Everyone is broken, and beautiful
Revisions: Aug 2018, Nov 2023, July 2024.
These words are floats on the water across the lake, a net strung underneath, thin filaments beneath the waves. To bring in the catch means reaching, some work. I hope for that.
Shakoon Learnings
Albert Paul James (Shakoon) entered my life in 1977 as stepfather and left as friend in 2018. It wasn't all sweet and roses, things were said and done later wished undone, or done differently. The whole though, the whole was Good without reserve. I'm a better man for having had him in my life.
Condolences are welcome, I have many teary moments as memories surge. More welcome than sympathy though is gratitude. Gratitude for those in our lives who teach, give laughter, help us grow, to be human. Every salty runnel down the cheek is a distillation of past and present joy and love. I intend to enjoy and relish each drop, without clinging.
There were times in my life no one scared me more. He was the FBI, the fucking big indian. His scowl dimmed the room lights, his growl made everyone scurry for cover, including the mice in the walls (true, that). With reason. A violent man and a more violent past, though never turned to me.
Also though, his smile parted clouds, bringing sunshine, and his laugh made the world right.
He told stories of everyday things in a way that made me laugh and want to hear more.
The bad times have left rocks. Hard knocks that perturb the current here and there, sometimes making rapids that swamp my boat in moments of inattention. They change not though the course of the river. Love is the overall theme.
I watched him succumb to disease of the body and another of mind, cancer and addiction. His 220 pound body in a 6ft 2in frame wasting into a 120 pound skeleton wrapped in skin.
('Addiction' doesn't refer to substance abuse. Being clean and sober was a very high value for Albert. He stopped drinking in 1976, cold turkey, after 20 years, and never touched a drop again. Albert didn't like pot, it just put him to sleep. He had a deep distrust of opiates, codeine, etc. Tylenol was about as much as he allowed for pain remedy. Even in hospital at the end he often skipped or halved the prescribed painkiller dosage in spite of clear discomfort. The addiction was bingo.)
Through it all he maintained a sense of humour and reminded me often of his gratitude for the good things.
I love that man. I know where the rocks are and can paddle around them, going with the current. It doesn't stop at the rocks. Flow keeps flowing.
A rock changes the path of a stream, but doesn't stop it's flow or alter the rivers course.
People are complex many faceted things. Tapestries of many threads. There may be wholly good and wholly bad people in the world, but I haven't met them.
Everyone I know no longer a child is deeply broken in some way. Every one. That one was abused, another one created abuse, this one drank to irreversible brain damage, the other one can't hear a certain accent and maintain their humanity. That one truly believes she is unlovable and alone. He thinks striking first is the only route to survival. And on, and on.
Albert taught me greatness goes beyond what is broken in us. We can be broken and still do good things, still do great things, still work for the betterment of our land and people.
We don't become good because we cut out the bad, throw it in the trash, or dissolve it into nothingness. We become good by simply doing more of it than of anything else. That's all.
The rocks remain. Love is the water and laughter its slipperiness. Or maybe that's backwards. Either way, generate more and keep the boat moving.
Gunalcheesh, thank you.
Tutshi River. Rapids are in the past, now is calm, attention still warranted, rocks and sweepers remain.
Everyone I Know is Broken, and Beautiful#
There is a thought bundle I ponder from time to time. Somewhere in it is a story to write, to tell, and someday I might find it. The title is “Everyone I Know is Broken”
The man willing to surrender wife and kid before confronting his aversion to money. The molester. The brain damaged emotional. The boil of anger nurtured for decades, fractured heart, fractured mind, gone hoarder. The mensa-smart shirt off his back generosity king with weak ego gone world small and living in literal shit. The boy tortured with violent imagery so real he'd rather blow his own brains out than live through more waking phantasms. The woman retreating into e-world from real world, neither job, husband or kids enough to stay. The girl just woman molested by her own pastor. The boy given pocketful of money and set loose to walk the streets for the day while papa visits mistress. The raped. The beaten. The rapist. The murderer. The alcoholic. The co-dependent alcoholic lover. ..and on, and on, and on. No word of this paragraph is empty. All embody people I've shared coffee, tea, hugs, laughter, tears, and breath with.
If I haven't touched the sharp edge or stepped in the bloody mush of The Broken it only means I haven't known them long/well or they're too young.
I'm not exaggerating. I can't think of a person excepting my kids that I've known deeper than acquaintance who has not been victim to or creator of atrocity or both. I don't know if this is a reflection of my life path - like attracts like - or a general principle for all people.
Granted 'broken' has a broad range, from largely harmless "oh they're a little weird about ____" to "watch every word and be ready to get the hell out".
Bottom line for me is that for me I ... Well I don't know yet. ... I don't reject people even when that might be the right thing to do -- for both of us. It's part love and compassion, and part fear and anxiety.
Someday I might find a way to write this story. Apparently it is not yet this day.
-={•}=-
Disappointing how many of the kintsugi cup images returned by google have nearly identical breakage pattern.
And yet, the reason I kept this one and include here is because it's the closest (yet imperfect, what a delightful recursion that is) match to my mental model of me: somewhat fixed, mostly functional, pieces of beauty, but nowhere near the perfection of what's usually found when searching Kintsugi.
Someday: rebuild a real one.
