I'm not a hard person. hard to know/stand/love maybe, but not hard in and of myself. at least, I don't regard myself as such.
I can't begin to guess at what anyone else thinks - I'm so terrible at reading most human signs that I usually assume that:
a) no one thinks anything; or,
b) they are just as or more self-conscious than I am
But around family... people who know your history, have memories in common with you, and can never really be expunged from your life (as a continuum of past-present-future) and always have an opinion about what you are doing vs. what you should be doing, I find myself in that weird place of worrying about the judgements of people who may not have seen me in years. a) and b) still apply, but the knowledge that these people will be around for years and years to come changes the stakes. Their hopes and expectations aren't there to hold me up to any arbitrary standard; rather, they ask questions on subjects they know little of because they connect those things to me. My cousins don't care about literature, but they ask because they're curious about me. It's different.
And then there are the tots. All of my cousins have children ranging from ages 1 to 15. There's no telling what they think, really: they don't even know themselves (well, maybe the 15-year-old does). But they certainly are paying attention and they certainly have an opinion. Very immediate, very definite, very affective. I can't help but care deeply about what children are thinking.
Maybe if I were a little harder I could avoid these uncomfortable functions on the coast. Maybe if I were harder I could escape the dysfunction of my modern family unit. Maybe if I were hard I could reinvent myself the way I wish I were: harder than you think.
But to do that would be to lose something that the value of which can't be measured, that is unlike anything else, that is never the same as it was, is fleeting, is genuine, is tender. Families aren't hard organisations: they're flexible and permeable and adaptive. Members come and go. Parts break. Things go missing. And we need to be soft enough to move and fill the gaps or find someone to fill it for you/us.
2 other voices:
take care of yourself marc. and in saying that i do not mean to ask that you biopolitically responsibilize yoactions; rather, i mean to say go slow. that's the pace of the gaps.
movement-images in the place of time.
you know, I edited this post after it had been up for day and removed a portion of text that described why "looking out for myself" was not high on my list of priorities.
while i recognize the wisdom in the advice to "go slow" and mind the gap(s), i'm not sure where that's coming from.
suffice it to say that i'm being pulled through the temporal eddies into the sea of time along with everyone else, regardless of whom I'm looking after.
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