So this month is rough. There was this eye twitch thing that was going on all year that finally stopped, or I don’t notice it any more, but there is this new jaw thing, where it feels like it’s all starting to tighten on its own and my face is being stretched because my jaw is about to pull backwards in the wrong direction. It’s the kind of thing comes from bracing yourself for things, for lots and lots of things.
Ok but first I should say that I understand that everyone is going through something. We’re always all of us going through something, and when we are going through these things, we find out that if we talk about them out loud that everyone wants to talk about their things out loud, because no one talks about them out loud. Because we don’t talk about things. It’s not that there’s a problem with repression, that these are repressive cultures, and they like to keep things hidden. Of course, there is repression, it’s a Victorian time where people talk about their leather masks and why polyamory works for them, but are very discrete about their feelings, because the body is not shameful, but emotions are, because something has to be shameful because I don’t know why because. We don’t talk about things because we don’t have time, because we want to say, How are you? and hear something easy, so that we can get to the business at hand, and if we can’t get to the business at hand, everyone will get upset because the world will surely stop if we don’t get to the business at hand.
There’s all this: (it relates somewhere, or will somewhere down the road, but it all relates, because this is about relatives): (bad punctuation; <yes>):
Last month my father went in for an operation to remove his bladder cancer, which returned, which returned and the doctor at the VA was not so concerned about (bad grammar) it. The operation to remove said cancer was not successful at all, it had grown a lot more than they thought, more than the images could show, and there would have to be further measures. So I’m at the VA with my parents on this morning a month ago, where there are images of the Boston Marathon on televisions in the background, images that make this country look like a lot of other countries in the world, except you can’t really talk about things like that at the VA because there are crusty old men who will get mad if you talk about those things. And we talked to the doctor and we heard this bad news, and then we went home, and a couple of days later my dad is back in the hospital because there’s something else that’s very wrong with him, something more urgent than the cancer, which is apparently spreading very fast but the doctors are not concerned. This is a minor complication, so they say, and it looks like he might not live for very long. The kidney is not working right and there are other things that are not working like they should. And for more than a few nights he’s there, and I get to spend one night with him, and remember waking up at 3 in the morning to a nurse from Puerto Rico putting a blanket over me and putting my phone and glasses on the table so they will not break. There are beautiful things that happen in ugly places.
And somewhere in the middle of this I (WE, really, it’s not me, it’s we, I had a lot of help) submit my RDC1, and the semester is winding down, and this is a little intense, and there are these meetings with my critique group which are interesting but hard to shift gears for because usually I am at my parents’ house to help with things on Sunday nights and there are dogs in the background and people on skype complain about the dogs. No offense taken, honestly, but this is important, there are always dogs in the background.
There are always dogs in the background.
And there is this afternoon with my dad in the VA where we are watching a show about LSD and military experiments, and it’s in the military hospital, and it’s kind of fucking awesome because of all of that. This inspires me to start listening to the Grateful Dead again for the first time in over 15 years I guess, I went through a phase long ago, and this is obviously another phase I’m doing through, except really it’s my dad who is going through it. But whatever is happening is also kind of happening to me.
I am thinking about the Borromean knot, and the place where the Orders intersect, between the imaginary and the symbolic there is a real here, and no one can live in the real, of course, and not this one, because it’s too close to the bone (cancer and dog pun, haha).
When I was in California, I started making arrangements for nfumbe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_(religion)), because the loan money is coming and I need this because Palo is going to be taking up more of my work in the next few years, oh but that’s complicated, very complicated to talk about here…but it’s a running track, because in Kongo cosmology, the dogs play a central role. Between the world of the living and the world of the dead, there is the world of the dogs, is an old saying. Dogs are like cats in some places, the ones that are in between worlds, because they live in the village and in the forest, the places of the living and the dead. They’re always in the background.
My uncle from Wisconsin comes to town, with my cousin, and they are visiting my dad all the time, even though he asks them to let him rest and he really doesn’t want visitors right now. This is my favorite uncle, from growing up, he had a painting show, Drawing with Ed, and has done a ton of watercolors, and we used to draw together when I was little, and he made me consider the idea of being an artist. He finds it hard to understand what I’m doing now, but is very happy I’m still doing it.
One night there are several uncles, and an aunt, and a mother and a brother (this is all relative) ((the kind of relativity that gives birth to Dada, and dada is in the hospital, and Dada is an orisha, one that comes to newborn twins, and therefore kind of rare)). And a daughter, a mortified daughter who is thinking about turning 14 and this is all very complicated, a lot of death talk in the air. In this room, on the symbolic level one might hear some of the uncles making racist jokes, and me and the daughter and mother and brother trying to disappear into our skin (on the imaginary), but of course in the Real there is this ritual about people gathering together to get ready to grieve, just in case. We don’t talk politics, and I decide not to tell them about my upcoming ceremony for my Palo spirits, and when they leave, my brother pretends to cry and throw himself in front of their car, because this gathering reminds him of something that made him comfortable when he was little (this is really awfully grim, good lawd).
My friend goes to California to see one of my godfathers, and while she’s there she texts me, and I’m getting annoyed because I am almost always with my dad in free moments now, and I don’t text my daughter all that much even and we’re close. But she texts me to ask if it’s significant that she got in a fender bender a block away from his house. I don’t know. But it turns out that it is, because my godfather calls me later, and tells me, “She has death all over her, she got the sign of getting killed in a car crash, and you have to do something.”
Elegantly, it’s a ritual with my Palo spirits, and it’s complicated and secret, and there’s an order that I have to get into my head so it goes well, because it’s a little intense. I’ll write about some of this later, because really, this is where the Lacan starts to come in. When there are rituals where there are metaphorical things that have to be done to someone, tearing this away, cleaning this, etc., and the metaphorical things have physical actions that are puns for the metaphors, it gets dizzying. The consciousness of the person being treated becomes whole by doing actions that are literal and metaphorical at once, and there are metonymic substitutes for death, ritual language is also structured like a language (and I’m reading the Dor book at the same time, which helps). (I didn’t know Lacan would help, hahaha, but it does.) This is in a closed garage, and I’ve been in this situation dozens of times, but not so much on my own, usually I’m part of a larger group of priestesses and priests. Being alone kind of makes it feel too responsible, and a little more adult than I want it to be. Because, among other things, it looks absolutely crazy, pots with dog skulls, rum and cigar, and it’s a little crazy I suppose, as crazy as psychoanalysis. In this city, I don’t know anyone else that knows this ceremony. Someone did it for me more than 20 years ago, but they’re long gone.
That’s enough, really, that’s plenty, really, for a month, really, but who knows why things happen like this. It turns out that doing this ceremony turned on my reflex for remembering complicated rituals, and it would come in handy in a week when we start rehearsals on the new project. But it also came in handy two days later, when my dog was hit by a car and killed, and I did a burial ceremony in my ex’s front yard. I’d like to say that I’m that kind of father where seeing my daughter grieving was much worse than the pain I felt about the dog, but I can’t say things that I like if I know they’re not really true.
That’s a picture of Sunny the dog in the Underworld, about a year ago when Elli dressed her up, it was a gender performance. This dog, I’ve been writing about this dog for a couple of years (since I first had her, really, she became my alter ego on Facebook, she would fall in and out of love like I did, and become charmed and disenchanted like me, and think about things that I thought about). She was the inspiration for my fake band, Doghead, in the performance/installation from earlier this year. She was also the star of a video with Fredo, a boy dog (sorry it was so heteronormative) retelling the story of Kassandra in modern dog times. I miss this dog terribly. They say that those that we love become part of us, and we carry them with us, but it also seems like those that we love get a part of us, and when they go, we’re also a little bit less than we were before.
And a few days later, there’s this news that my dad’s surgery, the next one, is scheduled for the end of the month (May) and they have to do it because it’s growing fast, but he has a 60-70% chance of major complications, and that sounds like very bad odds. And my daughter is grieving something very real for the very first time and I use the word very too much and I’m walking into her empty house and bursting into tears out of the blue still and it’s all way too much, and rehearsal is starting now and it’s kind of impossible.
Except. The first rehearsal. The night before I feel obi (coconut divination, oh it’s complicated) to Oshun and Yemaya to see if they’re ok with this, if we work with them and with spells, etc., and the answers are more positive than I’d hoped. In the spirit realm, we’re clear to start working (but not in the Ethical Standards Committee realm, which is another story that hasn’t happened all the way through yet, not enough to tell it yet). So…There are 9 people in the living room, and I’m talking about the theoretical underpinnings of this whole project, Lacan, Santeria, Palo Monte, phenomenology, performance art, video art, mediated versions of ourselves, and the mirror. And there’s all these rituals of death, because it’s Orpheus and Eurydice, and I talk about grieving, and suddenly there is this very peculiar feeling that comes over me. I’m talking too much, but there’s still so much more to say, so I say that, too, and all of this has been rehearsed, I’ve been writing about it for a couple of months now, and when I say it out loud, it’s not the typical scramble of complicated sentences that I get lost in, but this makes sense, and people are nodding, and they’re asking questions, and everyone seems terrible excited, and so am I.
After two weeks of that, I’m more excited, and so are they. Last night during a video shoot there was this breakthrough in developing this technique that I’ve been interested in, stolen from Godard and modified significantly, but the performers are describing their experience of being on film as crossing this line between thinking about the words and short-circuiting thought altogether. And it’s very raw. Hm. This feels very good, this feels very promising, this feels like being under a spell. I think we all might be under a spell. I think this life is a long and very beautiful spell (so far).
I’m putting a link here to show a little bit of unedited footage, to give an idea of what’s happening in my living room. The last section will be edited to the off camera voices are out of the video, but here you can get the echoes that are kind of nice for now. And as of 15 May, I am…C
No comments:
Post a Comment