(no subject)
I used to consider patience--endurance--to be my seminal virtue. Now I question that.
When I was quite young, my parents took me with them to see a subtitled film in the theater. I hadn't yet learned to read. I remember a vivid mountainous vista; the swarthy male lead riding a bicycle; a protest scene shot in black and white. I remember the darkened silence of the theater beneath the movie's soundtrack. When the credits rolled I pulled my legs up under me, smiling in pride, because I had sat quietly the whole time and never once asked how much longer it would be.
Slightly older, I would perch on the stairs, resolving not to move until the minute hand of the old chiming clock had traversed a quarter hour. I would wait motionless in the river shallows, summertimes in Missouri, as the algae collected in the hair that downed my legs; as the damselflies alit on my upturned hands, and the sunfish nibbled at my ankles.
Later, I waited in like stillness through a cavalcade of fumbling boys. I waited through certain soul shattering tortures, admiring all the while, from the highest ivory chamber of my mind, the silent tenacity with which I suffered.
Impassivity is a skill I have worked decades to perfect.
Yet while I value the patience it takes to listen well, or to observe the unfolding of a flower, I am sick of watching my own torments with the same detached interest I might give to the decay of carrion. I am sick of nurturing my own dull-eyed vacancy in the name of strength.
I want to learn the art of strategic retreat, of raids by night; the brutality of rejection and self-interest. I want to stop enduring that which I'd be wiser to avoid.
When I was quite young, my parents took me with them to see a subtitled film in the theater. I hadn't yet learned to read. I remember a vivid mountainous vista; the swarthy male lead riding a bicycle; a protest scene shot in black and white. I remember the darkened silence of the theater beneath the movie's soundtrack. When the credits rolled I pulled my legs up under me, smiling in pride, because I had sat quietly the whole time and never once asked how much longer it would be.
Slightly older, I would perch on the stairs, resolving not to move until the minute hand of the old chiming clock had traversed a quarter hour. I would wait motionless in the river shallows, summertimes in Missouri, as the algae collected in the hair that downed my legs; as the damselflies alit on my upturned hands, and the sunfish nibbled at my ankles.
Later, I waited in like stillness through a cavalcade of fumbling boys. I waited through certain soul shattering tortures, admiring all the while, from the highest ivory chamber of my mind, the silent tenacity with which I suffered.
Impassivity is a skill I have worked decades to perfect.
Yet while I value the patience it takes to listen well, or to observe the unfolding of a flower, I am sick of watching my own torments with the same detached interest I might give to the decay of carrion. I am sick of nurturing my own dull-eyed vacancy in the name of strength.
I want to learn the art of strategic retreat, of raids by night; the brutality of rejection and self-interest. I want to stop enduring that which I'd be wiser to avoid.