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Blogs by William F DeVault
the apricots 2/23/2005 7:29:10 AM
don't read this unless you want to see where my mind goes when I am really, really wound up. I thought I smelled apricots the other day. and it made me smile.
several years ago there was a study that said that many psychiatrists reported smelling apricots when in the presence of certain schizophrenic patients. the study implied that they had found a brain chemical that such patients had an overabundance of, and that when they were treated to suppress this chemical (via, of all things, dialysis) their symptoms subsided.
back to the thread...
I smiled because it played to the moment, it empowered me to say I will soon be incapable of being responsible for myself.
then I saw the bag of dried apricots on the shelf, someone had left it open. damn. still stuck here, in the real world, dealing with the day to day.
There's almost a depressing thread to being told by your doctor that you're practically bulletproof. It means you probably will have to feel the pain for years to come. Not being someone who is likely to give into the narcisstic suicidal drive, I suspect I'll have to wait until an asteroid drops on me.
I married, the first time, as much out of a desire to help someone who was a mess than any other motive. After seventeen years of treading shark-filled waters, I left. But, in leaving, I gave over all my worldly fortune and any realistic hope of a future...when the smoke cleared I was actually legally bound by the Commonwealth of Virginia to pay more per month than I brought in (and this after I got a job paying 20,000 a year more than the job they wrote the thing up under...even my ex's lawyer says I "gave away the farm")...most of that debt being to fulfill promises I made so that I could get out of the mad pool without feeling like I'd deserted my children.
Of course, when she's making a good salary, you're unemployed, and the Commonwealth continues to tick you for $50,000 a year, it's easy to get into a pit.
My second marriage, not quite the same, but again...more because I was trying to save a life than get one.
That one ended...well, believe whatever myth it is in your best interest to believe. At this point the truth is so tortured as to make it an unwelcome guest at most tables. Suffice it to say that, when my memoirs are finally opened, documented to the gills, some people may be choking on their own bile. I have to say that, because sooner or later the acceptance of an injustice burns deep enough to stir at least an outburst.
So, here I sit. A part time job. A lot of spec work. Close to a quarter million dollars in debt (I'd get a lawyer to help in that matter, as the DCSE in Virginia says they won't discuss it with me, to get a lawyer...but lawyers all want money, up front, and if I had it, I'd send it to the kids...) I do sometimes ponder when I see a collector has spent a gazillion dollars buying a dirty t-towel once used to mop the sweat off of an actress's dressing room stool that a fraction of that could free me to walk the earth a free man and turn all my attentions to the long term good of the species, instead of being the janitor to dysfunctionalities made by others and visited on their children.
Yet, I've no desire for the sympathy of others. Sisyphus has purpose, and thus he is a self-actualizing soul. At every turn I've been offered escape routes from helping others, both by their actions or by the desires of others, and I've not taken them. I will either dig my way out, find a windfall to buy my way out, or die in a state of being a host to perpetual parasites.
In madness, a common thing to creative artists, I might lose my grief. But, truth be told, I will fight to my last breath to avoid collapsing under that sky. The greatest thing I will leave to my children is my legacy, I want it to be Quixotic, but not commitable. I don't wish for the apricots. And, so far, still drug and alcohol free...I want to know the tools of my pain, I want to look into the eyes of my tormentors. And, smile.
Maybe it was all the comic books I read as a kid, or the mythologies. Endurance is a virtue, rare enough in times so graceless that we celebrate criminals and reward public failures of moral code and sanity. It may be the only virtue I've not bartered to try and help out a friend or lover, but I will cling to it.
C'mon, fates. Is that the best you can do? Come for me.
