100 things about me. (60-63)

60. I have decided not to have children this lifetime...but I must acknowledge that having other people's children in my life and participating in the raising a child profoundly transformed me, surprisingly...for the better.

61. As a result of the experiences of ( #60), I have forgiven my mother. Actually, I've determined that there was nothing to forgive her for in the first place. She loved me and raised me, doing the best she could during some of the worst parts of her life. She also did her best during some of the greatest parts of her life. She's my mother, she's a mother and as such is to be treasured and congratulated for living through it without killing my sister and me or herself. Sorry Mom for not getting it until recently.

62. I believe that everyone has to capacity to be racist, myself included. I know I'm more classist than racist now that I have grown older and acquired more possessions. Also, since I've moved to a highly urban environment, my intolerance has become more overt. I'm working on trying to recognize and correct these tendencies before I am completely corrupted. I don't intend the fix to return me to the extreme bleeding heart liberal ways of my twenties...instead, when I encounter social problems, I'd like to be part of a fair and practical human solution, not to capitulate based on guilt.

63. Today, and almost every day since I've formally entered the "real" working world, deep down, I've wanted to walk into my boss's office, thank her/him for the opportunity to work with him/her and then quit. The pattern began at five. The scene: I had my first day at school and was finishing my very first home work ...the assignment was to color, within the lines, a traffic cop standing next to some traffic lights. As I traced the outline of the police jacket with a dark blue crayola, fat hot tears began to fall from my eyes. My grandmother, walking into the room impatiently noted my meltdown.

"What's the matter?", she asked.
I had a hard time putting into words my awakening to the fact that life is a series of more or less complex variations on that initial, inane task. That it was all going to be about doing some thing or the other, day after day. Instead I just said, "I want my mother", which wasn't completely true...or false. What I wanted was a return to an unfettered, unshackled existence. A womb-like place of creative potency rather than pointless rote didacticism. I still long for it.

And here's my tiny, little breakthrough, it's the thing about me. Remaining soley in a place of possibility is about as easy as staying womb-bound...quite literally it's not sustainable. Necrosis sets in. We have to be born or paradoxically we die. I have to DO or I die a little each day. So, I haven't quit the job. I'm not above it or any other mundane job of living. But being tasked to participate in the mundane is not a sentence---it's a process. It does not preclude the pursuit of invention. Being grounded in the physical realities of life provides a launching point for living the rest of it...not a terminus for settling down to grin and bear it.

( 1-59)