Dear diary,
In this entry, I’ll try (again) to figure out what caused me to become what I now am. For, as I keep repeating in these e-pages, I don’t like what I’ve become; I feel that something went wrong along the way.
I can trace all my determinative, tragic moments back to Little Eden, where I attended kindergarten. Here in Minnesota, that’s what we call the school that prepares children for first grade: kindergarten. So I was five-&-a-half years old when my soul got stumped.
Actually I remember one crucial moment (above I allowed myself to use the word “tragic” to describe such times, because they seem at once sad & bad & mad, which is what tragedy is, if I’m not incorrect) — I say, I remember one crucial moment happened even prior to kindergarten, in the nightmare known as preschool:
Our preschool class consisted of twelve disciples. This was my first time ever being part of a class. What happened is this: One boy in the class began goofing off as the teacher attempted to lecture. The teacher, at that moment, had her back turned and was facing away from the class; so she heard the disturbance coming from behind her, yet couldn’t tell exactly who had caused it. She then grew steaming angry that her disciples were not listening attentively, so she spun around and faced us and demanded that we point out the aggressor. I myself honestly was clueless as to the culprit — all I knew was that it wasn’t I who’d interrupted: I had been giving her my undivided attention. Yet the teacher raged at the class & blamed us all for what the one misbehaving student had done.
This was a formative moment for me. After returning home from preschool that day, I told my mom that I was too scared to go back tomorrow — I was too traumatized by being scolded like that, as part of an entirety, as if we all had committed the crime of acting rudely: I couldn’t believe that an adult could wield such an injustice: it really shook me up. So my mother let me stay home from class thenceforward, & I didn’t return to school again until kindergarten.
Then in kindergarten I learned all the other lessons that shaped my soul the way that it’s shaped today. This tragic mis-shape. The first thing I remember is falling in love with Kim T. (She was one of the inmates at Little Eden.) On her birthday, I bought her an expensive gift. (That is, I pleaded with my parents to purchase a gift, which I then gave to Kim.) Now I can’t recall her response to my gift, but what left a permanent dent in the fender of my heart was when I invited her to my own birthday party and she said she couldn’t come. I took it as a rejection of my love. (When you’re that young, birthdays are a big deal: the only day that comes close to being as important as your very own birthday is the Christmas holiday, which is Jesus’s birthday, or so we’re all told.) Thus, because Kim T. failed to attend my celebration, I vowed never to declare my love for anyone again. It hurts too much to have your love ignored — it’s better to keep it a secret, cuz then at least it seems reasonable when your beloved ignores you. That’s what I concluded.
Then the next big tragic event for me was learning that I’m not universally adored. (Kim T. was a one-on-one failure, but here I shall significantly widen my scope.) It sounds funny to put it this way, but when I was five-and-a-half, I really did assume that everyone loved me. This surmise was eventually corrected by the evidence of reality. I had to find out the hard way that the entire planet’s adoration is not for Bryan R. but rather for Nick M. Here’s how I deduced this:
Our whole class was sitting in a great circle, in the gymnasium, and the atmosphere was quiet: so quiet, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Just then, an instinct ignited in my mind, and I decided to break the silence and voice aloud a funny remark, so as to make the class laugh — I don’t recall exactly what my statement was, this funny remark that I was certain would please all; but I remember, like it was yesterday, the resultant pain that I felt when my words fell flat: I lifted my voice and spoke this humorous observation loudly so that all my peers could hear it, but no one responded: apparently my observation wasn’t as funny to them as it seemed to me. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it was that, immediately after my botched attempt at comedy, a fellow classmate named Nick M. spoke some words of his own — again, I don’t remember the content of his speech; I only remember the feeling of the aftermath — and the class roared with laughter, and continued laughing for eternity. I even heard the two girls who were sitting next to me in the circle (each of whom I secretly admired) remark in an undertone, one to the other, “Nick is hilarious. And he’s so cute, too!” So this made my soul burst into a fireball of jealousy that, as I explained above, still burns to this day.
The lesson I took away from the above experience was: Do not attempt to please your contemporaries; it is fruitless, for they will never share your taste. Leave comedy to the birds; let strangeness replace mere mirth in the pinnacle of your value system. And strive not for physical beauty: it was not granted you, you cannot grasp it. Let the mind be all for you; forget the body.
One last thing I learned in kindergarten which affected my character so thoroughly that it determined my life-path is when I met my good friend Brian. He became my good friend in later years, but when I met him in kindergarten, it was a traumatic instant; because I did not know then what I know now: that his name is spelled with an “I” (“Brian”), in contradistinction to mine, which is spelled with a “Y” (“Bryan”) — for I had only just met him on the monkey bars at the playground; so I asked him who he was; & then, when he answered me by voicing aloud our shared name, I cried, “No, that can’t be your name: that name is MY name.” This really threw me for a loop. How can two distinct poems have received the same title? Perhaps our parents, who apparently are the source of this misunderstanding, are therefore NOT perfect beings who deserve our honor and praise. Perhaps there is no God. These are the thots ran thru my mind, and I came down with vertigo. I’m not joking about this severe reaction: the fact of our epithets possessing phonetic similitude threw into relief the abyss that underlies individuality. If I’m not the only true Bryan, then what exactly AM I?
Anyway, purely by coincidence this Brian eventually became my partner in rap, and we created many rap albums together. And, as well as having an “I” instead of a “Y” in his first name, his last name turned out to start with an “S.” not an “R.” (Brian S. versus Bryan R.) For the LORD never gives us more than we can bear, until he does, & then we die. But I still breathe air; and altho this technical detail, the differentiation of spelling and patronymic, only slightly mitigated the terror of our situation, I take what luck I can find. – I’m a scavenger of luck.
So what I learned from this last trauma is that originality is a sham. And we’re all interchangeable, especially when viewed thru the eyes of whatever we are copies of. All our SOURCE cares about is that at least one echo of it survives; it doesn’t matter much which one: Brian S. or Bryan R., it’s all fairly the same to it. All names blur to one, ultimately, which may as well be Monseigneur Xerox; for we’re but mechanical copies of a copying machine. What’s more, not even the form itself matters — so when I said just above that the SOURCE only cares that a single instance of it survives, which is to say: pick a human, any human will do — not even this is the case; for humankind could go extinct (apparently will go extinct) and the SOURCE would not care, because the only aspect of spacetime that’s truly inextinguishable is flux itself. The fact of its indestructibility is evidence of its having earned unending love. This is the only love that will last. That’s why I do not see human life, at least my own, as extremely important. Life is simply a state to be endured. In other words, if the SOURCE (A.K.A. “Endlessness”; “The Everlasting”; or “Ein Sof” — the All that is Nothing) really cared about humankind, it would have created us unstoppable, as it did for the phenomenon of change. But it’s also important to keep in mind the complimentary truth to this truth; as Blake writes: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” Yes, it is in love with humans at present; but it can just as whimsically fall right back out of love. Again, I repeat: Only flux has earned the love that knows no end.
So, if we enjoy our current form (I speak as a human to humans), we should try to extend the interest of The Everlasting by attending its parties. Requite its love by savoring the diversity of its shards (Eternal Life is a shattered mirror). Also laugh at its blagues. Seek out & find & sing its hidden beauties, the difficult pleasures of its wisdom. Lastly, & most crucially, let us avoid getting beguiled by the obvious, facile jokes and shallow cuteness of its enemy Nick M.
(If you happen to read this, Nick, I’m only ribbing you; like God ribbed Adam.)
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