Here is my business card, which I hand out to all picnic-goers:
Bracketed note
[My brother's son recently had a birthday; it was his first ever, so he's officially one year old; but I didn't wanna write an entry about that, cuz I'm trying to keep this diary mirth-free. However, thots of infancy & aging, and how I myself felt when I was just a year old, and how I've been such a great satan to my parents — all these things begunkt my mind as I wrote; so, despite my intention, the text ended up sinking in the topic, like sauroids in tar. I stepped in it with my very first sentence, even. Anyway, it seemed good to admit this up front; for, if I were to begin the entry without a preamble, then... it might turn out pretty much the same. Either way, I guess it probably doesn't matter. Just forget I said anything.]
Dear diary,
If you can make it past your first birthday, you’re home free.
Actually, that’s not true: many dangers await you, whoever you are; but it’s still an accomplishment to make it past your first birthday.
The blank thing about being just one year old is that you still haven’t figured out that you are a changing entity. Unless you’re extremely advanced for your species, you probably don’t even know that you can influence the movements of your own body. You might assume that the appendages that keep appearing at either side of your peripheral vision writhing around (I’m talking about your arms) belong to a team of puppeteers, who’re always putting on their show.
And the parents of a one-year-old child either think the child is cute, like the kid is just a doll to be gawked at and dandled, then tossed away when it’s outdated or once a cuter doll takes its place (which is what happened with me and my brother — he’s two years younger than me; that’s just about the amount of time it takes for a doll to get tarnished: two earth-years); or the parents of the one-year-old might already hate their abomination – that’s how they refer to baby Bryan in private: an abomination – because infants are exhausting: they demand constant upkeep, which bars you from ever getting proper rest.
Yet some kids die before they even reach their one-year anniversary. In this world, you can die at any time: there’s no rule that prohibits death from working on holidays. Death has one simple job, and it doesn’t matter when he gets it done, just as long as he does it. He shows up at your flesh like the repo man, unannounced, and drags you off by the tail of your soul. Takes you home and makes you God. (I’m operating on the assumption that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come — as William Wordsworth always sez — from God, who is our home.) No invitation needed: Death can show up any time, at any party, and dance with anyone he likes.
But if you evade death, for whatever reason — perhaps death finds you unattractive — eventually you end up growing older. Age two leads to ages three and four... soon you reach the brink of adulthood: the teenage threshold: onward from twelve: these be the crucial years when you begin to enter wisdom. Soon your mind eclipses the minds that made you: now you can no longer deny how stupid your parents are. You hate your parents, and they welcome your hatred — they hate you right back. Tho none of this hate is expressed clearly and honestly: it’s all veiled under layers of politeness, like a steak doused with ketchup; for there’s constant talk of “love” but it comes across tawdry and is spoken thru tightly clenched teeth.
Now, once the offspring outstrips the parental intelligence, diverging paths of action might be taken. One path is to continue pretending that the parents indeed deserve to wield their authority; that their rule is not insultingly, cruelly arbitrary — this path teaches the child the art of servility, whose ways she’ll find useful throughout her career. The other path is rebellion: For the child, this means enjoying an antinomian lifestyle and flaunting one’s manumission; for the parent, it means clutching all the more anxiously to the systems of torment that your own soul once loathed: traditional religion and established politics, whose dowdy views shield you from the terrifying truth.
*
No. At this point, I realize that I’m being too harsh and general and thoughtless and plainly biased and non-visionary. The truth is that there are as many styles of parents as there are types of snow in Minnesota. Not all parents are slush on the roadside by the gutter. Some are fluffy flakes. Some are ice.
I think parents are desirable when they guide one to better business practices. If your father is the owner of a racetrack, and you are his firstborn, you might desire to usurp his position and become the CEO: the Chief Executive Officer (top con in the pyramid). But no father is going to give up his spot without a fight. Yet a good father will only pretend to battle while ultimately allowing his son to win. He’ll even poison one of the blades and say: “Take the sword that is most to your liking.” And if the son chooses the one with the poison tip, the father stoically accepts his doom.
Yet, what if the son does not wish to inherit the family racetrack? What if, instead, the son desires to build a hospital and nurse the sick? In that case, here’s what a heavenly father will do. He’ll note the places where his son’s life-calling might benefit from studying the tricks of his own familiar trade. “O my son Bryan,” the father will cry, “O Bryan, my son, my son! It is my contention that parents are most desirable when they guide their children to follow what the entrepreneurial consensus generally accepts to be the best financial practices; therefore give ear to the words that I say. It’s no secret that I own this glorious racetrack, and it’s a real moneymaker: we spur horses to death bi-weekly. That’s how virtuous we are, in the eyes of Mammon (the god of the market). And you know what they say: Where great wealth is stockpiled, there is sure to be a happy and contented community. And this is true: for gamblers just love us. So I cannot fathom why a kid born into this family would not want to take over the reins of such a lucrative enterprise. I’ll gladly give you your choice of weapon, if you’d like to try to pry my kingdom from me. But you’ve made it clear that you have no interest in worldly pomp, in mansions and yachts; instead, you’ve opted to fashion a boring hospital because your fetish is to heal people. Well here’s my advice. I’d arrange the place so that it’s in the shape of a vast circle, and I’d pave a path that runs directly past each patient’s bed — that way, you can gallop from patient to patient and nurse them speedily; then keep making your rounds, lap after lap, till your time improves. I got this idea from watching horses dash around my racetrack. If you nurse them fast, the infirm will get well quicker; so they’ll leave, and you’ll be able to lodge new customers in those sick beds. And if you teach them to sleep faster, that’ll raise your bottom line. I can even send you some of the spent horses that we produce, in case you can find some use for them. Maybe you can convert their hides into scrub suits: hygienic outfits that you can wear while hastening from surgery to surgery, performing operations in record time.”
And a dutiful son will answer: “Thanks for your help. I’m definitely going to employ that idea about the circular path that leads to all the sick beds.”
So, this way, both the father and the son can enjoy success within the free market. Not everything has to be a cutthroat competition.
*
In the above scenario, I like the way that the dad passed on all his knowledge to his greenhorn kid. That’s the kind of nurturing that makes or breaks a soul in this universe. If you’re an orphan or a bastard, or if your father is a dipstick (like mine was), then you’ll only accomplish the impossible by way of trial-and-error, as opposed to the shortcut of nepotism. Alternately, of course, you could attempt reading up on things; but that’s a drag; plus it’s more helpful to have family connections: just look at Hollywood.
And hereto I’ve only mentioned the importance of males in modern society. Straight white males, and dead white european males. But there are also mothers and daughters. The reason I remained silent on this latter subject is that I know nothing about it. I’m a boy and I had a dad. My dad owned a trucking business, which is sort of like a racetrack; and I chose to work in the fast-food industry, which is much like managing a hospital, cuz you deal with sickness (only, instead of curing it, you cause it). On the contrary, my mother is not someone I can relate to; she volunteered at her church a lot, and she taught ESL (English as a Second Language) and helped dropouts get their GED (General Education Diploma). That stuff bores me silly. I really hate schools and learning. And my sister is unrelatable as well, for she attended college and got some sort of a math degree, then worked for a medical company as a chart maker: these charts helped the uppers at that company decide how much to pay their doctors — so that’s sort of like winning a horse-race after all your fellow jockeys mysteriously fall ill. — In short, I don’t have enough data about these female examples to weave them into a story about mothers and daughters; so you’ll just have to make do with the above parable about me and my dad. Derive an analogue from it or something.
*
Wow, I’ve sure strayed far from my intention, which was very simple — I just wanted to map out the life-course of an average bambino: After turning one, you become a teen; next thing you know, you’re married and contemplating having children yourself. Now imagine how banal it is to comprehend the entire cycle, from birth to age 27, and to know that nothing changes: you’re never granted a Damascus epiphany; and yet you decide to produce new life and feed it the same lies that you yourself were fed on.
I guess maybe not everybody hated their own childhood as much as I hated mine. Perhaps some people have sweet memories of being raised by dimwits. I can’t find anything agreeable about it. And I think my negative stance is better, too; because if you genuinely love your parents, then when they die you’re all broken up and distraught about it, and you spend the rest of your life harping on that bland theme: “I miss my mom” or “I miss my dad”. The only time I ever missed my parents was when I got lost in the shopping mall as a toddler. I guess I’m thankful that no one stole me into the underworld, where politicians frolic. But if the highest praise you can give your guardians is that they didn’t lose you to human-trafficking, then either something’s very wrong with Christendom, or your folks were low-quality. (Likely, both are the case.)
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