MOTH BALLS by tex norman

Before unlocking the front door
I stood watching this moth fling
itself against my porch-light bulb.
His flailing wings imply a frantic
need for light. I know the feeling.
Apparently this moth believes
that on this silent summer night,
finally, somehow, after traveling
through a seemingly endless
darkness HE has somehow
managed to reach the sun,
all 60 brilliant watts of her.
I refer to this moth as a HE
because this moth just has
to be a HE. This moth has
the balls to fly directly and
boldly at a white hot burning
bulb. HE is drawn to the light,
HE rockets toward the light.
He is full speed ahead, fearlessly
charging into this intense,
illuminating, sever, relentlessly
dazzling light. It is as if this moth
has an irresistible need to enter
the light, to merge with the light,
to become the light, to BE light.

I found him dead on the porch
the following morning. I interrupted
a requiem mass of ants in jittery
procession as they carry this hero of
brightness to his final, and no doubt
delicious resting place. What HE
found is what we all find: a light that
is bright, hot, extraordinarily real and
yet undeniably and absolutely artificial

Re-enacting My Past

My shrink tells me to go back to those incidents in my past where I was hurt and devalued, and imagine, or do a mental re-enactment of how that incident could have been better.

For example, when I was about 6 my father came in after church, I was getting my church clothes off, and he decided he would teach me how to read “shaped notes.” [See http://tooninginonmylife.blogspot.com/2010/08/shaped-notes.html] Clearly, my father had no clue about how children learn, or when they are ready to learn certain concepts. There are age appropriate lessons, and then age inappropriate lessons. Teaching a six year old to read shaped notes is similar to teaching algebra to a kid who hasn’t learned to add and subtract yet.

When I didn’t get it in the first 5 minutes of instruction my father got mad and ended up giving me a dozen lashes with his belt.

Now how might that have gone better?

Instead of teaching me shaped notes, he could have taught me a [VBS] vacation bible school song with hand motions:

This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel NO I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, all the time.

Or he could have put me on his back and played horsy with me.

What message would I have gotten if he had taught me a VBS song, or played some game with me? I would have learned that my daddy thought I was fun to be around. I’d have learned that he thought I was a neat kid just the way I was. I would have gotten the message that I did not have to learn something hard to deserve my father’s attention. And by not being belted for failing to perform it might not have occurred to me that failure, pain and punishment all go together.

The next step, I think, is that I have to extrapolate. I first imagine the better way things could have happened, and then I internalize the positive messages:

I not only could have been valued just as I am, I am valuable just as I am.
Failure is just a way of trying something and learning what works and doesn’t work. Punishment, pain, shame, embarrassment do not go with failure, especially not during the learning years. So what is supposed to be going on inside me? If I could have been valued, and delight could have been taken in my vary existence. Had that happened I might have grown up delighting in myself.

That seems logical. I feel I was treated as inferior and defective as a child and I grew up feeling like my inferiority is not just my perception, it is an absolute fact. IF my dad had treated me as a valuable delightful being, then theoretically I might have valued myself. I might have taken delight in myself. I can conceive of that, but I can’t imagine that.

Here come my troubling thoughts: Hypothetically, most of us agree that a baby has value period. Babies don’t have to earn value, they are just valuable.

Why do we think this? I think we generally agree that all babies have value because babies have potential. You can look at a baby and imagine that this baby might be the next Paul McCartney, or the next Dr. Salk, or the next President of the United States. If we looked at a baby and knew they would be the next Ted Bundy, or the next Joe the Plumber, or the next Leroy Jones: garbage collector, well, we might not value that child too much.

We value the potential contribution, but as the child ages and the ability of the child (or lack of ability) becomes apparent, well, our defense of the child diminishes in direct proportion to the inabilities of that being.

It is nice to think that unconditional love exists, but does it?

I understand that I might hate myself less had I been delighted in more at the beginning of my life. No one can really know the limits of their potential. I have taken on tasks and at some point, I’ve given up, but I’ve never given up because I had nothing left to give. I always give up before I’ve reached total depletion. I have been on empty but known there were a few fumes left. Whenever I stop, I always believe I could have done just a little bit more. I give up because I choose to give up, and because I give up early, I never know where my total depletion point is located.

Since I have never gone as far as I can go, I can’t know how far I could have gone. My view of myself determines when I reach my throw up my hands and give up point.

In my childhood, my family members spoke of themselves as if they knew themselves fully. My father would say, “I’m not mechanical” and by that he meant he had no mechanical ability, so he would never attempt to fix anything, he would never try to understand how something worked, he would never assemble a bookshelf in a box, or install a ceiling fan. my father labeled himself as being NOT MECHANICAL and that label locked his potential mechanical ability behind a door and that was then sealed shut by a brigade of bricklayers.

I remember saying I thought I would like to be a lawyer and my father said, “You’re not a good reader. Lawyers have to read a lot. You could never be a lawyer.” I received the label, “I’m a poor reader,” and from that point on I just didn’t try to do anything that required a lot of reading. My dad said, “You’re not good at math,” and I accepted that as a fact. Therefore, when I took algebra if I couldn’t instantly understand something I didn’t sit quietly and study the material, and I didn’t practice problems until I could do them. Why should I? I’m just not a math guy.

But what if I had grown up believing that I could do anything? What if I believed I could learn math if I wanted to learn math. What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a good reader? What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a math guy? How would my life be different now, had I thought there was no skill, and no profession that was too difficult for me? If I’d grown up believing that I could do anything, and be anything if I just applied myself to learning the material and practicing the skills, how might my life be different today?

If you grow up getting these “I can’t” messages, then you end up grown up and there are more things you can’t do, than things you can do.

No, it is worse than that. You grow up believing that you can’t do anything, and if there happens to be something you do well, you will dismiss that skill, you will deny your abilities, down play your successes, and (like me) you will become a full time self deprecating loser.

When I left home, I had NO PLAN for my life. I had no career notions because I didn’t think I was smart enough to do anything difficult. I loaded trucks, and had no ambition to order the supplies, or to learn to be a driver, because that was beyond me. I washed dishes in a restaurant, and never once considered waiting tables, or learning to cook. I stocked shelves in a grocery store but had no thoughts of ordering that stock, or managing a store, or owning a store.

I went to college because I was homeless, and starving. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I would have joined the army, but that was during the Viet Nam War and I wasn’t too interested in killing people and even less interested in being killed. I realized that collages have dorms and cafeterias. If you go to college you have a place to sleep, and you get three meals a day.

In college I discovered that I could do things I had previously believed were impossible things for me to do. I took a math class and passed it. I studied things that required a lot of reading, and I comprehended what I read.

Now this may sound stupid, but a success now and then did not fix my over-all problems with low self esteem. Actually, LOW self-esteem is not the right term, it should be NO-self-esteem.

So, IF I go back and pick the more memorable traumas of my past, and IF I do mental re-enactments and see how I could have valued myself, loved myself, seen myself as normal instead of a worthless loser do I then become OK?

I probably don’t understand the whole concept because when I see the past was unfair, that I deserved a better past, just means I have confirmed the hurts and unfairness of my past. I may understand WHY I hate myself, but I don’t stop hating myself.

Shaped Notes

By tex norman

He moved into my room. I felt the pressure
change, as if he were an angry thunder
storm, about to rain down hail upon
my head. He was a churning cloud of pent
up charges looking for a place to strike.

I remember that, that day, my room was hot.
My sweating made my church clothes cling to me
so tight that taking off my pants was like
the peeling of banana skins — no lie!
I still had on my church shirt as he rolled
into my room, but, down below, my legs
were bare.
“I’m going to teach you how to read
music, like the kind we sing in church,”
he said, but it was like a speech that he’d
prepared himself to say. This was rehearsed.
“You know son,” said my father, “singing is
Biblically commanded by God’s Word,
but only singing, never instruments.”

“I thought that angels played on harps up there?”
I said.

“Yes, I guess that’s so,” my father said,
“but, I’m sure you know, or you should know,
we speak when the Bible speaks and we
are silent on all subjects where the Bible
is silent. The New Testament of Jesus
Christ says seven times that we should sing,
but never mentions using instruments.
Since singing without instruments is hard,
that’s why we have developed these shaped notes.
Once you learn the shapes and learn the scale,
you can, without piano, learn new tunes.”

There was a tiny blackboard in my room.
My father drew five horizontal lines,
a treble clef, and then he drew shaped notes
and put them on the lines or spaces there.
He pointed to the first shape singing do,”
and then to ray and mi et cetera,
but I was five years old and didn’t care.
My room was hot like mama’s oven, but
without the smell of risen, dying yeast,
and I’d endured a morning spent in church.
All I wanted was to lay down on
the slightly cooler hardwood floor and draw.

He quized me on the shaped notes, but I failed.

“Pay attention, boy!” my father said.
“You’ll please the Lord if you can learn shaped notes,
but boy you’ve got to listen when I talk.”
Worry crawled around inside my shirt.
The fear inside my stomach seemed to rise.
I thought I might vomit up those fears.
Again my father’s finger pointed out
each note. He sang and talked the lesson, only
louder, like a sudden thunder’s slap.

My father pointed to a diamond shape.

“Which note is this note? Do you have a clue?”
My father answered for me, “No you don’t!
Because you do not listen when I speak.
I’m trying to help you. You don’t even care.
I could make you famous, if you just
open up your stupid ears and hear!
But do you listen? You don’t even try.
You’re just a stupid, brainless, sinful boy
who doesn’t care enough about his dad
to listen when his daddy teaches stuff.”

My fingers trembled like the leaves before
a storm, yet I felt rooted to the floor.

“You don’t listen. You don’t even care,”
my father said, “I take my time to spend
with you, yet you don’t have the courtesy
to listen to your father when he talks.”

Then like a thunder bolt he shouted out,
“DO YOU?” Let me hear you say it, NOW!
Let me hear you now say to me ‘no dad.’
Say it right now. Say it to my face.”

I looked down to my toes and said, “No dad.”

“I thought I said to say it to my face?
Can you see daddy’s face down on that floor?
Look me in the eye and say, ‘no dad.’”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “No dad.”
I said it soft, because I didn’t want
to say the words at all.

“What was that?
Did you say something to your daddy, son?
Well, how do you expect your dad to hear
you mumble like a moron? Tell me that.
Now look me in the eye and say real loud,
‘No dad, I never listen when you talk.”

I forced my face to face his face and said
the words he said I had to say. My father
moved in close. Our noses almost touched.

“I can’t HEEAAR you, boy,” my father yelled.

“No dad, I never listen when you talk,”
I yelled.

“The Bible says to love and honor
dads. But you don’t love or honor me.”

“I do!” I said.

“You don’t! Don’t lie to me.
When you lie, it only makes things worse.”

My eyes envied over towards the door.

“Don’t look over there,” my father said.
“Look at me. Look me in the eye
and tell me you don’t love and honor me.”

I didn’t want to say it, but I did.

“I hope someday you’ll know what it is like
to have a kid that will not show respect.”

“I do too love and honor you,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “Don’t you lie.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I really, really do.”

“If you cared the way you claim to care
then you should know the shape and name of do.
After all, I taught it to you twice.
So show me that you love me. Point to do.”

I had to guess, because I didn’t know.

“That’s WRONG, you stupid knot-head. Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Unbuckling his belt, in one swift move,
the leather slipping through the loops, is free.

“I’m going to teach you not to lie,” he said.
“Next time, you’ll pay attention when I talk.”

He looped the belt and swung it at my thighs.
I tried to step away. He grabbed my arm
and pulled me up toward heaven, ‘til my toes
were all of me that touched the earth. And then
he rained down lashes on my legs.
It wasn’t like my father wound down
but more like he was winding himself up.
I must’ve cried and surely I cried out.
I don’t remember that. What I recall,
what I remember, is my mama at
the door. Her voice is shrill with panic as
she’s screaming to my father,
“Dick,” she yells,
“you’re going to kill him. Stop it! Stop it, Dick.”

Angels (a poem by tex norman)

I wish I could count them as they descend
on that dance floor set up on a pens head.
If only one would shake the depression
out of me as if melancholia
was like shards of salt and after that I’d
discover I have a WONDERFUL LIFE.
I’d like to sink down into the folds of
an overstuffed chair and listen for the
tintinnabulation of the bells as
St Peter was passing out sets of wings.
I’d like to think that even angels have
some opportunities for advancement.
You know, Michael, slays a dragon and then
rises to the rank of Saint. I wish to
God that God had a special message for
me. Then I wonder what sort of message
would merit an angelic courier?
And what sort of delivery system
might the Almighty employ? Handwriting
on the wall, perhaps? I’ve been weighed in the
balance, and I have been found wanting. Tell
me something that I don’t already know.

The Suicide Questions

In a job interview
there is a category of questions
faced by all job seekers
a list of questions have come
to be called the Suicide Questions.

‘Tell me about yourself.”

Your fear of pauses
the terror of silence
the churning of fear
in your lower track
and that hyper drive
of nervousness
causes you to find a comma
and insert a paragraph
of self-revelations,
each of them Unfiltered
by anticipatory thought.
Your uneasy answers
have an effect similar to
burping the alphabet.

When asked about myself why,
why, why in god’s name
did I share that time I was asked
to resign. I wasn’t fired, so why
bring up being encouraged to quit?

“What are your weaknesses?”

Why did I give them a list?