July 09, 2005
A Pierced Haze
I’ve been thinking a lot about duality.
It seems to me that it’s the nature of the universe, the nature of reality – that things exist in some sort of oppositional continuum. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction….or something like that. I wasn’t very good at physics. Well, I wasn’t good at the math part of the physics, I should say. Conceptually, I could get on board – it was the practice that seemed to baffle me.
But such is life. Or at least mine.
I was conceived on my mother’s birthday. Much to my teenage disgust, she once told me that getting knocked up with me was “The best birthday present I ever got.” Ewwwww. Mom! She also told me that she first became aware of my existence at our county fair, which takes place every July. It was during the Horse show. My first kick was during the dramatic finale. I love pageantry. Even in utero.
During her pregnancy, one of the names being bandied about for me was Pierce Hayes. I can only imagine the kind of man I would be if I’d been zipping around this entire time as a Pierce Hayes.
Preppy gay…maybe…or pierced haze...who knows?
I don’t believe that anyone’s life course is ever set in stone. A myriad of influences impact our destinies. Pierce Hayes Thurman, I am prone to speculate, would have been much like me – but much, much pissier. Unlike me, Pierce might have gone to Dartmouth for law school instead of St. Louis for art school. The life I might have led as someone other than myself...
My siblings changed my life, as siblings are prone to do. When I was born, my parents turned to them to name me. Well – my dad did. My mom was knocked out cold. My entrance into the world began with an epidural and the ensuing drug-induced blackout. Oh...the foreshadowing.
Anyway, my siblings jumped at the chance. Their source of inspiration was a television show. Robin Wayne, they decided. Robin (Boy Wonder) and (Bruce) Wayne – the proverbial Dynamic Duo. It seems so clear now – secret identities and Barbara Gordon’s spin-around vanity/dresser. Holy life changing decisions and numerous outfit options, Batman!
The die was cast, I suspect, on that day – but my dad, either being a little hard of hearing or disliking the name Robin wrote Robert Wayne on the hospital form. And so it all began with the intention being slightly skewed by the outcome.
But such is my life. Or everyone’s, I imagine.
Duality is a part of life. Good-Bad. Boy-Girl. This-That. Right-Left. Top-Bottom. It seems as if there’s always some sort of choice to be made. Decisions that move your little life forward or backward. North-South. East-West. You get the drift.
I was having a conversation with my mother while I was home last weekend that provided me a little bit of insight into the nature of duality. We were outside talking about the trees that grow around the farmhouse where I grew up. There’s a beautiful White Dogwood growing where an old Catalpa tree used to be. It’s gi-normous and gorgeous.
“You should see it in the spring,” she drawled, “when it blooms….”
We stood there admiring the tree together, a slight breeze moving the tree limbs, bumble bees buzzing in the Hollyhocks.
“I asked your brother to cut it down, but he won’t,” she then said.
I turned to look at her, clearly confused…. “Huh?”
“Well, you see…it just gets so big…and I feel so closed in…and confined…but he won’t cut it down…even though I asked him to…”
And I started to get really upset.
Does she hate the tree?
Does she love the tree?
Is my brother being a jerk for not cutting down the tree?
Or is he being obstinate because my mother says she loves the tree?
All of these conflicting statements, resulting in my head spinning and my blood boiling.
If it’s not clear to you by now, I tend to think in these terribly dramatic extremes, and at that moment, when I was about to explode at my mother for driving my crazy with this circular thinking and conflicting dualities -- I stopped.
There’s another option to all this melodrama, I decided.
Isn’t it possible to love the tree and hate the tree at the same time?
Can’t it be beautiful and confining?
Must we make that either/or choice – to live with something we hate but bitch about it, or conversely, get rid of the beautiful thing we hate and mourn its loss?
Is there another way to think about events and activities that is not quite so extreme?
So today, like I was last Saturday, I’m just thinking about trees. How they grow. How they die. How their outcome, so much like ours, is decided by powers beyond their control, and what (if anything) we can do to change our destiny.
I’m thinking that it isn’t so much about choosing one way or the other -- but accepting that both options exist. Certainly, some choices are more sensible for us than others. But there’s a litany of opposing choices that await us – which by their nature, expect us to take sides, draw swords and fight for some supposed right or wrong.
The quandary and the ultimate challenge, I’ve decided, isn’t in making the decision between these two choices, it’s somehow finding acceptance and tolerance for them both. Amidst all this duality – I’m trying to formulate my thoughts and opinions for a third option.
Which will, for once, be my own.
