If I make it past April, I’ll have outlived my father. That does tend to concentrate the mind. As my analyst said the other day, cautiously at first, “You need to make choices.” I knew she was going to say that and said so. She gave an explosive sigh, laughed, and confessed, “That was really hard to say to a puer!” But I was laughing, too.*
I’ve come far enough that some things just don’t matter as much as they used to. Take lifetime accomplishments, for example. When are we ever finished? Some people have children, attain high rank in professional fields, and retire in glory while awaiting physical collapse. Or at least I imagine that’s what they do, having hit none of those marks myself. Is there a point where one just stops, or is that marketing?—you know, skipping down the beach with shiny teeth, enjoying your “golden age.” My 99-year-old grandmother wasn’t much help when she told me years ago, beckoning me close so she could whisper in my ear, “Johnny, it isn’t good to be so old…” But what did she know? All she did was sit in the same chair for 40 years and do crossword puzzles! Granny loved me, though, and for that she always rates a smile.
For most of my life, I’ve been driven by alternating guilt and passion. The one because I needed to be loved and thought I wasn’t, the other because I’m an irrepressible son of God.
I grew up thinking I would be a scientist or fly a plane. (Or maybe someone like Frank Buck or Buddy Holly.) In my academic career, I majored and minored—at various times—in zoology, English, central European history, and Germanic literature. In the adult world, I first got married, taught in a junior college, got divorced, dropped out to be a woods hippie in the Ozarks, worked as a day laborer, had a stint as groundskeeper at the same university where I’d earned my master’s degree, and learned to make welded steel insects. In the 25 years that followed, I was a traveling artist, got married again, tried my hand at cartooning, worked in a library, pursued rock & roll songwriting, became a self-taught sculptor, cast my own small bronzes, learned to paint, and bought a house. I spent years on the water in Maryland poking around in small boats. (This list is anything but complete.) None of that made me a star or quenched the guilt, but I can safely say I tried more things than most.
The last dozen years have been the most intense, insane, exploratory, and destructive, and I would never have gone down this path if I had known how hard it all would be, but here we are in darkest, deep New Mexico. Once again I’ve had more fun and hell than those who say, “I told you so,” yet I’m more focused on the present than I’ve ever been. Writing is my life now, though I hardly know what I’m doing—that’s all right, because no one else does, either—and I’m finally calm enough to do it right. Or may be: during that last (phone) session with my (Jungian) analyst (in Zurich), I was wondering why I hadn’t picked up my guitar in months!
But age is actually helpful now. I’m not afraid of being pinned down quite so much because I’m almost dead. After all, the one thing I never HAVE accomplished is to stick to one thing long enough to see it work. (I don’t mean money, either, but I’ll bet there is some.) Anyway, I’m here, I’m clear, and this will be a trip. Hey, I got up at 4:00 a.m. to write this, didn’t I?
Well then, there you go…
* Puer aeternus (Latin), or eternal boy. See here.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Any life consists of lots and lots of details, most of them haphazard and unintended. I myself always resist the desire to analyze the raw matter. A few good narrative lines are enough for me. A Danish writer (name escapes me) has recently completed nine volumes of a sort of an autobiographical novel which details his life in almost minute by minute form (I believe he is only about age 40). It is excellent reading, though the guy hasn’t done much of anything that could be considered exciting. The idea being that any particular life, looked at under a microscope, is a pretty interesting proposition. Whether it all adds up to the individual in question being successful or having accomplishments is, on the other hand, sort of boring. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man didn’t have accomplishments, successes or much of anything except spite and malice – but his take on life is all the better for it! I say, write, live and thump your banjo! “Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still / yet we can make him run.”
Your banjo-thumping advice is absolutely right.
I write this same piece every so often. It’s a kind of centering exercise. Plus, I like to remind myself of all the material I have.
When I look things like this over, though, I often think it’s too precious or revealing of one thing or another. But usually people privately via email, having obviously identified with it. That’s happened again. So we might say I wrote this for other puers. There are millions of them out there.
Puer is okay in its time and place, but surely the goal of a male should be to become homo, mensch, stand-up guy, provider, wised-up adult.
Women and girls have their own version of this, but no one thinks being a perpetual girl is anything but silly and embarassing.
Why is it that we males can get away with being feckless and boyish to the end of our days, but women are expected to grow up?
What’s the matter with these people? Why don’t they just straighten up and fly right???
There’s a yawning chasm between any goal and the achievement thereof. I argue only for the primacy of the goal, with no intent to denigrate the fallible human unable to achieve it. However, I don’t want to privilege failure (pace Underground Man) as desirable in itself.
Morality in general is sort of like that – the fact that we don’t and maybe can’t live up to what we believe to be the Good doesn’t mean that isn’t the standard by which we judge and are judged. Admitting the value of something that one can’t quite realize in one’s own life is the beginning of wisdom.
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
I know.
No problem. In a very ironical way I can’t explain now, you actually turned up a nugget of paydirt, too.
Well, this is an extroverted society we live in so those of us whose internal process is our primary accomplishment are used to feeling inferior. Now that I’m an elder (different than old) I appreciate the weird direction my life took. It kind of balances out that overdone extroversion. Taos is a good place to be this way without interference and misdirection even though harsh in other ways. While here I learned that I could paint, write and make some courageous choices. But I have to get away now and then.
Somewhere here there’s a stack of “new” Granny pot holders squirreled away, but there are still two well-worn ones on the stove.
I must admit I think of Granny every time I boil water, and even now with something as simple as crochet, she endures.
Wow, you still have untouched ones? All of ours have been washed many times. I think of her every time I boil water, too. Far out, I say.