Just finished reading Amy Irvine’s memoir, Trespass
“Herb, as usual, looks invincible. In this particular instance, it is as if the recessive climactic conditions that threaten the region [of Southern Utah]–combined with the stresses in our life–only strengthened his resolve to flourish.
Now as I stand in the home he has built, it is the photo that helps me grasp that he is not a lion an at all. He is pure Coyote–decadent, passionate, and possessing an inherent tendency to thrive in the worst of times.
But there’s more. He has his arms around me in a desperate sort of way–as if he’s trying to uphold my burgeoning mass [note: Amy is pregnant]. What strike me now, in thinking about the photo, is how he falls into anything that resembles the work of a savior–that this is how he gets duped into trying to hold the entire world in his hands…It’s not wonder that he feels so at home in Deseret–where God and biology are in perfect agreement that men and Canis latrans should take as much territory as possible. But, for all his sparkles and grins in that one photographic moment, his eyes are dark and resigned. It is the glimmer of resentment. The part that blames me for his hind legs’ getting caught in the snares of convention and duty. This part is his in our troubled equation…
His response was that of any trapped creature: to chew his paw off and run” (341-342).
This section of Amy’s book made me think of a poem that I posted way back in the early days of this blog, speaking about John and GameBoy:
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men too gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant’s profit and gain.
There are men too gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who devour them with apetite and search
For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry.
There are men too gentle for an accountant’s world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant’s world
Unless they have a gentle one to love.
-James Kavanaugh
For many years I’ve been dependent on John to bring home the bacon, to provide health insurance, and to make my life (and our children’s lives) comfortable materially. It’s a huge burden that is not without emotional and physical cost. I am often unsurprised when I hear stories from friends of their husband’s mid-life crises. It’s no wonder that so many men “chew [their] paw off and run” to a place where they can live a fleeting fantasy for awhile.
Yes I realize that part of being an adult is doing things we don’t enjoy too much. The slogging mundanity of daily household chores, the endless errands that are required to keep a family outfitted and fed, the days of busywork at a job that depletes one’s soul. And I wonder, why does it have to be this way? And how can I remove myself and my beloved from this madness? How can we create a space to live and to thrive even as middle-class corporate America seems destined to suck the life right out of us? Where is the oasis in this desert? Where is the Innisfree where “peace comes dropping slow”?
Your thoughts?
