Two selves

I have had two selves -- which various events are now uniting into one self.

There is the self I grew up with, and the self of the new culture that I continued on with. These are hardly the same, and have not been united up until now.

The old self is Polyphemus. It was the self that become frozen solid, petrified, as in Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, upon entering the modernising Greek culture. There was nothing in the new culture for it to identity with -- and so it turned into fossil, and could not grow or develop too much. There was no good soil for its roots, so it remained as it was, and then turned to stone.

Then there is the new self -- the green shoot that I sat in quiet rooms all day, growing. This was the new mind, and somehow the new body that would save me from the child victim of a traffic accident (which was how I pictured the psychical condition of my old self.) "Rest and be calm, there, beside the road, with your mangled bicycle," I said to the old self. "I'll be back. The minute I've grown a new self, or parts to prepare your mangled organs."

I've lived for too long with two facets. I can turn the one self over and find the other self. Only, I'm not able to understand in every sense what she is saying. A great deal of it makes sense: "I'm your feelings, the way you actually experience things. I am also, in large part, your body."

Yet there is a great deal that I cannot put into words, peculiar sensations that twist and turn within my gut, hard to undertand in terms of present realities, the adult context of my now existence, and the nature of the present established orders of things. It seems this child has no place in my adult life. A line has been drawn now in the sand, which separates childhood from adulthood completely. The child is quintessentially that which is verboten. And I see children and they are also verboten, much as my own childhood has been verboten. ( I speak to them, when it is necessary for me to do so, but cannot seem to understand them in a way that finds not threat in the association. I walk away.

"Zimbabwe".

Even the mention of it says "childhood" to me. I cannot think about the word, I cannot relate to it, except within the emotional frame of childhood memories -- those which I have come to accept as forbidden. I cannot mention Zimbabwe without cringing, thinking it an invitation for the superior cultural whip to descend -- as, so often, it does.

"Zimbabwe". It is a childish word like "sadza", like "hoohoo" (for insect), like "tummy" for stomach.

To me it is a word that resists adulthood and formulaic condescension about proper ways to do things "or else".

It brings back the former self -- the self who is shy and inarticulate, who knows best how to get along with others by respecting their awesome powers to be human, and hiding in a corner of their shadows.

My old school friends bring this mood back to me, more than anything else. They are still their own children and relate best in this way, whereas I, I've broken the promise, abandoned the former self to find help -- and never returned in the same way again.