Anyway because they were adults, they could read my mind. But I couldn't read theirs. I wasn't mature enough. I might have been mature enough in my African context, but here people kept telling me that I couldn't see right through them because I was 'immature'. So I had to become more sensitive to their needs. Because part of my immaturity was not being sensitive enough to everybody's needs.
If I said I felt a certain way, like lost or sad about my situation, people would tell me that I didn't. In fact, I couldn't be trusted because I'd had it really, really good in life, and now everything was just normal, but because I was too immature, I couldn't see it. This was how normal people lived and lostness and sadness was just a part of life. I couldn't have what I had experienced before. I was just being unrealistic.
I wondered whether, once I had my social initiation, I would feel better about things. I'd be able to read other people's minds, like an adult, and my views would have become respectable. If people told me that they felt a certain way, I would have been able to say, "No, that isn't true. You feel quite differently. That much is clear for all to see."
But the social initiation was always tricky because I was always being struck down in the workplace by a cold or 'flu. I tried to hide this as best I could, because I was the last person on Earth to enjoy being a social contaminant, but it was very difficult to paper over the cracks -- the fact being that I just didn't have enough energy to carry on as I should. Above all, nothing made a deep amount of sense to me. I knew I was doing what I was doing to break through and become initiated on the other side, but I could never seem to prove myself enough to the adults, who kept informing me that I was immature.
And that was because of the demon thing, because they'd got into my bones by now and try as I might I couldn't get them out. So I put on a brave face and hid the social contamination, but sometimes it would emerge and my father would get fired up enough to put me back into my place by telling me how much I reminded him of himself, and of other things he'd never liked. But I never knew what these things were, yet.
In some ways I guess I was just being silly. In Africa, I'd had my horse, Honey, to get along with, and we had exhausted vast semi-rural suburban tracts together. But here it was just me, my father, my family and myself. It was clear we didn't like each other, but the priest I went to see about the matter insisted that we did and that my family cared about me very much.
There must be some way to break through, but Christianity hadn't worked, no matter how much I tried to make it. My throat was tightening up, so I took endless sprays out of a throat inhaler, to not have a weak, small voice, or be susceptible to pollen, and I tried to find words in the Bible to repeat, but somehow that wasn't right for me.
Thing is, I knew I'd be mature once I had a rite of passage. I could sense that in my blood. But, let's face it, I didn't even know how politics worked, and I really wanted to, but I had missed the years of high school education in Australia that might have helped me.
I thought there must be a structure out there somewhere, and once understanding it, this would make it all make sense. But something was very weird about me because my facial muscles weren't moving properly in coordination with my voice anymore, and the pollen just kept getting in, until I found my speech was slurring during the extreme moments of fatigue which started about late morning.
Of course I was very privileged to have this opportunity to go to Uni, as it would never have happened in Zimbabwe, or even in Rhodesia for that matter, as we were not that well off.
I was working with paints, doing fine arts, and anyway the petrol fumes were probably getting to me, so I purchased a rubber ventilator device to wear upon my face. Whenever I did painting. I knew I'd deeply sinned, though, and I needed moral redemption. I threw myself headlong into the Christianity that wasn't working for me to try to make it work, and people said that I was arrogant.
I asked them how they knew the things they did, and they told me I already knew. I knew everything they did. I was just pretending not to because I was an arrogant sonofabitch. I thought everybody owed me something, but they didn't. Not even the time of day. I would have to learn that for myself.
So the only thing to do was to go back to the Christianity again, and try to make that work, even though it was clear it didn't. But maybe that was a lack of faith or something. I had to show more indifference to what others thought of me. That was the only way I had the slimmest chance of breaking through and getting some redemption. So I took to public praying and wrote "God" on the wall. It was a public beseechment.
Ok, so that didn't work, although I gave it my best shot.
If I said I felt a certain way, like lost or sad about my situation, people would tell me that I didn't. In fact, I couldn't be trusted because I'd had it really, really good in life, and now everything was just normal, but because I was too immature, I couldn't see it. This was how normal people lived and lostness and sadness was just a part of life. I couldn't have what I had experienced before. I was just being unrealistic.
I wondered whether, once I had my social initiation, I would feel better about things. I'd be able to read other people's minds, like an adult, and my views would have become respectable. If people told me that they felt a certain way, I would have been able to say, "No, that isn't true. You feel quite differently. That much is clear for all to see."
But the social initiation was always tricky because I was always being struck down in the workplace by a cold or 'flu. I tried to hide this as best I could, because I was the last person on Earth to enjoy being a social contaminant, but it was very difficult to paper over the cracks -- the fact being that I just didn't have enough energy to carry on as I should. Above all, nothing made a deep amount of sense to me. I knew I was doing what I was doing to break through and become initiated on the other side, but I could never seem to prove myself enough to the adults, who kept informing me that I was immature.
And that was because of the demon thing, because they'd got into my bones by now and try as I might I couldn't get them out. So I put on a brave face and hid the social contamination, but sometimes it would emerge and my father would get fired up enough to put me back into my place by telling me how much I reminded him of himself, and of other things he'd never liked. But I never knew what these things were, yet.
In some ways I guess I was just being silly. In Africa, I'd had my horse, Honey, to get along with, and we had exhausted vast semi-rural suburban tracts together. But here it was just me, my father, my family and myself. It was clear we didn't like each other, but the priest I went to see about the matter insisted that we did and that my family cared about me very much.
There must be some way to break through, but Christianity hadn't worked, no matter how much I tried to make it. My throat was tightening up, so I took endless sprays out of a throat inhaler, to not have a weak, small voice, or be susceptible to pollen, and I tried to find words in the Bible to repeat, but somehow that wasn't right for me.
Thing is, I knew I'd be mature once I had a rite of passage. I could sense that in my blood. But, let's face it, I didn't even know how politics worked, and I really wanted to, but I had missed the years of high school education in Australia that might have helped me.
I thought there must be a structure out there somewhere, and once understanding it, this would make it all make sense. But something was very weird about me because my facial muscles weren't moving properly in coordination with my voice anymore, and the pollen just kept getting in, until I found my speech was slurring during the extreme moments of fatigue which started about late morning.
Of course I was very privileged to have this opportunity to go to Uni, as it would never have happened in Zimbabwe, or even in Rhodesia for that matter, as we were not that well off.
I was working with paints, doing fine arts, and anyway the petrol fumes were probably getting to me, so I purchased a rubber ventilator device to wear upon my face. Whenever I did painting. I knew I'd deeply sinned, though, and I needed moral redemption. I threw myself headlong into the Christianity that wasn't working for me to try to make it work, and people said that I was arrogant.
I asked them how they knew the things they did, and they told me I already knew. I knew everything they did. I was just pretending not to because I was an arrogant sonofabitch. I thought everybody owed me something, but they didn't. Not even the time of day. I would have to learn that for myself.
So the only thing to do was to go back to the Christianity again, and try to make that work, even though it was clear it didn't. But maybe that was a lack of faith or something. I had to show more indifference to what others thought of me. That was the only way I had the slimmest chance of breaking through and getting some redemption. So I took to public praying and wrote "God" on the wall. It was a public beseechment.
Ok, so that didn't work, although I gave it my best shot.
No comments:
Post a Comment