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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Uses Your Anger Against You, With Thanks To Demon #35: Father
Demon #35: Father has cropped up twice in the last two days--once in another, once in myself. I suppose I have more lessons to learn from him--or at least a test to take in regards to the lessons I have learned. Yesterday, I dealt with an angry person--angrier by far than I have been in a long, long time. I used to be that angry all the time, all day, every day. I used to think that it was preferable to pay the cost and have the anger than it was to just deal with the situation. I learned how to be angry from the boys and men who peopled my life when I was young--my father, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles. I learned that anger worked. It could frighten other people into doing what you wanted them to do, into pretending as though they thought how you wanted them to think. You could use your anger to provoke their silence. Anger was my favorite tool--in fact, for a long time, it was the only tool in my toolbox that I used. I had paid dearly for that tool and it was mine and I was going to use it and use it and use it. I had paid with my childhood, logged thousands of hours locked in the house with an angry, alcoholic demon who fed on fear. I paid, when I got older, with relationships, with friends who I would cut out of my life at the slightest provocation. I paid with my teeth as I got to be an adult, grinding my molars down to stumps, cracking fillings. I paid with my health, with high blood pressure, headaches, burst blood vessels. I paid and paid and paid. And I learned how to fight anger in others, how to fight on the street using anger. I learned how to smell it, how to recognize it, how to provoke it in others and then to use their own anger against them. It's a beautiful skill if you have it. And inside the anger, there was always calm. I learned from so much practice that anger was a nearly impenetrable shell, but inside that shell was a Zen-like calmness, a spiritual calm in the eye of a storm. I came of age when I realized this. I retreated to that place often. I never, ever lost control while I was angry. Everything I did, I did from within that calm place. Because I knew this place so well, I was able to destroy things. I was able to destroy things simply for effect. I knew that the acts of destruction wouldn't make me feel better, but that it might--did--make the other person feel worse. I knew how to head straight for what mattered most to the other person and to do my calm best to destroy that thing without mercy, without any attention paid to the dearness of the thing to the other person. I'm not just talking about the destruction of objects, but about the destruction of self-esteem, the destruction of dreams, the destruction of hope. It was beautiful. It truly was. It was like finding a thing or a place that no one else seemed to know about until you told them. It was my own private fishing hole, and the fish were always biting. I spent ten years there. I am grateful to my father for showing me this place. And for showing me this: Yesterday, I provoked anger in another person so strong that the blast nearly knocked me back, back to my childhood. I was six and my father was breaking a broom on my back by beating me. I was six and my father was lifting me off the ground by a handful of hair clenched in his angry fist. I was six and I was dropping to the ground, the hair pulled out, my father bellowing unintelligible words at me. I was six and I was learning how to face anger so destructive that it threatened to wipe me out of existence. And it didn't wipe me out of existence. I faced it with fear then, and I face it with fear now, but within that fear is a different but equally calm place. Within that fear is the knowledge that anger has not the power to destroy me unless I use it myself, unless I am paying for it. And I met this person's anger with that calm knowledge. I met it with fear, too, with the six-year-old's fear of daddy, but with the thirty-two-year-old's calmness and the knowledge that anger has no power over me unless I chose to give it that power. I apologized for my part in the fight each and every time it seemed warranted. And I did it sincerely and willingly and with no dishonor. I did not allow myself to retreat into anger out of fear. I did not lose control. I did not fight dirty. In fact, I did not fight at all. I was a beautiful Zen shell with a soft, creamy center. I oozed good will. I made my points when I could see an opening, and I let my points go when I met resistance. It was beautiful. It really, really was. And then this morning, there was a confrontation in the studio between me and another woman, one of those �I�m entitled� women that you meet on the customer side of exclusive makeup counters in high-priced department stores all over the world, one of those women who accessorizes with the anorexic, adopted Laotian daughter and the doctor-husband that she managed to trap when she was planted in some tiny, exclusive college in Vermont or somewhere equally mythical. (And this woman makes what she calls "healing mirrors." They are mirrors so skilfully made that five-year-olds oooh and ahhh at her artistic achievement. The mirrors have nonsensical, New Age-ish claptrap things written on them, things like, "You are love" and "You are preciousness" and "Your being is beautiful." And Dorothy Parker would have taken one look at these things and at this woman, and then blown the woman's head off with a sweet little Magnum 44 pulled from her sweet little ladylike handbag.) And me? I know anger. I know all about the care and feeding of anger. I know how to pay for it, I know how to wield it, I know how to sharpen it when it gets dull, I know how to play it like fucking Stradivarius violence. And, sadly, the confrontation was over music. This woman came into the studio and turned up her annoying old lady music. And I asked her to turn it down. She quickly agreed, as she didn�t want the likes of me touching her radio. I might infect it with some actual artistic sentiment or something. So she turned it down. And when I walked away, she turned it back up. No, really. So I went and got a radio, and turned it on. And she turned hers up even louder. I went over, asked her if she minded if we had no music since we couldn�t agree on the matter. And she refused. She said she wasn�t turning it off. No, really. So I offered to get the studio monitor. And I went out to where the monitor was working with another artist. And the monitor had apparently left his spine in his other manifestation, because all he did was tell me that he never played music in the studio. The other artist said that she thought it should be headphones or no music. And spineless boy said he agreed. And then he went in to talk to the woman who agreed to turn her music down�until he walked away. No, really. So I thought, great. No rules in the studio today. And I lit up a cigarette. And I got my radio and tuned it to that music that they play at the gym to keep everyone�s testosterone flowing like wine, that �Ooo, baby, pump it, pump it harder, baby� kind of hip-hop music with the loud bass-line. And I got a few pieces off my shelf that I hadn�t ever liked. And I got a mallet. And I took all of these things to my easily accessible and very, very calm center of anger, and I smoked, and I listened to women begging for it, and I smashed things with a mallet. For almost two hours. And it was beautiful. And the "I'm entitled" woman and spineless boy monitor? They had made the rules up themselves. They could say nothing. Really. Right in the middle of all of that, spineless boy monitor came over to me. I smiled at him, blew clouds of smoke into the studio, kept smashing pottery. He went away. One of the women who had witnessed the whole confrontation and who had said nothing in my defense came over. She looked at me and walked away. After a minute, she came back. She asked me if I knew where something was in the studio since I have been there far, far longer than spineless boy. I told her very coldly to ask the monitor, excused myself, and returned to my work. Another man came in, and I greeted him cheerfully. He commented on my smashing, and I smiled and laughed. The studio director came in. Spineless boy called him into the office, and I knew what the studio director would be saying to spineless boy in three�two�one: �You�re the monitor, you handle it.� So I worried not. They came out of the office, and I greeted the studio director cheerfully, smilingly. And when I was finished with my work, I cleaned up carefully (my brother�s words�said to me one day at the end of a long, tiring cook�s shift, when I was tempted to leave a mess for the incoming cook�echoing in my head: �Don�t give them anything that they can use against you�). I left the radio blaring and I left the studio. And it was beautiful. It really, really was.
More lies:
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