Dear Mother,
I still
think that having the shoes in plain sight is aesthetically preferable because
I like to look at them. It reminds me of Van Gogh’s shoes and Heidegger’s
shoes. Please be more respectful of other people’s tastes. They are a part of a
person’s individuality, and it is humiliating to be told they’re ‘wrong’.
Father convinced me that the shoes were a health hazard, and I accepted the
rationale although I am still skeptical. Personally, if left to me own devices,
I would move all the shoes in order to clean and then put them back. There are
many things that you would find I could do well if entrusted with the
responsibility. Just know, though, that it’s never going to be perfect and that
there are too many things to worry about at any moment to allow oneself to be
bound to fairly arbitrary dogmas.
I grew
up watching you and Dad arguing about absurdly menial stuff, and I have had to
work hard to overcome my own perfectionism and see the bigger picture.
Hopefully you can do the same and revise your opinion of what ‘Normalcy’ is,
because it IS a fallacy (you can look up ‘Normalcy bias’) and many of my
friends, as well as my ex-girlfriend, have criticized you, and being around
them has shown me how relative things are, how diverse people’s customs are in
America, how Universal to them is the notion of Respect, how vague the word
‘normal’ is even to them, how nice things can be when people compromise, and
how there is a range of responses to conflicts of interest.
Really,
everyone simply wants to be ‘me’ in his or her own way, and their preferences
are a part of that. One person’s ‘mess’ is another’s order, because these are
not ‘things out there’ but internal attitudes and reactions.
When
you say ‘normal’ and negate my experience, it is naturally depressing.
You
could be more Open like other people and try to see the Beauty of another’s
totally unique world-view, aesthetic and otherwise.
Conflicts
are inevitable; the price of eliminating such tensions is a loss of that
Beauty. Try to handle them with a cool head, (like most of the people I have
met) and see if maybe any part of it is your fault. You’ll notice that, except
where the safety of someone other than myself is concerned, I never tell you
what to do. I do think you should try living it up more, since you seem
fascinated by glamorous lifestyles and Art, but I do not probe you routinely
about that. I’m glad that you clean up for me if you enjoy it, but I cannot
condone it if you do not.
Being
happy is what is most important. For all I know, the shoes might gather fungi
in the dark of the closet, and that would be more of a hygienic risk than the
dirt we could easily clean up anyway and that we never step in anyway (as
opposed to our shoes, which obviously make immediate contact with our feet). If
we do not Treat the shoes as a liability, handling them ceases to be a problem
and becomes fun. They cease to be ‘base’; this is the same reason I love seeing
them, like an old favourite toy. And yet notice again that I am not telling you
to do these things. I wouldn’t ever ‘make’ someone do something I did not
myself enjoy. If I don’t feel some sense of purpose to doing something, I know
it to be utterly unimportant, and if I feel compulsive about it I try to ignore
it. This is why also I never let someone tell me to do something that is
meaningless to me; if it is meaningful TO THEM, they can do it, and if not,
they shouldn’t. Notice that, left to my own devices, I walk the dog daily feed
him, and check regularly that he is safe. You never see me complain except
where his safety and health are at stake. I do not regard these things as ‘chores’
because I find them meaningful rather than menial. You probably notice that I
enjoy it, as Father enjoys providing for us.
Yet if
you think that ‘real work’ must be dreadful, I totally disagree with you. Quite
on the contrary, I think that enjoying the ardour of it is a sign of health.
Monks are good at doing this, so I note the different and lack of
compulsiveness. Like I said: Left to my own devices, if you were to go on a
trip for a week or something, you would see a semblance of workable order upon
return.
But I
am not going to become restless just because you may be, because internal
balance must come first; things seem much worse than they are when we are
restless. I learned in one of the first few classes I took at Palomar how to stop
making evaluative judgements and how to look at things objectively. It was
sobering and I wish I’d stuck with it earlier. If you need to express yourself
aesthetically, I still suggest you consider taking up painting or skating. It
can be Fun, and you don’t need to wait for me to become financially independent
to enjoy yourself. Kresten’s mom still enjoys herself, and I’ve seen it help
her relationship with her son. It’s not perfect, but it’s sweet and preferable
to some totally fake perfection. If you took some time off, you’d see that
things fall into place. This may sound naive, but it’s an experience I have had
numerous times by letting things be and resisting the overwhelming urge to
interfere.
Sincerely, your son,
Dmitry.
Post-scriptum: One time, at a McDonald’s, I was accidentally
given two plastic trays instead of one. This was a joy to me I could not begin
to describe; it would take me years to relate it. I sat there, reading a book
of collected verse and prose by Rilke, and then a woman who worked there (poor
thing), middle-aged and middle-eastern, rapidly yanked the bottom tray away
from me. She practically wrestled it from my hand within a single second; I had
all ready told her I wasn’t finished using it. (I wanted it near me.) It
crushed me. You understand, surely. My only consolation was in recognizing the
functionalism prevalent in our society. It is not unlike what Marcel called the
Problematic. In fact, it is probably precisely that. On the subject of eating,
I can understand, in the context of this sort of functionalistic aesthetic,
that many Americans would insist on removing their trays and forks as soon as
possible as though to hide evidence of any sort of dinner having transpired.
For me, it would be a vice, because these plates are my companions and it is
one of the great joys of the world (you understand) to see them still there,
waiting for me as a reminder of the prior meal. This joy also extends to
dish-washing, but it always has to be at a proper time when nothing else is on
my mind. Otherwise I feel unbearably ashamed. I do agree with Rilke that Things
have indispensable things to teach us, and we are to apt to treat them like
technology. (Which, as Heidegger pointed out, means that we are not really
treating them as Things.) To me, when I see a cluster of “used” dishes, (though
I loathe that term in context) I see a miniature city, and a “sullied” dish
with two pieces of silverware atop it is reminiscent maddeningly of a clock.
You understand. I even felt similar to that yesterday after Kresten and I ate;
there was a bit of jam that had formed a delicate crust on the semi-transparent
plate with its coarse visible interior and its smooth exterior. It was made the
topic of a very congenial joke. Watts was probably right about Western
anti-materialism, but I think that society might be improving from the time he
was writing in. At any rate, you get it; you read Salinger novels and Rilkean
poetry, and you like Art so I know you do. I myself have written many poems
about clutter and dishes which I might show you when they are ready.
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