Holes
Jackson will sometimes allow Lucy to have what they call “sleepovers” in his room. Lucy loves it because she gets to sleep in his top bunk and giggle half the night. I love it because then they sleep half the day and don’t ask me things. Lucy also loves it because she’s afraid of spiders.
Jackson, however, does not love it. Lucy disrupts his nightly reading. That’s what he says. But, really, Jackson just has a general aversion to his sister and takes secret pleasure—he would never admit to this—in making her suffer. When he tells Lucy no, she always takes it hard. For instance, a couple nights ago she grabbed a screwdriver and stabbed several holes in her bedroom wall. I thought this was excessive and I’m beginning to question Lucy’s ability to solve problems. Also, when I have severely violent reactions to events, I use writing to distance myself from their power.
A pipe underneath our house broke and we just finished off a week with no hot water. I took a lot of cold showers, which is absurd, because cold showers are for guys who don’t get any. I dreaded the showers while I also questioned yet another facet of my all pervading addiction to comfort. I’ve been obsessed, lately, with the inverse shadow side of technology making our lives easier. It also made us fat and lazy and altered our tolerance for suffering. Technology turned us into tame house pets.
We used to be wild ferocious animals. When’s the last time you took a screwdriver to a wall with reckless abandon?
The plumbers, hung over, sweaty, dirty and cursing, knocked holes through our walls, re-routing our hot water through copper pipes to bypass our leak. I watched them work, admiring their boisterous vitality, embarrassed by my ignorance of what lies beyond turning faucets on.
When they left, they told me Manuel would be by later to patch the drywall and that he only accepted cash. Random coincidence? God willed timing? Synchronous events denoting universal wisdom? How could I know? I don’t even know where my water comes from. But when Manuel arrived, I asked him to give me a quote for some holes in my daughter’s bedroom wall.
“Your leetle girl deed this?” Manuel asked and I nodded. “Hee hee hee. Oh, that a wild leetle girl. Hee hee hee. Un Diablo.”
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Reader Comments (14)
Um. I kinda mighta smacked - ok, punched - the wall outside my daughter's deroom the other day,a nd was horrified to have lots of paint andplaster crumble away. So I filled it in, with filler, and did a pretty smooth job, and was thinking, oh well, the hall needed painting anyway, never mind my temper tantrums - but then I came back and notived there was a finger hole poked into it. Sigh. And I haven't got round to filling in the fill-in yet.
I get in touch with my inner Diablo from time to time, but I hide the screwdrivers from her.
I just sit and stew.
'You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.'
Isadora Duncan said that, and I like it a very lot.
There is a savage part of myself that I hold in reserve. By 'in reserve' I don't mean 'in check', I mean 'tucked back there for when I (may) need it'. I'm sure some would say that I'm childish for refusing to fully give over to peace or whatever, but those are probably the people whose bones I will have to step over should I ever live in a world where the savage me is useful.
Besides, peacekeepers get their asses shot off. Peacemakers, however, have to have a little bit of that savage in them in order to step into the line of fire and raise their hands in hopes of stillness.
I like your daughter as I see myself in her. I fractured my hand with aggressive fist bumping last week. Un Diablo, indeed.
I once took a hammer to the wall outside my bedroom when I was a teenaged girl. My father was not best pleased. But he didn't bother to fill it in either. It just stayed there as a constant reminder of how pissed off I was.
I just read this book called "Liberation" that takes place after the US basically collapses entirely and all hell breaks loose. There's anarchy all over the place, but out of it, new societies spring up here and there, and a lot of people have better lives than they ever did before the fall. But to get there, a lot of people had to die and a lot of shit had to get fucked up. My point is, throughout the whole book I kept thinking, if this happened, I would be so fucked. I'm so comfortable, I have it so easy, I so rarely have to hustle or fight or struggle. My food decisions are rarely harder than, "what should I have for lunch today?" This life doesn't condition us for the worst....which I guess isn't horrible, but still. So fucked.
Do you think violent tendencies are genetic? I do - based on personal experience.
less about "with the inverse shadow side of technology making our lives easier" as it pertains to adults born after 1980 - more worried about those born after, and how much more like house pets (or more like house PLANTS, a la Wall-E) they will be after spending all of their youth protected by the comforts and entertained only by the internets. 1st world 1st graders in 20 years: what will they know?
is jackson's room on the other side of that wall?
I may be in love with Manuel.
That's right, Manuel. They're all el diablo. Wild, leetle, or otherwise. Mui! Mui!
I threw my rollar skate through my closet door when I was 8. I may have been imagining it was my Dad's face, or perhaps, my sister. I don't remember the precipitating event. I remember how powerful it felt to let go of that skate and watch it plow through the cheap sliding closet door, and then bump against the wall. No one called me a wild diablo though. I was punished and sent to bed without dinner. I sure showed that skate who was boss though.
Aren't cold showers also for runners with hurting legs?