humanifesto on a narrative otherways
Op-Ed rifles through her dictionary searching for words.
DAUGHTER (CONT'D)
The home is designed to care for
people like mom is, now. We won't
have to worry about her wandering,
falling, hurting herself. Or you.
FATHER
It's a one way road. Once your
mother's in that place, there'll be
no turning back.
DAUGHTER
(with rising dread)
You can't take care of her anymore.
Daughter runs her fingers through Old Mother's thin hair.
FATHER
I have a duty.
DAUGHTER
You've been a Hercules, pouring
your life into her. But now she's
pulling all of us down and no
amount of wistful remembering her
once shining companionship can
change things.
OLD FATHER
I won't abandon her.
Daughter stands so suddenly her chair falls back with a BANG.
Instinctively genteel, Father rises.
DAUGHTER
(offended)
No one's abandoning her!
OLD FATHER
I'm not saying you are.
More good news. Our latest, most audacious tool, the digital cyber and all its synapses, comes from us precisely now just as we need it. At this epochal moment of the crux it spreads a flashfire over dry grass. So much incoming. Its collecting, exponentially multiplying extensions into the cloud echoes the dance of our ever changing human brain. And yet, apocalyptic boogiemen aside, we have as distinction and generative source our ever tilling (semi, sub or un)consciousness and its ever twirling strands of meaning's making. But it is breathtaking to stay literate.
How to encourage this evolving Narrative Otherways in its conjure up and naming of our now coming into being? How to share comfort round the fire on the migration that lies ahead and help one another traverse seismic shifting? What ordering of truths can reconcile the able parts of us and still hold sympathy, and pride, for our animalparts? What could that reading be like.
Little Flame hops around as if her feet are burning.
DAUGHTER
(turning to leave)
You can just take care of
everything by yourself, then.
OLD FATHER
Come on now, please, don't do this.
Old Mother, agitated by the charged atmosphere, stands.
Father reaches for her.
May be our stories would seek the rebalancing of a drama sparked from connection as well as conflict; need of another portrayed not only as weakness but as strength too and a strength that knows to wound a loved one, a son or a daughter, is no protection at all against the inevitable rip and tear of separation. And that inevitable is not, no not ever, a reason to refuse deep connection. Now there's real tragedy.
The good news from this site of fissure is that there's much in its unstable elements of how the human internal wilderness works. And the learning has begun. Even as the earth sags beneath the weight of us her reach for freedom gone riot. Our more and more apparent interdependency lays bare the most fundamental misconception of the Male Narrative: that we are disconnected from, are of some substance other than, earth. The apocalyptic dare's been called. Our lonely hero's done, can't shoot his way out. Still can't find his way home. We are forced, connected all together with no other way out, to take a chance. Step into air. Some frightening, I know, but part and parcel of the high mountain pass that is before us now.