Mother's Thoughts II

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 29

Mother’s Day has just passed, and with it, bittersweet memories heightened by the well-wishes of friends to their mothers and all mothers. Now the memories are at the “usual” level. But I find it fitting to turn back to my mother’s thoughts at a moment, late at night, when I am in conflict with my own. Her meticulous handwriting brings comfort, and the sensation of holding a book and paper that she once held helps to shake off some ritual negative thoughts.

I have a library book at my bedside—a quite intriguing book entitled The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain. While Eric Kandel’s work comes recommended both by an national review and by a faculty member in my department, I am truly frustrated that—in between the paragraphs of the preface—my thoughts drift from art and science to the one-liner I saw today in an email from LinkedIn, of all things.

Why You Shouldn’t Go to Grad School.

Seriously? I know the Universe might be a little miffed at me. Lately, I have been reading my Hitchhiker’s Guide, in which the Universe comes across as rather absurd, but to keep tossing this in my face? Really.

I have two main sorrows, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms: the absence of my mother and the loss at a major gamble I call Columbia. So let’s try to figure out the connection between my sorrows and my joy. Because, according to Gibran, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

My rehearsed reaction to the my-MA-is-worthless thought spiral is that I wouldn’t be teaching without it. I wouldn’t be able to call myself professor and associate myself with a renowned university. I also wouldn’t have the extra cares such a vocation brings, like wondering why students toss their papers in the trash. I do find joy there, though. I talk and write about art. What could be better? I read about it, think about it in new ways, learn to explain it differently than it was explained to me. Could I do that without the MA and all the (shameful) sorrow?

My mind counters with this: I just saw a post from a former classmate showing her all classy, fashionable, and curatorial. What did I do today? Well, I toted geraniums and verbena in the back of my car for my grandmother and got mad at myself for not being the perfect trim- and window-painter. Provincial, small-potatoes. No need for the MA there.

I do not need anyone to put me in my place. Now, that is something I obtained in graduate school. My delusions of grandeur are safe within my mind, never to be acted upon.

It’s far too soon to come to any worthwhile conclusions about this particular topic. That won’t stop me from trying, but I’m pretty sure I’d have to give it a few more decades and look back on this period in time. The period I interchangeably refer to as rural exile, underemployment, and, perhaps, spiritual grounding.

Where is the delight? I believe I’ve found some in rediscovering a relationship, something impossible without my return to Ohio. I may not be a jet-setting curator, and probably shouldn’t be, but I have begun (tenuously) to imagine a simpler though just as fulfilling future. And despite the conservative talking points, it has been a joy to forge a stronger bond with my father. That is one big use of the word “despite,” though. On that note, I hope I am a better political thinker than the other stereotypical liberals in their ivory towers. I can operate in a conservative, rural world because I was born here, and, at the moment, I have to operate here.

I’m interested in determining which period of time taught me more: the fabulous days of Columbia or the rural exile. And I have successfully exited the thought spiral for tonight.

My Mother's Thoughts I

I found a project, as if I needed more to do during Tax Season.  While sorting some of my mother's things so Dad could (eventually) repaint his bedroom, I found a bunch of old folders.  The pocket kind with colorful patterns or pictures on them.  One had a couple sheets of old notebook paper with my mother's unique, precise script.  At the top, she had simply written "Thoughts," and proceeded to list quotes that I can only assume had inspired her.  Some are familiar, like some lyrics by John Lennon, and some I had to look up.  I'd like to share these thoughts one at a time.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.


It's a quote from Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American poet known for The Prophet.  I found several Khalil Gibran books, including that one, while sorting books and other things when I first moved back.  What interests me most is the book's connection to 60s counterculture.  Like The Lord of the Rings, it regained popularity decades after it was first published.

Dad describes Mom as being quite conservative when they met.  But in my own conversations with her, I definitely detected a liberal streak.  I believe she called me her little hippie without any derision.  Now, she graduated from high school in 1968, a very tumultuous year, and despite my recommendation, she declined to watch the movie Bobbie because she lived through it.  I never did figure out if she picked a side, anti-war or whatever the opposite is.

Being raised in rural Ohio does tend to give one conservative leanings.  It's a sheltered childhood.  But I find that my Mom and I are very alike in that we have defied that rural stereotype, thinking independently and, by virtue of what we read and what we see, often leaning the other way.

I began with this quote because I often chide myself for talking too much.  Especially with coworkers, I feel like I need to zip it and fly under the radar.  But I am not at peace with my thoughts...they fill my head with fears and worries about work, about coordinating tax volunteers and teaching next quarter.  Like a kettle coming to boil, you've got to say something when the thoughts reach a certain temperature.

I can read it both ways.  As a reason, a rationale for speaking up, and also as a symptom, as if talking is the effect of a tempestuous mind but not necessarily the release, the cure, that I sometimes hope it is.

Either way, it's a discovery of a new connection, a philosophical link to the mind of my mother.