Influence Oct. 4, 1985
The safest way to deal with a letter like this is to ignore
it., to pretend like it never came. Yet to do that would make me guilty of the
same crimes Maryann committed in the first place.
I underlined the word crime because it is so inaccurate and re-reading
the sentence after having written it, I realize how inaccurate it is and how it
may well live up to Maryann’s description of my “caustic and vindictive manner.”
After all, all she did was try and survive a world that makes
it difficult for a person – a woman in particular – to survive.
“If you are upset that we moved and you feel abandoned or
hurt because I haven’t written, say so,” she wrote.
In a very large way, this is true.
I do feel abandoned, not just by her, but also by my generation,
which has sold its soul and reverted to the illusion of “good and bad guys,” when
life is so much more complex than that.
I have issues with fundamentalism of any kind, be it religion
or the assorted social justice fanatics rising up on the left, each bringing
their own set of rules by which they expect the rest of us to live.
In her case, her sudden rediscovery of her faith casts a long
shadow I find troubling – she being among many aging hippies who have reverted
to this orthodoxy or that to fill in for the failed aspirations of the 1960s.
I fear the darkness that I saw enveloping her as if her
faith began turning out lights rather than turning them on, as if her decision
back in 81 needed to remain in darkness in order to maintain itself. This is
not a judgement on Johnny or his mother, but an observation that all choices
come with consequences, and a price to be paid at some point.
My questioning her decision in my letters to her must have
seemed harsh (and in retrospective was) and must have aggravated the deep wounds
she suffers from being forced to make such a decision. Sometimes, I am utterly insensitive,
and I don’t know how to change that. Somehow, I need to be able to communicate
better, to get my message out with rubbing something raw. But I feel like I’m
banging my head against the stone tablets of her faith. Perhaps this is the
devil in me, that passionate side of life that insists on manifesting itself regardless
of the consequences. Blake once pointed out that creativity and passion come
from the same place Christians associate with evil. So, if I am to play Milton’s
serpent in someone’s Garden of Eden, I must be crafty, I must make up for the
books Johnny won’t let Mary Ann read – although at this point that comes to
late since she’s already read them.
Perhaps my hostility has closed and locked a door I desire
more than anything to remain open.
My biggest misstate may have been to assume reason in a
person who has abandoned reason for the phony flag of faith – mush as many of
our contemporaries have.
When they still lived in this part of the world, I got
nothing but bad vibes from Johnny’s devout Christian mother, dark feelings of
something that scared me more than Satan might have, her fingers clutching too tightly
on a Bible from which she drew her strength. She hated me. She feared I had too
much influence over Maryann at a time when she and Johnny seemed hell-bent on controlling
her.
Maryann was confused and they seemed determined to steer her
along a path I found disturbing, she eventually surrendering to it as the
easiest way to atone for a sin she still feels guilty about, and a question
still lingering I her brain as to whether she made the right choice back in 81
when she chose Johnny over Danny.
I had no preference, but still recall the desperate phone
calls from Danny, begging me to use my influence with Maryann to pick him over
Johnny. Now, four years after the fact, I’m not so sure she made the right
decision.
That’s not my business. I just want Maryann to be okay. And
with mother and son controlling her every move, I’m not certain she is.
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