Tag Archives: Relationships

A Poem about Parents, Family, Sex, and Life

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I never had children. I guess it was not in the cards though I fear it was merely a lack of faith, a lack of faith in the Universe and in God and confidence in myself and my wife, though mainly myself. I guess I thought too much about it and I always remember what Hamlet said about his own tendency to think too much, saying that if this pensiveness were “quartered, it would be one part wisdom and three parts cowardice.”

Here is a beautiful poem by Sharon Olds as she conjectures about her own conception, eloquently describing her parents meeting in college, the story of their life together, the doubts and fears of their marriage, and the sexual union which produced herself. Olds’ image of coitus is just stunningly beautiful, consummately poetic.

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it–she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

The Crucible of Marriage

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I have said frequently, “What you see is what you are.” Karl Jung explored the phenomena of projection, contending that we often err in blaming other people or outside forces for what is going on within our own hearts.

I’m going to share with you here a simple exercise to test this premise. It will work…if you are honest with yourself. Take someone who is very important to you, a significant other or spouse and someone who you have been involved with for a long time. Then make a list of their flaws and eccentricities which anger you, which really grind your gears. Write them down and look over them carefully. THERE IS A LIST OF ISSUES IN YOUR OWN HEART THAT YOU NEED TO ADDRESS!

We get involved with and/or marry our complement, that person which completes us. They embody all those things that we desire; but, once the relationship deepens, the dark side begins to arise and conflict ensues. In our modern world, this problem is easily solved as we can divorce and, as mother once put it, “drive our ducks to another market.” But, more than likely we will end up with someone else who embodies the same qualities.

Marriage is a crucible, a container in which spiritual issues can be addressed. They will never be all addressed and the attempt to address them all is a problem in itself. But open and honest communication will put some of them on the table and allow some of them to be addressed. If the couple are then dedicated to the relationship, they will have the wherewithal to go about the daily routine of “hearth and home”, making their life together work while the conflict is addressed piecemeal, from time to time, but not compulsively!. There will be a baseline respect which will characterize the conflict and neither party will succumb to the temptation to think, “I am right! He/she is wrong!” Neither party will resort to violence, emotional or physical.

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry about the conflicted nature of marriage, entitled “Marriage”

How hard it is for me, who live
in the excitement of women
and have the desire for them
in my mouth like salt. Yet
you have taken me and quieted me.
You have been such light to me
that other women have been
your shadows. You come near me
with the nearness of sleep.
And yet I am not quiet.
It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

 

Forgiveness

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Julia Kristeva’s book, Hatred and Forgiveness, is an excellent exploration of the experience of forgiveness.  Kristeva explores the issue from a variety of perspectives and concludes that psychoanalysis is best suited for the accomplishment of forgiveness.  I would broaden this observation to include “talk therapy” in general.

Kristeva, in this book and others, develops the notion that forgiveness is more than a conceptual process.  If we are trapped in the conceptual world, then we are not likely to allow the experience of forgiveness to be constellated in the depths of our heart.  For, forgiveness does not begin with a concretely existing deity dwelling “out there.”  It is an essential element in the depths of our psyche and can be resurrected if we are willing to “unpack our heart with words.”   (Shakespeare)