Gimpy
The Living Force
This is the result of a long hot summer, and the drama that kicked in a series of old programs, salt and peppered with health issues, financial problems, and general implosions. It was very tough going, and one of the ways I got through it was by reading satire/comedy between other, meatier works.
To keep things clear: I was going to post this in the thread "Health Issues MS complications". After thinking it over, it's time to put this in a more public thread. If its confusing, let me know. This was first posted in a note on my FB wall, which is why there is an invitation to comment. Mirrors and what not welcome.
To keep things clear: I was going to post this in the thread "Health Issues MS complications". After thinking it over, it's time to put this in a more public thread. If its confusing, let me know. This was first posted in a note on my FB wall, which is why there is an invitation to comment. Mirrors and what not welcome.
Terry Pratchett is a genius. His books are easy to read, and so funny there were moments tears streamed, and my face hurt. His books kept me going when not much else could.
What does he write?
Its akin to Douglas Adams, JRR Tolkien, Dickens, salt and peppered with Monty Python, with skewering splats of Johnathan Swift. Yes, I'm being generous. Laughter is how I cope instead of giving up.
Its easier to give up, throw up your hands in the face of what looks like insurmountable odds, bury your mind in escapism of various 'flavors'....its anti-freeze for the soul, giving up...it tastes so sweet, even as its killing you. As a youngster, that's what I did. I'd gotten an unvarnished, clear look at Reality, of what I was actually up against: and it was so unbearable I ran off into my head for the next twenty odd years, unable to cope. Inside my head was the only safe place, the place where stories were spun in a bid to suss out how to deal with people who appeared to be sane and were anything but. Adults all around me were setting me up to be abused, scarred, mauled....and they had no awareness of doing it. It was as if I were not a real person....but a doll, and dolls shut up and don't cause problems.
That kind of Shunning can make you believe you're a ghost. To this day, I can walk through a crowd, and not a single person will see me. Ghost-mode..being able to walk past a person without being noticed. It can be fun to do.
Until I open my mouth, anyway.
“AAAAGHH!! Don't DO THAT!” Is the usual shriek. Which is fun the first few times it happens. Later on it makes you wonder how folks manage to get dressed or feed themselves.
What was I on about? (Its one of those coffee free mornings when three cups of black tea are not near enough, meditations aside.) Ah, there it is...Terry Pratchett and the metaphor of the Crab Bucket.
Here's an excerpt from the book “Unseen Academicals”:
“Oh, that's crabs for you,” said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. “Thick as planks, the lot of them. That's why you can keep them in a bucket without a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, as thick as planks.” Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. “Shall I cook it for you now?”
“No!” said Glenda, much louder than she had intended.
“Are you okay dear?” Verity inquired. “You look a bit ill.”
“I'm fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that's all.”
Crab bucket, she thought. I thought Pepe was talking non-sense. “Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It's going to be a long night.”
“Right you are,” said Miss Pushpram, expertly wrapping the unresisting crab in twine. “You know what to do, that's certain. Lovely crabs, these, real good eating. But thick as planks.”
What does that have to do with anything? Here's a bit more.
Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried toward the Night Kitchen. That's how it works. People from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley-bus. That's crab bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that's crab bucket. Practically everything I've ever told Juliet, that's crab bucket, too.......The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you....the realization had her mind on fire.
And here we get a nod from the Work, which made my face hurt, for those who know what I mean:
A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet.
They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say “Do not do this” in the hope that it'll work, but if it doesn't, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn't know that she shouldn't talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.
And custom and practice as embodied by Mrs. Whitlow was that the Night Kitchen staff should not go above stairs, to where the light was comparatively clean and had not already been through a lot of other eyeballs. Well, Glenda had done that, and nothing bad had happened had it?
It boils down (see what I did there?) to self sabotage: actually believing all the bullshit shoveled on you to keep you compliant, and 'not a problem.' Its insidious, and its everywhere.
It can be 'common sense' that your mother taught you, or unthinking memes poured into your brain from the Internet, 'News', its adaptable. Most of these notions are imprinted on us as children, and function like invisible fences in our heads. Nasty buggers those: its a shock to find them, a pain to remove them, and even then....they can hamstring you all your life. Why? Because you've lived with them for so long, you don't notice them anymore.
What do I mean exactly by a fence in your head?
For me, it was the constant screed of my parents that said: “You'll do what I say or else.” The 'or else' morphed into endless threats of throwing me out of the house, refusing access to asthma medication (which happened often), and endless repetitions of “Its your fault you're sick. You can't do____.” Sickness in my family is the same as a character defect. If you get sick, you are blamed for it, because you cost money, that hurts the family, so you don't deserve to have anything, you can't expect to become anything, do anything worthwhile...as a sick person, you are useless. So just shut up and do what you are told to do. Or else. Grrr..arrrrr!
Fists were substituted for the mallet.
What does this do to a person? It made me think I could never live in a decent house, or a neighborhood that wasn't riddled by gunfire or crime, because those things cost money, and I had to save every penny to pay my medical bills. I got a degree in Fine and Commercial Art. Not because I wanted it, or knew what to do with it. It was because my parents demanded I get it 'or else.' Even working through therapy and fighting back hard as I could....I've never considered myself to be even remotely 'useful', because, as a chronically ill person, there's nothing I can actually DO. When MS hit me between the eyes, it was as if everything my family ever leveled at me was true.
And it was bullshit.
It was a Crab Bucket. I'd convinced myself that I would be safe if I stayed in the front edge of that bucket, and pinched the p-mortal stuffings out of anyone who made a grab at me. It didn't change anything save the view...I still thought bare survival was all there was. It never bothered me to see other people living what to me were fairy tale lives. They can do that. I'm not allowed to. So there.
So...how did I get out of that damn bucket?
I got married, believe it or not, to a man whose 'Internal Bucket' was as big as a battle ship. Lots of room in a battle ship....enough to crack my bucket apart to breathe, at the least. He's not like me at all. He's loud, gregarious, and will tinker with anything. He drug me along with him, and taught me to enjoy traveling, and just being in the world. The notion that I couldn't do something just made him laugh and say “Says who?” I'd been in and out of the shrinks office for years by then. All that work, and it wasn't a workshop or a retreat, or a book that blew the bucket off my head....it was just a man who pried it off and said “Jesus, honey, how do you breath out of that thing?”
Notice I'm not saying the man is perfect. He just has a bigger bucket....he can at least get outside and move around and not just sit there waiting for something to come along and eat him, ending his misery.
We both read Terry Pratchett's books, because we can look into his many metaphors and find our lives parodied there. Its not just our lives either. The Crab bucket metaphor fits popular culture so well its creepy. On those occasions Hubby and I are forced to view the 'News', we compare it 'Deadliest Catch'.
Why? Because its just crab fishing....seeking to stuff an entire country full of people into a crab pot.
And people buy into it with alarming ease!
“Obama is for gay marriage,...vote for him!”
“Romney will get rid of the dead beats, vote for him!”
Which bucket do you want to held prisoner in?
The Blue bucket? Or the Red one? The result is going to be the same: the corporations are going to eat you, and then blame you for the pain of it. Just like an abusive ass-hat. And when the entire country begins to behave like that?
Something is very wrong.
Comments welcome......
If calluses on one's bum are signs of wisdom, then...thank you! ;D
