I – Last Week
My kids loved a book
By Dr Seuss …
A book about a aby bird
That was separated from its mother
And went hither and yon
Asking everything it met,
“Are you my mother?”
I was long ago
When I read that book
And the only potential mother
I remember
Was a steam shovel.
Last week it occurred to me:
That story is a metaphor
For my life
Only my question has been,
“Are you my me?”
My earliest memory
Is of being on my mother’s shoulders
Hiding in a closet
From my pistol-packin” papa –
Possibly the last person
To shoot up a town –
Who, having shot up the town,
Returned home
To roar through the house
Threatening to shoot everyone;
And I’ve come to believe
That one thing he did
Through that and many similar occasions
Was to take my me
Away from me
Making the experience the beginning
Of a long search … Because
My me went to hide
And watch from a safer place
And has never really returned.
Perhaps he’s still in that closet
And the house is gone.
People are fragile creatures,
I guess,
But they’re also tough
For they can live without their me
But they’re lonely for their me
And sad at the loss
And much of what they do
Is driven by the search for their me …
At least I’ve come to believe
That’s how my life has been.
What’s it mean to look for my me?
I can tell you lots of things I’ve done
And lots of things I’ve been
But I’ve been part of me for 69 years
And been unable to tell you
Who I am.
Love is in that closet, I think,
And the ability to trust
So I’ve found models –
Behavioral examples –
And words to describe and express
Love and trust
And many other things –
So I could claim them
And I’ve learned actions to convey them
But the me that should feel them
Is in a destroyed closet;
So I’ve asked those words
And those behaviors,
“Are you my me?”
And they’ve answered,
“No.”
I was a bright little boy
Who started reading
Just a little later
Than many kids start to walk
And I have read compulsively
Through most of the years since,
For long periods
A book a day
And you can think of every book
As being asked,
“Are you my me?
And I’ve taken courses
And classes
And workshops
And asked them all,
“Are you my me?”
I’ve constructed lots of mes
And let them go because,
As I’m learning,
It’s not about constructing
A me …
It’s about finding My Me
And I can’t open the door
To that closet
Because the closet’s not there
Except in some part of me
I don’t know how to find.
The books and the workshops
Are like a treasure hunt
Where the treasure is
My me.
Long ago
I lost a lot of things
Left in the closet
With my me …
But in searching for my me
I found a lot of other things …
a lot of other things …
That I might not have found
If I had had
My me;
But in recent years,
I think,
I’ve narrowed the search.
I was pronounced bipolar
When I took too few pills
To die
And I picked out ADHD
When all the case histories I read
Described my childhood …
But they still weren’t my me.
II – This Week
Three days ago
I started a workshop
But found I couldn’t hear the speaker
And couldn’t understand
What I could hear
And felt the room filled …
Courtesy of Christine Page’s course in intuition? –
Felt the room filled
With uncomfortable energy
So I asked to change
And found myself listening to
Robert Scaer
Talk about the effects of trauma
In shaping lives …
And for the next two days
I was in a class with
Belleruth Naperstack
Hearing about
Post-traumatic stress syndrome
And its treatment
With the emphasis on guided imagery.
In one exercise
We were to find some problem
We’d like to visit
And I settled on
Finding my me —
Then we were to pick a symbol
To represent the problem
We’d like to visit
And I settled on
Finding my me —
Then we were to pick a symbol
To represent the problem
And I found a question mark.
The altered state took me
Inside my head
Where I found two hemispheres
Asking each other,
“Are you my me?”
And the question mark
Became an exclamation point
And the two hemispheres
Began to merge into
One brain
As we were told
To begin to return to the room;
But that process continued
For several hours
Until …
I came to feel
I have found my me …
And now?
I have to get used to being me.
III-Next Week
I have to get used to being me …
At least until I find
Another me …
Or maybe this time
Just more parts of me …
But for all I know
I may just have gotten
To the Steam Shovel.
Forrest Jewell
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Asking everything it met, “Are you my mother?” I was long ago When I read that book And the only potential mother I remember Was a steam shovel…..
Trackback by Kylie Batt — April 11, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
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Asking everything it met, “Are you my mother?” I was long ago When I read that book And the only potential mother I remember Was a steam shovel…..
Trackback by Kylie Batt — May 13, 2010 @ 8:45 am