Wednesday March 15 2006

Children of Broken Homes

If the needle is wise, be the thread.
Maxi Jazz

Parents give us to ourselves.  They hand down the world we will live in and the way we will live in it.  They teach us how to hold on to our hearts.

My parents were two very different people and the things they taught me were very different.  It didn’t fit together; it still doesn’t fit together.

But everyone has it like that.  We all have two parents and not one - it’s human nature.  We’re in the middle of it from the start.  There’s a fork in every road.  We can only grow by betraying someone.

And when we each hand down what we hand down, it will be cracked and broken.  Our partners will give theirs as well, with all the fissures attendant.  And our children will probably not notice the poor condition of either with all the fuss over there being two of them.  Like we must have.  (Looking at children, we understand that neither of our parents had something whole to give, nor any of their parents and so backward - trouble within trouble for ever.)

Heritage isn’t a square thing, it’s an argument.  There are always many voices trying to be heard.  Our thread is doubled in thickness with each generation and, to keep the balance, presumably the oldest and weakest strands fall out along the way.  (Imagine that thread: any number of meters long.  Each fibre may only last a little of the way but as one they stretch the distance perfectly.)

 

9 Comments »

  1. You’d hope that the oldest and weakest die off soon enough. But someone (medicine and surgery) keep licking them back up to stay sticking in the stream and strand.

    Comment by Switch — Wednesday March 15 2006 @ 4:15 pm

  2. Bad karma. You’re done for, matey…

    Comment by Mark — Thursday March 16 2006 @ 3:28 pm

  3. I was done for a long time ago. I’m now just trying to pull others to the side to see the errors of existence in all.

    Comment by Switch — Thursday March 16 2006 @ 3:53 pm

  4. Define ‘broken home’ for me.

    They don’t need to split up to really fuck you up.

    Comment by nailpolishblues — Thursday March 16 2006 @ 4:13 pm

  5. They can get along fine and still fuck you up, I think.

    Comment by Mark — Thursday March 16 2006 @ 8:33 pm

  6. Hmmmmmmm fine…?

    I get along with them pretty well, very fond of them, but they’re completely fucking crazy and it’s rubbed off.

    Comment by nailpolishblues — Thursday March 16 2006 @ 11:08 pm

  7. Ahem, http://nailpolishblues.livejournal.com/281.html

    10 out of freakin’ 10 - think you’re special do you? :p

    Comment by nailpolishblues — Friday March 17 2006 @ 10:58 pm

  8. It would have made more sense for me to have posted this here..oh well..

    Mark said…
    What q’n are you people getting wrong? The badminton one?

    12:17 AM, March 18, 2006

    nailpolishblues said…
    Everyone gets different questions [I blame JtH!] - the one I got wrong today was about a Mariah Carey song. Yeah, I SO know all her lyrics.

    12:21 AM, March 18, 2006

    Comment by nailpolishblues — Friday March 17 2006 @ 11:22 pm

  9. great post

    Comment by Marcheline — Monday March 27 2006 @ 8:23 am

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