A new day, People!
Thank all the gods. I’m totally on board the Harris train. What a fucking relief. I think what is to be learned at the core of everything that's happened over the past, uh, four years, is how stubborn, proud and a bit delusional old ass men can be.
I can see it with my dad. It’s hard to shake pride and anger. They seem to be the last things to go. At least with him. He has dementia, so it’s more than just old age. All the good memories and specifics seem to fade, but anger and pride remain. They are frequencies. Defining ones.
I guess I understand. Self awareness and reflection are hard at any age. I know for myself it’s hard to acknowledge aging and what it is doing. I can see it physically but I can already see how mentally accepting it and its impact is hard. There is nothing I can do about it. I can fight it or see that as staying healthy but it’s a tough thing to swallow. Because ultimately you don’t win.
I talked to my dad the other day. His wife had gotten into a fender bender. She was rear ended. The guy may have been drunk. It fucked up the car but thank god she’s okay. When she got home, my dad saw the car. Now, my dad is hobbled at this point. He needs to walk with a walker. He’s not quick anymore. There’s a lot of space between his thoughts generally but I imagine the space between thought and action is similar. All that is to say, when I said I’m glad she was okay, he said, ‘She’s lucky I wasn’t there. I would’ve killed the guy. I would’ve stuck a knife so far into him they wouldn’t be able to find it. Who drinks that early in the day? The world would be better off without him.’ Quite a detail. The ‘so deep they wouldn’t be able to find it' part.
This is the part of my dad’s brain that remains. Violent fantasies.
When I told Kit she said that’s what dementia does. It makes them say crazy things. I was quick to tell her he always said those kinds of things. The sadder part of it all is why that part of his brain is so intact and any memory of my childhood home is gone. I guess the angry part is what stays fresh, active. The past part isn’t immediate. Unless it made him angry.
I was in LA over the weekend. It’s been nice being home for a few days but for weird reasons. I can't complain about how I’m set up in Vancouver and, as I’ve talked about, I love it up there. But when I’m away from my stuff for too long my brain gets a bit too much space. If it can't land on all the bullshit that surrounds my life at home - i.e. cats, Kit, house maintenance, comedy, books, records, my home habits - and I’m not really engaged in my immediate surroundings as anything but temporary, I drift. I drift into my past, my present and my assumed future, with a judgmental eye. I start to take myself apart a bit. I think some of it is healthy assessment and reflection but some of it is just undermining. That’s why I need my stuff, my habits, my distractions and patterns. So I at least have an engaged and constant and enforced barrier to too much me.
Today I talk to fellow Jew and writer Shalom Auslander about his new book ‘Feh’ and other neurotic related adventures. On Thursday I do a rare in-car talk with comedian Clare O'Kane. She was opening for me on the road. Both fun talks!
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
