I forgot to throw salt over my shoulder this morning before I left for work. Colleague One denied my salt request once I told her why I "needed" it, refusing to indulge my "magical thinking." Colleague Three not only gave me her salt shaker (which was very cute--miniature and glass) but then also followed suit and also threw salt over her shoulder three times as well. Colleague Two just stared at us, very much like one is unable to look away from a horrible car accident or a freak show. One and Two are younger (but often wiser than me when it comes to the ways of the contemporary world), and they eschew such silly superstitions. Three is older than me and has two children, and like me, she (apparently) believes in hedging her bets and taking lucky charms where she can get them.
(And I skipped lunch and am thinking that some Lucky Charms would be "magically delicious" right about now.)
The news this week is filled with atrocities visited on children by their parents and caregivers, the very people charged with caring for them, loving them, protecting them. Two 4-year-old-kids starved and beaten to death by their parents and caregivers. In two different states. A 10-year old boy, who was raised in the politics of hate and division, shot his father, who was active in Neo-Nazism. Tales of twisted parenting that led to twisted adults in my own work. And a father who was sentenced to life without parole for scalding and drowning his two infant children.
On my good days, like Anne Frank, I believe in the goodness of people. Despite all the philosophy classes that I had in college, despite the horrors that I see in my job or read about in the paper. But believing in the basic goodness of people during weeks like this seems like magical thinking, at its most extreme and destructive. Actually, it seems downright stupid and Pollyannish. And I think that I would be better off if I just accepted the basic premise that people are driven mainly by their own self-interest and that goodness is merely incidental to furthering this self-interest.
Wishing once again that I could pick up my sweet girl and drive off into the sunset and find a gig as a lighthouse keeper somewhere beautiful and remote where no one knows me and we can start over fresh, with a clean slate, with no mistakes, no expectations from people or from places. Hoping that tomorrow will be better, brighter, more hopeful but it seems unlikely as family issues, commitments, and bittersweet memories of my dad and loss will dominate tomorrow and Sunday.
I hate this bleak, bereftness of spirit. To have termites in my soul, to be miserable, and not to believe in goodness and beauty and light and spirit. Like the Grinch and Scrooge, pre-redemption and not sure that I even believe in redemption anymore. And that really does suck.
Today's cheerfulness brought to you by:
You really are a heel,
You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch,
You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel!
You're a monster, Mr. Grinch
Your heart's an empty hole,
Your brain is full of spiders, you've got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch,
I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!
You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch
You have termites in your smile,
You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, Mr. Grinch,
Given the choice between the two of you, I'd take the seasick crocodile!
You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch
You're a nasty wasty skunk,
Your heart is full of unwashed socks,
Your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch,
The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote,
"Stink, stank, stunk"!
You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch
You're the king of sinful sots,
Your heart's a dead tomato splotched with
Moldy purple spots, Mr. Grinch,
Your soul is an appalling dump heap
Overflowing with the most disgraceful
Assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable mangled up in tangled up knots!
You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch
With a nauseous super "naus",
You're a crooked jerky jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mr. Grinch,
You're a three decker sauerkraut and
Toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!"
AND
Charles Dickens
"External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty."
AND
W.H. Auden
***
"The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."
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