The Alleged and Possibly Impossible Personal Dichotomy
Yeah, there we were, just a few of us left in the classroom, and Rachel and I were talking about “Borges and I,” the “fiction” in which Borges explores what appears to be his personal dichotomy, in which he tries to distinguish between the person he daily presumes himself to be and the person who reveals himself through his writing. And we talked about how this distinction between two selves doesn’t have to be a Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing, how you can, after writing something, have difficulty recognizing your everyday self in that writing.
It struck me that I can to some degree apply this pseudo-dichotomy to myself, that the me who writes frequently about loss or regret could easily be misconstrued as a person who is constantly dealing with these questions, and wouldn’t ever be concerned with things as frivolous as, “Is it possible for LL Cool J to ever rap again now that he plays Sam on NCIS: Los Angeles?” Yes, what a gap we might find between our daily selves and the one who reveals himself through writing.
I may have been thinking about this because this weekend will mark 33 years since my father died, and that is the loss that sends me most frequently to the writing place. I don’t really feel anything about that, for whatever reason, maybe because I’ve directed my emotional traffic toward the members of what my principal calls The Club, that is, people like him and me who lost close family members at a young age.
What may be ironic about this is my own attitude toward teachers when I was in high school. As I was saying to one of the guidance counselors the other day, that loss was something I kept close to me, and my teachers basically didn’t deserve any part of it. I never said, wrote, etched, telepathized any of it to any of my teachers. When I felt like a guy like Mr. Binotto or Mr. Eaton knew, I liked that, but I never brought it up in conversation, and neither did they. (note to self: read through the blog and see if you posted the letter to Tom Eaton, or if you even wrote the Binotto thing you swore to yourself you’d write.)
Tricky stuff, this trying to talk to young people about things they don’t bring up. Maybe one of these days I’ll get the balls to do it.
Yeah, there we were, just a few of us left in the classroom, and Rachel and I were talking about “Borges and I,” the “fiction” in which Borges explores what appears to be his personal dichotomy, in which he tries to distinguish between the person he daily presumes himself to be and the person who reveals himself through his writing. And we talked about how this distinction between two selves doesn’t have to be a Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing, how you can, after writing something, have difficulty recognizing your everyday self in that writing.
It struck me that I can to some degree apply this pseudo-dichotomy to myself, that the me who writes frequently about loss or regret could easily be misconstrued as a person who is constantly dealing with these questions, and wouldn’t ever be concerned with things as frivolous as, “Is it possible for LL Cool J to ever rap again now that he plays Sam on NCIS: Los Angeles?” Yes, what a gap we might find between our daily selves and the one who reveals himself through writing.
I may have been thinking about this because this weekend will mark 33 years since my father died, and that is the loss that sends me most frequently to the writing place. I don’t really feel anything about that, for whatever reason, maybe because I’ve directed my emotional traffic toward the members of what my principal calls The Club, that is, people like him and me who lost close family members at a young age.
What may be ironic about this is my own attitude toward teachers when I was in high school. As I was saying to one of the guidance counselors the other day, that loss was something I kept close to me, and my teachers basically didn’t deserve any part of it. I never said, wrote, etched, telepathized any of it to any of my teachers. When I felt like a guy like Mr. Binotto or Mr. Eaton knew, I liked that, but I never brought it up in conversation, and neither did they. (note to self: read through the blog and see if you posted the letter to Tom Eaton, or if you even wrote the Binotto thing you swore to yourself you’d write.)
Tricky stuff, this trying to talk to young people about things they don’t bring up. Maybe one of these days I’ll get the balls to do it.
posted by Mike McAteer @ 4:47 PM
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