As a man is, so he sees.
William Blake
It seems to be time for me to study some of William Blake's work. I have always been aware of him. As a teen and twenty-something, I used to tell myself the really great poets were beyond me. Now I know this is nonsense (to think Blake is beyond my comprehension!). I wish I had known this when I was a teen.
I did not get a really great education. Much of my education, especially in relation to great literary art, was about teachers telling me what things. What nonsense! Like visual art means what the viewer gets out of it, what I get from a Blake, Dickinson, cummings, or whoever poem, is right.
When I gave weekly tours in a contemporary art museum, usually to grade school student groups but sometimes for adults, integral to every tour was my indivitation to the tour participants to trust their own vision, to trust that what they saw in any art I showed them was entirely accurate.
Who is to say what art means? Great artists know that as soon as they release their work into the world, they lose the power to define its meaning. Not just visual artists.
Once I had a then-new, not-not-a-friend ask me, when I had mentioned spending hundreds of hours studying Dickinson's poetry while I lived in Amherst, MA for two years, he said, and this guy has a doctorate from Stanford's English department and taught some kind of poetry classes (Yikes!), if I thought I could understand Emily Dickinson.
I told my sister the English teacher, who has a MS on fellowship from Stanford and her PhD from somewhere else, scoffed at this guy and said "What? Two brilliant women like us couldn't possibly understand an Emily Dickinson poem?!" I did not share sis' umbrage with the guy. And this particular guy did, over the seven or eight years we socialized but were not, as he once unkindly put it, ever friends [So why did he socialize with me all those years if we weren't friends? Sheesh.] I remember feeling soothed by my sister's indignation, by her including me in her belief that anyone could understand an Emily Dickinson poem. Or any other poem.
Now I see the guy I just mentioned very differently than I saw him, oh, maybe ten years ago when he insulted my ingelligence about Emily Dickinson (did he ever spend two years in Amherst? did he read every book written about ED that was available thorugh the Amherst library and Amherst College library?!!! I think not.). Did he ever tour her home, feel her in that home, even hear her whispering upstairs to Lavinia? I have.
Now I wonder if this guy is/was small and fearful and projected his smallness (smallness of thought) and fear onto me, wonder if he felt limitations and projected what he perceived as his limitations onto me.)
I just recalled an interaction with this guy, which is probably why I am thinking about him now. The day before Thanksgiving, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, we agreed to meet to talk about the stressors in our relationship. I prepared for this meeting carefully, listing specific examples of things he had said to me or things he had done, that had unsettled me. He prepped nothing. He showed up pretty late. He tried to leave early. He, and this struck me as odd, took notes on what I said. He, however, had nothing to contribute. He had nothing to point out in my behavior as unsettling or challenging to him. He gave no indication that he appreciated the very sincere effort I had made, because I cared about him and our friendship, or what I then believed was a friendship -- who schedules a four hour meeting to work on a relationship and offers nothing?
Two things.
At the end of our conflict resolution attempt, he said "All you have done here is what you always do. Complain complain complain." I did not always complain. And I had not complained that day. I had shared my experience of his treatment of me because I believed, obviously mistakenly, that he wanted us to have a better relationship.
I talked him to his car. When we got near it, he did say he regretted his complain complain complain remark. I am sorry to say I did not forgive him. I think I cried when he expressed regret.
And that brings me to a question: is expressing regret the same as saying I am sorry? Cause that guy never once said he was sorry for any of his behavior. He would say he regretted my misunderstanding of his behavior, or that he regretted it if I had had an expectation different from his own (like when he showed up for my 60th birthday celebration with him -- and he had invited me to get together -- and said "Hurry up, I only have an hour. I have a work meeting." And it was a Saturday. When I said I was hurt about 'only an hour', he said "I knew you would be hurt." So why didn't he talk to me, during one of the three times I had phoned him the day before to nail down details of our celebration of my milestone birthday, that he was time limited. I phoned once because we had not confirmed time or location of our birthday party. Then I phoned back to offer to show him how to make very inexpensive, homemade coconut milk. And then I phoned a third time to urge him to bring glass bottles for the hot coconut milk, for he had said he'd bring a plastic milk bottle. Three times we talked, yet he never mentioned he had made other plans and had to cram my birthday party in. And he later said "I knew you would be hurt".
I try, so hard, to avoid doing things I know will hurt someone, anyone, but especially those I care about. When he told me he had to rush our lunch (I had assumed an afternoon since he had initially invited me to dinner and I suggested lunch to save him money), I said I didn't want to go to lunch anymore and asked him to leave. He would not. He tried to tgroup me. He asked "is there anything we could do right now that might help you feel better?" I had already tried to do what would have made me feel better, which was see him leave so I could nurse my hurt in private. I felt a little threatened when he just sat in my home and pressed me to talk. He did not offer to talk, did not offer his thoughts. It was all about me fixing things. All I wanted was for him to leave me with my sense of wounding and when he tgrouped me, I said we could do the coconut milk before lunch so it would have time to cool. I caretaked. I took care of him, using the coconu milk making to help me cover my hurt.
I didn't want to go to lunch with him after that. I really had asked for what I really wanted, which was for him to leave. Then it would have been up to him to call and try again, invite me again, under circumstances under which he did not know beforehand I would feel hurt. He knew I would be hurt and he behaved as he did anyway.
I am wading through some low days. I haven't thought about the sixtieth birthday thing in years.
I see I still blame myself, as if it were wrong of me to hold the expectation that someone inviting me out for my birthday wanted to show he cared about me. I am ashamed that I wanted to be treated kindly.
As far as what I "see" in his behavior, I can say now, four years later, that I don't have any understanding of his behavior. I don't understand why someone would invite me out to celebrate my birthday and then show up announcing it had to be a quickie lunch because he had a business meeting on a Saturday.
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