29 September 2007

I am a bad daughter

This is just something I wrote, tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek concerning my relationship with my parents/writing. It's probably been done before, but I still like the idea.

Parents, do not let your children grow up to be writers. No matter how much love, money, or love thinly veiled as money you could throw at them, they will inevitably hate you. This is only because they are "supposed to" hate you. After both you and they are dead, scholars and others who you had never even passed on the street while still alive will speculate numerous abuses and neglectfulness on your part that helped fuel their self-destruction as well as their edge-of-madness brilliance. That is, if your child's work is even worth such notice at all.

You could even be supportive, understanding enough to the point of offering your home "for the time being" during their post-graduation/drop-out doldrums. Of course, this does not fuel rugged dreams of individualism or glamorous self-reliance. Doing the laundry in the basement of one's parents is hardly something to write home about, especially when still living at home. If
you ever want to see or hear from your children in their 20's to 30's, make sure the notion of writing professionally never so much as flashes through their minds at an earlier age.

Even when they're in college, expect listening to mechanized automated answering services over the actual sound of your child's voice. If you have a son, expect him to run around with loose women, drink alone and have a few experimental dalliances which may or may not result in the discovery he is homosexual or bisexual. Even if such dalliances do not occur, be certain that the scholars will speculate on that matter anyway. Do not ever expect to meet any significant others since there are many of the insignificant one-night or three-month sort, but none to take as seriously as his work. If you replace "work" with "drinking, alienating others, and not giving a shit," it makes more sense.

If you have a daughter, expect about the same thing. She will take up smoking as a teenager, but not really be addicted since she only does it socially to be "connected with the other artist-types who have no time to bother with cooking to the point where they solely sustain themselves on coffee or tea and cigarettes with a bit of drinking and pot smoking if they need to "balance" their stimulant diet with occasional sleep(ing around). It goes without saying that she will never bring home "a nice boy" because she knows none. In fact, her relationships, should she choose to become "involved" will be tumultuous and occasionally violent (on her part, resulting in flying half-empty bottles of vodka) and she will learn to hate any man who so much as looks at her. Do not be surprised if she realizes she is a lesbian.

After awhile, the binaries will not apply to your children. Boys in tight jeans and long hair, girls with close crops and large overcoats, they switch clothes as often as they switch beds.

"But what of the writing?" you may ask. After moving across country to get away from you and the monotonous bourgeois ideals of your society, they will have to support themselves somehow so as to raise the shackles of middle-class obligation from their wrists. Rejection letter after rejection letter will arrive. A few acceptances with drastic editorial changes will come rarely, but the "published" work will still feel unfinished and ultimately unsatisfying, especially considering the meager scraps awarded for all the toil which went in it.

Sometimes the writer will be discouraged, allowing his or her creative mind to be stifled so as not to go completely mad in their banal day job. After this full-out dejection, they will drink themselves into a stupor to the point where "maybe in a few months, I could be promoted to assistant manager" will be a comforting thought. Then they will stay out less, stop hanging out with their compatriots who resent them for "selling out" (but still anxiously wait the checks from their parents to clear at the bank so they can go pay off their bar tabs). Even worse yet, they may decide that existence is no longer an option and that razorblades, pills and guns are cheaper than playing out the farce of their life. More often than not though, your children will probably fall into a monotonous routine of work, eating and sleeping.

Perhaps then, they will finally come home for Christmas with a nice man or woman they met from work or on some random mundane chance meeting, buy a house and settle down somewhere outside the city they had hoped would foster their creativity. Even if they still write and somehow eventually sustain themselves with it, they will have become exactly like you. In the end, isn't that the greatest tragedy of all?