One thought leads to another

I stumbled upon a quote attributed to Beryl Markham, "You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself," and it got me thinking about her, the life I was living when I first learned about her, and about her comment, which strikes me as a supplement to Socrates' statement that "the unexamined life is not worth living."*

I spent 5 years of my childhood, from ages 5 to 10, on a commune in Colorado. I didn't go to school, and my home-schooling wasn't very disciplined, but I still learned my reading, writing, and arithmetic from all the thought-heads who passed through. There was Joe, with his PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He taught me to think critically, to ask questions and keep asking. He taught me at a very early age that inner strength and confidence come, not from knowing life's answers, but from being open to life's big questions. There was Isaac, who taught me that it was great art to get one's hands muddy (he was a potter), and Delia, the consumate flower-child, who taught me about plants and geology and took us on long hikes through the Maroon Bells wilderness. There was Genie, who dropped out of a master's program because she wanted to write a thesis on female aviators and her thesis advisor would not support her in it. She taught me about Beryl Markham, Bessie Coleman, and Amelia Earhart and other women who lived their lives out-of-bounds. Beryl fascinated me more than the others, because she was raised in Africa. She had known Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), caught the flying-bug from Denys Finch Hatton, and raced horses. She had been married three times in an age when divorce was uncommon. She was the first person to fly solo from east to west across the Atlantic, and her book, "West With The Night", was so beautifully written that even the hyper-critical Ernest Hemingway spoke glowingly of it. I read it when I was 8.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Genie. Like so many others, she drifted off the commune and was not heard from again. I am grateful to her and the others who gave me alternatives to playing with dolls. I spent my summers with my grandparents, who put me in dresses and tights and shoes, and dragged me to the half-dozen weddings that Grandfather performed every summer. I was only allowed to play with girly-things, which frustrated me endlessly. What could you do with dolls besides dress them up and dance them around, acting out silly scenarios like weddings, beheadings, and school, or the arguments of adults? Dolls were for girls to pretend being mommies and brides with. I preferred to be outside, running around half-naked in the mountains pretending to be horses, or explorers, or indian guides. I wanted to be back on the commune, where I was learning to throw pots, blow glass, carve ice sculptures, ski, ice skate, garden, orienteer, and ride horses in both english and western styles. I hated coming back home and having to re-learn sign language so I could play with my friends, many of whom were the foster-children of a deaf couple living nearby. I hated that Grandmother was always pulling books out of my hands and substituting them with the Bible. There were endless, often demoralizing, lessons on table manners, how to be a Good Christian Girl, and on growing up to be the "cool, calm, collected, cultured, poised, refined and intelligent young lady" she knew I could be. But I loved it that Grandfather wasn't afraid to try to answer the big questions that reading the Bible always raised. I loved playing in the redwoods, especially when the fog was coming in, transforming the forest into a fairyland. I loved the smell of the ocean, and the cries of the seabirds. I loved knowing where I was going to eat and sleep everyday. I loved knowing that the adults in my life were solid and consistent and kept their promises. So summers, while an adjustment, weren't all bad.

I marvel sometimes that I managed to reconsile the contrast between the wild and unrestricted life I lived on the commune, and my summers with evangelical minister grandparents. I think I succeeded so well because the two situations were so very different. When my hair was trimmed and I was scoured clean and fully dressed in a new outfit and put on the airplane to California, it was like entering another dimension, a parallel universe...

I have only just begun to examine my early life and how it shaped me up to the point where Demming invaded my bed. The circumstances of my childhood determined how I handled that sexual trauma. There is a break, a dam, created in the aftermath of that period, and I feel compelled to continue pushing beyond it, to reconsile myself to the circumstances that created a victim, a target, for her sexual and psychological predation.

I haven't decided what to do about Chris. He wants more, he thinks, but... he doesn't know me. He doesn't know any of this. He thinks I'm a normal person. I've steered clear of talking about my youth and my parents because I don't want to lie and I don't think he wants to know that much truth.

I really should just dive back into my navel and focus on me. There is still so much left to examine and learn.



*excerpt of Plato quoting Socrates, from: Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 1. Harvard University Press. 1966:
Perhaps someone might say, “Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?” Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you."