How We Brand Our Cows
Aug. 23rd, 2006 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseMy vacation starts tomorrow morning. What exotic locale are Snake and TTL going to this time? Well, uh, actually, we're staying home and fixing shit: new roof for the patio, finish the stairwell to the second floor, new laundry room sink and linoleum floor, Woodwork on the gable.
At least it's a change.
But first, my brother and I will finish the dread bar mitzvah video for his son's upcoming rite of passage. We will finish it tomorrow! If it kills us!
Actually, I had a revelation this morning about the process.
I have been feeling nervous and miserable for about two weeks now and I realize that it started when I spent a whole weekend with my family when my sister was up here for a week. Despite the pleasant time we all had, I have been filled with self-doubt and insecurity since then.
Here's the basic psycho-pathology of our family: the myth goes that we are all brilliant semi-gods and will all make the world stand up and take notice. This has left myself and my sister and my brother as underacheiving freakazoids who constantly feel we have let the side down.
The hagiographic qualities of the bar mitzvah video are actually the next chapter of this psychopathology. My nephew is, by far, the smartest kid I've ever met and I'm fairly certain that he's headed for some real bad meltdowns in his future because he is the heir apparent to ALL THE EXPECTATIONS. In my father's mind, and probably in my brother's, his future stellar successes will at last justify all the energy put into our line of disappointing semigods.
I am actually going to try and remove the scenes of my nephew accepting math awards that my brother pulled for the video. Why do we have to make a public show of him accepting awards? Why are we doing the equivalent of the puff piece on DiCaprio I saw on an airplane last year?
(Amusing cultural aside: the list of math award winners in the video goes something like, "Chang, Wong, Chin, Singh, Park, Al-Rezah, Cheung..." with my nephew's anglo name stuck awkwardly in the middle).
I know I'm actually not going to feel better until this bar mitzvah is come and gone and my family can fade into normal proportions in my life again. I've been waking up in panic at 4 a.m. and spending most of my days with my heart skipping beats. I'm suffused with shame for things I have not accomplished in my life and I'm aghast that I spend all my STELLAR, OLYMPIAN POWERS on a comic book and fanfic.
It's amazing how all the values I have arrived at by this age—all the things I'm proud of, all that I have accomplished—can be thrown on my soul's scrapheap when I am caught up in the orbit of my family...
…who are wonderful, loving people who have always been supportive, accepting of my life partner, generous with their love and money. But the sinewy snake of insecurity runs through the generations, swallowing child after child in its insatiable hunger.
And we are all together there, cheek by jowl—my father, my siblings, my nephews and neice—being slowly digested in the dark.
At least it's a change.
But first, my brother and I will finish the dread bar mitzvah video for his son's upcoming rite of passage. We will finish it tomorrow! If it kills us!
Actually, I had a revelation this morning about the process.
I have been feeling nervous and miserable for about two weeks now and I realize that it started when I spent a whole weekend with my family when my sister was up here for a week. Despite the pleasant time we all had, I have been filled with self-doubt and insecurity since then.
Here's the basic psycho-pathology of our family: the myth goes that we are all brilliant semi-gods and will all make the world stand up and take notice. This has left myself and my sister and my brother as underacheiving freakazoids who constantly feel we have let the side down.
The hagiographic qualities of the bar mitzvah video are actually the next chapter of this psychopathology. My nephew is, by far, the smartest kid I've ever met and I'm fairly certain that he's headed for some real bad meltdowns in his future because he is the heir apparent to ALL THE EXPECTATIONS. In my father's mind, and probably in my brother's, his future stellar successes will at last justify all the energy put into our line of disappointing semigods.
I am actually going to try and remove the scenes of my nephew accepting math awards that my brother pulled for the video. Why do we have to make a public show of him accepting awards? Why are we doing the equivalent of the puff piece on DiCaprio I saw on an airplane last year?
(Amusing cultural aside: the list of math award winners in the video goes something like, "Chang, Wong, Chin, Singh, Park, Al-Rezah, Cheung..." with my nephew's anglo name stuck awkwardly in the middle).
I know I'm actually not going to feel better until this bar mitzvah is come and gone and my family can fade into normal proportions in my life again. I've been waking up in panic at 4 a.m. and spending most of my days with my heart skipping beats. I'm suffused with shame for things I have not accomplished in my life and I'm aghast that I spend all my STELLAR, OLYMPIAN POWERS on a comic book and fanfic.
It's amazing how all the values I have arrived at by this age—all the things I'm proud of, all that I have accomplished—can be thrown on my soul's scrapheap when I am caught up in the orbit of my family...
…who are wonderful, loving people who have always been supportive, accepting of my life partner, generous with their love and money. But the sinewy snake of insecurity runs through the generations, swallowing child after child in its insatiable hunger.
And we are all together there, cheek by jowl—my father, my siblings, my nephews and neice—being slowly digested in the dark.
