An opposite but equal reaction? Oct. 23, 2012
Less than a week after departing the office, her sense of
floating in space with empty heart has vanished – although she clearly feels as
isolated, maybe even more so.
And she is beginning to feel the pangs of desire again for
her ambitions, the steady hum of her space ship giving way to the uneven beat
of her heart.
Her latest poem opens with her desire for quiet, the moment
when the hamster wheel of her mind eases so that all she is conscious of is her
beating heart, and as irregular a beat as this is, at least, she says, it’s
still beating, she still has a heart – implying that she has gone through hell
and survived.
This hear which in the last poem she celebrated as empty, is
being flooded again with old desires, the need to feel, to exist, to keep up
with all that she has accomplished, still wants to accomplish, and the need for
her heart to begin feeling again – after apparently a brief time of feeling
numb.
Her heart knows how to feel strongly, she says.
But this comes as a cost.
This intense desire can project a presence that might offend
others, even repulse them, and – using an odd term – be the object of predation
that can rattle other people, shaking them up.
Predation is word that reflects hostility and is often associated
with animals preying on weaker animals, the way sharks or raptors do. In another
context, it also reflects a man’s tendency to take advantage of a vulnerable
woman.
What she seems to be saying here is that the “presence” she
projects attracts predators, even when all she wants is quiet and peace.
In this context, she is saying that her ambition unintentionally
project something that makes other people hostile towards her – even when she
is desperate to remain unnoticed or invisible, and to not desire or need, but
bask in silence, to remain still, to existing with nothing.
It is not that she is being dishonest here, but in truth, the
poem doesn’t jive with the fact that she is extremely ambitious and determined
to get succeed, getting recognition, which is plays against the closing lines
of this poem.
The poem, however, when taken in context of her life
experiences, seems to reflect on the broader picture, looking back at a
repeated pattern that has transpired over the years.
The poem opens with the quiet of the current moment, when
the noise in her head subsides and she can hear the beat of her heart. It is an
irregular beat, no doubt brought about by the conflicts and traumas she has
undergone in recent days.
But her heart hasn’t stopped beating, and she knows she
still have a heart, and in her heart are many of the old desires.
In this, the heart symbolizes several things. Heart as
romantic love, or as having heart or courage, determination to survive, or as
the core of all her feelings and desires, the center of her ambitions, and as
she puts it, the desire to keep pace with what she has already accomplished,
what she still plans to accomplish, and perhaps most importantly as a the
center of her feelings and her resistance against feeling numb -- which seems to have been her primary
defense in the past.
She is saying she has intense desires, but these send out a
scent that allows her to be hunted by predators or attacked because these predators
feel offended or threatened.
This is both a parting observation about me over the last
year, but it is also a reflection about all those people like me in the past
who seem to react negatively when she is trying to achieve her life goals and
fulfill her ambitions.
She clearly wants love and success and other things, and
these desires cause other to attack her. The more passionately she seeks to achieve
her dreams, the more she seems to offend and cause these predations to target
her.
Clearly, gauging from this poem, she is still licking her wounds,
still casting backwards glances at those of us who have foiled her plans,
calling us predators who are somehow offended she stands up for what she wants
and attempt to achieve her dreams.
What is it about her that makes other react in such a way?
What invisible presence does she emit that caused such a reaction?
When, as she claims in this poem, she wants nothing.
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