The Forging and the Death of a Reflection
A Memoir, Peter J. Swartz
Copyright 2016 Dr. Peter J. Swartz
All rights reserved
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
Photographs courtesy of Pauliina Swartz
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2717-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
With gratitude for Jenna, for Pauliina, and for all the canines.
Introduction
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
− Pablo Picasso
Much of the time I don’t feel entitled to breath air. I certainly have felt neither entitled, talented, nor worthwhile enough to write a memoir. But something has changed. So here goes.
I think I may have been erased at a very young age—not heard, not seen, not touched. And I would breathe the dust from that family blackboard for most of my life. It has been as if the dust of that erasure has been left buzzing around in my head like a swarm of hornets who refuse to die, even when sprayed with insecticide.
Is it operative now? Has it just flown off to a new location—zealously beginning a new nest? When will I feel the sting?
I’m also aware that I have been almost constantly on trial. Charges pop up everywhere. No resolution is forthcoming from any trial. Not only am I the defendant, I am also the prosecutor, the defense attorney (mandated, state-reimbursed from second-rate law school), the judge, the jury, and the stenographer. Most cases are left hanging with no resolution and little relief.
If I don’t maintain a “very hard on yourself” demeanor (as I have heard many times from many people), I always fear that that erased boy will fully take over. My knee-buckling fear is that I would perceive and experience that event as catastrophic— provoking intolerable levels of anxiety and depression—mostly depression. And it’s that “hard on myself” demeanor which has motivated me to try and to do many things, both odd and difficult—attempting to avoid that lurking nest of hornets, I guess. These things I do become evidence, pro or con, of efforts to prove to myself that I am not, in effect, an erased boy. That evidence becomes a substitute, in a way, for that empty, distorted reflection I see when I look for who I am. Maybe if I do enough stuff, something worth something will shine back. Doing hard things is often experienced as confidence building.
Nothing wrong with that, eh? But the persistent internal sense that one needs to be hard on oneself is the near enemy of that positive sense that it’s fine to try and actually succeed at difficult things. Both can and do exist in the mind simultaneously. So this writing angles for a shot at attending to the process of these self-created set of illusory mental formations that have hovered with me throughout life. Some painful; some inspiring. Mine often seemed forged in steel, and thus very strong.
I knew somehow that I needed to bring awareness to these mental constructions—these creatures with no real substance. If I could notice them well enough to let them go, and just let them be, without acting on them, then, with luck, some work, some help, maybe, enjoy the freedom and relief as they perhaps, miraculously, lost power. In the end, even delusions, as well as all species of mental constructions, generally come and go like dust swirling in a strong breeze, or as shadows on a wall, just as Plato described in the Allegory of the Cave.
And from the iconic Buddhist tale, the “Platform Sutra,” about two monks vying to become the next patriarch, one candidate formulates:
“The body is the Bodhi tree.
The mind is like a bright mirror's stand.
At all times we must strive to polish it
and must not let dust collect.”
The second monk offers:
“Bodhi originally has no tree.
The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.
Where could dust arise?”
Both are deemed correct, although ultimately, the second monk is said to have better appreciated the heart of the Buddha’s teaching and he becomes the next patriarch. These metaphors guide my understanding of the stories here that follow. To be clear, the accumulating dust distorts any valid reflection of who anyone is. It is therefore useful to clear it away simply for the sake of accuracy. For many years of my life it would have taken a cyclone to move any of the dust from the mirror I was looking at. However, any perceived reflection is nothing more than a temporary, sometimes compelling illusion, which has, in fact, no basis in reality whatsoever. There is no mirror, no useful reflection to attach to, and no important existent dust. As such, there is no real self anywhere. There are, however, constant and compelling mental constructions coming and going and convincing us all of who we believe we are.
As a child, the dust on the mirror of my reflection is so thick as to obscure most everything in life except confusion and heartache. As I look back, I see that my father looms as largely responsible for helping me to accumulate my original layers of dust.
Several vignettes illustrate how he provided little in the way of any direct recognition, or meaningful empathic connection one might expect from a parent.
I have no memory, whatsoever, of his ever even calling me by my first name.
And, appropriately for my age, lacking what Piaget termed “formal operations,” I have no cognitive ability to adopt any reasonable perspective on what has happened.
I do find ways to keep going forward, however, sometimes by chance and by simply growing up, and sometimes by struggling through some particularly difficult challenges.
As a teen, I survive the empty rigidity and the warped isolation of a highly competitive three years away at a boarding school. The dust is overwhelming. It’s there that I learn deep in my bones the pain of not being “well liked,” that which tormented Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. I concurred with Willy that, “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”
I get beyond a self-medicated tangle with two failed attempts at higher education, boldly flunking out of the University of Massachusetts twice. That low point lands me in a series of short-term jobs, including driving a cab in Boston; and on Cape Cod, I make ice cubes, drive a cesspool truck, and drive a large
