Post #1
Jonathan Lethem wrote Lives of the Bohemians, in the beginning, as an easy for his fathers painting catalogue. What stuck out as interesting to me was his quote:
“I set out to write about a painter. He happens to be my father. Who was married to my mother. Who — parents, together with my brother and sister — make up my family. All I know comes from the ground I gaze across, and am rooted to, helplessly. What’s to keep the paintings from slipping out of view below the horizon, as my planet of memory grumbles on its axis?” (Lethem 86).
Something about this quote made me think about my relationship with my own family. My father, mother, and sister; How much do I really know about them? Beyond the facticity of their immediate ralaiton? If I were asked to give an objective account, how could I possibly strip them of that identity by which I have always known them? Surely, it would be impossible, They are effectively as much a part of me as my on limbs, their voices reside in my head as much as my own inner monologue.
As I read on, it became clear from Lethem’s vignettes of his childhood that there was some kind of resentment deep within him. He was a child of artist, living in ghettos, parents deeply involved with different social justice movement. At one point he states “The paintings seemed clean to me. I likely associ-ated them with the emotional reality of an infant who has his parents all to himself” (Lethem 89). That’s when I realize Lethem and I were more similar than I had first thought. I, too, had lived at the whims of my parents obsession with work, though more from survival than the pursuit of artistic intent. 2008’s recession forced many changes in our household, MY parent’s had to search for new jobs, we moved from my childhood home of Creve Couer, MO. In th espan of a summer I had lost my friends, my home, and my parents at least in the sense that I have never felt the same sense of security form them since then. All that to say I can relate to Lethem’s mutied bitterness as he speaks of the attention his father paid to his paintings.
Back to the question of how objective can I be towards my family, i’ve decided It’s currently impossible. As a result of their absence in the hours between schools end and dinner, my sister and I were inscribed with orders that dictated our behaviour. “Lock the door, care for the dog, do the dishes, do your homework. Don’t cause problems” just a few among them. Evemn now, I’m haunted by these phantom commands. Despite being 367 miles away, It’s hard to tell if my actions originate from my own will or from the voice in the back of my head weighing it with the cost of impeding on the instructions. I cannot separate myself from my parents because, within myself, their judge watches my every move. As for my sister, my compatriot in life, I’m still deciding how to relate to her. Of course she played the role of an overbearing older sister, but it grew more severe as time went on. As children it took the form of her attempting to form me into a type of living doll. Something created form her to use at times of play and discard when not in use. As teenagers, it took the form of using me as a spectacle to curry favor with her own friends. It was a a low frequency alientation wich I couldn’t escape. There’s nowhere to run to when it comes from those who share your blood. That is the burden I I trying to describe my family. It is not great moments of love or hate, but their absence.
Thats what I think is eating at Lehman. The contradictory presence and absence of his family haunts him as it haunts me. Nothing traumatic may have happened, but we only have the ghosts of what we know to tel us of who they are, ghost so pervasive that they are synthesized into our being. Thus, “I learned to think by watching my father paint” posits him as an observer of his father, not his child or a son; just another member of his father’s audience. He too, cannot know his father beyond his paintings. A mere observer gleaning unintentional lessons.
