Written for 1997 Memoir Class

Linked from What I Read

I thought I was pretty hot stuff when I was 18, in 1962. I guess a lot of 18 year old guys feel that way about themselves, but I had been very methodically building a case. I had just gotten accepted to Stanford, with a full-tuition scholarship, in the Honors English program. My SAT score was in the top 1 percent nationally, in the year that turned out to be the all-time peak for SAT scores. I had been a cheerleader, member of the elite Hi-Y boys club, and was an accomplished jazz drummer. But maybe the thing I was personally most proud of, and most identified with, was my reading. I was “building background” for myself, to have a running start at being an English major at Stanford. And working on a project of self-mythologizing that took off in earnest over the next few years. In fact, is only now being called into question as I go back to retell these stories inside of an externally imposed discipline.

It started with George Orwell. Sometime early in high school a friend introduced me to Orwell’s lesser known books, and for the first time the world of a writer opened for me. Independent of any school assignments, I read everything by and about him I could find, and even though I wasn’t writing I was beginning to imagine myself into the identity of a writer. Next I immersed myself in the works of Kafka and then Dostoyevski. I wanted to soak up as much as I could. But the one that I got deepest into was James Joyce. Before I started college I had read every word I could find by him, including Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses, and the first volume of his letters that had recently been published. The phrase in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “To forge the uncreated conscience of his race”, became my mantra and my touchstone. I saw myself going forth into the world to “save the world through literature”.

My literary fantasy served as an escape from the intellectual desert of the San Fernando Valley tract-home/shopping mall mentality. And it was also a way to intellectually bully my very sincere and good-hearted parents.

I was really stumped trying to find something to write about my mother. I went into my Progoff Journal and started a dialog with her. In 20 years of working in that form, she was the only person close to me that I hadn’t ever started a dialog with. It went something like this:

“Hi, mom. I’m supposed to write a 3-page memoir about you or a turning point in our relationship, and I haven’t been able to come up with anything”.

“I can see that might be a little hard for you. You spent a lot of time pretty wrapped up in yourself, and I felt like you didn’t know much about me”.

“Well, we did live in the same house for 18 years”

“Yes,” she replies. “And you were very sweet. Although you did become difficult in that last year or two of high school”.

“That’s it. I could write about that summer that I read 100 books and didn’t talk with you or dad”.

“Hmm,” my mother replies. “That was pretty painful. I cooked your meals, but I can remember being pretty upset and resentful about whatever it was you were doing”.

“What a jerk I was. I remember making my grand entrance for dinner when the theme song for Martin Williams’ jazz show would come on the radio at 6 in the evening. He would start with different tracks from the Miles Davis and Gil Evans big band album, and then his superior sounding intellectual voice, and I would come out from my room to be fed. I can see now that I was so self-centered and insensitive that I had no idea of how you felt”.

“Well, now that you now have some perspective, maybe you could slip some awareness of my pain and anguish into your piece”.

“I do remember you yelling at me about being totally self-centered and how unacceptable that was. And I remember that echoing in my mind as a motivator for the first few years of studying with Maezumi Roshi. A lot of his teaching was about how to be less self-centered, and I knew I had some remedial work to do. Now that I think of it, I need to apologize for the pain I caused you when I was being an arrogant asshole that last couple of years of high school”.

“That would be nice — to have your piece about me be in the form of an apology.”

“ I like that idea. I guess this comes up because of the forgiveness practice we’re doing at the Center right now. We’re doing a meditation where one of the steps is to recall hurt that we caused, to feel it, release it, and then ask for forgiveness”.

“I don’t care too much where the idea came from. I just appreciate you asking for forgiveness. And I can forgive you now.”

“Thank you, mom. This is great. I think I know what I want to write about now”.

“OK, honey. Talk to you later”.