N asks, “Did you see those boring paintings?” To his surprise, I tell him I didn’t find them so boring. Maybe I am too easily moved these days, & one might say I’m losing my edge, but H’s paintings from the 70s and 80s felt so self-absorbed that they were almost beyond human reach, which I found quite beautifully unsettling. I scramble through H’s journal pages, & she quotes an Irish poet in one of her entries, who writes “the music of the way things go.”
It tears me up a bit, because it made me think about my most recent case of grief– my godmother’s Parkinson’s diagnosis. The woman who raised me from age 1 to 6 & is responsible for at least half of the good memories from my childhood is diagnosed terminally ill, & this is the kind of music I find unfair. It hurts to write what is true because my heart rejects this reality. It is unjust that someone who has spent so much of their life in suffering & perseverance is sentenced to even more suffering. This kind of injustice isn’t mere individual misfortune, but a stone-cold example of a pattern in cosmic indifference. For many who believe they have endured undeserving mistreatment, including myself, it is comforting to subscribe to constructs like karma, or the absolute balance between pain & joy. It nurtures hope, in moments that feel unbearable, that somehow the scale will tip even & what you deserve is what you will have. Perhaps we collectively concluded that hope is the miracle cure for all our devastating realities, but speaking for myself, I am rather humiliated by my own entitlement in this formula of hope.
As a younger person, I considered karma as a sort of passive form of revenge. If a girl said something mean to me at school & I didn’t have the words to hurt her back, or if a boy left me for another girl & I didn’t have the guts to immediately move on with another boy, or if my dad threatened to emancipate me & I didn’t have the means to live without him, I imagined the universe would eventually take care of my dignity. The idea of karma relieved me from the burden of being vulnerable & communicating my hurt, as well as the all-consuming plotting & execution of revenge. It made a lot of sense that this was a Buddhist concept, considering how “morally superior” & “chill” it made me feel.
Necessarily, I grew out of that spell of chill-ness. At some point in college, my therapist said to me, “Good things happen to bad people & bad things happen to good people,” & I cried & cried & cried. Now, I cannot determine with any ease who are good people or bad people. Within the spectrum of normality, intentions are a complex blend of selfishness & honesty that cannot be measured on a scale of morality. Recently, I confronted my apartment sublessor for signing a renewal without notice & stealing my security deposit. All she had to say was that she didn’t know there was such a thing as a security deposit & that it was my fault for not letting her know in advance. No matter how ridiculous this sounds at face value, I truly have no way of knowing whether she believes her assignment of blame. I am pissed off that I’ve been taken advantage of, but I relate to her desperation– that disconcerting position of scarcity & shamelessly doing whatever it takes. In the depths of grieving the news about my godmother, I pointlessly dwell on the idea of karma that used to make me so comfortable. I desperately wonder if I let go of the money & show forgiveness to my sublessor, the universe would take the sickness away from my godmother, only to realize once again how illogical this is. There is no foreseeable give & take, no extra kindness or blessing for the woman who was nothing but selfless the whole time I’ve known her. It seems there is no cosmic punishment for crooks, & no cosmic reward for saints, & that’s the rusty music of the way things go.
These days, I try my best to pick the right battles & fight for what I want, because I want my godmother to fight. I hope that she will fight for the best treatment & care, more time to experience joy & indulgence, & just more time to live. I hope that she will overcome the feeling of betrayal after all her goodwill & generosity to the world. I hope what happens next is the music she never thought she could write– the sound of a long, warm shower & a nice dinner somebody else made for her. & eternal, eternal gratitude from me, for taking me out to the playground & showing off my drawings to all the neighborhood parents, for letting me cover her cabinets with stickers, & for laughing with me in the back of the car, at the grocery store, & in bed every night before she stroked my hair to sleep.