Ori in the Prison Cell of my Imagination

Week 45
I lay in bed for hours sleepless last night last morning thinking of Ori lying in bed in the prison cell of my imagination the prison cell of movies always there’s too much light and a white noise loud enough to be black wanting me wanting Machi wondering how his choices made his life go so wrong completely wrong
I want to go home Does Ori want to go home.
He will never never go home come home And now Machi too is gone
Thinking of Machi’s first arrest
How I doubled over in my room where I was standing when I got the call from seeing his life unfold before my eyes ending where Ori’s ended and not for the revolution but because of no revolution
There isn’t enough contradiction for my son
There was contradiction for me and Ori but where did it take us
Seeing my son walk into the courtroom with his hands behind his back wearing those invisible handcuffs they set up his whole world to install hands clasped behind his back head bowed
And now where is Machi? I heard he’s staying at Solly’s. Machi who barely knew her when she and I were closer before she went off to become a full blown burocrat Solly who wanted to be too close Who showed up in my house one winter night with my check I forgot to go pick up and stayed to watch videos with Machi and me and then came very Friday after that for months Even though I had that rule: don’t shit where you eat. Solly wanted me for a friend and wanted Machi for a friend. I heard that’s where he’s gone. I hate her for getting into my life this way. I’m glad he’s not on the street.
Young people need that. Other adults to turn to when they have to practice being orphans, practice making it in life without the endless tit. Knowing the tit has an end.
I lay in bed doubled over sleepless bent over. I thought this is the way it must have been then after a beating or after a tentealla after an emotional desertion from my mother. Alone. Alone.
My mind wanted to make a contradiction and the thought arose: think of people you like.
People I like. I was terrified. Terrified. Thinking of people I like was more frightening than feeling alone!
I thought of the young woman who drew horses and telephones for me on the front row and the back row of the church when I was maybe 5 Could it have happened only those two times I have a memory on a front row and one on a middle row I don’t remember her name if I ever knew it She had short straight dark hair maybe a square face a sweet smile She seemed to like me and not to want to be making points with my father Whatever I asked her to draw she drew It made me hopeful about my own drawing It inspired me to try other ways to make the nose and to imagine one day I too would be able to draw horses and telephones
My friend in second grade who also had short straight hair. Come to think of it I had short straight hair with bangs like they did. Did I like them because they looked like me?
Then my mind jumped to the present and I thought, I like Lucha, I like Solly.
Then I sobbed. I gave up very early on liking people and I was wracked? by grief, more grief from liking people than from being beaten by them and hating them, beaten by her and hating her.
Not a surprise, when my heart, my mind, moves toward people with hope I want to start screaming no no no I don’t like you first I hate you first I hate you before you disappoint me and betray me
Still I tried to put my mind in that place, a kind of spiritual practice, in that place of liking people. Is this the seed of the Buddhist loving kindness meditation where you let yourself full out love without reservation
Even Machi. My mind at last came to Machi. Even for Machi I was afraid to let my heart open.
Somehow, this inability to let my heart open to love full out to like anybody, this led to Ori being in prison today. Or is it that it’s led to me being unable to contact Ori even to hold him in my mind?
Was that the origin: when my father was gone I couldn’t hold him in my mind. Believe in his love. When my mother was violent I couldn’t hold her in my mind, believe in her love.
Still I persisted. Thinking of the people I liked moved into thinking of the people I loved. My heart would move towards opening and right away my body would double over and I would sob. So much grief from having given up the power of loving.
And at last I must have slept. And then overslept.
It was all I could do to not call in sick and here I am, still earlier than Solly for all I’m later than usual, but not later than Lucha. She’s on the phone with Jody’s therapist in the desert lowered her voice when I walked in. How am I going to face Solly? Am I going to ask her if it’s true or wait for her to come to me?
This sentence I’ve been waiting to write all week. This image of the week like a tunnel, a subway tunnel the way it is when it goes underground from the bridge, the weekends are my time and that’s the bridge, light and beautiful onyx water, and then the week is the tunnel sucking me away, away, away from my mind until I don’t remember who I am any more or what I think.
I do not want to sell my mind. Or I want my mind to still be mine even when it is on sale. How to take charge of my mind?
These things pull it away from itself.
The course for teachers I’m wanting to teach about how people learn to read, about how to subvert schools being about the taking away of the mind, the tunneling away of all our minds, how to make school about reclaiming and owning the mind. But I don’t get to prepare enough to read enough about reading because Lucha’s on the phone and Solly’s invading my office and
Adolfo broke the front door again. He loses his key, or leaves his key on purpose, and he kicks the door in. I get desperate. Three locks in one month. I don’t want to think how much I’d like to kill him.
Just now Solly came into my office in tears. I don’t talk to her about, why is Machi living in her house? Why she hasn’t told me Machi’s living in her house. She wants to talk to me, for me to listen to Her. Xiomara ??? wants to fire Lucha. She wants to put her on probation. She says Lucha has time leave problems. Solly fights her says Lucha does more in the time she’s here than _______ does in a week. Lucha has a daughter on drugs. (I want to say, why don’t you get Jody to live with you the way you’ve got Machi living with you? There ought to be boundaries between life and work.) But I just listen. Feeling my mind pulled further and further from itself, from the sentence I wait to write for a week.