DIGGING ON THE SOUL

Who knew?  Patrick “Terrierman” Burns reads “Vanity Fair”!  And he writes movie reviews!  And he knows Eugene O’Neill well enough to quote him !!  As follows:

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If Eugene O'Neill were making movies today, he could do no better than White Irish Drinkers.

In fact, it was a line from O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night that rocketed into my brain only 20 minutes into the movie: 

"None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever."

This subtle weave of cause-and-reaction, framed by choices, is what is too easily blurred in the living, and too hard to say in the telling, but it is what “White Irish Drinkers” gets exactly right. . . .

In 1975, if you had a family member who drank to stupor, it was a private matter, and you coped with it by never having people come over to the house.  If fists were thrown and doors were broken, you did not call the police, and you might not even patch the door since it would only be broken again later. 

In 1975, no one was prescribed a "mood stabilizer " or sentenced to a psychiatrist.  It was what it was, and if things got to be too much, you bunkered up in the basement or else you cranked up the music in your headphones, took to booze and dope yourself, or spent all your time out of the house fishing, playing sports, or working to save enough money to move the hell out of your parents house.  Out of body and out of mind, and out of here were the watch words of the era.  In the end, of course, you were what your parents made you, but if you stayed that way, it was your own damn fault. 

This is what White Irish Drinkers is all about -- that nexus between things that are done TO you and what is done BY you.... the cross section of forced fate and chosen future. 

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Sure, and isn’t that ALWAYS the way it is?  Patrick himself is called “Terrierman” in part because his chosen sport is hunting burrowing varmints with the help of actual terriers who chase groundhogs down holes so Patrick can dig them back out again.  It’s clear that his own personality is quite terrier-like, which is lucky for us all.  The family member of mine who was Irish was my mother, whose war cry was “I’m going to get to the bottom of this!”  (My father was a teetotaling, pacifist Scot.  I’m an awkward mix.)

And at the bottom what do you find but yourself?  Too often crying out that fate has forced itself onto you (I'm old, I’m on a reservation, I’m black, I’m female, I’m poor, I have HIV) when in fact, you have not chosen ANY future -- which is often a matter of attending to the present.  Maybe you just haven’t seen a future that has your name on it and, in fact, some futures are too far ahead to predict.  But sometimes you just don’t recognize them when they arrive.

Much of the present is a matter of keeping one’s options open, not jumping too soon.  Patrick talks about how he chooses the fields where he and the dogs go.  Partly a matter of soil loose enough to be dug and partly finding a field where the farmer is enough plagued by burrowers to welcome diggers.  Of course, he’s careful to preserve the future by always filling the holes back in so they don’t break machinery or horses’ legs.  And once in a while the dogs find a promising hole that will be impossible to dig because it’s into the base of a tree or a jumble of boulders.

So “life management” is a braid of past, future and right now.  But the driving force, the energy to dig, comes from one’s physiological and emotional nature which is often at least somewhat shaped by the genome the ancestors pulled through the knothole of history and place.  If you’re an Irish red head or a full-blood Blackfeet, that’s not irrelevant.  Neither does it dictate how you have to be.  It’s just your means, not your end.  What that dictates is that you have to learn your temperament, your capacity, and -- dare I say -- the shape of your soul.  The impossible to define or limit "inner element" that makes one person’s hot reactions an advantage and another’s an anchor around his or her neck.

"None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever."

One generation, O’Neill’s, takes that loss to alcohol.  Another goes to grass.  And the truly doomed cook up meth.  But these are no longer the only choices.  You can sit down with a patient listener and dig.  I had a shrink long ago who listened to my rage and frustration for a session or two and then said,  “You’re like a terrier who’s barking and digging over on the north side of the yard, because all your bones are buried on the south side.”  This was true.  And the reason I needed a digger/helper was that I didn’t know it was true.  Too much terrain between me and myself.

"This subtle weave of cause-and-reaction, framed by choices, is what is too easily blurred in the living, and too hard to say in the telling."  

No question about it, recovering the heart of yourself is a lot of effort and creates a big pile of debris, but I take it that this movie plot is produced by brothers who made lousy choices, either because they couldn’t think of better ones or because they didn’t have enough self-awareness to hang on for a brighter future.  And O'Neill's play is magnificent debris from his own excavations.

"In the end, of course, you were what your parents made you, but if you stayed that way, it was your own damn fault." 

We have found the varmint and it is us.  But, oh, the effort has given us some grand days and made us some fine friends, not even counting the faithful dogs who come with us into the fields.