Distortions and Allusions
In which I explain one way I use T.S. Eilot's "The Waste Land" in my memoir.
The last section of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land contemplates the bigger questions of existence, culminating in the 3-part catechism: Give, Sympathize, Control. Part V- What the Thunder Says has always capitvated me the most, with its water dripping song and the allusions to the Fisher King and the abiding hope of finding a way out of the waste land. The answer is in the rain.
The imagery at the beginning of Part V makes the transition from earlier parts somber and regal. It’s the period after the crucifixion but before the resurrection, and it seems at first that there is no hope for us.
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
The transition in my memoir is even more stark, jumping from the horrible dysfunction of the end of my marriage into what would become the horrible dysfunction of the following relationship. I didn’t know what I was getting into, partly because I didn’t know enough about how skewed my sight in the world had become.
Fifteen years living with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder will lead to a distortion of vision that changes how you interact with everyone, closest relatives, new friends, bosses, even your pets.
In my newfound single state, I felt free from that dysfunction, only to find out it had sunk roots deep into the marrow of my bones. It require a monumental resurgence of faith to overcome it. But first I had to realize that what I thought I was seeing was not what I was really seeing.
I’ll let you compare how I’ve alluded to Eliot’s poem in my own story. If you’re an allusion hunter, there are several other allusions in this brief excerpt as well. The following excerpt is from Part V - What the Thunder Said, of my memoir. Chapter 30 - Chapel Perilous.
30 – Chapel Perilous
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
They say women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know,
You’ll know.
-- Fleetwood Mac
He who was living is now dead. We who are living . . .
Memory made a palace of my prison, a prison of my palace. Reverberations of that lost life echoed long after the death of the marriage, the nerves dying more slowly than the larger organism itself. After all the shouting and crying, the embers of my previous life were now cold, black ash. At his post on deck, only faithful Moby-Dawg remained. I would have to sell the boat.
My next relationship followed the same contours as my marriage but in compressed time. On the surface, these relationships bore no similarities. Underneath, they shared an insidiousness that would pull me deep into the whirlpool. At the time, these similarities were clouded by years of living under the influence of borderline personality disorder. I had developed highly attuned coping mechanisms, but I saw the world as if looking through the bottom of a glass jar. Nothing was clear, not even my understanding of how unclear my sight had become. In short, my picker was broken.
It’s not that I didn’t see the red flags. I didn’t know they were red flags. If I caught a glimpse of them, I blinked them away like a master magician. This new relationship was set solidly within polyamory and the leather community. It included a failsafe: It was divorce-proof. She was already married.
To the narcissist, once people outlive their usefulness, they can be easily set aside, put in a box on a shelf.
These fragments . . .
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At that time in my life, I was still living on a sailboat, trying to keep it afloat financially. It would prove too big a burden and eventually I sold the boat. But what a boat.
It would have been easy to end my book with the end of my marriage. But the next relationship is essential in understanding just how deeply skewed my vision was of the world. And it’s that final relationship that leads to the my climactic escape from the waste land.
I can’t wait to share the entire story with you.
Thank you for reading. We are settling in nicely in the Pacific Northwest, but a cold has found me - my first cold in over three years, before the pandemic started require the wearing of masks. Late summer is hanging on and the days are still warm. It’s time to get back into a rhythm of work and writing.
I hope you stay well and are gathering heat for the coming chill of Fall.
For me, I’ll…
Just keep writing!