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Recently, I sent my mother something with a bob dylan line in it. She's not hip. She likes abba (and that is cutting edge for her) and shania twain. She owns a celine dion album or two. Her great loves are patsy cline and the everly brothers.
So, it was with surprise that she quoted a line from the same song back to me:
Time is a jet plane. It moves too fast.
She said old people, like her, really empathize with this. She often talks of time and how we don't realize how young we are.
I appreciate this from her.
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There is a tarot card in the crowley deck - I think the eight of cups - but I'm not going to look it up. The important thing is that it is called luxury.
This card is very pretty, but it is not a good card per se. It tells you that luxury is fleeting, and upon it's siren call, you can be quite the complacent fool.
Having gone back to the 9-6 world... had the time taken away from me - the endless days of plenty of money and plenty of time in which to do just anything....
makes me realize that I was in the thralls of luxury. People - my friends - used to be jealous of me. They thought how lucky I was. I had gotten what they always dreamt of (and lord lady, I had dreamt of it too - oh how I had)... nothing to do.
But, meinen kindern - it is a sly trap. I am humbler now and more tired.
My aunt Linda is of whom I will briefly write. Briefly because I want to glean my morning before heading off to computers and expectations and time management.
First some facts/trivia: My aunt is a millionaire. She is married to a many times over 80-year old millionaire. My aunt is about 63, so you do the math. This millionaire is their cousin jackie's widower. My aunt took on being stepmother to jackie and whit's (my uncle) five surly/sad children. My aunt was beautiful. Now she is a liz taylor-type sanctimonious (even more than me) lady who lunches. She is constipated always... has low blood pressure...is always on a diet (honestly since I was four, my aunt has been on a diet - always the newest and coolest ones then usually I return to jenny craig).
Have you forgotten the luxury card's warning? Have you forgotten that I once told you that the buddhists say that the biggest curse for a man is to be born beautiful and rich.
I am lucky. Many of you probably wonder/think how awesome - fucking awesome - it would be to have all the money you want, a doting lover, and beauty and brains.
My aunt has all of these. After she played tennis for a couple of years, she went back to school to become a doctor of divinity. She went to emory university and was the valedictorian of the program. She is a minister now. She has had more people than I could count tell her she was beautiful. She hasn't had to worry about the price of milk in many many many moons - or the price of gucci.
When I was a child, I idolized her. I thought of her life as one I wanted to emulate. We are good talkers, and we are both blunt - both introverts who most think are extroverts.
Now I pity her. Her marriage to an old man has been empty for years. She flits from church to church gathering praise for her beautiful and heart-felt sermons. She goes to women retreats and talks at them. She is just coming off of a huge ballroom dancing kick (it was sad to see the young instructor get her excited about competition dancing). She has spent $70,000+ on plastic surgery in her lifetime (the facelift alone was $50,000). Her aging husband likes to watch car racing and fix cars and that's pretty much it. He is a huge republican (is not for the flat tax) and contributed enough to bush that he has a signed framed, proudly displayed photo. He is as racist as any I know.
She never got over uncle wayne and their life in florida. She still loves him and is sorry that she couldn't have children - or that he didn't want to adopt. He left her for another woman that he is still married to, and they have children. My aunt was once a folk singer with him, a school counselor, a fucked-up beauty.
Now, she seems a pious aging fool.
Where is the girl who would cry to my mother? who could take the truth without talking down to you? who could be humble? who remembered what it was like to 'be one of us'? I love my aunt. I just wish I could say the magic words to get her back - to crack through and make her real again. Where is her acknowledgment that she is human?
She is like george lucas.... no one tells her who she is. She has made us all mirrors that tell her she has the prettiest clothes in the kingdom.
I only care really because my mother doesn't have many friends, and I am scared that I could be my aunt.
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