There's something going on with my late mother in this one. I have a memory of passing striking Delta workers with her at an airport in D.C. when I was younger (a teenager, not the Nemo boy in this frame) and her quickly shutting down, embarrassed or angry at these people unashamedly asking for something in public, as if they were begging. It was the same emotional clampdown that she exhibited with Jehovah's Witnesses: she carefully instructed me that the proper way to get rid of Jesus dogging at the gate was to deliver that Squidman line, and shut the door before your visitor could engage further. So, in me, why is this coming up - this anxiety about confrontation, sharing personal information with strangers? She had the same weirdness around talking about money. Deeply, reflexively private.
And, then, her life measured by her drinking. Or, at least, by her twelve years of sobriety, just prior to her death at 62 in 1997 from lymphoma.
Issues of control? I often think of how proud she was to be able to eat only one square of Mr. Goodbar per night. Kept her figure.
The final panel from a poem of Frank O'Hara that jumped out at me - the line, that is. It felt something like what was going on there - the deep, guarded privacy of our WASP bedrooms.
Guy holds a wire monkey mama. Actually, it's the velvet surrogate. In any event, the weird brokenness around mother attachment.
There's something going on with my late mother in this one. I have a memory of passing striking Delta workers with her at an airport in D.C. when I was younger (a teenager, not the Nemo boy in this frame) and her quickly shutting down, embarrassed or angry at these people unashamedly asking for something in public, as if they were begging. It was the same emotional clampdown that she exhibited with Jehovah's Witnesses: she carefully instructed me that the proper way to get rid of Jesus dogging at the gate was to deliver that Squidman line, and shut the door before your visitor could engage further. So, in me, why is this coming up - this anxiety about confrontation, sharing personal information with strangers? She had the same weirdness around talking about money. Deeply, reflexively private.
ReplyDeleteAnd, then, her life measured by her drinking. Or, at least, by her twelve years of sobriety, just prior to her death at 62 in 1997 from lymphoma.
Issues of control? I often think of how proud she was to be able to eat only one square of Mr. Goodbar per night. Kept her figure.
The final panel from a poem of Frank O'Hara that jumped out at me - the line, that is. It felt something like what was going on there - the deep, guarded privacy of our WASP bedrooms.
Guy holds a wire monkey mama. Actually, it's the velvet surrogate. In any event, the weird brokenness around mother attachment.