COLUMN FROM FLAUNT, ISSUE 183 - THE EMOTIONAL RESCUE ISSUE (October 2022)
(Extracted copy at bottom)
You may think generosity is an act—a description of doing—feeding the wretched, finding the lost. But all generosity starts with an emotion. Empathy, sympathy. Little tendrils of kindness that perceive some rough edge or broken element, then attempt to repair or soothe through giving: a kind word, a dollar in a cup, $500 to a needy friend whose credit card bill is due. Generosity is the most dangerous emotion that we have and the one from which we all need to be rescued.
As I have aged, I have trimmed away at my mischievous kind extremities, leaving behind a trunk that is firmer and that flexes less in the wind. My surface area for novelty diminishes, but with it, too, my foolish generosity of spirit. I reserve emotions now only for individuals who still support my central trunk and my bolder projections.
My grandfather nears his 97th year. A great many of his branches have been lost. And there is softness in places that used to be hard. His quality of decision making has ebbed, and with it, his novelty of purpose.
We watch these towering oaks, that were once incalculable, wither to their extremities through lightning strike and root death. We feel this pain in our marrow and it hardens our sap. But you should know that rescue is only found in allowing our generous limbs to wither. We can protect ourselves through retracement. Withdrawal into our foliage. Rip off those stray buds of delight and childish pleasure.
We bought my grandfather a dog from the pound. His name is Buddy. Elderly like his owner, he was a week away from a lurid needle of green and immediate death. He has a masterful scruffiness. And my grandfather knows he is a boy, but a lifetime of female dogs has left him totally incapable of describing him as anything but her. It is an act of extreme progression and wokeness. But alas it reflects confusion rather than panacea.
We found Buddy after my nana died, 94 years on this earth. A golden willow of kindness and delight. When she lost all her leaves, she could only feel the sun, and could no longer perceive it. She searched inwards and retreated to her roots.
My grandfather was bereft when she died. They had no recollection of ever not knowing each other and were an eternal coupling. Of the sort that I will never have. My roots have spread far through shallow earth to form a metropolis of misadventure. But if I have ever found good soil, I’ve been too weak, or too stupid, or too unlovable to have planted there.
As for the dog, Buddy sneezes and has strange seizures. His tail wags but his little back legs are weak. He stands with a bowed posture. He has replaced my nana on my grandfather’s bed. And granda remarks of their equivalence openly and without embarrassment: of the need for a warm companion tucked into the small of your back at night.
For all our talk of grand purpose and exalted accomplishment, it seems the true pinnacle of our existence is to become another’s hot water bottle. I have been slowly rescued from my generosity through rigorous pruning and self-maintenance. I live alone in a meticulous apartment. With exquisite, beautiful artworks and their dead empty eyes. I sit above a glittering harbor and a jeweled city. And count and horde my numbers on a tiny screen.
My phone rings several times a day from a contact I never recall acquiring who is named Suspected Spam. Often, they hang up as soon as I answer (mysterious!), but sometimes I hear kind voices who ask for my generous contribution to saving the whales, saving the elderly, saving the homeless, saving the emotionally unavailable. I hear these calls as a wonderful opportunity to prune my generosity. I try to listen carefully to the honied requests beseeching simple kindness. But I am impatient. These people have become my grandfather’s most regular confidants and he speaks to them at great length of his age and his lost wife. And then he always tells them no.
I, on the other hand, possess less plausible denial. Not interested thank you. I save that money for buoyant champagne and restaurants that no one can afford. I will drift until I am waterlogged. Each of those causes are but little wooden rafts upon the sea. I have found that drowning is not so bad. Generosity might keep you afloat for a little while, but it will not save you. And the water isn’t too cold once you get used to it.