Reflections
...listen, listen to me, my child, anger gets you nowhere. Righteous fury profits us nothing until the time for fury is on us. Save your fire. You wait-- you'll wait, I say, and bide your time, you'll work and plan, calmly, and when setbacks arise you will learn to turn them to your advantage, do you hear?
I can hear the autocratic note in my own voice. I know that's no way to win him, or anyone. These days I question everything, my tone of voice, my clothes, my very choice of words; 'my people', 'my country', I'm terrified of inadvertent hypocrisy. Of becoming the thing I fight.
You can't do that, I said to my father, you can't just do that, and he looked at me in mild amusement and said Of course I can.
They need that.
Oh, pah, boy, don't be gullible, they're always complaining of something; and as he turned away I realized all at once the depth of his ignorance. Not genuinely cruel but damnably and determinedly ignorant.
The house like a luxurious blot on the kindly landscape. It was no part of the world around it. Things went in civilized, stylized, courtly patterns while outside, for as far as you could see, all was green and gentle and simple. I could see my own face in paintings on the walls, but nothing of myself. And yes, I romanticized; but it was closer to truth, that simplicity, than the intricacies within those walls.
I thought I belonged outside, that I was nothing like him, and yet I catch myself ten times a day; as just now. What's worse, it makes the boy back down. Without his even understanding, we play out the parts assigned to us from birth, and that discourages me more than anything else. And yes, by heaven, I want him to back down, because he's being a fool; but not like that. I want to convince, not intimidate, but more and more he refuses to be convinced.