I'm No Zen Master/ Struggle Struggle Struggle

he title is from some poem or some grande dame of the arts giving advice to a young artist, I believe, about what she can expect in life. Wikiquote is not helping me. If anyone knows the real thing, notify me. I've just had this stanza playing over and over in my head for months now: "What can you expect? Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. And once you've succeeded? Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. And once you've been immortalized? Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle."
That's supposed to be the road of the "true" artist anyway, and I think it's half bullshit personally. That's the kind of crap that leads people to rationalize doing drugs, ditching their families, and basically refusing to be responsible citizens.
I prefer my art history professor's quote, which he got from someone else, and told us at the very beginning of the first day of class: There is no royal road to art. You will not be carried there on golden chariots, pulled by winged horses. You will suffer, but don't make suffering what the art is really about. Is what he was trying to say.
There ya go. This is a bit of an issue with me, and I admit it's been blocking me for some time now, because my mother was a so-called "artist," who, as you might guess, refused all treatment for her mental illness and caused us to suffer needlessly because she also refused to get a job, take responsibility for anything, yada yada, on and on... because she was "an artist."
If I were telling this to a therapist right now, she would say, "Hmmm, so that's why you think it's not okay to be a writer, right? Because you think that 's the narcissistic , irresponsible thing to do. Something your mother would do." And she'd be partially right.
My parents' irresponsibility and narcissism led to all of that responsibility piling up on their children, tenfold. I try not to dwell on it, but it's hard not to when every day you're struggling to pay bills, looking around at your friends who are enjoying 10 times the success that you are and take it for granted, and here I am, a grown -ass woman, with a full-time job, now raising my own child, paying student loans off, and I still have sheets for curtains like when I was in college.
Like I was telling Bruce the other day, I think I've been noble enough for 2 or 3 people, for one lifetime. And it also makes my lizard -brain think, "this shit better pay off big someday. All this fucking character development, emotional growth, resourcefulness, integrity- it better pay off!!!" heh. It's like what Ram Dass joked about, before he had his stroke. He was a Zen master, yes, but he also still understood that most people don't greet the next disaster comin' down the pike with open arms and hearts, as they karmically "should" or whatever. Most people, even with years of Buddhist or other spiritual training, are like, "oh great, another goddamned growth experience." Including him.
I think we all go through degrees of this, thinking about what we'd really like to do with our lives, and then thinking about all of our responsibilities. As I've been saying for years, I'm no Zen master. I'm not even trying to be one. My short, attainable goal for the time being is to try and temper all the vengeance in my heart with some wisdom and humour. E.g., don't kill anyone.
I do this by looking at the bright side, and reminding myself that with my family history, it's lucky I didn't wind up a truckstop crack-whore. Every day that I'm not a truckstop crack whore, it's a good day.
Amen. I have a steady job, a loving husband, a beautiful, funny toddler girl, a roof over my head and food to eat. The rest is gravy.
On that note, I'm growing some food in container gardens, which these days seems like a smart thing to do. And tying in with my Preparedness blog... I suppose it's some comfort that I've been struggling all my life, already learned how to be resourceful, cut corners everywhere, not used to luxuries, etc. etc. so when/if the shite hits the fan, I'll be more prepared than those yuppies driving around in their SUVs and talking on their Iphones at the same time. We have less-far to fall, I suppose. But that's cold comfort right now. And if the world truly does collapse in the next few months and I NEVER get to experience some of those luxuries... I will be PISSED.
And writing that, I already feel like a chump, because shite man, here I am a fat American, blogging on my f'in laptop far from a warzone and yes my family has health insurance... so what the f** am I complaining about? So it's all relative, but that doesn't mean you should trivialize your own stuff either. It's a balance. I /we have to learn to have compassion for ourselves, before we have compassion for anyone else. Real, active compassion, not just lip service and charity balls.
I give myself a pat on the back for not being a truckstop whore or abandoning my family (*like Bruce's 2nd cousin, Al Haig, bebop piano player extraordinaire of Charlie Parker's who went down the death-spiral of heroin abuse and took his family with him) and then I ask myself, allright beatch, how you gonna do what you gotta do? Including, not be miserable forever. There's a Zen story that goes along with the grande dame/artist's quote, different culture, same story: How do you become a Zen monk? Chop wood, carry water. How do you attain enlightenment? Chop wood, carry water. What do you do after you attain enlightenment? Chop wood, carry water.

I'm writing this now maybe because we got our pay notice last week with our supposed "raise" on it, and it amounts to like $60 more a month for me. Woohoo. And, my sister-in-law's dad just passed away, I never got to meet him, and I'm feeling sad about that, and contemplating what a life's achievements really add up to, in the end. This guy probably had an idea:
Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn