"Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well, it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then He stuffs it back dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then get up. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
Harper: That’s how people change."
Tony Kushner: Angels In America: Perestroika Act III: 5
I love this quote from "Angels in America: Perestroika". I know it isn't the most pleasant view of change, but it is so viseral and so true about some kinds of change. To be honest, because change is such a difficult thing to make happen, because people are so resistant to change, I looked for quotes that were about the struggle and there aren't many. I love the eloquence of many of the people I have chosen for this month's blog posts, but at the same time, I wanted to represent change in all its glory and ugliness.
Let's face it, some change is dang hard. Some change is forced upon us. Sometimes, change hurts so much you feel it in your toes.
When I read this quote, it reminds me of how I felt when Roby first died. A forced change, for sure. I felt like my guts WERE ripped out by a sharp claw and that they were hanging out of me, hurting, exposed and no one could see them. That's the oddest part - at a time when you are in the most psychic pain you could almost ever be in and remain conscious, NO ONE CAN TELL BY LOOKING AT YOU. It was bizarre. It made me feel like I should have found a way to physicalize the pain so that people wouldn't just assume that I was fine.
Right now, I don't feel like this. The changes I am trying to make in my life are good changes. They are the kind of changes that hone life into a finer brush stroke. They are the changes of choice and deepening. No guts here. Not today.
Hi! I found your blog on the NaBloPoMo January 2009 Blogroll.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing comment on psychic pain... I feel you described the incongruity perfectly: you feel like you have been utterly shredded on the inside, and yet people have no idea and talk to you as though today was the same as every other day of your life. It's the most surreal feeling. I too, had a crazy desire to give myself an external wound to "reflect" my inner one.
Good writing!