Sitting down to get a week of blog posts started I turned to {R}emnants for some ideas and found this doozy that Ezra had left there. It’s an article written by a guy whose grandfather was a gun runner who ran with William S. Burroughs. It’s a great tale about history, genetics, and the people we may not even know who have made us — literally — who we are. Take a look…
Josephine, my mother, is not a sociopath. She just has tendencies. At 69, her capacity for violence has diminished, but I think if she had to tackle a burglar, he would probably end up with a kitchen knife deep in his chest. My mom has gone through life with the kind of ruthless energy usually encountered in gangsters and soldiers of fortune.
I didn’t think about any of this as a child, except knowing that it was a good idea to keep a safe distance if I’d pissed her off. My school friends called her “Don Jo.” The pertinence of the moniker only occurred to me years later, after uncovering a buried family history that spans three continents and includes a once famous criminal, an upcoming murder trial, and a part in one of the 20th Century’s most important and disturbing novels. It is a history that taught me that nurture only goes so far in explaining who a person is. Sometimes, your blood does your thinking for you.
As I got to know my mom as an adult I realized she was capable of calmly making decisions that would cause others to shudder. In 2006, when I was 23 and she was 62, we spent two months backpacking around India. It was something my parents had planned to do when they retired. Tragically, my father took permanent retirement much earlier than we had expected, so I took his place. We had a great time driving up the Himalayas and trekking for elephants in the jungles of Kerala. However, one incident in particular convinced me that she could survive pretty much anything that life could throw at her.
We were walking along a beach in north Goa during monsoon season. It was overcast and windswept. There was a rusted cargo ship wrecked on the shoreline and large waves curled vindictively in on themselves before smashing into surf.
I jumped in.
It was an act of immense stupidity. I swam among the waves for a few minutes and then decided to exit. When I got to the shore and tried to stand, my feet didn’t touch the bottom. I went under and a wave pounded me and pulled me out. I swam hard to get back in.
I got to the shallows again. Except, I hadn’t. One foot down and it was like missing a step; a step into an empty elevator shaft. The current dragged me struggling from the land. As I swam back I could see my mom stood watching. Then she turned her back on me and walked up the beach.
Check out the rest of this illuminating article at the link above and watch this video of William S. Burroughs making paintings with a shotgun to get you in the mood…
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