By Ferdinand Ossara
In earthly frailties I am prone to welter–
And why? Is not my life forever yours?
Is not your love my refuge and shelter?
– Novalis
Relatives, living or dead, leave dints in the psychae which alter it irreparably, for better or for worse. I was born to a family of relatives: cousins, sisters, uncles, even mothers, who never traveled without a full course of didactic weapons with labels like FOR OEDIPAL ASTRINGENCIES, or USE IN CASE OF OUTSIDER INFLUENCE, and my own favorite, BABY PICTURES PHOTO ALBUM. The cavalcade of relatives bestowed upon me was not a point of concern in my younger days, but as the shades of adulthood drew closer, it became clear that something had happened to me, or was still happening. Was it a trauma that could never reveal itself among its progenitors; perhaps a misunderstanding, a process of organizing that went awry and was forever thrown into a stultifying fugue? Take, for example, the depressive who goes to Freud begging for psychological emancipation from a mother all too demanding and overbearing––nonetheless dead since his adolescence––saying,“I can’t let her go, she’s with me forever, I can’t be happy if she’s always here!” and Freud’s response,“‘Alone is freedom, alone is happiness’ quoth Emerson.” Sometimes liberation lies in solitude and to achieve it one must subject oneself to a life of loneliness, so Thomas Merton declares his entrance into the anchoritic as the “Four-walls of my new freedom,” and Freud invokes the great God of loners to comfort the depressive, but these reveal a compulsion that is very anachronistic in our time: one of abandonment, where current circumstances, be they overbearing or mundane, are dismissed for a higher purpose (as was the case with Merton) and self-induced abreaction. Our compulsions lie in agreements and compromises, where entities in contention remain so due to various forms of obstinacy, causing conflicts to remain unchanged. These compulsions, however, never apply to familial conflicts, where each party knows the other biologically and the impulse to dismiss any conflict as a biological fallacy enters and distorts the machine. Why is it that familial “bonds” almost never go beyond objective biological classifications? Your mother is your mother because she gave birth to you, but is she really the person worth opening yourself to? The biological bond with the mother is a concept already too diluted with analysis which I do not wish to dilute further; my interest in the example, and the biological “bond” phenomena begins with my own experience with my mothers, as mentioned before, my biological mother was not a wom—
It was either boredom or restlessness that filled the air. Neither, however, had helped this moronic babbling go down easy, but when the loud ring of his phone cut through the room’s lugubrious disposition, he realized it had been going on for 30 minutes. The moment of the call allowed a safe escape from the nearly empty lecture hall. He held in his hand the paper which had just been delivered, entitled “Vivisecting Relatives: A Reportage on the Psychological Lacunas of Biological Relationships,” right as he was to pitch it into the trash he saw a phrase he had not seen in ages, exaggerated with bold black letters: BABY PICTURES PHOTO ALBUM. “When was the last time I saw a photo album?” he asked himself. But the moment was ruined by the already-ignored phone call’s return, knowing already the reason of inquiry, he picked up, and without waiting, yelled “It just started, mother! Leave me alone!” and hung up.
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