Spirit Mother

by CRA

The spirit that dwells in my mother, trickster and artist alike, prods and pokes its way into all of our lives. She likes to cause problems, to upset balances, to displace realities. The conventional is her foe.

Her presence almost makes you nervous with the sheer abundance of energy dancing on her force-field. At any moment, this abundance of life can rise to an unheard-of pitch, and suddenly, mysteriously, break into a marvelous crescendo of hysterical and contagious laughter. Laughing in the company of my mother is an experience of ecstasy, complete unconscious immersion whirling in the absurdity of life: crackling, squealing, shrieking laughter. She feels her emotions from the center of her being; total emotion, not inchoate half-feeling. Complete pain, complete joy, complete anger.

My mother cries in a movie theatre like no Jewish mother has ever cried in public before.

She lives at the maximum threshold and her life is overflowing. She lives, not apart from the world, but within the tumultuous movement and ever-changing flow of it. She lives without regrets, without even the longing of unfulfilled desires. Anything she wants to do in this life, she does.

10/10/2005