Being It
A book by:
Timothy P. Holmberg
(author's note: chapters are being added as they are written - version 8-5-12}
“Don’t dream it . . . Be it.”
Introduction:
“Don’t dream it . . . Be it.”
I remember this line being first sung from a pair of slightly too luschious lips floating at the opposite end of a pair of slightly too remarkable legs. Anyone who ever snuck out in costume to make a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show will know of what I speak.
The words from that song first floated into my head around 1983 much like Tim Curry floated dispairingly in that pool. It was not until years later that I suddenly heard them more consciously while watching the DVD in the less festive surroundings of my living room without all that rice flying around. The phrase repeated in my head over and over (no, im not schitzo). I suddenly felt myself coming to life faster than Dr. Frankenfurter’s creation (though not looking quite as good in a speedo). I had discovered . . .
THE MEANING OF LIFE (achohol and/or “herbs” not included)
Of course what is the meaning of life if you do not share it? Right?
So, lucky world - On With The Show
As with life, this book has a few rules (probably made to be broken)
Rule # 1. “Don’t dream it . . . Be it.” (repeat this phrase several times with melody added)
Rule # 2. To avoid driving myself, the editor and you nuts, when the word it is italicized in this book, it means what is defined below. Otherwise, it is just your standard run of the mill it like the one at the beginning of this sentence.
There you have it. (notice the lack of italics? Good, ur getting the hang of it (just testing)) That concludes the rules section.
This is a novel about “Being It”, about becoming “It”, about being more than “It”, and about everyone’s desire to be their own “It” and not someone elses.
What does “Being It” mean?
Being a writer, being an engineer, being gay, being successful, being single, being imperfect, being an addict, being sedentary, being other peoples “It”.
Different things to everyone, I hope. Mostly, it means being the things that we dream of, or are afraid to let ourselves dream of. Being It is the point of our existence as human beings. This is the story of what it means to “be it” for me. It also represents a promise to myself to be one of the “its” I think I was always meant to be; a writer of things that will make myself, and others think (you’ll have to be the judge of that I guess).
I dedicate my book to anyone and everyone that finds any usefullness for it beyond garage sale fodder or holding up some disfunctional double hung window in a modest but enjoyable studio. The kind of studio you find on the fringes of an “up and coming neighborhood” (real estate lingo for the edge of ghetto I think). Somewhere at that twilight cusp of night and day between ghetto and good (hmm, would night be good and ghetto day? or the other way around?). Or perhaps both are ghettos in their own way. Surrounding us and insulating us in the comfort of sameness lest we stray and cross some imaginary boundary that crashes our programing.
Clearly, I am not totally devoid of ego since I do imagine my book making hard-cover so as to confound the hungry jaws of this erstwhile window. I’m also nostalgic enough to believe that hardcovers will not become extinct. That one day, a chilly November breeze will prompt a goose-bumped guest to wiggle my book free, regard the cover and its curious title, pry apart the yellowed wavy pages and sink into a denim sofa next to a lightly dusted lamp. And perhaps I will have found a new friend. Though less efficient, the scenario has an elegance that being “liked” on Facebook is missing.
Contrary to what the premis of this book may seem to suggest, I have never fit neatly in any one box, nor do I think most people really do. But that is the shorthand our society often wants from us. In writting this book I hope somehow to hurl a gauntlet against this most destructive and lazy ambition of society. Not to break society down, or undermine it. And maybe not even to salvage it. I only hope to help some one person out there who knows deep down they have something more to offer this world than “paper or plastic”
To quote Walt Whitman (if he will endure such abuse) -
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
but really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(what indeed have I in common with them? or with the destruction of them?)
I only wish to establish in the Manahatta in every city of these states inland and seaboard
and in the fields and woods, and above every keel little and large that dents the water
without edifaces or rules or trustees or any argument ,
The institution of the dear love of comrads.
Aha! you exclaim . . . your a homo commie!
Perhaps half way I guess. And as for Marx, he is way too uptight for me.
I just realized what will be the biggest pain in the butt about writing this . . .
going back and italicizing all the appropriate “its” in here so we both can figure out what the heck I’m talking about.
Anyway, I digress . . . dim the lights, and on with the show.
I didicate this to anyone and everyone and my dog Rosie (she would bite me if I didn’t).
Every childhood has a doll. A small creature of gentle nature that speaks a silent language that only a child can hear. Mine was a china doll and was my constant companion through day and night. He traveled with me and never strayed far. In this doll, woven into his threads was every laugh and every tear, every joy and every fear that I experienced. But one day, by fate or by accident we two were separated.
This book is filled with the early memories that doll might have spoken, and some he was fortunate not to have seen.
My early memories are like that china doll that was dropped in some distant corner of the back yard. Weather and leaves and soil slowly encroached on and covered him. His blue cap dented in from the rock at the side of his head. The red stripped shirt and blue shorts became food for mold and worms. Each year his frozen smiling face watched as another layer of compost was deposited above him. He slowly sank into the strata but his smile remained undaunted by the enroaching doom.
The writing of this book was like going out to clear the undergowth in that forgotten corner of my yard. I prepared the earth for a new planting. My shovel sank through the layers of the past driven by a purposeful foot. My arms pressed down on the lever of the shovel’s handle to coax my new vision into life. As I turn the shovel, my doll tumbled free. His shirt was half eaten, the shorts and cap were faded almost white. One eye was closed as if he was winking at me from the past. Though the painted expression on his face was faded, his smile still shined through as if he knew this day would come. The yard melted away and I was drawn back in time. His shorts reformed and his face began to glow with the intensity that sun and then soil faded. The moment sliped quickly from sight as the yard came flooding back. My tender hand reached down to push back the earth and decay and cradle the figure once more. As I turned to the house to resurrect my precious discovery, the shovel I propped against the fence sliped into the archeological site.
It’s a metaphore of course. The yard I explored as a child is now the territory of another child, another doll and another set of parents -
and another set of its.
But perhaps somewhere in that yard, in the back left corner where the giant pine still grows. Beneath a cage of time thickened roots and composted needles. Perhaps somewhere down there my little china doll remains . . .
Chapter 1
Our First It
In the womb we are sheltered from the world of imposed its. All the its remain outside, as we simply become our own first it. An act that we will not repeat for years to come, and some may never repeat at all.
Inside the womb we are sheltered from the its swirling around outside as our parents-to-be go into it overload. We grow like a cake rising in the Easy-Bake-Oven of life. The metaphor is appropriate, in the amateur-ness of it all. The recipe is a basic one, the ingredients are all prepackaged and just require a little . . shaking as it were.
One egg
millions of sperm in their own juice
Shake vigorously, and heat for nine months. Voila. At the end of the birth canal lies a portal through which upon passing we become someone else’s It, the fulfillment of an unfulfilled dream of potential; the baton carrier of our parents desires; and the embodiment of a myriad of possibilities that many parents lost somewhere along the way like so many shiny pennies. Our children are the ones for whom we would build the perfect world, the perfect future, and perfect life, full of all the chances we never had. The irony is that in our parents desire to provide futures for us, they unintentionaly perpetuate the same loss on us. In their desire to give us something, they often unknowingly take something away; the Leprechaun we will chase for years.
The battle lines over our it are drawn before we become aware. The first battle is unique in that the generals (our parents) have no control over the outcome. It is a civil conflict on the surface, fought with an almost English sense of order and honor in battle. Well-defined ranks of soldiers on either side, readily identifiable by their colors; blue on one, pink on the other. In place of soldiers are names, Frederick, Joshua, Timothy, and the occasional Sunbeam on one side; Caitlin, Brenda, Heidi, Deborah and the eclectic, if not hoity, Anastasia on the other. We are protected by an ocean of amniotic fluid that gently buffers us. Not even the dim veiled light that passes through the veined protective sack like light through a wild lace curtain hints at the frenzied pangs of parenthood outside. We are simply supplied with everything we need to become ourselves, nourishment and oxygen are bought to us, excrement is taken away, and with no contract, expectation or responsibility placed on us. A welcomed freeloader with a nine month lease.
At the end of our lease, on passing through the portal of the womb with much exertion we are greeted by the doctor’s hand impacting our buttocks like a champagne bottle across the bow of a ship. Thanks to ultra sound many of us are named as our keel is being laid, long before our stern impacts the water. We will sail through life from beginning to end and beyond with this name emblezoned across everything associated with us. In our civil zeal for order, everything that we do will be documented with the prefix supplied by our victorious parent.
We are placed in a room with other its, nice and neatly swathed in fresh blankets that will never match the silky perfection of our previous accommodations. The plastic bin which bears the product of our parent’s battle proudly displayed on its bow is placed carefully along side the others to form a veritable fleet - a pediatric Spanish Armada (hopefully with a better fate). Off in the distance bobbing and tapping and waving are strange men vying for our attention. In their eyes are the faint reflections of futures and its that we will see for years to come.
This waiting room is like a buffer between the world that awaits us and the one we have just left. In it we are both alone and surrounded, protected and yet exposed - and although our needs are provided for, for the first time, we must ask and wait. Gone is the conduit through which our every need was promptly met. The scar left from its removal will remind us of a unique time when the world gave us all that we required and asked nothing in return. From here on - negotiation, exchange, compromise and sometimes even dictation will become the mathematics by which we receive that which we need or want. In the beginning the formulas are very simple addition and subtraction. Later the formulas become increasingly complicated algebraic expressions as a teenager, and eventually trigonometry and calculus rear their ugly head as we enter early adulthood.
Infant formula
Needed + Given = Satisfied
Toddler formula
Wanted(Volume of Request)/Parental Volume Resistance = Given
Grade School formula
Wanted + x(Requested) = Given
x being a variable of the number of requests required in order to equal given, solve for x.
Optional grade school formula
Wanted - Chores = Given
here chores is assumed to equal zero since the promised variable is often never completed, therefore in this formula wanted often equals given.
Teenage formula
square root (Wanted)(Hormones)(Pier Pressure) + Self Image - budget + approval rtg
(paternal v maternal probability curve)/restriction impact
You may note here that this is remarkably similar to the quadratic equations we all endured in algebra, hence our natural aversion and easy acquiesence curve.
Although years of training, indoctrination and guidance lie ahead of us, for the time being our parents dreams will float over our heads like a mobile over our crib. All the while we stare at them not sure what they are, always out of reach and bobbing over us in much the same way they teased and fascinated our parents.
There is a moment in our early lives that lies just outside of itdome. A brief period when we are sitting outside in the back yard, playing with our toys - ones intended to stir potential its within. The sun shines on our young silky skin before we know the sting of a sunburn. The pansies in the flower-bed blaze in glorious colors. The sky drips a liquid saphire blue that almost lifts us into it. A butterfly lands on our hand before we could think of wanting to capture and posses it. Somewhere within us stirs a instinctive feeling that this moment of Zen is to be appreciated because it is fleeting. Soon the Its will be upon us.
We are to be subservient slaves to preordained destinies, as our parents had been. A sort of arranged marriage between human and future. My first awareness of my divergence from my intended Its came early. I remember at four years my mother showed me a picture of one of the girls that we lived with. She had moved away recently. Her picture was in the same frame as one of her brother who had gone into the Air Force. I remember how handsome he looked, such an . . . It. I was fixated, when outside of my mind came my mother’s voice remarking on how cute Narda was - that was her name. I realized that I was not looking in the intended direction, and nodded a quick itly nod.
It takes us a long time to realize that our parents have passed us the baton of their dreams much less know what we are to do with it. At first we wonder whether the baton is edible, then we feel it must be a tool of some sort, perhaps a hammer or a throwey thing to get the dog’s attention. Later we realize that our parent’s baton is both precious and imposing, a duality that confronts us before we know how to respond.
My father is a complex mix of its. An eternal son, a dreamer so fascinated by his dreams he will never achieve them. Like a moth always flying to the light bulb, never daunted but ever repelled by the glass shielding his dreams. He is a millionaire with holes in his pockets, a pro fisher with no boat, a gourmet with a happy meal, and a heart of gold hanging from a frayed piece of twine.
The baton that he passed me I have often felt was passed with the belief, and almost the desire, to see me struggle under its weight. That in so doing, his own difficulty with it would be validated. The combination of his early desire to both control and unintentionally limit my destiny sparked an early rebellion, and remained an undertone of our relationship for decades. In a way I still feel those forces lurking in the shadows of our conversations to this day.
Timothy P. Holmberg
(author's note: chapters are being added as they are written - version 8-5-12}
“Don’t dream it . . . Be it.”
Introduction:
“Don’t dream it . . . Be it.”
I remember this line being first sung from a pair of slightly too luschious lips floating at the opposite end of a pair of slightly too remarkable legs. Anyone who ever snuck out in costume to make a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show will know of what I speak.
The words from that song first floated into my head around 1983 much like Tim Curry floated dispairingly in that pool. It was not until years later that I suddenly heard them more consciously while watching the DVD in the less festive surroundings of my living room without all that rice flying around. The phrase repeated in my head over and over (no, im not schitzo). I suddenly felt myself coming to life faster than Dr. Frankenfurter’s creation (though not looking quite as good in a speedo). I had discovered . . .
THE MEANING OF LIFE (achohol and/or “herbs” not included)
Of course what is the meaning of life if you do not share it? Right?
So, lucky world - On With The Show
As with life, this book has a few rules (probably made to be broken)
Rule # 1. “Don’t dream it . . . Be it.” (repeat this phrase several times with melody added)
Rule # 2. To avoid driving myself, the editor and you nuts, when the word it is italicized in this book, it means what is defined below. Otherwise, it is just your standard run of the mill it like the one at the beginning of this sentence.
There you have it. (notice the lack of italics? Good, ur getting the hang of it (just testing)) That concludes the rules section.
This is a novel about “Being It”, about becoming “It”, about being more than “It”, and about everyone’s desire to be their own “It” and not someone elses.
What does “Being It” mean?
Being a writer, being an engineer, being gay, being successful, being single, being imperfect, being an addict, being sedentary, being other peoples “It”.
Different things to everyone, I hope. Mostly, it means being the things that we dream of, or are afraid to let ourselves dream of. Being It is the point of our existence as human beings. This is the story of what it means to “be it” for me. It also represents a promise to myself to be one of the “its” I think I was always meant to be; a writer of things that will make myself, and others think (you’ll have to be the judge of that I guess).
I dedicate my book to anyone and everyone that finds any usefullness for it beyond garage sale fodder or holding up some disfunctional double hung window in a modest but enjoyable studio. The kind of studio you find on the fringes of an “up and coming neighborhood” (real estate lingo for the edge of ghetto I think). Somewhere at that twilight cusp of night and day between ghetto and good (hmm, would night be good and ghetto day? or the other way around?). Or perhaps both are ghettos in their own way. Surrounding us and insulating us in the comfort of sameness lest we stray and cross some imaginary boundary that crashes our programing.
Clearly, I am not totally devoid of ego since I do imagine my book making hard-cover so as to confound the hungry jaws of this erstwhile window. I’m also nostalgic enough to believe that hardcovers will not become extinct. That one day, a chilly November breeze will prompt a goose-bumped guest to wiggle my book free, regard the cover and its curious title, pry apart the yellowed wavy pages and sink into a denim sofa next to a lightly dusted lamp. And perhaps I will have found a new friend. Though less efficient, the scenario has an elegance that being “liked” on Facebook is missing.
Contrary to what the premis of this book may seem to suggest, I have never fit neatly in any one box, nor do I think most people really do. But that is the shorthand our society often wants from us. In writting this book I hope somehow to hurl a gauntlet against this most destructive and lazy ambition of society. Not to break society down, or undermine it. And maybe not even to salvage it. I only hope to help some one person out there who knows deep down they have something more to offer this world than “paper or plastic”
To quote Walt Whitman (if he will endure such abuse) -
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
but really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(what indeed have I in common with them? or with the destruction of them?)
I only wish to establish in the Manahatta in every city of these states inland and seaboard
and in the fields and woods, and above every keel little and large that dents the water
without edifaces or rules or trustees or any argument ,
The institution of the dear love of comrads.
Aha! you exclaim . . . your a homo commie!
Perhaps half way I guess. And as for Marx, he is way too uptight for me.
I just realized what will be the biggest pain in the butt about writing this . . .
going back and italicizing all the appropriate “its” in here so we both can figure out what the heck I’m talking about.
Anyway, I digress . . . dim the lights, and on with the show.
I didicate this to anyone and everyone and my dog Rosie (she would bite me if I didn’t).
Every childhood has a doll. A small creature of gentle nature that speaks a silent language that only a child can hear. Mine was a china doll and was my constant companion through day and night. He traveled with me and never strayed far. In this doll, woven into his threads was every laugh and every tear, every joy and every fear that I experienced. But one day, by fate or by accident we two were separated.
This book is filled with the early memories that doll might have spoken, and some he was fortunate not to have seen.
My early memories are like that china doll that was dropped in some distant corner of the back yard. Weather and leaves and soil slowly encroached on and covered him. His blue cap dented in from the rock at the side of his head. The red stripped shirt and blue shorts became food for mold and worms. Each year his frozen smiling face watched as another layer of compost was deposited above him. He slowly sank into the strata but his smile remained undaunted by the enroaching doom.
The writing of this book was like going out to clear the undergowth in that forgotten corner of my yard. I prepared the earth for a new planting. My shovel sank through the layers of the past driven by a purposeful foot. My arms pressed down on the lever of the shovel’s handle to coax my new vision into life. As I turn the shovel, my doll tumbled free. His shirt was half eaten, the shorts and cap were faded almost white. One eye was closed as if he was winking at me from the past. Though the painted expression on his face was faded, his smile still shined through as if he knew this day would come. The yard melted away and I was drawn back in time. His shorts reformed and his face began to glow with the intensity that sun and then soil faded. The moment sliped quickly from sight as the yard came flooding back. My tender hand reached down to push back the earth and decay and cradle the figure once more. As I turned to the house to resurrect my precious discovery, the shovel I propped against the fence sliped into the archeological site.
It’s a metaphore of course. The yard I explored as a child is now the territory of another child, another doll and another set of parents -
and another set of its.
But perhaps somewhere in that yard, in the back left corner where the giant pine still grows. Beneath a cage of time thickened roots and composted needles. Perhaps somewhere down there my little china doll remains . . .
Chapter 1
Our First It
In the womb we are sheltered from the world of imposed its. All the its remain outside, as we simply become our own first it. An act that we will not repeat for years to come, and some may never repeat at all.
Inside the womb we are sheltered from the its swirling around outside as our parents-to-be go into it overload. We grow like a cake rising in the Easy-Bake-Oven of life. The metaphor is appropriate, in the amateur-ness of it all. The recipe is a basic one, the ingredients are all prepackaged and just require a little . . shaking as it were.
One egg
millions of sperm in their own juice
Shake vigorously, and heat for nine months. Voila. At the end of the birth canal lies a portal through which upon passing we become someone else’s It, the fulfillment of an unfulfilled dream of potential; the baton carrier of our parents desires; and the embodiment of a myriad of possibilities that many parents lost somewhere along the way like so many shiny pennies. Our children are the ones for whom we would build the perfect world, the perfect future, and perfect life, full of all the chances we never had. The irony is that in our parents desire to provide futures for us, they unintentionaly perpetuate the same loss on us. In their desire to give us something, they often unknowingly take something away; the Leprechaun we will chase for years.
The battle lines over our it are drawn before we become aware. The first battle is unique in that the generals (our parents) have no control over the outcome. It is a civil conflict on the surface, fought with an almost English sense of order and honor in battle. Well-defined ranks of soldiers on either side, readily identifiable by their colors; blue on one, pink on the other. In place of soldiers are names, Frederick, Joshua, Timothy, and the occasional Sunbeam on one side; Caitlin, Brenda, Heidi, Deborah and the eclectic, if not hoity, Anastasia on the other. We are protected by an ocean of amniotic fluid that gently buffers us. Not even the dim veiled light that passes through the veined protective sack like light through a wild lace curtain hints at the frenzied pangs of parenthood outside. We are simply supplied with everything we need to become ourselves, nourishment and oxygen are bought to us, excrement is taken away, and with no contract, expectation or responsibility placed on us. A welcomed freeloader with a nine month lease.
At the end of our lease, on passing through the portal of the womb with much exertion we are greeted by the doctor’s hand impacting our buttocks like a champagne bottle across the bow of a ship. Thanks to ultra sound many of us are named as our keel is being laid, long before our stern impacts the water. We will sail through life from beginning to end and beyond with this name emblezoned across everything associated with us. In our civil zeal for order, everything that we do will be documented with the prefix supplied by our victorious parent.
We are placed in a room with other its, nice and neatly swathed in fresh blankets that will never match the silky perfection of our previous accommodations. The plastic bin which bears the product of our parent’s battle proudly displayed on its bow is placed carefully along side the others to form a veritable fleet - a pediatric Spanish Armada (hopefully with a better fate). Off in the distance bobbing and tapping and waving are strange men vying for our attention. In their eyes are the faint reflections of futures and its that we will see for years to come.
This waiting room is like a buffer between the world that awaits us and the one we have just left. In it we are both alone and surrounded, protected and yet exposed - and although our needs are provided for, for the first time, we must ask and wait. Gone is the conduit through which our every need was promptly met. The scar left from its removal will remind us of a unique time when the world gave us all that we required and asked nothing in return. From here on - negotiation, exchange, compromise and sometimes even dictation will become the mathematics by which we receive that which we need or want. In the beginning the formulas are very simple addition and subtraction. Later the formulas become increasingly complicated algebraic expressions as a teenager, and eventually trigonometry and calculus rear their ugly head as we enter early adulthood.
Infant formula
Needed + Given = Satisfied
Toddler formula
Wanted(Volume of Request)/Parental Volume Resistance = Given
Grade School formula
Wanted + x(Requested) = Given
x being a variable of the number of requests required in order to equal given, solve for x.
Optional grade school formula
Wanted - Chores = Given
here chores is assumed to equal zero since the promised variable is often never completed, therefore in this formula wanted often equals given.
Teenage formula
square root (Wanted)(Hormones)(Pier Pressure) + Self Image - budget + approval rtg
(paternal v maternal probability curve)/restriction impact
You may note here that this is remarkably similar to the quadratic equations we all endured in algebra, hence our natural aversion and easy acquiesence curve.
Although years of training, indoctrination and guidance lie ahead of us, for the time being our parents dreams will float over our heads like a mobile over our crib. All the while we stare at them not sure what they are, always out of reach and bobbing over us in much the same way they teased and fascinated our parents.
There is a moment in our early lives that lies just outside of itdome. A brief period when we are sitting outside in the back yard, playing with our toys - ones intended to stir potential its within. The sun shines on our young silky skin before we know the sting of a sunburn. The pansies in the flower-bed blaze in glorious colors. The sky drips a liquid saphire blue that almost lifts us into it. A butterfly lands on our hand before we could think of wanting to capture and posses it. Somewhere within us stirs a instinctive feeling that this moment of Zen is to be appreciated because it is fleeting. Soon the Its will be upon us.
We are to be subservient slaves to preordained destinies, as our parents had been. A sort of arranged marriage between human and future. My first awareness of my divergence from my intended Its came early. I remember at four years my mother showed me a picture of one of the girls that we lived with. She had moved away recently. Her picture was in the same frame as one of her brother who had gone into the Air Force. I remember how handsome he looked, such an . . . It. I was fixated, when outside of my mind came my mother’s voice remarking on how cute Narda was - that was her name. I realized that I was not looking in the intended direction, and nodded a quick itly nod.
It takes us a long time to realize that our parents have passed us the baton of their dreams much less know what we are to do with it. At first we wonder whether the baton is edible, then we feel it must be a tool of some sort, perhaps a hammer or a throwey thing to get the dog’s attention. Later we realize that our parent’s baton is both precious and imposing, a duality that confronts us before we know how to respond.
My father is a complex mix of its. An eternal son, a dreamer so fascinated by his dreams he will never achieve them. Like a moth always flying to the light bulb, never daunted but ever repelled by the glass shielding his dreams. He is a millionaire with holes in his pockets, a pro fisher with no boat, a gourmet with a happy meal, and a heart of gold hanging from a frayed piece of twine.
The baton that he passed me I have often felt was passed with the belief, and almost the desire, to see me struggle under its weight. That in so doing, his own difficulty with it would be validated. The combination of his early desire to both control and unintentionally limit my destiny sparked an early rebellion, and remained an undertone of our relationship for decades. In a way I still feel those forces lurking in the shadows of our conversations to this day.
