Nathans Substack

Commentaries of my Father

within the beauty of childhood 

This is writing is a working experiment I am doing. Actually this is a larger context within the subject of exploring psychopathy with the family, but I have veered off course and will just present it as an exploration in slightly superficial detail regarding personal thoughts about life and musings about my father and being a man.

The writing is a necessary work to circumvent the harshness and rigidity of left brained thinking, to integrate myself, being, and my rag-tag army within a social context. When dealing with harsh things it is sometimes necessary to to be light-hearted and have fun, with focus and discipline, such that editing and coherence can be added at a later time. 

In this bit of mine please bear with me as I transcribe and transition between various styles. There may be various streams of regret and grief, and the reader may intuit various subtexts, such as an empty nest, and and a childless adulthood. I regret for so many loose ends as I’m a work in progress.

II: The unbearable lightness of being and growing up lost in the forests of Cordova ,Alaska with my emotionally unavailable father.

Beauty is a threshold, though it doesn’t end, because it is a point of demarcation where the body is illuminated. Illumination is a world thing, materialistic in nature. In such a state it is potentially very fragile-like a flower, to indulge perhaps a bit of the morose and mundane.

Its just illumination is not the ineffable, the lights, the source of knowledge and being. And this isn’t a burden.

However the promises that illumination gives are. We cannot share our burdens, else we be communists, but we can share=share in the true light, for we are a fractured soul, in the world , and in the light. There are needs, and they should be nurtured, savagely, or gently in attendance to an understanding of how sacred they are. 

You could say beauty has a seductive nature, but that is a lie. Bees devote their whole lives to creating honey, flies are attracted to its sweetness. Many are tempted by the sweetness -cause its sweet.

There’s a scene in the French Alps of the movie”The Bear”,where a Mama bear and her cub are harvesting honey in a dangerous rocky outcropping. With all her strength the Mama bear is moving rocks and braving sting after sting to get the honey. 

But tragedy happens, and a landslide of heavy rocks envelops her. 

It is a haunting scene of death, where the disturbed bees are buzzing around the Mama bear  and her confused and bewildered cub almost like flies.

I cant really comment on that. The world is a cruel place and growing up, as I did in the wild, is never easy. Theories abound in exploitative mystery schools about the symbolic process of death and rebirth. But it is true that creation comes from the light and not illumination. Many lies are told in beauty and illumination about rebirth into the world. One such lie would be -Hey , you are pregnant with the world, my what a burden; you better not move my frightened one, or else you’ll burst. As id you are that important. Each person, working alone is really quite insignificant and fractured; and that’s whats important, not masochistic individual evil and ego.

When a person sees beauty and illumination as an end in itself, they are trapped in a cult of death.

For young woman is vulnerable, because its so important she know and embrace beauty, for it is an internal portal to creation. Now think for a moment the horror of a lie, that woman do get pregnant in this world. It is to be embraced and celebrated, and thank goodness, not necessarily in materialistic emanations, but in its source, the light. It should be nurtured.

For men it is less important, though some exemption should be made for vanity and humor! Like a bear standing on its wobbly hind legs, all heart, but not seeing very well. Bears are so funny struggling to ascertain the cognitive balance between threat and pleasure/opportunity, all the while with such enormous strength in body.

Im not looking down on this. I grew up in bear country, They saw me a lot more than I saw them. They do warn. Its usually a pile of steaming bear dung. My first thought is always to the nearest tree—though it nay not offer safety. Some say bears are, or can be cowardly-well if true, thank goodness.

if I am with another it is to communicate, and in that spirit, how can I protect them.

This leads to right action and goodness. I highlight this, and the horror of the situation, to emphasize the good qualities of my father , and of being a man.

Right action, of being a good provider, protecting the family, self sacrifice in a good way, standing up for what’s right, being there for someone, even if it means traveling across the country at a moments notice when loved ones are in trouble or in need, are not burdens if done in the spirit of cooperation and gathering in network.

Being a man though is not carrying a treasure chest around ones back, or an arc of the covenant held sacred in a pact with illumination and the devil, as a toxic slave to the world.Not to be jealously guarded and cruelly administers in mockery.

Bearing in mind that Boromir, in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” whimpered at the sight of Galadriels terrible beauty, sometimes you just have to fake it till you make it. We did, we had fun, my father and I. Gathering water from the creek, having a poop tree, hearing the comforting rains, though they might inundate the fragile makeshift roof above our humble about, spreading wetness everywhere.  But underneath there is a rage, a terrible rage which alternates between a melancholic aloneness, as disconnected abstraction separates from true feeling and threatens to make a wonderful, harsh wilderness into a chaotic normal. Why rage? Well I was a kid and I didn’t understand, plus I knew what love was and my parents didn’t have it for me; rather they offered left-brained dominating indoctrination and becoming in a right-brained; Survival in a make-shift shelter cave surrounded by beauty. Now I didn’t go around throwing fits and pouting openly because I wasn’t allowed to do it and I wasn’t; actually the type. But I found my ways. I recall sitting at breakfast eating salmon eggs (there was a lot) as he stared wide-eyed out the widow, disconnected and lost in thought as he usually did, and I pretended to be a caveman, eating food like a neanderthal. And here it is that a separation began crystallize into a character disorder, refusing to so-operate in service to my being, thinking for selfish endsHe was educated and very much a fan of Darwinian evolution, and words like primitive was well within his lexicon of insults. And though I didn’t agree with it, or most of what he said, my rebellion separated me from integrating what good things he had to teach with my being in terms of discipline focus and effort. Did I mention I was a day dreamer and that he was a humble school teacher.  He always bitterly reminded me of that on our drives home. “ And so,” he would say mockingly,  “the humble school teacher arrives home with his son.” That was when we had a car.

Most of the things that happened to us were just ridiculous. We got our Landcruiser back from the school shop after they put a new engine in it. We roared up a canyon dirt road, and then closer to home plowed through 300 feet of 3 and half foot snow. Well lets just turn the key again to make sure it hasn’t seized like the last one. Click, oh no, I felt his heart sink. He didn’t yell or scream —just made the best of it. The students had forgot to fill it with oil (and he forgot to check it). He borrowed the principles mini-bike after the school bus driver refused to let him ride even though there was plenty of room.

I just walked the 21/2 miles to school after that in protest. I didn’t have to leave so early. But every morning after that he’d get up in the dark, “See you later, Ive got to fo to school,” He ‘d say. Rolling over on the top bunk Id hear him  cranking on the minibike 5 feet outside the window in the pouring rain, trying to get it started; for at least a couple of weeks, for half an hour. It rained a lot in the Prince William Sound.

It turned out it had some kind of fuel tank leak.

One night he came home, because he got up early and arrived later, and showed me a grapefruit sized burn on his massive calve as he had spun out near the dump.

then he started having sinus trouble. He said he kept smelling something dead. I thought it was my hamster who had escaped in the school, Karreem Abdul Gerbal. He said he finally realized that the smell was coming from inside of him.

People dying in the North is a real thing. I remember Daryl, sitting behind me in class. His father had gone out clam digging on the flats, and the fog rolled in and he couldn’t find their boat…

Years later Dad told me the fate of Kareem, that he’d squeezed inside of a bottle of formaldehyde, and the aftermath wasn’t pretty.

Things only got worse as a new superintendent came to town, an alcoholic, T. Brown. Immediately he and my father clashed and Dad had switch to teaching 4th Grade in order to save the program.

Dad had been teaching a class called Special Interests (for gifted kids). I got into the class easy enough but he wasn't really happy with my progress. Each year I’d test worse and worse. And they tested me a lot early on. Oh my God he broke the Raven!

He wan’t me to be a scientist and would claim, “he’s left -brained and smart like mother.” But where other kids would write paragraphs, I would just write a few sentences. I began to get Bs for the first time in regular class. I became more interested in the girl next to and discussing how many layers of paint there were on the walls.

On the other hand there was a great thing to have your dad at the school. I got to run in the halls (when empty), dance around bunson burners in the gym, and see what went on behind the scenes. I remember taking a bath in the deep school sink when a woman came into the classroom. It was clear there was something of a date going on, but all wind was taken out of her sails when she saw me all naked in the school sink asa small 9 year old.

We also had access to the audio visuals in the school and on weekends would watch films. Mostly nature films but pretty much anything they had. I became quite an expert at running and fixing film projectors.

Here’s a play I wrote, and performed for his class.

“Snappy’s Crime and Punishment” By Nathan Carney

Cast of characters:

Oyster-small and honest

Mrs. Snail-pretty and tricky

Mrs. Clam-kind and shy

Judge Oldman Turtle=mean and slow at thinking

Snappy-mean and without mercy

officer-mean and gruff

Oyster: Ho! Thursday wedding day.

Mrs. Clam: I’ll go in and fix breakfast. (All of a sudden she hears a knock on the door) Hello? (The door squeaks open)

Mrs. Snail: May I see Oyster?

Mrs. Clam: Sure.

(She walks in. Immediately Oyster falls in love with her)

Oyster: Ho! How beautiful you are!

(Snappy looks through the window.)

Snappy: Darn it, he is going with Mrs. Snail but maybe I can kill her. I’ll listen some more. So they are going to he park today, eh. I’ll be there, hee hee.

(Snappy was at the park. Snappy slips the knife out of Oysters pocket.)

Snappy: It’s her doom day, snicker

(Slash, she is dead)

Snappy: Run, Run, Run. (He hides behind a tree.)

Snappy: Oh, no, my tail is sticking out!

Mrs. Clam: Look!!

(Quickly Snappy pulls his tail in.)

The trial:

(The next day Snappy is picked as jury for the trial and Mrs. Clam has left the country.)

Judge: ‘Bam Bam, Bam.’ This Oyster has been accused of killing Mrs. Snail and it is obvious.

(In the background you could hear the jury.)

Jury: I saw him—I’m not sure—

(Snappy walks out.)

Snappy: Your Honor, Oyster is first class guilty.

Judge: Very well, take him to jail.

The second trial:

(Two months later Mrs. Clam came back because she felt she had to tell the truth).

Mrs. Clam: I saw Snappy kill Mrs. Snail.

Judge: You did?

(Jury walks in)

Jury: Your Honor, Snappy is guilty.

Judge: Take him to jail and out with Oyster!

Oyster: Ta, ta.

Snappy: We hates you—forever!

Oyster: When shall the wedding be? Tomorrow?

Mrs. Clam: Sure.

I couldn’t really talk about the play with him because it didn’t seem like he got it and he was disappointed/irritated that I’d waited to the last minute to make the puppets. Despite the slack, people did like the play, a success. And I understand why he was frustrated. It wasn’t easy. And through it all I learned something very important—how see and tell the truth the truth despite difficulties.

My joys in life increased with the visits of my red-haired middle brother. He’d snuggle in the same sleeping bag as me just to keep me warm even when I had chicken pox. As to my parents separation, we were on the side of my father in some ways and in part because of Stockholm syndrome, and also because we knew how hard he worked and was suffering. We wanted our mother back and I was certainly rather young. I built up a wall and was not really comfortable around women. It didn’t help that the only other woman in my life was a borderline sister.

There was some kind of power play, struggle between them. With my mother her kids were old enough and she was very much interested in procuring her independence, which is practical, and her career. The problem was she was seeking external power in a left brained  way and not also seeking real power and strength from within. It may have been well and and good for her to leave him, but the problem was she was escaping in the arms of materialism and not developing an inner life as I see it. Because of that she didn’t define what independence really is, escaping perhaps to some degree into ego. 

I certainly had a father, but I understand how some men without father’s behave. They develop a good relationship with their mother’s and sometimes become like a responsible little man, developing a facade of control to cover up for some deep hurt (indeed he barely knew his violent and abusive father). He was well versed in the game of control and new how to navigate the nurturing vulnerabilities of women. I’m saying he was still a boy like me. His strategy was not to open up, and heal, but to wait it out, without change, with endurance. In the end they both got together based on animal congruity. 

My father a tyrant? Hey you take a Daddy’s little helper shovel on your ass when you refuse to shovel snow and get back to me. Well he had a devilish grin for one, and a weird mania for another. While not constructive or good, I ask the reader some grace in filtering through the trauma of having a father whose prime entertainment and pleasure was criticizing and putting down my mother to the point that she couldn’t even drive without having panic attacks. Actually he wasn’t such a brute. He had endurance of will and strength—just twisted. Like stealing her essence until she retreated further and further from her being.

so when I call my father a tyrant, while it is not constructive or good, I ask the reader some grace in filtering through the trauma of having a father whose prime entertainment and pleasure was criticizing and putting my mother down—to the point that she couldn’t even drive without having panic attacks. Like stealing her essence as she retreated further and further from her being and heart to avoid pain.

And if first I am to relate to my mother, how am I supposed to look to my father as a role model when he treats her like that? Well I did it, and mostly I did it by remaining as neutral as possible. and it worked, burying the pain and the anger at him and whenever possible avoiding the qualities, well for me, growing up and being a man. I found solace in abstraction and being a brainwashed heart not a bleeding heart-a brainwashed heart. I played to win.

But by some magic trick that stopped working. I felt the hurt, the pain of rejection.

Many of these emotions and feeling are from early childhood, a time when the right brain is still developing, and the difficulties cannot be fully processed until adulthood.

For me, as a young man, the shock of reality and the internal divisions reached crisis point. Because I saw the truth in people, in my parents, but they just thought I was crazy and my vulnerabilities as a weakness.

I tried to rely on my lower mind, and left brain, to inhibit and control the pain-after all, Mom said I was smarter and more determined than anybody.

I was not immediately disagreeable, that came laterI loved my parents; but it became clear that they did not love me. My final year of living with them, I was like I was the parent=>What are you doing, where are you going, why did you come home so late?

So I tried to figure it all out “I’m creative, I’ll never give up, I can’t give up, never.” I said.

But I went in circles, hours at a time, trying to make sense. Its a bit like Frodo and Sam, in Mordor “We’re going in circles!” ,or walking around in a mega shopping mall, round and round—same thing. You can look at the mall map, but can’t figure it out because the technology doesn’t match the intent.

For theres is a fear, to the dissolution of ego itself, threatened by reality and in actuality this can be a positive disintegration, where the ego is in an inverse relationship the left and the right hemisphere of the brain, between being and becoming. When the left brain, ego, is not in service to the right, fear results- there is a balance whether intentional, conscious or not. Add this into the context of social situations and it is a disaster. Running, hiding, and peeing in the corner-we’ve all seen it.

So I gave up trying to figure it out—just stopped thinking, and threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Is it possible to stop thinking? Yes to some degree its possible to lose ones mind by acting out and indulging trauma from childhood overtly.

There is an early stage of childhood development that can be “held up” and “locked in” to survival mode. I call it the Buck Wild stage. Part of it is an emotional “eat to get stronger’ kind of thing. You can see it, you can do anything, accomplish anything.

They crush their prey to gain strength to get stronger. Its like you are fighting the evil dragon, by killing the dragon, absorbing its strength, and becoming the dragon for protection.

Mind control baddies are well versed in this stage, harnessing demonic powers and manipulating it in others

And my father was kind if locked in here. His only way, or main way, of letting it out, the steam, was through cutting humor. He was crafty about it, creating the strangest wormholes of deceit, that it was hard to see the cryptic pathways of insult=>Putdowns  usually directed at my mother. Oddly I would say beneath it all was an oxygen breath of lighthearted soul. Creative, twisted by evil and ego, but creative.

This is one of the characteristics of character disorder, and other dark personality traits. In fact I admired his humor. To some degree (mixed) my brother and I reverse engineered his humor to communicate under his authoritarian rule.

And he was authoritarian. We behaved around him, were polite, and didn’t talk back. He was a leader type and would be violent if you didn’t. He didn’t fuck around.

I remember my brother telling me of a story out at 50 mile on the Copper River Highway. It went so: whereupon he, redhead would continually walk ahead on the railroad tracks, despite my father’s warnings about potential bear danger. Well Redhead wasn’t listening so Dad sneaked ahead into the bushes and then jumped out at him.

“Arggh- Now what if I had been a big bear?” Scared the crap out of him. Red head got the message, but moments like these became iconic for Redhead’s and my personal communication. He wasn’t too nice , didn’t hug or have feeling too much, but he was our leader. We didn’t always like him, but we obeyed. And really it was a wonder why other kids talked back to their parents. That didn’t fly in our house-not at all. At least until I was 18 and physically hurt him. But that is the most unexciting cliff hanger ever, and the subject of another story. Only I will say that it made him sad, because he wanted to teach me, not fight me. And it makes me sad too.

When I last saw him, before he died (brain cancer), he was not in grief, rather he was sentimental and smiling fondly, because he knew that it would be the last time he would ever see me. We hugged, perhaps awkwardly, but at least we learned to do that.

I’d heard he was able to go to the bathroom and relieve himself without assistance until the final two days before his death. He was not afraid. “We all die sometime Nathan, “ he told me.

I cried like a baby (so hard I thought the world would end). This is appropriate to the situation. Part of that is just my nature, though I definitely need to learn emotional control and it is a challenge. 

At the family gathering of ashes it was hard to keep it together. Especially since in the reading of his will he said the executor/power of attorney was my red-haired brother (known of course), but in the event of her death it would pass to my sister, and in the event of her death, to my eldest brother and from him to his wife (who wasn’t close to the family). It stung but I didn’t let on. There was the usual distasteful greed of people wanting things, and the more selfish of the kids got the most spoils. My sister on top of that had previously bilked over a 100,000 dollars from him without anyone knowing it. I heard this and believe it. Never-the-everything was amicable, and for my part I made sure of that.

Let me transition to a song, though perhaps not appropriate.

I had all the teachings from my father to become a man—all that I need. As difficult as it is to integrate I can’t imagine what it is like to not have any father figure. When it comes to analyzing my father and family dynamics it is most helpful, at least to me. Because of early imprinting much of my perception of my father is me. The parts I cant figure out and can’t make sense of are not necessarily my business.

Starfire codes says : “survivors of emotional neglect are very hard on themselves and frequently have an internal worry  that others will “find out” that they are somehow defective or not good enough”-Kaylee Gillis

If I could say a few things to my self-pitying defiant child of the time, I’d say continue to reach out. If you focus on the good, and good outcomes, they will happen as to the law of being frequency transmitters. But that’s not enough. You also have to see reality.

Work with balance and don’t say no to life, reach out. Just because your parents don’t love you doesn’t mean its your fault and that love isn’t real. Need to still love them. Take the good of their teachings—the focus discipline and hard work, loyalty, and goodness—and throw away he nonsense. 

Remember also the force may…:

“You know that feeling that something is lacking or missing? It is. You buried emotions unconsciously. Those emotions are missing. Your mind tells the story of a person who is not good enough or unlovable to distract you from what you buried”- Scott Kelly.

Reach out then with focused attention, and bury them consciously and if you like speed, leave on a jet plane.

A great resource on narcissism in families and those disaffected is Josh Slocum’s Disaffected Substack and website/podcast. I’m also greatly inspired by Political Ponerology Substack, as his mature, clear thinking in this field is highly recommended.