father martin so, my dad died yesterday. what is it to you? 981024 ... daxle What I learned when my dad died is that it means nothing to anyone else like it does to you, and you can't expect it to. 990430 ... jennifer my father, who plays yanni music very loudly in his room, always yells at me to clean my dinner plate clean my dinner plate clean my dinner plate today I did and he promptly retorted with a comment on how fat I am getting 991210 ... jennifer sitting in the car the other day watcing through the windshield as my parents discussed fuses and bulbs and other car items I looked at my father from the side and realized that I did not know him. From the side, he was a stranger. Old. Distant. Strange. Unfamiliar. And I wondered if I had always seen him this way Or if my life had brought such a change in me that I no longer knew the man I called dad. 991214 ... andrea The Father: For Someone He Never Knew Child, so real I almost touch you feel you reaching through my fog of disbelief, once I forgave myself that I didn't try a place with you beyond my fear, I built your house so near my heart no one would know. Friend, sweet daughter/son, I go. In the only way open to me. I say no more than see that you ride in this thin rain beside me down the road to home, teenager now, and I have become, no matter how, better this year. I might wish otherwise. You could wear my clothes. copyright Michael Burns 991231 ... bellee fill me with your knowledge, with your experience, your expertise due to the days-gone-by happenings that you so often recount. show me the exit ramp from the vile highway you say i travel to the humble, or not so, hamlet from which your ideals come. there are no signs of phosphorescent yellow and green to lead me in the right direction. only the sirens of an angry squadron consisting of one officer can be heard, screaming into the corners of my mind, my emotions reeling due to the doplar distortion, only blue to light and dark the road. the noise would not be so intolerably horrid if only there were substance to it, to the belligerent beating of my will. your unthinking is what crushes mine. i would learn if you would teach, climb if holds were provided. preaching without doctrine is pointless, as is your pursuit. you shout hosannas and reprimands, but do not care enough to show me what it is that i should do. you are blind, but you will not lead me. 000121 ... amy so i got my dad on the horn, and asked him what i was like as a child."chipper" he says. extremely pleasant. it took me a long, long time to understand how *anybody* would have a bad day. everything was always fine with me. of course, everybody falls from their childhood. today, at my best moments, i feel this way. and the rest the time, i agonize about why i don't feel that way, and why nobody else feels that way. 000212 ... lauren "Did yoy get any grades back today? " he asked I shook my head no. "Did you take any tests today?" he asked I shook my head no "Well the what's the point of going to school?" I leave home in 473 days 000216 ... camille The Clause Gives me the preposition that you joined with me To create the idealism of “I am” Words dance upon page Leap into heart My feet still moist From the rain of your words I look even deeper than a well Into the print on paper Between the very fibers with looking glass I am thrown back With a force comparable to Falling off the seventh rung on a ladder Then upon falling You take my breath Absorbing thought, sight and sound I have experienced what no other will ever experience Yet mere words appear to be as primitive as drum beat So I cannot explain Who you are to me You alone, know my beginning and my end You alone take me to depths and heights Never before reached Open my windows and continue To fill me within With your sweet breath Your stillness that overwhelms… I move and you cease to exist I still myself and you begin to dance across the page You came to me robed with the fragrance of being. Tell me flowers will continue to put off their scent, when my father is no longer with me. When he walks towards you Adding to our clause Camille February 15, 2000 000217 ... MollyGoLightly hmm. i'm not even going to touch this one. don't feel i'm qualified to, really. 000531 ... MollyGoLightly mine called about 5 minutes ago. he asked if i wanted to come visit. he said he, his wife, and their son were getting ready to go to a dodger game. 000531 ... WingedSerpent people sometimes ask me about my family. about my parents. when i say that they have both long since passed away, that they are dead - I get the usual response: "Oh, I'm sorry." My sense of humor (inherited from my father, who we generally referred to as "The Old Man")leads me to respond: "Why? you didn't kill them." Some people don't quite know how to take that. 000531 ... emily ...i wonder if mine remembers me... 000531 ... yola mine used to say to me all the time "let me pick your brain" so that he could get me to think like him. last week, he wandered around panama. 000531 ... MollyGoLightly *laughs* "you didn't kill them." that's very funny. 000531 ... nym I am my father's son, he was a phantom, a mystery and that leaves me nothing 001129 ... silentbob my father smells like an old man who sits at a truckstop his whole life and forgets to shower 010117 ... unhinged hey dad, you're strangling me over here. i can't quite breathe. a plant doesn't need as much direction as a tree as it does as a sapling. i've been growing in the direction that you want me too for years and now i'd just like to take that pruning out into the world with me and see where i grow. you're always talking about how i need to be an adult but you don't let me. what am i supposed to do? 010117 ... rollins like i really wanna waste my energy taking my father out on the sidewalk so i can break his skinny arms? 010117 ... Laura the rain kissed my head, like my father used to, distant relations, no more talks, long forgotten hugs, you are not gone, but I miss you. 010318 ... Aimee father of mine, tell me where have you been? 010318 ... lacan/everclear "father of mine" by everclear is about no one's father who is also everyone's father and his name is the name of the father. and as our good friend jacques lacan explains, the name of the father signifies the desire of the mother, which is the unsignifiable. since the name of the father signifies the maternal phallus, and in lacanian terms a phallus is not a mere penis: it is a penis combined with the idea of absence. so the maternal phallus is not the mother's penis, but the mother's non-existent penis, no not even that: it's the mother's existent non-existent penis. so the name of the father is an existent non-existent, a present absence, an absent presence, a paradox incarnate. which is nothing suprising, since if logic is the symbolic, and the real is the remainer of the operation of the entry into the symbolic, then real must lie outside of logic. yet at the same time it must lie within. for the name of the father is the signifier of the unsignifiable, thus it is not a signifier at all. it clearly means nothing, and yet it clearly means something... 010414 ... thats me :) 010517 ... lizardqueen It's beautiful and sickening at the same time.."Come here boy...let daddy tie your shoes before you trip." I hear complaints all the time from people who say their fathers are too strict. I crave that strictness. Once when I was about four I remember getting lost in a department store. A nice, handsome man asked me why I was crying. When I told him I couldn't find my mother, he picked me up in his big firm arms and asked me if i could see her from that height. I looked down into his careful and gentle eyes. I had seen her plain as day by the Jewelry case, unaware of my absence. "No I cant see her", I had lied. I thought maybe wed spend the day together, after all why waste time looking for my mother when we had eachother. I clung to his arm, he was asking me questions...i think he asked what my moms name was and my age...but i was too busy pretending he was my dad. I was proud to walk through the store with him as i grasped around his forearm...my tears had turned to a grin. Only until he approached a stroller and a woman with long red hair. I remember him calling her honey. He explained that I had gotten lost while he caressed the hair of the kid in the stroller. I figured out it must be his and ran like hell to the jewelry case in tears. I dont let people pick me up anymore. 010602 ... Casey I almost killed my dad once. We were wrestling and he had a heart attack. After that I took a vow to never wrestle or hurt another person again. 010609 ... florescent light I hate you for fucking me up now I can never be happy 010626 ... Dafremen I don't write about my adoptive father much. I consider him to be my only parent since he was the only one of 10 or so foster families that finally gave me a home. The reason I don't talk write about the man much is because he is a private person and I respect that. My father has always been a paradox to me. On the one hand he is one of the most technically inept people on the face of the planet(ok so that's a bit of an exaggeration,) but at the same time he is a BRILLIANT psychologist and a consummate professional, so I can't help but have the deepest respect and admiration for him. I guess if there something in PARTICULAR that I could say to him right now it would be: Thanks for the home and the family. Thanks for the roots, I neeeded them, I had none of my own and you shared yours with me. Thanks for the name too. Thanks for a name behind which there is substance and honor, my old one rang hollow and empty and filled me with shame. Thanks for the safety net through my teenage years. I needed it very much and I needed it removed at just about the time you removed it. You helped me to remember the strength and self-reliance of my early childhood, for that I will be forever grateful. Thanks for letting me call you father, it has been and will continue to be a great honor. I love you Dad, Roger. 010911 ... ever dumbening He just turned 72; I bought him tai ji quan classes for his birthday. I've been helping him between classes. It's very strange to teach him, to make the choices for once, to select the filters, to mete out patience or judgement. Now I'm giving it back, the good and the bad; I could not do otherwise; I got it from you. 011114 ... whoknows father i killed my monkey 011114 ... ClairE priest Irish whiskey howling wind cold plant so much bitterness. 011130 ... Dis Left us when I was 13. I don't blame him, life with mom wasn't easy for any of us and we weren't a very tightly knit group, anyway. Still, he never called or wrote once he was on the outside. My mother always said dad saw the world in terms of "us" and "them". While he was with us, we were us and they were them. When he left us, we became them. I'm not angry or resentful that I never heard from him again, sometimes a person just wants out of a dismal situation. I can understand that, no harm no foul. Then again, perhaps my lack of outrage is indicative of just how badly I've been damaged. I'm not sure where he is right now, but I'm betting he looks very