Almudena

Chapter 9:

INSTANT KARMA

And then I realised that Terry and Mitch had left the table, perhaps to go get us more mockjitos, and I was alone with John. And somehow I thought it proper to express my condolences for what had happened to him, even if he seemed fine now. I told him I remembered how shocking it had been, to be 12 or 13 years old, watching TV at lunchtime with my family one December day, and to see and hear the news that John Lennon had been murdered in New York, at the entrance of his apartment building.

Even at that age, and living in Spain (back then still very much an isolated country, what with being fresh out of a 40 year dictatorship), I knew who he was because we had studied “Yesterday” in English class and there was an incipient late Beatlemania among some of my schoolmates.

We don’t have two different words for “murdered” and “assassinated” in Spanish. It’s not one thing or the other; it was both things at once. Asesinado.

So I told him I was sorry, and I meant it, and he said:

“Well, see, the thing is… It couldn’t have been any other way.”

And I said:

“Sorry, what?”

And then he explained. He said that he had struck a very high note in his public life, pontificating about love and peace and what have you, but his personal life was very different. All along he was trying to understand himself and the reality around him, but his main interest had been to make himself into this mythological being that symbolised some kind of hope for the world. But the thing is, he wasn’t that at all.

He continued explaining that he had been a strange and estranged parent, part dotting and caring and part negligent, hurtful and remote. He had mistreated many of his lovers, had been physically violent and emotionally cruel. There had been all sorts of issues with his s*x life, the core of which was dehumanisation.

And this confession didn’t really take me by surprise, I kind of knew it. I realised that this information is not hidden or suppressed at all, it is out there, in the air, and people know. But somehow it has never detracted from his ongoing fame and influence on the world, to this day.

Even so, even knowing that I already knew, hearing it first-hand would have normally given me pause, because domestic violence is to me one of the worst things anyone can do. But see, dear reader, I have known perpetrators of all sorts of violence; in my family of origin, in my social environment, and in my professional life (from many years working in prisons). And I have never heard anyone admit these things so openly or comprehensively, with no attempt at justification. And that was kind of disarming, so I said:

“Well… None of us can live up to our highest ideals, I suppose”.

But it was more than that, he said. He said that by talking such a big game and doing essentially the opposite, he misled millions of people, leaving them confused about what a good life really is, and letting them think that talent and charisma are the same as love and peace. And they're not. And this created an internal fracture, a tear in the very fabric of his existence. And that gaping tear was a magnet for murderous madness, and it just couldn’t have been any other way.

And he said that there were other people in his generation that fell prey to the same self-induced syndrome. And he didn’t tell me who in so many words, but the initials JFK and MLK popped into my head, so you figure it out.

So then he went on to say that the only peace and love that you will be able to bring to the world is the one that you can maintain in your own head and heart, in your own home, in your innermost domain. That if we were able to sustain peace and love on that small, intimate, low-key level, the world would be at peace already. That war and peace begin at home. That it’s all connected.

That you cannot have conflict and abuse at home and then head out to an anti-war demonstration and think it will be OK. It will not.

That you cannot betray and dishonor and degrade your wife and children, the people you vowed to love and protect, and expect to use a political career to effect positive change in the world. That it doesn’t work that way.

And when you entangle yourself in these fatal contradictions, in this terminal lack of integrity, the taller your pedestal is, the more karmic damage you are doing to yourself. And then… all it takes is an instant.