Rosebud

I used the term Rosebud, or Rosebud moments from time to time.  The meaning should be clear enough to all who have seen Citizen Kane, but I thought I might clarify a tad.

All of us carry within us “moments” which are primitive, childish, and of vast, existential importance. I  was reading the other day that Sartre’s parents divorced, and if memory serves (the details don’t matter) his mother remarried when he was 12.  Somewhere in there was a childish need that was not met.  He was crying with every ounce of his being for something–for maternal love, for his father, for a return to how things used to be.  But his cries went unheard.  His needs went unmet.

And what do you do with such things?  What did our portrait of William Randolph Hearst do?  He carried on.  He put it behind him, so he thought.  He suppressed it.  What good does keeping fucking hurts in your fucking memory fucking do?  Fuck it.

But here is the thing: they don’t go away until we own them, not really.

Christ taught both that we should be as children, and as wise as serpents.  Both.

Here is my emerging view: anyone unable to access the spirit of a child likely has major unresolved Rosebud moments.  Anyone STUCK in childishness, likewise.  You have to be able to move back and forth.  You have to be capable of what I will call “appropriateness”.  This is a very Taoist term in the sense I am using it. It is mutable, and its exact meaning will vary constantly.