My beginning of the day ritual of writing has been the way I've been dealing with disturbances of mind. I work most efficiently when I first get up, having been provoked by sleep and dreams to work out solutions to my internal (and sometimes external) problems. Because some of them are external, and because these tend to accumulate over time because I do not act to "solve" them (solutions are seldom permanent, and why do the same things over and over again?) so much as I "act" to solve the internal ones (I work on the theory that if you solve your internal problems, then your external ones will take care of themselves, but maybe this is not so true as I want to believe), I may need a mechanism analogous to writing to deal with my more immediate "real world" "problems." I do deal with them, but only as they must be dealt with. And maybe that is, mostly, the way to go. But sometimes, maybe, I need to be more direct and deal with them first thing, like I do with my ideas (writing), when my mind is fresh and most efficient. Or maybe not. What I'm saying is that maybe there are things that are more important than writing. Hmm. Nah. But equally important, then. Oh, I don't know. Maybe. This is all by way of saying that, sometimes, first thing, I will let the writing slide until later in the day and allow my mind to attend to some other project or problem that's been bugging me, and make some headway on it by utilizing the best time my mind experiences. But then, always, I have to catch up with the writing goals, which is a more caustic experience later in my day than it is first thing. I've developed a list of nags and bugs that I should take care of, if for no other reason that to have a little peace of mind. But, usually, that's as far as my motivation goes, into making lists. Usually, when I eliminate some "problem," it's because I abandon my taciturn scheduling/list system and just go ahead and do it, forgetting about any plans I've made. Get it out of the way so that I can get back to what I wasn't doing before that I had planned to do. (If it doesn't involve writing or working on my website, I tend not to do it. Writing is my therapy. If it's going well, all the rest if life doesn't too much matter.)
5-6-02c
Unconscious Wisdom
I shied away from people when I was young (and even now, but it's a more conscious practice now) because I intuitively knew that many people are not so good for our mental, and even physical, health. We choose "bad friends" as a matter of course. At least, I do. But it seems that so many people are such bad choices that it's difficult to find good company. I myself, in subtle ways, have been a bad choice for others, although I doubt that most of them would even have realized it. I have (had) unconscious means whereby I avoid (most of) those areas of life in which I am weakest (cowardice is our intuitive recognition of our weakness) by avoiding the people who would seek to negatively influence or manipulate me in ways in which I do not want to go. [But this mechanism is not (has not been) foolproof, because I have chosen bad friends and been manipulated and unduly influenced by them, but I have also been a bad friend in this same sense, so maybe it all evens out in the end (of course it does)]. I know now that the best thing (for me) is to avoid close contact with (most) people, when I am feeling weak, until such time, if ever, I am feeling stronger. I know to avoid certain (types of) people because I know ahead of time what they might do to me, what I might allow them to do to me, unwittingly. This manipulating behavior is more my flaw than theirs. Everyone (as I have said, even myself) is in some ways a bad influence. It's more important that we have internal safeguards to protect us against this influence than to avoid people. (But, until these safeguards are in place, if ever, then avoidance is a valid strategy.) These safeguards consist of, but are not limited to such things as "high moral character," a solid belief structure that allows us to filter out the negativity, a conscious awareness of the evil world, etc. I have not been so wise or skilled in these areas, especially in my more distant past. But the problem extends far beyond that. I've had a blind spot that permits others, unconsciously and even sometimes consciously, to take advantage of me. I've been naive. But the problem extends beyond even naivety. I'll still allow it to this day, while knowing better. If I meet people I like, I let them influence me without thinking. They charm me, even as I charm in response. Everyone does this, of course. This is human nature. This is the nature of personality interaction. But I have had a conscious guard against it, my extreme introversion, which peaks at times when I am feeling weakest, that is, at times when I (unconsciously) feel I am most vulnerable to negative influence, during those times when I unconsciously perceive that my mechanisms are least likely to function, and during those times when I perceive that others are harboring an agenda that I really don't want to be caught up in. [I may be as much describing a universal phenomenon here as I am describing my personal psychology.]
5-6-02e
Rabbit Love
Domestic rabbits, until they learn how to rear their young, what to expect, etc, until their instincts kick in, may reject the (first brood of) offspring. Is this what my mother did, in effect, because she didn't know how to raise me, because she was too young, inexperienced, and naive? [more]
5-24-02c
I spent most of my life hidden away, covered up, opening up only when outwitted or when necessary, for the purpose of survival and career development, and in most of these instances, I regretted having done it. Now, I see, it doesn't matter. I am not longer hidden, except in the normal sense (but, of course, that's because I am so physically withdrawn lately) and except that people will not understand me. Maybe I make myself an enigmatic mess in a newer strategy to obscure myself, but I don't think so. More likely, I am hiding only from myself.
5-31-02b
I think I'm finally starting to get a handle on my personal dream symbolism. I've known for quite a while that fish are my unconscious (especially artistic) contents, but today I realized that the fire hall (a specific one) is a symbol for society or social functions: social gatherings, symbolized by the hall being rented out for private meetings, firemen gathering around casually, etc.; more formal get-togethers, symbolized by firemen's meetings; and much more serious social concerns, symbolized by acting in concert with others to fight fires and conduct rescue operations. For a long time I wondered why I always dreamed of the fire hall. Now I know. I'm developing a symbols list. Here's the beginning:
fish = unconscious contents, especially artistic stuff
fire hall = society /social functions
long hair = feminine aspects of self (anti-authoritarianism)
grocery store = where I get basic nutrients (libido?)
I'm at the fire hall. Alan B (a bi guy my family used to know a long time ago) is a fireman there. [Not in real life.] Some social event is impending, a gala dinner/dance that evening, and I'm supposed to go with him. I have an evening dress I'm going to wear, and I'm very hesitant about wearing it and going with him as his date, even though I know that it means nothing to me personally. I'm mostly hesitant about wearing the dress, because of how it will make me look. I'm worried about going to Jimmie's graduation party at the fire hall next week, because of all the people who will be there who may not be accepting of my long hair, being threatened by it, thinking it indicates that I'm effeminate (that's actually what some of them still think, despite living in these "enlightened" times), when all it really means is that I'm still rebelling against their asshole authority (or my own). There's a new blue pickup truck parked at the lower end of the fire hall parking lot. A young guy and I own the truck jointly. (He's the now-grown son of one of the firemen I used to know?) I resent this joint-ownership (when I feel that I should appreciate it) because, since I never drive the truck, since I don't go to work at a job any more, since I keep such irregular hours and when I'm available, he has the truck, and since I hardly go anywhere anyway and when I do, I have my own car that is perfectly good so that I don't need another one, I think that having invested in the truck was a waste of my money. But I made the decision to buy it with him, and now it's a situation I have to live with. I haven't yet "committed" to attending Jimmie's party. I haven't RSVP'd, because I know that if I do, I will not want to go and feel bad about having said I would. I've been hesitating doing this, because I don't know if I want to go; and yet, I feel like I have an obligation to attend. I have no need to attend the party, but I have a social obligation, as a member of the family? Lots and lots of cognitive dissonance. I might as well have said I'd go as feel guilty about it anyway. I walk up the low road and up onto upper Rockcliff. In the middle of the hill, all of my aquariums have been set out in the middle of the street. If I don't take care of them immediately, the fish are going to die. This pisses me off. Why would they have been put out here? At first, I blame my mother, but then, I realize she's dead. And then I realize that the house up the street is no longer ours, that it was sold a long time ago, and the people who lived there have "put me out" by setting my fish in the street. I feel that my unconscious contents are being threatened. My unconscious mind has been "put out" of the house. I awoke from the dream with the realization, profoundly for the first time (it's been eight years since my mother's death) that the house is no longer ours. [Does this mean I'm going to stop dreaming about it? Maybe the new owners have held a seance, an exorcism, to rid the house of former inhabitants' spirits, since I visit it so often in my dreams. Maybe the people we sold it to couldn't stand the psychic traffic and sold it to someone else who better knew how to protect themselves. But, I think, I shouldn't allow others (who exist as psychic entities within me) to determine where it is I will go in my dreams. I should be adamant about insisting that I be allowed to travel where I want to.] That house has been a fundamental part of my psyche for a long, long time. Am I at some kind of a crossroads here? Am I leaving a big part of my past behind? This would be a good thing, I suppose, moving on. But it doesn't feel like it. It feels like I am overwhelmed with how I am going to take care of these fish without a place to keep them.
6-1-2c
Wilkinsburg, at the main intersection, but like it was years ago, less populated and more provincial. I am getting married to Helen Hunt, and we're, at the same time, planning and conducting the wedding. One of my formal, ritual, duties is to carry four sets of two liter glass bottles containing wine and some other party liquid to each sets of "tables" (there are actually no tables there, only small groups of people "sitting" around--although they're actually standing) on the sidewalks of the four corners of the intersection. These areas represent groupings of the sides of our families.
Transition from the northeast corner (my mother's extended family) into a social gathering which is sort of (but sort of not) in my father mother's back yard. Helen sits on my left and one of my cousins (Kathy) on my right. Both are chilled and snuggling under blankets that they try to lure me under too. Helen transitions into a combination of another of my cousins (Judy) and Eileen, who is determined to convince me to cuddle under her blanket. At first she is succeeding, but then I begin to doubt her appealing nature, as I hear what she has to say. She tells me I'm too bony as she puts her arm around my shoulder. I tell her I lost weight. She says she prefers muscular men. I tell her I used to be like (my brother-in-law) Frank (not really; I was never that big), but she says, "Ooo, no." I glance at Kathy, who's amused at her shallowness, as much as she is hurt that I will not get under her blanket with her. But she is somewhat satisfied that she sees in my eyes the recognition that I see the same thing in J/E. I wonder how I ever could have thought that she (Eileen) was a woman I could relate to. I'd rather be under Kathy's blanket.
I awaken remembering my mother's funeral. I stood to the side of the room talking to Mac, a friend of mine, and I said something particularly clever, and he laughed loudly, obviously entertained. (Mac has this behavior that he cultivates that, when he is genuinely interested in people, he attends to them and makes them look good by "acting" the role of the entertainee.)
Judy must have overseen this episode (she was sitting nearby) and decided that it was time to approach me. My extended family generally gives me wide berth. I think I intimidate them. She came up to me and began to talk to me, and Mac drifted away. I was in a particularly open mood, probably occasioned by Mac's attention/therapy, and when she asked me something personal (I don't remember what it was, something about my job, I think), I told her the truth, which I don't think she expected. I was very close to the surface, and I felt a lot of my painful affect in my face as I explained about my dismissal from my last job, how the stress had gotten to me, etc. I think I overwhelmed her, and she dismissed herself after a polite while and went back to her seat.
I did the same thing to Kathy at my father's funeral several years earlier, revealing to her how I felt about my then recent divorce, living alone, etc. But Kathy handled the affect a lot better and, in fact, my honesty peaked her interest. At my mother's funeral, Kathy came up to me again, and I began talking to her in an equally intimate way, but Rick O'Connor blustered up in his usual, extremely outgoing way and interrupted us. Since I was in an open mode, I said, "Hey, I thought you were dead," which he took as a joke. So I said, "No. Seriously. Someone told me you were dead." I was standing immediately next to my brother at the time, and I motioned to him saying, "I think it was him." In fact, it was him, I remembered immediately after I said it. Then Rick began to tell me a story about a guy with the same name as he had who lived in Verona and had died recent, and everyone thought it was Rick who had died. During this whole conversation, I watched Kathy, dispossessed of my attention, drift away. It made me sad, because I knew that I wouldn't re-approach her and I feared that she wouldn't re-approach me, and she didn't. Another missed opportunity.
Kathy and I have had a mutual appreciation for each other ever since the time, when we were kids, I beat up some kid who was hassling her when we were out in the street near her home. And we never got together and talked over the years like I would have liked, probably because we were both reticent, withdrawn personalities--kindred spirits. The whole point of this long essay is, if you don't want to hear what I have to say, don't ask. I just might tell you. I don't think Judy was prepared to hear my message. Kathy always was.
6-1-2g
Turn on the Catholic television station and watch those guys in robes with hoods and with giant crucifixes around their necks and women in long black and gray dresses with head coverings like they're looking out of a cave and tell me I'm crazy. And a whole lot of people around the world take these people for granted and assume that they are perfectly sane. If I am crazy, I'm way, way down on the list. There are way too many retro nuts alive in the world today trying to influence and coerce the masses back into the Stone Age.
6-3-2
I saw a piece on MSNBC last night about hoarding and the obsessive-compulsive disorder.* Compared to the people they showed, I'm not so bad at all. (This has been a week for making comparisons that put me in a relatively good light.) Yes, I hoard, but always in a more or less practical way. I insist that my caches are organized so as to prevent clutter, yet I am not so idealistic as to pursue perfectionist standards. I get to the organization when I can, and meanwhile I keep the developing clutter out of sight. I am an obsessive-compulsive hoarder, I guess. But I'm not so bad off. I can walk around my house without tripping over things. I wash my dishes nearly every day. I throw things out when their stocks rise above a certain level (old jars and containers, plastic grocery bags that I use as garbage bags, twist ties--well, maybe I've yet to define an upper limit there., etc., etc., etc.) Yeah, I think I'm okay, at least in this regard. And then there's this.
* It's not a disorder if a large percentage of the population has it. In this case, it's called a trait. We so much worship "normality" in this society that we jump on every disorder bandwagon and want to be cured of what we want to think are maladies, such as tendencies toward schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or AHDD. We take drugs like Prozac or Zoloft or Ritalin designed to make us more like other people, who take drugs or participate in therapies trying to make them more like someone else. Yes, there are people who suffer from these kinds of problems, but they are a very small percentage of the population. The rest of us see the tendency toward these disorders [a tendency that everyone possesses--it's called transference; you can't empathize with anyone unless you possess small amounts of psychic content similar to their larger amount that you can exaggerate to the point of understanding] and we assume that we are suffering, when we are either merely displaying our individual differences or, more likely, we are unconsciously empathizing by zeroing in on the very small degree that we are like these more unfortunate people and overly exaggerating our of very little variation from the "normal" human type, which political/social correctness tells us we should be. I myself worship the difference and go out of my way to celebrate the fact that I am deviant. If I suffer from bipolar disorder, I am glad of it, except that, now, everyone, is adopting the disease, so that I no longer want to be associated with it. If everyone has bipolar disorder, then no one has it, and we are all normal (standard) again. Hey! Maybe I've hit upon something here. Maybe disorders become contagious and people, being intrinsically herd animals, flock to the behaviors and adopt them as their own, thereby eliminating the disorder via making it a dominant trait. Thereafter, anyone not possessing the disorder is ill. (I think I'm going off the deep end here.)
6-11-02
I became aware several years ago of two different perceptions of the concept and experience of psychism. But I never put the difference into perspective. Apparently, most people think that psychic ability means supernatural power, so much so that they attribute to it a kind of extraordinariness that is not really true. Psychism, or "psychic ability," is something we all do all the time, each and every day, mostly unconsciously. Mostly, it is intuition. Occasionally, it rises to the level of conscious awareness of the process of the interchange of psychic material, which is that content of the mind that exists mostly unconsciously or semi-consciously and determines our basic character and personality, that stuff of psychoanalysis that gets transferred. It's the nature of the transference, and not the material itself, that causes the misperception of the nature of psychic ability--which then gets extended to concepts like telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.--not that these phenomena don't exist, but that they are attributed to some kind of a "magical" power, when they are merely a vital mix of active imagination, intuition, prediction, and effective transference of unconscious or semi-conscious content. I start to fall for this basic deception all the time. I want to feel that meeting Rick at the picnic was somehow foreordained, or at least that I'd had "psychic" hints of it beforehand. But whatever is going on here below the surface is far more profound than that. That would be just a cosmic parlor trick by comparison. Something is working in my life that had been lying dormant for so long (at least since last summer). I guess it's called growth, and two people with a mutual past just happen to be experiencing it at the same time and happen to run across each other. That's all. But that's a very big, profound all. I made a friend the other day that I forgot that I already had.
6-12-02
I never used to be apologetic for the way I was. If people didn't accept me for what I believed or did, too bad. If people thought I was wrong, They had a difference of opinion. Nothing more.
Why do I no longer want to put myself into situations where I will meet (certain) people, when I never felt any compunction to do it in the past, even as I was every bit as much reticent to open up to strangers or to acquaintances whom I felt were manipulating, overly friendly, and/or wanting things from me (physically, mentally, or emotionally) that I didn't want to give? Mostly, I think, I avoid certain social situations now because there are certain things I don't want (specific) people to know, first and foremost being that I was fired from my job, and second being certain things related to my writing, like my methods of publication or my online work, and after that, by extension and conditioning, any of a number of less and less important items. I felt (feel) guilty and/or embarrassed by things I have done and do not want to talk about them, and I fear that people will confront me with them. But why should I worry?
Solution to this mode of social isolation: Rick O's method (combined with my "waiting" method)--if others make the "mistake" of approaching me. (It's only a mistake if they are the superficial kind of people who are too afraid to deal with real material and only want to "socialize" on a cliche-ridden basis.) I should open up and let it all out. If they then try to use what I reveal to manipulate me and I see it at the time, I can point it out to them (or not, and become wary and less than open, temporarily and/or as a future caution against just them specifically, and not as a general practice (as is my method now). If I do not see the manipulation, I can deal with it later (as is my usual practice, mostly). But still, no matter what, I should never commit to anything other than that which is doable at the moment, especially when they are insistent, without first retreating and considering it and getting back to them later, if appropriate. The more insistent they are, they more wary I should be.
I used to not be so reluctant to go out into society because I didn't see how affected I was by it. I was insulated. I had an internal shield. The most significant reason that I put myself more willingly into social situations in the past is that I was far less conscious then, of my own internal and external behavior, of others' perceptions of me, and of consequences of being and acting differently from the social norm. But now, the shield is gone. It may never have existed, but only that the content was unconscious, whereas now it is more conscious. I may be no more "psychic" than I've ever been, just more conscious of my ability. (Remember, psychism is the awareness of how we are interconnected at the content exchange level.) When I was young, what people liked about me was this contact they made with me that I was unconscious of. They thought I felt what they did, the affective contact, but I acted without awareness, yet as if I consciously understood. This is the thing I'm missing now, the feeling of contact that I closed off because I became aware of it and didn't know how to deal with it.
Development: the more people know about me, the more they understand my inherent psychology, my withheld motivation, and/or my pathology, the more likely they will aid my development (ala transference, if in no other way). If, for example, I allow them to read this kind of journal material, instead of keeping its online existence hidden from my closer acquaintances, I give (the unconscious minds of) people I encounter the material they need to interact with my unconscious, so that effective transference may operate to my betterment. While it is true that some people will use the information to try to manipulate me (consciously) or to act to further their less than noble unconscious agendas (this has been my perception and my fear and thus far), I stand to benefit in a far greater way if I reveal myself, because in the long run, positive transference experiences win out over negative agendas as I choose friends, associates, and acquaintances well and avoid those people who would do me (at least unconscious) harm. I have been overly protective of my image/self-image and psyche as I have become aware of how manipulated I am. Everyone is manipulated, and manipulating. It's human nature. But I've become paranoid about it, which is unnecessary. In the long run, the "manipulation" works more in my favor than against me, especially since I am more able now to interpret it.
If I change my "need" to hide away what I am and feel, out of a sense of self-protection, I eliminate the reticence I have developed of going out among people. (Previously, unconsciously, others interpreted that reticence as shyness or distance. I was out among people but remained mentally and emotionally closed off from them. Now, more consciously, it's a matter of intentional stonewalling.) That still leaves the practical concern of taking on too much and becoming overwhelmed and needing to retreat, but it relieves me of the fear or worry of what people are going to ask me or ask of me. I will still wait, and require others to approach, but when they do, I may be more willing now to contact them and tell them the truth, and let them deal with it. Either they will be overwhelmed and back away, or not. If they are overwhelmed, that's their problem, not mine. And if they think the worse of me for having acted stupidly or in an embarrassing fashion, that also is their problem. How did they want me to act? Like them? (Probably.) If I am myself (and how can I be otherwise, in any case?) then they must accept me for what I am, or go away (or remain the masochists that they are).
[But there's no need for me to be admitting every one of my fears or problems. If they want to know about them, they should approach me--in the right way, respectfully and without a manipulative agenda, and they should persist in the face of my reticence to speak, if I choose to behave this way at any given time. Only those who are really interested and persistent earn the right to know (me).]
I should encounter people in the present. This doesn't mean I have to say anything. All it means is I have to be open toward them. Let them approach and talk, or not, as they see fit. Contact them, like Rick does. Get into their psyches, into their "souls." Anything more, any further social interaction, is optional.
6-12-02a
I lose my way all the time. I'm continually losing my way. And when I find myself again, it always seems to be in a more profound or advanced way. I hope that this is the case. I hope I am advancing, and not just repeating the same old stuff in a cyclic pattern. I mean, it is cyclic, but I hope it's spiraling upward.
I want to cut my hair, but not under "social" pressure. It's too hot on my neck, and it's too hard to maintain. I would have cut it by now if my brother hadn't said anything. This is exactly the wrong thing to do, but I can't help it. I need to resolve to do what I think I should despite what others think, whether positive or negative.
As it is, if there even just appears to be a social pressure being applied, whether it exists in reality or is a figment of my imagination and projection, I want to defy it. I rationalize that my long hair is a good indicator of people's intolerant attitudes. It's one way I have of uncovering people's truer natures, when they otherwise keep them hidden. It's true, but it's a rationaization, nonetheless.
6-13-02c
I awaken out of a dream about Isaac in a grocery store. It's near to closing time. [The end is near. But the end of what? The end of my search for basic nutrients I've stumbled across a method (Rick's) whereby "nutrients" are immediately available at any time, and I don't have to rely any more on finding them only in "grocery stores", and purchasing them, at a cost. They're free, for the taking--as long as I don't take them without permission.] I feel intimidated by Isaac (and others) in the store, but I'm nevertheless friendly toward them. [The current method of getting what I need in "stores" is intimidating.]
This dream transitioned out of a previous one wherein Cindy Regan and a lot of other people I used to know (I don't know if I really knew them or I just had known them in the context of the dream) are in a huge building, like a National Guard armory with one big room in East Liberty. These people are just kids (although they are really adults). [I'm a kid too?] And they're afraid, although they don't know it. But it's obvious that the rebellious behavior of these kids (and me?) is really disguised fear, but instead of feeling the fear, they displace it into behavior that, although it is not outwardly aggressive, still implies aggression, or the tendency toward it, always ready to explode if provoked.[This is the intimidation I feel.]
Later, in the grocery store, I act a little bit in this same way. An announcement is made over the loudspeaker that the store is going to close. Customers have twenty seconds to get their purchases to the checkouts. I tell Isaac I need sugar and coffee (assertive/aggressive "drugs.") But everything he shows me is priced way too high. But finally we find a very large container of coffee (at least five pounds), for two dollars. I go to the checkout, but the store is already closed and the girl won't check me out. This same girl was hostile toward me earlier, not liking me at all.
Outside, on the way home, I am slowed, stopped, and delayed, first by people, then by animals. [People are animals who confront me, accost me, and delay my progress.] I am demonstrating, to no one, but as if someone is there who I am teaching [this is what I am doing by writing this stuff out, teaching myself--and others?] how to defend yourself against "wild" threats. Dogs and pigs (authority figures) attack me, and I just manage to get by them, avoiding them or appeasing them, teasing them with food to distract them [grocery stores are where I buy the "food" with which I appease an intimidating populace], delay them, or head them off in another direction. The last dog I entice with frozen steaks that I have to thaw out a bit first in a microwave to get the juices flowing and enable the aroma to spread and become attractive. I hope I can keep him interested in the cooking meat and away from seeing my body as food. I give the dog this food to keep its attention away from me while I get into a safe place, over a fence or someplace. I also had to wrestle with these animals, in a rough, but apparently playful manner, but really with a very serious intent. [This is my sense of social intercourse. I engage in it in a jovial and playful manner, but it is a very serious business to me.]
Cut to a scene where a woman (me) takes her guard dog to the vet to be put to sleep after her husband dies. She wants to be there when the dog is put to sleep. She wants to look into its eyes as it dies. She wants to feel the revenge she is getting. She's been afraid of it all her life and now she can at last be free of it. This is me, being afraid, and at last finding a solution to my problem, putting the dog of my fear to sleep. But also, this has the feel of one of those dreams wherein I am tuning in on someone else's problem. This is the kind of dream that I will notice some weeks later seems to apply to someone whom I didn't have contact with at the time, one of those "prophetic" vision that you never realize was prophecy until much later when it seems to apply.
I've been afraid since I was a little kid. I see my fear in people I know, in particular in kids. I see it in my nephews, Jimmie and Danny. I first noticed it years ago in Jimmie, when he was a little kid. And now, I sometimes see it in Danny, although with not nearly so much repressed affect. (Or is this entirely projection on my part?) (Being a first child sucks.) They (I) feel abandoned in a hostile world. I felt left behind, literally lost, on a few occasions, a motive of my personal psychology, incidents that came to symbolize the general adaptation. We are forced to survive in a world that we feel doesn't mean us any good, at best. This is a general motif of the human race, proceeding directly from and developed out of childbirth. Simply put, it is separation anxiety. We never really overcome it. We only just deal with it. Rick's method overcomes this; that is, we become social people. (Or we do not, and suffer.) But this is only a temporary solution. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many times we repeat the social experiment to successfully attain a positive affect, an awareness of a mutual identity, a confirmation that what we feel is also felt by others, ultimately, we are each alone. We were separated at birth from that which nourished us, and we will forever try to find it again, whether via social discourse, sex, meditation seeking after a unified, non-separate universe, or dreams of grocery stores where we might find nourishing substances.
When people are "afraid" of me and don't want to approach me, because I look/am intimidating, I have successfully projected the fear away from me and onto others. This is my defense. I am a strong, stoic, intimidating person so that I don't have to show the fearful self I really am inside. I see others as threatening, and I adopt a threatening outer shell to counteract it. This is the same thing that Rick does. He was afraid to approach me, because he saw me as intimidating. [I wonder if he knew/felt this consciously?] (Thus, he kept warning me not to be trying to psyche him or to "twist" things around. I wasn't, consciously. He probably has felt that the world has been doing this to him all his life. So, maybe, he has been doing this to the world. That makes sense. Why else would he have become a car salesman?) He had to wait until near the end of the day to approach me, after he had had a lot to drink and when it looked like he was finally going to run out of time if he didn't. And when he finally did it, he had to adopt that blustering, macho-killer facade in order to protect himself.
We are all afraid, of each other, really. Really. We're afraid of the power we each possess, the libido. We're afraid of the psychic energy, the exchange, the transference. We repress this fear and become social, by assuring each other that we mean each other no harm. Social interchange is an elaborate series of rituals and behaviors that work to assure each participant that we are safe in each other's presence. When I am reticent to engage in these behaviors, I make myself a threat. I adopt that (non-social) role. I am a reminder to people what the world would be like if there were no society or social functions to keep the fear away.
I should socialize. This is the first time I've realized and understood the therapeutic significance of socialization. I've been assuming that society is anti-therapy, a goal, a place you get to when therapy is successful. Now, I see that it's just another step along the way. Society is one big group therapy session, everybody helping everybody else, via unconscious or semi-conscious transference. How obvious. Where the hell have I been?
6-16-2a
If I haven't made this quite clear yet, Rick is my new hero. The example he sets for me is at least as powerful as any set by any celebrity. He expresses his true nature, or he tries to, perhaps fogging it a bit, perhaps engaging in a few unconscious deceptions like the ones we all cannot seem to avoid, but he does try, and at least he makes genuine contact, at least he's not superficial, at least he isn't afraid to confront the issues he has with his past, nor is he afraid to reveal them, as he actively searches for solutions.
I would never go this far, I think. I would never go out of my way to reveal my past foibles. Not with most people. But I'll meet his method of approach halfway. This is my new method. I'll stop hiding away when people seem to want to know me. If they want to know, I'll let them see, if I don't suspect a manipulative unconscious agenda (or rather, if I don't immediately see one, because we all have manipulative unconscious agendas).
Because of events in my past, particularly those relating to my divorce and the loss of my last job, I've become very secretive and unwilling to talk about myself, because I've seen myself as having committed terrible mistakes. But they really weren't so bad after all, now that I look back, only human, certainly not nearly so bad a what many people have done, and if I had not been so much of a goddamned perfectionist, I'd have realized a lot sooner that I am just an ordinary person, just like everyone else. (I still don't believe this so much as I should. I see how ignorant many people are. But then, many other people aren't, and I tend to ignore this group when evaluating my status.)
This journal and its related online documents have been the only place where I have revealed what truth I have revealed about the "private" incidents in my life. And I have kept the existence of this material a secret from the people who know me personally. I don't think, for practical reasons, if not for psychological ones, that I'll yet reveal its existence, but otherwise I'm not going to be reticent to face up to people because I'm afraid of what they might ask me about my life. Even if I never tell another person about my "terrible secrets," at least now I've become aware of how I have fallen into a pattern of (even deeper) isolation by my fear of facing people because of what they might ask--or think. They're going to think it anyway, and worse, and much of that ill thought can be mediated by simple personal contact. When people feel that you are in contact with them, and especially vice versa, then no matter what you reveal, or don't, they feel good about you. And, as important, when you make that contact and express your opinions and point of view, or at least establish the conditions so that they may intuit them, you negate others' agendas that may be pitted against your progress in life, even if what you have to impart about your past seems not to be in your best interest, simply because the fact that you are revealing it indicates an honesty on your part that demonstrates an openness, that you are not trying to act in an underhanded way. And furthermore, this feeds back to you, so that your self-esteem, which may have been diminished by your previous closed-off attitude (when you fail to communicate your opinions, you allow others to substitute their own ideas of what you are, which can feed back to you as a negative self-image, lowering your self-esteem), is raised as you see yourself reflected in the social world in a more accurate way.
So, I resolve to be more like Rick. I'm not going to start drinking or taking drugs again in order to "free" up my inhibitions, but I'm going to use what I have learned to avoid the isolated stance I've developed over the past eight years to try to get back, at least, to the point where I had been before, and hopefully, to advance beyond it, which has always been a long term goal of mine, one that I now realize I've unwittingly put aside. Look out world. I'm back--at least for the rest of the summer, and all summers to come, if I can manage to remember this insight through winters' psychic freezes.
6-20-2a
All people have their own way of calling attention to themselves. Some people rely on their skills and talents, being professionals or entertainers. Some people rely on their good looks or the way they dress. Some people develop a personal act and rely on the way they behave. It seems that I have learned to rely on my mere presence. Since this is an unconscious ploy, I never think I am looking for attention and I'm often surprised when I get it. I think I'm being so standoffish, and when I discover that my (non-)behavior has prompted attention and even approach, I almost want to hide away and often feel shy and unresponsive. But I have to admit that this is disingenuous--but only in an unconscious sense. I have an agenda, I do want to call attention to myself, but it's unconscious, while my conscious mind adopts the attitude that I don't want to be noticed. I guess, if I really want to be honest with myself, I'm going to have to face up to the fact that I do like people to direct their attention to me. I just want that attention to be from a distance, yet I want it to be noticeable from that distance, I want it both ways. This is a tendency toward a schizoid split, I think. This is why, when Rick spoke of me at a distance to Josh, acting as if I couldn't hear him, it pleased me--not because of the obvious flattery, which I saw right through, but because it played right into my schizoid psychology.
6-20-2e
Music is the space between the notes.
Claude Debussey
I am in the high school with db. She's a student there, and I am older, having graduated several years earlier. It's the last day of class for graduating seniors and all of the students are on the ground floor (a semi-basement with only two sides open onto the lower parking lot) in one huge hall-like room, socializing. I'm wearing boots, Levis, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket. db and I are a bit notorious, and everyone seems to know us or know of us. We split up while she goes about socializing with her friends. I feel a bit superior to these kids. A teacher confronts me and asks me if I am aware of how much I stir up the students, how "sexy" I am. She's accusing me of commanding too much attention, but I take the accusations as compliments instead, thus defusing her criticism. [She's really attracted to me and projecting her attraction onto the kids, which means that a part of my psyche, the part she represents (the anima?), is attracted to the ego-me, my self-image. Yeah, that sounds about right. Or else, there is someone out there who wants to "teach" me something and is making "psychic" contact. And, definitely, that aspect of my psyche wants to teach me something.] She points to the way I am dressed as a rationale to support her argument. I say I'm just wearing ordinary clothes, the same as everyone else. "You mean the jeans? I ask." She does not. "The T-shirt?" No. "The jacket?" Well, yes. Actually. There is another sense in which I am wearing no jacket or T-shirt and am exciting the young girls with my bare chest.
When I go out into the world, I never feel this way, i.e., attractive. I most always feel closed off in my own little (mental) world. But occasionally I get feedback that tells me that I in fact do command this kind of attention. I try, today, when I go out, to see how this might work, but the insight eludes me and I soon find myself retreating back into my mind.
Occasionally, I enter the world (that is, the "outside" world, as it manifests itself independently of that "image" of it that I am constantly in touch with via television and the Internet) in a wary state of mind, and then I am tuned into what is going on. Most often, this happens when I first go outside, especially after having been cloistered for a while. If I pay attention to my overt behavior instead of focusing entirely on the environment, I see that my scanners are working overtime, examining the location of every moving object and searching out every nuance for the possibility of danger. I am a spy going into the cold. But this attitude soon wears off after a few minutes or a few miles and I become once again internalized.
I know my presence commands attention, especially among people who know me. But I most often ignore (repress?) this fact. It seems that I'd so much rather be unknown that I turn my attention away from the attention I am getting and I pretend I am unknown, and even unseen. But, am I fooling anyone, really--except myself?
I want to be a musician, like Thelonious Monk, who created music as he went along (jazz) and forced his out-of-step sense of rhythm onto a public that took a long time to understand what he was up to. Ultimately, because of his persistence, they came to accept him. But did they ever really understand? And do they even today?
While out today, I became aware as I traveled between stores, while listening to a Monk CD that I burned just before I left the house, how odd Monk really was, and I try heuristically to put myself back in his time to understand how his world would have felt about his music. It's not only his "discordant" notes that command attention. Others were doing this same thing, even classical composers. What's more striking, if less obvious, is his phrasing, the way he pauses when you think there should not be a pause, calling attention to a passage that otherwise would have flowed right by, satisfying your unconscious expectations that allow it to remain unattended. He commands your attention with his difference. This is what I do too. I am so odd that people must pay attention to me, even if I do not consciously want it. (It's an unconscious ploy. Consciously, I want so much to be left alone that I must compensate for the behavior unconsciously to keep myself somewhat in the game.)
I can't help but think that Monk's style was born out of mistakes he made while playing. Often I hear in his recordings what sounds like a mistake, repeated and turned into a theme. The music having been recorded somewhat later in his career, I can't really believe that these are so much mistakes at this point when his style is fully evolved. But earlier on, I can see how the style might have developed. He makes a mistake and he covers it up through repetition, as if he's musically saying "I meant to do that."
This is what I've done too. I made a lot of social and business mistakes, but I plodded on as if I never made a single one, behaving as I always did, because that was the way I was (am? Maybe not. Maybe I am changing. Maybe). I meant to do those things--not that I really meant to do them, but what else could I do? That was me. If I admitted to the mistakes, I would have been saying, "Yes. I'm a jerk. I'm an asshole. I deserve your scorn." But in my mind, I didn't think those things, and still don't think that I deserved the scorn I got. (I do think, now, that I was, an asshole, and I'm proud of it. I was a prime asshole in a world of assholes.) And so, I played on, doing the same things that got me into trouble, because otherwise I would be admitting that I was wrong. And I'm not, still. Just human.
My discordant, out-of-meter lifestyle is still going strong. If you don't like the way it sounds, don't listen. There are plenty of writers/journalists producing elevator music, where every note is exactly in its place and no empty space is going to force your attention onto something you'd rather not attend to. (I see now that this whole piece is one big projection.)
At 6 pm I take a nap that turns out to be 6 hours long.
I am really very tired. Not getting too much sleep.
I'm always like this in the manic summer.
At the intersection of Frankstown and Laketon roads, I am in a huge building, as if it is the middle of the roadway itself. This is a school [Hebron?], of sorts, for people who have nothing else going for them and so come here to put in time, in order to survive. I am a new student. I am instructed as to how to fill out paperwork (my writing?) and am told that I have a choice: I can continue on here, putting in the time, and remain safe and non-prosperous for the rest of my life, or I can strive to learn and go out to apply for a job elsewhere and make something of myself. I tend to want to stay here, even though I know I can succeed "out there." Here, I am told (and I experience it), we can be literally invisible.
People begin shooting at us. And we shoot back. But no one here is ever hit, because we're invisible. But as we move around, we become slightly visible, like traces of light seen through a watery substance. It takes a lot of practice to remain perfectly still so that no one can see us. I move around, shooting and being shot at, every time I see a watery substance move, or every time a watery substance sees me. I wonder if it's better that I remain still and invisible or if I become completely visible, like others are who are being shot at and seriously wounded or killed.
This is the world I am living in today, one in which I am almost invisible, except when I "go out." People are always taking shots at what they think is me. But the shots seldom have much effect, because I come back home, become completely invisible again, and work (write, and think) to remove all traces of the attack from my psyche [I almost changed the phrasing of this last clause to eliminate the ambiguity, but I understand that it could be correctly taken both ways, i.e., I remove the traces from my psyche, or I am attacked by my (own) psyche], purging myself of the effects of it. I am a watery substance that is incapable of being wounded or killed. Why would I want, then, to become fully visible? For money? Maybe, again, some day. It could become a necessity, I guess, especially if the financial situation doesn't improve. (Interest rates are ridiculously low.) For fame? I guess not. But, then, I don't really know. I've never really been offered it. I guess that's a trap I could easily fall into. And then they'll shoot me up for sure.
6-16-2e
When we were young, when I first met db, I'd pick her up at the fire hall and we'd ride on my motorcycle out past the suburbs and into the countryside, down long country roads, where we could feel alone, because wherever we went in the city, we always felt closed in, or I did anyway. On these short trips, I'd adjust the rear view mirrors to look back at her instead of at traffic behind me. I'd look into her eyes, which bothered her. I didn't realize what I was doing at the time, how I was making her feel; we were both still pretty naive. But, by acting embarrassed and turning her head away, she convinced me over a period of time to stop doing this. Really, I had no intention of not doing it, but only forgot about it, prompted, I see now, to her behavior. I went along blindly with what she wanted and eventually I forgot about what I instinctively knew to do, how to make her feel sexual by contacting that inner part of her in this way. So, in a way, though this was completely innocent on both our parts, this was her first rejection of me, and when I stopped looking at her in this way, this was my first rejection of her, in response. She rejects me by telling me not to look at her, and I comply, rejecting her back. That initial mutual rejection, as small as it was, slowly escalated until it became significant. It formed the basis of our unconscious relationship. She further rejected me by cheating on me, and I responded, unconsciously, by cheating on her. Then, still later, she rejected me by leaving me, and I responded by denying her advances in the bathroom one day when she returned, while her new boyfriend was seeing his old girlfriend one last time in order to break up with her. Then, she returned again and again to haunt me in my dreams, where I played out the old rejection script, back and forth between us, or between the images we represent. I internalized the pattern of rejection and became self-rejecting, developing (or intensifying a childhood) conflict within myself. The lesson I've learned here is: I should never have stopped looking into her eyes. Looking into someone's eyes is what makes the separation stop. When I stopped looking, I started the whole chain of rejections way back a long time ago. Even before db. The ultimate effect down the line of allowing early separation is self-rejection because, really, that's what the initial separation is.
7-1-2e
News, e-mails, information in general, intuitions, and even the occasional persons come to me, and so, by my theory of waiting, I must deal with all of them, process them, write about them, at the least. I don't go out of my way to encounter them, usually. But when they approach, when they arrive, I must follow up, otherwise I will feel remiss and out-of-sorts, as some universal power sent me an opportunity and I blew it. This is the deal I make with God, or whatever: I won't be a pain in the ass, I won't push myself on others any more, I'll live the way I knew how to live when I was young, before I learned how to be otherwise, and if It lets me get away with this, live my life in peace, survive and prosper out of society's mainstream, I'll adequately and conscientiously deal with those things It tosses my way--as long as It doesn't toss too much at once, which It does not, it's very considerate in that way, although, in the summer, It seems to want to be a lot more plentiful than during that nastier time of year, when It seems to leave me more to my own devices.