There's a cold, cleansing wind clearing the coast today from any gray hover, knocking empty plastic pots about, testing the branches of my new princess flower bush, littered with buds, whose deep violet flowers will be a joy--if only it gets enough sun where I planted it partly for shelter for the wind.
I don't think I've spent so much for a plant before. It was $38.99 but well worth the price if it adapts and flourishes. Right now I think the shock of planting and a new environment have inhibited the buds' unfolding. I worry about my plants, I want them to do well, like children in school--they are so helpless, rooted to one place, unable to escape a blistering sun or petrifying wind.
The night before last I forgot to turn on my motion-activated water-spraying deer deterrent, and the wind blew the deer netting off of my new vegetable plantings as well. The deer descended in the night and destroyed the broccoli, cabbage, and most of the kale. I don't mind the broccoli, it was already trying to produce minuscule heads prematurely. It just goes to show how vigilant I must be in my gardening here--one lapse and the whole toboggan crashes. I am dedicated to having a garden; this is the third time the deer have triumphed, but like Winston Churchill I won't give up. Besides, I've only had six months' experience in this new environment, and there is always a learning curve (although most of my instruction has come from the dreaded quadrupeds).
My book deal is on; the publisher is very kind and solicitous and willing to work with me on the layout and design. That's the easy part. The marketing is the hard part. In America trying to market poetry is like trying to sell space heaters in the Amazon. My goal, and it may not sound like much, is to sell at least a thousand copies, a high number for a volume of poems. I hope all that read me here and enjoy my early drafts will come through and purchase copies, and I further hope it gets out before Christmas so it can fill a gift niche.
It has taken a long time for me to recognize my own poetic voice, but I notice that my poems, in journals and anthologies, seem to stand out for one reason: power. I want powerful poems that stop you in your tracks. Subtlety is not my strong point, rather going for the gut-punch. As I have often remarked, a good poem forces you to read it until the end, even if you don't like it. I hope that most of the poems in my volume will rise to such intensity, or I've missed the mark. Kathleen threw in some formal poems I might have excluded from the ms., but I trust her judgment, and at least they function to show I have mastered form, so that my free verse does not depend on false credit like the bailout.
How about that bailout, huh? Too little, too late. If anyone doubts the global economy now they are absolutely in the dark. Still, printing money for bad debts has to be inflationary, and the idea of buying up bad mortgages and reducing them for consumers is beyond socialism: it's Santa Claus dressed in greenbacks. I am morally opposed to the bailout, even if morality has nothing to do with economics, though I suspect it does. If you bite off more than you can chew, spit it out, period. What the government seeks to do is to enlarge the oral cavity and esophagus of consumption with Monopoly dollars. I pray Paulson knows which markets to shore up; even so most economists agree that 700 billion is not enough. Imagine that! I say let the dice roll and the world will take its lumps in order to reform markets to a position where they are not so vulnerable to sneaky derivatives. We can't continue to live off of the future, on imaginary gains and appreciation--this is smoke and mirrors, but greed blinded us. Furthermore, in polling and letters to congress, the majority of Americans oppose the bailout, while our two presidential candidates endorsed it. A financial Iraq, perhaps?
I still have no picture of our new dog, apologies especially to LKD, but I'll get one up soon. He's a scamp and a darling, quick and smart. He's a leaper who has pawed moths out of the air. He may make a good Frisbee-fetching dog once I get him trained, but so far he avoids swimming, which disappoints us, but hope is not lost. You can train a dog to do near anything as long as you don't violate its basic dogness.
As the poem below attests, I have a dear bipolar friend stuck just where I used to be, and it tears my heart out to see him so, thus the new poem. The poor man has lost twenty pounds and is afraid to go out of the house. My empathy for him is my prayer, but though he is older than I he does not understand the disease nearly as well, nor has he endured it anywhere near as long as I have at a stretch. Nevertheless, in clinical depression time is suspended anyway, crawling slowly to the grave, and one day can seem like an eternity. He is under the care of a good doctor, my doctor as well. I hate to see him suffering, and that suffering, empathically, feels only a stone's throw away, and too long exposure to his toxic emotions could threaten me, I know. But I must continue to visit him, as Jesus said: "I was in prison and you visited me." I know of no worse prison than depression.
I just had a poem published in an excellent new journal, A Capella Zoo, though my work is only available in the print version, a glossy, perfect bound journal of high quality. I'm enjoying the other authors as well, something I can't always do in the journals in which I am published, which bodes well for this nascent enterprise, at least in my somewhat jaded, subjective view.
I have little else to report. This year's men's retreat was wonderful and perhaps I'll provide more details about that spiritual journey in another post. Suffice it to say that this year's workshops and rituals helped me realize one reason why my life has been such a struggle: I was a forceps baby! Also, I buried my problematic father one more time, and this time it seems final, though there's always more work to do on a dysfunctional parent, since they tend to live on in your head forever. Yet I won't let someone live rent-free in my head. I burned a symbol of him in the ritual fire and it felt good.
Mood at 2 Kilobunnies!
CE
To a Depressed Friend
In this starless night of pain I come to visit you.
You fear your wife's arrival after work
though she most loves you.
You want to shout “Leper!” like Moses prescribed.
but why move your lips? It is too much effort.
If I could swaddle you in my arms and whisper,
“Despair is not incompatible with love,”
(though it puncture your last boundary),
tears would fog your John Lennon glasses
and drip down your white beard.
You don't want me to see that.
Your eyes are so blue I see each red thread in the sclera.
Your skin is pink as an Englishman from India.
You look like Jerry Garcia and you like it
(back when you could feel any affection for yourself)
but there is no happy Dead song
to lift your spirit from this bog of soggy mulch
with no inlet or outlet for fresh water.
Like a ghost you walk through the supermarket.
Fluorescent lights siphon your spirit.
Is there hope in Celexa and Abilify?
Selectively abilified? Don't doubt me
with your moist eyes, I believe in chemistry,
my friend, it is the waiting that kills, a living death--
as if a tumor had replaced your heart.
My tearful zombie, we know the plastic bag
over the head, the pills like jumping beans
in the medicine cabinet, the rope in the attic,
the derringer you used to strap to your ankle.
It's OK to fantasize, just don't--you know?
Are you the camel on the carousel of death?
Burden bearer, long walker, desert horse--
or the zebra confused by stripes?
You're not the lion supporting a bench,
moving in a flat circle. Try to ignore
the revolving mirrors, the ice cream vendor music
on eternal rewind. I'd blow up the carillon
for you if I could, but you must endure.
This is so hard to grok: You are not your depression.
It's just your lizard brain malfunctioning,
the prosencephalon and mesencephalon
in reptilian cahoots, your neocortex having
capitulated to ancient phylogenies.
It's neither you nor your fault.
Before I leave you gift me some apples
scored with wormholes.
“They're good for applesauce,” you say.
Likely they will end up on my compost heap
though I haven't the heart to refuse you.
The red and black millipedes that live there
will consume them just as you are consumed
by the memory-eating monster of blackened neurons.
Advice? I wish you could grasp it.
Hold on, endure, wait for the medicines to work.
Don't spin your wheels in muddy repetition,
just wait for the sun to dry and one day
you'll drive away, though in the rear-view mirror
you'll recognize the bag of skin you shed
and shiver at the thought of suffocation.
Listen: though it may feel more tangible
than the loose vertebra begging fusion in your back
or a toothbrush on your gums, or your bum knee,
depression is unreal. Unreal, I say,
a temporary funeral of the imagination,
a death mask you once wore
that suborned your face
but not your face, a shrunken facsimile
of where a smile dwelt
in the white forest of your beard.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Lavender Boy, New Dog, and The River
I've been working on a poem for awhile, unusual for me to plan out such a narrative. It all began with a provence lavender that refused to change or bloom, unlike the lavenders I saw in everyone else's yard. Yeah, the poem is a little long for a blog, but so are my usual postings. You can ignore the poem if you wish and proceed to the next paragraph below, but I think it's a fun read.
Lavender Boy
It started as a lump out in the garden,
a mound of lavender that never changed.
I planted it in May. Transplanting it
did nothing. By September no thin shoots
had risen in violet efflorescence,
the fine hairs of its silvery leaves
speared dew for nothing. Where were all
the purple standards gardeners expect?
Seduced by vegetable melancholy,
had it turned its attention from the sky
to purely subterranean concerns?
My spade marked a wide circle
around the stunted plant.
Painstakingly I loosened earth
six inches down, when the spade
hit something solid. I substituted
fingers, pawing dirt with care,
when the outline of two shoulders
surfaced beneath.
My fingers recoiled. What could it be?
Dirt shook from a pale forehead, amethyst eyes
opened with sagacious innocence.
I freed its hands and motioned it
to help me but it wriggled them
in self-discovery, the way a baby
looks at its hands. Three-and-a-half feet down,
its bluish feet sprouted like potatoes.
Each rootlet I broke through
made the whole thing quiver.
Unearthed, it looked like a boy.
I feared to break his body like a carrot
or bruise him like a melon.
By his armpits I lifted him
gently as a slice of cake.
What stuff he was made of
was moist and pliable.
He hardened when I stood him
in the sun beside the zinnias.
I thought about Gepetto:
“What a beautiful boy! “
His lips were pale violet,
his hair was lavender that flowered.
Wherever he displaced the air
lavender filled the vacuum.
It seemed right to dress him
in a suit of silver velvet
with a frock collar.
He could gather blackberries
all day without staining his finery.
Only fires made him nervous;
I quit smoking because of it.
He drooped in the morning
before his drink restored his turgor.
When I put him in the shower
he swelled and sprouted--
beware of over-watering, I thought.
He liked the water cool.
Within a month he dressed himself
but speech took longer.
Toothless, he struggled with consonants
and diphthongs. He had a thin, melodious voice.
When he said “Chaos,” I said “Gaia.”
He grinned and said, “Uranus.”
I said “Aphrodite.” We understood each other.
Time passed and his limbs grew woody
as perennials do. It made him rough,
he didn't like it, still he eschewed return
to earth, said it would mar his sentience.
But I could see no future beyond a sachet
for the closet, nothing to accommodate
his soft, scented hands and fragile smile.
With tears I planted him again.
He asked nothing of me except to scent
all my days with lavender.
Since I put deer netting everywhere in my garden and turned up the sensitivity on my motion-activated sprayer, I've had no trouble except for gophers eating my potatoes, though I think there are potatoes left, at least judging by their above ground greenery.
We got a new dog after a year of mourning for Kenyon, and he's a fifteen-pound whippersnapper sheba inu-chihuahua mix, full of vim and vigor and bound to chew anything available down to the nub. I have begun reading dog-training books, have begun to try to think like a dog as a book by the Monks of New Skene suggests.
He can sit and stay and shake hands so far, but his staying power is less than ten feet. Kathleen and I have agreed he needs a crate for in-house training. We're trying to get him on a regular schedule but it's hard. Sorry, no picture yet.
Our cats have deserted us since the dog's acquisition. Did I tell you his name? He looks so prim and proper, like an English gentleman, so we named him "J. Alfred Prufrock," "J." for short. He likes to chase deer and points like a hunter despite his diminutive stature. He also likes to chase moths in the air, making me suspect he might have some bird dog DNA.
As I intimated, he's not a cat-friendly dog and Topaz and Jojo live outside now, coming to the porch at night for a feeding. We can't let the cat food stand outside because of the crafty raccoons. The cats look well-fed but I don't know if they'll ever make friends with the dog. He behaves just like a cartoon dog in relation to the cats.
On the literary front, besides having submitted my "Selected" to a publisher that approached me, the anthology "Crazed by the Sun" is now out. Click on the title for more information. In it I rub shoulders with e. e. cummings, Theodore Roethke, Marianne Moore, and many more contemporary poets like Sandra MacPherson. I'm honored to be included. My poem concerns attending a carnival with my youngest daughter, though that tells you virtually nothing about the poem. If you'd like to read it, here's the link:
At the Carnival
I'm still in a lot of physical pain, thank God for Celebrex but I couldn't get by without the morphine as well. My back is hurting more, a good sign that I might return to my chief chronic pain. It all takes time; some things heal, some things don't, hard to tell why. My back never has, though I have congenital defects to blame that on. My left hand remains too weak and numb to play the guitar with any authority, but if I stick to open chords I can sneak by, concentrating on my voice.
I just finished my third Mendocino Circle of Men's retreat and I must say it was magical. Every year is. It's a privilege to be associated with such great men in spiritual solidarity and intentional ritual. My chief insight this time around was that my life has always been a struggle--partly, perhaps, because I was a forceps baby trying to claw my way out. Life doesn't have to be that hard just because it began that way, but in my case it seems more like a prophecy.
The main thing is to try to stay in the river of being, to remind oneself that the hidden spiritual connection between all good men and women ultimately supersedes the daily grind we call life. Whatever your occupation, it is possible to stay in the river for periods, though we often find ourselves scattered on the shore of our own shortcomings. Have courage, the river can absorb it. The river of being is always flowing, it's our access that's impaired. So try to concentrate on the divine throughout your day and you will feel the difference. Take a deep breath and thank God for all the things you are and have, especially the love shown you by others. You can't think yourself into the river, you can only notice when you're in or out. Sometimes we enter it without thinking; other times we can't imagine it really exists. But it does. The flow of God's spirit is not constrained by any religion or viewpoint; there is no dogma to qualify you except for a willing heart and an open mind. May you dip in the river today.
Kiloneutral,
CE
Lavender Boy
It started as a lump out in the garden,
a mound of lavender that never changed.
I planted it in May. Transplanting it
did nothing. By September no thin shoots
had risen in violet efflorescence,
the fine hairs of its silvery leaves
speared dew for nothing. Where were all
the purple standards gardeners expect?
Seduced by vegetable melancholy,
had it turned its attention from the sky
to purely subterranean concerns?
My spade marked a wide circle
around the stunted plant.
Painstakingly I loosened earth
six inches down, when the spade
hit something solid. I substituted
fingers, pawing dirt with care,
when the outline of two shoulders
surfaced beneath.
My fingers recoiled. What could it be?
Dirt shook from a pale forehead, amethyst eyes
opened with sagacious innocence.
I freed its hands and motioned it
to help me but it wriggled them
in self-discovery, the way a baby
looks at its hands. Three-and-a-half feet down,
its bluish feet sprouted like potatoes.
Each rootlet I broke through
made the whole thing quiver.
Unearthed, it looked like a boy.
I feared to break his body like a carrot
or bruise him like a melon.
By his armpits I lifted him
gently as a slice of cake.
What stuff he was made of
was moist and pliable.
He hardened when I stood him
in the sun beside the zinnias.
I thought about Gepetto:
“What a beautiful boy! “
His lips were pale violet,
his hair was lavender that flowered.
Wherever he displaced the air
lavender filled the vacuum.
It seemed right to dress him
in a suit of silver velvet
with a frock collar.
He could gather blackberries
all day without staining his finery.
Only fires made him nervous;
I quit smoking because of it.
He drooped in the morning
before his drink restored his turgor.
When I put him in the shower
he swelled and sprouted--
beware of over-watering, I thought.
He liked the water cool.
Within a month he dressed himself
but speech took longer.
Toothless, he struggled with consonants
and diphthongs. He had a thin, melodious voice.
When he said “Chaos,” I said “Gaia.”
He grinned and said, “Uranus.”
I said “Aphrodite.” We understood each other.
Time passed and his limbs grew woody
as perennials do. It made him rough,
he didn't like it, still he eschewed return
to earth, said it would mar his sentience.
But I could see no future beyond a sachet
for the closet, nothing to accommodate
his soft, scented hands and fragile smile.
With tears I planted him again.
He asked nothing of me except to scent
all my days with lavender.
Since I put deer netting everywhere in my garden and turned up the sensitivity on my motion-activated sprayer, I've had no trouble except for gophers eating my potatoes, though I think there are potatoes left, at least judging by their above ground greenery.
We got a new dog after a year of mourning for Kenyon, and he's a fifteen-pound whippersnapper sheba inu-chihuahua mix, full of vim and vigor and bound to chew anything available down to the nub. I have begun reading dog-training books, have begun to try to think like a dog as a book by the Monks of New Skene suggests.
He can sit and stay and shake hands so far, but his staying power is less than ten feet. Kathleen and I have agreed he needs a crate for in-house training. We're trying to get him on a regular schedule but it's hard. Sorry, no picture yet.
Our cats have deserted us since the dog's acquisition. Did I tell you his name? He looks so prim and proper, like an English gentleman, so we named him "J. Alfred Prufrock," "J." for short. He likes to chase deer and points like a hunter despite his diminutive stature. He also likes to chase moths in the air, making me suspect he might have some bird dog DNA.
As I intimated, he's not a cat-friendly dog and Topaz and Jojo live outside now, coming to the porch at night for a feeding. We can't let the cat food stand outside because of the crafty raccoons. The cats look well-fed but I don't know if they'll ever make friends with the dog. He behaves just like a cartoon dog in relation to the cats.
On the literary front, besides having submitted my "Selected" to a publisher that approached me, the anthology "Crazed by the Sun" is now out. Click on the title for more information. In it I rub shoulders with e. e. cummings, Theodore Roethke, Marianne Moore, and many more contemporary poets like Sandra MacPherson. I'm honored to be included. My poem concerns attending a carnival with my youngest daughter, though that tells you virtually nothing about the poem. If you'd like to read it, here's the link:
At the Carnival
I'm still in a lot of physical pain, thank God for Celebrex but I couldn't get by without the morphine as well. My back is hurting more, a good sign that I might return to my chief chronic pain. It all takes time; some things heal, some things don't, hard to tell why. My back never has, though I have congenital defects to blame that on. My left hand remains too weak and numb to play the guitar with any authority, but if I stick to open chords I can sneak by, concentrating on my voice.
I just finished my third Mendocino Circle of Men's retreat and I must say it was magical. Every year is. It's a privilege to be associated with such great men in spiritual solidarity and intentional ritual. My chief insight this time around was that my life has always been a struggle--partly, perhaps, because I was a forceps baby trying to claw my way out. Life doesn't have to be that hard just because it began that way, but in my case it seems more like a prophecy.
The main thing is to try to stay in the river of being, to remind oneself that the hidden spiritual connection between all good men and women ultimately supersedes the daily grind we call life. Whatever your occupation, it is possible to stay in the river for periods, though we often find ourselves scattered on the shore of our own shortcomings. Have courage, the river can absorb it. The river of being is always flowing, it's our access that's impaired. So try to concentrate on the divine throughout your day and you will feel the difference. Take a deep breath and thank God for all the things you are and have, especially the love shown you by others. You can't think yourself into the river, you can only notice when you're in or out. Sometimes we enter it without thinking; other times we can't imagine it really exists. But it does. The flow of God's spirit is not constrained by any religion or viewpoint; there is no dogma to qualify you except for a willing heart and an open mind. May you dip in the river today.
Kiloneutral,
CE
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Zombie Haiku
Zombie Haiku as suggested by the lovely Arlene Ang--
six unspectacular things about myself.
My skin is oily
though not scarred bad by acne--
that should be "badly."
Frogs are a symbol
of wisdom and felicities.
Oh to hear them sing!
J. Alfred Prufrock
is my little mutt's given name,
prim like a butler.
Fan of the Simpsons,
I collect memorabilia--
worthless on e-bay.
Fan of the Lakers
my television habit
starts November 1st.
I love blackberries.
their purple glistening beads,
exotic perfume.
My shoes are thirteens
but I sometimes doubt about
the correlation.
1 Kilobunny,
CE
six unspectacular things about myself.
My skin is oily
though not scarred bad by acne--
that should be "badly."
Frogs are a symbol
of wisdom and felicities.
Oh to hear them sing!
J. Alfred Prufrock
is my little mutt's given name,
prim like a butler.
Fan of the Simpsons,
I collect memorabilia--
worthless on e-bay.
Fan of the Lakers
my television habit
starts November 1st.
I love blackberries.
their purple glistening beads,
exotic perfume.
My shoes are thirteens
but I sometimes doubt about
the correlation.
1 Kilobunny,
CE
Monday, September 15, 2008
Manuscript Completed! Of Pain and Snails
I finished my "Selected" manuscript today and sent it to the publisher. I can still hardly believe someone approached me to publish a book of my poems. On the other hand, should I be surprised? I've worked hard on what Lou Rawls called "the chitlin circuit," those middling journals who publish me while the august journals look down their collective noses. I like to characterize those journals with the three 'p's: Poetry, Ploughshares and The Paris Review. Yet recently I noted that a journal in which I appeared, The Alaska Quarterly Review, had an acceptance rate of 0.4% or less. Then again, the only reason I appeared in that journal was because a guest editor somehow had read and liked my stuff and solicited me directly. I pride myself on the fact that I filled as many pages as Billy Collins in that issue. But without the favoritism of the editor, without the ad hominem knowledge she possessed of my work, I wouldn't have stood a chance. Thus serendipitous connections count more than talent in many respects. This is old news to the cognoscenti.
My volume will have the simple title: "C. E. Chaffin, Selected Poems and Love Poems, 1998-2008." That is, unless, the publisher thinks I should change it for marketing purposes. But that would be a mistake. My name is the most marketable thing about me, for better or worse. It's my branding, and branding is everything in marketing. Think of "beer" and if you don't think of Budweiser, I'll be surprised.
Meanwhile after completing my ms. and idea for a poem came to me, below, from the POV of a snail.
Snails
Night is good for the slow,
with our green-gray skirts of suction.
We like smooth surfaces:
windows, painted wood, plastic and steel.
Do you know how long it takes
to near a promising plant?
Bricks slow us down.
Our mouths won't bite a human,
out teeth are internalized
to trim leaves with precision
and no waste.
The poisons you throw at us
only make us stronger
as your philosopher said.
In the moonlight, our slick
glistening behind us, we approach
the worship of the green
with an appreciation
beyond your fondest religions.
We honor what we eat with feats of climbing,
our weight balancing on tenuous stems.
Not ruminants, our harvest
must be fresher than hay
and we always leave some behind,
not like the locusts.
Deer feed down to the nub
indiscriminately. They'll savage
every flower, especially roses.
I'm not saying we leave roses alone,
but in general we leave
more than enough for another bloom.
Our cuts aren't fatal, we are not gluttons.
We feed with wisdom and it's slow going.
Our shells are little protection
against you, unlike the birds.
When a human heaves us
at a wall, we don't recover
and magically turn into slugs,
our lesser brethren: We die.
Have pity on us.
Have you never admired
the spiral patterns of our shells,
the beauty of our long necks
with our eyes on slender stalks?
The delicacy of our approach?
If we were horses it would be different.
A belly-walking gastropod
cannot compete in sympathies
with animals who have legs like you.
It's more an honor to be eaten,
steamed in butter and garlic
in an oval of bread
than wasted against a wall.
“Give and it shall be given.”
We yield ourselves without complaint.
Your garden will survive us.
Can't we come to some
slow compromise?
Truly, the deer and our own cats have damaged my garden much more than snails this year. A little PR for gastropods is not out of order.
I continue in great physical pain. Or if not great, significant. I fear the pain medication I'm taking may be bad for my mood, so I walk a tight wire between physical pain and depression. If I had no medicines for physical pain, I fear I might stay in bed the whole day. Given my nature, this is not probable, but my first hour after awakening is always a trial. Maybe if I had a protective shell and moved slowly at night I'd do better.
1 Kilorat,
CE
My volume will have the simple title: "C. E. Chaffin, Selected Poems and Love Poems, 1998-2008." That is, unless, the publisher thinks I should change it for marketing purposes. But that would be a mistake. My name is the most marketable thing about me, for better or worse. It's my branding, and branding is everything in marketing. Think of "beer" and if you don't think of Budweiser, I'll be surprised.
Meanwhile after completing my ms. and idea for a poem came to me, below, from the POV of a snail.
Snails
Night is good for the slow,
with our green-gray skirts of suction.
We like smooth surfaces:
windows, painted wood, plastic and steel.
Do you know how long it takes
to near a promising plant?
Bricks slow us down.
Our mouths won't bite a human,
out teeth are internalized
to trim leaves with precision
and no waste.
The poisons you throw at us
only make us stronger
as your philosopher said.
In the moonlight, our slick
glistening behind us, we approach
the worship of the green
with an appreciation
beyond your fondest religions.
We honor what we eat with feats of climbing,
our weight balancing on tenuous stems.
Not ruminants, our harvest
must be fresher than hay
and we always leave some behind,
not like the locusts.
Deer feed down to the nub
indiscriminately. They'll savage
every flower, especially roses.
I'm not saying we leave roses alone,
but in general we leave
more than enough for another bloom.
Our cuts aren't fatal, we are not gluttons.
We feed with wisdom and it's slow going.
Our shells are little protection
against you, unlike the birds.
When a human heaves us
at a wall, we don't recover
and magically turn into slugs,
our lesser brethren: We die.
Have pity on us.
Have you never admired
the spiral patterns of our shells,
the beauty of our long necks
with our eyes on slender stalks?
The delicacy of our approach?
If we were horses it would be different.
A belly-walking gastropod
cannot compete in sympathies
with animals who have legs like you.
It's more an honor to be eaten,
steamed in butter and garlic
in an oval of bread
than wasted against a wall.
“Give and it shall be given.”
We yield ourselves without complaint.
Your garden will survive us.
Can't we come to some
slow compromise?
Truly, the deer and our own cats have damaged my garden much more than snails this year. A little PR for gastropods is not out of order.
I continue in great physical pain. Or if not great, significant. I fear the pain medication I'm taking may be bad for my mood, so I walk a tight wire between physical pain and depression. If I had no medicines for physical pain, I fear I might stay in bed the whole day. Given my nature, this is not probable, but my first hour after awakening is always a trial. Maybe if I had a protective shell and moved slowly at night I'd do better.
1 Kilorat,
CE
Friday, September 12, 2008
9/11: World Trade Center Kaddish
I wanted to do something for 9/11. The poem below was published in Small Spiral Notebook not long after the tragedy. I have purposely not revised it.
In Memoriam,
CE
World Trade Center Kaddish
1
America, your confidence is shaken.
Though patriots say your resolve is steeled,
we now know steel melts at 1500 degrees.
In the ground are empty sockets.
Some say "The chickens have come home to roost,"
like Malcom X after Kennedy's death.
Some say, "Forgive, don't bomb the innocent."
Debris fill the cavities.
Myself, I hated the towers'
garish imposition on space
but we can't always choose our symbols.
Still, I won't buy a tee shirt.
Build it and they will come,
Blow it up and they will die.
Do you hear James Earl Jones' voice?
He's the real voice of America:
Verizon local and international.
What should we put in his mouth now?
"Be comforted, America,
you will not weep forever.
Temper your fervor with grave introspection.
Remember rain falls on the just and the unjust
and a rich man rarely enters heaven."
1
America, you are not a Christian nation
for there are no Christian nations.
Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world."
His kingdom was not attacked.
But how should we respond?
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing.
Better nothing than slaughter innocents.
America, if you must do something,
do something audacious:
"If you sin, sin boldly," Martin Luther said.
But let the innocents first know,
let pamphlets rain from the sky
and overwhelm the lie
that we are the enemy.
We come against all isms
America are you awake yet?
War is messy, the innocent die.
America, are you sure
you still have the stomach for this?
1
Black woman in white face.
Is this Pompeii?
No-- nothing is preserved.
What happened to the skyline?
Manhattan's pillars imploded
and Samson's hair was jet exhaust
The lions still flank the midtown library
but offer us no riddles.
Fire has made us one:
The ash survivors wear
contains the victims.
Have mercy, O God.
7
Someone cut a slice out of the Pentagon,
black smoke coughs incinerated braids.
Worse is the memory
of space no longer occupied,
where sudden ghosts are left
with nothing real to haunt
save vacant air and a pit of debris.
How many ways are there of not approaching
this atrocity, this national violation?
America, you have been put in stocks
for all the world to see.
Feel the whip of the turbaned Puritans?
5
Maybe nobody cares about us rich Americans
but even a lion gets hungry.
I fear for you, Saddam.
I fear for you, Iran.
I fear for you, Afghanistan.
We do not hate your people
but "a fly makes the perfumer's ointment stink."
To succor means complicity
and it is hard just to remove the fly.
9
Savagery grinds the human heart
to a flint too dull to spark.
War makes monsters of good men:
How much more the evil ones!
Good-night, Lieutenant Calley.
And never presume that people fight
for the right cause for the right reason.
Used car salesmen all,
buffeted by opinion, suspended
between the profit and the loss.
3
I have two cars, two computers,
two televisions and an ocean view.
They have clay huts and a copy of the Koran.
I did not get here by accident. Did they?
I should stop watching TV and read the Bible,
I suppose, wherein Job utters:
"What I greatly feared has come upon me."
But I am too angry and astonished to concentrate.
When I took my Pakistani friend
to a Gay Pride Parade, he said,
"Back home we'd simply
line 'em up and shoot 'em."
Does God bless Pakistan, even Afghanistan?
Of course.
His rain falls on the just and the unjust.
7
I am proud of Flight 93
but I can't understand
the others' timidity.
Box cutters?
With a flotation pillow for a shield
and an oxygen cylinder for a club
those ignorant fanatics
could not have withstood me.
(Note to my Pakistani friend:
one hero of Flight 93 was gay.)
For whom shall we die?
For you, America?
For God? For Allah? For country?
How does one die for his country?
Isn't that too abstract?
America, you are an ideal
and a very imperfect incarnation.
We can only die for freedom
else live in slavery.
7
I want to cleanse my mind of television,
do a hard-disk wipe of talking heads
whose earnestly raised brows
bring twenty-four-hour dissection:
the importance of being earnest.
America, turn off your televisions.
Grieve with the living for the dead
who are more than information,
more human than ourselves even,
having achieved mortality first,
the destiny that most unites us.
11
To die for freedom
is the ultimate freedom.
To murder in the name of God
is the ultimate slavery.
It is not about religion,
it is about fanaticism.
As C.S. Lewis wrote,
"Whatever becomes a god
becomes a demon."
I have seen the doll's-eyes of young cultists
chanting sacred syllables in the street,
invoking angels, posing beatific from a holy brainwashing.
If you meet the living God
I do not think he will ask
about the angel of destruction
(who measures righteousness
with an abacus) or how many bodies
he put to sleep before bedtime.
In heaven terrorists may be located
only with great difficulty
in hell's Classifieds.
175
I have an Iranian barber.
He cut my father's hair before mine.
If I stop by during business hours
and the chairs are empty
I know he's praying
so I get a magazine and listen
to the hummed prayers from the back room.
He beams when showing me
pictures of his grandchildren,
dark-eyed, dark-haired, like him.
He is a good man.
93
I've scattered the ashes
of my parents in the Pacific
but I knew whose ashes they were.
"The greatest forensic undertaking in history"
I know we all want relics--
perfectly understandable in grief--
but does our obsession with bones
too much confirm our materialism?
No mass grave and memorial
with a common belief in heaven
will ever suffice.
Is there no emperor
but the emperor of death's dream?
77
Yet America is not the Great Satan.
Islam is not the Great Satan.
Israel is not the Great Satan.
Iraq is not the Great Satan.
The Great Satan is an -ism
as in, "My security depends
on my trust in an absolute truth
to make sense of the world.
and I will defend it to the death
because I cannot face the terror,
the terror of doubt true faith requires.”
00
If America indulged in terrorism
we could blow up the moon.
The effects on earth's orbit, tides and climate
could subsequently be classified as natural:
no increase in pollutants,
just floods, volcanoes, earthquakes,
maybe an ice age or two.
Think of how the moon's absence
would alter the skyline
and how little credit men and nations
receive for what they don't do.
In Memoriam,
CE
World Trade Center Kaddish
1
America, your confidence is shaken.
Though patriots say your resolve is steeled,
we now know steel melts at 1500 degrees.
In the ground are empty sockets.
Some say "The chickens have come home to roost,"
like Malcom X after Kennedy's death.
Some say, "Forgive, don't bomb the innocent."
Debris fill the cavities.
Myself, I hated the towers'
garish imposition on space
but we can't always choose our symbols.
Still, I won't buy a tee shirt.
Build it and they will come,
Blow it up and they will die.
Do you hear James Earl Jones' voice?
He's the real voice of America:
Verizon local and international.
What should we put in his mouth now?
"Be comforted, America,
you will not weep forever.
Temper your fervor with grave introspection.
Remember rain falls on the just and the unjust
and a rich man rarely enters heaven."
1
America, you are not a Christian nation
for there are no Christian nations.
Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world."
His kingdom was not attacked.
But how should we respond?
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing.
Better nothing than slaughter innocents.
America, if you must do something,
do something audacious:
"If you sin, sin boldly," Martin Luther said.
But let the innocents first know,
let pamphlets rain from the sky
and overwhelm the lie
that we are the enemy.
We come against all isms
America are you awake yet?
War is messy, the innocent die.
America, are you sure
you still have the stomach for this?
1
Black woman in white face.
Is this Pompeii?
No-- nothing is preserved.
What happened to the skyline?
Manhattan's pillars imploded
and Samson's hair was jet exhaust
The lions still flank the midtown library
but offer us no riddles.
Fire has made us one:
The ash survivors wear
contains the victims.
Have mercy, O God.
7
Someone cut a slice out of the Pentagon,
black smoke coughs incinerated braids.
Worse is the memory
of space no longer occupied,
where sudden ghosts are left
with nothing real to haunt
save vacant air and a pit of debris.
How many ways are there of not approaching
this atrocity, this national violation?
America, you have been put in stocks
for all the world to see.
Feel the whip of the turbaned Puritans?
5
Maybe nobody cares about us rich Americans
but even a lion gets hungry.
I fear for you, Saddam.
I fear for you, Iran.
I fear for you, Afghanistan.
We do not hate your people
but "a fly makes the perfumer's ointment stink."
To succor means complicity
and it is hard just to remove the fly.
9
Savagery grinds the human heart
to a flint too dull to spark.
War makes monsters of good men:
How much more the evil ones!
Good-night, Lieutenant Calley.
And never presume that people fight
for the right cause for the right reason.
Used car salesmen all,
buffeted by opinion, suspended
between the profit and the loss.
3
I have two cars, two computers,
two televisions and an ocean view.
They have clay huts and a copy of the Koran.
I did not get here by accident. Did they?
I should stop watching TV and read the Bible,
I suppose, wherein Job utters:
"What I greatly feared has come upon me."
But I am too angry and astonished to concentrate.
When I took my Pakistani friend
to a Gay Pride Parade, he said,
"Back home we'd simply
line 'em up and shoot 'em."
Does God bless Pakistan, even Afghanistan?
Of course.
His rain falls on the just and the unjust.
7
I am proud of Flight 93
but I can't understand
the others' timidity.
Box cutters?
With a flotation pillow for a shield
and an oxygen cylinder for a club
those ignorant fanatics
could not have withstood me.
(Note to my Pakistani friend:
one hero of Flight 93 was gay.)
For whom shall we die?
For you, America?
For God? For Allah? For country?
How does one die for his country?
Isn't that too abstract?
America, you are an ideal
and a very imperfect incarnation.
We can only die for freedom
else live in slavery.
7
I want to cleanse my mind of television,
do a hard-disk wipe of talking heads
whose earnestly raised brows
bring twenty-four-hour dissection:
the importance of being earnest.
America, turn off your televisions.
Grieve with the living for the dead
who are more than information,
more human than ourselves even,
having achieved mortality first,
the destiny that most unites us.
11
To die for freedom
is the ultimate freedom.
To murder in the name of God
is the ultimate slavery.
It is not about religion,
it is about fanaticism.
As C.S. Lewis wrote,
"Whatever becomes a god
becomes a demon."
I have seen the doll's-eyes of young cultists
chanting sacred syllables in the street,
invoking angels, posing beatific from a holy brainwashing.
If you meet the living God
I do not think he will ask
about the angel of destruction
(who measures righteousness
with an abacus) or how many bodies
he put to sleep before bedtime.
In heaven terrorists may be located
only with great difficulty
in hell's Classifieds.
175
I have an Iranian barber.
He cut my father's hair before mine.
If I stop by during business hours
and the chairs are empty
I know he's praying
so I get a magazine and listen
to the hummed prayers from the back room.
He beams when showing me
pictures of his grandchildren,
dark-eyed, dark-haired, like him.
He is a good man.
93
I've scattered the ashes
of my parents in the Pacific
but I knew whose ashes they were.
"The greatest forensic undertaking in history"
I know we all want relics--
perfectly understandable in grief--
but does our obsession with bones
too much confirm our materialism?
No mass grave and memorial
with a common belief in heaven
will ever suffice.
Is there no emperor
but the emperor of death's dream?
77
Yet America is not the Great Satan.
Islam is not the Great Satan.
Israel is not the Great Satan.
Iraq is not the Great Satan.
The Great Satan is an -ism
as in, "My security depends
on my trust in an absolute truth
to make sense of the world.
and I will defend it to the death
because I cannot face the terror,
the terror of doubt true faith requires.”
00
If America indulged in terrorism
we could blow up the moon.
The effects on earth's orbit, tides and climate
could subsequently be classified as natural:
no increase in pollutants,
just floods, volcanoes, earthquakes,
maybe an ice age or two.
Think of how the moon's absence
would alter the skyline
and how little credit men and nations
receive for what they don't do.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
New Publications
I have some publications up, in Quill and Parchment (feature, for this you'll need the passwords, in order, september and school), Underground Voices and Abandoned Towers (under "Poetry").
I've also had an overture from a publisher but I'll keep that quiet for now, no need to upend good fortune with presumption.
I have been battling the deer, who more than decimated my vegetable garden and took care of a host of blooms as well; the very plants they are said not to eat, mainly of the daisy family, are not even immune to them. I have found but two resistant flowers, zinnias and marigolds. They eat the flowers of petunias, cosmos, lobelia, alyssum, poppies, roses, geraniums, jasmines, and in some cases their leaves well. They resist spices in general, like sage and dill and lavender, but will eat mint. Our persistent drought has made them bold in seeking anything green, even if authorities say they "dislike" it. It's all relative to hunger. I'd eat grasshoppers if I had to.
That said, my mood has improved since increasing my Effexor by 75 mg. a day. I'm glad I thought of it. Too often even the experienced chemically impaired patient fails to suspect his disease first. I should know better. To be fair I was blindsided by the scene of the crime.
Little else to report. I did replant over thirty vegetable starts today with my motion-activated sprayer (Scarecrow) set to spray a swath to protect them against any approaching mammal of a certain size. This includes humans, sometimes to my guests' dismay.
Tomorrow I pour wine at a Subdudes concert. Pretty good ticket for me. Wish you were there.
Kiloneutral,
CE
I've also had an overture from a publisher but I'll keep that quiet for now, no need to upend good fortune with presumption.
I have been battling the deer, who more than decimated my vegetable garden and took care of a host of blooms as well; the very plants they are said not to eat, mainly of the daisy family, are not even immune to them. I have found but two resistant flowers, zinnias and marigolds. They eat the flowers of petunias, cosmos, lobelia, alyssum, poppies, roses, geraniums, jasmines, and in some cases their leaves well. They resist spices in general, like sage and dill and lavender, but will eat mint. Our persistent drought has made them bold in seeking anything green, even if authorities say they "dislike" it. It's all relative to hunger. I'd eat grasshoppers if I had to.
That said, my mood has improved since increasing my Effexor by 75 mg. a day. I'm glad I thought of it. Too often even the experienced chemically impaired patient fails to suspect his disease first. I should know better. To be fair I was blindsided by the scene of the crime.
Little else to report. I did replant over thirty vegetable starts today with my motion-activated sprayer (Scarecrow) set to spray a swath to protect them against any approaching mammal of a certain size. This includes humans, sometimes to my guests' dismay.
Tomorrow I pour wine at a Subdudes concert. Pretty good ticket for me. Wish you were there.
Kiloneutral,
CE
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
New Publication, Old Poem, Holding at 2 Kilorats
Here's a new publication on the theme of parents, where I am lucky to be the featured poet: Quill and Parchment
To enter, the passwords are "september" and then "school."
My mood remains fragile, I am navigating melancholy with appropriate fearfulness, hoping the disease of depression will remain at bay, but just last night at a meeting of men where I know I am loved and accepted I felt like the complete outsider, and the long view of my life being worthless wants to creep into my mind and declare me an utter failure, but these depressive symptoms are recognizable and I intend to view them as a tourist views a city, not owning them for my self. I still have a sense of self, though tenuous, as in deep depression my self becomes an abstraction and I become depression incarnate: hopeless, helpless, worthless, angry, sad, fearful, incapable of love, pleasure, or human connection. I will see my shrink tomorrow and see if I should increase my adjunctive anti-depressant, Abilify, even more.
Some spider bit my ass repeatedly and Kathleen says the bumps make a smiley face. LOL!
Pray for me, or if that is too much, think of me with favor--as I so dread dropping into a drop-dead depression again. I was recovering steadily before the motorcycle accident; now I'm on shaky ground again.
Here's a revision of a villanelle I sketched during my depression, where the fog proves a prescient metaphor, I think, for the black dog:
Through Fog
Encapsuled in the intimacy of mist
Our visibility’s but fifty feet.
World within world we exist.
My markers vanish, the road dips and twists
As if its narrowing shoulders have to meet
And marry in an intimacy of mist.
I want to scream, I want to raise my fist
And curse the small circumference of our light.
World within world we exist.
This driving makes me itch. I should desist.
We follow dim tail lights like idiot sheep
Pastured in an intimacy of mist.
Back home we make a fire, share a kiss.
The fog’s outside, a monster in a sheet.
World within world we exist.
Head on your lap, relieved, I feel blessed.
Your belly's breathing makes my being complete.
Conjoined, one droplet in the intimate mist,
World within world we exist.
2 Kilorats and holding,
CE
To enter, the passwords are "september" and then "school."
My mood remains fragile, I am navigating melancholy with appropriate fearfulness, hoping the disease of depression will remain at bay, but just last night at a meeting of men where I know I am loved and accepted I felt like the complete outsider, and the long view of my life being worthless wants to creep into my mind and declare me an utter failure, but these depressive symptoms are recognizable and I intend to view them as a tourist views a city, not owning them for my self. I still have a sense of self, though tenuous, as in deep depression my self becomes an abstraction and I become depression incarnate: hopeless, helpless, worthless, angry, sad, fearful, incapable of love, pleasure, or human connection. I will see my shrink tomorrow and see if I should increase my adjunctive anti-depressant, Abilify, even more.
Some spider bit my ass repeatedly and Kathleen says the bumps make a smiley face. LOL!
Pray for me, or if that is too much, think of me with favor--as I so dread dropping into a drop-dead depression again. I was recovering steadily before the motorcycle accident; now I'm on shaky ground again.
Here's a revision of a villanelle I sketched during my depression, where the fog proves a prescient metaphor, I think, for the black dog:
Through Fog
Encapsuled in the intimacy of mist
Our visibility’s but fifty feet.
World within world we exist.
My markers vanish, the road dips and twists
As if its narrowing shoulders have to meet
And marry in an intimacy of mist.
I want to scream, I want to raise my fist
And curse the small circumference of our light.
World within world we exist.
This driving makes me itch. I should desist.
We follow dim tail lights like idiot sheep
Pastured in an intimacy of mist.
Back home we make a fire, share a kiss.
The fog’s outside, a monster in a sheet.
World within world we exist.
Head on your lap, relieved, I feel blessed.
Your belly's breathing makes my being complete.
Conjoined, one droplet in the intimate mist,
World within world we exist.
2 Kilorats and holding,
CE
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Near Relapse, A Poem, On Will
I've been a bad, bad blogger as I have not blogged in nearly two weeks. Ah, the suspense! Has he retrogressed into depression, are his joints regenerating, can he play an acoustic guitar yet? Are there new publications, new formulations? What happened to his theory of the mind?
Yes, I had a meltdown after briefly visiting the scene of the crime, my sister's house where I underwent electroshock as an outpatient and worsened with each seizure (plus Invega). I came to tears about it Friday, indeed dipped into the bone closet for a spell, but my loving wife and neurochemical manipulation promise better, though I must stay on an increased dose of Abilify for now.
My joints hurt mucho but I am curiously glad to be alive, presently in that transition phase where sleeping with my head to the side is nearly possible for half an hour before pain intervenes. It is hard for me to play the acoustic guitar, my left ring and pinkie fingers are numb and the dorsal extensors of my left forearm are weak as well. July 21 was the accident date; it will likely take a year or more for the central neuronal axons to regenerate, and physical therapy cannot increase the rate of nerve growth. Patience, in other words.
There are new publications, but for now a new poem:
Abduction
A tongue of lacy foam
nudges the stranded bull kelp
upshore. Caramel bulbs float,
pulling brown snakes behind
like heavy hoses, brittle when snapped,
coiled in Medusa mounds
the color of molasses,
pods softly popping under heels
Sea-glass sparkles beside
abalone fragments, prisms of pink
and the mussel's sky blue and limpet rings.
The tide rises, kelp edges up
onto fine dry sand where strands
desiccate to bitter black.
Far west a storm died,
power done and undone,
telegraphing a swell:
stone-holds were ruptured,
water-trees uprooted,
some with young bulbs thin
as the human amnion.
So I was ripped from my moorings,
sea-story over, sunk down
like dough in a doctor's palms,
seal-heavy in the white glare,
tucked in a bassinet and spirited
away from mother sea, her bells
and voices, the kelp towers.
My theory of the mind foundered upon the shoals of will. Will is the simplest aspect of being and yet the most inscrutable. I cannot move my arm unless my arm consents to move; the body is more a democracy than we think. And initiating action, and what goes into the timing of that, are hard to separate out. Am I willing my fingers to type? Only in a general way; rather I am filling white space with narration and my fingers are obedient servants, like workers in a hive. Having incorporated mitochondria and other organisms into our being, it might be instructive to think of ourselves as a metaorganisms, a colony of ants, for instance, with the ego for queen. And the link between mental control and physical action is interdependent; I will a muscle to flex, it flexes--unless emotion or danger forbids--
Should I punch back if punched? And what are the consequences? Or do I reflexively punch back without a thought, like a spring mechanism? Or does the latter only occur when the challenger seems weaker? If I'm cold, do I actually will myself to bundle up or do I grab an extra blanket without thinking? Existence occurs by bodily participation, be it only the sensors on alert. Imagine living without moving. To move is to live, if it is only movement of the mind, a concerto of neurotransmitters chattering.
I've weakly answered my opening questions.
If I had anything to say to you it would be to bet your life on love, practice love in all you do, aspire to act lovingly even when you feel antipathetical toward compassion; the discipline will fill the empty times, the reward is greater than you imagine.
Fragile, near two kilorats,
CE
Yes, I had a meltdown after briefly visiting the scene of the crime, my sister's house where I underwent electroshock as an outpatient and worsened with each seizure (plus Invega). I came to tears about it Friday, indeed dipped into the bone closet for a spell, but my loving wife and neurochemical manipulation promise better, though I must stay on an increased dose of Abilify for now.
My joints hurt mucho but I am curiously glad to be alive, presently in that transition phase where sleeping with my head to the side is nearly possible for half an hour before pain intervenes. It is hard for me to play the acoustic guitar, my left ring and pinkie fingers are numb and the dorsal extensors of my left forearm are weak as well. July 21 was the accident date; it will likely take a year or more for the central neuronal axons to regenerate, and physical therapy cannot increase the rate of nerve growth. Patience, in other words.
There are new publications, but for now a new poem:
Abduction
A tongue of lacy foam
nudges the stranded bull kelp
upshore. Caramel bulbs float,
pulling brown snakes behind
like heavy hoses, brittle when snapped,
coiled in Medusa mounds
the color of molasses,
pods softly popping under heels
Sea-glass sparkles beside
abalone fragments, prisms of pink
and the mussel's sky blue and limpet rings.
The tide rises, kelp edges up
onto fine dry sand where strands
desiccate to bitter black.
Far west a storm died,
power done and undone,
telegraphing a swell:
stone-holds were ruptured,
water-trees uprooted,
some with young bulbs thin
as the human amnion.
So I was ripped from my moorings,
sea-story over, sunk down
like dough in a doctor's palms,
seal-heavy in the white glare,
tucked in a bassinet and spirited
away from mother sea, her bells
and voices, the kelp towers.
My theory of the mind foundered upon the shoals of will. Will is the simplest aspect of being and yet the most inscrutable. I cannot move my arm unless my arm consents to move; the body is more a democracy than we think. And initiating action, and what goes into the timing of that, are hard to separate out. Am I willing my fingers to type? Only in a general way; rather I am filling white space with narration and my fingers are obedient servants, like workers in a hive. Having incorporated mitochondria and other organisms into our being, it might be instructive to think of ourselves as a metaorganisms, a colony of ants, for instance, with the ego for queen. And the link between mental control and physical action is interdependent; I will a muscle to flex, it flexes--unless emotion or danger forbids--
Should I punch back if punched? And what are the consequences? Or do I reflexively punch back without a thought, like a spring mechanism? Or does the latter only occur when the challenger seems weaker? If I'm cold, do I actually will myself to bundle up or do I grab an extra blanket without thinking? Existence occurs by bodily participation, be it only the sensors on alert. Imagine living without moving. To move is to live, if it is only movement of the mind, a concerto of neurotransmitters chattering.
I've weakly answered my opening questions.
If I had anything to say to you it would be to bet your life on love, practice love in all you do, aspire to act lovingly even when you feel antipathetical toward compassion; the discipline will fill the empty times, the reward is greater than you imagine.
Fragile, near two kilorats,
CE
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Gardening, Pets and a Summer Poem
It is a sweet and golden day here on the Mendocino coast, nearly windless with the occasional sound of a wind chime, the tinkling of my glass mobile of a lighthouse, and the sandpapery slidings of a windsock decorated with tropical drinks.
Our favorite aestival drink has become the "pink monkey," a mixture of vodka, Italian pomegranate soda, Fresca, ice, and a slice of lime. Refreshingly sweet but with the almost bitter clarity of pomegranate, a juice now in vogue for its anti-oxidant properties, but long a favorite flavor of mine. I remember harvesting pomegranates from my neighbors' bushes growing up in SoCal, not that we ever asked permission.
Even in the suburbs I dreamed of living off the land. There are still few thrills for me as great as drinking fresh creek water. The first time I drank from a stream, backpacking in Big Sur at the age of 14, I was taken aback that water could simply be sipped from an open source instead of arriving, chlorinated and fluoridated, through a stainless steel pipe. The best things in life are free, indeed, as were the blackberries I harvested today twenty feet from my front door, which I mixed with vanilla yogurt for a wonderful brunch.
It's been a dry spring and summer here and the deer, now searching everywhere for green tidbits, have effectively decimated my garden. Last night they topped the broccoli and brussel sprouts which leaves me with no crop except for the few flowers they won't eat, zinnias and marigolds among them. I may convert my garden to flowers only, though there is still time to plant some winter crops, but before I plant anything new I must deer-proof the garden. At present I have but one "scarecrow," a motion-activated sprayer that discourages mammalian pests, but I need at least two to protect the garden, plus some deer netting to throw over select plants. Do I have the gumption to start over again? I think so.
I think of my first garden on the coast as an experiment. Curiously its greatest enemies have been our cats, who love to dig up new plantings, and the damned deer. Gophers have been absenet and insects not much of a problem. Since we rent I have no ambition to put up a fence, not to mention that it would disturb our ocean view. But I am no longer unapprised of the hazards of gardening here. Deer will eat almost anything in my experience, though they do have a preference for roses and edible greens. They sampled my apple mint last night, about to bloom, but did not devastate it, evidence that perhaps mint is not on their preferred menu.
Kathleen, after a year since Kenyon's demise, is ready to adopt a new dog. We looked at an Australian heeler mix the other day, a lovely, athletic, freckled beast of medium size, but she was so energetic that I did not look forward to minding her during the day while Kathleen is at work. I don't think I have the energy to keep that dog entertained; it would likely be in constant motion and in no small danger of escaping and exploring the adjacent State Park unless tied up. I've always wanted an Irish Wolfhound, as my size makes such a dog look normal-sized, but Kathleen points out how much room it would take up and how much food it would eat.
It is a worldwide scandal, America's fixation with pets, as many are better fed than the world at large, not to mention the excellent veterinary care in a world where most veterinarians earn their keep by treating cattle and other more valuable animals in the economy. In Mexico dogs were no more or less than furry burglar alarms, and their relative neglect was shocking in view of American prejudices. Other nations employ animals; we anthropomorphize them. Is it all Disney's fault? At least in 4-H students learn to groom their animals for slaughter, while the housepet remains an end in itself. I do think the Paris Hilton chihuahua fad has gone too far, however, since we heard of a wedding our friends gave in Mexico with Chihuahua bride and groom (appropriately dressed) a reception for 100. I'm told it was a "black nose only" affair, with exceptions made for bipeds.
Through the accident I've lost a month of my life and am just catching up with correspondence and other duties, though I might have saved my garden if I'd been feeling better. As it is I don't mind feeding the deer if only they had better manners and could wait in line to have their hooves stamped.
I recently joined a blogging network on Facebook and discovered that poet Ann Marie Eldon had over 200 regular subscribers to her blog, which I found astounding. Props to her. It is mind-boggling that a platform like Facebook automatically fills in the statistics for blogs when you sign up for their network, if a little embarrassing for my dearth of regular subscribers. Then I have not always been the most regular of bloggers, nor do I promote myself much beyond writing.
Wednesday our magic bed arrives with its mattress of extra-firm latex foam, the best sleeping surface I have discovered. Our old joints scrape and grate with anticipation of a partial reprieve from the assault of nightly gravity.
For today's poem I want something summery, so I'll paste in one from my years in medical school in Galveston in the late 70s. Galveston has a climate of 80/80 six months of the year--80% humidity and 80 degrees. I have never been more uncomfortable physically in a climate than when I lived there, but since summer took up half the year, I did write a number of summer poems.
Mid-Summer Invitation
The humid night sits on a rocking chair.
Cicadas, crickets melodize the air.
The summer's fullness pushes through the screen
like a ripe pear.
Faraway, radios sing and blare.
A dog insists a cat was nearly there.
An automobile's signature of wind
tingles my hair.
I dream the dreams of summer, I loaf and loll.
I will not wrestle with a thorny soul.
I'm sinking in a dish of mint ice cream, with chocolate
running around the bowl.
Join me then. Here is a mild cigar,
a glass of beer, one shy small summer star
and this my porch. We'll rock and sip and smoke and talk
and talk some more.
(published in Arkenstone, 1978)
Aestivally,
CE
Our favorite aestival drink has become the "pink monkey," a mixture of vodka, Italian pomegranate soda, Fresca, ice, and a slice of lime. Refreshingly sweet but with the almost bitter clarity of pomegranate, a juice now in vogue for its anti-oxidant properties, but long a favorite flavor of mine. I remember harvesting pomegranates from my neighbors' bushes growing up in SoCal, not that we ever asked permission.
Even in the suburbs I dreamed of living off the land. There are still few thrills for me as great as drinking fresh creek water. The first time I drank from a stream, backpacking in Big Sur at the age of 14, I was taken aback that water could simply be sipped from an open source instead of arriving, chlorinated and fluoridated, through a stainless steel pipe. The best things in life are free, indeed, as were the blackberries I harvested today twenty feet from my front door, which I mixed with vanilla yogurt for a wonderful brunch.
It's been a dry spring and summer here and the deer, now searching everywhere for green tidbits, have effectively decimated my garden. Last night they topped the broccoli and brussel sprouts which leaves me with no crop except for the few flowers they won't eat, zinnias and marigolds among them. I may convert my garden to flowers only, though there is still time to plant some winter crops, but before I plant anything new I must deer-proof the garden. At present I have but one "scarecrow," a motion-activated sprayer that discourages mammalian pests, but I need at least two to protect the garden, plus some deer netting to throw over select plants. Do I have the gumption to start over again? I think so.
I think of my first garden on the coast as an experiment. Curiously its greatest enemies have been our cats, who love to dig up new plantings, and the damned deer. Gophers have been absenet and insects not much of a problem. Since we rent I have no ambition to put up a fence, not to mention that it would disturb our ocean view. But I am no longer unapprised of the hazards of gardening here. Deer will eat almost anything in my experience, though they do have a preference for roses and edible greens. They sampled my apple mint last night, about to bloom, but did not devastate it, evidence that perhaps mint is not on their preferred menu.
Kathleen, after a year since Kenyon's demise, is ready to adopt a new dog. We looked at an Australian heeler mix the other day, a lovely, athletic, freckled beast of medium size, but she was so energetic that I did not look forward to minding her during the day while Kathleen is at work. I don't think I have the energy to keep that dog entertained; it would likely be in constant motion and in no small danger of escaping and exploring the adjacent State Park unless tied up. I've always wanted an Irish Wolfhound, as my size makes such a dog look normal-sized, but Kathleen points out how much room it would take up and how much food it would eat.
It is a worldwide scandal, America's fixation with pets, as many are better fed than the world at large, not to mention the excellent veterinary care in a world where most veterinarians earn their keep by treating cattle and other more valuable animals in the economy. In Mexico dogs were no more or less than furry burglar alarms, and their relative neglect was shocking in view of American prejudices. Other nations employ animals; we anthropomorphize them. Is it all Disney's fault? At least in 4-H students learn to groom their animals for slaughter, while the housepet remains an end in itself. I do think the Paris Hilton chihuahua fad has gone too far, however, since we heard of a wedding our friends gave in Mexico with Chihuahua bride and groom (appropriately dressed) a reception for 100. I'm told it was a "black nose only" affair, with exceptions made for bipeds.
Through the accident I've lost a month of my life and am just catching up with correspondence and other duties, though I might have saved my garden if I'd been feeling better. As it is I don't mind feeding the deer if only they had better manners and could wait in line to have their hooves stamped.
I recently joined a blogging network on Facebook and discovered that poet Ann Marie Eldon had over 200 regular subscribers to her blog, which I found astounding. Props to her. It is mind-boggling that a platform like Facebook automatically fills in the statistics for blogs when you sign up for their network, if a little embarrassing for my dearth of regular subscribers. Then I have not always been the most regular of bloggers, nor do I promote myself much beyond writing.
Wednesday our magic bed arrives with its mattress of extra-firm latex foam, the best sleeping surface I have discovered. Our old joints scrape and grate with anticipation of a partial reprieve from the assault of nightly gravity.
For today's poem I want something summery, so I'll paste in one from my years in medical school in Galveston in the late 70s. Galveston has a climate of 80/80 six months of the year--80% humidity and 80 degrees. I have never been more uncomfortable physically in a climate than when I lived there, but since summer took up half the year, I did write a number of summer poems.
Mid-Summer Invitation
The humid night sits on a rocking chair.
Cicadas, crickets melodize the air.
The summer's fullness pushes through the screen
like a ripe pear.
Faraway, radios sing and blare.
A dog insists a cat was nearly there.
An automobile's signature of wind
tingles my hair.
I dream the dreams of summer, I loaf and loll.
I will not wrestle with a thorny soul.
I'm sinking in a dish of mint ice cream, with chocolate
running around the bowl.
Join me then. Here is a mild cigar,
a glass of beer, one shy small summer star
and this my porch. We'll rock and sip and smoke and talk
and talk some more.
(published in Arkenstone, 1978)
Aestivally,
CE
Monday, August 18, 2008
To My Left Pinkie, Revised
Here is a second draft of my pinkie poem:
To My Left Pinkie (three weeks after the motorcycle accident)
You were not sprained as I twirled,
suspended as if on a rotisserie,
slamming each shoulder in turn
before my helmet broke
and I lay supine on Highway 1.
How dare you play the fool
and insist it's you that hurts!
Alien digit on my keyboard
punished by each 'a' and 'z,'
you would make my neck a liar.
Faintly I feel your origins
descend my inner arm and elbow
down to the ulna's tip until
pain absolutely concentrates
in your three-jointed misery,
as if you were freshly broken
or come too near to frostbite--
but there's no bruise or swelling
just your wrinkled cylinder
with two tufts of blond hair.
In pain's intensity
your pink and yellow flesh tones
seem strangely psychedelic.
Are you showing off?
How odd to be upstaged
by such an undistinguished part!
The indignity! I can no longer play
a 7th chord on my guitar, a demonstration
of how the body boils down pain
to elementary deception.
Should I accept this, rail at you
and indemnify my spine?
Who switched a deuce for a queen?
And if I can't trust your trumped-up signal
how can I trust anything?
You have hoarded the free currency of pain
inside your little bank, out-shouting
all my separations, dislocations,
compressions and abrasions.
Perhaps the Empiricists were right.
Perhaps a headache comes
from undetected hemorrhoids,
bursitis from a hangnail,
my fluttering eye's tick
from an abraded knee.
So much for the perceiver.
If you were a middle finger
I could make the right response.
Your insult is one of disproportion,
encapsulating suffering
into one mean appendage,
oppressed and oppressing,
without splint or dressing,
a nothing turned celebrity
in the mistaken pagination of the brain.
Traitor, puppet, fall guy, shill,
least valuable of digits!
Worm not worthy of a ring,
usurper of my first-born pain,
poseur, impostor, not even
my first choice to pick my nose
when it should be my neck on the marquee!
Still “ouch!” means “ouch!” I yield
the floor to a deceptive field;
perception's not all it's cracked up to be.
CE
To My Left Pinkie (three weeks after the motorcycle accident)
You were not sprained as I twirled,
suspended as if on a rotisserie,
slamming each shoulder in turn
before my helmet broke
and I lay supine on Highway 1.
How dare you play the fool
and insist it's you that hurts!
Alien digit on my keyboard
punished by each 'a' and 'z,'
you would make my neck a liar.
Faintly I feel your origins
descend my inner arm and elbow
down to the ulna's tip until
pain absolutely concentrates
in your three-jointed misery,
as if you were freshly broken
or come too near to frostbite--
but there's no bruise or swelling
just your wrinkled cylinder
with two tufts of blond hair.
In pain's intensity
your pink and yellow flesh tones
seem strangely psychedelic.
Are you showing off?
How odd to be upstaged
by such an undistinguished part!
The indignity! I can no longer play
a 7th chord on my guitar, a demonstration
of how the body boils down pain
to elementary deception.
Should I accept this, rail at you
and indemnify my spine?
Who switched a deuce for a queen?
And if I can't trust your trumped-up signal
how can I trust anything?
You have hoarded the free currency of pain
inside your little bank, out-shouting
all my separations, dislocations,
compressions and abrasions.
Perhaps the Empiricists were right.
Perhaps a headache comes
from undetected hemorrhoids,
bursitis from a hangnail,
my fluttering eye's tick
from an abraded knee.
So much for the perceiver.
If you were a middle finger
I could make the right response.
Your insult is one of disproportion,
encapsulating suffering
into one mean appendage,
oppressed and oppressing,
without splint or dressing,
a nothing turned celebrity
in the mistaken pagination of the brain.
Traitor, puppet, fall guy, shill,
least valuable of digits!
Worm not worthy of a ring,
usurper of my first-born pain,
poseur, impostor, not even
my first choice to pick my nose
when it should be my neck on the marquee!
Still “ouch!” means “ouch!” I yield
the floor to a deceptive field;
perception's not all it's cracked up to be.
CE
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Poem: To My Left Pinkie
Here's a fresh draft regarding my recovery and referred pain. I owe the idea of this piece to Scott Murphy and his wonderful poem, "A Conversation, a Praise." No doubt this poem on a phantom tweak needs some real tweaking before I put it in a finished folder. Comments and criticism appreciated.
To My Left Pinkie
You were not sprained as I twirled
as if suspended on a rotisserie, slamming
each shoulder before my helmet broke
and I lay supine, a failed gymnast
in a hair-raising routine.
You make my neck a liar:
the pain comes from my cervical disks,
old donuts leaking jelly on the nerves,
not from some local dislocation.
I'm past the blackout pain, a telegraphic
shock sharper than any razor stropped,
as if my arm were an electric cattle prod,
my scapulae molten bomb fragments,
my ribs losing their welds,
barbed wire around my thorax
like a poisoned barrel hoop.
Three weeks post-accident
you have achieved a stardom undeserved,
you, alien digit on my keyboard
punishing each 'a' and 'z.'
Faintly I feel your origins
descend my inner arm and elbow
down to the ulna's tip until
pain absolutely concentrates
in your three-jointed misery.
You ache as if you had been broken
or come too near to frostbite
but there's no bruise or swelling,
just your wrinkled cylinder
with two patches of blond hair.
In pain's intensity, your pink and yellow flesh tones
seem strangely psychedelic.
How dare you play the fool
and insist it's you that hurts!
You, you were spared, no miner's canary
but a turd left in the tunnel after rescue.
So easy to ignore before,
I'm sorry I underestimated you.
I pledge allegiance to the body's meanest parts,
all are potential understudies
in the drama of pain's economy.
How odd to be upstaged
by such an undistinguished part.
The indignity! I cannot play
a 7th chord on my guitar, rude evidence
of how the body boils pain
down to an elementary deception.
How can I rail at you and indemnify my spine?
Who switched a deuce for a queen?
Your pain enlists a mother board
of cervical and other plexi
whose interwoven signals
processed through a blind committee
agree you are the victim and the oppressor,
symbol of all that alienates us from ourselves.
If we can't trust the origin of sensation
how can we trust anything?
Locke, Berkeley, Hume, I take it back.
“If a tree falls in a forest,” ha!
It may be that a headache comes
from undetected hemorrhoids,
bursitis from a hangnail,
the tick of my fluttering eye
from an abraded knee.
Pain is a currency, it seems
free traded throughout the corpus,
for me now hoarded in a pinkie bank.
Of all my separations, dislocations
and compressions, you claim pre-eminence.
If you were my middle finger
I could make the right response of you.
Instead I use my right hand to curse you.
Mainly your insult is one of disproportion,
how you encapsulate my suffering
into a small appendage,
oppressed and oppressing,
in no need of splint or dressing,
a nothing elevated to celebrity
in the tabloid of the brain.
You, traitor, puppet, fall guy, shill,
least valuable of digits!
You, worm not worthy of a ring,
usurper through your phantom pain,
poseur, impostor, bastard of extremities,
not even my first choice to pick my nose
when it should be my neck on the marquee!
Still, “Ouch, ouch!”--you win!
Unstably Yours,
CE
To My Left Pinkie
You were not sprained as I twirled
as if suspended on a rotisserie, slamming
each shoulder before my helmet broke
and I lay supine, a failed gymnast
in a hair-raising routine.
You make my neck a liar:
the pain comes from my cervical disks,
old donuts leaking jelly on the nerves,
not from some local dislocation.
I'm past the blackout pain, a telegraphic
shock sharper than any razor stropped,
as if my arm were an electric cattle prod,
my scapulae molten bomb fragments,
my ribs losing their welds,
barbed wire around my thorax
like a poisoned barrel hoop.
Three weeks post-accident
you have achieved a stardom undeserved,
you, alien digit on my keyboard
punishing each 'a' and 'z.'
Faintly I feel your origins
descend my inner arm and elbow
down to the ulna's tip until
pain absolutely concentrates
in your three-jointed misery.
You ache as if you had been broken
or come too near to frostbite
but there's no bruise or swelling,
just your wrinkled cylinder
with two patches of blond hair.
In pain's intensity, your pink and yellow flesh tones
seem strangely psychedelic.
How dare you play the fool
and insist it's you that hurts!
You, you were spared, no miner's canary
but a turd left in the tunnel after rescue.
So easy to ignore before,
I'm sorry I underestimated you.
I pledge allegiance to the body's meanest parts,
all are potential understudies
in the drama of pain's economy.
How odd to be upstaged
by such an undistinguished part.
The indignity! I cannot play
a 7th chord on my guitar, rude evidence
of how the body boils pain
down to an elementary deception.
How can I rail at you and indemnify my spine?
Who switched a deuce for a queen?
Your pain enlists a mother board
of cervical and other plexi
whose interwoven signals
processed through a blind committee
agree you are the victim and the oppressor,
symbol of all that alienates us from ourselves.
If we can't trust the origin of sensation
how can we trust anything?
Locke, Berkeley, Hume, I take it back.
“If a tree falls in a forest,” ha!
It may be that a headache comes
from undetected hemorrhoids,
bursitis from a hangnail,
the tick of my fluttering eye
from an abraded knee.
Pain is a currency, it seems
free traded throughout the corpus,
for me now hoarded in a pinkie bank.
Of all my separations, dislocations
and compressions, you claim pre-eminence.
If you were my middle finger
I could make the right response of you.
Instead I use my right hand to curse you.
Mainly your insult is one of disproportion,
how you encapsulate my suffering
into a small appendage,
oppressed and oppressing,
in no need of splint or dressing,
a nothing elevated to celebrity
in the tabloid of the brain.
You, traitor, puppet, fall guy, shill,
least valuable of digits!
You, worm not worthy of a ring,
usurper through your phantom pain,
poseur, impostor, bastard of extremities,
not even my first choice to pick my nose
when it should be my neck on the marquee!
Still, “Ouch, ouch!”--you win!
Unstably Yours,
CE
Thursday, August 14, 2008
On Rachel's Death
We just passed the anniversary of my daughter's memorial service. Prior to that, on the anniversary of her death, we scattered her ashes where the river meets the sea on the Mendocino coast, where she and Jacob had played together.
It was tough but also freeing. Amidst my tears I lost control of the empty bag of ashes while being pushed at once from both the river and ocean currents. I almost fell in. I didn't recover the bag. There's a poem in that.
While looking through a draft file last night I found a three-line sketch and re-formatted it:
On Rachel's Death
The hole
in the ground
left by the tree
the hole left
by her life
or my life
or any life
always lacks
dirt enough
to cover
the uprooted
root-crown.
Loss is a coin
tossed down
a depthless well;
you listen
for a splash
that never
comes.
I'm in some sort of mixed state, can go from anger to worry to sadness to confidence to happiness in a matter of hours. I've increased my Abilify dose because of it.
Aren't some of the Olympic commercials terrific? Love the United ads.
In Kiloinstability,
CE
It was tough but also freeing. Amidst my tears I lost control of the empty bag of ashes while being pushed at once from both the river and ocean currents. I almost fell in. I didn't recover the bag. There's a poem in that.
While looking through a draft file last night I found a three-line sketch and re-formatted it:
On Rachel's Death
The hole
in the ground
left by the tree
the hole left
by her life
or my life
or any life
always lacks
dirt enough
to cover
the uprooted
root-crown.
Loss is a coin
tossed down
a depthless well;
you listen
for a splash
that never
comes.
I'm in some sort of mixed state, can go from anger to worry to sadness to confidence to happiness in a matter of hours. I've increased my Abilify dose because of it.
Aren't some of the Olympic commercials terrific? Love the United ads.
In Kiloinstability,
CE
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Of Time and Tolle
It's been a while, hasn't it? Almost two weeks. I spent one week at music camp, where I felt isolated by the cliquishness of the other participants, not to mention that I am more a blues/rock player than a dabbler in traditional Celtic music. Unable to use my left pinkie, I appeared at camp with my ice maker (rather than ice breaker)--a little battery-powered amplifier for my electric guitar, whose fingering is easier, thus I could play a little--but the acoustic warriors did not seem happy with the surprise, though I played at acoustic volume.
I felt like an outcast, truly. I am not an unfriendly person but I found Lark Camp to be a pretty closed phenomenon. Many insiders had been coming for over a decade, eager to play with their long-lost friends. I wish I could have been a friend found, but it was not to be.
Upon arriving home I had to prepare for performing the following two days, at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens Saturday and the Noyo Food Forest on Sunday. These gigs went passably well, but my heart was not much engaged. I felt more like a jukebox distraction than an artist pouring out his soul. But that is the meaning of professional: You do it because you're committed, not because you necessarily want to on a given day. Imagine if doctors said, "I don't feel like doing surgery today." The world would fall apart. Civilization depends upon the contract between personas, our social selves, and our responsibilities--even if so minor a thing as playing music for a benefit.
I have plateaued, it seems, in my recovery. The acute pains of nerve entrapment have quieted somewhat, but the persistent aches slow me down. I have maybe 50% of normal neck motion. My shoulder motion is somewhat greater, good enough to impress the orthopedist not to do surgery on my shoulder separation three weeks out. He said it should have been done acutely but that scarring now would require a larger operation and it was better simply to pursue physical therapy and reserve surgery in the event that the pain proved intolerable long-term. I had surgery on my back once before for long-term intolerable pain and it was a disaster that led to my disability.
My family doctor wanted an MRI of my neck to define the disk injuries and rule out occult fractures, but given my 20% co-pay, which would amount to over $500, and the fact that I'm relatively stable, we have decided to table it for now. I'm sure my cervical spine is just as messed up as my lumbar.
I had an emotional meltdown yesterday with at least three crying spells. I think it was the backwash of the accident, over which I had never wept, combined with my feeling of rejection at the music camp and Kathleen's ongoing dip in mood, in part related to my brush with death. How do you apologize for an accident? God knows the thought of losing her would send me into a tailspin. I think we should rather consciously rejoice in the miracle of my escape, but sometimes that's hard to do.
I have two new poems out in Centrifugal Eye, "Radiated" and "The Dust of Guanajuato." Both poems concern, coincidentally in the wake of my accident, physical problems--sunburn and air pollution. I have Lynn Strongin to thank for recommending the magazine to me; she has work in there as well.
I have been of late overwhelmed with spam and I blame Facebook for the most part, along with a program meant to alert me to others' birthdays. Both applications required a password to search my address list, and in all this trading of information I suspect the spam bots got a toehold. It's tedious to paw through my junk mail, but I could miss letters from editors if I don't. Perhaps I will begin to utilize another of my addresses until the spam typhoon dies down, but I've had my hotmail address for over ten years. (Did you know the founder of Hotmail, who sold out to Microsoft, is now trying to build a utopian city akin to Silicon Valley in northern India?)
I finished "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle, and I have tried to practice remaining in the present, but sometimes my emotions get the better of me, along with thoughts of the future and the past. He claims we are all filled with the light of God, it's only a question of how much we become conscious of it. His message is not greatly different from other spiritual gurus like Baba Ram Das (Richard Alport) in "Be Here Now."
I want to honor the present and be present in the present but the present includes so many distractions, like the numbness in my left pinkie as I type. I don't want to focus on that or my aches and pains; it's easy to be present with pain, but that is an alarm of the body and not the fullness he seeks. I give him points for clarity, but he does demand a big leap of faith, since he supplies no reason for us to believe that Christ, or The Divine, lives in us all; he assumes it as a fact and goes from there.
Traditional Christian doctrine would require a submission to the Holy Spirit to have a foundation for access to eternal love within, but who am I to limit the reach of God? I journey towards the present but find so many detours, as in my ambition to clean up my desk today. Perhaps I can make that a test of presence, though no doubt sorting dead-tree correspondence will often return me to the past and the future.
I've also been reading Jung and his disciples, and again I am fascinated at how much his psychology depends upon the interpretation of archetypes in dreams. (I have tried to remember my recent dreams but keep losing them in the present.) Whereas Jung seeks integration of the conscious with the unconscious through mediators like the anima, the feminine guide for man, Tolle wants us to draw on an inner well of joy that he claims is always present. And strangely, in my presently labile emotional condition, I feel a monumental sadness while also conscious of an underlying unity and joy, though yesterday the sadness overwhelmed me, but the latter felt suspiciously like "bad chemicals."
The Beatles sang that Love is the answer and it is. But how to apply that inwardly in everyday life brings me to an impasse. I find it much easier to help my brother in need when opportunity affords than to think about my own spiritual state. I would like to be filled with light at all times; alas, I am only human, and the light shines when it will. Perhaps it shines brightest when I am least aware of it. But it seems there are too many shadows in me for the light to pierce the fog consistently, although Tolle, no doubt, would tell me to forget about dreams and dream the present.
Here's a new poem:
After the Accident
Third degree abrasions peel,
a scab falls and another.
I network through DNA,
my business cards abound.
Floss flicked a filling out,
it rattled on the floor.
My tongue explored the jagged
grotto of amalgam's absence,
another part discarded.
Here a nail, there a hair:
after a while it adds up.
My left collar bone pushes
my skin up like a tent pole.
But where did the trapped gas go
when the ligaments popped?
Could I have breathed it out,
sent a postcard to the ambient air?
I wonder I'm not whittled to the quick.
I wanted my poems to be dolmens:
the body decides.
From Kilorats to Kilobunnies in the same breath,
CE
I felt like an outcast, truly. I am not an unfriendly person but I found Lark Camp to be a pretty closed phenomenon. Many insiders had been coming for over a decade, eager to play with their long-lost friends. I wish I could have been a friend found, but it was not to be.
Upon arriving home I had to prepare for performing the following two days, at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens Saturday and the Noyo Food Forest on Sunday. These gigs went passably well, but my heart was not much engaged. I felt more like a jukebox distraction than an artist pouring out his soul. But that is the meaning of professional: You do it because you're committed, not because you necessarily want to on a given day. Imagine if doctors said, "I don't feel like doing surgery today." The world would fall apart. Civilization depends upon the contract between personas, our social selves, and our responsibilities--even if so minor a thing as playing music for a benefit.
I have plateaued, it seems, in my recovery. The acute pains of nerve entrapment have quieted somewhat, but the persistent aches slow me down. I have maybe 50% of normal neck motion. My shoulder motion is somewhat greater, good enough to impress the orthopedist not to do surgery on my shoulder separation three weeks out. He said it should have been done acutely but that scarring now would require a larger operation and it was better simply to pursue physical therapy and reserve surgery in the event that the pain proved intolerable long-term. I had surgery on my back once before for long-term intolerable pain and it was a disaster that led to my disability.
My family doctor wanted an MRI of my neck to define the disk injuries and rule out occult fractures, but given my 20% co-pay, which would amount to over $500, and the fact that I'm relatively stable, we have decided to table it for now. I'm sure my cervical spine is just as messed up as my lumbar.
I had an emotional meltdown yesterday with at least three crying spells. I think it was the backwash of the accident, over which I had never wept, combined with my feeling of rejection at the music camp and Kathleen's ongoing dip in mood, in part related to my brush with death. How do you apologize for an accident? God knows the thought of losing her would send me into a tailspin. I think we should rather consciously rejoice in the miracle of my escape, but sometimes that's hard to do.
I have two new poems out in Centrifugal Eye, "Radiated" and "The Dust of Guanajuato." Both poems concern, coincidentally in the wake of my accident, physical problems--sunburn and air pollution. I have Lynn Strongin to thank for recommending the magazine to me; she has work in there as well.
I have been of late overwhelmed with spam and I blame Facebook for the most part, along with a program meant to alert me to others' birthdays. Both applications required a password to search my address list, and in all this trading of information I suspect the spam bots got a toehold. It's tedious to paw through my junk mail, but I could miss letters from editors if I don't. Perhaps I will begin to utilize another of my addresses until the spam typhoon dies down, but I've had my hotmail address for over ten years. (Did you know the founder of Hotmail, who sold out to Microsoft, is now trying to build a utopian city akin to Silicon Valley in northern India?)
I finished "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle, and I have tried to practice remaining in the present, but sometimes my emotions get the better of me, along with thoughts of the future and the past. He claims we are all filled with the light of God, it's only a question of how much we become conscious of it. His message is not greatly different from other spiritual gurus like Baba Ram Das (Richard Alport) in "Be Here Now."
I want to honor the present and be present in the present but the present includes so many distractions, like the numbness in my left pinkie as I type. I don't want to focus on that or my aches and pains; it's easy to be present with pain, but that is an alarm of the body and not the fullness he seeks. I give him points for clarity, but he does demand a big leap of faith, since he supplies no reason for us to believe that Christ, or The Divine, lives in us all; he assumes it as a fact and goes from there.
Traditional Christian doctrine would require a submission to the Holy Spirit to have a foundation for access to eternal love within, but who am I to limit the reach of God? I journey towards the present but find so many detours, as in my ambition to clean up my desk today. Perhaps I can make that a test of presence, though no doubt sorting dead-tree correspondence will often return me to the past and the future.
I've also been reading Jung and his disciples, and again I am fascinated at how much his psychology depends upon the interpretation of archetypes in dreams. (I have tried to remember my recent dreams but keep losing them in the present.) Whereas Jung seeks integration of the conscious with the unconscious through mediators like the anima, the feminine guide for man, Tolle wants us to draw on an inner well of joy that he claims is always present. And strangely, in my presently labile emotional condition, I feel a monumental sadness while also conscious of an underlying unity and joy, though yesterday the sadness overwhelmed me, but the latter felt suspiciously like "bad chemicals."
The Beatles sang that Love is the answer and it is. But how to apply that inwardly in everyday life brings me to an impasse. I find it much easier to help my brother in need when opportunity affords than to think about my own spiritual state. I would like to be filled with light at all times; alas, I am only human, and the light shines when it will. Perhaps it shines brightest when I am least aware of it. But it seems there are too many shadows in me for the light to pierce the fog consistently, although Tolle, no doubt, would tell me to forget about dreams and dream the present.
Here's a new poem:
After the Accident
Third degree abrasions peel,
a scab falls and another.
I network through DNA,
my business cards abound.
Floss flicked a filling out,
it rattled on the floor.
My tongue explored the jagged
grotto of amalgam's absence,
another part discarded.
Here a nail, there a hair:
after a while it adds up.
My left collar bone pushes
my skin up like a tent pole.
But where did the trapped gas go
when the ligaments popped?
Could I have breathed it out,
sent a postcard to the ambient air?
I wonder I'm not whittled to the quick.
I wanted my poems to be dolmens:
the body decides.
From Kilorats to Kilobunnies in the same breath,
CE
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Physical Pain and Depression
I'm sitting here in a neck brace, wondering how this accident affects my life beyond physical impairments. As I said before, nothing was "broken," thank God, but sometimes things are less painful when they break rather than being stretched to the limit. As I type my chest hurts, my neck hurts, my shoulders hurt, my knee hurts, and I suffer from numbness in my left fourth and fifth fingers. This numbness is a persistent symptom from compression of cervical vertebrae 7 and 8, what's called "a stinger" in football circles. If I cough or strain, a band of metallic fire shoots down my arm into my left elbow and fingers; it takes my breath away. When this occurs my right little finger goes numb as well, confirming that the injury is spinal rather than more local, as in a stretched axillary or cervical or brachial plexus on one side. Bilateral symptoms in the same dermatome mean that a central lesion is at fault.
Both knees have third degree abrasions, now beginning to leak from under the scabs. The right hurts worse because the accident included a brief dislocation of my right kneecap.
My left shoulder was dislocated as well, but popped back in like the kneecap. Above the shoulder I display the clinical deformity of "tenting," where the collar bone, now separated from the shoulder blade (3rd degree acromioclavicular separation), rises up and pushes against the skin.
I also have pain from thoracic compression at T5 as a band around my pectorals, and pain shooting into my shoulder blades bilaterally from a cervical compression at C3-C4.
In addition to all these is the constant ache and burning of soft tissue injuries to muscle, ligaments, fascia and tendons, especially in the left shoulder and at the base of the occipit where the strained splenius capitus muscles insert.
Emotionally my knowledge of medicine and my own body relieve me of any fear, knowing that my long-term prognosis is fairly sanguine. I may need surgery on my left shoulder but delaying it will make the operation easier, as the body goes on repairing what it can and clearing the surgical field of inflammation and debris. The opposite can also hold true if too much scarring complicates the field.
I have never been afraid throughout this ordeal, unless it be the immediate fear of pain should I cough or move--knowing that in the next instant I will feel like a fish speared by its own nerves.
Pain renders the mind blank and speechless, unless it be the occasionally needful swear word.
I feel lucky in my mind but my body doesn't agree.
To be thrown at 25 mph from a motorcycle onto a winding two-lane highway in the fog with much traffic, and fare as well as I have, seems a miracle, as if the angels said, "So far and no further." Further could mean dead or at least quadriplegic; yet the fact that I was relatively spared feels more like a lucky statistic than a personal gift. When the pain lessens I may be able to rejoice more fully.
I am selling the bike, btw; it was dangerous for my bulk because it was underpowered, at 125 cc, at pushing my fat ass up hills. And I have no desire at present for a bigger, safer bike; I was doing OK with the bus system before this happened in any case.
After sitting here to write this, my neck and left shoulder continue to register the highest pain levels, while my left hand feels funny with its numb digits.
Pain is the greatest teacher but it is sometimes overrated as a tutor. One learns nothing from chronic pain except endurance, maybe a little increased caution.
I feel much the same way about depression; its main lesson is also endurance, hoping "this, too, will pass." I can't speak of any dark night of the soul or spiritual realization from depression or the accident. They are similar in requiring stamina, or the quality of indomitability that I have shown throughout my life. My name means "Rock," and my body's response to this accident was very much like a rock, with a few exceptions. So likewise I am a rock in depression. I continue to function despite the inexpressible feelings of anger, fear and sadness co-mingled into self-hatred that attend my waking hours in that condition.
Strangely, my strength does come from the darkness, from depression. If I can endure severe clinical depression I can endure nearly anything. And the prospect of depression puts my present thoughts of pain in perspective; I'd much rather endure physical injury than mental torment. Those who say otherwise have not known depression as I have, and I hope they never do.
Bloodied but Kiloneutral,
CE
Both knees have third degree abrasions, now beginning to leak from under the scabs. The right hurts worse because the accident included a brief dislocation of my right kneecap.
My left shoulder was dislocated as well, but popped back in like the kneecap. Above the shoulder I display the clinical deformity of "tenting," where the collar bone, now separated from the shoulder blade (3rd degree acromioclavicular separation), rises up and pushes against the skin.
I also have pain from thoracic compression at T5 as a band around my pectorals, and pain shooting into my shoulder blades bilaterally from a cervical compression at C3-C4.
In addition to all these is the constant ache and burning of soft tissue injuries to muscle, ligaments, fascia and tendons, especially in the left shoulder and at the base of the occipit where the strained splenius capitus muscles insert.
Emotionally my knowledge of medicine and my own body relieve me of any fear, knowing that my long-term prognosis is fairly sanguine. I may need surgery on my left shoulder but delaying it will make the operation easier, as the body goes on repairing what it can and clearing the surgical field of inflammation and debris. The opposite can also hold true if too much scarring complicates the field.
I have never been afraid throughout this ordeal, unless it be the immediate fear of pain should I cough or move--knowing that in the next instant I will feel like a fish speared by its own nerves.
Pain renders the mind blank and speechless, unless it be the occasionally needful swear word.
I feel lucky in my mind but my body doesn't agree.
To be thrown at 25 mph from a motorcycle onto a winding two-lane highway in the fog with much traffic, and fare as well as I have, seems a miracle, as if the angels said, "So far and no further." Further could mean dead or at least quadriplegic; yet the fact that I was relatively spared feels more like a lucky statistic than a personal gift. When the pain lessens I may be able to rejoice more fully.
I am selling the bike, btw; it was dangerous for my bulk because it was underpowered, at 125 cc, at pushing my fat ass up hills. And I have no desire at present for a bigger, safer bike; I was doing OK with the bus system before this happened in any case.
After sitting here to write this, my neck and left shoulder continue to register the highest pain levels, while my left hand feels funny with its numb digits.
Pain is the greatest teacher but it is sometimes overrated as a tutor. One learns nothing from chronic pain except endurance, maybe a little increased caution.
I feel much the same way about depression; its main lesson is also endurance, hoping "this, too, will pass." I can't speak of any dark night of the soul or spiritual realization from depression or the accident. They are similar in requiring stamina, or the quality of indomitability that I have shown throughout my life. My name means "Rock," and my body's response to this accident was very much like a rock, with a few exceptions. So likewise I am a rock in depression. I continue to function despite the inexpressible feelings of anger, fear and sadness co-mingled into self-hatred that attend my waking hours in that condition.
Strangely, my strength does come from the darkness, from depression. If I can endure severe clinical depression I can endure nearly anything. And the prospect of depression puts my present thoughts of pain in perspective; I'd much rather endure physical injury than mental torment. Those who say otherwise have not known depression as I have, and I hope they never do.
Bloodied but Kiloneutral,
CE
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Motorcycle Crash
Free Fall on Highway 1 (recorded the night of the accident, July 21, before the real pain set in).
I was following the fog line when my front tire lipped over the asphalt and climbed the shoulder into the bushes. I rolled off to my left and tumbled to the road until I lay on my back, groaning. I must have hit my left shoulder first, as I feel a partial dislocation and acromioclavicular separation there. It pops as I type. The right is equally sore, more a blunt injury, I think. I haven't looked in the mirror for external orthopedic markers as I fear I can't remove my shirt with shit for shoulders. Inside each scapula is an ache so deep it wraps around my chest like an iron band around a barrel. Rhomboid strain, slight radiculopathy at the fifth thoracic vertebra. My neck burns stiffly; I wrapped a towel around it for a chin rest. I'm creaky and sore but breathing. My left little finger is numb from disk compression in my neck at C7-C8. My helmet spared my skull. As I said, I was following the fog line when I got too close, lipped off the asphalt into the brush. I saw a tree; I don't think I hit it. I didn't get a good look at the bike but it didn't appear too mangled. I feel a generous raspberry on my right knee, I don't know if it bled through, but my kneecap pops in a new way from a partial dislocation. Strangely, before the accident, I was talking to a friend who had fallen from a height out of his truck and suffered a severe concussion that took him five years to recover from. He was misnaming things, calling a stove a refrigerator, calling his employees by the wrong name. I think my brain's OK, it's my neck and shoulders that sustain the agony--worse with movement, of course. I have now cheated death nine times. That doesn't mean I don't have damage, At 53 the human body doesn't bounce anymore, it slams without rebound. Were I six again, running with a football, I would recover quickly. I don't know which impairments will remain. I've doubtless added to my chronic pain.
CE
p.s. I just noticed in a previous comment a challenge to a meme; what work among these media most impacted you in your adult life?
the book:
The Brothers Karamazov
the film / network series:
"Altered States" directed by Ken Russell, written by Paddy Chayevsky
the music / spoken word recording:
Bob Dylan "Highway 61" Columbia
(challenge by Sam Rasnake)
I was following the fog line when my front tire lipped over the asphalt and climbed the shoulder into the bushes. I rolled off to my left and tumbled to the road until I lay on my back, groaning. I must have hit my left shoulder first, as I feel a partial dislocation and acromioclavicular separation there. It pops as I type. The right is equally sore, more a blunt injury, I think. I haven't looked in the mirror for external orthopedic markers as I fear I can't remove my shirt with shit for shoulders. Inside each scapula is an ache so deep it wraps around my chest like an iron band around a barrel. Rhomboid strain, slight radiculopathy at the fifth thoracic vertebra. My neck burns stiffly; I wrapped a towel around it for a chin rest. I'm creaky and sore but breathing. My left little finger is numb from disk compression in my neck at C7-C8. My helmet spared my skull. As I said, I was following the fog line when I got too close, lipped off the asphalt into the brush. I saw a tree; I don't think I hit it. I didn't get a good look at the bike but it didn't appear too mangled. I feel a generous raspberry on my right knee, I don't know if it bled through, but my kneecap pops in a new way from a partial dislocation. Strangely, before the accident, I was talking to a friend who had fallen from a height out of his truck and suffered a severe concussion that took him five years to recover from. He was misnaming things, calling a stove a refrigerator, calling his employees by the wrong name. I think my brain's OK, it's my neck and shoulders that sustain the agony--worse with movement, of course. I have now cheated death nine times. That doesn't mean I don't have damage, At 53 the human body doesn't bounce anymore, it slams without rebound. Were I six again, running with a football, I would recover quickly. I don't know which impairments will remain. I've doubtless added to my chronic pain.
CE
p.s. I just noticed in a previous comment a challenge to a meme; what work among these media most impacted you in your adult life?
the book:
The Brothers Karamazov
the film / network series:
"Altered States" directed by Ken Russell, written by Paddy Chayevsky
the music / spoken word recording:
Bob Dylan "Highway 61" Columbia
(challenge by Sam Rasnake)
Monday, July 21, 2008
Theory of the Mind VII: Better a Dirty Teat than a Clean Bottle
I have a friend, call him Vince, who plays the flute well enough to jam but has a terrible alcohol habit and lives in his car. I don't judge him; I try to help him with logistics and in music participation when I can. I have told him outright that his main problem is being a drunk, but I don't judge that, even when I have to help him in the car (he doesn't drive) after a jam where he couldn't even play due to his alcohol level. He knows that I know that he knows that his desire for sobriety cannot compete with his desire for alcohol, though he claims short-term memory loss and possibly some liver damage from the habit. Yet he is more interested in stopping beer because of a feared "gluten" allergy than stopping drinking; lately he's felt better on vodka. And his doctor gets frequent blood tests. I find his attendance by doctors mildly entertaining, as they do nothing about the elephant in the room except to clip its toenails.
Why does Vince lack the desire to quit drinking? He would certainly feel better and his memory might improve if he did. Is his will merely enslaved to drink, or does every drunk entail another incremental yielding? Certainly he can't drink without picking up a bottle, so his desire and will are engaged. Does he ever stop, early in his consumption, to think he might not want to go any further? In my experience that would be a rarity; when an addict uses, there is no ceiling save illness, if only the usual hangover or post-coke morning burnout.
Interesting that marijuana does not seem to have addictive properties; many can choose to smoke it or not, and those who smoke if often prefer their lives that way, it seems, although the literature talks about the "apathetic syndrome" of heavy pot users. Cocaine, especially in smokable form like crack, is the most addictive substance we know, while chewing coca leaves in the Andes has been done for centuries without ill effect. Certainly concentrating a drug makes its addictive powers more apparent.
All of these addictions, however, as I've said before, are easier to quit than to have a successful diet, for the obvious reason that food is a necessity for survival, and we are hard-wired to enjoy a surplus if it comes our way, as it does every day in these United States.
To control, to moderate--this is the only choice with food. At present I'm at my heaviest ever, somewhere between 275 and 280, and it's a little uncomfortable. I very much want to be thinner but my desire has not engaged my will to the point where I'm willing to pass up the cashews last night, for example, that I didn't really need. Laurel Dodge suggested a food diary as the starting point for any logical diet, and I know that's good advice--first examine the problem. And to eat only when hungry, chew food slowly, etc., are all good measures. Yet the pleasure of food (I also like to cook) often overcomes my resolve to resist the extra calories. Since I've come out of my depression everything just tastes so damn good! So I've become fat and happy and put on at least fifteen lbs. since recovering.
Shall I make an experiment of myself? My desire to lose weight, I fear, is not strong enough to engage my will as yet. But I could post a food diary on my blog, starting today, in my ongoing exploration of the mind.
So far today I have eaten one double-chocolate muffin. I would estimate it at 400 calories. I drank one 12 oz. soda, about 100 calories. More later.
Meanwhile I will be attending a music camp from Aug. 1 to Aug. 9, where I will have the opportunity to quit smoking, drinking and overeating if I choose... but at present I'm enjoying all three, and for now the pleasure principle overcomes the import of immediate and future consequences. When I quit smoking for two years prior to my present relapse, I no longer enjoyed it and used to cough until I threw up some mornings. Apparently a two-year break for my lungs was enough to grant them a second wind. Now I'm in training again for smoke tolerance, though I note increased mucous of a color that makes me think that smoking is a co-factor for a chronic sinus infection and bronchitis; the tar weakens the system enough that white cells must become engaged. Ah, the slippery slope.
The Pauline answer to the slavery of habits can be found in Romans 7-8; it is not so much an answer as a transformation. By inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, Paul claims freedom from the enslavement of physical desires, and by a neat trick of psychological casuistry, blames any sin that recurs on the body, nothing to be too concerned about, since if left to itself, the body will exceed whatever limits we place upon it.
I think of those two chapters in the Bible as too all-or-nothing; I think of conversion or transformation as a slow process as the Spirit claims more and more of our hearts, which ultimateluy includes the body, but in practice, I find it much more important to love my neighbor than to quit smoking or diet successfully. There have been fat saints, smoking saints, and drinking saints (including Jesus); the saintliness is much more about how one treats one's fellows than how one governs his personal habits. I do not suggest thereby that there are sexually promiscuous saints, because that includes a violation of the body of another, quite a different matter.
The Gnostic argument of Indian gurus like the Maharishi (who so disappointed John Lennon with his screwing of all the groupies) is that the flesh does not concern the spirit. In the Christian view, it is precisely in the flesh where the war between the Spirit and unchecked desire live out their meaning. To say there is no connection between the spirit and the flesh is to deny the material nature of man. We have bodies and sometimes we are our bodies, as in the experience of extreme pain. We have body consciousness, thought consciousness, feeling consciousness, and consciousness towards external stimuli all at the same time. But the body consciousness feels like an aspect of the self: that's my hand typing, for instance, not some attachment to my self.
Christianity insists on a bodily resurrection for reasons like these.
To the Gnostics, nothing but a spiritual resurrection is possible, as Jesus came in the spirit, as for him to appear in the flesh would have been a violation of the Gnostic division, and if he had, what he did in the flesh was not so important as who he was in the spirit. The Manichees, whom Augustine disputed, had similar views, just as the Maharishi could argue that all his philandering was only "Maya," or illusion.
Self-consciousness begins with body consciousness in the womb, and the self is first built up of non-verbal encounters with people and things and especially one's own bodily functions, why control over bowels and bladder loom so large in the early psyche. What looms larger is, of course, the love and care of a primary caretaker to provide the emotional support for achieving such milestones.
Our projections of ourselves, as in the infant looking up at its mother, will always contain a human face, why we almost automatically re-envision so many patterns, even the grilles and lights of automobiles, to form faces. The imprint of the mother's face, and especially her experesions, touch, sound, and smell, can never be underestimated in the developing infant.
"Failure to Thrive" is the famous syndrome of developmental retardation in infants who receive inadequate emotional input. Better a dirty teat than a clean bottle. And better a loving neighbor than one with no bad habits.
All for now,
CE
Why does Vince lack the desire to quit drinking? He would certainly feel better and his memory might improve if he did. Is his will merely enslaved to drink, or does every drunk entail another incremental yielding? Certainly he can't drink without picking up a bottle, so his desire and will are engaged. Does he ever stop, early in his consumption, to think he might not want to go any further? In my experience that would be a rarity; when an addict uses, there is no ceiling save illness, if only the usual hangover or post-coke morning burnout.
Interesting that marijuana does not seem to have addictive properties; many can choose to smoke it or not, and those who smoke if often prefer their lives that way, it seems, although the literature talks about the "apathetic syndrome" of heavy pot users. Cocaine, especially in smokable form like crack, is the most addictive substance we know, while chewing coca leaves in the Andes has been done for centuries without ill effect. Certainly concentrating a drug makes its addictive powers more apparent.
All of these addictions, however, as I've said before, are easier to quit than to have a successful diet, for the obvious reason that food is a necessity for survival, and we are hard-wired to enjoy a surplus if it comes our way, as it does every day in these United States.
To control, to moderate--this is the only choice with food. At present I'm at my heaviest ever, somewhere between 275 and 280, and it's a little uncomfortable. I very much want to be thinner but my desire has not engaged my will to the point where I'm willing to pass up the cashews last night, for example, that I didn't really need. Laurel Dodge suggested a food diary as the starting point for any logical diet, and I know that's good advice--first examine the problem. And to eat only when hungry, chew food slowly, etc., are all good measures. Yet the pleasure of food (I also like to cook) often overcomes my resolve to resist the extra calories. Since I've come out of my depression everything just tastes so damn good! So I've become fat and happy and put on at least fifteen lbs. since recovering.
Shall I make an experiment of myself? My desire to lose weight, I fear, is not strong enough to engage my will as yet. But I could post a food diary on my blog, starting today, in my ongoing exploration of the mind.
So far today I have eaten one double-chocolate muffin. I would estimate it at 400 calories. I drank one 12 oz. soda, about 100 calories. More later.
Meanwhile I will be attending a music camp from Aug. 1 to Aug. 9, where I will have the opportunity to quit smoking, drinking and overeating if I choose... but at present I'm enjoying all three, and for now the pleasure principle overcomes the import of immediate and future consequences. When I quit smoking for two years prior to my present relapse, I no longer enjoyed it and used to cough until I threw up some mornings. Apparently a two-year break for my lungs was enough to grant them a second wind. Now I'm in training again for smoke tolerance, though I note increased mucous of a color that makes me think that smoking is a co-factor for a chronic sinus infection and bronchitis; the tar weakens the system enough that white cells must become engaged. Ah, the slippery slope.
The Pauline answer to the slavery of habits can be found in Romans 7-8; it is not so much an answer as a transformation. By inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, Paul claims freedom from the enslavement of physical desires, and by a neat trick of psychological casuistry, blames any sin that recurs on the body, nothing to be too concerned about, since if left to itself, the body will exceed whatever limits we place upon it.
I think of those two chapters in the Bible as too all-or-nothing; I think of conversion or transformation as a slow process as the Spirit claims more and more of our hearts, which ultimateluy includes the body, but in practice, I find it much more important to love my neighbor than to quit smoking or diet successfully. There have been fat saints, smoking saints, and drinking saints (including Jesus); the saintliness is much more about how one treats one's fellows than how one governs his personal habits. I do not suggest thereby that there are sexually promiscuous saints, because that includes a violation of the body of another, quite a different matter.
The Gnostic argument of Indian gurus like the Maharishi (who so disappointed John Lennon with his screwing of all the groupies) is that the flesh does not concern the spirit. In the Christian view, it is precisely in the flesh where the war between the Spirit and unchecked desire live out their meaning. To say there is no connection between the spirit and the flesh is to deny the material nature of man. We have bodies and sometimes we are our bodies, as in the experience of extreme pain. We have body consciousness, thought consciousness, feeling consciousness, and consciousness towards external stimuli all at the same time. But the body consciousness feels like an aspect of the self: that's my hand typing, for instance, not some attachment to my self.
Christianity insists on a bodily resurrection for reasons like these.
To the Gnostics, nothing but a spiritual resurrection is possible, as Jesus came in the spirit, as for him to appear in the flesh would have been a violation of the Gnostic division, and if he had, what he did in the flesh was not so important as who he was in the spirit. The Manichees, whom Augustine disputed, had similar views, just as the Maharishi could argue that all his philandering was only "Maya," or illusion.
Self-consciousness begins with body consciousness in the womb, and the self is first built up of non-verbal encounters with people and things and especially one's own bodily functions, why control over bowels and bladder loom so large in the early psyche. What looms larger is, of course, the love and care of a primary caretaker to provide the emotional support for achieving such milestones.
Our projections of ourselves, as in the infant looking up at its mother, will always contain a human face, why we almost automatically re-envision so many patterns, even the grilles and lights of automobiles, to form faces. The imprint of the mother's face, and especially her experesions, touch, sound, and smell, can never be underestimated in the developing infant.
"Failure to Thrive" is the famous syndrome of developmental retardation in infants who receive inadequate emotional input. Better a dirty teat than a clean bottle. And better a loving neighbor than one with no bad habits.
All for now,
CE
Friday, July 18, 2008
An Animated Poem; On Desire and Will
In Blue's Cruzio Cafe you can see an animated version of yours truly reciting his poem, "Where Are the Frogs?"
As for my ongoing monologue on a theory of the mind, I am letting my mind range broadly in its pursuit of the will, and have yet to touch upon the relationship of desire to the will. Desire must precede the will, and must be processed through a myriad of contingencies, including reward and consequence, ease vs. effort of attainment, pleasure and pain-o-meters, and the opinion of others as well as an internal moral compass--to name a few. Unless hung up on a conflict, all of this and more can be processed in a second.
What is the counter-propulsive force that resists desire and restrains will? Judgment, again composed of the above and more. Still, despite judgment, desire can overcome will by the sheer power of the urge or by reason ceding permission for the irrational to flower.
Here are two examples of desire and will just performed before and after writing the above. I was hungry for a snack, some crackers or something, but there were none to my liking, so I ate most of a bag of Classic Caesar croutons. I knew they were fattening, and caused heartburn, and so forth, but my desire for them overcame my better judgment, involving only a small twinge of guilt. And while writing the paragraphs above, I had an urge to micturate, but I resisted it until the end of the second paragraph, holding desire in check.
If I held it in check long enough my urine would have eventually been released, and to do so would be a strong act of will but also a display of poor judgment. And this is small potatoes. The human mind can delay gratification for decades if firmly settled upon a goal, which makes us masters of time in a way no other animal can know.
To frustrate desire for a higher desire speaks to a hierarchy of desires, or in Maslow's terms, of needs. Air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and above all, human attention, form a hierarchy of needs within the web of desires. We may prefer love over clothes and shelter, but at food we draw the line, excepting, of course, sacrificial situations where we have a choice to sacrifice our own survival for that of another. That this can be done is another example of the triumph of will over desire. To will what is good for another with the consequence of one's own extinction is a capacity not all possess, but indicative of what is best in the race.
Which brings into play ideals. Regard for the other as an ideal is the one of the core teachings of some religions, as in Christianity, where Christ tells us that "If a man asks you for your coat, give him your shirt as well."
Dedication to an ideal above and beyond our usual tit-for-tat morality is a feature of an integrated man, one who values his values above his desires.
There is something in us, some strength we depend upon, by which we can triumph over desire in the name of desiring the good. How many qualifications are placed upon the desire for good determines how easily the will may act on the desire for it. And often the immediate good, as in buying a junkie another fix, is trumped by a higher good, as in getting him into rehab. But he will not succeed at sobriety unless his desire for getting well exceeds his desire for getting high. As heroin takes most forms of human pain away, both emotional and physical, it must be a daunting path to abandon the land of the lotus eaters for the land of rocks and scrapes. What motivates a junkie to go straight? Here there are lots of sentimental testimonials, with any number or reasons, both personal and general, but we can say in a general way that it is some conception of a higher good that allows the will to ignore immediate gratification in the name of an imagined, perhaps half-remembered, life with no guarantee of a favorable pleasure to pain ratio. Which illustrates in passing that the pleasure-pain principle is not pre-eminent as a value by which the will is engaged, though it contributes much to decisions.
I'd rather watch TV than write right now, and in admitting this it is my will that keeps me writing, through a desire to write and at least close out my remarks properly. The desire for completion is very strong in me. I hate leaving things unfinished. Nevertheless as I dont know when this monologue will ever be finished it doesn't matter if I quit and watch TV now, a moment when my brain is better served by the passivity of television watching. as the work of writing is beginning to outweigh its pleasures.
All for tonight,
CE
As for my ongoing monologue on a theory of the mind, I am letting my mind range broadly in its pursuit of the will, and have yet to touch upon the relationship of desire to the will. Desire must precede the will, and must be processed through a myriad of contingencies, including reward and consequence, ease vs. effort of attainment, pleasure and pain-o-meters, and the opinion of others as well as an internal moral compass--to name a few. Unless hung up on a conflict, all of this and more can be processed in a second.
What is the counter-propulsive force that resists desire and restrains will? Judgment, again composed of the above and more. Still, despite judgment, desire can overcome will by the sheer power of the urge or by reason ceding permission for the irrational to flower.
Here are two examples of desire and will just performed before and after writing the above. I was hungry for a snack, some crackers or something, but there were none to my liking, so I ate most of a bag of Classic Caesar croutons. I knew they were fattening, and caused heartburn, and so forth, but my desire for them overcame my better judgment, involving only a small twinge of guilt. And while writing the paragraphs above, I had an urge to micturate, but I resisted it until the end of the second paragraph, holding desire in check.
If I held it in check long enough my urine would have eventually been released, and to do so would be a strong act of will but also a display of poor judgment. And this is small potatoes. The human mind can delay gratification for decades if firmly settled upon a goal, which makes us masters of time in a way no other animal can know.
To frustrate desire for a higher desire speaks to a hierarchy of desires, or in Maslow's terms, of needs. Air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and above all, human attention, form a hierarchy of needs within the web of desires. We may prefer love over clothes and shelter, but at food we draw the line, excepting, of course, sacrificial situations where we have a choice to sacrifice our own survival for that of another. That this can be done is another example of the triumph of will over desire. To will what is good for another with the consequence of one's own extinction is a capacity not all possess, but indicative of what is best in the race.
Which brings into play ideals. Regard for the other as an ideal is the one of the core teachings of some religions, as in Christianity, where Christ tells us that "If a man asks you for your coat, give him your shirt as well."
Dedication to an ideal above and beyond our usual tit-for-tat morality is a feature of an integrated man, one who values his values above his desires.
There is something in us, some strength we depend upon, by which we can triumph over desire in the name of desiring the good. How many qualifications are placed upon the desire for good determines how easily the will may act on the desire for it. And often the immediate good, as in buying a junkie another fix, is trumped by a higher good, as in getting him into rehab. But he will not succeed at sobriety unless his desire for getting well exceeds his desire for getting high. As heroin takes most forms of human pain away, both emotional and physical, it must be a daunting path to abandon the land of the lotus eaters for the land of rocks and scrapes. What motivates a junkie to go straight? Here there are lots of sentimental testimonials, with any number or reasons, both personal and general, but we can say in a general way that it is some conception of a higher good that allows the will to ignore immediate gratification in the name of an imagined, perhaps half-remembered, life with no guarantee of a favorable pleasure to pain ratio. Which illustrates in passing that the pleasure-pain principle is not pre-eminent as a value by which the will is engaged, though it contributes much to decisions.
I'd rather watch TV than write right now, and in admitting this it is my will that keeps me writing, through a desire to write and at least close out my remarks properly. The desire for completion is very strong in me. I hate leaving things unfinished. Nevertheless as I dont know when this monologue will ever be finished it doesn't matter if I quit and watch TV now, a moment when my brain is better served by the passivity of television watching. as the work of writing is beginning to outweigh its pleasures.
All for tonight,
CE
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
New Theory of the Mind Riffing VI
"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will." --G. B. Shaw
Let us leave the feminine aspect of the psyche for a moment and review some common models of the human personality. Christianity has long divided the self into body, soul and spirit, though some factions confine their speculation to body and soul. The tripartite model is more common, based on the creation story where God breathes his spirit into the dust and man becomes a living "soul." Which makes man an amphibian, of spiritual origin but of bodily circumstance. In this schema the spirit corresponds to God-consciousness, the soul to self-consciousness, and the body to thing-consciousness, which we share with animals. What animals have yet to demonstrate is self-consciousness, which would require of them the infinite regressive capacity of the "I" voice, for which we have no evidence.
Self-consciousness of course includes the "I" and all the gifts that come with it, from reason to fantasy and above all, the will, which is closely tied to the spirit. In the Bible man's spirit is known to strive with God's spirit, but when attuned by the Holy spirit, man's restless spirit should know peace. Of course this is a lifelong struggle, and none attains it completely. Yet the idea that God's spirit can intervene in the highest functions of the self is a very supernatural idea, one best aligned with transpersonal psychology.
Freud posited the superego, the ego and the id--or the moral center, the center of self and choice, and the primitive urges, mainly bodily and sexual, which influence the "higher" functions. Freud's theory is useful in terms of psychological defenses, but it founders on the bar of sexuality, which is much overemphasized as an organizing principle. For simplicity's sake, we can equate the id with bodily desires and the unconscious.
Jung saw the persona as the superego, or public self; the choosing self as the ego, or 'I;' in the unconscious he located the true self, the anima and animus, the shadow, and the collective unconscious of mythical archetypes. Much less bodily-driven, his model has been useful in classifying personality types when combined with his ideas of extroversion, introversion, judgment, feeling, sensation, perception, and intuition.
The formerly popular Transactional Analysis divides the self into Parent, Adult, and Child, roughly corresponding to the Superego, Ego, and Id, the difference being in its conception of internal roles, roles assumed by exposure to others, that combine to make the self therapeutic simplicity. And indeed, when we accuse ourselves of failings, we do very much sound like a parent, and when we feel the world is patently unfair, we are in touch with our child, while the adult must adjudicate the proper path, living as an adult or choosing self in relation to other adults, avoiding the easily assumed roles of parent and child that we have so well learned by experience.
Galen's ideas of temperament ruled the western world for over fifteen hundred years, through medieval times, and four temperaments or humors were postulated: the upbeat and extroverted sanguine, passionate and laughing, or blood; the brooding and pessimistic black bile of melancholy; the driving, energetic and and quick to anger, aggressive yellow bile of the choleric, and the watery bile or phlegm of the phlegmatic, also called sluggish or dull, but better conceived as unflappable. All of these temperaments can be interpreted in positive and negative ways. The melancholic is sensitive; the sanguine is passionate; the choleric is aggressive, and the phlegmatic filled with equanimity, when taken positively. Unfortunately this clinical quadrumvirate led to blood-letting to restore the balance of humors, a practice that only produces anemia and dehydration except in the rare case of heart failure, where it might actually do some good by lowering the blood volume. What is fascinating about the temperaments or humors is that they ruled western medicine for over 1500 years. One biographer of George Washington is convinced that the bloodletting applied to his pneumonia led directly to his death. But I digress.
Once we start assigning any of the above models to my model of the tree, the first split is the conscious vs. the unconscious, and where then to put the superego? Because the superego includes taboos, it must exist consciously and unconsciously, whereas Jung's more elegant persona is the socialized self, the self that seeks to follow society's requirements, though in the unconscious "shadow" we can find things like incest, a great superego taboo. Let us then put these models aside, as I seek to wrap my writing around a model that has more clarity and clinical utility.
So far I have not written anything with any great clinical application, save perhaps my modeling of forgiveness and the importance of the feminine, but clinical applications can wait while I go on.
In my schema, when the unconscious becomes conscious it joins the tree; otherwise, it stays in the roots below ground. Thus with Jung's persona we care how our tree appears to others, but feel secure that they cannot see our hidden roots of unconscious--although this is not strictly true, since we reveal our unconscious in our actions quite frequently, though they have been polished through defenses to become part of the persona.
And what are Freud's defenses? Anna Freud is the best on this with "The Ego and Its Defenses," in which many categories and examples are clearly stated, as in projection, denial, even humor (a healthy defense). A defense is a psychological response to a threat to the ego. Thus if I am unwilling to face my greed in asking my boss for an untimely raise, I instead accuse him of miserliness to prevent the collision of my true self with the ego's more complimentary projection of itself.
In all of this I am working towards being "present," being aware of root and branch, of the unconscious and the conscious, of the repressed, suppressed and expressed, in an effort to unify the self.
I cannot conceptualize the self without two indispensable features: will and language. Although I do not know what I shall next write, I am willing myself to write, and as I do language is supplied to my developing notions, which are essentially non-verbal syntheses waiting to be born. Before I write about a thing one might say it doesn't exist; and in writing about it, it has a very limited existence, circumscribed by denotation, connotation, interpretation and misinterpretation. To describe the self most clearly we must resort to models because otherwise we are left with a psychic soup. Perhaps consciousness is a soup, but our will possesses the ladle by which we scoop up certain ideas that stand out. These ideas then become a basis for a psychology, though a true psychology can only be established, finally, by an understanding of brain function. The soul or self is in the brain, easily proven by stroke victims, but in my experience most spectacularly affirmed in an eight-month old named "Gloria."
Gloria was deserted at the teaching hospital at which I trained by her parents early on. The reason? She was not human. She lacked anything above the midbrain, essentially no neocortex for synthesis, a condition called holoprosenchephaly. All she did was lie on her back, blink and have seizures. She didn't track faces, her eyes were like dolls' eyes, she had no tactile responses, just automatic reflexes. There was truly no there there, and you could see the absence on a cat scan. Nothing in medicine so unnerved me as seeing this non-human infant in a human body, kept alive by a feeding tube, her seizures only poorly controlled by anticonvulsants. She could not feel or think or respond to human touch or sounds. She was a machine, quite simply, with less personality than a dog or cat.
It is clear that the human soul is in the physical brain, which brings up a host of problems. I like to think that the necessary complexity of the 16 billion neurons of the brain and their connections, combined with exposure to environmental stimuli and bodily experience, amount to what we call human. On the other end of the lifespan we see Alzheimer's patients who appear to have lost their souls; they must be fed and diapered, and when the disease takes over completely, where a person was is only a human-shaped shell. Yet loved ones take, as in the Terry Schiavo case, undue liberties with their projections on the soulless person, convincing themselves that some response or capacity remains when it is only a grunting coincidence.
Of those things unconscious, we must admit that many are just below the surface, as in easily accessed portions of intellectual and emotional memory, which can be recalled from the near surface roots without difficulty, just as I recall the music played at the concert I attended tonight. To relegate mere memory to the unconscious is to place a much stricter requirement on what is conscious; easy recall of non-conflicted experiences is not conscious, in my view, for it has to be remembered to become conscious. We must think of the unconscious as roots at different depths, some easily communicating with the tree, some that must nearly be dug up to liberate the trauma they secret.
Freud's idea of the unconscious was that which was repressed, which we did not wish to remember, but it is clear that much is forgotten as well and only re-surfaces with proper stimulation, as when baseball's All-Star game causes me to remember my own All-Star games in Little League, a not unpleasant memory, but not necessarily a conscious memory, rather a memory I must retrieve and rarely do. Freud's idea is that the really important stuff, the traumatic experience of maturation from an infant, is buried for the ego to survive. Else how could an executive hold forth at a board meeting while thinking about his liberation from diapers at age two or three? Naturally we cannot have this sort of information leaking into our brains at any time it pleases, or we would be unable to function. To function we must filter all of the past, most of the present and some of the future. And without a mental outline, much of our conversation is basically associative: "You saw what movie? I saw the one just before it. How was the sequel?" Or, "My mom used to wear a hat like that." Or, "When you mentioned your abuse as a child I thought of mine."
Freud's priesthood felt that "free" association would naturally lead to ur-traumas, but much of it can lead in circles with no therapeutic effect except an increase in self-preoccupation, and a wish to please the therapist by digging up some really impressive childhood stuff. This is one of the basic traps of therapy; the patient will try to please the therapist, no matter what school he hails from. So those in Jungian therapy are happy to recall archetypes, those in Freudian therapy, sexually repressed material, especially the early struggle with parents, and cognitive-behavioral patients are quite simply encouraged to report on their progress toward goals agreed on with the therapist. In all cases the therapist warps the response through his prejudice toward psychological systems. Yet worse is a therapist without a system, with no way to chart the patent's growth. But that would not bother someone like Carl Rogers or Paul Tournier, who emphasize the interpersonal in therapy, where simply "positive regard" for the patient yields results. And it does.
What is the chief factor in whether a therapist is helpful? Whether the patient likes him or not. And if the patient likes the therapist, he will try to please him as well, trying to gain his approval; it is inevitable. Thus all therapists are behaviorists and cognitive therapists, because they reward the brain for certain processes more than others.
Back to the brain. If the majority of personality, say 75% (as I believe) is congenital, how much overall effect can a therapist have, anyway? Actually a great effect, if therapy is directed toward exploring the desires of one's true self and putting aside the expectations of others, even the therapist. When I have practiced therapy I know the patient is on the way when they disagree with me and treat me as an equal. In so doing they demonstrate the affirmation of their true selves, or better, learn to accept the brain they were born with it and all its idiosyncrasies and prejudices.
I have been typing for some time without regard to organization, so let me take a moment to review. I envision the human personality as a tree, the unconscious below ground, the conscious above, and their junction, or trunk, the seat of the will. From both conscious and unconscious sources we are influenced, and the greatest act of intentional consciousness is a verbally premeditated action. Many if not most of our actions are automatic, which properly belong to the monitoring system of the brain and body; how we tie our shoes and brush our teeth need no updated verbal instruction. Even a new-fangled toothbrush is more used than discussed in the mind; the hands and mouth adjust without a lecture. But to make a list on which "toothbrush" appears is a very conscious act. Should automatic behaviors be considered conscious or unconscious? I say conscious because we are aware of them, however peripherally, but not so peripherally that we can't identify a missed eyelet in a shoe or a sore gum while brushing.
I should add, as an ongoing personal experience of the self on which these musings are based, that I decided to stop after the above paragraph. Gathering myself on the porch with a night view I thought about playing the guitar to experiment in arpeggios and other techniques of the Jango Reinhardt-style guitar I heard tonight, whereupon I projected a voice internally that cautioned me, "You don't have the energy to do that right now. Just edit this piece once and then go to bed." So my superego, my parent, my adult, perhaps even my spirit, spoke to me--realistically, I might add--but only because I willed that cautionary voice into existence.
To be continued...
Let us leave the feminine aspect of the psyche for a moment and review some common models of the human personality. Christianity has long divided the self into body, soul and spirit, though some factions confine their speculation to body and soul. The tripartite model is more common, based on the creation story where God breathes his spirit into the dust and man becomes a living "soul." Which makes man an amphibian, of spiritual origin but of bodily circumstance. In this schema the spirit corresponds to God-consciousness, the soul to self-consciousness, and the body to thing-consciousness, which we share with animals. What animals have yet to demonstrate is self-consciousness, which would require of them the infinite regressive capacity of the "I" voice, for which we have no evidence.
Self-consciousness of course includes the "I" and all the gifts that come with it, from reason to fantasy and above all, the will, which is closely tied to the spirit. In the Bible man's spirit is known to strive with God's spirit, but when attuned by the Holy spirit, man's restless spirit should know peace. Of course this is a lifelong struggle, and none attains it completely. Yet the idea that God's spirit can intervene in the highest functions of the self is a very supernatural idea, one best aligned with transpersonal psychology.
Freud posited the superego, the ego and the id--or the moral center, the center of self and choice, and the primitive urges, mainly bodily and sexual, which influence the "higher" functions. Freud's theory is useful in terms of psychological defenses, but it founders on the bar of sexuality, which is much overemphasized as an organizing principle. For simplicity's sake, we can equate the id with bodily desires and the unconscious.
Jung saw the persona as the superego, or public self; the choosing self as the ego, or 'I;' in the unconscious he located the true self, the anima and animus, the shadow, and the collective unconscious of mythical archetypes. Much less bodily-driven, his model has been useful in classifying personality types when combined with his ideas of extroversion, introversion, judgment, feeling, sensation, perception, and intuition.
The formerly popular Transactional Analysis divides the self into Parent, Adult, and Child, roughly corresponding to the Superego, Ego, and Id, the difference being in its conception of internal roles, roles assumed by exposure to others, that combine to make the self therapeutic simplicity. And indeed, when we accuse ourselves of failings, we do very much sound like a parent, and when we feel the world is patently unfair, we are in touch with our child, while the adult must adjudicate the proper path, living as an adult or choosing self in relation to other adults, avoiding the easily assumed roles of parent and child that we have so well learned by experience.
Galen's ideas of temperament ruled the western world for over fifteen hundred years, through medieval times, and four temperaments or humors were postulated: the upbeat and extroverted sanguine, passionate and laughing, or blood; the brooding and pessimistic black bile of melancholy; the driving, energetic and and quick to anger, aggressive yellow bile of the choleric, and the watery bile or phlegm of the phlegmatic, also called sluggish or dull, but better conceived as unflappable. All of these temperaments can be interpreted in positive and negative ways. The melancholic is sensitive; the sanguine is passionate; the choleric is aggressive, and the phlegmatic filled with equanimity, when taken positively. Unfortunately this clinical quadrumvirate led to blood-letting to restore the balance of humors, a practice that only produces anemia and dehydration except in the rare case of heart failure, where it might actually do some good by lowering the blood volume. What is fascinating about the temperaments or humors is that they ruled western medicine for over 1500 years. One biographer of George Washington is convinced that the bloodletting applied to his pneumonia led directly to his death. But I digress.
Once we start assigning any of the above models to my model of the tree, the first split is the conscious vs. the unconscious, and where then to put the superego? Because the superego includes taboos, it must exist consciously and unconsciously, whereas Jung's more elegant persona is the socialized self, the self that seeks to follow society's requirements, though in the unconscious "shadow" we can find things like incest, a great superego taboo. Let us then put these models aside, as I seek to wrap my writing around a model that has more clarity and clinical utility.
So far I have not written anything with any great clinical application, save perhaps my modeling of forgiveness and the importance of the feminine, but clinical applications can wait while I go on.
In my schema, when the unconscious becomes conscious it joins the tree; otherwise, it stays in the roots below ground. Thus with Jung's persona we care how our tree appears to others, but feel secure that they cannot see our hidden roots of unconscious--although this is not strictly true, since we reveal our unconscious in our actions quite frequently, though they have been polished through defenses to become part of the persona.
And what are Freud's defenses? Anna Freud is the best on this with "The Ego and Its Defenses," in which many categories and examples are clearly stated, as in projection, denial, even humor (a healthy defense). A defense is a psychological response to a threat to the ego. Thus if I am unwilling to face my greed in asking my boss for an untimely raise, I instead accuse him of miserliness to prevent the collision of my true self with the ego's more complimentary projection of itself.
In all of this I am working towards being "present," being aware of root and branch, of the unconscious and the conscious, of the repressed, suppressed and expressed, in an effort to unify the self.
I cannot conceptualize the self without two indispensable features: will and language. Although I do not know what I shall next write, I am willing myself to write, and as I do language is supplied to my developing notions, which are essentially non-verbal syntheses waiting to be born. Before I write about a thing one might say it doesn't exist; and in writing about it, it has a very limited existence, circumscribed by denotation, connotation, interpretation and misinterpretation. To describe the self most clearly we must resort to models because otherwise we are left with a psychic soup. Perhaps consciousness is a soup, but our will possesses the ladle by which we scoop up certain ideas that stand out. These ideas then become a basis for a psychology, though a true psychology can only be established, finally, by an understanding of brain function. The soul or self is in the brain, easily proven by stroke victims, but in my experience most spectacularly affirmed in an eight-month old named "Gloria."
Gloria was deserted at the teaching hospital at which I trained by her parents early on. The reason? She was not human. She lacked anything above the midbrain, essentially no neocortex for synthesis, a condition called holoprosenchephaly. All she did was lie on her back, blink and have seizures. She didn't track faces, her eyes were like dolls' eyes, she had no tactile responses, just automatic reflexes. There was truly no there there, and you could see the absence on a cat scan. Nothing in medicine so unnerved me as seeing this non-human infant in a human body, kept alive by a feeding tube, her seizures only poorly controlled by anticonvulsants. She could not feel or think or respond to human touch or sounds. She was a machine, quite simply, with less personality than a dog or cat.
It is clear that the human soul is in the physical brain, which brings up a host of problems. I like to think that the necessary complexity of the 16 billion neurons of the brain and their connections, combined with exposure to environmental stimuli and bodily experience, amount to what we call human. On the other end of the lifespan we see Alzheimer's patients who appear to have lost their souls; they must be fed and diapered, and when the disease takes over completely, where a person was is only a human-shaped shell. Yet loved ones take, as in the Terry Schiavo case, undue liberties with their projections on the soulless person, convincing themselves that some response or capacity remains when it is only a grunting coincidence.
Of those things unconscious, we must admit that many are just below the surface, as in easily accessed portions of intellectual and emotional memory, which can be recalled from the near surface roots without difficulty, just as I recall the music played at the concert I attended tonight. To relegate mere memory to the unconscious is to place a much stricter requirement on what is conscious; easy recall of non-conflicted experiences is not conscious, in my view, for it has to be remembered to become conscious. We must think of the unconscious as roots at different depths, some easily communicating with the tree, some that must nearly be dug up to liberate the trauma they secret.
Freud's idea of the unconscious was that which was repressed, which we did not wish to remember, but it is clear that much is forgotten as well and only re-surfaces with proper stimulation, as when baseball's All-Star game causes me to remember my own All-Star games in Little League, a not unpleasant memory, but not necessarily a conscious memory, rather a memory I must retrieve and rarely do. Freud's idea is that the really important stuff, the traumatic experience of maturation from an infant, is buried for the ego to survive. Else how could an executive hold forth at a board meeting while thinking about his liberation from diapers at age two or three? Naturally we cannot have this sort of information leaking into our brains at any time it pleases, or we would be unable to function. To function we must filter all of the past, most of the present and some of the future. And without a mental outline, much of our conversation is basically associative: "You saw what movie? I saw the one just before it. How was the sequel?" Or, "My mom used to wear a hat like that." Or, "When you mentioned your abuse as a child I thought of mine."
Freud's priesthood felt that "free" association would naturally lead to ur-traumas, but much of it can lead in circles with no therapeutic effect except an increase in self-preoccupation, and a wish to please the therapist by digging up some really impressive childhood stuff. This is one of the basic traps of therapy; the patient will try to please the therapist, no matter what school he hails from. So those in Jungian therapy are happy to recall archetypes, those in Freudian therapy, sexually repressed material, especially the early struggle with parents, and cognitive-behavioral patients are quite simply encouraged to report on their progress toward goals agreed on with the therapist. In all cases the therapist warps the response through his prejudice toward psychological systems. Yet worse is a therapist without a system, with no way to chart the patent's growth. But that would not bother someone like Carl Rogers or Paul Tournier, who emphasize the interpersonal in therapy, where simply "positive regard" for the patient yields results. And it does.
What is the chief factor in whether a therapist is helpful? Whether the patient likes him or not. And if the patient likes the therapist, he will try to please him as well, trying to gain his approval; it is inevitable. Thus all therapists are behaviorists and cognitive therapists, because they reward the brain for certain processes more than others.
Back to the brain. If the majority of personality, say 75% (as I believe) is congenital, how much overall effect can a therapist have, anyway? Actually a great effect, if therapy is directed toward exploring the desires of one's true self and putting aside the expectations of others, even the therapist. When I have practiced therapy I know the patient is on the way when they disagree with me and treat me as an equal. In so doing they demonstrate the affirmation of their true selves, or better, learn to accept the brain they were born with it and all its idiosyncrasies and prejudices.
I have been typing for some time without regard to organization, so let me take a moment to review. I envision the human personality as a tree, the unconscious below ground, the conscious above, and their junction, or trunk, the seat of the will. From both conscious and unconscious sources we are influenced, and the greatest act of intentional consciousness is a verbally premeditated action. Many if not most of our actions are automatic, which properly belong to the monitoring system of the brain and body; how we tie our shoes and brush our teeth need no updated verbal instruction. Even a new-fangled toothbrush is more used than discussed in the mind; the hands and mouth adjust without a lecture. But to make a list on which "toothbrush" appears is a very conscious act. Should automatic behaviors be considered conscious or unconscious? I say conscious because we are aware of them, however peripherally, but not so peripherally that we can't identify a missed eyelet in a shoe or a sore gum while brushing.
I should add, as an ongoing personal experience of the self on which these musings are based, that I decided to stop after the above paragraph. Gathering myself on the porch with a night view I thought about playing the guitar to experiment in arpeggios and other techniques of the Jango Reinhardt-style guitar I heard tonight, whereupon I projected a voice internally that cautioned me, "You don't have the energy to do that right now. Just edit this piece once and then go to bed." So my superego, my parent, my adult, perhaps even my spirit, spoke to me--realistically, I might add--but only because I willed that cautionary voice into existence.
To be continued...
Monday, July 14, 2008
Theory of the Mind V: The Miracle of the Knife, Forgiveness and the Feminine.
"Your recent entries exceed the ambitions of a blog. As blog entries, I feel they are too demanding a read. Do you plan to systematize them in a more formal sense?"
So spake my most reliable literary correspondent. Right now I am just riffing as I go, but my scattershot approach has already borne fruit.
Today at the Mendocino Headlands, picnicking with my daughter, was an orange leather couch some youths had hauled down to the cliffs, nearly identical to a couch my first wife and I purchased when we first moved to San Clemente, one of the happier times in our marriage. More miraculously, a man at the headlands sold me the exact model of a Buck Knife he'd bought at a Rainbow gathering that my second wife purchased in Alaska but kept as a secret for two months until my birthday. I had pointed it out at a knife shop in Juneau from the display window after hours, and though she was terrible at keeping secrets, she kept the surprise from me, which I took as a sign of love. Further, my third wife, the love of my life, broke that same knife in Mexico trying to jimmy a lock that separated her from her ransomed service dog, whom I afterwards recovered through legal means, though we each spent a night in jail over him due to our misguided attempts at physical intervention. After breaking it, she threw the knife away without consulting me, and the genuine replica fell into my hands today for half the price of a new one. Here is a picture of it:
Buck Vanguard
I chose it because it was a strong, practical knife good for many uses, from skinning to cleaning to slicing rawhide or carving wood. Its main disadvantage is also its strength, a fixed handle with a thick blade, whose steel needs a lot of attention to maintain a fine edge. But it is intended for field dressing, just as this new turn in my blog is intended for stripping down my consciousness to its various processes.
I take these little synchronicities as signs that I am making progress in the area of forgiveness toward past wives, though my second marriage carries none of the weight of my first. The second divorce was also worlds easier, especially because children were not an issue. My second wife and I parted at exactly the right time for me to meet Kathleen, whom I consider my true wife--in Jung's anima terms, my "Mary," though this is unfair to my former ones, as my capacity for partnership increased as I matured, though my finding Kathleen is a love story for the ages.
My first marriage was instigated by infatuation and impulsiveness, the second by friendship, the third by true love, composed of eros, agape and phileo. My relationships to women thus improved as I progressed as a person.
From the viewpoint of my second wife, my great shortcoming was that I was not necessarily "in love" with her, but I loved her as best I could and we had a better partnership than I did with my first wife.
Pain can shut us up emotionally, compartmentalizing great griefs into untouchable boxes of denial. But the unconscious teaches us that where our pain is greatest is where we most need to go in order to heal the root. If we ignore the quarantine imposed on one root or branch for its painfulness, we can limit the tree, even poison it with enforced repression. When the need for light exceeds the need for repression, the psychic economy can open up new territory to health.
If we are only partly healed, it is because all griefs lead to one great grief, that of emotional isolation or blunting. This is evidence of non-self, where the self has been stymied by expending its energy on emotional quarantine of certain distressful periods. We all fear being swallowed up by the void, and much of what we seal off is not a void but rather dark matter needing exposure.
When I think of the universe I think of the expanding stars as masculine and the vacuum of space as feminine, but all selves partake of both masculine and feminine qualities, as Jung points out in his theory of anima and animus. Woman envelops, man invades. Woman comforts, man protects. Women help build civilizations, men tear them down. Women symbolize the receptive, man the initiative. Women often go around while men go through, women more often make peace while men confront. Men want the truth, they want to be right, and women prefer the truth of social compromise. All of these are traditional traits of the idealized masculine and feminine, but I also know, as a man, what it is to envelop a baby in my arms and rock her to sleep, what it is to absorb the negative verbal energies of a teenager without counter-attacking, how to go with the flow and make social peace at the price of a few intellectual objections, because in me I find the feminine as well. In marrying three times and fathering three daughters, surely my exposure to the feminine has been a strong influence in my development, though it took a while for me to embrace it consciously.
How does this polar concept of gender traits fit in with the self and its functions? There are both conscious and unconscious identifications with the male and female principle in all of us. Those more integrated will have their "opposite" gender traits more conscious than those who have yet to make peace with their idealized opposites. Once conscious, the feminine or masculine becomes a strength for the opposite gdnder, and can be accessed by intention, not just by the imprinting of childhood from parental imagos.
"Old men should be explorers." --T. S. Eliot
And young men should have the freedom to make fools of themselves, to follow their hearts into adventure, and women should have the same opportunity, though differences in brain structure an acculturation incline men to fill this role more naturally. Even as female astronauts succeed I conjecture that there are many more qualified male applicants.)
We need the comforter and the prophet, the enveloper and the initiator.
In biological terms, men and women of previous centuries lived these traits out as their destiny, especially in the act of conception. Now technology has complicated such roles, as in the recent birth of a baby to a woman surgically altered to appear a man, utilizing her still present ovaries and uterus.
The differences in idealized gender archetypes form a conscious and unconscious repository of feminine and masculine approaches to life. Men usually want to "fix" things, to stop a woman from crying, to solve her problems, while women are more likely to accept another's complaints without the need to find a solution, learning to be with the sufferer rather than to try to mitigate the suffering through action. Men get uncomfortable when women complain, often thinking it's because of some shortcoming of theirs, and masculine anxiety makes them want to answer the problem rather than envelop the problem with emotional solidarity.
Though necessarily oversimplified, such traits allow the human will, the center of our construct so far, different approaches to the demands of persons. Something perceived as a problem to a man may as easily be perceived as a wound by a woman, needing tending rather than surgery. Women are by nature more socially aware and political, and work better in groups than men, or at the very least, differently. They are much better at reaching a consensus that satisfies all than men are, who make stands for concessions rather stubbornly. In a word, men like to be right and women like to be loved.
All this affords the self that has integrated the unconscious feminine and masculine a greater palette of responses from which to choose. I, for one, have learned by long practice to listen to a feminine complaint without feeling the need to solve it. It is often enough just to sit with the person as they vent, and in that action is much wisdom, as Job's worthless comforters proved when they first opened their mouths in judgment.
The feminine has more patience as well, and more investment in the process than the result. Impatience is my cardinal sin, and I have learned much from the feminine to reduce it. Not that my impatience is cured, for it is not only a sin of pride but also a manifestation of an intervention-oriented self when it comes to problem-solving.
If a man has claimed his masculine side but neglects his feminine, he may end up a grotesque exaggeration of manhood as in the celluloid image of John Wayne, whose character is often confused by the power of women. Men he can handle; women are a mystery. In addition he embodies the exaggerated concept of the lone wolf, the maverick, the self-made man. There is no such thing. There are degrees of independence, but all of us are subject to interdependence except for hermits who grow their own food. If no man is an island, some pretend to be, and for the most part, such persons are not happy, for they have sorely neglected their feminine side. All of us must learn the feminine in life, and one of its chief virtues is the ability to ask for help, as in the previous example of the surgeon. To the myth of the self-made man, I say: "Grow up! You have stood on the shoulders of giants." And by giants I mean not only explorers that have gone before, but the very early influences of primary caregivers, traditionally the parents. Nothing looms so large in the imprinting of the self, as object theorists have shown. The only factor larger is the innate personality as determined by the roll of the DNA, for this determines how such influences are perceived and employed.
There is no self-made self. The self is a living embodiment of all the selves it has rubbed against, for better or worse, along with its native intelligence and tendencies. In affirming our uniqueness we at the same time must affirm the diversity of influences, not only that were chosen for us, but that we chose. Freedom is only limited by our conception of it.
To be continued...
So spake my most reliable literary correspondent. Right now I am just riffing as I go, but my scattershot approach has already borne fruit.
Today at the Mendocino Headlands, picnicking with my daughter, was an orange leather couch some youths had hauled down to the cliffs, nearly identical to a couch my first wife and I purchased when we first moved to San Clemente, one of the happier times in our marriage. More miraculously, a man at the headlands sold me the exact model of a Buck Knife he'd bought at a Rainbow gathering that my second wife purchased in Alaska but kept as a secret for two months until my birthday. I had pointed it out at a knife shop in Juneau from the display window after hours, and though she was terrible at keeping secrets, she kept the surprise from me, which I took as a sign of love. Further, my third wife, the love of my life, broke that same knife in Mexico trying to jimmy a lock that separated her from her ransomed service dog, whom I afterwards recovered through legal means, though we each spent a night in jail over him due to our misguided attempts at physical intervention. After breaking it, she threw the knife away without consulting me, and the genuine replica fell into my hands today for half the price of a new one. Here is a picture of it:
Buck Vanguard
I chose it because it was a strong, practical knife good for many uses, from skinning to cleaning to slicing rawhide or carving wood. Its main disadvantage is also its strength, a fixed handle with a thick blade, whose steel needs a lot of attention to maintain a fine edge. But it is intended for field dressing, just as this new turn in my blog is intended for stripping down my consciousness to its various processes.
I take these little synchronicities as signs that I am making progress in the area of forgiveness toward past wives, though my second marriage carries none of the weight of my first. The second divorce was also worlds easier, especially because children were not an issue. My second wife and I parted at exactly the right time for me to meet Kathleen, whom I consider my true wife--in Jung's anima terms, my "Mary," though this is unfair to my former ones, as my capacity for partnership increased as I matured, though my finding Kathleen is a love story for the ages.
My first marriage was instigated by infatuation and impulsiveness, the second by friendship, the third by true love, composed of eros, agape and phileo. My relationships to women thus improved as I progressed as a person.
From the viewpoint of my second wife, my great shortcoming was that I was not necessarily "in love" with her, but I loved her as best I could and we had a better partnership than I did with my first wife.
Pain can shut us up emotionally, compartmentalizing great griefs into untouchable boxes of denial. But the unconscious teaches us that where our pain is greatest is where we most need to go in order to heal the root. If we ignore the quarantine imposed on one root or branch for its painfulness, we can limit the tree, even poison it with enforced repression. When the need for light exceeds the need for repression, the psychic economy can open up new territory to health.
If we are only partly healed, it is because all griefs lead to one great grief, that of emotional isolation or blunting. This is evidence of non-self, where the self has been stymied by expending its energy on emotional quarantine of certain distressful periods. We all fear being swallowed up by the void, and much of what we seal off is not a void but rather dark matter needing exposure.
When I think of the universe I think of the expanding stars as masculine and the vacuum of space as feminine, but all selves partake of both masculine and feminine qualities, as Jung points out in his theory of anima and animus. Woman envelops, man invades. Woman comforts, man protects. Women help build civilizations, men tear them down. Women symbolize the receptive, man the initiative. Women often go around while men go through, women more often make peace while men confront. Men want the truth, they want to be right, and women prefer the truth of social compromise. All of these are traditional traits of the idealized masculine and feminine, but I also know, as a man, what it is to envelop a baby in my arms and rock her to sleep, what it is to absorb the negative verbal energies of a teenager without counter-attacking, how to go with the flow and make social peace at the price of a few intellectual objections, because in me I find the feminine as well. In marrying three times and fathering three daughters, surely my exposure to the feminine has been a strong influence in my development, though it took a while for me to embrace it consciously.
How does this polar concept of gender traits fit in with the self and its functions? There are both conscious and unconscious identifications with the male and female principle in all of us. Those more integrated will have their "opposite" gender traits more conscious than those who have yet to make peace with their idealized opposites. Once conscious, the feminine or masculine becomes a strength for the opposite gdnder, and can be accessed by intention, not just by the imprinting of childhood from parental imagos.
"Old men should be explorers." --T. S. Eliot
And young men should have the freedom to make fools of themselves, to follow their hearts into adventure, and women should have the same opportunity, though differences in brain structure an acculturation incline men to fill this role more naturally. Even as female astronauts succeed I conjecture that there are many more qualified male applicants.)
We need the comforter and the prophet, the enveloper and the initiator.
In biological terms, men and women of previous centuries lived these traits out as their destiny, especially in the act of conception. Now technology has complicated such roles, as in the recent birth of a baby to a woman surgically altered to appear a man, utilizing her still present ovaries and uterus.
The differences in idealized gender archetypes form a conscious and unconscious repository of feminine and masculine approaches to life. Men usually want to "fix" things, to stop a woman from crying, to solve her problems, while women are more likely to accept another's complaints without the need to find a solution, learning to be with the sufferer rather than to try to mitigate the suffering through action. Men get uncomfortable when women complain, often thinking it's because of some shortcoming of theirs, and masculine anxiety makes them want to answer the problem rather than envelop the problem with emotional solidarity.
Though necessarily oversimplified, such traits allow the human will, the center of our construct so far, different approaches to the demands of persons. Something perceived as a problem to a man may as easily be perceived as a wound by a woman, needing tending rather than surgery. Women are by nature more socially aware and political, and work better in groups than men, or at the very least, differently. They are much better at reaching a consensus that satisfies all than men are, who make stands for concessions rather stubbornly. In a word, men like to be right and women like to be loved.
All this affords the self that has integrated the unconscious feminine and masculine a greater palette of responses from which to choose. I, for one, have learned by long practice to listen to a feminine complaint without feeling the need to solve it. It is often enough just to sit with the person as they vent, and in that action is much wisdom, as Job's worthless comforters proved when they first opened their mouths in judgment.
The feminine has more patience as well, and more investment in the process than the result. Impatience is my cardinal sin, and I have learned much from the feminine to reduce it. Not that my impatience is cured, for it is not only a sin of pride but also a manifestation of an intervention-oriented self when it comes to problem-solving.
If a man has claimed his masculine side but neglects his feminine, he may end up a grotesque exaggeration of manhood as in the celluloid image of John Wayne, whose character is often confused by the power of women. Men he can handle; women are a mystery. In addition he embodies the exaggerated concept of the lone wolf, the maverick, the self-made man. There is no such thing. There are degrees of independence, but all of us are subject to interdependence except for hermits who grow their own food. If no man is an island, some pretend to be, and for the most part, such persons are not happy, for they have sorely neglected their feminine side. All of us must learn the feminine in life, and one of its chief virtues is the ability to ask for help, as in the previous example of the surgeon. To the myth of the self-made man, I say: "Grow up! You have stood on the shoulders of giants." And by giants I mean not only explorers that have gone before, but the very early influences of primary caregivers, traditionally the parents. Nothing looms so large in the imprinting of the self, as object theorists have shown. The only factor larger is the innate personality as determined by the roll of the DNA, for this determines how such influences are perceived and employed.
There is no self-made self. The self is a living embodiment of all the selves it has rubbed against, for better or worse, along with its native intelligence and tendencies. In affirming our uniqueness we at the same time must affirm the diversity of influences, not only that were chosen for us, but that we chose. Freedom is only limited by our conception of it.
To be continued...
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