I am reading a story from a lent book; it should be more painful than it is, for it involves artists and dysfunctional families. I do not understand the person who handed me the book though i have tried, my fantasy is that she would like me to know what she discovered in the book and thereby understand her a little better. This form of communication in psychiatric jargon, as best i understand is called referential thinking. I know this because i met a young couple who lived across the street from me in Santa Ana, CA during my first marriage fiasco. He was a Psychiatric Intern and she was a newly minted dance professor at the local Jr. College. Later after the whirling propellor blade who was also my 1st wife left for parts unknown the young Dr. looked at me very earnestly and said, “you know she was a paranoid schizophrenic, right?” In retrospect i have to ask myself how someone could graduate from University with 4.0 GPA and a degree in Chemistry could be quite so obtuse, but that’s psychiatry for ya’. Nor am i defaming the study of the mind, my life would have been far more chaotic than it has been without the years of therapy i spent answering pointed questions which as often as not reflected the pain of the questioner as did my own - but that’s another essay, altogether.
There is no escape from pain, that much i have learned. No substance on earth is strong enough to dissolve the incessant ache that comes with breathing. My first awareness of that physical pain related to breath was contracting Pneumonia at age 1. The conventional wisdom of the time dictated that the infant should not be exposed to the parent, lest it impair the healing process. That was my 1st real introduction to the emotional pain that accompanies so many physical maladies. When i was 7 or so, our family took an extended driving trek through Mexico - 2 weeks into the adventure, while wading very far out into the shallow bay of Guaymas with my eldest brother i stepped on a what was later learned to be a Sting Ray, it responded like any animal might and whipped stinger into the heel of my foot. Our family had always been close to the ocean and so up until that time had no fear of the water. From that moment forward i gained a very real and immediate fear of pain. I had to walk back to shore, because my bellowing offended my older brother such that he refused to carry me once i could no longer contain my pain silently. That was a good lesson, for there are few i’ve met who can abide the howl of another’s misery - myself included.
I’ve gotten better over the years as the injuries piled up, both at quieting my own shrieks of discomfort, but also in abiding the ache of others - articulated or not. It is not a healthy place to be where one does not feel free to express their discomfort, or at least to face whatever it is that is causing one to ache. Healing, i have found starts when one can sit closely to the source of pain, be it a broken heart, a broken foot or a broken eardrum all of which i have endured - not always quietly, but to the extent i am, as a fine friend once remarked oh so ironically, “sitting up and taking nourishment.” What was harder to mend than what i have endured is the fear of pain, and it has proven to be the most dangerous of my many injuries. There are a vast array of strategies in today’s world designed to alleviate physical and emotional discomfort - sitting here now pondering the question i cannot honestly say whether fear of pain is an emotional discomfort or spiritual. I have spoken elsewhere in these chronicles about the bungalow in Costa Mesa, CA that seems to have been such a nexus for my early years, to the degree that it from that same neighborhood i departed for my journey to Vietnam 45 years later - and that will also have to wait another essay.
They were heady days 1975-76 and in my young poetic mind i had conceived 4 of us as “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse”, there was even an Albrecht Dürer poster honoring this referential conceit of mine; though i’m sure i was alone in this fantasy. In truth these young friends, were surrogates for my family which was dissolving before my very eyes. Today i believe this dissolution was due to greed, hatred and delusion - the same poisons i have resorted to throughout the years for quelling pain. I did not understand then how much of that pain was inflicted by my own hand. In 1976 - the year from hell, as i fondly remember it, I broke the #5 metacarpal in both hands on different dates; met married and divorced my first wife, the Paranoid Schizophrenic Cherokee from Long Beach, and dropped through a covered hole in a roof we were replacing dragging my right forearm down across an unspooling role of flashing and opening a gash in the inside of my right arm which required 60 stitches to close - my left hand was in a cast from the 2nd broken bone of the year, but the Cherokee was gone.
Oddly, i could go on and on, but that could become tedious; besides it’s almost the drinking hour, and i know you have better things to do. The point of all this is that there is no hiding from the misery of existence. The best any of us can hope for is 1) discover of the injuries you acquire those that were avoidable. Not avoidable in the sense of a castle and drawbridge you construct to protect yourself from the serfs you have been exploiting on your royal road to success, but avoidable through mindfulness, looking both ways crossing a street - leaving unkind people to their unkindness, being cheerful and of service where you can help, and letting yourself off the hook if you can’t. 2) Accept your frailty and do not deny your discomfort. If someone repeatedly is abrasive and cruel, know they suffer far more than you. When you find yourself being abrasive and cruel, look it in the face; find the wounded child that would lash out as you have and listen to their hurt - try to speak to that part of your nature seeking revenge, soothe him or her as you would like to be soothed at the injustice of existence. What i am recommending is not easy, i know only because i am so shitty at it - what i also know is that when i use words like shitty to describe myself it is dishonest and untrue but also useful in pointing the way to where i can heal my own pain. Are we having fun yet?
jts 02/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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