I never would have thought myself fortunate to think like a rat, yet here i sit in a 1st rain-soaked sort-of modern home in an agrarian foreign gulag of a UNESCO site. I beat back the vermin invasion with no more than odor - who’d have thought a boutique “peppermint” essential odor would render me the pied piper of an ancient asian trading post - up to its gills with predatory capitalists · and it just gets weirder and weirder. The rats are not happy that i burned peppermint incense just as their domicile received its 1st rain, and i feel their pain. Sort or like seeing images of Mussollini’s hanging upside down at the end of WWII. Fascists are rats for no more than they are at the service of corporate thugs, and have always been .;
and i am no better for my cultural arrogance - in U.S. today understood as “white privilege”. This cultural assertion is not something i have always understood - during the 60’s i often envied Black Men the solidarity they seem to enjoy by belonging to a cohort that was indivisible. I grew up in a suburban Southern California demographic that claimed a whole lot more than it delivered. The police arrested me on numerous occasions - some; on infractions, some on no more than “differences of opinions.” In the high school i attended, that was enough, but once those i disagreed with became authorities, that was no longer enough.
Now i sit wondering who gives a fuck about my rotting body and it’s no longer funny. .. 020720 so i stopped pressing and went to relax. Now a day later and another bicycle circuit under my belt, and while not entirely feeling better i am more at peace and comfortable about where i am at - alone, older and still curious · i am not seeking counsel outside of what comes to me from my interior; nor is it always palatable. I have always been sexual which doesn’t dovetail easily with a solitary stature that that corresponds to a fallacious belief that others are more worthy of company than myself. After 20 years of intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy and another 65 years of sacred devotion to plumbing the mystery of life, i have found no easy answers - but i am more comfortable with the bad answers i find and no longer evaluate my success or failures based on other’s approval · i hope.
Nor is that a cut & dry condition with many cul-de-sacs and false starts, but i no longer berate myself for using cliches, or ending a sentence with preposition. Whatever compensation i utilize in defense of reaction formation get vetted with what one therapist described as “hyper vigilance,” actually two separate Doctors described the behavior in different ways - one using the description i just described; the other Doctor using jokes to illuminate one oblivious to the good around them: for the sake of literary development, we’ll try abbreviating both - the first was a Jew seated next to two SS operatives during the 2nd WW; Jew oblivious to his danger and thirsty, “Oye, am I thirsty, oye am i thirsty & on & on.” finally Heinrich tells Drumpf, “for god’s sake give the schmuck some wasser to shut him the fuck up.” Drumpf good nazi that he was obeys orders and gives the poor schmuck a drink of wasser, only to hear; “Oye was i thirsty, oye was i . ..” The 2nd was about a sophisticated traveling salesman who got a flat tire in the wilds of the cornfields of Iowa and had nothing he could do but walk because there was a time when cell phones didn’t exist. This salesman, walked and walked and talked to himself a lot. “Fucking hicks, here in the middle of nowhere - what am i gonna find but fucking hicks. Mile after mile and hour after hour until finally the poor wound up city slicker spied a farmhouse alight, but it was too late for when he knocked on the door to ask for help, all he could articulate was - “Fuck you, you can keep your goddamn jack and spare tire, i wouldn’t use them if you begged me.”
We all could benefit from therapy, not the over inflated “wellbeing for a profit” kind found in the US of A and those medical industries modeling such a selfish business model, but the kind oriented by suffering of those around us who have been helped by a consistent attention to probing the difficulties we each face in daily life · probing in such a way that helps each of us move toward wellness as we conceive that state to be. I should have died any number of times in my life, beginning with pneumonia at age one - that i have not yet died does not make me feel brash, nor has it cornered me in a state of constant fear wherein i believe my next move could be my last. And my survival has not encouraged me to be reckless with the time i have left, nor manic about making every last second count for something. I sit closer to wonder than i ever have, and i’ve always sat fairly close to that state of confusion. What i strive for in these chronicles is to establish and maintain a friendship with one the world has not often been fair to, nor friendly with - myself. .. continued on 020720
jts 01/07/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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