Freud vs. Jung

You know, if someone wants to write a catchy tune about Jung I will post that as well.  

Until then: I cannot stop watching this.

Enjoy.

Much affection,

~ Bernard

...What Did You Say?

As I walked down the street today, I passed a young lady who was carrying some shopping bags.  She was white.  On the opposite side of the walk, there were two men, walking the opposite direction.  One of them yelled to the woman who had just passed me by: "Hey, white girl!", and kept repeating versions of this greeting.  I turned to watch the woman walk away, ignoring them, and I saw the men waving their arms at her and making kissing noises.  The men were Dominican.  Had I screamed, "Hey, Dominicans!" at the men across the street, as I wanted to, this would have made me look like an asshole.

My love for yelling observations is huge.  I like greeting things that are really, really obvious.  It really makes me happy: "Greetings pigeon!  Hello small man wearing the tiny hat!  Good afternoon very large rat sitting inside the cheetos bag!"  I enjoy obvious greetings.  By these examples, I should have really loved "Hey, White Girl!" as the possible best thing I'd heard all day.  I mean, she was white.  Hello.  Specificity is important.  They taught us that in school.

I failed to mention above that the more the woman ignored the men the more insistent, and more graphic they became.  This is not the first time I've seen this happen, regardless of who's yelling and at whom they're yelling.  I've never yelled at a woman before.  I notice women every day, but I don't yell at them.  My mother would have definitely disapproved.  The pigeons and the small men and the rats in cheetos bags don't usually respond to my greetings either.  It's an understood that I am just acknowledging their existence.  I'm specific, but I'm not really endearing.

I mean maybe that's exactly what men are doing.  Other than being pigs, they're acknowledging a beautiful woman's existence in the only way they know how.  They tell it like it is.  It's a nice thing to do.  Maybe women need to be reminded how beautiful they are all the time and that's why men are usually so obvious about it.  Maybe if women were more confident, men wouldn't yell at them so much.  Wait...no, no the more confident a woman is the more men yell at them.  Beautiful women give men tourretts.  We get short-circuited.  It happens.

Men: when next you are out and you wish to acknowledge something you enjoy or even find attractive, like a beautiful woman of any particular color or build maybe try "good morning" or "How do you do?".  I would suggest this, rather than naming ethnicities across the street.  If the feeling rises, why not try "Hey, Accountant!" or "Hey, Front Desk Manager!"  This will break the ice in your favor.  If you don't seem to be garnering a response, why not add on small bits of information, like: "Hey, horn-rimmed glasses Accountant lady with the kickin' boots" or "Hey, Front Desk Manager of the company with the shiny windows and the free candy bowl!".  See?  There are variations to employ.

Good Luck,
~ Bernard

Pansy

I made a call this week to a dear friend of mine.  It went something like this:

Me: I've got a bad feeling about this.
S: About what?
Me: Is it possible to have a bad feeling about everything and still be a positive person?
S: I don't think so.  What do you mean everything?
Me: I mean I have a very distinct feeling of...if I don't do something--a drastic--a BIG something to change the path I'm on everything might explode.
S: Well, then I guess you should change something drastically.
Me: Totally.  Can you do me a favor?
S: Sure man.
Me: Get a green apple.  Draw a face on it.  Pretend I'm sitting in your office.  I miss you.
S: I will do that.
Me: Thanks.
S: Word.

I got the above picture later in the day.  I somehow knew this would happen.  Looking at the apple (I named him Pansy) and his jaunty eyebrow, I felt that I had been spending time with my friend, in his office, shooting the breeze.  He's the kind of person that radiates good.  I miss being around that.  He took a job out of state.  He'll be back, he swears.  I believe him, and that the return of his goodness will rebalance my life.

Then I thought of something.

There's that way of thinking that states you surround yourself with exactly that which is an outward manifestation of your inward universe.  What occurred to me is that my inner universe is full of stale circus peanuts and mean bouncers.  It's filled with that CD that got stuck in your car stereo that you keep listening to over and over and would rather die than listen to it again but prefer it to the silence.

All I have to do is fix the stereo.  This is where Pansy is incredibly helpful.

I am not the type of person who asks for help very often or very well.  I'm bashful about it.  It's a stupid thing to be bashful about, as a reaction to a sense of my own need.  I love helping other people.  In some way it's more egotistical to deny help from others because the person who only does favors for his surrounding people creates an environment of constant, outward exhaustion, and people don't survive this way.  They don't survive well, at any rate.  My well has run dry.  I feel like sweeping up the sawdust on the floor and packing up and moving out of town.  To where?  No idea.  But it's that time.

Do you know that song lyric?  The one from the Avett Brothers--"When you run make sure you run/to something and not away from".  Plenty of times throughout my life I have cleaned the slate and run simply because I don't want to deal with current circumstances anymore.  As in the surrounding zombie outbreak surely won't be a problem in the adjacent town, and if I just hit the gas hard enough in my tractor trailer and make the overnight passage, I will outrun the zombies and find a nice girl close by and settle the hell down.  In harmony.

It's frightening to realize that no one actually makes you do anything.  You only do what you want to do.  I have been trapped in a job with an overbearing boss (standard), someone who is ridiculously unpleasant to be around, approaching poison.  I know I need to eat, but I don't have to work where I work.  The feeling of being in prison is, at times, more comforting that a feeling of absolute complete freefall.  I am entering freefall and I'm honestly pretty excited about it.

More later.

~B

Freeze-drying Machine

I've decided that I need to purchase a freeze-drying machine.  Everything that is fruit seems to taste better when it is freeze-dried.  I realize the bonus of fruit, generally, is its juiciness and freeze-drying everything will take all the juicy properties away, but even fruit didn't know how delicious it was until one day somebody ate some freeze-dried strawberries.  It's like astronaut ice-cream, but from the loam.  Free from artificial neopolitan ice-cream flavoring.  I feel really good about this.  I'm going to start researching.

I really bring up the freeze-drying machine because I've been so lazy lately.  All of my thoughts are about the same things, so I tend to ignore all these other thoughts, like the strong desire to purchase a freeze-drying machine.  Why can't this idea be just as important as finding the love of my life?  I bet I can even choose the color of my freeze-drying machine.  I can choose where to put it on the counter.  I can polish it if it gets dirty--if I get any grapefruit juice on it for example because I imagine grapefruits will be on the early list of experimentation--and I can manage how sticky it becomes on the outside near the buttons.  I could buy some aggressive stickers and put those on the outside of my machine; maybe some flames and skulls with snakes coming out of the eyes.  I could draw eyes on it.  I would definitely name it.  I would freeze-dry everything, and I would commiserate with those who purchased fry-daddys for the first time and then proceeded to deep fry everything they could get their hands on, and the lessons and tales of failures would flow between us.  We would learn of each other, and our snacking habits.  Who was there when the first hard-boiled egg was deep-fried?  Who was present when they decided to deep fry some cherry cordials?  Was it Rick's hand who was horrifically blistered by the deep-fired Oreo?  And how much damage was it when the hot oil was spilled on your counter top after slipping on the flying fish roe from the California roll you just tried to fry?  I, too, would share tales of Boris, my freeze-drying machine, who bravely freeze-dried watermelon, freeze-dried gummy bears, freeze-dried gooseberries and Sam Adams summer ale...clearly my new fry-daddy friends and I would have much to discuss.

I would like to address the feeling of not writing because one feels what they have to say isn't important enough.  God knows there are plenty of people out there speaking and writing right this moment who have very little to say but are saying and writing things so hard...so very hard they are exclaiming thoughts and experiences...I judge them not, but I will say that what is withheld cannot be an actual contender against things shared that are, in reality, heinously stupid or annoying.  Why it was only this morning I overheard a conversation between a man and woman about broccoli that was in reference to a pasta salad the woman had over 17 years ago and how crunchy the broccoli had been and how glad she was to learn that you could add such small pieces of broccoli to pasta salad and it could still be so satisfying to eat.  It just so happened at that moment as I was overhearing this I was thinking about a book that I wanted to write that would involve a great deal of research in order to execute, and might require that I do some traveling as well.  The woman spoke of small broccoli pieces ("not the stem parts, the fat, the stringy--I don't like the stem parts you can't put that in the salad it will ruin everything") with deep feeling.  Why I felt as if I too had eaten that same pasta salad 17 years ago.  It was chilled perfectly and had a good amount of dressing, I imagined.  The fact remained that I was only thinking of something that might not happen, or something that I was planning to happen in a certain way at a time that is not now...the traveling, at least...the pasta salad was as legendary as James Dean.

In honor of Rosa and her pasta salad I decree here and now, with the thought of Boris my freeze-drying machine in my heart, his small plug-tail wagging, that I shall try to be more forthcoming with my thoughts and ponderings.  I will explain them, even when they're not perfect--especially when they're not perfect (for what truly is?).  I will take Rosa's hand and step into the deli of life and make it happen.

That is all.

~ B

Cranes

You know those Chinese cranes?  The ones often gracing landscape paintings--beautiful, large birds that are black and white with red on their heads?  

Last night I dreamt I was lying on a mountain in cool, comforting weather.  At the break of day two of these Chinese cranes flew over head, light between their feathers.  They sailed without moving.  Not really going anywhere, but happy they were together.

Today I saw a pair of Great White Herons fly over the Harlem River, together, much in the same way.  I've been in the area many times, and have never seen them there before.  

I am comforted to my bones.

~ B

I'm wrong: not 11

Here's a list, found it online.  How helpful, the internet.

• 1816 His family was forced out of their home. He had to work to support them. 

• 1818 His mother died. 

• 1831 Failed in business. 

• 1832 Ran for state legislature - lost. 

• l832 Also lost his job - wanted to go to law school but couldn't get in. 

• 1833 Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt. 

• 1834 Ran for state legislature again - won. 

• 1835 Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken. 

• 1836 Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months. 

• 1838 Sought to become speaker of the state legislature - defeated. 

• 1840 Sought to become elector - defeated. 

• 1843 Ran for Congress - lost. 

• 1846 Ran for Congress again - this time he won - went to Washington and did a good job. 

• 1848 Ran for re-election to Congress - lost. 

• 1849 Sought the job of land officer in his home state - rejected. 

• 1854 Ran for Senate of the United States - lost. 

• 1856 Sought the Vice-Presidential nomination at his party's national convention - get less than 100 votes. 

• 1858 Ran for U.S. Senate again - again he lost. 

• 1860 Elected president of the United States.

Again...with Lincoln...

I was having a conversation last night with some friends about the last Lincoln descendent.  We couldn't remember when this person died.  Turns out it was in the 1980s.  The next rational question we posed, of course, was if there was a possibility that somewhere some of Lincoln's DNA has been frozen for posterity.  Maybe a hair from his sideburns hidden inside his top hat now lives in a hermetically sealed chest made out of diamonds.  Maybe at some point it would be very important to know we could get our hands on some Lincoln whiskers.  Not us personally--my friends and I are not very smart with such matters--but someone.  Maybe someone who was in the middle of figuring out something important.

Then of course the thought of being the great-great-whatever of Abraham Lincoln was overwhelming to us.  Could you ever focus on anything else?  Would it be possible for you to play the piano, go to the bathroom, or be a good speller, without whipping out this fact?  Even if it was only in the descendent's head, just pure knowledge floating around in there, while making pancakes.  I bet the knowledge would have the tendency to just creep up, kind of scare the hell out of him.  Like a floater in the eye...little Abraham Lincoln mouth smiling while he waves, temporarily obstructing the pancake he's flipping.  I don't know that I could concentrate on anything else.  Generic oppressive potential for human improvement is enough, but genetic?  Holy smokes.

I've certainly heard about the "skipped generation" with "great people".  Maybe the son of someone spectacular is impressive, but the next one--exhausted by the lineage--kind of decides to be a complete loser.  At least unremarkable.

Can we decide to be unremarkable?  Can we decide to be remarkable?

Since I have no idea what I'm talking about, not having a presidential great-grand parent, I don't know the answer to that.  I do know that in my family: my mother's grandmother was some kind of gypsy.  She helped orphaned children.  My mother apparently used to give blood religiously, and I have an Uncle who had a fairly successful polka band.  I love all these people, and would hope in my actions to make them proud.  Choosing to be unremarkable for me I suppose would be choosing not to try.  Try to...to be a good person, do the right thing.  Honestly, who is not trying to do the right thing?  Even if one's idea of right is horribly confused, because what is more confusing than "right", I think the basic principles of humanity (want of connection, love, acceptance) apply.  People don't set out to be complete assholes.  Not that I know of.  It happens along the way sometimes.  I haven't chosen to hate polka because I know I'll never play the tuba very well, as well as my Uncle.  I'm fine with polka, even if I don't celebrate it.  I have many cassettes.  No player, but I do own cassettes.  This is something.

I'm finishing writing this without looking anything up because I want to go off of what I remember.  I recall that Lincoln's life in politics was stuttered and difficult before he got what he wanted.  I believe I read somewhere there were 11 failed attempted before he was elected.  I like the number 11, so I will choose to remember 11.  What he did in his life seemed super-human, impossible, remarkable, magic.  Boiled down he was just damned stubborn.  I'm trying to think of doing anything I really want to do 11 times and then trying again for # 12.  Remarkable.  I would think that's choosing to be remarkable.

The skill of my lineage is stubbornness.  Not Lincoln's variety--but I know we're flooded with the stuff.  We just don't do anything anyone tells us to do.  Not without struggle, anyway.  I don't know that it's healthy or even normal, but today it makes me feel closer to Lincoln then I've ever felt.  I'll know I'll never grow a beard that distinct, but I can remember the number 11, and try again.

Because what if he didn't?

~ B