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

almost there...

HEY THERE, FELLOW WANDERER. CLICK HERE.

Field of Dreams

Man...today got me stumbling all over myself.

We can pretty much agree that the sky is blue and clouds are fluffy-looking and it hurts when you get hit by a car--but what of the different versions of our feelings?  The shade of one person's love in comparison to another's? Or embarrassment or excitement?  How is embarrassment perceived--where in the body does one feel embarrassed?  And where do we learn that from?  Did someone tell us or better yet show us how to be embarrassed and we absorbed it, like a twin in the womb?

Yeah.  I mean I think.  There are many or at least more than one who show us, and it is shocking to really grasp how deeply they have grafted onto you.

A close friend of mine once described a situation where her lifelong friend, Jacob, was very much a part of the development of her senses.  Like most of us, we have these relationships that solidify how we see and do things on a daily basis.  My friend described a day where she and Jacob were sitting in her car together and she happened to be talking with a pen in her hand.  The pen was black.  She was playing with the pen while they were in a parking lot, I think--waiting for a friend. Anyway, she said she realized suddenly while looking at the black pen that Jacob could have convinced her in that moment that the black pen she was holding was actually purple.  They had known each other for ten years.  In that moment, casually, Jacob could just explain that all along she had been incorrect--and that black was in fact purple, and purple was black and she had just gotten it wrong.  It would have actually been possible for her to take this as fact, because Jacob's perception of fact she valued as much as her own and the power of this realization she found deeply unsettling.  She then started to wonder what subtleties of perception Jacob had already adjusted for her, knowing him since she was fourteen.  No doubt there were conversations and communications where something was not as obvious to the world
--like black being purple or vice-versa--something that went on behind the closed curtains of her heart and quickly molded into her very own idiosyncrasy without her permission!  Whoosh, instantaneous!  And now it was something she couldn't get rid of and had to hold onto forever because it would be too hard to dig it out or even find it for that matter?  Like that sewing machine her uncle gave her.  She doesn't sew.  She realized that Jacob taught her how to love.  (It was the pen's fault).

I suppose we all have these subtleties of perception.  Things we've learned from people we allow ourselves to care for and have therefore taken for granted.  As the self unfolds these idiosyncrasies usually emerge in intimate relationships, where one feels safe enough--if only for a moment--to express the private workings of our brains and hearts.  And why not?  Intimate relationships are that moment where the stage lights get turned on, or field lights for a night game.  It almost feels like everyone is ready and waiting to throw that pitch, just hoping to be asked to show the world how hard they can throw and the second they know the crowd is watching they let it fly.  It could be a terrible disaster and you could make all kinds of excuses for the pitch but goddamn you threw it hard, didn't you?  Just then?  You were throwing because it felt good and you were waiting for the crowd's reaction?  Approval?...

I am unclear today.  I am dancing around the point.  I mean I usually dance around the point but I'm not doing it in an interesting way...we're all secretly wired to throw wild pitches.  We have to.  We're just waddling around, looking for these specific people who will get to know us enough to allow us the opportunity to flex the good arm--and we really don't know what's going to happen.  And I believe it isn't just for vanity.  We don't need to hear how great we are all the time--I mean that's nice too, but the opportunity to show strength by throwing the weird pitches--strikes me as so lovely today that I am windless.  Winded.  I am amazed at human beings.  Amazed at the extent of beauty in our bottomless flaws.

And this is why beer was invented.  To get people relaxed enough to share the first pitch.  My pitch analogy is overly exhausted, but it deals with the posturing and preparation and "show" before the actual throw...this is what I mean.  The ritual wind-up.  I pray everyone winds up and lets it rip.  Say what you gotta say.  It's written in your blood.  You can fight it, but I will tell you right now that awkward throw will always win the tournament.  Because no one has rehearsed its outcome.

~ B

Shock.

Shock.

If I had to define SHOCK without looking at a dictionary: 

1. noun, a sudden blow or happening

2. an emotional state of complete surprise/astonishment.  

3. one’s inability to believe something one knows to be true. 

4. an electrical attack

Or

5. a systemic response/means of protection against further physical or emotional harm.

I am in shock.

I cannot believe that I am capable of being so surprised by the behavior of a single person.  With wisdom (here defining wisdom as being in my 30s, and yes a debatable definition) I believed I would possess the proper intuitive and logical tools that would enable me to evaluate the individuals with whom I interact and therefore make careful decisions concerning those I allow into my mental and physical space.  God always laughs last, because he’s a funny guy (or ferret).  And no one is wise.

People are shocking.  They do shocking things.  Why?

Well, to answer my own not-so-rhetorical question, people do shocking things because: 

a. they are acting out/against their own personal character patterns as a means of expressing duress or confusion.

b. their behavior is not out of line with their character, it is the observer who has changed 

Or

c. they are retarded.

I will become transparent.  Bear with me.  For now, an anecdote.

There is a young woman in an office who is very amiable.  She is attractive and smart and easily engages with everyone.  It is hard to get to know this woman, for obvious reasons being so smart and attractive, but when you are one on one, it seems you are the only man in the room.  I mean in the world.  It seems you share a complete, unspoken language.  You slowly gather the courage to ask this woman out, thinking the answer will be a breathless yes, because you share so much together, so much unspoken good “ju-ju”.  The woman agrees cryptically, but flirtatiously.  She says something like “she was bound to go out with someone from the office one of these days”.  Not a rousing seal of approval, but certainly not a no, as she said it with smiles and that same wonderful “ju-ju” in the eyes.  And you’re syked, right, because she said she hasn’t yet gone out with anyone in the office.  Win.

You get ready for your date.  You have a sneaking suspicion inside of you that this very night you are to experience destiny: an event predetermined merely because it is so awesome, the waves of its greatness have been and will be felt throughout the ages, so you’ve got a timeline and gps on it because it reverberates in time and space (i.e. “destiny”).  You are leaving your house to pick her up.  You are on your way you are driving to her house with this great, reverberating feeling inside you.  Suddenly, you hear the phone ringing.  It’s her.  Could it be?  The awesome beginning so soon?  Perhaps she’s planned a surprise of some kind?  Giddiness!  You pick it up and she says over the phone: “I’m sorry, did you think we were going out?  I thought you were kidding.  I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a misunderstanding.  You know, to avoid anything awkward”.  

Well too late, you are already outside her house.  With flowers.  With the phone in your hand.  The gong of reverberating destiny in your guts is now the sound of…of some kind of emotion…

1. You’re disappointed.  Obviously.  You wanted a date with this woman, a chance to be alone to show her how great you are for each other and it was cancelled.  You were given signals of her attraction.  This is not fair.  (ANGER)

2. She never actually said she wanted to go out with you.  The complete failure of the date and feeling of disappointment was created in your own head.  (EMBARRASSMENT)

3. She’s playing hard to get?  Now you know where she lives…she did tell you that… (GENERAL CONFUSION)

4. She has Borderline Personality Disorder.  (SHOCKING TRUTH)

Maybe you won’t get transparency here, but I guess my point is if someone has been asking you for a steak, and when you bring them the steak, they say “I wanted the fish”, I feel like punching someone in the mouth.  The problem with being a man of course is, in addition to being unable to punch a lady in the mouth, I want the steak, but prefer you ask for the fish so I can bring the steak when I want to.  If you just come right out asking for the steak it’s too much.  It’s too…well it doesn’t work, okay?  If that doesn’t make sense I can’t explain, because my description is terrible already.

Give me steak or give me death.  I’ll lick my wounds for a while, if they’re even wounds.  I honestly feel like if I could just be on tv for something—a small major award, nothing serious—and after being noted as the most interesting and engaging man of the 21^st century, utilize my acceptance speech to gently, deftly, almost imperceptibly drain the libido from the offending party (because squelching it forever sounds “too harsh”) while simultaneously emptying her fridge, living room, and bank account with the final gift of bestowing on her rank diarrhea for a few months—well I’d feel much peppier. 

Not that I could wish ill on anyone.  That’s for people with Borderline Personality Disorder.  Those cats are crazy.

63

Forgive my brief absence.  I've been even more self-involved than usual.

Today is my father's birthday.  I bought him a large cardboard box that contained three things: a weber grill, an ape mask, and case of white tic tacs.  The man loves grilling and has been doing so on a strange little red number that is falling apart.  The man enjoys scaring the Christ out of people, hence the mask.  The man also loves fresh breath.  I felt this three-tiered attack would be proper for the 63rd year of his life.

I began the day at the dentist (dad receives his presents this evening).  The dentist made me think about death far too early in the morning.  Firstly, I can't imagine being 63, almost twice as many years as I already have, and further, I can't imagine my teeth falling out.  The dentist believes I am on this road, and I am never certain if this threatening is something they learn in school as a means of behavior modification for their patients, or they're sitting on a throne of knowledge and carelessly letting you know you're going to be hideously deformed in a rather short amount of time.  Perhaps when I am 63 the art of dentistry will have blossomed to such a place that teeth can be easily screwed back in, taken from baboons, or made out of milk.

At any rate, it crossed my mind--as he was pointing to the x-rays explaining how my bone loss would eventually cause my teeth the wiggle themselves out of my face (maybe)--that I have never been able to imagine myself old.  In fact, when I was young I always imagined I would die young.  I have no basis for this.  I wasn't imagining dying specifically, or planning insane things that would activate the many ways in which I might tragically expire, but I just never saw it.  Like it wasn't in me.  The bone loss thing, the teeth falling out (maybe), showed me my first vision of age and I decided in that moment that I would rather be dead then be toothless.  If possible, I am thinking of this only in a philosophical way.  Looking at the x-ray, I remembered my childhood feeling of impending James Dean Death and wondered if perhaps there was something woven into my cells to make it so, something of a timeline.  Maybe I was a perceptive child (maybe) and I was just aware.  Aware.

I was thrilled to live past 27.  I thought I was in the clear.  I think I am in the clear, at least until this morning.  I will try not to think about all this as I sing to dad in a couple hours.  My father is a great man.  He is a practical joker, a pun-er, a lover of human beings.  He probably owns three pairs of pants, he hates change but secretly loves it, and is openly baffled by the things he doesn't understand.  He adds glitter to the world like garlands at Christmas.  The length of his life should extend and extend, and I will do everything I can to continue adding popcorn onto his string.

It's not that I'm afraid of being ugly.  I'm sure I could pull off the yammering toothless man bit pretty shimmeringly.  I don't know...I don't know if it's my wonder at the hidden timeline in my bones or my inability to envision my old feet on the earth.  I am not as terrified of the future of the planet as many of my peers, so it is not my inability to envision earth or astroturf underneath my chubby feet.  I don't know.  I wonder if I am brave enough to live without worrying about legacy.  Without worrying about witness, as I am to my father and am happy to witness, but can I--as the yammering toothless man I (may) become--sift into the dirt without feelings of regret?  No one beside me who is one with my soul, just pleasant memories?  Is this so terrible?

I don't know.

~ B

Find the Dead Body Installment #1

I would like to play a game.

I've discovered that one of my favorite things to do is look at catalogues and choose where the dead body would be hidden, if there was a dead body.

I feel this is a good picture to start with, for reasons I'll reveal later.  Please weigh in.

~ B

DISRUPTION

"Man...never perceives anything fully, or comprehends anything completely.  He can see, hear, touch and taste; but how far he sees, how well he hears, what his touch tells him, and what he tastes depend upon the number and quality of his senses."


- CG Jung (Man and His Symbols)

The quality of his senses?  His sense to be sensitive?  Forgive two consecutive quotes, but DaVinci wrote in his notebooks:

"It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which...you may find really marvelous ideas."

I think we can all agree the quality of sense in this man was of the original variety of magnificent.  According to a mind of artistic, mathematical and general creative greatness: the mud makes us see.  The ash and fire.  No wonder I am thrown for a loop in this city.  Our mud is graffiti or advertising, our ash is starving men on the subway, our fire is a street exposed argument between lovers.  Our buildings are our clouds.

Jung also said: "As anthropologists have noted, one of the most common mental derangements that occur among primitive people is what they call the loss of the soul--which means, as the name indicates, a noticeable disruption...".  Losing my soul here is, indeed, my greatest fear.  I am able to lose things...    
But ideas are more immediate here because they have been skewed and sewn into secret daily rituals of our own (mostly ridiculous) making.  Attention everyone: We Have Endeavors!  We have shit to do!  So much so it can be seen from space!  We walk and eat and avoid humanity, all while walking and talking of eating and longing for the humanity we are avoiding.  These events are more on fire, more dangerous, because we say they are.  While I long for a soul that does not feel disrupted or dislodged, I feel sometimes I would be less useful to myself were I to move away and be at peace.  How strange that peace can seem selfish, or at least dull...no, terrifying.  But again, "Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is limitless".  To be disrupted, to be on fire in this cramped space, is an invitation for nature to use me in its excesses.  I suppose when I can take no more, I will be "selfish" and move away.

"An ability to control one's emotions that may be very desirable from one point of view would be a questionable accomplishment from another, for it would deprive social intercourse of variety, color, and warmth."
 
Good luck, my friends.

~ B

Tuesday, May 1

I cannot wed the sides of myself.  They are warring planets that have no language between them.  Nothing but fireworks and longing.  If we must not seek our completion outside ourselves, then what are we doing?The living and giving with others seems to be the only worthy contract, many an inspirational poster has told me so...so very good!  True happiness in actuality exists outside the self.  One's bliss is met, at long last, in the sharing with and giving to another after we hang in there, like a good kitty.

Monks are here to remind us to gaze inward and be silent, be still.  Other people too, but I like monks so lets talk about monks.  Buddhists monks are these orangey energy fields walking around shining light on everything.  It's splendid.  But if humanity wasn't such a glorious basket case they'd have no one to remind to be mindful of our own darkness.  They'd just be tapping the most annoying monk on the shoulder, the one they like the least, to be better at all his monk stuff.

I am not a monk.  I wish I were much of the time.  But not today.

I have felt for the longest time the most selfish of creatures.  I am so choosy with my love.  Love, the finest of things, should it not be given away always, often--as fully as any contract or commitment can be extended?  I realize that all humans are woven differently and thankfully our tastes and fancies are not all one thing or another, and even if set and chosen in any given month do change like air pressure...but I have always, if not any one thing, been...well changeable.  Changeable and somehow fixed with the desire to catch fire or not live at all.  How can such a person finish anything?  Even if I look really good in orange?

I rarely do.  That's why I get so excited for the small things I do on a somewhat regular basis: pay bills, floss, call people.  I tend to begin and begin, hoping the new road is right, the new one is the path, through the earth, the one I needed to dig for and only found what for all the starting and starting.

While one must burn, he may wish to have the substructure to support him; to rage as hot as he can.  Plant his feet in the earth!  Free from stray saliva from angry mouths ready to minimize him, even his most effervescent parts.  His smoke and shadow and ash...the good stuff, really.  The secrets about yourself you never admit to anyone and simultaneously realize are the very reason you are alive.  Damn it.

Going to a lecture about science stuff tonight.  Maybe I'll want to be a monk again tomorrow.  We'll see.

~ B

Huh.

I cannot think of any reason to love someone other than unexplained feelings.  The feelings that come from somewhere else and change the way you look at life.  Where do the unexplained feelings come from?  From love's storing ground?  Are love feelings handed out when storage is too full, or when all the good love has already been given away?  Why and what other reason would anyone suffer love?

It is far easier to like someone with great feeling.  You choose it then--it comes from no where but yourself, attached to no secret rules or properties that may flippantly modify thoughts or emotion.  To like or regard someone highly is the true contract of living people, furnished with ALL the splendors of love but none of the dripping sentiments, the burdens of jealousy and wandering affection.  To love is to fix with rules another person in time the moment he or she was deigned to be love-able--was loved.  Desired.  Possessed.

Huh.  So lovers are kind of assholes?  Huh.

You can like a home that doesn't belong to you and not wish to posses it.  In fact, you may even regard those living within very highly, maybe they even ask you to dinner every other tuesday and are likely to ask you again because you've never broken anything that belonged to them--and you refrained from acting like an idiot around anyone living on the premises who might be their daughter.  In general you refrain from things that might make your presence "tiresome".  Indeed!  These imaginary people cannot mistake your gentle loyalty and lack of aggression!  You are as peaceful and desirable as a night breeze, simultaneously forgettable and irreplaceable.  No harm intended, no harm to come.

Yes I should like to be liked far more than loved, especially if this means matching a night breeze.

~ B

The Width of the Heart.

It's comforting to me somehow to think that while compassion is a shining developmental achievement of mankind, some people just aren't born with it.  They are completely deficient.  They simply do not have the capacity for it, or have trouble recognizing it, even when they see it happening, even when they refer to compassion as something else--weakness perhaps.  How can this be comforting?  How can I view this phenomenon in a positive light, rather than frustration or a heavy acceptance of psychopaths?

I will get to that.  I want to say that, from my perspective, those who "feel" more than those who don't are more often the crazy ones.  The ones bombarded with these extraterrestrial "feelings" are kept from operating within their given reality in a civilized manner.  To be civil, surely, is to ignore passions on a daily basis.  To Feel the passions, to use them up and lavish them with experience and indulge them in sweet execution and delight...now that's crazy.  I think what I'm saying is the argument can go both ways.

But comfort...how am I comforted when facing my opposite?  I am comforted realizing that People Either Feel A Certain Way Or They Don't.  I really have no say in it, no chemical to add to the process.  It means that people play the piano or they can't.  It means you'll be blonde your whole life or you'll be raven.  Someone will love you with the power of a thousand suns or they simply can't--they don't even have the gas for it.  You can no sooner train someone to burn for you than you can train someone to be good at having arms (if they don't).

It is a matter of chemical harmony and becoming frustrated with those who are unABLE to display compassion is truly a senseless act.  We will no sooner teach them heart manners than they will teach us indifference.  We, that is I, can find the night wind that smells of freshly mown grass and just stay put until a time when another passes and asks if I too can detect the smell or we simply catch each other smiling over the simplicity of it.  The beauty of the clean and simple.

I refuse to fall in love with someone so against my feelings ever again.  I will be strong enough to steer clear of the pitfall of opposites.  I will love one of my kind, and they will see my heart.  I will not have to ask them if they can see it, I will know.  And they will view it as the gift that it is, because love is the thing I am good at, though I so rarely give it away.

~ Bernard  

The BookThatDoesn'tExist

I recall a picture book with which I was wholly obsessed when I was small.  I've never again seen it, even after troubling various librarians and exhaustive online searching.  I can't find it.  My mom checked it out of the library.  It had a shiny and yellowed protective cover and was pretty large.  I'm embarrassed to say it was a story about a pegasus--but an AWESOME pegasus.

The illustrations were all in Black & White.  Beautiful.  I have almost no memory of the story because my mother would make it up each time she read it to me.  It always changed.  I know that a pegasus lived in a house, and one night decided to fly out of one of the windows all over the town.  Looked at stuff.  Did things.  I must have loved all the different versions more than anything because the only picture I remember is the very manly winged horse flying out the window and my feeling of overwhelming excitement wondering where he would be going and what he would be doing that night.

I suppose it's possible my mother just made the whole thing up by blotting out the existing words of a very terrible book with excellent illustrations and I never noticed the tape or the white-out or her deft hands shielding me from crappy, indelible narrative.  I hope I don't wake up one day and books are dead, awakening to the snap of the final bullet sounding in the air as I realize the novelty has worn fully and completely off.  I try to imagine my mother reading the manly pegasus book to me from a tablet and it gives me a stomach ache.  But surely if a way is the only way you know, growing up, it is just as precious?  Maybe?  Help?

~ Bernard

I overheard a conversation today that went something like this:

Woman: I think I'm going to get my ankles reduced.

Man: What?

Woman: My ankles.  I want to make them smaller.

Man: They do that?

(Lots of nodding.  Man looked concerned.)

Man: ...your ankles look good.  I mean they look fine.

Woman: They don't.  I have excess muscle down there.  It's genetic.  Which is weird because the rest of me isn't like that, so if I get them reduced I'll look symmetrical.  I've thought about it a lot.

Man: That's amazing they can do that.  Won't it be hard to walk for a while?  Removing muscle is probably a big deal, like major surgery.  I just didn't know that was possible!

Woman: It isn't, Jared.  I was kidding.

(Tonally, Woman is pissed).

<Silence.  Lots of silence for Jared.>

I don't understand women.

~ B

Abe!

This was on the ground outside my house today.

So I was wrong about a secret follower.  It appears that one of the greatest men to have lived 

is trying to send me secret messages.  

Maybe.

1980?  

I've met people who were born during this year...I don't remember it much but my father bought his most favorite couch he's ever owned in 1980.  

I will think more on this.

(I would like to add that the tiny bag was sealed, and discovered face-up, once again).

~ B

the Lottery

When I was little I can remember eating a lot of frozen peas.  Why don't I do that anymore, eat frozen peas?  That would be better than a lot of the things I choose to eat now.  I think on the way home I'm going to buy some frozen peas and eat them.  What a barrel of laughs.

For the last few nights I've been having dreams about birds landing on my right hand, then they fly off into a cloudburst...then the sky explodes (in a good way.  Really good.  It's beautiful).  Usually at least two land at once, sometimes four.  Last night they were hummingbirds.  Different sizes--some probably too fat to be hummingbirds but they were hummingbirds anyway.  If I'm having recurring dreams about animals it's usually fish.  I am always dreaming of fish.  I don't know what that means either, but at least it's familiar to me...

Perhaps I'm feeling foolish because I have seen no other change around my house or at work.  I still smile at everyone, but something about it makes me feel like I'm trying too hard.  I don't think my secret follower is following me anymore.  Maybe there never was one.  That's okay, but I think that is what made me think of the peas.  I used to eat them all by myself and I was very happy when I did that.

I miss Paris today and it hurts a little.  I'm not sure how to feel about it.  Surely I can smile at people just the same there?  Hm...

After I buy the peas I will stop at the bodega and purchase a lottery ticket as well.  If I win, I will go to Paris.  If I lose, I will try again tomorrow.

~ B 

Bottle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mVEapKnS1c


My dearest Kirsten,

Do not stop.

~ Bernard

Pita Chips.

I wanted to distract myself today from thinking about things that confuse me.  The average person I suppose would explain that I read too much into things.  I do know that before anyone read anything into anything, there was so such thing as classical music.  This defense doesn't get me very far, and the average person is not wrong...I do read too much into things.  But I can't think about it any more today.  So I wrote a letter to a company.  It relaxes me.

Below please find the text sent to BAKED PITA CHIPS.  I don't think anything is quite as delicious and crunchy.  There was a rather small box and allotted number of characters, so I had to be as brief.

Dear Creators of Baked Pita Chips,


I would extend the courtesy  of introducing and explaining a bit about myself were it not for the space restrictions in which I might praise your fine product.  The Romans believed so much in bread and bakers they put a baker in the Senate, and certainly thought of bread as some kind of boat for man's soul, a means by which (through creating and sharing) he might nourish himself and extend kindness to others.  I have no doubt this philosophy was imbued in the entire creative process of your "baked" pita chips; heat and ovens of course also representing passion, fire--the center of the universe.  The mind of God.  Wasn't it Nietzsche who said "seek not God in the empty firmament of the mind"?  I have no idea what he was talking about.  But clearly the leader at your fine company--the single creative epicenter from which the idea of this crispy chip burst forth--this individual's mind may very well contain some portal to the almighty infinite being called "God".  Please extend my hearty congratulations, and encouragement to this person to adamantly continue exploring the helpful recesses of his or her generative brain, for therein lies transcendence and sublime snack satisfaction.


With Admiration and Respect,


~ Bernard

Thursday. Wearing the red scarf.

Discovered a penny, heads up, on my front mat.  It was positioned directly in the center, and Abe was perfectly arranged.  An unexpected and audacious move from my secret follower.  This gesture shouldn't be taken lightly, nor can I deny that the closeness of this gesture to my personal space is exciting and unnerving.  How should I take this expression, now that it radiates desperation?  Will think more on this and return home with a plan.

~ B

Dear Everyone,

I believe someone has been following me around and leaving me change.  Whomever is doing this--thank you!  How might I reach you?

~ Bernard

In the beginning

I was conceived in Paris, born in New York.  I would like to think I was formulated within a rare romantic atmosphere, but perhaps the physics of my life were only meant to operate properly within the states.  Had I been born and raised in Paris, say, I would have been missing one side of my face or been unable to pronounce certain vowels.  Thank you, random chance!

Neither of my parents are French.  My mother died of cancer when I was five.  I've noticed my father holds no special reverence for Paris, other than the standard type: he enjoys Serge Gainsbourg and speaks half-heartedly of seeing the Seine at night once more before he's dead.  It's possible the memory of my mother is what keeps him distant from the place, but I think he is just the type of man who moves forever forward rather than back.  For that we get along famously.

To this day I don't know what my parents were doing in Paris and I like that very much.  I know one thing they were doing, and I am glad to be alive.  When I can tell my father is thinking of Paris I don't sense regret, and secrets without regret are the finest kind.

~ Bernard

To begin...

Love is more interesting than loneliness.

Why not be in love?

Why not look for the divine, the unspeakable in others, and cherish it?  Worship it?  Crave it more than nourishment and other necessary things?

Love is constantly seeking magic.

What a fortunate species we are!  Irrational to the point of madness...and fantastic!  Fantastic!  Fantastic!

(...it smells like raw eggs in here).

~ Bernard