Monday with a new Mr. Coffee

I am reading a book that weaves in shadow images and Jungian analysis. "Clipe" not spelled like that, is Yiddish word for a husk with kernel of light or power inside, also known sometimes as a demon. Is it possible that this may be the long lost word that describes my angst -- part inner glowing light (laser) and part demon? Another day on the job.

Writing

Back from Highlights retreat, and re-enthused. New people give me new stars to reach, and new emails, blogs, and fb friends don't hurt. I am hoping for a lessening of the maddening sophoric effect that just sitting down to write has on me. Don't tell buy I bet it has to do with not really wanting to write. I could, of course, engage in the more complex analysis of it being a cousin to fear of failure. Lenore at the workshop said to think about why the story is cast in the voice of a neutral onlooker, and not the character with pain. Rich said it didn't really work for him to vomit on the pages -- one big amorphous mess (I know, mixed metaphors) and then try to pare it down. -- Better to come in with structure and intent, I guess. This is my new paradigm for living, perhaps. Lots of qualifiers, precoffee.

I am rudderless

okay, the clock ticks, the waves crash, the grass grows, and still, mixed metaphors and all, what it all about. I also wonder why a distinct desire to carpe diem results in nothing more than a loss of a few pounds. Will it come? Will I go get it?

Epiphany?

This must be a 50s thing, when you can first start to feel the winding down. I crave empty space indoors and an ocean outside. Walking this past vacation along the water, I understood that, if I lived by the ocean, I wouldn't need therapy. Notice I don't go so far as to say I wouldn't need medicine. And if I had the 100 possessions with which the new sparists live, I would find peace. What do the ocean and empty space do for me?

Ocean - remember being stoned and sitting out on the rocks in Bar Harbor or thereabouts. I had this distinct thought that, if I couldn't marry someone, I'd marry the ocean. Still not married. The ocean washes in the treasures -- shells. odd creatures (witness the Portugal Man of War!!!) - stones - I pick them up, dead or alive. I secret them in my pockets. I spill them out, sand and all, and organize them: stones by color; miscellaneous shells by type and, of course, "cigar" shells by size. The accumulation feeds me. Perhaps, I just don't want them inside because:

Open Space - ah, the restfulness of walking from the bed to the door, in the dark, without tripping over anything. The peace I find in the absence of a junk drawer. The whitewashed antique-y photos of trendy rustic bedrooms all in white an natural. Like clothes, I think I just need a few good things.

So, you see the tensions. I am not by an ocean. Nonetheless, I like to collect. I collect and I don't throw out easily. So. bye bye little epiphany. I am living in a hopeless chaos, for now, for now. Don't forget, I can still change everything. Really?

emphasis on the deception of therapy

Should you go to a therapist. What is the best she can offer? Personally, I go for the hired "intelligent friend" who is self-deceived into thinking that she is something more. We look together at what I do over and over again that someone might want to do less of. "Huh . . . wonder why I do that?" We say, "Can we make that relate back to your mother somehow"? Might that be something that therapy might help me stop? If consciousness of why and how I do anything, from breathing to threatening to off myself at periods of high stress, is productive, we've had a good run. We are coming up on 7 years, but she is not merely an expensive habit, she's that self deceived intelligent friend. Everyone's go to make a living.

skinny

Hello Skinny,

You visit again, and I am in love with you. I know you'll leave. I wish I knew how to keep you. We've reunited so many times, only to be parted. I know this is my fault. But I always miss you when you're gone.
sb

Long ago, long deceased.

He was a history teacher, with a history of depression, at a small northern boarding school. I was a 17-yo, with too many emotionally free ions and a pension for older men in position of authority as well as a sucker for the really needy. I am not sure I really like him, but he liked me and that was enough. My way of getting close to him, and his family, was to obsessively wash their dishes and clean the kitchen. I babysat his kids a few times but once he came back from the ski slopes because he and his wife had talked about whether the kids were safe with me. Did I say I had issues?

Anyway, I found reason after reason to spend time with him. I'd stay after. I'd court his confessions of severe depression. I'd walk all over kingdom come with him, holding hands until cars came upon us. He'd joke about sex for grades but I was too cowardly to call his bluff. Once, he was sick and I went up to lie down on his bed. He told me to leave because he didn't trust himself.

Yes, he was terribly depressed. When I served as his ski assistant for the downhilll teams, I used to sit in the front seat of the big stationwagon and plan our deaths at the hands of oncoming traffic. Was I serious? I doubt it. I remember his brother in law had moon boots and I got to walk around in them.

The final tableau had him taking me to Boston over spring break, with a stop over at my parents' house. They thought he was toasted mush, or something equally aberrant. Even I was repulsed by his depression. He dropped me off in a Boston suburb near the highschol where I was going to meet an old friend that I didn't even care about visiting. He asked if I wanted him to come with me. How would that work? I'd introduce him as who exactly to my middle school friend and her parents? I said I needed to learn to navigate on my own.

Two weeks later, spring break winding down, a girl a year ahead of me at school showed up at my house. She was all dressed up like a fake adult to come tell me the news. He had shot himself. I was confused. When I got back to school, I went to visit his wife. She was bathing their two children. She told me the grizzly details. I did acid at his memorial service. I was still alive. Once, I hung out after an english class to talk with a friend of his, an eccentric English teacher named Jeremy. He said he wished he could have gone along for the ride . . . just to see how he got his gun back and drove away from home to shoot himself.

What more is there to sy?

The friend he took to the prom

Her name was Megan. She's 15, from a girl's Catholic school, while Z is almost 18, and I had never met her and may never again. Yet, the picture of her, rather the two of them together, clicked by my cell phone, is beguiling. Megan has her hand on her hip, which I hear is a learned affectation, and has a smile that shows full teeth and a happy heart. Z doesn't look so bad himself, in his pink vested tux! He is looking in the other direction, but it doesn't matter. I have not a single clue as to their dynamic. Did he kiss her good night? You know, the things mothers cannot ask. But, I like this Megan. I like her spunk. I like that Z wore pink to match her dress. They are immortalized as my screensaver, larger than life, and enchanting me this fine morning.

Girls to the Airport - an early a.m. of "like"

Wed. 5-27 "like" - Abby and Clare LIKE this word: like. I took them to the airport this morning. It must have been my 6:00 a.m. inability to filter their speech that made it stand out so prominently. Once you become aware of its [omni]presence, the rest of the sentence just fades away until all you hear is "like like like." How useful they make the word - accenting any sentence, a placeholder for any word, in any form of speech. Anway, the girls are off to see Isabel in Minnesota -- Our three Glen Arm 20 year olds. Note: their carry-on luggage seems oversized. Note 2: What does it say that two healthy young adults are both afraid of flying?

Abby says she put $3000 in her shopping cart at Anthropologie last night, for her new apartment at school (that's another story). I like virtual shopping carts. You can push them down the aisle with great enthusiasm, even riding on the back, until right before "check out," at which point you just dump the cart, leaving it all for someone else to put away, and go check your email.