| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Sunday afternoon. I am lying on the couch watching some kind of sports or another, trying weather a hangover. There is a knock at the door. I open the door and there is a woman of about 57, short, sandy-blond hair, wearing a baggy t-shirt with vertical red stripes and baggy shorts with horizontal red stripes. She has a huge sailor's sack full of laundry slung over one shoulder and is holding a bottle of wine and a plastic bag full of what appear to be rolls in the other. "I've got to do my laundry," she says, and walks in. "Sure Ma," I say. She sets the wine and plastic bag on my dinner table and starts to load her clothes into my washing machines, which are in the hallway leading to my bedroom in my small apartment. She tells me to open the bottle of wine, which I do, and give her a glass and pour one for myself. "What's in the plastic bag?" I ask her. "Dumplings that Randall the Atheist's wife makes. He gave me some. He comes to work with those things and puts them in the microwave. God the smell! We have to clear the floor. He loves them, though." "Randall the Atheist?" "Didn't I ever tell you about him? I work with him at the utility company. One day as I was coming to work I saw out on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse with a sign that said 'no bibles in...' some school or another. You know, protesting...on a cold October morning. At work I asked my boss, Dave, 'did you see Randall out in front of the couthouse?' Dave said 'yeah, he's an atheist. Didn't you ever read that article wrote in the paper? About no prayer in schools or something. It was signed State Director American Atheists.'" "Wow, the real thing," I said. "Got the laminated membership card and official jacket and everything." We are sitting at my dining room table about ten feet from the washing machine, which is chugging along noisily. "Yup. You wouldn't take him for an atheist though; he's quiet and sweet, really. He's a big man, well over six feet and big in a pear-shaped way, sort of a Baby Huey. He's got this roll of fat under his chin and a balding, pointy head like an ostrich egg. Every time he talks to you it's real low, sort of a whisper. Lot's of 'excuse me's' and 'I don't knows'. One time he was he going to an atheist's convention in Chicago: he came up to me at my desk beaming and said 'I'm so excited! I'm going to go on my first train trip!' "But he's committed though. Does all sorts of things for kids and stuff. Does a hell of a lot more than a lot christians I know. Try those dumplings. His wife is from Thailand. He got her from one of those mail-order brides services. Whatever, he seems happy." I put the dumplings in the microwave. They are spicy and made with cabbage and some other vegetables. I poured us both some more wine. We start talking about some land owners meeting she went to in Austin, where my family has 500-something acres of land that we just recently turned into a wildlife preserve for a tidy sum. "The meeting was held on the Wright land. Old school Texans, all of 'em. The meeting starts with a prayer, then the pledge of allegiance, then we all have to sing 'God Bless America'! Yeesh! Anyway, there's this old man there - 88,in a wheelchair, looks like thawed out death, thin and bent, long white hair that went down past his shoulders. The patriarch of the family, apparently. Next thing we know they're giving him a microphone and starts talking about his days as a Texas Ranger." My mother lowers her voice into a raspy whisper. "'Back in those days, there weren't but two laws, Ranger law and....' Oh I don't know, law of the jungle or something. Then he goes on to talk about how the Rangers didn't have time to take the criminals they'd catch back to town or wherever and put 'em on trial, so they'd just shoot right there or hang 'em in a tree. I thought, Oh please!" She gets up and transfers her clothes to the dryer, and puts another load on to wash. She sits back down and we start talking about my Aunt's divorce, my sister, my future, etc. We aren't necessarily ripping through the wine, but we're not holding back. Eventually, we start talking about all the money she's come into after the land deal. Some of it she invested, some of it she's going to use to travel, etc. She's got extra income from renting out my grandparet's old house. After spending much of her life worried about the future, she seems to feel safe. Suddenly, she smiles broadly and says, "Do you think I'm going to die?" "What?" Her smile gets bigger and she's glowing. "Do you think I'm going to die?" "Well...Ma...in the fullness of time." "I mean, I finally feel I've gotten to that point where every thing has come together. All my ducks in a row. I mean, surely they're not going to let me get away with that? It doesn't matter. All my life I've worried about the future; well, I'm on the last leg now, the future is death. I've probably got another good 20-25 years left in me. I can't worry about you or your sister or where I'm going to be or how I'm going to live." I'm not sure what to say to her, but she seems very happy. "And what do I care about death anyway?," she says. "I think I believe in layered life, you know." She makes stacking motions with both hands. "I think when I die I'll probably come back in 1791 or sometime like that. Especially after all that stuff you read about DNA! I mean, It's like a bar code! Like at the supermarket! Boop! Your a soldier at Waterloo. Boop! Your Queen of the Nile. Boop! You're growing hydroponic radishes on a Martian colony." She sits back, sips her wine, and smiles. I tell her, what the hell, it could happen. By this time her laundry is done. She folds it and stuffs it all back in the bag. she notices the my little grandfather clock, one that she had given me, had run down. She opens it up and winds it back up and and sets the chimes. Then she leaves. Fifteen minutes later, at exactly 6pm., the clock chimes 2 o'clock. |
If they ever make a movie of yr life/get Gena Rowlands to play yr mom. (P.S. -- Did you hit her up for an advance on yr inheritance/or no?) |
No movies abuout my life. I don't like to face it directly. An art film... "Surrealistic Laundry"... My mother will be a woman named Vita Brevis and will be played by Jack Nicholson in drag... I will be played by a soiled, secondhand microwave in a wheelbarrow. |
Lemme think... how abt Paul Newman instead? He'a got a great sense of humour abt himself. |
"it's fantastic!" . . "Who's your shrink" |
Though I do think that one her greatest fears is to be written about or r-tistically interpreted by me in any way. That microwave (of course oven) in a wheelbarrow is more apt a description of me than you know. No Shrinks For Me. Had a bad month with a rational-emotive therapist once. I would argue with him about the way he did the session. He would look hurt and confused and say "does it make you feel better to attack me?" Of course it did; but more importantly he, was an idiot. I started making stuff up so I could watch his eyes brighten at some bogus revelation and start scratching stuff on his notepad. Just when I had him convinced I was certifiable, I stopped going. Wing(ed) Sony? |
did you lose your possible medicare/medicade certifiability.or ssi ? Shrinks are jive. like that Freudian Jungian whatever has anything to do with modern times. that was for the society of Then. try and apply it to ghetto problems and theyll look at you like youre from out of space. comparing a nostril to a vagina. . .indeed: that's a quote of a quote of freuds. frauds they are. |
This guy I saw was anti-freud, in his own vague way. Rational-emotive therapy was supposed to be about facing your problems head-on. He wouldn't let me talk about my past, which I really wanted to do. A lot of revelations about my family had come to light, and certain questions had been answered for me and I really needed to talk about it. No dice. He wanted me to chart things and forget about things. I started to notice that he really wasn't at all a very perceptive man, as far as people go. Generally, he was one of those over-amiable types who talks loudly. He would act in exactly the same way in each session, following a little routine - greeting, a couple minutes on irrelevant chatter (junk mail, sports, the weather) that was supposed to disarm me, then we sit down and I was supposed to tell him how I feel. He got uncomfortable if ever I went outside his routine. If I argued with him or said anything negative he would flash a worried/confused look, then say something like "well it's good that you're speaking up, but..." and try to get everything back into a groove. I think he was a man with no actual people skills who really trying to do his job the best way he could. I found out later that mostly he only worked with alcoholics and drug addicts who needed his kind of spiel - straightforward, set goals, and all that. He would also try to do this sort of reductio ad absurdum(sp?) thing. Bad feelings were "irrational". He knew he had the advantage in that nobody can explain any feeling rationally, and you almost felt ashamed of them. But I like my irrational feelings, treasure them. I have the curse that someday, somewhere they're going to come in handy; that I'll be able to make something out of them. Rilke, when asked why he didn't have himself psychoanalyzed, he said: "it may well banish my devils, but I fear it may offend my angels." I've seen my share of shrinks in my time, but he actually changed my life. Strange. |
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talk about twisted. "sorry about that chief" talk things out. air your grievances. somewhere i read that repressed feelings, emotions, demons, whatever, if not 'vented' will cause disease physically, express itself in ways like cancer or the like. My experience was with a counselor from an Episcopal schools program. Trainees using . . cognitive _?_____ therapy. it was most logical and also free-form. You can step around the truth when talking to them but you can't fool yourself. one way or another you know what needs to be done. check out Krishnamurti. or the title of an album by van Morrison, "no guru, no method, no master." i believe that everyone knows the difference between right and wrong. turn on the light, look at the demons. but someone once likened forcing issues to opening an oyster. don't die over it. |
wish i could remember the fellows webpage. |
Evens us all out..... I intend to fight the reaper all I can.... OD in 84; gunshot in 85; Still here, and maybe I wish I was gone, Yeah, I have been like I am now....... Make money, buy Oracle at 25....... If they only knew!!!!!!!!! |
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