Slaughtering Your Inner Demons

Frank:

Nice picture of the big bird.... you said it was a vulture.  We don't have vultures around here, just crows and ravens.  The other day, I did see a pair of very big hawks soaring over a field where I walk our dog.  A little songbird seemed to be trying to drive one of them off and it was interesting to watch this little bird repeatedly swooping at a predator that was about ten times its size.

Yeah, I sympathize with the guilt you're talking about.  I get that too, usually from an inner voice that's saying something like, "Well, you sure made a damned fool of yourself."  After a life interaction comes guilt -- actually, for me I'd call it shame -- and of course before there's often anxiety. You get hit both ways, coming and going.  What gets me is that most people, the thick skinned doers of the world, don't feel any of this stuff.  They just barrel along, thinking, "I'm doin' great!"  I don't even think they have dreams at night, at least not dreams they remember.  And the stuff you're feeling guilty about, they do stuff that's five times worse, but they're feeling just fine.

That Self Therapy book would say you've got this inner "part" -- like a little person inside you --  that is causing you to feel that guilt, and it would say you should make friends with it, and get to know it, and figure out why it's doing that.  That's good advice, but I've also come up with another solution that is more satisfactory and fun.  When I feel what you're talking about, let's say it's either shame or anxiety, I  sometimes picture the being inside me that's causing me to feel that way.   But then, instead of imagining myself being all nice to it, like some little boy trying to make friends with Uncle Steve, I imagine myself murdering it.  In my imagination, I'm screaming, and hacking it to death, and blood is splashing everywhere, and it's very satisfying.  It actually seems to work sometimes, too, the guilt or anxiety recedes.  Then, when it returns the next time, I don't get all upset and think, "O darn, it didn't work."  No, I treat it like one of the villains in an action movie.  They always come back, too. "I knew you'd come back," I say, and  I just go after it again, with a battle axe this time maybe, and very graphically chop it all up again.  It's my imagination, after all.  I can do whatever I want.  I think you should try this.  Seriously.  As far as I'm concerned, whatever gets me though each day, it's all good... as long as it's not something that's obviously self destructive, like developing a heroin habit.  I'm thinking I should write a self-help book.  It would be titled, "Slaughtering Your Inner Demons." 

Here's what I think -- there's a part of you that wants to shut you down for some reason.  It wants you to end up barricaded inside your house, with aluminum foil over the windows, trying to keep you inside, and everything else outside.  You could view it as a frightened part of yourself, probably some little kid version of you, or you could picture it as an enemy... as a kind of  "demon."   Or better yet, picture it one way one time, and another way another time.  At any rate, whether this part of your is your friend or your enemy, you can't let it have its way, at least not before you're in a nursing home somewhere, at the mercy of high school drop-out aides... at that point, withdrawing into depression/isolation would actually probably be a reasonable response.

Yes, this is a nice time in Maine.  It's a very green time.  You can feel life bursting out everywhere.  As opposed to April, when everything just feels dead.  April in Maine is like being depressed at Christmas.  You know you're supposed to be happy, it's supposedly spring, and that theoretically "life" is happening all around you. But you look around and everything still looks and feels empty and dead.

We hike once in awhile, but the problem where we live is that if we actually want to hike somewhere in the mountains, it's at least an hour and a half away.  So we go on a lot of shorter walks, along the coast, in meadows, or in the woods, or whatever.  We also go on bike rides sometimes.  We have ocean kayaks, too, but I tend to drag my feet about going out in them, because to me it's a big hassle putting them on the car, driving to the ocean (it's only five minutes away), taking them off the car, etc. etc.  I'm really lazy about stuff like that.  A big lazy baby.

We should have lobster one of these days, now that you mention lobster.  I see the nearby farm stand, which also sells live lobster, is selling lobster for $4.99 a pound, which is a pretty good price.

Yes, I'm planning on getting to your place in  the evening of June 22.  I'd be there for the 23rd and 24th, then have to leave on the morning of the 25th.  I'm looking forward to it.

--edward

scared of strangers

Frank:

Interesting that it is such a puzzle, getting from your place to Carson City.  How about paddling that 18 ft canoe of yours, down to the south end of the lake?  You could camp overnight along the way.  The whole adventure, and an explanation of the difficulties that led you to it, would make a great article for the local newspaper.  It might even get picked up by the Associated Press, and you'd end up being a guest on David Letterman (I'm assuming David Letterman still has a show on TV) or Jay Leno, or whatever.  Of course, you'd first have to round up some Mexicans to help you get the boat from your place down to the lake, but the story of that would just add more fascinatingness to the piece.  Or is the canoe still sitting in Jane's garage?  This is a brilliant idea but, no, you'll end up getting there in some not-newsworthy way.

Okay, so let's address this discomfort with people thing....

Well sure every stranger you meet is a potential rattlesnake. Or it could be like one of these insects that injects its eggs inside its prey so they can hatch in there, and then slowly devour the thing from the inside.   I've definitely always felt wary of people, and on my guard, to the point where my face starts twitching and I can't look people in the eye. My dad did a great job of teaching me, and demonstrating, that people are scary and not to be trusted easily, and the world is a terrifying place. But everything is dangerous and unpredictable.  That's what makes it life as we know it. Catastrophe can strike any time and anywhere, with or without people.   Every decision or non-decision could be the one that kills you. And if you try to seal yourself off from all these dangers, bingo, you're dead already... you just have to wait for your heart to stop beating.   Sure, the world is an unsafe place, and people can be rattlesnakes. I've always assumed that everyone has a dark, secret underbelly. All I have to do is look at myself honestly and I realize, okay, people are complicated, and a mixture of good and evil.   I think everyone is, to a greater or lesser degree, a fraud.  That's the human condition.  I feel like I've got a fairly decent radar for when people are seriously being fake and trying to manipulate me and that sense gives me a certain amount of confidence, I guess, that every person I might encounter isn't a complete unknown scary question mark, with an equal, random chance of being a rattlesnake.  Did you start out thinking that people are basically good and trustworthy?  Have you always had this intense wariness and suspiciousness of people, or did it come over time from many repeated experiences where you misjudged or trusted someone, and they turned out to be a rattlesnake?  If you can't generally tell the difference between a cherry bomb and a pebble, then all pebbles seem dangerous.

Jesus said this to his followers when he sent them out into the world to interact with people: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: so be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”  Be wise as serpents.... a very interesting thing for Mr. Son-of-God to say to his friends.  He didn't tell them to just go out and be trusting fools.

At this point in my life, the rewards of trying to make connections with other people outweigh the dangers.  It's like being on the second story of  a burning house.  It feels like the choice between a gamble and guaranteed emotional death.  Sure, it's scary to jump out the window, but given the alternative... bring it on! That's a fairly new thing with me, this interest in getting emotionally intimate with other people.  I am by nature a very, very solitary person, more so than almost anyone I've ever met. I love solitude. I love quiet. That will never change.   It's only in the last four or five years, as I've stumbled through some pretty intense psychological and spiritual crises, that I've felt I need other people to somehow complete my destiny, for lack of a better way of putting it.  But that's just me, my personal situation.  For you, I guess the question is, can you be happy and fulfilled without other people?  And that's not even the question, because you've got Jane and the others in your family, and you've got me, and who knows who else you've already got.  If what you've got is sufficient, then there you go, there's no problem at all. 

I attached one more cartoon from Dilbert, that comic strip you think is dumb and humorless and incomprehensible.  Do you see any humor in this one?

I feel like an embarrassing dope after writing this e-mail, for some reason, but I'm sending it anyway.  If you're not an embarrassing dope once in awhile, then you're not really living.  That's my motto.

--edward

George Whittell

Frank:

Well, that's exactly what I said, that you haven't changed, it's the political parties that have changed. 

Those were interesting comments about the French guy's statement.  It probably is true that it's because he's generally a caring, generous person, with a socialized French conscience, that he thinks it's not possible to be happy without being generous.  Then there's the question of what it means to be happy.  There's happiness that is a kind of fun/pleasure, and then there is something else which is a deeper rooted sense of fulfillment and peace.  I'm pretty sure the two are different, and even contradictory a lot of the time.  There are all sort of pills and drugs and video games and things like sex and eating, and stuff like that, that are pleasurable, sort of like a rat pushing its little bar to get a brief moment of stimulation,  but a lot of the time those things are like taking out a loan that you need to repay later,  with an I.O.U. for an equal payment of unhappiness and suffering at an unspecified future date.  The fulfillment/peace thing comes from something else.  I think that's more the thing the French guy was referring too.  But that doesn't mean other people find fulfillment in the same way, or that everybody even cares about something like that.  Maybe for some people, it's limited to just trying to find ways to press that little pleasure bar as much as possible, until they die.  That sounds horrible to me, like some kind of ghastly dark nightmare.  It would be like somebody who masturbates as many times as possible each day, every day.  There would be a lot of moments of pleasure each day, I guess, but I can't say it sounds like a very good recipe for happiness.

Which kind of leads to the whole question, is life purely materialistic, where we are just a bunch of atoms running around experiencing little bursts of energy and unconsciously demonstrating the laws of physics, or is there something more to it than that.  Each person has to answer that question for themselves.

For sure, I do think that life consists of both joy and sorrow, and there's no way around that.  In Asian cultures, they totally accept the idea that suffering is a big part of life, but here in America, we do everything we can to avoid that.  We're supposed to be happy all the time, just like we're supposed to be young all the time, and I think that in itself is a big source of unhappiness.... it's particularly bitter to be sad in a culture that denies the legitimacy and meaning of sadness. 

So how were the festivities surrounding John's birthday party?

I've been thinking about this George Whittell guy you told me about, which is kind of hard to do since I hardly know anything about him.  But I was wondering if at one time in his life he really had enjoyed and cared about people, and so it was a shocking change of character that he ended up scurrying around in underground tunnels so he could be alone, or if his whole recluse stage was just a foreseeable ending of the way he had always lived his life.  My guess would be that he always treated people the way he treated his Duesenberg and his fancy wooden power boat -- as things to collect and show off and move here and there in ways that amused him.  If that's the case, it makes sense that in the end he'd get fed up and just take his toys and live in a tunnel. If that's the case, I feel sorry for anyone who got close to him in his lifetime, if they were at all caring or sensitive people.  Fortunately, the kind of person who likes to "collect" other people as fun accessories, tends to attract people who are also manipulators, so it's all fair game.

--edward

conservative vs conservative

Frank:

I have to laugh.... right next to the e-mail you sent me, was an e-mail from "Michelle Obama,"  wondering if I would take the time to wish Barack a happy Father's Day.  I won't bother to hit the "yes" button, knowing the next step is a screen asking how much I'd like to donate.

Yes, why aren't you a tea partier?  Like everything else,  it's all genetics, right?  Thanks to your genes, I'd say you are temperamentally conservative.  Conservative in the meaning of the word that is talking about being moderate, cautious, somewhat adverse to risk and novelty/craziness, and also interested in conserving elements of the past and of nature.  A "saver."  The tea-partiers call themselves conservative, but it's a whole different thing, in some ways they're almost the opposite of that meaning of conservative.  They wouldn't admit it, but they're more radicals than conservatives, like some kind of barbarian tribe, bent on destroying civilization. So, actually, if your description of yourself as a selfish beast -- I remember your family used to call you "Beast" ... was that short for "Selfish Beast?" -- is accurate, then it all makes sense.  When you were young and forward moving and hoping to be a accumulator who was going to amass a successful material life then make sure it was sheltered and secure, then political conservatism made perfect sense.  Now that you're more on the fringes of society, no longer a person who is actively working at raking together a hoard of wealth, and fending off any hungry mother fuckers who might try to challenge you for it, it makes sense that you'd be politically left leaning.  You are being consistent.... a true sign of a conservative.  The ones who aren't being consistent are the uneducated, futureless morons who have been duped into thinking that if only government was abolished, they would rise to the top like helium balloons, and once again enjoy the benefits of being Americans,  destined by God to be like the New York Yankees -- always dominant, happy and free.

Back to what that French guy said, which you never commented on:  "I think it's not possible to be happy without being generous to other people."  This guy is not religious, by the way.  France is considered a "Catholic" country, but very few French people believe in god, mostly just the older ones that are dying off.  Anyway, if that statement of his were true, then a truly selfish person would need to find a away to be generous to others.  Otherwise, he'd end up making himself miserable. 

Yeah, it's too bad Jane and Paul were into these GM and Chrysler trucks.  It's kind of a mini-tragedy to be responsible about careful maintenance and all that stuff, but to start out with a vehicle that is essentially rotten to begin with.  What a lesson it gives to people, when most stuff is shoddy and disposable -- there's no point in taking care of anything.  Just throw it away when it's broken, and buy a replacement. 

I have to admit, I'm not at excited about Obama as I once was.  I think part of it is that I'm psychologically withdrawing a bit, to prepare myself for not being devastated if he loses.  It would be a different story if he was out there making a difference, but right now he just seems like a guy who knows he's been stalemated in chess, and he's only moving the pieces around so it seems like he's still trying.  But I'll still vote for him, since his opponent is high-school bully boy Romney.

--edward

The Introverts

Frank:

Too bad about the truck breakdown, and all the troubles that followed.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that these vehicles are American-made, from the era when the Japanese were kicking our butts with reliability, but the American car makers didn't seem to care.  Or was that the case in the early 2000's?

You trying to get back and forth to the mechanic in Carson City, it reminds me of that guy, Hubcap Charlie, in Palm Springs.  If you keep having these car troubles, and have to keep going to Carson City, you could become a minor celebrity.  Little kids will be staring out the window of the cars, trying to spot Broken Truck Frank.

I'm delighted to hear that Bruce Jenner looks like Jessica Tandy now.  That is a very satisfying turn of events. 

I am reading a very good book right now.  It's called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking.  As you can probably guess from the title, it's all for introverted people ...  kind of a feel-good read for introverts, just like someone might come up with a book for people with buck teeth, with all sorts of research, and information about famous people who had buck teeth, and shit like that.  But actually, it's a well-written, interesting book, very thought provoking. Peggy read it, and told me I should read it.  I wasn't all that enthused, but I did start it eventually, and I'm glad I did. One introvert to another:  you should read it too. One interesting point it makes is that the United States is more culturally extroverted, and has more extroverted people that your average country, because it was pretty much settled by risk takers who pulled up stakes and set out for the new world.... the introverts probably all stayed home in Ireland and Germany and wherever. So there's a lot more extrovert tendencies in our gene pool than a country that has been settled for thousands of years.  Anyway, you should read this book.  There's a whole lot of stuff I've never really thought about before that is surprisingly helpful and useful.  My experience has always been that a person gets the feeling there's something wrong with them in this society we live in, if we're not out there with a big grin on our faces, slapping people on the back, absolutely loving to be around people, and drawing energy from social events, rather than being drained by them.   Yes, you should track down this book.  It's written by Susan Cain.  I'd buy a used copy and send it to you, but it was published in 2012 and it's still new enough that it costs $14 or $15 used.  In about six months it'll be available for about a penny on Amazon.  I'm reading a copy from our town library.  Maybe you can get a copy at the King's Beach Branch Library.  If nothing else, you'll like all the scientific data to back up your conjecture that our temperaments are largely derived from genetic influences.

Yes, you're right that the Republicans seems pretty successful at getting middle class people to support politicians and policies that will eventually destroy them.  They've managed to convince a whole lot of people that nothing good ever came from government.  I heard some politician say exactly those words the other day and I realized, wow, if that's what these people actually believe, then we are in some serious shit.  Actually, this is the downside of America.  We've had a very short history, compared with most other countries of the world.  Culturally, we're at about the teenage level of development, I'd say.... we think we know best about everything, just like some fool high school jock. The other countries of the world have experienced thousands of years of wars, good times, famines, golden ages, plagues, victory and defeat and on and on.  They have a basic understanding that humans can be completely barbarous, and that government at least offers at least the possibility of encouraging our better natures.

--edward

Bruce Jenner vs. Robert Crumb

Frank:

Okay, this is going to be an all-Bruce Jenner e-mail. All Bruce Jenner, all the time.

Well, that's interesting, that Bruce Jenner is married to Kim Kardashian.  Who the fuck is Kim Kardashian?  Anyway, it's Bruce Jenner, the pretty-boy track and field athlete who rode the crest of that wave of fame and glory to even further heights, to become a spokesman for Wheaties?   I had no idea he was still a functioning celebrity, or even that he was still alive.  So I go on Wikipedia  and learn that the guy has been a very active celebrity indeed.  I've got to give him his due, he never rolled over and quit, despite the fact that he's just a big dumb hunk of shit. He was in a couple of Hollywood movies, and both of them won the "Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture of the Year."  Now that's hard to do. Since then he's done everything from Skating with Celebrities to serving as a guest judge on the Animal Planet show Pet Star. He's done all kinds of stunts, shows and gimmicks.  He's lucky he was born at the right place and time.  If he'd been born about twenty years earlier, his options would have been so much more limited....  maybe a semi-regular spot on Hollywood Squares, and .... what else was available for a celebrity of his caliber back then?  I suppose he and Kim will remain together just so long as they figure they can milk more celebrity points and money as a team, then they'll cash in and get more celebrity credit when they get divorced. 

Well, my dislike of Bruce Jenner -- which never existed before you tipped me off that he's still running around on the planet -- is all jealousy, of course.  His track and field accomplishments are admirable, but everything else about him ticks me off.  Wikipedia describes him as a "motivational speaker, socialite and television personality" and each of those things is a huge negative for me, and then you combine that with the fact that everyone was already swooning over him from the start because he was dealt golden boy handsome genes.  So, I hate him.  But I wish I could run into him some time,  and have a little chat with him, one human to another.  For all I know, maybe he's a likeable guy.  But for now, I'm am consoled by my religious belief that there is a special, extra-hot circle of hell reserved for motivational speakers, socialites and television personalities.

Maybe what I'm really jealous of is that Bruce Jenner seems to have no sense of shame.  Pretty much everything I read about him, all the stuff he is up to, would be prohibitively humiliating for me.  Let's just pick one thing... say, appearing for five episodes  as Officer Steve McLeish on CHiPS, when Erik Estrada (who I see is also a "star" of both  reality TV shows and infomercials) was on strike for a better contract. So Jenner was essentially an unwanted picket line-crossing scab, on one of America's all time dumbest shows. This whole CHiPS  thing alone would have been enough for me to go out and commit suicide, out of pure embarrassment, if I was Bruce Jenner.  But, because he doesn't have any sense of personal shame, embarrassment or introspection, the guy just goes out and enjoys life.  If a producer approached him with a pitch for a show called American Top Celebrities Smear Dog Feces On Their Faces, he'd probably say, "I'm in!"  And he'd have fun with it, and be proud of it.  And I'm sitting here, filled with bitterness and disdain.

I have had a bad headache all day, with nausea.  I get these things about every couple of weeks.  I think it's maybe a form of migraine headache, and I don't like it.  I feel like Bruce Jenner is drilling a hole in my skull with his god damned little RC helicopter repair drill, next to my right eyebrow, and once he's done with that I'll hear him thumping about in his southern california mega-mansion, along with the high-pitched whine of the rotor blades.  The only thing good about these headaches might be that maybe my doctor will prescribe me some kind of euphoria-inducing narcotic pain medication.  If I had something like that to take when I got up this morning, this wouldn't have been such a bad day.

All of this Bruce Jenner talk reminds me of a comic by Robert Crumb, called "My Troubles With Women."  Are you familiar with R. Crumb?  A pretty brilliant cartoonist, as far as I'm concerned, mostly known for his alternative comics in the sixties.  Anyway, this "My Troubles With Women" is hilarious and perceptive.  I attached several images of it, at the point where he's reflecting on his utter failure with girls as a misfit high schooler. I definitely relate to it, and it all has something to do with my negative attitude toward Bruce Jenner.

I hope you have fun at John's birthday.

--edward

corgis, women, and helicopters

Frank:

Everything you said is true.  Except maybe the part about women not getting to play.  It's true that women look at a lot of the play-type things men do and think, "Ugh, how dumb!"  but they get their play-time good feelings from social interactions.  The very stuff that men look at and think, "Ugh, how dumb!"  But the women are living it up, and a lot of it has to do with making fun of the men in their lives.  Have you ever listened to a bunch of women sitting around with other women, just saying and doing women things? They're having a blast.  The guys are earnestly running around out there playing with their RC planes and helicopters, and the women are on the porch drinking wine coolers and talking about what the guys look like with their clothes off, and exploding with laughter.

All this stuff about play makes me think about my experience down in the Sawgrass community in Florida, that gated community where, once you pass the guard station, and the wall that rings the entire little "town"  -- a wall that  is so cleverly camouflaged that you don't even realize it's there -- you are suddenly in a kind of permanent play world.  Everything is perfectly landscaped and charming,  and only the right kind of playmates are found there.... affable, white, sportily dressed, unthreatening people.  The two central features to the community are play areas -- the tennis club (which includes other play activities such as squash, a swimming pool, and so on) and of course the golf course, which is the central theme of the whole place.  The residents are weirdly friendly and happy-acting, though I'm sure I wouldn't have felt that vibe if I were, say, latino.  Anyway, I found the whole experience deeply disturbing, mostly because I was thinking, "Is this really what life is about?  Have I missed the boat?"  It was actually a kind of jealousy thing.  In my experience, life involves a lot of pain, struggle, confusion.  Is it all meaningless suffering, that would all vanish like a silly dream if I just got inside the gate and took up......golf?

In the end, I know a secure life of endless golf wouldn't work for me.  Maybe it works for other people, maybe not.  I don't know.  It reminds me of when I was school teaching.  I always taught in a wild, undisciplined, hilarious way, and sometime the kids got so worked up in that stimulating environment that behavior was a problem.  I used to threaten them that if they didn't settle down, I was going to completely change, and become quiet, docile, totally organized, and civilized.  I remember one time I said that and tears started running down this one little girl's cheeks.  But deep down I knew there was no way I could possibly change like that; I couldn't even pull it off for one day.

The French guy we were traveling with in Italy said an interesting thing to me, while we were hiking.  He said, "I think it's not possible to be happy unless you are generous to others."   I wonder if that is true.  Actually, I don't think there is such a thing as a person being essentially happy or sad, it's always a mixture of both.  Happiness gives way to sadness, and sadness gives way to happiness, just like life leads to death, and death leads to life.  I'm not even trying to be happy any more, because I know I'll get my share of both happiness and sadness, no matter what.  I'd like to live an essentially brave, fulfilled life, though.   To me, that is essentially a religious or spiritual matter.

--edward