Seeking Help & Support

If a rich, successful person frequently tells the world, anyone listening that is, that he sees a psychiatrist what might be our first reaction? Mine would probably be that he was wound so tight from having personally made all that money, he needed a safe place to vent. I have in mind a man in his 50's who will soon be making $2,000,000 a week and he's not even a basketball player, ha! I'll reveal who the person is in a minute; perhaps you know, or have already guessed.

The subject, 'seeing a psychiatrist' came to the fore yesterday or the day before because someone posted on a writer's message board that Sigmund Freud was an avowed "Atheist." I had to admit I did not know that. Curiously I was made to feel shame for my ignorance, especially since Freud has always fascinated me. Also, I've been in therapy, and know people I admire who have been psychoanalysed. In spite of Freud's expressions of distaste for religion I retain my great interest in, and admiration for all religions. In theory I believe wholeheartedly that one's relgion would be even more beneficial for a good life and fulfillment if one possessed keen self awareness, a benefit conferred by psychoanalysis and therapy, group, or one-on-one. 

Howard Stern, radio talk show host about to move to satellite radio in about nine months, freely and humorously confides that he sees a psychiatrist. Doting on all forms of self-revelation, even though it gets me in trouble, I applaud Howard for his guts and strong desire to contribute to people's well-being through alleviating their guilt. Sometimes we don't know, we don't know we are miserable. Ha! Every day I strive to say something out loud that is difficult to give voice to.  Why hold it in? Well, to not hurt someone's feelings could be a good reason.

My access has been a little iffy lately so I'd better save this now. Thanks for listening.

Barry    

 

 

 

Rambling

Sections of the California Harbor Freeway 110 were completed around 1985. It joins Los Angeles to San Pedro on the Pacific coast.  Parts of the highway, taking North and South together, are twelve lanes wide. The other day a driver was shot to death by a shooter in another vehicle. The young man was only 20, and handsome, and in college, beloved by his mother shown on television weeping uncontrollably, begging for witnesses to step forward. Nobody has come forward.

I was driving South when it happened. An ambulance, and a police car passed, sirens wailing. There were already helicopters overhead. Passing the scene on the North bound side I saw perhaps ten police cars, and at least twenty uniformed policemen walking around with measuring tapes. The victim's car, I later learned driving home shortly afterwards, was the one crashed into the dividing wall. Going by my daily newspaper, and evening news, no progress has been made in solving the murder. I did hear on television that many shots had been fired. The policemen with measuring tapes were probably collecting bullets and spent cartridges.  I'd never seen so many policemen in one place before.

That engineering marvel, the Harbor Freeway runs through South Los Angeles. Not far from the scene of the murder is Malcolm X Avenue which runs beside a small Muslim Temple. Nearby, also, is a thoroughfare named after Martin Luther King Jr.  Not far away, just a few miles, is the King Drew County Hospital. The Victim of the Highway shooting was African American.

I intend to make no case or comment. Yet, that is utterly impossible in fact. Put A next to B and the result is some new entity, AB.

Road rage must take many forms, and happen everywhere. I believe the government no longer publishes the number of highway fatalities. Could there exist a belief that numbers induce more numbers? Of course millions more acts of kindness and caution happen on the highways than do acts of madness. We are saved by that fact, the innate goodness of people, and our desire for loving connectedness.

Barry

 

 

 

Burying The Pope

My immediate family was agnostic. Yet, my mother sang in the choir of a Catholic Church on Sundays a few times when she visited her brother, my Uncle Hugh, in the rural town of Mudgee, NSW, Aust. Hugh also sang in the choir. He married into a wealthy, Irish Australian, Catholic family, and converted. Just this minute, right now, did it occur to me that not once did I hear anyone mention how and when the conversion came about. Approximately 65 years later he included in a letter to me his observation that the Pope was a good man, but "misguided." He could say that then; his wife was dead. Helen was spectacularly beautiful, and gave birth to eleven splendid children. Not only was she beautiful, but she was also 'winning,' warm, quick to laugh, gracious, almost as if she had modelled herself on an image of Mary. As a child, before my father stupidly put his foot dawn, when I visited my country cousins I took an active role in saying the Rosary, and went to mass. On later visits, after my agnostic father denied permission, I had to stay at the house, alone, on Sunday mornings when I visited my cousins.

My Uncle, and my mother, both committed adultery with devastating results. My mother, after the event, and before my mother knew that I'd seen her on the dark livingroom couch with a man not my father, one of several 'other men' during the war while my father was overseas, said to me while she sat at her mirror, "It's alright what you do provided you don't hurt anyone." Not long afterward, maybe a month, I murmured in the kitchen that I was going to "Tell Dad." My mother said, ever so quietly, "That would be a very hurtful thing to do." Not only did I never tell Dad, I forgot all about it until, in America, I brought it up in therapy.

Hugh was found out, causing a whopping scandal. His wife went to South America, alone, for a year. The neighbor had to divorce, and move to the city 200 miles away, a broken woman when I met her some years later. She told me how much she loved Hugh. She actually used that old cliche, "I loved that man with every fibre of my being." She was plain and pedestrian compared to Helen, who went back with Hugh and made more babies. She forgave him. Her family did not.

I became Catholic while serving in the U.S. Army in Korea. No, it wasn't fear of dying in combat, it was fear of the negative 'rewards' of leading a too clever life getting by on not letting anyone find out what I'd done, or what I really wanted.

Another leap in time and I'm in confession in Los Angeles, Blessed Sacrament on Hollywood Boulevard. After talking for a while the impatient priest said to me. "That's enough of the sex stuff, have to cheated in business lately?" Shocked, I stuttered and stammered I'd been in tax trouble. He was even less interested in that than he was in my sex life. He instructed me to say ten Hail Marys and go in Peace. Wow, I was singing.

I hope and pray that with that sketchy outline of formative influences you'll understand, no matter your religious views, how it came about that I'm deeply moved by the present spotlight shining on the Catholic Church. Let us together enjoy a brief moratorium on criticism.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

INNOCENCE

Had to look up the spelling anyway, so here's a reminder just in case. I deleted #3 at the end which said "BLUET."  I looked that up too, and it said a flower, perhaps denoting innocence? an addition I really can't fathom.

Main Entry: in·no·cence
Pronunciation: 'i-n&-s&n(t)s
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 a : freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil : BLAMELESSNESS b : CHASTITY c : freedom from legal guilt of a particular crime or offense d (1) : freedom from guile or cunning : SIMPLICITY (2) : lack of worldly experience or sophistication e : lack of knowledge : IGNORANCE <written in entire innocence of the Italian language —E. R. Bentley>
2 : one that is innocent

________________

All the Pope talk has me longing for a return to innocence. If I'm not too inordinately rigorous with myself I believe I lived in innocence up till about age 14. For example, it never occurred to me as an option to think ill of someone. I'm positive I never characterized anybody negatively, not even in thought. It's true I was on one occasion very angry with a younger brother, and I chased him for two or more blocks then hit him. That doesn't sound too "innocent" does it? The event was so isolated I'm appalled at what I did.  Well, I said not too rigorous, and I'm ashamed. My brother Hugh knocked over my windup train.

That state of innocence is thrilling. The much televised weeping for the lost cleric, the recently dead Pope, is partly about fear of losing a connection with innocence, and the thrill of integrity.

The next Pope will be African Black. Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles stated on the news last night that the next Pope will not be American. That's for sure, Father. So, that leaves possibilities from South America (we can forget Mexico, where in my opinion the Catholic Church is in disarray) and from Africa. Like Mexico, the rest of South American Catholic clergy cannot emerge untainted by political turmoil, at least in reputation if not in actuality. So, if the new Pope is to come from Africa, how in good conscience can that choice NOT be Black? To give some idea of how Catholic is much of Africa, there is a full scale duplication of Saint Peters Vatican Cathedral in Africa. I'm embarrassed to admit I do not know exactly where it is located. I think I read that the African duplication is actually bigger. It would be good theater if the Pope were Black. "Theater," you know, is not a dirty word. I simply cannot resist quoting just once more someone I loved: "The Catholic Church is good theater." - Lee Strasberg. 

What should we do when our "train" is knocked over? Life doesn't seem to offer many answers. Striving for innocence sounds too abstract. And what do we do with our fear of being tricked, or lied to, or spoken against behind out backs? What many young people do in America (and elsewhere of course) is join a gang. A great deal of ego strength is provided by gangs. That part gets left out of news accounts of the growing number of gang members in America, so many that California is probably about to make it a crime to belong to a gang. Can you imagine? What that offers is an opportunity to sue a compnay that hires a gang member, which would damage the economy!

Is our popular music innocent? How about our movies and television? Innocent? Not bloody likely. How does one measure innocence? By many measures Howard Stern is innocent. This morning he begged, tearfully almost, for his present employer to fire him, release him from the remaining 9 months of his contract. Howard Stern is faithful to his employees and his girl friend and his friends. In many areas he is devoid of guile, lies, defamation, and disloyalty. Notice how he is loved by large numbers of people. He gets along beautifully with both his parents who must be 75 or 80 or more.

One interesting measure of the degree to which we are innocent might very well be how comfortable are we at entertaining ourselves at home alone? Alone we can't so easily escape the infuriating mind chatter that dogs us when we lose our innocence.

Barry 

 

Working out

Declaration: I will compete in a USMS (United States Masters Swimming - age divisions) Long Course swim meet (under SPMA, the local, CA., body) on this coming May 8, a Sunday.

For one thing I must prove I'm under certain times in order to be eligible for the Nationals, this year being held in Southern California.  My best event, probably, the one in which I might place, is the 1500 meters freestyle. That's the event at the Athens Olympics where American television broke away in the middle for several commercials. I was horrified, and embarrassed for America. In Australia, swimming nuts, one can be absolutely certain the TV coverage did not break away. And, an Australian won.

Okay, okay, so I'm American. My parents were not.

Today, Sunday, in a public place, a crowded laundromat to which I drive some miles for their huge, $6 a load machines-- we have a family of five -- I did my stretching and balancing exercize which I employ before every swim training session. How happy I was, and very surprised, I could balance for minutes on one foot while holding the ankle of my other leg against my buttock, looking straight ahead while standing tall and erect. No shyness, no self-consciousness, no miserable doubts. I'm ready to compete. 

I have a month to get used to, and break in, a new pair of goggles, and a new swim suit. For competition I will use a make of goggles that give good peripheral vision, and don't fog up. (Secret: 'Original' Palmolive dishwashing liquid  poured direcly on all surfaces of the goggles, then thoroughly rinsed, obviates fogging for at least an hour of swimming. Don't ask, I don't know why. I can definitely swim 1500 meters in less than an hour. Less than half an hour also.)

Then there's the question of should I take son Vincent, aged 9, to count laps? (30 in a 50 meter pool.) The mind plays tricks with you so you lose count without help. At the Championships, I guess, never having been in the Nationals, only So. Ca., I'll have to count my own, so I better try it alone for practice. I never practice the actual event. Superstitious. Hey, I'm an amateur.

Thank you for listening to my declaration. I'm not nervous already. I'm not, really. Really.

Barry

 

 

Schemes Hopeless, and Schemes Delicious

"Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment," quoth Johnson // Sam (or did he sign 'Sam : Johnson' ?) the august assembler of the first English dictionary, wit, contrarian, amusing snob in the 1700s from whom derived the still oft used acronym TIPS: 'To insure prompt service.' He was clever and made more famous than he might have been otherwise by his biographer whose name I have no intention of ever remembering. 

Plays, movies, sitcoms, standup comics, and birthday parties are successful or not in providing "merriment" depending how studiously created are their "schemes." I enjoy quarreling with Samuel Johnson, Gentleman, because he was idle, drunk, and fat, and said of the sublime Paradise Lost, "Nobody ever wished it longer." With this famous, oft repeated witticism, the writer immediately places himself, and not Milton, front and center, and who dare contradict him? given the potency of his barbs and opinions and putdowns?

One's private merriment can also be willfully created. The trick is to get off it regarding your negative judgments about acting and actors and practice preparing for the daily stage appearances of one's active life, even if that activity is done solo in the house all day. We create our experiences. Even those sudden shocks unexpected can be processed for merriment. Well, that's my opinion; there are those, including myself sometimes, who turn down merriment, and go instead for high drama, and rending one's raiment.

I must at this juncture give up the word processor to another family member. I'll revisit this subject. Sudden changes of plans are not exactly merriment are they? Ha!

Barry 

Mooning

"It's only a paper moon." April Fool: that's some old song lyric. "Moon over Miami," is another song lyric. Who 'mooned' the Boston Celtics years ago? Give up? Jack Nicholson. Why? Don't ask, the guy's nuts (calculatedly) crazy like a fox. He has to be a part owner of the Lakers don't you think? He gets away with murder, screaming at the refs (Umps?) to eject him: "Go ahead and see what happens," he yells. Moonstruck, that guy. Shine on Harvest Moon. Moonshine: ya like some? Just a nip to get you started for the day ahead?

What is that rock that follows us around in such an irregular-seeming fashion? Sometimes a planet hangs around, under, or beside it, kinda sucking up, like a lamb.

While still only three my son found the moon out of our bedroom window, then moments later dragged me into his bedroom to show me the moon was out that window also. Moon watching continues now that he is four. Why, he asks is the moon sometimes yellow, and sometimes almost white? My explanation began by telling him it is even orange when near the horizon, and almost white when directly overhead. He doesn't really get that yet, nor can he get it that the moon is an inert mirror. Who could blame him? The damn moon wanders all over the sky, showing up wherever it damn well pleases and adds to the general human state of constant confusion. Moonbeams indeed: effing nuts, that night sky. Then, like a mooncrazed loon turned pale grey the lonely moon shows up sometimes in the daytime. Shouldn't it be at work, or hanging out, chilling, waiting for nighttime? In bright sun I wear a baseball hat for safety while driving. Think I'll wear the same thing at night when the moon is full. They don't call it moonshine for nothing; the moon can make you drunk. and see how it swells up when it's giddy? Hey, and those flyboys who walked and played golf on the moon, are they alright? I suppose they get regular checkups. Did they bring the flag back with them or is it still there? Why don't they tells us that stuff? Give us an update.

April Fool I am, every month, what with that loopey moon shadowing me. What? It's from the FBI or what?

Barry