There's been so much talk about Trump's intelligence; I differ with much of it. I don't think he's a Dumb-Ass or a Dumb-Fuck. Au contraire ... tolerably bright but never as bright as the really bright and, like Lilith or Aqualung, standing outside the Gardens of Pleasure with great envy and wishing others harm because he cannot rise to the position of the Luminaria. His coffers are never full enough. His wife never the absolutely prettiest. His stage never shareable. I think these types are the most dangerous, in certain ways. There's a famous Medresh (Rashi quotes it, I think it was on the passage that says "And God created the Great Lights.") The Moon Came kvetching (קטרגה הלבנה): It's not possible for two kings to share the same crown. The Holy One Blessed is He said simply: Go and make yourself smaller. .... Envy, this level of primitive envy, cannot ever be satisfied. No rest ... no peace .... just needing to get ahead of all those other pesky bright folk who have the Chutzpeh to also seek to shine. Our first Irish President, O'Bama, set it off pretty good by publicly announcing DJT's second-rate -- not poor, just second tier -- status, in humor. This is not such an uncommon character structure. The healthy live in-the-mix, share the limelight and even feel good about sharing it with friends, colleagues, kids, grandkids. For these folk, there's only one Subject and a World of Objects whose subjectivity is denied. 

Apparently Fate has it that I shall spend my Golden Years under the Rule of the newest of these Sun Kings ... and under these folk who have taken this one as their Saviour. Already, we see his wanton destructiveness  and the further Splitting that he has caused in the body politic. 

I haven't been writing in this blogged journal for some years, now. I've been busy tending to the wounds of old age (surgeries, illnesses of later life, ...) ... mine and my partner's who with me will celebrate 60 years of marriage towards the end of 2025. It took nearly 30 years for Germany to recover from the 1933 election of just such a man .... and neither M nor I have thirty years in the pocket. 

In my Dreams, I do expect a recovery or maybe more to the point ... a resurgence of a belief in shared governance from the Home to the State Capital and all the way to DC and the World. 

Moses got all pissed-off that he couldn't cross over the Jordan ... and ended up by cursing out his kids, at the end. My goal for the Last Quarter is to do better than Moses and better than Jacob who berated his kids at the end, too.

Gird your loins for a tough battle that I fully believe will be won.

Dreams Dreams Dreams ...

 

 Can you hide from your subliminal feelings and desires? Is Matthew  correct in saying that to fantacize something is the same as doing it ... or ... is the only question whether you ride the Tiger or the Tiger rides you?

 Why I came to Philadelphia ... running a school for some years while I was training psychoanalytically.

Videos

 I've decided to post some videos on this site. They were recorded by a training company in India ... I don't know what they're using them for ... what purpose ... but they represent some spontaneous thoughts I had in response to their questioning and may as well be out there. hhc 

Nevermind Just "What do Women Want" 

but 

What Do We Want in the Last Quarter

COVID-19 has us, as they say, Locked Down. In our homes! Alone or with family. Down to basics? I suppose for some but not for all. Still, most of us have slowed down. There's a scene in the 1950's Thousand Clowns, just as the movie opens. As I recall, Jason Robards is looking down from a very high window or maybe it's the moderator, himself, panning Wall Street with throngs of bug-small people moving about going somewhere. The plot wonders if maybe they're going nowhere. Perhaps, today, we'd call it a Gyph! A graphic trope! Matters little but it goes along with the plot-line centered on a man who is coming against a burgeoning society that was beginning to move in the direction of these earliest -- but pre-COVID -- months of the 21st Century. Madness! Entropic energy! We worry about the parents who bury their kids in music and math and dance and karate and baseball and ... and a neverending and unfolding of hustles and bustles competing only with the TV Adverts that move at five times 78rpm, betimes so quickly that one begins before the previous one has ended.

In my good COVID moments, I think of these seven weeks in the way 19th C. Sampson Raphael Hirsch thought of the practice of restfulness ... of sabbath. He reasoned that the biblical prescription for a day of rest helped humanity recognize that, in spite of their aspirations for greatness and creativity and a Porsche in the driveway, we members of Clan Anthropos are creations, just like the dog under the dining room table and the slug in the garden. We pretend to create. Judy Collins, the Kohelles-like chanteuse of a generation, sang: "Everything comes and goes/Marked by lovers and styles of clothes!" So, too, after some 50 years of labor and writing and building, I get my months -- funny they should come in the Last Quarter -- of reminders that, in some sense, we and I spend our time pretty much just moving one pile into an apparently neater one.

Still, even if we're doing nothing more than being born, rearranging some furniture and dying, we have some good times. We Eat and we Dance and we Sing and we Make Love and some of us choose to reproduce and raise our spawn "in their Good Times and in their Bad." And lest anyone reading this seeks to have me sent off for a Rest Cure for some Deep Depression, let me say that I've had a very Good Ride with lots of fun and occasions for both sadness in saying goodbye and some pretty whacky glee in times that I've been able to play with my fellow travelers. No way I'd choose not to have been born or to live a shorter life. I say: Bring me More of the Same!

Good enough. So, what do I want from this Last Quarter and however much Overtime I get to have. The Biblical character Jacob asked for "some clothing to wear and bread to eat!" In his last hurrah, standing before Egypt's Pharaoh, he whine: I'm an Old Man and my Days have been Just Awful. In the scriptural readings in my Faith Tradition, I always like getting to Chapters 48-50 in Genesis. It means, frankly, that I don't have to read any more, this year, about poor Old Jacob and his self-absorbed misery. Miserable people are, well ... miserable. 

There is essentially one and, perhaps, only thing about which Dennis Prager -- he is a Conservative Trump-and Fracking Supporting thinker who also is a Happiness Speaker -- and I agree (my Sister suggested I listen to Prager on Happiness): 'expressions of happiness are a gift we give and a debt we pay to others. Withholding it is nasty.' I don't think it's something, by the way, that we owe others every moment ... but often. Indeed, one of the greatest gifts I receive is when one of my near and dear or even an actor on stage shares their deep sadness with me. Sadness is not Depression (unless you're Big Pharma selling pills). Depression, like Anger, pushes people away. Sadness welcomes people to come near and hold. And so does Happiness. And Sadness is not Unhappiness and can often commingle with Happiness. I am, let me digress, quite sad that a dear old friend is dying and M and I cannot visit her during COVID. Still, I am quite Happy to hear her on the phone playing cards with her 24 year old grand-daughter who came to help Grandma and Grandpa when Grandma was diagnosed last year. Maybe those are Wedding Tears ... tears of joy. One sees the Bride and Groom celebrating Future and, like Proust, we're sad that we cannot quite ever again experience that transcendent feeling of a Big Sky Future.

So, in my extended Months of Sabbath, I hope for some joys, too, but something else, as well. Interesting how our News Programs often end with this other shared sentiment. I'm referring to Kindness. I'm not certain exactly what Kindness is but as a Justice once said about Pornography: "I know it when I see it." Show me two people interacting with each other and I'll tell you whether there's Kindness, in the mix.

We're not born Kind; we're born Needy. "His Majesty the Baby" (Freud's 1914 way of noting the demanding neediness of the infant and baby) has Needs and Others either fulfill those Needs or FAILS to do so. Somewhere in the first three years, the child begins to realize that Others are not only different than s/he but also very similar. They, too, have Needs. Until that moment, Others are mostly like Chess Pieces manipulated on a Board to the end of satisfying some Pleasure or Need. They have no Subjectivity as Subjects have their own Needs and Wishes and Motivations.

That Moment when the Child recognizes that it's possible to be motivated-to-action by others' needs or wishes moves the child from a narcissistically-hedonistic state of being into one where it is sometimes possible to be motivated to act due to the wishes of this Special Other ... Parent? Sibling? Child? Friend or Homeless Person. The Hairy Little Caterpillar becomes a Butterfly, a being that not only hides itself protectively with its patterned wings but brings Beauty to some Others. The Butterfly's beauty is truly only apparent in the eyes of those who can behold and reflect on what they see. 

I don't know what Kindness is but it is nonetheless what I think I most crave Playing in the Last Quarter. But of some things I feel certain:

• Kindness is about sharing one's beautiful wings with another;
• Kindness is about being motivated to make others Joyful;
• Kindness is about not raining on Others' parades;
• Kindness is not Greedy but seeks to Share; and
• Kindness IS the the stuff that Bonds us Electrons, together in these teaming madness that we think of as life.

Just Another Day in COVID-City

I'm not among those suffering. I am one of those lucky 70+'ers whose likely to be hunkered down for the Summer but I can work from home and we have access to enough victuals to carry us through.

I'm not among those suffering alone ... No Eleanor Rigby, here. I have a partner and a dog ... M for a very long time (some friends wonder if M's suffering being with me?) and Maisie for a couple of years, now. I'd like to think that I rescued M from her Mother in 1965 and Maisie from being euthanized in some W. Virginia Dog Shelter. I think of myself as a decent sort, as old Professor Higgins opined on himself, "an ordinary man ..."

I just read a piece from a psychiatric colleague who noted that our Elected President seems to place no value in the expertise or the health of Medical Staff. I suppose Trump only admires those who don't get caught by the virus and thinks of those who do as weak as Sen. McCain.

His writing certainly hit home. It fascinates me to watch how each segment of the population in an autocratic state becomes targeted due to some narcissistically pragmatic need of the would-be-Despot. Indeed, this administration has shown no respect for any expertise ... nor for any extant structures or organization that predates his rule ... not for the generals, not the heroic soldiers, not the Goldstar parents, not the economists, not the House, not the Meat-Packing workers, not the Judiciary, the Senate, NATO or WHO and now neither OSHA, CDC or ...  quelle surprise! ... the Healthcare World. It brought to mind the prose of a German Post-War cleric who famously wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I tried for many years to write about the administration. I started a FB Group named Free Citizen Therapists more than three years ago to provide a forum for therapists to discuss the need to balance the rights of public figures to their private lives (The Goldwater Rule) with the rights that the electorate has to expect the Mental Health Community to clue them in on when a leader was dangerous ... and dangerous in a way that threatened people. I joined other therapists in writing a book on The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. And while I think those writings may have helped get the word out, it has become rather unavoidable to at least consider that there's nothing more to do with this storm except ride it out.

For the moment ... at least at this moment on the last day of April 2020 ... I've given up. I have little doubt that I will be re-energized sometime soon but, today, I feel helpless to do anything to help the Doctors, Nurses, CNA's and Staff of the Hospitals to stay safe in Trump's America. I don't know what to do for the Meat Packers who are being threatened with intentionally induced poverty (no job? no unemployment, either) if they don't join the active troops in Gen. Trump's Wartime Army, conscripted to Kill or Outlive COVID (TWACKOC).

So, if y'ever wanna find me, I'm here gettin' old and puttin' on the COVID-15 ... those 15 pounds that most of us are gleaning from grazing like the cows and bulls being slaughtered, today, wish they were doing. I'm doing my work and having a snack. Then a little more and another snack, maybe some lunch. I call it the COVID Bovine Diet.

I have nothing really to complain about and, as Thomas Merton wrote some 60 years ago:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself.

This much I know: I've lost a step here and there ... but I'm OK.