Softening My Image

Virus

Part 6 of 30

These viral times are indeed trying times. I went out to mow my yard for the first time since winter and it took 30 pulls at the handle, nearly to no avail till, finally, it turned over and started. I was starting to sweat from embarrassment, not wanting the neighbors to see me in such a state of futility. Then there’s the virus, and children perhaps in all kinds of trouble, I don't know the full extent of the danger, but, forget about it, it's not good.

But it's not all bad. I give thanks for my neighbor, one of the Pavlona sisters from the old country. She used to travel quite a ways, not just around the three county area but out in the pretty far flung areas in a carriage. Her dad was one of the good old traveling minstrel types who could con the gullible out of their life savings, a fascinating thing. So Marie's one of the few neighbors I trust intrinsically, because she was totally upfront about her scheming thieving past and said indeed it was past. I put a 5 dollar bill on my dresser once in a while to test her, but of course she’s on to that old ruse.

These are the people, some of the neighbors -- the children and Marie Pavlona -- I have in my heart in these depressing days of this terrible virus. The children, naturally I want them to walk freely and to run and play freely. And Marie, she holds me in her prayers, she says, and someone with such a checkered past, if she says she’s praying for me, I believe it. That’s really the way it goes with folks like her. They may lie through their teeth when it comes to conning someone, but when they’re your friend they’re as good as gold. And kids can be the same way, usually conniving little monsters, but these kids, her extended family -- they’ve had nothing for so long -- they’re simply good. But offer one of them a fudge brownie and you better have one for the others! Fudge brownies are always a hit.

I mention all these children and Marie not so much for their own goodness, etc., but to soften up my image for you the readers. A few of you, according to the comments, think I appear to be “cold and aloof," I guess when it comes to stuff like that, and things about the virus, which I do take seriously. I have a mask, true story. And I want to assure you and put your mind to ease that I’m really an old softie. Which you about have to be when east European Roma are your friends; they’ll do anything for you. And then, naturally, the kids, every one a born thief but lovable as pumpkin pie.

Anyway, in these sad days of the virus -- dire days! -- it’s good to keep your friends close, etc., and look out for one another. Remembering, it should be remembered, to wash your hands and use about a gallon of antiseptic on everything they touch. It’s actually better to keep the kids outside or at least at arm's distance, wiping down any touched surface and all the rest to keep them from infecting me. These are things I’ve learned at the grocery store, which just recently put up an industrial strength plexiglass wall between the cashier and the customer. Prayers for them too.

I Reign A Small Town King

The Big City

Part 3 of 28

Even as a small town king myself, so often I find myself rejecting the prejudice small town morons have about the Big City, essentially that it’s evil. That goes against my competing small town values of prejudging any case. I had the impartial justice bug even as a kid, anytime I was accused of something. “Take your hands off me, you filthy devil,” I remember saying as a kid to one of my accusers, the school principal. That's what I should've said.

Another way to look at it is, Hey, we’re supposedly small town kings! If that’s what they call us, shouldn’t we embrace our royal identity and live out the truth how we have it over everyone else. It’s an injustice, it cries for legal help, to believe anything else. Although a lot of this language about us being small town kings was likely just a cheap shot by the main proponents of the small town vibe against the Big City. Meaning, yeah, sure, you’re a “small town king,” but apart from the debate with the Big City the message was always, “Don't embrace it as a thing,” or “When push comes to shove, we make the rules, we can change them.” A terrible thing as a kid to recognize. “You set up the parameters of my supposed royalty and you can knock ‘em down. 'We’re the ones calling you kings, We giveth, We taketh away.'"

Obviously in a situation like that, where the propaganda is widely touted even as you see how shabby it is -- like finding that all your birthday presents were just cardboard cutouts of the real thing, or your surroundings a Hollywood set when the director yells “Cut,” are things no kid wants to face. “But, but, you said!” “Yeah, kid,” the cynical adult says, “We know what we said. Stick around, clean your ears, there’s no telling how much more you’re going to hear about your so-called promise. You’re promise equals exactly this: The principal bares his ass and everyone lines up on their knees in lockstep to symbolically kiss it.  These are the insights the typical kid doesn’t know what to do with. Maybe just grow up to parade his own backside around the town, with one of two motives, to expose the apparently false teaching that every small town kid’s a king, or to keep embracing it, with the fear that to reject its truthfulness is to make even the promise vanish. Then what are you left with? Shambles, a small town vibe little better than the hated Big City.

I’d love to find the documentation on this stuff. It could be, given their low opinion of us, they were very careful to collate together all the documents, distributing them at meetings and then storing it all somewhere secure. But it could actually be easier to find than we think. A man serves as mayor or principal or even flunky only so long. I’ve seen how these meetings go, in unrelated fields. “We’re going to collect all the papers, etc.,” and the reality's often different. A guy’s talking and accidentally packs his papers home, they’re misplaced, they’re forgotten. Only to be discovered years later in an estate sale. “What have we here? A Nazi plan to make us think we’re all royalty, when, in fact, we’re peons from the word GO? This is what the exalted small town thinks of us, so desperate to keep us from the possibly true Big City propaganda that the Big City turns out the best kids, the true royalty!"

At the very least, friends, it’s disappointing to grow up and suspect your entire youth was a carefully nurtured lie, and now you're left to counsel a bunch of widowed children in their old age. But I simply got out, and here I sit, now a resident of the Big City. And I've seen one big difference here, they don’t even tell you you’re a king. The subject never comes up! Which explains a lot.

Tiny, You're Huge In Pictures

Part 12 of 31

They Found Another Body

Every story of someone being found — in the river, in the park, their den, the alley behind a strip club — starts somewhere. We could go way back, way way back, when these happy souls were prancing off to school. I’ve heard of cases where kids don't do that anymore, so it’s good to know we’re making progress. Even back then, we would’ve been better off staying home and learning what we needed behind the barn. The teachers were psychos, the principal, the lunch-ladies, the gym teacher, and certainly the guidance counselor. As soon as they saw you they hung out to dry, and, what goes up someone must cut down.

I spent an entire month decrying the psychotic (in practice) profession of guidance counseling. Ground I’d rather not cover again. Since I wrote that I’ve been temperamental and antisocial. I went to a dance and didn’t want to dance. Then a psycho came in and shot the place up. It took everything we had to talk him down. To make a long story short, I danced three or four dances with him and he went home and was apparently redeemed. Surprisingly, they dropped all charges because of the promise he showed as a dancer.

He and I didn’t share any guidance counselor stories, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had the same problems. Although the big difference between me and him would've been, I didn’t deserve the problems and he no doubt did. Definitely, he presented himself as a guy with multiple deep problems, problems gnawing away at him over the years, chewing at him, gutting him, emptying him out, literally making him rotten to the core. And whatever there is beyond a person’s core, I’m sure it had several negative aspects as well, if I had to judge, off the charts rotten.

What I’m really thinking is, What would it have been like had I been his guidance counselor? Say I went into guidance counseling. It’s not impossible to imagine. I’m idealistic. I could've gotten in there, whatever the situation was, and done it right. I’ve seen it done wrong all my life, I could train guidance counselors single-handedly. But the first thing would be to throw away their books and diagnostic notecards. We’d grind them up and have them danced on by exorcists. Then start fresh. With great techniques, the best techniques that technicians have never even imagined, technically speaking.

For instance, I wish I could've helped this guy, the hapless subject of a rather large painting. A man of greater girth makes an innocent remark that insults him. "You’re tiny, your picture is big, that is to say, you’re a tiny shrimp of a man and don’t deserve such a big likeness. Or you’re a small man and having a big picture makes you look smaller yet. We could make the biggest picture of you in the world, a canvas stretching across the Grand Canyon, then when you see it, we’d know you were a speck of dust just waiting to blow away, to blow violently against something, like a bug hitting the windshield. In your case, you’d hit your own huge picture like a speck of dust against one of the painting’s county-wide nostrils. You're tiny, tiny, tiny, nothing.”

Not a good tact. And what happened next ... which was before I heard the case and could've helped … it's unfortunate, too tame a word for it ... but at least we still have the painting to remember him by.

The Great Colossus

Part 26 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

At this point in my life I suddenly knew how the Statue of Liberty feels, not just once in a while but everyday of her fascinating life, similar to Martin Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Which was an incredible insight for Luther, because when he lived the Statue of Liberty was still nothing but a gigantic French puzzle. People dreamt of it, “Will this thing ever be pieced together and floated to America on barges?”

When you put it that way, I guess I shouldn't have worried so much about the guidance counselor and my life. It sounds like things were fairly well, or most definitely, set in stone, foreordained, and going to happen more or less as much as any other alternative. Heavy stuff, I know, but my super brain, fit only for a Colossus, or split in pieces and shared by several brainless men, can think such things (1) and recognize them when they eventually come to pass (2).

The guidance counselor, then, knowing the school year was ending and that he'd soon be rid of me, was in helpful mode. “What can we do to cobble together a reasonable cover story for your educational pursuit thus far, resembling as it does the Wild Mouse ride at the carnival, a rip roaring scary ride, fraught with bumps and bruises, but in the end still on track?” I thought, “Now you’re talking my language. The end is set from the beginning, but just getting there is half the fun.”

“Something like that,” he deadpanned in his usual sour tone. As much as saying, “What do you know?” With a side of “I’m also guidance counselor for the best and brightest of this school. Let me get you on track, Mouse, so I’ll be able to deny whatever bad eventually happens.” A real Judas Iscariot moment if you ask in hindsight. But it’s true, life is about sinking or swimming. Dying in the embers or rising from the ash heap and taking your place. Does anyone really doubt that a guy like me — with loving parents — would rise to take my place with the immortals? Hearing none, the motion's carried.

Just looking at my Colossus pose is enough to put me on top of the world, even today, so long after the events of the past, fraught yet with bad memories, but with the evidence of whatever wrongdoing was done either long forgotten, lost, or being eaten by mice in the educational headquarters and their hidden files. The beauty of the whole thing now is, despite the guidance counselor’s many fevered insults about me, none of it matters anymore.

Plus, I could go to a hypnotist right now and still be put in a trance and forever be centered on the image of me as the Great Colossus, striding over a dominion vast in scale. This Colossus wouldn’t be a bit funny. Not a bit, for in my mind, with the hypnotist’s help, I would stride around the city knowing, certain that I am the champion of the world! Be nice to me or that could happen.

It really gave me a funny feeling to think, “Here I am, every bit as good as the guidance counselor, and destined to surpass him in every way. And I guess I have in certain ways. I’m still alive and he’s dead. And I know where his cremains are buried. And I’m not yet cremains myself, but like I mentioned before, I’m still alive. Not to rub it in too deeply, alive unlike him, who is dead.

But he was alive that day -- damn the luck -- and that’s what always matters about the past.

I Gotta Be Me

No. 22 of 31 - Thermometer series

I believe there's a saying like this, “The measure of man is man himself.” Or maybe it goes, “Who knows the measure of a man more than himself?” There’s a saying something like that involving “the measure of a man” and “himself.” They used to measure me, so anything's possible, but that was just for shoes, pants, and shirts. They never measured the soul, although, I guess to be fair, I did go to Sunday School. So there's a lot of wondering about yourself and various jabs at answers.

So am I OK? I feel like I've put the pieces together, even drastically, with my own insights together with modern psychology and can not only say “I’m OK, You’re OK” but, invoking Tony the Tiger, “I’m Grrrreat, You’re Grrrrreat!” I say some version of that, and whether I believe it, that’s a different story. I definitely believe we as the subject are too close to the subject to objectively know whereof we speak in evaluating the self. But what other perspective can we have, especially when we restrict ourselves with a mechanical approach and a more or less superficial frame of reference? So called objectivity

It might sound trite to say it, but it’s likely true, we have to transcend somehow from within, seeing ourselves as more than skin, bone, guts, with a watchman on top of a spine. I can be very ethereal in thought. But not as much as I want to get, like in the Transfiguration. That’d be great. Say you’re sitting there, you’re transfigured, but while you’re sitting there, you’re also able to be in the kitchen, or over at the coffee shop, taking in refreshments. You run home or text to see how things are going in your chair. You’re so ethereal and so wonderfully transfigured that you’re able to text back that you’re doing fine. With the weirdest part being that you only have one phone but are somehow able to text back and forth while apart!

OK, let me draw a few at least superficial lessons from this as it applies to the thermometer drive. Which is weird, because the thermometer drive is the most important thing in my life at the present moment. Look at me sitting here typing this in a fever, while I’m across town having coffee. But I’m not in a coffee shop, no no no. I’m at a park, standing there waiting for the dew to dry so I can sit on the bench, while another manifestation of my consciousness is making the coffee in a French press pot and preparing to rush it to the park. As I sit here I was only momentarily disturbed as that I grabbed the keys from the table next to me. I hope they have a great day and that I accomplish a lot.

To drive the point completely home, or completely to the space between here and the park, or completely at the park — wherever I actually am — I gotta be me! I gotta be me! What else could I be? Something to see or maybe not. Just a bunch of ethereal spirits, eternal playthings in league with all that is, driving me completely bonkers, the more they’re busy playing around when there’s actual work here on earth to be done.

I have plenty of compatriots helping with the blog. The men’s organization, always pointing at me, going “You da man.” And the ladies aid, a more practical group of gals I’ve never seen. How the men ever happened to marry these particular women, I’ll never know. Maybe someday -- say I live till the 10th anniversary or 20th of this present-day blog drive, and we’re reliving old times -- they’ll tell me the full story: “Where did I meet Missy? I couldn’t tell you this 20 years ago, but she was a complete doll.”

Hit that thermometer! Things are going great! I'm not in the doldrums, just a reflective moment. I'm right here with you-all, bobbing like a cork, staying visible and doing well. We need you in this drive because it's taking off any minute now. Success is within our reach! We are our own success! Let me hear a rip-roaring Amen!

Drive for Pride -- Self Image

There it is, the chart I made in the '80s for a college psych class, on the subject of Self Images. Reading through it, it still jibes with my current thinking. I don't know if others have made progress since then. If so, good for them. I'm personally happy I got it right the first time, and to see how mightily it's stood the test of time.

This is the chart I was referring to yesterday in my post "The Forlorn Duck.". Now you can visualize where I said I was on the Ladder side, at "Healthy Below Average." That's where I started, being in a funk, the funk dinging my self image. Then I more or less changed my mind on a dime and was able to stomp -- physically and mentally -- my way up a few rungs to "Healthy Average." Pretty good, huh? Still, that's a little low for me, not bragging, because I generally run midway between "Healthy Average" and "As Good As You Can Get."

I'm happy to say that I've never fallen completely off the Ladder in my life. I can understand people who have, though. Because there's been those rare occasions when I've glimpsed the Scaffold from afar, which scared me straight back up the Ladder. True statement. I've always been someone deriving tremendous benefits from fear of every kind. I've avoided so many life-crushing setbacks in my life, thanks to fear. And now the pattern's so set that even if I lost my mind completely, I'd probably still have enough fear in me -- deep-seated, in a groove -- that I'd be safe and free. No incarceration or confinement for me!

OK, let's take a look at the Scaffold side of things. You start seeing the Scaffold side when you're at the bottom of the Ladder. There's a signpost near the Ladder's bottom that reads, "Very Unhealthy -- I beg you, try your best! Do not go down any further." Wow, that brings back a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget! Because I am personally the guy who posted that warning. True. I was right there, with the Scaffold side in view, with two ways to go, down further then across to doom or back up!

You can guess which I chose. And this is how I did it, like it went in "The Forlorn Duck," and similar to clapping and believing in Peter Pan/Tinkerbell, I simply rallied and stomped my way back up one single rung. Putting me in the "Hope" region but still so low as to almost have No Hope. I took off my mental belt and strapped myself to the side of the Ladder, gasping and shaking with something like delirium tremens, until I settled down. Then I carefully unhooked the belt and clawed very carefully up most of one rung, at which point I rebelted and rested another hour. After that I gave it my all and finished the rung. Finally, I was safe enough to sleep in place and progressively make my way back up over the next few days. Four days later I was home in time for breakfast.

Anyway, back to the Scaffold side, for those brave enough to take a look... When you go up a scaffold, you're going to your doom. That's why the worst self image states are toward the top, leading to some curious descriptors: When you make it to the top you've hit rock bottom. But when you go down, you're mentally ascending. The truth being, In this realm, nothing is what it seems. Let me clarify that by saying, In this realm, there is such a lack of possibility and hope that all of it is more or less diffuse; there are differences, of course, between the high bottom and the low rock bottom top, but when things are 100% hopeless, to you those distinctions lack meaning. Obviously, though, we still use them clinically for quantifying a person's self image or lack thereof.

I've probably known a person or two who've been at Absolute Rock Bottom (ARB). But, as you can guess, they tend to be people you turn from almost immediately, lest they suck you in. Still, it would have to be an interesting state, except to them they seem unaware of their state and certainly unable to describe it. There's such lifelessness, it's scary. Most professional helpers I've known who've had a likely ARB case generally stick them in a freezer till a cure is discovered. Then 100% of those soon suffer freezer burn, and, worse, die.

The only sure cure is to avoid the Scaffold all together. If you can't manage that, then, whether it's your own fault or someone else's, you really should have tried harder to manage it. Seeing, though, a case in which you didn't, there's no reason to talk of cures now. Maybe something like going to a castle, being laid out on a lift gurney, and being raised out a domed tower, and being repeatedly struck by lightning -- and having had someone qualified to prepare the wires and apparatus in particular ways -- might do the trick. But that's a lot to depend on, especially since most insurance plans don't cover it, and, anyway, the odds of success are worse than winning the lottery without playing.

In your own personal "Drive for Pride," you need to tend often to your self image. It's easier to regress, naturally, like a coach potato, but it's much more satisfying to make progress, and, having made progress, to maintain your good position in life.

The Forlorn Duck

If I may be so bold, Hello! -- Please don't hit me, I didn't mean anything by it. Please excuse the mood; it's getting kind of severe, this skittishness. . . . The thing is, I've been doing some fairly intense work on my identity, looking for certain aspects of my personality to put forward. I feel like I've sunk a lot in recent weeks -- I don't know why -- A lot of my former confidence and even joy have gone missing.

My self image right now's at its lowest. And the more I do -- the old stuff I used to do for maximum happiness -- doesn't have the same kick as before. I go to bed sad. I wake up in the night sad. And of course I greet the brand new day, pulling open the curtains to see the new day's sun, in a totally sad way. I've become what I never dreamed I'd be, The Forlorn Duck. That's what I'm calling myself, "FD" for short.

So if you've never liked me before -- it wouldn't be so hard to believe -- please like me now. This Forlorn Duck stuff is worse than you'd think. It's so bad, it's like the experts say, It's hard to get out of it. So part of me says, "Just give up and give in. Be the Forlorn Duck." Part of me counsels resistance, "Put up a good effort of resistance." Then the old me, the confident me, checks in before quickly checking out again, with this, "Stand your ground as the strong confident person you used to be. Gotta run!" My old me apparently doesn't know much about counseling. He needs to hang around a while and do some validating.

I go places, and I see other Forlorn Ducks, by the way not to be confused with Hangdogs or Sourpusses, although I don't want to get sidetracked on technicalities. I see all of them, but it's the Forlorn Ducks I'm interested in now. The biggest problem with Forlorn Ducks is our vulnerability to every little thing. If you know anything about "The Ladder of Easily Helpable Self Images", a chart which I'll scan and post if I can find it, then you know Forlorn Ducks tend to flock in the "Healthy below average" range.

Looking at it that way, it's not as discouraging as it could be. I really think I might be able to overcome enough of it to work my way into "Healthy average." Again, if you like me, then maybe give me even a little encouragement, and I just might make it. And here's something. Even if you don't like me, and don't give me encouragement, I might be able to convince myself that you would have if you knew me better. That theoretical statement could be enough to raise me a few rungs. (I don't know where the Ladder chart is right now; I'd love to double check it.)

I suppose while I'm in this FD funk I should learn as much about it as I can. I'm big into the science of self images and all. I believe this is true, that FD-types, while not desiring contact with other FDs, must have something like a DNA override, an internal attractor/reacher-outer, for mutual protection. And that's why I'm suddenly surrounded by FDs. I need to get out of this quickly, lest the override sticks in place. There's another reason for you to like me. I need your heartfelt consideration, but as I've seen in anguished Facebook pleas for liking, I know that only 2% of the non-FD population will respond. Thinking of that -- 2% is basically low -- it's hard to be encouraged. Yet I am still heartened that it's not less than zero, for where there's 2%, there's hope.

This is horrible! I just need to get a grip! I am more, much more than a Forlorn Duck! What's this? I feel something ... Muscles are returning to my arms? My shoulders and jaws are suddenly squaring up? My solar plexus is starting to flicker, then shine? My feet are widening? I'm standing solid? Yes -- what is this? -- I'm standing solid! One foot up, one down, one up, one down! I'm stomping! I'm stomping again, me! Stomping again! Stomping victoriously! Now I'm turning, twisting, moving in a circular motion, like a human tornado, a powerful whirling humanado, picking up steam and ... emitting a lot of wind. With confidence again! I'm moving with confidence! More, more, more! Pointing my index finger, like John Travolta in the '70s, with all negativity falling away like dominoes, all of it collapsing in a gigantic heap!

The Forlorn Duck has passed away! With this simple exercise, writing up an inventory, that's all it took. I'm already up a rung on the Ladder, all the way to "Healthy average"! With super strength, alive and kicking ... meaning, now I am able once again to help others ... with a renewed push toward healthy self images for all demanded of me! ... We're on the verge, my friends, of a new Drive for Pride!*

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*Drive for Pride was a major self-help series of this blog in 2009-2010, for those with a failing memory.