I have been in North Carolina for the past week. Living in north Florida has removed me from the opportunity to see dramatic changes in the fall colors in the trees. Fall in north Florida is more subtle. There is more dew in the mornings and the air has begun to be drier. The clouds are different during the day. The grass has stopped growing so fast. Just a week until Halloween and then the long holiday-filled months of the end of the year...nice to think about.
Poem added: "I Wonder"
I am listening to a re-play of the second presidential debate. I am reminded again how impossible it is for any voter to learn anything useful from such debates. Neither candidate is really able to give a good analysis of the country's problems and reasonably detailed plans for how to deal with them in such a forum. Those who had already made up their minds will not hear anything that will change their minds and those who are waiting to hear something that either candidate could say that would offer real solutions to the problems will be just as confused after listening to the debates as they were before. It seems that about 49% of the electorate will be disappointed with the outcomes of the upcoming election.
Fortunately, the poem I have added has absolutely nothing to do with the presidential election. It is about something equally elusive. It is about the vicissitudes of being in love. Debating and voting on that is useless as well. However we can be assured that if it doesn't work out well at least a full 50% of those involved will be disappointed.
Poem Added: "Long Drive Home"
Written the evening I heard about the death of a childhood friend who I always admired. I heard yesterday that 70 is the new 30. Well, I still had most of my friends at 30, so I'm not convinced.
New Poem Added (A Pine Tree) and general comments.
Trying to stay focused on the realities of living while being inundated by the political rhetoric of the presidential campaign has been a challenge. I keep reminding myself that the country has withstood the rigors of presidential politics for well over 200 years and the basic institutions of government still stand. I am thankful that we are able to have changes of government without the turmoil and bloodshed that rocks so much of the world in these situations. It is not that the issues involved are unimportant in this race; they are. However, it is also true that no one person sitting in the Oval Office of the President of the United States can act without the wisdom of, and the cooperation of, the people. Our government is no more divided now than it has been at critical times in the past. A brief review of our history will show that we are not too many generations past the time when members of congress called out one another for duels of honor. Presidents and their families have been slandered in even more vicious terms than we are seeing now--and so have their challengers. What seems to have changed so dramatically in my lifetime is that, with modern television media and with social media outlets on the Web, people are able to react immediately--and frequently without doing any critical thinking--and reach huge audiences. Opinion is often treated as fact and people pick-and-choose from all of the available information to support their preconceived positions. There are a lot of ideas about how to break this cycle through external manipulation but none of them seem realistic. The most likely scenario in my way of thinking is that. as economic and social conditions improve (which they will regardless of who wins the White House), people will lose interest in politics until economic conditions turn bad again.
Regarding poetry: I will soon add a section to the blog for some haiku that I wrote while trying to become centered again after my wife's death nearly four years ago. More on that later.
New Poem and Photo.
I have finally discovered how to add my poetry to the blog, and have added the poem "Bold Enough to Bloom." Added to the "Inspirations" section is a photo of Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. The photos in this section are original and represent important places, objects or people in my life.
New photos added today in Inspiration.
The photo section contains photos I have taken of things and places I've found interesting, beautiful, awe inspiring, whimsical, inspirational or just representations of fond memories. Pictures will be added from time-to-time. Some may relate to written blog entries.
Kids With Kids Who Were Different
Anybody who grew up in a small town knows the people in that town who are considered "a bit off." You know who is harmless and who to avoid. I lived just across from an elementary school playground when I was a kid. It was where everyone met to play. One learns much abut human interactions and human nature playing with others as kids. You learn about cooperation, competition, aggression, shared happiness, dominance, trust, and how to survive in a group of peers. You also learn about how people are different.
There were two kids in our neighborhood who were "different." Each was a kid in a man's body. Each was probably in his mid-to-late twenties when I and my friends were between eight to twelve years old. It didn't happen every day, but occasionally, when were playing games in the school playground, one or the other of this kids would show up. I can remember "Cookie" as a slim and soft-looking kid with sandy hair and ivory skin. I have an image in my mind of him often showing up with a fringed cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a cap gun strapped to his side. He liked being picked to be on a side for games, but wasn't able to tolerate much frustration and would often walk home crying and saying he would "tell my mom on you." I think it was for that reason that we never seemed to make much of a connection with him. "Waldo" was thick and muscular. He was shy and slow-thinking. He was strong as an ox from our perspective. He could hit and throw a softball farther than any of us and we liked having him on our teams for that reason. He had trouble understanding the games, though, and was easily distracted. We thought of him as a good kid who tried as hard as he could. We all knew these guys were different from the rest of us. We knew that something was keeping them kids when they should have been adults, but we didn't understand what or why. I think that we kids knew they needed special consideration and I never saw anybody say or do anything unkind to either of them. Also, we were not afraid of them just because they were different. They never did anything to make us afraid. Kids seem naturally tolerant of differences. Knowing that always gives me hope for the future of humanity.
When I can finally master the ins-and-outs of this blog space, I plan to include a group of haiku that I wrote while dealing with losing my wife to cancer. Although I had no plan in mind when writing the poems, I later decided that they seemed to fall fairly naturally into four groupings. One group of poems is about my relationship with my wife. Although very personal tome, I think they also have a kind of universal meaning. A second group is poems about what I observed and learned from my clients while working as a psychotherapist for forty-five years. A third groups is about the innocence and importance of children and nature. The final group is about my attempts to establish new intimate relationships after being out of practice for so many years and finding that I had a myriad of unexamined issues that I was unaware of having. I think this blog is a part of the journey that I began as a kid. Everything then was new and un-nuanced. What I have discovered so far is that it was easier as a kid. We were more tolerant and more interested in gobbling up any new experiences. I think that it is important for all of us to embrace that child-like part of ourselves that still exists within us somewhere.
Entry from a week ago.
I was unable to access the blog to make this post last week, so I'm doing it not because it still seems relevant.
Less than an hour ago I was sitting in a restaurant in Berkeley, California looking out of the window while I was drinking coffee. For some reason, I happened to notice what appeared to be a large, articulated bus in the intersection of the next block. It turned the corner and headed down the street toward me. Strangely, the second section of the bus began elongating and getting smaller as the front of the bus became larger. it took me a minute to realize that I had actually been looking at two different buses, the second being so close to the one ahead of it that they looked like they were joined. While the first bus turned toward me, the second actually tuned and was going directly away from me. What a wonderful optical illusion! How easy it is for the brain to be tricked. I think that Berkeley is just the kind of place for me to see the unusual so I guess that I was open to unexpected perceptions.
I had known one of my college roommates for several years before we roomed together for a year. He was one of the brightest people I had ever met and had vast stores of information at his fingertips. I was in awe of his mental prowess, but he always seemed tip-of-the-toes anxious. When he and my other roommate left the university, I stayed on for another year to complete a master's degree. I saw my friend once more about a year after he left, then lost complete track of him. I hadn't heard from him for years until I received a call fro him at my office one day. He told me some of the things he had done and was dealing with. He was currently living in Sausalito, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. He told me of his experiences with and EST cult some years before and how he has given them all of his money and was now going to sue then in the "biggest thing ever to hit the news." He sent me page after page of his writings, most of which were about his obsession with a female pop singer who was very famous and who lived in the Bay area. And, incidentally, he mentioned that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his experiences with EST. His writings consisted of his stream-of-consciousness thoughts, with only the occasional glimpses of coherence, but loads of emotion. Rightly or not, I wrote to him and suggested that he should give serious thoughts to getting back on his medications. That might have seemed cruel, but it seemed necessary. I didn't hear from him afterwards.
Why mention this story here? I think I was reminded of my friend because I saw a number of people like my friend on the sidewalks on and around Shattuck Avenue near the University of California. They weren't necessarily homeless people, although some were clearly sleeping in the local open green spaces at night and pushing shopping carts filled with their possessions. One black man who appeared to be in his mid-30's walked by with seeming purpose while proclaiming loudly that the US military was ruined by allowing women to serve and that the country was falling apart because of that. Others were clearly involved in conversations inside their heads and only peripherally involved in what was going on around them. One man stood at a corner looking into the distance and talked intently to himself, lips moving but no sound coming out, while punctuating his points with jabs of is cigarette in the air in front of his face. One tried stopping person after person walking by to show them something in his hand. Some just sat, looking disconnected, and smoked weed. It wasn't very hard to separate out those with serious mental problems from those who were just disaffected and protesting. There were those who claimed to be homeless veterans who were begging on the street. There were the bearded, guitar-playing young men with torn jeans who may have been there just to have the experience. There were also people who were living pretty normal lives who were on the sidewalks to try to earn a living selling crafts or who were performing music for money or to support a cause. A trio of black men was doing close harmony in the praise of Jesus. The sidewalks were also crowded with students who seemed to be doing the normal things that college students do pretty much anywhere in the world.
I looked around me and realized that all of what I was was "normal" for where I was. Everyone seemed to take things in stride. Nobody reacted like anything that was ongoing on was particularly unusual. A group dressed in pink shirts and hats were walking fro Breast Cancer Awareness Week, weaving in and out of the shoppers, beggars and sidewalk performers. One their group was a large black man wearing a pink hat and a pink bra over his black sweatshirt. Everyone was tolerant and polite as they intermingled, like this was what happened every day on this street. I tried to remember when and where I had experienced this kind of tolerance in the past. That is the subject of my next blog entry.
Kids Being Kids
I have yet to discover the spelling and grammar checkers in this blogging software. I hope my own editing skills are up to the task if there are none.
BOYS AND PISSING. I had just begun to cross a street at the edge of the Night Market in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand when I heard giggling and glanced to my left. There were several adult women there looking at a little boy--probably about age 3--who had pulled up the leg of his shorts and was arching a stream of urine that actually topped his head and landed farther away from him than he was tall. I was impressed at his prowess and secretly wished that my bladder and sphincters were as effective as his. The women, all of whom seemed to be family members or good friends, looked on with amusement. None of them said a word of criticism to the boy. I think they were not only tolerant, but were proud of him. I had often heard how loving and tolerant the Thai people were toward their children, and I felt I was witnessing it first hand. I doubt that I would have received the same response had I done the same thing in the middle of my home town shopping district when I was three.
I had a cousin who lived just across the street from me when I was growing up. He was two years younger than I, but we spent a lot of time together exploring around our end of town. We were close enough to be brothers and we played and fought like brothers. We learned new things together, and we got into trouble together. Most of the time we could extricate ourselves from the thorny situations we got into; in fact, I can't remember one when we didn't. However, we did some stuff that only kids without a lot of life experience would do. One one particular day we were walking along a fence line at a local farm. There was a bare wire running along the inside of the fence near the top. It wasn't part of the regular fence, but was actually wrapped around white ceramic spools attached to the fence posts. I was pretty sure that it was an electric fence, so we tried running our pocket knives along it to see if it would produce a spark. It didn't, so we concluded that it must not be working. For reasons known only to him, and I'm sure completely forgotten in the fog time, my cousin decided it would be great fun to relieve himself on the fence. Apparently the handles of our pocket knives had insulated us from completing the grounding necessary to receive a shock when we ran them over the electric fence wire. That was not the case, though, when my cousin's urine stream hit that wire. He was perfectly grounded, and, boy, was he surprised. I could barely stop laughing. He was not amused until much later. I believe that was our first lesson about electric circuitry.
Why do boys take such joy in peeing on things? There is no doubt that draining one's bladder can be a joyous experience, but that is not confined to just boys. No, there is something else that is operating, something that gets translated into a certain disdain for things deemed inconsequential and culminating in the expression: "Piss on it." Still, it just makes sense to be careful where you piss.
Comment and a little story.
Yesterday's poem didn't post very well and I'm working on how to do better. All poems are the work and property of the blog administrator(except when specifically noted) and cannot be copied or reproduced without the express consent of the author.
My Brother and the Bird--
My only brother was four years older than I was. We didn't hang out together very much because the age difference was just too great, I think. We lived in a small town in the Midwest and attended the same schools. He was always just leaving the school I was just entering. Following my brother through those schools was a challenging and interesting exercise. We were equally smart, but he had no particular interest in doing well in school. He was a far better athlete than I and was much more socially adept. He was the homecoming "King," and I was voted "most likely to succeed" by my classmates. Despite our differences, or perhaps because of them, my big brother was always my hero. During my high school years, my brother was away serving in the US Army in the Army Security Agency. There, to quote him, he and his buddies "taught grasshoppers to drop atom bombs" and were "mechanics on glider engines." That, at lest, was what they told the German people they met while occupying the banhaufs and drinking all of the beer in sight.
I enjoyed his sense of humor and we both enjoyed pretending we were the other brother when calling home and talking with our mom. She could never be quite sure who was talking with her. I remember sitting with him in our mutual bedroom on the day he separated from the Army and listening to, what for me, was one of the funniest "jokes" I had heard up to that point in my life. It was so funny to me that I laughed and cried until my sides ached and I was literally lying on the floor. The joke was a "non-joke" and that was what made it so funny to me. I recognized the absurdity of it on a flash. I couldn't control myself afterward and came close to losing bladder control. So, enough lead-in and on to the "joke." Don't blame me if you don't get it or if you laugh until you pee. Joke: Two polar bears were floating down the stream on a log. One yelled "carburetor" and the other one jumped off.
Stopped laughing yet? Well the story I was actually going to tell was something else again, but it did involve my big brother. Here it is. During the time we lived in my little Midwestern town in the 1950's, having parakeets (budgies) was quite popular. However, we didn't have one and had no idea that people would leave the birdcage doors open so the birds could fly freely around the house. My brother told this story, sheepishly, after he came home from the service and was ready to "fess up." One evening he went to a friend's house and knocked at the door. As was often that case at that time, someone in the house told him to just open the door and come in. Normally, that would be a simple, uneventful and undramatic act. That night, however, when my brother opened the door and entered the house, the parakeet, who had been flying around blissfully minding his own business, happened to be crossing the doorway just as my brother entered. It wasn't a pretty sight. The bird suddenly appeared in by brother's face and, not having any warning that an errant bird was on the loose, my brother automatically reacted the way anybody might with someting flying at his face. He smacked it. Hard. I think I remember him telling me (but maybe it is only my own imagination)that the bird was launced toward the wall as blue and white feathers wafted slowly to the carpet. Was there really a sickening thud as the bird hit the wall and dropped immediately to the floor? He couldn't quite remember the thud, but the rest clearly happened. Fortunately the bird survived and my brother's hosts were more amused than alarmed. I can still remember the grin on his face as he finally told me this story of something that had happened to him several years before and I felt it was a special moment between us that he would share something that was so clearly embarassing to him with his little brother.
It is interesting what any one of us might think about as a signal event as we are growing up and approaching adulythood. Because this seemed to represent a kind of acceptance of me by my older brother while was still in highschool, this was one for me.
Poem: Uncle's Visit
It isn't always clear when looking into a mirror in the morning just who is looking back. It often isn't the person who slept in my bed last night.
The dreams must have been some sort of catalyst that opened new spaces and changed the clay of my mind. I was reshaped and had no active hand at doing it.
It is like a visit from a favorite uncle who always arrives with gifts for the children and then disappears to God knows where until he chooses to show up again. The adults always smile when he is mentioned but they just aren't sure what to make of him.
Jim Morgan August 17, 2012
Another challenge; another opportunity.
I first though of starting this blog as a way of sharing the small book of poetry that I wrote to help me work through my grief after my wife of nearly 44 years died of lung cancer. I still plan to include those poems in the blog, but I've decided to add other comments, poems, pictures and observations as well.
I enjoyed over 45 years working as a counselor/psychologist in university counseling centers. I was fortunate to be at universities where I could not only do direct service, but could also teach graduate and undergraduate courses, train psychology and counseling students, write for publication and become involved in local, state, national and international professional groups. It was a rich experience in all, but the richest part of it was the contacts I had with students, clients, colleagues, faculty and staff in each of those settings. After my retirement a few years ago I was able to do more international traveling and have made new friend worldwide. In this blog, I want to share with you some of what I have learned in this journey.