JONNA'S ART

Jonna, age 3, at the Fresno zoo.

Jonna was 3 years old when I first met her. I was a guest in her grandmother's home in a farming community near Fresno, California and Jonna was spending the day there. She was initially very shy, but became quite talkative as she got used to my presence. We spent several hours at the Fresno Zoo visiting the animals. Jonna has the deep brown eyes and dark curly hair that belies her Mexican-American heritage. She had all of the charm of a typical 3-year-old girl. I was able to visit her grandmother's home several times over a 2 year period. Jonna is now 5 years old and is as petite as she was when I first met her. She was, and is, a bundle of energy. She is now occupied with her new little brother, Mateo, who she waited excitedly for to be born this last year. One of the unexpected surprises I had while getting to know Jonna is that she is a very creative artist. She has been drawing and painting for over two years. She also shapes things in clay. She has been studying dance this past year as well.

Vicki Filgas directing dancers at the 12th Annual Rebozo Festival in Fresno, California.

     Jonna's grandmother is Vicki Filgas. Vicki taught dance, including forms of Mexican dance, in the town of Selma, California for many years until retiring a few years ago. She taught many of the people who have become leaders in her community, males and females alike, and she is well-known and respected as a supporter of the arts in their many forms. She has been very active with Arte Americas and with many other art projects, including helping arrange the painting of mural depicting the history of the town of Selma and the surrounding countryside. I met her when traveling in Thailand and found her so engaging and fun that I accepted an invitation to visit with her and her friend, Ernie Palomino the first time she made the offer.

     Vicki has built a hacienda with a red barrel tiled roof overlooking farm fields in the fertile Central Valley near Fresno. She has recently removed nearly all of the grape vines that produced raisins for Sunkist and replaced them with pomegranates and walnut trees. Her front door is a sunburst design that was hand-crafted in Mexico and the floors are red tile. She has art on display everywhere, including a number of Ernie Palomino's larger canvasses. Vicki is an excellent cook in addition to be a very pleasant and accommodating hostess. I have been fortunate to have been a guest at her home on several occasions and her authentic Mexican recipes have been awesome. Her home is full of open, sunlight-filled space and includes a second story porch overlooking her pomegranate orchard and the farming country as far as the Sierra Mountains. Sitting on that porch and talking with friends into the twilight while enjoying glasses of wine, feeling the cooling air and looking at the sun fading on the mountains is an especially enchanting experience.

     Part of joy of getting to spend time in Vicki's home has been watching her interacting with Jonna. Vicki is a patient, loving and interested grandmother. She teaches naturally and she encourages Jonna to explore new and interesting things. When Jonna began to show an interest in painting with watercolors her grandfather bought her a nice paint set with an easel that Jonna was using nearly every day. I watched Jonna painting one afternoon and saw that she was very intent in what she was doing. Each stroke and each color she selected seemed studied rather than random. It was clear to me that she had particular ideas in mind with each picture. She explored with colors, shapes and sizes, but, when asked what she had painted, she nearly always could tell you what she had in mind and you could see how she was representing it.

Jonna's paintings in my home.

     These are four of Jonna's art works. The line drawing in the bottom center, which she calls "Man With Idea," was done when she was four. The others were when she was three. I found them delightful, artistic and openly expressive. She calls the one on the right "Woman and Man In Their Kissing Place."  The larger figure on the right is the woman, the smaller middle figure is the man and the far left and bottom (brownish) areas are the "kissing place." . The other two (left, top and bottom) are unnamed, but show a very imaginative and deft use of color and space. I found them charming and a wonderful reminder of the freedom and imagination of a child's developing mind. I enjoyed framing them and display them proudly in my home.

     Ernie Palomino, who I talked about in in my last blog entry, has a web site for his work. He, Vicki and I were sitting around her dinner table one evening after eating one of Vicki's Mexican meals and looking at some of Jonna's recent paintings. I wondered if there would be a place on his site where Ernie could show some of Jonna's work. As we talked, the idea came up of having an actual art show for her paintings. Everyone thought that was a cool idea and Vicki got to work on it and made it happen.

     Vicki picked out some of her more colorful and expressive paintings and Ernie arranged for larger prints of them, and the show was on.  My contribution was the following poem:

JONNA

She pushes back the brown curly hair
that falls across her face.
It stays behind her ears only for a moment
before cascading forward again.

She sits looking intently at the easel
in front of her.
Her soft brown eyes become
tightly focused
and her attention seems to
shift inward.

Now her brush touches the paint and,
on this painting
on this day,
her strokes are bold and definite.
She starts with black and deep, deep blue
using both brush and fingers.
The message is clear:
I am here
I am powerful.
You  must yield to me.

Later strokes become more tentative
and experimental,
then more deliberate.
A stroke of bright red just there, some yellow
A streak of green.
She explores the space of the canvas with
a studied eye
seeking a sense of completion.

And then she is finished.

When she is asked later
what she painted, her response is:
"I painted that."

Her inspirations are many and varied.
With innocence, beauty
and simplicity
she paints her visions.
She sees a woman and a man
in their kissing place
and a pig eating a frog.
Blowing seeds float above
a surreal landscape.
Or perhaps they are stars
in an alien sky.

She approaches painting with
the joyfulness of youth.
She learns something new with each stroke.
She is having fun.

And what will be said of this
young girl's art?
Will it be said that it is
a doorway into a special future?
Is it a window that
lets images out
while illuminating what is within?

There may be a day when those
are important questions
for her to ask herself.
But not now, not now.

She is too busy finding herself
in the world
and the world in herself.
She is doing well.
Let's not disturb her.

(Jim Morgan--April 11, 2011)

     Jonna turned five this last December. She is now studying dance and has been making things from clay. I have steadily tried to give her gifts that will influence her to become acquainted with the University of Florida were I am still an Emeritus Professor of Psychology. For this last visit I gave her the smallest girl's T-shirt I could find. She is so petite that she could wear it as a nightshirt. She has also always carefully selected paintings that she wanted me to have. The last gifts she gave me, though, included a tiny clay angel that I display on my mantel It is hardly an inch high and is truly the "Littlest Angel" I have ever seen and certainly the most charming.

      Although I truly believe that Jonna is especially talented, I also believe that every child has the capability for exploring and expressing their inner feelings and their wonder of the world through the world of the arts. Doing so allows them to experiment with trying to express themselves, find boundaries, seek new solutions and find satisfaction in their accomplishments. Not every child has a adult in their life like Vicki, who has the insight and patience to help a child explore the world in this way...and that is a shame. However, sometimes all that is needed is an appreciation of the wonderful imagination of a child's mind.

Ernie Palomino

Ernie Palomino

     I met Ernie Palomino when we were in the same travel group to Thailand a couple of years ago. I have come to know him as a warm, gentle and sincere man and as an artist who has made his mark in several media. Ernie is an Emeritus Professor of Art at Fresno State University in California. I have had the good fortune to have been able to spend several days with him on several occasions. Ernie was the person who propelled the Chicano Art movement into prominence. He began his work in the 1950s and is still actively producing new work, including oil canvases, multimedia pieces, pastel drawings, public murals and sculpture. I came to know the bronze sculpture above, still being welded together at the foundry in the picture, as "Coatlicue," because that is how Ernie referred to it. It has now been accepted for permanent display at Arte Americas The Mexican Art Center in Fresno and will be dedicated on January 19, 2013. To see more about the sculpture and Ernie's brief biography, go to: www.indiegogo.com/viva-la-raza.  Viva-la-Raza is the formal name for the sculpture.

     As we traveled together, I noticed that Ernie was often making sketches in a sketch pad he kept with him--that is, when he wasn't seeking out the nearest piano to noodle on. Although he has a history as a drummer for various rock, blues and jazz groups, he has recently taken up keyboards and seems endlessly fascinated with what he is learning. His studio is also his home. Unlike many artist's studios, his is usually very tidy. It is light-filled and comfortable. Works in progress are on the walls. He seems to always be working on several things at once. A number of his paintings spring directly from the sketch pads he has filled on his trips to countries around the world. He has usually been accompanied on these trips by his friend--and mine--Vicki Filgas, who has served as his Impresario. She has worked tirelessly on Ernie's behalf finding projects, securing funding, arranging exhibits and doing whatever she can to support his work. She has always been one of his biggest fans.

    I find Ernie's art bold in many ways. His black-and-white sketches are dramatic and expressive. He uses color boldly as well and it often provides a sense of motion and life to his work. I feel privileged to have some of his paintings in my home. His web site is: www.erniepalomino.com. It is well worth a look, not only to glimpse his art, but to get a sense of what Ernie has added to the genre of Chicano Art and to the art community in general. I am proud to call Ernie my friend. The poem "Expression In Bronze" that appears in the the section of this blog called "Returning: A Short Book" is my attempt at expressing my admiration for him and what he has accomplished in his life.

God Watching, by Ernesto Palomino

BEST FRIEND

My best friend, Jacquie.

      I have had many friends in my life, but I never had a "best" friend until recently. I have learned so much about trust, confidence and risk-taking in this relationship that I have had to re-evaluate what true friendship means. Although I wish I had been prepared to have this kind of friendship earlier in my life, I feel astonished and very thankful that I have had it at all. I was not aware of what I was missing. There are no hidden agendas between us. We can take risks with one another and both seem to grow from doing so. We have been able to explore the world around us together while still remaining separate as individuals. We can both challenge and support one another. We feel connected while each of us is reaching for our own, separate, goals. We each want what is best for the other and try to support one another to achieve it. Our paths are connected but are not the same paths. We are at different points in our lives and have different desires and needs, but we are in agreement that we are, and will remain, best friends. I hope that everyone can have such a good friend.

RETURNING: A SHORT BOOK IS COMPLETE

     The book of poetry I wrote while trying to find a life for myself after my wife died is complete. It appears in this blog as: Returning: A Short Book.  The Author's Notes section repeats each of the haiku and adds my comments about what I was thinking experiencing as I wrote them. Comments about the longer poems are also included, but they are not repeated in this section.

    DOT MORGAN

November 24, 1931-November 26, 2008

CHILDREN OF ECUADOR AND PERU: PHOTOS

There are four new pictures in the Pictures section of the blog. They were taken about 40 years ago in Ecuador and Peru. The little girl with the bare tummy lived with her family in a village of the Las Indios de Colorados in the eastern Ecuadorian Amazon basin. That group was still practicing slash-and-burn agriculture when we visited, but "civilization" was rapidly encroaching. Even though they lived in dirt floor huts, I saw high heeled shoes on the shelves in one of the huts. The men wore some kind of dye in their hair that made it look like they were wearing bright red helmets. The women were bare-breasted.

The other little girl lived in the countryside in Peru. She wore a child's size outfit that was the same as that of the older women in her area. Women from each area wore distinctive hats and garments that marked them as members of the same local group, so it was easy to know which group they belonged to just by looking if you knew the traditional outfits of each group.

It is easy to imagine that those young girls, now in their 40's if they are still alive, still live hard lives and are probably rapidly approaching the end of their life expectancies. The high altitudes of the villages in Peru, in particular, expose skin to colder, drier and more sun-drenched conditions. Each of them have probably already been mothers and grandmothers.

Keeping the Tigers away.

     A number of years ago I heard a story about a man who walked around his hometown in a city in Texas snapping his fingers all of the time. He was a regular fixture and everyone seemed to see him at one time or another. Someone finally asked him why he was always snapping his fingers. He said: "To keep the tigers away."  The man looked him and said, skeptically: "But there are no tigers in Texas." And the man replied: "Yes, see!"

     During the "Cold War" days championed by Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, the US foreign policy was one of "brinkmanship," and a central facet of that policy was keeping the communists at bey through the threat of the use of atomic weapons, promising "mutually assured destruction" for those engaging in a nuclear war.

     There are many people in our country now who seem to be applying the same ideas to the notion that the "good guys" should be armed so they can prevent the "bad guys" from getting an advantage. The belief seems to be that the more "good" people who are armed, the less gun violence there will be because only "bad" people use guns to harm people and they will be too afraid to use their guns. That is, of course, a stupid idea believed only by idiots with no sense of history or psychology.

     Brinksmanship lead to an arms race that nearly bankrupted the Soviet Union financially and led to the US having the largest military budget in the world and encouraging some of our political leaders to believe that the US can and should use its military might to try to force other governments to adopt US style democracy. We spend more money on our military than the next 5 largest nations combined. We still can't get countries in the Middle East and Afghanistan to do our bidding.

     There are now more gun shops in the US than all grocery stores and hospitals combined. The money being expended on guns and ammunition annually exceeds all of the money we are expending on mental health services. We still lead the world in annual gun deaths with over 30,000/year. No matter how many are killed, there are always more to be killed because guns are so readily available in the US. The killing will not stop just because more people have guns. As long as guns are readily available they will be the weapon of choice to kill friends, family members, neighbors, policemen, school teachers, kids, estranged spouses, and those who commit suicide.

    As Americans we have a habit of "declaring war" on things; perhaps we should start "declaring peace" on ourselves by bringing guns under more control so that, like in Japan, a gun death is something that is so rare that people can remember the exact time when one occurred rather than learning each night on the news in the US that there have been several more that day--so common that they mean nothing..

Will More Guns Provide Greater Protection?

I read a few days ago that there are now over 1 million people in Florida with concealed weapons permits. That scares the hell out of me. Just from statistics alone I can predict that some of these guns will be used to maim or kill dozens or more innocent people over the next five years. Yesterday we learned that 26 children and teachers were killed in an elementary school here in the US, and the days before that, there were other assaults and murders by people who had easy access to guns. Weapons assaults on school children in the US over the past five years have nearly matched the combined statistics of similar assaults on school children in the all of the remaining countries of the world over the same time period. US citizens possess over 300 million guns and account for, by far, the largest number of gun assaults (outside of countries at war) of any country in the world. Canada's culture is in most ways similar to that of the US, but they have very few incidents of gun violence. The same is true of Australia, New Zealand, England. Yet the US alone has the highest per capita rate of gun violence. Some say that the major difference between the US and these other countries in terms of gun violence is that we have the Second Amendment to our Constitution, which, arguably, gives each citizen of the country the right to possess weapons for their personal use and separately from their use by citizens as part of a well-armed militia. It seems to me that we will soon have to deal with the rights of citizens who do not want to carry weapons to protect them from those who do. There is no reason why I, as a US citizen, should have to worry about whether a person with a legally acquired gun can use it to kill me because he/she happens to be pissed off at the moment. The more guns on the street the more certain it will be that these senseless killings will continue. It is naive and foolish to think otherwise.

Author's notes

     I have started to add a section of author's notes about the poems to "Returning: A Short Book." They are my thoughts about the poems as I was writing them.

     It is now just past four years since my wife died of metastatic lung cancer. I have recently purchased a film/slide scanner for digitizing slides and photos and storing them on a computer. My hope is to copy these photos onto DVD disks and give each of my children a copy. Many of the pictures are of my wife and family as we celebrated birthdays and holidays and as we traveled across the US and camped in national parks and forests. We had many great experiences together as a family that I never was able to have with my family of origin. We were able to take my mother on one of these camping trips to the American west one summer. It was the first time she had traveled west of the Mississippi river and the first time she had gone camping. I had made sure my children had as much exposure with their grandparents as we could possibly arrange because my experiences with my own grandparents were such a source of richness for me. Watching our three generations together gave me great comfort and pride.

REFLECTION

       My youngest grandson received a kidney transplant from his father a few days ago. He is just eighteen years old but his kidneys had both shut down completely because of an autoimmune condition. The surgery was successful and he is making a very rapid recovery. He said that he feels better than he has for several years and that, except for some pain from the surgery, feels normal again. Modern medicine has produced another miracle that was only dreamed of when I was his age. I am so happy for him, his mom and dad and his older brother.

       The poem "Reflection" has been added to the Contemporary Poem section of this blog. The image I had in mind when I was writing it was of a person riding in a train (or bus or car) and looking at the window at night when the lights within the vehicle helped produce a reflection of that person looking out. This person was not really looking outside but was deeply involved in inner reflection and that was amplified by the image bouncing back and forth from the "lens" of the window to the lens of his or her eye.

       Before the surgery, my grandson was occupied with thoughts of whether or not the surgery would be successful and whether or not he would be able to live a normal life. He looked stressed and worried, but was determined to go through with the surgery, despite his misgivings, because he knew that he would  be tied to a life of dialysis and a shortened life overall without it. After receiving the new kidney and finding that it was working exceptionally well, he is finally able to live in the moment again...and he is happy.

Chiang Mai Farewell

       It had been a year since my wife died. I had been invited by a friend to go to Thailand with her and her husband as part of a small tour group. I hadn't done any traveling during the preceding year, just not feeling quite up to it. This was an opportunity, however, to complete a voyage that my wife and I had talked about doing together but never quite got around to doing. We had wanted to travel to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Angkor Wat was just a hour by plane from Bangkok.

       Dot and I had traveled to a number of places around the world that seemed to be places of natural "power"--where previous civilizations had concentrated for both living and worship. We had been to Machu Picchu, Anasazi cliff dwellings in the American Southwest, Menehune  sites in Hawaii, and abandoned desert cities in coastal Peru. Angkor Wat seemed a natural place to want to visit.

       Because Angkor Wat wasn't part of the tour I was on, I flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia and toured the Angkor Wat area on my own. I stayed in a nice, modern French Colonial style hotel in downtown Siem Reap (for about $50 US per night, breakfast included) and hired taxis ($25 US/day plus a generous tip) to take me to several of the various archeological sites nearby, including Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and the "Pink Palace."  Angkor Wat is a UN International Heritage site, so tour guides were available for a few dollars a day, although I didn't use them. I've included a few pictures of those monuments in the "Pictures: Places and People..." section of this blog. Because the area was partially flooded from a Pacific hurricane that had come through a few days before and there was still some rain falling, not many tourists were out so I got to see many of the ruins by myself. The rainy weather seemed to add to the mystery of the abandoned structures. I felt Dot's presence, knowing how excited she would have been to have been there with me.

Overlooking Chiang Mai, Thailand

     Returning from Cambodia to Bangkok I joined the tour group of about 14 other people and we toured the country together from the big city of Bangkok to the floating markets to the Bridge over the River Kwai, to visits with mountain tribes, rides on elephants and river rafts, dinners in Thai homes and visits to 20 or so of the thousands of temples, both ancient and more modern. The Thai people were wonderful and the Thai food was spicy and delicious. We were near the end of our trip in the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and visiting a very famous temple on a mountain overlooking the city when I realized that time had come for me to end my active mourning of my wife's death and say goodby.  I wrote the poem "Chaing Mai Farewell" that evening.

     That trip was a milestone for me. I met people there who I now count as some of my best friends. One of the people I met was my friend, Ernest Palomino, a professor of art, emeritus, at Fresno State University. I will write more about Ernie in a later blog. The poem, "Expression In Bronze," also included in "Returning: A Short Book," was something that I wrote after hearing Ernie's' life story and being inspired by it.

     That time in Cambodia and Thailand marked the beginning of a new path for me.

The Narcissists

       A poem, "The Narcissists" has been added to "Returning: A short Book." Though a bit tongue-in-cheek, it is written in the same off-hand manner that describes the behavior of the type of people the poem was meant to depict. Fortunately, I have found that most people are not as self-absorbed as the people described here.....although there are enough who are that everyone can probably recognize someone in their lives that they might imagine being depicted in the poem.

Missing Chapters

Missing Chapters is the title of the latest poem added to this blog. The title reminds me of the many parts of history that are omitted from biographies, autobiographies and works of history in general. Some of these things would probably be too mundane to include, but some are purposely omitted in order to present a person or subject in a particular way. Deciding what to include and what not to include has both artistic and political (in both the narrow and broad senses) implications. It is said that "history is written by the winners." I'm sure I could find the actual person to whom this quote was originally attributed. Suffice it say that I'm not claiming it for myself. You can look for the reference if you want. It is clear to me from working as a psychologist for many years that some truly formative experiences never make it into people's autobiographies. We hide many of these experiences, even, sometimes, from ourselves.  I am a fan of science fiction and have been intrigued by a theme that occurs occasionally in stories of that genre. In those stories, the beings are unable to shield their thoughts from others in their societies, so that no thoughts are really ever private. Because of that, people never learn to bury their thoughts by "shading the truth." (Lying, denial, exaggerating, deceiving and so forth). The stories are not sophisticated enough to deal with people giving "false" messages because they perceive the world in a distorted way. But would the messages actually be false or just different from what others perceive? Would communication really be any better in that type of society? What is true is that we have our public faces and our private ones. Sometimes balancing the differences between the two causes great distress. I suspect that trying to reconcile the differences between the two is one of the main motivators for bringing people into therapy. And in psychotherapy, what is not focused on by the client is often fertile ground for exploration. It probably contains the areas of focus that will eventually bring about the desired change. What is included in your missing chapters?

New Poetry added to "Contemporary Poetry" and "Returning: A Short Book"

     I have been gratified to learn that some people are actually reading my blog. Please feel free to make comments if you want. I will happily read them. Let me know if you have a blog that you wish to share with others and I'll be glad to refer to it here if you provide the address.

Practicing psychotherapy

       Psychotherapist is a single word, although at times one wonders if it shouldn't be two. Practicing psychotherapy means that one meets someone entirely new, gets to know them intimately in a few short hours, learns their life stories, shares their secrets and then sees them walk away--hopefully in a better state of mind--and never hears from them again. That has got to be a crazy profession.  I had never seen that scenario spelled out quite so clearly until I read a book by my friend, Dr. Tom Skovholt and his co-author, Dr.Michael Ronnestad, "The Evolving Professional Self: Stages and Themes in Therapist and Counselor Development" (1992, John Wiley & Sons). The book was a nice reminder that becoming a psychotherapist is a developmental process.

      I would like to pay homage to all of my teachers and sources of influence in my own development as a psychotherapist, but just don't know how to do that. There are just too many sources to name them all, although I probably should start with my own mother. She was a natural therapist, but I only realized that later in my life while looking back to the times I sat listening her talking with her friends over coffee around our kitchen table.  She was a great listener, showed amazing empathy, was always open in a non-judging way to what others were saying , and would offer her ideas and opinions in such a tentative way that they weren't automatically rejected. Within 30 minutes of meeting someone, she would know their life stories. When she was being treated for leukemia, her oncologist talked with her about problems in his family, often asking for her advice.  People felt better after talking with her even though she was never trained as a therapist, worked as a cook in a restaurant, and lived in near-poverty. Her great strength was that she was "real."

     It took me years of studying in graduate school, years of supervision and years of both teaching and practice to approach the skill my mother had naturally.  I have sometimes felt that my education actually got in the way of my discovering my own abilities. There were a few sources of knowledge that I can look to that I did find clearly influential. One was the book: How Psychotherapy Heals by Richard Chessick, M.D. (1969, Science House) where I learned about how transference operates in psychotherapy . Another was Brief Psychotherapy by Bellak and Small. I think I must have loaned that book to someone years ago an not gotten it back because I can't find it in my library to pass on the correct publication information. A very important resource was the work of Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, which I learned about through the teaching, supervision and mentoring of Dr. Harry A. Grater, Jr. at the University of Florida during my time as an intern and graduate assistant. Much of my therapeutic approach in the early years of my practice was heavily influenced by the work of Carl Rogers and by many, many theorists and practitioners of humanistic psychology, but there have been many other influences over the years. My own description of my style of psychotherapy is that I use psychodynamic theory to conceptualize but use a variety of interventions from many therapeutic styles, including cognitive-behavioral, affect-focused, transactional, object-relations focused, solution-focused, systems theory, Gestalt and many other systems, depending on the needs of the clients.  I found that the study of hypnosis and hypnotherapy offered many tools, including insights into the ideas, techniques and interventional style of Milton Erickson, M.D. I also benefited in developing my skills in hypnosis from training, teaching, working with and learning from professionals in the fields of medicine, dentistry and psychology.

       And, of course, the greatest source of learning has been my own successes and failures while working with the clients I have tried to help. EACH of them has contributed something new and important to my development as a therapist. And occasionally, but only occasionally, a former client has gotten in touch with me after some years to let me know they were still using what we did together in our sessions to get through new difficulties--and to thank me for my help. Those rare occurrences have been extremely gratifying and have reinforced my belief that I was doing something important and useful. You can find some of my experiences with clients expressed in haiku in the "Counselor Cycle" in the section of this web site labelled: Returning: A Short Book. Maybe you will find something there you will recognize.

Continuing a journey.

     Over the past few days I have been adding material to the section of this site called: Returning: A Short Book.  The full four sections of haiku have been added and I have begun to add some longer poems to that section. Eventually I will add everything that was included in the original piece. As mentioned elsewhere in this web site, this section accounted for my original motivation for beginning this blog.
       I just attended a workshop where the presenter announced that one is now not considered elderly in this country until they have reached the age of 91. I have some years to go, so I guess my journey will continue. I only wish that being elderly was held in the same high esteem in this country that it is in many others. Actually, I suspect that whether or not one is held in esteem has more to do with how one behaves than how old she/he is. I hope to be both old and appreciated.

Not In The Picture

New poem added to Contemporary Poetry: "Not In The Picture."

     Part of the fun of any creative writing is playing with observations of everyday occurrences and embellishing them so that they not only illuminate the original observation but also extend the idea into other areas. Sometimes these areas are directly related and sometimes they are not. Sometimes the relationship is at the emotional level rather than the cognitive level. Part of being a psychotherapist is helping people make connections at the emotional level of things that don't seem related at all at the cognitive level. Most people speak in metaphors but they often don't understand their own metaphors. They are emotionally removed from them. One of the nice things about poetry is that it brings metaphors to the forefront and forces us to search for the meanings generated by the metaphors. It urges us to look inside of ourselves to find meaning rather than to look outside ourselves for it. There is no one particular way that a poem can be seen if it is a successful poem. We need to be reminded from time to time that there are multiple meanings in our experiences if we are open to them. Doggedly clinging to only one way of looking at things is not very adaptive in the long run.

Caffeine Withdrawal

       In the counseling center where I worked for over 40 years as psychologist we had a 40-cup coffee pot. I used to drink coffee all day, including during sessions with my clients. I suspect that I must have been drinking about 9 large cups of coffee each day.

       Somehow I developed a bladder condition that required me to avoid spices, certain leafy green vegetables, alcohol and caffeine for several weeks. I felt like I had nothing good to eat during that time and whined like a baby.

       I often left work about 6 PM to drive home. My office was on the third floor of the building where the counseling center was housed. I usually walked down the stairway to the parking lot. One afternoon during this time of caffeine deprivation, I came to the bottom of the stairs and realize something was different. I couldn't quite understand what it was that was different and had to stand and think about it for a few minutes. Suddenly it came to me: my ears weren't ringing like they had done for years. At that moment, I became a dedicated caffeine-free coffee drinker.

       It is now a week since the US Presidential election. I am experiencing a similar moment of epiphany. My ears are not being assaulted by campaign rhetoric. I barely know what to do with myself. The unfamiliar assault of the political campaign had become familiar. But now my ears are not ringing.

       I wonder why those who are running political campaigns think that, if they are not getting the results they want in the polls, they need to continue saying the same messages even more loudly and more often. Why can't they realize that no matter how often and how loudly they repeat the message that they just can't sell it to everyone. It isn't that they are not saying the messages forcefully enough or often enough; it is that people aren't buying the message, or that they have already fully convinced all of the people who are willing to believe it and that nobody else will be swayed. What a waste of time and money.  

    Fortunately I have not had to go though total withdrawal immediately. There are still politicians and pundits trumpeting the same messages from the campaigns even after the results of election are clear. I assume that they are having campaign withdrawal. Maybe they will eventually come to see the silence as a something positive, just as I learned that the losing the ringing in my ears was a nice side effect of cutting back on caffeine. Maybe they will give some thought to reducing their own addictions.

Poetry has been added in the Contemporary Poetry section and the Returning section.

New Haiku added to "Returning..."

I have added the first of four groups of haiku to the "Returning..." section of the site. The poems are reflections on my life with my wife as I dealt with her death.

NEW WEB ADDRESS: The new web address for this site is: www.fracturesandleaks.com.

Adding a new section: "Returning: A Short Book"

After my wife died I was feeling at loose ends. I began to write haiku as part of my seeking a new balance in my life.  What followed is the small book of poems contained in this new section of this web site. They are mostly modern haiku, but some longer poems are included at the end. Also included, at the suggestion of a friend, are my reflections on each poem in the collection.

Poem added: "Old Friend"

       Storm on the eastern seaboard.  I had the pleasure of helping my best friend move from her  home in North Carolina to a new home and job in Pittsburgh last week. A few weeks before I had gone to help her get over the immediate trauma of having been in an auto accident that completely wrecked her car but caused her only some cuts and bruises. She has mostly healed from the physical injuries by now, but I know from my own experiences that the emotional trauma may linger for a while. I wanted to help her as much as I could and, being retired, I had the time to do so.

       The drive to Pittsburgh was uneventful, but we began to feel some of the effects of the storm by the time we arrived at noon on Saturday. Skies were overcast for the next five days and rain was constant, but relatively light. Winds, however, gusted to over 40 miles per hour and the temperature dropped to the high 30's F. The fall foliage would have been beautiful, but was cancelled out by the weather. The overcast sky reminded me of why I had left Illinois in the 1960's and vowed never to return there to live.

       I hadn't watched much TV while there, so I was surprised by the amount of snow in the mountains of West Virginia when I started my drive back home to Florida on Wednesday. The elevations above 1200 feet all received snow. At first it looked pretty and I had some fond memories of the beauty of first snowfalls I saw as a kid. As the elevation of the highway rose to about 3000 feet, I saw just how devastating the early and heavy snow had been. Thousands of trees had snapped from the weight of the heavy, wet snow. They hadn't toughened up yet from their summer growth period and the snow had come before they were in their winter stage. Some trees had fallen near or onto the highway. Snowplows had been busy, but in some places the highways had only one large center lane open. I hadn't noticed that the gas tank on my Silverado pickup was low until the low fuel warning light came on. I began looking for a place to fill up and began noticing that most places along the road were dark and without power. I was able to find a place for gas with about 2 gallons left in my tank. While filling up, I noticed that at least one person had just bought a gas-powered generator and had stopped to fill up some gas cans to run it.  After getting home, I saw news stories about people who had died from carbon monoxide poisoning from running generators in their garages and not having adequate ventilation.

       This storm was certainly far from ordinary. It was one of the very few ever to have actually strengthened after having passed north of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The storm was estimated as being 1000 miles wide and resulted in coastal flooding warnings as far inland as  the western coast of Lake Michigan. New Jersey and New York barrier islands were devastated. Just a look at the changing weather patterns all across the world these past few years should convince even the most hardened skeptics that climate change is happening and that we will find our lives changed considerably over the next 20 years. The polar ice cap is melting at an unprecedented rate and the change in the flow of currents of the world's oceans will create a new "normal" set of weather conditions over time. As the oceans continue to rise, we will be faced with decisions about whether or not to rebuild homes on barrier islands and whether or not we can afford to build barriers to the sea for our major shoreline cities. We may be about to become more crowded as population centers shift to higher ground. My property sits at about 81 feet above sea level in Florida. My drive to the Gulf of Mexico to launch my boat now takes a minimum of one-and-a-half hours. If I live as long as I think I will, my driving time should be cut in half before I die. I wouldn't buy any Florida shoreline property if I were you.