Author Archives: oinsketta

Disconnect

The young therapist-in-training seemed at a loss when I asked why her supervisor seemingly gave her no advice about a patient who reported no progress week after week on two of the three goals he came into therapy seeking help with.    

“But you speak so well, and seem to know exactly what you need to do, and talk very precisely about it, I…..” and her voice trailed off as I looked on, alert, eyebrows sympathetically raised, listening actively with body language showing her I was not shutting her out.  

“Ah,” I said, philosophical as always, “that’s the devilish subtlety of it.  I can always see another side and even as I feel bad that I cannot, for example, motivate myself to do an amazing thing that perhaps only one in a million people would even dream of doing, I can also reassure myself that it’s cruel to chide myself for not being able to do what perhaps one in a million would attempt to do, on their own.”

I watched the wheels turning in the young therapist’s mind.  She was forced to agree.  

“You’re a tough nut,” a friend concluded with a tiny chuckle when I told him about the unhelpful dance I do with this psychology student for about 40 minutes every week.  His long-ago CBT therapist had eventually found a way to get him to have a good cry.  That cry made him feel pain he was then able to release himself from, in an important way.  I don’t want to feel that kind of pain, of course.  

“Part of what makes you such a tough nut,” said my friend, clapping me on the shoulder and moving our glasses to the sink.

“Makes her the perfect therapist for me, I suppose, she’s not going to make me cry.  Something to be said for that.”  

“Yep,” said my friend, running some foamy water into our glasses.

Pitch

The difference between a skilled amateur, content to pursue their talent as a hobby, and a paid professional, who lives by selling their skill and passion, is the ability to make a successful pitch.  The pitch must be delivered confidently, smoothly, with grace and music.  

Everything rides on it, true, but a winning pitch must move the other person seemingly without sweat or effort.   A difficult transition to make without a mentor, from the schoolyard to the pros, fair enough, but one that can theoretically be made.  I say this as the croupier eyes me impassively, me and the stack of chips piled precariously on a single spin of the wheel.  

I drive from my mind the offer of the high-powered literary agent who, after howling over a complicated horror story only made funny by my telling, assured me she could sell it and get me money to write the book– if I could pitch it just like that.  Turns out it was like an offer to give me a half hour comedy special on TV because I’d been funny over dinner.  The gig could be mine, provided I crack the execs up with my pitch for the show. The meeting is set up, just go in there and do your stuff, you’ll be great.

“Let’s hear your pitch, we’ve heard good things about you,” says one of the execs, leaning forward with a wolfish smile.    

“Knock ’em dead,” I hear my friend’s good luck call as I left to tap dance at the meeting.   I’m thinking now that maybe I should have written some material for this meeting.  Failing that, it would be nice, I suppose, to just knock them dead, these hungry carnivores.

Let’s start small, I tell myself mercifully.  There’s a website I’ve just heard of that will pay a neat, symbolic sum, a week’s spending money, for short, tight pieces of human interest.  Pitch the guy, here’s his email address, tell him you know me.

A practice pitch, then, before I get back to work on my larger pitches, the one to the Department of Education, the one to the Childrens’ Hospitals, the one to recruit someone to deliver the winning pitch to the Department of Education and the Children’s Hospitals.  I can’t do it alone, after all, I’ve learned that much, and going forward I will need partners in any case.  A single smart well-spoken ally would be a game changer, someone excited about the idea of kids who are rarely given a chance getting a chance to be producers, artists, technicians, stars.

Dream on, baby, but first pitch this 1,000 word piece to get on the score board, something to build on.  A solid single, up the middle, maybe another base hit later in the game before the walk-offs start later in the season.

Hello.  I am an old friend of so and so who sent me to your excellent site which I browsed with great interest.  Here is a pitch for a piece I’d like to write for you:

Too abrupt?  Too blunt?  Too long?  Too short?  Wait, wait, it’s not done.

The View from My Father’s Death Bed  (why not start with that old chestnut?)

My father was smart, funny and brutal.  The brutality came from his upbringing.  My sister named him the D.U., the Dreaded Unit, and the name was fair.  He felt kind of flattered by it, often signed his notes “The D.U.”.  Our family dinner table was a war zone, each against all, which always struck me as a bit crazy.  My periodic attempts to broker peace deals were angrily rebuffed, I was a combatant, not a diplomat, after all.   The impasse continued for decades until I entered my father’s hospital room where he was quickly dying from undiagnosed liver cancer.   My need to forgive the poor devil met his need to tell me how sorry he was, to be forgiven.  The final conversation was a gift to us both.

 Fucking heartwarming, no?  Who could resist it?   Like that colorful slide show, seasoned with kids’ faces, hands and voices, touting all the great benefits children take away from being listened to carefully, encouraged, put in charge of the wild productions they dream up.  Pitch that shit to the right person, baby, they could not resist it!

Knock ’em dead, man!

My Sister and Lady DU, toward the end

I have a snapshot that captures the relationship of my younger sister and my mother, near the end.  They are looking past each other.  The older woman wearing a long skirt, a cane in her hand, looks toward the photographer;  the younger one turned slightly away, her face showing a bit of the exasperation she is fighting off.   They had ongoing battles over the years, as many mothers and daughters do, but as their roles slowly reversed, my sister becoming more and more the caregiver as our mother’s 24 year death from endometrial cancer progressed, some hard edges were rounded off their conflicts.   I could show you the photograph, if not for invading the privacy of the individuals depicted.  A little background, instead.

My sister named our father “The D.U.”, The Dreaded Unit.  The name was apt, my father was able to convey his dreaded aspect with nothing more than a withering facial expression, no words necessary, though he was quick and deadly with a word or phrase too.   My sister once reported an answering machine message from the D.U., the mere tone of his voice making her want to rip her ears off so she could stop hearing it.   Our mother loved and always defended the D.U. and, after his passing, took on the name for herself in her last five years.

“Of the two of them, she’s by far the more dreaded,” my sister always said.  I had the opposite experience, but I knew what she was saying, from her point of view, and watched their struggles with sadness.

My sister lived a mile or two from our mother and looked in on her often, took her to doctors, had her mother take her and the kids out to dinner once in a while. Each resented the other’s ingratitude, and complained of it to me from time to time, swearing me to secrecy.   Any decent mediator could have helped them resolve the most fundamental issues between them, but both refused to consider it, for the same reason: the other was too stubborn and would never agree to it.

“She’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” my sister told me often, citing the most recent example of our mother’s supposed slide into dementia.  My mother had a variation on this for her daughter.  During my visits I never found my mother in the least bit demented, though she sometimes mis-spoke.  

“I can’t stand it in this hotel anymore!” she declared one day from her bedroom in her apartment, not long before she died.  I looked over at the guy who cleaned for her and took her shopping and said “well, we can fire the bellhop,” and he smiled, “but this is your home, mom, it’s not a hotel.”  

“I know, I know,” she said, annoyed “I can’t even talk any more…”  The sad fact was, she didn’t have many friends left to talk with.  When a group of women from the hospice came, days before her death, I heard laughter coming from the bedroom.  “One thing for sure, your mother is not demented,” said one of the women as she came out of the bedroom, a big smile still on her face.

The New York Times published a piece by a woman who went to visit her mother, toward the end of her mother’s life.  The two had always had a very contentious relationship and the daughter set off on the visit with trepidation.  When she arrived she found that her mother, her dementia fairly advanced, did not know who she was.  She was surprised at the happy greeting she received.  As heartbreaking as she found the situation it soon emerged that her mother mistook her for a long lost friend, or maybe a beloved sister, and they had a wonderful weekend together.  It was like old friends meeting for the first time after a forgotten lifetime.  

I gave the lovely piece to my mother to read on the plane as we flew from Florida to New York for her last visit.  My mother liked it very much, and I’m sad that I never got it back from her to pass on to my sister, she might have gleaned some insight from it.  

The piece disappeared like many other things when my mother died, like a life, finally whole, studied, and appreciated, and existing now only as lessons, digested and undigested.

WTF– have to get out of this rabbit hole!

from Wikipedia — and I love the editorial touch starting sentence two, though, of course, I have to get off the damned internets now:

Legal troubles [edit]

Bowe was convicted of the February 1998 kidnapping of his estranged wife Judy, and their five children.[18] Thinking it would reconcile his marriage, Bowe went to his wife’s Cornelius, North Carolina home and threatened her with a knife, handcuffs, duct tape and pepper spray. He forced her and their children into a vehicle and set out for his Fort Washington, Maryland home. During the kidnapping, Bowe stabbed his wife in the chest.[18] Police captured Bowe in South Hill, Virginia, freeing his family.[18] Bowe agreed to a plea bargain of guilty to ‘interstate domestic violence’, and was sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison.[18] Despite the agreed sentence, on February 29, 2000, the judge sentenced Bowe to only 30 days, due to a claim of brain damage by Bowe’s defense.[19][20] This sentence, counter to the plea agreement, was later overturned. Bowe served 17 months in Federal prison.[21] On February 8, 2001, Bowe was arrested in Long Island after a domestic dispute with his new wife.[18] Bowe allegedly dragged his wife and left her with cuts on her knees and elbows.[20]

On the Pope’s upcoming visit

This Pope seems to be a very good man.  Not all of the Popes have taken the teachings of Jesus so much to heart, it seems to me.  

It’s hard for me to think of the Pope, any Pope, without recalling the answer Riddick Bowe, former world heavy weight champion and Boxing Hall of Famer, gave to a reporter as he was leaving to visit the Pope in the days leading up to a fight to defend his title.  Wikipedia seems to be silent on this important matter, (though the NY Times of Feb. 1, 1993 mentions the private audience with the Pope)  but my memory is not.  

The reporter asked Bowe, who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, what he was going to say to the Pope during the meeting.   Bowe’s unforgettable reply:  “yo, Pope, you gotta bless me, man.”

NOTES:  (from Wikipedia)

They saw fit to include this, however:

Though ahead on points, Golota was penalized several times for low blows, and was finally disqualified in the seventh round after a volley of punches to Bowe’s testicles.

(and during the rematch)  Golota, after dropping Bowe in the second round, and being dropped himself later, was leading on the scorecards, only to be disqualified in the ninth round, once again for repeated shots to the testicles.[15]

Talking to Myself

I mentioned to a friend a while back that I often speak aloud when alone, sometimes in thick foreign accents.  At times these outbursts greatly amuse me.  I felt a little mad mentioning the laughing fits I sometimes have while alone.  

“I do the same thing,” said my friend, another fellow who loves a good laugh.

Late at night exhausted Sekhnet has been maniacally practicing her Spanish with an app called Duolingo.   She’s also mastered a lot of French vocabulary using Duolingo, though she has no idea how to pronounce the language, which, as all Americans know, is very fwah tah tahn.  For some reason one night I heard the words “el pais” pronounced enough times over her smart phone that I soon found myself, in moments of silence, lowering my voice an octave or two and saying “el pais!”.

Sekhnet has a new surveillance camera for her apartment in Sekhnetville where I spent a few hours yesterday.  It apparently catches snips of any motion it detects.  She was chuckling over the snip of me, by the door, saying “El Pais!” to nobody, in a deep voice and with great emphasis.   This is ridiculous enough, but then I turned to pick up my sandwich on a plate and apparently said to it “come on, Pah-eesy” and took it into her other apartment to watch the latest episode of Ray Dawnovan.

Reason vs. Emotion, redux

Here we go again, goddamn it, tap tap tap like a blind man here at the keyboard instead of picking up the phone and being in contact with other humans, like my wonderful nephew or my very cool niece, instead of going visiting, renewing ties with living, breathing creatures.    

Although here on the blank page, things can be set out and pondered in a way that is rare when we sit with others, listening, waiting, thinking we know what they are not hearing, hearing what they are, possibly, not saying.  

“I thought that piece about the ticking time bomb was another screed against Dick Cheney, the personification of evil, I just couldn’t take another one….”  

“Was it about Cheney?”  

“No, not really, but the opening made me think it would be.”  

“Ah-HAH…”

Expectations.  There is what there is and what we think there is.  More precisely, what we feel there is.  Our thoughts and expectations are influenced by our emotions, obviously.   There is no truth-based reason for general optimism or general pessimism, these are features of general mood.  Genetic, perhaps, a tendency toward the major key or the minor key.  Me, I steeped myself in the blues, a five note minor key, that music is in my soul.  The major key, often considered happy and optimistic, set against the sadder minor scales, always gave me an uncomfortable shudder of church.  

The church, to me, in the abstract, an institution that long sanctioned the mistreatment of my kind.  Bad-smelling incense, a super-wealthy institution that tolerates terrible crimes against the most helpless of its own innocents, using shameless threats about God to shame the victims into silence.  And let us not mention the swords wielded and oceans of blood spilled in the name of the Prince of Peace.  “What you do to the least of us you do to ME!” warned Jesus.  The fighting popes had infallible reasons why Jesus didn’t really mean this, skewering the least of us, disemboweling and plundering in the name of Christendom.

 “You mean, I’m sure, to exempt from this merciless portrait of Christianity hundreds of millions of good, kind, generous Christians who take the proper lesson from the life and teachings of Jesus.”  

Yes, thank you,  of course. I certainly do– along with a few billion fine Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists too, and everyone else who practices their religion for the right reasons.  The righteous of all nations have a share of the world to come, no doubt.  I’m painting with a broad, savage brush today, but it doesn’t change the larger truth.  Most people in the world are decent people, most religious people are humble and good in their practice.

The hellishness of the world was set out brilliantly in Catch 22, the concept of Catch 22.  You can get out of the army if you’re crazy.  Plain, clear, merciful.  There is one small caveat, Catch 22.  If you can prove that you actually are crazy —  wanting to leave the army shows that you are actually not crazy, therefore, in the army you will stay.  Catch-uh 22!  This merciless catch sums up the world of men as well as any single concept.  

The precepts of the church are mercy, charity, peace, gentle practices, service, devotion, loving our neighbors, even our enemies, but those precepts do not always translate into following the way of Jesus.  Unscrupulous religious demagogues have always carved out exceptions to Jesus’s love edict for those neighbors who hate our freedom, disagree on any significant aspect of our Christian belief (a sect of religious Christians once fought a hundred year war against another over whose love of Jesus was set out the right way), for people who insist they were born homosexual, or those who shrilly try to hold the church accountable for life-altering crimes against children, or blah blah blah.  

“Oh!  Taking a stand against the institutionalized hypocrisy of the worst of the Church on a Sunday!  Very bold.”

No, that’s not my goal today.  I give the example to show how mood colors our interpretation of the world.  Everything I’ve written above is true, even if not the entire picture.  Does it cancel out the comfort widows and orphans have always taken from the church?  The deep Christian faith that sustained American slaves generation after generation?  

“Why do you have to bring slavery into it, pantload?”  

Because Christianity was indispensable to ‘the Peculiar Institution’, as you know.

“Jeez, you’re in a mood today….” 

One slave ship captain had a revelation as he was steering another ship full of captured Africans across the murderous Middle Passage to lives of almost unceasing torment.  According to the story he turned the boat around, released all the prisoners, got out of the human trafficking business.  He wrote Amazing Grace, the hymn about God saving a wretch like him.  One of the most popular hymns around, they probably sang it at Klan rallies too.

“They didn’t sing it at fucking Klan rallies!  Have you no decency?! What the hell are you on about?”  

Catch-22.  

“The thing you need to do is shave, shower, go outside and visit a sick person.  Put on a clown nose and cheer up a dying child in a cancer ward.  Go find homes for one or two of those adorable, doomed little kittens.  Spread some goddamned joy, instead of ruminating on the horrors of the church.  The horrors of the church, the horrors of the church…  Jesus, how goddamned original….” 

Catch-22– the things that would help my mood the most today, my mood prevents me from doing.  

Suddenly, in my head is the Temptations great version of “I Can’t Get Next to You”, one of the greatest tracks ever spun on a piece of vinyl. I can turn the grey sky blue-uh, I can make it rain, whenever I want it to… but the things I want to do the most, I’m unable to do.

“Unable, or unwilling?”

You clearly know nothing of my work.

Sekhnet’s last photo of Dobby

She called this shot 6 Eared Fur Ball, Dobby’s the one with the white face.  Taken on 9/11 it is the last portrait of the smallest of the kittens.  His fate and final whereabouts are unknown.  Feral cats have very short lives living outside, it is rare that they make it to two years old.  Makes it all the more urgent that I find homes for these other three friendly, playful young cats.6 eared fur ball 9-11-15

The short, adorable life of Dobby

Sekhnet delivered the news, heartbroken.  The cutest of the three kittens of the feral kitten in the garden, the only one we’d named, Dobby, last seen by me two nights ago, characteristically toddling off to hide, is no more.  Nature, knowing that death is only a matter of time for every living creature, gave the handsome, timid runt of this litter about five weeks of life.   Here is the rest of the family the other day: three cats 9-17-15