Author Archives: oinsketta

A Dream that Shook Me

The dream featured one of the kids in the second series of animation workshops I did, a survivor of childhood cancer, a bright, lovely and creative kid who was sometimes out of control.  His parents loved him to death, his survival had been a miracle, every day was a different struggle and the boy, much indulged, was volatile.   One day he demanded I help him, said he needed me to get him a gun so he could kill himself.  He appeared to be quite serious about suicide, unconcerned with the pain it would cause many people who loved and cared about him.  His mother told me she’d speak to his therapist about it.   On many other days he was the most cheerful and entertaining kid you could ever imagine. Once in a while he was completely out of control, crawling on the floor, responding only with animal sounds.

In the dream he is driving his father’s brand new Mini Cooper east on 73rd Avenue, a two lane street near where I grew up.  I caught a clear look at him as he drove past, alone in the car.  The ten or eleven year-old veered across the line a few times, narrowly missing oncoming cars, coming dangerously close to the parked cars on both sides.  I caught up with him, he was on foot by then, and told him that driving was a complicated business and that he shouldn’t be behind the wheel until he’d had some instruction.  And besides, he was only ten or eleven and it was far too soon to start learning to drive.  

He dismissed these concerns, told me he’d parked the car with no problem and pointed down the street.  I walked over to see that he had parked it, on the sidewalk, perfectly lined up with the white lines of the crosswalk.  I didn’t know where to start: illegal to park in a crosswalk, illegal to park a car on the sidewalk, the tickets his father would get, the towing and impound fees, that he could have easily killed somebody, himself.  

I ran into his father at some kind of party and took him aside to tell him quietly what his young son had been up to.  The man was concerned, but fell silent as the boy approached, eyeing us suspiciously.   “I have to pee,” the kid said.  I pointed out where the bathroom was and the boy went there.  The father thanked me for letting him know and told me he’d deal with the situation.

I woke up in a particularly bleak mood.  The dream, it seemed to me, was an unmistakable proof of the folly of tying to be a one man team in the business of getting a student-run workshop up and running.   Was not the dream that young children can run a workshop as absurd as the kid childishly driving a death mobile?  

I reached for a pen and wrote:  just because he doesn’t actually crash doesn’t make driving a good idea.   Then I added:  but– students run, adults facilitate.

There is always, I’ve noticed, an argument to be made for the other side of almost anything.

A Key Distinction

 
The Devil, it is often correctly noted, is in the details.  We all have our particular weaknesses and very particular reasons we are weak exactly where and under what circumstances our weakness becomes excruciating.  I’ve been chafing for years, for reasons I’ve gone into many times, when someone simply leaves their end of a conversation to silence.  I’ve done conscious work on my reactions to this, which is about all one can do, but it’s a challenge for me even now, whenever it happens.  And we all know, it happens all the time, especially with email.  
 
I was gratified to see in the famous NY Times, in a review of books on how to deal with difficult people, that one respected author sets aside Silent and Non-responsive as one of seven supremely maddening types.   For whatever reason, that type has learned:  all I’ve got to do, motherfucker, is nothing.   Hmmmmm?  Is my humming bothering you?  Hmmmmmmmm?
 
If a friend expresses annoyance that I didn’t reply to his description of an outburst of rage he described in an email he sent, I will read the email again and reply.  Stepping neatly into the trap.  Because then, heh…. what?   I didn’t say anything.  You’re fucking crazy.  I did nothing and look how fucking mad you get!!!!  Oh my God, and you think I was enraged because I said I was enraged when I totaled my car… what a complete fucking asshole you are, Mr. Ahimsa-Boy!
 
A few distinctions occur to me and are in order.
 
In defense of people with bad tempers who don’t want to think too deeply about why they fly off the handle from time to time, or suffer, like an expatriate friend, from all sorts of painful anger-repression related physical ailments, or live joyless lives seeing no reason to do anything but continue trudging out of a sense of duty, if you don’t lose your job over your temper, is it really that big a problem?  True friends and loving family will often forgive you for an outburst of anger, bosses– not as much.
 
Also, the difference, I realize, between the rage that was directed at me (and my sister) by my abused father, at my friend by his enraged, quick to snarl and slap mother, and whatever bad treatment was meted out by other inept parents of adults we know, is that being raged at is a trauma that causes a different category of harm in the child than just being disrespected or treated thoughtlessly.   Being the object of a parent’s rage from your earliest memories?   Priceless.
 
Just ask my dad about that, though you’d need special powers to make out what his smiling skull would tell you up there in that little boneyard outside of Peekskill. If you had those special powers, the man could tell you a hell of a lot. 

Do You Find Your Own Thoughts Fascinating?

And if so, are they valuable enough to sustain your beliefs and provide the energy to power productive actions?

I am asked to give my thoughts on the Thought Inventory next week.  What did I think about how I thought about things I was thinking about in regard to what those thoughts led me to do?  If I did not think that thinking about how I was thinking provoked thoughts I did better to think than the ones I was previously thinking, please rate this thought on a scale from “somewhat” to “extremely”.

“I’m sorry, doctor, I am losing the thread of this conversation,” I said.  

“I’m not a doctor,” she said.  

I did not wish to think about that further.  The work, I thought thoughtfully, is mostly done by the patient anyway.   Most things here, in this world of pleasure and pain, are matters of opinion, after all.  I’ve already stated for the record that I value my own insights above almost every other– though I am open to helpful advice, I like to think.  And I need help from somewhere, that much is as clear to me as to anyone who has seen me in inaction these last two quarters.

“Well, one thing to become more aware of is how you are feeling about yourself,” said the therapist early on in the session.   The obvious question, if you have faith in your theories and your powers why aren’t you using them, in spite of whatever lack of encouragement, whatever objectively discouraging obstacles, you’ve had?  

“You will feel better about yourself if you use 11’s on your guitar,” a moderately accomplished guitarist told a better one.  I’ve never forgotten this, though it was spoken decades ago.  For one thing, I’ve always used 11’s.  I don’t recall ever feeling better or worse about myself based on the gauge of the guitar strings I use.  

“You live in the world of your head!” another told me, though it’s possible I was hearing things.  It’s not as though there are not very good reasons for living in my head.  Growing up, the world of my head was a much safer place than the world of everyone else’s heads.  Putting oneself in the heads of many other people is truly scary, as is much of the world of what we agree on as “objective reality”, the way things actually are.  Tens of millions of kids who will never see a toilet, though many of their siblings will see early deaths from diseases absent in places with basic sewage and sanitation infrastructure.   You know, the way things actually are.

For the record, then:  I created and implemented a largely autonomous team-based animation workshop that allows participants to create stop-motion animation in a fraction of the time it usually takes.  I did it alone.  I don’t know anyone who has dreamed up, designed and implemented anything as simple yet complex.  Still miles from being the self-sustaining business I am counting on it becoming, but as far as demonstrating that it works– I think the 90 plus workshops speak for themselves.  

For the opposition, those who do not live in my head, highly successful marketing genius Seth Godin:  if you send your best idea to ten people you trust and they don’t send it on to other people, your idea is not worth chasing.  Find another idea to sell.

Another angle: if you send your best idea to ten people, in a form that is not readily digestible, tasty and exciting, the way a marketing person would send it, how do you know your idea is not worth chasing?  After all, the people who actually experience the workshop are engaged at once.  Many of them love it.  People not inclined to work with others soon find themselves working with others because it’s simply the best way to work on any creative project with multiple moving parts.  The work they produce is, inarguably, sometimes quite cool.

Guy Kawasaki, I told the therapist, concealing my surprise that I’d immediately remembered the name of an internet savant I’d heard once, sent a query to his email list of 2,000,000 people.  He initially heard back from about 1%, or 20,000 and was very happy with that success rate.  If I send a query out to ten people and hear back from two, that’s, statistically, a hugely successful week, if we don’t factor in the emotional let-down of 80% of the people who claim to wish me every chance at success not bothering to tap “nice” and hit send.  

“Most people do not tap ‘nice’ when somebody sends something they created, they feel like they have to write something more in an email, give some real feedback.  If you need people to tell you ‘nice’ you are a needy fucking baby who needs to get a life, and a job, and not try to be the CEO of an imaginary nonprofit.  The rest of us work our asses off, and spend years paying our dues.  We’re sorry if we can’t jump every three months when you send us something for your feedback to tell you it’s ‘nice’.”  

“Well, shoot,” I say, extending my lower lip a bit, “you don’t have to get all pissy about it.  Don’t say ‘nice’, that’s fine with me.  Must be tough, having your life.   Sorry to bother you.  Hope you have a nice day.”  

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” says my former business partner to the mediator.  “He claims this is about the starving children in Harlem, kids with cancer, the women undergoing chemo, that it’s not about him.  But it’s about him.  It’s only about him.  And he gets to be pissed off at anyone who works for corporations because he thinks he’s Saint Fuckface.”  

“But, darling,” I protest, doing a passable Cary Grant, “I AM Saint Fuckface.”

Don’t Think About it Too Hard

“The most universally practiced form of therapy, and the most dependable device to free oneself from the torments of excessive introspection, is to stay busy.  Work is good, and proper, and necessary.  It is always good to work, it keeps you occupied, gives a feeling of accomplishment, plus you get paid, which allows you to live.  And everyone knows you have to work, so working long and hard is also rarely seen as a vice,” A said.

B was quick.  “Yet you, I notice, endorse indolence and excessive introspection for yourself. Which would be fine if you were wealthy or successful, you’d be entitled to your opinions, not needing any further pay for them.  But you are neither wealthy nor successful and clearly are in need of pay, even if it comes only in the form of recognition or appreciation.”  

“What I endorse for myself I would not recommend for everyone.  In fact, I say ‘go to work’ whatever that work may be.  Better you were working now than busting my balls, for example.”  

“Yet you feel superior because you spend your days ruminating, seeking connections, puzzling, trying to clarify.  You actually feel superior because you do not work, because you believe you are somehow doing hard and important work by tapping away in your little journals even though nobody pays you for it,” said B.

“That may be so, but I don’t fault anyone for not taking the time to try to think things through too deeply.  It can hurt, that much is clear– and whether it can help is an open question.  And look, I understand, perhaps more than most, that people need recognition and appreciation, in many forms.  Dale Carnegie, years ago, set out in his principles of how to make friends and influence people, that first among our needs is the need to be acknowledged.  No sweeter sound than hearing one’s own name spoken kindly and so forth.   We live in a world where this is simply not done very often. In its place we have getting and spending, deriving self-worth from our work and our possessions, striving, trying to thrive as comfortably as possible.  Why explore the roots of an anger you’ve spent a lifetime repressing if you can work long and hard day after day and then go on a fabulous vacation instead?  Or, in rare cases, just be happy because you have the genetic set-up for it?”    

“Why, indeed?” said B.  

“No, I grant you that.  100%.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  If you fit in, and you are able to be happy competing, rising early, striving all day to do your job well, going to bed tired with a feeling of accomplishment, God bless you,” A said.   “I’ve never had that talent.”

“That’s why people think ‘A’ stands for ‘asshole’, my friend.   You sit around all day brooding and judging, and think you are…. ah, never mind,” B said.  

“Look, I grant you that I am annoying.  What is my life but a perplexing mystery and the story of incomprehensible failure?   I may have mastered a few things over the years but what have I done with any of them beside make fine hobbies of them?  I recognize that even someone like George Steinbrenner, who I had nothing but contempt for when he was alive and little feeling for at all now that he has a monument bigger than Babe Ruth’s in Yankee Stadium, could be a hell of a piano player.  I knew a cocaine addict, a pretty decent bass player, who grew up near Steinbrenner’s and somehow became connected to the old tyrant.  He told me George could play the hell out of a piano.”  

“Fascinating,” said B.

“Point taken.  It’s just that I’m struck over and over by how many people’s lives of quiet desperation unfold with just one or two moments of seeming broader understanding popping up.   Is insight worth so little that…” A was at a loss.  

“‘For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,’ Ecclesiastes 1:18,” said B.  

“You quote scripture at me, Devil?  Those books contain every kind of justification you could ever want: God has no problem with slavery and genocide, God hates slavery and genocide.  Isn’t Ecclesiastes The Book of Depression?”

“Yes, I think so.  The Book of Depression, yes.  That’s what most biblical scholars have taken to calling it,” said B.  

“Or maybe it’s the book of what just is: a time to be born, a time to die, vanity is just vanity, do not spend too much time chasing the reasons you are miserable, don’t worry, be happy,” said A.  

“Oh, are you a biblical scholar now too?” said B.  

“No, I read about it on Wikipedia.  Anyway, I got a note recently from a supremely busy friend, perhaps the most harried person I have ever known, a little piece he’d dashed off while in flight to a business conference of some kind.   He wrote that he had gained some insight into his troubled marriage and had reason for hope of improvement, based on small signs of tenderness from his often angry wife.  Within that note was a report that in a fit he later recognized as rage, he had totaled his car.  I wrote back to tell him I was glad his marriage was looking up,” said A.  

“This is exactly the reason some people who hate you hate you,” said B.  “Everyone you know is just a lab rat to you, a living chart to be pulled down and vivisected to make your pretentious points about human life here in this unexamined world.”

“Heh,” said A, “that reminds me, years ago F called to tell me he was sick of being one of my lab rats and that he was resigning the post.  I laughed and told him I was making note of this excellent reaction in my lab book, that his ‘resignation’ would be presented in my next scholarly paper.  And I told him I’d make sure he was given two extra pellets for that fine work, that I was proud of him but that, of course, letting him out of the cage could not be considered.”  

“You’re a sick bastard,” said B.  “now, if you will finish your point about the busy friend with the glimmer of hope about his difficult marriage, I have to get back to work.”

 “OK.  So I get an email back from him saying I’d missed the point.  The point was that he’d been enraged, and, driving in this state, totaled his car.  His anger, damn it, that was the point, was I not paying attention?” said A.  

“Were you not paying attention?” said B.  

“I’m sorry…” said A, “what were you saying?”  

“OK, I really have to get back to work, what is your point, if any?”  

“As long as my friend stays busy, busy, busy he will never have to think again about the anger that drives him, dogs him, bedevils him, anger that I’d been so fucking oblivious about,” said A.  

“Without a doubt,” said B, “now, unlike you, I have to get to work.”  

“Go forth and be productive,” said A, sliding off his chair back on to the carpet.  

“And you, have a nice nap,” said B.  

“Look,” said A, “some people respond to their anxieties by running, others by stopping in their tracks.”

“Profound,” said B, “I suggest you sleep on that one.”  

“Excellent idea,” said A, curling up to think on it more.

Another glimpse at Perfection

If your point is that American politicians are hopelessly corrupt, and the voters a bunch of easily whipped up partisan dupes, and that since government is ineffective, at best, and  should be curtailed and kept small enough to drown in a bathtub, imagine if you could do this.

Contribute unlimited money, tax-deductibly, to organizations created under the odd provisions of a certain law’s section 501(c) (4) to run unlimited ads ensuring that politicians who oppose your agenda know they will be voted out of office if they don’t go along with your program.  If they’re conservatives, threaten ’em from the right.  If they’re liberals, shoot, it’s even easier to primary those bastards.  

The result?  A pliable bunch of hopelessly compromised and corrupt American politicians  committed only to staying in office, playing to easily whipped up partisan dupes who are already mad as hell and waiting to do something about it.  The resulting ineffective government will cause even those who believe in the importance of democracy to cry out to drown the bastards, every one of them, in a bathtub.

A kind of sickening perfection, you have to admit.

Creativity, you say?

“No,” she said, “that’s what you say.  Imagining all-consuming creative collaboration that is all in your head.”  

“That is what I say,” he said, “its own reward.   And all-consuming creative collaboration has not always been in my own head.”  

“That’s what you say,” she said.  

“You keep saying that,” he said.  

“As you say,” said she.  

“Listen, I’ve been in rooms many times, people get swept up into working together, given the chance to be part of a creative team.  I’ve taken part, I’ve seen it, experienced it many, many times.”  

“You are a dreamer.  Nobody but you gives a rat’s creatively shaved buttock about creativity for its own sake.  Creativity that leads to more tangible things, OK.  But even there, it’s more a buzzword or catchphrase — creativity– than something anyone cares about for its own sake.  Anyone but a person like you.”  

“A person like me….” he said.  

“Show me the money, I’ll do something creative for you right now,” she said, “pay to play.  I’ll collaborate with you all day, if you got the green to make it worth my while, I’ll riff with you til the cows stop farting up into the ozone.  You know what I’m saying?   If your idea is so valuable why is nobody paying you for it?”  

“I really don’t see the point…” he said.  

“My point exactly,” she said. “it’s nothing to talk about excitement, you have to make me excited about it.”  

“Oh,” he said, reluctant to take her deeper point, “you’re the one I have to make excited about the excitement of my exciting idea.”  

“I am,” she said, “and I am but one of hundreds you need to excite.”   She was right, goddamn it, he thought.   She’s just the first hurdle in this two thousand hurdle race.  

“You have no idea how many more hurdles than that it is,” she said, reading his thoughts with an ease that struck him as supernatural.  

“Supernatural my ass,” she thought, “all I had to do was read the words off the screen.  This guy doesn’t even realize all this is just writing on a screen.”

“I know that,” he said, his bottom lip coming up to cover the upper one.

Quick, Snide Note to My Fellow Americans

Americans are arguably (and we will argue, by God, and the dumber the argument the readier we are to fuck somebody up over it) the world’s most competitive,  unhealthiest, most easily manipulated, most vi0lent, most ill-informed, most opinionated, most likely to kill each other with a gun, most likely to defend the right to kill somebody with a gun, most prone to suicide with a gun, most materialistic, most optimistic, greediest, most distracted and self-involved population, probably of all time.  I’m leaving most fearful off the list, and angriest, because while those might also be true, they’re matters of opinion and hard to verify.  I’m also leaving off most kind-hearted, idealistic and trusting, for the same reason.

Of course, we Americans are free to fight about any one or all of these snidely unflattering characterizations.  We have that freedom here, unlike citizens of a lot of other places.  And God bless these United States.   I defend our right to be all of these things and more.  

Worldwide consumers of fast food and violent American films should not feel smug about America’s faults.   We come by them honestly:  our national religion is the acquisition of wealth and the refinement of the machine that assists in that acquisition.  Wealth, or lack of it, is the measure of everything here– as it is fast becoming everywhere.   America was the land where unlimited wealth was advertised, our streets paved with gold; the chance to have more money than anyone else remains a big part of the American Dream, the global dream.  The right to compete was guaranteed to all Americans, even if it is, arguably, not always enforced fairly.  

This dream was sold to Americans living here and used to lure needed workers here over the years.  It was sold deliberately, skillfully, to excellent advantage, from our earliest days.  America pioneered Public Relations and modern Advertising, the increasingly sophisticated use of the mass media to shape public perceptions, frame debate, package, brand and sell products, instill values and consumer loyalty.  We are the masters of it.  Nobody else, until very recently, was even in second place.  

As adults most of us can sing many catchy ad jingles we remember from childhood.  Few of us can quote a line of Shakespeare or anything from the Bible, but most of us who were around at the time can sing “The One and Only Cereal That Comes In The Shapes of Animals” and know exactly what we’re singing about.

So while it’s true we may be dumber than shit, and arguably in steep decline, as a nation and culture, we’re very, very rich and we can still fuck you up.  Yeah.  And we will too.  What are you gonna do about it?

Heh, I thought so…

You’ve Got to Appreciate Perfection, in any form

I have to admit, maddening as it may also be, the details of some of my current annoyances  have a certain mad perfection to them.  The devilish invention and sometime symmetry must be admired.

One reason I had such poor sleep the last few nights was that it was probably close to 90 degrees in my apartment.  I need to buy a thermometer, it might surprise me to learn that only 77 or 81 degrees feels like ninety.  Friends had suggestions: call the landlord (it’s 11 pm…) complain to the City (too much heat?  huh?)  put a tray of ice in front of the fan blowing hot air (uh… nah.)

I opened the windows, slept in front of a blowing fan, without blankets or sheets over me, without a shirt, with no socks (my usual winter sleeping accessory) and still it was uncomfortably hot.  The valve on my radiator?  Too hot to handle, and stuck in place anyway.

Last night I fell into a deep, blessed sleep that was interrupted when, three hours before my appointed wake-up, hammering, banging, drilling and stomping began directly over my head.  It persisted vigorously for exactly three hours.  It stopped abruptly right at the time I’d planned to wake up, literally at the time my alarm had been set for.

I noticed it was quiet, as I tried to go about my business, as I waited for a call back about lunch plans.   After learning the lunch appointment was cancelled, and realizing the quiet had gone on long after any lunch break the workers upstairs may have taken, and since even after two cups of coffee I could hardly keep my eyes open, I stretched out to sleep for an hour’s nap.

I fell asleep at once, but less than a minute into my nap, Sekhnet, checking up on me, woke me with a phone call.  

I began to fall asleep again when the sound of a pneumatic drill, or that machine the mechanics use in a garage to remove lug nuts, gave a short burst from the air shaft below my window.   Literally two seconds of very loud mechanical rattattattattat!!!! noise, followed by perhaps three minutes of complete silence.  

Then four or five seconds of the lug nut removal (can’t imagine there are lug nuts down there anywhere) followed by perhaps ninety seconds of silence.  

“What the devil?” I wondered, when a hammering began.  But the hammerer was as fickle and tentative as the guy with the heavy machine.  Three blows, a fourth, then silence.  Maybe it was the same guy?  Words were exchanged in a foreign language.  Perhaps there were two of them?  What the hell were they doing down there?

I began to drift off when “BRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!!!!” sounded again, then two hammer blows.  More consultation in the unknown language.  Silence as they pondered some unknowable mystery.   Hammer, hammer.  Silence, almost asleep again….BRRRRR!!! BRRRRR!!!! BRRRRRRR!  BRR!!! BRRRRR!!!!”

Silence.  Sudden very loud hammer blow, once!  Silence.

My eyes are crossing as I type these words.  I wonder why I am typing at all.  I am too tired to wonder very hard.  I am thinking about what’s next, what infernally ingenious, fiendishly customized and ridiculous petty annoyance will the universe come up with for me?   It’s sure to be a cool one, and perfect for me.  Stay tuned.

Friday the Thirteenth Again

Rodney Dangerfield:

When the alarm rang I hit snooze, and the snooze bar came off.  I went into the bathroom,  the door knob came off in my hand.  I was afraid to pee.

It will sound petty and peevish, I know, but I haven’t been sleeping enough the last few weeks.  I’m down about 2 hours every night, it seems.   I was asked to sleep over in SoHo and take care of my sweetheart’s cat while she was away overnight.  I was to stay over and make sure the Baron had his accustomed dinner service, his midnight snack and his continental breakfast.

They are renovating the apartment above.  It worked out better than any alarm clock could, for the cat, because it was impossible to stay in bed directly under the hammer blows, drilling and other banging that commenced three hours before my alarm was set for.  The cat was happy, he had his late breakfast a few hours earlier than he otherwise would have had I not had such a persistent and energetic alarm clock pound me awake.

I’m not complaining, mind you.  I am complaining, let me face that sad fact.  Of course, as my father was wont to point out, I’d complain if I was hanged with a new rope.  All I need is a couple more cups of coffee and I’ll be fine.  Fine, I say.   Whoops, the drilling has moved to over my position here at the computador.  Excuse me, please, I’ve got to get out into the street for some peace and quiet.

 

Does the thought of anger make you mad?

Is the subject of anger so infuriating, threatening, hideous in itself that virtually any mention of it will, sooner or later, stop conversation?

Likewise, the subjects of apology, repentance, forgiveness.   Do these of necessity, except, among a small, select, wounded population, induce squeamishness and avoidance?

“May I play Devil’s Advocate?” she asks, and without waiting for so much as a nod says “Here’s another either/or.   Either your intensity, self-righteousness and over-sensitivity on any subject go beyond the boundaries most people consider decent, made worse by a relentless demand for response, stated or strongly implied, put people to silence, just to make it stop.  Or, if what you write is like… oh, never mind.”

What?

“You freak people out, and piss them off, when you… you know, when you act like yourself.”

Hmmmm.  Good to know.  I’ll try not to act like myself so much.

“That’s not what I mean,” she says.

Corporations are people, with feelings too, sniff, sniff, you judgmental, insensitive bastard.   Is that what you mean?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.  “I mean that you might like to think you are not an angry person any more, that you have made great progress in that area, gained important insights you’ve had the courage and persistence to act on and are just currently frustrated, discouraged and trying not to wake up and smell the napalm, but that doesn’t mean….”

Hold it right there, girlfriend.  I was in the middle of a long discussion over the roles of genetic predisposition, nurture and  conscious effort to change innate personality traits one is unhappy with.  The correspondence reached a certain point and then abruptly stopped on the other end.  Silence as loud as the other person yelling “Silence! Enough!” [1]  

I stumbled on this line in my notes last night:  “the most insidious enemy of death benefits [taking positive lessons from the lives of even difficult departed loved ones–ed.] is the pervasive assumption that personality is fixed by midlife.” source

“Maybe your correspondent believes this pervasive assumption fervently, or hopelessly, as you might say, and has proven to his own satisfaction that struggling for any kind of positive personality change is futile and is just tired of your 2,000 word meditations, your opinionated self-regarding back and forth about the importance of doing things he feels are futile at best– particularly in light of your objectively depressing circumstances and lack of prospects for changing them any time soon.  Maybe he’s doing you the kindness of not telling you he finds these attempts to justify your life particularly distasteful.   Maybe he’s protecting you by not calling you on what bullshit virtually everything you say is.”

Dad?  Is that you, you rascal?

“You will find, son, when times get tough, that I am everywhere.  But let me assure you of this: you have made progress, and if I was still alive, still enlightened by the regrets I expressed on my death bed and my wishes to have lived differently, been, in fact, more like you, I’d be very proud of you.   Proud that you continue to believe in what you feel is right, in spite of the difficulty of it, despite the deliberate and inadvertent deafness of virtually everyone you encounter these days.”  

Must be easier for you these days, to say things like that, being a skeleton.  

“Oh, I can’t tell you how much easier it is, now that I’m just bones with dirt between my smiling jaws.”

[1]  Of course, another obvious reason for the gap in this particular case is the present lack of time required to thoughtfully reply in a life I know to be particularly emotionally complicated at this moment.   This goes as well for each of the other several cases where the subject of anger has been unveiled and then left to languish a bit.  –ed