I’m breaking the weak rule I keep for myself, no more than one blog per week. When the unconscious percolates up into awareness and the brewing bubbles burst revealing an idea or feeling to write about, then there’s no stopping that. The heat of the Nevada desert is insufferable; one runs errands and then beats it back to the air conditioning. Unlike a more temperate climate, it goes for months without rain, of any kind. As a new Yorker I could easily describe the varieties of rain in the big city between the East and Hudson rivers — light drizzle, heavy downpour, trickle, impending rain, threatening rain, fog-ridden moisture, dew on the tips of one’s shoes; torrents and then buckets, all knowable to the average city slicker. Jane wakes up to the stark and glaring sunshine and speaks to the climate gods for a cloudy day, one in which she can dwell in the shadows. Shadows and inclement weather make for good writing, no doubt.The trouble here in Henderson is that there is no adversity climatically speaking, it is all the same and interminably boring which reflects something of the human population hereabouts. (Readers of this blog will understand my seemingly interminable rant against the species.) What is missing is variety. I wonder if the lack of climatic stimulation may impact upon the citizenry, creating a dull, flat affect.
Sometimes as the heat broils my cortex I wish I were in some Caribbean or Latin American country, to spend the rest of my years gazing out on the BP free sea. After all, at 70, what do I have left, 10 to 15 years at the most declining into decrepitude, hearing loss, cataracts and macular degeneration? Since many of my peers — celebrities, newscasters, actors, Ringo Starr at 70 — are aging I try to ask myself what is it I need to do to prepare for my great swan dive into existential nothingness.Three questions in a row and I confirm my Judaism. As I wrote to someone recently, I hang between carpe diem and tempus fugit. (If I could say that in Yiddish, it would have an earthier and more graphic effect –anyone out there who can supply me with the equivalent?). I was fantasizing about Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador for a week or so but I was informed that Medicare cannot be used there. That was an eye-opener, for apparently many well-intentioned ex-pats find out that pension and social security checks can be forwarded, but not Medicare, That is to be found in U.S. territories or protectorates — the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, whatever. So now I am limply gathering info about Puerto Rico. I chuckle at Americans — and their “tastes” on such a show as International House Hunters, who venture into Mexico and fall for the beauty of the land, disregarding cartels, and the lack of an infrastructure (we call this well-schooled dentists, doctors and surgeons). It is a kind of blindness in search of pleasure. So what else is new? Perhaps we stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic when Jefferson offered us “the pursuit of happiness.” He should have known better; to pursue happiness is to end up with your nose up your butt. Silly founding father — take that, Glenn Beck.
And sometimes as the heat broils my home and this Jewish lobster within, I think about going back to my practice as a therapist, that is, part time. All the conflicts and issues that creates is something to behold — but I do miss the intensity of a session, the search for a better question on my part, the struggle to understand the other self a few feet away, that taxing of one’s feelings and emotions, the stretching of one’s reasoning powers, the ability to offer choices and show the client how to use choices as a way to humanly go on in life, the need to have after some years of practice a kind of wisdom, a good nature, a supportive and encouraging self, a goodness about one’s self; of being brave and courageous as a therapist, to share that knowledge; to metabolize depression that pours from the patient and to change it into a kind of feeling talc, gently falling to the floor, and a whole host of other feelings and sentiments and emotions. I think about that and then I go take a nap. It passes.
However, I am clear to myself about why I think this. It is a giving; it is challenging; it makes for growthbetween patient and therapist — it is growth; it is existential; it is meaningful; it is real and most of all, if you have guts and grit, it can be authentic! I feel I am at the peak of my creative powers but there is no call for this. Indeed, Nevada puts up all kinds of barriers to practicing, since I am from another state. The credentialing process is a pain in the ass; all the credentials that testify to your professionalism are disregarded here, in this rather stupid and arch-conservative state. I bridle at the thought of being supervised by a 35 year old. A former instructor of mine is 87 and he is still practicing in New York City, recently writing me for information as he is working on a new article. To practice psychotherapy is to keep one intellectually alive, for it is the impossible profession and because of this endlessly fascinating, much like fiction writing. It is the best defense against dementia. I get all worked up about this “unjustness” but then I take a nap and it too passes.
What I just observed in this self-moment is that most if not all my wishes are not retroactive or attempts at repair or reparative; I seek not to go back, although I have my rueful and remorseful moments. Whether I did or did not do my best as a father and husband and human being is lost in the folds of time cascading through the voids of space, evermore. I wish for things and opportunities in the present, for time instructs me that I have no future but this very moment. Sometimes I wish I could “shape” the immediate present into something I would not have to siesta through. And I think I know what that is. It has been given to me the need in this autumnal part of my life to just write — believe me, blogging isn’t writing; blogging is practice for the real writing that lies ahead or — perhaps tomorrow or the next day. With that, adieu.
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