I cannot remember the title of the book by R.D. Laings, a well-known psychiatrist of the Sixties. It may have been called “Knots,” for that matter. What I dimly retain of the book was a series of verbal knots he presented to the reader, in verse, mind you, rather convoluted and brilliant I must say, just like knots. I associated to a knot or knots while musing about this blog and the issue of control. I will just blather from here on in. Control is a kind of rigid inhibition, I imagine. It is Custer’s last stand. One goes down fighting rather than giving up control. It is the Great Wall of China (Kafka wrote a story about that) in that all walls keep in as well as keep out. Control for me is the fear of invasion, so dark and desperate that one feels he or she will be swallowed up, incorporated into some dark abyss of the world — or the other. I imagine doctors walk the walls in defense for they cannot abide a loss of control — death.
Perhaps, metaphorically, human beings create walls and install controls because we are corporeal entities walking through and into this world. What is outside our skin? Or, better still, what inner labyrinths do we have that equalize the pressure(s) of the outside and the inside. It may be argued that although we are individual units we are really part and parcel of the “out there.” All is flow, all is flux. I suppose, I guess and I imagine that we create controls in what cognizance we own or are given as human beings as a way of differentiating ourselves, of differentiating out. If that is so, some controls define us as individuals. I don’t feel lost at this point, only curious. I will try to concretize.
Dealing with the purchase of buying this new house in Nevada we have complied with all kinds of requests, some remarkably anal and quite ridiculous. Only yesterday we were informed that essentially the house is ours — the banker is on track with us, et al — but that the title company has not delivered the “Docs” to move into closing; that we are six behind; in short, delay again. What has been churning within me is that poor management, poor and incompetent workers, poor everything is holding up everything for no good reason; that the conjunction of several “forces” are retarding the process and that as the buyer I am being kept on hold, on the back burner while idiocies flow. Clearly it is like Hitler as the sole cause of the Holocaust; too simple. He did not befoul himself with the implementation of his “ideas.” I can go back into time and I will not discover who is holding up simple processing of a mortgage; in fact, I am not buying a house, I am, apparently, seemingly, buying a mortgage. And so controlling this imposition upon me seems beyond my grasp. I could cancel the whole thing, ask for my deposit back — that’ll show the bastards; I could discover one knucklehead along the chain of incompetency and lose my not inconsiderable temper; I could choose not to push the river and allow all time and space to marinade a bit more. I could choose not to act, not to do, to observe, to cede all control, to surrender, to be spiritually oblivious to what is really a minor iota in the flux of life. I could give up all control. I could go out and merrily exercise today in the fitness room or fritter away the day.
What I might do is what I often shared with clients over the years when they faced all kinds of personal hurdles or difficulties in decision-making. I offered an image. One is on a beach and we all know that water comes up at different places along the beach. Sometimes the water reaches your feet and stops; sometimes it passes your feet and runs on. And at times water stops short of your toes. The client easily grasped that. I offered a thought or proposition based on this simple observation. Perhaps life is like that. That is, life does not come up to us like a straight and horizontal line all along the beach. Life is fractured, splintered, stumped, and spastic as well as spasmodic. So, the client proffered, what are you trying to get at? What I am getting at is that we deal with what we have before us first, not being shattered by all the other spurts and sprints of life coming at us. We don’t become paralyzed. In other words, we don’t wait for the toast to pop. We crack open the eggs, get the milk and butter from the fridge, take our morning meds and so on. We don’t stare at the toast and wait for its completion. We are not fixated, as we often are when faced with a hardship or a difficulty. In short, I will play a game. I will shift focus and move away from a control issue which beckons me to lose it, rage and do something immature and convulsive. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Control is there. I am being controlled by some foreign substance, and I don’t like it. I want to choose for me in ways that I am not doubly devoured, once by them, once by myself. The controllers love it when you implode.
And I not above holding someone’s feet to the fire if they are impeding a just response. It comes down to the self knot. I want something. I can’t get it. The person or entity is beyond my grasp — in Nevada; there is no corporeal corporate throat to rattle. All feelings, all control really is in me. However, one has to measure how much shit one can take — ah, there’s the rub. So I must go interiorly, ask myself how many inner frences have to be breeched before I respond in measured ways; or, how much control will I allow to be exerted upon myself by others — or, even by myself. In all this the serendipitous result is one gets to know a little bit more about one’s self. Well, I don’t like control. And control is all about us, isn’t it? I question authority which unnerves others. I question myself which is unnerving as well. Within me is a tethered child who despises all the controls that were imposed upon him while growing up. Give me a shears and watch as I go about cutting through these cords. Judd Hirsch as the very humane psychiatrist in Ordinary People tells his client who wonders aloud why he need come twice a week that “control is a bitch.” I loved that line, still do. I can live without controls much less controlling others in very subtle ways — just check out your relationships for examples. It is frightening to be free, to be free of controls. The Hannitys, Cheneys and Roves of this world give it away if we just look as if for the very first time. They are pinioned to themselves by controls, static and inflexible inhibitions and lack the humanity or flexibility of well-rounded humane individuals. They are the end result of imposed and self-imposed conditioning — religious training, rearing, et al. They are knots, a macrame of neuroticisms, causes, “ideas,” and religious injunctions, whatever.
I am even writing this blog, as is my wont as a writer, to subliminate my not inconsiderable anger at being controlled by what are apparently CIRCUMSTANCES. Dammit, I can’t even get the names of people to confront. My own impatience compounds control into an unsavory personal brew within me. When impatience and control come together, historically I have combusted in this way or that. Age brings modulation unless you are a human twinkie, which many of us are. So I am with modulation. I am trying to see, a la Krishnamurti what this whole issue is for me. Wouldn’t it be loverly that I lose the house because of my anger but gain greater insight into who I am? Now that is someting to ponder! I’d take the insight, he bravely barks back.
(Bullshit! False bravado. What I am crying out, like the child in me, is that I want both — insight and a house. Crybaby!)
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