It's only me, Simon

I had an idea today, an idea that has been percolating in my brain for several days and only recently came to the surface.

It has to do with being in therapy.  I've noticed that one doesn't want to divulge everything to one's therapist.  One should hold something (or a few things) back, so as to maintain the upper hand.  Another thing - don't let your therapist concoct scenarios based on the bits and pieces that you have told him.  Nine times out of ten the scenes he'll describe to you are total ballocks.  And if you get tired of the whole therapy thing and you decide that it's not helping you at all, then tell your man that everything's is fine (even though the chances are that things are not "fine".)  Then he'll leave you alone.

Psychotherapy and pyschotropic drugs are all rubbish, in the end.  The only way to get out of the mess one has found oneself in is to pull oneself out, without help, without pointless talk therapy and drugs that make one crazy.

Well, that's all I have to say.  Cheers - Simon

We need adults in the NH House

If our legislators have their way, New Hampshire will be inhabited by selfish, under-educated rich people who have no compassion and couldn't care less about the arts or the quality of life for everyone in the state.  Their attitude?  "Hey, I made my million.  What's wrong with you?  Get off your a** and get some money!"

The Hunter

The gun’s retort bring Jones to the window

To peer across his field with clouded eyes.

He sees a truck parked beside the road

He sees a splash of red, nothing more,

But enough to tell him the man who built

The house down the road in what was once

Jones’ hay field is hunting.

A shot rings out.  “Hunting,” Jones exclaims.

He spits the word out like a gob of phlegm,

Cursing the noise that brought him from his chair

Beside the parlor stove that’s barely warm

To the window that is less than warm.

Yet another shot comes from the woods,

Answered by the “crack!” from the pine

That burns in the parlor stove behind him

Jones jumps, and then a tight-lipped smile

Creases the pale and gray-stubbled face.

“Good hunting,” Jones says aloud

In a shaky voice that sounds to him

Like an old lady’s.  “Good hunting,”

He croaks the benediction once again

And shuffles back across the creaking floor

And sinks into the chair beside the stove.

In the cold and stealthy November dusk

Jones curses, then curses once again

The pain in his bones that makes him slow,

The age that forces him to sit alone

While someone else hunts in his woods.

Hosanna

I heard on the radio yesterday

That the Tasmanian Devil

(Not the whirling dervish on TV

But the actual animal from Tasmania)

Is being wiped out by a blood-born virus

That causes cancer.

One of the symptoms of the disease

Is horrible, disfiguring facial lesions.

Within five months the animal is dead.

Hosanna in the highest.

I heard at a lecture last month

That the bat population of the Northeast

Is being wiped out by a mysterious disease

That is being called white nose

Because of the white patches that develop

On the animal’s nose.

In a manner that is not yet understood

The bats are wakened from hibernation

And fly out of their caves looking for food.

But in midwinter there are no mosquitoes.

We were shown video of bats flapping weakly

As they lay on the snow, starving.

Hosanna in the highest.

I read in the paper that in Darfur

Up to 400,000 people have died since February 2003.

More than 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes 

More than 200,000 have fled to refugee camps in neighboring Chad 

As many as 1 million civilians could die in Darfur

From lack of food and from disease within coming months.

Eighty percent of the children under five years old

Are suffering from severe malnutrition.

Many children are dying each day.

Humanitarian aid organizations have access

To only twenty percent of those affected.

Hosanna in the highest.

Mt. Guyot, September 8, 2010

Cloud-swept mountain peak.
Wind blows both cairn and hiker,
Bringing clarity.

Simon, It's Time to Stop Talking

Friend Simon phoned me up earlier this evening. He sounded down, and when I asked him why he told me a strange story. Relatives who are very dear to him have been visiting. Of course, Simon is thrilled to have them, and to have the chance to visit with them. But he feels that every time they get to talking, Simon sabotages the conversation by turning the spotlight on himself. . . . what he thinks, what he believes, what he feels . . . and when he's not doing that he tells me that his mouth keeps running on, making silly jokes and tossing non sequiturs into every conversation that is NOT about him. He told me that even as he's doing it he knows he should stop, but he feels like he almost can't control it. He told me that part is a bit frightening. I asked him if being with these people made him anxious or nervous. He admitted that the need for their approval was playing a big part in motivating his behaviour.

I put it plainly. "Simon," I said, "It's not all about you. Get over yourself." I'm sure I threw in several other cliches of the moment that are in the same vein, but my basic message to him was that he needs to listen as well as talk, and to resist the temptation to talk just to fill silences.

I didn't say this to Simon, but this behaviour seems pretty narcissistic to me, as does the worry about it. Simon, when will you learn to leave your Little Boy Simon persona at home, in the bin?

The Transcendentalist Holds Discourse With the Heavens

The Transcendentalist lies on his back outside the mountain hut.
The dark summit of the mountain looms beyond in the darkness.

He feels the hard wood of the porch under his back.
The mountain wind soughs and rushes over his body,
Cool and damp.

His companions sit on the wooden benches and listen as their leader
Explains the anatomy of weather, atmosphere and mountains –
The reason for the perpetual cold and damp that grips the hut
And for the bent spruce and hissing grasses
That surround it.

The Transcendentalist lies with his hands crossed behind his head,
Half listening to the voices of his fellow travelers
And half to the wind that flows from the silent peak,
A cold, fast river that makes a rushing sound
In his ears.

As he lies there, the clouds shift without warning
And the ineffable heavens are displayed,
A scarf thrown across the sky by an unseen hand,
Woven with shimmering strands of heaven-sik
And bright, glittering jewels.

A falling star darts across the sky and is extinguished soundlessly,

Another, then another appear and are gone.
The Transcendentalist gazes into the Milky Way, into the depths

Of a Universe that has no beginning

And no end.

Then the platform upon which he lies seems to rise.
It floats higher, taking him closer and closer to the stars
That continue to shine steadfastly above the heedless earth,
The earth that has chosen to turn in on itself,
Unattached, unaware.

The Transcendentalist, aware, floats among the stars.
(Or does he? Does he remain on the rough wood of the porch
Hands laced behind his head, looking up and losing himself,
Dreamer that he is, imagining that he can touch that which
None have touched?)

Whatever the case, he is wrapt, enthralled by the incandescence.
And he forgets the hut and mountain below him.
He forgets even the rough wood that chafes his back.
He forgets his clothes, his stiff boots, his body.

He is pure thought.

Incorporeal, existing as mind alone, glimmering in the sky
He bends his energy and apostrophizes the whirling orbs.
Then he turns mute as the ancient lights slowly divulge
The small part of their vast astral wisdom they have

Chosen to reveal.

Please visit the beta version of this blog at From the North, In the Green Country

Into the Woods

I took our dog into the woods this evening.
Though the day had been unseasonably warm, the woods were cool
And (thank the powers that be) free of the blood-thirsty insects
That plague these parts every April and May.
The dog was overcome; the smells, the sounds and
Sights of the woods in the slanting light
Of the sun that moved slowly toward the hills
Were a transcendent Border Collie experience.
She sniffed every stump, leapt over every fallen tree,
And waded through every brook, lapping the water blissfully.

We walked until daylight began to fade.
We heard the first hermit thrush, who warbled
His unearthly song from a hemlock grove
Like the bird the Vermont poet wrote about.
From the meadow came the odd call of the "dunk-a-doo,"
The American Bittern, who performs his pump handle call,
Then stands perfectly still in the tall grasses,
Tips his head back and his points his beak to the sky
And thus becomes invisible.
But loudest of all, the spring peepers, hyla crucifer,
Rang their tintinnabulations of joy
As if this were the very first spring;
As if it were the very first time life burst
The icy bonds of winter and, finding itself alive,
Rejoiced that such a thing could exist
In the blue waters and the cool air
Of a late April evening.