Frontalot!

I go through phases. Something will grab this little corner of my attention that's dedicated to finding the highest points of low culture. At one time, it was researching "Kung Fu Fighting," (Carl Douglas apparently is a media producer in Germany), and now it's MC Frontalot, the Godfather of Nerdcore. (Here for all things Front.)

What is Nerdcore? Nerdcore is rap by nerds: "nerd" + "hardcore". Very smart people telling stories about low-brow smart kid stuff: computers, pop culture, video games. It's the post-modern mind exploring it's per-modern roots. In Wilberian terms, it's Yellow exploring Red. It's the Mental reflecting on the Basal. It's pretty fun.

Heather and I went to see the Front down in a little club in Monteray last month, where he played with two other nerdcore luminaries (MC Lars and YTCracker--i.e., "whitey cracker"), which was a fun outing. We two old fogies were the most dance-worthy in the crowd of mostly stiff young geeks (though, as Heather pointed out, there were some representitives of the "hottie" wing of the Nerdcore scene), and that's not saying a lot.

The music coming out of Frontalot is not just clever or novel (as in "novelty"), but actually rich in orchestration, smart, and tells a good story.

So, as an example, here is one of his more well-known songs (because it's included in the game "Rock Band"), "Living at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe." The song can be heard here (ignore the video of the game), and below are the lyrics descibing what a bunch of pot heads try to do with their drug-dealing friend who passed out and died on the bar-b-que. Natch.

(...and if you like that, check out a song and video about text-based adventure games, here, or about his fantasy child, here. Oh, wait, here's another favorite--again, ignore the video: I'm Gonna Be Your Man. Although, the video does say something about the scene...)
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Living at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe

Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
wasting my time at the corner of dude and catastrophe.
Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
but I feel fine at the corner of dude and catastrophe.

Woke up by the pool again.
Must have played the fool again.
Wonder what them hooligans put on the grill that stinks
kind of like burnt fur and regurg’ed drinks
with an undertone of the acorn
and leather that’s laid on
thick like Liz Claiborne.
Step over with big trepidation,
lift up the top off the meat cooking station
to discover my homie Todd!
I said "Oh my God,
what grim façade
do you meet me with in my wakefulness?"
I had too many Stellas and they all was crisp;
must I rise up in the morning with my squirrel desisted
from the world? Insisted, as I did
this instant, that
him up in heaven again is premature?
If only reality would concur!
Poke him with the tongs. Dude won’t wake up.
Put him on the lawn; Ray’s about to cook a steak up
and this ain’t no kind of mausoleum.
Got to get the high degree on.
Todd’s onomatopoeia
got already all used up — I mean he sizzled —
ain’t nothing left but char, bone, and gristle.
My heart is fissile: I mean it could break
like crystal; he never learned to whistle. Don’t rake
his cadaver up, wassamadda with your mind?
He ain’t a lawn clipping. We been knuckleheads since old times.
Dig out the batting helmet and the bat
‘cause we’re all about to have a funeral, and that’s that.
We’ll do it after breakfast. We’ll do it up proper.
We’ll drop all his ashes out the Airwolf copter,
all singing up dirges, all spreading out blossoms,
and it’s gonna b-b-b-be frikkin’ awesome!

Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
wasting my time at the corner of dude and catastrophe.
Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
but I feel fine at the corner of dude and catastrophe.

Six bong rips later: we ain’t going to the helipad,
standin’ ‘round hella sad,
wonder where them Stellas at.
All these dudes ain’t huge on sentiment,
still they want to say a little something to the benefit
of layin’ Todd’s soul to rest.
I cold regressed, contemplated old regrets
and said, "Man why he even got to do a thing
like pass out on the Bar-B-King?"
I’m tryin’ to bring from like recesses in my mind
a word or two that wouldn’t prove unkind.
Aligned as he was with the less-than-angelic,
trafficking black tar smack & psychedelics
in that little-ass van of his, and drunk doing it,
knowing what the right thing to do was but eschewing it,
it’d seem pretty probable
flames are audible:
that’s the duty that Todd’ll pull,
not just in death, but in after-that,
like the bat out the h-e-double-vertical-slat
but inbound in the case of this rodent,
like when he got peeled-out on and ‘sploded,
or indeed when he got shanked in the joint —
hella causing me to wonder if there’s even a point
to our shepherdly tending of his life’s ending.
Bet he’s chilling at Friendly’s
and gonna be back in the neighborhood shortly,
discussing how awesome it is to be portly,
reporting the slant he just got on with Blister
(drank till his wrists hurt,
boned the ghost of your sister).
The dude’s a bucket kickster when he has to be
and this one wasn’t like a masterpiece
so yes we’re depressed but not drastically...
livin’ at the corner of dude and catastrophe.

Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
wasting my time at the corner of dude and catastrophe.
Where I’m livin’, it’s hard to say,
but I feel fine at the corner of dude and catastrophe.
I’ll just wait, waving goodbye until the next time.
I’ll just wait, waving goodbye until the next time.

The Displacement of Loving

I've finished a really mellow, spacious day at work, and somehow found myself reading criticisms of Wilber--oh, I know, I wanted to see if I could find any detailed analysis of Wilber's take on Hegel. Our friend Emily, up for the weekend, via London, is partnered with a Hegel scholar who said that Wilber is not right in his reading of Hegel, and this was a reason the Emily was reacting to a set of his CDs I'd given her years ago.

So. I found myself dipping into the blogosphere's Wilber critiques, and again found myself with this sad sinking feeling. I haven't got the primary-text background to make sense of some of the technical claims, but that wasn't what I was reacting to. I've seen critiques of Wilber's model and his personhood that feels much different than these comments--ironic, because what I see in these critics are essentially emotionally based complaints, not real critique. A lot of what I read was about an incident a couple years ago where Wilber supposedly blew up at his critics--the so-called "Wyatt Erpy" incident--telling them among other things to suck his dick. This "explosion" came after having his blog post reviewed by several hundred people, which seems pretty deliberate.

Anyway, he offended a lot of people, broke rules of "nice" discourse apparently. Frank Visser, a key critic and collector of critics (at integralworld.net), writes a response that's full of a kind of sniffy offense, and like his site in general, there's this sense of simmering, vibrating discontent.

Which brings me to my title. In these writings, though there may be valid critical points, there's this overall emotional quality of, well, pissiness, but like most activist groups I've encountered. "Something's wrong here, and we need to right it. And when we right it, then we'll have the world we deserve." A displacement of loving. My reading is, like these activist groups, people will get the loving they deserve when they follow the rules: be nice, be kind, be non-hierarchical, be non-offensive, be sensitive. If not, you don't get our love, acceptance, or appreciation.

It's oppressive to read, and as oppressive as I've found in these activist groups.

I just read the other day a letter from the previous CEO of Integral Institute (Wilber's organization), which though critical of Wilber's managerial style, was also loving and grateful for what he was doing right. But more so, there wasn't a magnanimity which I've seen in others associated with Wilber or with Integral, a commitment to loving that exists totally aside from what's being loved.

I remember Goenkaji saying one time that he gets lots of letters from all over, from people with different concerns or wanting advice. But he said that some came through with such negativity, which was noticeable from the outset, and with those he mostly just sent the writer metta (loving kindness). That feels the same with these folks.

Film as fallen worship

I was listening to David Milch's lecture to a religion and media class at MIT, on the way down to work after dropping Heather off. I'd been avoiding it, partially because I'd listened to a lot of him recently, but more so because I'd accidentally ejected the cd last week, and dreaded holding the fast forward button for several minutes. Anyway, I went back to it.

One thing he said that quite struck me was his comment about the film "National Treasure," which was released several years ago. He didn't exactly see it as a milestone in film making, but he did see it as an expression of humans' practice in submitting themselves to God as an act of worship. THAT I'd never thought of, but it kind of makes sense. As Milch says, as a "fallen" act of worship, but nonetheless something that keeps people in the practice of opening themselves to something larger.

This morning, I had thought I'd slip in some surfing before starting the work week, but after doing my morning sitting, just didn't really want to. What I wanted was to drift around in the half-dream state, and then when that tapered off, to watch NYPD Blue, Milch's cop show from the 90's. I wasn't at all sure why, but various bits of theory from recent readings spoke up to say that this submission to the dream states, in real dreaming, and in the surrogate form of film/television, was an act of reclaiming something that had long ago been displaced or projected.

Heather and I have talked about this, our particular version of a generic topic applicable to all couples: what lessons do we secretly desire our partner to teach us. You can spot them, because they are the parts of our partner that we generally fight and denigrate. For me, its Heather's ability to go into dream or dream-like states and not fight them at all. For me, they are like slipping down a gravel slope into an oily goo. And yet, whose are these states except mine? What are they except another expression of consciousness? And so pushing them away, emphasizing the intellect and rational, what is that if not a dissociation of a genuine, legitimate aspect of myself?

Advanced meditators and spiritual practitioners are reportedly able to remain in witness-mind through their immersion in dream and unformed sleeping states. There is not a loss of conscious as the person remembers what it is that is always awake through all states of mind. It would seem that somewhere along the way, I learned to see consciousness as antithetical to dream states, that it's either/or.

But this morning seems to be a shifting or softening of that dis-association--there was a willingness to stay put and legitimize what was actually happening. And then with the TV show, there was an attempt to remain conscious and aware as I descended into the story.

Milch's point seems to be that film/TV, even the worst of it, is an act of submission to a different state of mind, and that that submission is resonant with and a practice in worshiping God. Maybe a more or less bastard version, or perhaps the object of worship is (extremely) fallen, but he seems to be saying that nonetheless, it's a reaching for God.

Hearing that, something clicked, or perhaps rang. My family has been watching film since my earliest, earliest days. In high school, my career aspiration was film director, and I attended UCLA as an English major, but within rock's throw of the film department, and often spending evenings and weekends watching movies and listening to film makers talk. My longing was to be in there, making films, but I never had the courage to follow through. Maybe I never wanted to challenge my experience of worship by getting to know the priests?

As a family, we didn't have a religion, and certainly nothing like worship in any traditional sense. We were called "happy heathens," by my mother, neither term being very accurate. I think that film was a stand-in church, where religious longings were squirreled in the face of discredited institutions and teachings. Our ad-hoc solution to what Wilber describes as the disaster of modernity: that religion is identified as pre-modern, and science is defined as modern, rather than understanding that there is a pre-modern, a modern, and a post-modern expression of religion. Being a modern family, we were cut off from religion, rather than given a modern version. So not being even aware of this split, and not being able to kill off our religious longings (I recently found myself pining as I passed a van full of kids from a Baptist church), we seemed to find ourselves to the altered state of worship, in front of movie and TV screens.

Nothing is cast off by God, by Spirit. Not even "National Treasure," which Milch seems to see as proof of God's grace. Isn't it something of a redemptive move to see film/TV in this way? Isn't there something deeply gracious, generous, and true in seeing man's longing for redemption and communion in something so modern and so often corrupt. It's not that the products are clear voicings of Spirit, it's that the repeated act of submission to them is a thoroughly respectable stumble towards God.

The Weekend Doings

So, this was a pretty full weekend. Friday morning, I saw a new client who has come in as an EMDR client, to work on a grief situation. There's some trickiness around money, but hopefully they'll stick.

Then, Heather going off to the chiropractor, I decided to get some surfing in. The surf report from Wise, the shop at the end of Fulton, said that it was marginally surfable, which pretty much proved true. I decided to not drive down to Sloat (the beaches are labeled by what street intersects them from the East--all are strung out along the Great Highway) and to try what I think is called Sunset Beach. The waves looked a bit choppy from the parking lot, and no one else was on them, but I figured to brave it anyway.

Suiting up, I tore my boot but since it's both relatively warm in the water now, and seemingly I'm acclimatizing to the fridgity, I went with it and it didn't prove to be a problem. It's a trek from the lot to the water (which makes for a lot of mud on the way back), but I'm getting used to the ritual. Suit up in the lot, trying not to let one's birthday suit show as the wind pulls at one's modesty towel, then schlep the board down across the sand and finally strap on the leash to your right leg before walking into the surf.

Now, the current can be a bitch out on Ocean Beach, pulling north or south depending on where the wind is blowing from, and therefore from where the waves are coming. You can be standing in the water and have to fight not to be pulled over by the force of the waves pushing along the beach. Rip tides haven't been a problem, but once in the water, the current can have you up or down the beach in no time.

But that day, it was fairly mellow, and I could get out past the breaking waves to the line where most were breaking. The problem was that the waves were big--maybe five feet, which is pretty damn big when you're laying on your stomach at the bottom of them--and were breaking quickly. So if you didn't position right, they'd either land right on you or break in front of you and knock you about with the stack of white water.

I persevered and caught a couple waves, and a chunk of whitewater, that allowed me a short ride and a quick dunk. Slowly, slowly, my body and mind are building a surfer, but the growth curve is slow because you only get a short amount of time to build said surfer each time you're out. You get to practice a lot of swimming and getting through the surf to the line, but the actual surfing part, not so much. Still, it's addictive, and being out alone in the waves is a welcome break to the sociality of my life.

One thing you learn is a real respect for the ocean and waves. That day, they were waves to make you pay attention, medium-serious waves that needed to be treated with respect. Extrapolating to larger waves, that's a long ways down the line for me (though I wouldn't mind finding some more classic waves to practice on). I ended up rather pooped from the swimming, and finding my biceps strained, just floated on the surf and let it gradually push me back to shore, doing a little prone surfing, getting a further hang of how to press into the board in order to catch more of the wave's energy. Eventually, I made it into shore in one piece and forgot to pick up a rock to mark the day's surfing (I've begun collecting a stone for each outing).

Usually, I've been surfing on Saturday morning, but having gone out three times this week, I was too sore, so just got up late and rousted Heather for our band workshop. We drove over to Fort Mason and worked on a couple songs off our setlist, with our funky group of rockers. There's Heather as the female voice (and I'm working on her to take up the maraccas), Rex on guitar and voice, Brian on guitar, Bill on bass, me on drums, and Bill2, our teacher and backup guitarist. In aggregate, the band is probably 30 years older than Cattleprod, the band from two years ago. We quickly threw out some names at the end of the session, and it seems like my idea from the morning's shower, the Estrogenics, is going to stick. Five guys and a chick: The Estrogenics. Yeah? I actually liked "The Enhancements" better, but there ya go, life in a democracy.

After that, we hit Guitar Center for a cord and maracas, then did a relatively rare Big Shopping at Rainbow, and headed home for a mellow-ish rest of the day. We spent an hour and a half working on Widgethouse--the name of our project to create a multi-purpose retreat center up near Petaluma--something we've agreed to do weekly. We skipped it last week, so it felt good to follow through with it. Then some work on finances, juggling the zero percent credit cards and shifting money around, like dodging sharks, and I read some more of Wilbur's book (again, jaw-droppingly profound) and then finished off David Caruso's tenure on NYPD Blue (yeah, the guy from CSI-Miami).

The Morning Story

So, I'm at work doing my usuals, dealing with cranky clients, and nicer clients, but lots of peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies. More so, what our work is at a psych unit like this, is holding the space for people who can't do so themselves, the psychic equivalent of what it would be like to be the skin on someone else's body. It takes a lot of effort sometime, and if you're feeling raw yourself, it can be a LOT of work.

Today, I woke from a series of dreams about misery without relief. Seems like they were stories of both other's suffering (an Indian peasant?) and of a birds eye view of suffering per se. I'd watched a string of cop shows last night (NYPD Blue, Milch's early drama), where the detectives are constantly having to negotiate with profound suffering, usually by hardening to it, or shuffling it off in dark humor. So the pump was primed for my dreams.

I've been reading Wilber's "Integral Spirituality," an astounding book that essentially lays out a system of seeing reality as a prism of perspectives, without any primary perspective, that reality is actually the simultaneous coordination of 8 primordial perspectives that cannot be reduced to each other. Reality, in his model, is the arising of all these perspectives at the same time.

So, then waking, I did my usually morning meditation, and saw into how this "suffering without relief" is a particular perspective, one way of framing or narrating the world, a particular story which is true as far as it goes, but not the primary story.

But when I came up from sitting, what was left was this story which was struggling for primacy, not wanting to be held by anything larger, insistent that it was the base story that all others led to. Curious. It seems to be something that has been emerging for perhaps the last year or two, like undigested gristle. And I've been noticing how the tenor of my time at the half-way house has also changed during this time, where the suffering of people here has become harder to hold. Perhaps as I've gotten more sensitive, or more embodied, it pushes me towards this early perspective/story which inherently denies other perspective/stories.

It's trick, holding stories that then bite you because being held itself is an insult. Being held, the story then converts into it's basic experience, being pain and contraction, which the story is there to suppress or avoid. So it doesn't want to be seen for what it is, while at the same time, secretly, every contraction yearns for release.

Milch, Fancy, and Imagination

I am on a BIG David Milch jag. I've downloaded hours and hours from a new blog I stumbled on (here), the bulk of which is Milch talking to a Writers Guild of America crowd right after the strike started at the end of last year. It's like listening to the English professor I never found in college, an erudite man with a deep life history who can find the humanity and numinous in the worst piles of crap.

Milch started as a literature professor at Yale, and a very active junkie, until getting hired to write for Hill Street Blues. He then co-created NYPD Blue, and then a couple short lived projects until he did Deadwood for 3 seasons, and then John From Cincinnati for 1 season, both with HBO. (I've written about both shows, below.)

In the WGA lectures, a central theme--and remember that he's talking with fellow writers--is the difference between fancy and imagination. He defines "fancy" as arbitrary and idiosyncratic connections of two events or objects, his example being, "When I think of the Del Shannon song 'Runaway,' I think of the first time I got a blow job from a white girl." His fanciful connection is not going to be shared by anyone but him, or a precious few anyway. Whereas imagination is the deep structure of meaning, the "natural" associations that will be shared by most people (whether in a cultural unit or more broadly would be a whole different lecture).

He say that authentic writing is the act of keeping company with the fanciful long enough that it yields up its imaginal meaning, and that the act of writing is the mind resting transparent in the ground that gave it rise, from which imagination can occur.

All his raw and beautiful stories in these lectures are about these two points: fancy vs. imagination, and the method of purifying the former into the latter. He makes huge digressions in this discourse, with rank profanity and lurid stories, but manages to bring it all together in exquisite summations and proofs, as it were, of St. Paul's revelation on the road to Damascus, that God's love is available to all people. That, Milch says, is what writers write about: the availability of God's love, with very very good examples.

Milch really points me to the fundaments of writing which were never explained or demonstrated in my romantic gropings through my undergraduate English degree, that is, what makes writing authentic, an act of service rather than a self-serving act.

I think James and I both floundered on this point, in our longings to be writers, in that neither of us knew how to surrender and serve, though both of us longed to find out how. We could feel it in other's writing, but could not figure out how to get into their company. So our attempts were contracted, limited, and thin--and therefore frustrating of the basic want of communion. If we'd been content with our own egos, or the slavish gratifications of others desires, then maybe we could have moved ahead. But I think both of us maddened from the inability to surrender, and both went in other directions in our lives. I still rarely read a novel, and the last one I started, "Divisidero" by Ondatje is so small and careful that I couldn't bear to continue it.

What has gripped my literary heart has been Milch's dramas. I'm watching the 3rd season of Deadwood again, and each episode leaves me...emptied. As my friend Michael said of John From Cincinnati (Milch's last show, last year), about the central character John's efforts towards all the other characters, "He's going to redeem every fucking one of them, isn't he?" Same for Milch, as he keeps giving very very good examples of what St. Paul got converted by, on some dusty road: God's love is for all the creatures, available always and freely.

Zohan!

After our swing dance class last night, with our perky Swedish instructor Cat ("tree-pull step!"), we went to see You Don't Mess with the Zohan. I wasn't expecting much. Adam Sandler has had about one good movie and one half-funny movie (Punch Drunk Love, and Anger Managment), and a lot of dumb-ass productions, like drawn out SNL skits.

But this was not only funny in an outrageous but not heavy-handed or contrived way, it was actually very sweet. Sandler's clueless superhero Zohan, an Israeli counter terrorist agent who apparently usually works on his own because he doesn't really need anyone else (he catches bullets in his teeth and up his nose, and sticks a piranha down his pants without flinching), comes to realize that he's tired of all the fighting, and longs to go to New York to be a hair stylist. OK, funny setup which could play the macho Israeli male stereotype against the male stylist stereotype--which does get some play, but Zohan is so sincere and unaware of the stereotypes, without irony, that he comes across as rather clean and pure. When he talks with the young man whose mother takes him in, and whose mother Zohan quickly starts screwing, he's sincerely tells the son how happy his mother is and how could he want anything different (apparently in Israel there's no such thing as the primal scene, i.e., walking in on your parents having sex). And he really means it, and you believe it totally. There's really not a wink-wink nod-nod in relation to Zohan. You are expected to take him at his word.

Thus what we get is something of a checking of the American ironic stance via this foreign transplant, who doesn't even understand irony and is fearless about his own sincerity. When he starts seeing hair clients, little old women from the neighborhood, and adds a little shagging at the end of his hair care, you get the sense that he really and truly appreciates these women who American culture (and American film culture) view as hags or sexless wisdom figures. Zohan sees an inner quality of beauty and lustiness that is so obvious to him, that you start actually seeing the obviousness yourself. It's in this way that the film really tweaks some of the dehumanizing that goes on in American culture.

Not to mention what Zohan is doing with the Middle Eastern conflicts. It's essentially a pacifist and humanistic film. All of the characters (except the evil-doing mall developer and his hick-terrorist hireling) have dreams of a better life, free from conflict and inherited hatreds and divisions. The super-terrorist The Phantom (played wonderfully by John Turturo) secretly wants to sell shoes. His hatred of Israel is something giving to him, and forced on him by circumstance; essentially, he wants to live a useful, joyful life doing something he loves.

Same with Zohan, the master soldier, who is tired of the constant fighting and wants to make the world "silky smooth." He also wants to serve others, not support division and dis-integration. He also wants to find his own internal integration, where he does not have to choose only one incarnation of himself, the soldier, over the lover or the servant or the artist. He is tired of only choosing a part of himself, and having his culture insist on only that part.

So in a sense, the film is upholding a cherished, and older, value of America, that you can come here and shed the Old World--the cultures of rigid relationships and inherited animosity--in favor of a life of opportunity. However, here's where the film updates this story to one of not Horatio Alger-like rising to the top, not a narcissistic climb over the bodies of your fellows, but of self-integration, the expansion of the human community to include all struggling, yearning beings. Even the hick hireling--played by Dave Mathews, in a weird and wonderful casting decision--is not killed in the end, but rather catapulted by the combined, uh, singing of The Phantom and Zohan--never done in 2000 years!--into the gay party helmed by George Takai (nee, Sulu from Star Trek). Even he is given an opportunity to face his fears through exposure to the feared community, which presents itself as both wonderfully idiosyncratic and totally human.

I am such a sucker for such films, because I so believe in and yearn for this deep healing and recognition of connectedness. And I love the archetypal nature of pop culture, how it can express in simple terms deep longing and hope. And I really love genre literature and art, in it's both honoring the structure/tradition/community of life, as well as the joyous reinterpretation of that life by the artist, a conscious expression of what we all do all the time.

So, the reason why "you don't mess with the Zohan" is not actually that he's so tough and macho, it's because his essential nature is loving, and there's no way to fight that.

The End of an Era

I never had a name for this truck, other than, The Truck. As in, Heather, where did you park The Truck? Or recently, Where the hell did I park The Truck?

If Friday was the welcoming of a bouncing baby boy to our little SF family, Saturday was putting grandpa onto the ice flow. Yes, the 23 year old Nissan King Cab, my longtime companion since when it was sold/given to me by my parents when I moved to SF in '98, was delivered up to Pick and Pull Auto Wreckers in Hayward for--I won't say dismemberment so much as, parts reassignment.

The morning was spent with my friend Robert, out at our regular haunt at the funky Seal Rock Inn (whose claim to fame is having been one location for Hitchcock's The Birds, or maybe it was Vertigo), having mediocre slightly washed greasy spoon cafe food, but fun conversation. Especially when Robert said, "You have a way of suppressing the divine ambiance." This was following our previously favorite adage, "You are making me feel less than spirit." Yeah, goofy spiritualist rap.

Then home where I cleaned out the truck of various items acquired over the years (perhaps this would be stripping the watch and gold teeth from Grandpa's too-feeble to resist self) and Heather worked at getting us a non-outrageously priced insurance policy. Those tasks finished, we headed off to the East Bay, Heather driving The Truck in order to say her goodbyes.

We found our ways into the backwaters of Hayward, being the area between the Bay shore and Highway 880, one of those odd industrial areas that are necessary to any city, but always feel a bit odd in a region where the land is worth more in troy ounces than gold. It is one of those areas where the regular city conventions loosen a bit, and the developmental level seems to drift down into, as if space somehow warped and you've driven into a little displaced chunk of a red state.

Pick Your Part is one of those places. The parking lot was rough dirt n' gravel, and there were one of those barely-edible-food vans. Many rough looking persons dragging parts, going in to find parts to drag out, and lots of hard hats. We were directed back out to another facility down the street, to have Grandpa processed for removal. I drove into the new place, and was waved back out by a guy who said, "You can't come barreling in!" "Oh, sorry." The guy mellowed right away, and we chatted while he took all the details about the car, which sat there quietly, not protesting its fate.

Poor Heather lost it a bit when she saw another, presumably much loved, car being picked up unceremoniously by a huge fork list, and began crying when we got into Zippy. Poor girl. For me, was only a little twinge today looking at the photos. I meant what I said to my mother-in-law when I said that, for me, there is one car with many locations--my attachments don't lean much to cars, for whatever reason. But Heather, apparently she's cried whenever leaving a car.

We went back to the Pick Your Part corporate offices, which was a dingy office next to the entry chute of the yard, where a woman took my info, disappeared for some time, and returned with a cheery orange check for $300. Yes, Grandpa, nee The Truck, had been converted into three c-notes, after thousands of miles and thousands of hours. We drove home together in Maybe Zippy, nee Zippy, nee Zippy Sanguinity, and began our new life together.

May our faithful The Truck find satisfaction in knowing its parts will give new life in many older vehicles who are struggling to remain on this earth. Grandpa lives, as an organ doner. Thank you, Grandpa. Your service is honored.

Maybe Zippy

I would like to introduce to you our new used car, provisionally nicknamed "Zippy." I wanted to name it "Sanguine," but Heather shot that down (I'm going to secretly call it Zippy Sanguinity). Zippy is the name of a Nanday conjure (seen here with his nominal owner, and actual servant in the cause of the nebulous grand forces), from our beloved David Milch HBO show of last year, John From Cincinnati. Presumably we'll come up with another name...yeah, right. Like we were going to do that with Phoenix our hawkhead parrot, and he's still called Phoenix. We can check in again next year.

But Zippy For Now, or perhaps "Maybe Zippy" (a la our friend who had a bird called Jake, before Jake was DNA sexed and found to be a female, thus making the bird "Maybe Jake"), is our 10 year old Subaru Forester, bought from a used car dealership in Fremont. We found the place through Craigslist, of course, and spent most of Friday testing different cars, debating among ourselves, selecting Zippy out of his sad-pound-puppy lot friends, getting Zippy checked out by a randomly selected auto shop a few doors down (Puurfect Auto, natch, who were very nice folk), and then doing the paperwork, and finally driving what seemed like an inordinately long path back from the Fremont hinterlands to our little burg. Really, that was 8 solid hours.

Chris, he was our nice young entrepreneur at Auto World Fremont, having carved his little piece of business heaven from the space behind a house converted into a palm reading establishment, and some other house advertising itself as Aljf Enterprises, or some series of letters that was either a foreigner's name (SCARE-eeeee!), or an acronym (BOOR-ingggg!). There were about 30 cars, none younger than perhaps 2002, and a fair amount of dust. Christ pulled out another Forester that we did not choose to go with, and gave it a substantial washing which he announced as only going to take a few minutes, which stretched out under the pressure of his washing diligence to about 10 minutes...the first clue of Chris' genial but distorted time sense.

He was his only employee, we found out later, accounting for some of the, um, multitasking that he was doing. He wore a blue-tooth ear piece for the entire time we were with him, and took maybe 20 calls over the course of the day, while talking with us or other customers. We took that car out and then Soon To Be Zippy, which I liked more for some reason I can't remember. When we went to take the first car, I asked if Chris needed a driver's license, and he motioned to the foreigner's house and said, "Smile for the camera." I took that at face value, but we looked later and I don't think there were any cameras. So we thought it was pretty strange and loose that he'd just prep a car and off we go.

And then third, we drove an Outback, probably the more commonly seen Subaru, which Heather's mother has owned for a long time. I wanted to like it, really. But I didn't. Partially because it felt too heavy, with a slow acceleration from a stop, but mostly because of the smell of oil that, after a 10 minute test drive, had worked its way into my system and showing up as a taste/smell on my tongue. (Cigarettes and pot smoke do this too, very noxious, bleagh.) Plus it was $1500 more than the other cars, way beyond what we'd planned. Heather was trying hard to like it, too, but we came to agreement that Zippy was the likely candidate. (We told Chris about the oil smell, and he said, "Yeah, I'm waiting for someone without a sense of smell to come along," and then told the sad story of a brother-in-law who had some gear box thingy full of oil, putting it in the back of the car, and then spilling it while driving the car somewhere. Apparently, it's nearly impossible to get that smell out of the carpet. That said, why he then pulled the sullied part and trying to wash it with soap and a brush while Heather and I parlayed.)

So next step, take the car to Puurfect Automotive to do a safety check (a shop we found through the magic of Google's mapping system, that can show businesses by proximity). We left it with them and walked (I limped, as I banged the hell out of my foot last week, through a combination of dancing and surfing...not at the same time, wise ass) down to the corner strip malls and found an Indian cafe near the Barnes and Nobles.

Now, Fremont. What an odd town. First of all, it's no further from the water than we are in the Inner Richmond of San Francisco, and yet it was humid! Not South Carolina humid, not rivulets of sweat down your back humid, but nonetheless, humid. And then, even though in the middle of the East Bay, between Oakland and San Jose, it's got all the trappings of a typical American suburb--the sorta-grid wide streets, the miles of small houses, the strip malls--but there are Indian establishments everywhere. I suppose the proximity of Silicon Valley, who has hired many Indian computer folk over the years, explains this (?), but there ya go.

And the very personal effect? We had about the best Indian food I've had in years, at the Chaat Cafe. The malai kofta was really amazing, compared with the usual Tasty Curry or Naan and Curry of the city. And so we chatted it up there for an hour and a half, continuing an as-yet-to-be concluded discussion of identity and the solidity or abstractness of boundaries (the central question is, "When does an ingested carrot stop being a carrot and start being a person." I think it points to the basic constructed quality of boundaries; Heather thinks it points to a basic silliness.)

We hobbled back to Puurfect and they gave a clean bill of health--even the head gasket!--and then back to Chris' shop au naturale. We told him it looked good, and if he could get us out of there for under $5000 (the amount available on our new credit card), then boom, it's a deal. So we got it for about $4500, plus the various taxes (he handles all the DMV paperwork). But he had to deal with a client who just purchased an older outback: "I need to give him a ride a few blocks to his house. I'll only be 5-7 minutes.") About thirty minutes later he came back with a different car, a new purchase presumably, and brought us a little sheepishly into the office for the paperwork, I guess justifying his time-warping by saying that he can keep his prices low because he is the only worker. Sigh, OK.

He balked a bit when I pulled out the credit card, and we did agree to pay the other $50 (he had been pricing out at $4950), if he would pull the damn stereo out of the truck. We did the paperwork, lots of signatures and dating, and then sat in the car while he worked on the stereo, exhausted and about ready to chew our own legs off to get out of there. But all things come to an end, and with a little mechanical advice about not needing to do the timing chain service, we got the stereo with its sliced, dangling wires, mounted up, shook hands with our diligent young entrepreneur, and took off for the hour long (objectively, because subjectively it felt twice as long, perhaps some chemical change from breathing car fumes and jasmine scent all day, apparently the patron smells of Fremont) drive back to SF.

Success!

Indy!

Well, pretty flaccid and tired. I said to James, it was like after making Schlindler's List, how can you get that impassioned about another rehash of trashy early-century serial dramas? I hope the filmmakers and actors had fun with each other, because I came out feeling battered and without memories of anything...memorable.

Here's Fresh Air's spot-on take on the movie, here.

More thoughts

At the end of the MBCT group this morning, someone asked what my experience was, and since she was a doctor and the other student was a yoga instructor, we had something in common to talk about. We addressed that guilt suffered by teachers and therapists that they are not as perfect as their teachings, but agreed that people get into these roles partially to serve, and largely to learn.

I'm constantly astounded at the wise things I say to clients that I don't apply to my own life. Or at just what they are teaching me if I can listen. For instance, the yoga teacher talked about managing her mood by asanas that opened up the chest, and as I got lost in the back streets trying to find a way through the Bay to Breakers street closures, I realized, hey, that might work for me too! And sure enough, just pulling back my shoulders started shifting my mood towards something lighter and more open.

It's funny how our basic needs can elude us. What I often come back to is my need--I should stress that, my need, is to feel that I'm serving and that I'm productive. Whether under that is a need to feel connected, that's probably there with service and productivity being the vehicles for that relationship. I don't feel fully alive without that, and I certainly don't function very well without them. Whether it's because of something everyone needs, or just my idiosyncratic needs, I feel like the best way of relating to this is in a real functional mode: without these relations in my life, I don't function, so I do them in the same way I eat my greens. Maybe something sacred should be there too, but it seems most important to me to orient myself in these ways is just necessary, period.

For me--I'm seeing this today at work, which on the weekend can often feel like a little island floating in the middle of an ocean--I'm really seeing how I need to feel in motion in order not to start a depressive reaction. But the trick here is not to fall into the compulsive thrashing in order to feel energy, but to look for the motion that is already in my experience. And it's there, even in the gray-sky days of my life. But it requires faith and look/feeling carefully into what's in front of me. It means taking a deep breath and observing, and not allowing myself to panic. It also means holding a vision/belief/image of motion to counter the inner vision/belief/image of stagnation that can be triggered.

That last bit is a fascinating piece for me, how important the use of imagery is in managing mood. Maybe in the ultimate sense it's unnecessary, when you're grounded in mindfulness to the degree that you are never seeing life from thought, but only from experience. Till then, though, images are a huge determinant in our lives, whether you're aware of them or not. And so telling yourself a good story, with enough evidence not to make it a delusion, is really really important. It is the undergirding that supports you when you lose your direct exposure to reality. Stories are not true, but they are very very useful at times. They can be traps, but they can also be very good friends, when they are resonant with reality. Saying, "All things are impermanent" is not the reality or experience of impermanence, but it is a languaged expression of something that is true, which makes it a very good story.

And again, until the story function of our brain collapses, it's going to be telling a narrative, and it behooves us to have a good one.

Check in

I finished up with my first Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression group, which had been running 8 weeks on Sunday mornings. We started with five and two dropped out, and then today were just two as the third was on vacation. It was a stressful run, overall, though seemingly it went well and people got benefits from the class. I'll probably run it again but I need a breather for a while.

Ironically, the group brought 3 or 4 clients, and then several others came from elsewhere, but the sudden jump in numbers within 3 weeks, along with the nascent group, kind of floored me with energy output. My Tuesdays used to end about noon, but now I go from 9am to 10pm, with a break in the middle. Plus my half-way house job, it adds up to a lot of hours a week. The nice part is I'm making some change to put towards paying off bills, and the downside is I've less time to market and build up my practice to leave the half-way house job, or get one of the other projects up and running to allow that transition.

So I've been fairly tired recently, not so much on the physical front as what happens when I've got a few too many irons in the fire. My system starts flinching at new outputs of energy and there's a drag towards depression as a sort of systematic closing down. Which takes more energy to fight, or just more rest. Da da da.

So I'm trying to adjust to my recent success, and as a few clients attrition out (after solid and productive work), and the group ends, I'm actually taking a deep breath and looking towards the next marketing push, which will be offering free, hour-long workshops on an EMDR-related technique called "resource tapping."

And at HH, the work is about what it's always been, and I'm pretty ready to leave, but finances are such that until the income switches over to my practice and other projects, I'll need to stay just for body and soul. So I continue to try to make use of it, and it still has things to teach me.

For instance, today I noticed, driving through the maze that's created every Bay to Breakers day, each year (because they block off the streets leading from the Embarcadero to GG Park, and then through the park down to the ocean), that I was feeling a sinking, stagnating feeling heading down to work. When I checked in to see what I was lacking, it was a sense of continuity and "flow-through" to my experience down on the Peninsula. There's a sense of stasis down at the house that sets in, which I think was compensated for during school and internship by the inevitable flow towards either graduation or licensure. Now that I've "made it," the flow needs to be a more internal sense, and sometimes it just fails me. That's when I have to be careful not to drift down into a depression.

I think there are associations that arise to hot, seemingly empty and endless summer days in Sacramento. School was out, and I'd often be at home along, drifting. So these hot suburban days seem to conjure that same feeling, and it's difficult sometimes to be in the present and realize that all those days are long gone. Truly, some days I long to be on the proverbial pig farm.

What helps, and what's helping today, is to remember why I'm here and why I'm doing the therapeutic work I'm doing in general: which is, to serve growth, in people, in this culture, in spirit. I was telling Heather over the weekend that what I notice myself losing my cool about most often is exposure to people or opinions which seem to be stultifying. Not just coasting, or fixed, but actually anti-growth. That's where I lose it and start into fighting mode, probably because I feel the sense of being threatened by being caged, or worse, trussed up like a bonsai tree, i.e., intentionally stunted. The sense of nausea that arises from that is so palpable, and so motivating to fight back.

But the probably here is the fighting part. I love that Zen story about the bull in the village. Basically, a bull gets loose in a village and is blocking the main road, keeping villagers from moving through. They are very upset, but don't know what to do as the bull isn't calming down. So they see the Master walking down the hill from his hermitage and think, oh good, he'll know what to do. As he gets close, he looks up from his mediation and sees the bull, sees the upset and expectant villagers, sees the bottleneck in the road...and walks down another road.

That's where I'd like to go, to not get so freaked by the sense of stagnation that I actually get into a death lock with the experience. All I need to do is acknowledge it and then walk another direction. I'm only in danger if I grab it.

Look how much that's going to cost!

I was watching the last part of the recent film "Beowolf," with my clients at the halfway house. It's a clever high-tech hybrid of real actors and computer animation, and tells the story of King Beowolf and his travails. The climactic scene is him battling his son-cum-dragon, who is rampaging across the country burning villages and so forth. He goes after Beowolf's concubine and wife, who are standing on a stone walkway between two high towers. Of course, the dragon burns chunks out, bites other chunks, all but destroying the construction. Earlier, he burned a wood bridge across a chasm.

So where does my mind go? To think, who's going to repair that? What a waste of workmanship! All the drama is nice and all, but in the long term, some poor group of schmucks are going to have to do a lot of heaving and hauling to get the bridge up, the walkway reconstructed. Probably some will get injured or fall. The kingdom's coffers are going to be drained for the construction, and resources that otherwise could have built infrastructure have to go for these repairs.

Oh, how easy it is to destroy, how difficult to build...

A weekend in review

Well, I had quiet a variegated weekend. Texturally nuanced, as it were. A topography of tonalities.

Friday morning started early, waking up to sit at 6:30, and then being in the Inner Sunset to meet a new colleague, who contacted me about her MBCT group. (I'm currently running a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Depression class, and she saw a posting of mine.) We had a chilly cup of coffee (decaf for me) at the coffee wallah on 9th and Irving--chilly because the fickle San Francisco weather turned from sunny to demonstratively overcast within a half hour, and the only seats available were outside. We chatted about our classes, and especially about the what has had to happen inside in order for us to show up as teachers outside.

Then I got on the lawnmower scooter, Heather's original Honda that now is held together by prayer and red duct tape, and rode off to the beach were I was to meet my friend Robert at the Seal Rock Inn, our usual haunt. Robert and I met at my old counseling intern site, and struck up a friendship there which has stuck. We get together every 4-6 weeks to do what his current and my ex supervisor calls "nondual ping pong," which involves a few hours of smacking nondual ideas and experiences back and forth, laced with psychotherapy and personal history. It's always very rich and warm.

Then from there, I rode home along the park and got home a little before Heather, and when she arrived, off we went for our every-other-Friday therapy appointment with Philip, our beloved couples therapist. We had a good session, as we're both learning to be nicer to each other. I think that's the real upshot of couples work, and relationship in general: be nice, be kind, and don't hit. If you lived that out purely in your relationships, you'd be doing pretty damn well.

And next? Off to the scooter store to buy me a helmet, which I was ready to do but the very nice manager guy insisted he order a different model so I could compare before buying. SF Moto is a great place, really friendly and competent, from the grease monkeys in the back to the owner who still works the sales floor. That's where we bought our Sym, which is a great freeway ready scooter.

Then shopping at Rainbow, our venerable whole-foods worker owned coop under the highway on the edge of the Mission district. We have been going over our food budget the last two months, but we managed to keep the expenses fairly low with this shopping run. Yeah, budget!

And we'll probably be spending less, at least for a bit, as I've taken up my mother-in-law's diet, called Fast Five, which basically is eating within a five hour period, and fasting the rest of the day. I've been doing this for the last four days or so, and am fairly amazed at how steady my energy is, how my body is feeling somehow, um, snappier, and that I've already lost a pound. I'm not sure if I'll want to make a lifestyle out of it, but since I've wanted to drop 5-8 pounds, this seems like a good way to do it. I simply feel better when I feel leaner. And I remember my grandfather saying how he chose a target weight, and when he saw himself edging over it, would simply fast to keep on the mark. That sounds like a good plan, especially since I'm seeing how the hunger is negligible and easily manageable (probably because I'm used to retreats where you don't eat after the noon meal).

Let's see, so then we went home and I did my evening meditation, in the afternoon because I had a presentation at CIIS in the evening. The ex-dean of students invited me last month to present on my clinical work, as an alumni at the 40th anniversary celebration. The day before, I had been musing topics and thought I might look on the website and see how I was listed. Lo and behold, I'd somehow been assigned to talk about MBCT.

I'd scribbled up some notes, but with certain of these presentations, it feels like you just kind of set the intention to show up, and then the thing shapes itself. So last minute, I decided to do a particular exercise from the MBCT (the "mindfulness of raisins" bit) and then just sketch the protocol and ask for questions.

Heather was too fagged out to attend, so I rode the scooter down to that familiar building in SOMA, and presented myself in the lobby as a speaker. The genially harried table people couldn't find my name, so just gave me a name tag to write on, and I headed upstairs to my assigned digs. Come my start time, 5:30pm (I had a half hour), the alumni who was had missed her 5pm start time due to traffic, came in with the eccentric (ahem) psychotherapist from last year's nondual conference, the one who had almost physically attacked a presenter. One person came for my talk, so we two pairs retired to separate corners (after the organizer came in to give me a hug and wish me well, like we'd seen each other yesterday, though I had the dimmest of memories of her). My attendee and I started talking a bit before three folks from school or internship wandered in, wine glasses in had, to say an enthusiastic hi and to wish me well. Then as I turn back to my attendee, a wash of people drift in to hear about MBCT.

Now, when a speaker has 30 minutes to present, shouldn't you endeavor to get there on time? Anyway, I started over and did the raisin exercise, and then discussed how it went and why it was a good illustration of what the group's about. Then some questions, with me answering a tad clinically at times, and at the hour the next group entered and off we went.

It was really an enjoyable experience, not because of the outcome or my skill level--both can be tweaked--but because it reminded me (for the first time) of being on stage with my old band, Bi-Curious George. The sense of presence in the moment with the people, of partially making it up on the spot, and of endeavoring to guide the energy while fundamentally having no control over people's reactions or responses--pretty exhilarating like I remember from being on stage all those years ago. It's just so real. So, I want to do more of that, for it's own sake as well as for marketing purposes.

Then from there, I rode back home and woke Heather up so we could go to the first of a 12 series of swing classes at our YMCA. She was groggy, but since once you get her over her inertia she wakes up, I kind of gave her the first push and let the momentum carry her outdoors and to the Y down the street.

The class was fun, more fun than I expected, led by a Swedish woman who claims to have helped revive the Lindy Hop. Well, OK. But the steps were relatively easy, the classmates amiable, and I seemed to pick it up fairly easily. It will be fun to see how it develops.

And then we did a run on the treadmills before heading home and settling in, me reading a bit and then watching the fun and ridiculous Transformers. Which I think Heather said had a good portion of "car porn."

Saturday began more slowly than Friday, with me waking relatively late (9:30a) and sitting for an hour. The day was gorgeous, blue and clear, so I thought to call James and see if he wanted to go to Chrissie Field for a picnic. Robin couldn't make it, having a gig down south, but he and the Boychik could, so we arranged a time and then Heather and I noodled around till he came. Which he said was more or less on time, but I don't quite remember it that way.

Still, we made it to the beach, which after a few shivering minutes of wind and drifting sand, decided us to retreat to Golden Gate Park. Boychik, nee Benjamin, was in pretty good spirits, and when he sat on the grass in his beanie, he looked like a garden gnome.

GG Park was less windy, but not by much, so we huddled together eating sandwiches and chips while Boychik picked grass and repeatedly placed it in father's hand. Repeatedly, but without a seeming diminshment in interest. Early onset OCD? James thought that it might have been the first time he had sat on grass.

With Boychik's nap time looming, James took us home and we retired to our abode. I sat, then sans Heather (who was to get her fingerprints done for her new internship, and then was too tired to get out of the house) went to the gym for a good upper body workout and a long soak in the Jacuzzi. I just dipped my legs, and sat on the edge reading my MBCT group to prep for this morning's class (the second of eight). Regardless of what people might think, everyone is amiable there, no one really blinks at idiosyncrasies.

Then home to do some more preparation for the class, and as Heather was feeling a bit funkified, I retired to bed, to read a book on Buddhism's vector into American life, and then the first couple chapters of a book that's been on Heather's shelf forever, Good Omens, the story of the coming of the Antichrist, and the demon and angel who'd prefer that not happen. Like short grained brown rice, novels are something I never give enough attention to, and which, when imbibed, tell me how neglectful I've been.

And then this morning, I did the MBCT group and it went very well. My fear that I wouldn't be able to fill the time was demonstratively unfounded. We actually went over 10 minutes, and I could have gone another half hour. So that's good in terms of calibration for future sessions. Lots of good conversation happened, and reports on people's efforts and struggles--all normal and predictable, but poignant, seeing people work hard and what's quite difficult practice. And I seemed to even have some lucid things to say, and felt both supportive and appropriately focused in leading the class. I'm actually liking this role. Whodathunk.

And lastly, I drove down to Redwood City to work, and it's been quiet and relatively uneventful. I did try to do some CBT with my men's group in the evening, but it was beyond all but a few, so I'll have to ratchet the cognitive level back a bit to keep it meaningful to them. We decided though, perhaps as a break, to watch "Letters from Iwo Jima" for the next group. That's a good dude flick, yeah?

Surf is up!

I went surfing for the first time yesterday, with my friend and ex-supervisor Michael. We didn't have a camera with us, so I found the above picture to represent my experience. Well. My internal experiences. Externally, from the shore, to make it accurate, you'd subtract about 25 feet off the wave, make it mostly whitewater, and have the surfer wobbling onto his feet for a second before plowing over and trying not to get hit in the head by the 10 foot board.

We went down to Linda Mar beach, in Pacifica, a local surfing mecca. After the long suiting up process, Michael taught me the basics, but the little board of his was too small so I couldn't really get up on a wave. So we rented a longer board, which proved much stabler. I was actually able to ride a couple waves pretty much to the shore, maybe crouching a little, but there ya go for a first timer.

It actually felt quite intuitive, maybe from learning to rock climb or back in the day, ride a bicycle. It seems to be one of those activities that require very little head, and just a lot of allowing the body to learn from doing. I'm pretty sure that within not too much time, I could be up consistently and learning more of the nuances.

The culture is very interesting, kind of a liminal area between the land lubbers and the sea farers. The rules of conventional society seem to get a bit loosened at the water's edge, like the commonness of stripping down in the parking lot, en route to the water, or drying off. The surfer stereotype does seem to have a lot to do with that dreamy in between space on the waves or on the beach.

I can't say I'm hooked, but I'll be back to give it another try.

Dogville

There is something utterly disgusting about Lars von Trier's "Dogville," which is belied by the richness of production and the sheer weight of acting talent. It's the story, shot as a play without an audience, of what seems to be a gun moll escaping to a small Colorado town for refuge. The town slowly plays out its suffering on her, like a J.G. Ballard story, where the human race slowly devolves into its most primitive forms. She turns out to be the daughter of a mafioso, and she orders the execution of the whole town in the film's finale.

But the disgust is not in the story, it's in the sheer adolescent arrogance of the director, in his pompous and supercilious dismissal of human weakness. The end montage, of America's downtrodden, is really horrific to see, like some Versaille aristocrat pointing out their window at the suppurating peons in the slums below. The setup is so easy and yet the payoff so self-righteous, and psychologically stupid.

The film sketches certain moral issues, about responsibility, liberalism, but never plays them out with any integrity. What you get is a cypher for the director to play out his own disgust, to make of the characters what the characters make of the mob daughter: a scapegoat and screen for projection.

Because the production is so skillful, it wasn't till the very end of the film, as the denouement was reached, that the simple point of the film was reached, and the director got to piss on everyone and walk off content. It's like listening to a long, sophisticated speech about race relations, which then ends, "And that's why I hate niggers."

The disgust of the film is supposed to be directed at the morally weak, while in truth it's deserved focus is the director himself.

Some movies

I seem to have seen a slew of movies recently, more than usual. I just got back from "The Bank Job," which was curiously bloodless. Maybe because it was British, and they can't help it. It felt like an exercise in genre, well done, nice people, derived from a real event. But a the end, I kind of shrug. The denouement was rather anticlimactic, bland. So, that's that.

We also watched "Across the Universe" on dvd, which was a colorful, fun trip through the late '60's in America done through the music of the Beatles. But at the end of the day with this one, not much substance, and kind of a string of stereotypes and stereotyped situations. Like they looked through the papers of the time, and stripped the major headlines and cultural figures: there's Janis Joplin, and Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, the radicals turned bombers, the student movement, the soldiers. And that's pretty much it. It was nice thought to see Joe Cocker playing a singing hobo.

Ok, and then there's "South Park the Movie," from years ago, which we never saw. Actually, the TV show is, in general, much funnier than this movie, I think because on basic cable you have to censor yourself. Where here, the boys are swearing up a storm, which kind of takes the edge off. It was funny seeing what you'd always thought, that Saddam Hussaine is Satan's lover...and batshit crazy.

Also, "Eastern Promises," David Croneberg's second film with Viggo Mortensen, a story of the Russian mob in London. It was a more straightforward story than "History of Violence," that horrible mess of a film. This one has the nice, order-affirming twist at the end, and the baby is saved. Yeah! Well executed, but pretty forgettable.

Anything else? Oh, I saw "Domino" on the on-demand cable, and was really impressed. Which was curious, because it got TOTALLY panned in the press when released. I just checked Rottentomatoes and of the credible critics, 9% liked it. But Roger Ebert liked it, which makes sense (here). I almost always agree with Ebert; I wonder if we're the same Ennegram number? I love the way he can love the scraggly dogs that no one else wants to let in the house, or can see the beauty of.

I told Heather that "Domino" is like a Joss Whedon production on methamphetamine, a story of a totally dysfunctional, but loving family of thrown-togethers. If it were shot in a linear, cinemagraphically conventional way, it would be banal. But Tony Scott's crazed Vegas color scheme and ADD editing style gives the film a vibrancy and surreal sweetness. Some films look at their characters as if they were either planets floating in space, or a bunch of billiard balls knocking into each other (The Bank Job was a bit like this). Others, like "Domino," somehow see their characters as both people, representatives, and locations of spirit. Which is weird to say of a film so violent, so on edge, and so darkly comic. But these people really seem, in their brokenness and unpolished and unaware selves, reflect that Leonard Cohen line, "There's a crack in everything/And that's how the light gets in." There's a lot of light here because there are really tremendous cracking in this world. And Tom Waits as the desert prophet in a Cadillac is wonderful.

Plus, the totally audacious scene of a man having his arm shot off at the shoulder by a double barrel shotgun, in front of the ex-stars of Beverly Hills 90210 is, well, jaw droopingly ballsy. Christopher Walken's character, a sleazy reality show producer, just looks and says, "Wow."

So, that's my movie roundup.

A show only a therapist [i.e., your mother] could love

"In Treatment" began airing on HBO last week, and will run for 9 straight weeks, 5 days a week. And what you get is two or three people talking for a half hour each day, mostly in the therapist's office, or in his supervisor's office. That's it. But man, it's like therapist porn! I'm not sure how anyone who's not a therapist--not just in the mental health or healing trades, but a working shrink--could possible love such a show.

But I find it riveting. The acting is mostly solid and the stories are real enough (though they've definitely selected the more extreme cases), and the therapizing is pretty accurate. Paul Weston, the psychiatrist/analyst played by Gabriel Byrne, is a competent, caring clinician who is falling apart in about the way most therapists I know are. His marriage is imploding, his relationships with his children are thin, and he hates the supervisor who he keeps returning to for support and to punish. In fact, Friday with the supervisor is some of the juiciest interactions in the show, because you have two veterens of the game playing doing very high level sparing with rather low-level emotions. Watching Paul lie to her without even realizing it is thrilling!

The verisimilitude is a bit strained, but that's ok, since it's being adapted for dramatic television. For instance, 30 minutes is pretended to be a 50 minute session, which is a little mind bending as it happens (because you see the total session), but you can handle it. And as I said, the intensity level is higher than in most therapies.

But what you get is an intense presentation of one man and his many relationships, in which little nuances carry great meaning. He says in one of the first episodes, to the cocky fighter pilot, "In our profession we have a saying: 'The customer is always wrong,'" which he later explains as that a chunk of his work is to expose how his patients are lying to themselves and to him. Watching this unfolding and unpacking happen is riviting, and really funny at times, though the show is in no way a comedy. What's funny, to me, is seeing these common human train wrecks happening, and watch the games and machinations of the human psyche laid out so clearly. It's not a phony or supercilious clarity, though, because there are times when people are so clear and obvious.

It would be a much paler show if you didn't get to see Paul interacting with his wife and with his estranged supervisor, which then changes the way you see him interacting with his clients, even though his demeanor is consistently professional and competent. Like the one scene where he's spent most of the episode fighting with his wife after she exposes her having an affair, and then after she is dismissed from the room, he straightens his jacket, wets his hair, and opens the door to greet his next client, who launches into his own self-centered stuff. It's funny because it's so accurate, and is a juxtaposition of tones which is part and parcel of the therapists life. There are unresolved contradictions which are simply held, which is also so much of a therapist's work.

Seeing a portrait of a mature psychotherapist is a treat for such as me, relatively green in the field. Because it's a complex portrait of a complex man, who is both very skilled and personally very flawed. And it gets the therapy situation right--they must have good consultants. It's like seeing a show shot in your home town. You get to point and jump up and down: "Ooh, I've been there!" Good stuff.

An update

I'm here at work, with the morning's rain blown off, and thick, gray and pink clouds pushed across the sky by a high wind. The day's paperwork is finished, and a Fresh Air interview with a Russian double agent is playing in the background. A client is out cooking fish and fries, which I helped him with though I had to look up the cook time in the Joy of Cooking. The others are watching the Superbowl, which I hear is going to fall to the Patriots, which would have done my maternal grandmother proud, her being a big fan of the Patriots.

These Sundays have gotten harder and harder to manage emotionally, as I haven't had a co-worker for quite some time. With the severity of clients we've had, you're always vigilant, while at the same time there's no other staff to help carry the responsibilities, and the level of depression has increased. It feels at time like I'm at the end of the earth, and my own depression buttons have been getting pushed. Someone will be coming in soon, which will help.

There are these moments, though, like when I went out to check my clothes (I do wash every Sunday) and no one was out on the patio. I stood there and watched the bamboo wave in the neighbor's yard, and the tone was so still and placid, hard to relate to the crowd inside. But when I can coordinate the two experiences, I'm at peace here.

Crying Wolf

I met with a friend yesterday for coffee. We had a good chat over tea and a bagel, catching each other up on our respective lives, then meandering around therapy subjects. She's been doing EMDR for a long time, so, as a newbie, I picked her brain on general and technical questions.

Two hours later, we gave parting hugs, and she said she intended to attend our potluck next month. I wave goodbye and walk around the corner to get on the scooter, and where I parked it in the little space in front of the beige and purple houses was...spacious.

Now, it's an odd feeling to find something you know you place somewhere, not there. I went and looked at the space, then up and down the street trying to remember if I'd parked it elsewhere. I scanned my memory, and recalled pulling up and seeing my friend on the corner, waiting for me, and me walking only a few dozen feet to greet her. So it wasn't around the block or across the street. Hmm, apparently it was stolen.

Next part of my strategy was to wander back and forth between the Empty Spot and the cafe. And yet that didn't make the bike appear. Then I called 911 and asked how to report a stolen vehicle, and they gave me the non-emergency number. I walked up the block, somehow thinking the bike may have wandered off and was grazing in another parking spot, but no luck. So I resigned myself to dealing with a stolen scooter, and started walking home.

I called the police when I got back, and they directed me to the impound. Not there, so I called back and they told me they'd send a cop out to take the report. I only had some of the information on the bike, but Heather was in her class orientation, so I could only leave her the dismal news on her voice mail. Then I was going to do some work, but couldn't concentrate, instead playing the video game my brother sent. Well, shooting up banditos wasn't soothing, so I finally decided (it's funny how long it takes for us to do the appropriate thing) to meditate. And a minute into it, vroom, it hit me where the bike was.

See, although we met at the Royal Grounds, she had originally wanted to meet at Peet's, up the street, because their coffee was better. The memory I had of her on the corner was true, but I layered it over the wrong real-time corner. Smacking my forehead, I left a message with Heather, a "This is your stupid husband calling..." type of thing, and then headed off, walking to get the scooter. Heather actually pulled up just then and gave me a ride, and I did some more mea culpas for being a twit and scaring her.

An odd event. I think, with my brain running with "stolen bike" narrative, that I was in a bit of shock and couldn't piece together the data to figure out what had happened. When meditating, apparently the dust cleared and there it was, but in the heat of the moment(s), the memories wouldn't jell.

The positive thing is that we confirmed that the bike is covered for theft (though with a depreciation for age). That's comforting, I suppose.