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.

Just a day...

Let's see, not too much coherence here at the end of the day, not a particularly difficult day at work, but I'm pretty fagged out. Still, it felt like a pretty good day, mostly because I felt that I handled my moods well. I woke up with a dose of nebulous anxiety, but worked with it, particularly with the resource tapping. Early in the day, I did the safety resourcing--summoning a picture that conveys a felt sense of safety, and then tapping my knees to get my brain to remember...believe it or not--and then one with an inner counsel figure--who turns out to be someone named Xavier, go figure, and he sits on top a slab of beginner rock up at Donner Pass. There wasn't an overwhelming change in mood in the moment, though there was a little relief. But what I noticed through the afternoon was a greater sense of ease, and especially a great if gentle sense of diminishment in what feels sometimes like I'm living a the end of the earth. There's a loneliness to being here on Sunday that sometimes triggers a bleakness that's hard to kick. But today, there was a sense of having sympathetic and supportive company. Weird but true.

What this resource tapping is teaching me is how much one can intentionally manipulate one's psyche in the same way that you can manipulate your body when you are uncomfortable. If you're sitting in a certain posture and get crooked, you just shift into another comfortable position. No magic, no struggle. The same can be true of the mind. You notice discomfort, you call forth an image of a pleasant feeling, and the psyche shifts or calms down. Voila!

I guess in the past, this felt like cheating, or somehow wrong. But here, with the resource work, it's simply you changing you. There's no one to pass your decision by, and no one outside of you presenting the resource. Just what's in the brain already, and you're simply choosing to connect up the parts.

But I think that