GAY DAY FOR EQUAL JUSTICE

It strikes me strange in the Xtreme for the Supremes to go with Obamacare and gay marriage. It's strange from a court that predictably sides with corporate interest against the good of the citizen. I can see that Obamacare benefits insurance corporations, which helps me understand the court ruling with it. I don't see any corporate benefit for gay marriage, but PR, so I'm a bit slow coming to terms with how the decision happened as it did. I learned it was Kennedy who swung away from the Reaganistas. I read his paragraph about marriage, held up by a talking head as poetry, found it rational mixed with sentiment. It only took one of them to make the difference. The court was divided between the republicans and democrats, and Kennedy abandoned the republican ranks. The Supremes have lost so much credibility with me, it will take more than two decisions to convince me they deserve credit for anything but one man's mistake. The women have my full appreciation. The men are all intellectual feather-weights compared to the women. In fact, it doesn't feel right attaching the word intellectual to Thomas, Alito, Scalia and Roberts. It makes an oxymoron to connect one of the four names with the word intellectual. They render the word meaningless. They bring up in me the question, how did they make it through law school?

It is a new day, any way you look at it. The gay marriage decision was one step closer to the American ideal, unity in diversity, equal justice for all. It's been on hold since the time of the Reagan Trojan horse that brought us Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, the Bushes, and a crowded pen of others. We now have legions of white middle class women celebrating with gay couples over getting married. The other side of the coin,we have the working class, and so-called Christians hating everything about it. Representatives from different states are saying they won't allow gay marriages in their states, and won't have Obamacare either. It is the right's turn to gulp down a decision by the Supremes not to their liking. The Supremes gave us Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice, over-riding democracy for the billionaires that positioned them. Bobby Jindal called the Supremes yesterday, "completely out of control." That the congress has a few republicans breaking ranks, and now the Supremes have one, it's telling me the Reagan Revolution has wound itself down. It had no substance in the beginning and wound down from there. My favorite Reagan quotation, "Facts are stupid things." 

The republicans have declared Sarah Palin irrelevant. Took them awhile to get it. Rush Limbaugh's syndication is going away from him. Roger Ailes of the Fake News channel is on his way out.  A fun image popped up in my head, Ailes as Jabba the Hutt, Ann Coulter Princess Leia on a chain leash, and nobody comes to rescue her. America's forty-year pendulum swing to the right is slowing to a halt, and it's not due to resistance. A fundamentalist preacher somewhere in America promised he'd set himself on fire if the Supremes passed gay marriage. He's had several offers in facebook to give him matches and lighters, gasoline, anything he needs. My next door neighbors, Allan and Gary, were married at the coffee shop in Sparta a few months ago. There, too, the white middle-class women were ecstatic. These are the women in our midst. For all the American disdain for education, it still means something. I can't help but think that when the women in our society take to something with the enthusiasm given gay marriage, there must be something to it. 

In my own way of seeing, gay marriage makes sense, and tells me the society is taming somewhat, tuning itself to the obvious. I saw a cartoon that said, more weddings, more cakes. I am not a proponent of marriage of any sort. This is my own personal thang. It was around age 8 the kid already had a good case made for a solitary life, which became the kid's intent. Example of parents was not one to model self after. A silent battle raging between them all the time, tension in the house so dense it hit like a hammer stepping in the door, like Florida heat stepping out of an air-conditioned car. I did marriage for s'posed-to, and jumped out like the frog dropped in hot water. I realized I cannot live the rest of my life playing unacknowledged emotional mind games. I was the cause of the separation. I was the cause of everything. I saw the psychology I'd wedded myself to, understood my own better, and ran for my life. It was totally selfish. I could not live with a control harridan. I saw a lifetime of misery and said to self, this is not what I'm here for. Let her find somebody who wants her misery. I've been happily unmarried ever since. Understanding the popular zeal for marriage is out of my reach. 

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READING HENRY MILLER: TO LIVE AND BE AWARE

henry miller

 

Over the last several days I've found some remarkable insights by way of Diana Toma's prompt in the Daily Creative Practice, where the art impulse came from in self. It was quite a subtle place to go to. I danced around it, spiraling in on the core of it, finding much inspiration toward art and writing from Henry Miller. "Just happen to be" reading his Colossus of Maroussi, a little at a time, rereading by a whim. Picked it from the shelf thinking I'd like to revisit Greece with Miller and dip into his writing again. Pinned down to name a favorite American writer, it has to be Henry Miller. He speaks to me like no other writer has. I've read biographies, memories of him, a lot of what he's written. Haven't read any of his Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Sexus, Nexus and Plexus. They're too long and I'm a slow reader. I've wanted to read them since they were new, but thick books turn me away on sight. I don't care who wrote them. I'd like to read From Here To Eternity, by James Jones, but it is about four times too long for me. I've been saying of myself in the years after high school I could not read with comprehension. I read Colossus of Maroussi age 22. I picked it up to read it again half a century later to see what I missed, to enjoy it again, to read Henry Miller again. This time around I have found I comprehended more than I thought. It even felt like I had almost memorized the book. I didn't remember a lot of details, but saw a way of thinking, of looking at the world, an attitude toward life I have gradually shaped into my own life. No other writer I've read has seemed like somebody I know, a friend of many years. I found at the end of four days of self-examination looking for the origin of the art impulse in self, it was Henry Miller's influence. I've retained so well what he had to say, I realize now I was reading much closer then than I thought. I see in retrospect I had adopted Miller's way of seeing, his attitude toward life. When I started writing the daily blog, I had reasoned for myself over several years that first person observation is closer to the reality of living in this world than third person, I instead of he. I is more direct, more experiential.

 

henry miller by kalman aron

 

I set out with the notion that this blog is a record of one person's point of view and experience in one place, in one time. I decided at the start not to make any attempts to promote it, just let it be a daily journal. I chose not to make it spiffy online journalism of short paragraphs dealing only in the obvious. Since I tend to long paragraphs naturally, I decided not to chop them up into USA Today speak. I said, I don't care. I'm not in it for money, nor am I in it for popularity and maximum number of viewers. Decided to go ahead and write long paragraphs as I felt like doing. Paragraphs are getting closer to one sentence every year, to one phrase: See Spot run. I decided not to honor that progression, or degression, whichever, and do what I feel like doing. I saw Miller wrote in long sentences and first person. The influence is obvious to me now, but it happened unconsciously. I would never set out to write like Henry Miller, nor would I set out to paint like van Gogh. If ten times as many people would read it if I wrote short paragraphs, I don't want ten times more. I don't care how many see it. First, it is a journal to self, made public because I'd never do it for more than 4 days otherwise. Online gives me a deadline, makes me do it. I don't know who's seeing it, except for some friends, and don't know what others make of it, except for a few friends. That's enough. Feedback is important in any art form. I need feedback, practical feedback, mainly to know if it is connecting with anyone and how it's connecting. I've learned from feedback that when I write with a certain intent, though not stating the intent, it comes through. I've wondered over that one for years, how to get intent across without stating it directly. Turns out, it simply amounts to: intend it. That's one I like to play with in writing, seeing how intent comes through without consciously willing it. I don't mean for you to think I take myself so seriously by calling myself a writer that I'd compare my writing to Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller. Not at all. It is only recently that I've allowed myself to refer to self as writer. I write every day, the original and only intent of the blog. It's been five years of writing five or six days a week. So I call myself a writer. It doesn't mean I'm writing for the New Yorker or the Nation. Just the act of writing makes me a writer. If I ran several hours every day, I'd call myself a runner. When I paint, I am a painter. The blog is my art form in this time. Learning by doing. When somebody asks if I'm an artist, I say, "Sometimes." Sometimes I'm just filling up blank space. Sometimes I may even touch art in a sentence or two.

 

This was quite a revelation in self awareness finding how closely my early years were influenced by Henry Miller, to the point he has been a great influence on the way I live, the way I write. My artistic sensibilities were educated and inspired by Miller. My friend Jean used to tell me I am the perpetual college student, that I live like a college student. Part of what she meant was I live on the very least I can get by on. Like, again something applied from reading, Marcel Duchamp said, It's not what you make, it's what you spend. From reading Miller's writing and Duchamp's interviews, I learned the importance of living frugally. The less money I make, the less my contribution to the Pentagon, two-thirds of my tax dollars. I never felt right paying taxes to keep a war machine going, didn't like it, couldn't do anything about it, but I could arrange minimum contribution to the machine by living on the minimum. In retrospect, I learned that thinking from Henry Miller. Could possibly attribute same to Henry Thoreau. It was that kind of thinking I was drawn to, quiet civil disobedience. Miller had plenty of Thoreau influence. I think something in our society is nuts, I don't have to participate. The Sixties taught me the futility of political resistance. This time we're in now has taught me to stay out of politics altogether, don't even concern myself with pictures of politicians on facebook. Just keep on scrolling. I like the kind of civil disobedience that doesn't get me arrested and hit in the head with one of those cop sticks they get a cheap thrill out of bullying demonstrators with. I leave that to the players. I'm not a player. Lyndon Johnson and the corporate press made me a non-player the summer of 1968. Five years previously, he'd taken power by coup, the day the American dream of democracy died. I withdrew from all political activities. My only political act is voting, despite knowing voting is a joke on us. Pretend participation. Pretend having a voice. I divorce myself from concerns over American democracy. It is also from Henry Miller I developed and interest in American cultures, American history and awareness of politics. I've taken too much interest, just by paying attention. I see self withdrawing further from paying attention. I don't even care what Bill Maher or Jon Stewart are saying this week. They used to make me laugh. Now they make me think: stop making stupid people famous, the republicans they use for jokes.

 

Reading Colossus, I was in a time of wanting out of a screwed up marriage that didn't have a chance, two people didn't know each other turned out not to like each other. I was longing for the freedom to be on my own, no more being bitched at, gamed with, mother-in-law from hell. I saw too much of her in her daughter, realizing it would be a life of liking her less until it turned to living with miserable hate. I wasn't going to do like my parents and live in agony pretending we're all happy in Jesus. Her games got outta hand. I arrived at our address after six months in the Mediterranean. Some man I'd never seen was there with her. A friend from college days. It was a setup. She knew what time I'd be coming in. I walked in the door, saw him, knew her game and rejoiced inside like the young do now, pumping a fist in the air and hollering the Rebel yell, Hail Yeah! I had a lifetime training in keeping a straight face, not letting anything show but surprise. I went straight to him, shook his hand and said glad-to-meet-ya in the best cocktail party style I knew how. He was so nervous it made me feel mean, but I saw what was happening and it made me want to be mean. Didn't need to. This was the kickoff, I was on my way. No problem. Henry Miller saw me through that time. He showed me how to find my equilibrium alone without backup or being kept in line by a force outside myself. He was going it alone after a divorce, doing it well, revealing for me the interior life is the most important. Hooray for the freedom to have an interior life. Miller taught me to let go of concern over other people's judgment and expectations. Looking back to the time Henry Miller entered my awareness, I see now he became something of a lesser spiritual guide.  Since earliest childhood I knew I wanted to live alone all my life. That speed-bump was a mistake that needed settling. Miller was turned against religion, just like I was. He showed me how to live a life of self-awareness, self-education and fun. Enjoy your life. Live your life. Follow your own light. I did not know where that thinking started, and now it's spread out before me like a map on a table. I might want to read his book on Rimbaud again. I have to say, Thank you, Henry Miller, for my life. He's like a facebook friend; we never met, though we're awfully good friends. He didn't know it, but he ranks among the closest friends of my life. I didn't know it either. I have to say thanks to Diana Toma for the insight and to Ruth Schowalter for setting up this momentum called DCP that I have benefitted from in my interior existence and it's fun. Jerry Lee: a whole lotta fun goin on. Rock and roll all night.

 

 

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AN ALLEGORY

Took a nap this afternoon and woke from it in a mind I've had all my life, a mind I've done very little to settle, to deal with, except avoid thinking about, because it always brings me down. Lying in the bed recently awake, I was looking at why it takes me to my own place of unresolved issues that I've already discovered I don't want to resolve. Given the chance once, I chose not to. Chose not to because I realized I didn't want to. It's like attempting to make friends with somebody you don't like and realizing when it's down to able, you don't want to. Didn't want to because of absence of trust. I don't want somebody for a friend I know I cannot trust, somebody I know with my life I cannot trust. And I don't want somebody for a friend I don't like. All the way along in church I hear, Honor thy father and mother. My ongoing question has been, Why? Somebody hits you every day, berates you every day, beats your self-esteem into the ground in the most vulnerable time of your life, and when you grow up, wants to be your friend. Who ever heard of loving the school bully because he picks on you every day? Or even liking him? Nobody picked on me at school. The only place I was bullied was at home, to the point that home became a place I never wanted to be. Loved going to school, hated going home.

I was lying in the bed looking at the ceiling a little bit ago, considering how odd it is that since I've grown up and left the nest, I'm expected to keep in touch, come to visit, never talk back, and take orders like go to church, one thing or another, whatever mother's obsession with making me mind is entertaining this decade. It felt like, lying there looking at the ceiling, I was of a new mind today. I was lying there in a mild awe of the effrontery of expecting, intending that I forget our history, and spend my life denying it, honor thy father and mother. After age 6, I couldn't honor him any more. After age 10, I couldn't honor her anymore. From then on I was captive by way of childhood vulnerability to living with these people who were my foremost enemy. The only time I heard love was, I hit you because I love you. How do you expect even a child to believe that? I was thinking about my new donkey friend, Jack, how I am easing into getting acquainted and becoming friends with him. I don't become his friend by hitting him, telling him he's a dumb jackass and nobody wants to hear him bray. I don't berate him every minute I'm around him. That's not how I make friends. I treat Jack well, talk to him gently, touch him lightly on his neck and back, showing him by body language, tone of voice and eye contact that I am no threat. I feed him carrots by hand and talk to him like he's somebody I care about.

I can't imagine hitting Jack every day and telling him he's stupid and come out of it after fifteen years his friend. He would be obedient, but only sometimes. Making a friend of him by treating him right and showing I am his friend will gain his absolute obedience without any reservation. I don't want obedience, but use it for an example. I don't want him biting me and kicking me, but he won't. The four-leggeds, like children and adult humans, all return what they receive. If I were pushing Jack around, forcing him, yelling at him, demanding, I know he would kick at me when he had a chance, or bite just for the fun of watching me yell out in pain. But I'm showing Jack that I care about him, I want to know who he is. I am connecting with his consciousness, with his mind, by showing him that my mind is with him, on his side. I bend down and look eye-to-eye talking to him. I tell him I'm happy he's here. He likes that. He likes getting to know me the same as I like getting to know Jack. He's not going to kick me. He would kick somebody who threatened me. This is my idea of how to make friends. Kindness, open-hearted caring. Not threatening and hitting and keeping a child in constant fear---at home. Kinda gives the kid a twisted feeling about what constitutes the word home. Upon leaving them, I never wanted to see them again. But duty intervened. Honor thy father and mother. What? How? This has been the question of my life, How? Forgive? How? Obey? How does one obey insanity without going insane?

I've pretended, pretended all the way along. I was like a vulnerable baby smiling and being cute to be cared for. Cheshire cat grins, acting like I liked living with them, because I was afraid to run away. I knew cops would bring me back and there'd be hell to pay. So I kept myself below the radar as much as possible. I didn't want them knowing anything about my inner self, mainly because the only thing in there was hate for them. Like the time I was told, "I oughta hit you for what you're thinking!" I laughed inside. You don't know what I'm thinking. If you knew what I was thinking, you'd beat me to death with your fists. You wouldn't allow me to live. And then there was the pride in telling a neighbor, "He's my kid! I'll kill him if I want to!" That was mommy speaking. I was thinking, 'She's my mommy. I'll kill her if I want to,' knowing the consequences before being stupid enough to say it. I lived two lives. Around them I learned to keep quiet, tell them nothing, stay out of their way as much as possible. Watch tv. And that didn't always work. It seldom worked. But sometimes it did. It wasn't a problem keeping my inner self under guard, because they didn't want to know anything about who I am, then or any time since. In church they were told to FEAR THE LORD. That's how you love God, be afraid of God. I supposed daddy interpreted that to have something to do with how his kid was supposed to regard him, with fear. As long as he saw fear, I was ok. On the other hand, I had my life at school with the other kids and sensible adults. Also had grandparents who cared. Couldn't have made it without them where love is concerned.

I still laugh at the Saturday morning, age 14, probably 1956, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. Had to pass through the living room. Saturday was hell day, daddy was home. He was sitting right beside the door I had to pass through looking at the newspaper. That was a funny sight in itself. Him reading was something of an oxymoron, though I didn't know the word. On sight I knew something was up. When I walked by him he said, "If you ever join the Communist Party, I'll kill you!" I thought: Gee, thanks, daddy, you're the most. This is where I learned my irony. Of course, the only thing his wisecrack did to the kid was make me curious about the Communist Party. What is it? Where do I join? And atheist. That sounded so cool. It freaked out all the adults. That was the first day of my curiosity about Communism. I didn't study it, but paid attention to it. By the time I read the Communist Manifesto in college, I was all for it. Bring it on. It wasn't anything like the propaganda about it. Then I took a course in Soviet history. I was turned off by Communism before Lenin died. He turned out to be an emeffer from l'enfer. Stalin was worse. I was thinking: Shit, what's so great about some ego-maniacal testosterone freak for my leader? I think not. Had enough of that at home. I admired Angela Davis in her time of making the news, proclaiming herself a Communist. I started her autobiography, which was interesting by a brilliant woman until she joined the party. It turned into party doctrine and I quit reading. It was like reading Republican parrotry. I lost my interest in Angela Davis the day I closed the book the last time.

Communism failed, which was not real Marxism. Capitalism failed in its own excess. I came to think of Soviet Communism militarist socialism. And I think of American Capitalism as militarist fascism. Neither one is a real ideology because both are militarist first. Like colleges that put the majority of their budget into the sports program, it's their money maker. Our military force is also our corporate government's money-maker. Hence, perpetual war. Defense contracts. Halliburton. Exxon. Suits. Suburbs. Country Clubs. Swimming pools. I went intentionally to a small college that did not have government funds in their budget for research and had no sports program. It was great not to be required to fake team spirit and buy season tickets to something I'd rather watch on tv or not at all, esp the latter. The day of discharge from Navy was the last day of living my life by somebody else's command. Got out on a Friday, started at the college on Monday. It just worked out that way. That weekend was the first days of living by my own command. Went to the beach. Been through a two year marriage. Married daddy in female form. When I saw that, it was like the frog dropped into boiling water. Looking back, from leaving high school to leaving the Navy, a period of about 5 years, this was one dumb shit hobbling around with no idea about anything, a head boiling over with confusion like dry ice in a bucket of water. And that's a self-serving way to say it. Unable to make sense of the circus of the false calling itself the truth blinking and flashing all around me, my heart shut down the best it could.

I rented an apartment and started reading novels from drugstore racks; Peyton Place, A Summer Place, novels from movies, The L-Shaped Room, Ben Hur. Jack Kerouac was coming out in Signet paperbacks at the time. And Grove Press was printing Henry Miller in paperback. This was the beginning of my reading life. I didn't know what was "good" to read or what I was "supposed" to read. I just wanted peace in my mind and it wasn't happening. Today, at this time in the life I feel like peace is the nature of my mind. I don't have anything in my life that is wrenching my heart with guilt, remorse, fear or hate. It's been a long row reading fascinating psychology books, the most helpful being Alice Miller's FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. She blew my mind to smithereens. I'd felt so guilty for so long for hating my oppressor. Alice said, Of course you hate your oppressor. To deny it is neurosis. Uh. That set my guilt adrift like a note in a bottle to ride the waves between sea and sky forever. Alice taught me that what I feel is real, not what I'm supposed to feel. Don't deny it. Start the healing from understanding that it was not the victim's fault. First step. Thank you, Alice Miller. I've wanted to write her to thank her for several years, but inhibited the impulse by knowing in advance the letter would be way too long, take way too many pages, would have to be mailed in a box. I couldn't do that to her. Who wants a long letter of nothing but gaga praise and gratitude for so much the list is endless? By now, I've found the home of my soul in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the Blue Ridge Mountains I feel the peace of home. Like in Jimmy Arnold's song, The  Rebel Soldier, "Tell me parson, will my soul pass over the Southland?" I'll be asking, Will my soul pass over the Blue Ridge? And when the parson says yes, I'll ask if I can write in the sky over Alleghany County, I love every one of you.

 

 

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STAY OUTTA MY FACE

     caterpillar lioness

Wondering what it is about cats and dogs, pets, that is so satisfying for me all along my way. In childhood, I had dogs, cats, chickens and caged birds (canaries and parakeets) for pets. I've never been one to sit with a dog or a cat and tell it my troubles, or anything. I think of them living without words, so I prefer to communicate with them without words, learn their silent language and interact with them learning from them how to communicate without Sit, Heel, Roll Over, Shake hands, Play dead. I've never wanted to make a pet into a circus animal, though I have loved seeing shows of dogs jumping over backwards, jumping through a ring of fire, etc. What happens with me is I fall in love with them, they fall in love with me and we develop an inseparable relationship, such that if I were to die on Caterpillar, there's a good chance she'd die of grief soon after. When I lose one of my non-verbal friends, I feel the same grief as when a human friend dies.



About a year ago I read something that said pets are often surrogates for absence of human relationship. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. Sometimes when I hold Caterpillar and tell her I love her, I'll question if I'm playing surrogate. It always comes back, no. The human psyche is too powerful for me to attempt to live with another person's energy, psychology, control issues, needs, demands, wants, deception. Married, I would have to be one of those men who has his own space with a locked door that is off limits to kids and wives. Being honest with myself, I have found from experience that I don't do well living with somebody else. I get accused of not talking. What happens is, the other becomes so predictable she turns boring. This is what happened in the marriage. She became boring to me, because I knew in advance her response/reaction to anything I might say, so I wouldn't say it. She grew frustrated, because I talked so little, and I grew frustrated because she was too predictable. She had an endless list of wants that meant debt I couldn't stand living with. I felt lonely married and have never felt lonely unmarried. I feel lonely if I don't have a cat or a dog.



That's another marriage issue. "You love that damn dog more than you love me." It is so tempting to say, "That's right," but I know what comes next. Hell to pay. Like daddy telling me when I was 14 that he'll kill me if I join the Communist Party--this was back in McCarthy times when the government had the populace freaked over Communism, like they do over terrorism now. Then I hear, but terrorism is real. It's real only as a reaction to American aggression against poor people of color. The end of American aggression would be the end of terrorism if it weren't so convenient for population control, a shared enemy, a bad to contrast against our own good. Being told I'd be killed for joining the Communist Party set off an alarm. I'd never been interested in Communism before that moment. After that, I was looking for the recruiting station. Suddenly, I was sympathetic with Communism without even knowing what it was, except the preacher at church said it was bad.



I tried to look at Communism like something I'd like. I read about Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, and said this was even worse than home. Hitler was home. Stalin was worse. Mao was worse. I was looking for an antidote to living under fascism. Finally, there came a time I realized, after much denial, that there is nothing desirable about Soviet and Maoist Communism. Wasn't anything desirable about Hitler either. Even though our American democracy is a matter of pretend, we white people, nonetheless, don't feel directly oppressed the way people in the Soviet bloc and mainland China felt it. Communism turned out to be a very dark, brooding cloud that controlled people by fear. That wasn't for me. That's what I was objecting to at home with parents, that dark, brooding cloud, control by fear. There's an old saying, nobody's happy when mama aint happy. It applies to daddy as well. Daddy's dark cloud brooded over the entire house. The tension in the house felt like something you had to cut your way through with a machete. It was the same dark brooding as I felt in Xao Xingjian's novel, One Man's Bible. Mao must not have been very happy; he kept his entire nation in brooding despair.



I dislike that oppressed feeling. I feel I understand it, somewhat, in the black people. It is a dark cloud the black people in America live under. The same can be said for Hispanics, anybody not white, except the poor. I'm privileged with whiteness, something I see in the white people around me that no one seems to get, that white people in American are privileged and take it for granted, same as the rich do with wealth. In most intimate proximity with another human, like living together, tensions grow and the feelings from my developing years trigger the feeling of oppression when I've got somebody I once thought something of yelling in my face telling me what's wrong with who I am. The next thing that happens is I'm gone, no turning back, no reassessing relationship, no apologies. The first time I showed this aspect of myself in married life was at a table playing bridge with X and her parents. I, a beginner, made a bad move. X across the table exploded into a rage at me for being stupid. I rose from my chair and announced, I will never play another game of bridge. Game over. That was it. I hate that shit. When I went out the door forever, it was after a shouting in my face experience when I told myself I do not have to live like this. I do have a choice. 



My dogs and my cats are good company. That they don't talk is a lot to be said for them. I don't like to talk either, so we have good relationships. I have to watch the use of that word relationship. Since about the 1980s it has meant fucking. Like now, dating also means fucking. "We've been dating (fucking) for three months." When I say I have a relationship with my pets does not mean we're fucking. I think we have the original meaning of relationship. We care about each other, we live in the same place, I never yell at them, they never yell at me. I am so bad about being yelled at, that I have walked off jobs over it. I don't accept such behavior from anyone for any reason, no matter how close, no matter my vulnerability. When somebody believes they know me well enough they can yell in my face, is when they find out they don't know me at all. That individual dies to me. They actually die before my eyes. Not like fall down dead in imagination. It's like the person I once knew, I don't know any more. Whatever the nature of our relationship, it's over, totally. I figure somebody that needs to talk to me yelling and accusing is somebody who doesn't want me around. Dogs and cats don't tell things behind your back. They're not fickle and they don't deceive. I don't think of Caterpillar a surrogate of something I don't want. I think of her as my friend.

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