Sarcastic Neon Art

A visiting European friend and I headed into downtown Los Angeles, by train and on foot and by bus. I had not realized how well our public transportation does work, if you only use it. No one-way streets to navigate around, no parking, just walking and serendipity.

After I showed her Frank Gehry's Disney Hall, she wanted to take advantage of the Broad Museum (rhymes with "road") on the next block. No charge for admission! and no crowd! as it was already 3 pm.

I had never heard of Glenn Ligon but he impressed the hell out of me. Engaged, sarcastic/sardonic, utterly original, eye-popping comments on American society. Seeing and hearing, though ignored and unheard. How glad I am that my friend insisted. Dayam.

Six Questions For . . .: Six Questions For Shannon Connor Winward, Founding Editor, Riddled With Arrows

Six Questions For . . .: Six Questions For Shannon Connor Winward, Founding Editor, Riddled With Arrows

Lifestyles of the Undead and Fabulous

Very Personally Yours—or—When Life Sucks

 Congratulations! You’ve risen from the dead! Everyone has questions about becoming a vampire, so don’t be embarrassed. We hope this pamphlet will help you as you begin this new cycle.

When I found this pamphlet under the wilting flowers, I thought it was some kind of joke. They don’t tell you what you really need to know, any more than those Kotex booklets from the 1960s told a girl what to expect. Those pamphlets made a girl think that her flow would be blue, that she’d have to learn to play tennis, that she’d become slim and dainty. Nothing about the mood swings, or what would happen to your clothing. Same for us new creatures of the night.

You will have risen at night, waking up in a coffin. You’ve clawed your way out and up through six feet of dirt. It’s a special time. No wonder you’re hungry!

Lucky for you, you’ve just been to a funeral. You’ll be well-dressed, so important for putting people off-guard before you jump them and tear into their arteries with your fangs. Don’t worry about that part. It will feel like the right thing to do, and you’ll know how. But no one tells you where to get one of those cool leather coats that swirl and flap like wings, the coats that never get in the way of fighting. Forget the high-collared capes lined in satin. That’s what your grand-sire wore.

You may wonder about your social life. Some vampires like to go it alone, all brooding Romantic, but most prefer to nest. A good way to find others is to share your kill.

I’ll tell you one thing about your social life:  it’s all after dark, baby. The louder and cheesier the club, the better for hunting. You will literally smell their desperation to hook up. It’s a win-win.

Enjoy your new existence. You’ve got super-strength and mad martial arts skills. What’s more, you’re virtually immortal!

About that ‘immortal’:  you won’t age, but that doesn’t mean ‘invulnerable.’ You didn’t have to read the pamphlet to know about wooden stakes, or beheadings. What about the lifestyle? No tanning, no driving up the coast with the top down, no dancing in front of the fireplace. If you were vegan, that’s gone too. You’ll know what you want, but you still might feel squeamish about blood from a cup, even an IV bag with a straw. No one’s ever figured out how to talk us through that part. On the other hand, you can eat and drink anything else you want—death-by-chocolate cake, double-double cheeseburgers animal-style, fettuccine Alfredo. If you want. There isn’t really much point, is all. But go ahead and smoke. It can’t hurt you now, right? You can’t breathe but you can blow impressive dragon plumes out your nostrils. Just don’t ask me where the air comes from.

Just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. In fact, a whole new world is waiting—for you!

Yes they are. Waiting for you, I mean. A good thing you can fight and kick like—well, like a demon. Also, you carry no weight on your feet. No reflection, no weight. It’s that simple. When you have no soul, your soles never wear out. It’s catchy in English, kinda pointless otherwise.

Meredith Burton Mitchell, 1927-2017

My dear friend, my former analyst and supervisor, my mentor and quasi-father, Meredith Burton Mitchell, died today, two months short of his ninetieth birthday. He had suffered increasingly poor health over the last several years. His first heart attack came 35 years ago, late for the men in his family, most of whom died before they were 50. He labored mightily to support his health, his heart, despite several other miserable conditions. His big conceptual contribution to Jungian psychology was to recognize that the opposite of the hero is the victim, and he was determined not to be a victim. Here he is at the left, rejoicing at my wedding, where he was one of the chuppah bearers. The chuppah is the traditional canopy under which the bridal pair stands, and Meredith joyfully helped consecrate my union with my husband.

 Here are Meredith and my husband talking about life--children, retirement, deep and playful thoughts--in Meredith's airy home. I was so happy that they got along so well together.

Roberta, Meredith's wife/widow, and Meredith. They found each other after much travail, and were such a loving couple.

I've been grieving him all day today, and probably will be grieving for some time yet. I met him when I was 17, and he saw me into adulthood and launched me into psychology. What strength, what empathy, what all he overcame himself. Very much a human being, but so aware of the power of the transference and of his responsibility to hold that projection until the patient is ready to re-integrate its power. Thank you. Thank you. We love you. Good-bye.

Such a problem

Buds in silhouette, cloudy day

Garden glove masquerading as kitten

Western Saw-whet Owl

Here's the problem that is, perhaps, not a problem:  you know that I write poems and that I take photos. I've had poems published since 2008 (about a year after I returned to writing). I've had photos published since 2008--as soon as I started submitting them. What's more, my hit rate, my acceptance rate, is considerably higher for photos than for poems.

I *work* on my writing. I've attended conferences and workshops, I've worked with other poets for years on end. I've read so very many poems, mostly for love, but still. I've been trying to write--I have been writing--since I was nine, since I first read a poem and thought, I want to do that. Words have always been my strength and my joy. Some of my poems are quite fine, some are too closed, some just aren't very good. There is a lot of competition, as witnessed by the ten thousand poetry journals out in English. About half of what I write gets published, eventually. My hit rate, based on total submissions, is something like 20%.

My photos, I take on the fly. Something catches my eye, I find it, I snap it fast as I can set the exposure and speed. I've looked at others' photos, but not a lot (not by my standards) and admired what they did. I have certainly never taken a course, have not even consulted with someone else. I didn't even know that I had an eye until we went to Paris and to Greece in 1999. But editors seem to love them! They often accept every photo in the batch. I've been paid perhaps the highest compliment, namely, a vendor stealing one of my photos to put on a T-shirt. That settlement constitutes the only real money I've ever been paid for Art. My hit rate for photos is over 70%.

So, the problem? I value the poems more. I don't mind, much, if photos get rejected (perhaps because it is relatively infrequent) but I take it rather personally when poems get rejected. Most conflicting is when an editor rejects all the poems but takes (some or all or most of) the photos. Anyone got any non-anodyne corrective thoughts I might call on when my pictures are valued more than my words?

Facebook: Be sarcastic to me

For reasons quite unclear to me, a lot of young Indian facebook users have started liking my page for my book, The Book of Knots and their Untying. As far as I can tell, they are not (necessarily) purchasing copies from Amazon, and they are certainly not messaging me. I think it must be some kind of in-joke, the kind that is so dumb that it's funny. I used to do that sort of thing. When I was in college, I often attended the Saturday night movies in the chapel. The film board chose excellent movies:  La Dolce Vita, Casablanca, Repulsion, Metropolis. What my friends and I used to do was sit through the credits, and when "Grip" came up on the screen, holler enthusiastically and yell out the name of whoever the grip had been. It was stupid and pointless and harmless. Welcome, fans from India. I am proud to be part of your silly private cult.

The End of Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert Pirsig, author of the eloquent and passionate Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died yesterday at 88.  His book inspired and sustained me through the last two years of writing my dissertation. His notion of the power of Quality, of characteristic goodness as opposed to the solely utilitarian, supported me (and through me, many of my patients) in finding the savor in life. He was schizophrenic and off-and-on psychotic, but he achieved something great and unique in this book. His redemption at its end--his salvation--still brings sobs from me. Even if he was not able to sustain being free of the grief and tangle of psychosis, he achieved it long enough to produce this book. Honi soit qui mal y pense. May his struggling soul rest in peace.

Thoughts on Inauguration Day, January 20 2017. This does not violate Godwin's Law.

Cloud Rorschach

Back in the day when I worked as a psychologist, I performed psychological evaluations and
taught graduate students how to do the same. I know there is a bunch of fantasy out there about psychological testing and 'putting people in boxes' and such. Let me tell you that testing and evaluations can be individual, specific, and valuable.

Anyhow. The Rorschach Ink Blot Procedure was one of my favorites from early on. It has been the subject of a lot of research, and, if you stick to said research, you can draw reliable conclusions. Now, the Rorschach took off as a clinical instrument (that is, a procedure whose findings can be accurate and useful with troubled people) during WWII. As it happens, the Nuremburg Commission used psychological testing to have some independent measure of who the Nazi war criminals were, to understand better who they were dealing with. At the same time, testing was performed on rank-and-file Nazis in Denmark--self-identified active members of the Danish National Socialist Party who had not committed war crimes, but who had supported and furthered the Nazi activities. The history and outcomes of these assessments are detailed in an excellent book, The Quest for the Nazi Personality:  A Psychological Investigation of Nazi War Criminals, whose authors (Eric Zillmer, Molly Harrower, Barry Ritzler, and, Robert Archer) are extraordinarily competent and conscientious. It's a bit technical if you don't have the particular training, but it's a good read.

What were these outcomes? I will summarize. The Danish rank-and-file Nazis differed in some characteristic ways from non-Nazis. For instance, regarding problem-solving, they rarely possessed a dependable approach (e.g., "first things first" or "take the long view" or "practical answers" or "principled above all"). They tended to vacillate inefficiently, with great difficulty solving problems on their own. After such an inauspicious start, they tended to be easily influenced by others and then to adhere rigidly to approaches that had proved unsuccessful, rather than adapting their approach after failure. For all their expressed energy and outcry, they tended to be passive in the face of the actual problem.

Regarding their sense of self and of others, they were more likely to view themselves and others as objects to be manipulated and exploited or feared and hated (or all of these). They were not introspective and were likely to disregard feedback from real relationships--again, disregarding actual events and actual outcomes. Finally--and remember, this is from the Rorschach findings--independent of life events, they were likely to disavow responsibility for their actions and to see themselves as victims.

Does this describe any people you have seen or heard in the last year, interviewed on national television and radio at various rallies? Are you perhaps wondering how so many Americans can have voted for someone whose actions and statements were consistently--supply your preferred adjectives--without concluding that this person's claims were without supporting evidence?

Please understand:  I am not calling Trump or his supporters Nazis, except for the ones who call themselves Nazis. I am, however, struck (and discouraged) by certain similarities.

New Year's Eve memories--Sylvesterabend, actually

For the end of one year and the start of another, shadows seem right to me. I suppose it's the notion of what has been done, what exists, casting influence over what is to come. Or maybe just feeling my way into signs of what blocks the light and thereby shows itself.

In any case, short days, early darkness, and long hours indoors have been reminding me of the period of my life when I visited Germany as often as I could, trying to be with a boyfriend who had--let's call them complicated feelings about me.

Last Night in Munich

 I waltzed, as one ought to,

on New Year’s Eve, München.
My guy’s law school buddies
were throwing a party,
to Strauss, of course, Danube,
and Emperor and Roses.
I danced in mulberry,
in platform shoes, mini dress.
It was the Seventies.
Earth-tones were over.

First Erhardt waltzed with me,

because you’re supposed to,
although as a rule
he preferred to ignore me.
Then Hannes, the blind guy
who played killer chess
with an uncanny spatial sense,
something I thought about
as he embraced me
and held me too close.

My boyfriend drove taxi

on holidays, weekends,
and this was a big night
for all the big drinkers,
but he had been gone nights
for most of my visit,
then slept through the daytime,
and I hadn’t sat in a plane sixteen hours
to still sleep alone.

At dawn he returned,

woke me up for my flight home.
Weird night, he said.
Picked up this guy at the opera house
right after Beethoven’s Ninth let out. You know.
Had me drive him a hour out into the country,
to this totally dark village crossroads.
Then back into town. “Midnight yet?”
Told him no. “Go again,” says he.
Four hours with him
in a taxi on New Year’s,
‘til midnight and after
and those were the only words out of his mouth.

And those were the only words out of his mouth.