On Self-Deprecation

Another Thread from the Tapestries of Alfred Corn:

Alfred Corn

The prejudice of the larger society is often internalized in particular individuals. So that women doubt the value of themselves and other women; people of color become anxious about their own ability and value; Jews let themselves be affected by prevailing attitudes and become "self-hating"; and gay people develop homophobia. Our first instinct is to dismiss this psychological configuration as absurd. But I sense that it is actually a very strong current in human affairs, affecting all sorts of actions and decisions.

Carolyn Holmes Gregory, Ann Wood Fuller, Sher Brisebois and 18 others like this.

Comments

Carolyn Holmes Gregory Excellent post, Alfred. Something I think about pretty often, too.

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Art Kingston and so the circle continues. someone stick a pin it . I though wonder having watched briefly the news on the migrant situation in France. thinking what would come of the situation if all there were given the tools to create their own town.

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Alfred Corn African-American writer Zora Neal Hurston grew up in in Eatonville, FL, an entirely black community. So she never developed any form of self-prejudice. It was only later when the family moved to Jacksonville that she realized she was, for the larger society, Other.

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Art Kingston In my thinking. Perhaps a secondary situation as described where people share the same circumstance. Inequalities would not be present. Purely speculative of course.

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Shakila Khalje But the forces which create the "other" in us can be the fuel for personal, political, cultural, social etc. awareness and understanding. I could have lived a very peaceful, safe and nice life in Afghanistan and never would have suffered as well as en...See More

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Alfred Corn Shakila, I've come to see an enormous strength in you. What would have destroyed other individuals became, for you, a motivation for achievement.

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Shakila Khalje Thank you. Could not agree more. It can easily be the destructive and self-limiting force. I know first hand that too. It is a rich but tormented path...one becomes dauntingly aware of the deadly/life altering consequences and that is in itself a great motivator for choosing resilience/survival mode.

Doug Anderson I've come to understand self-hatred as the result of projective identification in childhood. Since as a child we have no self-knowledge and thus no ability to defend ourselves, we take on the projections of others and form our identity around them. If, say, we have a parent who is sexually repressed, they may project their own unfulfilled sexual desires into us and we then act them out. They then condemn us and we condemn ourselves. We are condemned to carry their shadow. We're scripted. Socially it works the same way. In the Double Soul of Black Folk, Dubois talks about the identities that are thrust upon people as well as who they really are.

Carolyn Holmes Gregory Doug, this is pretty accurate. Sociologists call the acting out that transpires "secondary deviance". I studied that phenomenon in graduate school.

Alfred Corn I can tell you've reflected on this at considerable length.

Jack Miller One way we deal with this internalized self-deprecation is to seek out models that affirm ourselves. As a teen I was deeply depressed by my homosexuality, but in college I read about every great homosexual I could. Doing so allowed me to gain self-respect for my difference; perhaps too much so as I began to see myself as a non-conforming Leonardo, Marcel Proust,Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Andre Gide, and Plato. There is nothing better than education and travel to heal such lack of self-esteem.

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Alfred Corn That's good, Jack. I don't see that every gay person has made the transition, though. Some of the most damning literary depictions of gay experience have been produced by gay men themselves. I just wonder if they realize.

Ida Jablanovec You were seeking your ego-ideal, an idealized version of you, that you that would be if you allowed yourself to be you. Society in general does not understand the damage they do when they shame people.

Raymond Saint-Pierre I learned early on in high school that the proscribed/forbidden books were not just the ones I wanted to read, but needed to read because they explained so much more! Poor Sister Ursula never knew what she let loose!

Ann Wood Fuller As a female and a Lebanese, which gave me the skin of a darker mother, I had so much self demoralization growing up. And the larger members of society, those beautiful Anglos, added to my self flagellation.
It was only when I came to a liberal college town that I sunk into a better comfort zone.

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Alfred Corn And look at you now! Confident and happy to be you.

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Ann Wood Fuller Shukrun Alfred, O but all the painful years I'm sure we all share..

Dragan Radovancevichttps://www.facebook.com/plantingpeace/photos/a.10152382457590494.982447.266206800493/10154489554550494/?type=3&theater

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Alfred Corn Says it all.

Alfred Corn And there is a paradox: extreme self-vaunting is actually a sign of low self-esteem. A "reaction formation" of compensatory feeling.

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Ann Wood Fuller I will
always remain humbled in the presence of angels, and gods!

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Eric Robinson i don't kno2w many Jews who "self-hate," just as I don't know many blacks who "doubt their worth." I do know of many of both who are tired being asked to demonstrate value to whites who, intellectually and socially, would never be in our league. That is more than tiresome

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Jefferson Carter It's called herd instinct.

Bill Tremblay ASPEN HALF IN SHADOW

It was born before dawn from a rhizome,
has lived, pinned to one place between
row houses and the ditch, for twenty years.

When it was eight a kid hacked it, never
thinking it could feel. Struck by lightning,
its bark ripped tip to root. It has stood

crooked ever after, its leaves dry, yellowed
before their autumn. Though sunlight tints its
top leaves bright, its lower hang about its scars.

Touched by breezes, its branches aspire to be
broad. Every move its limbs ever made was
toward the sky, toward its own sun.

If only it could get past its present, if it could
hear an Orphic lute and pull up its roots
and dance down the ditch. it might see who it is

and live among sunflowers by the hundreds.
Will the aspen be rooted there in that filtered
light, its boughs shadowed by the one it

stands beside, its grieving mother. wondering
if never seeing, never feeling, means safety,
means nothing to burn in Hell for?

Anthony DiMatteo "What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give to it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What is this national vice that permits loss of independence? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over?"- de la Boetie, On Voluntary Servitude.

Alfred Corn The problem is the more vexatious in that it is most often unconscious. The person isn't aware of the subtle ways in which the prejudice has been internalized.

Let me add this simple song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYlHI8Ghkg

Mardi Gras

Rex-- Photograph I made in New Orleans in the 1970s

In New Orleans, if not also in Rio or Venice, Mardi Gras (or Carnival) has become more a celebration of  Dionysus than of Christian excess. It is not just a matter of getting drunk and releasing stress. Mardi Gras is affirmative, a primal urge equal to anything rational or exalted. There is mysticism in a true Dionysian experience. One transcends the private, egoistic self to experience a bonding with others, a merger with the spirit of the time and the place. Getting high is no more than a way of letting go in order to be open to the higher awareness. Sex is essential to the experience-- the sine qua non of this fullness of being. 
My first Mardi Gras in New Orleans exceeded my wildest expectations. I was dazzled by all the people in masks, the music day and night, the dance in the parades of torch bearers and in the street of everyone around me. We were out until the wee hours the days leading up to Tuesday. We rode the Streetcar packed with happy revelers. We drank wine and made merry. We wore masks and costumes. There is nothing quite like wearing a mask and actually becoming the channel for spirits, taking on an added identity, transforming oneself. We embraced others. I slept in the arms of two lovely souls, one male, one female, simultaneously. We slept after our embraces, our warm sexual exchanges and merging. 
The experience is beyond some bit of material or carnal excess. It is not to be shed the next day in some sort of hungover repudiation. The return of the ordinary and the rational may be welcome. But Blake's insight that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom is burnished by the full experience of Mardi Gras. There is an ineffable wisdom of which I can only share a hint or a glimpse. If you want to understand Carl Jung, to know what he meant by the Shadow and the Collective Unconscious, Dionysus will show you The Way.

--Jameson

Mardi Gras Eve and Eve of the N.H. Primary

'Tis the night before Mardi Gras and I'd love to be in my shotgun apartment near the Garden District off St. Charles again. Such amazing Dionysian times they were in the 70s. How bored I am with the ever more hysterical news, comments, articles, and FB posts about this year-long election process. So much of the same hysteria I heard back when poor Hubert Humphrey ran for president and lost because of the onslaught from the Left and the onslaught from the Right. And here we are talking about "real change" once again, reliving the McGovern dream, the stand by your principles Nader, the idealist whose parents came from Lebanon and taught him Arabic. It isn't possible not to wonder what he must have thought as he watched W. Bush destroy the Middle-East. Nader lived in a fantasy world I think many on the Left still live in. Every time I read or hear the rabid attack they make on Hillary, the more I am inclined to vote for her. Hillary Clinton is not the enemy of humanists and ecologists, of those who believe in civil rights and the rampant destruction of the environment by corporations. Is she as liberal as Bernie, as much fun, as dynamic, as poetic? Hell no. She is pragmatic and serious. I have more faith in her moving the country more to the left than in Bernie's dreams of revolution. But I love them both and want either of them to champion the cause of stopping the insane candidates, the Republicans now in line to ruin the country and the planet. We can only stop someone far, far worse than Nixon or Bush from coming to power if we unite to support the Democrats. We need to do this on the Congressional level as well. After tomorrow (Mardi Gras), take off your mask of outrage, of hysteria, and support calm, sane, determined work to get Democrats elected nationwide. Please.

After-thoughts on the afterlife.

Yesterday's day long tribute to my father was more moving than I expected. There were many people at the Gamble Funeral Home, including my Aunt Sarah, my cousins, my friends, including Ben, John and Maggie, Kathy and Lisa, a sweet gay couple, Daryl and Brian, and even people from the AMBUCS.
The gathering at Kathy's was pleasant and sad simultaneously. It poured rain the whole day. A limo took us to the Beaufort National Cemetery, where soldiers stood at attention in the downpour. We took our places in a covered area, the huge bouquet of flowers from BFA standing in front of us. The soldiers folded the flag in an elaborate ceremony and presented it to Kathy, who sat between Lisa and grand-daughter Maggie, my father's only grand child. I was pleased she had come.
Then the soldiers gathered to fire guns in salute and another soldier played the farewell bugle. It was all very moving and we were all in tears.

The ceremony transcended the particular time and place, though the rain made it especially touching. We all knew it was just such a ceremony and meaning my father, himself, would want and be moved by. This is what he, Lt. Col. Miller stood for and believed in. He thought of himself as a patriot and a good citizen. He thought of himself, also, as a good father and husband, whether he achieved that in our eyes, for the moment, was unimportant. We honored him for what he believed in; that is what I found so moving.

For me, the ceremony was one of completion. In my mind he rose out of the skeletal frame and feeble mind of the past decade to become the whole man I knew as a child and young adult. I may know his failings, but yesterday I also knew what was good in him and recalled how proud I once was of him. I recalled the joy he felt in his office, of owning Savannah's oldest standing house. I recalled his love of art, his photography, the gallery he once had and which gave him joy. The joy he took in helping Kathy promote her own art for decades; all the shows and galleries, beginning with his office--

Christian-Camphor House



We didn't have much in common, my father and I, except our love of art, however different our viewpoints; our love of chess and of bowling; we shared his love of Stravinsky and Schopenhauer, and his love of Savannah. Interestingly enough, Dad also loved Marilyn Monroe both as an artistic subject of art and for her personality and looks. 

He shared this with the Gay Community, of course, and he was also supportive of gay relationships, especially Darryl's and mine. 
Kathy reminded us of his love of Paris, too, of his climbing out of the spires of Notre Dame for yet another take on the gargoyles.

Dad will live on in our memories. That is the way of things. With time the good ones will dominate if not cancel the not-so-good ones. Add to those the heartening glimpses of others at the service who shared memories of him. Farewell, Lt. Col. Jack Miller, husband, father, grandfather, brother, attorney, artist, art lover, and good citizen.





Dad with John and me

With his grand-daughter Maggie

With Love,
Jack

Dad-- a Tribute

My father died yesterday.What I wrote for his birthday last month (below)
 remains accurate. The official Obituary skims his life, leaving out what is most real. Of course I have fond memories, mostly of his life before 1970 when I graduated from college and Dad moved on to his second wife. As she once said, "Marriage is the triumph of habit over hate." Quite forgotten, it seems, are their early days together, he turning his historic law office and house into an art gallery, going to art shows, making her conversion from English teacher to artist complete. Now all that is left for his second wife is the ample Air Force retirement check she will have the rest of her life.

Going to his final funeral service and to the military salute that will  honor him means little to me. I think my father dies with only one person truly loving him and missing him, my good brother, John. For me, there are memories of travels together when I was a child, of playing chess, or bowling, of some letters we wrote, some of which I still have, while I was in college, graduate school, and living in the carriage house attached to his office. We had some good times; but he remained a mystery to me. His childhood as the son of a Jewish father, that he found out was not his biological father, his ambiguous religious feelings, his affairs and love life, his politics and love of the military remain unknown. He was always secretive and capable of telling lies, sometimes based on his prudishness. I do recall fondly his love of Stravinsky and his reading of Schopenhauer. It is sad how much he loved, and was so little loved in return.

94 -- But Not Counting (Dec. 10, 2015)

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

end of summer smile
shades made for the afterlife
fists pep pop tabletop

--Haiku Cola

Today is my father's 94th Birthday.

To celebrate in Savannah my brother is taking Dad for ice cream and a look at the nearby lake. Dad has no idea it is his birthday. My brother goes over each Saturday to persuade him to leave the bed and go for an afternoon outing that usually involves fast food ice cream.


It would be nice to say his life is comfortable. It would be nice to say he is well cared for. After all, has he not lived to the very ripe age of 94? Without home care. Without a bath or shower. Without food except for nutritious "shakes." Or, as my brother reports, gobbling up everything on his plate for Thanksgiving when there was real food to eat. Like Rip Van Winkle, he spends long hours in slumber; only he will not awake to a wondrous future.

Not that I have room to complain about his being ignored and left uncared for.  He and I have no relationship any longer to speak of. I see him on Saturdays on my I-Pad and he tells me to shave. Today, he was rather lively, saying he had peach ice cream and repeatedly surprised to hear it's his birthday.

W.S. Merwin's poem comes to me often when I think of my father:

(https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/yesterday)

Dad's quips include still the desire to chase after girls. Sometimes he sings for the I-pad.
The military man, the retired colonel is gone. So too the Savannah lawyer. He still mentions Kathy's name with love and devotion. But much as we might think, or wish, he does not see the world through rose colored glasses. He is a shade wearing shades. He has become the archetype of countless aged souls who are left to fade away, those around him daily expecting him to die, leaving him seldom washed (unless he can manage to shower himself), without medicine of any kind to help him, or anyone to encourage some minutes of exercise.

Yes, I feel sad for the old man I long, long ago played chess with. He is gone. And yet, he lives. How I love the irony of the photo of him and his umbrella with Munch's Scream. 

Dad has been most often the stoic, screaming only in irrational anger, never-- that I recall-- in pain or anguish. His smile has always included his defiance.

Obituaries

Lt Col JACK EVERETT MILLER, U. S. AIR FORCE (RET.)

Lt Col Jack Everett Miller, U. S. Air Force (Ret.), 94, of Savannah, Georgia and husband of Kathryn “Kathy” Woodard Garriss Miller, died peacefully Friday afternoon, January 29, 2016, at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Colonel Miller served as an Attorney-at-Law for over 40 years in Savannah, being a member of several local law firms before establishing his own firm on East Oglethorpe Avenue. He also served as Judge Advocate in his capacity as a member of the Air Force Reserve. Colonel Miller rose through the ranks from non-commissioned officer to Lieutenant Colonel in his decades of service to the military, including duties during the Korean War. As a businessman, Colonel Miller was a prominent member and chapter president of the American Business Club, now simply known as the AMBUCS, a charitable organization which helps children with disabilities. During the 90’s, after retiring as an attorney, Colonel Miller dedicated his time and energy to photography, and exhibiting his work in his own gallery, The New Wave Gallery, at City Market. He also assisted his wife, Kathy Miller, at Signature Gallery at City Market. When time allowed, he enjoyed fishing in the waters around Savannah, bowling with the AMBUCS League, and relaxing at home with his family.

Colonel Miller is survived by his wife, Kathy Miller; two sons, Jack Miller, Jr. and John Miller; a son-in-law, Darryl Gossett; his step-daughter, Lisa Garriss; his beloved grand-daughter, Margaret V. Miller; his dear sister, Sarah Deich; his brother-in-law, Henry Woodard, and several nieces and nephews.

The funeral service will be held at 10 o’clock Thursday morning in the chapel of Gamble Funeral Service. Interment, with full military honors, will be at 2 o’clock Thursday afternoon in Beaufort National Cemetery.

Remembrances: The Humane Society for Greater Savannah – 7215 Sallie Mood Drive, Savannah, Georgia 31406-3922.

Online Condolences

1. BethAline Smith

   January 31, 2016 at 1:04 pm

   My sincere condolences to Kathy Miller and the entire family. Mr. Miller was a fine, thoughtful, and creative man. I have happy memories of him and I pray for your peace as you grieve him.
2. Amy Barnes

   February 1, 2016 at 9:42 am

   Jack,
   I am so sorry to hear of your father’s passing. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
   Amy Barnes
3. William Rhode

   February 1, 2016 at 2:31 pm

   Kathy,
   You have my sincere condolences on the passing of Jack, he was a great man. I was honored to have known him. If I can help you in this difficult time, please let me know.
   Bill
4. Deborah Mueller

   February 2, 2016 at 11:33 am

   Kathy, so very sorry to learn of Jack’s death, my condolences to you and your family. He was a good man and I feel lucky to have known him.
5. Jan Bedol

   February 3, 2016 at 1:33 pm

   Jack,
   I was so interested to read about your father’s life. What an amazing person! I am keeping you and your family in my prayers.

   Fondly,
   Jan
6. Daryl & Brian

   February 3, 2016 at 7:44 pm

   It was a great pleasure meeting Jack and getting to know him. We shall miss him. Our thoughts go out to you Kathy, and the whole family.

Sunday-- Here Comes the Sun

Sunday and the sun is back in full swing, following last night's brilliant moon. The snow has come and gone except for a white splotch here and there in the ivy. Change is the way of things; might as well flow. My father gazes from his skeleton at my brother's I-Pad, "Jackie is on the phone?" he parrots John. He looks at my face not really getting any of it. What, I wonder keeps him going at 94, confined to the hospital or the rehab center, sometimes in fury, sometimes quietly eating the ice cream my brother patiently spoons him. Where, you may well ask, is my compassion?
The ubiquitous absurdity of life is what overwhelms me. We laugh at it over and over-- the nonsense pouring forth from Sarah Palin, the absurdity, way more serious, of imagining a President Trump. The absurdity of capitalism making an undeserving few rich and powerful while millions settle for so little, or fail to protest their degradation. The absurdity of meaningless work, like rolling the boulder up the mountain, only to see it roll back to the bottom. Bernie's dream of social democracy and the absurdity of its dismissal by millions as being tyranny of some sort.
I refuse to succumb to the absurdity, like the belief in a benevolent god or gods, or absurd trinity, or other such wishful thinking. Religions lead too often to the absurdity of killing those who don't believe, or to subjugating whole sectors of humanity. Freud was so brilliant in seeing such belief rooted in the trust of a child in his/her father, no matter the delusion, no matter the evil that father might perpetrate.
I can neither beat the absurd nor join it. So what is left? To climb up to the peak of the mountain without the boulder. Take a long look at the view, simultaneously beautiful and hideous, the sublime and the slime.
I recall the final verse of "Dover Beach," but wonder to whom or to what to be true. Friendship, perhaps, or nature in some pantheistic way: or is that, too, just being absurd? Of course there is always art, entertainment, novels, hedonistic pleasures, simple and not so simple, ice cream, hot chocolate, and best of all, music... 


Nina Simone Here Comes The Sun (listen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8ol8ufSRg

Another Year, 2016

Holiday in Savannah

(click the photos)

Winter Solstice, Christmas, New Years... anything to keep us from admitting the monotony of the repetition of short days and long nights. The holidays have become a self-fulfilling prophecy since each year the accumulating parties, festivities, travels, presents, and revelations of holidays past flood our memories. So we do our best to make something memorable happen again. We celebrate ridiculous gods and customs, dance around whatever our various embodiments of Stonehenge happen to be. For all that, the long nights may still hold dark thoughts, depression, the realization that our world, general and particular, is no paradise.
The demise of 2015 was no different. Facebook now holds many of the details of those days in my own and friends' lives. So let me here give a glimpse of the roller-coaster ride from mid-December to now. It was a good time to do some contemplation.
Around the Solstice, Will and I drove to Nashville by way of Starr's. Getting high on the porch and experiencing the bonding of the three of us rocked. Will and I engaged in our usual soul searching. Starr was a delight, as always. The trip from the Mountain to Nashville was all up and down. High up on the campus of Sewanee, we enjoyed the ambiance of that elevated realm of learning and intellect, as well as an ironic embrace of tradition in a very liberal arts world. I loved sharing the University and reminiscing of those extreme times circa 1968-70.

Sewanee

The trip to Nashville to see some bands was, for me, a tedious waste of time and energy. I don't think it was much better for Will who had to drive us all the way back to Atlanta from midnight until 4 AM. Tired, we were no longer engaged in enchanting dialog.





The East Room





For Christmas itself, Darryl and I spent a few days on another mountain at Amicalola Falls. We did have some good food in the Lodge there; however, the fog and the pouring rain and thunder obscured the scenery.  We did manage the short hike to the top of the roaring waterfall itself, plunging precipitously into the abyss created by the dense fog.


Amicalola Falls and Fog





Then came Savannah. My father fell and broke his hip on Christmas eve and ruined Kathy's plans for Xmas dinner the next day. After a successful operation to repair the fracture, Dad spend days in the hospital and went to a rehab/nursing home for "recovery" for the next 100 days. John and I spent several evenings with him in the hospital and I convinced the nurse to feed him ice-cream each night since he pushed away his dinner.

John and I managed to spend one warm, sunny day at Tybee walking on the beach around the pier and going for shrimp at Coco's Sunset Grill where, oddly, I managed to fracture a tooth. Dealing with the tooth and a new $1400. crown took up my first week of the New Year when Darryl and I returned to Druid Hills. I have to add that The Savannah Bed and Breakfast Inn disappointed us with a small, if pleasant, room  where we were bombarded every day there with construction on the terraces and patios. Still, I was able to visit there at different times with Buz, Ben, and Effie.

New Years's Eve, Darryl and I wandered over to neighbor Gerry's for the midnight celebration, fireworks, and champagne. The party set the perfect mood for taking on yet another year, one that will bring the madness of another presidential election.

Will (the lion) and Starr
Starr's Porch 

Will and Sewanee

  Jack and Effie, Savannah Bed And Breakfast Inn

Johnny Harris Xmas 2015

 Home Sweet Home 2016

Jack

Winter Kept Us Warm

With this Winters 70+  temperatures, 

T. S. Eliot's line from The Waste Land is literally true.

Five years ago I wrote the following:

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Solstice Approaches

Another winter solstice arrives in ten days, this time with a total lunar eclipse. Outside, beyond the screen porch, the skeletons of oaks reach up to a sky pale as death. It is impossible not to think of mortality on such a day. 

It is noon, Darryl is still asleep upstairs, and I have watched a Swedish film about the troubled life a a woman photographer from World War 1 through the Twenties. Art arises out of  hard life experiences. No doubt, as I look around rooms of art, the huge Larry Connatser painting in front of me that hung on my mother's wall for decades, two people conversing in a cubist world of turbulence; The Picasso lithograph of two figures confronting one another with masks; the Huichol jaguar with a peyote button on its forehead; even the sculpted Buddha protected by a cobra. Art penetrates into the heart of life.

What better time to make merry, to decorate evergreen trees, to drink eggnog, and believe in sweet baby gods. The moon will turn blood red this Solstice as the dark winter caresses the Northern Hemisphere. Thus goes the cycle of death and rebirth. The New Year follows with dancing and champagne.

May your holidays be sacred, may they give birth to the angels of your highest selves. 

Peace,

Jameson

94 -- But Not Counting

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

end of summer smile
shades made for the afterlife
fists pep pop tabletop

--Haiku Cola

Today is my father's 94th Birthday.

To celebrate in Savannah my brother is taking Dad for ice cream and a look at the nearby lake. Dad has no idea it is his birthday. My brother goes over each Saturday to persuade him to leave the bed and go for an afternoon outing that usually involves fast food ice cream.


It would be nice to say his life is comfortable. It would be nice to say he is well cared for. After all, has he not lived to the very ripe age of 94? Without home care. Without a bath or shower. Without food except for nutritious "shakes." Or, as my brother reports, gobbling up everything on his plate for Thanksgiving when there was real food to eat. Like Rip Van Winkle, he spends long hours in slumber; only he will not awake to a wondrous future.

Not that I have room to complain about his being ignored and left uncared for.  He and I have no relationship any longer to speak of. I see him on Saturdays on my I-Pad and he tells me to shave. Today, he was rather lively, saying he had peach ice cream and repeatedly surprised to hear it's his birthday.

W.S. Merwin's poem comes to me often when I think of my father:

(https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/yesterday)

Dad's quips include still the desire to chase after girls. Sometimes he sings for the I-pad.
The military man, the retired colonel is gone. So too the Savannah lawyer. He still mentions Kathy's name with love and devotion. But much as we might think, or wish, he does not see the world through rose colored glasses. He is a shade wearing shades. He has become the archetype of countless aged souls who are left to fade away, those around him daily expecting him to die, leaving him seldom washed (unless he can manage to shower himself), without medicine of any kind to help him, or anyone to encourage some minutes of exercise.

Yes, I feel sad for the old man I long, long ago played chess with. He is gone. And yet, he lives. How I love the irony of the photo of him and his umbrella with Munch's Scream. 

Dad has been most often the stoic, screaming only in irrational anger, never-- that I recall-- in pain or anguish. His smile has always included his defiance.

Death and Eroticism

We learn about guns early on.
Some learn about hate at the same time.

Shall I name those in my life who have died by guns

or by violence?

"Those not busy being born are busy dying."

Thanatos and Eros dominate our lives. Take TV. Sunday, I watched The Affair, Homeland, and The Leftovers. All three plunge into death, sex, and their inextricable connection.Smashing walls in desperation or despair over sex and/or death is found often, as in The Leftovers or in the season finale of Doctor Who, consumed with death-- both pictured here.

Oh, it goes beyond mere TV shows. What Shakespeare play or sonnet has not dwelled substantially on death and sex? What explains the mass killings of terrorists more than their obsession with unconventional or non-conformist sex, the freedom of women, and death to infidels? Could it be that Freud was correct in his assessment of our impotence before these urges? Wasn't Marx correct in his decrying the danger of religion, it's fervor, its obsession with death, its life-denying dictates upon sexuality, its violence ? Its use by those in power to stay there ? We cannot, it appears, wall out our wayward urges or keep away the head-hunting, murderous hordes of lost souls.

And I haven't even mentioned American Horror Story.


You've Got to be Taught How to Hate


With Love,

Jack