Things to Do While Drinking Coffee #6

Live from the High Point Cafe, West Mt. Airy, State of Mild Post-Yoga Retreat Malaise

...one thing I’ve learned is that the professional therapy world is pretty weird...like, the way people come to essentially the same gig from so many directions...medical school for psychiatrists, different kinds of degree programs for psychologists and social workers, rabbinical school, divinity school, yoga teacher training, or just working one’s way through volunteer social service work...for the writing or poetry therapy angles often English or creative writing or theatre degrees...meaning, apparently, I’m already qualified....then, if the gig we’re talking about is simply listening to people with empathy and understanding, it’s probably an area where nobody truly has expertise, though we all do, to varying degrees....

if you realize you are not there, that means you are there
Chogyam Trungpa

...reading these books about using writing to work through trauma can be difficult...since it’s hard to stay objective in thinking about these write about your most traumatic experience kinds of exercises...I’ve written about that stuff, but probably not enough...ever fearing, perhaps, that death is in the details...

I chose poetry and the metaphor not for the love of mystery or elusiveness but because that comes closer to the way we experience things deep down. Explicitness and directness cannot be applied to our psychic life. They are not subtle enough.
Anais Nin

...one book I stopped reading took this incredibly dry, anal-retentive text-book approach to using poetry as therapy...I thought, jeezus, anybody who can write a book like this has no business using poetry for anything...then, at one point, my attention was caught by a bit on working with prisoners...until I read something like the purpose of working with prisoners is to teach them to conform to society’s norms...and thought that might be your purpose, buddy...

Won’t you recognize us? We’re everything you hate...
Lou Reed

...when I tutor recovering addicts in preparation for taking the GED, I don’t hide the fact that I think that the GED, like all other standardized tests, is awful...particularly in the case of interpretive questions...basically if you think too much about the passage or the questions...or, worse yet, use your imagination...think at all about the possibilities of meaning, rather than going for the easiest, essentially rote answer...you’re going to get it wrong...so I tell them: since these tests supposedly are about seeing how smart you are, you’d think they’d reward you for thinking about things, using your imagination or creativity, but in fact they punish you for that...nonetheless, as these tests are, unfortunately, important in our society at this time, it’s necessary to learn their rules...learn them, that is, while knowing that they’re stupid, and ultimately test very little other than one’s ability to follow rules....the important thing is to know what society’s norms are...learn how to use them rather than being used by them...

Things To Do While Drinking Coffee #4

Should I pursue a path so twisted?
Patti Smith

A general rule for dealing with mental health professionals: never go to a shrink who doesn’t readily acknowledge that she’s at least as fucked up as you are.

I use the feminine pronoun above not to be PC, but because most women I know are more willing to acknowledge how fucked up they are than most men I know. Admittedly, a lot of men take pride in how fucked up they are—as do a few women—but they probably don't make the best therapists, either. So, another rule: if you walk into a shrink’s office, and the guy’s sitting there starting at the wall saying “duuuude, I am sooooooo fucked up," you should probably turn around and go.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharlal Nehru

For the most part, I disagree with the kind of gender essentialism expressed in that last paragraph. When you start seeing stuff like “men are from Uranus and women look really hot in pink” all over the place, it should be taken as a sign that traditional notions of gender difference are in some amount of trouble and it scares people shitless. At the same time, I don’t really think the story about the guy with the beard and the female reproductive system having a baby means much at all, except maybe something about media shamelessness and the willing gullibility of people like me who can't stop ourselves from reading about a pregnant man. Hell, upon returning from a week-long self-imposed news blackout in Mexico last spring, that was the first thing I saw.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Anaïs Nin

Then, at that point, it was preferable to the accusations of racism and sexism lobbing back and forth between the Clinton and Obama camps. Right now, of course, a lot of of the accusations flying around are about politicians acting like politicians. While I find most of the shifts Obama’s made lately disappointing, in the end it’s probably good for a lot of starry eyed progressives to have to acknowledge that he’s a politician rather than a liberal messiah or reincarnation of Martin Luther King.

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?" "Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

(A refreshing counter-story to the better known and far more cynical “you knew I was a scorpion/snake” one, found on somebody else’s blog) (http://musingsfrommara.blogspot.com/).

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Steven Wright

*yet more thanks and praises to the High Point Cafe, West Mt. Airy, State of Wondrous Befuddlement, USA*