Got a Headache?

Just dipped into Therapy Today, in particular a view from the couch. This lady expressed her frustration at being told she’s angry when she wasn’t feeling angry. I surmise the therapist had spotted that she was and wanted to offer her enlightenment of the fact. And of course when she refuted his suggestion it somehow constituted proof he was right. There’s a sort of temptation to state the outside obvious as a therapist, rather like someone with a hatpin stuck in her head complaining of a headache. “Ah I see your problem, you have a hatpin stuck in your head, here let me take it out.” When he does she reaches in her bag and sticks in another one. Therapy’s not that easy. But when the therapist became alongside the lady she felt some benefit. At the risk of taking this metaphor too far, if he’d stuck a hatpin in his own head and said, “God this really hurts! You’re good at this, what should I do?” she might respond with, “I know, let’s stop doing it.” I know that for me remembering my own perceptions count for nothing on someone else’s internal map would be virtually impossible. I’d be a rat up a drainpipe offering advice and guidance, and generally giving vent to my amazing powers of insight and awareness that I’m so proud of possessing. So don’t come to me with your hatpin problems, I’ve got a headache.

Old Langsyne, 2013.

Having begun to draw my pension this year it’s only likely the world will end in 2012. ‘Sorry’ seems insufficient somehow. I know there’s global warming, food shortages from the weather in spasm, economic melt down, the end of the Mayan calendar, and Nostra fucking Damus, but the truth is my pension. I’m really really sorry. And then there’s a high probability of a meteorite impact from the galaxy going into a flat disc orientation. The last time this happened was thousands of years ago and it toasted the dinosaurs. Oh and the weather and seismic activity we’re experiencing at the moment is typical of an imminent polar shift. That’s where the north/south magnetic poles, and presumably a fair proportion of the earth’s core, swop ends in just a few days inducing mega tides and even worse weather. And then there’s catastrophic rises in sea levels along with a scarcity of fresh water as water tables get lower and lower. Honestly I’m so so sorry. I mean if I’d known I’d have just taken the tax free lump sum. I’m going to buy a lottery ticket in January just to make sure. If I win, well it’ll be ‘good by everybody it’s been nice knowing you.’ But looking on the bright side, Happy Christmas, and here’s to us all singing Old Langsyne in 2013.  

Christmas Games.

So Christmas approacheth, time to dig up your nuts etc. And here’s some Christmas games. We played them last night for thespian warm up. It requires around six people. OK designate a settee or two chairs as a park bench where the first player sits and assumes the role of an unsuspecting member of the public. A second player joins him/her and assumes a personality with which to join the first player in conversation. After a few minutes the first finds a reason to leave and a third brings a new personality, and so on. For example last night a player joined and began to interview the other. “It says here you….” “Yes I’m used to working as a member of a team and …” “and your IT skills?” “Well I’m fine with Word, Excel, oh and Power Point.” “So how do you think you’ll cope with the lions?” “I, er, I mean I, er, well I have a dog.” “Good.” “I, er ….” Etc. There followed an upset little girl, Father Christmas, a paranoid schizophrenic, a recalcitrant husband and a really annoying schoolgirl, and others. It’s a bit of a stretch to begin with but great fun when you get into it. In a similar vein two people stand up and converse. As soon as either one mentions another person they are replaced by a third being that other person. It’s whoever fancies a go that steps forward. Pretty soon if someone mentions a dog, the dog appears, then a house or later in my case a platform. Pandemonium sets in and changes become more rapid. At one point a woman was talking to her dog and mentioned a cat. We then had a dog and a cat, which as well as provoking a fight left us in a bit of a stalemate seeing as neither couldn’t talk. Having said that being a platform didn’t stop me wittering on about being taken for granted and being stepped on, which incidentally Maggie wasn’t meant to be taken literally. So there you have it. Given half a chance we can all be incredibly talented like those people in ‘Who’s Line is it anyway?’ Enjoy.

Fluffy Tails and Tits.

So Mothermouse has stocked the bird table up with Christmas Spirit Nuts. A pair of bluetits is waiting their turn as a busy squirrel is stuffing as many nuts as he can in pockets and pouches. Actually he’s also pushing nuts off the side of the table to his mate below who is bagging them up so a third can rush off and burry them around the garden like an advent calendar. Such is the power of fluffy tails that we go ‘ahh.’ But now I’m suspecting the third is an incomer as the bagger has just chased him off. Which poses the question, has the news of abundant Christmas nuts travelled too far a-field? Mothermouse suggests it may be a visiting Christmas relative. Well if he is he’s already outstayed his welcome and it’s barely December. The tits wait patiently. There seems a rich web of morality in this little scene worthy of Dickens but I can’t fathom it. We go to Sainsburys for a Christmas tree. There people with a firm hand on their nuts, pardon the unfortunate simile, buy their Christmas indulgencies and scurry with bags to the car park while unseen in bushes tits, oops another one, wait for charitable droppings or scamper off with someone else’s fresh found bag while they’re not looking. This is reminding me of a lovely little book I’ve just read about old American Indian ways, how nature reflects us in sustenance and conflict. However much I can’t really connect, not having a corpuscle of American Indian in me, I share the same certain sadness of losing a relevance and reverence for nature’s lore; that we are still just scurriers of nut and timid tits, rooting boars and thoughtless chickens however our minds dress up supremacy. How they all have their turn and give leeway and proceed in some supremely gracious efficiency that we have forgot. In surplus they reproduce, in debt they die cold with a peaceful forgotten hunger. There is little complication. So the Indians are sad their ancient ways are dying out, romantically forgetting they used to loathe and kill each other before they had a common enemy, and in that reflective sadness is their demise. They have become old and nature knows what has to be done with the old. It knows only new growth on the burial. But new man, the reaper and sufferer? We have much to remember of what nature already knows. For example, she has never found a need to create politicians.

The invisible Pig.

I’m considering becoming ‘The Great Inviso’, the first ever magician to work with invisible objects. I’m still working on my first trick, to make an invisible wine bottle disappear. You laugh but it’s not as easy as it sounds. First I have to find it, which isn’t easy. And then I’d have to carry all this stuff including a baby pig to performances along with my beautiful, scantily clad assistant, Camilla. Well I wouldn’t carry her; she’d have to buy her own bus ticket. But I’m excited about the tricks with the invisible baby pig, once we’ve caught the bloody thing. This will be the crescendo of the act. First I place it on a small table; I’m going to have to put it in a trance and make it believe it’s watching Match of the Day so it stands still. Then I’ll slowly walk in front of it and, vwala! It changes colour to red, back the other way and it’s blue. I plan on doing this several times until the applause begins to dip. Then the piece of resistance, I or we, me and the audience together, will attempt to levitate the pig up off the table. There will be silence and complete concentration and a waggling of hands rising slowly up accompanied by the same in sound. As it lands back down on the table I will grab the pig and leave with Camilla to rapturous applause. Oh I forgot one thing, sorry, this must all seem nonsensical without it. I need to get a member of the audience to touch the invisible wine bottle to confirm that it’s there. Without that this would all look a bit stupid. This is where the practice comes in. I will ask for a volunteer to close her eyes and feel a real bottle and pace my hand on her shoulder as I confirm, “you can feel the bottle,” then say to the audience, “So lets see Mary if you can feel the (invisible) bottle.” This has to be done precisely. I will say loudly, “So lets see Mary”, mumble the “if”, and then place my hand on here shoulder again as I say directly to her, “you can feel the bottle.” I may repeat it in a different way but again place my hand on here shoulder as I say the phrase. Finally as her fingers approach the invisible bottle I will repeat the hand and phrase. If it works she will be amazed to find she can. I will make it disappear and move her hand through the place where it was and she’ll confirm she can’t feel it. Total confirmation that what you’re not seeing is believing. It’s called anchoring. Of course I won’t tell the audience there’s no such thing as an invisible pig that changes colour; that would be stupid. 

9-11-2011.

It’s been ten years and three months since 9/11, enough time to take a considered view. I remember all the conspiracy theories at the time that were subsequently disproved, or at least ignored by the official investigation. What I’m left with is collateral issues from accepted facts. In the days leading up to 9/11 there were highly unusual put to call options specifically and only in the companies affected by the attack. This, as well as being a strong sign of insider trading, suggests prior knowledge of it. An FBI supervisor reported a month before the attack that they had discovered a plot to fly planes into the twin towers which was ignored, and other agents felt thwarted by the government in their investigations. Eye witness accounts of strange sounds and dust in the building in the months before, and firemen hearing a sequence of bangs prior to the collapse, also of people being warned not to go to work that day. And for me the strangest of all; the collapse of building 7. This was not hit by a plane or damaged by the collapses. Later in the day there was a fairly insignificant fire on one of the floors and it collapsed at around 5.30pm in a way typical of a building ‘being pulled’ i.e. purposely demolished. A videoed interview with the owner of all seven Trade Centre buildings, a Mr Silverstein, shows him saying, “so we decided to pull it.” He later explained what he meant to say was ‘we decided to pull the people out of it just in case it collapsed.’ The trouble with 9/11 is there’s enough smoking guns to equip an army. But whose army?

Simpler in the Real World.

My medicine name, though I’m not very medical, is Happy Beaver. I love it; it works on so many levels. I’m currently reading a book about the adventures of a ‘shamanic thrill seeker’ under the tutelage of a shamanic teacher called Raven. Notice they’re never called things like Stiff Mouse, they’re obviously higher up the romantic food chain. Raven knows stuff. He knows about you even when you don’t know it yourself, and so has the incredible facility to tell you what you will know even before you knew it. Anyway this lady has an incredible dream, a lucid dream, where she leaves her body sleeping in her bed and walks into the night. This is where it gets incredible. In this half state of being she is kidnapped along with two other pregnant ladies and driven to a deserted ranch where she finds a room full of kidnapped expectant ladies. Through the power of lucid dreaming she has learnt from Raven she moves to another room full of babies and bats and realises an evil sorcerer is stealing babies to feed to bats that will fly out and do nasty things. Then to escape she becomes paper-thin and passes through a crack in the door using her powers of incredible lucidity. Now back at the motel Raven knows all this before she tells him. He generously awards her a 1:1 draw on account of escaping but not overpowering the evil sorcerer. She is understandably shaken up by this experience and asks if this happening in dreamland or in reality. Raven who knows, knows it is really happening and knows the guy and his whereabouts in Texas. They talk about the sorcerers power and what ceremonies and teachings will be required so that next time she meets him in her lucid dreaming she will be better equipped to overcome his dastardly powers. Now call me an unimaginative realist if you like but wouldn’t shopping him to the FED be a better idea? I mean stealing babies to feed to bats must be illegal in the US surely. It seems not, sorcerers must do things sorceristically. My interpretation, Raven take note, is that this lady, in trying to give birth to a new life for herself, has subconsciously realised her ‘birth’ has been kidnapped by an unpleasant ever-so-plausible know-it-all called Raven. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, dick-head.