Timeless

“We cannot apply our notion of time to the unconscious. Our consciousness can conceive of things only in temporal succession, our time is, therefore, essentially linked to the chronological sequence. In the unconscious this is different, because there everything lies together.”
~Carl Jung

Facebook meme:
“Sorry I just saw your text from last night,
Are you guys still at restaurant?”
~ Thomas Lélu, Lacan Circle of Australia

I chuckled upon my first reading of this meme, my initial reaction being that the text writer was still waking up and had not yet recovered a sense of time—past versus present. You know, that foggy haze we sometimes wake up with, being confused as to where we are and what time it is.

However, just maybe this fictional text message is more complex than meets the eye, suggesting the way we sometimes hold on to images, thoughts and memories that continue to affect us, as if they are timeless and continue to exist or haunt us in the present, like an echo of something that seems as real today as it was yesterday. Dreams often operate on this level, combining images of the past and present from different places; the dream depicting them as occurring at the same time and in the same space.

Some psychologists and physicists believe that everything is happening in the here and now, and it is only our minds that divide them into past, present, future, and separate spaces.

Are time and space convenient illusions? What about cause and effect? Try to imagine a lifetime of relationships, people, things, places, events and situations existing together in the here and now; no need to separate any of it into past, present, future, spatial distances, or causes and effects. Impossible?

The screw

You’ve been out of work for a while, unemployed because of layoffs. Your wife is getting on your last nerve, pressuring you to do something productive, maybe fix the broken slats in the fence, or set up the vegetable garden she’s been asking for since Desert Storm…anything that shows a bit of initiative, maybe impressing the neighbors. You know, keeping up with the Joneses thing.

So, she finds this prefab gazebo at the home improvement store; excited by the sales pitch of a quick and easy install, she says, “Even you can do this, hon! The sales guy said it is a very quick and easy assembly.” Despite being a thinking kind of man, rather than a hands-on, can build anything kind of guy, like every husband on your block, you go ahead and purchase the gazebo.

After assembling the gazebo, you notice an extra screw in the plastic bag that held the other screws. You check and recheck the assembly directions and screw holes several times. Nothing seems to be amiss. Every screw is screwed into a screw hole, except for this extra screw.

What is with the extra screw? you think to yourself.

Continue reading “The screw” →

Final hour

Blood is everywhere on this final hour of my final night. The ground gurgling from it; denuded trees drizzling with it—like red maple syrup; and strewn body parts being drained of it—gravity at work. Nature’s dramatization of the end in progress, a mental spectacle of death’s metaphor.

Red streaks the sky with a neon fluorescence; plumes of black smoke twisting into funnels, crisscrossing the expanse, headed eastbound along invisible rivers of wind. Concussive blasts multiply along the horizon, shattering my brain; the last stands of the living, dying, and hanging in limbo; the resilience of mind over matter, to observe one’s mind on self-destruct—its last hurrah!

Continue reading “Final hour” →

Field trip

The lot of us roamed the state park, back and forth, like zombies searching aimlessly. We’d keep going until Liz – the activities coordinator – blew the whistle, and then we’d scramble back to the bus.

Lenny and Chip, the OCD sufferers, zigzagged the grounds in convoluted patterns, understood by them alone. Reminded me of the football patterns I ran with my mates behind Foley field, about 40 years earlier. The difference being that we never crossed into each other’s lanes in those days. But, Lenny and Chip crashed into each other at one point, almost coming to fists over it, before arriving at a compromise with my assistance.

“Avoidance is the key,” Lenny told me after calming down.

“Yep, stay in your own lanes, and all will be good,” I said. And I gave him a thumbs up. He smiled, gave me a pat on the back and continued his zigzag patterns. I felt validated from the pat.

Continue reading “Field trip” →

Casual disappointment

Question: Why is casual sex so disappointing?

Answer: Because it is casual!

More often than not, the casual folks are disappointed when they don’t receive a stellar performance from their partner. There is no meaning beyond the performance, hence the emphasis on bedroom skills – a compensation for the lack of emotional intimacy.

Thus, if casual is your thing, then stock up on the Viagra, get in tip-top physical shape, and study a copy of “The Joy of Sex.” Is that still in print?