Merry Christmas to all my friends, estranged friends, strange friends, non-friends, and enemies.
Merry Christmas to my patients and co-workers, with whom I am enmeshed, thankfully.
Merry Christmas to my prosecutors, who don't know me and whom I don't know: Corey Smith and Bobby Stinson. Let's get together for a beer some time soon!
Merry Christmas to all the FBI agents and GPD officers who might have thought they got to know me that day of the raid in my office.
I am at home with my family today. It is the one day I am fairly certain the government won't knock on my door (they only have to wait fifty seconds, by law, before breaking it down), haul me away in handcuffs, read my Miranda rights (surely, they'd do that much!), and pitchfork me like so much manure into a 6 x 9-foot cell. For some reason or another. I believe, at that point, they'd actually have to tell me what their charges are--but who knows? Maybe there is a new leniency for the government I don't know about, a statute hiding undercover somewhere, another excuse to keep me in the dark, even in jail. It happens.
We are making Christmas cookies: cut-outs of little trees, bells, snowmen. We're having fruitcake and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We're having a talk about the idea of renewal, as though my sons--who have been born into an acquisitive, barely-conscious, skating-on-the-surface-of-things generation--might be interested in the idea of inventing or reinventing themselves. It's my theme, these days, anyway, and it's a Christmas theme.
One of the great things about leaving your station in life and changing your identity--making new friends, taking a new job, or altering routines--is that you can withdraw from the projections stacked onto your persona like so many pallets perpetually loaded with stuff put there by other people. Every interaction with others consists of projections, the ideas we have about one another--which are really images of ourselves that we can only acknowledge by seeing them in other people--and relating to them through others.
Changing your life allows you to take on fresh projections, or decline to take them on. In your new life, new people project different demeanors onto you, and you can become someone else by picking and choosing the personality traits that feel correct.
At a time when many of the projections onto me are demonic (I'm a criminal, I'm a government suspect, I'm a liar, cheater, swindler, fraud...) or larger-than-life (I'm a healer, the hand of God, a philanthropist, an empathic presence, a skilled technician) I fantasize about escaping from all projections, because none of them is accurate, or me. The projections are too many weighty overcoats piled on top of a somewhat fragile reality.
Christmas, in the dead of winter, is the occasion for the birth of a new self-image.
How can I bring out of the depths of my being that which has been neglected, over the years, in the interests of serving the exigencies of life and the needs of others? Whatever that is, which has yet to emerge, can't be taken away by government agents, or jailers, or spectators.
No one can take away my possibilities, or yours. Not really.
Merry Christmas to my patients and co-workers, with whom I am enmeshed, thankfully.
Merry Christmas to my prosecutors, who don't know me and whom I don't know: Corey Smith and Bobby Stinson. Let's get together for a beer some time soon!
Merry Christmas to all the FBI agents and GPD officers who might have thought they got to know me that day of the raid in my office.
I am at home with my family today. It is the one day I am fairly certain the government won't knock on my door (they only have to wait fifty seconds, by law, before breaking it down), haul me away in handcuffs, read my Miranda rights (surely, they'd do that much!), and pitchfork me like so much manure into a 6 x 9-foot cell. For some reason or another. I believe, at that point, they'd actually have to tell me what their charges are--but who knows? Maybe there is a new leniency for the government I don't know about, a statute hiding undercover somewhere, another excuse to keep me in the dark, even in jail. It happens.
We are making Christmas cookies: cut-outs of little trees, bells, snowmen. We're having fruitcake and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We're having a talk about the idea of renewal, as though my sons--who have been born into an acquisitive, barely-conscious, skating-on-the-surface-of-things generation--might be interested in the idea of inventing or reinventing themselves. It's my theme, these days, anyway, and it's a Christmas theme.
One of the great things about leaving your station in life and changing your identity--making new friends, taking a new job, or altering routines--is that you can withdraw from the projections stacked onto your persona like so many pallets perpetually loaded with stuff put there by other people. Every interaction with others consists of projections, the ideas we have about one another--which are really images of ourselves that we can only acknowledge by seeing them in other people--and relating to them through others.
Changing your life allows you to take on fresh projections, or decline to take them on. In your new life, new people project different demeanors onto you, and you can become someone else by picking and choosing the personality traits that feel correct.
At a time when many of the projections onto me are demonic (I'm a criminal, I'm a government suspect, I'm a liar, cheater, swindler, fraud...) or larger-than-life (I'm a healer, the hand of God, a philanthropist, an empathic presence, a skilled technician) I fantasize about escaping from all projections, because none of them is accurate, or me. The projections are too many weighty overcoats piled on top of a somewhat fragile reality.
Christmas, in the dead of winter, is the occasion for the birth of a new self-image.
How can I bring out of the depths of my being that which has been neglected, over the years, in the interests of serving the exigencies of life and the needs of others? Whatever that is, which has yet to emerge, can't be taken away by government agents, or jailers, or spectators.
No one can take away my possibilities, or yours. Not really.
Sounds to me like you had a serious pensive day.
ReplyDeleteI like the part of a new beginning,, I hope the people
you had these interactions with were really paying
attention. I WOULD HAVE BEEN TAKING NOTES.
Some of your comments have been ever present on my mind for a long time. I would have ulcers by now and maybe even a nervous break-down.
But you are a very strong woman and with the help of GOD you will persevere. Not only survive, "YOU WILL COME OUT AHEAD, MAYBE EVEN A BETTER PERSON" IF THAT IS EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE.
YOU SAY A LITTLE PRAYER FOR ME, AND I WILL SAY A LITTLE PRAYER FOR YOU.
GOD BLESS