Month: November 2023

Dear Diary: The Body Will Have Its Due

Posted on by sudrakarma

I woke up too early for a Saturday due to another compensation dream, my psyche’s attempt to balance my conscious life of celibacy with unconscious expressions of sexual intimacy. They’ve been getting more frequent and intense lately.

My body knows what it wants, needs, hungers for…but it’s not to be, so upon awakening it turns into resentment of my asexual wife.

Honestly, after 3 1/2 years, I thought I was past all this…this hormonal hysteria. A part of me wants to believe my wife’s rationale that, at 58, I’m old enough to be done with it once and for all, to put it behind me. We’ve settled into a dull but relatively content routine so well you could set a clock by it. We even have a running joke – “Happy Groundhog Day.”

But now I realize, with the help of my unconsciousness, that i’m just suppressing my desire to maintain my own sanity. After all, the body contains all the other elements of the psyche; the ego, the personas, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious (the instincts), the shadow and anima/animus. The body gets the last word and the body will have its due – in the waking world or its complement.

I suppose I should be happy my libido’s not entirely dead yet and its energy can, perhaps, be put to another use. Even the suffering that comes with deep, unfulfilled yearning is better than the vapid dullness of depression and its ruminations on the diminishing returns of aging.

Posted on by sudrakarma

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Having not seen much of the world, it’s hard to say, but topography is important to me since I grew up in a “valley”. It’s not much of a valley, really; i’ve seen much better valleys in Kentucky. There are some great foothills in Kentucky.

But nothing saps my soul more than flat, featureless vistas like the one where i’m currently working; nothing but strip-malls, cinder-block industrial buildings, and dated-looking apartments. Blech.

That said, I’m also keenly aware of the saying, “Wherever you go, there you are”, that is, you’re still stuck with your particular thought patterns wherever you may find yourself.

But who you associate with also plays a big role in who you are in any given locale over time. You can’t help but become a part of the landscape yourself. So I’d like to be somewhere that takes me away from who I am now.

Posted on by sudrakarma

Who is the most famous or infamous person you have ever met?

Shortly after the premier of Star Wars Episode IV, we went to the Autorama at Cobo Hall in Detroit. That’s the show with all the customized cars like The Batmobile, The Weeniemobile, and if memory serves there was a car built around a telephone booth (you see, kids, before there were smart phones…oh never mind. How ‘bout a Tardis? No?) and various other automotive novelties and classic cars.

But there were always celebrity signings at these things, just like there are today, and this one featured none other than Luke Skywalker, that is, Mark Hamill.

Now, at that time, “Star Wars” wasn’t the vast multi-billion dollar franchise it is today, and most of us had no idea why it was called “Episode IV” at that time (future movies were still a rumor at that point) but it was the coolest space movie to come out since “2001; A Space Odyssey”. Everybody talked about how cool the special effects were, even though they’re humorously primitive by today’s standards.

So, I forced my dad to stand in line with me for about an hour, me clutching my glossy 8×10 of the movie hero, hoping to get a word and an autograph, which I did.

“What’s your name?” Luke asked?

“Eric”, I said sheepishly.

“Oh, I have a cousin named Eric,” he said while scrawling a signature with a sharpie. He smiled at me, flipped the photo back around and slid it back. And that was that.

I’ve long since lost that photo, likely the victim of one of my mother’s occasional cleaning purges, or maybe a move or two of my own boxes of nostalgia, but I still have the memory of meeting the hero from Tatooine at Cobo Hall.

Pod-Busting

Posted on by sudrakarma

What podcasts are you listening to?

I just finished listening to an episode of “On The Media”, one of my favorite podcasts out of WNYC, that takes a deep dive on how the media covers various topics of the day.

This particular episode took a slightly different bent for the second half of the episode, recounting the beginning, the boom, and now the first bust of the podcast world itself.

Sadly, it seems the long-form reporting podcasts that cost real money to produce are losing out to more cost-efficient podcasts featuring celebrities just blabbing about the topic du jour with their celebrity friends. Blech.

That really bums me out because, like everything else under capitalism, quality products will always lose out to higher margins.

Oddly, while NPR and Spotify and others are laying-off their podcasting staff, the podcast world is actually expanding. But more does not necessarily mean better – think of what “reality television” did to network TV. Or even MTV for that matter.

I’m really glad i’ve been able to enjoy the heyday of podcasts over the last twenty years because it’s may never to be the same again. I’ve seen great podcasts come and go over that time.

On my current list are: On The Media, Hidden Brain, Radiolab, Deconstructed, Intercepted, Living Myth, Team Human, Speaking Of Jung, This Jungian Life, New Books In Psychoanalysis, and the DIY Musicians Podcast.

Dream: Impossible House

Posted on by sudrakarma

I think I was working in an apartment complex somewhere doing maintenance or restoration. I had an open area outside, maybe under a carport, where I had dragged items from various jobs that needed repairs to keep them organized.

Suddenly, I was flying with someone…more like floating with someone. I never did see who it was, but I was being led high over a “neighborhood” full of impossibly built, impossibly lavish homes with multi-level entertainment areas built outside in various transparent pods connected by stairs and, I assume, held up by insanely tall pylons (think The Jetson’s homes but all connected by iron stairways and catwalks. They sorta looked more like those segmented sunrooms people build on the back of their small, ranch homes).

As we neared one of the main houses, the people in the pods looked up and pointed at us. I was terribly nervous because I couldn’t figure out how we were flying. Was it a helicopter? No. Was it some kind of drone? I don’t hear the whirring of blades. We climbed up and over the house and set down on the ground on the opposite side of the main house.

The “somebody” who was with me led me into the main entrance and down a spiral staircase where I was introduced to the owner. In that room I looked up and saw there was a massive leak coming right through the ceiling. I offered to take a look for him.

As I climbed through what must have been multiple floors to a massive and lavish atrium with maybe 40ft ceilings, I could surmise the source of the leak: the rooftop pool.

Impossible job.

I ran through, in my head, what would be required to repair the leak and the floors and ceilings of every floor beneath it; pump out the pool, giant scissor lifts and teams of skilled tradesmen for repairing the atrium ceiling, marble tile craftsmen, concrete pump-truck, etc…Millions of dollars in repairs.

It’d be easier to tear the place down and re-build it, I thought, but it probably costs hundreds-of-millions to build in the first place, so I figured it was an opportunity to make some real money for the first time in my life – even though the job was way above my pay-grade.

When I got back to the apartment complex I realized I’d never labeled all the parts and pieces I’d collected from the various jobs there and didn’t know which ones went to which apartment.

The most vivid dream I can remember having in a while – and only the third flying dream I can recall. I thank my daemon for the amazing show. Now to ponder the significance…

Vignette: The Angelus

Posted on by sudrakarma

The the remnants of burning leaves fills my nostrils as I step outside to the carport for an evening smoke. The sky is darkening early with the end of daylight-savings time.

The air is getting crisp.

Ohna, our black cat, rubs against my shins and walks to her designated spot near the side door to chew on some kibbles left for her benefit – and the benefit of the nocturnal creatures; raccoons, possum, and the occasional skunk who make regular cameos on my security camera.

Somewhere off to the east, behind the woods, a distant machine whirs. A leaf-blower i’d guess. But the sound is quickly overtaken by a cacophonous chime of church-bells calling the faithful to recite the Angelus.

May we be made worthy.

Grace At A Gas Pump

Posted on by sudrakarma

So I’ve been in filter-changing mode lately.

Twice a year I change all the furnace filters at almost every building in two light industrial parks and one office park. A few of the tenants do their own or have a contractor do it.

Rooftop of building 23

Our business parks are separated by a two-hour stretch of freeway with Wixom in the middle and Sterling Heights and Lansing at either end – both an hour’s travel time in opposite directions.

Today I was at our Lansing park, helping out the sole employee who oversees that property. If he had to do all the filters himself it would likely stretch over a month, but with my help we managed to knock it out in just a couple of days.

At the end of the second day I was exhausted, but thankful to be finished with furnace filters and to be off the rooftops for a while.

Somebody’s contractor is slacking

As is my usual routine for Lansing at day’s end, I set off toward the Speedway gas-station to get something to drink and fill up the van with gas before heading back to Wixom.

While I waited for the painfully slow pump to do it’s work (supplies must have been getting low as this is a very busy station), I glanced through my open driver’s-side door and out the passenger window toward a young woman who was filling her own tank at another pump.

I could see that the sun must have peeked through the dull, grey cloud-cover somewhere behind me because it lit up her youthful, but visibly exhausted face. The light crossed it diagonally, revealing the shadow of the awning above us.

Instinctively, she tilted her head toward the sun and closed her eyes. Then she took a deep, slow breath.

I swear I could see the day’s stress melt from her face in that single moment. It was beautiful.

Or maybe it was the fumes.

I turned away from her and finished pumping gas into the van, jumped in, and headed back to the freeway for the hour-long journey.

As I mused about her on the ride home I thought observing that one, simple, very human moment of grace in a harried world of ceaseless responsibilities and obligations warmed my work-a-day heart a little.

Still, I’m glad she didn’t notice me…noticing her.