Some of the new paintings

My new job is good for my painting. I work a second shift so Kathie gets up around 6:30 and I do too. She goes to work, and I can paint until about 2 pm when I have to head to work. When I get home, around Midnight, she is asleep. I am wired from work, eat a small supper and sometimes I paint another hour or two before trying to sleep. I'm not sleeping enough, but I am enjoying my time painting. I've been doing a new work almost every other day.

I opened up an Etsy site [http://www.etsy.com/shop/texarooty] and I'm offering some of my stuff for sell. It might help me pay for new supplies. If I could get ahead I would try to do some glicee prints of my work. That would enable to me to make a little more on each painting, and offer quality reproductions hand signed to more people.

Marital sex, Turning 60, and Research

I am not qualified to speak as an authority on any subject, and this disclaimer goes double for the topic of marital sex. I am not in a position where I would be comfortable sharing my personal experiences, and my reluctance is in part from the fact that marriage involves two people and only one of us has any interest in sharing. I am reluctant to share too many of my thoughts on this subject, because my thoughts are clues to what is going on in my life. I want the world to be as clueless as I am.

I had a session with my shrink where she said that having a sex life is part of being a normal healthy human, and that got me to wondering and reading about the subject pair bonding sex.

Questions floated to the top of my consciousness like an oil slick on the sea of memory.

• What is normal sexual frequencies?
• How does sexual frequency change as one ages?
• What factors increase sexual frequency?
• What are some of the causes for decreased frequency?
• Is it important to have an active sex life? If so, why?
• How does one’s sex life change as they age?

I started reading up on the subject, and came across a lot of interesting statistics. What I am doing here is sharing my research. I am not sharing my life, I am not disclosing, I am not confessing, all I am doing is sharing my research. Maybe what I’ve read will be interesting to others. Here are some of the things I have learned through reading:

First, I learned that statistics are often misleading. [Gasp!] This is not a new lesson for me, but it is a lesson I continue to relearn. For example, most couples claim to have sex 68.5 times a year, or more than once a week, according to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The problem is that when asked about one’s sex life people are just not very candid. People are not forthcoming because while most people today can talk about sexual topics, they become uncomfortable and embarrassed when asked about what is going on in their own bedrooms. When pressed, people tend to have a default number. People will say they have sex once a week, even if they are not having sex that frequently.

Where does the default number come from? This once a week frequency of married sex was a figure reported in the 1953 Kinsey Report. Today many experts in the field feel that the Kinsey Report was flawed. The problem with the 1953 Kinsey Report is that they got all of their figures from questioning volunteers. It is thought now that 1953 couples willing to share their sex life with a clipboard holding stranger were not like average couples. Sexually revved up people might have a tendency to brag.

Remember, in the 1950’s, married couples depicted on TV slept in twin beds. On TV the word pregnant was rarely used. There was a baby boom going on in the 50s, so obviously, people were having sex, but there was also a lot of cultural prudery. The Kinsey Report failed to gather data from shy and reserved couples, so Kinsey never really found out how frequently regular married couples we “making the beast with two backs.”

Is it important to have an active sex life? In my reading, I found studies indicating that married couples live longer than their bachelor /bachelorette counterparts do. Does this mean that sex is the key to a longer life? Not necessarily. The longer life could be the strong mutual support that marriage brings, but it could also be from the frequency of sex. Anyone who has ever been involved in pair bonding and regular sexual congress knows that sex is a wonderful stress reducer.

My research indicates that sexual activity within a committed relationship improves self-esteem, cultivates a closer emotional bond, somehow it lowers incidences of illness, it keeps you young (or feeling young), and it even enhances our physical fitness. I didn’t read this, but this would seem to imply that little or no sexual activity would do the opposite.

No sex life would result in a decrease in self-esteem, brittle emotional bonds, an increase in illness, a feeling old, having little joy in life, and a decrease in one’s physical fitness.
In an AARP article I found some statistics about human sexuality among older couples.

• Couples between the ages of 45- through 59 years of age have sex at least once a week, but among couples between the ages of 60 and 74 years of age, the frequency of sex drops to 30 percent for men and 24 percent for women.

• older couples may not have sex as frequently as young people but more than 70 percent of surveyed men and women who have regular partners are still healthy enough and interested enough to have intercourse at least once or twice a month.

• People age 60 and older say that better health would do more to enhance their sexual pleasure than any other life change. On the other hand, 50 percent of the men and 85 percent of women say that their sex lives are unimpaired by illness and the AARP survey indicates that this is true even among people age 75 and older.

Now we come to the most startling information I gathered in my research.

Couples who don’t have much sex also don’t argue about not having sex. In fact, the less sex people have the less they talk about it. No sex may be an 800 pound gorilla in the room, but it is a beast they both ignore. Of course some couples do argue about sexual frequency, and a lack of frequency is often used as an excuses for affairs, and a justification of divorce, but among sexless couples that stay together, well, often, it is just not talked about. Once a couple has gotten use to not having sex they don’t argue about not having sex. The longer a couple goes not talking about this issue, the less likely it is that they will ever talk about it.
Among couples who’ve grown accustomed to their sexless marriage you just don’t hear things like:

• “Honey, remember that thing we used to do when we were naked?”
• “Do you remember why we stopped having sex?
• “Do you remember the last time we had sex?”
• “Why don’t you want to have sex with me?”

Often a long marriage is admired, and perhaps it should be, however, having a long marriage is not the same thing as having a wonderful marriage. Rarely having an argument, not having disagreements, may means that one party is just blindly following the other, or always acquiescing. Perhaps an occasional disagreement is the sign of a healthy relationship, and the get along, go along marriage is the one that is troubled. If a couple never argues about anything then they also are not communicating, each party in the relationship is self-censoring themselves. One party in the pair bond may dominate and that would mean that the other party is being suppressed, pressured, intimidated, and cowed down. A long marriage may also be a long relationship filled with false harmony. Under the surface one may be building monuments to resentment.

Can a sexless marriage be a good marriage? I’m going to say yes. It is possible. A marriage my become sexless due to ill health. Marriage is a relationship based on love and love is not sex. Sex is sometimes called making love, but we have lots of loving relationships that have nothing to do with sex. We love our children, we love our grandparents, we love our closest friends, and sex has no part in those relationships. Marriage and sex are linked in the minds of most of us, but married people are not having sex all the time, yet they can be in love with each other all the time. This implies to me that you can love your partner even without having sex.

A sexless marriage can still be a lasting and loving marriage. It is possible to be married and with sex having no role in the relationship, but possible is not the same thing as natural, or normal, or recommended. It is a little like keeping a lion as a house pet. It can be done, and you may go all your life without a problem, but you need to know that this is not the natural normal way lions and people get along. People who keep a lion as a pet run the risk of having their hearts ripped out and eaten before their fading sight.

Me, My Mask, and My other Masks

In masks outrageous and austere,

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.
Elinor Wylie

For about 10 years, I was a high school drama teacher. You can’t study drama without encountering the ancient Greek plays. One of the more dominate traits of Greek theater is its use of masks.

Most of us think of masks as something used to conceal. In western movies the bad guys wore black hats and covered their nose and mouth with a bandanna . They were concealing their identities. The Lone Ranger wore a mask making the phrase forever famous, “Who was that masked man?”

In Greek theater the mask was used NOT to conceal, but to reveal. There is a small but interesting mask vocabulary: Guise, disguise, persona, person, impersonate, personification, mask, masquerade, mummer, mime, pantomime, costume, pretend, prevaricate, even pretext .

It is a career of make-believe, of masks. We all
have masks in life.
Judd Nelson

The word persona is especially interesting to me. Persona is derived from two Latin words. The first Latin words "per" meant "through" and the second Latin word "sonare" meant "to sound." Put them all together and you have PER-SONARE and that combination meant “something through which one speaks.”

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and
know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin

Carl Jung wrote some about masks, and persona. The problem I have is that I have fitted masks on my face to tell the world who I am, and what I am like. I have created various personas and they often do reveal some aspect of myself, but it is always a selective revelation. Humans are complex. People have facets, but we show only a few sides of ourselves. I communicate ME through my created or selected persona, but I have not revealed all of me. In some ways our personas are like selective memory. The “me” the world sees is part of me, but not all of me. My life masks have served to protect me from historical harms. My mask protections have had limited success, but the shortfall is that I have forgotten myself. I lost sight of the real me, the complete me, the total me.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks
are dropped.
Cesare Pavese

Junior High P.E.

I was always the new kid at school. When you move 3 or 4 times a year almost every year like I did, you never have friends. Always being the new kid means you never know where the restrooms are, or the lunchroom procedure, or who is safe and who must be avoided at all cost.

Always being the JUST TRANSFERRED IN KID made me the kid no one really knew. What I learned from this early miserable life was that the best target of prejudice, the perfect scapegoat is always the person who is not part of your group. No one cares all that much for someone they don’t even know. It’s true. Watch the news tonight. Someone has been killed in a traffic accident, or a suicide bomber just killed 30 people you don’t know and will never know. You may feel sad that there is senseless death in the world, but you aren’t upset the way you would be if it was someone you really knew. When someone needs a target for their fears and rage, if they need to draw attention away from themselves, then it is the new kid who is the perfect kid to make fun of, the most enjoyable one to mock, the perfect pick to pick on.

At home I was under no illusions about who I was – I was the inferior child. I was referred to as idiot, knot-head, stup-o. At home I was being told to “straighten up and fly right.” I never understood the second half of that phrase. The straighten up part was a reference to my poor posture, but how was I supposed to “fly right?” I didn’t fly at all. What I knew with absolute certainty is that I was a disappointment. I was a drain on the precious resources of my family. But at school I was a jerk, a dweeb, a loser, stupid, the butt of every joke, and the victim of every bully. For my entire school life I felt totally vulnerable every day. There was a target on my back. There was a kick me sign hanging off the back of my belt, but my victimization in the classroom and halls was nothing compared to the locker room.

In elementary school we had recess and a play ground. For a short period of time you were released from the agony of desks in rows and the pounding that made us all alike. During recess we were free to be who we were and do what we wanted to do. All of that changed in Junior High School. In junior high we had to take those moments of freedom and impose order upon them, we had to set standards, to write and implement rules and then inflict punishment for any and all violations. In junior high PE was mandatory. In PE the coaches made it a rule that everyone without exception must shower naked before getting back into your school clothes and completing the school day. What sort of cruelty was this? Most of us were hugely self-conscious in junior high.

The only way to avoid the nude shower was to forget your gym uniform, so you could not "dress out." Of course, not having your gym clothes earned you a zero for that day. Guess what it was like to bring a report card home with an F in PE. "What is the matter with you?" my father would yell. (It wasn't a question.) "You can't even pass PE?" my father said incredulously.

If you feel like a sitting duck in the hall way, just imagine how much worse it is to have all those strikes against you and then to be naked. Very early in the process I had no pubic hair. I didn’t want anyone to look at me “down there,” but if they did, I didn’t want to be hairless. The PE locker room was the place where my shame, and self doubt was put under a microscope. The other guys compared dicks, lied about sex, and made themselves feel tall by knocking someone else down. I spent a lot of time toppling.

There were five basic groups in most Junior High locker rooms:

1. There is the self-acknowledged studs
2. There is the testosterone fan club
3. There is the shy, and/or clueless virgin
4. There is the decent and self-assured kid, and
5. There is the invisibly visible ones.

I was the one people saw, but not being known was never truly seen. I wasn’t a nerd, but nerds are smart. All I knew about sex was that it was sinful mostly. The stud kids may have had some sexual experience, but probably there was some hyperbole going on as they talked about the tits they have handled, the girls they have scored with, the ones who gave it up slowly, and which ones were slut easy.

I couldn't count myself among the decent kids, because in my head I was not decent at all. Inside, I was a cauldron of burning lust. I was a crucible that turned hopelessness and sexual yearning into the alloy that is “me.” I was not decent. Had I grown up in one place, if I had friends in Junior High that I’d had in Elementary School I would probably have belonged to the testosterone fan club with dual membership with the “clueless virgins” group.

Instead, I was the butt of jokes, the target for practical jokes, the perfect victim for bullies. If you were a loser and needed someone, just one person you could make fun of and feel superior to, I was that kid. “You have a teeny-weeny peeny.” “Suck my dick.” “Jump on this trouser trout.” “You pitiful peckerhead.” “Jerk off!” “Jerk wad.” “Shit head.” “Shit ass.” “Asshole.” “Ass face.” "Homo." "Faggot!"

For most people Junior High is the worse period of their young life. For some of us, the misery of Junior High leaves psychological scars. You can’t see my scars, but I can’t see a photo of myself without focusing on those locker room wounds that will not heal.

Thoughts on Relationships and Love

Somehow, I got in my head some odd ideas about relationships and love. I still cling to some of these odd ideas. I want to list them so I can examine these ideas.

Love is a decision of the mind.

I got this idea that the term “falling in love” was wrong, it was bad. The term “falling in love” reminds me of those pit traps. You know, someone digs a big hole, puts pointy sticks in the bottom pointing upward, and then covers the opening with brush and twigs. That just could not be what a loving relationship was all about. The term Falling In Love sounded like a trap. Who wants to be in a trap. The term also implies that love happens, through no will (or fault) of your own, that you have no choice about that love-relationship because falling is something that just happens to you. I decided around the age of 16 that what most people were calling love was sexual attraction, and LOVE was a purposeful commitment that was apart from sexual desire. I hoped, of course, that sexual intercourse was still an option, but the sex was just a side benefit, that love was love with or without the sex.

LOVE is wanting the highest good to happen to the person you love.

I got this idea in my brain that if I really love someone then I want them to be happy and that means that even if something makes me unhappy, or miserable, or is psychologically crushing, I will endure that IF that is what it takes to make the other person happy.
This idea is not totally unique to me. The singing group BREAD has a song called IT DON’T MATTER TO ME:

It don't matter to me
If you take up with
Someone who's better than me
'Cause your happiness is all I want
For you to find
Peace ... your peace of mind
Bread

This lyric and this idea lead to some odd positions in a relationship. For example, if you really believe that the other person matters more to you than you matter to yourself then they have all the power in the relationship. Believe this enough and you will accept the person you love loving someone else. If their happiness is ALL that matters then if they leave, or want to have an affair or spend all your money that’s OK because their happiness is all that matters.

I believe that MARRIAGE is a covenant and not a contract.

A prenuptial agreement is a contract. A prenup protects what you have from the person you are marrying. A contract looks after your own interests, your own assets and protects your personal property and wealth from your spouse. In marriage the two people pledge to look out for the interests of the other person. A covenant has a lot of religious connections, but a covenant can exist outside of religious rites. Think of the movie version of marital vows.

Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sadness and in joy, to cherish and continually bestow upon her your heart’s deepest devotion, forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her as long as you both shall live?

Notice, there is no escape clause in this vow. If you say I WILL (in the movies it is I DO, but that’s wrong) then you are committing yourself to looking out for the other person no matter what happens next.

What if the other person breaks the vow? What if she doesn’t cherish and continually bestow upon you your heart’s deepest devotion? What if she doesn’t forsake all others? What if she doesn’t keep herself only unto you for as long as you both shall live?

In my mind, that means she broke the vow and that is all it means. My vow doesn’t break just because she broke hers. Regardless of what happens after the “I now pronounce you husband and wife” you made a vow, you made this conscious purposeful commitment, and there is no escape clause even if your spouse does not reciprocate.

"LOVE: The irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
Mark Twain

I may be all wrong about love and marriage. I think Mr. Twain is on to something. The thing I wanted most in marriage was to be irresistibly desired. What I yearn for in unconditional love. While I am more than willing to cherish and continually bestow upon my wife my heart’s deepest devotion, and I’m willing to honor that commitment even if it is not reciprocal, that is not really getting me to where I want to be. I want to be loved. I have an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. I’m not worthy. I’m not particularly attractive. I have no money. I’m not a person with qualities that other women are drawn to, and I’m pretty sure that is true of all women, and all humans on earth. Because I am not desirable, it is to be expected that I have never and will never be irresistibly desired. I’m not plan A. I am not plan B. I may not even qualify for plan Q.

I saw a great scene on the old Barney Miller TV show. Barney goes to see one of his detectives that was home after killing some bank robbers. There is a lot of awkward him-hawing as neither man knows what to say. Just before Barney leaves he asks the other guy if he know that the Blue Whale, the largest animal on earth has a throat about this big (Barney holds up a hand and makes a little circle a little larger than the diameter of a quarter.) Barney next says, Because that’s the way it is, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

I’d like to redefine love. I’d like to calibrate my relationship meter. I’d like to be cherished, but I am the cherish-er, that is my role in this life, and that is just the way it is and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

Women, Marriage, and Me

Somehow, I’m not sure how, I got through the 60s, the Summer of Love, the open marriage Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice sexual revolution still a virgin. I smoked pot. I protested against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights, I grew my hair long, had as much facial hair as an 18 year old can grow, I thought bell bottoms were cool, and I bought my first new car, a Big Bad Blue Gremlin. I was very much a child of the 60s except when it came to sex.

Oh, I wanted to have sex. I was totally preoccupied with sex. People having lots of sex could not hope to experience the kind of intense all consuming obsession I was having 40 times a day. Under the right circumstances I might have had sex, but the right circumstances just never happened. While I had some doubts about the black belt fundamentalist church I was drug up in, I still had that idea in the back of my mind that sex outside of marriage was sin, and it was possibly the UNFORGIVABLE SIN.

In high school I can remember reading Utopia by Thomas More, and there was a recommendation that every citizens of Utopia must follow before they could be married. The passage is as follows:

Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom; and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom naked to the bride.

I was shocked when I first read this. This writer is purported to be pretty religious, yet as he wrote about this imaginary country he is recommending that women and men reveal themselves totally to their potential spouse, that couples get a preview of one another before they get married. It is similar to what we do when we buy a car, we take it for a test drive. The Utopia passage continues with an explanation for this radical idea:

We indeed both laughed at this, and condemned it as
very indecent. But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations,who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them; and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a hand's-breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which there may lie hid what may be contagious, as well as loathsome.

I made decisions in order to begin a sex life. I complied with the religious tenet and the social mores with which I had been raise. I’d had some experience with heavy breathing make-out sessions, but no sex. On my got married I was still a virgin. I’ve heard men say the first time they had sex it was a disappointment, because nothing real can be as good as what one imagines. For me, my first sexual experience was the most traumatic experience I have ever had. It was scary, filled with panic, regret, and was the greatest disappointment I’ve endured so far.

Freed To Paint

While I have some baggage I carry around about my father (who doesn’t?) I have to admit to myself that there were times, as a child, that my daddy was my hero. I thought my daddy was the smartest, most talented man that had ever lived. When my father said something I treasured the words, I secreted them away in that part of my brain I called MY HEART. I like to pretend I have forgiven my father and that my grudges have gone the way of icicles in spring, but the grudges are still there cold and sharp and hanging over me menacingly. Nevertheless, despite my grudges remaining, I know there there are still things about my father’s life that I admire. I have regrets for my father. I know that he sacrificed the life he wanted and surrendered his shot at greatness to support his family. I know he was trapped and I know why.

My father had a significant measure of artistic ability. Had he made a few different choices as a young man, there is a good chance that he would be as well known today as Norman Rockwell.

My father seemed unable to talk with me, unless he was driving. If I sat next to him, and he drove somewhere he would talk as he drove. The vast majority of my non-terrifying memories of my father occurred while he was driving and I was riding shot gun.

My father told me a lot of stories about artists. He would talk about how great Paul Cezanne, Telus Lautrec, René Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gogan were and he knew a lot of biographical details. Later I learned that he had some of the facts wrong, but those factual errors did not diminish the intoxication of the tales. I was fascinated by the lives of these artists. To my father these were rags to riches stories. My dad didn’t want to work, he wanted to be rich and famous doing stuff he enjoyed doing. Who doesn’t want the same? My dad wanted to do what he wanted to do and be rich and famous doing it.. To him it looked like a short cut to the easy life. An artists take cheap canvas and paint and turn it into masterpieces admired for hundreds of years, and sometimes it is the source of enormous wealth.

Eventually I learned that my father didn’t really want to paint he wanted to be a rich famous painter. Being an artist was not the goal, being a famous artist was the goal. That was what he wanted for me, to be a rich famous artist who’s name and work would be admired for a thousand years or longer. Education was not valued by my family. The main value in my family was creativity. Creativity was not just valued, it was the highest of all values.

Some of my father’s paintings really wowed me. I have, in a place of honor on the walls of my home, a picture my father painted in 1954,. While I saw that painting almost every day that I lived in his home, I still find it a very fine painting. His technical skill was very, very good.

As I grew older, however, I noticed something about my dad’s artistic work ethic. He was a very fine artist, but he just didn’t produce much art. When a picture was finished, when the quality of the work was to the point he wanted it to be, then it was done and had to be protected and treasured. He never immediately started another picture. My father was also very reluctant to sell his work, or to give it away to family.

I sometimes got the feeling that once he had completed a picture he was afraid he would not be able to do another picture as good as THAT one, and he was reluctant to start another and prove himself right.

The other thing I noticed about my dad is that most of his paintings were copies. I remember him trying portraits of his wife and children, but he just did not do that much original work. I remember him painting pictures from photos he saw in photography magazines. What I remember him doing most was copying paintings by artists he referred to as “the great masters.” The thing about copying an existing work of art, or even a carefully composed photo, is that all the work of composing the picture is already done. Someone else has worked out the color pallet, the perspective, the copied picture has already found the light source and located the places where shadow needs to be to give it the desired look.

I caught that same disease. I would paint a picture and then be too afraid to start another. I too used magazines as a source for my painting subject matter. I wanted to keep every picture I painted because I feared no one else would care about them enough to let them go, and it was always possible the “gift” would leave me and I’d have no evidence left to show I had been a successful artist.

Eventually I gave up on my father’s artistic goals and found my own goal. I became a more productive and somewhat happier artist when I faced what I believe are real yet disappointing truths. What I discovered was that I was a better artist when I stopped caring about the finished product. I go into a zen like altered state when I paint, but once it is done, once I've allowed the images to settle in a little, the finished product becomes just a trace of moments I am soon going to forget.

I’m not going to be a famous artist -- so I might as well not try. To be famous, my work has to be perfect. Each picture has to be a knocking it out of the ball park crowd please-er. If I can’t do that kind of painting consistently then I can’t be famous. Here is the advantage of accepting my mediocrity: If I’m not going to be famous then I am free do paint bad pictures. Once in a while I might paint something I think is pretty cool, but mostly, it just really doesn’t matter what I paint, how well I paint, and it doesn’t matter if other people like what I paint. To be a rich and famous artist most people have to love your work. I’m not famous, I'm not cut from that kind of cloth, so I’m not under any obligation to produce famous quality work. If I like to paint then I am now able to paint all I want with no restraints, no parameters, no rules, and no expectations.

If I paint a lot, then selling paintings, and giving paintings away is not a problem. If I paint a lot and don’t distribute my work, then I’ll soon be covered up with paintings. If I’m not a famous artist then who the hell cares what I paint? I can copy if I want to. I can do stuff out of my head and not give a tinker’s damn if the shadows are all in the right place? I paint to please myself. I am free to paint what I want, how I want. I don’t have to be good enough to sell because selling is not the goal. I don’t have to paint good enough to be famous, because fame is a pipe-dream inherited from my father. Because I am free from my father’s obsession with fame and fortune I am free to paint. My wife, who sees all this as a hobby, has said, “When you paint, you do better.” She has endured almost 40 years with a chronically depressed husband. If painting make me easier to live with then that’s just one more reason to keep painting.

I have already painted more pictures than has my father did. I have sold paintings in shows, I’ve taken commissions, I’ve painted murals, filled sketch books, and given pictures away. I have pictures in the Netherlands, in Australia, Abu Dhabi. Every where I have lived I’ve left pictures behind, Milwaukee, Kansas, Virginia, Florida, and all over Texas. I decided that while I may not be good enough to be the sort of painter my father wanted me to be, I am good enough to be the kind of painter I am. I may not be all that good, but what I lack in ability I make up for with volume. And here is the secret I learned: I enjoy painting. I paint because I like to paint. I only have to paint good enough to have fun painting. Nothing is freer than that.

Reading THE DARK SIDE OF THE LIGHT CHASERS

I’m reading a book called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford. I sought out the book because I heard it was based on Jung’s thoughts on the shadow world of people. I say this because it means I am predisposed to want this book to be great for me, to enlighten me about my own dark side. I am a depression lifer, but as pessimistic as I am, I hide within the folds of my brain little pockets of goofy optimism. I keep thinking, I’ll get the right medication, talk to the right shrink, or read the right book and be suddenly and forever OK.

There was a series of skits on the wonderful but now defunct Tracey Ullman Show where the character would go see a shrink, the shrink would say some fairly simple statement and the patient would be instantaneously cured. We laugh because it just can’t happen that fast. We laugh, I laughed, but that is still what I want.

So it is with high hopes that I began reading The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. I’m a light Chaser. I, like all humans, have a dark side. The premise us of this book is that we harm ourselves by pretending that the dark side doesn’t exist. Very early in life we learn that there are some things in our make up that parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers, and peers don’t like. We learn that we are unacceptable if we have within us some of these unacceptable traits. If you can’t get these unacceptable traits to disappear then they must be hidden away. At first we hide them from others, but, over time, with practice, we hide these “bad traits” from ourselves.

The trouble comes when we have bad traits, shadow traits, but don’t know those traits are there. I read once that Mother Teresa was asked when it was she started her work for abandoned children. Mother Teresa replied:

On the day I discovered I
had a Hitler inside me.

What this faith leader meant was that she had the same ingredients in her that were in Hitler, and so as saintly as she was, she had the capacity to do great evil.

In Ms. Ford’s book she uses the example of a Hologram. Every part of a hologram in half and each half will contain the whole holographic image. Cut the Hologram into three parts or four, or more and every piece will contain the entire holographic image. Ms. Ford’s point is that all of us, each and every human contains the traits of all other human beings. Given the right circumstances I, a passive wimp can be aggressive and brave. I have the capacity for both gentleness and cruelty.

Ms Ford goes on to say that these shadow parts of us, according to Ms. Ford, these aspects of ourselves that we label as bad, are the very aspects that contain great gifts that will benefit us greatly.

In one example the author said she was in a workshop and the leader pointed to her can said that she was a bitch. Ms. Ford’s reaction to that was, “How did she know? I thought I had that trait hidden, under wraps.” The leader went on to ask if there were times when she needed to return an item to the store when it was helpful if she was bitchy. Were there times when you are being “run over” by some bully that it would help you protect yourself if you could be as bitchy as needed?

This is the place where I get hung up. I have traits that I have labeled as bad, and I have trouble seeing the gift contained in that shadow trait.

Ms. Ford tells another story about a woman who was ashamed to say that she hated her own child. Later that lady was asked to see the gift her hatred contained. The woman and her daughter apparently had some sort of breakthrough and now they can be open and honest with one another. It was a good story, and it was well written, but I just don’t get it.

Part of what Ms. Ford is trying to say is that we do “shadow work” in order to be whole. If we pretend we have no shadow world then we are functioning with one hand tied behind our back. We are entering the battle field with a powerful gun, but unaware that we have hidden the ammo somewhere on our person.

I’m going to have to think about all this.

I agree with the author that I have hidden these parts of myself labeled bad, and I have closed off each allegedly negative trait in its own room, and, over time, the part of my castle available for my use has gotten smaller and smaller. What I have trouble accepting is that these shadow traits are not bad, they are actually good, that the hidden traits I wish I didn’t have contain gifts that will greatly enhance my life.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Becoming A Grouch

Yesterday, my wife said: ”I think I’m going to be one of those woman married to a grouch.” When I asked what she meant she said, “You know, one of those guys that never wants to go anywhere, never wants to do anything, and is just fussy and critical of everyone they meet.”

Usually, when facing an opportunity to have my feelings hurt, I attempt to get logical. I try to consider what truth may be found in the statement that has all that “hurting feelings” potential. Am I a grouch?

I remember once, years after I’d left home, listening to my father saying stuff he thought was funny. He’d come up with all these doorbell sound jokes. He thought up a different front door sound to fit each of his children. My father thought he had captured the essence of each child by the doorbell sound he’d selected for each of us. The way it worked was like this: someone would ring the doorbell of my brother Bob for instance, and Bob’s doorbell sound would be, “I hope you’re the Pizza Guy!” That was supposed to be funny because Bob eats a lot and so what else would a portly middle aged guy want but pizza, right? Or for my extrovert brother Paul, his doorbell sound would be: “Come on in and let’s Par-teeeeeee!” The doorbell my father thought up for me was this: “Someone comes up to tex’s door,” my father said, “they rings the bell and they hear: GO AWAY!”

There was a lot of sibling thigh slapping laughter because my daddy had nailed me, perfectly. My doorbell sound had honed in on my most recognizable trait. That I’m a loner, who would prefer to have no interaction with anyone. Eric Hoffer says that we know ourselves by hear-say. Is Mr. Hoffer right? What I hear from my family is that I’m not just not very friendly, that I don’t like people, that I’d rather be alone.

If one does not understand a person,
one tends to regard him as a fool.

Carl Jung

Was my father making an observation, or was it criticism? Was it intended to be funny, or was it a passive-aggressive way of telling me I’ve been a bad son, because I have such little contact with them?

I have to admit that I took the comments of my father and my wife as negative assessments of my behavior. Whether I mean to or not, I come off as a grouchy, stick in the mud that never wants to do anything, go any where, or enter act with anyone. Is that an accurate assessment of me?

Everything that irritates us
about others can
lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung

If the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has taught us anything, it has taught us that we are not all alike. We do not all share the same traits, interests, or characteristics. We don’t all think alike. The way we process our experiences can vary dramatically from person to person.

Garrison Keillor has a running gag about shy people. Extravert's may not understand introverts, but it isn’t wrong to be extroverted and it isn’t wrong to be introverted.

Perhaps I take some of these observations about myself as criticism because the words have so often been used in service of negativity. If you are not comfortable being the life of the party are you “unfriendly” or are you “introverted.” If you are quiet in a group are you devoid of thought, do you lack problem solving skills, or might you be reflective, deliberate, and not given to knee jerk responses, or jumping to conclusions?

Is it rude, unkind, or indelicate for people who have a family bond to be critical and blunt about the personality traits of a member of their clan? It is so easy to take offense because criticism implies a need for improvement. A need for improvement implies failure. Failure indicates that one just doesn’t measure up when compared to others. In my mind failure equals loss. A loss makes me a loser. Being a loser means I am not productive, I am not earning my way, that I deserve nothing because I contribute nothing

We cannot change anything unless we
accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Carl Jung

Even Myers-Briggs is too restrictive. If you’ve ever taken the Myers-Briggs test you know that as you read the results most people still find stuff that fits them perfectly and stuff that doesn’t fit them all. In a way people are like snowflakes. They are all similar and each one is unique,

I recognize that I am more comfortable alone. This may not be my personality, but a symptom of my mental illness. For most of my life I’ve had very low self esteem , I have been hypersensitive to criticism (even very mild criticism). I am a turtle, more comfortable when I’ve retreated into my shell. It just seems slightly safer inside a shell.