Therapy sketch:

So last time we talked about values.

There are two sides to them, during courtship, definitely.   One side with integrity, but the other must not be so honest, perhaps even lying as she considers and judges a potential mate.  There will be some extremely mixed messages, a swing between poles.  And the male has to simply hold on, stay optimistic and eventually win his way back to her after the initial encounter.  Or, he doesn't, which is his fault.  She could all along have been his to lose, but, he didn't capitalize on his opportunity.  Or, he ended up not working out for her for whatever reason.  And then, if she does chose a mate, basically the old suitor she will exorcise from her realm, wiping him off the map, performing murder on his memory, on the possibility of any interaction.

Yeah, in my state after that, I did not go into the publishing world as I should have.  I didn't do anything, really.  I took whatever job came my way, like I never even tried, never stood up for who  wanted to be or who I was or where I came from.  From the night at the Beach Party, she acted bored with me, my haircut was too short, blah blah blah, 'it's chemistry,' she said, yes, I told her, it is chemistry, I'll see you later, and I then got up...  She lingered at the party.  I got a cigarette and talked to a few regal young women a year above me, and ignored I her seeing her in the corner of my eye.  You're going to be that way with me, fuck you.

Maybe it was in my genetic code, poetically speaking, some kind of old school gallant Austro Hungarian way of courtship, since outmoded, not responsive enough.  And anyway, I was realizing how complex the human creature is.  Being honorable her rebuffs stung.  I should have simply ignored them, not been such a gentleman.  Then it all began to unravel.  The rejection got to me.  But it's not his place to protest unfairness.  You go on.  Stoic.  I was a fool kid from the country.  I did not know about rejection.   I'd never experienced... well, I take that back, I had experienced it before, but not at such a professional level, ha ha ha.  Not such a gang effort as it came to be.

Kindness from the male part is not the same as courtship.  And that leaves some of us to take increasing reliance on the claim of spirituality, decent morals, realistic decency toward other beings.  All of which does not necessarily make for a great mate and protector and the most glorious of bird's nest and plumage.

I guess that's why I become a writer, seeking a redress of grievances through being a moral decent person with some integrity, and so of course, being some form of Judeo-Christian Theosophical kind Buddhist type, as a writer, that's the kind of thing for me to explore, exploring the kind of person who go wait on the lonely leper in us all.

Maybe that's just a juvenile reaction, yeah, as if all people would be kind to each other in the world.

But yeah, sure, integrity.  Of for whatever other reason I'm here.  And I think that one of the reasons why people fall into writing is because your like this guy with an older brother always looking over what you do, a stern voice telling you to not be weird, do this, don't do that, you know, kind of putting you down, and things in life are always complicated.  Because you're nice to your mom and call her a lot doesn't mean you're a momma's boy.  Because you write poetry doesn't impune anything against your manhood, quite the contrary.  And I know from these sessions, you know, anyway, that there's always the voice even in your own head, criticizing, bringing up some account, 'oh, you're worthless, a loser, people don't like you, what have you done with your life... '  And those are demons maybe even a writer has to especially battle with everyday.   Just like I pretty much every day remember her surface level put-down or the old story of 'me fucking it all up with her.'  Stuff which might be true, but which one has to move on from in order to live a fulfilling life.

And you what, I'm finding out, after I've meditated and become mindful and stilled all those voices, that... well, you can always be proud at least of being decent to other people, friendly, to all walks of life, high and low, the high need it too, even as they might look down their nose at you initially, they need kindness too.  How tough it's been, quite often, Jesus Christ, to go do that job, but that self of inner mindful clear sky consciousness would always jump up and be kind to people and engage with them as I had time to, and even if it was awkward, try to ask or express something, something like 'hey, we're human, we all share, it's good stuff, even if it's partly bar talk, sometimes full of too much gesture...'

That's what this writer learned, even with all the voices in his own head, telling him all the things that makes you down about the day and where you are and all the missing engagement in your own life, the structure of your own life stuck around the night shift rut...

You know, the last night came to end, the Pandora wasn't working on the sound system so I had to go looking for the music on the iPod in the closet there at the bar mouth, the busboy coming in and out the linebacker waiter with plates, and the bar is a bit full, nice people, kind of boisterous, a bit drunk and happy at 11:15, Bolivia, Columbia, the military hospital regular guys, one of them knocking Obama (I did not engage, even my mind), and I've played Brubeck and Toussaint, Bryan Ferry, and Roxy Music won't play, so I put on Abbey Road.  "You never give me your money...  Here Comes the Sun...  Boy, you're going to carry that weight...  And in the end, the love you take..."  All those beautiful brief sketches of songs... that seem to come out of, I dunno, somewhere, all the life experience, bunking together while they played the Hamburg strip club...  Some of it has a sort of Lennon violence, yelling in it, but it's more or less like those early songs, like "And I love her," coming back in a deeper kind of poignant form, their last album, a kind of balance before they parted.  That is art, that album.  And it stilled the beast in the barroom last night, yes it did.  "Old and magic feeling..."  "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."  What else is music for?

And today I got up early.  I didn't dwell on goddamn jazz night beating the crap out of me, no, I got up and wrote and expressed my old values, without going down that dark hole of beating myself up with mind, rehashing the past...


After the session was over and a chore of procuring animal protein and green vegetable and eggs was accomplished I walked home, and I sang to myself,  "she was a girl in a million my friend, I should have known she would win in the end...  although I look and I act like a clown, beneath this mask I am wearing a frown...  I'm a loser, I'm a loser."  Yeah, what can you do.  Go home and meditate.  When you're a younger brother, it's a bit of a habit to listen to the voices.

But I knew my mind was always a bit wilder, less tame, less of the agricultural settling of the human species, therefore smarter, not that it always does you much good to be smarter in that way, a wolf compared to a dog, a mountain lion rather than the kitty cat complacently resting by the radiator.

Creativity, the Zen Buddhist says, the height of artistic expression is selflessness.  Which we might take to mean that mindful higher consciousness that's able to look down at our thoughts and mental processes.   Saying, as Hamlet does, "these are actions that a man might play, but I have that within which passeth show.'  I have that within which passeth show.