THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eighteen

Time moves faster as you age. If you’re young you should trust me on this. What seems only a year ago invariably turns out to be three. It seems impossible that Sarah and I are married a year already. I look at the time and realize how slowly time moves when I watch our measurement of it, and how quickly it passes when I am having fun. This is more than interesting. The realization is telling me something. What is boring slows time and what is fun…well, you know. I decide that fun is the natural human state. Boredom, drudgery and stress are not. Until my dream era there was more boredom and drudgery than fun. Dolly Parton’s movie ‘9 to 5’ sums it up pretty well, unless you love your work, of course. I love my work, but not all the time. I love being with Sarah, but not all the time. She agrees with me.

For two weeks Sarah lives with me in New York. The third week she’s back in Norwich. We’re flexible in this, but it is a year round thing. Our respective businesses of the mind make it so. There is much to be said for alone time. I have always needed it and so has Sarah. Even a soul mate will eventually get under your skin. Those of you that have one know what I’m talking about. Living with Sarah has expanded my understanding of energy as it relates to what energy makes. Everything my senses register on my mind is the product of energy. Any physicist worth his salt will confirm this. Ask Alex. I am beginning to see energy, little projections of color moving and swirling around everything I see. I can’t do it all the time, but when I do it is an affirmation of what I know. It never crossed my mind to see an ophthalmologist.

Sarah doesn’t think about these things as I do. She takes in the world differently. It is as if we are wired by differently trained electricians. I’m not saying that one is right and one is wrong. I’m simply saying we process the world differently. She is Miss Emotion, and Ben here, is Mr. Potato Head, my slang for over thinking. Our differences got me to thinking about the Myers-Briggs personality classification system. I won’t bore you with it because that is exactly what it will do…bore you. But, here’s the deal. What if there are different ways we humans process our reality. What if there are, say, three different ways we do it. My sister Rose is an introvert. My old girlfriend Debra is an extrovert and I am a bit of both. It’s not as simple as that. I’m sure of it.

In my practice I have tried to squeeze everyone under the hood of the Bell curve. What if the Bell Curve represents just one of the three human perceptual sets, the majority one? I’m working this out as I go, so give me some slack here. I would say that I fit into the majority and therefore the most common perceptual prism. I get my information from the world of matter and things. They speak to me. Rose, and for that matter Sarah as well, are more than just emotional. When I ask Sarah why she does certain things she invariably says, “I don’t know. I just felt like it.” She pretty much does what she wants. We all do that, but not with the frequency that Sarah and Rose do it. The outside world doesn’t seem as important to them as their own inner directive. It is difficult to describe from my perspective. It makes for some conflict, though, as I am a guy that needs explanations. Our culture needs explanations. We can’t understand action without an explanation for it. If you ask little Johnny why he hits his sister and he says, “I don’t know,” it drives most parents over the edge, except those parent who are put together like Rose and Sarah…or Johnny. All their lives they have experienced that action of doing without a cause or a rational reason. They don’t always understand the question ‘why’ because there wasn’t an objective reason driving their action.

What might the third perceptual prism be? How about a combination of the other two? I have a patient like that. He’s hard to figure because in one moment he sees things like me and another moment like Sarah. From what Sarah told me about Tom, her dog sitter, he seems a lot like my patient Dean LaRusso. I love Dean. Our sixty minute sessions seem like ten. Dean is gay like Tom, but Dean is flamboyant where Tom is not. If Sarah didn’t tell me Tom is gay I would have never known. Unless, of course…never mind. Dean on the other hand never misses a gay pride parade. His favorite costume is a cop’s uniform. He loves cops and paratroopers. I haven’t figured out the paratrooper thing and neither has Dean. But this goes to the point. Dean doesn’t know why he likes paratroopers.

Keep in mind that my thinking on this is in the rudimentary stage…like a stone wheel that eventually morphs through time into a moon rover wheel. I’m at the car wheel stage. We all look like humans, but as a species we have three perceptual sets. Mine, the most common, sets the rules of our civilization. That’s not so good for Dean and Tom, and really bad for Sarah and Rose. Dean and Tom can swing both ways (no pun intended), but it is easier if they swing my way because they will fit in better. Sarah and Rose cannot do that. Sarah could have grown up confused about her identity, but she didn’t. Her parents are dead, but I’ll bet they had the same perceptual orientation as their daughter or she might not have turned out so well. It was still a struggle though, since she was embedded in a world of Augustos. There is nothing worse for a pear than to be brought up by two oranges. That was Rose’s downfall. My parents were just like me. Rose was always different.

If this is true, and I think it is, it can help me in my practice. I’ve spent my professional life trying to squeeze apples and pears into oranges. That comparing thing is a big deal for the apples and pears. The oranges do it too, but when oranges rule the world it doesn’t pay to be anything else. That’s not to say that apples and pears can’t be happy. They can even be happy with oranges. Sarah and I prove the point. But, I’ll bet pears get along best with pears, apples with apples and oranges with oranges. It’s no wonder I’ve had such a difficult time understanding where people are coming from. Well, not all people, just the apples and pears. Apples and pears can try to look like oranges and they often do. They want to fit in. But bite into one and their secret is revealed. Being an orange I can never fully appreciate the perception of apples and pears. My rational mind cannot enter their place of residence. I’d like to, though. It makes for less conflict. Maybe I do in some of my many lives or focuses of attention as I now call them.

As you can see, I am making progress on The Frog Handled Mug, but I can’t see how it is to end. I didn’t know what this page was to look like until I began writing it, so I’m not too worried about it. I guess it’s called being in the now, a most popular phrase in 2012. Alex is at MIT finishing his Ph.D. dissertation. He should be done by May. He had to do some serious persuading to get a faculty sponsor. Alex has an answer for everything. He is an orange. Having a pear as a mother was perfect for him. What if we chose our parents? There’s nothing better for an orange that wants to think outside the box than to have a mother that lives outside the box. It is a box built by oranges for oranges. Anyway, proposing a dissertation on simultaneous time to a faculty made up primarily of oranges, and pears and apples hiding out as oranges, is worthy of my praise. Alex sends Sarah and me clippings whenever his work is cited. It is being cited more and more. As Alex would say…Geeze!

So I am thinking, getting back to energy, that it is the energy that creates the body and not visa-versa. The energy is conscious, which means…at least to me…that the universe is conscious. I wonder if Alex has thought of that. It ties into my one-time experience of being everything and myself at the same time. This everything-is-connected thing may be more literal than just some feel good new age drivel. If everything is literally connected it would explain Alain Aspect’s discovery of instant communication at a distance between quantum particles. The eggheads call it non-local action or something like that. The communication is instant because the particles are not separate. They only appear to be, just as we appear to be.

I loved Ayn Rand. I still do. Her skill at spinning a yarn is timeless. Ayn was a staunch anti-communist, and her book, Atlas Shrugged, held high both the individual and capitalism. This is all related. Trust me. By now you have to be getting used to how my mind works. It tends to flit about. Capitalism is failing, but for the opposite reason communism failed. When I am you and not you at the same time, but don’t know it, it is easy for me to fool myself into thinking that what I do affects no one but me. Or, if nothing else, I affect only those in a relatively close perimeter. Communism failed, among other things, because the individuals never believed in the communal nature of life. Put simply it was, why bust my ass for the same pay as Ivan when Ivan drinks vodka and smokes cigarettes all day. It was an issue of fairness and not an issue of Ivan and I being connected at the deepest level. If you ask me this shift thing is bringing into experience the concept of connectedness. Everything affects everything and until we get that, Capitalism is going to spiral down the shoot.

Dreams are simple and complex at the same time, like life. Shortly before marrying Sarah I had a simple dream. I saw a large carpet. It was symbolic of the universe because all the galaxies were woven into its design. James sat upon the carpet, legs crossed Indian style, his arms rested in his lap. I am awake during this dream, and I continue to thank my frog handled mug for it. As I look closer James is not actually sitting on the carpet but rather is woven into it. He is impaired. Where, I don’t know, but I suspect it is an injury of spirit. The threads of his body are broken. I see the other threads rush to repair the breaks in the pattern that is James. He brushes them away and they honor his intent.

The dream used James, but it was about me, about us, you and me and all the other six billion of us that make up the fabric of the carpet. I saw James refuse help from the whole that the carpet represents. Why? What is it I do that so keeps me from the support that seems so readily available in the dream. James brushes the help away as if saying, “I don’t need your help. I can do this myself.” My thoughts return to Ayn Rand and her hero, the individual. I can feel it coming, the connection. It seems big to me if I can only connect a word to the energy I feel. My mind darts to Rand’s America and the Declaration of Independence.

I get it. I get the word, and it is no more likely that I received the word ‘independence’ from some fired up chemically based neuron, than it is I received my Christmas presents from Santa Claus. I reflect on why independence, the pearl of the American way of life, keeps the whole at bay. I think of Sarah’s words, ‘open to receiving.’ I think of my mother. She was one of those feisty Italian women that detested help as much as she detested the devil. Before her death in 2009 she could barely see, and walked with such a limp she needed a cane so as not to fall over. People loved her, especially those in her church. She loved them, too. When she was able she readily and enthusiastically gave aid and comfort to those that needed help. When she needed that same aid and comfort her friends had to beg to give it.

The carpet comes back to mind. The weave obeys, but does not hold grudges as we do. We give up once our offer of help is denied. Not so the carpet. Deny it a million times and it will give on the next request. It never gives up just as my mother’s church friends never gave up. How does a people whose culture is based on the individual and independence let go of their pearl. Indeed, should we let go. Up/down, black/white, good/bad, independence/dependence. That is where my mind first travels. If I give up independence I become dependent. I don’t think this is about that. It seems the logical conclusion, though. If I am not independent then I am dependent, the perfectly drawn conclusion in a world of duality.

No. I can be dependent and still be disconnected from the whole. If dependence equates to connectedness then surely the poor would have already inherited the earth. My mother was dependent and she still couldn’t see or walk without a cane, and she seemed nor more enlightened than before. The rock solid duality of our reality makes this difficult for me to see. I want to go to that place where connectedness heals. Somehow my independence keeps me from it. Ah! It comes to me. Independence separates.

The phone rings. It’s Sarah. She promised to call when she arrived in Norwich. Sarah is good about doing what she says she will do. I’m less responsible that way. When she arrives, she calls. I might call a few hours after I arrive if I remember at all. “Hi, Honey,” I said. “Get home alright?”

“Yep, You sound…diffuse. Like I only have part of you on the phone.”
“I am,” I said. “My mind is stumbling over a concept. What is it about independence that keeps the individual from connection?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Instead of diving into the word why not dive into the life of someone you think is independent. It’s sort of a relative term…independence. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I arrived home safely. Good luck in your quest, Augusto, but don’t obsess so much. I love you. Bye.”

I say goodbye and close the cell. I have a headache. That tells me I’m pushing, trying to force something that isn’t ready to be forced. Until now I’ve been good about doing that…not forcing. You can probably tell by way of this chapter that I’ve been forcing. Trying to squeeze water out of a dry towel will not produce water no matter how hard I squeeze. It’s six o’clock and I turn on the news. Wolf Blitzer is starting to look old. Five are dead from an IED in Afghanistan. Unemployment is at twelve percent and the standard of living is dropping. No surprises there. They’re building that wind energy farm off of Martha’s Vineyard. Finally! When an individual can afford energy no matter what the price he can also afford to bitch about his scenic view the wind mills will obscure. Hey, we’re all connected here.

I catch myself on that last one. I am as connected to the rich folk of Martha’s Vineyard as I am to the poor folk of Bangladesh. The rich are no more to blame for our energy mess than anyone else. It is a mass creation, whether it is in conscious awareness or not. It’s tough not falling back into the old blame and shame game.

I was a Kennedy liberal before all this started. I was overjoyed at Obama’s election. For me it was more symbolic than anything else. The Democrats were responsible for protecting the oppressed, the Republicans for keeping the rich wealthy. They strongly believed in the Regan trickle down effect. That’s the way it looked to me anyway. Not any more, at least in terms of judging the Democrats as good and the Republicans as bad. Each is as much a part of the carpet as my lungs are a part of me. I have concluded that the most desperate Bangladeshi is as responsible for the predicament we find ourselves in as any powerful political party. If I am no longer a victim, then neither is anyone else, despite appearances to the contrary. We believe we are what our thinking tells us. The Okandos are an increasing exception to the rule that shit happens. Khidr is steadily rising into conscious awareness.

I look at my frog handled mug sitting on the kitchen counter. I see it in most of my dreams no matter what time period the dream occurs in. It is the perfect dream trigger. We’ve been making pottery as long as we have been making wheels. I am thinking of the economy as I look at the mug, and it strikes me that from 2075 and beyond I never see money exchanged. I can’t imagine a world without money, or how that world might work. It started with the David Cawley focus walking out of the store without paying for his mug. The lack of currency exchange is so foreign to me it doesn’t register until now. Maybe my thinking about independence triggered the recognition.

After all, I thought, most of us equate money to independence. I don’t need the money, but even I have thought about how wonderful it would be to win the lottery. This lottery thing is almost a syndrome. The trouble is that the data doesn’t support the notion. Within a few years the winners are often penniless and more miserable than ever. What is it that comes with wealth? Responsibility. With money I am responsible for so much more than without it. I have the wherewithal to help my friends, my family and all who know me, but with that go a lot of baggage. I like the helping thing, but not the baggage. It’s like the CEO of a large corporation. He appears independent, able to get every manmade thing he wants. He is also enmeshed in responsibility at all levels. From the CFO down to the janitorial staff the CEO, by way of his decisions, is responsible for it all. Unless he is a sociopath it has to affect him. That is a heavy load to carry. The buck stops here. Didn’t Harry Truman say that? It is a weight as dense as a black hole. What does the energy of responsibility do? What does it look like? In conjunction with independence it separates the individual and repels the natural help of the carpet. I need to sleep on this because on the surface independence and responsibility are highly valued. We teach it to our kids from the moment they arrive. I’m missing something. I am making this shift thing, as big as it is, more complex than it is intended to be. I need a break from my thinking.