When I was 10 years old, I had already gained the reputation of inventor.  My mother’s boyfriend at the time was a pretty smart guy.  He’s the one that told me I could be wasting a lot of time on perpetual motion machines.  I guess I was still young enough to heed good advice.  I moved on to the next machine.

I presented my mentor with my latest design, bouncing with anticipation of what he might say next.  He told me it was a very good design; and that it just might work as well.

“But there’s only one problem I can see,”  he said with a developing smirk.  “Unfortunately, this has already been invented.  It’s called a steam engine.”

This moment in childhood is my first memory, in a discontinuous stream of thoughts since, of not ever having said or written or seen anything that had not already be said, thought, or done before.  The event horizon of the slowest growing humility – replete with the pain of ego deflation.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

-Ecclesiastes 1:9

“The wealth of the soul exists in images.” ~CGJung is quoted by @Depthinsights on Twitter.  Images and symbols are our means of communication.  I’m hoping Noam Chomsky will not disagree with me on that.  So symbols, for the sake of non-debate, originate of the Collective Unconscious.  And for as long as mankind has been able to make his mark in a place, it has put them down in various physical manifestations.

The circle has got to be one the most commonly configured complexes.  Sometimes the analyst – me in this case – wishes to work his way from behavior back to symbol.  Creating images is one way for me to understand the relation of behavior and symbol.  In fact, I understand most subjects better with pictures.  Yes, I’m the one who flips through the book for pictures before I read it.  Did it in first grade; do it now.

If psychodynamics or archetypes takes a shape in a way Viktor Frankl has shown me somewhere, then I am more apt to find places that need development or change.  I’m also better equipped to know when something needs to stay status quo.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  The elements that don’t need fixing can be called reference points.  An electrical engineer might call these 0 volt points, grounds, floating grounds, Earth, or neutral.  “Gosh, he’s got his feet firmly planted on the ground.”

My point is I think in images.  Humanity’s images/symbols are brought forth most commonly as two dimensional plots.  But of course, Plato would have to go and object.  On returning to Yoda, his wisdom, and my obscure expansion that left my brain’s mouth dry with thirst...  Well, that is exactly where I am.  And I write that I may know me.

They say that if I know me, I can know you.  This is my personal quandary.  The beginning.  But there is a tangent that tells me a circle is really a cycle.  Circles feel complete.  Many things “come full circle” because a circle is a cycle without at least the dimension of time... so the mathematicians tell me.  Old Mr. Tangent would whirl me about like an inquisitive boy, were it not for Little Miss Anima.

I wondered first why I was angry.  I found some reasons, but I did not find the cause immediately.

    “My dear reader...” Mr. Tangent said in the voice of Diderot.
    “...suffice it to know ‘twas decades of time that drew their staves pointing the way to this truth that fear is the singular cause of anger.”  Miss Anima interrupted.

To make yet another leap of faith, “disconnection” by any other name is still the feeling “a-part” from others.  It is not loneliness; it is alone-ness.

Anakin stood before the Jedi Council when Yoda asked “how feel you?”  The Collective felt he had fear within him well before he had known for himself.  So they pressed the issue.  Anakin admitted he was experiencing fear, but asked defensively, “what’s that got to do with anything?”  Yoda answered the immediate question with “EVERYTHING!”  Then he continued the explanation “fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; and hate leads to destruction.”

Yoda is, of course, correct about a well-known emotional axiom.  But in the movie, he does not explain how this recursive progression operates.  He does not explain what destruction means.  And he does not cover esoteric Jedi beliefs on the origin of fear.

Explanations for the machinations of emotional truth are profoundly short and sweet.  The practice of rising above them – of changing one’s weltanschauung – is inscrutably, disproportionately arduous. (Go ask Alice.  I think she’ll know.) Frank Herbert writes the solution in one sentence from Dune (my underscore).

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

He is speaking of the “Shattering Gaze.”  The clinical elbow grease working in the trenches.  The fourth step of twelve.  Exposure.  Helplessness.  And release...if one can live through it.

Let’s not forget about the short and the sweet.  Destruction is Death.  Fear is disconnection.  Transcendence is bliss.

Recently, two incidents of time and place looped around, intersecting in synchronistic repose.  But it wasn’t until my neighbor came to my door that I realized it.  Ken, my neighbor and unrelenting ball of octogenarian energy, held his head in shame when he had to tell me (by the prodding of his wife) he could no longer make good on our agreement.  I watched him shift from foot to foot, eyes down as a twelve year old admitting he broke a window.  He said “I can’t mow your lawn anymore. [pause] ... [pause]  I had a heart attack.  Ain’t never had one of those.  I’ll get my boat out of your garage day after tomorrow.  I’m selling it.”  He looked to my eyes – head still hung.  I wasn’t sure if I should say something like “It’s OK.  Would you like some milk and cookies?”

This morning Bullwinkle made the overlay in time visible.  Yes.  Bullwinkle, as in Rocky and Bullwinkle.  For in the introduction to the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, Bullwinkle “accidently” pulls a lion out of his magic hat, and exclaims “I don’t even know my own strength!”  Of course this implies our weaknesses as well.

I thought of Ken.  Never still.  Never stopping business to tarry about the roses.  He had just always ran.

Many years ago, I was taking a friend’s young son to the playground just over the fence from my mother’s back yard.  There were several routes available to us, but I chose the quickest – and also the most difficult path.  The boy told me he couldn’t navigate the foray.  I asked him “why not?”

“I’m just a kid.”

“It’s OK.  I’ll keep you from falling.”

Off we went.  Daring and courageous.  Living life as though we only lived once.

Is it important to monitor our years alive, only to go referencing back to the “Grand Tome of Your Culture’s Age-Appropriate Behavior?”

Sometimes...I guess.

Christopher was 28 when I met him.  I was a 20 year-old agoraphobic, introvert shut-in of sorts.  I was having difficulty attending school, i.e., being in school with people.  Christopher and I only met once.  He was the younger brother of a good friend of mine.  He had come to visit his family in Michigan since he lived in Los Angeles.  His family placed a great deal of weight on education.  In fact, his parents, Doctors B., expected doctorate studies from all three of their boys.  Something, I guess, Christopher came to devalue for one reason or other.  In fact, he seemed to thumb his nose at them when he suddenly and provocatively dropped out of studies one class away from his bachelor’s degree.  He got a job as a janitor.

I had a great many questions regarding his course in life.  I queried his brother for details.  “‘Topher’ just took a different direction in life; had different ideals.”  He was a quiet, unassuming man.  He was, I guess, a self-proclaimed asexual.  Christopher was ostensibly the mysterious black sheep of the family.  He and I also shared an interest in music.  His brother, my friend, was gay, but he was at least finishing up his dissertation in American Studies.  The oldest brother seemed to take the path of least resistance: he studied, married and had a wife and children.

Christopher was scary.  Well, to me, as per.  But he could have easily been scary to many other people as well.  His hair was long, thin and stringy.  He had a three-day beard.  And he was probably not quite fresh enough for most social occasions in a first world country.

I brought in a 4-track recorder, a keyboard, a microphone and a homemade, fretless bi-tar (as in two strings).  Christopher evaluated the bi-tar with his hands and eyes and a few other senses that were beyond my ken.  I played for him the chords I was messing around with and said, “maybe you can do some lyrics and some arrangement with the bi-tar?”  He answered with no confidence in himself that he would give it a try.  We visited with other friends, and I left for home.

Turns out he’d stayed up all night playing, writing and recording.  We had one tune done before his departure.  Six months later, I was notified he had died in a Las Vegas Hotel room...alone.  Family genetics had caught up with his heart.  I re-listened to the tune we recorded.  One verse—no bridge—repeat:

Stop followin’ me
Stop followin’ me
yeah quit yer followin’ me

...but please don’t go

People want to believe time is linear because it brings us comfort to know beginnings and endings; a little predictability.  Senex swings the walking stick of linear time at a regular interval.  But I am not a believer.  I know that time is anything but linear.  I can hear the voice of the past now.  I can feel the connection to a friend long lost.  And I can fear that which has not yet come to pass.