NPD domination and control

Well, here I go again.  I just spent half an hour on totse, feel like I am going from the ridiculous to the sublime, although (he said defensively) I did do some sorta serious stuff–questions about my car, serious advice to someone thinking of coming to Alaska, stuff like that.  But I digress.  To quote the fact sheet–”Inappropriate attempts to dominate and control others: a narcissist is demanding, expects to be treated ‘special,’ and thinks everyone should immediately stop what they are doing to do what he wants them to do.”

Yeah, that’s me again.  And the thing is, looking back over my life, in many ways I was encouraged to think of myself as special, mainly due to my intelligence.  In second grade, the teacher divided out the smart kids, and let us work ahead at our own speed in the math book.  Thing is, I hated the boring rote addition problems, and just did the more interesting (and much fewer) reading problems.  You know, the ones like “If a train is heading north at 50 miles an hour. . . .”  When the assignment came due and the teacher found out what I had done (or NOT done, to be precise) I spent one of the longest evenings of my young life wading through page after bloody page of boring problems with my mother standing over me, keeping me on task.

The next year, third grade, I got major narcissistic injury when a teacher wrote on my report card “Should be straight-A student.  Too satisfied with mediocre work.”  I always tried to justify that by blaming my poor  peformance on my chaotic home life due to an alcoholic dad and co-dependent mom, but that was before dad’s drinking got way out of hand, I think. But I am jumping ahead to behavior #21, underachieving.  Back to topic.

I always felt special for some reason or another, like my Indian blood, or my poor eyesight, or my aptitude for reading, or something.  I was an only child until age 12, and perhaps my mom lavished what attentioin on me as she could to make up for the neglect I got as an infant, the neglect which molded me into an NPD person in thew first place.  I don’t know.

Anyway, once I got to junior high and was placed in the honors program, I was sort of officially “special,”and I ate it up.  In high school, I got special treatment, even for a member of the honors group.  I would write little funny stories and the teacher would end chemistry class early so that Joe Goldsmith–Student Council president AND quarterback of the school’s football team–could read them aloud to the class.  Boy did I get narcissistic supply out of that.

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I finally went to a small  state college, edited the poetry for the literary magazine.  There I became acquainted with Dean Koontz, who was a fellow student and writer.  One year, we each got honorable mention in the Atlantic Monthly’s  college writing competition–he got it for prose, I got it for poetry.  More narcissistic supply, more reason to think of myself as special, more deserving of stuff than others.

When I entered the job world, I wound up spending over 30 years in either sales or public relations.  Both areas in which domination and control is essential for success.  And I was good at it.  I worked in the press office of the health department and got chastised for referring to myself as a deputy press secretary, which I was not.  I was an information specialist II, to be precise, but I worked directly under a deputy secretary–a minor cabinet member, in other words–and so it pleased me to style myself a deputy press secretary.  More narcissistic bullshit.

Somewhere in there, I joined Mensa, the international high-IQ society.  Just another spurious reason to think myself special.  The year after I joined, I was a local officer. The next year I was running the central Pennsylvania chapter. I traveled the country going to Mensa conventions, driving a sports car with a “MENSA” vanity plate.

When I gave all of this up–the money, the imagined prestige and so on–to come to Alaska, I left a lot of stuff behind, but brought along a lot of  emotional baggage and attitude.  It shames me now t think how horribly I treated SuSu.  I used sex and affection (withholding it when she wanted and needed it, offering it at inappropriate times) to control and dominate her.

Later, I used money, or anger or just bad vibes in general.  In short, I behaved in a way that was heinous and contemptible, and I am tearing up now just thinking about it.  AA talks about making amends–how can I possibly make meaningful amends for spending 13 years trying to destroy the woman who loved me, for destroying a life-long dream of hers, for hating her simply because she loved me?  I can’t, and I have to live with that.  I have to face it. I have to transcend it and get past the guilt and shame.

Today, I am using the energy I have to rebuild our relationship, to transcend my addictions, and to become a  loving human being.  It is not easy.  At times, it is exquisitely painful for both of us, especially when I am challenged to transcend programming and behaviors that were decades in the making.  But I intend to do it.  I intend to prove the experts wrong, the ones who write off NPD folks as hopeless cases who are best shunned.

The rewards I have gotten already help motivate me to do more,become more, work harder at reinventing myself.  Lately I had been slacking off; no more.  I know how mean, how spiteful, how hateful and miserable I can be.  My intent now is to learn how loving, how spiritual, how positive I can be.  On my side I have  whatever good stuff I am getting/have gotten from AA and NA,my spirit guides, my own considerable will and intelligence, the help  and counsel of my sweety(the value of which cannot be over-estimated), and God Himself.

I shall not fail.

Grandiose?  Maybe.  That is another NPD thing, after all.  But as I write these words, I feel within myself a clarity of intent that is adamantine.  I know, in general outline at least, what I want to do, what I need to do, and how to do it.  Few people are so blessed, so fortunate, so privileged.

FINALLY–back to NPD!

I have been way remiss lately–lately?  Over the past I don’t know how long–weeks?  Anyway, I have been slacking off, partly due to sloth, mostly due to complacency.  And complacency, like anger and resentment and a few other separating emotions–is a “luxury” I cannot afford.  Addicts in recovery who get complacent, tend to go out and get loaded.  I have seen this happen in others, as well as doing it myself.

When I last blogged about NPD, I had worked my way down the list to a biggie–”Overly dramatic presentation of emotion: could well be known as the ‘drama’ queen or king(negative emotions), exaggerates the importance of his experiences.” Yeah, that’s me all right.  And boy do I have examples.

One that springs to mind is when I was a kid playing with firecrackers.  I put a bottle cap on one, it flew at my face, knocked a lens out of my glasses, and I got some glass in my eye.  Okay, this was, I suppose, a fairly scary thing.  I remember taking my clothes off and going to bed, for reasons that are still not clear to me. The doctor came, got the glass out of my eye, and that was pretty much it.  I had a hell of a bloodshot eye for a few days, but I don’t think my eyesight was permanently affected.  Here’s the NPD part–the last time I spoke of this in public, it was “I almost lost an eye.”  That was bullshit.

My rationale was that it was a pardonable exaggeration, as I was trying to make a point about how dangerous fireworks are.  It was still bullshit, and NPD bullshit at that.

Another example springs to mind, the damage I sustained from being handcuffed when I was busted.  In my NPD way, I dramatize this to show how brutal and callous the troopers were.  More bullshit.   I was drunk and disorderly, they busted me for having a pretty considerable amount of dope in plain sight, and as it was, I got off lightly, even though I had a PD–20 hours community service, six months SIS.  Big deal.

Thing is, they always cuff people they bust, and I made it worse by struggling.  I had never been cuffed before, didn’t know how to act.  And I was going in and out of a blackout, for all I know, they might have warned me not to struggle. I do have some permanent loss of function in my right middle finger, it tends to kind of lock in position.  But hell, I couldn’t play the piano before the incident.  I should consider myself  lucky they didn’t really beat me up or shoot me.  They do that sometimes, you know.

SuSu has pointed out that I holler before I’m hurt.  Hey, why waste time?  Why wait till the last minute is my lame rationale. Another lame rationale is that I am just expressing surprise.  More bullshit.  What I am doing is being overly dramatic, trying to get attention and/or narcissistic supply, playing the “poor me” game.

I often do the “poor me” game in a more literal sense, pointing out my family’s poverty at every opportunity that arises.  And if no opportunity arises, I make one.  Okay, the fact is that our income is below the federal poverty level.  The Lions Club paid for my bifocals, and the ones SuSu wears.  Our two cars together are worth less than $3000.  But so fucking what?  What is so special about me in that respect?

Easily 40% of the folks around here are in the same boat or worse off.  We own our home, as well as some property.  We own the cars.  We keep our credit card bill paid.  We often find useful things in dumpsters, or just laying on the ground.  God provides.  I have so much fun shopping at thrift shops I woldn’t want to pay the high prices for new clothes even if I could.  Heck, the first time you wash them, they are used anyway, just like the stuff we get for next to nothing (like a very good almost new trench coat for 50 cents, like a very nice Brooks Brothers tweed sport coat as part of a $5 bag sale) at the thrifts.  Sure, we could use some medical and dental care we can’t afford, but it is not life-threatening.

The point is, I tend to make a big deal out of little deals, or even non-deals.  That is a big part of NPD in a nutshell.

I AM getting a handle on some of this.  Used to be, when it rained when I wanted to work outdoors, sometimes I would literally get hopping mad.  I woulld literally jump up and down, shaking my fist at the sky like some third-rate road-show Lear.  I still get pretty testy in windstorms–boy do I hate wind–but I am learning, all too slowly, to put my energy into changing what I can and accepting what I can’t, instead of just acting like a petulant fool. For instance,  I figured out a real efficient way of covering my tables and stock, have yet to implement it. Also, one of my problems with wind was that it made my eyes hurt.  So I got some special eye drops which I use before the eyes start hurting.  And you know what–it works.

(This is not rocket science, I know, and you may be wondering why such a brilliant dude  as myself has so much trouble with simple concepts, like “protect your eyes when in a wind/dust storm.”  This ties in with NPD behavior number 9–”lack of practicality,” which I will get to later.)

My rationale for the overly dramatic presentation thing has been that, well, I’m just eloquent. Anyone else would present like this if they had my vocabulary, my gift of gab, my  years of experience at public speaking.  More bullshit.  The fact is, I am a recovering drama queen, and when someone some time ago pulled my covers on this, I pulled them right back over my head with a mixture of arrogance and defensiveness.  The fact is, I have NPD and misuse some of the gifts God gave me in order to be better at being disfunctional.  Disorderly.  Sick.

One f the AA cliches about getting sober is “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  Right now, I am just plain sick of being so damn disfunctional.  AA guys say that if the program doesn’t stop your drinking, it will at least ruin it for you.  In a similar fashion, my NPD therapy has not stopped all my NPD behavior, but at least I can recongnize it (sometimes–okay, rarely), and I can endure having it pointed it out to me without flying into narsissistic rage.

I am sick of being a pain in the ass, I am sick of being burdensome to those I love and who love me, and I am sick of being unconsciously obnoxious.  If I must be obnoxious, it should at least be by choice and conscious volition.  It should NOT be a symptom.

My therapist gave me some specific ways to transcend some of this negative programming that has dictated so much of my behavior over the past half-century plus. Perhaps by the time I have worked through the remaining specific NPD behaviors on the sheet, I can share some of that.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what I’ll blog about next.  The next item on the list is “inappropriate attempts to control and dominate others.”  That’s another biggie for me.

How DeBeers saved the planet: A science fiction parable

The scout ship from the planet Zeta-Jones had completed its mission.  It had observed the watery little planet for almost fifty of its years, translated the major language groups, tapped into relevant data banks, and all without breaking the Prime Directive.  Okay, they bent the sucker a little, but nothing that a few mind-wipes and some Preparation H wouldn’t fix.

Their leader, Captain Slirk, had finished the written report and entered it into ships’ memory, but there were a few things he had left out.  Things that could not be adequately quantified or digitized.  Things that, if interpreted wrongly, could result in a planet’s being vaporized, more or less due to a clerical error.  These things have happened.

Slirk therefore resolved to communicate with his high commander, the Supreme Springsteen, also known simply as the Boss.

He linked up with one of the ship’s quantum espers, specially bred telepaths who could send and receive data instantly, regardless of distance, time zones, or servers being down.  This was not done routinely, however, as it tended to be hard on the telepaths.  They were usually only good for a short time before expiring, not unlike pre-paid long distance cards.

After the usual routing errors, he linked up with the Boss.

“Greetings, boss,” he said.”A full belly and an empty mind to you.”

“And to you,” replied the Boss affably.  “I assume you have a matter of great import to impart.”

“In part,” he imparted  impartially.  “The quantifiable digitizable data has been quantified and digitized, but there remains something which is, well, weird.  Odd.  Virtually inexplicable.  It relates to mating rituals.”

At the reference to sex, three of the Bosses’ eyes widened slightly, and his left palp throbbed a bit.

“Weirder than the genital-exchange ritual among the Jaxonians?”

“Yep.”

“Dear me. Odder than the ritual implantation of explosives into the in-laws on the planet Kaboom, formerly known as Barsoom?”

“Yep.”

“Oh my.  More inexplicable than the lemon-sucking we encountered on the planet Edselmouth?”

“Fer sher,” replied Slirk, lapsing briefly into an obscure sub-dialect he had become fond of.

“Well,” sighed the Boss,”you better tell me.  And do get to the point.  My esper is starting to twitch, and I don’t know how much longer she can hold out.”

“Okay, okay,” said Slirk, sounding strangely like Joe Pesche, or as much like Joe Pesche as a being  can whose facial parts tend to slide and click when communicating.

“There are two dominant genders on the planet, and three to seven subdominant genders.  Let me be frank, we’re not sure, and neither are they.”

“No, let ME be Frank,” interjected the Boss. “Sorry,” he added quickly. “I guess I was just born to run at the mandibles. Please continue.”

(Author’s note: The Boss interjected the punchline to a joke, variants of which are to be found in every galactic society which has subdominant genders; all of them, to be frank.)

“There is a pre-mating ritual in which the male gives an object of great value to the female.”

“So what,” said the Boss. “Nothing terribly unusual about that.  We see food, land, weapons, slaves, and such being bestowed all the time.  So what do they bestow?  And don’t be slow, you know?”

“Well, the male gives a chip of crystallized carbon to the female.”

“Crystallized  carbon?  As in glorified soot?”

“Yep.”

“That IS odd.”

“Oh it gets worse.  These are carbon-based lifeforms.  Carbon is one of the most abundant elements on the planet.”

“WHAT?  Are they crazy?”

“It gets better.  These crystals are gathered by members of an underclass who can never own them. And even though these things are not particularly rare–almost every upper and even middle class female has one or more–the males are expected to exchange the mass-energy value equivalent to one/sixth of what they can generate in one of their years.”

“Okay, that tears it.  You did well, Slirk.  Had you attempted to quantify and digitize this business, we would have vaporized the suckers on general principles.  I mean, this is dangerously nuts.  Clearly we need much more study before we take action.

“”This is what I want you to do.  Round up a bunch of examples of  beings wearing the largest crystals, regardless of gender–I’m not taking any chances here. Get a banker’s dozen or so.  Then subject them to the whole nine yards–brain scans, pentothal, organ probes,credit checks, whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this.

“Fuck the Prime Directive, we need answers and we need them soon–say in a few hundred of their years or so.”

And that is why two members of the British royal family, seven rap stars, the Pope, and Bill Gates’ wife disappeared.

Good-bye ephedra?  

It’s getting late, and I really don’t feel like being real serious, so I shall defer the next NPD post for another time.  Right now, I want to rant.

A few irresponsible idiots OD’d on ephedra and died.  Boo hoo, big fucking deal.  Now those of us who use th stuff responsibly have to suffer.

SuSu takes the stuff so she can breathe better.  i use it to help me through 12-14 hour work days.  I have yet to come close to the maximum recommended dosage, and usually fall short of the suggested dosage.  By the way, in case you don’t know, the stuff is basically a CNS stimulant, also serves as an anorexiant in sufficient quantities. 

And it seems to be going off the market.  Wal-mart is now ephedra-free, as is Carr’s and Safeway (I think).  I haven’t checked Fred Meyers or GNC lately, but I am not optimistic.  There are a few sources online, most are outrageously expensive.

There is no good reason why it should not be cheap and plentiful.  It is way less harmful than, say, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco or refined sugar.  It is probably less harmful than the new “ephedra-free” products, one of which contains (among other things) refined essence of black pepper, something that many people are allergic to.

The whole situation sucks.  Furthermore, shit, dammit, and rats!

What the hell happened to the free market economy?

*grumbles into beard while adjusting henia truss*

           

        How My NPD behavior stacks up against “the book”

  I have a sheet SuSu got off the net listing a flock of NPD behavior.  I show most of them.  Note: This post will not exactly come to a conclusion, it will just stop after I get tired of going through the list.  I will start up again in a later blog, and carry on until I have waded through the list.

1.  Inability to control impulses: eating, drinking, gambling, spending money, etc.

  I only overate when I was stoned and had the munchies, and the drinking goes without saying–I AM an alkie, after all.  The gambling, I dunno.  Last time I was in a casino. I lost some money at the craps table, won it back at the roulette table, pissed some change away in the slots. Video gambling, supposedly one of the most addictive forms has no allure for me, it seems like a pointless waste of time.

Spending money is something else.  I am easily distracted by shiny things, and will buy something “cool” I really don’t need if it is cheap and I have some extra money in my pocket.  This has to do, I think, with the NPD sense of entitlement, as well as the NPD sense that the rules that apply to other people don’t apply to us.  One thing that helped me with this is our recently drastically lowered income–I don’t have the money to fritter away I used to. Plus, living in town in an 8×10 foot cabin has cut down a lot of buying things, since I have no room for them. 

Still, I have managed to accumulate some pretties of dubious need–a cut and facted rutilated quartz (my rationale–I can resell it at a profit), and a lovely hardwood escritoire I got for cheap at a thrift shop.  I have a use for it in the cabin, haven’t decided what to do with the thing when I move back home.

2.  Overly concerned about health(somatic, imagined illnesses):. . .unable or refuses to stick to a diet. . . . .usually adheres to taking meds recommended but this doesn’t take much effort on his part.

  I am a charter member of the disease of the month club.  When I had health insurance, I went to the doctor a lot, which did me way more harm than good, expecially the free Xanax part. 

As it stands now, I have seen an MD once in the past 13 years, for a broken bone.  I keep meaning to see an MD to have my “hernia”  (I wear a truss, hurt a lot if I don’t wear it, still not positive if I even have a hernia or just some groin muscle injury) checked out, haven’t gotten around to it.  I am also supposed to see the clinic for a hep test, since SuSu’s results were “inconclusive.”

I can easily afford this, as our income is so low, we only pay $5 for an office visit.  There are so many more pressing things to deal with, it just doesn’t seem all that urgent.  Maybe this means I am getting over part of this, I don’t know.

Also, I have been doing a good job on my alcohol and most other drug-free diet, am doing pretty well at avoiding sugar (I still get maybe 10 grams a day, mostly in bread), and have been making sincere but half-assed attempts to cut out refined wheat flour from my diet.

3.  Excessive talking: leads to inappropriate self-disclosure as well as exposure about anything he knows or perceives about others.

That’s me.  People have been commenting about this trait of mine for over 20 years.  I thought it was a good thing–we are “supposed” to be open and honest about ourselves, right?  Well maybe so, at least up to a point.  But are total strangers really happy to hear about the color and texture of our latest bowel movement? Plus, I am careful to disclose only things that I think make me look good–such self-delusion!  Mostly, no one cares!

And boy, do I love to gossip, or at least know stuff about other folks.  It seems to give me the illusion of power if not control to know things about other people, especially stuff that could get them in trouble if disclosed.

I still catch myself doing this, but at least I am getting on to myself, and more and more catch myself before I run off at the mouth inappropriately.

4.  Evokes fear in others: the web of mystery that the narcissist spins around himself makes others leery of him.

At first, I thought this didn’t apply to me, especially since it seems to contradict #3.  And I am too small, old, and disabled to be physically intimidating. On the other hand, one of my favorite lines is “You really don’t want to fuck with someone who sells weapons for a living,” and I probably mention more often than necessary that I know which arteries to sever and how long it takes for unconsciousness and death to ensue.

This is something else to work on, and transcend.

5.  Inability to spend time alone; he doesn’t care who he spends time with just so he isn’t alone.

This one clearly is not me.  Before I came up here, I would gocamping by myself almost every weekend.  And after  day of dealing with dozens of folks at my stand, I really enjoy spending time by myself reading or watching videos or doing cross-word puzzles.

I go to a lot of 12-step meetings, but arrive early so as to have some time by myself.  Also to do some cleaning up–some people are such pigs.  I kid myself that my cleaning up is service work, but I do it as much for the strokes (narsisscistic supply) as anything else.  Then again, I keep laundering the dishtowels most every week, hardly anyone knows I do it, and I get no strokes.  Maybe that is honestly a selfless act–if so, it requires very little of me, so I don’t really deserve much if any credit for it.

This will be all for now.  Next, I tackle a biggie–”overly dramatic presentation of emotions.”

                       The NPD kid rides again!

  First, a little background. Okay, a lot of background.  But I have a lot of time here now and if you are in too big a hurry to take some time now, you can bite me.  Or come back later.  Whatever turns your crank.

I’m an alcoholic, got drunk the first time almost half a century ago. I went into rehab for the first of several times in 1976.  Right now, I have a 30-day AA chip in my pocket (or would, if I had pants on–it’s HOT up here right now), which tells you how well I succeeded in getting and staying sober.  I am also something of a garbagehead–polyaddict is, I think, the politically correct term.   I am the Will Rogers of CNS depressants–I never met a down I didn’t like, with the exceptioin of thorazine.  I’ve done speed, opiates, DMT, four-way strawberry fields, Thai sticks, synthetics, Xanax and other scrip shit, and so on.  I never used needles, but that was due more to cowardice than prudence.  But I digress.

In the program, there is a lot of talk about “character defects.”  That term from the 30s sets my teeth on edge, for a lot of reasons.  One, in my belief system (BS for short) in its present fairly primitive stage of development, everything that god created is perfect.  That does not mean no one needs to grow, to change.  An acorn is perfect, but it is a long damn way from being an oak tree.  Thus, I am perfect as I am now, but that does not mean I don’t have a lot of growing to do until I become the person I want to be.  Two, a lot of what the old-time fundy AA folks call “character defects” are really personality disorders.

This is where the NPD thing comes in.  Not long ago, I took a personality disorders quiz (I forget the url, to find it quick, just google “personality disorder quiz,” and it will be the first thing at the top of the list.)  I found out that I have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD for short), with a generous side order of histrionic personality disorder for good measure. 

Unlike total nut cases with schizophrenia or paranoia, we do not suffer.  We are not tormented by voices in our head telling us to kill our cat, or live in fear that the mole people from planet Zeta-Jones are beaming weird rays into our heads.  Nope, nothing that simple.  Mostly, having NPD means that I tend to be a complete pain in the ass to be around, that I am shallow in my relationships, that I take offense easily and often wish to kill those who offend me, that I tend to over-dramatize every aspect of my life, that I demand to be in the spotlight all the time, and woe betide anyone who wishes to share the limelight.  Now that I have started to work on my own NPD, I see it more and more often in others.  And boy, are we fucking pains in the ass!

Conventional wise guys in the head-shrinking field say that we are lousy clients, that we tend to bail out of therapy, and that we are pretty much incurable when the NPD came on as a result of early childhood neglect.  With the help of god and SuSu (not necessarily in that order) I intend to prove those white-coated nitwits wrong.

One of the keystones of AA is that we as alkies cannot deal with our disease (or condition, or bad habit, or whatever you want to call it–I’m on a roll here and have no wish to get hung up on semantics or labelling, except as when totally needful for effective communication) on our own. Many of us rely heavily on god–atheists, agnostics, whatever, may use the group itself as their higher power, or use their neighbor’s cat, or the fucking coffee machine for that matter.  Whatever works, works.  As someone said, effectiveness is the measure of truth.  Or as Sun Bear put it, “If your philosophy doesn’t grow corn, I don’t want to hear it.”

Anyway, part of my regimen for staying clean and sober includes asking god for help each morning and thanking him for all the day’s blessings, including sobriety, at night.  It works now–heck, it worked pretty well for seven years once, although I continued to use drugs besides alcohol during that time.  Anyway, lately, I have been asking god to help me deal with this NPD thing, even the lack of empathy part. 

When I first learned about empathy, I thought it was for the birds.  Who in their right mind wants to  feel another person’s pain?  Feeling my own is quite enough, thank you very much. But I am told, and accept as true, that NPD folks are not exactly totally human, and since I wish to be human–or at least, as human-like as I can get–I am working on it.

So now I ask god to help me feel others’ pain.  What a concept!  Asking god for something bad. But if that is part of the price I have to pay for my homo sapiens membership card, so be it.

And something happened the other day that shows me that this all might just  be working, at least a little bit.  There was a tear-jerking story on the front page of the Anchorage paper, complete with full-face close up of one of the surviving victims.  It seems that six buddies–none of them rich, pretty much salt of the earth types (one was a paramedic, another a firefighter)– were living their dream of touring Alaska by motorcycle.  So here they are, buzzing along the Parks Highway near Trapper Creek, maybe twenty or so miles from where we live.  Some old fuck in a rented Kia falls asleep at the wheel, crosses the center lane and plows into the group, killing two of them.

Normally I would have thought, fine.  More fucking tourists offing each other, at least they didn’t  hurt any of the locals.  But this time, it bothered me.  A lot.  I kept thinking abut these guys, living their dream one moment, enjoying for a time the awesome beauty that we local yokels enjoy year-round and all of a sudden, BOOM.  Their dream is shattered, two of their friends are dead, and they have to keep on keeping on, picking up the pieces of their lives.  I’m getting teary just thinking about it, writing this.

Later on, I got to thininking about the old fuck who hit them.  (The paper said he was a 74-year old, traveling with his 64-year old wife or sister–same last name–who could not be reached for comment.) Evidently the guy was not a drunk, probably was on a raft of drugs–most old geezers are, anyway.  Maybe he had thought about taking a break, maybe even the woman told him to and refused out of stubborn and stupid male pride (THAT I can relate to big-time), and here he is, responsible for the deaths of two young men.  That poor sap, whatever legal penalty he pays, will have to live with that for the rest of his life.  God knows I have a lot of rotten shit I have to live with–a few ADWs, various and sundry other felonies and just plain non-felonious rotten shit–but a least I never killed anyone.

So anyway, now I am not only relating with and feeling for the victims of this sad event, but I am relating with and feeling for the perpetrator.  Is this empathy?  Don’t ask me, I’m the last one to know about that.

But I am sure as shooting feeling SOMETHING besides the usual cold “fuck you, tough shit, glad it didn’t happen to me” business that used to be my response whenever I heard about something bad happening  to other folks, especially when they were white, and especially when they were rich.

I am changing for sure.  I assume it is an improvement.  Luckily for me, I have SuSu here to provide reality checks of that nature.

I will be keeping you posted on further developments.

More Adventures of Melody Andrewsdottir

Episode Eight

 

In the previous episode, everyone’s favorite Lady Shaman to the Rich and Famous had arrived in Parma where she was nonplussed to see her nemesis, Mad Dog, and gratified to meet up once again with her Bushwa Indian mentor, Naomi Chortling Wolverine.  She is about to receive shamanic training in preparation for a journey to acquire a power animal.

In making preparation for my first serious shamanic journey, I had many unanswered questions.  Should I go first class or coach, for example?  Would I need to take along a change of underwear?  How about a passport?

“So much to learn,” I sighed.

“And so little time in which to learn,” Naomi reminded me.  “Even as we speak, Mad Dog’s power grows.  And he at least is not unmindful of the ancient sacred Ahhooah Principle that power flows from a rubber hose.  So let’s get with the program, girl.”

“Very well,” I acquiesced.  “I do indeed wish to fulfill my destiny as a dues-paying, card-carrying member of the Sorority of the Sow, that ancient and powerful group of wise and compassionate women (plus a few moody bitches) who are dedicated to world peace, planetary healing, and making sure that everyone brushes and flosses after every meal.”

“Right!  Now the first thing you must know is that the shaman typically works in an altered state of consciousness–”

“Jeepers!” I peeped.  “You mean I can get high?  I have papers here somewhere…”

Naomi looked pained.  “No, that is not precisely what I meant.  You see, your so-called normal state of waking consciousness is beta.  You need to proceed down through alpha, down farther through theta, until you reach feta, the ultimate state of consciousness, in which you can commune with spirits.”

“Are they friendly spirits?”

“Please stop interrupting, and take off those silly aviator goggles and leather helmet.  In this state, you can commune with plant spirits, animal spirits, mineral spirits and sometimes even the most powerful of all, neutral grain spirits.”

“Neutral grain spirits?” I asked.

“A small jocularity,” she admitted.  “I get a little tired of feeding you straight lines all the time.  But I digress.”

“Once you have attained the feta state, you will seek and visualize an opening in an enormous Swiss cheese, through which you will pass into the Lowerworld.  You will pass through a tunnel which will eventually dump you into the Dreamtime, where you will encounter many strange and awesome animals.

“There are several ways to tell if a specific animal is meant to be your power animal.  Say you see a wolf which snarls and wets on your shoes–not a good sign.  If you see a grey fox in wraparound sunglasses, who tries to get you into a game of three-card monte, watch out.  And by all means, avoid turtles wearing roller skates, especially if they are eating a pizza.”  She paused expectantly.

“Are you expecting something,” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about the turtles?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “They are sort of cute little beasties, and Rocky kept a pair of them as pets…”  At this point, Naomi sighed impatiently, but I continued doggedly, knowing her bark was worse than her bite.  “In a larger sense, the turtle can be seen as symbolic progenitor of the world, hence the Native American term for the North American continent, Turtle Island.  Beings of great antiquity, they perhaps spring from the collective unconscious of the entire domesticated primate species.”

“Well, I’ll be blowed,” Naomi said.  “How did you know all that?”

“After all,” I sniffed, “I do read more than the occasional Cosmo, you know.”

“Stop sniffing and blow your nose,” Naomi said.  “It is time for your journey.”

Now, with the momentous moment immanent, I had passed beyond the trivial concerns of would I need a passport, and should I take along a two-suiter or would a simple carry-on bag do the trick.  No, indeed, I was facing sterner questions of self-examination.  Was shamanism truly my right livelihood?  Was I following the will of Spirit?  And was my hair okay?

You see, I usually kept it in a simple page-boy bob… well, actually shorter, sort of a paragraph-boy.   Would this do for impressing the spirits I would meet in the Lowerworld?  My mentor usually kept her long flowing hair tied back in a bun, sometimes with an Oscar Meyer weiner, no onions.  I must ask her about that sometime.  But maybe–just maybe–I was being a tad superficial.  Perhaps the purity of one’s heart and steadfastness of one’s intent were more important than the correctness of one’s coiffure.  Naah.  After all, I am a material girl, living in a material world.  At least, I always had been.

“Melody, stop wool-gathering!”

Naomi’s sharp tone brought me back to reality.  Discarding several handfuls of wool I had carded, I once again paid attention.

“Melody, I have told you of what to be wary–the urinating wolf, the fox playing three-card monte, the Greeks bearing gifts, the frumious bandersnatch, the partridge in a pear tree.  But I have been remiss, in not alerting you to the more positive factors in helping you distinguish a guardian spirit.

“A guardian spirit is indeed a friendly spirit, and this will manifest itself in any one of several unmistakable ways.  For instance, should a bear come up and offer you some honey, that is a favorable sign.  If a rhinoceros should approach and roll at your feet like a puppy, that is another good sign.  If a unicorn should sidle up and whisper in your ear something like, ‘Happy Daze in the fifth at Belmont,’ that is a very propitious, and quite possibly profitable, sign.

“Above all, you must be open to spirit.”

At this point, quite frankly, what I was open to was grabbing the phone, hitting 911, and summoning several husky lads with butterfly nets.  Naomi was going seriously weird on me here.

“No, Melody,” she said quietly.  “I am not yet ready for a ride on the happy wagon.  Know you that the shaman is a technician of ecstasy, and while yet touched by the divine madness, which even Western mystics and masters have praised and striven to emulate, the shaman remains in control.  He, or she, can see, or hear, those things which you can, or will, not.”

I was touched and impressed.  Six commas in a single sentence!  And it made sense, more or less.

“Forgive me,” I said tritely.  Contritely, rather.

“Cheer up,” she boomed heartily, giving me a slap on the back which loosened my bicuspids.  “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”

Wise words, indeed, worthy of a philosopher.  I was ready.

“I am ready,” I said.

“No you’re not,” she said.

“I am not ready,” I said.

She smiled.  “In the words of the Yanquidoodle Indians, close, but no cigar.”

She frowned.  (Naomi was prone to mood swings.)  “That was a very confused tribe,” she said.  “But then, they smoked a lot of peyote.”

“Aren’t you supposed to chew peyote?” I asked.

“Most people do, although you can avoid the nausea by inserting it rectally.  But I said they were confused, didn’t I?  Let us continue.  In order to attain the feta state, you can use one of several means, such as drugs, meditation, rubbing two stones together, chanting, ecstatic dancing, or drumming.”

“That first sounds pretty good.  Do I get a choice?”

“Nope!”

“Rats!”

“We will use drumming,” she said.

“So, what do we do for a drum, ring room service?”  We were in the Parma Hilton.

Ignoring my sarcasm, she said, “No.  We will use a technique endorsed by Joe and Rena Beleevens.”  Then she produced, from her brown paper Gucci bag, a Quaker Oats box and an unsharpened pencil.  Eberhard Faber #3, to be precise.

She instructed me to lie down on the floor, while she lit a candle.  This struck me as superfluous, since there was bright sunlight streaming through the window.

“Cover your eyes,” she said, “and focus on the beat of the pencil on the box.”

She began drumming.  I began visualizing, seeking an entrance to the Lowerworld.

TO BE CONTINUED….

This episode was first published in Volume 4, Number 1 of The Shaman Papers, Spring 1992.  That issue also contained a number of book reviews and reviews of shamanic sound CDs.  There was an article on Surviving a Shamanic Initiation Crisis, and a followup to the earlier article on Theta State as Therapy.

In the first of our extended series of articles on the metaphysical properties of minerals, Getting Stoned with Rock Stars:  Part I, Greyfox wrote, on the subject of belief:

…The clearest statement of this concept I have ever encountered is in The Newcastle Guide to Healing with Gemstones (Chase & Pawlik):  “When you sense the non-physical properties of a stone, your conscious beliefs have a direct impact on what you perceive… When you work with stones, you interpret their consciousness according to your own spiritual understanding… It is best to form your own relationships with the stones and trust your perceptions and beliefs.”

Personally, I’m more interested in results than explanations.  I do better psychic readings when I wear a bracelet set with an azurite cab.  Maybe it is a placebo effect, maybe the stone opens or sensitizes my third eye.  I know hematite is the best grounding stone for me, but as to why, I neither know nor care.  (Ignorance and apathy strike again.)  I am particularly sensitive to the vibrations of amethyst but could only speculate as to a reason.  Sure, I could journey and ask the amethyst deva, but why bother her with trivialities?  When I am directed in a journey to recommend or send specific stones to a client, I don’t ask for a rationale.  Let the left brain go figure.  The right brain is doing this job.

Meanwhile, back at the
 Melody ranch….

Episode Seven

[Editor's note:  Recently, The Adventures of Melody Andrewsdottir, Lady Shaman, have been in flashback format, due to an error by Professor Neil Dreary's benighted lab assistant in Hoopla, SD, who mistook Mel's lipstick-inked paper towels for the Kleenex of Turin.  Before the lab lackey's lacuna, Melody had just completed a 17-year course of training in 23 minutes with the renowned Polynesian Poobah, Dr. Lint Kahuna Duke.   After receiving the gift of a power object, Melody boarded a plane for Parma, on her quest for dharma, and the sacred wedding waffle iron.
{Editors footnote to editor's note:  that episode can be found HERE}]

I was seated comfortably in the Fly By Night Airways jet, musing on the emergency instructions the flighty attendants had just finished imparting–”In case of emergency, passengers on the right side of the plane will please stick their right arms out the windows and flap like hell;  non-sectarian prayer is also recommended.”–and thinking back to my session with Dr. Lint Kahuna Baron, also known, for reasons I could not yet fathom, as the shaman of many names.  I had completed a lengthy and detailed course of mystic instructions, the details of which I had jotted down on the back of one of my business cards.  In addition, he had presented me with a power object, the femur of an Abyssinian Lesser Aua, which I had reverently made up into the centerpiece of my coiffure.  I wondered if perhaps he should have removed the meat and gristle adhering to it, but he had explained.

“To do so would have lessened the mana,” he explained messianically.

“But isn’t that the stuff that falls from heaven?” I protested weakly.

“Your protest is weak,” he countered, shifting his considerable bulk on the counter in his office.

“But what about the power?” I asked.

He unscrewed one end of the bone with a flourish and out popped two C-cells.

I was jerked back to reality, whatever that might be, by the presence of a flighty attendant hovering over me like a vulture that has spotted a moribund bunyip.

“Care for a cold drink?” the attendant asked.

“No thank you,” I replied coldly.  “Alcohol dulls the senses, and opens one up to entity attachment.”

“How about some hot tea or coffee”?

“Certainly not,” I replied hotly.  “Caffeine causes mood swings, palpitations, constipation, liver cancer, and also stains dentures.”

“Soft drink?” the attendant ventured softly.

“Sugar contributes to hypoglycemia, arthritis, tooth decay and the national debt; artificial sweeteners are worse.”

“How about some plain water?” she asked plaintively.

“Fish fuck in it.”

Defeated, the attendant retreated.  I myself felt depleted, but at least the exchange was completed.  Seeking new fields, I headed for the WC.

Returning to my seat, I wondered why the flighty ones pushed the booze.  A high profit margin aside, perhaps they were just trying to be helpful.  Naa, more likely they wanted to divert attention from minor lapses in service:  the late arrivals and departures, the quasi-edible food, the occasional wing falling off the plane.

Finally the plane landed, wings intact, landing gear almost so.  Stepping off the plane, I felt many eyes upon me, and brushed them off impatiently.  Other onlookers were looking on at me and the bone in my hair, their noses wrinkling in the traditional, if cheesy, Parmesan gesture of greeting and approval.

It occurred to me that in my headlong quest for wisdom, enlightenment, and big bucks, I had neglected to determine just exactly where in the world Parma was, and what time zone it was in.  Turning to the information counter, I asked, “Where are we?  And what time is it?”

The counter clerk beamed my way.  “We’re here!  And it’s now!” he beamed.

Oh, great.  I’m looking for some info, and I get a bloody Zen master.  Irked, I trudged over to the newsstand to procure a local paper.  I noticed the cover price of 25 cents was totally obscured by a sticker that said $2.98.  Darned old profiteers, I thought, and was about to make a mental note to charge $50,000, not my planned $5,000, when I hit the lecture trail; but I had run out of mental Post-Its.  I bought a paper anyway, and was about to read it when I became aware of an ominous figure lurking near the door to the men’s room.

It was a man, painfully thin but starkly muscular, clad in dusty cowboy boots, cut-off jeans, and a Boston Celtics t-shirt.  His long greasy hair hung down to his long greasy shoulders.  His brow was furrowed, and he had bags under his eyes.  He bore an odd, striking, strange, uncanny resemblance to… someone…I…almost… remembered….  Marvin Dingleberry!!  Worse, he bore an unmistakable sign of hostility.  To be precise, he was carrying a large placard which read, “Death to Melody Andrewsdottir,” in five languages:  English, French, Estonian, Pig Latin and Gaelic.  It could only be Mad Dog!

My jaw dropped.  My newspaper dropped.  The London stockmarket dropped.  Raindrops kept falling on my head.  Noticing me noticing him, he folded up his sign, tucked it in one of the bags, and quickly sauntered off.

So, Mad Dog was in Parma!  And so was I, and I knew that he knew that I knew.  What I didn’t know, my power bone notwithstanding, was what to do next.  I whirled around resolutely, to fetch my bags, and fetched up beneath the bosom of a rather large person who had been standing behind me.  “Oof!”

Regaining my composure, I was pleased to see it was my mentor, Naomi Chortling Wolverine.  Still clad in the familiar malodorous black high-topped Keds, she had her long flowing hair tied back in a bun, a Sara Lee cheese Danish, to be precise.

“Naomi!” I said.

“Welcome to Parma,” she beamed.

“Oh no, not again,” I wailed.  “One more beam and I can make beam soup.”

“What’s wrong, my child?” she asked, beaming down.

“All this synchronicity is getting me down.  I’m not as Jung as I used to be.”

She beamed up again.  “Perhaps your blood sugar is low.  Would you like to go for some Tennessee Freud Chicken?”

“No, thank you very much, it’s not that.  You see, I have just seen Mad Dog.”

“Lord love a duck,” she ejaculated.  “Last time I saw that rascal, he was in line to see a PG rated British flick at the Wodehouse Theater.  And the time before that, he was in the Basque highlands herding sheep and singing ‘Embraceable Ewe.’  My goodness that rascal does get around.”

“But why is he here, and why now?”

“Everyone’s gotta be somewhere, Toots.  But to be more specific, I suspect he is here because he realizes your power as a pledge to the Sorority of the Sow has not yet realized its full yin potential, and he wishes to force a confrontation before you are fully ready to claim back the power of the sacred wedding waffle iron he has purloined for his own nefarious porpoises.”

“Porpoises?” I protested powerfully.

She nodded grimly.  “He has enlisted the aid of some renegade cetaceans, a group of militant mammals who are even now at work on a political polemic to be entitled ‘Flipper Died for your Sins.’  What’s more, he has a porpoise as one of his power animals, along with a tufted titmouse, a blue-footed booby and and rabid pit bull.”

“Yeow!  That sounds like a pretty nasty crew.”

“Nasty, indeed.  Nasty, mean and hungry.  Let me put it this way:  right now, in his current state of ACC (Alternating Current Consciousness), he makes Rambo look like Pee Wee Herman.  So it behooves you to augment your yin power.”

“Let’s see, the yin is the guy, right?”

“Wrong, wrong, WRONG!  Yin is the female polarity, yang is the male.”

“Okay, I think I got it now.  How about port and starboard?”

“Never mind that now.  You’re not at sea yet.  At least, not completely at sea, anyway.  Now, what do you have in the way of power animals?”

“The mink and the chinchilla,” I offered brightly.

“Not good enough, ” she sighed.  “You need to take a journey to the underworld to retrieve power and knowledge.”

“Sounds scary,” I said.  “How about I just buy a gun?”

“Nope.  You wanna be a shaman, you gotta do shaman stuff,” she said stuffily.

That sounded reasonable enough, at least by shaman standards, so I proceeded to stiffen my upper lip, gird my loins, furrow my brow, and just generally psych myself up for what was next.

TO BE CONTINUED….

The foregoing episode first appeared in The Shaman Papers Volume 3, number 4 Winter, ’91-’92, along with some letters to the editor, an article about Theta State as Therapy, and a review of Native Healer: Initiation into an Ancient Art by Medicine Grizzlybear Lake.  Lake was a reluctant shaman who, “…did not want medicine power, and consulted four shamans for the purposes of having it taken away.  Of the four, two refused to have anything to do with him, one agreed to try to help and died within a year, and the fourth made him his apprentice.”

Also in that issue was the following by Greyfox:

The other night, Aurora sang to me.
High and clear like crystal ringing,
The other night Aurora sang to me.

The other night, Aurora danced for me.
High and clear with heaven for a stage,
The other night Aurora danced for me.

The other night, Aurora spoke to me.
High and clear like love made light,
The other night, Aurora spoke to me.

This was to have been a little filler essay, but got out of hand.  What is described is true.  I did really and for truly hear the Aurora Borealis.  It sounded like a Tibetan bowl would sound if it could sing.  Kathy tells me that to hear the aurora is not unknown, but quite uncommon.  It seems small next to what I have heard tell of:  an Inuit or Inupiat shaman, who could call the aurora down to him.  Moi, I am content to gaze in wonder from down here.