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Hi Mat,

I'm wordless, except to say that I appreciate your reposting this poem and that you found
the words to have expressed yourself so well. And ahhhh, "sunshine" -- Yeah!

The hurters have been hurt. Alice Miller did research into various famous/infamous people. She sudied Hitler, concentrating on his formative years. They were bloody horrible.

My grandfather was a weak, passive man, my grandmother neurotic. I remember her screaming at me, at family members at the family table, at her mother who lived with her until my nana was 63. My father came from a disastrous setting. But I didn't 'know' that in 1975. And I can't ignore the fact that he ignored me. That my siblings didn't measure up and were so fucking hurt trying. One took his life - he didn't speak to Dad for 3 years.

I believe a very important component in finding your real self, if you've been abused and forced to deny the pain, is grieving. For some reason Alice Miller's wisdom hit me in 1990. I may sound very naive. You may think I'm unlearned - I am - but if you get hurt, intellectualism will not get to the crux of the problem. You gotta mourn. Or play with paint or...

And yeah, Mat's poem rips you in half.

Adam

So what influences a human being? Parents/guardians, teachers, peer group, lovers, governments, entertainment, business, religion. Most of us wade through this kaleidoscope and hopefully 'fit in'. Every single one of us needs attention - all of us. We aren't so dissimilar to dogs. Yet we find ourselves in this Machine type world that labels us, numbers us, and fucks with us. In the first 15 odd years we are shaped so much by our immediate family. Blindly, we look up to our parents. But slowly this dissipates. We 'grow up', we 'arrive', we 'make it'. Get a job, a lay, a wife, a child, a house. Then we expand. We renovate, send the kids to the best schools, have affairs, go to church/synagogue/temple, upgrade the car, get divorced. We remarry. We retire. We hope to God we have enough in our super and pension to survive. We fly to Queensland for a holiday. And then we die.

And it seems that along the way, somewhere, somehow, we were being guided by something. That there was a 'system' to it all. There are in fact two. One is Good and the other is Greed. We have a decision to make and it usually comes early in life, but not always. Are you gonna' give or are you gonna' take? It's that simple. Which system is best for me? Am I compassionate or am I self-centred. I am self-centred, but I try like hell to be otherwise. If you give, to others, to dogs even, you are going against so much of the evolution in nature and you are going against multi-nationals - nasty little bastards capitalizing on the take system so many of us assume. To give is a difficult option. If you take, you'll slot in so neatly with your society that you probably wouldn't read this anyway. The point is, to get back to the theme of this thread, it very often correlates, I think, that a child supported by loving parents learns to love himself and his world and is often a giver. Someone, anyone, who gives a child Love, even if his emotional world is all mayhem, is doing a service Peace is proud of. Even one compliment to a child, and an adult too, can change the world. All of us need love, and if we mature in that love, we can give

I am tired

Adam

Hi Boss,

I don't think you are naive nor unlearned. Intellectualism is worthless with these
kinds of things, to take your valid point a bit further. It's been said that
"feeling is healing," and that applies to grieving also. But, for anyone reading
this, it's not about being overwhelmed, disconnected, isolated or anything like
that when dealing with feelings. It's about doing so in a supported, safe and
individually appropriate way -- not self-remedy work for this.

And when evil is thought to be good, it's...

Steven
I am waiting, Steven, for your response.
Matj

Hi Sean, there is stuff you mentioned I still need to get back on, but I am internet-less at home at the mo... Back in due course, I hope.

Dear Adam ~

I've read only enough of this thread to see that your Buddy may have cancer; so I may be coming in here to comment after you've already learned more. I'm so sorry and pray for you and Buddy that your vet is wrong in his suspicion. I know from my own experience how much of yourself and your feelings you've invested in Buddy. I'm praying for you both and hoping I don't find worse news as I continue to read. For now, I just felt the urgent need to say something to you.


Love,
Lizzy

Hi Mat,

If by response, you mean a completion of the sentence, two possibilities are:
blasphemous and horrible. I hope you weren't waiting for a response to when
that happens.

What my dad wanted me to tell him

I was seven,
unwelcome
impoverished
immigrant kid
with an Irish name
and a British accent
in a French district
in Montreal.
mom was depressed
dad drank
winter was bitter
the house was
horribly unhappy.

They sent me to
a normal house
for a weekend
and I was liberated,
but not for long.
on Sunday night
I was returned
in the back of a taxi,
alone and very sad,
echo-empty sadness,
silent tears
streaming,
pouring through
two eye-taps
all the way home.
my two-day holiday
was a torture
and a tease.

The frequency
and severity
of the beatings
determined by
the booze-stress
bottom line.
the waves
we all rode,
passively,
surrendering to
the undertow.

This is what my father
wanted me to tell him,
but I refused,
because
fortunately,
I didn't need to.
I don't need to
tell the tale here either,
just hoping it's helpful,
to someone.
all dad needed
was forgiveness.
and I was glad
to give it.


Sean

This is what my father
wanted me to tell him,
but I refused,
because
fortunately,
I didn't need to.

No offence meant daka, but it is not all about "your" needs.
He, your father, may have "needed" to hear it.
Otherwise his guilt may still roll around stirring the mud of his otherwise still and clear pond.
Maybe you are a little afraid that in the "telling" process you may become overtly emotional ?
If you think it might help him, (and perhaps you)you could give him a copy of the poem you posted above.
"let it all out" as they say.

My guess is : you are hiding from something.

Matj

Steven wrote:
....it's not about being overwhelmed, disconnected, isolated or anything like
that when dealing with feelings. It's about doing so in a supported, safe and
individually appropriate way -- not self-remedy work for this.

I disagree. If anyone reads this thread and starts to question their own upbringing or parenting, that is fantastic. Who knows where it will take them. Also, I've been in a 'supported, safe and individually appropriate way' scenario for 18 years. But I found the inner child in me in the Golan Heights, at 2 brothers' and a sister's funeral and crying one morning in May last year in front of a video recorder watching my father read poetry. It does not have to be in a clinical situation at all. Sure you get advice - you give me advice unknowingly - but the road is yours and yours alone. And I don't care if I make anyone in the psychological/psychiatric field pissed. They are not me. They do not know me. I know me. I know the hurt. I own the hurt. And I take it with me wherever I choose and I cry when I want. Yes, self remedy has worked splendidly for me. I don't want to rile you Steven, but I believe healing happens all the time, everywhere. It can happen lying on your bed, or at the fair.


Thank you Lizzy for your post. Buddy is right next to me. The vet may be wrong. I haven't the cash for any testing. Maybe next week.


Early this morning I put on a post about giving and taking. Erich Fromm wrote a great book called, To Have Or To Be, I think he explains it better. I wrote this on a pad about 2 hours ago.

Business and governments take our souls. We give them the benefit of the doubt - like we did our parents. All grown up we think we are in control. We vote, make babies, make money - but we are subject to surrogate 'parents'. We are still children, still obedient to 'Daddy and Mummy'. Just like in Germany and Japan in the 1930's, the state is our parents - we slide so easily into dependence. A rare few are free. Cohen is 'daddy' for some of us - me included! The Nasdaq is for many. The US dollar an illusion we pray to to alleviate the brokenness inside because we were never loved for who we are. We fill in this chasm with anything we can find. We are ravenous. But nothing eases the ache.

We gotta love ourselves, really love ourselves. We gotta find that abandoned, hurt little person and hold him or her. And reconcile. And I think we gotta cry. It may take many years, but what else have we got? Pride in Hewlett-Packard and Barack Obama?

Find pride in yourself

Adam

For Sean

A father is a son
He knows of all things
Behind the shed
And up the chimney
He was a boy
On yesterday’s science
And bicycles
And girls
And tadpoles

The world insists
That he is grown
He shaves
For posterity
As the odd hero did
And he looks
To his child
Remembers her mother
And how they danced
It was magic!
How they made love

And in the distance
His father calls
He runs
As he did as a child
To serve him
And his father asks him,
“Can I get you anything?”
And the son weeps
In the love of himself
In knowing
He was beautiful
All the time

mat james wrote:

This is what my father
wanted me to tell him,
but I refused,
because
fortunately,
I didn't need to.

No offence meant daka, but it is not all about "your" needs.
He, your father, may have "needed" to hear it.
Otherwise his guilt may still roll around stirring the mud of his otherwise still and clear pond.
Maybe you are a little afraid that in the "telling" process you may become overtly emotional ?
If you think it might help him, (and perhaps you)you could give him a copy of the poem you posted above.
"let it all out" as they say.

My guess is : you are hiding from something.

Matj

Hello Matt

Thanks for your honest and direct response.

I stopped being sad and crying about the old pain in 1994. I let it loose for four years. I divorced dad, and mum for a while.

Dad had two or three years with top notch therapists, and weekly groups that they ran so I trust that he did a lot of work there.

I have wondered whether my dad may have needed me to tell him those few verses, and some others, whether he would have benefited from hearing and processing all that. Thus far I have trusted my intuition and refrained from doing so. One reason is that I am presently completely delighted with the relationship, and he appears to be delighted, so I wonder what it could help in terms of the relationship. Also, considering his needs, I tried for a few years to encourage him to read Alice Miller so that he would be clued into what 'Poisonous Pedagogy' is because it was such a huge part of his life, but I gave up and abandoned that wish instead of becoming too harassing or abusive with him. I also tried occasionally to talk to him about his parenting. He still has a very strong denial in place with respect to the horrid parenting that he endured. All of the boys (7) in that family were emotionally abused and narcissistically crippled a la "For Your Own Good"! He still unfortunately idealizes his mother and father, and lets them off the hook and tends to focus on the Catholic Church and the academic abuse, ignoring the more painful truths. This is after years with the best psychotherapists in Toronto! So I feel like I have done all that I can do, and he is 85, approaching the end. Sure, you are right, that if he had the motivation, and the time, we could both do some more processing of that old stuff, and he could certainly benefit from that, (I'm not so sure about me) but there is cement-strong resistance and he has no time.

I felt like I had to choose between giving my dad 'education' (fuel for more psychotherapy for him) or forgiveness, and that if I tried to do both it wouldn't have worked. But I suppose that it would have been possible to give him the forgiveness first and then a detailed accounting. But even as I write that I see that the detailed accounting would probably have detracted from the forgiveness. Maybe there was a skillful way to do so, but I couldn't find it.

I have considered your suggestion of sending that poem off to him, and will continue to consider it. I may even first ask him if he still wants to know what my life was like, as his child, if he still wants to know about my pain.

He benefited greatly from Psychotherapy! But He still has miles to drive. As do I.

He hasn't beat me up since 1962.

And if I sent him that little poem, just maybe, I might get a poem back from him! But is it worth the risk of digging it all up again in his mind, at 85?

AGT

Sean


PS I am impressed that no one has taken the bait from the cruel critic!, though I must admit I have been tempted!

"IMHO" she said!
I have been
terribly tempted
to try
to climb
her high horse,
grab her bloody whip
and lash her mercilessly
for having the gall
to call herself
humble.

Maybe you are right, Mat,
I might have some work left to do!

(Got my threads mixed up Mat, you were whipped by her humbleness in another thread)

Dear Adam

I was thinking about you this morning, before turning on my laptop and reading your very kind poem. I thank you. That is the second for my collection, and I value it. I shall read it often as my collection is quite small.

As I was thinking of you this morning, I was trying to come up with something useful to offer you, a gift of sorts. As I reflected, I realized that your world seems to me to be cloudy, foggy, rainy, dismal, and the best gift I could give you would be a shift to a lighter, sunnier, happier, weather system. Having no control over the actual weather, I looked through my songs, which are nearly all Leonard Cohen songs, and I came across one that has touched me in the past, and that I intend to learn to play and sing, probably starting today. Whenever I do, I will think of you.

What a Wonderful World

Louis Armstrong


I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom, for me and you,
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white,
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people goin' by
I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?"
They're really saying, "I love you."

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know,
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people goin' by
I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?"
They're really saying, "I love you."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This song, believe it or not, is a very Buddhist song
That is why I will sing it
Tantra uses the power of the mind
to determine the reality
that one chooses to experience

Louis probably didn't even know that he was a tantric practitioner!

AGT

If the Militant Wing has a problem with
"love" in this song, I have a poem for them to critique:


Tough Titty!

Sean

daka wrote: As I reflected, I realized that your world seems to me to be cloudy, foggy, rainy, dismal,

You pay me a noble compliment. You see I believe I am in tune with this fucked up world. It is foggy and rainy, dismal with its weapons, its wars, its weaknesses. I swim in the filth of money – that which supplies all of us rich people power and privilege over the poor and the hungry, Sean, while we consider psychology and Buddhism. This wonderful world full of greenhouse gas and noxious minds leading us all astray. Yes, I am cloudy. But I am not false like many. I see with clarity the feeble attempts of men to garner attention or importance because they can't find it in themselves. I see grown men throwing themselves into alcohol and drugs because their fathers never hugged them. And I see the ‘happy’ secretly cursing their wives and God for this unquenchable misery that lurks each morning when they get on the train. I see the dirt, mate. And often it is transparent as the water in my cup. I like my dismal position – I need not pretend that I’m not fucked up. Tell me holy monk, do you see a clear and happy world? Dare I intimate but is your world so ‘together’? Can a jobless, broken wretch like me dare intrude on your pretentious existence? Your rude pretentious existence. I think I can.