Cave Troll

Because of the genetic nature that typifies neurotic behaviors like hoarding and obsessive-compulsive rituals, I was raised among a group of rather short, fat, twitchy women on my mother's side who sometimes wrongly believe (in their worst disassociate and delusional states) that objects are more important than people, which is about the most abusive thing a mother can be towards the human children she birthed, and whom are now dependent upon her for life and care. Of course, the root of our faith defies the need for talismans and other superstitions as mere witchcraft, but in our family groupings, the pagan is sometimes closer than the monotheist, especially if you can't break through to the people around you using logic and reason.

Most Italian-Americans like to blow their tops to release the pent-up stress that comes along with sitting in a room full of people, eating plateful after paper plateful of someone else's home-cooked meals, while being as unobtrusive as possible as long as their needs are being met. Failing that, it's showtime. Then, it's a horrible gnashing of the teeth, angry spitting, and pulsing veins popping out of their foreheads, in almost direct contrast to their rather pathetic physical state. Uh, excuse me, bitch? You said what to me? It doesn't happen as much now that me and my brothers "rule the roost", but when we were smaller and more vulnerable, our family got away with as much hurt as they could without drawing the attention of social services or law enforcement, because that's actually what crazy bitches off their meds really need, in lieu of decent behavior.

If their violently abusive presence wasn't ugly enough to serve their weird agendas, then an out-pouring of incredibly escalating and extremely juvenile head games ensued, vicious in their focus on bizarre trivial household matters, like the "right" way to put a plastic bag in a garbage pail that sucks design-wise. If you "outed" them on that particular fetish (my mom and her sisters like the sound of plastic rustling, like dogs do), they simply argued until you went away or complied with their insane demands about shit no one really gives a fuck about, because it doesn't really fucking matter. Petty and spiteful is the domain of the common cave troll, not mine. Lines were then drawn in the household, like a sitcom family gone awry, with designated areas strictly off-limits to the non-complying human that could be enforced with a long boring story about their psychotic mindset, which was the point: that was the power they could use against you as their evidence to back their compulsively disordered actions and outbursts.

No, no, no. That's not it! You don't understand me! You're not listening to me! You didn't close the bag "properly"; that's why the chips went stale. You need this special gadget, like the one I have! It's magic. Well, I had to call the plumber because you have all that hair that's clogging up the drain! You knocked the car's transmission out-of-whack and that cost me money. No car for you! Every wacky thing that caused them the slightest pressure would cause them to spew out a bunch of falsehoods and lies, because their abuses supposedly swirled around our "incompetence" without their necessary hyper-vigilant monitoring, but really, what the fuck can a kid do to a nervous mother tearing paper into strips because the relatives are stopping by, er, I mean, it's recycling. Yeah! That's it! This is recycling. You can see the little wheels of their dysfunctional brains whirling now too fast, whereas before it was a depressed stupor. And it certainly wasn't limited to our often violent home lives.

After college graduation, the same trolls inhabited our office spaces, too, with the same bitchily passive-aggressive and lowly mentality as the ones they displayed within our family units behind closed doors, now aired out in public, and always with the same type of pissant jobs like secretaries (now "admins") and junior assistants, rife with ready-made excuses to explain away their phobias and unexplainable oddness around rather average and dull office workers. With me around, it was like they were wind up so tight that their heads might explode in confused hostility.

First, it would be deliberate neglect towards obvious job duties like changing the toner, making coffee, or keeping the fax area clear of excessive paper by tidying up when near it. You know, stuff a two year-old knows how to do. Then, after a period of tight observation (now called "stalking") while I went about my day, they would form the same bullshit plans to subterfuge my day, like noticing I forgot a small amount of food in the fridge, or an unwashed coffee cup in the sink that could be pounced upon with an alarming alacrity that did not mark their usual day-to-day work behavior. Next, the typically nasty "Wash your own dishes! I'm not your Mom!" notes show up next to the company sink, with other stupid notes posted on the fridge or, even better, a group email sent to me and cc'ed to my managerial higher-ups, but not until after catalog season was over, and they'd already used my designs to push their products onto the consumer.

Anything to humiliate, embarrass, or harass me would be an ideal day in their offices of the world. You know, to balance things out because they get "shit on" all day long! Uh...but not by me. "Sorry, you know how I 'get' around conference time". Their abuses were fine and excusable, even noble, given how "hard" they worked at the bottom of the corporate ladder! Except, I'm a working class Acadian; ain't nobody done nuthin' I haven't had to do for the diva's around me at least four or five times. It just didn't work with me around. If the cunt working reception couldn't frighten me away from the reception desk area during my work-related conversations (she's, like, really sensitive about boundaries and stuff because she was raped and she doesn't have a "real" desk like we do!), the next day a big heavy box full of books or paper would magically appear right in front of the area we stood in to talk to her, even though she often complained about her "bad back" when it came to moving boxes or mailing out packages.

Ditto with any apartment dwelling or townhome I resided in. If I recycled, then the bitch on the block would find good reason not to do so, like hiding all those empty vodka bottles in the common trash so the building's owners would get fined with the next garbage collection, by blaming it on "that new girl" who just moved in, which is always me. She must not know the rules! If I happened to use a common staircase, then clutter would appear the next day to block my path (because the bitch of the building tensely hid behind her door, looking at me through the peephole because she heard me laughing with a friend as we walked upstairs, and that's not right!), like their shoes on a too big mat by their door, or (as in the case with the house here in Pearl River), a kitchen chair obviously blocking the top of a small staircase everyone used. But, not me! I can't. There's, like, history! Such as...Oh! She's better looking and I started fights with her. Huh.

After awhile, the psychotic begin a brutal obstacle course of manipulation and deceit. "Well, no one helps me move boxes!" Or: no one looks at me! I have to do something to get attention! See? It's always put back onto you to solve them as the problem, so that their pressure is put back on your shoulders as a weight, even though by now, it's such a false construct to use with me, that's its purpose is easily discernible to any healthy outside observer, which is exactly what I want. I want help for your hoarding mood swings, and violently aggressive, wildly transgressive behavioral problems, because if you're so desperate for interaction (any kind, good or bad) that you put large objects in doorways to express your illness over other humans using it, then you are so fucking nuts, you should be in society-supported housing for the critically mentally ill and infirm.

Objects for the insane take on more meaning than they should because of their inability to communicate properly with the lifeforms around them, which is about as seriously ill in "human" as you can get, given the range of communicative abilities that we possess as a species. If you can't talk, write, read, speak, listen, or even hand signal your intentions clearly to others in a way that's appropriate and easily understood, go seek a doctor's help immediately, because there's something very wrong with you. And no, it isn't me, or anything about me, my life, my appearance, my lifestyle, my education or religion, nor is it my presence, or my great abilities to be heard and understood at an expert level. I'm not your problem. It's you. Got it? Good!

https://www.omh.ny.gov/omhweb/cogdys_manual/CogDysHndbk.htm

Espresso

My friend Elvis had a lot more problems than his over-priced "caffeine delivery system" cleverly marketed to addicts. He hoarded beyond control when circumstances in his life caused him stress, like helping out friends in need, or waking up in the morning without a hangover, or not having a stash of coke hidden somewhere in his rat's nest of a room. So, it wasn't like I took it personally when he "kicked me out" of his place during my bout with homelessness, because I knew it freaked him out that he couldn't abusively control me, like he does with the sicker people in his life around him, so he can feel like he's the "king of the hill".

Quite a tipsy structure to maintain isn't it? His life was never built on totally solid ground, besides his ethnic parents who had emigrated to New York from Puerto Rico. I could tell he missed it there, too, with his morning mango/guava Entenmann's danishes out on the kitchen counter for his work crew of illegal immigrants. You can tell when a person is homesick, you know? He had adored his mother, who was ailing and under his brother's full-time care (he's also disabled) when we first became more acquainted. After we knew each for awhile, he told me that her death had rocked him to his core. She had bed sores his brother had to dress every day, and neither of them were mentally stable enough to handle such a mature scene. 

He told me more than a few times that she had sores on her vagina that caused her pain, which I could have surmised from the medical term "bed sores" (which regularly occur in elderly people who are hospitalized long-term), so I knew he had sexual identity issues to go along with his obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, schizoid-affective, addictive personality disorder. When I was forced to couch surf with him for awhile, after I lost my rent-stabilized apartment in a rigged scheme designed to do so, I knew he would think I was his captive to pore over and possibly romance, though in an interim period of our friendship, I found out that he had repeated his psychotic pattern of severe relationship dysfunction without any help from me at all.

He'd done work in a building for a family made homeless by a strong hurricane we had in the city years ago that had greatly affected the lowest-laying, poorest neighbors of Brooklyn. During that process, he'd made friends with a disturbed young woman who was fragile, vulnerable, and needy. Perfect! He could swoop in as her "rescuer" to give her items that she and her dependent family needed. She had her parents and brother living with her in the cheap basement apartment, too, when it flooded out completely. I met her briefly after I left my apartment, when Elvis gave me a lift to a nearby hotel in Park Slope that was, ironically, housing hurricane victims through a city agency, as the residents there wrestled with complex legal paperwork that was out of their depths, given their socio-economic strata.

She was twitchy and weird, pulling on her hair repeatedly and answering Elvis' questions abruptly, leaning over to play with her smartphone so her hair would cover her face. If she was the "stable" one in her family, it was small wonder that Elvis saw an opportunity he could manipulate to his advantage. While they dated (or whatever the fuck two head-cases like them do), I cleaned up a tenement room on Ninth Street and went back to work. After that situation went bust (or "Cotto Crazy"), he offered to help me out, per his typical pattern. I was originally going to live with his brother temporarily, but that deal went bust because they can't do business properly, so I couch-surfed on a sofa made-up for his brother, while Elvis stashed his slightly sicker brother in the apartment of their chain-smoking Nuyorican friend.

His brother complained incessantly that I had deprived him of his "home" while I slept on a couch, which is a crazy thing to think about some guy's sofa, but that's family for you. While I stayed there, his cardboard boxes remained in the hallway, as if in limbo, and Elvis quickly lost his mind over a woman too beautiful, brilliant, and healthy to be in his company for any real length of time, but that's my life. I don't have any reliable help in my family. I am the help! And so, Elvis started going downhill almost as soon as he realized I wasn't going to be his fellow shut-in/nursemaid, like his cousin living in an illegal apartment in his basement (he'd bought a Park Slope townhome with his parents money), and his nervous brother who stopped working years ago, so he could use their mother and her age as an excuse to live with her for free, as her makeshift caregiver.

They pretended he was starting an "Internet business", which was laughable to me, because they were also embroiled in a crazy lawsuit over the apartment deal that went bust after Elvis did work there, leaving his brother effectively homeless, too. Elvis also told me he had "put his hands" on his last girlfriend (also while homeless), who had moved in with him shortly after he bought her and her family used clothes, so she felt like she owed him, hence the speedy courtship. They "broke up" after he probably tried to choke her to death one drunken evening together, but with me, he played it wayyy cooler. He knew about me and my martial arts background because his brother had a black belt, and he kept a samurai sword (a rather cheap display one, not the real kind) behind the sofa where I slept, which I effectively displayed one night after he tried to get "touchy feely" with me.

He had tried to get me to touch his stomach because he stopped eating while I lived there, hiding it behind some diet-and-training routine along with his snake oil pill cabinet. I freaked, which put him on notice for the remainder of my stay. He grew paranoid, rifling through my stuff while I worked days at an insane office in Manhattan, saying it was the price he charged for my non-payment of rent, even stealing a street sign from me that I had found cleaning up the other place I lived in for a short while. He tried to play it off like I had problems with touching and intimacy, which I blew up like the phony case it was. He grabbed me and forced me to touch his body while he lifted up his shirt, in a move that gave him a taste of my body and muscle that must have stayed with him long after that night, because he almost immediately dropped my hand after grabbing it. I don't feel like his soft crazy women.

And so I came to understand that his make-believe coffee machine was deeply anchored to his delusional fantasy life, and that he desperately wanted me to be in it with him, as a savior to his rotten life. He'd made a fake picture in his head of me in his garden during the summertime as his maid/cook/lover, beautifully dressed and expertly serving him and his friends wonderful iced drinks. Huh. I then told him how many weeks I was out from getting my own place due to my calculations, now that I'd secured a gig as the design lead for a small publishing company headed by some trust-funder looking to go bust in a financial scheme with his publisher dad. I made (and spent) a lot of money working at professional houses around the city, but only enough to support me and my expenses in a place as expensive as New York, where most natives are only one paycheck away from homelessness and bankruptcy.

He immediately grew anxious after I shattered his artificial construct, as so often happens with the very sickest among us. He could earn a living if he was enabled by the sometimes sicker people around him, but on his own? Elvis merely drowned, clutching at people madly to help him out of yet another mess. He also told me he was guilty over a murder he and his friends committed many years ago; he and his friends had killed a bum sleeping in the park, in an end-of-the-world vibe that sat over the entire city during its last down-spiral in the crack-fueled 70s and 80s. My college boyfriend had also tortured a bum sleeping on a park bench with his best friend in a similar scenario as a teenager, too, as the city veered out of control into anarchy.

As soon as he realized I'd be moving on quickly without him, he began planning his attack, packing my stuff into garbage bags while I worked hard, padding himself with his fucked up brother, his dependent cousin, and an old girlfriend of one of them, who gave me a fake look of sympathy (really, it was fear), because those poor muthafuckin' Nuyoricans finally realized that they had actually met one of the kind of people who had originally inhabited a land they can't live on peaceably. 

They had actually done battle with their first real ethnic minority: me. And guess who won? As he and his brother shook my hand (after putting my stuff in the trunk of Elvis' car), I could see that they learned from my lesson well enough. No more. No more abuse. And just like that, I was back on my way to a nice hotel with cable t.v. and a free Continental breakfast, like the rest of my homeless Brooklyn people. Thanks for that.

https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/health-insurance/

Walking Dead

We've learned about different types of soulless humans inhabiting this sphere with us: how to suss them out, bust them on their egregious bullshit (which usually sends with them running away), while keeping our heads above water. It isn't easy. I've known people so wrecked by life that they become easily programmable drones with nothing to lose (besides a soul that's gone), and those are the most dangerous types of people we have on this planet. What do you say to someone who's been brain-washed since birth to accept death as a part of their human sacrifice to some fictional netherworld? It's hell, boy.

And that's what this culture of death and fear is about: getting you to accept the premise that life is pain, and the only way out of it is through your death. But, how can that be? His Holiness the Dali Lama recently posted on Twitter that human problems require human solutions, and it couldn't be any truer. You don't want to know the life conditions divinity exists under, and be glad for it. Celestial levels exist for a reason. Faith requires trust, and nothing erodes trust faster than fear and pain.

I've seen rotting souls up close, and its even uglier than some bloody cartoon made for t.v. You couldn't put on television the horrors that warriors deal with excellently every day. Those taped-up rooms full of broken bodies are not sights for the uninitiated. It's take a lot of focus, discipline, and training to overcome the worst humanity has, to see through to better days. In our religious world, we repeat the sayings, prayers, proverbs, and gospels that carry us to the promised land of light and hope, but how to reach the ignorant and insane? Repetition helps, as does a solid foundation in education.

The analogy I've always used in my work with the disordered people I'm closest to, my own family, is that they need much more help than I do. I am their "Anne Sullivan", so if I don't get through to them who will? Doctors? Pharmaceutical companies? Therapists? Television? It hasn't worked so far, has it? So what if some nut plays head games with me? I can break through any mindset borne of sickness, because I'm healthy. No matter the stimuli or conditions, I will endure to survive. 

I was talking to a lovely older African-American woman here at the library the other day who is struggling from job loss, economic instability, and the destabilization of her family unit that comes with sudden changes in her life. Right, been there: "If Mama goes down, we all go down!" And she knew exactly what I meant when I said it. She's been through it before. But, why me? She wanted to know. "Because G-d always chooses the strongest to challenge, not the sickest and weakest among us." We laughed about it, as she nodded her head in agreement, because the cornerstone of our faith is the juncture where the warrior meets their own inequities to adapt and change to. 

She struggles with old technological advances like computers (typical for her generation) and as we talked, she realized that we were the same person, because I told her honestly than no one has ever helped me with my work. I'm largely self-taught, because there are no classes, or books, or television programs, to become "Master Illuminator". I've also been alone and challenged as the people around me fell apart, and it's always me that pulled me through. 

In this modern world of psychotherapy that fails so many ailing people, I consulted an expert on her turf and conditions, under my family's threats of financial hurt (as is typical for them) when 1) I lost my job in the economic crash, like so many other people around the world 2) my friend committed suicide practically on Facebook 3) I got punched in the head repeatedly during MMA training and 4) I finally lost my beloved and very aged grandmother—as my psychotic aunt guarded her hyper-vigilantly so I couldn't see her during her last days, caught in the grip of paranoia that marks schizophrenia—as the last good link to my maternal line, because if my world goes under, so does theirs. 

The woman I consulted under my then-doctor's recommendation already knew I was extraordinary, but she still wondered about my state of being. I couldn't help but smile when I brought her back in a full circle to my troubled family as the source of my lifelong woes (the place I always come back to, because it's true), which led her to ask me (and for this question, she leaned in, with her eyes shining brightly): how? I told her the truth: I am the source of my strength. Huh...but who supports you? Ah, yes, the language of any typical psychology student in these troubled times that we think are so unique to today. It always comes up short in the face of superior technology, doesn't it? I couldn't help but laugh to myself during this last session with a human healer who wants to be on the forefront of this new world with us; my very own Counselor Troi on the USS Enterprise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deanna_Troi). "I do", I told her. 

Normally so poised, she shuffled in her chair, adjusting her notepad on her lap, switching her pen to the other hand. She waited a moment to see if I would go further, so I did what I always do with people who are light years behind; I repeated it. "I am the one who supports me." And that's "my truth", a recurring motto of these times lifted from pop culture, as a justification for an insanity that cannot be explained away. I am the one who supports me. It's me. I am the strength I need. I am the one I seek. I have been all along. And so I became the one she sought after, too. I hope it was worth it, Dolores!

It couldn't have been easy for our breach into your usual patient confidentiality clause, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. Same with you, Dr. Elizabeth, and my fellow confessors. It's disturbing to be known like that, isn't it? There's no secrecy in our world. But, now you know and you can never not know it. Now you know the truth about transparency, and living a life beyond reproach. See you on-board my ship. Hope you make it! Until then, fight. Fight back with all your might. That's what I do. Life is worth it, all of it: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent. That's my mantra. Life is beautiful. So...what's next?

"Everyday I Write The Book"

Don't tell me you don't know what love is
When you're old enough to know better
When you find strange hands in your sweater
When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote
I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
Chapter One we didn't really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in Chapters Four, Five and Six
The way you walk
The way you talk, and try to kiss me, and laugh
In four or five paragraphs
All your compliments and your cutting remarks
Are captured here in my quotation marks
Don't tell me you don't know the difference
Between a lover and a fighter
With my pen and my electric typewriter
Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal
I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel

  

Zombification

All of my life I've known that there's something wrong with some people, even as a baby. I've seen it in animals, too. My fluffy white dog loved almost everyone, except the crazy dyke who "dated" my mentally ill aunt in secret, much like her silent hoarding habit. Our adorable little princess doggie would immediately bristle, baring her fangs aggressively and raising her hackles in anger, and she was right. That bitch was totally fucking nuts (she died from a deliberately bad surgery done years ago), and psychosis is something most life forms pick up on. I don't want you to think that you need special superpowers to know "crazy" when you see it or feel it, because you don't.

Anomalies in our human world are fairly easy to spot, like the disordered dykes who wander around the local public library thinking they can stalk me on the sly by pretending to have a real interest in our community. By the way, say "hi" to the camera, bitch! We also note license plates to go along with your cars' make and model, because we all know each other here in Rockland County, so thanks for making it easier for us to spot you. Bitch.

Dead people are like that, too. They have a hollow feeling to them that permeates their entire being, often with a seriously bad smell to go along with their mental static (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/michelle-hat.html). I don't want you to think that I'm prejudiced against serious illness either, because my mom is the most disabled person I've ever met, and I've tended to her my whole life. It isn't just sickness that needs fixing. It's like there's something rotten deep in their soul.

Psychotics know we sense them as a disturbance in the force (life force, that is), and so they continue this weird gay dance of circling around human life on the periphery, until we notice the quietly lurking nut-job in a corner of a room, punching a black hole into our days and lives. They will cite loneliness as an excuse for sabotaging the peace and quiet of our happy days, but that's a total fucking lie. Psychos hurt people because it takes their minds off the innate badness that's seeped into the core of who they are. It's their essence that offends.

Back in art school, we had a friend who was like that. If you didn't enable her obsessive compulsive addictions, she lashed out at you and then tried to build a consensus around the shaky justifications she needed to cover up her bat-shit routines, like an incessant cleanliness that was (and still is) directly linked to her mental illnesses, and not a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink of a college house. My friend Cheryl, also significantly problematic like a lot of the people I met at school (what else do you call a professional graphic designer in her 30s from a professionally artistic family who decides to compete with a group of working class kids in art school?!), felt it in Lisa, too.

"It's like there's this hole inside of her <she would gesture to her midsection> that she's always looking for you to fill for her", and that was dead-on. She was so needy that it was too extreme to be around her sometimes. If you had a male friend hanging out, that was even worse. She'd try to poach him from you or the group barely after introductions had been made, like we were in a deranged competition that only she knew about, which I guess she figured gave her the "edge" she needed to "win", but at what we were never really sure of. Need I tell you that she is a former cheerleader, bisexual, and manic depressive? No?! Right! Because you already knew that, just like I did, and so did our hip art school friends.

She'd hit on gay men to see if they would "turn" for her (totally delusional), or pretend she wanted to kiss girls at the bar to put on a big gay show, if a lot of people were around and not talking to her; anything for attention. She had the requisite art-fag hairdo (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/09/art-fags.html) to go along with her overly trendy outfits, decorated with stupid hats and pilgrim shoes with too-big buckles, using a garishly bright red lipstick made for you to notice how unusual her lip shape was, cleverly accented with slightly darker lip-liner. She just tried too hard about shit no one gave two fucks about, which drove her to even more abusive behavior.

And it never ended with her. If I introduced her to a single guy, I could count on Lisa to either A) hook up with him or B) try to later on. If the guy was my boyfriend, I could rely on her to make "subtle" overtures to him in front of me that I had to prove in this wild series of ever-escalating head games that were designed for her to decrease her mental static by using me, instead of taking medication and going to therapy. If she was flat-out busted by the entire group for her machinations and schemes, she'd shrug her shoulders of any blame by saying that "if he was really into her, he wouldn't have slept with me! That's her problem", because she had that line at the ready in case she was caught. After awhile, it didn't matter if the life-form was male or female, just easy or drunk enough for her to manipulate.

My oldest brother bought into the Yuppie world hardcore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie), which meant that he has trafficked with some of the biggest scumbags on the planet, in the world trading center of downtown New York City. He describes the dead people he's worked with as "sketches"; outlines of people roughly drawn, without any real detail filled in. We were all pretty much saying the same thing after a certain point in our lives, and it was this: dead people were everywhere, and we could prove it. We've seen them and talked to them all of our lives. I can see dead people. So can you! How's that for a rainy day like today? Beware, humans. They're everywhere.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/closet-psychological-issues-being-and-coming-out

Ill Communication

Do you remember when you and your brother were kids, and the two of you decided to flush one or two of your smaller toys down the toilet just to see what would happen, only to watch the water slowly rise to the top of a clogged toilet bowl in a growing panic, wondering what to do next, turning around to see your Mom standing in the bathroom doorway with a thin smile on her lips? Communication is like that; effectively done and it's almost like E.S.P. Well, how did you know what we were doin'? And then she'd say, "Because I have eyes in the back of my head", or even creepier, "Well, it was too quiet, so I knew you two were up to 'no good' because you're always so noisy!"

That's how my Bronx-born mama rolled: with eagle-eyed precision and harsh corrections. My parents weren't training us to be alright in your particular corner of the globe. They wanted us to be able to survive in the city and beyond, which means that you have to not die to win and that's not always easy, especially when the people around you are workin' all sorts of cons and scams: in degrees, mind you, but they get there step-by-step just like you do, through deliberate obfuscation, vagueness, and outright lies.

Like my mom, I know when the people in my family are sick, because they stop talking to me completely, as well as everyone else around them. I mean, we get nothing from them, and I can't tell you how disturbing that is, except if you know what I mean because you've lived through it, too. I've have sisters-in-law who have never sent me a card, or a letter, or an email, or an invite, or returned a phone call, and these are supposedly affluent white women who went to the best schools their families could afford. Nothing. You get nothing from them but their neurosis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis), and maybe some insults, if the wine is freely flowing.

Imagine if I spent all this time writing to you, telling you all about my life through a "ghost writer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter) or an outside editor, because despite my years of education and experience, I still can't communicate what I want to say. That would be such an utter failure to me, I'm not sure I could stand it. I simply don't understand that level of selfishness, or the depth to that inability. How can someone earn a lot of money for houses and cars in multiple, but can't talk to someone as open as me? How can that be successful? 

And before we go on to that, I'm tellin' you that these women have had the same Catholic upbringing that I did, except with way more expensive bells-and-whistles built into their experiences, like fancy parochial school educations from birth. Do you know how much of a selfish, sick, unfeeling, hard person you have to be to watch someone like me and not care enough to help out? Think about it. 

Think about the inaction, ineptitude, incompetence, insensitivity, and utter lack of generosity you have as a physical therapist on the clock only (like my brother's wife), but never when your sick mother-in-law with Multiple Sclerosis needs it, especially between those Medicare "donut holes" in her coverage that occur each and every year? Besides sickness and badness, is there any other explanation for withholding all that your family gave to you for free? Because I've heard every excuse there is too many times to count.

We've been dug into this deep hole as a society, that we find harder and harder to climb out of, because of the gross inequality that comes from the over-acquisition of material goods over the better skill sets that should be part of the healing arts, including excellent communication. If you can't talk about what's wrong, you are it. There isn't any other place to go, or hide. It's you. You are the problem. The problem in your life and in this world is you, so you better start talking. I'd start today, if I were you. Cough it up! Get it out! That's the only way to get rid of it. If you can talk your way into money, you can talk to people about your sickness. Cut the fucking bullshit. It's time.


Your homework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication

Demon Hunter

One of the more salacious facets of our Holy Roman Catholic faith is exorcism, so much so that Hollywood has grown fat and rich with its telling and re-telling over the years, almost in direct contrast with the intensely taut state that is demonic possession. It's not something I talked about during my office career, as sanitized places where the gossip can be about sex or drugs, but never about the evil that lurks around a generic-looking water cooler, but that's exactly what it was.

After reenacting countless work scenarios where every single card in the crazy deck was played for a host of sick people at work, it was the only explanation left to explain the suicides, mental illnesses, and violent psychosis I observed firsthand, as well as heard in the first person from other employees. You could feel it swirling around you, the way you can feel a house's soul as either empty and fraught, or lively and well (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2016/01/sick-house.html). It's the same thing with some office spaces and commercial buildings: if you immediately get a bad feeling (or very soon after), trust it.

In criminology, sometimes a gut instinct is the only thing a really good detective has, besides knowing the killer is guilty as fuck, because evidence is notoriously tricky to find, and that's what evil relies on. It was the only explanation that made sense to me after my years toiling for insane family businesses; that they thought they had "the drop" on better workers because they cheated. It was something my dad and I used to talk about openly with one another. He worked for a sick family in Pennsylvania (the one year we had lived, as a family, outside of the New York area) who had a solid business that didn't need tricks, but they skimmed off the top anyway, and for peanuts, too. If they made a million-dollar deal, then a thousand or a few hundred dollars would go missing. It was always petty cash.

And it was baffling to my father, because they were already rich and successful. I asked my dad why he didn't call the cops after figuring out their scheme, and he just muttered that "all good things come in time". He got a big payout as his severance for knowing about them, in a dramatic stand-off scene that enabled us to move into a house in suburban New York with our family dog. He just wanted out. I knew it was finally over when the head of the family (one son flipped on the brother and father to cop a plea) appeared on the cover of a famous American magazine, and it still sickens me to think about it to this day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rigas). 

Given his rough Brooklyn upbringing, my father already knew that the line between businessman and gangster could be a thin one. I think he was afraid they'd kill us, if he talked about it to anyone in the cable business. Besides the company, there were absolutely no signs as to how tight a grip the corruption of this wealthy family had over the other rich white men in town. We lived in a beautiful Victorian house we were very happy with, and the countryside was beautiful. I had my own room! Plus, we got the cutest little Samoyed puppy I'd ever seen in my life. Life was good. But, still, there was something. My mom asked one of the women in town to do a "house reading" for us, which, to the uninitiated, is gauging a living space for "good" or "bad" spirits. 

We were told that our house was "clear", meaning that if anyone had died there (and with a house that old, before funeral parlors and that sort of thing, dying at home came with the territory), they'd been happy, peaceful people who'd moved on easily. Oh good...we breathed a sigh of relief. That's good. And it was. We had a clay patch in the backyard, beneath a little ridge that led to a set of old train tracks we loved to explore together. As kids, we were instantly bumped up a grade for our innate New York street smarts and natural acuity (in rather stark comparison to the small-town folk), and we jumped into huge piles of autumn leaves in the fall that smelled of the richness of the earth. It taught me that good and evil can live right next door to each other, sometimes in very close proximity.

Let's leave it at that for now, as a sort of a beginner's primer to the (super)natural forces that exist around us, every single day. I couldn't wear a cross to work back in the day without getting hassled about it, (in yet another tale of workplace harassment that's actionable by law), and my life in the secular world has always danced around the natural one that I know to be true, but try telling that to deeply ignorant people who are afraid. Fear is a crippling emotion that feeds off bad juju (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju), keeping its oppressors stuck in deeply ingrained patterns that can last for many years, often until death. And afterward.

Some say that "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", but that's not what happens with evil. No, sometimes it soul-sucks at you real slowly, until you grow weaker and weaker, almost dead with its sickness. Doubt me? Well, I've survived brush-ups with a few witches (recently, too, with a deranged Hexe: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hexe), and as your favorite modern Fili (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fili), let me assure you: witchcraft isn't something that you just hand out once a year with Halloween candy. No, children, there are dark things to be afraid of that go bump in the night, and I'm here to tell it to you straight. Class is now in session.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/16/vatican-exorcism-course-draws-170-students-to-study-demonic-activity/

Bowerbird

JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) - Own work

Great Bowerbird (Chlamydera nuchalis) bower, Mount Carbine, Queensland, Australia

Being a tenant of a big old house in the fertile Hudson River valley means you accept that nature and wildlife take precedence over you in this landscape. Birds nest in every nook and cranny of the house, with 4-5 types of animals living underneath the porch, resulting in wilderness showdowns that you have to be "country" enough to roll with in good humor, like the unfortunate weeknight when the large skunk of Franklin Avenue woke up from his winter nap to have a massive showdown with the bad ass groundhog at 3 a.m. The resulting stink was so bad, it permeated the entire household for days.

Right now, I can't even count the number of sparrows and starlings roosting in the eaves. They are very successful here, give or take a baby bird or two. I found a dead one this past weekend that barely made it out of its egg (see it here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieDoucette/status/732274778774589441), but such is life. You can't escape the sights and sounds of nature in this more rural suburb of the greater tri-state area, which is just the way we like it. For more typical suburban experiences, we have Westchester County, New Jersey, Long Island, and parts of Connecticut, with much more accessible mass transit options available for commuting into the city.

Here, we have a state park that forms the third side of our county's triangular shape (http://bit.ly/253lsVk), the smallest in all of New York, which is also just the way we like it: easy to patrol and traverse, to the civilized housing developments and their developed shopping districts right up to the beginning of mountain after mountain, easing on up to the bigger peaks. I can disappear into the back country very quickly, and the wild side of me likes that, too. See ya! I'm already gone.

I can't imagine not having an infinity for nature and life in its astonishing diversity. It's strange to me when I meet urban people who are challenged by that. What could be better than hearing call of the wild? No more bumping elbows with a bunch of gross strangers crammed into tightly packed subway cars, in a fetid heat that reeks of urine and sweat. Personal space, anyone? They just don't get it, or worse, they get it and they like it. Creepy...to be that desperate for touch, like a common criminal. Ugh! Makes me want to look at trees instead.

And so I do, as you can see from my photographic feeds on social media. My favorite type of programming is public television, and "Nature" is my favorite show. I love it! Gorgeous photography and wildlife: what could be better for a nature lover to watch than that, outside of the real thing? Not much. So, with great interest, I watched one dedicated researcher create a makeshift roost of her own, with which to observe the male bower bird during its ritual mating season. You'd think they'd perform on cue (like an actor), but you'd be wrong.

Science requires a patience and discipline that belies the instant fix most t.v. junkies have come to expect from their level of programming, which looks to me like an ADHD ten year-old just consumed a pound of highly-sugared cereal (but skipped the morning Ritalin), and is now running around madly because his babysitter is a rather dead 21 year-old more interested in shoe shopping and gossiping with her bitchy, bipolar (and occasionally bisexual), pill-popping, pink drink-consuming "tanorexic"* girlfriends, similarly rabid on a toxic cocktail of awful t.v. and addictive caffeinated drinks from the nearest strip mall. Your t.v. shows hurt to watch, suckas, and that is a very bad sign.

So, watching my type of programming would necessitate a lot of adjusting for someone like you, living out there in "T.V. Land", as a barren place replete of vomit-colored attitudes with overly saturated clothing made for cameras instead of life itself, which means you might die quickly, and I don't like that. Go away! But for me, the courtship of the bower bird is just the sort of thing I don't have time time to do in real life, but I would totally do with a guide. It's like camping to me, with the added bonuses of bird watching and photography (which I do anyway), minus the leg cramps and a bit of stretching, intermittent with trips to town over the course of a month-long shoot.

I'd love it! Without further ado, I present to you one of the most beautiful courtship rituals in nature, helpfully provided by one very special male bird of the wild, patient and kind in his adjustments made in anticipation of his potential mate, as normal in this springtime of our lives as any other facet of life. Life can be short and sweet.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_dependence