the king of cobras seduces a woman
she looks medea
that is, an old soul of mine, with callas’ eyes and that ridiculous application of eyeliner
the cobra winds its way into the womb and spreads its hood over the micoscopic zygote she is carrying. protection.
he coils his length around the baby as it forms, holding the head in place so that it doesn't get shaken.
no poison in the watery union - the snake drinks poison like shiva drinking the poisonous ocean
the boy is born fully man now and the snake has fused onto him, hood spread eternally, fangs drawn out over his face.
i coax his face out from the venomous cage, maybe to kiss
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does, and the Great Failure of Cognitive Therapy
. I went to a therapists’ house for an informal session. she was going to hook me up; we were acquaintances. She had this deep soft couch i kept flinging myself all over
i was wearing this short chinese silk dress and no panties. i kept getting embarassed, not able to control my body as i was positioning myself on this couch in crazy ways. she seemed to understand and as she was talking to me kept covering me up in a motherly fashion
i don’t really know what i was going into therapy for.. of course, i was never sure of what i was there for when i was enrolled in therapy. it was like brushing your hair?
the therapist turned from understanding earthy female to attractive business-oriented black male, kind of in the vein of my old landlord. he analyzed a dream dave had had last night. i don’t remember which one this was. He had a lot of dreams last night.. we’ve both been storming brains in our sleep lately – lots of sleep, thankfully.
“How did this dream make you feel?” he asked. Instantly my heart began pounding and i started talking even though i had no idea what was coming out of my mouth, a throwback to my old therapy sessions, where i would often dissociate or become bored, instantly blacking out sound when we arrived at a real changing point, or when we got around to the pith of a problem I truly wanted to solve.
The dream in discussion i didn’t seem to mind that much. “At least I wasn’t a giant spider, sucking the life out of him,” I joked. (That’s the one dream I do remember from the previous night. Tried not to read too much into that one!) My heart was still pounding and I was reeling, perhaps it happens when i tell the truth – euphoria of naked speaking.
“See now that’s -------“ I heard ‘cute’ but knew that wasn’t the word he was saying, “When you do that right there, that’s it.” I giggled because i knew he could tell i was bullshitting, or dissociating, or just not able to integrate the sides of my brain when speaking truthfully. Was he flirting with me? A new kind of therapy? This could actually work! But I knew he wasn’t and that perhaps he thought I thought he was. Agh! Fucking cognitive therapy – so boring.
“Repeat after me; ‘F and U’.” Um, ok, like a meditation?
I kept mentally repeating it, but felt too silly to do it outloud. It was surprisingly easy to meditate on this nonsense. His phone rang. “Mind if I take it?” as he answered, “You can sit in the Metaphysical Waiting Room.” He tapes together three Scrabble tiles to give to me; F, U and another I can’t seem to figure out and sends me on my way.
The Metaphysical Waiting Room was through the front door, where “outside” should have been. It looked like a Presbyterian church, lots of white, a balcony. I was in the South! There was a speaker at the podium (not a pulpit):
“F and U. Simple sounds; meaningless and easy. Repeat it everywhere. i do it while i’m waiting for the train. F and U. F and U. Don’t think about the sounds of them together; don’t think at all. Just repeat, over and over.” I look around and there are hundreds of people, some paying attention, others chatting, a few stragglers walking and reciting the letters.
Under the balcony in the center was a VIP section full of high ranking church officials and a lot of apparently very important African Americans, dressed to the nines – church gear was everywhere from robes and stoles to diamond hats and gloves. A man, apparently a proponent of interfaith ministry, walked up with a large sign advertising his new version of the Kaddish in Ebonics. “Why don’t I recite it for everyone here?” he offered.
My father piped up through black teeth, “Yeah, and I’ll get the Hammond out and throw a few chords in from some” -- pause for extra menace—“plantation tunes.”
The African American VIPs silently shuddered.
I walked up to the crowd and called on my dad, half to distract his offended party from his faux pas, half to shock him. I did appear a bit strange, flashing the tattoo and wearing a Chinese minidress. “hey dad, making new friends?” Our public relationship sometimes mimics this exact dynamic: him fucking with people and me having to fuck with him to make it appear that we are all a bunch of assholes and can’t help ourselves; in other words, “Please Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does.”
i was wearing this short chinese silk dress and no panties. i kept getting embarassed, not able to control my body as i was positioning myself on this couch in crazy ways. she seemed to understand and as she was talking to me kept covering me up in a motherly fashion
i don’t really know what i was going into therapy for.. of course, i was never sure of what i was there for when i was enrolled in therapy. it was like brushing your hair?
the therapist turned from understanding earthy female to attractive business-oriented black male, kind of in the vein of my old landlord. he analyzed a dream dave had had last night. i don’t remember which one this was. He had a lot of dreams last night.. we’ve both been storming brains in our sleep lately – lots of sleep, thankfully.
“How did this dream make you feel?” he asked. Instantly my heart began pounding and i started talking even though i had no idea what was coming out of my mouth, a throwback to my old therapy sessions, where i would often dissociate or become bored, instantly blacking out sound when we arrived at a real changing point, or when we got around to the pith of a problem I truly wanted to solve.
The dream in discussion i didn’t seem to mind that much. “At least I wasn’t a giant spider, sucking the life out of him,” I joked. (That’s the one dream I do remember from the previous night. Tried not to read too much into that one!) My heart was still pounding and I was reeling, perhaps it happens when i tell the truth – euphoria of naked speaking.
“See now that’s -------“ I heard ‘cute’ but knew that wasn’t the word he was saying, “When you do that right there, that’s it.” I giggled because i knew he could tell i was bullshitting, or dissociating, or just not able to integrate the sides of my brain when speaking truthfully. Was he flirting with me? A new kind of therapy? This could actually work! But I knew he wasn’t and that perhaps he thought I thought he was. Agh! Fucking cognitive therapy – so boring.
“Repeat after me; ‘F and U’.” Um, ok, like a meditation?
I kept mentally repeating it, but felt too silly to do it outloud. It was surprisingly easy to meditate on this nonsense. His phone rang. “Mind if I take it?” as he answered, “You can sit in the Metaphysical Waiting Room.” He tapes together three Scrabble tiles to give to me; F, U and another I can’t seem to figure out and sends me on my way.
The Metaphysical Waiting Room was through the front door, where “outside” should have been. It looked like a Presbyterian church, lots of white, a balcony. I was in the South! There was a speaker at the podium (not a pulpit):
“F and U. Simple sounds; meaningless and easy. Repeat it everywhere. i do it while i’m waiting for the train. F and U. F and U. Don’t think about the sounds of them together; don’t think at all. Just repeat, over and over.” I look around and there are hundreds of people, some paying attention, others chatting, a few stragglers walking and reciting the letters.
Under the balcony in the center was a VIP section full of high ranking church officials and a lot of apparently very important African Americans, dressed to the nines – church gear was everywhere from robes and stoles to diamond hats and gloves. A man, apparently a proponent of interfaith ministry, walked up with a large sign advertising his new version of the Kaddish in Ebonics. “Why don’t I recite it for everyone here?” he offered.
My father piped up through black teeth, “Yeah, and I’ll get the Hammond out and throw a few chords in from some” -- pause for extra menace—“plantation tunes.”
The African American VIPs silently shuddered.
I walked up to the crowd and called on my dad, half to distract his offended party from his faux pas, half to shock him. I did appear a bit strange, flashing the tattoo and wearing a Chinese minidress. “hey dad, making new friends?” Our public relationship sometimes mimics this exact dynamic: him fucking with people and me having to fuck with him to make it appear that we are all a bunch of assholes and can’t help ourselves; in other words, “Please Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does.”
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