Self-Defeating Rats
Pavlov's experiments with dogs, Roger Williams' experiments with rats, Freud's journey from Catharsis to the Repetition Compulsion and the popular excitement for B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism during the sixties; these are the subjects we have come together to discuss today. Or, to put it another way, this is my second attempt to write about my father, the first attempt having been deleted, after being left up over-night. As I have often said, "Thank God nobody reads this Blog!"
There I go being too negative again. The thing is, see, that it can't be done. The Poor Me thing, that is. It won't work. You can't talk about your neurosis and how it led you down a consistently bleak road with no happy ending. At least I can't. Maybe if I was Louis Ferdinand Celine.
I can tell you though, there were times when I was growing up that I felt like a rat undergoing some sort of experimentation.
Let me jump forward in time. I'm now in my advanced years, and am being asked to discuss my relationship with my father. By whom? By myself. Here's the cliche appropriate to that; "Self!, say a few words!"
......
Well hell yeah! One of the people who read my book and had some nice things to say about it, and who I trust because she is a professional editor and a good poet besides, said something to me that I was surprised, and pleased, to hear, and that was that she could tell that I loved my father very much.
And that is the real point. Though indeed my father was difficult to live with, being occasionally hurtful, even violently so, there were also long periods of time when he was fascinating and fun to be around. Watching him paint, I was often transfixed. Watching him sort of tune himself up listening to Jazz, was instructive. Fishing with him was like bird-watching with Audubon. It was 3-D color poetic fishing.
And then I grew up. The book I wrote successfully if I do say so myself illustrates the community and the environment that I grew up in, and could, I think, supply an introduction to the story of my adult life.
The raison d'etre of such a second volume of historical memoir, working title My Adult Life, would be three-fold; that I became an alcoholic and an abuser of drugs; that at some point I got into recovery and stayed for a ridiculously long time, perhaps even unto death, and that as the son of an artist I was confronted with particular problems along the lines of Living in the Shadow of the Great Man", which adds the confessional genre to the mix.
I am leaving aside the question of whether my father was a great man in historical terms, with confidence that there is enough truth in it for my purposes. I'm trusting my self, in other words, a good sign that I'm not stuck in the muck.
You could say that I killed the pain of being a self-defeating rat with alcohol and a variety of chemical accessories, including occasional illegally possessed barbiturates, benzodiazapan type pills, Miltown, and types of amphetamine such as the all-time favorite, Dexamil, (patent pending), chrystal meth, not to mention more marijuana than is recreationally advisable.
The long period of sobriety came next, and lasted from May Day, 1974 up to and including and perhaps in continuance, to the same day, 1 May, 2019, which is tomorrow, Wednesday. I'll have 45 years of clean and sober life. That's a certain kind of success, though one wedded to an anonymous fellowship and which I would be unwise to flaunt to the lay public, for a variety of clinical and ethical reasons. Anywayz, as I like to say, that brings me to the next subject.
P.S. The "next subject", implies both a sequence and a goal, neither of which apply at this time.
