Personality Wars

THE PERSONALITY

WARS, again…

Psychoanalysis XIV, approximately…

By Izzy Ess of Creativeness

Imagine that a parent, or a teacher or a boss is basically left-brained.  His or her successful personality is that of a perfectionist, a clean freak and a germaphobe.  You might also say that he or she is obsessive and compulsive, wont to make up lists of dos and don’ts and watch the weather very carefully.  Suppose they are responsible for one or more offspring and one is born that is not perfectionist.  Suppose that child is naturally creative, curious and serendipitous.  Suppose that child is more intelligent than most parents, most bosses and most teachers.  He or she doesn’t have to be a genius to see that rules and regulations are a fabrication of the parent, teacher, boss and supervisor, or in the least, a faithful follower of policy that has been previously formulated to set down the usual rules and regulations regarding thinking and behaviour in a certain place, a home, a school, a workplace and even in a University.

There are no end to maxim’s that are quoted by these folks who are in charge of things, in general, at home, at work or at school.  My favourite one is, “Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness,” which sounds Biblical but is not in any Bible, as far as I have read.  Another is, “Arbeit ist Freiheit,” which the Nazis displayed in their wrought iron prison gates at death camps.  Yet another is, “Idle hands do the Devil’s work,” or something similar, which also sounds Biblical, but it’s not.  If you want the Bible stuff, start in Exodus with the Ten Commandments and continue through the subsequent four books with 613 Rules and Regulations.  Each set of commandments and each grouping of the Rules and Regulations, through the end of Deuteronomy, is preceded and proceeded by admonitions that simply say, that if you don’t follow these, you’re not likely to be favoured by God and will suffer consequences, and, if you do follow them you will find favour with God and live in Peace and end up in a peaceful place.  Personally, I prefer the New Testament wherein are found the quotations from Jesus, as well as the diatribes of Paul.  In the Old Testament and most of the stuff quoted about Paul in his words or letters, the prevalent emotion is Fear and God is seen as Angry.  In the quotes attributed to Jesus himself, the prevalent emotion is Love and Jesus is seen as loving.  The summary could be simply stated.  God said do this and you will be favoured for if you don’t you will be damned.  Jesus said, consider loving me and I will love you and lead you into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Further, if you love yourself and love your neighbour and allow forgiveness in both directions, I will come back and create a Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth with Good Will Toward Men.  There’s still a bit of warning: if you don’t take Me into your heart, you will not be admitted to Heaven but be forced to stay on a hellish Earth for a thousand years before you get another chance.  Incidentally, most Catholics to whom I’ve discussed this think that “Life is Hell,” already.

Let’s get back to the offspring with perfectionist parents.  In my 75 years, so far, I have found that most folks are a mixture of right-brained and left-brained sided-ness.  Thus, if the right brain predominates, there is natural creativity and fun-loving music, art and an aversion to work and make money for money’s sake.  If the left-brain is predominant there is a strong adherence to the rules and regulations, a feeling that one could be perfect with such adherence and that everyone should feel the same way.  At some level there may be a cognitive choice of whether to be left or right bained predominant.  It is most likely however, that the choice is made before birth by the usual randomness of how things settle but also by the basic genetics in families.  Right-brained folks tend to have right-brained kids and left-brained folks tend to have left-brained kids.

Environment certainly plays a role.  In a creative environment, it is easier to be artistic and musical, fun-loving and creative.  In a restrictive environment, it is easier to follow and enforce the rules and regulations and let your creative urges just be an aberrancy to be corrected or hidden.  What is frightening to me, a predominantly right-brained person, is that following the rules and regulations is considered fun!  Often, I hear, “I had fun getting my kitchen floor clean” or “I had fun getting my clothes laundered and neatly put away.”

In a mixed environment, there are only minor clashes of personalities which are easily resolved.  I am stubborn and I insist that it’s better to go through life having fun.  I suffer personality clashes all over the place.  In my mainly left-brained family, I am considered unpredictable and uncomfortable to be around.  My stubbornness in insisting on an Epicurean life-style, clashes all the time with folks who insist that life-styles should be Stoic and unemotional, who feel that work is more Godly than play.  What helped me a lot was that as a physician, I appeared to work long hours and long weeks.  I knew that I was enjoying being a doctor and that it was equivalent to play for me.  I often said, that I would work without compensation because of the joy and satisfaction that being a healing, caring person afforded.  Of course, the compensation was generally very good for some periods in my life.  Outwardly, I appeared to be a left-brained person going after the almighty dollar.  This made my family proud and happy for me.  What only few people saw was that I would have worked for nothing.  Surely I’m not the only artistic person that appears to be a hard working Stoic.  It does have the secondary advantage of avoiding personality clashes.  But, in the relationships that meant the most to me, there was trouble.  My stubbornness made it possible to feel alienated from almost everyone in my family and most of the people in my social life.  You could say I stuck out like a sore thumb.  Mostly, I was proud to be different and adventurous.  I was proud to be brave and to be able to stubbornly stick to my unpredictability and refusal to be purely dedicated to making money and hording it.  You could say, I willingly gave all my money away because I saw money as having little importance except for buying food and maintaining a modest shelter.  I admit I spend too much money on good food, money which is not readily available to me, at this, or most times in my life.  I also admit I have been extra-extravagant at times with regard to cars.  At this particular time, I am facing having to give up my Honda Civic because I can no longer afford the gas, maintenance, insurance and car payments.  I have given up at least four cars in my life-time struggles with my mood problems and my lack of interest in making money, for its own sake.  It is significant that I have given up successively less expensive cars.  It was a Mercedes I gave up initially, then a Lincoln, then a Toyota and now, a Honda.  As before, this will make a significant change in my life-style.  However, it will mean more money for food and shelter, art supplies and writing materials.  It will again look shameful for the rest of my family and most of my friends for yet another bankrupt interlude.  I’m getting used to it…

At 75, I have more control over my moods, than ever before.  Nevertheless, during some of my happy times, I spend way too much money, that I don’t have, and create untenable situations for myself and my loved ones, who don’t seem to want to have anything to do with me.  I feel like I have leprosy.  During my less happy times, my energy levels drop significantly and I hardly spend any money at all, mainly because I have none and cannot earn much during these periods.  I do love to be a creative cook and make things that taste unusual and stimulating.  I have a reputation for mixing things together that are highly unusual in my environment.  No one will even taste it as if they think it might be poisonous.  Actually, I’ve never poisoned myself or anyone else which substantiates my claim as being an excellent cook.  Those that have been brave enough to taste it, if I don’t tell them what I’ve put into it, always say it’s very good.  My mother managed to poison me twice.  I cannot believe that she did it on purpose, but sometimes, I’m not too sure…

Thank you for listening.  I feel much better now.  Giving up my car makes me think about patterns of behaviour and that takes a little of the sting out of losing yet another favourite car…

It’s just after 3:30 am on a Sunday morning.  Yesterday was Yom Kippur, a day in which you’re supposed to fast for 24 hours and make peace with your deity and the relatives with whom you’re having disputes.  My mother in the Ukraine would have put on a burlap dress with a few Kopeks in her pocket, waved a dead chicken over her head and said some prayers.  Then she would have buried the chicken, something like one buries the hatchet.  Then she would have gone to the river which runs through Kiev and thrown the coins into the river as a symbol of being bereft of gold and other earthly treasures.  Then she would have adjusted her wig and returned to her family very happy to have made a solid peace with everyone and everything about her impoverished state of being.  Perhaps my writing this essay this morning is a way of making peace.  In the last year, I gave up cable television, my actual television, a personal internet connection, a lot of my possessions and a nice apartment for a much cheaper one.  And, now I face giving up my car and all the independence that it does afford for public transportation, walking and bicycling.  Yesterday, I spent my last $60 until my pension checks come through at the end of the month, at the Welland Farmer’s Market  for some very fresh vegetables, cheese, eggs and chicken thighs.  I didn’t attend the synagogue for two reasons; I can’t afford the membership and I don’t like worshipping.  In fact, I’ve attended the synagogue as a favour to me, for the stories of the Old Testament which are fascinating for me.  The rules and regulations are really funny because of their ancient character while the stories are fascinating as allegories of classic human behaviour and human intercourse.  I like writing stories where I get to retell some of these old stories in my own style.  Besides, I’ve always detested fasting as a cruel joke; if I don’t eat, I become quickly ill.  Other folks that fast say it is a purifying experience.  I will start hallucinating if I don’t eat regularly; perhaps that’s why there are so many stories of fasting in the Bible and elsewhere that suggest to me that some people need some hallucinating to make big decisions, say for going into battle or thrilling out-of-body experiences that have a spiritual meaning.

Since there’s no longer any synagogues in Welland, I have been attending various churches.  For one thing, there’s food and coffee and potential for meeting someone interesting who tells an interesting story.  I suppose the usual applies; there’s pleasure in seeing folks that know you and recognize you.  Once, I even got to say the Hebrew prayers on the wine and Eucharist that I’ve memorized since childhood.  It was a very emotional experience and I was glad to have some understanding friends to comfort me at the time.  In one church in Port Colbourne, I met a female Anglican Priest who had some very interesting things to discuss with me.  We actually dated over a period of 8 years during which time I asked her to marry me.  She turned me down for reasons that were probably obvious to others, but they weren’t obvious to me.  After she and I stopped dating, she married someone else.  I loved her very much and she said she loved me back but it wasn’t in the cards, as they say.

I have two life-threatening illnesses, Bipolar Disorder and Congestive Heart Failure due to Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, a disease of unknown cause that has a terrible prognosis.  The books and scientific papers on both diseases say I should have died some 20 years ago.  I must be a statistical anomaly because most folks with Bipolar Disorder, which my mother had and most of my aunts and uncles had, die before their time.  The usual longevity for Bipolar patients is less than 50.  I’m 75 and I have outlived many of my doctors, kith and kin.  Perhaps it’s my stubbornness, the stubbornness that makes me refuse to lie down and accept an early death.  I have symptoms that don’t allow me to lie flat, climb stairs or walk swiftly, without severe shortness of breath.  However, my coronaries were checked four times by disbelieving doctors and found to be extraordinarily free of significant blockages.  All other arteries, apparently, are similarly wide open, including those to my brain and those to my limbs.  If I need surgery for my enlarging prostate, or my small hernias, a general anaesthesia would be out of the question because of my heart.

My habits scare all my doctors.  I am addicted to caffeine, food and nicotine.  Actually, I smoked and drank coffee and overate before I was born.  In 1938, it was expected that a pregnant woman, like my mother, would have gained a lot of weight, and she wasn’t forbidden to smoke her two packs of cigarettes daily and drink two pots of coffee daily.  And, she passed her Bipolar genetics on to me at conception.  I eat a lot of fat and have done so all my life.  And, it’s the “bad” fat; I’ve never hesitated to eat the fat of pork, beef, and other animals, as well as lots of butter, cheese and eggs.  My blood tests show no diabetes though my father had it.  My cholesterol is only a little high and I’m about a hundred pounds or more overweight by any standards.  In the past, I was always an athlete and did a lot of sports, but never regularly “worked out.”  It’s boring and makes no sense to me to have an unreasonably shapely body.  I did have one when I was a teenager doing gymnastics and playing a lot of basketball.  That was 60 years ago, if you’ve done the math.  Though my family didn’t seem to care, I was prouder of my Athletic letter than I was of my Medical Diploma after making the Varsity Squash Team at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.  I have shunned all my medications for the last few years, feeling they were unhealthy and dangerous.

I’ve always been curious and rarely bored with what I’ve been involved.  I’ve always liked music and my radio is always on.  Luckily it doesn’t cost a lot to have classical music and Jazz constantly on.  Though I “tinkle” on a piano, I do not play any instrument, except for the radio.  I also love jokes and remember most of the jokes I’ve heard, even the ones my dad told me.  Usually I remember the idea of the joke and make up the details to fit my audience.  My writing often contains those old jokes that fit into something I’m writing.

In the Biblical sense I’ve been all three professions, all my life:  healing, teaching and leading.  And I’ve had special joys with all of them.  Recently, I was described as “jovial” by someone I had just met.

As in the past, my mood swings precluded any consistent joviality but recently, my mood has been consistently good for almost two years now.  That is, the “normal” swings that people have every day, has been my surprising pleasure for the past two years.  At times, there have been twinges of mood fluctuations that remind me of my severest times with nightmares or uncontrolled optimism.  And, I have not required the usual medications for over three years, now.  One of my psychiatrists predicted this if I made it to age 70 or over; I’m happy to say he was right.  I don’t know what the future brings, but I do know that I have never been this stable or happy for this long a period, ever.

My writing disturbs my family and many others.  My paintings are even more disturbing to them.  I’ve learned to keep them away from my painting and writing.  I was reminded several times in the past few months that most of my family doesn’t read my blog, even if I only send them what I think is a bland poem they would like.

Incidentally, it may be that eating lots of animal fat has something to do with my tendencies to be jovial.  In a report in Science, a magazine that publishes outstanding research, there was a paper, perhaps thirty years ago, that described a simple experiment.  The researcher used a population of rats that eventually developed hardening of the arteries, heart attacks and strokes similar to those seen in Humans.  Starting with a thousand rats, he divided them in two groups, carefully matching populations of each according to weights, ages, sex and eating habits.  He had the usual mazes to measure performance and he planned to sacrifice some of the rats at various times, on a regular basis, in both groups, to have a measure of any advancing arterial disease.  He force-fed one group of 500 a very high cholesterol diet and the other group, a zero cholesterol diet.  The results were startling and perhaps so surprising that it was not taken into account by the cardiologists or the nutritionists or the psychologists or the general public.  I felt that I was the only one that had read it and been impressed with its apparent truths and simplicities.  My patients would not believe it when they came in demanding a low cholesterol diet or cholesterol lowering agents which have many dangerous side-effects.  I stubbornly refused to support the “fad” for skinniness, low cholesterol and fat free diets for any of my patients, many of whom went elsewhere to get the advice they were expecting to get.  There was no difference between the two groups of rats with regard to advancement of their usual arterial degenerative disease, usually associated with high cholesterol diets.  There was however two differences which should have alerted someone in a position to publicize it.  The high cholesterol rats were fatter and happier than the low cholesterol rats.  The low cholesterol rats were meaner and more aggressive toward their keepers than the high cholesterol rats.  There was no difference in the death rates, stroke episodes or heart attacks incidents.  Yes, it’s true that humans and rats are different mammals.  In this experiment the differences seem insignificant.  Yes, it was never repeated by someone and some rats in another laboratory, which is the usual way for confirming any results.  Funding for research is a tricky business.  Without a positive or expected positive result, a company with a vested interest would be happy to support a confirming experiment.  Otherwise, governmental funds for pure research with equivocal results is hard to come by, these days, and the government has no vested interest in these results, ironically.  We used to say that the best research was done in a dark basement somewhere on a shoe-string budget.  Parkinson, of the famous Laws of Parkinson, showed that successful researchers then become fund raisers and built institutions with their names on it and that no significant research is ever again produced.  He reported this in the New England Journal of Medicine about 50 years ago.  It’s very good reading if you are interested in the Psychology of Researchers and their funding, or if you liked Parkinson’s Laws as much as I do.

Applied research is now the norm, apparently.  That is the usual kind of research where a drug company, say, does its own research to show that its own product could be a lucrative adventure.  Disclosure of who pays for what results is supposed to keep a lid on this kind of entrepreneurism, but it doesn’t.  Outcome research is the most reliable as opposed to applied research where the results are predictable.  Metropolitan Life Tables done by an insurance company is of true monetary interest to the Insurance company and all life insurance companies.  These studies established the dangerous levels for blood pressure and heart rates, etc.  The weight statistics were not believed by most of my patients who had a fixation on some arbitrary “ideal weight” published by fashion, health, diet and work-out magazines.  Any magazine will tell you the exact formula for calculating its value.  Metropolitan paid no attention.  It formulated its ideal weight based on longevity.  It’s the weight at which your longevity is the greatest.  It turns out to be 30% above the ideal weight calculated by your doctor and your nutritionist and your spa enthusiast.  Suppose you’re a woman and your popular ideal weight is 120 pounds.  At that weight, the actuarial tables might predict a life time of 82 years.  At 30% higher, your actual ideal weight is 156 pounds, at which time the tables would predict you’d live to 84 years.  At 60% above, you’d weigh 192 pounds and the tables predict you’d live 82 years.  At 30% below the popular ideal weight, you would die at a much younger age.  At 60% below, death would be imminent.

Patients with anorexia and distorted body images, and an APA official diagnosis of Distorted Body Image Disorder, an acquired psychotic affective disorder, look in mirrors when they weigh 73 pounds and say something like, “I’m much too fat!  Perhaps I can lose another three or four pounds by starving for a week straight.  When I tremble, it’s like I’m exercising.  And exercising is really good for me, despite my loss of muscle bulk.  Food looks poisonous to me, like eating insects or snakes.  Sometimes, I eat only one grape, one fortune-cookie, one sugar chocolate wafer and a stalk of celery for five or six meals in a row.  The hallucinations don’t bother me.  I’ve grown to like them.  Sometimes, they have sex in them with a very skinny man with a huge erection and with the strength to lift me on high and do me in mid-air.  Sometimes, they are associated with voices that tell me I’m too fat and need to lose more weight.    They are colourful and interesting, entertaining and foretelling, insightful and sagacious!”  These folks, generally women, are suicidal and must be monitored closely and usually hospitalized where a fat bully of a psychiatric nurse or technician must watch over them to prevent suicidal attempts.

I met four such women in a psychiatric hospital in the Midwest USA.  They stayed together as a group and had therapy directed by a psychiatrist, separate from the bigger groups of cyclic major depressions, like Bipolar and Unipolar Affective Disorders, and the whole gamut of non-psychotic anxiety disorders, like Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with Hypervigilence.  Three of the four were quiet, pleasant, insightful, under one hundred pounds, fashionably dressed and made-up, and quite beautiful, intelligent and artistically talented.  They were whizzes at crossword puzzles, scrabble, chess and cribbage.  Each had a special hobby which was extremely exacting.  One did beautiful embroidery; another painted Christmas scenes on wooden fruit baskets; another painted photographically perfect images of houses and seascapes, landscapes and animals in acrylics.  The fourth in the group was outstanding in that she looked frumpy and deliberately unattractive.  In contrast to the other three, she was hard to get along with and confrontational.  All four had an exacting schedule for meals, activities and therapy.  No medications were used.  Cognitive and behavioural modification seemed to get them out of the hospital once they weighed more than a hundred pounds and promised to stay away from vigourous exercise.  All four would have exercised up to eight hours daily on their home equipment or by running and jogging.  All were in their mid-thirties and all had made serious suicide attempts in the past.  One had visible scars on both wrists.  Although there were deep feelings of self-contempt, all were aware of the pressures to which they had all succumbed including the fashionable images of very skinny models and movie stars in all the magazines.

Eating Disorders in the other direction, overeating and obesity, are much more common, but much less dangerous.  A man and a woman with a substantial oversized belly is classical appearance for almost all renaissance painters, especially the proliferative Rueben who painted huge works depicting Heaven, Earth and Hell, all on one 25 foot square painting, showing angels, earthlings and devils all obviously chubby and fun-loving, in contrast to the present standards of photographed “beautiful people,” who are slim and slimmer, even if obviously muscular.  Overweight people by any standard outlive their skinny counterparts and are happier, mostly.  The chubby clown who is laughing on the outside and crying on the inside is a classic image of underlying malaise and dissatisfaction and actual clinical depression.  I am Bipolar and my weight varies with my mood, though generally upward since my teenage years when I weighed 145 and did gymnastics and played basketball frequently.  I would be described in the nutritional literature as a “Yo-Yo.”  When I was thirty, during my first disabling severe depression, I returned to my teenage size and weight of a 29 inch waist and I weighed 145 pounds, again.  Other than that throwback, my weight has fluctuated with my moods with swings that were generally pointing up to a peak of over 300 pounds and a waist line of 56 inches about 3 years ago when I had had a mild, non-debilitating depression which lasted about 3 years.  Since then, I’ve felt like my old self and even better for the last 2 years, a period of “stability” never before experienced.  Of course it’s not a straight line on a graph.  If one does tests for depression and hypomania, or learns to put numbers to levels of moods, like I was taught by a behavioural and cognitive modifying psychotherapist, not a psychiatrist, then I’m presently varying between approximately +10 and -10 on a scale of +100 to -100 from about ages 20 to age 60.

I’ve been hospitalized twice for severe -100 suicidal, Clinical Depressions.  The first time was after a suicidal overdose grossly miscalculated on my part after which I promised myself that this would never happen again.  I’ve had to repeat those promises to several of my psychiatrists and psychotherapists especially during my second hospitalization for suicidal ideation.  The first time, in 1978, following a divorce and a paternity suit which caused a loss of practically every asset I owned, was the first time I was given Lithium for 18 months.  I gained 45 pounds during that period and felt like a trembling zombie with diarrhea and frequency of urination.  The second time in 1990, following my second divorce, there was another total loss of practically everything.  Both times I had to give up very expensive, unaffordable cars, a Mercedes and a Lincoln.  The second time, I was given Prozac which in a short time engendered a +100 Manic Psychosis, and the Prozac was discontinued.  The first time was the beginning of a three year dysfunctional period where I lost my position at two hospitals and had no significant income for those three years, as documented by the US Social Security Agency which revealed my earnings continuously since I entered the USA in 1962 from Canada, first as an exchange student and later, in 1969 as a green card carrying resident alien.

In 1992, I gave up my green card at the border and easily re-entered Canada with only the clothes on my back.  My sister and brother-in-law supported me until I was able to gather the old documents and re-instate my Canadian License and my Ontario License to practice Medicine and Surgery, April 28, 1992, having re-entered my home country with a valid Canadian passport that I’d maintained throughout my US years from July 1, 1962, to January 2, 1992, interrupted for two years between July 1, 1967, and July 12, 1969.

During those two years I did transmembrane cardiac research and taught in four languages at the Physiology Institute at the University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, two of my most memorable years, in many ways.  Besides the academic stuff, I was able to ski in the Alps, rock climb the Simi at the western end of the Swiss Alps, kayak the Aare River from Lake Thun to Bern and explore the land with my family of wife and two boys, which included trips to Austria, France, Germany and Italy on a Swiss work visa and a Swiss driver’s license and my Canadian passport.  My wife and I decided that our marriage was a bust, except for the boys, and that we would get divorced when we re-entered the USA.  In the meantime we tried an open marriage with multiple affairs with other folks, both Swiss and otherwise.  It was also a time when recruitment by the CIA was a possibility, that I turned down because I thought it would be dangerous for me and my family.  I met some very interesting people during that stay in a foreign country.  My teaching and language skills were sharpened and my research was extremely interesting and led to a meeting with a Nobel Prize winning scientist, Andrew Huxley, the brother of Aldous and Julian, also Nobel Prize winners and grandsons of the famous English Philosopher, Thomas Huxley.  I was offered a permanent position at the University of Berne.  I turned it down in favour of getting back to Chicago where a position for me was already offered as Full-time Staff member in the Medical Department of Michael Reese Hospital, teaching and doing research.  On my return, my mood was extremely low and I suffered my first very dysfunctional major depression and started my life-saving and life long association with psychiatric supervision.

The divorce was finalized, rather quietly, after a return trip to Europe to visit friends in Switzerland and pick up a 1974 Mercedes to drive around Switzerland and other parts of Europe as I attended an International Conference on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in London.  I guess it was a misguided attempt on my part to heal the wounds with my wife and not get a divorce.  Despite what I thought was a grand trip to Europe, my first wife and I recognized the futility of staying married.  The wounds were too deep and the stubbornness on both our parts was severe with regard to changing or compromise.  The personality clash was strong, right-brained and flighty, vs. left-brained and practical, right from the beginning.  My wife gave me the correct assessments by saying, “I can’t live with you but there’s never been a dull moment around here.”  Also, “You’re finally making enough money for me to divorce you.”  And, “You’re a nice guy and you don’t have any trouble making friends.  I’m sure you’ll be OK on your own.”  The settlement was quick and typical for 1973: the wife got every asset except for one car and one stereo.   Alimony and child support were reasonable and visitation rights were liberal.  We both had psychiatrists at the time who confirmed that we were both too stubborn to change or compromise.  I learned at age 65, applying for US SS benefits, that she had earned more than I during her working years, some of which I could have asked for.  I decided not to ask for all, or some of the water that had flowed under the bridge.

It is now glaringly obvious about my stubbornness and the tremendous effect my moods had on my two marriages and divorces, and all my relationships with kith and kin, and vice versa, and my jobs.  I became aware that there was a grander cycle of events with severe dysfunctionality, approximately every 11 years, matching, perhaps, the cycles of increased sunspots.  I am also aware that virtually total losses at regular intervals are very significant.  In this year of increased sunspot activity, my mood has been unusually good while once again I face imminent bankruptcy and tremendous losses.  I do however see the possibility that I have more control over my actions and decisions.  Even as I write this, I have some plans to avert total disaster.  The plans may not work, but the self-supportive cognition helps a lot.

As to the stubbornness of sticking to my Bohemian notions of living and laughing, enjoying and creating, I’m happily acceptant of myself, at this time.  Barring an accident or a serious physical illness, I’m optimistic that I will continually outlive my doctors for at least another 10 years.  I have been able to be happy on virtually no psychometric medications for more than 5 years and at this time, I have no immediate need to see a physician, at all.  I know that is a stubbornness on my part inasmuch as it might be financially easier if I get a psychiatric verification of my mental illness and medical verification of my cardiac disease, both as life-threatening disabilities.  I’m guessing I’m still too stubborn to admit that I am truly disabled.  I know the optimism is self-serving and probably healthy on my part.

I also know that some degree of denial is one of my survival mechanisms, trusting in some miracle that will save me once again from death and depression, destruction and defeat.  It could in fact be the remnant of my iffy spirituality and a belief in a benevolent deity that watches every sparrow fall.  Er… don’t quote me on that one.  I still can’t bring myself to see an invisible, all-powerful, all-seeing and an all-over-the-place God , that has anything whatsoever to do with my life here on Earth.  If anything, I feel there was one philosopher, who felt that after the “Creation,” God has been sitting it out and observing how His experiment is playing itself out, who might be unprovably correct.  I believe he was French and called it the principle of “laissez-faire."

Its 3:22 am, the following day when I started this essay.  Frankly, I had no idea that it would end up so long and complicated.  I apologize to my readers if I have insulted you or said things that are totally against your rules and regulations.  I’m 75 and I can’t be frightened anymore about what I write or say.  It’s me and I’m happy to be me, at this time, still alive and kicking.  Sometimes, I kick a lot harder than I mean to, but, perhaps, I do it on purpose.  Perhaps I should label my writing with a warning: “Do not read unless you are prepared to be disturbed!”  Or, perhaps, “to be stimulated.”  I was inspired a lot by what my son had to say about his “mix of his mother’s personality and my personality,” which must be an unbearable conflict at times.  There’s no intended fence-sitting here, I believe.  I’m an atheist, not an agnostic.  As my other son points out, there’s a distinct dogmatism implied which is religious by definition.  It is also political and sexual, all of which may be the same thing.  I have a distinct feeling that I’m spiritual but it seems like it’s a self-serving thing, something which justifies for me my own “raison d’etre.”  I believe I generally feel that God was created in Man’s Image, not vice versa.  I do believe that the allegories of the Old and Newer Testaments represent something of value to me and to us all.  I love the Biblical Stories; they are better than any soap opera I have ever seen.  I do like the actual words deemed as having been said by Jesus.  I do like my unusual conclusion that Esther and Scheherazade were the same woman told by two different cultural writers.  I don’t like to think that Jesus was deliberately suicidal, but his “sacrifice” smacks of it.  I don’t like to think of Moses as being the cleverest of leaders and warriors and the most intelligent writer of the “Rules and Regulations,” but my reading of the Pentateuch smacks heavily as something written by a left-brained person who seeks to control large numbers of reluctant followers, presuming it was he, not Aaron, that did all the writing and speaking, inasmuch as allegorically, Moses had a lisp.  Aaron could have easily been the kingpin, a behind the scenes provocateur and revolutionary leader, much like Henry Kissinger was to Richard Milhouse Nixon or like Nancy was to Ronald Reagan or Cheney was to George W.

I’m lucky that I live in a beautiful, fairly free country like Canada, with high marks for education.  Last July 1, Canada Day, I believe I alienated all my Canadian readers by suggesting we give back to the natives their lands because they were doing a much better job with the mountains, trees, air and water that we are as Europeans who came here way after they did.  I don’t know what attracted, initially so many Russian readers who then ignored me in droves.  I don’t like to believe that I used the phrase, “All animals are equal except for pigs who are more equal,” to chase them away.  Right now I have much more respect for them because of what Putin did to prevent more bloodshed, in Syria.  Perhaps, they’ll get more interested than the Americans who seem, presently, to be my most faithful readers.  I have no idea why…  Feedback would be great!  Please…

At my first breakfast, about 30 minutes ago, I had chicken and veggies, pasta and olive oil.  The rest is still stewing and will be my lunch.  I’m thinking I may throw in some eggs to add to the 6 week stew using only one large saucepan.  I just threw in some sweet peppers and some white eggplant, a new veggie for me.

Y’all have a great day!  I’m going to take a nap now, after an aromatic cigarillo and a large cup of coffee with honey and chocolate ice cream.  There’s been some great Jazz on the radio for the last few hours, from an international FM station, Jazz.fm, from 91.1 MHz, CJRT, Toronto.  My kitty fell asleep after recognizing that I won’t let her out until the dawn.  She can be very persuasive, at times.  My plants are growing very well; there’s a minor forest in my bathroom…

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

September 16, 2013