PINBALL CHOICE

WHO AM I?

I have been rolling downhill on my old-style, electro-mechanical pinball life. I bounced from bumper-to-bumper, location-to-location, job-to-job, crisis-to-crisis, and person-to-person. Did I really control any of this or did I really only control my desire-flippers at the bottom?

I am now propelled by the gravity of aging and the inertia of my vanities. I am now realizing that I am unable to really alter the linear direction of my descent toward “Game Over” which prior events have orchestrated. Even the speed of my fall is cumulative. My rolling silver steel ball of personality appears out of my control. I watch all that is going on behind the glass game-top and wonder if I have become a “deaf, dumb blind kid” like Tommy.

Can’t I choose anything? Do anything?

Then again, do I really want to choose? Or should I simply let the events choose? That’s the easiest. Less effort, right? Watch my little steel ball go straight down and disappear out of sight. Then I can curse “what they did to me”, those stupid bumpers. Blame someone else for my fate, my lack of opportunities. The lack of wealth of my parents, genetics that gave me an “eecch” brain. Maybe whine about the obviously rigged game of life which is not on the level. Oh sure, there were inclinations, mine on the inner and the inclined game table on the outer. And, after all, I chose this game.

And I was inclined to try to affect the outcome. I shook the table, nudged it – hard (careful not to “tilt”). But, basically, a pinball life is three balls, flashing lights, sounds, points rolling on the board as you stand there somewhat confused, unaware, naïve, numb in my heart and alone. Yeah, I flipped my desire flippers and occasionally kept the ball in play.

Choose. Huh? Yeah, right.

WHAT DO I WANT?

Let me brood in my dull anger for a moment, okay?

Do I want to choose? Yes, I do want to choose. And, I realize that if I choose, then I will pay for my choice. I will suffer. I do suffer. Your extra replays don’t come free. But, I’m brooding already, right? I have a few more games racked up on the counter – a few more years before “Game Over.”

     Deprivation because when you choose, you only get one thing – not both. I have to pick one or the other, poverty because I can’t have both (or the many). There will be labor, conflict, looming fear, addiction (to my desiring. Desiring? Hell. Longing!), regret that things will not be harmonious, rejected divinity, failing physical capacities, pissing myself. Maybe denial is easier. Just let me stand here like Tommy – deaf, dumb and blind. But, Tommy could play. Am I a player?

     Suffering. Suffering to be myself. A warrior, a player, chooses to define her/himself from the others. Can I be hostile? Independent? Push back against the inclined table of life? I can be hostile to the amorphous, undefined!

     I long for the One Thing. The One Thing we have in our hearts, our True Self. The others told me that real success was getting my steel ball into the 1,000 Points Hole. Roll your ball into that Hole and score big time, lots of lights, sounds and chatter. Woo-hoo! (“You get a replay!”) And, then the 1,000 Points Hole ejects you, shoots you across the table.

That other thing which warms your heart? That True Love? Where is that? Don’t seek that. There is no choice, they say. Stick with the 1,000 Point Hole and replays. You are what you are, the game is the game, the table is what it is, and that is that. True Self? True Love? Not here. Not in this game. This is a closed system. There is no place to go for that.

WHY AM I HERE?

I am here to awaken the True Self before I die. Before you die.

“Time, time, time, see what’s become of me...” I am a child of the 60s in my 60s. What time is it? Am I late for a very important date? “When the Moon s in the 7^th House...” Is this the dawning? I have I missed it? When was that Millennium? Y2K?

Is it ever too late to transform? If you don’t transform yourself, life will transform you. So, you have to go from the closed system to an open system.

If I am a steel ball, I am iron. Iron is malleable with enough heat. With enough passion I will undergo the agony of change. I will stand between the opposites where I’m normally not inclined to go, and feel the power of resistance. Resistance to my passion cranks up the heat. With enough passion, resistance and friction, I can change. Form a blade. A sword. The One Thing to become, my new self. Someone who does not just roll mindlessly, who can overcome the inertia of the past. A blade does not roll mindlessly. A blade cuts you away from the amorphous which clings.  Change - the one precious thing to do - the act which grows more fierce with each sun rise.

True Self awakens in the sphere of cause. Outside the box. Off the table. Choose to be the gravity, your self-motive. This is how we roll.

Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

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"WIGGLE ROOM AND FISCUS" - A FAMILY LEGEND REPUBLISHED

REVISED 9/10/2016 - My wife, Marietta, a Master Gardener, told me I was misspelling "Ficus" when I first showed her a draft of this post. I explained that Microsoft Word, with which this was written, did not accept the spelling "f-i-c-u-s", and kept substituting "f-i-c-h-u-s". She said that was "unfortunate".  I also told her that the Microsoft vocabulary did not have the Texas word "thang" and kept substituting "thong". She said that was probably "fortunate". My friend, Ira Lipson, also tried to save me from embarrassment by correcting the “fichus” / “ficus” situation by informing me, as my wife had attempted, that the correct spelling of the plant name was “ficus” not “fichus”.  So, now I have corrected the spelling, okay!

Brainz version- September 25, 2016

I have a “gift”. Okay, I actually have several “gifts”, but I do have a “gift” of spatial perception. For example, I can look at a jumble of stuff and tell if I can pack it all into an assigned fixed space or not, right down to the tiniest item in the littlest place.  Like, loading boxes, trunks, appliances, packages, and so forth into the back of a truck. Or a trailer. Or the trunk of a car or a self-storage unit. I discovered I had this gift, when as a young man quit a newspaper job and got a job loading trailers at United Freight Service (UFS) on the “Midnight Sort”. I was a “Loader” and that was my official UFS / Teamster job title.

   Some think that people who load trucks are desperate immigrants or unskilled half-wits. We had those, but we also had people who had fallen on hard times, like myself  (who pushed himself into hard times), a Summa Cum Laude attorney whose firm had lost a major client, a former MD who apparently specialized in malpractice, and Gary who laughed out loud at the movies he made in his mind. We did not “bond” because we hardly saw one another and we each had one or more trailers to load during our shift. But, we did go out after work to a strip club once or twice.

     This capacity for spatial perception has been a great gift to have because we have moved a lot over the years. One of my favorite moves which has now gone down into family legend has been the move from Pennsylvania to Michigan, or as we call it, “The Ficus Move.”

     I had perfectly loaded, and I mean perfectly loaded a 26-foot Ryder rental truck, the one with a “Grandma’s Closet” (the little space over the cab) with our family’s belongings. That included bicycles, appliances, aquariums, books, boxes, wardrobes, tools, the lot. Now, when a loader says “perfectly loaded”, that means tight. Pardon me while I take a narrative side-road to explain the technical term “tight” for you lay-people, but I assure you it’s integral for your understanding of the Ficus Move story.

     “Tight” was a technical term which my loading colleagues and I researched because our boss commanded us to ‘”packed it tight”.  “Que?” said one. “Is there a case law definition of tight?” asked another. Gary giggled. We retired to the Spotlight Strip Club to conduct careful, scientific observations using spatial perception over many data gathering sessions and held lengthy debates. Given our weird constellation, and the Spotlight Strip Club as our research lab, it was not surprising we argued intensely over Catholic and Mexican cultural, legal, mathematic and physiological factors which Gary turned into a movie and giggled about.  Our research concluded scientifically that “tight” means there is less “wiggle room” (or free space for movement) between packed items in our loads compared to the space between the fanny-flesh and the thong of “Miss Easy Evil” at the Spotlight Strip Club. We are sure because the MD suggested we used the well-known “Three Bears” statistical methodology which he used in all his research. So, for control purposes, the MD helped us gather comparative anatomical data on “Miss Toothpick Annie” (‘She ain’t got no fanny!’) and “Miss Judy Booty” (‘That girl’s got a bonus booty!’). And then he said, “Come to Poppa, ‘Miss Easy Evil’ you is just right as the operational definition of tight!” If this scientific definition has been something you have been worrying about, I am glad to have helped.

     Now, back to the Ficus Move story. My Ryder rental truck load was “tight”, so tight I wanted to take a snapshot of the full load because the overhead trailer door would just barely clear the last few items. I mean it was a mover’s dream. Tight and perfect.

     Then I heard my wife, coming around the corner of the house calling out “Can you get in the Ficus?” And there she came with my eldest teenage son, a 6’3” lad who could probably press and easy 200#, dragging a 3-gallon terracotta pot with a 5-foot Ficus tree which had been sitting in the corner of our living room.

     A brief moment of panic. Was this something I forgot? Maybe. My gift is spatial perception, not house plant detection.

     Now, if the question had been, “Is there room for the Ficus?” The answer would have been “No!” because the load was perfect and tight. If the question had been “Am I too late to get the Ficus in?” The answer would have been “Yes!” because I had been loading all day, just pulled the door down.

     “Can you get in the Ficus?” she repeated, and here they come dragging that dang Ficus. I raised the overhead door and looked over at the Ficus. That thing was big! Did I mention this load was tight?

    My wife had worked in mental health, psychiatry specifically, for decades by this point in our marriage. So, the question “Can you get in the Ficus?” may have been a clever intra-spousal psycho-analytic challenge aimed at some deep-seated Freudian masculinity thingy. That would have pissed me off.  But since she’s a Jungian, I doubted it, so I didn’t get angry. My guess was that the question was a lucky, off-the-board, 3-seconds left in the game “Hail Mary” half-court shot by an indoor garden fanatic.  Can you? Can you?  It swished in.

     Can I? I looked at the perfectly packed, tight load. I looked at my wife. I looked at the Ficus again. I looked at my teenage son, he smirked. He knew daddy’s “spatial perception” was caught. I knew what sleeping on the couch meant. I looked at the Ficus and considered its 3-gallon pot, its broomstick shaped trunk, and its weird leaves. Then my spatial perception “gift” kicked in, and I began mentally re-arranging the load. 

     It was not easy. It was not pretty. Let’s just say I had to violate good loading protocol and exceed the laws of physics to get that Fichus loaded. It should not have been physically possible to cram in that 3-gallon pot and Fichus into that “tight” load any more than it was possible for “Miss Judy Booty” at the Spotlight Strip Club to load that much fanny-flesh around her thong. But, I was there for the foundational research: I saw her bonus booty and it was moving. I regretted seeing both. Such is the stuff of movers’ nightmares. I must admit that I used a few loader 4-letter incantations, and applied leverage, and I got the Ficus loaded.

     Since then I won’t attempt spatial perception or loading anything without looking over my shoulder and asking my wife well in advance, “Ficus?”

     She just laughs.

P.S. - The Ficus survived the legendary move and to this day sits in our living room in a 4-gallon pot. It now has two additional limbs. Those are weird leaves.

© Copyright 2016, Jean W. Yeager / All Rights Reserved

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WIDE GAZE

BRAINZ SUBMISSION, SEPTEMBER 2018

                After I had my heart attack, and I was well into physical rehab, I took a meditation course.  I was physically recovering, so I thought I would change my inner life as well.

            The meditation course taught two, very simple, basic types of contemplation.[1]

The first type was a focused gaze on an object. They gave me a river pebble to look at. “Look at the stone carefully, Jean, then shut your eyes and imagine the pebble in great detail.”

The second type, was to adopt a wide gaze and not focus on the stone. See the stone, on your hand and the rest of the room, how the light is coming in the windows, etc. A wide gaze. Then look way and imagine the wide gaze.

I could do the first, the focused gaze like gangbusters. The wide gaze I could not do. I had lots of excuses. The line on my bifocals got in the way, I couldn’t get the angle right, lots of excuses.

So, I went to the facilitator and described my difficulties. He is a close friend of mine and he said, “Well, Jean, that’s why you had your heart attack.”

“Oh, really?” I said.

“You see, the narrow gaze is easy for people whose life is organized around details. You’re a good writer and non-profit administrator. You hold all the details, the decisions, and the like. Those details take all of your attention and that works its way into your physiology. It becomes you. People say you are an “attention to detail” kind of guy. You dress neat. You order your meals. By holding on to so many details, by living for the details, you have regimented your life and your physiology and have hardened your heart. You have hardened your arteries and that caused your myocardial infarction. To not have a second heart attack, you have to not focus on the details. Learn to adopt the wide gaze. Delegate in your job, and at home. Strengthen the wide gaze. Learn not to care about the details. When you jog, try not to see specific trees you pass by, try to see the forest.”

“And this makes a difference, really?”

“Oh yes.” He said. “Your heart has a very strong fear – a phobia, really - that if you don’t cling tightly and live for the details in your life – what you now consider so important - you will disappear.”

My phobia was my fear of not existing, of disappearing.

So, I worked at it hard, and delegated, and trusted the details would be carried by others, decided by others. I had to learn to trust. And, slowly, I changed. I saw the forest, not the trees. The green and not the plants.

But now, my phobia is back and resident in my smart phone.

All my apps deliver a persistent, super abundance of details; specifics some aspect of my life. All claim to be essential. They are a type of consciousness which works to re-create the  phobia that if I don’t pay attention to those details – to them – then I may miss some detail.

A techno-phobia. So, I am now practicing the techno wide  gaze.

---

[1]Contemplation just means imagination or memory. 

(C) Copyright 2018, Jean W. Yeager - All Rights Reserved