| Sigmund Freud is largely credited with devising the technique of free association as a tool used in psychoanalysis. My definition is to flow with whatever comes to mind and to manifest the thoughts and memories in words without regard to chronology, relative importance or even whether or not the thoughts are true or made up since truth is often in the mind of the beholder. I'm going to free associate now, and I'll even share it with The Capital City Hues readers if it's not too embarrassing. I see that I'm in trouble already, because I almost started off freely associating with an audience in mind. I'll try again. Here I go: I've read and some part of me believes that fear of a thing prevents us from experiencing whatever we want to enjoy on the opposite side of that fear which, in a way, suggests that not only do opposites not attract; they don't exist. I wonder if it's true that simply changing my mind can turn these things around. For example, I've been stuck in a mindset of lack for as long as I can remember. Lack of money is the most obvious illustration of this, but it's far from the only one. Hand-to-mouth is what I've come to believe and accept as true. I had a girlfriend when I was about 13 years old. Her name was Judy. Her name is probably still Judy. I was in love, but she only seemed to love me in certain circumstances and locations. Is conditional love really love? Elko Lake Camp in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York was our magical place. When camp was over and we went back to the city, other realities set in, like her parents' hatred for garden variety Negroes with coarse hair, wide noses and medium to dark skin. They hated people who looked like me, and insisted that Judy only date light skinned Negroes with "good" hair. The thing I couldn't get my mind around was that prejudice was as thick among some Black folks as it was among White folks. There was a saying that went, "If you're White you';re alright, if you're Brown stick around, if you're Black get in the back." I think that Judy's parents invented the saying or at least subscribed to it with all their hearts and souls. My family went on big grocery shopping excursions every Friday night. We'd climb into my father's 1956 black and gray Chrysler Windsor with the red plaid upholstery and red leatherette headrests and cruise down Avenue D where my mother shopped at the A&P and Safeway stores. We'd usually have a dinner of corned beef hash and eggs or something else that was quick to fix after our Friday night shopping. Then we'd settle in to watch the Friday evening television shows like "West Point Story" and the "Friday Night Fights." The thing I really wanted to say about Judy was that her family had extra stuff. Here's what I mean. There was an extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom hidden and dressed up in a little crocheted thing that sat on a shelf. To the best of my recollection, my family only had one roll of toilet paper at a time and that was the one on the spindle. When that ran out or, at best, was about to run out, I'd go on down to the Hy & Al hole in the wall neighborhood grocery store to get another roll. "Extra" anything was just not something we could afford. My father had a friend named Harold. Now, Harold lived in high-rise buildings in Queens on the other side of the Tri-Borough Bridge. Harold was a light-skinned Negro with good hair and even a bunch of freckles. Did you ever think that there could be a whole bunch of Black folks with freckles but they are just too dark to see them? Harold and his family had a whole bunch of extra stuff. More toilet paper than a family of elephants could use in a month, and even a freezer with extra food. I grew up in the '60s. I don't have heroes, but if you stretched me out on a rack and cranked the medieval wheel until I was a full six inches taller and you told me that you'd make me as tall as Kareem Abdul Jaabar (whom I played against in high school when I was in the 10th grade at the High School of Commerce, and Big Lew -- as he was called in those days -- was in the 12th grade at Power Memorial High School) I'd probably mumble that my father was my hero. A few probing questions would unveil that there was a heavy dose of acrimony mixed in with the hero worship, so we would be back to the starting line. My grandmother was a hero. Gender didn't have anything to do with it. She was a bona fide, full fledged hero. Hercules and Superman didn't have anything on her. She was a hero. Nuff said. On more than one occasion she started off to swim back to her home in Barbados from Riis Beach in Long Island. The lifeguards hated seeing her. They didn't know how to deal with a person who didn';t care about the danger symbols painted on the last buoy, or the sharks or the waves as tall as New York City apartment buildings or currents. They didn't know how to reconcile their lives with a person who was simply unafraid. When I visited ancient Mayan cities in Belize and Guatemala, my prevalent feeling was that the people who built the mind-boggling structures centuries ago did not know fear. They obviously were not afraid of heights. They did not limit their possibilities with negative thinking. There was no separation between them and the forest and the animals and other living things that flew, crawled, walked and crept on the forest floor, lived largely unseen in the forest canopy or underground. They did not fear these things -- seen or unseen -- because they understood that they were part of the scene. There were no divisions. There were no rich and poor neighborhoods. Maybe the word fear is synonymous with separation and the more barriers (concrete, wood, or imagined) that we build between ourselves, the more fearful we become and fearful beings do not behave "rationally" from any perspective. To give a horse its head means to let it go to run freely according to its own instincts without being controlled by the rider who imposes his dominance with stirrups, bridles, whips and reins. It means that the thing being ridden knows best how to harness its own power, its own essence. It's about trust and trust means letting go. It's earwig season. They love damp places. You wash them down the drain and they just come back angrier and more determined. Toilet bowls are their private swimming pools -- like lakes in the deeper recesses of mountain caves. Humans obscure the opening, from time to time, and threaten to drop steaming asteroids in the placid pools while fearing the earwigs will crawl into their openings. Mutual fear does not always yield mutual respect. I wonder how free these associations are since I knew they would be read. Maybe next time I'll share my first draft with the understanding that first drafts, first thoughts, first impressions are generally closer to the truth than slick, polished, practiced, prettily-packaged versions that we substitute for truth at some later time. It just occurred to me that this is my first and only draft which means that it's not a draft at all. It's as real as it gets. I am happy that my dogs don't flinch when I extend my hand in their direction; that women generally do not grip their purses tighter as I walk by; that people usually say thank-you when I hold a door open for them and that I say thank-you when they hold a door open for me; when I understand that the person blocking the aisle with their grocery cart just has too much on their mind as opposed to being arrogant or inconsiderate; that I'm out here doing the best I can and trying to be the best person I know how to be; that you're out here doing the best you can and trying to be the best person you know how to be. Maybe there's hope for us. If lost whales can find their way back to the ocean, maybe humans can find our way back to our essence. After a good rain, the world smells like God just ate a breath mint. It's raining now. Pura vida as they say in Costa Rica. Tranquilo as they say in Guatemala. What do we say here to express routine appreciation for anything? I sat in one of my favorite coffee shops looking as life pass by through the large plate glass window. It was a Farmer's Market Saturday. The complexions of the buyers and sellers and colors of the flowers and produce and scents of all of them swirled together in an exquisitely wonderful way that told me -- without words and in no uncertain terms -- that the source for all the beauty and smells and colors and movement was one and the same, and all the impressions that exploded in my senses and brain and heart were caused by manifestations of that essence. How is it that we fall easily into the beauty and grace of a flower and simultaneously bristle at the approach of a fellow human being whose beauty we are determined not to see for whatever reasons? What would happen if every day was a Farmer's Market in our minds with every person a flower -- either in full bloom or a bud bursting with untold potential? Sliding back into the so-called rational world -- I see one basic problem with free association. It's circular in that there is no "logical" stopping place. So I chose here. |
| Simple Things/Lang Kenneth Haynes Free association |
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