Guest Contribution for the New Year: Franklin Abbott

Franklin Abbott is a psychotherapist and poet who lives in Stone Mountain Georgia. We have been friends for over twenty years. We first met during a Men and Masculinity conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The conferences were a series of well attended gatherings for connection, education and transformation of men and interested women. They were sponsored by an organization of pro-feminist men who were working hard to come to new concepts and actualizations of what being a man could mean and be. The organization was good at everything but finding a name for itself and it changed it's name too many times for me to keep up. Franklin and I were both poets. It was an organization that, in those years, valued poetry and gave us substantial audience for our work. I think this is a beautiful way to welcome in the New Year without unrealistic hyperbole about resolution, but one that does not side-step hope and the power of self actualized personal growth. --- B. Vance

nanakorobiyaoki

That's the way life is --
Falling over seven times
Getting up eight
-- Japanese kotowaza/folk poem

It was a normal day in Fall. I was sweeping the walkway behind my house while my friend Martha Ham was getting her luggage ready for the ride to the airport. Maybe it was my new shoes, maybe the leaves had stayed too long on the plank I was sweeping but my feet went out from under me and I fell sideways on my left hip and landed with a dull thud. No one except the birds and the squirrels saw me. I picked myself up, dusted myself off and continued sweeping.

I know how to fall. I can't remember where I learned or who taught me. Maybe some forgotten P.E. teacher in a long ago gym class first explained it was better to fall without struggle. This has come in handy since I lack normal coordination and depth perception.

I tend to move slowly and deliberately to avoid hurting myself and so far, knock on wood, I haven't broken anything. Another Japanese proverb states: Even monkeys fall out of trees. When I was a little monkey, seven or so, I did fall out of a tree. I had a puncture wound in my left thigh that required stitches. I can still remember what it looked like to be sewn up though I can't remember the doctor. I remember after the fall my little brother pulled me home in a wagon. The only "ambulance" (knock on wood twice) that I've ever ridden in.

I remember reading The Fall by Albert Camus in college. I should probably re-read it given how unlikely it is that my 19 year old mind grasped much of what the French existentialist was talking about. I know it had something to do with the fall from grace, somehow connected to the Bible story of the Evil One tempting Eve to tempt Adam in the Garden of Eden. I remember a Sunday school argument over whether she used an apple or a fig. I knew from the mild form of Christianity I was brought up in that the fall resulted in original sin and that I was by dint of birth, a sinner. I was thinking of none of this when my hip hit the ground. I was soon driving Martha and myself to lunch and then her to the airport. I wasn't sore and when I checked later I wasn't bruised.

It took several days for what happened to manifest in odd ways. I was going to the Gay Spirit Visions Conference in the mountains of western North Carolina where I would be a featured speaker. I was going with friends Roger Bailey and Cal Gough and I asked Roger to drive as I was feeling shaky. The conference was celebrating its 20th anniversary and I had keynoted at the first conference so I was brought back as a piece of living history. I had prepped for the presentation with Bob Strain and we would mix music, poetry and reminiscence in our morning with the gay spirit brothers. Despite a wonderful massage, my hands were still shaking, my balance was off, my brain was a little foggy and I felt like a Coca Cola with no bubbles. I adjusted my presentation buoyed by Bob and the delicious energy of the hundred plus men who gathered with us. As the conference progressed so did my shakiness making feeding myself an awkward chore in the cafeteria. Back home I had a terrific Thai massage by a man I met at the conference and after an afternoon at the office gave a reading for my new book, Pink Zinnia, at Outwrite. I know I appeared nervous as my hands were shaking. Like at the conference I could hardly sign my name. The next day I was better and the day after that

I went to the kung fu chiropractor at my gym. Though petite, she is a take no prisoners manipulator and one chop to my left hip and I heard an amazing pop as my pelvis relocated. Within twenty four hours I was fine, balanced, coherent and I could write legibly!

The nanakorobiyaoki (fall down seven times, get up eight) proverb has been pinned to the wall by the door going down a flight of stairs into my garage for a number of years. It has taken on new meaning. I know there will be a time to fall and not get up. That happened to several of my friends who died this year, one a little younger, four not too much older. Part of the price of surviving is to pay tribute to the fallen. I learned this lesson young back in the bleak years of the AIDS epidemic when I couldn't count the number of friends and colleagues lost to the virus. 2010 will bring more losses. Mortality, mine and that of all living things, is inevitable. I don't have any sway over that variable. What surprises me is that at 59, I can still lose innocence.

Like everyone I know I was and am impacted by the loss of physical and financial security brought home by the events of the last decade. As cynical as I can be at times I am still mourning the loss of the American dream. As hopeful as I feel about the change of administrations and the election of our first African American president, I have lost something that I can't get back, a naive belief in inevitable progress. Things will not always get better and better. I did not believe that with my intellect but it was deep inside me.

My Venezuelan friend Alejandro invented a word: believance, a cross between belief and observance. I had a believance in the American dream that was as strong as my believance in original sin.

So, a new year is here and a new decade to boot. I have lots to be thankful for including, thanks to my fall, the ease with which my fingers are now moving over the keyboard.

I am loathe to make resolutions for the New Year. One of the gifts of getting older is making peace with who you are. I will not learn a foreign language, a musical instrument, run a marathon or organize my files in the year to come. My mentor and friend the poet James Broughton would often say that the two things we need more of are praise and gratitude.

Praise be it for All Creation or the waiter who brings my food is something I will endeavor to give more of. And gratitude, well that brings tears to my eyes, despite all that I have lost and we have lost, I am grateful for such good company on the journey as I have.

And I am grateful - nanakorobiyaoki - having fallen down seven times to have gotten up eight.

Franklin Abbott
3 January 2010
Stone Mountain

I am happy to supply references for the talented folks who helped me heal from my fall:
Tom Clephane, Bill Hufschmidt, and Dr.Marina Harris.
An interesting website on Japanese proverbs is www.stockkanji.com .
For more information on Gay Spirit Visions: www.gayspiritvisions.org .
For more information on Outwrite (and to order Pink Zinnia): www.outwritebooks.com

Surviving Solstice Period Holidays: A List That Refuses to Pretend

I don’t pretend this is what anyone wants more of: yet another list in the exponentially growing blob of lists of pretend wisdom that promise to make your solstice period holiday easier, wealthier, cheaper, more fun, healthier, less stressful, less devoid of central religious figures and beliefs.

I do invite you to consider, however, whatever it is you really might want from this time of the year, no matter how invested you might or might not be in any of its more mundanely celebratory or religiously-based streams of events and customs. No matter how much you hate them or love them.

Let’s face it. We’re stuck with a plethora of feelings about the season whether we like it or not. Let’s stop pretending we can escape it or make it something it’s not or cannot be.

Let’s stop pretending we can get away from the constant dome of bad music in every public place we walk into, or that we can quit trying to find the one version of that one song we haven’t heard yet that makes us cry because mom or dad liked it and they are gone now.

This is a list about not pretending.

It is a list that does not pretend that buying or giving material gifts is wholly satisfying when what one wants, in a more and more fractured and anti-intimate world, are more opportunities to be intimate… to know more love.

Nor does this list imagine that somehow our list of gatherings of friends and family will be without dread, without pain, without too-small portions of unmitigated and unqualified joy and love the way it is portrayed by every blessed advertisement for everything from electric shavers to the hoards of plastic doodads and hoozits that come parading across our consciousness every time we open a magazine, a book, newspaper, email or internet site.

This list imagines that life goes on and that, during the holidays, there are opportunities to make it more livable, more understood and understanding, more truly connecting and more accepting of what cannot be connected, understood or livable.

So are you ready? No? Well, give it try anyway. Something might work… even a little. And if it does, I’d sure like to know!

1. Say no to events and people that drain you and have drained you every year for the past three years or more. Do this especially in regard to family gatherings you dread and have always dreaded. Can you afford to sacrifice yours and perhaps your significant others’ holiday by trying yet another time to make your Uncle-in-law into something other than a fat Nazi drunk? Say you have other plans, and then don’t waste time feeling guilty. Try the next thing on the list.

2. Schedule one-to-one face or phone time with someone who nourishes you. At the end of the initial time together, schedule the next time. Don’t leave it at “We’ll get together soon” Mark it on your calendar. A variation on this would be to make a face or phone time “date” with someone whom you’ve only ever communicated with via the internet. Try it, hetero, bi-, or homo, with a same sex friend, or, as a couple, try it with another couple.

3. Charmingly corner someone you think you might like at a holiday function. Ask them an open-ended question that demands more than a yes or no answer.

4. At a party tell the truth about a complicated way you feel about something to someone you inherently trust and do not know well but would like to know better; someone you haven’t connected with in a long time, or have had a long past misunderstanding that has never cleared. In the last case purposely avoid making a statement about that misunderstanding. Make an opportunity for meaningful conversation first.

5. Make an agreement with yourself to quickly end your part of any conversation that revolves around “dissing” someone who isn’t there. Change the conversation to one about the moon last night. If that doesn’t work, walk away complaining of urinary urgency.

6. Make a list of open-ended questions (see #3) that have the potential to start in-depth and rich conversations. Take the list with you to gatherings that you aren’t sure you will enjoy. Review the list in the bathroom in-between mingling. Practice them before you use them and don’t expect success every time. Remember, people are hungry for this kind of talk… and don’t worry about excluding politics or religion. You’ll find out soon enough what isn’t acceptable, or you might make a joyous connection with others who agree with you and each other more than disagree.

7. Make time for great, memorable sex with someone you love.

8. If you end up at some gathering of people and it is turning out as badly as it has every other year, try responding in a way you have never responded before. Be silly and loud. Laugh loudly and run from the room, taking someone with you and then look out a window and call everyone’s attention to the stars, or the snow. Stage a fake fight with someone you came with who is also having a bad time. Say: “I told you to use the rubber", loudly but not too loud… then "now look at the trouble we’re in” as you walk angrily from the room. Try anything… including going upstairs and visiting with the children who aren’t really asleep. They’ll love it.

9. Make your grief and sorrow over the deaths and/or absences of lovers, family members, beloved friends, spouses or parents a part of how you observe your holiday. It does no good to repress such things. And feeling badly about feeling badly becomes an exercise for sleeplessness, a bad drunk, or panic attacks. Find ways to give yourself and others time to remember. Feel good about tears even when it hurts… and it mostly does. It matters not how long ago the loss was. I always suggest a place in amongst the decorations with remembrance candles and/or pictures of loved ones lovingly and frequently tended to. Regularly start conversations with others who knew the person who is gone.

10. Don’t expect that bad family/friend relations can be mended or made better by doing the same things that have always been done. If you want to reconcile, you must invent new places and ways to attempt this. Start a conversation, not a solution. Be ready to forgive yourself and let go of the way you have been hurt so it does not continue to hurt you.

A Poem For Knowing Place and Gratitude

Waking to Birdsong


Wild in the first light, catchments
of dreams, choruses
of the dawn star

cast out of the darkness
flails the new near shadows
where even the moon

has failed to crease the trees.
Cedars, river, beech,
old hemlock, stumps from beavers,

birdsong all
a chorus from the spinning
uterus of our stars. Galaxy,

whole mountains
of little winged things flying
that bring us day.

Awake
the paths between the tops
of trees. Awake

the calliope
in the near new sky. Awake
the grass by the golden rivers

where beavers
and the other nocturnal workers
hear those bells of slumber

and the rest of the blue-eyed
brown-eyed,
furless and furry world comes to. Waking

to birdsong all hallelujah
to the sun.
We arrive in another circle

another twist
in the molten membrane
of these beds of stars, oh

these little winged harbingers
of going on.
Even suicidals rise

and for just a few moments
are busted into
by joy.

The paymasters of the cheats
of the kings
close their eyes

on their ledgers of blood
and remember the children
they must have been,

once. The blasted kingpins
of the ugliest secrets and torture
cannot out sing these cherubs

of dawn. My dreams
as elevated as they have been
cannot compete

with this chorus.
I walk to the river.
They dip and rise and follow me

one after another over
the miracles of water. Darkness yes
will soon be shattered.

Gifted Child = Gifted Adult

Gifted child pre-occupation = gifted adult occupation

by Christopher J. Coulson

(from the blog "The Gifted Way" http://www.thegiftedway.com/)

Who was I?

This is a recurring question for gifted adults because the intensity of our childhood experiencing has a direct bearing on our adult gifted success. It also offers valuable clues to understanding those things that don’t work so well for us.

In particular, the question: “What fascinated me when I was three years old?” seems of special significance. This is because the passionate preoccupations of three-year olds so often seem to form the foundation of success in a wide range of gifted adults.

The number of gifted and creative artists who recall their passion from their very early years is legion.

"I danced myself out of the womb.Is it strange to dance so soon?"Marc Bolan. "Cosmic Dancer".

At three or less, musicians pick up violins or start hammering on drums; dancers shake their booties; painters discover negative space without realizing there was ever anything else.

As an example, if you enter: “I started drawing when I was three.” as a single statement on Google you will get nearly 150,000 responses from illustrators, artists and so on. Substituting “playing piano” brings up 3,000. “Writing” only gives rise to 9, but includes one of my favorites: “I started writing when I was three years old, but it wasn’t until I was seven that I was first published.”

If you simply enter: “I started when I was three.” you’re greeted with nearly a million dancers, skiers, stamp-collectors, violinists, riders, soccer players etc. And these are only the people who feel compelled to commit their biographies to the Internet.
Pre-occupation to Occupation

Given that three is an age that has great significance for our future, how can we use the lessons to be learned from it?

Unconsciously building a gifted future.

Lucky the child whose obvious interests attracted parental support. S/he would all-unconsciously have started on the path to mastery and clarity.

But what about those of us whose creativity didn’t manifest through a musical instrument or box of crayons? We have to look harder to see where we come from.

The effort involved in this considered examination is highly worthwhile. Through it our uniqueness becomes apparent by revealing our own history and balance of preoccupations.

I hope you’ll take the time to uncover your own. As a process it can reinforce some affectionate self-recognition as well as open the doors to greater self-understanding.

As a guide to what I mean, here are some of my early qualities:

I was very clumsy at drawing.
I read a great deal.
I took every opportunity to go exploring on my own.
I built complex houses and towns from building blocks.
I focused a great deal of attention on my mother’s welfare, not least because we moved every six months or so, sometimes halfway round the globe.

How does that translate into today?

I still read a great deal. And, as reading is practice for writing, I write a great deal.
I’m very independent, an explorer in thought and in location.
I have always worked with complex systems demanding deconstruction, re-architecture and re-construction. This applies to my work in computing, in writing, and of course in the ongoing task of understanding and re-framing human nature.
My “taking care of mom” shows itself in dozens of ways, from a tendency to be over-solicitous in personal relationships to volunteering my time on committees. Many a professional or non-profit organization has reason to be grateful to my mother!
I’m still very clumsy at drawing.

Your mind is an iceberg

If your present life is more or less in accord with your three-year old preoccupations then you’re probably reasonably happy.

Out of sight but in the mind. What's concealed can slow you to a crawl.

However, if you’re finding it hard to follow through on your early enthusiasms, it could be due to your unconscious mind. Like the lower part of an iceberg, this is the hidden power that dominates your actions.

Brain research has made it clear that it is the unconscious, not the conscious, that rules our decision-making and thus our lives. (Check out Jonah Lehrer’s book: “How We Decide” for confirmation of this.)

Experts of all kinds have contributed their estimates as to when the development of our unconscious mind is ‘finished’. Such estimates typically fall in an age range between two and seven.

So where does that leave us?

Where does that leave us? Perhaps shockingly, it leaves us being managed by the assumptions and beliefs of – let’s average it – a five-year old. With our mind like an iceberg, our consciousness is the ten percent above water while the real weight and power lies massively beneath the surface.

This explains so much of what we find challenging. Our conscious mind says: “Let’s go to New York and look at some art,” but our unconscious wants to go surfing. With nine tenths of us pulling one way we are bound to end up in some compromise situation.

In this case, rather than New York it might be a trip to Malibu. There you can spend the days at

Surfrider Beach while taking side trips to the Getty Museum.

That kind of compromise might seem harmless enough but supposing your conscious mind is saying: “I need to save for a rainy day,” while your unconscious is saying: “There’s no point saving. Someone will just steal it from you.”?

The inevitable – yes, inevitable – consequence is that you will effect a compromise between these two positions. And it’s unlikely that it will meet all your conscious self’s need to save. So you will fret . . . and fret . . . and fret.

I want to correct any impression that I assume that the childhood unconscious tends to be irresponsible. It often isn’t. There are plenty of people who consciously think: “I ought to have more fun,” while their five-year old unconscious is nudging them to keep working “just in case.”

What to do about it

When our early preoccupations work for us, life is grand. But what happens when they don’t?

Gifted and creative individuals are highly sensitive. We feel conflict intensely and will take great steps to try to resolve it. The sense of going where we don’t want to – under the control of something hidden - is thus very painful and discouraging for us.

It’s never going to be easy, but the key to tolerating such apparent conflict and inability to achieve our objectives is first of all to make our five-year old selves real. Picture yourself back in that tiny body, mentally recreate a room in which you spent a lot of time, and allow these questions to pass across your mind:

Who were you then? How did you experience yourself?
Where were you? What events and family dynamics were determining your life?
Where did you go to be yourself and what would you do there?
What were the actions of your parents/caretakers showing you about their belief systems?
Did they all send the same message? Were you able to reconcile any conflicting messages and if so, how?

You can call for reinforcements when you know what you need to overcome.

The more clearly you are able to re-experience yourself at that time, the more understandable your current conflicts will become. And, much more importantly, the more you’ll be able to work with them rather against them.

This is because by revealing your most counter-productive beliefs to yourself you discover where your conscious will needs reinforcement.

You can use this information to help you find the appropriate assistance to tug you in your preferred direction. This assistance might come in the form of a person, a book, or some other form of external energy. You’ll recognize it when you need it.

And now . . .

I’d love to hear how your fascinations as a three-year old reveal themselves today. Just add your comments below and tell us your story.

Thanks.

Genius and Eccentricity

Actually, I think the idea that genius automatically carries with it the price tag of eccentricity or a kind of insanity is over-stated and under-supported by what ever kinds of research could be done to prove it.

That we are more interested in the lives of geniuses may only mean that we tend to be attracted and entertained by the eccentricities of history’s most examined, scrutinized characters. We are less likely to be interested in more mundane lives of those others who are just as integral to the full spectrum of human inventiveness and genius.

We are also less likely to scrutinize in so personal a way individuals in the rest of the population that are not considered genius, and so really have no way of comparing which “sample” has a greater degree/proportion of insanity/eccentricity.

We are also attracted by the eccentric on one level because, I think, it reminds us of our selves, our community of friends and family, our relationships, our inner lives and our own potential participation and desire to participate in the genius of the species.

I work in the mental health field so I have some background in this. The fact that we tend to know more about the lives of those who are considered to possess genius may throw off any untested theory that there are a greater proportion of eccentrics and/or a greater degree of insanity among those who are considered genius than those who are not.

As my work involves a much, much larger proportion of people who are not considered genius than people who are (although I might petition that rather arbitrary application of the definition for a definition that recognizes that everyone has, at least, the potential for genius in their own lives and community and may apply it in their own way), and as I am privy to the deepest life quandaries and pathologies of these people, of which there are numerous and frequent examples, even among the many who look to be quite "normal" to those who are not privy to their inner, more private and secret, lives, I am skeptical about any claims that the proportion of eccentrics and/or level of insanity among those who possess genius are any higher or lower than among the general population.

Though I would be glad to change my own theory if someone could fashion and implement a far-reaching enough study, I am not sure how that could be done, if one considers the enormous barriers of subjectivity that all this naturally calls into play.

How would we measure genius? Certainly not by IQ alone. How would we measure eccentricity or insanity? Certainly the behaviors and intelligences of any one culture, historical time frame, or social milieu can only be defined along a continuum from harmfully insane or eccentric to mind-numbingly dull and normal if each is left to be defined within its own sets of relative norms and abnormalities.

What system could we devise to compare these various and potentially innumerable sets of norms? Would we say that Moses was crazy for hearing a burning bush speak in the voice of his god if we are willing, at the same time, to continue to put much weight into the commonly held idea that artists like VanGogh or Sylvia Plath were insane because they heard voices? What is our system of measurements and how do we determine a manner of implementation of a system of measure that is absent our own set of assumed norms?

It could be that it only appears that the "genius" segment of the human community has more than its share of eccentricity because we know more about them than even our own “normal” neighbors and, in addition, we are attracted to genius, love the stories of their struggles, loves, pathologies, failures and successes simply because they DO reflect our own lives, families and communities of loved ones so well. Their stories are ours.

Another reason we may like to focus on geniuses’ foibles has something to do with our own deep feelings that our lives lack the kind of meaning and import that the lives and accomplishments of geniuses have and we are, on some levels, envious. So we like to balance their accomplishments against our own by diminishing their lives against our own lives.

Oddly enough, if my own theory holds true, we would be better off seeing their lives as comparable to ours in that they have the same struggles, heartbreak and victories, on very personal levels, that any of the rest of us do. Then, perhaps, we would also be more able to recognize and catalyze our own potential for genius.

Anger Worksheet and Anger Log

Anger is normal and a healthy response. It is the way we manage anger that becomes problematic.

Healthy shows and uses of anger are misunderstood, stigmatized and often vary by culture and family. Some displays and uses of anger are useful and lead to healing and motivation, others become repetitive patterns of avoidance or aggression, passive or otherwise.

Passion and variances in affect are often interpreted wrongly as anger, just as passive-aggressive or aggressive, harmful, anger displays are sometimes excused as normal or to-be-expected in certain groups and genders or are stereotyped as a part of some activities, sports or roles.

The following is a good anger worksheet and anger log that can help you understand your own anger and how to begin to modify how you use and display it. Thanks to Pine Rest Christian Hospital and The 10th Annual Michigan Substance Abuse Convention for some of this information.

Anger Worksheet

1. What things, persons or events, over which you have no control, do you keep trying to control?


2. What do you do to try and control this person/situation?


3. What is the consequence of your struggle to control the uncontrollable?


4. The one situation that frequently resulted in my becoming angry was:


5. List at least 3 factors or conditions that seem to influence your anger.


6. List 5 anger cues or signals. These are the warning signs that tell you, or others, that you are beginning to “lose it”.


7. What are the Physical Signs?
   Clenched jaw, fists
   Raising your voice
   Sweating
   Feeling hot
   Rapid heartbeat
   Rapid breathing
   Pacing
   Becoming quiet, withdrawing
   Cravings


8. What Else?
   


9. Remember: Anger causes 178 chemical changes in the brain.
   Adrenaline numbs the frontal lobe of the brain-the seat of our thinking capacities

***


Anger Log

Use to track individual anger display episodes.

• What Happened?
• Why did you get angry?
• Rate anger on scale from 1 – 10
• What body signals did you notice?
• What thoughts did you have?
• What were you feeling?
• What were your actions?
• What were your choices?
• What, if anything, would you do different next time?
  

The Effectiveness of Phone Sessions: Testimonial From Client

Not being able to meet with Bob in person, left us skeptical as to whether coaching would work for us. After our first phone session and a few awkward minutes, Bob was able to take control and put all our fears to rest. Bob has a unique ability to really listen. You don’t have to be sitting across from him to know that you have his complete attention. Equally important to us was his fairness and sincerity and respect. With Bob’s help, he dissolved a stressful and tense situation and shifted our focus back to each other. Bob never chose sides, he only led us to rediscover the things within ourselves to improve upon. We were so lucky to find such a compassionate and experienced professional. Anyone who has the pleasure of working with Bob will take his lessons and apply them throughout their lives. We thank you Bob for all that you have done for us.

Larry & Penny Everett