June 21, 2005
Structure Number Twenty Four
Report from Psychomotor City. The Pessos have moved into their breathtaking new quarters. We met in a glorious workspace, with double storied glass walled views of the forest and the lake. Al was more stationary than usual, eagerly awaiting a hip replacement on the day after our group met. (I just talked to him-- the surgery went swimmingly, no general anesthesia. I asked him about the noise, but he said he had interesting conversations with the Indian anesthesiologist during the sawing and grinding, which distracted him pleasantly -- something about coconut openers. Everyone has been impressed by his perkiness. He is very pleased indeed)
So yesterday, sitting in front of the huge window with cane and headset, Al spotted, rather early in my structure, the emergence of what he fondly calls the "entity" . One of the ways (and I'm sure there are several, but, to my shame, I have never read Psychomotor Theory) to recognize an entity is by the smile on a person's face when they are describing something quite dreadful.
I had begun my structure by talking about my seized feet and my inconsolable child, who will not let anyone comfort her, because it's just too damn late. The one that's up on the ledge of a building, and can only be reached with a ladder truck and spoken to via megaphone. This is the part of me that is girded and causes my feet fascial seizures.
With this description, Al, champion of the language of the unconscious, concluded that my entity was probably a gargoyle, given its chosen habitat. How's this for woowoo ?
Al has a theory (very loosely stated by an abject amateur) of how an entity develops, just in case you're interested. When a child feels compassion before he or she has had sufficient nurturing, that compassion bulges out from the self, herniated, as twere, and then gets stragulated. Once strangulated, the hernia of compassion can no longer receive input, nurturance, and, as a result, begins to think of itself as omnipotent (probably has something to do with the developmental stage at which the entity pops, since omnipotence is very popular among small children). In any case, what started out as compassion from the child, turns into quite the little monster .
Given my gargoyle, we began to search my childhood experience for premature compassion, so that we could fill the "holes in roles". which requires that all the deprived caretakers in our personal history symbolically get ideal parents who would have cared for them with sensitivity. Once that's taken care of, the gargoyle can relax and become receptive to comfort and nurturing once again.
Well folks, let me tell you, finding someone for whom I felt compassion as a child was lean pickings. Frankly, I felt fear, and only fear. We started with my family, wayyyyy too much fear for compassion, and then Al thought I might have developed some premature compassion from stories I had heard. We looked through all the piteous children in Struwwelpeter -- complete terror --and then all the poor, kids in those wonderful family books, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", "The Boxcar Children", "Little Women" -- mild compassion, sans viscera. The animal books, however, were such compassion sink holes that I read "Black Beauty" and stopped there. And then there were all the children starving in China, who would be grateful for the rejected food on my plate, as well as the children of war torn Europe.
We symbolically gave everyone in my family, in every story, in every impoverished country ideal parents, siblings, husbands, you name it, as well as a happy ending. Honestly, I had the whole damn floor covered in pillows, kleenex, shells, dishes. I almost ran out of stuff. The endless, mostly affectless, search for strangled compassion was really pissing off the gargoyle.
I can't remember when I chose to enroll ideal parents for myself, but my buddies accomodated, sat on the couch next to me, and then I was able to connect with the gargoyle. My ideal parents provided limits for my anger, holding my hands and my head, while I vigorously roared and clawed, assuring me that I could have my feelings but that they wouldn't let me hurt myself, or anyone else. I did experience some shame about then, but they assured me, coached expertly by Al, that they had gargoyles inside of them too, and that their parents had helped them handle theirs. I can't remember the details, because I was preoccupied with the clawing business, but it did feel great. I must say that it was a little hard to get quite enough traction on the new leather couches for a full tantrum. I was finally able to relax. Then my feet felt quite a bit better.
I realized that the seizing in my fascia serves a double purpose. One, to keep unwanted intrusion out, and two, to contain my own, rather impressive, anger. Believe it or not, I like to think of myself as a nice person, oh well.
Because we had to leave shortly after my structure, I didn't have enough time to process my structure with others. My commuting companion said that he felt gargoylian vibes coming from me all weekend. I guess I just wasn't my usual sweet, compliant, subserviant self. What an improvement.
I am left with a slight aura of pissiness. But if you're gonna be a goddess , I suppose righteous anger comes in handy. It's probably a good idea to wait until next week to invite me out for lunch.
Photo note: What's a girl to do when she only has gargoyle feet in her archives and the nearest one to shoot is downtown? -- publish the next best thing, even if it's for the second time.