Earth's Constricted Life

Brian--

Hey, buddy. I pen you another missive from my constricted cell--my six-by-eight foot writing hut--attired in the metaphorical garments of the prisoner-of-fantasy that I am.
How are you bearing up under the strain of our falling out? Breaking up is so hard to do, they say. Of course, I've never used a cell phone. (Who would ever call me?) So I have no experience with breaking-up. But I've heard about the phenomenon. Not pleasant, so I hear.
Breakup or not, my epistolary relationship with you continues. Did you foresee that? Did you foresee that I would continue to communicate with you by letter, or did you assume these letters would stop with the end of our physical relationship? Oh, the questions! So many questions.
Did the British authorities anticipate that jailing Mohandas K. would transform a garden-variety Indian malcontent into the future Mahatma? Did "The British Powers That Were" foresee that Gandhi, from his prison cell, would pen the blueprint of Indian autonomy? Probably not.
With me, as with others of my ilk, you always have to take into account the uncertainty principle. One never knows how I will react to a stimulus; and how my reaction will stimulate others, in turn, to act. I suppose that when I was terminated from my position at Akin Gump--(the world that dances to an interminable three-four rhythm)--The Powers That Be assumed that I would continue on my way, pick up a job at another place of employment and never be heard from again. Little did they know or foresee that I would assume the identity of a One-Man Warren Commission, turning my job termination into the crime of the century, assuming the role of Dick Tracey without portfolio--tracking down the malefactors who had denied me a place on the dance floor while the band played on: Um-pah-pah, Um-pah-pah.
Mortality and Immortality. These themes have plagued me since the end of last year, when I turned 50 years of age. What have I accomplished, what remains for me, how will future historians--the Michael Beschlosses and Doris Kearns Goodwins of this world--treat my legacy? Will my work be treated fairly, objectively? Or will my name be blackened by the "nattering nabobs of negativity," as Spiro Agnew would put it?
Like all great men, or potentially great men, I ponder and I worry about my legacy. I ponder how future generations will see me. Future generations must know-I must see to it that they know--how I lived, how I suffered, how I survived. They must know my thoughts, and the ego structure that housed those thoughts, as Stanley Greenspan--the Levittown of psychoanalysts--would say.
Do you wonder about these things, buddy? Do you wonder about your own legacy? I suppose the childless individual is more likely to ponder, and be preoccupied with, his place in the future than those persons who are fortunate enough to have sired biological heirs. Persons who have children see those children as carrying on their seed, and rightly so. For them biological continuity and biological destiny tend to subsume concerns for historical survival. One has a son and assumes that that one individual, at least, will, in the narrowest literal sense (but also in the wider metaphorical sense) "say Kaddish."
I didn't say Kaddish for my father. Where would I have found a minyan? It's hard enough--a near impossibility, in fact, for me to find a single other--let alone nine others who will share some physical space with me. And for that association of ten men to continue for an entire year is beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, my uncle--my father's older brother--arranged that Kaddish be said for my father.
I always wondered about that. About my father's mindset. He had a son, but what did he expect of that son? I had no Jewish education. My Jewish observance was virtually non-existent. What did that mean to my father. A man raised in an orthodox background looks to the son--at least one son--to carry on his name: in the narrow (and in the larger metaphorical sense). Certainly in the real, literal sense, my father passed on little if anything to me to carry on.
But in the realm of fantasy--unconscious wishes, conflicts and prohibitions--as they say in Levittown, perhaps my father passed something on to me that I carry as a burden (not as a cross, to be sure) but as a burden. The lumber, shingles and fixtures of the mind--as Stanley Greenspan would say. Psychoanalysts believe that, you know. The parent passes on to the child not simply conscious beliefs and behaviors, but also the underlying "blueprints" of unconscious mental life.
According to the analysts--and I've read this in Meissner and Erikson--unconscious beliefs, values, and fantasies from generations past will be passed on to future generations. Perhaps for me the burden of the past is so powerful, in some consciously-unrecognized way, that that cause, that burden, that responsibility outweighs any concern I might have about my own personal, biological immortality, and any responsibility I might otherwise have for biological procreation. It is, perhaps, as if The World of My Fathers have spoken: "You will be our servant. You will do a great deed, not for yourself, but for us. You will tell the story of our Wandering. You will pass that story on to your fellows and future generations. That--that--will be your life, that will be the purpose of your existence. You will have no children. You will devote your creative energies to The Word. Our Word. Do this, our son, and you will do all that is required of you!" Perhaps that is my responsibility, my destiny, and my legacy. "You will preserve in Words the World--the unconscious mental World--of your Fathers. And for that deed you will be blessed, Our Son!"
In this sense, I suppose, I resemble the Designated Survivor: for the Designated Survivor "The Word" vitiates the imperative of physical generativity. Perhaps it is this role--the role of transmitter of The Word--that dominates my anguished and tormented existence. At some deep level of the unconscious, properly speaking, the Superego, as Erikson would say, I live out the role of one who knows, who understands, who possesses a gift and responsibility for transmission of The Word. The Word of "The World of Our Fathers," in Louie Howe's phrase.
Knowledge and Memory. These are my tasks, perhaps. To know and to transmit The Word. My physical task will be complete upon publication of The Word. My physical existence has one purpose, and not to procreate my kind, but to preserve The Memory of the Past--the World and experiences of those who have passed. That is the sole task of the Designated Survivor. What is the Designated Survivor? Despairing of physical immortality in the form of continuity of the generations--biological immortality--the elders imposed on one individual the duty to survive for one purpose alone: to communicate The Word.
Suffering. I suffer my role, if that be my role. I seem to live for one purpose alone. That role is instinct with duty and guilt. I feel the burden no less than Goethe's fictional creation, Faust. But while Faust saw no purpose to his torment, I see purpose in mine. To wit: to turn dross into gold--to give permanence to the insubstantial, to transform the idiosyncratic into a universal medium of exchange. Faust despaired because of his lack of awareness. He saw his pain as personal and therefore devoid of value. He gained the ultimate transfiguration at the point he became parable, a parable of universal significance. The alchemist of matter became the "alchemist" of the universal human struggle. The dross of Faust's human existence was transformed into the gold of universal meaning: but only after Faust's death.
My suffering is Faust's suffering. "In every garment, I suppose, I'm bound to feel the misery of earth's constricted life. I am too old for mere amusement and still too young to be without desire. What has the world to offer me? You must renounce! Renounce your wishes! That is the never-ending litany which every man hears ringing in his ears, which every hour hoarsely tolls throughout the livelong day. I awake with horror in the morning, and bitter tears well up in me when I must face each day that in its course cannot fulfill a single wish, not one! The very intimations of delight are shattered by the carpings of the day which foil the inventions of my eager soul with a thousand leering grimaces of life. And when night begins to fall I timidly recline upon my cot, and even then I seek in vain for rest; savage dreams come on to terrorize. The god that lives within my bosom can stir my inmost core; enthroned above my human powers. He cannot move a single outward thing. And so, to be is nothing but a burden; my life is odious and I long to die." Thus said Faust. But Mephistopheles replies: "But somehow death is never quite a welcome guest." And isn't that true!
Goethe wrote: "Man errs so long as he strives." Another truth! Attempt to change your lot or even carry out a task, and you will fail. Allow the stormy seas of life to carry you, and eventually you may be carried back to shore. Am I becoming too philosophical, or perhaps too bathetic for your taste? I have a strong bathetic side that I try to conceal with humor. Yes, humor--but there's little humor in this letter, I admit.
Brian, people say to me--they stop me on the street and say: "Don't you despise Brian for what he did to you? Calling the police and all that? The embarrassment of being caught out as an icon manipulator, or perpetrator of the lesser-included-offense of icon tamperer? Yes, I despise that. I hate you for that. But I see you as my Mephistopheles. A devil, but not simply a devil. I see everything that comes my way in life as an opportunity. You, buddy, summon the darker forces, like so many before you: but that--that--compels me to light a candle in the darkness of my cell (May I admit that I am in a dark place?) How's that for a novel turn of metaphor? Eh, buddy?
I no longer struggle against the current. I've learned, like Goethe, that it's pointless to fight the tide: to attempt to strive. Let the current take you where it will. Let the devil tempt and destroy. I will make an opportunity out of the infernal forces you, and the other powers of darkness, foist on me. I remember President Nixon's ruminations in the darkest days of Watergate, when "The Great Resigner" faced the real--all-too-real--possibility of criminal conviction and imprisonment. He opined: "Some of the greatest political writing has been born out of the experience of the prison cell. I will be like Gandhi. I will welcome my imprisonment as an opportunity to create--in words--a new vision." Yes, that's what Nixon told Garment--Garment who was so constricted in the legal options he could offer his client, the President. "There are worse things than jail," Nixon said. "There's no cell phone there. There is, instead peace. A hard table to write on. The best political writing in this century (the 20th century, to be sure) has been done from jail." Nixon mentioned Lenin and Gandhi to his lawyer, Leonard Garment.
Here I am imprisoned in my cell, my writer's hut, my one-room closeted compound--and I play with words. Perhaps not great words or ideas. But who knows where these meandering thoughts will lead. I face the currents and let them carry me to unknown shores. More bathos! But not mere bathos!!
Yes, I'm in a bathetic -- if not pathetic -- mood.
So how will future generations remember me? Let's say one of your kind--a librarian of this wicked world--a librarian of the 25th century were to write my biography. What would he say? How would he open the account of my sordid life?
Perhaps you can "bank" on his "opening the account" as follows:
THE LIFE OF FREEDMAN AS TOLD BY BRIAN P. BROWN'S 25th-CENTURY HEIR--
IN EARLY TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY America there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Gary Freedman, and if his name--in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, Saddam Hussein's, for instance, or Kim Jong-Il, Osama bin Laden's, The Waltz King's, etc.--has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Freedman fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, to wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of icon manipulation and the dark world of the hard-drive. (Pace, Patrick Suskind).
Yes, Brian, that will be my legacy. I am, and will forever be remembered as, an icon manipulator--a shameless and tactless icon manipulator and hard-drive tamperer. And you found me out. You discovered my lack of Icon Tact.
But I had an intimation of your discovery--the discovery you made that would lead to your act of perfidy in calling out the law against me. Yes! Tuesday April 20 ("The Day Before," so to speak), a date which will live in infamy, I noted your lack of Eye Contact. I knew you knew. I sensed the impending disaster. I knew the jig was up.
Like the Big Jew in the Sky, I knew I was about to be betrayed by my own Apostle. The Apostle of Doom. Say what you will about my lack of icon tact, buddy, but I've always had the guts to look you straight in the eye. I always make eye contact. Can you say the same?
Who knows, Brian? Maybe a great friendship will be born out of our legal tussle. Did you know that for Gandhi, opposition and conflict were sources of friendship? Claire Hirshfield will bear me out on that. The chief concomitant of "non-violence" for Gandhi (what Gandhi call "Satyagraha," or truth force) was loyalty to the opponent. You must tell your opponent what you are going to do, precisely and without the faintest deviation from fact. ("I am in a dark place. I will not take medication. I will avenge my pain and suffering.") You must accept your opponent's course of action, which you yourself have foreseen and chosen. Did you think that I--Freedman--didn't know that there would come a point in time when you would react to my provocations? Are you that naive, silly boy? For Gandhi, asking the maximum penalty from the authorities was a form of this. You must never deceive your opponent or take unfair advantage of him. He must always be aware to the full of what you intend. He is, in fact, your friend, from whom you are temporarily separated by a disagreement, but you must never forget that he is your friend. It has often been noted that many of Gandhi's opponents--jailers, policemen, detectives, jail doctors--(perhaps even librarians)--became his greatest friends.
How sad, I must say, that the two bothers who interrogated me--the two African-American policemen--could not see the similarities between me and my struggle, on the one hand, and, on the other, the tactics employed by Martin Luther King, Jr.! It is so sad, really. The police I dealt with seemed to take offense when I, just like Dr. King, offered a hand of friendship to them. They didn't even seem to know of their own heritage!
Do you think my comparison of myself with the Mahatma and Dr. King is a tad overdone? Well, I'm a grandiose narcissist. That's how I earn my living. By my psychopathology. Some make their way in the world by their wits. I make my way by illness.
Well, buddy, it's time for me to move on--to the leering grimaces of the life that await me.
See you later, Brian.

The Fortress of Konigstein

The Fortress of Koenigstein Brian--
May 10, 2004
Hey, buddy. I hope this weekend found you in good fettle. Did you do anything?
I spent most of the weekend wandering the Fortress of Freedman.
Wanderer that I am, I explored both internal and external worlds. My external behavior was conventional enough, but my exploration of my inner world and my independence of mind in exploring my relationship in the universe was profound, as usual.
I led an "Arafat existence," as is my wont. I'm old and growing older (or at least middle-aged and growing more so by the minute), trapped in my apartment--like Arafat in his compound at Ramallah--scorned by Malcolm Lassman and Earl Segal, and often ridiculed by my own people (the librarians of this wicked world), but that doesn't mean I or my thoughts are irrelevant. They're simply idiosyncratic. But not irrelevant.
I remained confined to "my compound" on Saturday, plotting strategy. Yes, I feel trapped and hopeless. It's been that way since the occupation. Will I ever come into my own, I wonder.
As the pundits say: "What is Freedman? Everything. What has Freedman been until now? Nothing. What does Freedman want to become? Something." All I want is to come into my own. I don't need a room somewhere, as Alan Jay Lerner would say, (I've already got that)--what I need is to come into my own. I have a book ready for publication. It just sits on a shelf, awaiting its destiny, its publication.
Yes, I spent most of my weekend in my fortress of solitude, like Superman. A fortress in the subterranean depths of 3801 Connecticut Avenue. A futile (or seemingly so), meaningless, and lonely existence in my fortress. Scorned even by God--or, at least, that's how it feels at times. Was it Woody Allen who said: "God Isn't Dead.--He Just Doesn't Want to Get Involved." I sometimes think Lieberson would be a good friend for me. But I'm old enough to be his grandfather. Lieberson is my neighbor, by the way. I'm not a pederast. Young boys aren't my thing. After all, I'm half-Jewish. I'm not a Catholic priest, shunning cloistered nuns for young alter boys. Give me a nubile, young nun with a habit any day. The more lascivious the habit, the better.
"The Fortress of Koenigstein." The King's Stone. Koenigstein--That's Woody Allen's real name, by the way. Did you know that? Koenigstein. No, no. Wait! Allan Stewart Konigsberg. That was Woody Allen's real name. "Konigsberg." The artist whose picture hangs in The National Gallery actually gave his painting the wrong name. The painting should be The Fortress of Konigsberg, but the artist's attention was distracted by a nubile, young nun and he ended up misnaming his own painting. The artist was probably a friend of Rubenstein's.
In any event, Koenigstein translates as "King's Stone." But not the President's Stone. A stone but not a marble block. A stone block. But not a writer's block.
I suffered writer's block most of this weekend. I had no idea what I would write to you about. Right now, it's five antemeridian. It's dark. Should I risk my liberty and admit something? Yes! Let's throw caution to the wind. The dark night of the soul I experienced this weekend led to a more mature and adequate faith.
"How do I revive my creative juices?" "How do I summon the creative spirit? The creative spirit that infuses my communications with you, buddy?" Those are the questions I pondered in my fortress this weekend.
I've moved my writing venue, shall we say. I created a writer's hut within my apartment. A protected cloister. A place where I can meditate, gather my thoughts, and let the transference (my thoughts about you, Brian) take shape. I have a walk-in closet in my apartment, where, this weekend, I set up my word processor along with the paraphernalia of my trade. The signs of my profession, shall we call them. My computer discs, my dictionary. A hard chair suitable for the writer's mind. Comfortable, but not overly so. Yes, I've gone back in the closet. While so many people are coming out of the closet, I've "in-ned" myself. The small space concentrates the spirit and mind. Do you notice a new tone in this letter: a tone of the didactic and enigmatically stoic?
Yesterday I got out. I ventured downtown. I sought inspiration in the outer world. I made my way to The National Gallery of Art. At least, that was my destination.
But on my way, I walked by The National Archives. Did you ever notice, at the Northwest corner of the Archives Building, the memorial to President Franklin Roosevelt? It's touchingly simple. I had seen it before, but I had forgotten about it. The President's Stone. It's a simple block of marble with a terse inscription: "Franklin Delano Roosevelt." And the dates: 1882 - 1945.
A small plaque discusses the history of the monument. And I rephrase from memory: "In the year 194-, in the presence of several close aides, President Roosevelt talked about the kind of memorial he wanted erected when the time came. He pointed to his desk, and said: "It should be a simple marble block, the size of that desk. Engraved on the stone should be my name, and nothing more, except the dates of my birth (1882) and death. And I would like the stone placed on the grounds of the National Archives." The explanatory plaque closes: "Erected by the President's friends, on the fifteenth anniversary of his death." Or words to that effect. And there it stands today. The Franklin Roosevelt Memorial. It is strikingly poignant. The President's stone, as it were.
That's all he ever wanted. A simple marble stone. Of course, the government erected something on a grander scale--more Rooseveltian, shall we say. I've never been to the "official" memorial, have you, Brian? It's a tad silly, don't you think. The statue of FDR's dog, Fala. (And is that a wheelchair under FDR's cape?) I suppose we should be grateful that FDR didn't have a pet hamster. The Memorial Commission would have said: "We need a reproduction of that hamster next to the statue of the President." Yes. The President and his annoyingly-gnawing companion. Fortunately for all of us, he had a dog and not a treadmill-chasing rodent. The bottom line is that President Roosevelt already had what he ever wanted. The President's simple marble block at the northwest corner of The National Archives. What I wonder is, why the Archives? Why did Roosevelt select that site? A question for K.R. Eissler, I suppose.
And so I made my way to The National Gallery. I ventured through the West Wing and the East Wing. Actually, they're all one--East and West. And isn't that a dream come true? I had feelings of nostalgia for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Philadelphia Art Museum, which was one of my childhood haunts, has a more extensive collection of mediaeval art than The National Gallery. I've always found mediaeval art odd but intriguing. The Philadelphia museum has several mediaeval rooms--yes, the entire rooms from mediaeval buildings were removed from their European provenance and are housed in the museum. In fact, there's an entire mediaeval cloister in Philadelphia, where nuns -- the nonflying variety -- used to gather their thoughts, meditate, and pray to The Big Jew in the Sky.
A painting in the National Gallery caught my interest. "The Fortress of Koenigstein." The painting depicts a ruined castle on a hill, in the town of Koenigstein in Germany. I suppose Woody Allen can trace his roots to that town. The castle, as depicted in the painting, is partly in ruins, but there it stands--alone, safe from invading forces (for the most part). Above the hoi polloi, standing on a hill, like the Parthenon. A metaphor for the grandiose egotist in me, perhaps. A grand castle, in ruins, standing on a hill--its impressive design an atavism of a forgotten age.
Is it really twenty years since I made the decision to move down here from Philadelphia to practice law? Made the decision to go South--literally and (unintentionally) figuratively?
While at The National Gallery I perused the work of a contemporary artist, Jim Dine--born in about 1933, he's still among the living. His work is naturalistic--or realistic--I suppose you'd say. One room of the Gallery was dedicated to a collection of about 40 sketches that Dine had done of ancient Greek marbles from a Greek temple, marbles that are now housed in a museum in Berlin, Germany. An explanatory plaque quotes the artist. "Drawing is not an exercise. Exercise is working out on a stationary bicycle, going nowhere. Drawing is like riding on a real bicycle, taking a journey."
But of course, Jim Dine never met Stanley Schmulewitz, the vice-president of the Tenants' association in my building. Schmulewitz works out on a stationary bicycle in his street clothes. I suppose you could say old Stanley is all dressed up with no place to go. Schmulewitz wears sneakers in the swimming pool, so they say.
Then I made my way to the East Building. "Go East Young Man," as Justice William O. Douglas titled his autobiography. And that I did. Via the underground concourse. Just like Berlin in the old days. You know the stories about the East Berliners digging tunnels under the Berlin Wall, making their way to freedom, and proclaiming "I am free!" Well, I made my way through the concourse and thought: "I.M. Pei!"
There was an exhibit of American paintings titled: "From Bingham to Eakins." It was a small--and disappointing--exhibit. It featured only one important painting by Eakins, a portrait of Dr. William Thomsson--whoever he was. The exhibit occupied only two rooms. You know, Thomas C. Eakins was a graduate of Central High School in Philadelphia, my alma mater. 38th class. June 1861. That class won't be having a reunion any time soon! At least not on City Avenue.
You know the funny thing about the concourse that connects the East Building and the West Building of The National Gallery is that "moving sidewalk." There's that lengthy moving treadmill that connects the West Wing and the East Wing. You walk along the treadmill and you feel like a pet hamster. Actually, Jerry Seinfeld used to do a bit about "moving sidewalks." They have them at airports. "Did you ever notice?" Everything Seinfeld says is always prefaced by "Did you notice?"--at least so his detractors say. I never heard Seinfeld say that. In any event. Seinfeld complains about the people who think they can just stand still on those treadmills. The people who think that because the treadmill is moving they can just stand still, rest, gather their thoughts, meditate, and let the treadmill do the moving. "Move, move, move!" Seinfeld says. "You idiots, don't you know, the moving treadmill is there to speed up your movement--it's not simply there so you can avoid walking altogether." So Seinfeld turned the moving sidewalk into schtick.
Funny thing how Jewish minds differ, but always gravitate toward the same problems. Einstein worked out the mathematics of traveling along a beam of light. It was a problem that haunted him since his boyhood days. Einstein was the first person to see that there's an ineluctable conclusion that flows from the fact that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light--the C in E=mC2. If a person were to travel on a beam of light--hypothetically speaking, of course--he could never achieve anything by walking. That is, he could never speed up his travel time. That follows from the fact that the beam of light is already moving at optimal speed, namely, the speed of light. I suppose that's the origin of the saying "going nowhere--fast."
I just find that odd and intriguing that Seinfeld and Einstein--radically different minds, with radically different intellectual orientations--in some sense worried about the same problem. The idea of an object moving forward while traveling on a moving object. Whatever that means. All the while I think about people who think about moving on moving objects. A problem of psychology. Well, that's where my head is at, buddy.
Check you out later, Brian.
P.S. What I found really galling about you calling the Police on me was the fact that it implied that you thought I was just a common, garden-variety mental case. I'm a mental case, to be sure. But not common. Not garden variety. I'm special. My psychopathology is unique, as I told David Callet sixteen years ago. Yes, I preserved that issue for the record during my brief chat with David Callet, Esq. "I notice you seem to work very hard," said David Callet. I responded: "It's part of my psychopathology." Buddy, if word gets out that I'm an ordinary nut case, it will ruin me, absolutely ruin me! Don't you know that?
P.P.S. NEWSFLASH!!!!
I'm writing this real-time. It's 1:04 postmeridian even as I speak. I'm at the Westend Branch (with Mrs. Jones-is that her name? Jennifer Jones?). There's a nutty guy who frequents this branch. He's here every time I visit this branch. He's neatly dressed, as usual. Today he has on tan slacks and a blue long-sleeved shirt. Anyway, he's always talking to people about his crazy theories about the left-wingers and Communists, and their nefarious schemes that are undermining the world order (or what George Bush, Sr. would call, I suppose, the New World Order. So I got to the library about 8 minutes to 1:00 PM. The library doesn't open till 1:00 PM. The guy was talking in a loud, boisterous voice about how millions are going to die in World War III. How Israel has a nuclear weapon that would make the Hiroshima bomb look like a kid's toy. Really, really horrific stuff. Talk about disrupting the peace. Both the content (violence) and the manner of communication (a boisterous harangue) was probably enough to prompt a passing cop to tell the guy to either shut his trap or move on. Then the guy got into a verbal tussle with another patron, just outside the door of the library. "Shut the fuck up." "You're always in my face, every time I come here." "Nobody's interested in your fucking crap!"
And the librarians inside the library? You mean they couldn't hear the guy outside? Do you see where this is going, buddy? I know you do. The long and short of it is Mrs. Jones opened the door at 1:00 PM and acted like nothing was even a tad askew. It was as if she's used to the guy. When she opened the door, she let everybody--I mean everybody--in. She didn't exclude Mr. Human Bull-Horn.
My thing is - what is it that I did to merit my impeachment? (The question is: Is what you did legal under Scottish law? Is what I did illegal under Scottish law?) I said I was depressed; I said I was not taking one of the three medications that was prescribed for me; and that people will pay for my pain (through lawful means). I didn't talk about millions of people dying, or anybody dying or suffering any physical injury. I'm bemused.
You need to reevaluate your threat assessment procedures, buddy.
By the way, I mentioned before that there's a young lady at this branch (Westend) who lives in my building. Maybe the police should talk to her.

The Wanderer

The Wanderer Brian--
May 6, 2004
Hey, buddy. What's up on Macomb Street? Anything new? Anything interesting?
I love that line from the movie about the 19th-Century German opera composer, Richard Wagner. "You are ordered to leave Munich forthwith!" So says the royal messenger. Wagner's responds sarcastically: "May I have time to pack?"
At my psychotherapy consult on Tuesday, May 4, 2004, I spoke about my banishment, or exile, from the Cleveland Park library. My therapist asked an interesting question. "What metaphors come to mind that encapsulate your experience of banishment from the library."
What's interesting about that question is that if you look at my autobiography, "Significant Moments," the writing is absolutely replete with references, direct and indirect, to the experience of wandering and exile. It is no exaggeration to say that the theme of exile and wandering form a kind of skeleton around which the entire writing is draped.
There's an interesting book I own by Carol S. Pearson titled "The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By" (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989). The author talks about five basic heroic archetypes in literature. It is the author's observation, or insight, that all literature, from the most heroic and manifestly mythical to the most realistic, contains heroes that conform to fundamental archetypes or stereotypes of mythical types. At pages 20-21 the author provides a chart that lists and compares 11 basic characteristics or assessment criteria of the mythical archetypes that she titles, respectively, (1) the orphan, (2) the martyr, (3) the wanderer, (4) the warrior, and (5) the magician.
The degree to which my personality conforms to the criteria of "The Wanderer" is striking. Let me review "The Wanderer" archetype according to the author's 11 fundamental criteria.
THE WANDERER ARCHETYPE
1. GOAL -- Independence, autonomy
2. WORST FEAR -- Conformity
3. RESPONSE TO DRAGON -- Flees
4. SPIRITUALITY -- Searches for God alone
5. INTELLECT/EDUCATION -- Explores new ideas in own way
6. RELATIONSHIPS -- Goes it alone, becomes own person
7. EMOTIONS -- Dealt with alone, stoic
8. PHYSICAL HEALTH -- Distrusts experts, does it alone. Alternative medicine, enjoys isolated sports
9. WORK -- "I'll do it myself," searches for vocation
10. MATERIAL WORLD -- Becomes self-make man or woman, may sacrifice money for independence (like Jesse Raben)
11. TASK/ACHIEVEMENT -- autonomy, identity, vocation
My experience at the library, the experience of banishment, has an archetypal quality, or existential aspect, to it. While on the surface, the experience of the ban appears to concern the issues of bad conduct and subsequent punishment by the authorities, the outcome of banishment in reaction to my lack of conformity has a wider meaning for me.
This proposition finds abundant support when one considers the pervasive role of The Wanderer in my literary and historical identifications that are manifest in my autobiography.
As one leafs through my autobiography one sees immediately that the overriding quality in my identifications is wandering and the struggles of wandering. Each successive section of the writing focuses on an aspect of wandering: its requisites, goals, and risks.
Melitzah: "Those with an intimate acquaintance of Hebrew texts," so the writing begins. Thus the book opens with an implicit allusion to the wanderings of the Jews and the reliance of the Jews throughout history on The Word and verbally-transmitted tradition as the only things of permanence in their peripatetic existence.
Candide: Wanders the world facing disaster after disaster
The Writer: remains true to himself in an always alien world
Individualism: each man has only one true vocation--finding the way to himself
Conformity: the Wanderer does not conform to reality, he creates his own reality
Jean Valjean -- The Victor Hugo hero wanders through France as a fugitive from the law, and creates his own reality (or environment) in the guise of an assumed identity, Monsieur Madeleine
The Rescue: The rescuer acts as a lone individual
Conformity: The Wanderer places an absolute premium on the absolute value of the individual. He risks his personal safety and security and feels drawn to "the great adventure."
Values: The Wanderer (like Daniel Ellsberg) sees as corrupt the pursuit of group (or collective) goals and seeks to expose that corruption.
Discovery: The Wanderer (like Jeffrey Masson) is convinced that he can discover truths that are not seen by others, and risks his security in pursuit of finding those truths.
Curiosity: The Wanderer is curious and will act with naive foolishness or ruthless aggression in pursuit of discovery
Slander: The Wanderer risks the slander of his fellows in pursuit of his goal of discovery of truth
Punishment: The Wanderer risks societal punishment in pursuit of his goals
Adam and Eve: These two archetypal figures faced banishment as a punishment for the bad act of attempting to satisfy their curiosity
Reciprocity of Curiosity: The curious person who breaches the boundaries of others will, like Nietzsche or Ellsberg, face the breach of his own privacy.
Is there any need to continue? I think not. After my autobiography is published I suppose there will be some eager Ph.D. student who will elaborate the themes I have set forth here. I can just imagine some future American student at a British University writing his M.A. thesis (arranged like a film script, of course) on the subject: "The Theme of the Wanderer in Freedman's 'Significant Moments.'"
That reminds me of an anecdote I find humorous. William Faulkner once participated in a seminar composed of English professors. The seminar's theme was Faulkner's use of symbolism. One English professor asked Faulkner about some theme in his works, and Faulkner replied: "I just write. That's all. I don't worry about symbolism, or anything else. I let you English professors worry about those things. I just write stories."
Be that as it may.
Do you really think medication can help me deal with the core, existential conflicts I experience? Are you that naive, Brian? "He's not taking the medication that was prescribed for him." Oh, well, that's terrible--we'll have to banish him from the library.
It's uncanny--UNCANNY--how my reporting my act of misconduct (i.e., my act of not taking my medication--an act that evidenced my "distrust of experts") set in motion a series of events that led to my banishment by you, Brian. You became an unwitting player in my repetition compulsion, which centers in part on my "distrust of experts" and on my need to be banished, to become a Wanderer. Don't you find that a tad odd? Perhaps my life was becoming a tad too comfortable for me. You brought me back to my "regressive" goal--the need to be banished, and the need to Wander.
I had a consult with my psychiatrist, Dr. Barbot, yesterday. He said he may increase my anti-psychotic medication by 50%--from 10 mg/day to 15 mg/day. I'm sure that will make a big difference for me! A little sarcasm.
It is so frustrating for me that my psychiatrists focus on the issue of medication, when it is so apparent that I suffer from some existential conflicts--conflicts that are pervasive and complex-and beyond medical remediation.
There will be those therapists who, looking at my banishment from the library will say: "Well you knew the rules, and you failed to conform--and you were punished. In the future, perhaps you will remember that punishment, the banishment from the library, and seek to avoid it. Perhaps in the future you will obey the rules and conform." "You need to develop the ego structure that will enable you to conform to acceptable norms of conduct."
But there will be other therapists who, looking at my banishment from the library, will see it as reflecting an existential conflict: an expression of a need to experience and re-experience the state of banishment, the need to wander. In other words, they will see the experience of banishment and punishment as "themes" that need to be repeated again and again, themes that are apparent in my literary and historical identifications. Such a therapist will take the sophisticated viewpoint that, in all probability, I need to negotiate a struggle with wandering and alienation. It's not simply that I fail to conform out of some perversity or lack of ego structuralization. It is, rather, that I am driven by unconscious wishes, conflicts and prohibitions to experience what I in fact experience. And those unconscious, wishes, conflicts and prohibitions--as Stanley Greenspan would say--are housed in their own disturbed ego structure. For such therapists, we are not dealing with a lack of ego structure, but, rather, a deviant structure (perhaps highly developed) that sustains, or houses, disturbed affects and promotes disturbed experiences.
Going back to my autobiography, you find so many identifications with the issue of banishment and wandering. I just can't get away from that idea, which seems so important for me.
Even the titles of some of the books I quote suggest the issue of wandering, estrangement, "occupation" and banishment. Titles such as "Nietzsche in Turin," or "Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis," or "Indian Home Rule" (with the British occupation of India the polar opposite of banishment or exile).
Scattered throughout the writing are references to Wagner evicted from his paradise on the estate of Wesendonk, the wealthy merchant.
Freud leaving Vienna to live in exile in London.
Hesse living out his days in exile in Switzerland.
Masson's termination (or banishment) by the Freud Archives.
Masson's reference to his fantasies in adolescence that centered on "hidden Tibetan Monasteries," separate and apart from the mainstream world.
The mythical Castalia--Hesse's fictional creation--a secret order hidden from the rest of the world.
President Nixon's resignation (or banishment) from the Presidency of the United States.
Bruno Bettelheim's release from a Nazi concentration camp and his subsequent "exile" to the United States, where, initially at least, nobody believed his story of Nazi persecution.
The French novelist Emile Zola's escape to London after his conviction on a charge of criminal libel by the French government.
Adam and Eve's banishment from paradise because of their act of disobedience (and conversely, Abraham's absolute obedience to the parent (God) which is associated with annihilation (of Abraham's son, Isaac).
Shakespeare's fictional creation Prospero, who exiled himself to a magic island that he could dominate.
Marcel Proust (author of "Remembrance of Things Past") working alone on his literary masterpiece in his cork-lined room.
Howard Temin, the virologist, working out his discoveries in isolation from his colleagues, and in defiance of accepted wisdom.
The list is seemingly endless.
I am reminded of the psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold's observation that sometimes a patient's pattern of thinking is so pervasive that the psychoanalyst can say, unequivocally, that he has uncovered a vital truth about that patient.
I believe that my underlying truth is the Wanderer fantasy. This psychological need, or fantasy, must be understood and worked through. Medication will not alter that fantasy, that need to experience banishment, the need to discover as a lone wanderer.
Such is my state of alienation from psychiatry! "Alienation!" That's another symptom! Carol Pearson, the author of "The Hero Within" writes that the Wanderer's core affects are "alienation and isolation" (page 14).
Check you out later. By the way, today is my 15th day of my banishment. I suppose I can say that I'm loving and hating it.
P.S. Today (May 6) is Freud's birthday. The old guy would have been 148 years old today.
P.P.S. Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D., is the President of the Center for Archetypal Studies and Applications (CASA), the Director of the Transformational Leadership Certificate Program at the Georgetown University Center for Professional Development (CPD), a Senior Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, and an adjunct faculty member in the Saybrook Graduate Program in Organizational Systems Inquiry. Dr. Pearson's research focuses on developing the theory and practice of depth coaching and consulting. To this end, she has identified the archetypes that are most important for healthy human, organizational, and leadership development, and has designed models and instruments to assess the presence of archetypes in individuals and social systems, including the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator (PMAI), which she developed with Hugh Marr, and the Organizational and Team Culture Indicator (OTCI). Dr. Pearson has published extensively in her field of research and her work has been translated into several languages. Her publications include The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (HarperCollins, 1986, 1998); Educating the Majority: Women Challenge Tradition in Higher Education, co-edited by Donna L. Shavlik and Judith G. Touchton (Macmillan Publishing Co., 1989); Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes that Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World (HarperCollins, 1981); Magic At Work: Camelot, Creative Leadership and Everyday Miracles (Doubleday, 1995); The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, co-authored by Margaret Mark (McGraw-Hill, 2001); and Mapping the Organizational Psyche, co-authored by John Corlett (CAPT: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, forthcoming 2002). Additionally, during 1998-99, she served as Senior Editor of The Inner Edge: A Resource for Enlightened Business Practice, a newsletter designed to apprise leaders of emerging ideas and breakthrough practices. Dr. Pearson has been Academic Vice President of Goucher College and Director of Women's Studies, first at the University of Colorado, Boulder and later at the University of Maryland College Park. She also was a member of the teaching faculty at each of these institutions, receiving tenure in 1977 and promotion to full professor in 1985. Dr. Pearson holds a Ph.D. in English from Rice University (1971), an honorary degree in Humane Letters from Norwich University (1987), and a certification in Personal Mythology Methods by the Midway Center of the D.C. Psychiatric Institute Foundation (1986). From 1988 until 1990, she continued her studies in Jungian psychology as part of the Professional Enrichment Program in Jungian Theory and Practice, Wainwright House, Rye, NY. In 1980-81, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow in Higher Education Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Upon returning, she served a year as a visiting scholar at the ACE Center on Leadership Development. In her coaching/consulting practice, Carol Pearson works with executives, entrepreneurs, professionals, and management teams and speaks and leads seminars in Canada, Europe, and Central America, as well as throughout the United States.

Trivial Events

Brian--

May 4, 2004
Hey, buddy. How's it going at the library? That's no longer a meaningless salutation. What, literally, is going on at the Cleveland Park Branch. Since my exile to St. Helena, I genuinely wonder what's been happening in the cultural capital of Cleveland Park.
What did you do this weekend? As usual I did nothing, nothing interesting and nothing uninteresting. But I survived. Remember, I'm a survivor. A friendless survivor. For some reason I was thinking this weekend about Franz Wisner. Franz Wisner was Jesse Raben's roommate at Tufts University. I was thinking about normal people. How they just live, interact, and befriend each other. For them normal living is like breathing. They just do it. They don't think about it. I think about social relations a great deal, precisely because, for me, social relations are difficult, all-too-difficult. It's as if I suffer from the asthma of human relations. When you have asthma, you think about each breath. You attach a meaning to something that other people do without thinking--namely, breathing.
The utter vacuousness of my weekend gave me an idea for a TV show. A pilot-in-the-making. Must-see-TV at its best. "American Idle." It would be a reality show in which contestants compete for a prize for living the most idle and meaningless life. Think of it as a comedy version of Gilligan's Island.
I kept thinking this weekend of the line by Clifford Odets. "That miserable patch of event, that mélange of nothing, while you were looking ahead for something to happen, that was it! That was life! You lived it!" Yes, I've lived life--about three-quarters of it by now. But what have I done?
Whenever I tell people how I've gotten stuck in a rut, how my life seemed to come to a screeching halt at the time of my job termination 13 years ago, they will say invariably: "You need to get on with your life." I invariably respond: "This is my life. How could it be anything else? Whatever you do--whatever that happens to be--that's your life. How could it be otherwise? Can the life you live be anything other than getting on with something? And how can that "something" be anything other than your life?" What people really mean when they advise someone to get on with his life is: "You need to do something other than what you're doing." But for some reason, inscrutable to me, they don't say that. They say: "You need to get on with your life." But why the obfuscation? A question for philosophers, I suppose.
Saturday night I watched "Hannah and Her Sisters" on TV. That's a Woody Allen movie. Remember the famous line: "These pretzels are making me thirsty." No, I'm just yanking your chain. That's actually a line from Seinfeld--an episode of Seinfeld that parodied a Woody Allen movie, any Woody Allen movie. They're all really alike-all Woody Allen movies seem identical to me. At least that's my opinion.
I'm not a great fan of Woody Allen. It's as if all of Woody Allen's movies are slices of a loaf of bread. A single loaf. Each thin slice of bread is virtually identical. The size may vary to some extent, the number of caraway seeds--with Woody Allen the bread is always rye--may vary, but basically, one slice of Woody Allen is pretty much like any other slice.
Some of his movies are more entertaining than others, but they're still all alike. The masterpiece is "Annie Hall." That won an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. "Hannah and Her Sisters" got critical acclaim too. But it didn't medal. At least not like "Annie Hall."
Woody Allen 's movies remind me of the witticism about the Vivaldi concertos. You know Vivaldi, the Venetian composer? They say he didn't write 400 concertos. He wrote one concerto 400 times. You could say the same about Bruckner. If you've heard one Bruckner symphony, you've heard them all.
Is Woody Allen a genius? Well, he is prolific. But is that a sign of genius? If he had made only one movie, say "Annie Hall," would his genius be any less than if he had made ten movies. If Beethoven had written only the ninth symphony, or Shakespeare had written only "Hamlet," would these creative people be any less a genius? I don't know.
Then there's the issue of precisely what part of a creation is the part that exemplifies the genius. Take Beethoven's Diabelli variations. Beethoven wrote a piano piece: thirty-three original variations on a waltz theme by Anton Diabelli. Fundamentally, the piece in its entirety is a collection of bagatelles. Each bagatelle lasts about 2 minutes on average. The entire piece takes about an hour to perform. It is considered one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. But what makes it great? A single bagatelle wouldn't qualify as a work of genius. But would five bagatelles? Or twenty? No. What makes the Diabelli variations a work, a creation, of the highest musical achievement was Beethoven's act of squeezing out of Diabelli's brief and commonplace waltz-theme every last drop of musical meaning.
In the case of the Diabelli variations, it's the piece as a whole that is evidence of the highest powers of musical creativity. In art, it often happens that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If Michelangelo had painted one human hand reaching out toward another, that might be talent but not genius. But to create a fresco, such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which depicts a grand multiplicity of gestures, postures and figures--well, now, that's a work of genius.
In art, we can isolate fragments and appreciate them. We can take a single variation from the Diabelli variations, listen to it and say: "Ah, what a delight!" We can look at a single scene from the Sistine chapel and exclaim: "How inspired!" But that's art. In science, it's not always easy to isolate out aspects of a creation. Take Einstein's famous formulation: E=mc2. There's energy, mass and the speed of light. The whole is not suggested by the individual parts. An equation exists as a totality. You can't slice up Einstein's Theory of Relativity into segments as you can with a loaf of bread.
Be that as it may. I suppose all this rumination means only one thing. I have too much time on my hands.
But back to Woody Allen.
In one part of the movie "Hannah and her Sisters," Woody Allen decides he's going to convert to Catholicism. There's a scene where he returns home and proceeds to lay out on a table all the paraphernalia he will need as a Catholic. A crucifix, a loaf of white bread, and a jar of mayonnaise. Heaven and Hellmans, I suppose you could say.
Actually, I've been thinking of converting. Not religion. It's hard to convert when you're a half-Jew. It's a painful decision when only part of you is Jewish. Which part exactly is the Jewish part, and thus, which part is in need of conversion. It's like trying to separate Siamese twins. The outcome can be fatal.
I have a theory that all people are fundamentally Jewish. It's our cultural upbringing that modifies that essentially Jewish character to something else. How could it be otherwise? Who would eat white bread, for instance, out of free choice. Any sane, rational person would sooner eat pumpernickel or rye. No sane person, as an act of free will, would choose to put mayonnaise on a corned-beef sandwich. People are born with an instinct to put mustard on a corned-beef sandwich. It's the process of acculturation that perverts the human being's normal tendencies.
There is a belief in traditional Judaism--a rabbinic belief from the middle ages--that if you take an infant and raise him without any language, he will naturally speak Hebrew. The human's normal affinity is to speak Hebrew. Hebrew, so the mediaeval rabbis believed--is the language of God, the language by which God spoke to Adam and Eve and Moses, the whole cast of characters that Michelangelo painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But since most people grow up learning English, French, or Chinese, or whatever, they assimilate the language they hear around them. So much for the linguistic sophistication of the mediaeval rabbis.
But back to the issue of conversion. No. I'm not thinking of converting to another religion. I'm thinking of converting to normality. In terms of the dialectic Normal/Abnormal, I'm genuinely, 100% abnormal. Unlike my religion I'm not half abnormal. Believe me, I'm totally abnormal. So it's not a question of precisely what part of me needs to convert. Any change in the direction of normality would be a step forward for me.
Actually one of the highlights of this weekend was that I read an article in the June 2004 issue of the magazine "Psychology Today." The article was titled "Snap Judgments" by Carlin Flora. The article says that everybody makes snap judgments of other people. We all tend to form an impression of other people upon first meeting them. It's not necessarily sexual. Like, for example, when I saw my buddy Glenn Fine for the first time, I just knew he was a great guy--no, more! A Great Guy. So much for the chastisement directed at me in Group therapy that I have no right to judge a person based on only a few trivial observations about the other person. Related to that is the accusation that I attach a negative meaning to trivial events. We all do. We all attach a negative meaning--or at least some meaning, negative or positive-to trivial events. It's just that I was stupid enough--or ingenuous enough--to tell the managing partners of a law firm what I thought.
What separates me from normal people is not that I attach a negative meaning to trivial events, or that I make snap judgments about people. It's the fact that I have awareness of what I'm doing, and I'm up-front and honest about what I do.
The June 2004 "Psychology Today" article, at page 60, says:
Just three seconds are sufficient to make a conclusion about fresh acquaintances. Nalini Ambady, professor of psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, studies first impressions carved from brief exposure to another person's behavior, what she calls "thin slices" of experiences. She says humans have developed the ability to quickly decide whether a new person will hurt or enrich us--judgments that had lifesaving ramifications in an earlier era. She believes that thin slices are generated in the most primitive area of the brain, where feelings are also processed, which accounts for the emotional punch of some first encounters. Immediate distrust of a certain car salesman or affinity for a prospective roommate originates in the deepest corners of the mind. The ability to interpret thin slices evolved as a way for our ancestors to protect themselves in an eat-or-be-eaten world, whereas modern-day threats to survival often come in the form of paperwork (dwindling stock portfolios) or intricate social rituals (impending divorce). The degree to which thin slices of experience help us to navigate modern encounters--from hitchhikers to blind dates--is up for debate.
So what is it precisely that makes me abnormal? Is it my tendency to attach a negative meaning to trivial events? Well, "Psychology Today" would say--resoundingly--"No!" Is it my tendency to judge whether I like a person--whether that person will hurt me or enrich me--after only a brief encounter? Again, a resounding "No!"
According to "Psychology Today," we all attach a meaning (positive or negative) to trivial events. We all make snap judgments about other people.
So what makes me different? It's my sincerity, my lack of shame, and my cognitive ability to understand and describe--and elaborate--the trivial that distinguishes me from others. A person might say: "I don't like him. Why? Because. Just because." Or a person may say: "I don't really like him. But I have no right to judge, so I'll repress my dislike." Or a person will say: "One shouldn't over-analyze things." Well, I do none of that!
I am a shameless over-analyzer. I will elaborate a detail--squeezing out every last piece of juice out of a detail. I believe that I have a right to do that. I'm sincere in my feelings about people. I don't pretend to like people I don't like. I'm unusually open about expressing my positive feelings about people I like; or the converse, speaking openly about the negative in people. These are the things that make me abnormal. Yes. I'm abnormal and proud to be so.
On second thought, maybe I'd better just stick with the religion I was born with. I'll stick with my slices of rye. The hell with the white bread! If I want to count every last caraway seed on a slice of rye, I'll do it. If I choose to attach a negative meaning to each trivial seed, I'll do that! I don't care what Ellen and J. Alfred Prufrock think!!
Check you out later, buddy.
P.S. I've changed all the light bulbs in my apartment. I've upped the wattage from 40 to 60. I know how my being in a dark place is threatening to you. Believe me, I don't want to threaten you. I now live in a clean, well-lighted place.

The Ruminations of a Banned Library Patron

Brian--

Hey, buddy. Are you missing my presence at the library? To tell you the truth, I'm missing the Cleveland Park library, but I'm not missing you particularly. The way I see it, if you've seen one fat, Irish-Catholic ass, you've seen 'em all. Not that I have anything against Irish-Catholic asses, fat or otherwise. It's just that I don't miss yours.
I suppose if we had been actual friends, instead of friends-as-a-metaphor, my separation would have been a source of pain for me. But what I miss primarily is the fact that I've had to become a peripatetic (or simply pathetic) library patron, wandering from library to library in the DC Library System.
There's a lady at the Home Office (The Martin Luther King Branch) who handles complaints pertinent to discrimination under "The Americans With Disabilities Act." Her name is Grace Lyons. Maybe you've heard of her. I'm thinking about presenting to her my complaint about my (possibly) discriminatory exile from Cleveland Park. The fact is I suffer from a disability (paranoid schizophrenia). I'm a lonely guy, just reaching out for friendship. Even my therapists (who are employees of the District of Columbia) encouraged me to reach out to you. Further, according to my "Patient Rights Statement," I have a right not to take medication that is recommended for me. And of course, my stated desire to make people "pay for my pain" was protected speech: I was talking about taking legal action. Fundamentally, you banned me from the library for the following reasons, which, I opine, do not "pass the mustard" under anti-discrimination laws.
Fundamentally, as I see it, you banned me from the library for the following reasons:
1. I have severe mental illness (a disability);
2. I was not taking anti-psychotic medication that was prescribed for me, which I have a legal right to do;
3. I suffer from depression; and
4. I have feelings of anger toward (and a desire to redress in a lawful manner the wrongs done to me by) attorney managers at my former place of employment.
What did I say that was such a crime? Maybe YOU need to be in therapy, Brian, or at least take a remedial reading course. I may tend to exaggerate, but you are an over-reactor. You overreact to purely non-threatening statements. You're the Three-Mile-Island of over-reactors.
Oh, yes! And I changed the icons. What a dastardly crime that was! But didn't the Turks do the same thing when they took over Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul? Didn't the Turks change all the Greek Orthodox icons? Yes, I admit it. I'm an iconoclast! Oddly enough (and you may not know this) but at this very moment, there's an exhibit on the second floor at MLK of Greek Orthodox icons. I perused them the other day. I passed by the exhibit quickly, lest I be overcome with an irresistible urge to tamper with the icons.
How do I feel about being banned from the Cleveland Park Branch?
To tell you the truth I feel like Babu Baat (the Seinfeld character) who was deported back to Pakistan because he never filled out his visa renewal application. "Brian Brown? He's a wery bad man. A wery, wery bad man. When (or if) I return to Cleveland Park I will exact vengeance on that man (by lawful means, of course).
I have to add that disclaimer now ("by lawful means") whenever I say anything even remotely threatening. Even when I say something as a joke. I find that you have some virtues (or do I exaggerate?) but you are a humor-challenged individual, Brian. And they say I'm hypersensitive. Imagine calling the police on someone simply because he says he's in "a dark place." Now really, Brian!
There's also your boss, Barbara Webb. I've been thinking of contacting her about my treatment at your hands, Brian. Maybe Miss Webb will show some mercy on this Queer Duck.
Yesterday, I talked with my therapist about my feelings about being banned from the library. I said I felt as if I was in a wrestling match with you, and that you had won the first round by pinning me to the ground. But that I wanted to flip you over and pin you down, and win the final victory--triumph for me, humiliation for you. I'd just love for The Powers That Be at the Home Office (MLK) to determine that your banishment was a tad overdone, and that those Powers re-instate my library privileges at Cleveland Park. That would be sweet. And I'm not talking nude wrestling. I'm talking fully clothed, no holds barred wrestling. A little G-rated Rupert/Gerald wrestling. I'd love to claim victory over you, Brian. In front of a burning, hot fireplace or not.
As you can see I'm stuck in the same banal observations. I think Freud termed people like me banal, or banal retentive. I retain the banal experiences of life and memorialize them in meaningless letters that get saved on computer files that never get read. Such is my life!
So how is William bearing up under the strain of not interacting with his favorite library patron--namely moi? I can just imagine you and William ruminating about me: "Remember the time he said this?--or "Remember the time he said that?" Well, you don't have Freedman to kick around any longer. But like old RMN (that's Richard M. Nixon) -- I'll be back. The terminated will be de-terminated. Remember, the meek shall inherit the stacks. Didn't the Big Jew in the Sky once say that?
I'm reminded of the note that The Prime Minister penned to Eleanor Roosevelt after the death of FDR. I paraphrase: "I feel so deeply for you all. As for me I have lost a dear and cherished friendship which was forged in the fire of war. I trust you may find consolation in the glory of "his" name and in the magnitude of "his" work."
Yes, in these dark days, I find myself all-too frequently lapsing into military metaphor (not to mention the third person singular) (and the confusion of subject ("my") and object ("his"). It's always been a source of solace to me; that is, military metaphor, the third person voice, and the confusion of subject and object. And of course, my work at the library -- like FDR's on the international stage -- was of considerable magnitude. Say what you will, Buddy, but I always displayed that very special "magnitude-with-attitude."
After FDR's death, Eleanor Roosevelt told a group of reporters who had gathered around her: "The story is over." Well, in my case, the story may be over, but the letters will continue. Count on that, my friend.
As for the Second Front, my psychotherapy is coming to an end at GW (don't forget I'm fighting a two-front war; you are my first front, my therapists are my second front). Just three more sessions with Indira Gandhi, and its farewell time for Viceroy Mountbatten, as it were. Can you follow my metaphors?
My therapist said that I need to start focusing on my feelings about termination. Termination of my therapy at GW, that is. That won't be difficult. My life is a series of terminations. Few beginnings, but many terminations.
How do I feel about my therapy coming to an end? Nothing really. I suppose I see it as a release. A release from meaninglessness.
I will look on my tenure at GW as a strange and inscrutable interlude. First, I never understood why, when my therapist at the DC clinic left (Dr. Shaffer), they couldn't find me a replacement therapist at the public clinic. Now I can't understand why I have to leave GW. Just a few months ago, they were saying that I would be assigned to a new therapist at GW when my current therapist (Indira Gandhi) finished her internship. GW's rationale is that it would be better for me if all my therapy services were placed "under one umbrella." That metaphor is more apt than they know. My entire life is like one long rainy day; or one dark (may I say that?) and stormy night of the soul.
I'm looking forward to my new therapist. I'll be seeing someone at the D.C. Community Mental Health Center. The one good thing about the new therapy is that it will be free of charge. Gratis. GW was charging me five dollars per session. So that -- that -- at least, is one positive thing.
Terminations. This past year has been a year of terminations, false starts, and losses.
First, David Bloom died. You know, David Bloom, the NBC reporter. I had an irrational emotional investment in that guy. He was a terrific reporter. I think I mentioned how highly I thought of him. When he died last April, April 2003, in Iraq, it triggered something in me. A feeling of loss, I suppose. A feeling that some portion of the sublime--which is in short supply here, on planet Earth--had been lost. It was at about the time David Bloom died that I started to write letters to you, buddy. That was David Bloom's favorite way of addressing people, by the way. "Buddy." David Bloom used to call everybody "buddy."
Then, in July "The English Lady" left. The English lady was the front desk manager in my apartment building. She added a touch of class to the building. The management company hired a corpse to replace Elizabeth Joyce. Imagine being replaced by the walking dead; and he doesn't even speak with a British accent!
The greatest blow, I suppose, greatest because it was the most personal, was the loss of Dr. Sack. Dr. Sack was a psychiatrist in my building who I admired a great deal. I saw him for three consultations back in May 1991. I remember the first consultation was May 13, 1991. I remember the date because it was the anniversary of Sigmund Freud's circumcision. I'm sure Fred Cohen, M.D. would get a chuckle out of that. Not to mention Dr. Sack's widow, Dr. Sally Ann Amdur Sack.
Dr. Sack's widow is the editor-in-chief of Avoteynu, the Journal of Jewish Genealogy. The journal contains articles pertinent to issues of Jewish genealogy. I happened to come across a copy at MLK the other day. Interesting stuff, by the way. Reminds me of that old TV show from the 60's: "I Dream of Genealogy."
I wonder how Dr. Sack's widow is getting along without the good doctor. You know, it can be very difficult for the survivors of the great and near-great. Maybe Dr. Sack's widow will find herself a rich Greek-Jewish shipping magnate, a la Jackie O. Somebody like Richard Ben-Veniste, only a little older, a lot richer, and with considerably more knowledge of maritime law.
But back to Dr. Sack. I was so stunned by his death. I remember one day, shortly after I learned of his passing, I listened to the slow movement of the Beethoven Ninth again and again. For about two-and-a-half hours. The piece lasts only about 15 minutes--so that's a lot of repetitions. I was just in a dazed fog. I always looked on Dr. Sack as my own personal Jerusalem. At Passover, observant Jews say: "Next year in Jerusalem." I used to comfort myself by thinking, "next year maybe I'll be in therapy with Dr. Sack." It's as if all my hopes for the future died with Dr. Sack. But, as they say, life must go on. In times of greatest need I find it soothing to retreat into platitudes. Why not?
Then in February of this year I entered, then quickly exited, group therapy. It was a disaster. But not an unmitigated one. I had the feeling that my experiences in group provided the valuable experience of confirming many of my suspicions about my social problems. Certainly, the experience confirmed my suspicion that I'm a different species from another galaxy. I think: "If those freaks are human, count me out of the human race."
The most recent disaster was your act of banning me from the Cleveland Park Library. Let's hope that's the last disaster for this year. I think I've reached the quotas of disasters for one year.
You may ask: "Well, Freedman, did anything positive happen to you this year?" I'd have to say "yes." My epistolary friendship with you, buddy, has been a great source of pleasure to me. I love writing to you. It's not a chore to write to you. It's like sex, really. You don't need any motivation to do it. The motivation is just there. It's irresistible, actually. What they call in the criminal law, an irresistible impulse. Yes, that's the way I'd put it. I have an irresistible impulse to write to you, commune with you, share my thoughts with you, Brian. Brother-Animal, You!
I hate your gaudy guts Brian, but I like you, too. And as we know, in my warped psychology that combination--that ambivalent combination--makes for my most intense relations with other males. People I like, I simply like. But people I both like and hate--well, that puts the Other in a special league of liking. I suppose it's that ambivalence that brings me closest to my relationship with my father. People say, "Do you like Brian?" I say: "No, I both like and despise him. That's why I like him so much." At least those are my feelings about you in my fantasized imagination. That's the transference. I don't really know you, like you, or hate you in reality. You're--as I've said before, a chimera, a phantom, a ghost. The ghost of library visits past, at least for now. But remember your Dickens! Mr. Scrooge also had to contend with the ghosts of library visits future.
Check you out later, buddy. Remember, just because I'm banned from the library doesn't mean we can't get together. I'm still thinking about Memorial Day. What do you say?

Lost in the Doldrums

Brian--

Hey, buddy. It's just after 5:00 AM. It's dark. Yes, I am in a dark place once again.
Lucky for me, I didn't tell you I was in the doldrums a few weeks ago. You probably would have called the Coast Guard out after me. And believe me, you don't want to mess with maritime law.
I can just hear William saying to the Coast Guard: "Brian Brown and I are very concerned about Mr. Freedman. Mr. Brown happened to come across a letter that Mr. Freedman wrote and saved on the library's hard-drive in which Mr. Freedman complains about being in the doldrums. He says he feels like a Titanic survivor adrift in the North Atlantic amid the frozen flotsam and jetsam of the icy coastal waters off Newfoundland. Then, at another point in the letter he complains, further, that he feels like a ship lost at sea, a sinking ship. And more! He compares himself to a German U-boat, prepared to sink neutral vessels on the high seas. Officer, that really had Mr. Brown and me concerned--I mean, a German U-Boat! Mr. Freedman is talking literally" (No, William, I'm talking metaphorically) "he's talking literally about upsetting the international law of the seas that's been in place since the end of the Napoleonic era. Officer, the letter Mr. Freedman wrote is literally (!) a distress signal. It's an SOS from Mr. Freedman."
Brian, I'm in the doldrums. Yes, I'm like a ship, such as "The Sea Wolf," adrift in the doldrums. GET OVER IT!
Be that as it may.
So many things struck me as odd about the Metropolitan Police interview.
First, the officers relied wholly on your interpretation of the letter I wrote, and proceeded to question me without having read the letter. I suppose that was the only practical approach. It was a lengthy letter. But still, it would have been useful if they had taken a few minutes to read the letter, then proceed to question me about the letter's content.
The most serious accusation you made about me--the accusation regarding my threat to "make people pay for the suffering I have experienced" was immediately shot down (may I say that?) once the officers were made aware by me that what I was talking about was pursuing legal remedies, and not threatening to carry out physical harm on anyone. "This isn't a threat," said the officer. "He's talking about pursuing legal remedies. That's not a threat." Do you have a problem with reading comprehension, buddy?
There was that peculiar colloquy about my intellect. William pointed out that I was very intelligent. "He's very intelligent, officers," said William. "He changed the computer icons. Why, I don't even know how he did that. But he knew how to do that?" It was as if William were talking about the devil. The devil is fiendishly clever. That's the way he's seen. His evil is insidious and inscrutable. The devil works in mysterious ways. There was a quality about William's attribution: the quality of attributing to me what, on the surface, sounds like a virtue (intelligence), only to use that attribution as a collateral attack on my character. It's as if William were saying: "He's fiendish, he's clever, he's very smart, why he's the Devil personified!" I'm not calling William an anti-Semite, but that's a quality that anti-Semites attribute to the Jews. "They're smarter than us. You have to watch out for those Jews. They're clever, and they know how to put their intellect to nefarious purposes." Watching Louis Malle's film "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (Good-bye, Children) I was struck by an accusation made by one of the anti-Semitic students about the Jews. "The Jews are evil because they're smarter than us, they have more money, and they are the people who killed our Lord."
Then one of the police officers chimed in: "You're very intelligent and well-spoken. You should be a teacher. Why don't you teach? You should teach, instead of doing nothing." I felt as if I was being attacked from all directions (that's a metaphor). What I mean is I was being subject to all kinds of contradictory sanctions and attributions. Here I was a mental patient with serious psychopathology (as David Callet would say), but at the same time I should be a teacher (according to the Police). I wonder how that officer would feel about having his child's care and education entrusted to a paranoid schizophrenic.
Paranoid Schizophrenia. That's another thing. I noticed that when I said I had paranoid schizophrenia, the police said nothing. They didn't question that. I recall the time in February 1996 when I was interviewed by Secret Service agent Phillip Leadroot. I said at that time that I had paranoid schizophrenia. He shot that down (may I say that?) immediately. "No, you don't. You don't have paranoid schizophrenia. I proceeded to show Special Agent Leadroot the letter written by my then treating psychiatrist, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, saying his diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. Agent Leadroot simply dismissed the letter and its diagnostic assertion.
I was struck by the officer's handling of the accusation that I had changed the computer icons. As I said in a letter a few days ago, the officers didn't question anything about that. They didn't ask me precisely how I did that, or ask William what was involved in curing the problem. There was almost a paranoid quality to William's accusation: "Officer he did something evil with the computer. I don't even know how he did it!" The officer's response reminded me of the scene described by the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson concerning his termination by the Freud Archives. Dr. Eissler accused Masson of "getting Zeplichal wrong." "I asked you, Professor Masson to find out who Zeplical was and you said apparently he had written a book on Geometry. But you were wrong, Professor Masson. The Zeplichal Freud had in mind had written a book on shorthand, not geometry." Masson said he proceeded to look around the room and there was a quizzical look on everybody's face. "Zeplichal? Who??" ("Freedman changed the computer icons." "What? What?"). It was as if the police officers' response could be described in Masson-like terms: "Yes, you changed the computer icons! Terrible! Terrible! Terrible misconduct!"
In fact one passage from Masson's book "Final Analysis" can be paraphrased to describe fully the accusations lodged against me by William.
"I believe I have a right to know why I'm being banned from the library. Why, why, William? Why am I being banned from the library?" William was calmer now, and he said everything I said was true--that I had a right to know why I was being banned from the library--and he would now tell me why I was being banned. I was being banned for three reasons. "The first is your statement that you are in a dark place. The second reason is the Computer Icon incident. Do you remember, Mr. Freedman? You sat at the computer and changed the computer icons. The third and final reason you are being banned is that you were prescribed anti-psychotic medication and you confessed that you were not taking it!" Here William paused to look up at me. William was serious and apparently considered this almost a sin.
I was too stunned to respond.
I turned to the Police officers, and I said "Well, Mr. Dacosta has told you the reasons why I am being banned from the library. I want to ask you, do you both feel so strongly about the computer icons?" For a moment, they looked confused ("What?"), then there was murmured assent. Yes, indeed, you changed the computer icons, terrible, terrible a terrible incident."
In truth there was very little reasoning or none at all. The Police officers' method was one of accusation, assumption, and denunciation.
I was stripped of my library privileges, like a disgraced soldier.
It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends (assuming I had any), that I was shocked.
Well, chalk it up to "life imitating art," I suppose. Uncanny, don't you think?
What was irrational about the Police officer's response was, as I pointed out in an earlier letter, that they didn't inquire into what remediation was required to fix the computer problem. Would it take an hour of assistance from Tech Support? Would somebody from the main branch of the library have to stop up to Cleveland Park to fix the problem? Yes, indeed, if that had been the case, I would say that what I had done was serious, a serious act of misconduct that merited some kind of sanction imposed against me. But to accuse me of doing something that would take all of five seconds to cure, and then ban me from the library for that absolutely trivial act is odd, if not bizarre. The strangeness of it all suggested to me that you and William had a second, hidden, unstated agenda.
You and William are quirky people, buddy. You're librarians. That says it all. I didn't want to push William (or you, Brian). I didn't want to hurt you both. Something terrible was going on inside William (as well as you), William was not capable of talking about it, but it was real, and I was the source of his pain. I did feel bad for him. And I felt bad for you too, Brian.
I wrote about that the other day. I think that at some deep level, you really like me. You really, really like me (with all the ardor of a Flying Nun). You are unable to connect with me socially or professionally. My presence in the library, day after day, is a kind of narcissistic injury or wound for you. It's as if you were a hungry fox, and I a cluster of ripe grapes, just outside your grasp. That reality tormented you. So you had to ban me from the library. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
In retrospect I wonder what role envy and jealousy played in William's reaction to me. A number of pertinent questions arise.
I think we can all agree that I'm a socially attractive person. I think we can agree that my letters are witty, entertaining, interesting and, yes, sometimes even poetic. I suspect that at some level you feel flattered by my attention. And I further suppose it's possible William is envious of the attention I focus on you. William is the odd-man-out of our daily tête-à-tête. He's been left out of the ménage, so to speak. So there's this possible envy and jealousy William feels about my letter writing to you, Brian.
Isn't it possible that you and William have formed a kind of psychological coalition against me, based on your respective, individual grievances against me.
William is envious and jealous of the attention I lavish on you. And you, Brian, are threatened by the taint of homoeroticism in my epistolary relationship with you. You are threatened, too, by my social attractiveness, attractiveness that remains forever out of your grasp. You are threatened by the fact that our relationship can never go anywhere. Perhaps I'm somebody you'd like to be friends with, perhaps close friends, but your occupational duties preclude any friendship. So you and William, both, from your own individual perspectives, feel threatened, hurt, envious ("Mr. Freedman is fiendishly clever"), and jealous.
Then there's the issue of my disability benefits, and the fact that my life is a fantasy camp. William, you know, suffers from serious mental illness, but because medication cures his symptoms he is able to (more than that!)--he is required to work. Because medication works for William, William is compelled to grind out the daily wage gruel. He is unable to claim he is disabled. He can't just take it easy, like moi. I, on the other hand, live my life, as it were, as if I am on an extended vacation. I don't have to work because I can claim a mental disability; moreover, a disability that defies medical remediation. Possible validation of this belief is the fact that I've heard (or eavesdropped on) William saying he'd like to retire. He'd like to retire, and live off retirement benefits. But he can't do that financially. Additional confirmation comes from the fact that William made the odd and highly personal admission, during our conference with the Police, that he's on lithium and Risperdal. He said that in front of the Police officers. I ejaculated at that moment: "That's antipsychotic medication!" William responded forcefully: "You better believe it is!" So there is some kind of peculiar congruence between the fact that William takes anti-psychotic medication that cures him and enables him to work, on the one hand, and the fact that I was not taking my anti-psychotic medication, thus (in William's mind) enabling me not to work. You'll recall that "one of the three accusations" made against me was that I had been prescribed anti-psychotic medication but was not taking it.
All this reminds me of something my father used to say. "Politics is three people." At least three or more people will always underlie any political configuration or coalition.
Bottom line is I have a sense there's that quality of "political coalition" between you and William against me. In politics, as we all know, strange bed-fellows sometimes arise. You take three people: A, B and C. A has his own reasons for resenting C; and B has his own specific reasons for resenting C. Put A and B together, and their specific grievances against C meld. In the end C will get "impeached." At least that's the way it works in Scotland.
But sometimes C, after impeachment starts a new life, writes a best-selling book, and goes on to live neurotically-ever-after.
Check you out later, buddy. As usual, it's been great talking with you, Brian.
P.S. Tell William that Captain Freedman on "The Sea Wolf" sends his regards.

I Feel Jewish, Oh So Jewish

Brian--

Hey, buddy. Wassup? Jus chillin? It's all good, Brian.
Welcome to AllthingsFreedman.com. Or perhaps, in view of my enigmatically stoic and eternally didactic manner I should call it AllthingsFreedman.edu. Or even more, perhaps, in view of my protean nature--the cast of characters I embody--I should say: "Welcome to AllthingsFreedman.org! Yes, Freedman is an Org, a complex multiplicity of ego states and affective nuances.
I'm feeling very Jewish. What, you may ask, does it mean to feel Jewish? Well, I suppose that what it means to feel Jewish differs from person to person. For Elie Wiesel, it means Remembrance. A remembrance of the past, of past experience, of loss, of the loss of family, community, of the entirety of European Jewish civilization. It's as if Wiesel's assigned role in life is to preserve for future generations the memory of the past in word and metaphor.
For Ariel Sharon, a secular Jew for the most part, I suppose being Jewish means being the political leader of a polity of Jews, the Jewish state, the embodiment of the hope of the Jewish people, both past and present. I was deeply moved by, and will never forget ("and will never forget," that's so Jewish), something that the Prime Minister said at the height of Israel's foray into the West Bank--and the siege of Ramallah where Yassir Arafat was hold out--last year, in 2003. The Prime Minister was asked about the legitimate claims of the Palestinians to the West Bank and to the desire of Palestinians worldwide to return to Israel proper. In measured tones of proud severity, Ariel Sharon proclaimed the unalterable and undeniable ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel: "The land of Israel," he said, "has been the home of the Jewish people for three thousand years." It was as if for Sharon nothing more need be said. Whatever the claims of the Palestinians--whether those claims be legitimate or illegitimate--the Prime Minister proclaimed (as Earl Segal might): "We, the Jews, hold title to this land in fee simple."
That one statement changed my view of Sharon as a mere conquering militarist to the view of him as man who sees himself as carrying a moral responsibility for the protection of the claims of the Jews to their historical homeland, the land of their fathers and the home of future generations of Jews. "The hope of the Jewish people" as Harvard comparative literature professor Stephen Greenblatt said at the time.
Golda Meir, another secular Prime Minister, when asked whether she believed in God said: "I believe in the Jewish People, who believe in God."
So what does it mean when I say "I am feeling very Jewish?" For me it is a feeling of the power of reason and of The Word. It is a feeling, or capacity, to suffer or experience an injustice, all the while confident that the means to right that injustice rests with the Power of the Word. Words that function as more than words. "Beyond Words," as the motto of the D.C. Public Library has it. Beyond Words: a phrase that connotes the power of words as Words, but paradoxically not "fighting words," as Justice Holmes would call them. Words as the vehicle for emotion, from the most sublime to the most disturbingly vengeful. But only words, not action--not action, not illegality.
Being Jewish for me means suffering a wrong and seeking to right that wrong by sitting down with paper, pen and ink. Or word processor. Or computer. For me the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the most "religious," the most "Jewish" of the rights of Americans. Ironically I refer not to the Establishment Clause. For me religion is not literally "religion," that is the world of sacrifice and slaughtered rams. For me religion -- the Jewish religion--is the freedom to speak and write, to express one's self in words. A veritable Sea of Words. The freedom to navigate through the Sea of Words, which are the rational manifestation of the wild currents of variegated emotional states -- from the most exultant to the most despairing.
Words, words, words, words. Words as a vehicle of expression, of the embodiment of experience, of morality, of identity. Words as a connection between my world of personal experience, on the one hand, and to the world at large, on the other. Words as a vessel of communication, words as the conduit of the desire to "Let the World see what I have seen."
Do I recognize that a direct threat of physical harm through words is a forbidden act in our society? Yes! Do I respect the distinction between a proscribed "threat of harm" and, alternatively, the permissible act of freedom of expression? Yes! But I also recognize, as any thinking person must, that the subjective perception of threat by the recipient of a communication is not necessarily a measure of the forbidden nature of the ideas of the communicator. The fact that the recipient of a communication feels subjectively threatened is not a measure or indicator that the communicator has engaged in an unlawful act.
So what does it mean when I say I'm feeling very Jewish? For me "feeling very Jewish," as the secular Jew (or half-Jew) that I am, means being true to the best in the Jewish tradition. For me the best in Jewish tradition takes the form of recognizing that the conscious acceptable enemy, be it personal, social or societal is to be battled in a war waged largely in words within the controllable arena of social conscience within a writing: whether that writing be a letter, a play, a speech, a work of art or any collection of words--or "Words."
Well, so much for my Jewish feelings.
And how are you feeling, my friend? You who claim to be so threatened by my words!
How can one explain why someone would subjectively feel threatened by an expression that any reasonable person would not perceive as threatening?
How can one explain your bizarre act of summoning the police and having me banned from the library for a six-month period simply because I wrote a letter that communicated nothing more than the fact that I was depressed, that I wanted to avenge (through lawful means) the wrongs done to me, and that I was not following my physician's medical prescription that I take medication that did not help me in any way?
Perhaps, the reason is that you have positive feelings for me--perhaps you like me a little "too much," shall we say. Perhaps your reaction was a "paranoid one," in the technical sense of the word.
Is it possible the I am an important person to you emotionally, and that you assigned me an unacceptable quantum of malign power precisely because of your irrational investment in me?
Yes, I like you, Brian. Yes, perhaps I like you a little too much. But isn't it possible that behind your face of rationality lurks the ghost of Schreber?
You will recall from my previous letters that Daniel Gottlob Schreber was the psychotically-paranoid judge (is there any other kind!) whose bizarre memoirs, "The Memoirs of a Neuropath," intrigued Freud. Freud wrote an analysis of Schreber's memoirs, an analysis that was a tour de force of insights into the paranoid mental state. Freud's insights, which center on the homosexual import of paranoid fantasies, have informed all subsequent psychoanalytical writings on the subject of paranoia.
Freud's biographer writes: "For decades Freud had been persuaded that the craziest ideas of the most regressed psychotic are so many messages, rational in their own twisted way. In accord with this conviction, Freud chose to translate Schreber's confidences rather than to dismiss them. He read his world system as a coherent set of transfigurations designed to make the unbearable bearable: Schreber had invested his enemies, whether [his treating physician] Dr. Flechsig or God, with such malign power because they had been so important to him. In short, Schreber had come to hate them so deeply because he had earlier loved them so much; paranoia was, for Freud, the mental ailment parading with unsurpassed vividness the psychological defenses of reversal and, even more, of projection. The 'core conflict in the paranoia of a man' is, as Freud put it in his case history, a 'homosexual wish-fantasy of loving a man.' The paranoiac turns the declaration "I love him" into its opposite, "I hate him"; this is the reversal. He then goes on to say, "I hate him because he persecutes me"; that is the projection." Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time at 281 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988).
For Freud, to call a man "paranoid" was to call him a homosexual -- or at least a sublimated one.
You see, Brian, the difference between you and me is that I have insight into my feelings. I know what my feelings about you mean, and I accept that meaning. Call me grandiose, but I'm a superior person at least in my ability to have insight into my variegated "dot org" mental states. For those with poorer insight and/or a poorer understanding of their intrapsychic motivations, the real world can arouse disturbing feelings whose rationality seems ultraclear, but which are no less irrational.
Brian, in conclusion, maybe the reason you felt threatened by my letter to you, the letter of April 16, 2004, is that you like me, you really, really like me--as The Flying Nun would say.
Check you out later, buddy.
P.S. If you're ever at a party at somebody's house, Brian, never yell "library" in a crowded foyer -- it could cause a fatal stampede to the stacks.

A Tree Falling in a Deserted Woods

Brian--

Hey, buddy. What's up at the workplace?
You remember the old expression, "If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody's there to hear it crash, does the tree make a sound?" I suppose this letter--and all subsequent letters I write to you--follow that principle. If I write a letter to you and just save it on my own e-mail site, will that letter make its way to you? In my paranoid way of thinking, I suspect somehow and in some way the letter will ultimately find its way to your hands.
It's funny how I have transformed you into the invisible, absolutely incorporeal Jewish God. I can't see you, I can imagine no representation of you in the present, and I cannot communicate to you directly. I must rely on faith, my faith in the invisible and incorporeal in my communications with you. I wonder what that means. Perhaps that I'm not taking my medication. No, no, Brian. I am taking my medication. Ever since my "arrest."
That was some little production you arranged for me last Wednesday April 21. There I was in the library, preparing my latest letter to you, when in walked two police officers. Next thing I knew I was doing a little "Martha Stewart Living," answering questions, defending myself with dialectical authority against disturbing accusations and hoping, all the while, to evade a slimy prison shower. As I learned in Mr. Cades' ninth-grade English class there are certain sentences and prepositions that you just want to avoid.
Brian, I'm in a dark place. Yes, it's early morning, and I'm writing this letter by a dim light. I am in a dark place indeed. And I'm full of anger about my pain and suffering, pain and suffering caused, lo, these many years, by your friends and mine at the law firm run by the Waltz King--the world of perpetual three-four time. Someone will pay for my pain and suffering. Literally--not metaphorically. Earl L. Segal, Esq. and Malcolm Lassman, Esq. will pay for my pain and suffering--pay in an exemplary way, of course.
That was the whole problem, really, Brian. It was your failure to distinguish the real from the metaphorical. When I say I am in a dark place, I mean that (perhaps) literally, while you took it metaphorically (as relating only to my mental state).
What I meant as literal and concrete -- "Someone will pay for my pain and suffering," that is, pay out some cash from his richly-lined custom suit -- you took as a metaphor (someone will "pay" with physical harm.) For a lawyer, references to pain mean "pain and suffering," that is, punitive or exemplary damages. That's purely legal.
I think we have a basic failure to communicate. My literal is your metaphorical and my metaphorical is your literal. You have a literal, corporeal God; whereas my Divinity, like that of Glenn Fine and his ilk, is abstract: a metaphor. Curious, isn't it. What you consider to be real and corporeal -- namely, your physical being, I have now transformed into an abstraction -- a metaphor. You are now a purely abstract presence for me -- a chimera, a phantom, a ghost -- perhaps like Hamlet's father. Or the Jewish God.
And by the way Brian, I'm back on my anti-psychotic medication. Do you see the change? Do I appear more normal, more lucid, more coherent? Fat chance. The medication does nothing for me. It's a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy! I think the pharmacy is giving me dummy pills. Sugar pills. I can't believe that I'm on anti-psychotic medication, can you? I have to say, I'm a little envious of William. You know, he suffers from bi-polar disorder. Yet the medication he takes works for him. He said he takes lithium and Risperdal (an anti psychotic medication). But as old FDR once said: "To some psychotics much medication is given with felicitous returns, of other psychotics much is expected in terms of therapeutic response. You, Freedman, have a rendezvous at St. Elizabeths Hospital." Perhaps I'll end up there one of these days. Only William Nussbaum knows for sure.
I can't believe the Metropolitan Police bought that line William Dacosta fed them. "Brian said he read only one letter--the letter in question, the letter dated Friday April 16, 2004." Now really!
I've been writing letters to you, Brian, since last April--April 2003. What you expect the Police to accept is that I've been writing letters to you for over a year, I've been changing the computer icons for over a year, but you only noticed this activity of mine on one occasion--and the one and only letter you read happened to be one of the few letters that, arguably, had any law enforcement interest. That's like the guy who goes to the racetrack on one occasion in his whole life, bets on a horse with a poor track record--and the horse wins and wins big! Right. How often does that happen?
And I also liked the fact that the letter I wrote AFTER the letter in question (dated April 16, 2004) discussed at length my views on violence. The letter dated Tuesday April 20, 2004--the day before the police intervention--clearly stated that I abhor violence as a form of dispute resolution and that people who resort to violence (people like the Columbine shooters in 1999) are morons. I said it's so much more fun to screw people legally with words than to physically harm a person.
We're supposed to believe that even after you were placed on notice that I had written (and saved on the computer hard-drive) a "disturbing" letter to you, that you had no curiosity at all about whether I wrote any letters subsequent to the disturbing letter. Wow! And then William provides the police with evidence that I'm an "icon manipulator." I have to laugh at that. That is an absolute triviality. And it could have been corrected with a warning. "Icon manipulation" is not grounds to bar a person from a library. It's the functional equivalent of a patron folding over a page in a book, leaving a fold mark on a page. Would you ban a patron from the library for folding over a page in a book? Sure, if he keeps doing it after a warning, that's cause for concern -- but really! A single computer click will return a computer icon to its proper form. A single computer click. Perhaps the police thought that what I had done (manipulating the computer icons) had caused a problem that would take hours to correct. In fact, it takes about two seconds to correct the problem (if you can call it a problem).
Let's look at the chronology here. Take a look at the following facts. When you consider the whole picture, Brian, you have to admit the whole thing smells -- and smells really rotten.
April 2003 to April 2004: I engage in a practice of manipulating computer icons and saving to the computer hard-drive letters that I have written to you, Brian. I engage in this activity for a one year period. You never noticed that I was engaged in that activity (so you would have us believe). But wait! There's more.
Friday April 16, 2004 -- I write and save on the computer hard-drive a letter that says that I'm in a dark place emotionally, that "people will pay for my pain and suffering," and that I was prescribed anti-psychotic medication but I was not taking it. This is the letter that you printed out--the letter William Dacosta provided to the Metropolitan Police on April 21, 2004. You, Brian, claim that's the only letter you had ever read. But wait. More.
Saturday April 17, 2004 -- I visit the library. We had a friendly chat. Computer Number 2 had been having problems with the mouse. I had brought in a replacement mouse that I paid for out of my own pocket at Radio Shack and was willing to donate to the library. I hand over the mouse to you. You thank me. You proceed to take the mouse over to Operations Director Charles Davis at the circulation desk. Charles tells you that the Radio Shack computer mouse I offered "is not compatible with" the library's computer system (which is Microsoft). You return to speak with me, to tell me that you cannot accept the mouse. You specifically used the phrase "not compatible with," information that had to have come from Charles Davis who is the resident computer expert. On this day, Saturday April 17, 2004, I write and save to the computer hard-drive another one of my letters to you. I manipulate several computer icons.
Monday April 19, 2004 -- The library is closed as usual on Mondays.
Tuesday April 20, 2004 -- I visit the library. I see you at the library, but we do not speak. I write and save to the computer hard drive a letter addressed to you, Brian. I manipulate several of the computer icons. The content of the letter dated April 20, 2004 is very important. I talk about my anger and feelings of rage. But significantly I state that I abhor violence and that I think people who commit violent acts in revenge are morons. I specifically referred to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two Columbine shooters. I called the two individuals morons.
Wednesday April 21, 2004 -- William Dacosta calls the police after I enter the library. The Police interview me in connection with the letter to Brian dated Friday April 16, 2004. The Police officers in question are from the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia: Officer J.E. Williams, Badge 1226, 2nd District (202 282 0070) and Officer Williams' partner.
William Dacosta denies that Brian has any knowledge of any other letters I have written, and denies knowing that I (for approximately one year) engaged in the act of tampering with the computer icons. The fact that a person could tamper with the computer icons for a year, while the activity goes unnoticed by the librarians, is persuasive (if not overwhelming) circumstantial evidence that icon tampering is absolutely trivial.
William Dacosta does not allege that I was engaged in a practice of harassing Brian (though such a case could have been made) or that I had been engaged in acts that constituted the crime of stalking Brian (such a case could have been made). The Police decide to enforce Brian's request that I stay away from the library for a six-month period--that is, until October 21, 2004. The police conclude that the letter dated April 16, 2004 does not constitute an unlawful threat to commit an act of violence. The Police officers' decision to enforce the 6-month ban on my visits to the Cleveland Park Branch is based only on my act of tampering with the computer icons. The police do not inquire of William Dacosta precisely what is involved to restore the computer icons, or question Brian's and William's failure to first issue a spoken warning to me about my conduct.
I stated in the letter dated April 20, 2004 that I prefer to vent my anger and rage with words, by writing or talking about my angry feelings. I specifically stated that I like to seek revenge by the use of words.
You didn't provide a copy of this letter, buddy, to William Dacosta to give to the police. The letter is exculpatory. I wrote the letter to clarify my views about anger and a desire for revenge--the desire to make people pay for my suffering through legal means. The letter was written a day before the Police spoke with me and William.
What you, Brian, would have the police believe is that a letter I wrote on Friday April 16, 2004 was a cause of serious concern regarding my mental health and stability--that, in effect, you were placed on notice that I had written a disturbing letter: BUT THAT you didn't bother to check to see whether I had written any subsequent letters. In fact, I wrote two additional letters after April 16, 2004. Namely, a brief letter to you on Saturday April 17, 2004 as well as the very important exculpatory letter I wrote to you dated Tuesday April 20, 2004.
I can't believe you had William feed this line to the police; your position is not credible! I have the letters I wrote to you, Brian. I'm sure the computer operators at the main library downtown (The Martin Luther King Memorial Library) can verify everything I claim about the sequence of the letters I wrote to you.
Brian-- You and William could end up being in very big trouble (with the law). Not only does the circumstantial evidence tend to show quite strongly that you lied to the police about my letter writing, there's something even more sinister going on here. There must be something bigger going on that you're trying to conceal. What is it? Why did you pick out one letter that I wrote that suggested that I was mentally unstable and potentially violent, but omit to tell the police about the exculpatory letter written a few days later?
How could you not know that I had been tampering with the computer icons for a one-year period? How could you not know that I was writing letters to you for a one-year period. And, why did you wait until April 21, 2004 to complain to the Police?
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE BRIAN, AND WHAT IS IT THAT HAS YOU SO WORRIED THAT YOU WOULD CALL THE POLICE ON ME RATHER THAN GIVE ME A SPOKEN WARNING ABOUT TAMPERING WITH THE COMPUTER ICONS?
Anyway, buddy, I'm putting this letter and all subsequent letters I write to you on my confidential website on Netscape.
Let the world see what I have seen!
By the way, Brian-- I think your behavior to me is discriminatory. I notice that for years now you permit one of the patrons, John Conner (is that his name?) to sleep at a table in the back of the library. Would you have allowed that to continue if it was I who slept all day in the library. Not only that--sometimes the guy snores. Why on Earth do you allow John Conner to sleep all day in the library?
Check you out later, buddy. Give my regards to Earl and Malcolm.