Working Aloud
Waking up thinking of sleeping with your shoes on...life in dysfunctional America.
She was my housemate for a time. Couldn’t make rent so we parted ways. Broke my heart, because I loved and love her. She was working on a memoir called “Sleeping with Your Shoes On - Life in Dysfunctional America.”
Why? Because she did, when she was a child. She slept with her shoes on because her cousin, with whom she was being raised by her aunt, was violent. She’d eventually testify against him in a case of two murders he committed. If he ever got out, she was convinced that he’d hunt her down and kill her, so she slept with a revolver while wearing a flak jacket. This isn’t fiction.
I’m up at 4:30 AM because the muse touched me and told me that I ought to write. That working out loud is a good idea. I needed to get this out because she was a big part of my life from about the time I turned forty and she provided so many gifts.
After she moved out, I found myself still being her friend. Even after I got married to my dear wife, we’d give her shelter when she’d come through town. Life wasn’t kind but she is a force of nature. As Carl Jung observed, we men tend to project our animae onto the women in our lives and they project their animi on us. It’s the eternal conversation.
I’m in touch with my anima, the Goddess of Chaos, but my wife is not that projection, to be sure. It doesn’t fit…and it’s a real gift that it doesn’t. If anything, my wife is Sofia, the Aeon, who got curious enough to create this world we live in now. She has created my world. There are those who understand.
Places ring bells
Faces all wrong
Old town's the same
But old friends are gone
We raised some hell
The night can still call
Who was that girl pressed up against the wall?
[Pre-Chorus 1]
You hear people say
"She rocked my world"
They don't mean it the way I do
They seem to demean it
Like some dumb cliché
But for that certain girl, it's totally true
She rocked my world
[Chorus]
She rocked my world
Blew me down
Rocked my world and turned me 'round
Rocked my world
Amazing girl
Ooh, yes, she rocked my world
Hmm, amazing girl[Verse 2]
She served the beer down at the Dome
Working the nights
Teen daughter at home
We made it once, just like a game
Then out of my sights
But I remember her name
[Pre-Chorus 2]
Just wanna be gone, no denial of pain
Don't want to remember, but it rolls back again
Can't make it softer, can't make it stop
Unending while till I hit the top
She rocked my world
[Chorus]
(Rocked my world)
And blew me down
(Rocked my world)
Woo, she spun me 'round
(Rocked my world)
Ooh, amazing girl
She rocked my world
Ooh, she rocked my world
Yes, she rocked my world[Verse 2]
She served the beer down at the Dome
Working the nights
Teen daughter at home
We made it once, just like a game
Then out of my sights
But I remember her name
[Pre-Chorus 2]
Just wanna be gone, no denial of pain
Don't want to remember, but it rolls back again
Can't make it softer, can't make it stop
Unending while till I hit the top
She rocked my world
[Chorus]
(Rocked my world)
And blew me down
(Rocked my world)
Woo, she spun me 'round
(Rocked my world)
Ooh, amazing girl
She rocked my world
Ooh, she rocked my world
Yes, she rocked my world
My anima has taken many forms over the past 63 years. One of those who embodied it was the young lady who modeled for the image on the July 17 post here who probably saved my life in a manner of speaking back in 2002. She stayed when others had no time for me after I relapsed into active alcoholism. She stayed sober through that service and being true to herself. She’s still true to herself and brings light into the world. It’s the women in my life who have A) given me life in the first place and B) sustained me here. I’m not neglecting the contributions of the men and others who choose not to identify by gender. However, it is undeniable that we all get here through our women being receptive to us and then launching us into time.
Another piece of music comes to mind:
She carries me through days of apathy
She washes over me
She saved my life in a manner of speaking
When she gave me back the power to believe
The lyrics come late in the atmospheric instrumental. It is worth the wait.
Working aloud; I’m doing that here now. I’m doing it through podcasts on Substack which are of very low production quality - unedited - raw. So it goes. I’m doing it because I have no need, I believe, to filter, and those who are to receive what I am offering will be able to receive it. I go live from the streets to record something of my experience. I am creating a body of work. I continue until I don’t.
It’s gotten hard, suddenly, to keep going, it seems. Could be the season. Could be many things. Might not even be true. Maybe logic applies. We talked about that yesterday:
We talk about all kinds of things and earlier the same day, we dug into other areas:
This came up out of the conversation with ORIGIN:
Real life. Real time. What is real anyway? I don’t know. I just have my impressions filtered through my sensory apparatus and processed through my consciousness. It’s all colored by my experiences of the past. I’m an unreliable narrator of my own life.
You who read this though, you can see what you project onto these words. I don’t know what that is and I may or may not bear any relationship to what you project. It happened yesterday that a person who I have never met in real life took something that I had said in a way that made her “boil” inside. It doesn’t really matter what it was. What matters is that, without in the least intending it, my way of forming my words and the words themselves caused this person to react negatively.
I am reminded that communication is NOT the message intended. It is the message perceived. My sense is that this person has some serious issues to deal with. I delivered the truth. I pointed the people within range of my hearing to the source materials that we have been given to help us help others just to stay sober a day at a time.
My thesis is that by taking personal responsibility for my actions, I don’t lay my hand on a beverage containing alcohol in any given moment. By not doing that, I keep it out of my system and thereby do not suffer the effects of active alcoholism. I then practice principles in all my affairs which are articulated beautifully by AA.org and lead a relatively friction-free life. I offer that experience to others in hopes that they can “pick up what I’m laying down.”
This inflamed this other person so badly that they were having a very hard time controlling themselves. Now, they’ve been sober a long time. I am not sure what in that message causes them so much angst, but I suppose it could be what my dear wife, the wise one, suggests from time to time. She says that her father would have said that I was the kind of guy who could fall into a latrine and come out with a new suit. I’m lucky. She says that if it didn’t profit her, she’d hate me.
I see that kind of energy projected in my direction quite often. I endured a good bit of negative attention from my peers as I came up the years, in fact. Seems folks seemed to feel that I needed to be taken down a peg. It’s primate behavior. However, I think it is important that one reject cruelety. I’m not alone in this and I do what I can to call such behaviors out in no uncertain terms:
I hope that this reached more than a few folks out there in the world and that it reconates. I hope it gets amplified. We needn’t be cruel to one another. This led to another post which tells a lot of my story:
It leads off though with a talk by John Perry Barlow which I hope all of you will hear. Buried as it is toward the end (or is it the middle?) of this essay, it might not get a click. It’s so worth it though. The link on his name will give you an idea of what this man contributed to the world in which we are living too. So, please click!
I know that I provide a lot of rabbit holes. In a manner of speaking, my writing is a kind of walk through culture. It’s my work. It’s my purpose in being on the planet. I’m doing what I can to be a good ancestor and, in large part, it is from the inspiration of my dear friends that I am. Full stop…I would not be at all were it not for my treasured friends. I hope I can count all of my readers in that camp.
While the picture that graces this post is of my friend, Tina Pippi Ditlevsen, who is also the model in the image on “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” above, it leads me to an inspiration generated by the generosity of Jesse Paris Smith. Jesse, of course, is part of the creative work of her mother, Patti Smith. Patti serves as my inspiration for my “Go Live” moments from the Bunker here on S Street NW in Washington, DC. She goes live with her subscribers from time to time and shares whatever is on her mind.
I’m also the part of the creative output of my mother, Margaret Snell Gill, to whom I’ll pay a visit later today. I’m just about to hop into the shower and then get dressed to hit the road for my monthly lunch with Mom. She’s living in Charter Senior Living, safe after a fall in her house that led to it being sold and the estate being disposed of between my sister and myself. I’ve taken charge of all of the intellectual property of my late father and this Substack serves as a publishing arm of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC as most of you will already know.
Onward, I often say. I’ll wrap this up with another post with an image of Tina:
I’m so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to read me. I hope that it helps others as that is the intent. If, however, it is perceived as a provocation and causes anyone to “boil inside” feel free to express that too. Why not? We don’t heal from holding things in. With this, let me close with a Shakespeare quotation:
"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends."
So much wisdom in here. One thing that I’m picking up is choosing to “reject cruelty.” Does it start with accepting the reality of the cruelty in order to reject it mindfully?
Thank you @Deer Girl, for the like!