fromthemouthofmoi

  I recently found this academic paper while going through things in my home. It is a book review of Dorothy West's novel, The Wedding. It was written sometime between 1994-97 when I was working with the Dean of Empire State College,  James H. Case , who served as my mentor. I do not know how to put footnotes in Blogger so I will be using asterisks with an associated number which can be found at the end of the piece.  Two days ago I closed Dorothy West's book, The Wedding, and fell straight to sleep. I had a dream. I was out shopping but had an appointment with E's therapist later in the day. I was supposed to meet E there.  I called twice to say I would be late and finally arrived when the session was over. When I arrive, E and the therapist are friendly. The therapist tells us of a party we might be interested in going to later that very evening. E and I agree to go. We arrived at the party and I immediately split to go sit with the gay men and begin to yuck it up...

I have often dreamt that I was Chinese. I have had many dreams in which I am speaking Chinese or that I work in an opium den at the turn of the century in New York City's Chinatown. The following is a full dream I had back in the early 1980's. I woke up and immediately and wrote the following down. The title of this piece is what I gave to the dream at the time. I didn't know that I was Chinese until I came outside and looked into the eyes of a God. I didn't know that the young woman I loved was my daughter until my husband, a man I never knew, strapped her to his lap and went before a firing squad to die. I didn't know anything consciously. It began in the evening at a strange party. Music, food, people mingling and reenacting all the usual party maneuvers. The sound system was outside the windows, which were thirty stories up, suspended by heavy cables, being whipped about by high winds. Young hippies were crawling around on the apparatus trying to outdo the last ...

 This post was inspired by my dear friend Sue, a psychoanalyst on the west coast of the US. It was a conversation we recently had where she asked me how I control or deal with being bipolar. She said that my experience was important and that I should write about it. So here we go. I’ve been in therapy on and off for 50 years. Periodically I return to therapy when I need to tease something out that is going on with me where I want a second voice. In another conversation with Sue I asked her if someone could be given a diagnosis at one time and with therapy work through and out of that diagnosis into either another diagnosis or to more awareness, self reflection and control over the things that led you to therapy in the first place. She responded with an emphatic: Yes. Think of it this way: A diagnosis helps to focus your awareness to go further towards your healing and self awareness; gathering self respect along the way. Your awareness expands within the diagnosis and with that exp...

When I see my hands with nails long and feminized  I imagine them weaving their way  through the hairs on a man’s chest delighting in the contrast  Me Jane, You Tarzan Then my nails snag and get filed to a much more practical length  Enough with this daydreaming! There is work to be done.