All day, all week

Please read my friend Kelly's blog post about when we went to Zucotti Park last week to see some Occupy Wall Street. Kelly, the straight bomb.

Having been last week, my contribution since has largely been talking to disapprovers while out and about, correcting their perception, media-backed, that the kids, (and Kelly, I too cannot help calling them kids.  It's something about idealism. Well I'm probably about to say it...) smell and are dirty and spoiled.  I try to appeal to the fact that I and whomever I'm speaking to live in New York so we know from horrible smells, and my olfactory was not in the least offended down there - they should really go see and smell for themselves.  I also tend to mention how much I feel for the "kids".  As with every generation, the media has consistently indulged a reduction of theirs to "they're apathetic, brainwashed by their computers, and now, if they're doing this spoiled".  But kids are supposed to be idealistic! I want to thank them. That's how I feel.  Do we want a whole country of people who, what? buckle down, buckle-down-and-you-should-too.  How ridiculous.  By how ridiculous I mean how unrealistic about humanity.

Today I have my third consultation for psychoanalysis - I guess we'll decide the schedule (at least four times a week!) and payment today.  I feel like I've had one realization already.

Let me tell you why I love New York this year, today.   NYU's free Health Clinic.  Many thoughts, share them in a sec.

Some details on my conversation with that guy Kelly talked about in her post.  He is what really worries me.  The movement itself should encounter division and problems myriad any minute now as movements must.  Their "consensus" thing is bound to, must, mutate, frighten, be frightening, etc.  But that is fine - that is natural - that is the discussion- that is the experiment.  But the gunman, the Charles Manson, the psycho who ruins everything and discredits by ruining. That's a thing.  This guy's delicate psyche gave me a real fright.

Kelly kicked off how he approached - wanting me to agree that the people near us playing some kind of game were "ridiculous".  Let me see if I can properly write our dialogue - which I'm usually so good at, but think I'll have difficulty with here because my heart was racing while I spoke to him.  It's funny because I'd been emailing with my brother and sister about OWS and Revolution before Kelly and I went down there and I had left off with them that I wanted to write them about the personal and the political. How a "movement" suddenly throws into view for you how much they do meet.  Like psychoanalysis, how it may bring a question of "who am I? How did I become me? Why do I have this ideal and not another? What do I want?"  I didn't write that email I had percolating.  But this conversation brought that thought "The political is personal. The personal is political" banging into my head- like "not only personal, the political can be psychological".  It was something about this man's psychology that made me feel in danger.

It's also hard to remember the conversation because the mode was one of cutting me off and then smugness.  It wasn't terribly sensible and I was in a decidedly defensive position - so it's hard to remember as a whole.

I suppose he was asking me why it was happening.  I think that's it.  And that was a hard one to answer cold off the top.  As he told me I couldn't answer him I managed to answer something about "the social contract."  Honestly, I was not beautifully articulate.  I think I said "That's a thing right.  There's a social contract."

"Well what's that?"

Me: Okay, let's see, well quite a few things.  Let me try an example.  Take social security.  It comes out of your paycheck your whole life.  That's a contract - that you're paying in so when you're older it'll be paid into for you.  If I live to be 65, it's worrying to think it won't be there for me.

An older woman, pretty older lady with painted nails and a warm sweater and lots of piled red hair, overheard and politely jumped in.  Apparently Social Security was exactly one of the issues that had her there.  She explained that she was older- she began to try to explain whatever her situation was with Social Security. But the man just interrupted her over and over to say "Are you finished yet?  Are you finished talking?  I'm not listening anymore- are you going to answer my question?"  This guy was so alarming I tell you. We asked him again to clarify his question. She began speaking again. He started in with "not answering my question" again.  She saw someone she knew who she had to talk to for some reason.  She seemed to be an occupier and when you see what's going on there, it is pretty obvious that one would actually need to talk to one's friends pretty often to find out - particularly this day - if you might need to move your stuff,  what the next step was to continue peaceful occupation etc.  It's a hive, you know.  So she, all politeness, excused herself to talk to her friend she had seen.  I mean, I saw her see this person and realize she needed to talk to her/him.  The man said, "She couldn't answer me. That's why she left."  And I said "No- I think she saw her friend.  Although the way you talk doesn't make people want to stay for more conversation."

This is what I'm talking about regarding psychological problems though.  What frightens me about this  person is the inability to see motivations other than that people are stupid and have no point, "can't answer my question".  I guess all I'm saying is that Kelly and I talked to a real sociopath.

The conversation we continued to have following this was wholly ridiculous so my enthusiasm to transcribe it is fading, was never very strong.  I don't have much joy in telling you how dumb this guy's questions which I kept on "not answering" were.  He made me agree that 20% of 1,000,000 is 200,000. (vis a vis the social contract.)  So, he questioned, if a person is making a million dollars and taxed at 20% and is putting in therefore 200 grand, should someone making 50,000 put in less?

I mean, no one who reads this blog is so stupid they don't know how stupid a question this is.  Me: "Well yeah, I'm fine with that.  I mean let's talk about 50,000.  Can they pay 18%?  I mean what's left over afterwards?  Capitalism isn't just taxes right?  Like, people have to be able to buy stuff?  If you tax 18% of 50,000 and leave the rest for the person to live on, can they still buy stuff after paying for wherever they live and eating regular meals, maybe going to the doctor?  You definitely want them to be able to buy some stuff."

Oh on and on we went, and on and on he scared me.  We talked about how a bad diagnosis could bankrupt you forever if you don't have insurance. Him: That's YOUR problem.  Me: Yes, yes it would be. (pause) Oh and yours.  It's actually also yours...

Obviously trying to talk about socialism was not productive. ;)

And it was when I said that what was happening seemed revolutionary to me that he was most scoffing and angry.  I asked if I could explain what I meant by that.  I tried to say something about how what it seemed people were asking was an actual re-examination of global capitalism as a system.  He said "You're delusional".  I said the conversation had to stop then.  Told him that's very disrespectful to me.  He agreed and apologized (my heart raced - frightening.)  I tried to remind him we had agreed on one thing.  He believed the banks should have been allowed to fail.  He believes recessions are a natural part of capitalism and capitalism should have been allowed to work to let the banks rebuild.

Anyay, this man is useless as a tool to understand anything about what is happening with Occupy Wall Street and what the most interesting parts of conversation are there.  I do keep thinking of him in relation to my revelation that the psyche, my own psyche, is interesting - incorporates trauma, incorporates other psyches battling I can't say what...

He's more to me an exemplar of how we live in ourselves with a past and with problems and with defenses and with reactions and with old wounds and with old joys and we can bury them or we can use them or we can do battle with them or or or.

More on the free clinic soon and how I am working unemployment my friends, working it. And how without me saying something, a person in his second month of medical school might have would up seeing my vagina, and my cervix. HILARIOUS.  My whole day at the clinic was a joy and worth telling you about, but my favorite part was telling the third year med student who was about to get her big chance to "swab 360" in my "OS",  "Thank you so much.  Cool.  But Sean can't be in here for that."

XOXO love
A