Death in a Cab, heard in a hospital

I brew coffee, serve coffee, make and serve espressos and subsequent espresso-bean-drinks at a local hospital to pay the bills. While working, a good amount of caffeine is ingested as well: free and legal drugs are kin to me. I’m an addict, plain and simple.

For the most part, I enjoy the regular customers that come through the line each day. There are, of course, those two hand-full of folks who refuse to look at you in the eye when going through the routine “how are you?” “I’ll have…” “Thanks, have a nice day”—one would be inclined to presume they look at the vending machines with more concern than they’ll look at an actual person.

Then there are those extra-ordinary customers; no, people who you can’t help be assume it’s an ingrained custom to live extra-ordinarily. Admittedly, these are my favorite, they truly make my day when our paths cross. An elderly was coming through every day for about a week, at 15 minutes past opening, without fail. She would order a 12oz coffee: no cream, sugar, or Splenda please and thank you. Her beverage mimicked her: small, thin, and natural with little to no additives. Thankfully, she treated me better than a vending machine as she would force a weak smile that barely curled towards her eyes; it looked like it hurt to smile, or maybe she just had too much hurt to hide, so much hurt that it even leaked through her blue eyes and weathered skin.

She never left a tip—not even a nickel.

I inquired: “You have been coming for a little over a week now. Is there any indications that you might be leaving soon?”

“Maybe. The doctors aren’t confident enough this morning but hopefully we’ll get some good news this afternoon.”

“Well, ma’am, I just want you to know that seeing you come in here everyday to be there for your spouse is really inspiring for a youngster like me. It is so incredible to see folks who have been there for each other so many years and are stronger than many youths today.”

“Thanks, dear. I’ve been around 62 years, figured I might as well see it through till he gets on with it and just dies.”

She smirks; her eyes soften and for the first time her smile seems to have an aroma of refreshment. Perhaps she had been coming for conversation the entire time and not just coffee. For a split second, maybe an entire second, guilt creeps up. I ignore it, feeling guilty never does much good anyhow.

“Are you serious?” (I think to myself: Ok, of course this is a rhetorical question, but come on, is that all I have to offer her?—ask about her story). “How did you meet?”

“Blind date. I met him in late January and by the second week in February, we were married. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It’s been good, and I’m hoping our deaths are just as lovely as our lives have been.”

I’m flabbergasted. I try to come up with something but all that comes out of my stupefied mouth is, “wow.”

“You have a nice day dear, maybe I’ll back in a while to get one of those cinnamon rolls.”

Of course she never did come back. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t blame her; the cinnamon rolls we serve would most likely make her stomach expand at least six inches if she happened to take a sip of water while eating one. They look heavenly, and anything that looks that good is most likely hellishly experienced. I am curious if her husband is physically better or not; I am curious what his wife would prefer. I am curious what it would be like to be alive long enough to be married to someone for 62 years, let alone actually be married that long.

What I am not curious about is this: there is a Death Cab song entitled “What Sarah Said.” Towards the end of the bridge in that song, he sings, “love is watching someone die—so who’s going watch you die?” This is a rhetorical question used usefully, unlike my usage. I never understood that line, what he was really hinting at besides some biting remark to a girl he didn’t feel reciprocated love from; not until I met a lady who had loved being married for over half a century and was loving life to the point where she embraced every-thing it brings us: even the death of one we fall for after just two weeks of knowing them.

mythopsychosis: an explanation

I am a student. I make this acknowledgement before attempting to post anything; call it a discrepency, call it honesty. Either way I am attempting not to inform you, but to reflect for myself. The world at large is only as interesting to me as the world within, and I firmly belief that whatever we are to make of the world ultimately derives from a psychological foundation that is revealed in our habits, expressions, imaginations, et cetera.

It seems appropriate that I’ve come to this point: integrating the study of religious texts with some pseudo-scientific field like “psychology”. With the exceptions of James Hillman, David Miller, and other mytho-psychologists, the majority of psychiatrists still believe that theirs is a scientific field. As if “psyche”—that mental instrument used to for scientific discovery—can fall beneath itself. Conventional psychology—developmental, abnormal, child, adult, et cetera—interests me as much as Bill O’Riley’s opinions matter to me.

As for the latter, I take up what my friend told me last week: “Opinions are like buttholes: everyone has one.” My friend stopped short in that, like buttholes, opinions usually wreak of something awful, especially those from Bill O’Riley.

I became interested in religion at a fairly young age, sometime around 16 years old. Well, let me put that this way: I became interested in studying religious texts at that age, whether I was religious or not depends on what one means by “religious”. Studying the Bible—academically and meditatively—has always been a joy for me.

I don’t think I ever truly enjoyed going to church, though. Except for when there was those few instances of the religious experience; I’ve had those at four in the morning while I was only wearing underwear. Church, from what I can recall, always had a taint of the Badlands attached to it.

I don’t study the Bible too much anymore. At least not proficiently. I read the gospels—canonical and non-canonical—daily, but only for meditative purposes. I don’t believe much dogma. I don’t even know really what I believe, other than what I know. This “knowing” is naïve, though I don’t naively know. I know it’s naïve, therefore it’s not naïve for me to choose to know the way I know what I believe. It has been through a mystical lens that I have always read religious texts. Since my spiritual awareness germinated from the dirtiness of Christianity I seem to always think in typical Christian-mystic fashion. It’s completely intuitive; I’m not trying to convince, because I don’t really care if you believe me. I don’t need your belief for my own.

My interest in psychology is a conundrum. My initial exposure came through the writings of Carl Jung, introduced to me by a (now ex-)girlfriend. The affinity of my thought world with depth psychology culminated in Jean-Luc Marion’s book God Without Being. Even to this day it’s difficult for me to pray, because when I go to pray I immediately anthropomorphize the Divine. I do pray; I mean, wait, no, I don’t know what I mean. I feel God…at least, that’s how I phrase it. I don’t really know what it is though. I don’t think I’m supposed to.

Depth-psychology, then, is of interest—great interest—because it is from within that I feel this thing called “god”. What or who this thing or being (or none of the above) is or isn’t (or either) is beyond me; but I know the feelings that I have regarding that stem from within. Hence, I go to the depths of my psyche and from there the world becomes a mystical land that is often more accurately described by the poet than the scientist or positivistic philosopher.

I don’t expect too many to agree with me with that last statement.

Life has brought me here, to this place where I live in a ultra-conservative, Midwest city and fly once a month to the liberal west coast. As if I’m on a teeter-totter of ambivalence; a refusal to be static, a constancy of fluidity. And, let me just put it out here: I don’t find it as mere coincidence that the last of my friends to remain in academia live on the east coast, studying at a seminary (a liberal one at that, but still a seminary). It’s as if my flying back and forth and not living in California is more of an ambivalence of (lacking) confidence for where I truly am in Life and where those who have encouraged me in my academic and spiritual journey are. I’ve been through a marital divorce; that wasn’t nearly as difficult as divorcing myself from those who have made love with me in our spirits.

But deep inside, in that part of me called “the pits of your stomach” (“Even if I descend to hell, O Lord, there I find you”), I know I can’t distinguish my experience of God and an ontological being of God. I can’t decide if I make up God or if God makes up me. And I don’t really care to make such superficial, if not narcissistic, demarcations, because the last time I checked, life didn’t consist of too many strict categorical separations.

So I enter a mythology and depth-psychology program, because that programmed way of thinking has been how I’ve seen the world since I was old enough to start thinking for my self. Only, my self is more thought for, through the Divine which works through me, than it thinks for itself. It’s always been that way, I’ve just been a bit too arrogant at times to admit to this privilege. This thing called “being alive”…whatever that means.