If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf (Nikita Khrushchev)

Wie geht's?

Lately, we've been binge watching Alone - season 10, 11 and now 12. Samantha and Andrew got us started on this series and it's retained its appeal.

For the uninitiated: Alone is an American survival competition. It follows the self-documented daily struggles of 10 individuals as they try to survive alone in the wilderness for as long as possible using a limited amount of survival equipment. With the exception of medical check-ins, the participants are isolated from each other and all other humans. They may withdraw from the competition ("tap out") at any time, or be removed due to failing a medical check-in. The contestant who remains the longest wins a monetary prize.

The early episodes of each season are all about settling into who's who, and predicting who will tap out first. Once the ten has been reduced to about five, the show develops a different kind of intensity.

I hadn't realised that so far there were only two episodes of season 12 to view on TV One on demand, so we'll need to wait a while for it to stockpile more episodes before returning to this one.

In the meantime, we figured we would return to Dance Moms for season two. Oh my! This programme is so hilarious and frightening at the same time: Episode 1 and one of the moms calls Abby a whore!! Twice!! Yikes. 

These women are more vicious than any of the predators the contestants experience on Alone!

Must watch TV? Yessireebob!

Love and peace - Wozza

Breathe, breathe in the air; don't be afraid to care. Leave but don't leave me (Pink Floyd)

Photo by blocks on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Recently, Jacky and I were talking about where my love for records came from, and I had to go back to my parents' influence to explain it.

While watching Alone, we were both struck by how much the participants discussed the influence of their parents - notably fathers.

The success with which human beings grow, mature and enhance their power as psychological agents depends on their ability to properly internalize the personality traits they've inherited, on their ability to properly negotiate between being active and passive, self-assertive and receptive, independent and dependent, in relation to their parents and other role-models (Star Wars and Philosophy Strikes Back).

Interestingly, while Jacky also had music and records featuring heavily in her childhood, the record collecting bug never bit. While for me - gazing at magical record covers in my parents' collection (along with books on their bookshelves*) lit a burning fire in me to collect records and read books.  

*An aside: some of the books I remember still from gazing at my parents' collection beside the fireplace at 18 Korma Ave.: the Doctor in The House series by Richard Gordon; Alistair McLean novels; Nevile Shute; Hammond Innes. I can still see the spines.

Love and peace - Wozza

The temples are the links to lead us through our past (Mike Pinder)

Photo by John Moeses Bauan
on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Robert Bly's summary of the Wild Man's qualities in Iron John rang a bell with me.

The Wild Man's qualities, among them love of spontaneity, association with wilderness, honoring of grief, and respect for riskiness, frightens many people. Some men, as soon as they receive the first impulses to riskiness and recognize its link with what we've called the Wild Man, become frightened, stop all wildness, and recommend timidity and collective behavior to others. Some of these men become high school principals, some sociologists, some businessmen, Protestant ministers, bureaucrats, therapists; some become poets and artists.

Risk involves the possibility of failure but failure is good. The Wild Man path involves 'intensity, awareness of the wound, alertness to impulse, the possibility of a fall'.

It's good for former high school principals to keep that in mind.

Love and peace - Wozza

Love and marriage, love and marriage: go together like a horse and carriage (Frank Sinatra)

Wie geht's?

Robert Bly on marriage:

In marriage, there can be boundaries, and valid
points of view on each side of the boundary. They don't have to merge into one view.

This seems a no-brainer to me. Although couples merge in many ways, each person in a marriage is distinct. When I think about my parents' marriage, they merge as 'Dulcie and Graham'. 

However, they were two distinct people with clear differences in background, personality, interests, and characteristics. By the same token, they are forever united in my brain as one unit with the same core values and the same approach to parenting.

I tend to see my own marriage in the same way. We merge as 'Warren and Jacky' - but we are also a unit with the same core values. That said, we still each have valid points of view on each side of the boundary.

I think that view also holds up for the marriages of our friends and whanau.

Love and peace - Wozza

But in you, there was that glow and a coat of Indigo. Problems will come and go In my coat of Indigo (Pendragon)

Wie geht's?

I spoke in the previous post about moving closer to my father via the creation of this blog. The thing of it is, I only clearly felt true closeness to him twice in my life. Once when my mother passed away and he was really vulnerable, and then, as he passed away.

This came to mind when I read this passage from Iron John recently:

It is possible that we will never have the closeness we want from our fathers. "Male," John Layard says, "symbolizes that which is 'set apart.'"

Bly indicates that 'whatever the father gives us, it will not be the same kind of closeness that our mother offered'.

Although that was also true for me, I don't feel any angst around that situation. Those two moments were enough.

Love and peace - Wozza

I broke through the trees and there in the night - my father's house stood shining hard and bright (Bruce Springsteen)

Wie gehts?

Robert Bly in Iron John makes an interesting statement about a son's movement from his mother to his father when they enter their early forties.

Idealization of the mother or obsession with her, liking or hating her, may last until the son is thirty, or thirty-five, forty. Somewhere around forty or forty-five a movement toward the father takes place naturally - a desire to see him more clearly and to draw closer to him. This happens unexplainably, almost as if on a biological timetable.

Interestingly, it was a little bit later than that - from 45 to 50, before I strongly felt that desire and the urge to draw closer to my father. 

Although - the beginning of that process was forced on me with my mother's passing in 1983, and it continued after Keegan's birth with our decision to move back to Auckland to be physically closer to my dad in 1987.  

After those green shoots of the reawakening process, which lasted about ten years, on July 1, 2008, I began this blog.

The stated reason on that first tentative post, was to communicate more and therefore get closer to my father. Although I left it late, he would pass away a year later, the blog had the desired effect in that it definitely brought us closer together. 

Now, this blog has morphed into a different kind of thing, but it still allows me to have greater contact with my family, and wider whanau.  

Love and peace - Wozza

Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you (Neil Young)

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Recently, we spent a day/night in the E.D. and an observation ward at Palmerston North hospital, while Jacky received treatment for Influenza A. in the bed next to her was an elderly dementia patient who was treated with impressive respect and compassion by the nurses and doctors. They were remarkably kind and patient, even when he failed to communicate with them.

However, another patient in the ward was not so compassionate or tolerant. She loudly complained, made jokes and loudly huffed and puffed.

Yes, his continual loud exhortations of 'help' and his regressions to childhood (he referred to 'mummy' a few times) were testing. It was hard to hear him often say, "I'm going to die" amongst other things, but there for the grace of God go all of us.

I couldn't help thinking about his life. There was no one with him, either from his family or the rest home that he'd come from, but he must have had a life, right? Maybe a wife, maybe children. He wasn't always like this.

I also wondered about his what-next. We left the ward and came home, but what's next for him? My heart went out to him, and I was ashamed of the response from that other patient. When she tried to enlist me in her shenanigans, I just said that I felt for the poor guy. At that, she turned around and walked away.

Love and peace - Wozza