So. So then, years went by whilst I was mighty busy changing diapers, majors, houses, married states but not in that order.

Wars came and wars went, some at home, some in the streets, some with drugs (prescribed or not)some say those were crazy times. Well, you know, crazy is my middle name, and all I could think was to get as far into the action as I was able while the gettin was good.

That landed me right in the middle of a Crisis Intervention Center's Listening Skills training program.

This thing was run by the center coordinator ...
a former philosophy grad student cum frustrated and lonely housewife (to an alcoholic spouse) who did think through the crisis-ridden situation extant among townies and gownies...she, in concert with her fellow university cohort (an Afro-American psychologist; unhappily married and P-whipped to a mild froth and who had been absorbed into the University Community during the tokenesque 60s when all things white still had a pretty good hold on the situation intellectual... simultaneous with that there did be leftists among um...you know, so...they had an inkling they could make something that might support themselves outside the university...which never did actually materialize, but that was their initial motivation. As I recall.


Now, there had been psychological research being done on drugs and human behavior ever since at least the 20s when the La Guardia Report was in process... it had to do with Cannabis Sativa being rampant in the City of New York.

Google it yourself, it's a real can of Fear Factor yummies.

Ok, but, back to the rampant psychologizing that was going on in and around the crisis intervention center where I found myself during the Vietnam international and home land street war complete with hippies, red squad activities, innocent kids and not so innocent adults manipulating for personal gain on as many levels of local, national and international government as one might guess were in turmoil amongst themselves and one another.

It was the 70s and was variously called things like "The Generation Gap" the "Communication Gap" and other things not quite as succinct. "Personality Conflicts" sprung up all across the country, some were armed and some were un armed, sometimes some were adorned with flowers, others were not, the latter usually wore some kind of uniform. Badges, name tags. You know, the gammit of gimmick that brings in a paycheck.

Now, at this crisis joint, a wholly volunteer organization
[ the name of which I will refrain from using because it still exists in some more or less residual form and is yet staffed by many of the same kinds of folks or wannabe types who can smell a psycho scam a mile away, and besides it's a great place to skillfully listen yourself into bed with others of your own sometimes seemly often unseemly ilk]
I didst indeed become privy to many kinds of more or less scientifical schmoozerie as did and does pass wheezily for a gradually bent and broken branch of concerned citizenery that called themselves a professional &/or semi-professional psychological community.

After several years of problem-sharing which was much discussed back and forth among these folks and after carefully listening to the scuttlebutt that passes for run of the mill gossip which swirls and changes in its travels in mixed company such as was enclosed there as well as among the hangers on, not to mention the girls and boy friends or spouses or lovers of : hippies, freaks, cops, robbers, druggies, aspiring social workers, school-teachers, psych grad students, local psychiatrists and same in training, high school and/or college students --- everything, in short, between the diametric poles of anti - disestablishmentarians, and red scare tactic using reactionaries with a hard on for wayward youth and those who exploit or intend to exploit them.

Well, after long and sustained exposure to them folks I get a slight bit squeamish whenever I hear someone beginning to psychoanalize anyone, be they sports people or whatever their daily habits, proclivities or personal fascinations.

It's a lot like when someone paints a picture of a rose and someone else says "I wonder what that represents to that artist." Which the wondering person in question truly thinks is a valid point of consideration.

It's a lot like when someone sleeps a full 8 hours and gets up in the morning and someone might ask, why did that guy get out of bed?

It's a lot like when someone's breath is caught when someone else says something very kind to them, particularly when they might be feeling down (as all of us do at one time or another, and some of us more often than others; some of us perhaps being more thoughtful than the others of us, some of us perhaps being more "sensitive" than the others of us, or whatever) and someone else wonders why the gasp....

Hey, the sky is blue. When a toddler having just fairly recently has learned to talk asks his mommy "Why is the sky blue?" and that mommy thinks to herself "My but my baby asks such profound questions."

To a parent, or many of us, anyways, everything our offspring does is amazing, just because we produced that fellow planetarian. Or something. Even, or maybe especially when they get big and correct us here or there.

I don't pretend to know all the answers of all the questions that crop up in this finite universe we inhabit or infinite if it so happens that's how it really is...I just take each day as it comes, I accept the joyous facts of creation as I find them and as they are manifested in nature.

I daily celebrate them in as many ways as I am able, then I go to bed after a long day of it. Sometimes the night-time discoveries are too much to leave alone and I keep celebrating what occurs to me. And, eventually, I leave it at that. Or try to. Mostly.

Not that I am incapable of wondering, you know.
b.