The end of August, 2021 You need Professional Help!

August 31, 2021

 The dog days of summer.. Easy times. But, when a person you consider a close friend and has been a friend for over fifteen years calls and says,"I don't know how you are going to take this.." and tells of a love affair that has gone on for almost a year.. well, ten months, I must be wrong to feel insulted and betrayed, not because I hold any sway at all over my friend's life, but true friends generally share good news.
. She mostly dismisses my suggestions and is hard pressed to share much of anything beside a daily report and then my report and then her report. Danger, Will Robinson? Red flag?  To a less naive guy, probably.

To feel dismissed is probably on the dismissee and the dismisser really has no feeling about being dismissive because it's not their affair to look out for the feelings of someone who has .. he thought.. me.. was being loyal and helpful and kind and all of that, as a good friend behaves.

I've vented on FB and the odd thing was that in my dismay and hurt feelings .. I put up one of those meme things with white text and black back ground 

 "I know a woman who has never made an apology and never said thank you from her heart. How about that?"

Immediately, I get the email telling me that I need professional help. In my inimitable way, I agree. I need a plumber and other professionals to do the stuff that I seem uable to do myself.  The sad thing is that instead of offering any help or wanting to make me feel better.. I get another dismissal.  Some folks are like that :Black and  White.  I've been accused of that and hope it ain't true.. But hiring a 'professional helper' for a situation that could have easily just been discussed about the second month that she was having so much fun; opting to share it with her other friends (I'm pretty sure..)  and not me.. it felt like a deliberate slight and 'I don't know how you are going to take this" as an introduction to this surprise was just really a friggin' surprise.

 The business of venting in public is not all that cool.  How many of her friends know that she's never apologized because she is never wrong and says the words 'thank you' clearly, but with nary a hint of really being grateful might be that, I, in my feeling dismissed wonder why sharing good news.. she found someone to be with.. would not be something to share right off the bat?  Am I jealous, probably. But, the air kisses at parting after a dinner or lunch and exchanging reports was probably a red flag, too.

We all have stuff that is on a need to know basis. Sometimes too much information can be.. well.. too much information.. My getting my tender feelings stomped on is on me, right? Feeling left out? This behavior expands to other stuff that I've deliberately swallowed and kowtowed to, just because being snapped at for asking 'is everything all right?' makes me a cautious pal. Red Flag?

I take responsibility for the stuff in my life. Do I deserve an apology for being deiberately kept in the dark vis a vis my friend's happiness?  Maybe because I had discussed her handling my estate if/when I die, as a friend..  made me think that I mattered in some extra ordinary way?  Could be.  so. 

Poor Me.. my feeings got crushed and she's in the sack or not. .none of MY business. with someone she likes and finds attractive and that's a blessing.  I said to her on the phone "I just want for you to be happy.. " and I meant it, but that did not dismiss my feeling as though she really had very little concern for my feelings and probably would have not said anything, except we have some business she helped me with and she didn't want the news of her big deal to come from another source.. 

 Maybe I'd have gotten an invitation to a wedding in the mail? Oh By the Way..  That's silly, of course, but I'm on a roll and still feel crappy and would do just about anything to fix it because it all comes back to my feeling damaged by another person's actions, whether they intended to hurt me or not.  The get help email was deliberately mean.  But, being terse and tacit is the way some folks survive. 

I maybe wrong all together. Later?  I'll be happy to be friends.  Am I glutton for punishment? Evidently??  It's just not very comfortable dealing with a person who thinks about things more than being spontaneous and when I've tried to make her laugh ..?  It's like pulling teeth. I'm about one for ten. 

We learn to cope and the fact is I've relied on her way too much. Too many eggs in one basket, right? So.. We get what we deserve.. the royal We? ..  I can forgive just about anything.. but I am entitled to my feelings and my feelings are in sad repair. 

We are all responsible for our own feelings even when they have been knocked silly by someone who was trusted.  They didn't ASK to be trusted, that's on the trustor.. is that a word.. the one doing the trusting?

All anyone has to say is 'I'm sorry that you had a bad fall.  Let me give you a hand. I didn't mean to push you. It was an accident." Or they can look down at the heap in the puddle of tears and say "Get professional help." 

Okay. .call me a plumber? ..

 

August August or just a bust?

 When a go to theatre guy  / cum college prof rises to the call of August with the Scottish play at hand, weird sisters in the times of non-binary and up the LGBTQ and such.. The following scene is set not upon a Heath or a Butter Brickle for those in the know of candy.. but in the phosphors. 

Barbara Garson's "MacBird" discussed a scenario after the death of a really good president with the Bard as a matrix... So, Professor Bill Svelmoe, bard of the Bend of South rises to the August occasion. 

 

With Bill's permission, I share his writing here and applaud the notion that the Theatre may be a resting place for what's to come this august August.   

 With thanks to Professor/actor/director/playwright/novelist and observer of the days of dogs to come.. His latest take on the state of our nation: Thanks Bill.

//   

It is August.

I (Bill) awakened this morning covered in sweat. The air was full of portents. Birnam Wood is on the move. Pentecostal prophets hee and haw throughout the land. On every lip one hears the cry, “August. August is here.”

 

Yes, my friends, August is indeed here. A month, we have been promised, like no other. A month, a day, an hour unlike any in our history. The Phoenix rises from the ashes. The head that had been wounded revives. The king retakes his throne.

 

Is it the return of Christ?!

For his followers, it is better than that. Like the sun rising, an orange shadow will be cast over the land.

It is the return of Donald.

It is a month that requires its own scribe. 

Its amanuensis(a literary helper?). 

Its chronicler. 

Its poet.

Barbara Tuchman, take up thy typewriter. Combine “The Guns of August” with “The March of Folly.” Perhaps “The Fools of August.” Set aside “The Distant Mirror.” A narcissist’s mirror must not be distant. Perhaps “The Mirror Next Door.”

Oh Shakespeare, take up thy pen. Record the moment. A new title that must never be mentioned on the stages of the world:

 

“Donald”

Act I, Scene 3.

Enter DONALD and GIULIANI, drenched in sweet and sour sauce and drifting makeup. With torches.

Donald: So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Giuliani: How far is’t to Mar-a-Lago?

 

Three Pentecostal Prophets appear wearing nothing but Bibles.

The Prophets: The Weird Brothers, hand in hand,

Looking like a bad boy band,

Thus do speak, in tongues, in tongues,

Shandalabaya, and Bayadashanda, and thus spake Zarathustra,

The Donald will come and make it thunda.

Peace, the charm's wound up.

 

Giuliani: What are these

That look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth,

And yet are on the internet? – Live you, or are you aught

That man may question?

 

Donald: Speak, if you can: what are you?

 

First prophet: All hail, Donald, hail to thee Thane of Mar-a-Lago.

 

Second prophet: All hail, Donald, hail to thee Thane of Bedminster.

 

Third prophet: All hail, Donald, that shalt be King hereafter and Thane of White House.

 

Giuliani: Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair?

In the name of truth, prophets, that mythical concept with which we are not familiar,

Are ye fantastical? My rotund partner

You greet with present grace, and great prediction

Of White House returning, and of hope of actually learning … something … for a change,

Oh he seems rapt withal as if believing his own lies.

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,

Will the grain of his brain grow like a Thane

Or will it, like rain, run down the drain?

 

First prophet: The drain.

 

Second prophet: Yeah. The drain.

 

Third prophet: Best not get your hopes too high. We’re prophets, not magicians.

 

First prophet: Lesser than Obama, but greater than … than … somebody, somewhere, surely. Maybe Pierce.

 

Second prophet: Not so happy, yet much happier than the country will be. Forsooth. I would not want to be that nation that gets him again.

 

Third prophet: Thou shalt perhaps get another Supreme Court justice, though thou be a fool:

So all hail Donald, and Giuliani.

 

The PROPHETS turn to leave.

 

Donald: Stay, you internet prophets, tell me more:

I know I am Thane of Mar-a-Lago,

But how of White House? The Thane of White House lives

A real gentleman; a man of knowledge; a man of experience; a man who actually knows things about government; and to be king again

Stands not within the prospect of belief, although I have high hopes for Arizona

and for aid from the Thane of Pillows. Say from whence

You owe this strange intelligence, if intelligence I can call something for which there is literally zero precedent in the Constitution, or so they tell me, as reading it is really asking too much,

or why

Upon this blasted heath you stop our way

With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.

 

PROPHETS vanish.

////

Alas, that is as far as Shakespeare can take us. Perhaps Ivanka with bloody hands will reveal more.

Let us await the Ides of August my friends. As it has been foretold. “When the sun doth set upon the numberings of Arizona, then will the Son of Doofus be revealed. For when the bamboo splinters of the desert are carried throughout the land, he will retake his scepter. He will rule with a rod of pasta, and his rapier mind will once again be focused for up to three minutes at a time on topics of relevance. And the solutions to the problems of God’s nation will once again be just ‘two weeks’ away.” 

 

It will be an August for the history books … or at least, an August for the comic books …