Happy Talk
"You got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"
Archibald Alec Leach [18 January 1904 - 29 November 1986], otherwise known as the actor Cary Grant.
Randy and Archie in Hollywood.
"So I get it," Didier said, trying to summarize. "You were like, 'this is important,' and then you were like, wow, 'this is totally IMPORTANT!'"
"Why yes, that's one way of putting it," I agreed.
"Can you do it with any year?" he asked. "Could I?"
"I don't know, Didier," I confessed. "As I tried to explain, although there may be some universal appeal and importance for mankind as a whole, at the end of the day 1904 has personal significance for me, not the least being it's a year of the Dragon, and as I was born in a year of the Dragon" (I was not about to tell him which one) "it may be that I am predisposed in a way that someone else might not be to --"
" -- Dude, I want MY own year where everything important is happening."
"Oh well of course you do," I quickly replied. I've found it always pays to agree with people, especially if they sound as though they're looking for a fight. Certain types of people love to fight; they aren't disagreeable, they just like to disagree. Arguing for them is a form of exercise. If they are young, they should be sent outside to play as soon as possible. My mother knew this. "What a lovely day it is," she would exclaim with a quick studied gaze out the nearest window, upon which, unless at that moment the Barn were being swept away in a flash flood, or lightning was scissoring across the sky, illuminating a flying house and old crone on a bike, and provided you could still see past the porch railing through the sleet, snow or 'wintry mix' she'd have you out the door so fast your head would spin.
The alternative to this strategy was for her to say, "You've been playing too hard, darling," which meant that you had continued to display emotion or seemed more combative than she judged to be either warranted or suitable. "You're just tired. You need a lie-down. You need a lovely nap." Which meant being confined to quarters until further notice, except it sounded nicer.
As a result, given the weather in western Pennsylvania and the alacrity with which Child Services responded to reports of children being tied up and left outside in the snow, I was often tired. I had a therapist tell me once I sounded upset. "I'm hearing some anger," he observed. "I don't know what you mean," I replied truthfully. "I'm just tired."
Didier, of course, was not tired. "What a lovely day," I observed. Which, being southern California was the kind of statement you could make without even pretending to look. Ray Charles could say it was a lovely day. It was inevitably true, even when upon occasion flames danced along the mountain tops on the horizon. "You should go out for a hike or ... something," I added.
"You are not trying to be tricking me," he said in what sounded like a rhetorical device, and I quickly protested I was not, indeed, trying to be tricking.
"This is not a joke, this 1904," he asked again.
"Look," I said, remembering the article about Cary Grant which MW forwarded to me the other day, (link above), "if you pretend something long enough, it can eventually become true. If you have a dream you can make that dream come true. That's how Archie turned himself into Cary. I mean that there is, in other words, a sense in which we shape reality by the way we focus on it. To a certain extent that is, by having a dream, we impose the dream's meaning, if you see my point. Archie literally meets Cary. And in that respect, things -- events, incidents, facts -- begin to manifest meaning for someone that another person might not even notice..."
I realized I was quite alone and talking to myself and had continued to do so while Didier must have padded, silently barefoot, out of the room. I heard in the distance the random opening and closing of kitchen cupboards, and that subtle but tell-tale pressure seal release of the refrigerator door. "J'ai faim," he called out.
Crisis averted.
Archibald Alec Leach [18 January 1904 - 29 November 1986], otherwise known as the actor Cary Grant.
Randy and Archie in Hollywood."So I get it," Didier said, trying to summarize. "You were like, 'this is important,' and then you were like, wow, 'this is totally IMPORTANT!'"
"Why yes, that's one way of putting it," I agreed.
"Can you do it with any year?" he asked. "Could I?"
"I don't know, Didier," I confessed. "As I tried to explain, although there may be some universal appeal and importance for mankind as a whole, at the end of the day 1904 has personal significance for me, not the least being it's a year of the Dragon, and as I was born in a year of the Dragon" (I was not about to tell him which one) "it may be that I am predisposed in a way that someone else might not be to --"
" -- Dude, I want MY own year where everything important is happening."
"Oh well of course you do," I quickly replied. I've found it always pays to agree with people, especially if they sound as though they're looking for a fight. Certain types of people love to fight; they aren't disagreeable, they just like to disagree. Arguing for them is a form of exercise. If they are young, they should be sent outside to play as soon as possible. My mother knew this. "What a lovely day it is," she would exclaim with a quick studied gaze out the nearest window, upon which, unless at that moment the Barn were being swept away in a flash flood, or lightning was scissoring across the sky, illuminating a flying house and old crone on a bike, and provided you could still see past the porch railing through the sleet, snow or 'wintry mix' she'd have you out the door so fast your head would spin.
The alternative to this strategy was for her to say, "You've been playing too hard, darling," which meant that you had continued to display emotion or seemed more combative than she judged to be either warranted or suitable. "You're just tired. You need a lie-down. You need a lovely nap." Which meant being confined to quarters until further notice, except it sounded nicer.
As a result, given the weather in western Pennsylvania and the alacrity with which Child Services responded to reports of children being tied up and left outside in the snow, I was often tired. I had a therapist tell me once I sounded upset. "I'm hearing some anger," he observed. "I don't know what you mean," I replied truthfully. "I'm just tired."
Didier, of course, was not tired. "What a lovely day," I observed. Which, being southern California was the kind of statement you could make without even pretending to look. Ray Charles could say it was a lovely day. It was inevitably true, even when upon occasion flames danced along the mountain tops on the horizon. "You should go out for a hike or ... something," I added.
"You are not trying to be tricking me," he said in what sounded like a rhetorical device, and I quickly protested I was not, indeed, trying to be tricking.
"This is not a joke, this 1904," he asked again.
"Look," I said, remembering the article about Cary Grant which MW forwarded to me the other day, (link above), "if you pretend something long enough, it can eventually become true. If you have a dream you can make that dream come true. That's how Archie turned himself into Cary. I mean that there is, in other words, a sense in which we shape reality by the way we focus on it. To a certain extent that is, by having a dream, we impose the dream's meaning, if you see my point. Archie literally meets Cary. And in that respect, things -- events, incidents, facts -- begin to manifest meaning for someone that another person might not even notice..."
I realized I was quite alone and talking to myself and had continued to do so while Didier must have padded, silently barefoot, out of the room. I heard in the distance the random opening and closing of kitchen cupboards, and that subtle but tell-tale pressure seal release of the refrigerator door. "J'ai faim," he called out.
Crisis averted.
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