How Does and Era End?

According to playwright Arthur Miller, an era “can be said  to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”
      
       Hasn't an era ended if I can put Pat McCullough's (pseudonym for client) info off to the side and not write anything for her ... and not have anything “bad” happen to me.  I need to write and tell her that I am not going to do any work for her.  She now has millions and should hire someone else to do it for her ... and when she figures out why I am doing this she should call me and come down and I will buy her lunch at the Ramada Inn and I’ll explain it to her … or she can explain it to me.
      
       Hasn't an era ended when I don't want to be a physician anymore?  When I am not afraid to hire a consultant to go after new contracts to expand my company and shoot for triple the income by the end of the year?
      
Passages, Crises, Stages and Eras

The October Syndrome:
the leaves fall,
the body fails.
the mind deserts us.
we need jails
for the body, not the mind.

the mind is free
of worries and
cares and
of woe is me.
it's backwards, the world,
I've thought that for years.

when you ought to be
laughing you are
shedding tears.

when you ought to be
crying you
are racked with pain
from the humor of circumstance:
               a pig in the rain,
               an Eskimo's ice box,
               an Arab's space heater.

it's queerer and queerer:
the rich man's a cheater;

the poor bastard gives away all that he has,
then goes to earn more
to feed starving lambs.

the ones who have "everything"
really have nothing.

the ones who are struggling
are swaddled in bunting
of red, white and blue
or today's favorite colors,
by grateful receivers of
staples they're hunting.

you win, but you lose it,
you fail to succeed.
you get what you want
but don't have what you need.

you strive for a goal and
make fun of the gooks
who don't have objectives,
who don't have roots
in the ground, and
no plans for the
future, tomorrow,
they just go on living,
without joy or sorrow,
just living and dying without direction,
Free Spirits wandering
without a connection
to anything I can see anywhere.

can it be,
I'm afraid to ask,
does a life without tasks
well-defined, planned,
scheduled and ordered,
hold the answer to structure,
the solution to boredom?

Is the real answer "living,"
not looking for "life,"
is it doing, not thinking,
is it fun and not strife.

if winning is losing and
losing don't matter
and neither does "don't"
as opposed to "doesn't matter,"
then I've missed the point,
I've been led astray by
illusions and
mystique and
power and play
as in:
play with my mind,
don't tell me the truth.
tell me what I "should say"
and starting from youth
tell me how things are done
and what things we say,
and what we don't do
'cause our kind's not that way.

so I'll grow up with
curtains and
screening and
blinds and
dirt-covered windows
that I'm stuck behind.

I'm trying to see out,
but what the hell,
there is so much damn filtering
how can I tell
what is real,
what is fake,
what is true and
what's not.

I'm so confused hereabout
I can't use
what I've got
in the way of skills,
to sort it all out.

from the top of this tower of bullshit I sit on
       and
       look
       down on
                    real things
                                    miles down below,
it's so far away
how is a person to know

what is real,
what's made up,
what's right and
what's wrong.

is it right 'cause you told me
or now is that wrong?
is it wrong cause you told me
and now it's all right?
or will all of my days be spent
walking in night-
like confusion and
darkness and
worry
about who is the Judge and
who is the jury?

which one is properly prepped
for the task?
it's no wonder so many
men take up the flask or
the  pill bottle, needle or
gun at the worst,
       (the quickest if you prefer
        your death in a burst)

nary a day-to-day
slaking of thirst
which grows larger and drier
as suns rise each day,
'til you think that the bottle or
pill won't belay
the pain and the hurt.

but, then, big surprise!

you're dying!
it's working!
in front of your eyes
a real death is lurking!

it's working, the pain's gone,
oops, so is your liver,
but the hurt is a dream,
and you're life's
just a sliver
of memories.

painful, yes, ahhh,
but now waning,
episodes recalled,
       (but only with straining)
                         (and effort)
                         (and energy),

god how you work, but now back-
wards to subdue
the slivers
that lurk
in the cracks.

The Beauty of Backwards
 
the beauty of "backwards"
is that it says you have finally made it to the point where
you can enjoy life
because
you have to expend more energy
trying to remember the by-gone slivers
than
you used to spend
trying to forget the chunks.

one switch like that and
you can begin to see
a hundred of them a day,
everywhere.

nothing is really what it seems,
not even you.
you're what you
think
you are, but that's not
really what you have
become.

to discover what that is,
turn your head upside down and
see what you find.

most of us find that we are,
when upside down,
looking up our own
asshole,

which may have been what we were doing
all our lives
and didn't even
know it until
now.

or worse yet, someone else turned
our heads upside down a long time
ago
and we have been looking up
their asshole
all this time not realizing it,

you know,
like when you  “are only doing
what your
father
wanted you to do."

then you find out
he didn't even care, never cared, still doesn't care to this day,
what you do or how you do it.

"minor" shocks like that cause people to start wars or
        spray a MacDonald's restaurant in San Diego / San Ysidro
with three
semi-automatic weapons,
splattering
Big Macs and Large Fries all over
the ceiling and
the walls, to say nothing of
the additional pieces of tissue,
brains
hair clumps,
eye balls and
other assorted body parts of 21 people killed and 19 injured all over the
                                 "Over 164 billion Sold"  sign (*)
hanging on the wall.

I  wonder  if
that MacDonald's closed down or
if it is back
in business? (**)

      (*) 247 billion as of April 30, 2010
     (**) addendum: it was closed and bulldozed; a new one was built two blocks away.

The Decision

I haven't decided:

is the October Syndrome (*) the end of an age
or the beginning of an era.
(*) http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The--October--syndrome-5723

it certainly marks the end of an era, since
all of the previous basic illusions are exhausted by
the occurrence.
but the flip side of the
coin has interesting words
and pictures printed on it too:

is the onset of The October Syndrome the start of
a new era and if so can we figure out
what the Basic Illusions of the new era are and,
in so doing,

either,

postpone the passing of that new era or hasten
its demise in a conscious manner?

it does follow logically,
doesn't it,

that if "we are finally free of the illusion" that our father controlled
us, then we have to
ask the questions:

free from what?
free to do what?
really free or just apparently free?
or just free of that one parental figure and now
controlled by some other parental surrogate or
substitute illusion  ...
when will this new era end by our becoming "free of"  ...
or by exhausting ...
this new illusion?

The Waltz With Death Effect
                    —> Transition
                           —> Transformation
      
"It goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three CLICK !   ..."

you are  a cop and you are depressed.
you are Catholic, have two kids, an ex-wife, a girl friend who lives with you,
you see your kids on alternate weekends and you want to kill yourself.

so you go see a therapist and talk about it, but nothing gets any better and you report that you are getting more and more depressed and are fearful of becoming suicidal.

you think about suicide more frequently each week.

then you get a call one night on duty, a domestic situation.

a father has called because his son has gone berserk in their two story farm house just outside of town.  the kid has threatened the whole family and has fired a couple of shots from the 38 in a random fashion inside the building.  the family is out of the house and you are called to check it out.  your partner checks the yard and the back door while you go around the front, in the door and through each of the downstairs rooms ... but you find nothing.

you mount the narrow, central stairway which rises from
the entry foyer
straight up to the landing
on the second floor ...

with your service revolver cocked,
held upward in firing position.

as you near the top step you see
a shadow
coming from your right side,
not moving,
but in the hallway on the second floor.
you step up,
aim
scream "Police! Freeze!"

you hear

the CLICK ! of a double-action
revolver being cocked,
pointed at the space between your eyes.
as if in slow motion your mind knows
you have heard one click
and you must hear two before the revolver can be fired.

without further thought you sense
his revolver has not
clicked the second time,

you round the corner toward the click
but you have already BANG !
fired your service weapon and
are sure that the bullet has
covered at least 6 of the 12 inches separating you
from the gunman
before he even knows what has happened.

in the next limitless instant
he is hit
pulls his shot skyward,
blows a very large hole in
the ceiling of the hallway and
has a grand mal seizure as he falls to the floor.

your shot has penetrated his skull with
unerring precision.
it takes  minutes,
apparently two or three full
minutes for him to
instantaneously
hit the floor as you watch in amazement.

as he falls    s l o w l y,

gracefully,

jerking arms and legs
going in different directions
from the neurological shock of the missile that
tumbled
and
slashed
its
way
through his
gray matter

(and now lies firmly embedded, almost two thirds of the way through
a two by twelve in the frame of the house!),

you are aware your depression is
melting in an almost visible,
physical,
palpable
way.

you feel it either
draining
out of your body or
being lifted off your shoulders in a musical, lyrical way.

there can't possibly have been time to think of all this,
but you did:
as if both you and the rapidly dying gunman are dancing with
death.

Death spins you,
his former partner,
around,
twirls you to the point of throwing
off the weight of his presence
with which you have had to cope for
so long ... and .. .

waltzes his way over to the
bloody,
grotesque
form,
dancing in its
tonic
clonic,
jerking,
dissonant,
uncoordinated way toward the
sanded … polished ... hardwood ... so ... as ... to ... catch ... him,
unite with ... him ... just ... before ... the ... foundation-shaking ...
                                                                                                                               
                                                                thud !
to dance the last few  bars with the
former son,
former gunman,
former lunatic
to keep him from having
to dance alone this one last time.

Death takes his victim to another ballroom
down below and you are left
                                               alone
without a partner,
without the weight of depression,
without the suicidal thoughts and
with the recognition that
if you had really been suicidal
you would have let him
shoot you.

but instead you won the Quick Draw Contest handily ...
automatically ....
instinctively .... and,
believe this ...
so gracefully
with one of the smoothest, most coordinated and on-target fluid
point-and-shoot motions you can ever remember having put together.

Killing another man in self-defense is not suicidal behavior.

Waltzing with Death had definitely made him a transformed man.

Waltzing with Death was definitely a dance of                    
                                                                           Transfiguration.

       The message that he heard when he listened to the voices inside was suddenly different than before.  He didn't hear depression and despair.  Now he heard "Live! I want to live!" He felt so good he never did go back to see his therapist again. He was too busy living.
      
       The feeling of how bad things were was gone.  The illusion that the feelings were so bad the only solution was to kill himself had disappeared.  Nothing was that bad.  All of the sudden he knew all he had to do was cope with each problem, one at a time ... and he knew he could do that,
but only if he was alive.

        Dead he couldn't cope with anything and dead he wasn't.  Dead was the only way he wouldn't be able to cope, since he now knew, being alive, he could cope with anything . . . if he could cope with this he could cope with anything.
      
       The era of his depression was over the instant the hammer of his gun dropped, sending the 230 grain ball spinning like a rocket down the barrel of his 45, taking the midbrain out of that maniac and, in the process, exhausting the last breath of the cop's illusion that he was now, or ever would be again, suicidal.