The Rational Psychic

A dialog between myself, Barrie, and Katy, my girlfriend who I’m living with.

K: But why, Barrie, why do you think I should care about this whole blogging phenomenon?

B: Katy, you love writing and you think that it’s important for people to communicate. I don’t understand why there are so many folks like you who think that blogging is either a waste of time or somehow…immoral. Is it because we were born well before desktop computers came along, is it a female vs. male thing—what?

K: Do you always have to bring up th fact that you’re two years younger than I am? I think it’s very cruel. And you also have no visible wrinkles—which you can’t see from this blog, but Reader, it is so.

B: First of all, you’re not answering the question. What people don’t know about you is that you’ve written features and news articles for the local paper for years. This is part of the reason why I don’t understand that you aren’t more excited about the blogging. And as for me being two years younger, admit it, you love it. It’s like I’m a trophy boyfriend or something. Embarrassing.

K: Here’s the thing that bugs me in plain sight: In a blog format where is the composting time? Where is the settling time for the bad ideas and dopey lines and flakey parts to blow away? What would “The Blog of Anne Frank” have been? Not possible. If I had any real news to give the world –Help! I’m being hidden in an attic from Nazis who want to kill me—then this blog would have a meaning and somebody could come and rescue me. As it is … what do I have to say? Anything that would not be improved by the passage of time? I doubt it.

B: OK, I think those are all good points. As for letting things “compost” or “settle” I think that there’s already a tradition of personal essay—the newspaper editorial—which shares the same flaw. However, I think that we all get better as we have more practice at writing the form. As I was researching starting a blog I read that the average length of blog entries varied from 250 to 500 words. That’s not a lot of space to develop a thought but not too difficult of an expectation for the writer to maintain a theme or idea, either. And if Anne Frank would have had a blog the Nazis would have found her even more quickly by tracking her IP address, unfortunately. But her diary is an argument FOR blogging, not against it. She was an ordinary person writing honestly about her extraordinary circumstances.

K: Do we have any extraordinary circumstances here? I don’t think we do. But we may have something to offer. We are surrounded by children in all states of thriving, suffering and in between. [Through your job as a therapist] You have an amazing window into how society can make kids into victims and perpetrators of sexual misbehaviors. I am back in college learning about the experiences kids have in Minnesota schools when English is their second language. We have seven children between us from ages 4 to 18 going through everything life in America in the 21^st century has to delight and confuse them.

As we serve these children as parents, counselors, teachers, mentors the biggest part of our time and energy goes toward them and I’d like to see you, Barrie take on a higher mission in your writing than simply narrating our not-so-extraordinary lives. When we think about it, we can be pretty wise guys about what is really happening to kids around us and we have good ideas about how to help them and change the world to be more helpful. The core values we share—of patience, loving-kindness and compassion—bring light to everything we do. Blogging about this might not be so bad. Especially if you could still get to bed by midnight, trophy-boy. You know, for that male-female thing.

B: Alright, that last bit may be a bit off the topic but I think I hear what you’re saying. I’ll get this posted, brush my teeth and get to bed. OK with you?

K: That’s OK with me.

Last night I had a nightmare. Not the kind that wakes you up from sleep in a cold sweat, yelling at an unseen threat. Nor the cute, funny, kind of nightmare where you’re at work only dressed in your drawers.

No, this was the kind of nightmare that was just plain disturbing. It’s going to have me thinking for days about what it means and what I should do about it. When was the last time you had a nightmare that made you realize you had to take action to keep your dream vision from coming to pass? To understand the nightmare, you have to understand something about my children.

I have four great kids: three girls and a boy. My youngest daughter was born in China. When she was one year old my then-wife and I flew to China to meet her and complete the in-country portion of the adoption.

It was love at first sight on our parts, of course. She was so small, weighing only fourteen pounds. Qian (pronounced “chen”) was watchful but appeared willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t cry when the orphanage staff gave her to my ex-wife to hold. She didn’t cry, poop or pee the whole first afternoon and night we had her. But she did cry when we tried to give her a bath the next morning. Such a skinny kitten! She had so little fat on her stomach that it was almost flat—not rounded at all. It was only later that our guide told us that in the orphanages, the children are given sponge baths and so had never seen a bathtub full of water.

For the next fourteen days, I carried Qian in a Snuggli carrier in front of me as we went through the official hoops set up by the Chinese and American governments to complete the adoption proceedings. And so she was always lying against my stomach and chest. She may not have known where she was going, but she always knew where I was.

Even now, at four years old, she wants me to carry her everywhere. Much of this is likely due to the fact that I see her one day a week and every other weekend. I can’t help but think that she remembers a little of my carrying her in China, though.

Now, on to the nightmare. I dreamed that I was at a local, independent CD store. This is a place I would usually go to buy a CD. The people who work there were in the dream and so were a number of Asian people (but in the dream I knew that they were Chinese). And I’m not there alone. I’m carrying Qian on my back. Only she’s eighteen years old now and weighs about 110 pounds.

When I set her down on the ground to get a CD it appears as though she will stay there and I have no worries about this. However, as soon as I walk away from her, Qian begins talking in Chinese to the Asian people walking past her. She is swearing in Chinese. She is yelling at all the Asian people in the store how much she hates them for being Asian, Chinese, speaking Chinese, wearing bad fashions—whatever she can think of.

All the people who aren’t being yelled at by Qian are looking at me with the saddest, most disappointed look they can give. It’s the look that your parents gave you when you really did something rotten as a kid. And the look is so damning you wish you parents would give you a thrashing rather than continue looking at you that way. I walk back to where I’ve left Qian and put her on my back again and carry her out the door as she continues swearing in Chinese.

Why isn’t this something I can shake off and laugh about? Because as much as I love my daughter and as much as she gets along with her sisters and brother and is loved by her mom, the fact remains that she is the only one in our family with Asian features.

I know that when she goes to school or goes out for a sport or wants to be in a play or—name the situation—someone is going to use her looks to separate her from the crowd and say she’s not good enough or “not right” in some way. And she’ll be hurt.

There are people who will read this and ask, “Then why did you ever take her out of China?” When we wanted to adopt another child, my ex-wife and I agreed that we couldn’t take the heartache of an open adoption that went bad or a young father who changed his mind late in the process and wanted the child to be in his life. These things are neither good nor bad, but you have to know how much crap you can take. We knew our limits.

China has a reputation of being very orderly and straightforward in their international adoption process. We brought gifts for officials, which is considered polite, but the value of the gifts (a carton of cigarettes, a baseball cap, a bottle of liquor not available in China, etc.) is far from being what could be mistaken as a “sale price” for a child.

For now, I’m letting her know how much we love all things Chinese. We go to a family-owned restaurant a few times a month and she’s learning to say “Ni hao” and “Xiexie” when she talks to the woman at the cash register.

I cling to a silly folk belief from China as part of my explanation for why Qian is part of my family now: “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break.” A lot of adoptive parents have heard this, I think.

It’s one thing to remember the first day I saw the “referral picture” of Qian and felt that this had become a new reason for living. It’s another to feel that the hard work has only just begun to help her decide who she is.

I have a lot of problems settling myself down. I’ve really taken notice of that over the last…twenty years or so. As an adult with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), I constantly need to rein myself in and explain to myself why I’m keeping my day job rather than running off and becoming a cowboy or a neurosurgeon.

When the day-to-day becomes monotonous, I find it easy to forget I have a paycheck coming in and look for schemes to allow me greater freedom and to work from home. Seeking to become a blog-writing internet mogul definitely fits this description.

And while these qualities can make one seem peculiar and keep you off the management track, they don’t appear to be overly destructive to the casual observer. That is, until you realize that for most of your life you’ve told yourself that you’re a loser because you’ve never quite been able to cut it.

You watch others, younger than you, succeed in positions you should have occupied and been promoted from years ago. Why is this? A lot of it is due to a short-term memory that is unreliable. You find you can’t put a project—any project—together step by step because the distractions interrupt every transition. Getting from the beginning to the end of anything seems insurmountable when a dozen other things come to you each day and then fight legitimate projects for priority in your racing brain.

Ah, but all is not lost. One day your child’s first-grade teacher sends home a note recommending your child be assessed for ADD because your child is displaying these same behaviors. The pieces start to fall together: your future, except for this intervention could have been your child’s future. And so you decide to get assessed as well and—surprise! You find you have ADD, too.

Prescriptions of Wellbutrin and Zoloft have been the recommendations by my psychiatrist. As a result of taking these little pills, I experience a workday that is less fractured. I find myself able to put together more minutes in the day that are truly focused on the project at hand. At the same time, as I notice myself getting better I can see how far away from “normal” I still stand.

The trouble is that, as I get better and my ability to pay attention increases, I see what I’ve been missing over the years. I then feel like cursing someone (don’t worry, I don’t leave myself out) for not having seen the problem and done more for me earlier.

Being forty-four again stands large in this account of my very average-sized life. It takes a long time to recover from hurts like this. Or, better than “recovery,” to adjust and accept that although I’ve got a lot of work to do, what I’ve got to work with ain’t bad and it’s getting better. I leave you by telling you I know I’m no more important than any of my readers and by reminding myself I’m no less important, either.

I’ve been wondering what I should do now that I’m 44 and I know there’s more waiting for me to do but I’m not sure what it is? I got divorced because I wasn’t happy and I didn’t want my kids to see their dad turn into someone who was bitter and blaming.

Even a year after the divorce there is still a voice asking me, “Is this all there is?” Sometimes it nags me with this one: “There’s more you could be doing.” I mean, obviously. The point is what is it I should be doing? And if I find it, will I know because I’ll feel noticeably more happy or content?

Before I can even get to the answers to these questions I need to answer for myself whether or not this is just whining. Or, am I asking because one person can make a difference and my difference will add up?

Last night I was watching “The Return of the King,” with my youngest son and daughter. One of the characters in the movie is Denethor, Steward of Gondor. He has gone mad after learning of the death of his oldest son, Boromir. So, of course, the old man sends his second (and last) son out on a suicide mission to attack a force of orcs ten times the size of Faramir’s group.

Many fine cinematic moments follow. In which the crazed father eats a meal of spurting fruits and vegetables in such a way that blood seems to be flowing down his chin as we are shown scenes of the men of Gondor being slaughtered by the orcs.

Sure, I’m talking about a movie character whose grief affected his every decision. I still wonder how often I am like this: a man in charge of a mythical city in a novel turned into a Hollywood movie who doesn’t know what’s worth fighting for in the middle of the battle of good against evil. My own sadness at leaving their mother asks of me how well will my children do now that I don’t live them.

And beyond my household of one-person-sized problems I know the world is disintegrating faster than it can build itself back up. The climate I grew up with is literally disappearing. This year, even the honeybees are gone from the fields.

The reason for these events which I cannot prove to be causally connected has something to do with the fact that I am part of a country that has acquiesced its thinking to the politically powerful. And that we as citizens have been naïve enough not to remind those who hold an elected office: “you serve at our pleasure.”

You might tell me that one blog won’t do much. For me this is a start to reclaim my interior life and to meet my obligations as a citizen. I’m doing this because I feel a need to make my own life a greater contender in the public arena. Through this exercise I will be a more powerful servant whether in service to my children, the natural world, or my neighbors close by and in towns I have never heard of.

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The Rational Psychic

What could be better than the psychic who’s willing to tell it to you straight? I don’t claim to be a psychic. Sensitive in my better moments with a Masters’ degree in Counseling, perhaps, but I won’t claim to be a psychic unless you tell me I am. YOU need to convince me.

My great-grandmother was a MacKenzie before marrying David Brown, my great-grandfather. Family stories say that she was clairvoyant and could see or know when things were happening with her family members even at a great distance. Her daughter, Alice Evans (nee Brown) also had this ability and would call family members directly after illnesses, accidents or births occurred.

And me? I’m trying to deal with reality as I experience it. I do believe that there are many things unseen that affect us. Some are provable, such as microwave radiation. Others are not so easy to observe. I believe that human love build up our health while hate can leave scars that will be with us for years.

I am going to use my training as a counselor, my familiarity with the Tarot and I Ching to create a healing experience for you. If you have a problem that is too great for me to deal with, I will give you the best ideas I can but suggest that you allow others to help you. I also believe that you should get some value for your money. I will not stretch out a session with you for profit. In fact, I may suggest cutting it short.

I currently do therapeutic work with adolescents all day. I love what I do and have energy left at the end of the workday.

Make an appointment with me and I’ll call you within 36 hours to confirm. Paypal is accepted.

My rates are:

$15/ 15 min. $25/30 min. 30 min. + = $.75/min.

Thank you,

Barrie

This new site was posted during the first week of May, 2007. You may also write to gargantua@charter.net if you do not get an answer as quickly as you’d like.