SATURDAY MEMORY

December 14, 2024

I was a junior in high school in 1955, and I fancied myself a tennis player. My fancy was reinforced by winning a major tennis tournament for juniors. The prize for winning that tournament was a series of lessons from Pancho Gonzales. Pancho was ranked the number one professional tennis player in the world, and winning this prize swelled my head big-time.

The lessons occurred on the lone court at Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Panhco called me “boy.” After instructions and a bit of small talk, Pancho said, “OK, boy, let’s get to it.”

I walked to one side of the court, and he took the other. He had the tennis balls, so I presumed he was going to serve. He was known for having the best and strongest serve in the game. “Lesson one,” he shouted and motioned me to come to the net. This struck me as odd because you don’t serve at someone standing at the net. Volley, yes, but not serve.

But he served.

His serve came straight at my eyes, and I barely fell out of the way in time. As I got up, he came to the net and he said, “Boy, what’s that on the ground?” “My racket,” I responded. I had dropped it as I fell. “And what’s it for?” he asked me. “To hit the ball.”

“OK. Lesson two.” He walked back to the service line; I picked up my racket and I somehow knew I was to stay at the net. Again, he served straight at my eyes. Somehow, I managed not to duck or to fall. But I mainly used my racket to protect my face, and the ball went flying off it out of bounds.

“Do you know what lesson three is?”

I took what seemed like a lot of time to come up with the answer. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and worthless. But somehow, I knew what lesson three was. I didn’t say, what lesson three was, but I did say, “Yes.”

I took my position at the net. I swung my racket back and forth. I looked Pancho in the eye. I said, “serve!” He did. I kept my eye on the ball. I stepped into position, and I hit the ball squarely at Pancho. To my surprise, he let the ball hit him.

He laughed. He came to the net. He shook my hand.

“You got what it takes, kid.”

From that moment, I wanted to be a pro.

SATURDAY MEMORY
December 7, 2024

In high school, I was extroverted in ways I have not been since that time. In my senior year, I was Boy's League president. I was a Squire and a Knight and was other such honorary things. My girl friend was editor of the student newspaper, Girl's League President, and I was business manager. We led the dancing at the senior prom. One of my jobs at the time, was to arrange speakers for school assemblies. I arranged for Ronald Reagan to speak. At the time (1956) he gave speeches for General Electric on themes of freedom, economic progress, and the threat of communism. Another job was to arrange the annual auto show. These two events coincided in time.

I had arranged for a special car from Bob Yaekel, an Oldsmobile dealer in Los Angeles. Bob was crippled and the car he had specially made was all controlled by hand controls on the steering wheel. I had picked up the car for the car show. I was also to pick up Ronald Reagan from the airport. I did this using Bob Yaekel's car.

On the way from the airport back to school, a driver went through a red light and my foot searched frantically for the brake pedal. Only then did I remember I had to use the brake control on the steering wheel. We avoided a collision with the errant driver, but not by much. If I had not stopped in time, the impact would have been on the passenger side.

Reagan laughed off the incident and congratulated me on being able to stop in time.

I remember Reagen being very funny the rest of the trip.

I have often mused on muffing my chance to change history.

SATURDAY MEMORY

November 30, 2024

I learned the importance of being silly from my father. His sense of humor was infectious and an aura of laughter colors my earliest memories. He could turn anything into jest. I remember endless times when my stomach ached and tears flowed from laughter I could not stop. When he chased me down to admonish or punish me in some way, my collie dog, Blackie, would get between us and let out rapid-fire threatening growls at my father until we all ended up rolling on the floor with sides splitting, punishment forgotten, perhaps, humor as punishment was lesson enough.

It was the forties and times were simpler. Our first TV, a 1950 Packard-Bell, came with a record-making machine. As fascinating as TV was in the beginning, and what I remember most is wrestling —Wild Red Berry and Gorgeous George and my grandmother throwing her shoe at the new TV because Red was doing bad things to Gorgeous — what occupied us most was the recording machine. My father set up regular Sunday “broadcasts” duly recorded on those 45-rpm-sized vinyl disks. He would announce at the beginning that this was “station FART operating on 10,000 kilosquawts.” Everyone in the family became a reporter and we tried to outdo one another in good old Scot’s scatological “funning,” as we called it. I remember when we would all be laughing hysterically, Blackie would go running in circles, adding to the mirth, but the cats, all silver Persians that we raised for sale, remained untouched and aloof as is the pride of cats.

The dinner table was an arena for food games. My favorite was tossing peas into my sister’s gaping and eager mouth. When my father would make scrambled eggs with squirrel brains, he’d wear a coonskin cap while frying up (he’d been a short-order cooked when he escaped the hills of West Virginia and came to California) and would pose us puzzles to see if we were getting smarter as a result of such fare. To the extent I have any “smarts,” it is a result of those squirrel brains, I am sure.

SATURDAY MEMORY
November 23, 2024

This memory visited me this week. I’m not sure why. I have written this up before (see “Some Strange and Weird Experiences” in Words As Eggs). It’s in two parts.

Part 1. Back in 1963, I was a bit late for my analytic appointment with Marvin Siegelman at his Beverly Hills office. I was a bit out of breath from rushing as I went into the lobby and pressed the elevator button. My attention was called to an old man who was hand-painting a sign on the window. Unaccountably,  I ignored the open elevator door and went over to the old man. He turned to me and said, “You will want to know this is a dying art.” He told me he was the only one in the area doing it the old way. It was all mechanical now. He said, “No one wants to pay the price for this work. I spend a lot of time at, just like Ghiberti. You know, he spent 50 years working on his doors. That’s love. But who has time to love anymore.” I was so affected by this old man’s words that I walked out of the building. Halfway down the block, I remembered my appointment and now I was quite late. Still, the old man’s words stay with me and seem ever more relevant as I become an old man, like the sign painter.

Part 2. Five years later, I was in my university office working on final preparations for a trip the next morning. I was to present a paper at the World Congress of Psychiatry in Milan, Italy. I answered a knock on my door. It was a man about my age wanting to know if my colleague Professor Lovejoy was around. We searched and called but Lovejoy could not be found. The man had just stopped by on the off chance of connecting the with professor. He was on his way to Los Angeles to return to Europe the next day. A few days later, I flew from Milan to Pisa. It was madness at the airport because of a power failure and all the lights were out. Retrieving one’s baggage in the dark with only flashlights to assist was very tiring. By the time I got on the bus to Florence, I was exhausted. About halfway to Florence, the bus pulled over and stopped by the side of the road. I was not amused by this delay. A car had broken down and the driver had hailed the bus. When the man had got on the bus and came down the aisle where I was sitting I was shocked to see that it was the man that had knocked on my door a few nights earlier looking for Professor Lovejoy. He recognized me as well and sat with me and we discussed the potential meaning of such a strange and weird experience. He said, even though we were both tired, that walking around the streets of Florence at midnight was called for. He said we must go to the Cathedral and see the Bapistry of St. John and there we could see Ghiberti's doors.

Ghiberti. Taking time to love. Lovejoy. Strange and weird. You never know what or when psyche will gift us.

 Saturday Memory  

November 16, 2024

I was eight years old. A Cub Scout, hiking in the mountains with my mates. We got to roughhousing, as we often did. At one point, I lost my balance, fell off the trail, and started rolling down the mountain. I banged into shrubs and rocks and was getting scratched and pretty banged up. As I rolled, I saw a huge owl in the sky, and it said: "Grab hold of the tree." I then crashed into a small tree and I did what the owl said. By that time, I was likely in shock. I know I was terrified. I could hear my mates yelling, but I could make nothing out. The last thing I saw was that the tree I was holding onto was at the edge of a cliff. The huge owl vision was still in the sky, but all faded to black as I lost consciousness.

This memory is intense in the extreme whenever I call it to mind.

As a kid, I didn't know what to make of the owl vision, but I realized fully that the owl saved my life.

Even now, I feel the owl is never far away.

Saturday Memory

November 9, 2024

I was sorting through a box of files and came across some notes I had made for a lecture I gave in 1979, entitled: “The Importance of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.” If I am remembering correctly, this lecture was given at the Jung Institute in Chicago. Reading these notes over now causes me to pause and wonder if I have done enough to enact what I wrote 45 years ago. To some degree I think the answer is “yes.” But to some degree also, the answer is “no.” Whatever the case, finding these notes in the current moment, and considering recent events, I feel an increased charge to do more now!

Here is one trenchant note that feels like a guiding light.

For it is our existence, the existence of the world and all its life, and the lives of the future that now hangs in the balance. Jung saw that the world is hanging by a thread and said that the thread is the psyche. Attending and caring for those threads, the nursing and nurturance of psyche in our time is the fundamental reality that needs to inform all other issues and everything, every single thing that we do.

Saturday Memory

October 26, 2024

It was 1945. I was not yet 8 years old. On a Saturday, the movie matinee I saw was “The Mummy’s Curse.” I saw all the Mummy movies and I still recall the mummy’s name: Kharis. That day, I won the door prize—a box of Hershey Milk Chocolate bars. I remember all the kids applauding as I received the prize. Very exciting. On the following Monday, I was in the hospital with acute mastoiditis—an infection of the mastoid bone behind the ear. At that time, penicillin was not yet widely available, but I was treated with several shots of penicillin a day. They were not painless, and I still have a vivid memory of the pain in the butt where the shots were administered. On the bedside table was a radio which was on all the time and on top of the radio sat my prize—the chocolate bars.

When I was well enough to eat them, I discovered that they were all a melted, gooey mess. It was a vacuum tube radio in those days and got hot.

Nonetheless, I licked my prize with abandon. ?

Saturday Memory

October 19, 2024

My father had a regular job as foreman at Arden Milk Company in Los Angeles. He also had a sideline. He was a bookie. He had a sizeable clientele consisting of police, firemen, and local political figures. A year after I was born (1939), Mickey Cohen moved to Los Angeles and began to develop an organized crime family. He was mentored by Bugsy Seigel, the head of the National Crime Syndicate. During the ensuing years, Mickey began to organize all bookies in the Los Angeles area. It was in 1949 when Mickey pressured my dad to join the “family.” My dad said no. At that point, Mikey threatened my dad and our entire family. His threats were not idle, as he had killed or ordered the killing of many. My dad talked to the police, and they ordered full protection for us. The police would take us to and from school and at home there were always two detectives. We were never harmed. The police taught me how to play poker and how to bet and how to read “tells.” I loved this!

In 1950, Mickey Cohen was investigated by the US Senate’s Kefauver Commission and was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to prison for four years. The police protection ended. I followed Cohen’s news after he was released. He became a celebrity and traveled in high circles. Several movies were made in later years featuring Micky Cohen (Bugsy, L.A. Confidential, Gangster Squad, The Lincoln Lawyer.)

Pretty heady times for a kid not yet a teen.

Saturday Memory

October 12, 2024

While sorting through a box of stuff, I came across a small, 3.5-inch by 5.5-inch plaid covered notebook that I had journaled in on my trip to Scotland in 1992. That year, I was the United States representative to the Arts Festival held yearly at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye. I had been invited by John MacLeod, the Chief of Clan MacLeod. During my week-long stay at the castle, I got to know John, Bani Shorter (Jungian analyst from Edinburgh), and Norman MacCaig, one of my favorite poets, as well as distinguished others.  The festival featured singing (including John MacLeod, a professional-level opera singer), piano recitals, presentations of instruments and discussions, several sessions of bagpiping, original music compositions (Marc Yeats), and talks.

Bani Shorter presented “The Thread of the Story: The Fairy Flag.” I presented two talks: “Writing from the Inside of the Inside,” and “The Cost of Poetry and the Price of its Loss.” The year before, the US representative was Helen Vendler, perhaps best known as the poetry editor of the New Yorker, and one of the most honored literary critics. She was an English professor at Harvard and known for her emphasis on “close reading.” I was honored to represent the US, but I was daunted by following Helen Vendler.

I think scared would be more accurate. For as much as I felt it necessary to have prepared and written talks for this august event, I could not write. I was totally stopped. Some insistent inner voice said, “No! Spontaneous talks they will be.” And so, they were. I felt inspired by the feelings generated in experiencing such a gathering of creative people. What I said was not recorded and I barely have any memory of it. I can say that what came out of me was not some well-honed conscious material, but more like the outpouring of a deep lava. I was basically speaking out what I heard from somewhere deep inside. I am reminded now of what Miles Davis said: “Man, you don’t play what you know, you play what you hear.” And too, what Robert Olen Butler says: “Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.”

I would like to re-create those talks, but I’m not sure it is possible.

Russ

Hi all,

Here is an important interview. Jon Wilson interviews John Woodcock on

the subject of therapist as shaman, the subject of John's new book. Here is

the link:

On the Couch with John Woodcock PhD (substack.com)

Russ