June 22, 2003

• Pulling Covers

  
  

  

  
  

  One edge of the big muskeg across the highway from the spring where we get our water.

  
  

  Doug and I did a water run today, went to the old place across the highway, and picked up a futon, some craft materials, more junk–still moving in here and it’s going on five years since we first came over here to “house-sit”.  The pictures are just some decoration, I guess,  not illustrations, but views from the water run, not related to the central theme of the blog.  All day long I’ve been thinking about “pulling covers”, which was biker slang thirty-some years ago for blowing someone’s cover, revealing some hidden truth.  The subject came up last time I was in town with Greyfox, a couple of days ago.

  
  

  The creek that flows out from our little waterhole.  In winter, without all that vegetation, you could see a mile or so across a muskeg and down the road from this angle.  Now it’s the great green wall of summer.

  
  

  Covers– I don’t even recall exactly what we were talking about, as we waited around for a meeting to start, but Greyfox said something typically dramatic and self-serving and I shot it down, just told him it was narcissistic nonsense, but probably not that politely.  Nothing new about that, up to that point.  But lately, since his spiritual awakening and his finally getting it through his head that he has an unhealthy case of histrionic/narcissistic personality disorder, those shots across the bows don’t fall on deaf ears, to shamelessly mix metaphors.  Used to be, he would either clam up and pout or go all defensive if I pointed out his bullshit.  This time, he smiled a little bit ruefully, said, “You pulled my covers… again,” and gave me a sincere hug.

  
  

  I rarely take pictures of traffic, but just to give the balanced view, because there really is some traffic out here, especially on weekends….

  
  

  I really do enjoy and appreciate Greyfox’s newfound willingness to accept my feedback on his behavior, my therapeutic input, because accept it or not, he will get it as long as he hangs out with me.  Take a perceptive and empathetic naturally mouthy Virgoan perfectionist and put her through a few months of Reality Attack Therapy with a group of social service professionals and recovering junkies, where the only rules are no physical violence and all bullshit gets shot down, then apparently what you get is a skilled, natural-born cover-puller, an unstoppable denial destroyer.  I’d be in deep shit without my First Amendment right to free speech.  Shit, I’d be in trouble even with it, if I gave a shit what people think of me.  Ever hear that saying, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke”?   I have my own twist on that:  Fuck ‘em if they can’t take the truth.

  
  

  Below:  more of the big muskeg

  
  

  This attitude, added to my trust in the Flow so that I’m not all hung up on getting paid for every last reading I do, serves me well in my work.  I can look at a given layout of the cards and see denial.  Don’t ask me how I do it, because I can’t explain it.  It’s like being farsighted and reading the road signs half a mile away, only I can more or less explain that.  It’s not always the same cards or combinations, it’s just that sometimes things add up to things that it’s obvious to me that people would just rather not believe.  I seldom miss on that, and I address denial directly.  Feedback from them usually confirms it–not that they say, “I’m in denial,” not right at first anyway.  They say it’s not true of course, and then eventually if I keep at them, restate it, make it undeniable, they will cop to it, some of them, most of the time.  There are always the pissed-off few who would rather hang onto their sick delusions than adjust to the healing truth.  That’s where the Flow comes in, because of course they don’t pay me.  And it’s where the attitude comes in handy, because they give me hell, too, and say things that would hurt the feelings of any normal person without my unshakable self-esteem. 

  
  

  But I can take their crap and laugh it off, tell it to Doug and Greyfox and laugh with them at the idiots who would rather keep propping up a pile of bullshit with ever more bullshit and denial until it overwhelms them, rather than let it go and rebuild a life on a basis of truth.  The payoff for taking the deluded ones’ negative feedback for daring to question their illusions and threatening their shaky reality structures, comes from the ones for whom the truth clicks into place and who with a grinning “AHA!” and a sigh of relief, say thanks and get on with rebuilding a real life.  Now that it’s coming from my soulmate, the man that I still love despite years of abuse and denial, that payoff is particularly sweet.  It’s gratifying and it is validating, and I can just imagine a lot of benighted future clients of mine who would, if they knew what was coming at them, cringe in their crappy denial now that my cover-pulling muscles are stronger than ever.

  
  

  The other night in town I was not happy with having to come home alone and I bitched Greyfox out.  I probably went overboard.  I do that sometimes.  He says I’m a poor winner, don’t quit when I’ve made my point.  I don’t think he understands what venting is.  But that time, after I had gone on for a while about my not liking the set-up he’d concocted before that last binge, renting that little cabin in which to drink himself to death, he thanked me for my input.  I was… not shocked–am pretty much unshockable, by him at least.  But it did surprise me after forcefully expressing my displeasure with having him living in that little cabin fifty miles from home and the two of us commuting back and forth to spend time together, when he thanked me for the reality check, the wake-up call.  We are getting somewhere, I guess, and he is living there only for the summer, the tourist season, and he is considering other options, other places he might set up the stand closer to home.  Once again, pulling covers paid off for me, so watch out world, no secret is safe.  I’ll never back off if this is the kind of payback I get.

  
  

  Last picture:  Doug, resting after loading the full jugs and buckets in the car.  When I was really ill, until a few months ago, I’d just drive him to the spring and wait while he filled and hauled the buckets up the slope from the waterhole and put them in the car.  Now I fill and he schlepps.  Toward the end of today’s task, he came back down the slope and saw me there, sorta leaning on a full jug sitting beneath the outflow, overflowing, while I stared off into space.  He asked me what was wrong, what was going on.  I answered, “Nothing, just resting, gathering strength.”  Then I hefted the full 5 gallon jug up onto the platform for him to carry, but he sat down on the full bucket beside the full jug, instead, and said, “Me too…” then he squirmed a little fidget and said, “…and getting my butt wet–multi-tasking!” 

  
  

  

  • 9:38 pm
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