Tuesday, January 31, 2012

"Be always drunken" continually, with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will: Charles Baudelaire (1857)

Yesterday an Anonymous reader posted what I consider the most interesting and profound Comment posted on "Bobs blog" since I started this project last July.  The reader was responding to my post about the young woman who hates my being present, dancing, in the dance clubs.  The entire Comment consisted of Charles Baudelaire's poem "Enivrez-vous" from his 1857 poetry collection, "Les Fleurs du Mal" ("The Flowers of Evil").    One English translation of the title "Envivrez-vous" is "Be always drunken."  The literal translation of the French would be "Get drunk" or "Be drunk," as an exhortation.

I will give you, below, the original poem, in French, followed by an English translation which was recited by the actor Dean Stockwell to the actor Ralph Richardson in a 1962 movie version of Eugene O'Neil's "Long Day's Journey Into Night."  The Google Translate version is a bad translation.

If you read the poem, you'll see that the poet is not primarily interested in persuading people to get drunk on alcohol.  Instead, the idea is, get drunk on life, however you need to do that.  The last stanza of the poem sums it up:

"Be drunken continually,
with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, 
as you will."

The poem aptly describes what happens in the dance clubs I spend four nights a week performing in.  Everybody other than me drinks a lot of alcohol and pretty much gets inebriated, high.  I drink water almost exclusively.  Occasionally I'll have one drink (vodka with cranberry juice) or a beer, but that's really the rare exception.

But I DO get drunk: on the music, the atmosphere, my dancing, and the energy I absorb from my audience's reaction to my uninhibited dancing.

Until the onlookers get to know me, they frequently come up to me and ask what I'm "on."  "What are you taking?" is a frequent question.  "Nothing.  I'm just drinking water.  I'm high on life.  I'm a retired lawyer.  I got sick of feeding my law firm's money machine.  Now I dance, write, do stand-up comedy, and generally find the fun and humor in life, rather than the money and tragedy."  When I still get stares of skeptical unbelief, I call over friends of mine, young men who have seen me over many weeks in the clubs, and ask them to convince the unbelievers.

People wonder where I get the energy to dance without a break of any kind for three or four hours at a time.  "All that energy I put into making money for my law firm and into the anxiety I sustained to maintain my intense focus on all the details of all the cases I handled is now free for dancing and writing and comedy," I explain.  And then I return to The Dance.

When I perform, which is frequently, in the dance clubs, on the streets, in the stores (dancing, comedy, showing off), I become highly energized, intoxicated, drunk, really.  But the power supply is God-given, not drug-induced.

When I seriously thought of killing myself, during the three months of my severe depression, from September through December of 2010, I was like the man the poet describes in the poem, the man lying in the dreary solitude of his own room, who awakens, and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from him.  Somehow, by mid-January of 2011, as in the poem, I somehow found out how, as the poem says:


"to ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock,
of whatever flies or sighs or rocks or sings or speaks,
ask what hour it 'tis,
and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock 
will answer you:
'It is the hour to be drunken.' "


At first, my family, law partners, strangers, and friends thought I was too drunken for their taste.  Perhaps I was, but I found that state far preferable to where I had been in "the dreary solitude of [my] own room," 
contemplating how I could end my life the previous Fall.  

Then, what I considered "Job-like Comforters" entreated me to take mood-stabilization medication.  They thought I was too drunk and needed external means to make me more "sober."  I refused, reacted angrily, even viciously to my friends who made this suggestion.  I was confident that I could adjust my level of emotional, psychological, and spiritual intoxication with life by myself, using the resource of talking every week with my social worker psycho-therapist, Ray Oakes, without taking mood-stabilizing medication.  

Over time I HAVE moderated my mood, learned to turn the "inebriation" on or off depending on who I'm with and what the context is.  I haven't yet struck the perfect, Goldilocks, balance, but I'm on the road to achieving that goal.

In the meantime, Anonymous, I plan to memorize Charles Baudelaire's wonderful poem.  And I will continue to dance, no matter how many people hate me for it or feel anxious about it.

Here's the original French poem, followed by a link to a YouTube video of Dean Stockwell's film performance of it, and the English translation which Stockwell recited in the film:

Charles Baudelaire

Enivrez-vous (Paris Spleen, 1864)

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront: "Il est l'heure de s'enivrer! Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."

 Be Always Drunken

Be always drunken,
nothing else matters,
that is the only question.

If you would not feel the horrible burden of time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken, continually.

Be drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue,
as you will,
but be drunken.

And sometimes,
if on the stairs of a palace
or on the green side of a ditch
or in the dreary solitude of your own room
you should awaken,
and the drunkenness
be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock,
of whatever flies or sighs or rocks or sings or speaks,
ask what hour it 'tis,
and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock
will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken."

Be drunken continually,
with wine, with poetry, or with virtue,
as you will.

http://youtu.be/0Zlzl4uUWjw      The YouTube link to Dean Stockwell's lovely recitation of the poem in the
                                                  movie

Monday, January 30, 2012

Age stereotypes, and lies, which some young women use to express their conscious hatred and manage their Unconscious Electra-complex anxieties, fantasies, and fears of Older Men on Dance Club floors

A young, psychologically immature woman named Shelly Surandon on FB has written some vile and perjurious lies about my conduct in the dance clubs.  She falsely accuses me of groping women and grinding into women's bodies, just for starters.  Now to be honest, my first reaction was anger.  Most people, I included, do not like to be accused falsely.  As people who have observed me in the dance clubs over time recognize, I do not grope or grind into anyone.  I do, however, make it clear that I have no objection to women groping or grinding into me.  The DJs, guitarists, bands, waiters and waitresses, bartenders, and bouncers, at Mezzo Grill, and the DJs, owner, bartenders, and bouncers at Titanium Club can confirm this.  That's not to say that one or more of them, especially at Mezzo Grill, now that the manager there, David, has banned me from Mezzo, won't lie to please David, but I cannot stop people from lying.  If I ever decided to sue Mezzo Grill for treating me unfairly and unequally, and in violation of my federal civil right to be treated no differently than any other patron, I know that most the employees of Mezzo would, if questioned under oath, under penalty of perjury, testify that I was a sober, unharmful dance patron.  If anything, my biggest fault is this that I only drank water at Mezzo, and, although I ALWAYS gave the bartenders a $1 tip for the water, I didn't contribute to the bar's bottom line directly, although to the extent people liked my lively spirit on the dance floor, I probably increased alcohol sales.  The same testimony could be elicited in a proceeding before the Liquor Control Commission or the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, should I decide to make complaints against Mezzo, and in particular, the manager, David, for denying me an equal opportunity to patronize his establishment.  The two things holding me back from litigation or administrative complaints are these: I don't want to get any of the employees of Mezzo in trouble with the manager, David, for testifying truthfully and at variance with David's claim to me the other night that he was barring me from the premises because he had gotten complaints that I had "infringed on the personal space" of some women whom he was unable to identify for me, or the dates when such behavior allegedly occurred.  He couldn't so identify because he was lying, or if someone made such a complaint, THEY were lying.

On an interesting side note, I had my wallet lifted from my rear pants pocket back in September at Mezzo, when David still allowed me to dance there.  I could have called the police and demanded they search the dance floor up in the disco to find who stole my wallet.  That would have stopped the party, two hours before closing time.  Instead, I went downstairs, told David what had happened, and told him I loved the dance club and didn't want to stop the party, so I would just take the loss of the money in the wallet, cancel my credit cards, and get a new driver's license.  David seemed to appreciate this gesture of mine.  When I got home from the club, I cancelled the credit cards and got up in the a.m. to a call from the Middletown Police that they had found my wallet, without the money, outside the police station.  Whoever the thief was, he or she just wanted the cash in the wallet.  I just ordered new credit cards and, from then on, leave my wallet in a secure location elsewhere on nights I dance.

Now, back to Shelly Surandon's ageist prejudices.  She seems from her rantings and ravings about me on Facebook to have two objections to my dancing in the clubs.  Alleged "creepy" behavior, and my age.  She only has a high school education, which shows in both her thought process and writing style, so I readily understand the intellectual and emotional puzzlement, conundrum really, which my presence in the dance clubs evokes in her immature mind.

If Shelly Surandon focused her objections on what she claims, wrongfully, about my BEHAVIOR on the dance floor, apart from my age, I would have no objection to her making the complaints, even though they are without foundation in actual fact.  Everyone I talk to, everyone who observes my behavior on the dance floor knows that I think of all women as Goddesses, regardless of their age or physical appearance.  And I treat them as if THEY own me, not the other way around.  I frequently tell men, mostly young but even older men when older men are there with their girlfriends or wives, who want me to dance with "their ladies," "Look, that violates my rules.  If SHE wants to dance with me, she can come over and dance with me.  But I don't dance with anyone who doesn't indicate that she wants to dance with me."  Obviously, anyone who has been in the midst of the somewhat chaotic atmosphere of a dance floor knows that mistakes can be made about these things, but these are my rules and I follow them assiduously.

But Shelly Surandon doesn't limit her complaint to what she alleges, wrongly, is "creepy" behavior, i.e. groping and grinding into "young" women.  She mixes in my age by calling me a "creepy OLD man."  As if creepy behavior becomes more creepy, or more objectionable, if engaged in my an older man rather than a younger man.  On all the dance floors I've been on, I have ALWAYS seen instances of younger men grinding into women's bodies without their consent.  When the man does not seem so drunk he might lose control and take a swing at me, I sometimes go over to him and whisper in his ear, "Hey, she's a Goddess.  She owns us, but we don't own her.  Why don't you let her decide if SHE wants to dance with you and not just go over and make physical contact with her like that?"  All the men and all the women who hear this from me universally have approved the sentiment I express about the proper relationship of Goddesses to Mere Mortal Men.

I love it when I see "older" men and women in the dance clubs.  Back when Mezzo Grill still allowed me to dance there, back in September, a man of 50 and his wife of 47, and the wife's girlfriend of 33, were there.  The the two women started to dance with me.  I could tell that the 50-year-old man was smiling his approval.  I was delighted that these "more age-appropriate" women were in the club and interested in dancing with me, even though some would not see a 33-year-old mother as "age appropriate" for me.  But that just goes to show how vague and unclear the term "age-appropriate" is.  I didn't then know who these three people were.  A few weeks later, the three of them again were at Mezzo in the disco, and the women came over and began dancing with me and taking video and stills of the dancing on an I-phone.  I noticed that the husband was not standing up dancing, but he was getting into the music and moving his arms and hands to the beat.  In that situation, when I see a man who does not seem to be as free as I am to dance with abandon, I go over and sympathetically mimic his arm movements, smile, whistle my approval, indicate by hand gestures that I think he's cool, and generally try to get him comfortable to loosen up and dance.  In this case, the man responded by getting out of his chair near the pool table and dancing a bit with his wife, her girlfriend, and me.

At one point, some obviously much younger women, very attractive (but not as attractive to me as the older women, partly but only partly because of the older age of the Goddesses who were dancing with me), began dancing near us.  The 47-year-old wife said to me, "Why don't you go dance with those women.  They're much younger than C and I."  Immediately I smiled and replied, "Because I wnat to dance with you and your friend, and your husband.  You're all better-lookin' and more fun for me to dance with."  She smiled broadly, and beautifully, with her Sicilian great looks, and the three of us continued to dance.

About a month later, either I saw a photo on FB of the Sicilian woman, or she did of me, and we "Friended" each other.  I also "Friended" her husband, who's also Sicilian.  I then realized, to my delight, that their daughter is married to one of the DJs in one of the clubs I've danced at.  I've since become good friends in real life of the woman's 50-year-old husband and was even invited by the DJ to the christening of his second daughter with the "older" couple's own very beautiful daughter.  (I mention their daughter's beauty only because she truly is a beautiful 25-year-old woman, with two beautiful children of her own.  Like the DJ, she's also a very smart, competent career woman who gracefully balances her work and her mothering of her children.)  My buddy, F, has even said that Susie and I should go out with his big Sicilian clan when they go dancing on occasion at restaurants and other venues where a particular local band they love plays music to dance by.  I'm hoping that Susie will agree to do this.  I've promised her that when we do such activities, I'll not show off and try to perform, as I do in the dance clubs, but dance with her and pay attention to her.  I don't conceal the fact I'm a natural show-off and performer, but that doesn't mean Susie has to be "subjected" to that when I'm out with her and our friends.

Some young women in the dance clubs have no problem dancing with an older man, old enough to be their father, or, if I'd had children at 20, instead of starting at 26, and my children had started having children at 20, instead of 31, as my oldest son did, their grandfather, at least in the case of the 21-year-old women.  These women have no unresolved Electra Complex issues of the sort Sigmund Freud wrote about with respect to the psychological development of children.

Oedipus was the Greek mythological figure who killed his father, the King, and married and slept with his mother, the Queen.  Freud hypothesized that men who identified women unconsciously with their mothers, regardless of the age of the woman, had psychological resistance to letting themselves love women.  Freud's theory said that such men are afraid, but not aware of why, that even a young woman they want to sleep with is his mother.  When that happens, the man has difficulty feeling positive loving feelings towards the woman, even though the reality is that the woman is the man's age and cannot possibly be his mother.

In women, the comparable complex was called by Freud the Electra Complex.  In such cases, women have a hard time loving men because they unconsciously identify all men with their own fathers, whom they of course do not want to feel sexual feelings about, even though the psychological reality is that what Freud called "the Id," the complex of libidnous energy which is not socialized or civilized, leads people to be attracted to both conventionally "appropriate" and "inappropriate" love objects.  As Woody Allen said when he fell in love with his step-daughter, Mia Farrow's adopted then 18-year-old daughter, "The heart wants what it wants."  Now while that is so, it doesn't follow that every person one is attracted to is a person one would be wise to get into an intimate sexual relationship with.  That depends on a lot of circumstances other than mere sexual attraction alone.

Back to Shelly Surandon's psychological resistance to my dancing in dance clubs where she's also a patron.  I don't know anything about her except, she went to high school in the south, she is inspired by Sarah Palin, she likes to drink and she likes wine, and, from her Facebook profile picture, which is the only picture of her which is available to people she has not "Friended" on Facebook, she is not physically repulsive.  I will leave it to other men and women to judge whether she is physically or sexually attractive to them.  She doesn't do anything for me, but that's just me.  Since I allow all women who want to dance with me, grope me, or grind into me to do so, I wouldn't object to Shelly Surandon doing so, but I would not, on my own account, choose to do any of those things to her.  Also, while she fantasizes I want her to call me because she thinks I like her, that idea is only in her mind.  I invited her to call me anytime if she wants to discuss the false allegations she's made against me with respect to my behavior and presence in the dance clubs.  Personally, if she falls off the edge of the earth and I never see or hear from her again, that will be entirely too soon.  But I bear no ill will or animus against Shelly Surandon.  I am, quite simply, indifferent to her or her existence.  I do, howver, take issue with, umbrage even, with the lies she tells herself about me and also broadcasts on the internet through Facebook.  But I'm a big boy, and "old" man actually, with a long career as a very successful trial lawyer behind me, nearly 36 years of seeking justice for my clients and making money to support my family and the families of my firm's employees.  As a young high school graduate, who likes to drink wine and fawn over whoever she fantasizes Sarah Palin is, Shelly Surandon has not actually accomplished much of value to society in her young life.  She is just barely out of puberty, it would seem, assuming the ID she shows to get into the dance clubs does not overstate her age, and as long as her Profile Picture on Facebook is not the picture of somebody she is just an imposter to, so we can't hold he lack of any accomplishment against her.  Other, of course, than her being an accomplished drinker and a person who tells bald-faced lies about me.  But hey, it's a free country, except to the extent that her lies become defamatory and damaging to me.  Then they could become the genesis of libel litigation by me against her.  I doubt she has a proverbial "pot to piss in," so the libel damages route is probably  pointless, and, unlike countries like France, we don't incarcerate liars and defamers.  Maybe that archaic institution would deter liars and defamers like Shelly Surandon from plying their prevaricating trade.

Now, the fact that Shelly Surandon tells lies about my actual behavior on the dance floor, what other possible explanation could there be for her enmity towards me?  For her expressed wish that I never again enter the dance clubs she frequents?  Well, consider this possibility.  Maybe my Dionysian, free-spirited dancing actually but secretly, and unconsciously, excites Shelly Surandon?  What if she rather likes my moves on the dance floor, my free-spirited, energetic, physically-strong, creative dance moves?  What if, God or the gods forbid, Shelly Surandon actually wants to dance with me, to grope me, to grind into me, to be groped by me (only in her dreams), be ground-into by me (see, dreams, hers, only in, supra.)?  If that were the case, then Shelly Surandon clearly has an internal, perhaps only unconscious, conflict about me being on the same dance floor, within groping and grinding distance of her.  And if that's the case, and she feels a strong wish to dance with me, and the like, then one psychological defense against becoming aware of, and admitting those wishes to herself or others, is to instead tell herself a story, an untrue story, that it is I, not her, who wants to dance with her, and the like.  And, the story might go, in her mind, "This guy is old enough to be my father.  I have unresolved romantic feelings towards my own father.  I'm afraid that if this 'creepy old man,' Bob Dutcher is out there on the dance floor, near me, I might lose control of myself and go over and begin dancing with him.  And then I'd feel like I was dancing with my own father, feeling attracted to my own father.  Oh my God, I can't handle the internal psychological tension resulting from this conflict within my mind, my soul.  There's only one way to relieve the tension----Bob Dutcher has to go.  I have to tell myself and everybody else that he misbehaves on the dance floor, so I can pretend to myself and others that I have good and sufficient reasons to want Bob Dutcher never to return to the dance clubs, apart from my actual attraction to Bob and to my own father."

Okay, I think that gives you all a glimpse of the way I turn whatever happens to me in life into a story to write about.  I am so much happier creating art than making money.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Northeast High School, Philly, PA, Class of 1967, Thanks for the Memories: News Flash: I've been BANNED, EXPELLED from the Class of 126. Freedom, at last. Take it easy, bro'.

  • Today, what would have been UNTHINKABLE when I was actually in High School, back in the late 60's, finally happened.  I got myself EXPELLED from the Northeast High School Class of 1967 Facebook page for what the class Ayatollah, Fred Blum, said were Offensive and Abusive Comments.  If you care to waste your time reading them, here's the link to the Class of '67 FB page: Actually, I can't even get to the Web Link because of my having been Exiled to Fantasy Island, so you'll have to do the FB search yourself.  It's Northeast High School Class of 1967.  Anyway, one of my classmates, Harvey Goss, who, with a few other people, were playing along with my shenanigans this morning on the class page, before I got kicked off, messaged me in hopes I'd write a kiss-ass apology letter, begging to be reinstated, as I was a few days ago after being Expelled once before.  I of course refused.  As I told Harvey, a far more creative person than I, Groucho Marx, famously said: "I would not be a member of any club which would have me as a member."  QED.  End of discussion about Kiss-Ass Apologies.  Here if you're interested, or having trouble sleeping, is my Message chain with Harvey on this subject.  I'll make no further comment but feel free to do so if you're so inclined.  All perspectives are welcome, the hateful, the supportive, whatever.  It's all Art and all Good, at least in the eyes of the gods, if not The Vatican.



    ROBERT DUTCHER HAS BEEN BANNED PERMANENTLY...
    Fred Blum12:46pm Jan 27
    ROBERT DUTCHER HAS BEEN BANNED PERMANENTLY FROM THE GROUP DUE TO OFFENSIVE AND ABUSIVE POSTS. I have received too many complaints from other classmatEs. I am sure i will be criticized but so be it.!!

    • I've been BANNED, EXPELLED from the Class of126. Freedom, at last. Take it easy, bro'.

  • 42 minutes ago
    Harvey Goss
    • I know-- I meant to tell you to tame it a bit, since some of your remarks were directed at individuals in the class--but it seems like the complaints came from others who don't comment. My advice is: just send a note of apology, stating that you got carried away, but meant no harm--say that as a writer, you tend to tell it how you see it, or what others may think, but not comment--you meant no harm, just got carried away--in recent posts, you were a bit much--remember, the audience is on the conservative side--I really believe an apology is the right thing to do--if nothing else it will test their ability to let things go--

  • 40 minutes ago
    Harvey Goss
    • I have apologized for my content and delivery, because upon reflection, I realized I got carried away---

  • 35 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • Thanks, Harvey, but I don't, frankly, care if I'm on the h.s. board or not. It started to get interesting when you and some other people began to get creative, but I have plenty of other outlets for my creativity. I'm at a point where, if people don't want to deal with me, I go elsewhere. It's a big world. I called Fred Blum and he told me Linda Noble whatever was upset because she's had MS for 25 years and gets around in a Medicaid scooter. I had no idea. If I'd known, I would not have made the joke about the scooters. Look, I don't go out of my way to hurt people, but I am a creative person now, rather unconventional, and humor sometimes hurts. I do not plan to apologize or kiss ass to try to join a club which does not want me as a member. Think Groucho Marx, a far more creative person than I'll ever be, who said, famously, "I wouldn't want to be a member of any club which would have me as a member." But the people who find my energy enlivening will, I suspect, stay in touch with me. This afternoon, when you and I and the other loosey-goosey people were riffing back and forth, I was having a hard time controlling my laughter here at the Drunkin' Donuts where I now get wif-fi access. Anyway, I've got to get some dinner and then get ready for my Friday night dance club performance at Titanium Club tonight. Last night at Rookies I had a blast. The Goddesses and the Mere Mortal Young Men got all worked up by my Dionysian energy field. I'm having a blast in life and have no need to return to high school. Keep in touch, bro'

  • 35 minutes ago
    Harvey Goss
    • Send a masterpiece---let your best writing be seen and felt!

  • 31 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • Not sure what you mean by "Send a masterpiece." You mean create one?

  • 25 minutes ago
    Harvey Goss
    • Wish you would reconsider--not to kiss ass, but simply to say "got a little carried away" and never meant to hurt anyone's feelings--the reason being--you were too much, considering the group--masterpiece-oh- when I read your letter, I want to feel it-I know you are opposed to it, just want you to do what I believe is right-you're a good guy--no reason for people to think otherwise---

  • 23 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • What do you mean: "--masterpiece-oh- when I read your letter, I want to feel it"...What letter? Feel what? Sorry, I can't read between your lines. You need to spell it out a bit more clearly if you want me to understand.
    • As for explaining myself, I don't mind if people think I'm an asshole. Plenty of people do. That in no way shakes my self-confidence and it does not "deter me from my appointed rounds," just like the Post Office. But also, I've been Exiled to Alcatraz so I no longer could post an apology even if I wanted, which I don't want. I would like to tell Linda Noble that I had NO idea she has MS. Had it, I would not have made the comment I did. But I'm not a mind reader, even if the high schoolers fantasy I am.

  • 19 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • My life is out there for anyone to tell stories about, any way they want. And I do the same about my life and other people's lives. We're all storytellers, all the time, but most people don't see the wisdom in THAT story line.
    • So, are the high schoolers assholes because they can't handle my creativity? Or am I an asshole because I refuse to behave in ways they're comfortable with? There's no TRUTH there, must more stories. That's why I love being a writer, or at least that's the story I tell about myself now.

  • 18 minutes ago
    Harvey Goss
    • Bottom line--you can't always say what you want to say--if you had a radio show, people could choose not to listen, but in this case you were a bit much, only the last several comments--whatever you, is your choice--just my opinion -- we'll still correspond:-)
    • Rob, as I said free speech is valid to a point--
    • Battery dying--if ur not to partied out tonight--shoot me a dose of wisdom--later bro

  • 4 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • Bro', Free Speech is always "valid" and always my option....as long as I don't run into problems with the U.S. Supremes (think court, not Diana Ross), I don't frankly give a shit WTF anybody makes of my creative shit....that's not MY problem, but theirs, dude.....that's what ART is, there for the world to contemplate and tell stories about. Do you think Picasso really gave a shit what the Pope thought when he did that series of pictures of the Popes peeping through bathroom key holes watching people take a shit or peeping at people having sex with whores in whorehouses? I saw these at Picasso Erotique exhibit in Montreal years ago. Le Louvre had kept them hidden away in the basement and that was the first time they ever were shown publicly because the museum feared people would crucify Picasso. Do you think Old Pablo gave a flying fuck what people thought? Hell no, bro', and I'm no Picasso (although you'll notice that word sequence rhymes nicely), but I feel the same way about what I create. I create what I create and don't give a flying fuck what people make of it. Lock me up, kill me, but I'll never stop CREATING until they kill me, or God or the gods give me over to the Grim Reaper.

  • 3 minutes ago
    Robert Dutcher
    • If I remember when I check FB outside the closed DD at 2:30 a.m. once I get done partying, I'll send you some creative shit. Send me a message if you want to remind me because I communicate with scores of people on FB.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Call him JOB---Dr. William Petit is getting Married to a Much Younger Woman, of Childbearing Age--As I Predicted, his Focus has Changed, from Hatred to Love

When I first wrote about Dr. Petit, the man whose wife and two daughters were raped, burned, and murdered in the Chesire Home Invasion case, I compared him to Ahab in "Moby Dick."  I thought that Dr. Petit had an unreasonable, almost neurotic, obsession with the idea of killing the two men who destroyed his entire family and burned his home to the ground.  But, as I related in the blog post about the case, I came to a different understanding of the man when I paid a visit to the property where the house once stood and walked through Michaela's Garden, the Japanese garden which Dr. Petit named after his younger daughter.

In that blog post, which can be found at this link, http://wwwbobs-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/call-him-ahab-except-in-michaelas.html , I reported that Petit family members were absolutely certain that Dr. Petit would never be able to love again, that the criminal prosecution and the desire for the execution of the murderers would remain the focus of his life forever.

At the end of that blog post, I expressed the hope that Dr. Petit, like the Job of the Jewish bible (Old Testament), would be able to turn his focus from his desire that the murderers be killed to a desire to live again, find love, and even create a new family.  Here's what I wrote at that time.


"Whatever the Petit clan feels now, in the heat and passion of the trial, it is my fervent, daily prayer that Bill Petit one day searches for, and finds, True Love again.  He deserves no less.


I understand the passion with which Bill's family says these things, and I just don’t have it in my heart to remind them that about the story of that guy from Ur, wherever That place is, whom the biblical philosopher called Job.


In the Jewish bible, the story goes, Satan murders two of Job’s children, with God's explicit permission to do such things to Job, in a vain attempt to shake Job’s faith in God, to rock and dislodge Job's love of life.  In the end, once God reminds Job that his problems are not the central focus of all of Life, of Existence, Job moves on, finds love again in his relationship with his wife, and has two more children.  He does not get back his two murdered kids, but he does get two more new children to love, or so the biblical writers tell this arch-typical story.


I hope Bill Petit can reenact the Job story in his own life, once these murder cases are over."

Well, contrary to what some of Dr. Petit's family thought, he now HAS found love in his life once again.  This time, the god of Love has appeared in the form of a woman 21 years younger than Dr. Petit, who is 55.  His new love is a Hartford Courant photographer, Christine Paluf, age 34.  She is blonde, beautiful, radiant.  They apparently have been dating since at least last summer, just before the commencement of the second murder trial, the one I reported on in "Bobs blog," State of Connecticut vs. Joshus Komisarjevsky.  The Harftord Courant did an article about the relationship just last week.  Here's the link to the January 4, 2012 story: http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-petit-engaged-0105-20120104,0,6260318.story   

The Courant article reports that Ms. Paluf attended the trial.  I recall seeing her there and watched Dr. Petit and her talk occasionally during recesses in the trial.  She sat a few rows behind Dr. Petit and his immediate relatives.  It was obvious that she was attractive and he enjoyed interacting with her.  It was not obvious that they were "an item," although I thought to myself at the time, wouldn't it be nice if he eventually finds somebody like that young woman, marries her, and has children and a new family with her.

So, Dr. Petit is not Ahab, the obsessed sea captain in Melville's "Moby Dick."  He is Job.  The man whom God allowed Satan to test.  Like Dr. Petit, Job went through a long period of intense suffering but eventually came to the other side of despair and again found love in his heart.  In Job's case, he did not lose his wife, but he did, like Dr. Petit, lose two of his children.  And so the Epilogue of Job says that God restored Job's life.  And so Dr. Petit, with God's help, will restore his life.  The wife and children Dr. Petit loved with all his heart and soul cannot be replaced, but those feelings he's now transferred to his new love, Christine Paluf, and he will transfer those feelings to whatever children God blesses the couple with, should they be so lucky, so graced.

The only question I have is this.  If the jury which gave Joshua Komisarjevsky the death penalty had known that Dr. Petit was actively engaged in changing his life, his past misfortune, with Christine Paluf, would the jury have thought even harder than they did about whether Joshua Komisarjevsky should also be given a new chance at life?  And another question then rears its ugly head: did Dr. Petit deliberately conceal from the jury, by not sitting with Christine Paluf in the courtroom, by not showing the jury that he was cutting his (understandably) revengeful heart some slack by turning away from hate and back to love?  Was Dr. Petit carrying out a strategy of witholding from the jury a significant fact about his own life which a jury maybe, just maybe, would have used as the reason to save Joshua Komisarjevsky's life?  If so, is Dr. Petit somewhat less blameless than most of us thought, before we read of his relationship with Christine Paluf?  That fact would have made a difference to me, had I been sitting on that jury.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

62 and 80 Years: An Insignificant Difference in Geologic Time---An Email Exchange with my Journalist Brother-in-Law on my Birthday‏

My brother-in-law, William Johnson, is a professional journalist, author, and once, many decades ago, a Jesuit priest.  The Vatican released him from his priestly vows so he could marry his first wife, have his two children, and be transubtantiated into a budding journalist by taking his family to Alabama and following Dr. Martin Luther King on his civil rights marches.  On that journey, it dawned on William that maybe he could make a living reporting on events like Dr. King's journey for human freedom, like the reporters William observed on the marches that summer.

William is 18 years older than I.  However, he is a YOUTHFUL four-score man.  Today, on my birthday, I am three-score and two.  William wrote me a nice email and I replied.

It is now in the waning moments of my birthday evening.  Soon, I shall never be just three-score and two years.  Add one day on the morrow, another the day after, and so on.  And so it is for all of us Mere Mortal Men.  You Goddesses, well that's another story, for another day, another blog post.

For now, I'll close my three-score and two with the email thread, by which William and I were, on this day, connected. cbream is Carol, my sister.

From: wjohnson@
To: a12250@hotmail.com
CC: cbream@
Subject: RE: January 22
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:43:34 -0500


Hey, you Babe-in-Woods,

I hear a rumour that today is your birthday and that you have struck age 62. I still remember when I was a callow youth of 62: my best years lay ahead of me, though I did not yet know it.

May you enjoy many more years of happy life – as you have enjoyed over the past year or so. And may the years bring you emotional satisfaction, growing maturity, more self-confidence and more love for all other human beings. And may all the people you care for love you.

And may I accompany you for a few more years yet.

Your much older brother,

William

  • 62 and 80 years: an insignificant difference in geologic time‏

To William Johnson


hey, allegedly much older bro',

the only thing i need say is this.  rumors of your impending earth-exit ("a few more years") are greatly exaggerated.

other than that, i needs agree with thee, that your best ones lay after thy earlier years, my now not-callow wiser, better.

your wishes are gratefully received, and generously given.

should i ever learn to have but a small part of your emotional satisfaction, maturity, self-confidence, and other-love, then, when i am god's blink older, as you, accomplished much shall i have indeed.

your slightly younger, in the gods' time, bro',

bob