Thursday, May 12, 2011

Joe Kennedy: "He even talks like a Schwarzenegger!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced their separation after 25 years of marriage on Monday May 9, 2011 by releasing a joint statement.

His mom and dad are separated, but son Patrick Schwarzenegger isn’t worried – because they drive Hummers!

“Appreciate all your messages. Small speed bump in life, luckily we own hummers, we will cruise right over it. All will be okay. #peace,” Patrick tweeted Tuesday morning.

In one of my letters to my imaginary friend Brian I wrote the following, in which I compare my life to a car accident:

"My own life is like an unending slip and slide; I seem to be continually at the edge of an abyss, mere seconds and a few feet from swerving involuntarily into oncoming traffic. I fear crashing into the traffic in the opposite lane, hurling into the windshield -- hurting myself and damaging the rear view mirror.

My entire existence, in some sense, can be viewed as the lived aftermath of an accident, or series of accidents -- a fall from grace. I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion. I've found it takes at last two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of a snowdrift.

That's the way I feel now. I feel as if I'm at the bottom of the heap, struggling to ascend from the snowdrifts that ensnare me in a winter wasteland."

I see sexual overtones in the above quote, but then I see sexual overtones in everything.  The psychoanalyst in me wants to point out that out-of-control movement of any kind can symbolize out-of-control sexuality.  I have pointed that out before.  Car accident and breakdown dreams are a direct symbol of our wakeful situations which make us feel out of control.

1 comment:

My Daily Struggles said...

During the summer of 1989, when I shared an office with Stacey Schaar, Stacey used to refer to Joe Kennedy with unusual frequency. I think he was a Congressman at the time.

Kennedy resembled my friend Craig Dye. I saw the references to Kennedy as a veiled reference to Craig. Now, how on Earth would Stacey Schaar know what Craig looked like?

It was Stacey Schaar who famously said: "We're all afraid of you. We're all afraid you're going to buy a gun, bring it in, and shoot everybody. Even the manager of your apartment building is afraid of you."

Now, how on Earth would Stacey Schaar know anything at all about the manager of my apartment building, Elaine Wranik?