into the black hole of my careless memory.
I brought this phrase to the next session I had scheduled with my therapist cum meditation instructor, who hung his shingle outside an old storefront. His name was Dr. Olan. However, with his familiars and clients he preferred to be addressed as Dr. O. This personal designation also appeared on his business cards, as if it were some kind of alias. The simple “O,” he once explained to me, was not a declaration of negativism, as I once hoped, but one of openness to interpretation and non-sectarianism. I found this affectation nauseating, but at the time I wrote it off as part of the whole package that was Dr. O: his gentle yet commanding manner, his projection of a superior erudition, and, despite his shabby place of business, his clearly expensive yet tasteful attire and fastidiously groomed person. Furthermore, I was not in a position to shop around for the help I needed to get me from one day to another. And the only reason I needed such help was that what I really wanted—to be euthanized by anesthesia—was not available to me in the barbaric society to which I belonged. While Dr. O was capable of assisting me in my true desire, I was not so unhinged or unreasonable as to expect his compliance. In fact, he would not even allow me to speak of it due to his expansive acceptance of an objective moral order in the universe.
“An ‘all-new context,’” repeated Dr. O when I told him of my dream occasion. “Interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, it’s so open to exegesis.”
This reaction in no way took me aback. As I have suggested, Dr. O was so blatantly, so ostentatiously open to “delightful possibilities and interpretations” that nothing really meant anything, or not much, in whatever context he spoke at a given time. For this reason, I often felt like murdering him. However, the intensity of my demoralized state of emotion left me with nowhere else to go, since I had been rejected by every other psychotherapist to whom I had previously appealed. And having somewhere to go was at this point all I had going for me, that is, until I went for good, preferably via euthanasia by painless anesthetic. Nevertheless, I must admit that I still felt at some level a totally idiotic need to exhaust every speck of interest left to me in being alive. Consequently, I was drawn in by Dr. O’s use of the word “interesting.” Of course, he knew that this is how I would react, just as I knew how he would react. The whole pitiful drama between us was such that there were no surprises, or none that indicated any progress in my condition. There were only confirmations that everything was just what it seemed—birth, the business of living, and death. This was simple enough for most, but quite intolerable for a moral and sometimes even a phenomenal nihilist like me.
Claiming that he found the phrase “all-new context” to be interesting was a sort of empty compliment, though I could not prove it or I might have saved myself much time and expense. After all, it was not as if I needed Dr. O to perform emergency surgery on my body, just to tinker enough with my brain to keep me from going to ruin in a purely psychic context . And what therapist or meditation guru does not use flattery as a tool of leverage when dealing with his clientele? No one who seeks the attention of either type of healer, let alone one who is both, wants to be seen as just another face in the crowd. If one is defective, as are we all in some way, being uniquely defective is something of a consolation in the absence of a cure.
All the same, my resentment of Dr. O was based primarily on his prestige as an authority figure, one who by virtue of his specialized learning could lord it over anyone willing to pay in order to benefit from what he knew, or pretended to know. This attitude toward authority figures applied with special vehemence to those who conveyed, though they
I brought this phrase to the next session I had scheduled with my therapist cum meditation instructor, who hung his shingle outside an old storefront. His name was Dr. Olan. However, with his familiars and clients he preferred to be addressed as Dr. O. This personal designation also appeared on his business cards, as if it were some kind of alias. The simple “O,” he once explained to me, was not a declaration of negativism, as I once hoped, but one of openness to interpretation and non-sectarianism. I found this affectation nauseating, but at the time I wrote it off as part of the whole package that was Dr. O: his gentle yet commanding manner, his projection of a superior erudition, and, despite his shabby place of business, his clearly expensive yet tasteful attire and fastidiously groomed person. Furthermore, I was not in a position to shop around for the help I needed to get me from one day to another. And the only reason I needed such help was that what I really wanted—to be euthanized by anesthesia—was not available to me in the barbaric society to which I belonged. While Dr. O was capable of assisting me in my true desire, I was not so unhinged or unreasonable as to expect his compliance. In fact, he would not even allow me to speak of it due to his expansive acceptance of an objective moral order in the universe.
“An ‘all-new context,’” repeated Dr. O when I told him of my dream occasion. “Interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, it’s so open to exegesis.”
This reaction in no way took me aback. As I have suggested, Dr. O was so blatantly, so ostentatiously open to “delightful possibilities and interpretations” that nothing really meant anything, or not much, in whatever context he spoke at a given time. For this reason, I often felt like murdering him. However, the intensity of my demoralized state of emotion left me with nowhere else to go, since I had been rejected by every other psychotherapist to whom I had previously appealed. And having somewhere to go was at this point all I had going for me, that is, until I went for good, preferably via euthanasia by painless anesthetic. Nevertheless, I must admit that I still felt at some level a totally idiotic need to exhaust every speck of interest left to me in being alive. Consequently, I was drawn in by Dr. O’s use of the word “interesting.” Of course, he knew that this is how I would react, just as I knew how he would react. The whole pitiful drama between us was such that there were no surprises, or none that indicated any progress in my condition. There were only confirmations that everything was just what it seemed—birth, the business of living, and death. This was simple enough for most, but quite intolerable for a moral and sometimes even a phenomenal nihilist like me.
Claiming that he found the phrase “all-new context” to be interesting was a sort of empty compliment, though I could not prove it or I might have saved myself much time and expense. After all, it was not as if I needed Dr. O to perform emergency surgery on my body, just to tinker enough with my brain to keep me from going to ruin in a purely psychic context . And what therapist or meditation guru does not use flattery as a tool of leverage when dealing with his clientele? No one who seeks the attention of either type of healer, let alone one who is both, wants to be seen as just another face in the crowd. If one is defective, as are we all in some way, being uniquely defective is something of a consolation in the absence of a cure.
All the same, my resentment of Dr. O was based primarily on his prestige as an authority figure, one who by virtue of his specialized learning could lord it over anyone willing to pay in order to benefit from what he knew, or pretended to know. This attitude toward authority figures applied with special vehemence to those who conveyed, though they
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