A month of sundays

This week’s prompt from One Single Impression is ‘Carnival’.

“The Zodiac collides with FaceBook”

in a month of sundays
the snow accumulates
floods wash away promises
leaders rise and flee
seasons end and prayers go unheeded
payday comes in
fees go out
blame is the Carnival of our lives
guilt sambas through the endless
relentless
negative
bombastic
rhetoric
we all loath
yet lap up with zeal

###########################

I want to start by wishing all my friends best wishes and health for 2011. I have taken a break these past four weeks to center myself and make many difficult decisions. However, before getting into the recent past, I wanted to share with you something fascinating. Yesterday I went to our local library and picked up a copy of Smithsonian magazine from Sept. 2010. Within the pages I discovered this article: Patience Worth: Author From the Great Beyond . There is another source here from Wikipedia: Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran (February 15, 1883–1937).

What I found though was buried deep in the article towards the end in four short paragraphs. Bold text mine.

“No sooner had she appeared than an uproar ensued in the press, as a variety of experts—philosophers, psychiatrists, neurologists, historians, semanticists and literati—began weighing in from around the nation, Canada and Britain. Psychoanalyst Wilfrid Lay, writing in the literary journal The Bookman, insisted that Patience’s writing was merely “the automatic activities of [Pearl’s] Unconscious.” Writer Mary Austin in the Unpartizan Review attributed Patience to “an excessive discharge of phosphorus” in Pearl’s brain. Other observers explained the phenomenon as the result of inherited “nerve cells” or a “talent that has been transmitted over the heads of [Pearl’s] ancestors to her.”

Pearl steadfastly refused to cooperate with the psychologists who wanted to study her, but that didn’t stop Charles Cory, chairman of the philosophy department at Washington University, who’d been present at several Patience Worth sessions, from claiming to have solved the mystery. In a long article in the Psychological Review in 1919, Cory argued that the case could be explained by multiple personality. Though Cory was confounded by Pearl’s ability to remain herself while Patience dictated to her—multiples usually inhabit only one personality at a time—he concluded that while Pearl went about her housework during the day, her “other self” composed her novels and poems.”

“James Hervey Hyslop, head of the ASPR from 1905 until his death in 1920, was typical. After earning a PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, Hyslop had joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1889 as a professor of logic and ethics, but by the early 1900s he had given up his post to devote himself to psychical research. He claimed that he could determine the authenticity of spirit communication through a system of “cross references,” whereby several mediums who were unknown to each other would receive related messages from a spirit. As soon as he heard about Patience Worth, he wrote to the Currans, urging them to submit to his cross-reference test. They refused. Anger at their rejection may have been behind the attack he launched in the April 1916 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. The case of Patience Worth was “a fraud and a delusion,” he wrote. “Notoriety and making a fortune were the primary influences acting on the parties concerned.”

A decade later, Hyslop’s judgment was emphatically contradicted by his successor at the ASPR, Walter Franklin Prince. A one-time Episcopal and Methodist minister and amateur magician who had a PhD in psychology from Yale, Prince had grown up with a passion for puzzles. He became fascinated by abnormal psychology after he and his wife adopted a girl diagnosed with multiple personalities. This led to an interest in the psychology of mediums. Some of Prince’s research was published in the Journal of the ASPR, and soon Prince became the society’s chief investigating officer, working with Harry Houdini to expose fake mediums, who “came to fear him like the plague,” according to a friend.”

I had no idea multiple personalities were acknowledged so far back in psychology which begs the question how has the current style of mental therapy and treatment become so hostile towards multiples? I have yet to meet a single person in the mental health field who is willing to talk to me about our lives. The contrast in eras is so striking.

I began a new job this year after burning out in my previous occupation. The economic downturn has been difficult on many sectors of business. I am very hopeful my new position will last at least as long as I wish to continue working. It is a complete opposite; mentally taxing and physically restful versus physically taxing and mentally boring. I am working much longer, driving much further but am also much, much happier. Sometimes quitting and moving on is necessary even when doing so creates a different set of obstacles. I have received unconditional support from home and abroad for my change of employment and am looking forward to each new challenge.

lay down past failures
enter the hall of mirrors
own your distortions

seared meat on a stick
tacky detritus coats midway
festive illusions

thrillriders screaming
staccato barkers weave dreams
nebulous shadows

dark steps to sideshows
raucous safe entertainment
mutants titillate

clutch giant pink pandas
fall back to reality
swig sugary dregs