Of Simplicity and Freudian Free Association

Summer Interior - Edward Hopper, 1909

          I read that Sigmund Freud would have his patients lie on his couch and exercise what he called 'free association'. He would have them speak of anything that came to mind, as a way to let the contents of the subconscious, thoughts normally suppressed, surface and communicate with the consciousness. Lying in bed yesterday afternoon I tried it for a few minutes. This is what surfaced (after some editing).

          Two books currently on my nightstand include Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World which may explain the nature of some of the content.

          If you find poetry or the imitation of it tedious (as I usually do), just skip this post.

Kisses, embraces, and nowhere places,

Forgotten faces, not my own

I hope.

I believe, but what is belief?

Reality exists and is what it is,

Who can change it, not me?

Curtains and laces and blended faces,

Abandoned places not my own

Maybe ours, if only for a summer past,

But certainly not forever gone

I see you there, and here, and everywhere,

But nowhere, not my own

I miss you, I hate you, I may actually love you,

My perpetual indecision is known

Semantics, hysterics,

Philosophic, neurotic

Oh, when will I be free?

Of these cages and wages

Of war against nature

Of Unbearable Lightness of being.

Rhyme and meter and picky eaters

And fishing in the sea

Or lake as the case may be.

Cheese and tomatoes,

Green beans and potatoes

All of it I see

Or saw

Or will see

Time is playing tricks on little old me.

Advance, retreat,

No one to beat me but he

Submission, admission,

Repression, cognition

Oh, how I long to be free

Secrets, where is he?

Lonely road, Where is she?

Warm hands, soft lips, wet tongue,

Your tongue on me…

Sensitive places, tips and spaces,

Maybe sensation will set me free.

‘Exit here,’ I wish it said somewhere

Just exactly how to be

Liberated, non-frustrated,

Nihilistic, emancipated;

Gone, this inertia of ennui.

Angst, self-doubt,

Self reproach, self-abdication;

Emotion, you treason of reason,

Leave me be!

It is transcendence I seek,

Sweet, and unencumbered~

Simplicity