The ineffable

My new preoccupation has become ghost stories. Not the fictional kind; the ones that I like are (or at least claim to be) real personal accounts of supernatural goings-on. Everything from living in haunted houses to seeing weird stuff on the road to Ouija board phenomena. The stuff that really enthralls me is of a religious nature, which is telling.

I think I'm starting to get into one of those periods of my life where I feel the empty spot where religion could be. I spend most of my life happily not thinking about the Big Questions-- why we're here, the purpose of my existence, whether I'm living a good life and what will happen if I die. But every now and then they start to haunt me and I get a hankering to believe in something, anything. And lately things have all been connecting in my head.

Time for bullet points!

• I'm reading Name all the Animals by Alison Smith, a fictionalized memoir of a girl growing up in a very Catholic environment. She wrote that during her childhood, up until her brother died, Jesus was as real a person to her as her parents, and would talk to her. She also writes about praying to a statue of Mary. Sometimes I really wish I had someone or something to pray to. The thought ran through my head the other day that had I grown up in such an environment, I would probably be an exceptional Catholic.
  
• I haven't had any real supernatural experiences, except for playing around with a Ouija board with my best friend when we were 12 or so. We spent a summer talking to this "good" spirit named Nick and a "bad" spirit named 6. These two spirits were at war with each other and would battle over who was speaking to us through the board. One time the planchette was moving around wildly and then flipped over quite violently. I asked my friend why she did that, and she immediately denied it, saying she thought I did it. I don't remember feeling especially frightened through any of it. I'm not sure either of us really believed what was going on, although we also knew we weren''t moving the thing ourselves.
  
• The only other thing close to a supernatural experience I've had was when my family and I were staying at a hotel at Disneyworld, and as we were all drifting off to sleep I felt a very distinct tapping on my forehead, like someone was tapping with their finger. Three firm taps. That also didn't frighten me, although it was surprising.
  
• Reading scary stories tends to freak me out a lot in real life, because despite being nonchalant about the Ouija board when I was twelve, I am a big huge baby when it comes to ghosties and such. So the other night when Anthony and I were laying in bed talking and suddenly the staircase motion detector light came on, I freaked and he ended up going to make sure no one was out there, wielding the knife on his Leatherman.
  
• The next night, we were hanging out in the living room when we heard a noise coming from a plastic shopping bag that was in the middle of the floor (we'd picked up a couple of things earlier and just left it there). I dunno if it was the bag settling or a bug got into it or what, but again I freaked out and Anthony went and stomped it and it stopped making noise. Bottom line: I am SUCH a baby. I think if anything ghostly were to actually happen, I would wet myself and hide under the covers crying for the rest of my life.
  
• I know I'm not using these bullet points correctly but I don't care.

Do I believe most of the stories I read? Yes, yes I do. I don't have any theories about ghosts. However, I do not share my husband's belief that when you die, that's it and you're dead. I think some part of us is eternal. I've dabbled with beliefs about reincarnation and spirits, but really I don't know what to believe. I always thought I'd end up a Buddhist, but I studied Buddhism pretty heavily during my last year of college and it just wasn't compelling.

One of the main reasons I do believe in life after death is my unwavering belief that my grandfather (who died of emphysema several years ago) and my aunt Sam (who died of an aneurism when she was 19) are watching over me. There's no reason or logic behind that belief, and sometimes I feel a little foolish admitting to it, but it's just a feeling I have, almost a hunch.

One January when we were both in college, my sister and I were driving down to Massachusetts in my car. I was going to drop her off at her school on the way to mine (this was at the end of winter break). It was going to be a long trip, so I let her drive first, because I knew how to navigate better once we got into Mass. It was snowing lightly when we left the house, but nothing we were too concerned about.

When we hit the Portland area, the snow had turned into freezing rain. It was eerie. It seemed like it was just rain and the road was just wet, except that ice kept forming on the windshield, and we kept passing cars that had slid off the road and hit the guard rail. I want to say we saw 3 or 4 cars off the road in a 20 or 30 mile stretch. I started to get a little worried, because my sister didn't have a lot of experience driving in bad conditions. I told her to pull off at the next rest area, and she did.

Except, the car slid on the ice on the way into the rest area and ended up smacking headlong into a curb. Long story short, the car was damaged, I didn't know exactly how badly, but certainly didn't want to continue on to Mass, so we turned around and went home.

My mother was so happy to see us get back home safe. She said she had a bad feeling about us making the trip that day, and prayed to Aunt Sam and Grampa to protect us. She took our minor accident as a sign that they were watching over us, keeping us safe from what could've been a worse accident (the ice storm continued on in Massachusetts, so we would've been driving through it the whole way).

Later I was annoyed at my "guardian angels" because it seemed like the accident was going to cost me a lot of money. The repairs cost 950 bucks and my deductible was $500, a whole lot of money I didn't have. As it turned out, the estimate by the insurance company ended up being $1500, so they sent me a check for $1000. I came out of that accident with 50 extra bucks.

I think I've strayed from my point, and also run out of things to say. If any of you (either people I know who read the blog or anonymice who happen to run into it) have any ghostly, supernatural, or related stories to share, please do!

Fatherhood from a mother's perspective.

I've been watching a lot of the A&E show Intervention, and sort of psychoanalyzing as I watch. A lot of factors in the addicts' lives repeat. Almost all the addicted women were molested or raped, usually as children. A lot of them had absent or weak fathers, and try in their adult lives to make up for this by dating much older men. Of course, all I can think of when I watch this show is Téa. I've made Anthony re-watch a few episodes with me to warn him about how NOT to be a father.

One particularly disturbing episode featured a girl who couldn't swallow. She had a feeding tube put directly into her stomach as a teenager, because she just stopped eating. She said she experienced massive fear and panic when she put food in her mouth, because as a child she was forced to perform oral sex on a man. Really fascinating how trauma shows up in the body.

The father figure is a huge part of Lacanian theory. The symbolic father (which is not necessarily the biological father) is crucial in a child's psychological development. The symbolic father is whoever or whatever becomes the Name-of-the-Father metaphor, which disrupts the mother-child dyad. I've written about this dyad in other entries; the child desperately trying to be what the mother desires, and the mother sort of just letting that happen, maybe hoping that her desire can or will be fulfilled by the child (again, all this is unconscious).

"In French, 'Name' and 'No' are almost the same word (nom/non), and so 'Name of the Father' becomes 'No of the Father.' This 'no' is a prohibition-- no, you cannot become (the mother's desire). In order for the child to function in the symbolic register, of society's laws and symbols, the fantasy of becoming the complement to the mother's lack cannot be maintained."

The Name of the Father is Lacan's take on symbolic castration, which Freud wrote about. The result of this is the child coming into the symbolic register, which is basically the world of language and the laws of society, and becoming a "desiring subject." This is also the beginning of the unconscious, which is a whole other can of worms.

When the child becomes a subject of desire, she also takes on a structure-- one of three: neurotic, psychotic, and perverted. These are not psychopathological; everyone fits into one of these three structures. They have nothing to do with mental illness or pedophilia. "Structures are a way of organizing the subject's discourse, conscious and unconscious experiences, and the way one experiences one's own body" (quoted from my thesis).

I'll write more about the neurotic and psychotic structures at some point, because they are fascinating. The structures always struck me as the most interesting and disturbing part of Lacanian theory.

The law of the father must come through the mother. Sometimes the mother does not let the Name of the Father get through clearly, or at all. When the mother completely blocks the Name of the Father, the child ends up with a psychotic structure. When the mother lets it through but dismisses its importance, the child ends up in the perverted structure.

"The mother and child have a pact, essentially, that they are outside the law-- cultural prohibitions do not apply to them. The pervert knows what's right and wrong, but she does not live by these rules." (from my thesis, again)

A lot of the male addicts on Intervention really seemed like they must be in the perverted structure. They often lacked a father figure and were spoiled by their mothers. I always feared that if I had a son (this structure most often happens in boys), I would end up having this kind of "we're above the law" pact with him. Actually, when I had my big plans to write a novel last year (pre-Téa), I was going to write about a woman who gives birth to a son, and ends up with that kind of relationship with him.

Fathers are so important. I feared for a while about what kind of father Anthony would be. His own dad was abusive, absent when he should have been present, and only present in the most damaging ways. Anthony admitted to me the other day that he was afraid he'd end up being the kind of dad his father was. If that were to happen (I told him), I would do what his mother failed to do, and leave.

I think getting that fear off his chest was a relief for him, though, because lately he's been bonding with the baby much more than before. I think men find babies a little difficult because they are so mommy-centered, especially breastfeeding babies. Téa has become my heart and soul, and I wouldn't be surprised if Anthony's felt a little left out. But lately he's been playing with her, talking to her, dancing with her (which is adorable). He's taking his place as the third figure in our little Oedipal world.

Which is great for me, because finally I can take a shower or a nap without being interrupted by her where-did-mommy-go screams.