21st of September 2021, a birthday of an enemy, a birthday of an old flame, trams and busses with Bruno, and the usual swinging between being a good person and wanting everything Clients will often ask what I did on the weekend. I always answer something truthful, but tailored to what I know they are ok with hearing. Sometimes something nasty in me does the opposite and I tell them that which makes them envious or makes them feel that they there are 124 hours in my weekend and only 6 in theirs. That only happens when a client pisses me off, which can only happen when am confronted with something in me that I struggle with and vice versa. You can see my wanting to do, be and own everything all the same time even in how am trying to convey everything in two pages here. Zuzana and Bruno are asleep. They are not afflicted by some kind of raging greed to suck more out of life that wakes them up at 5 am and makes them grab a book in some obscure language which they then start reading to prove to themselves and the world that they can read that book in this obscure language. Am also often too harsh on myself. That’s not the only reason why am reading a book in Slovak, it’s only one of many. Some are not so ego driven. It’s also true that I expose the machinations of my own ego, so nobody else can do it. It’s like knocking the sword out of the hands of potential adversaries.

And one thought leading to the next, one could say that it’s also a sign of a big ego to expect enemies to show up to expose my ego. This is why I understand Israelis. The evil that is in them, is also in me. One version is that the good in me daily triumphs over the evil in me. The other version is that am not in any position to unleash the evil. I haven’t managed to buy the US congress yet. Zuzana cuts to the essence of this kind of thinking. The other day she reminded me of that Native American idea that there are two wolves in all of us, a good one and a bad one and we choose which one we want to feed. So what am saying is that I choose to feed the good one, but that I suspect my evil one is hungrier than in some other people and that I can imagine circumstances where I would maybe throw food to the evil one. I often watch the movie Der Untergang. To explain why would probably require a novella in its own right. Partially it’s because I learned German by watching German movies and documentaries over and over and over again. Partially it’s because no movie has better sounding explosions. It’s the only movie where I have the impression the explosions are happening right around me. This distracts me from the turnmoil inside me. I think I re-traumatize myself with this movie and others like it, again and again. It’s like biting your lip to forget you have a headache. It can be pleasurable to cause yourself some pain if it helps you ignore other pain.

It’s maybe a pedagogically beneficial way of self-harm. Watching ‘The Downfall’ makes small cuts into my soul, so I don’t have to take a knife and make real cuts. The release of feel good hormones by doing something harmful is similar though. There are a few scenes that I prefer not to watch. At a certain point a little boy is killed by Russian artillery, for example. That cuts too deeply. That’s not biting my own lip anymore, that’s ripping it open. So about the title of this entry. A week ago it was the birthday of the staunchly pro-Israeli Rabbi I tried to be friends with. My friend-enemy. My frenemy. It was the day Gabor Maté was in town. I do not rationally believe in astrology, but several people with a birthday on or around that date have had a profound influence in my life. I toyed with the idea of wishing him a happy birthday after a few months of radio silence. He bailed out of the cockpit of our dicussions, not me. Am 100 percent convinced he no longer had the energy to try and turn me into a pro-Israeli. Maybe he thought if he could convert one Twitter Muhajdeen like me there was hope for his cause. I didn’t wish him a happy birthday, because it would have been entirely hypocritical. First of all, I find it cowardly he discontinued our discussions. And second of all, I do not wish happy birthdays to anyone who’s on board with continuing the massacring of kids in Gaza or terrorism like blowing up pagers – a device most associated with medical personnel. So that was that. A week later a woman I had a ‘coup de foudre’ attraction with as far back as 2008 had her birthday. I wrote about her in ‘Female Alphabet’.

Over the years our connection evolved into me coaching her and she mostly contacting me when she was in trouble. At times she would also display some kind of groupie like behaviour. Her constantly wanting to be guided was wrong, but so was my feelings of control by always having people around eager to get my guidance. So I got tired of maintaining this imbalance and didn’t write her on her birthday. She already has other guys in her life willing to guide her. She emphasizes they all have my star sign, Pisces. Which, and again I don’t rationally believe in astrology, is not entirely correct. Am a blend of Aries and Pisces. Pisces tend not to have such ego drive or much energy in general. If you want to know why I know something about astrology, it’s because in the past I used it as a crutch to get to know people. I think this topic resurfaced in my head while binge-watching interviews with Peter Crone. In several interviews he mentions he is a typical Virgo, he also uses Water, Fire, Air and Earth to categorize people. He took it so seriously that it shocked me. He correctly defined the astrology sign Virgo, but he could have just as easily explained his own personality type using traditional characteristics of some other signs. Everything for Aries-Pisces fits for me, but I could take two other signs and portray myself that way. Although I must say it would be a bit harder.

So maybe there is more to astrology than am willing to admit. I would certainly not go on any kind of podcast to broadcast to the world, I do this and this and that and it’s because I was born on the cusp of Aries and Pisces. Optimistic, overly eager, aggressive energy blended with empathy and melancholy and some self-loathing. I would certainly not explain the personalities of clients using astrology. But then again, Peter Crone gets about 50 times (?) more money per session than I do, so maybe he’s right and I’m not. I also suffer from this illness of our time that I have the reflex to evaluate the effectiveness of something by how much money it fetches. Enough with the navel-staring for two minutes. We took Bruno to an open door day of busses and trams. It’s not something I would go to without Bruno. Am not there to look at busses and trams. Am there to see Bruno smile. And he did smile and that made me happy. He saw part of some theatrical act for kids, which made him laugh out loud. That’s the best sound in the world to me. To say what the second best sound in the world is would be oversharing, even for me. We were in a bus that was being washed. He really liked that. We got to wear helmets and walk under and above a tram with an hour long technical explanation. That was a bit too long for him, but he didn’t protest too much. Which you could take as a positive trait or a negative trait. Maybe we have already domesticated him too much or maybe he’s just well-behaved. Depends on your view of society. Personally I take it as a good sign that he made it clear he wanted to go.

He was surprisingly patient during this technical tour. We went in and out of several busses and trams. They had more types than I could count. He played around in a jumping castle, he got a balloon and most of all he got the undivided attention of his two parents. All the love we have we pour into him. He’s the most amazing dude I have ever met. It’s my hope he will not have any of my toxicity, but without becoming a push-over. I wasn’t as innocent as he is at his age. Maybe the anger that runs through our family is losing its edge. My grandfather killed himself and my father did too. A suicide is a prevented murder in my opinion. Anger that turns on the person carrying it. At least that’s how I see it in my family. I carry that anger with me, but I am trying very hard to not pass it on the Bruno. Note that this anger wasn’t passed on by being angry at each other.

This anger, in my case, was passed on via love. I love my father dearly and I took on the anger he had directed at the world, not at me. Am trying to prevent that in my son. It’s my anger to carry, not his. I want to love him without saddling him with toxic stuff he would be willing to take on because he got so much love from me. That is definitely my own case. Am fighting the same forces my father fought and though it’s sabotaged me less in my life than my father was sabotaged by them or my grandfather, it’s been a two-edged sword to say the least. The influence of my childhood is everywhere.

Even at this open door day Zuzana is wearing a T-shirt with ‘Good morning Vietnam’ stamped on it. A movie that influenced me enormously. There is a lot anger in the character of Robin Williams in that movie, but also zest and love for life and other people and in the end he gets punished for expressing all that. If I can manage not to pass on these dynamics, which apparently lead to suicide in our family, I will have fulfilled about 50 percent of what I perceive as my life’s mission. As to trams… I learned the most modern types carry sand with them to help them prevent being stopped by autumn leaves. Trams are always sanding the tracks to make them run smoothly. My form of sanding is writing.

It’s 7.17. I can hear Bruno’s voice. They are awake.