PLEASURE PUDDINGS

This morning, while sitting in my green armchair waiting for my ten o'clock patient to arrive, my eyes zeroed in on a dream journal from 2004. Upon opening it, it was with immense pleasure that I noticed I'd dropped in all sorts of quotes from this place and that place, just anything, really, that took my fancy at the time. So, without any further adieu, here are a few of the "little pleasure puddings" I discovered mashed upon before and amongst my dreams:

"No one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity."
- Gustave Flaubert

"One of language's first functions is to help a child create a mental image of his mother, one that can soothe him when she is absent."
- Julia Kristive, from THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE

"The main thing is....father and mother must eat. Write!"
- Chekhov

"No words can express the secret agony of my soul; Even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man, and wander desolately back to that other, older time in my life."
- Charles Dickens

"There is some Myth for every man which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all that he did and thought."
- Yeats

"Mama Kay, which is the other hand?"
"Which other hand?"
"You know, like 'On the other hand!"
-Aleister


And this, my favorite, by an anonymous but accurate source"
"According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway."

"A book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us."
-Franz Kafka

"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will."
- Rimbaud
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And that's that. Today my three o'clock patient, I shall call her Helen, said, "I guess I've felt quite good all week because I don"t remember feeling at all badly."

One year ago this entirely elegant and beautiful woman stood up and stated, "I can't believe how absolutly tolerable all my imperfections have become!"
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Oh, and there's more, so much more. Two weeks ago, Chris Dosa and I were drinking wine and rolling around on my living room (or whatever one calls it) sofa, making up words and finally we settled on the word DUKE. As in, "He or she got 'duke'." Meaning, "She gets it, she understand the blues and blues lyrics, jazz, hip, rip, rag, rag-mop, Ella, Aretha, Billy H., etc."........."....but does she 'duke it'" meaning: "But does she do it with style, with juice, with cool, with elan, with a sense lf 'hey now', with a sense of 'get down', with a sense of 'go' or 'stay' or..... 'easy, easy, easy, baby' or whatever is needed even if it's not needed, exactly, you know'........." ......aw, it's hard to explain, it's ineffable, it sounds stupid to explain, you've got to hear it, got to see it, got to walk it....she got duke, she got duke, he duke, she duke.......we rolled around heaven all day.

It felt good. That day, we were ridiculous.
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In movie terms, "duke" is style. It's Michael Chekov saying to Gregory Peck who's marrying Ingrid Bergman who used to be married to Michael Chekov, "Any husband of Constance is a husband of mine, so to speak."

or; "To hardly know him is to know him well."
- Cary Grant criticizing Katharine Hepburn's fiance in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

Or Eva Marie Saint asking Marlon Brando,"What are you rebelling about?"
And Brando, responding: "I don't know, wha'tve ya got?"
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OKAY, THAT'S IT - ANOTHER PATIENT - GOTTA GO - LOVE YOU ALL, GIVE MY REGARDS
TO BROADWAY AND KEEP THOSE WORDS COMMIN'