The mechanisms of repression continue their grind, like the inner workings of a clock....In an age of openness and complete transparency, no less...What is being repressed and why? Even now, at a time when trolls spew venom from their basement laptops...what is there that still must be kept buried? Thoughts that are considered vagaries, forbidden, alien, unlawful, creepy, outrageous, unlucky... thoughts that do not represent "who we are"... Career-ending thoughts....hostile, angry, reckless thoughts.... ugly, twisted, bestial thoughts, ... Thoughts that disparage and drag down others, thoughts that shame and lay blame to.... hostility toward the brighter lights, covetous thoughts meant to demean....Thoughts that circle around an unseemly topic...obsessing over car crashes, prison conditions, serial crime, ....an unhealthy fixation on wild-fires and boating accidents, poison and torture, hoarders in houses and the morbidly obese, missing persons, runaways, vagabond youth, fascination with failure and tragedy, the early deaths of celebrities, fascination with dictators, their odd rise to power, how luck or fate seems to buttress them until the bitter end, schadenfreude as when other people have their breakdowns, their failed flings, their lost jobs, their ruined properties, their unforeseen disasters ...a secret lust for chaos, rioting, looting, political upheaval, bacchanalian excess, the need for breaking things up... one cannot ventriloquize a Tasmanian devil in ordinary discourse ... rather, there must be a rhetoric of civility for the sake of order...But within each one of us...in the innermost recess of what we call the psyche, who or what constitutes the "inner censor"? Who decides that such "material" is unacceptable, verboten, disgusting, vile, unclean...that it shall not be touched, sampled, endorsed, enjoyed, wallowed in, that it shall not be recognized as part of us, as as part of some passing mood? What harm are we spared by means of such repression - how say those of you who claim that nothing need be repressed?
It was several decades ago now that the rumors were swirling about a possible ghost @ Moonlight Beach. There was a definite "buzz" among the Coast Highway vendors and their customers - enough to keep the conversation rolling... Ronnie, for example, the short-order cook at the 1-11 Diner used to compare notes with Sue-Ellen - owner of the guitar shop about the latest "sighting" while Eduardo who owned the Taco Shack near the corner of D Street asked Mel who ran the old movie theater across the street if the real headquarters for the poltergeist might be in one of the older buildings - maybe an attic space. Maybe it's a ghost that goes on field-trips now and then - agreed Manny Uwanco - proprietor of the used book store and cousin to George Uwanco - the owner of George's diner. Everyone tried to convince Lou - of Lou's Records that this thing was real - but he proved to be the skeptic of all skeptics. Truth be told - it was hard to imagine a less hau...
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