Taboo and Totem
So many things are taboo for me. It's taboo for me to tell you about it. It's taboo for me to tell you who you are. It's taboo for me to succeed.
I am not subject to risk homeostasis. Risk homeostasis is a concept promulgated by psychologist Gerald Wilde. It occurs in cases like this. Imagine a dangerous situation. Safety measures are introduced. But some people increase the risks they take, offsetting, in a sense, the new safety measures. I'm not prone to this.
Says Freud, when someone violates the incest taboo observers will see the possibility for themselves of breaking this taboo. The strong tendency toward the taboo necessitates strong preventive measures.
Yesterday, in a very old library at Rosemont College, a place with many soothing paintings of Mary and Jesus, as babe, not corpse, I was trying hard to think, not observe. I pretended I was writing a letter. A woman up on the mezzanine kept swinging her white-sneakered foot. It was like when you see a piece of paper fluttering through the air, but less cliche.
My mother often used to say, You never finish what you start, and You'd be pretty if you smiled. I hate to think that and I hate the thought of writing it down because I wouldn't want her to find out and be disappointed or hurt even slightly.
The pale, curvy, yellow ceiling of the Rosemont College library was so soothing I could hardly make myself leave. I had an ID card, so I didn't have to. When I finally left I was waling to the train and someone offered me a ride, which I took. The Good Samaritan told me her name, Pat Ryan. She may have thought I was a nun, albeit in disguise. I had on a long trenchcoat, so she didn't noticed my secretary-ish suit, which is just a little juvenile for me.
My totem is the fox, because of my name. Once on a London bus I saw a man with a little fox. It was sticking its head out of the man's doctor bag. I'm attracted to people with names like Lyon and Wolfberg. I have neither eaten nor worn the fox, but have seriously considered having a child just so I could name him or her Fox.
In Freudian terms, the savage, or primitive, who thinks they are literally descended from their totem animal corresponds in developmental terms to an infant.
That's part of my secret life. To naively read the works of Freud and his wayward Jung. Sometimes I read them backwards, sometimes forwards. Sometimes I read their works in the order in which they were written, a whimsical method copied from my father.
previously published in Hanging Loose 82 (2003)
Copyright © Valerie Fox 2007 - 2011