Hey.

Haven’t been posting much these day. Maybe since the kids are grown men and I’ve said most of what I had to say on parenting I’ve tried to be more of a listener.

At dinner the other night a friend kind of let me (and her husband) have it about what men need to do to step up in this moment as women are being denied a fundamental human right thanks to the Supreme Court. I felt both taken aback by my friend’s vehement and passionate anger, and also knew she was right.

But what voice do I have, I asked myself? And so here I am on my dusty little forgotten blog.

Yet just as I was trying to form words on how we might counter this current attack on freedom for women, I learned that there was a shooting in Highland Park Illinois. I grew up in Chicago, called my brother who lives there, and found out that his close friend’s friend is in surgery, another friend’s aunt is dead, a doctor friend of theirs texted that he did CPR on a child and saw at least five dead bodies, two completely “eviscerated by bullets.”

Although I made many hours of calls to swing states to support Democrats in 2020, I tire of their failure to effectively stop this current slide into erosion of women’s rights, more guns, more dead children, more suicide, more depression, more addiction, more climate denial/or disinterest, more racism, more hate for LGBTQ+ people, more power in the hands of the few against the will of the majority… yet we know that more Republican senators and congressmen and congresswomen will not make things better.

I want to be an ally, and I will make more calls, give time and money, march, and while I do not have the vision to know how to contribute optimally and effectively, much less win, I suspect that our collective power is not yet harnessed for maximum impact.

If you are on the sidelines, please join in whatever way feels right for you. The first calls I made in 2019 had me sweating with anxiety, my stomach in knots, as I felt like I was intruding on people’s lives, but I remember speaking with a frightened woman in Michigan who felt certain Trump would win with all the intimidating shouting and banners around her; but she quietly voted and HE DID NOT WIN.

At the end of the Day, the end of so-called “Independence Day” there are enough of us who believe in equality and women’s fundamental human rights for us to win on this single and era-defining issue if we use our power, our voices, our strength in standing together as women who deserve empowerment, respect, and where needed, protection, and as men to use our power, privilege, passion, and whatever else we have to lend to the cause to stand with our mothers, sisters, daughters, nieces, friends, and fellow human beings.

If you haven’t voted in the 2020 US election and you are eligible to do so I am asking you to please vote, and to vote for the candidate who is not a bully.

I have worked in schools, and I have seen that bullying is a terrible problem.

Social scientists have studied the problem and the solution comes when a school supports kids to work out bullying problem amongst them selves—by creating a non-bullying environment.

It starts at the top, but the kids create the kinder environment by all agreeing that bullying is not cool and everyone has an obligation to call it out when we see it, even if we are not the target of the cruelty.

The plan is not to shame the bully, but to let them know that this is a school, or a country, where it’s cool to be nice, and that the bully can fit in if they act nicer.

That simple.

Humans do not want to be disliked. Bullies are not necessarily disliked or “unpopular.” The key is not changing the bully or the victim so much as the overall tone of the school, or the country.

We do not need to hurt others or exclude others in order to have good lives. The best society is one that supports excellence to lead—to understand that leading is serving the group, not dominating and definitely not exploiting or stealing from the group.

If you hate bullying behavior, you are not alone, and you have the power to assert that it’s cool to be kind.

So… if you are eligible to cast a vote on Tuesday, or see the County Clerk on Monday, please socially distance, wear a mask, bring a snack, and a lawn chair—and VOTE!

Maybe bring a friend.

It matters. We can have a better world.

Hi. Recent months have included procrastination, and so I’m just now posting a link to my latest comic, which itself is partly about procrastination. My younger son also said that it was “non-linear,” and I guess I couldn’t argue with that. In other words, it might not make that much sense, but that’s what I’ve got, in case you want to check it out:

http://awkwardtangent.com/mr-innocent-3rd-comic

Our dog Agnes has been with us through thick and thin. In light of her service to us we decided to honor her by creating a set of stories featuring her as a service dog for other animals.

Here is a sneak preview of the first installment of Agnes Service Dog For Dogs.

For more please click on this link: Agnes Service Dog For Dogs

I made a new comic book. Please check it out: http://awkwardtangent.com/want-something-or-go-home/

Dear Dreamer,

You are most likely reading these words because you had a nightmare, perhaps some weeks or even months ago now, perhaps last night.

I’m going to try to keep this brief, but please understand that I am trying to write something that could be helpful to you, but also to your fellow parents who have also had a nightmare, just like you.

Although I have written as patiently and clearly as I could that I am no longer able to personally interpret dreams at this time, people keep Googling the topic of nightmares about children and I seem to keep showing up in the search—even though I have not been interpreting dreams here for some time.

Still, when people are scared they apparently don’t read much about what I have to say to other dreamers, or that I’m not interpreting dreams at this time—they just spill their dream into the comment box and hope I will read it and tell them what it means.

Please understand that even though I don’t know you, I would like you to be able to feel better. But after interpreting literally hundreds of dreams, staying up late at nights answering inquiries after working full days, I’m hoping maybe someone else might step up as I step back.

That said, let me sign off on interpreting all these nightmares with some overall ideas that you may consider if you still want help with your dream. You will have to take these ideas, however, and then put in some work on your own.

Firstly, you have written your dream down and thus your own written record of it is now here for you to prompt your memory as you circle back to your dream to try and make some sense of it—for your own self. That’s really the best way to interpret your dreams, to work with the material and think about all the random things it brings back into your mind and then, like a puzzle, try to figure out how these random things fit together.

In general I would suggest that dreams are not reliable predictors of the future and so I would encourage you not to take your dream literally as foretelling a tragedy.

Obviously we all want to keep our kids safe and do what we can to protect them. If your dream is telling you that you are unconsciously worried that you are not keeping your child safe, then it would be appropriate to take action to protect your child.

More likely your nightmare is somehow reminding you of your own past traumas or confronting you with the very feelings that you try to avoid in waking life. If this is true, and you have not yet been able to heal from a past trauma or loss or traumatic loss, then perhaps the “message” or “meaning” of the dream is that you are in pain and you need/deserve some therapy or other way of helping yourself resolve your trauma and find a way to move forward. In this case the “meaning” is “get some help” and if you do get some help and the dream stops recurring, then you can appreciate how your unconscious encouraged you to get better (and this helps your kids by giving them a calmer and more confident and happy parent).

When we talk about the “meaning” of dreams we are looking at the situations or things in the dream through the lens of symbolism. Freud was all about this, and it’s interesting stuff, it just doesn’t have much place in science. It does have a place in art and literature.

So whether or not cigars symbolize penises and staircases symbolize sex (I sort of doubt these arcane symbolic interpretations for you the modern dreamer) one thing all these nightmares have in common is that they are about “bad things” happening to “children.”

Thus “bad things” aren’t symbols so much as they are visual representations of feelings (fear, dread, loss, etc) and in these dreams the Unifying Symbol is The Child.

Maybe our children symbolize EVERYTHING. We love them, they frustrate us, we practically die ourselves at the very thought of harm or death involving our children.

So one umbrella interpretation is that a nightmare about our child or children is a symbolic way of feeling the worst possible feeling we could ever imagine. But we don’t really need a nightmare like this in order to know we love our children.

And if that’s so, what’s the point of a brain that scares us for NO GOOD REASON?

Maybe it’s the same as having a worry brain that torments us, tells us we suck, aren’t good enough, don’t have enough, aren’t safe, loved or lovable. This very brain makes us nervous and unhappy but pretty good at survival. That may be both why there are so many more humans than animals (we won the contest to survive); and it may be why humans have such annoying tendencies for selfishness, greed, cruelty and violence… when we don’t feel safe, loved or respected.

If we do feel safe, loved and respected we tend to be pretty social and nice and creative and industrious and generous (it’s just that we too often feel lonely and inadequate instead of loved and respected… even in our own minds, in our own negative opinions of ourselves, in our sleep when our brains cook up nightmares and cast us as victims).

Thus your nightmare might simply be about feeling scared, horrified, out of control, sad, angry, helpless, abandoned, lonely or whatever horrible emotion lead you to Googling nightmares about children. Whatever we may think about our nightmares, what we know is that they make us feel awful.

And so we want an “answer,” that will make us feel safe and good again. But feelings are not facts any more than dreams are waking reality. We can’t solve the riddle, but we can feel the horror and accept the emotional reality that we cannot love our children without the built in risk that bad things could happen and thus horrible feelings could happen.

This seems like the best guess of all, because even if you had trauma, or the superstitious fear that bad things are going to happen, what you most certainly do not want is to feel bad, mad, scared, helpless, sad, lonely, powerless, etc. And yet your unconscious went and made you feel bad.

And this is deeply human: we don’t want to feel lonely, scared, hurt, etc. And yet our own brains have a way of making us feel bad, scared, inadequate, etc.

This could be understood as our “survival brain.” Our biology wants us to survive, and we do survive by staying scared (running from saber-toothed tigers in prehistoric times) and we do survive by never feeling good enough or like we have enough.

Our survival brain does not care if we are happy, its job is to keep us alive—terrified, unhappy, restless but alive.

Happiness happens in a different part of the brain, the part that does Love, and Gratitude and likes hearing music and likes just hanging out with people who are nice. When that part of the brain is working we are not scared about things that are just dreams, and we know the difference between real threats and passing emotions (like nightmares) that are not real threats.

So… when we get scared, sad, “triggered,” into trauma we do not feel safe and we want solutions to our “problem.” We hope that “knowing the meaning” of the nightmare will give us control over it and then we won’t feel scared.

But feelings, including fear, are not “problems to solve.” They are just feelings.

This is not to say that if you were abused, or your kids are being hurt that we shouldn’t take real steps in the real world to heal, to stop cycles of abuse, to protect children from real harm. We just need to differentiate real threats from the ones our brain made up in the night.

So to conclude, if you want to interpret your dream and you want clues about how to do that feel free to read even a few of the hundreds of interpretations I’ve already offered; this way of thinking is like English Class where we could have a discussion about what a novel “means.” Even then, the author is the best person to ask about the meaning of their book, and mostly they will say that they expressed what they meant with the book, and that their unconscious participated in the making of art.

You are the dreamer and so you are the master artist who made a personal horror film in your mind. What it means is known better to you than to me or anyone else, but if you watch the dream you will see your own brilliant ability to scare the hell out of yourself. Realize that you are good at that, and that keeps you alive.

Try to see the artistry in your dream and you may be willing to feel scared, the way you must be willing to feel scared if you watch a horror movie. It lets out steam, makes you feel alive, or glad to wake up, or leave the movie and stumble back out into the light of day. We all must be willing to feel devastating loss if we are going to let love be alive in our lives. When we attach, we could lose; and losing those we love sucks beyond words.

Finally, there is a teacher of cartooning, Lynda Barry, whom I admire (https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/syllabus) and she encourages us to begin drawing by drawing monsters. The logic goes that since monsters are not real, there is no way to “get it wrong.”

In that spirit, I would invite you to re-read your dream and consider drawing a scene from it, or making it into a comic. You could share it back here if you want, and maybe other readers would find it interesting, or make them smile, or feel less alone.

Words, after all, tend to be literal and when our brain tells us, “you are not safe,” it ends up being processed as a terrifying fact instead of a feeling created by the words in our mind; and dreams are so vivid that they become “real” to us, but only when we are sleeping. They are not “real” in terms of waking life, they just “feel so real.”

Ultimately our waking lives might be like some sort of dream we all dream up together. No one person makes the world alone, but we all do make the world’s nightmare problems, and great moments too.

Perhaps if we could turn our nightmares into art, into laughter, into courage to live better experiences than those we dream up in our darkest moments we might all wake up together to a better world.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I sincerely hope it helps.

And if you want to send a picture, I won’t interpret it but I will be happy to look at how your monsters look to you

Hi all!  It’s been ages since I have posted anything, but I wanted to say hello to readers who still subscribe to Privilege of Parenting, and welcome to any new readers who may wander by.

when I was blogging about parenting I realized that I ended up giving a fair amount of advice, when mostly I wanted to connect and offer compassion and community.  Writing about parenting was an attempt to merge my interest in writing and creativity (and also to make sense of my own creative block and maybe finally break through it) with my interest in psychology and especially in my wish to contribute in a wider way than just direct psychotherapy.

When I started blogging my kids were in elementary school.  As I write this post I am about to travel to attend my oldest son’s college graduation; my younger son is nearly finished with his freshman year in college; my wife is back in school studying to become a therapist and my dog isn’t getting any younger… and yet as the house grew quiet I found myself drawing, like when I was a kid.

I have always liked kids’ art, maybe because despite all my attempts to “grow up” I am very much a kid at heart.  I am by no means conversant in Nietzsche, but someone who studied philosophy told me that Nietzsche believed that humans needed to live as “artists” by which he meant to be our best Selves, a true expression of our hearts with all their feelings in whatever we “do” in life, more than he meant to paint or write or make music.

I like that idea, and in parenting I tried to be my best Self, but in order to do that I needed to write about it, think about it, talk with others about it, get support and offer support.  The blessings do come, over time so it seems, from “leaving it all on the field.”  Maybe it’s that transcendent field of all-in commitment, beyond terror and dread, through passion to love that Rumi means when he says, “Beyond right and wrong there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”

Nietzsche says, “In spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individuals, but as one living being, with whose creative joy we are united.”

So many teaching on wisdom speak about balancing opposites; Jung is all about differentiating and relating opposites within the psyche; brain science is all about differentiated parts communicating harmoniously in both “executive function” and also gratitude and present moment awareness.  Nietzsche was all about the balance of Apollonian reason and Dionysian passion.

When I think about those I love, and I am pleased to acknowledge that I love a lot of people, I think my favorite things are kindness and authenticity; those are the people who inspire me to keep taking chances and trust that I will be loved even if I fail or end up looking stupid.

It is in this spirit that I wanted to admit that I have been spending my late night hours after full days of work taking an arts class and drawing at my dining room table (a table that I will have to clear for the summer with a full house about to happily constellate).

I ran into a couple of colleagues last fall at a psychology conference, in a breakout seminar on the psychology of procrastination and avoidance.  Newsflash:  like all anxiety it is about avoidance.

I admitted that I wanted to make a graphic novel, or at least a story, and my colleagues had some projects of their own still not accomplished.  We worked to be more conscious of our fears, and agreed to keep supporting the others to check in and keep going.

Then a client brought me a book on cartooning, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to get more creative but feels intimidated or stuck (Syllabus by Linda Barry); and then my artsy son and my wife saw my drawings and encouraged me to take a class.  I was nervous—and I was right to be, if the point is being “good” as it was young people serious about an arts career, and teachers already having arts careers.  I was older than the teachers by about 20 years, and nearly 40 years older than the youngest student.  But they were awesome—so kind and encouraging—and soon I was just having fun (and working hard—deadlines and structure really help us get things accomplished).

Tonight is the last class, and I know I’m going to miss it.  I have to turn my comic book in, which I just finished yesterday (and I’m waiting for Amazon Prime to deliver my “long reach stapler” just in time for the deadline).  We also had to make a website to share our art.  I wouldn’t have done that either without the assignment and the structure.  I’m tired, but I think I might take another class.

I guess I share this for two reasons: 1) to invite you to come read my comic book; and 2) to encourage and inspire any readers who may be feeling a little stuck to let the connections with others be part of the fabric that allows us to create—not necessarily “works” of art, but relationships and experiences that weave us into that “one living being, with whose creative joy we are united.”

To read my Comic, “Poultry Germs,” visit awkwardtangent.com

And in any event, thanks to the many who inspire me with their sincerity and encouragement to keep it real—wishing all who may come upon these words compassion, friendship and creative joy in life well-lived.

I would say, “Happy Martin Luther King Day,” except we’re not there yet.  Instead let’s just acknowledge that it’s Martin Luther King Day and admit that we have not yet overcome and that today’s a day to keep on pushing forward on liberty and justice for ALL.

When I left Selma the other night I was so choked up that I could hardly speak for fear of breaking down in tears.

I encourage you to go and see it.  Now.  In a theater.  With other human beings.

As Andy and I filed out of the movie last Saturday night in North Hollywood, the crowd funneled into a little corridor and I fell behind Andy and into line next to a beautiful couple.  Maybe it was because they were African American and I couldn’t help but fantasize that we were, if not exactly “marching,” at least walking out of the movie together in a spirit of truth and love.  I turned to the man next to me and a few words tumbled out:  “When is American going to actually get it?” I asked.

The man looked at me and said, “I keep asking myself the same thing.”  His date turned back to me, as we slowed for a moment together in the theater lobby.   She smiled and said, “I think a lot of us feel the same way.  I think we all have to just speak up.”

I went to film school with Spike Lee, but I don’t think I really and truly got what he was talking about until maybe fifteen or twenty minutes ago.  Maybe it took the LA riots, multicultural training, psychology training, working in the trenches of mental health, working in Beverly Hills, parenting or who knows what to get my white Jewish suburban head out of my clueless butt and start to wake up (and maybe I’m still asleep but at least hoping the dream of ignorant and wrong might turn sweet and right).

It was 1988 when Spike made School Daze, and his message was indeed, “Wake up.” It’s still time to wake up.  We are not awake.

When it comes to injustice, anger is a proper response,  it is how we know something is unfair.  Racism rests on ignorance.  No one who is truly awake is unjust.  It’s safe to say that most of us, or at least myself, are not enlightened, not fully awake.  Knowing this is a start.  Not knowing things, together, and non-violently, is freedom of speech.

Dr. King was remarkable.  He stood for Truth, and his use of non-violence is in perfect alignment with Truth because while lies require liars to tell them, the Truth just is.  Justice in any absolute sense, like Truth, is beyond human opinion.  The conversation is our right, even our responsibility, but when we get it right all will be free and all will agree that they are free.

When Dr. King kneels on the bridge leading from Selma to Montgomery, a rising tide of Truth behind him, a wretched wall of racism, privilege and hate in front of him, he is like Moses continuing to lead the long march from slavery to true liberty.

Like Moses who himself never gets to the Promised Land, Dr. King helped make something possible, but it’s on us to take it all the way home to our shared world, our collective consciousness.

We may or may not be “Charlie” this week.  Freedom of speech, not to mention freedom from slavery, poverty, tyranny, sexism, discrimination, homophobia, brutality, exploitation and hate may remain a dream for far too many, but it’s a dream we can all share (or else perpetuate the nightmare of lying idiot humanity from which we cannot seem to awaken).

I’m hoping that the vast majority of human beings want a peaceful earth.  I’m hoping that the vast majority of human beings, if allowed to be educated, safe and free would come to the self-evident conclusion upon which our American Constitution is founded:  the equality of ALL.

Love and Truth and Justice are like the water under every bridge.  Truth, like Water, is  humble, powerful, life-giving and clear to everyone.

Dr. King said, “Wake up” (to his dream of equality) in the 1960s.  Spike said, “Wake up” in the 1980s.  Ava DuVerny’s, Selma says, “Wake up, dignified and non-violent” right now, although Oscar (which might be made of white gold) didn’t much notice.

The woman in the lobby said, “Speak up.”

And so I am speaking up as an infrequent blogger inspired to voice, but mostly just to say, “Go see Selma.”  Vote this Martin Luther King Day with your time, your money, your heart for justice and love—the ingredients that make this movie and that make the world I want to live in.

Selma says it straight.  I say, “Amen to Selma.”

Of all the imaginary juice joints in the wide world of the child’s mind, it had to be Elliot, Little Elliot who walked into Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle where I was sitting with my legs dangling from a booster seat, trading “what time is it?” jokes with Madeline.  Ferdinand was drowsing over a flower as Curious George floated above our kiddie table holding onto his balloons, one of which carried Babar himself, dapper in his green suit.

Some writers haunt the Algonquin, others the White Horse, but new dad on the kid lit block, Mike Curato, knows exactly what time it is:  bedtime, when Truth be told so quietly that only the very young and rather old can hear the wind blowin’ in the willows as sweet heads sink into lovingly fluffed pillows.

Ferdinand’s dad, Munro Leaf, said, “Early on in my writing career I realized that if one found some truths worth telling they should be told to the young in terms that were understandable to them.”  Amen.

Follow the little polka dotted elephant into, “Little Eliot, Big City,” (especially if you have ever felt unnoticed, which is for whom this tale tolls).  Elliot says that there will be other stories coming, but for now I can assure you that Ferdinand has sniffed Elliot’s tail and found that tulip to his liking.

With drawings numinous with fairy dusted brush-strokes indebted to eternal masters, homages drift like cherry blossom petals and post-modern tropes rise like Leaf Men in an hour of need to sound the call for friendship, punctuated with Yayoi polka dots.

Grown-ups may trudge on in the grim business of forgetting where they came from, getting on planes and saving the world, but in a little corner of a juice joint it’s always circle time and that time is neither the beginning nor the ending of a beautiful friendship for the very most beautiful friendships are eternal.  Elliot just may be staying indefinitely.