Schopenhauer's Porcupines

I'm reading Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and its Dilemmas, by Deborah Luepnitz, as a compromise. I don't consider myself any sort of towering intellectual, striding or marching amid the plebian hordes of the mentally mediocre, but I despise pabulum. My original assignment was to read a very popular book on intimacy. Blech. Thank you no, I'm full.

I always saw watered-down things as a sort of insult. Sort of like, "you're almost good enough to play with boys," sort of thing. I refused to play softball as a kid, because I considered it a watered-down version of baseball, which I preferred to play. I wouldn't play girls lacrosse in my twenties because I had been taught the boy's version, with boy's wickets, not those tiny little things the girls ran around with. See what I mean?

My initial reaction was actually rather explosive, to my great surprise. It was something along the lines of "I'm not reading that Naropia touchie-feelie crap." Ahhh, how refreshing it must be to work with a client with such an open mind as I have. I should be charging her.

It all came up because I asked about transference. The book I mean. And I was worried because Anne*, the therapist, well her opinion was becoming terribly important to me. More important than my own and that worried me.

***

I have nightmares. A lot of nightmares. Some of them are a re-living of terrible times. Others are very vague. Some are about what could or should have happened but never did. Lately, I have nightmares about a mission that stalled at the K-4 circle in Mogadishu, Somalia. Because we were stalled, because we were forced to retreat, because so many of us were wounded trying to save our wounded elsewhere in the city, we went back to the airfield, defeated and bloody. And men died that night. A lot of them.

In this one dream I relive it again and again. I watch my LT pull a pistol on a Pakistani commander, insisting, really, that he knew the Pakistanis would love to help us get the Rangers out. Honest. I remember the Malaysians firing up their German-built, white APCs. I remember the one driver taking an RPG through the driver's window, and it smashing into his arm and chest, unexploded. He was very lucky because he died instantly. Another soldier that night was not so lucky when the same thing happened to him.

But since I started therapy, there is a twist. Now there is a civilian judge present. They come for me, to get my statement of why our mission failed, why I failed. Boots ring down the corridor. Somehow the tent and wooden floor transmutes into cold, sweating stone. The judge is my therapist.

***

Back to the book. I saw myself in many of the pages, to my discomfort. But instead of beginning to solve the dilemma, it made it more complex. I was paying more attention to the therapist's response and less to the process that, Leupnitz insists, is our central "character." (Great, I was having transference with a book.)

The title refers to a well-known fable Schopenhauer used to tell. To paraphrase, a bunch of porcupines are freezing. They cluster close to get warm. When they get closer they poke each other with the quills. They spread out due to pain. They start freezing again and get closer. They hurt again and move off. It's a metaphor for the human conflict for the dual needs of intimacy and space. (It's also a fair warning if you are a hypothermic porcupine.)

Now me, I need a lot of space. A hundred yards is about right. I don't like humans (or procupines) touching me. I need to watch people, especially their eyes and hands at all times. This makes me not much fun at cocktail parties. I look odd, backed into a corner, warily watching. I look like a refugee from a Hitchcock film. I don't get invited out much.

My closest intimacy is with my twin and my cats. But, my twin lives across the country and my cats don't ask me what I am feeling twenty times a day.

I guess a normal person would say, with some glee, "Hey! I can learn from this! I don't have to keep repeating this cycle."

Me, I thought (with some glee,) "Hey! I'm a porcupine now leave me the hell alone."

Somehow I think I was supposed to get something else out of that book. Maybe I need pabulum after all.

* not her real name