Horoscopes are fun.  They are funny/  Until you realize that people believe in them.  Then they are not so fun.  They are sad–pathetically sad.  I use to write the horoscope for a small newspaper.  The rules were to be more positive and say things that matched the predetermined script for the month.  I wrote some doozies.  But they never made it to print.  I hear one is framed on a wall at a large newspaper.

The arrogance of a person, who cannot explain the influence, the actual attraction of the moon, let alone the other planets, to tell me that these influences which if they do exist are not known to this person, to tell me that my personality can be predicted by them.  That is beyond arrogance.  Actually that is saying, “I know more than you because you are stupid and believe my mumbo jumbo.”

Every, and I mean every, true research study, using scientific principles, has placed the horoscope below alchemy, phrenology and liberalism. (you might need to reread that).

I studied for 12 years in college and graduate school to understand the human personality.  I earned two post docs, one in neuropsychology and one in forensics.  I tested, evaluated and interviewed people often charged with serious crimes.  I had the test results of years of scientific research backing up my findings.  I swear the defense attorney read the criminal’s horoscope to the jury (a jury is defined as12 people of average ignorance).  The criminal walked and a poll of the jury said they couldn’t get past the horoscope.  I realized that education was wasted on the masses.

I did sharpen my sense of humor with the aforementioned. Truth, research, honesty and  research findings mean nothing to people who believe in horoscopes. I had a patient who controlled his wife’s depression, actually got her off medication and functioning, by reading her horoscope that he made up on the internet.  So maybe it does have a purpose.  People with thinking problems take medication and gullible people read horoscopes.  I can work with that.

I will stop here but I should add that there is something worse than the horoscope that people who have or had belief in the horoscope have now succumbed to.  If I were to write here and now it would be a rant.  I have another avenue for that piece.

I was baptized a month and 6 days after birth.  Back in those days you baptized the baby the same week as the birth.  The church records had my birth date very close to my baptism date.  In reality, I was born a full month later than my state records show.  When I showed this to a horoscope person she asked my family questions and said I fit the sign under which I was born to a near perfect match.  Only problem was that was not the sign I was born under.  My sisters and parents laughed but I was confused because the horoscope lady said nice things about me.  My sister said they laughed because none of the stuff was true, I was born under the sign of the DEVIL.  They had me convinced.

Today “Pay close attention to financial matters as your moon is affected by the movement of Saturn.  The rings of Saturn bring on financial concerns to people under your sign.  A relationship of note awaits you this month.  Be wary as this relationship has long term affects.  Your health will need to rest as you work too hard and have weakened your system”

I made that up.  But I will abide by it nonetheless.

The three songs are the audition of Kevin Skinner singing IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES, MR. CURIOSITY, ONE HEADLIGHT.

IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES has two meanings.  That a person can come out of nowhere and express a talent is the obvious to me.  The other message is that you need to say and feel what you need to say and fell while you have the opportunity.  I actually feel like I have that covered.  The loss of two wives to death has left me with the hope that I did just what the song said.  From here on I will continue that idea but unfortunately my fear prevents me from even finding someone to feel that way about.

MR. CURIOSITY gives me hope.  The person who gave me that song is on mind daily.  Something she said chews at me and it spell checks me.  Still there is a peaceful that overcomes me when I listen to it.

ONE HEADLIGHT brings me to tears.  That song is the story of me and Sandra.  Her death haunts me and so much of me is wrapped in that song.  My saving feeling is that my life is meaningless and my life life.  No one will ever know the struggles, the successes, the joys, the tears but me.  This song runs those things through my picture player.

The music takes me to a place where words don’t work.  It is a feeling, a sense, a time.  It feels like it wants to be expressed.  Maybe that’s why I write.

THIS IS PART OF THE 30 DAY WRITING CHALLENGE

My first doctoral dissertation chairman was Dr. Albert AX.  He did the famous fear and anger studies back in the late 1930s.  So the definition of fear to me is most likely different than most.  Fear is commonly defined as an unpleasant feeling in the presence of danger.  This is a step advanced from anxiety which is the a similar feeling with no present danger or another definition where there is imagined danger..

This writing prompt allows me to understand something about myself.  As a baseball player I learned to control my fear. Iin a batter’s box with a 9 in sphere coming at you at 95 mph has risk but the fear is in not hitting it as that was what I got paid for.  Once I mastered hitting the ball I saw it as a challenge.  So I learned to alter my perception from fear to challenge.

So for me to have a fear I would need a significant change in blood pressure and pulse rate and the autonomic response of perspiring.  Don’t misunderstand me, if I was being held in an ISIS camp I would have FEAR, worse if you dropped me in South Chicago.  But as those are only anxieties because I keep away from those places I do not consider them fears.

The one fear, at least I classify it a fear, is fear of rejection from a woman of interest.  I have many female friends and they, by nature, can be fairly judgmental and outright nasty.  Because I have no romantic interest — no problem –fire away.  But I avoid women who I am attracted to because of fear.  I get all the physical signs.

So my technique avoids anxiety and fear.  I am surely alone, but fearless.  Since I avoid fear enhancing situations I have few fears.  I fear bugs as they are a number one killer of people.  I don’t fear death but I am not running to it and certainly don’t want to be felled by a bug– an insect.  So I live in the mountains where they don’t thrive.

I don’t fear the inevitable.  I don’t fear my dog dying but I do keep him on a leash so he decides to not look both ways.  This is a precaution that allays anxiety and fear.  Some people can’t trust their safeguards and worry about things that could happen.  This is where years of failure (experience) comes to bear.

Bottom line, I have so many things I can be anxious about and can even advance them to real fear but I choose not to do so.  Thirty one years of forensic neuropsychology and treating anxiety has given me skills that are resistant  to fear.

Now if I could only talk to her.

This writing prompt points out a deficit of mine.  Maybe it’s a strength.  But since I can remember, colors, clothes. design, art  has never grabbed me, at least like I see how others react to it.

I would get annoyed when someone asked me to help them make a decision on color coordination.  It seemed worse when they gave me a choice of two and I oickedd one and then they slammed my choice.  (came to learn that to be a female trick to see how far she could push you).  Since I was the only boy in the family (cousins included) I had to color coordinate, dance, sing, sew, cook and a host of other unmanly things.

I realize now, today, the appeal of my two deceased wives.  They were like me.  They did not care about these things.  As a psychologist, I had a patient who complained about how different his wife was on the issue of color and preference.  He agreed with his wife that he would go out and make money so she could stay home with his daughters and figure out wall colors and occasionally buy shoes to break the monotony.  He reached a limit when he found out that after they figured the color scheme, he had to go buy the paint and then paint the walls.  The whole time he said they complained that he was painting it wrong.  The family eventually settled on irreconcilable differences.

The constant exposure to the feminine arts slowly had an affect on me.  I admire men who dress nicely.  I know good fabric and good fit albeit I do not practice it.  But one day I saw a woman with horizontal black and white stripes on the blouse with vettical black and white on the bottom.  I honestly thought there had been a jail break.  She was rather curvaceous and the stripes were going in various directions.  I knew this to be a fashion faux pas,

I have two Cuban women in separate apartments next to me.  They are sweet gals and funny.  They also have the two biggest asses in the neighborhood.  When they walk in the huge park next to the house they look like hippos grazing on the Serengeti. They tend to wear very bright colors like canary yellow or burnt orange or brilliant white.  Need I say they look like they have a map of Russia dragging behind them.  Then one day they wore brown pants and the map shrunk to the size of Portugal.  So the years of hearing “does this color make my ass look big”  now made sense.

So my favorite color is blue.  I don’t know why but I figure I have blue eyes which I seldom see but people remark about them, (“blue eyed bastard” “keep away from my daughter you blue eyed freak”)  I’m working on changing my image.

I have learned patience and acceptance using two quotes.

The first is an olde english quote, “It be an ille winde that blows no one no goode”

I recently mentioned this quote in a writing group and the writers pounced on me for my poor grammar.  I defended myself by citing the original verse.  I went home and looked it up as I had done previously and all the grammar had been updated.  The saying now says” It’s an ill wind that blows no one (any) good.”

I had the same issue with the pronunciation of OXYMORON.  The original pronunciation was with the accent on the first syllable but the usage has changed.

So back to my original quote that basically says if a hurricane destroys homes the construction people find jobs.  Another way is to say every cloud has a silver lining.

As often as I use those quotes the one that I use the most is my mother’s.  “The purpose of any conversation is for the other to speak.  So keep your mouth shut.”

I have mastered that saying.  I give the illusion that I gossip but in fact I pretend to gossip to learn information.    As a psychologist I had to learn to keep things to myself and I might say much to my detriment.

I have painted a persona that allows me easy entry into another person’s world.  The whole time I have only given the false belief of what I claim or what you wish to believe.  Sounds devious but it is very open.  Sometimes I feel bad that people believe these things that I allow, but many see past the veneer.  I have one friend who does not and she actually believes that things she says.  This allows me the opportunity to weigh statements by giving information to her that she interprets that others see differently.  This difference is important to me.

My two quotes may seem trite but when added with others as the situation arises I figure things out.