Bartender, Heal Thyself

One of the roles of barman (or barmaid, but my local is rarely staffed by a woman) is to be father confessor, listener and confidente. They are supposed to stand there, head cocked to one side, polishing a glass, occasionally dispensing nuggets of meaty wisdom.

Of course, the glass polishing is unhygienic, but it's a prop.

So how come I'm up to my seventh barman who wants to tell me his worries? I'm father confessor to the barmen. I'm not necessarily objecting, and I'm rather flattered. I do remember being in a similar position in the early nineties, but that was for mates. Not that these people aren't mates. But still. It's an odd reversal.

Psychoanalysts are meant to be in analysis themselves, which is a little bit meta. (As in, how do you deliver cardboard boxes? In a cardboard box. So how...) Do they talk to more experienced shrinks? In which case there's a limit point. On is it a large circle, and would that work?

Somewhere Tom Lehrer comments about the counsellor who made his living giving helpful advice to people who were happier than he was.

Ho hum.

Poetry Day II

A Short History of Chess

When chess began in India
The bishops charged as elephants,
The queen was still a minister
And both were clearly combatants

In battles secular and male.
Who claims the Eastern ways perplex?
It took the West to twist the tale
To strategies of faith and sex.



Desire

Of the violence of that pain
What poor traces still remain---

This I learnt: the wry technique
Of avoiding what I seek.



Opening the Pyramid

Though you recall the emphatic starlight
When the angels said, 'Follow we shall lead',

Irony, like the free air and sunlight
Crumbles the mummy of each simple creed.



Dick Davis