11/21/02 - In Which We Get in Touch with Our Anger

Thursday, November 21, 2002
Vol. 1, No. 7
In Which We Get in Touch with Our Anger

Hello, and welcome to the seventh installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

I haven't written in a while, which is what this site is all about—not writing—but not for lack of desire. The thing is, lately I've become concerned about my anger. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to pull a Falling Down, go on a rampage, and machine gun people. It's just that I have days when it all gets to me. All of what, you ask? Well, everything.

Like everyone in the New York area—and increasingly, around the country—I see a psychiatrist. I realize that this entire subject is something I should probably be discussing with her, but the problem is, she talks too much. Every time I go to see the woman, I have a mental checklist of the "issues" I want to cover with her, and every time, she spends the majority of my session railing about Republicans and urban decay. I used to accept this. I figured, heck, she's the expert. Either she thought I was okay and didn't really need talk therapy, that I would benefit more from listening therapy (implication: I talked too much), or that I was just a pleasant young man to chat with and get paid for it.

My wife and the significant others in my life told me to get rid of her, but I couldn't. Since I'm employed only part-time, an appointment with her gives me an excuse to go into Manhattan, walk around the city (one of my favorite pastimes), and eat lunch at Pret. The other problem is, she's black (okay, African-American), and I don't have enough minorities in my life. I'm as white, Anglo-Saxon as they come (my ancestors had a castle on Loch Ness—beat that), and I feel guilty for it. I suppose I derive some satisfaction from being able to tell my friends that I have an African-American shrink, as if to say, "Aren't I liberal and forward-looking? I'm in touch with black people." Regardless, at my last visit I got tough, demanding hour-long sessions instead of the 30-minute warmups I'd been getting. My next session is Dec. 2. Wish me luck.

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So the question still is, what am I angry about? Since I haven't been writing, I've had a lot of time to think about this, and the conclusion I've come to is that it's the little things. Like this: I was in the subway Tuesday afternoon when I saw a Microsoft billboard that really annoyed me. The ad (for Pocket PC) featured a guy hunched over in his chair in an airport lounge, chin in his hands, waiting for his flight. "You have 17 minutes until your next flight," the ad read. "Wait or communicate?" This really bugged me, and as often happens to me, I looked around the subway platform for someone with whom I could commiserate, but everyone looked like they were either full up with their own frustration or too jaded to care. Jesus, communicate? What happened to sitting quietly and watching people, or maybe just thinking for a while? Or not thinking. Whatever. The point is, do we have to be doing something all the time?

My grandfather, who will have been gone 10 years next month, was capable of sitting quietly for long periods. Anytime he drove alone from Manhattan to his spread in Dutchess County, he would work out prime numbers in his head. He wasn't angry. Maybe I should shut off the TV and work on prime numbers.

Considering this issue some more, I've come to the conclusion that what makes me angry is feeling powerless in this world of ours. Whatever the issue—the proposed reinstatement of the New York Commuter Tax, the looming war with Iraq, or the incessant blitz of fear and idiocy on television—I feel like there's very little I can do to change things. I vote and I write letters, but like all of us, I'd like to have more of an impact than that. And if I can't,

Have a nice day.

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