It’s been months since I visited this introspect development area. It’s not for reasons of neglect as much as growth, or change? I haven’t been able to decipher the answer to that yet, maybe that’s why I am here now on my walkabout?
This look at the cast members that perform in my psyche, as singular characters or acting together has been enlightening to say the least. It has also been rife with an honesty that I haven’t figured out if it is completely honest, or an adjunct expression of my own self destructive mechanisms. It doesn’t surprise me that it has taken this long to loop back to the practicing again, there has been a lot of sand moved around the lagoon, and it doesn’t look the same after the last few storms. Coconuts everywhere…
I can’t begin to write about Gilligan unless I start with the Skipper. The Skipper has been in a conundrum of place. On the Minnow he knew what his positions and responsibilities were. Here on the island though, the responsibilities and self imposed checklists made no sense. He was built for the systems of society, the constructs of leadership, direction, keeping the ship afloat, as not to clog the societal waterways. The antique telephone switchboard was a plethora of wires, but out here none of them connected to anything, they just hung there jumbled together to make it look functional. Seeing this over the last few months has been sobering in the literal sense. The anger has flared, the frustration far beyond the red lines of whoa buddy, and the culmination of storms has left the Skipper unplugging the wires as soon as the lack of any real connection were made apparent. The big guy knew what was going on, he was out of whack, overwhelmed, and not knowing where he was, is trying to climb a tree and stay there until he can see a way down. Just don’t make things worse.
It’s easy to try to find the blame in all things, in this case Gilligan would be the post that emotions would berate, ego diminish, psyche chastise, and characters whip. I am finding that course more and more a generality of human nature. The kindness for weakness mistake has been exceptionally revealing of late, the strength of prayer, and the inflatable apathy pool has been a blessing to bathe in. I started out by calling it tolerance via tolerating, but meh, it’s just a form of apathy, as I give it no strength of thought. In my case even the banal can reach untenable heights if given just a muon of brainpower, so these acts of apathy are a practiced, and at times challenging behavior. So as blame goes, there is not a single cast member to lay the blame on. Gilligan at this point is the only one with a societal value of sorts. The glib unpredictability, while still trying to produce a sense of life is admirable, if it wasn’t so sad as well. All this to remind an island of folks of life, while the world floats by unaware.
Gilligan is the only thing the Skipper has left in his connection to hope of being rescued. He has to remember that he failed in his duties so bad, yet they made a TV show about Gilligan? That is the truth of the matter and as awkward as it is, leaves few solutions, few viable escapes from this island and the set of the show with no apparent doors. The thing that all of the cast members have in common at this point in time is Gilligan. The others, the entire cast, failed their duties so dramatically that the construct of Gilligan is the only functioning one left. Gilligan is life, he is the epitome of my friend Bob’s saying that the only thing I gotta do, is die. His dreaming keeps the books coming to the Professor, and the flour to Mary Ann. He suggests the new fabrics to Mrs Howell and Ginger, and let’s Mr Howell know what all of the new lingo means. In this collection of bits and pieces the anchors are the most fear driving aspects of it all. I’ve anchored my dingy in many places over the years just to find the rope too short and the anchor too buried to bring up in time to save the craft. In the process I’ve taken on more water than one person should, too many times.
This part of the connections were almost impossible to codify when I first started this journal of amazing Id, or idiocy, I haven’t decided remember? Sometimes you need to let the best foods cook, or marinate depending on the flavors you wish to produce. In this recipe though, the hope was that the flavors would emanate from the actions, but that isn’t always the only way to get the sweet, or the savory, when the sour is the standard datum of measurement. The parts the others play have grown and changed a bit from their first writing, but stayed mostly in their huts as far as characters. More insights and fourth step kind of lists were being done by them all. But Gilligan wasn’t there because that isn’t his place, if he were to do so would mean to deconstruct his nature, one of fourth steps and lists, that go along with the glib un-anchored muse. It is Gilligan’s creativity that is the only, phone type of plug in, that the others have to the present, and the future. They all stopped trying to do their jobs in one form or another as life’s issues arose, and pathways out by themselves, overgrown.
I can almost point to the places in life when the various characters either stopped trying, or just ceased to look for answers. One good thing about being able to take things out to their various endings is a peek at how many will simply not work, and of those few working ones, none of them working well. It’s never just one outcome, I have to play them all. While I don’t even know if I should ruminate on these pieces as they flow, or are they the thoughts I am supposed to let fly by? I always liked stories of U.F.O.’s, so of course I notice things flying by and try to recognize what they are. These are definitely U.F.O.’s… So as much as the players did their playing and the cast went along with the script that was presented, they were all retiring early, knowing that each one of them had to stop engaging the fantasy realm of purpose and realness. Their overgrown pathways happened long ago, Gilligan was the only one willing to go and visit each of them, keeping trails open that probably should have been left alone.
I think one of the reasons it took a while to loop around to this invenstory is the crunchy medication peeling that has been going on. The other aspect is the actual sobering effects, I have been, and still remain dysfunctional in a wide range of abilities needed to sustain a standard of living. This absolute sense of insignificance, of being so poorly adjusted, that I am a burden of one kind or another, to each and every person I know is haunting, and exhausting in it’s constant attack on the Island. The Professor started playing around with electricity again and the Lagoon exploded somehow. Gilligan in the meantime has stopped walking those paths, is sitting on his bongo’s, and staring into the sand. The Skipper is up a tree and Ginger is nowhere to be found. None of the others have any lines and even then they pass when it comes to that necessary part of the acronym THINK.
Somewhere in the Skipper’s logbooks is the time he ran into trouble in the Sargasso Sea. Gilligan has read this account and felt that is where the island must have drifted off to. The Sea is infamous with sailors who found no wind to sail free of the dead calm waters. The encroaching Sargassum would pull at the timbers and climb the masts, an almost welcome ending in the dead calm wonder of either free sailing or succumbing to the waves. That is the way Gilligan feels during all of this, the glib spontaneity has no wind and doesn’t want to find any. Look where it has gotten them all so far? A line up of half, and quarter filled glasses, not enough in all of them to fill one though. The mathematics is questionable, but this is the psyche, my Id never learned math.
It really does feel like a different time, either darker or more fraught with fear, and with that the mantra of the piece becomes, I don’t know? Gilligan is the wild card, the only one who seems to be able to pull all of the cast together to shoot a scene, but he is tired and his feet hurt. The series didn’t live on forever on TV and I don’t know if it will play on with successful ratings in my future. Gilligan is my Id-iot and as tiring as that is to defend, has little help through all of this from the others. The Skipper may be in charge of it all, but Gilligan is the soul and is wondering why this is all working out this way. It is clear I don’t have any grander purpose, or even a realistic talent to guide the rest of my days. Another reminder that the best of my thinking has gotten me here, a long ways from… anywhere.