Where do our phobias come from?

I’m proud of myself because today I survived my first MRI scan despite my claustrophobia.  I had requested and been promised a scan in one of the “open” machines, but it turned out that, because the scan was of my left shoulder, my head and upper body were inside the lighted tube and only my lower body was in the open.

But the technician was comforting, not critical about my fears.  She gave me earphones that played music, but did not drown out the loud rapping of the machine (which at times sounded like machine-gun fire).  Once I was wedged with pillows and slid inside and felt the first wave of panic, I shut my eyes and kept them shut for the entire 20 minutes. I kept thinking how lucky I was that the scan was only about a possible torn rotator cuff. I overhead a woman saying to a male patient who went in ahead of me: “I’ll be praying”, so I knew he had a lot more reason than I did to feel stressed and panicky during the MRI.

(My claustrophobia is not crippling—I’m okay in a crowded elevator, but if the elevator got stuck between floors, I’m not sure how I’d react.  And as for crawling into a narrow tunnel or cave, you can count me out.)

I have this theory about phobias that will probably convince you that I’m crazy.  I think that early and life-long phobias may be the result of some subconscious memory of how we died in a previous life. 

Of course some phobias are the result of traumas in this life—for example my dear departed Aunt Mary was so terrified of birds that even a feather duster could drive her into hysterics. But that was because, when she was little, her mean older brothers would terrorize her by chasing her with a live chicken.

But in some cases, like my claustrophobia, there’s no clear explanation.  When I was very small, around five or six years old, I was listening in my room to a radio broadcast of some scary program like “Inner Sanctum.”  (Radio was a lot scarier than TV because your imagination provided your own images.) The program began with a man’s voice saying something like: “Where am I? Why is it so dark in here?”  Then a sinister, resonant male voice replied, “You are buried alive.”

I happened to be eating a Hershey Bar with almonds and I leaped off the bed, bolted to the bathroom and got violently ill.  Needless to say, I turned off the radio.  It took something like ten years before I could even look at a Hershey Bar again.  Because of my violent, instant reaction to the words “buried alive”, I suspect that in a previous life I died, as so many have recently, by being buried in a mud slide or avalanche or earthquake.

As you can see, I believe in reincarnation, which is a very controversial subject in the West  unless you follow one of several Eastern religions.  But at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, there is a Division of Perceptual Studies (formerly the Division of Personality Studies) originally founded by Dr. Ian Stevenson, a Canadian biochemist and professor of psychiatry,  which has collected more than 2,500 case studies of young children who claimed to remember a past life.

I’ve encountered a few such children myself who arrived in life, as Wordsworth wrote, trailing intimations of immortality.  If you know a small child who is very verbal and ask something like, “Do you remember where you were before you were born?”, you may get a surprising answer. These memories seem to fade by around five years old.

But reincarnation is a subject for another day. Today I’m talking about unexplained phobias and my crazy theory.  Not too long ago, I was at unisex hair salon and, in the next chair, sat a man having his hair cut by a blonde young woman. He was telling her how he had just come back from a trip to the Empire State Building in New York with his teenaged son.  The dad, who had a phobia about heights, made it up to the 88^th floor where you have to switch elevators, but then the father realized he  couldn’t go on. He had to go back down to ground level. The son went to the top and later mercilessly teased his father about his phobia. 

Then the blonde hairdresser told about her phobia, a new one to me.  “When I’m driving and I go over a hill and look down and see that the road leads to a body of water, I’m always terrified that I’m going to drive the car right into the water and drown.” 

Naturally I didn’t let on that I was eavesdropping, but that sounded to me like a phobia born of a past experience.   Some phobias seem understandable: snakes (that one we can blame on Eve), spiders, bugs, sharks… but others: bridges, tunnels, airplanes, heights—may be rooted in early memories of a previous life.  (Did you know that Woody Allen refuses to drive or be driven through tunnels or over bridges?) 

What are your unexplained phobias? 

Degrees of Infidelity – Which is Worse?

(I wrote this two days ago before  Anthony Weiner confessed to his internet escapades, so have added a footnote about his now widely discussed  degree of evil at the end of this post.)

The other evening over dinner, while talking with my husband and a woman friend, after pondering such gentlemen as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I posed the (totally theoretical, you understand) question:  What is the worst kind of cheating husband?

I tossed out some (completely rhetorical, of course) examples: Is it worse to have your husband leave you for, say, another man, or the trusted baby sitter, or his secretary (whom you know) or a colleague whom you don’t know, or, maybe your best friend?

My husband immediately said the worst would be to have your husband leave you for a man, but my friend (who is on her third divorce) and I both instantly disagreed, saying that, no, that would be the least crushing kind of betrayal, because the wife can tell herself “It’s not that he’s leaving me because I’ve failed in some way.  He just has never acknowledged that he’s gay.  It’s completely NOT MY FAULT.”

Just for the sake of argument, I would like to propose the following ratings on my cad-o-meter, ranging from one to ten degrees of evil.

1.  One.. He leaves you for a man, having finally acknowledged that he’s gay.

2.  Two. He leaves you while insisting that there’s no other woman, but he just doesn’t love you any more. (This category may deserve to be higher up on the evil scale.  I think it also includes men who leave you because “You’re no fun any more” or because “You don’t turn me on any more.” And extra evil points for the ones who leave because “Ever since the kids came along, you don’t pay attention to ME any more.”)  Please discuss.

3.    Three. He cheats on you with an age-appropriate woman you’ve never met. (Extra evil points if she’s 20 years younger and/or looks just like you did 20 years ago.)

4.    Four. He cheats on you with a paid professional sex worker, (Extra evil points for exposing you to a possible S.T.D.)

5.    Five.  He cheats on you with an employee—his secretary, the videographer for his political campaign, an intern. (Extra evil points if said employee produces a child. Many extra evil points in any category if you happen to have a terminal illness.)

6.  Six.   He cheats on you with an employee who is like a member of the household: a babysitter, longtime housekeeper, teacher or nanny whom your children have come to love. (Hello there Robin Williams and Jude Law!)

7.  Seven.   He cheats on you with your best friend (who’s single.)

8.  Eight.  He cheats on you with your best friend who is married to his best friend and you have always gone on vacations together.  (Although Shania Twain made this situation work.)

9.   Nine.  He cheats on you with your sister.

10.Ten. He cheats on you with your daughter (who is not his daughter.) Hey there Woody Allen!

Beyond this category of cheating we move into areas  which are punishable by law, like incest and pederasty.   Let the courts and the police deal with these types of evil, hopefully by locking the perpetrator up for life.

But what is an appropriate punishment for the various degrees of cheating described above?  And what should a betrayed wife do if she doesn’t have the nerve or the money to hire a hit man to teach the cheater a lesson?

What kind of recompense would be enough to convince you to forgive him? (Like giving you fabulous alimony or getting you a very high post, say Secretary of State?)

How would you rate the various types of cheating on your cad-o-meter?

Breaking news update—now that Anthony Weiner has admitted that he has harassed women, willing and unwilling, with “sexting” on the internet (and in one  soon-to-be-classic slip of the  computer, sent to the general public an e-mail message and photo that he meant to be private), everyone is now discussing the following question: —is it really cheating if, as he claims, he has never laid eyes (or anything else) on these hapless women, (some of whom were more than willing to play his creepy game.)?

I think that on my cad-o-meter, he only gets  to be  .5 (half a point) because he didn’t really have sex with them.   But he has terminally destroyed his career and embarrassed his wife.   Now everyone is asking WHY he did it (my answer—he’s a narcissist who loves looking at himself).  So Anthony Weiner, in my opinion,  definitely gets a rating near the top on the dirty old man creep-o-meter.

Liminal Stages and Death on the Internet

I thought I’d introduce this subject with a photo of a fabulous horse-drawn hearse that I saw in Granada, Nicaragua.  The coffin rides like Sleeping Beauty inside the glass compartment, and you’ll notice that the horses are draped with crocheted blankets.  "Why?" I asked.  "Because this is a very serious time,” I was told.)

My husband claims that I’ve been preparing for death ever since my twenties--over 40 years ago.  I guess that’s what you get when you marry a hypochondriac with a gloomy Scandinavian background. (Remember in "Annie Hall" when Diane Keaton and Woody Allen were breaking up and sorting out their books? She said something like: “All the books with ‘Death’ in the title are yours.”  You should see my library.)

So about death. Like everything else, dying has apparently been transformed by  the creation of the internet.  I think we’re all familiar with on-line memorial pages where mourners can post their condolences and memories of the dear departed.

In today’s New York Times (Jan. 25) there’s a front-page story reporting that  funeral homes are now offering bereaved families the opportunity to invite friends and relatives who can’t make it to the actual funeral to watch the services live on the computer and then re-view the tape over and over again. Some of the companies offering this service to undertakers are FuneralOne, and  Event by Wire.  Even the famous Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel in Manhattan is introducing a webcasting program.

Some funeral directors offer the on-line funeral service for free, according to The Times, and others charge $100 to $300.  A family can make the funeral broadcast open to the public or issue invitations along with a password. (I wonder, does Evite do funerals?) This service has allowed the military colleagues of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, for instance, to view his hometown funeral including the arrival at the airport, the graveside ceremony and the 21-gun salute.  The father of the young Marine said he watches the funeral over and over again on the computer. “I don’t know why, but I guess it’s healing.”

Two weeks ago, the cover story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine of Jan 9, 2011 --“Ghosts in the Machine”-- was all about what happens to the words and images of yourself that you’ve posted on the internet—after you die.  Will you be remembered by your last foolhardy Tweet?  By those embarrassing photos on Facebook? Entrepreneurs, according to The Times, are popping up who will manage your digital afterlife for a fee—acting as a virtual executor who will categorize, file, organize or just do away with your on-line self. 

Andy Fish, the artist and instructor who taught me about blogging and Photoshop and computer illustration, says that he plans another kind of digital immortality—in which he can communicate with his fans from beyond the grave.  Andy often writes  a week’s worth of posts for his blog,  www.AndyFishWrap.blogspot.com , and then schedules the dates on which they will be posted on Blogspot.  Using that facility, he plans to post an annual message on his birthday well into the next century, even if he’s already gone to his reward.

Death, of course is one of life’s major passages. So why not make some plans for it ahead of time? 

For a woman’s group I belong to, with a different topic for discussion every month, we once wrote and read aloud our obituaries. It was a worthwhile exercise.  Leaving a draft of one’s obituary probably would be helpful to  survivors as part of your  internet estate unless, like my husband, you already have an up-to-date bio on your computer for public appearances and press coverage.

(One of Nick’s colleagues at The New York Times back in the day was the head obituary writer. He was always amazed that he could get in to see anyone—no matter how important—by mentioning his job.  Every big shot cares about what his Times obituary will say about him.)

Speaking of life passages, daughter Eleni Gage just launched her blog “The Liminal Stage”, on New Year’s Eve, which she calls “The most liminal night of the year".  The subtitle is:  “Navigating a modern world with the help of time-tested traditions.”

"Liminal" comes from the Latin word for “threshold” and Eleni has packed several liminal moments of her own into the last year: getting engaged, then married and moving from Manhattan to Miami. 

Here you see her at her wedding in Corfu, Greece, about to toss a decorated wedding bread to the single ladies behind her (a Corfiote twist on throwing the bouquet.)

Eleni  majored in Folk Lore and Mythology at college and, like me, she really loves learning about traditions, rituals, superstitions, divination – in all cultures.  She writes on her blog:

“It’s precisely because people get anxious around liminal stages, and the questions they raise, that cultures develop rituals designed to bring comfort, protection, and luck…My family is Greek so we throw pomegranates on our doorstep to invite abundance, and sit down to a meal in which a lucky quarter (wrapped in tinfoil for hygiene) is hidden inside a meat pie. …Whoever finds the quarter is guaranteed a good year, an extra little burst of confidence with which to face the unknown future. That’s the point of rituals, and of this blog–to invite luck, to celebrate a given moment, and to use traditions to do what they always have–to give yourself the tiniest sense that you can control what happens to you, even if that’s just an illusion.”

 You can find Eleni’s blog at www.TheLiminalStage.com or by clicking on the title in my blog list to the right.