it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
― Carl Gustav Jung
Wednesday is hump day―the day I see my shrink.
I used to call it hump day when I worked, because by mid-week I was over the hump and part way through my week. But not so, now with Elias―when I see him my work just begins.
I mention my work, but I have no recall of that.
I lectured in Victorian Literature, or so they tell me, but I don't work now because since my head trauma, I'm memory challenged.
Funny though, most of my memories are of Shakespeare, not Hardy or Ruskin. I'm sure Elias can make something of that.
Elias is monkish and broods like a storm―a bright patch on my radar screen―a moody, inscrutable presence hovering just above the borne of my mind.
And whenever I see him, it rains.
Today is no different―a mid-May downpour complete with mist, fog horns and dark clouds above the lake.
But I like sitting in his office watching storms as they raise squalls across the lake―much the same way he troubles my mind's eye with questions I can't escape.
"So you think you're recalling scenes from a past life?" he asks, casually, as if inquiring about my health or the progress of my week.
"I don't know―that's why I'm asking you. Isn't that why they pay you the big bucks?"
"Ah, the mythical they's. But they don't pay me―Arthur Reid does that―your attorney, and so, by extension, ultimately you."
"Okay Elias, like I give a crap. I'm asking if it's even possible I can recall someone else's life?"
"I don't know."
I throw up my hands in frustration. "You're kidding me, right?"
He shrugs. "I'm not the Delphic oracle, Marcus. I can only tell you what I've learned.
"Fine. What have you learned?"
Elias smiles, leans back in his swivel chair, and steeples his fingers.
He'd do well in a monastery, or out in the desert as a hermit monk, I muse.
"Let me tell you what Jung said about such matters. He believed the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays. He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great deal escapes him; because it is important to speak of incomprehensible things. Such talk is like the telling of a good ghost story, as we sit by the fireside and smoke a pipe."
I could imagine Elias telling ghost stories in the drowsy way one talks before a fire on a rainy day.
"Okay, so let's see if I got this right. It is possible for me to have flashbacks from someone else's life if there is such a thing as past lives. And you're being noncommittal because you know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy? Am I right, or am I right?"
"Have you ever noticed how you weave quotes from Shakespeare into your conversation, Marcus? Don't you think it odd for someone who specialized in Victorian Lit?"
I knew Elias would pick up on that, but I refused the bait.
"Sure, sure, I'm a reincarnation of the melancholy Dane and I'm being oppressed by a familial spirit of some dead ancestor. Is that what you're implying?"
Elias just chuckled. "Hardly. I'd say Lillian Yardley is much more attractive that Hamlet Senior and I doubt you're tapping into the collective unconscious to channel her or this so-called 'Paul' avatar you become in your dreams."
His remark sobered me. I stared at him for several moments trying to read his meaning and ultimately gave up.
"So what the hell is really going on, Elias?"
"You're either being oppressed by a demon from hell, or as Jung would concede, we have to discern whether such things really derive from the deceased or from knowledge which may be present in the unconscious."
"So, I'm either oppressed or deluded?"
Elias stared out the window at the storm. "Perhaps. I think the key lies in our dreams, in hints sent to us from the unconscious."
Just great.I could see there would be no pat solutions to my conundrum.