Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Good thing this, (reprinted post), was as good as it was! I’m referring, of course, to the post in block quotes below, the one with the music video in lead position. The reason it’s so prominent is that the song somehow captures the feeling of this morning’s semi-pre-dawn weather. The house Phyllis and Una and I live in, is on a lot cut from a pine forest. Not ‘Pacific Northwest pine forest’, which I imagine has mostly 300 foot tall Sequoias and Douglas fir and where it’s always raining or snowing. I trust I’ll be forgiven if this is not accurate, seeing how the sum total of my experience of the Pacific Northwest is courtesy of Chris Carter (X Files) and David Lynch (Twin Peaks). In any event, the reason the song (in today’s reprint) resonates so much is that on mornings like today’s, when it’s windy, there is a sound that’s created by the wind tearing through the surrounding pine trees, that is quite distinctive. Created by the wind as it passes through the pines, it’s a sound that you don’t get in woods comprised of deciduous trees. The sound is the moving of the pine branches as the wind moves over the landscape. This element is enhanced by the fact that you can ‘hear the wind approaching’, the sound of distant trees bending in a gust that increases in volume, not simply because the air is speeding up, but because it is getting closer. Closer to where I sit, darkness out the window, only the sound of the wind. It is not an unpleasant sound. It might be considered an awesome sound, provided that the term ‘awesome’ was coming from a person over the age of 33 (and) having read more than 17 books.

Hey! that’s a cool hook!  The three books I wish I could read again for the first time!

1. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin
2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’ Engle
3. (A tie between): Semi Tough by Dan Jenkins and Candy by Terry Southern

OK, the winds dying down, the world is being permitted to proceed with it’s Monday.

Fans of Blogdominion? Not to worry! Chapter 17 will be hitting the stands later (hopefully) in the day today. The tale continues…

(from December 2009)

(Well, oh kay… interesting note to start a Post on… but stranger things have happened in and about the Wakefield Doctrine)

(…”this just in”…’clark…the seventies…were…thirty…plus…years ago’…stop…’please, stop’…)

Hey Reader! Yeah you!
Do you believe that your (personal) history defines and (pre)determines your future or what? Is there such a thing as the momentum of habit. (The ‘momentum of habit’ is the notion that what we are is simply a more elaborate form of what we have always been.) (Cheery thought, no?)

Well? Do you think it does? (Don’t you dare touch that “Back” button.)
(in a fairly creepy, sudden shift to a calm tone…)Do me a favor, (After all, you know something about us here at the Doctrine because of the information we are throwing out into the world by way of this blog.)…

…Look back on your life. Try and recollect the things you have done, the places you have lived, the people you have known, since as far back as you can.
Now, erase the names of the people, delete the addresses of the locations and take off the labels of the things you have done (job title, education, religious designations). You can still remember your life, can’t you?
Even with names and labels removed/deleted/eliminated, you know that you have been alive, with a life that is yours and yours alone. You know, even without the names, you lived in one place (or many different places), you knew some people (or a lot of people) and you spent your waking time doing this (or doing that).
Your ‘life story’ runs from the first (and often sketchy) times you remember as a child through and right up to now.

Pretty goddamn ‘straight’ line isn’t it?
(Come on roger, stop protesting. You what I mean. You are capable of this.)
Look at your life in terms of how many different interests and activities and ways of investing your time is evidenced. How different was your life when you were 7 years old compared to when you were 17 years old?(…or 27 or 77…)
(Yeah, yeah scott, I get the ‘I gots the girlfriends/boyfriends thing’ Does not matter. Lose the names, and they (still) are people you shared yourself and your time with, no different than a best friend in second grade or a spouse in middle age or the person in the bed next to yours in the nursing home.)
What I am trying to get across here is that the important thing is not the names of the people, places and activities that comprise(s) your life.
Rather, I am asking you to consider the question, what did they (seem) to add to your life, why did you give them your time!?

I want the Reader to consider their lives without the qualification/rationalization/justification that we all impose when we reflect on our lives.

… ‘he was a great friend, even though he was an asshole’… ‘I really liked spending time with her, but I had to because she was family’ … “of course we are happy together! We have beautiful children and a nice home’… ‘I know this is a boring job, but I will stick with it, because otherwise, what will I do?…’maybe I can still pray and maybe its not too late for me…”who will take care of me if I get sick?’…

(These little quotes barely hint at the myriad of ways that we employ to make the fact that what constitutes ‘our lives’, the essential nature and character, if you will, is the same today(as you read this blog) as it was on your very first day at school.)

So?
So what, what is wrong with that, at least I have a life that I can look at and say, ‘hey I’m not doing so bad’!

(You are correct, scott. roger you can come back in the room, we have stopped talking about life as if it were totally unpredictable and un-certain. We won’t talk about interchangeability any more.)

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? (Yes, I am seriously getting ready to close out this Post for today.) (No, I actually don’t have a more satisfying denouement for todays Post)

(writer leaves, house lights stay off…)

Alright, alright. Seeing that we have some new visitors (from Italy and Sweden and Ghana to name a few) and, of course, Sloveniaaa is in da house!! I will try to impart or at least ‘duct tape’ some kind of coherent point to this Post.

If pressed, I would have to say the point of this (Post) is that our essential natures (clarks, scotts and rogers) will determine how our lives are experienced and will force a consistency throughout the years (of our lives).
Having said that, I will remind everyone that the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated (yeah! he said predicated, he must be back from wherever…) on the idea that we all have the full range of potential, we are all (potentially) clarks and scotts and rogers.
And despite how this Post reads, we always have the potential to feel, act, or think in the manner of the other two personality types. In fact, that really is the purpose of the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers).