Dissociation on Potash Hill

This book is the third of seven small books written to family and friends as a holiday gift, marking the end of my second year as a graduate student. My partner and I had decided to move up into the hills to an old ‘School of the Arts’ that was being resurrected as an intentional community, making life exponentially more complicated and challenging. This story, fraught with thwarted effort and frustration, is a sketch of the scene from a humorous angle. Below the story is a short list of the rocks and hard places actually navigated during that year. I’ll bet you’ve noticed detours and disappointments like this that also, somehow, move you along in the direction of your deepest intentions.

Dissociation on Potash Hill

Prologue

This is a mostly true story of betrayal and revenge that took place this past summer here on Potash Hill. Just in case you don’t happen to have the 4th Revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the psychologist’s menu of mental disorder handy, let me tell you that dissociation, roughly, is when the present moment situation is so intense that you check out spontaneously from your present state of mind, or even your personality, to allow or become something entirely different. People who dissociate into multiple personalities have even been known to be quite different physiologically, even to the point of having different blood types! Potash, by the way, is used in the making of soap.

One day in July I was walking up the hill from the ‘children’s barn’ of the old summer school, having enjoyed the use of civilized white porcelain in the form of sink, toilet and shower. I had to walk almost a quarter mile to get back to the apartment we were renovating that as yet had no plumbing. A dog comes walking along by himself. I recognized this dog as a beagle named Bernie who had been making a nuisance of himself around the community. We hadn’t been formally introduced. Well, as I passed the graveyard, he came towards me, his sturdy paws drumming rhythmically, his ears flopping solemnly. Curious, I looked him right in the eye. He returned the look, with an aloofness and gravity altogether incongruous with his briskly wagging tail. 

I realized suddenly that this creature is not really a dog. I said so to him on the spot. “You’re not really a dog! Are you.” He didn’t stop to answer me, he just kept looking at me with that cool acuity and I received the distinct impression that he was saying, “Blow my cover, lady, and I’ll get you.” 

Well, I can tell you I was not about to be threatened by a beagle. That evening, down at the main house sitting around with friends and neighbors, I told the story of Bernie the Dog and how I had divvied that he wasn’t really a dog. Deborah shivered with relish and said “Oooh, a shape shifter!” Neal added thoughtfully that the fire chief in town was named Bernie. We all laughed and laughed; Bernie’s reputation as a shape shifter was made. 

So I went home, and found my big cat Atlas. I woke him up and told him about Bernie the Dog and how we thought he might be the fire chief in shifted shape. 

Stretching his striped bulk and lashing his long and elegant tail, Atlas yawned and said “Actually, to be slightly more accurate, I believe what you are referring to is a Dissociative Species Disorder; the dog in question may be able to dissociate from the dog state to that of a human being. Though I’m sure I question his taste in such a choice.”

 Now, Atlas may be something of a wussy in the cat world, but he has tremendous perspicacity when it comes to observing and commenting on the activities around him. He is something of a feline Nero Wolf. I go to him when I need definitive insight. 

“I can speak with authority on the subject,” he continued, “because I myself enjoy the ability to dissociate into the plant kingdom and savor the Cabbage state. In my case, however, dissociation is a refined form of meditation. This dog probably does it out of mischief. Just because his name is the same as the fire chief’s, there is no reason to suppose they are the same creature. It sounds like too much responsibility for a beagle.”

Stories of Bernie’s mischief were thick as the blackfly swarms and marked by the dog’s singular tenacity and determination to make messes and squirrel things up. Our downstairs neighbor received the greatest torment from Bernie: The floor in the their apartment had been torn up to expose the crawlspace and crumbling foundation walls. Bernie managed to insinuate his chubby self through the joists and play havoc with the newly laid pipe that their plumber was in the process of installing. He also ravished the garbage cans, urinated on rugs, and napped in the laundry basket. 

When discovered, Bernie’s owners would be called over in the next town and pretty soon, a red pickup truck would pull up out front, a whistle would be heard, and there’d be Bernie, loping up from out of nowhere to hop into the truck. There would be mutual patting and drooling, and then Bernie and his owner would drive off. Bernie had it made. Anytime he was marauding far afield, all he had to do was show up here and his ride home would be called, saving him many paw-sore miles. 

Bernie methodically performed these and other acts of canine terrorism on a regular basis and, though we watched for signs, there was nothing in his behavior to further the suspicion that Bernie the dog and Bernie the fire chief were one and the same being. He seemed instead to be more interested in fouling up the construction work taking place. 

We speculated that maybe he’s really the building inspector dissociating from the weight of his responsibility. If Bernie happened to be present stretched out on the lawn waiting for his ride home, he would scowl at me with revenge in his eyes. 

Meanwhile, my partner and I were wrapped up in the renovation of the upstairs apartment with our minds focused mostly on plumbing, that is, adding the kitchen sink and the bathroom as soon as possible. Having to walk down the hill between rows of ancient maples past an old graveyard to a barn just to take a shower or use the toilet can lead to a certain amount of dissociation. Turns out, dissociation is a good thing, because once your sense of humor goes, you’re in deep doo-doo without a plumber.

Plumbers, it turns out, are a troublesome breed. They will repeatedly promise to come and work for you and then find themselves elsewhere for no apparent reason. In psychology, we call this a fugue state, which, interestingly, is one of the dissociative disorders. If you think psychotherapy is tough, try being a plumber. 

Weeks later, the plumber finally found himself at our house. He drove up in a truck with his name and telephone number emblazoned on the outside, probably to help others identify him when he was found wandering loose. He brought one youthful apprentice who spread out a large blue tarp and emptied everything out of the truck, arranging it carefully in mysterious heaps. Then the plumber began to randomly drill holes in the apartment floor while the apprentice, a young man with an aloof and determined expression, ran purposely up and down the steps to the truck, carrying things back and forth. We decided to leave, feeling that our apprehension and skepticism might interfere with the obviously highly ritualized alchemy of plumbing. 

When we came home later, none of the plumbing fixtures had been installed, but a quantity of pipes bristled from various parts of the kitchen and bathroom. When we called to ask when the plumber would be back, we were told that he had gone off to Cape Cod for vacation, but that his apprentice would be along to “finish up.” 

When the apprentice finally arrived another week later in his red pickup truck, we took off to do errands and let him get on with it. When we returned, the apprentice was once again methodically carrying things back down the stairs with that same aloof and determined expression. He did not meet my eyes when I asked him if we really had a bathroom now. I ran to see for myself– our own bathroom at long last–! But when I grabbed the faucet of the bathroom sink, it wiggled in my hand. Sure enough water came out of it, but the whole fixture was loose as a goose in the setting. My partner found the same was true for the kitchen sink and the drain dripped miserably. The water pipe to the toilet was dribbling in a slow careless stream, and the tub wasn't hooked up at all. We looked at each other in shocked disappointment. The chamber pots could not yet be retired. 

The apprentice came in to pick up his last toolbox and my partner began to ask him what the hell kind of a job he thought he was doing. With just the suggestion of a smirk in his aloof expression, the apprentice said nothing, turned and ran. His steps thudding rhythmically down the steps. After a moment, my partner gave chase, yelling “Hey! you come back here and explain this mess you've made.” A few minutes later, he returned, bewildered, and said, "I can't find him. He just disappeared.” 

I glanced out of the window and said, “Well, his truck is still here. He's got to be back sometime.” Finally, about dusk, a car pulled up behind the pick-up. We walked casually down the stairs so as not to seem too eager to attack the apprentice in front of whomever had brought him back. As we got closer to the car, I could see that there were two people in the front seats and a dog in the back. Neither person was the plumber's apprentice. 

The dog, however, was Bernie, staring down his nose at me again with the same arrogant, non-doggliness; he was laughing at me! “I told you I'd get you and I did”. He just laughed and laughed with that floppy tongued hahahahaha that some dogs have. I finally got it: Bernie had dissociated into a lackadaisical young plumber’s apprentice, able to act out his vengeful dog feelings. Has this sort of thing ever been cited in the literature, or do I have the makings of a doctoral thesis right here at home? 

Meanwhile, the man had gotten out of the car and climbed into the pickup truck. My partner who had just figured it out, said rather sourly “In the future, could you please curb your dog?” The guy sighed and said, “So sorry about this. Obedience School never really worked.” He drove off. His wife followed in the car with Bernie the dog still laughing in the back seat. 

My partner and I climbed the stairs to our apartment with the squirreled up bathroom. I went straight over to Atlas, who was still sleeping on the window sill. "Atlas, you must have known the plumber's apprentice was Bernie all along.” Atlas opened one eye and said, "Of course I did. He came over to patronize me, as dogs will, and I could smell Science Diet on his breath. Besides, everyone knows that dogs know nothing about plumbing. They can't even use a litter box.” “Well, why didn't you tell us?” Atlas rolled onto his back to catch the last rays of sun and said, “You didn't ask.”

The End. 

This story is significant as the third of seven: The up-rushing energy of the creative process often involves a tangling of intentions and desires that can lead to complications and loss. Have you ever noticed this process when the path of ease disappears and frustrations abound, even when you’re committed to the effort?

So it was for me: 

• When this story begins, I had just started a paid internship for three days a week in a town an hour and a half away, compounding my already long commute to graduate school. During that winter my supervisor had to jump start my car at the end of the day several  times because my battery was dead and I couldn’t afford a new one, nor could I remember to turn off the lights in my car. 

• I was swamped in imposter syndrome, working in a day treatment program with people who had multiple diagnoses. I was asked to run a daily group because there was no one else available. The kindest thing a client in that group said to me is: “Who are you? Alice in Wonderland?” I had to say “Yes, I am.” I could not even pretend otherwise. 

• I also provided weekly extra sessions to a person diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, asking about their pets and what they enjoyed about their job. Meanwhile, with their other therapist, they were discovering more and more alter egos, each with gruesome stories of ritual abuse. I was barely treading water in those sessions. I felt like a stuffed animal. 

• I was also doing an independent study on Dissociative Disorders and their treatment, while diving more deeply into my own family trauma, feeling immobilized, entranced. In my therapy, we reviewed my dreams, which were often about desperately searching ruined buildings and outhouses for a working toilet in a stall with a working door. 

• Lots of shape-shifting was going on in the community as we attempted to ‘create community’ with very little idea of how to do it mindfully. Contracts to buy building lots were being written and revised by sleight of hand, none of us clear about what we were getting into. 

• The nightmares continued; some of the toilets were five or six feet tall, overflowing, always in ruined buildings with broken floors and doors off their hinges. 

• By the end of December, just weeks after getting the plumbing to work, we moved out of the apartment, and out of the community, to keep looking for a new home. Little did we know then that plumbing would continue to be a challenge. 

• There’s a Star Trek episode in which people on a planet are stuck reincarnating into the same variety of roles over and over again. They beg to be either killed or taken to a new planet. As they describe their experiences, one says, “Yeah, and we’ve all been the dog…”