The safe car

During my Jungian phase I went to see a psychologist with the aim of taking notes about her. No one recommended her to me, I must have just found her in the yellow pages or something.

I was immediately ill at ease when I entered her office and saw that placed any which way on a chair in the corner were about twenty beady-eyed, patchy teddy bears, who looked like they had been chewing each other's ears and licking each other's fur every time they were left alone in the dark. Their bellies were popping open with pain from hearing too many weighty secrets. One of them, a rose-coloured runt with sad holes for eyes, was sitting upright in a seemingly uncomfortable position, a paw caught under the heavy legs of an obese bear. I walked straight over to it and moved it to a more relaxed position over by the window, saying apologetically to the psychologist "he looked uncomfortable".

How does that make you feel?, the psychologist said through the haze of boredom that hovered around her making her hair dull and brittle and giving her words a lifeless timbre.

"A bit ill at ease I guess" I responded, how does it make you feel? After all, you have to work with them looking at you like that...

But she wasn’t going to let me tinker around in her mind and toy with any feelings of guilt she may or may not have in relation to the crowded conditions of the teddies. Ignoring my question she started compiling my dossier. I kept trying to re-direct her from delving into my inner recesses to a more interesting conversation - her opinion on Jung’s theories for example. But she was a wall when it came to intellectual insight so I never went back to her.

According to her, the reason I was ill at ease had nothing to do with the teddy bears but was in fact because I'd recently changed apartments in Sydney and moved out of what she called a safe house, a place where I felt at home. Apparently I was feeling vulnerable because I just hadn't spent enough time in my new flat or with my new flatmate to feel safe. I needed to inhale the new smells and reciprocate by rubbing my own smells all over the place. It's true that I can't say that wherever I lay my hat, that's my home. I need time to adjust, like most cats I guess. It was the kind of stuff you study in psychology 101 or that the vet tells you.

I personally think one of the safest houses I’ve ever lived in was, in fact, a car. And it only existed in my imagination. I remember that one day in 1986 on my walk home from school I was accosted by my older sister and her friends, red eyed, wailing and clinging on to one another, informing me that because the US were bombing Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was going to blow up the world. Apparently he was going to switch the button from existence to non-existence within hours. We said long-drawn out goodbyes to one another in the tomato splattered dusk and I went home and wriggled around under my bedcovers, waiting for the bomb to drop and imagining a place, a safe house.

My safe house was a revved up version of our family car and it was invincible. All my family and an assortment of my pet rabbits and guineapigs (and teddy bears of preference) would pile inside. We could drive wherever we wanted but the car, with all my most loved inside, would be protected from anything that took place outside. I took refuge in the notion of this safe car on many a dark night (it was kind of like counting sheep to fall asleep - I spent a lot of time thinking about who would go in the safe car, seating arrangements and general car hygiene). Naturally over the years new people were added to the improved safe car model.

I guess my choice of a safe car rather than a safe house was fuelled by a desire for movement and travel combined with the desire to have a space where I feel, well, safe. I wrote quite a few posts in my old blog on places I've lived and I think they fit in here, so i've posted them below.