The Duchy of Jerald

Happy Sunday
Hi. It's Sunday and I imagine you are going to church. It's true that I'm an 'atheist' whatever that
means. For me, losing a parent at age 2, it means the notion of a God in the sky and a father in
the sky are all mixed up in childhood loss. Neither one are available to bring me presents, based
on evidence.
My mother wasn't available either because she was a narcissist, and I was in love with who she
pretended to be when I did something for her. He's such a Good Boy. Essential grooming and
training of a co-dependant and dogs. No wonder I prefer cats. That look, the narcissists stare, the
unblinking eyes of the look of mothers love, gets me every time.
I've seen it in lovers and yoga cult recruiters. At the Ashram they could really turn it on, God's
love channeling, shining through the eyes of the Guru. They even called it Divine Mother, as
they were shopping for and grooming the 'karma yoga' codependents, slaves essentially, who
traded labour for that look. At the church as well, whether it's the minister shaking hands at the
end of the service, that loving stare in return for the donation, or the bishop when I was 13 at
some rite of passage ceremony, the same unblinking intense look of a mothers love that we are to
redefine as a spiritual experience.
It's all part of who they are pretending to be. My last minister in the United Church held a
meeting in his home, for us planning some art show I was to curate. He drank 2 bottles of wine in
the hour I was there, and still kept the pretense up, of a sober serious man. He had some serious
narcissist chops.
The native charisma I suppose goes with it, the powerful personality of a world class charmer.
Good actors either have it or are trained in it. I know when I was at art school we were trained,
commercial fine art, in how to make an image 'look good'. I suppose if you can do that, trigger
emotional responses with a pencil and a piece of paper, you can do it with anything, especially a
human being.
My teacher at the Ashram was a 6'6" imposing figure of a man, former truck driver with a radio
announcers voice, recruiter extraordinaire, the most charming man I ever met. He hid very well
the anxious and hostile makeup, I've found common in the type, behind the unblinking eyes of
feigned mothers love. As age 60 approached him, he married one of the young devotees, early