The Liminalist # 112.5: Stories We Tell Ourselves (with Anonymous Italian)

Part two of conversation with Anonymous Italian, on amnesia & memory, do your parts have names, compartmentalization of memory,  another reality, military base and shadowy connections, a dark room and a hole in the wall, complicity and denial, day-care center abuse cover-up, the manipulative skills of a sociopath, occult signifiers, stumbling on a ritual, suicides, memory again, sexual functioning and trauma, the loss of the capacity for intimacy, Jan Irvin’s vision of the divine, taking the blame, the inner guardian, just a couple of guys, stories we tell ourselves.

Songs:  “The Kommema and his Religion” & “Of the Lakes” by SunWalker;  “Noise Problems”  by Scout Niblett; “Are You Trying to Get Away” by Hazelwood Motel.

14 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 112.5: Stories We Tell Ourselves (with Anonymous Italian)”

  1. you guys, that pic is priceless — yo, pass me the peanuts — for what its worth, i hear you. all of us women who have brothers, fathers, sons or partners we love were no doubt every bit as moved as i was to hear you both just now. thank you for sharing yourselves and your fierce and fragile humanity with all of us out here. makes me think of that song, ‘i’m only human, dont blame it on me’ . . . alas, i am at a loss for words

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    • On behalf of the Anynomous Italian. Thank you for listening. It was a pretty scary step for him to do this podcast.

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      • i can only imagine, but he did it and amazingly , please tell him i think he is braver than most everyone i know including me . he was in good hands for sure, keep walkin the walk

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      • Powerful story. I’m honored to hear it and to understand it at some level. You know, these master manipulators have charisma and use it to control people he/she views as ‘just a piece of meat.’ They are either malignant narcissists, or sociopaths, at least that has been my personal understanding. I grew up with them and even married one. Almost makes me an authority because even in the memories, they dominate.
        You remembered very young, not typical according to the literature.

        I agree with you concerning that dissociation is a coping mechanism. True, and it’s a shame not every one can do it. Those people don’t do as well as we do in society.

        I’m glad you survived and are courageous enough to share it. Much love to you Joe and anonymous. We aren’t unassembled IKEA furniture anymore. We won.

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  2. Profoundly beautiful couple of podcasts and hugely illuminating, shining light into the cracks – the places in between, like glue stringing this stuff together, glimpsing how this virus is transmitted, a missing piece. I wanted to say thank you to the anonymous Italian, your voice was velvet , easy to listen to and your words a soft cushion to couch this otherwise disturbing subject on, great respect for you, really beautiful. I wonder why i find this so fascinating, i want to call it interesting and yet it feels wrong to say that, i think you’re right it scares the shit out of people, except those of us whose lives are fuck up by it and who cannot function and just tell ourselves some fantastical tale in order to carry on. for us the material somehow soothes. for me at least. thank you. Brought tears to my eyes. I relate to you saying you’re just now getting yourself together. We were just little kids 🙁

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  3. yes marih, and yes again to saying that so beautifully. i wondered and wandered around with pretty much the same thoughts all day long bumping into my self, torn between anger and admiration. such a loss is mine, and the thought that anyone must endure shame on top of this most precious loss of innocence is unbearable to me. but then i realized that your most courageous heart is also my heart. all our hearts really. and i decided to take comfort in that one shining detail. your story and your own gathering was a gift to the child in all of us. an inspiration.
    the difference, i think anyway, between strei–pal et al who fictionalize trauma and continue to profit greatly from a genre like say, horror, while enjoying the fruits of that notoriety for years and, say jasun and yourself and our velvety italian is truth. truth and the discernment of your audience. multiple selves are by nature self preservational and truthful. i have my doubts about the insidious grooming of a populous into thinking that somehow the lines have now blurred, that fiction is now fact, and that they are now the self appointed harbingers of half baked truths and the sacred not to mention salvation with regards to trauma. it seems a bit like appropriation, or wait, do i mean smarmy? i still think of it, the title of that one infamous book with the alien head and eyes that scared the bejeezus out of thousands of kids trapped in carts at the checkout lines, and that one word title, you know the one. the eucharistic sacrament of the RC. in one fell swoop the readership of the ufo community, the rc community ( current faithful and recovering catholics) and now trauma survivors. pick your trauma pt barnum style, line up, empty your pockets . . . what a transparent attempt to exploit others while blowing ones own horn.
    where was i? oh yes, fiction and horror and truth and trauma, and all the cleverly constructed words in between.

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  4. the human race: overly sexualized, while simultaneously corseted and utterly frustrated behind the cheese wire of shame, and “that’s bad” and billboards wanking you off on every corner of every street in every town and television screen, the burning desire beneath the skin of every prince whom carries off his soon to be queen into the sunset, as the credits roll and music plays. A breading ground and petri dish of incest and exploitative abuse underneath neat quilted covers and behind gloss covered doors, doors with holes in, through which – of course, the profit pours in, in every conceivable direction. As Jasun once said “to be able to see the abomination and not be triggered by it”

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  5. yes, there is that true enough. and it does come, even tho it seems not soon enough. but it does come creeping across the horizon while the mere shadows of our former selves look on with racing hearts and ragged breath. it comes dear one, it does, and there will always be abominations it seems to me, but the same tenacity also applies to beauty and our capacity to recognize it in each other

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  6. Such powerful dialogue there is nothing like this on the Internet at moment
    Just the two way conversation makes this such healing tool for the wounded soul
    We all have been severely damaged by the society at large though the culture programming

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  7. For some reason I got this image of Alex Jones being a fairly entertaining yoga instructor at the part where you bring up yoga.

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  8. Just wanted to say thank you. From a guy to two other guys. I really felt the space you two created and it hit me deep. I can relate to so many of the symptoms and tolls on quality of life.

    Bravery and strength to be vulnerable deeply appreciated. Keep going on both of your journeys.

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