I can recall the moment with utmost clarity even though it occurred nearly 40 years ago when I was 23 years old. I remember how my breathing quickened and my body surged with excitement as the car headlight beams illuminated the huge buck deer standing on its hind legs with its neck stretched up into the apple tree. His antler rack gleamed in the headlight’s glare and I agonized that I had no cartridges for the 30-06 rifle in the car trunk. But there was something else that I now consider fascinating albeit shameful. It was the fact that while I stared at that deer, I felt no ambivalence. It didn’t matter that  quantum ai trading I thought that night poaching was reprehensible and that poachers deserved the most severe punishment under the law. That thought was disconnected, out of commission. The only thing that existed in my brain at that moment was how I was going to shoot that deer out of the tree!

Brunswick

This incident occurred in a remote part of New Brunswick, Canada where my father and I had been hunting. We had hunted together for many years after I had seen the movie I Never Sang For My Father and I had made the choice to make the most of my relationship with him while he was still alive. We had been hunting that day but hadn’t seen anything. I had dropped my father off in the local town for some errand and was driving back to the old farmhouse in the woods where we had been staying. That’s when I swung the car into the field just to see what was happening under that apple tree. When I saw the buck stretched up into that tree, I didn’t wait long. I didn’t want to scare him off. I sped back to the farmhouse to get the bullets I would need.

A strange thing happened as I bustled in and out of the farmhouse. The owner stopped me for a short conversation. He was a bent elderly man with creases and wrinkles on his face and a soft slow voice when he spoke. I don’t remember all of the conversation but I do remember when he said something about how the local boys around there tended to do some things at night that they shouldn’t. I remember how he then stopped speaking and studied me in a quiet way. Did he know? Was there something in my countenance that had given me away?

Apple Tree

Speeding back to the apple tree, I planned on how I would commit my crime. I would load the gun, drive up into the field with the lights off, line up the gun and then flick on the high beams at the last second. I was getting close. My heart pounded rapidly as I swung the car onto the field. I stopped the car and lined up the gun in the direction of the tree’s silhouette. I pulled the toggle for the high beams. Nothing! Nadda! He had gone. The tree was empty and there were no glowing green eye reflections anywhere to be seen. What a let-down! But then something else came into my mind. I started feeling a kind of relief.

I’ve reflected on my one attempt at poaching many times over the years. Sometimes I’ve shared it with patients when it somehow fit into some discussions about low versus high consciousness. The incident has a certain irony for me. Most of the transgressions I hear from patients have involved affairs. I’ve never had an affair with the opposite sex despite several opportunities. But I honestly tell people that I was ready to trade my soul for a buck deer. Not a woman. A damned deer! Pretty pathetic! I’d like to think that I’ve grown more capacity since then.

Undergraduate At Columbia

The second close call I’d like to share came from the time in my life when I was an undergraduate at Columbia College in New York. I had been dating a girl from Brooklyn who had been extremely open and vulnerable with me despite the fact that we had no commitment to be exclusive with each other. I think she just assumed I would be. She wore her heart on her sleeve as she was that kind of a person.

The incident started when I was having coffee by myself in a cafe on campus. Out of nowhere a very pretty brunette came up and asked my name and whether or not I wanted some company and conversation. Of course this kind of incident is a young man’s wildest dream. It didn’t ever happen to me… maybe to others but not me. I recognized the girl from several times when I had heard  quantum ai trading  her sing and play the guitar at the Postcrypt, a gothic feeling coffee house in the basement of the local chapel. She had a penchant for wearing turtle neck sweaters which showed off her shapely form. A gorgeous folk singing girl who wanted to spend some time with me! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

We talked and talked, learning about each other’s backgrounds. She didn’t hesitate when I invited her out to a local bar for some drinks which we couldn’t buy on campus. We talked some more and the talk became more intimate. I shared with her how I was being confronted in some radical honesty groups I had been attending. Among other things, she shared with me how she had not yet had an orgasm in any sexual experience. She looked at me with a quizzical look. I was aware that I still had a lot of homework to prepare for the following day’s classes and I told her so. “We need to leave soon because I have a lot on my plate to do tonight.” She replied “You sure do!” and smiled. I was sure that I knew what she meant.