psychology dector

Christopher Thomas Knight after his arrest for burglary Christmas 2016.   It is an uncertain world, as it is always an uncertain world.   I’m also skeptical about this as a season of peace and light.   There is desperation in the air.   On the commute home, people fly by me as darkness falls.   Drivers swerve and change lanes without a backward glance.   Everybody’s frantic; everybody’s impatient, in a rush. I went to a Christmas party last week where the hosts actually worked off of a script timed to the minute. “I want to welcome you all to our annual Christmas party,” the host said.   “We’ll have a half hour for small talk and then we will eat.”   And exactly 28 minutes later, we ate.   “The main course here is barbecue,” she gestured with a Vanna White wave of her hand.   “And over here we have our vegetarian entrees and our gluten-free options.”   They had covered all the bases. Forty minutes later:   “we will now play ho...

Years ago, I was working two jobs and going to school full time.   Rarely did the two jobs overlap, but one of the few times they did was on a particular New Year’s Eve in the mid-1980s. I worked security at a shopping mall forty hours a week.   The job was good because it paid better than flipping burgers and it offered plenty of down time to study for my classes.   My second job involved playing keyboards in various bands in dives around L.A. and at weddings and bar mitzvahs.   At the mall, I met many off duty LAPD officers who moonlighted as additional security.   All of the officers and my fellow security personnel knew I was a musician, and most of them also were familiar with the places where I played. One New Year’s Eve, I had to work my regular shift at the mall before running home to change, load up my equipment, and get myself to Hollywood to play at a Filipino night club called The Bayanihan .   A friend of mine recommended me for the job. ...

Christmas Eve.   Probably the best one ever.   Just the two of us.   Quiet.   Peaceful.   Cold out, enough for a fire in the fire place.   Plenty of time to rest, read and sleep. I have so much needed time away.   A moment’s pause in the rough and tumble universe.   Some days, I would step outside my office, look down the hill to the Santa Monica Bay and wish I could fly away.   Too many words, words, words.   I did not want to write or read another one. But lately, I’ve felt the call to come back to the world.   It is time to pick up pen and paper again.   It is time to sit in front of the fire and read, read, read long into the night.   Contemplate the ideas we seek, the message in a bottle that is a good book. It is natural to search for stillness in our lives, a shelter in the storm.   The holiday season can be brutal.   Car commercials interrupt my Pandora stream.   Deals and gifts and endless advertis...

It is a city on the edge of forever. Endless desert, empty and dead, even on the holiday to resurrection. My family has lived here for generations. My great-grandfather and grandfather built a cabin in Bouquet Canyon in the early 1900s, and we used to go there for long weekends when I was a child. This is where we would go deer hunting and fishing . Here in the sands among the Joshua trees are my roots. Joshua tree: Yucca brevifolia , a monocotyledonous tree given its more Biblical name by Mormons who crossed the Mojave in the mid-1800s. Whenever I travel to Mojave, I am reminded of Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert, tempted by Satan. It is Easter and we are driving out Highway 14. The temperature is still mild, even for late April, and heavy dark clouds hover in the sky with only patches of blue and thin, wispy strands of white. All of this skyscape indicates a low pressure system moving out to make way for a high pressure system later in the week, where the winds will kick...

I wish everyone: Peace and tranquility this holiday season. And some good books and a warm fire! Merry Christmas .

Today begins our Christmas break, so the entire middle and high school student body gathered at St. Peter’s Church for a service. The weather was cold and windy, but the day was also bright with sunshine and blue sky. I am struck by the quiet hope of the season, the solemnity of it all, and the power of winter, even here in southern California. After finishing at school for the day, I went to a local shopping mall. Big mistake! I felt like I was assaulted by the crowds, the cars and traffic, the frantic nervousness of it all. To me, the dream of Christmas is a reflective time. The year has been difficult, what with the economy tanking and the increasing stress of simply being. I enjoyed the pause of church this morning, the calm before the over-heated nonsense of the mall. This is the time to think of where we are in our lives, what is important to us, and the meaning of love and friendship. It seems more and more difficult to connect with people these days. Everyone exists in his own ...