Saturday Memory

August 23, 2025

It was 1950. I was not yet twelve. On the way home from school, I crossed a field like I usually do, but I tripped on something and when I feel, I managed to land my right hand on a broken glass Clorox bottle. My right hand was bleeding profusely. I think I was in shock because what I did was to look into the deep wound. I was taken up with observing objectively the inside of my hand. I left a trail of blood all the way home. When I got home, my mom was in the bathroom cleaning the shoer stall. When she saw my hand, she fainted. I went next door to get the neighbor’s help. Rocco, the man of the house, saw my hand and declared he must get me to the hospital. I blacked out. He was dressed in his underwear. Nonetheless, he took me and I woke up in the hospital. At some point, my mom arrived. I was into English accents at the time and I shouted out, “There’s my bloody mother!” I thought that was very funny, but she did not laugh. [Note. Rocco was a communist and mentored me to by a young Trotskyite. He had me reading all sorts of Communist literature. But one book he gave me I noticed was different. It was Jung’s Modern Man In Search of a Soul. I kept it. I did not return it. He never asked for it. It was my introduction to Jung.]