Family Fun Activity

The family fun activity for today is: moving 10 yards of freshly dumped gravel from pile to floor of pole building. All that it's going to require is strong backs, two wheelbarrows and a garden shovel for each adult and adolescent. The primary motivation for this is will be my 3 year old son's ability to cover himself in the clay like residue from the pile at multiple times throughout the day. We figure it would be more work to: police him to keep him off of the pile, give him multiple daily baths, and wash all of his play clothes on a daily basis until our guy shows up with his machine to spread it. I do not know where shoveling and wheeling gravel fits into the unschooling scheme of things yet but I'm sure it will show us by the end of the day.

Born To Run?

I have been running close to a mile six days a week for well over a month now. I really like doing it, which is surprising. I'm a baseball player at heart. And baseball players usually don't spend a lot of time running long distances on a daily basis. Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle come to mind. Ruth spent a lot of time drinking, smoking, chasing tail and not getting to bed on time, and he's still one of the greatest hitters of all time. Mantle, after a long night of drinking, said the next day the key was just to swing for the middle ball as it's crossed the plate. The first Milwaukee Brewer game that I ever went to as a kid I peaked around the wall of the dugout to see then all star catcher Ted Simmons smoking a cigarette.

Granted I haven't played organized baseball for close to twenty years now but I still love it. Some of my fondest memories have come from my time spent on and around a baseball diamond. This is partly the reason why I think I've kept myself in pretty good shape since I graduated high school. If need be I still could play. So over the past 20 years or so I've made sure to stretch in the form of some loose yoga poses and do sets of push-ups and sit-ups atleast 5 days a week. Currently I'm doing a variation of them everyday. But I always made sure not to run long distances because I didn't want to suffer any of the injuries that I've heard runners suffer, especially knee injuries. My mom has had a couple of knee replacements starting in her mid-forties. She weighs just over 110 pounds, so it's not because she's overweight. She's never been a runner. She has worked in retail since she's graduated high school, though. That means a lot of time spent standing on cement floors. Come to think of it, both my parents have been making their living standing on cement floors for close to 40 years now. My dad spent 30 years in a metal fabricating factory near where I was born and raised, then retired so he could move up to northwest Wisconsin by his kids to spend more time standing on cement floors in the sporting goods department at Wal-Mart. He's had his share of foot problems. So I've tried to stay away from cement floors and long distance running.

To top it all off I started reading Christopher McDougall's "Born To Run." I'm 15 pages into it and he's already layed out the common injuries that runners suffer and how often. The number that has stuck with me is 8 out of 10 runners will suffer some type of injury during their time at it. Now I'm really ready stop running, but before doing so I had take off my shoes and try running a mile barefooted. I know of a friend that started running barefooted after he read it. If I remember right he said that his doctor told him he'd never be able to run again. The last I checked in with him, he was running close to three miles every other day and getting stronger. So maybe I will continue on with the book and try some barefooted running before the snow flies here in northwestern Wisconsin.

On a different note. I stopped by a neighbors yesterday to pick up her garbage. She's done some activist work in the past and follows Wisconsin politics much closer than I do. She made sure to let me know that they (I forgot the name of the company) are now pumping water out of the ground near the Penokee Hills and shipping it over to China. She also made sure to let me know that the Walker administration was fascist. She even wanted to take the time to show me a list of reasons that was put together by a fellow citizen as to why this is so. I told her not to worry about it. I said to her, "I pretty much figure any government body that values products over people's needs is well on its way to fascism. And this is why I don't think Derrick Jensen is too radical of a writer."

More Than a Truck

The most important thing I got from my neighbor yesterday was not my 1995 Chevy pic-up but were a couple of stories from his wife. She told us (Annie drove me there) that her son would have been 45 years on that day. He's buried in the cemetary across the road from their house. I heard he died close to 25 years ago playing chicken on a motorcycle with my grandpa's cousin. Neither of them refused to stray from their direct path with each other and neither of them made it. I've heard it said they were going well over 80 miles an hour when they made contact. She also told me that she's been taking in foster kids for close to 40 years now but she's had enough. "One of the latest", she said, "was an emergency case. The kid showed up with nothing but the clothes on his back, and they were all full of holes." She then went onto say, "He got in the car and moments later he was eating food scraps off from the floorboards of the car." And at the end of the conversation she even threw in some politics. She didn't think it was right that Governor Walker thinks he can just take away BadgerCare (Wisconsin's state run healthcare system for poor people.) and food stamps. "There are people out there that need that," she said. "Yes, I realize it's not just up to the govenor, but it seems like he is sure playing a big part."

And that's my brief reflection on some of yesterday's activities before I head outside to do some work on our pole barn.

A Brief Reflection on The Insolent Chariot

How do I define pain? Having to go to the bank to pull out cash to buy a vehicle. Lewis Mumford wrote this back in 1966: "Only war can claim so many premature deaths; for the death rate from motor cars is greater than the combined death rate from falls, burnings, drownings, railroads, firearms, and poisonous gases, plus some two thousand other deaths from undefinable causes. And though only roughly half as many Americans were killed outright by autos in the last four-year period as were killed in our armed forces during a similar term in the Second World War, nearly three times as many were injured."

I imagine it's only gotten worse.

Our New Addition

We have a new addition to the family. Ernie, the owner of the junkyard a few miles to the west of me, had it sitting out by the road with the for sale sign. Annie spotted it on the way from work. She thought Ernie just put it out there and it was going to go fast. So as soon as she got home we loaded up the kids and headed a mile to the east to pay the neighbor for the 4 dozen eggs he'd given me earlier in the day, then we headed back 3 miles to the west to look at it. There it sat with not much rust. The number one selling point for me at this time. Especially on a chevy pic-up that'll be 19 years old next year. My Chevy pic-up that my dad bought after I rolled his Bronco II when I was a junior in high school is just about ready for the place our new addition is coming from.

The next thing I was looking for was if it had 4 wheel drive. It did. It didn't work, though. By the time I noticed that, Ernie had made his way through his front yard to the truck. He said someone had swiped the front drive shaft off from it while it was sitting in the yard amongst the hundreds of other vehicles.

"It happens all the time," he said.

"That's fine," I said. "Are you pretty firm on the price?" I asked.

"I'm negotiable," he said.

"Alright, I'll go home and think about it. I'll give you a call tomorrow."

"That sounds good. But before you leave I'm going to pull it out of the way so no one misses the corner and smashes into it. That tends to happen quite a bit right here." He said.

I got home and gave it a half hour's thought. I called him up and offered him two-thirds of what he was asking. He came back with his price. I told him I'd take it.

"Do you want cash or check?" I asked.

"Cash," he answered. "You gonna pick it up tomorrow?"

"No, I've got to wait for the bank to open on Monday," I replied. I just don't keep that kind of cash on me.

"Alright, I'll look around here for the title." He remarked.

We exchanged good-byes and hung up.

Not bad. I got 4 dozen eggs and a different pick-up without leaving County Rd. E. And I'm still in line with what I mentioned to a friend this summer; we both agreed that we haven't paid as much for a vehicle as most people pay for a new riding lawnmower.

Getting Out The Door

It's 6:30 AM. It's been one of those mornings. Annie wasn't able to get out the door before Hayden (3 yr. old) and Sophia (1 yr. old) got out of bed. That means nursing Sophia (I'm not equipped!) and a diaper change (I'm capable but not so much willing). They're sad that mom has to go to work in 10 minutes. Hayden has started his usual mourning process. Tears and the occasional scream. You'd think somebody had died. I'm questioning this whole attachment parenting idea as I'm holding Sophia. I don't think she knows whether to cry or jump back into mom's arms. Annie should be just about to the Post Office by now, but she's still trying to get out the door. She tries to make the final break by saying the usual, "Okay, now I really have to go." We all go through our final good byes with hugs and kisses again. She's grabs the door handle is able to get the front door open without too much trouble. She steps out onto the porch and is just about able to get the door shut when Hayden grabs the handle and opens it. He says with a concerned tone in his voice, "Mom! Watch out for mice, rabbits, and deer. Because they jump out on the road!"

Limits on Ammo

The other day my two sons (14 and 3 yrs. old) and I were at the store looking at shotgun shells. We were trying to determine what size of shell to use for shooting ruffed grouse. We weren't standing there but only a few minutes and a casually dressed man who looked to be in his seventies smiled at my 3 year old son and said, "Someday you'll be shooting those." My son turned his head and buried into my leg so he could get a view of the man out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at the man acknowledging his presense. Silence followed. We all went back to looking at the shelves full of shells and bullets. A minute or two passed by and out of the silence the old guy motioned toward a sign that was on display in front of us and grumbled, " This current President and his administration are why we have limits on buying ammunition." Tension followed. I said something intelligent like, "yeah." Less then a minute later he turned to walk away. And as he did he made sure to proudly smile at us as he walked by.

Brief New Technology Reflection

The other day, while my family was gathered at my parent's to celebrate my mom's 57th birthday, my 8 yr. old nephew excitedly said, "Hey guess what, Uncle Curt, I got my IPad at school today. We've just started learning about them." About two months prior to this I was over visiting my grandparents on a Sunday afternoon. Just before leaving to go home my grandpa says to me, "Here I've got to show you something." He unzips a black case and pulls out an IPad that he is currently required to use in his capacity as a publicly elected county board member. "This thing," he says, "will be my undoing. It marks the end of my service as a county board member. I'm not running again."

Death and The Other World

"I think it's more a matter of realizing that there is a porous permeability between the living and the dead. Between life and death. And the way we have set it up is that death and life are opposed and you must hold off death and it's the ultimate other, and you die alone, this sort of existential whatever. And it seems to me that this offers a completely different way of realizing that the day world is permeated with the other world--in all kinds of small ways, that they're always inner voices, that the dead are cautionary figures. That you are living with the dead. And what you think of as the way of life may be the way of more death. And the way of death may be the way of more livingness. That these are not necessarily alternatives or that first you do one and then you do the other."--James Hillman, pg.25, Lament of the Dead

Derrick Jensen made it clear to me with his work that our "way of life may be the way of more death."

All Learning is Remembering

I learned yesterday in a talk by Michael Meade that "all learning is remembering." What I'm hearing him say is that if you want to learn there has to be some remembering involved. In other words, the knowledge is already there it is just needs to be awakened. It's also interesting to note that in The Story of B Daniel Quinn titled one section The Great Forgetting and followed up later with a section titled The Great Remembering. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that if any schooling program isn't aimed at remembering then all it is doing is putting kids and adults to sleep and it isn't worth the taxpayers money. The Quote below out of The Story of B better illustrates some aspects of this remembering.

"B means to gather the voices of humans all over planet into one voice singing, 'The world must live, the world must live! We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies. The age of The Great Forgetting has ended, and all its lies and delusions have been dispelled. Now we remember who we are. Our kin are not cherubim, seraphim, thrones, principalities, and powers. Our kin are mayflies, lemurs, snakes, eagles, and badgers. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has abated, so we no longer imagine that Man was ill-made. We no longer imagine that the gods botched their work when it came to us. We no longer think they know how to make every single thing in the whole vast universe except a human being. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has passed, so we can no longer live as though nothing matters but us. We can no longer believe that suffering is the lot the gods hand in mind for us. We can no longer believe that death is sweet release to our true destiny. We no longer yearn for the nothingness of nirvana. We no longer dream of wearing crowns of gold in the royal court of heaven.'"--Pg. 324, The Story of B

Not to be Forgotten

"I often wondered what would happen to the Gods of Christianity if no one believed in them. They require belief. If the God says you have to believe in me, then belief is what supports the God. The Greeks did not ask people to believe in their Gods. The Gods asked for certain rituals, or not to be forgotten, the was the most important thing. Not to be forgotten."--James Hillman, Pg.128, Lament of the Dead

I learned something interesting today while reading "Lament of the Dead." Back in the 1950's John Freeman asked Carl Jung in an interview if he believed in God. Jung hesitated for a bit then replied by saying something to the effect of: I don't believe, I know. This would mean absolutely nothing to me if I never would've read "The Holy" and the rest of Daniel Quinn's work, but especially "The Holy." The beings that drove David Kennesey over the edge and eventually to his death, I think, are good examples of beings that don't necessarily expect belief of any kind, but only ask not to be forgotten. Because, like Jung has said, called upon or not they will be present. I would guess it's better just to be aware of them instead of being asleep at the wheel. Too bad it's taken me close to a decade to come to this understanding.

An Ancestral Question Answered?

I haven't had much time in front of the computer lately. Still busy trying to get two pole buildings built before November 1st, and generally getting ready for winter. Posting will be light for awhile.

James Hillman writes in Lament of the Dead:

"...the way I understand archetypal psychology, that you must always understand who is asking the question. The task is not to get the answer, the answer is who is dominating my mind, so that that's my basic question, who is determining my point of view. It's like a deconstructive 'I'.' You don't just want to get an answer. The real answer is 'Why is that my question?'"--James Hillman, Pg. 56, The Lament of the Dead

Another reason why I think I cried with a sense of relief after reading Ishmael back in the late nineties was that an ancestral question was answered for me. A question that my grandfathers were asking generations before me. Plus, I had just come off from living and working with my grandfather for close to seven years. To a certain degree I had an understanding of his point of view and inner struggles. And if you follow Jungian psychology those inner struggles are also mine to some degree. This is probably why I tried my damdest to get him to take a look at some of Quinn's ideas.

A Short Letter To The Editor

This morning, amongst 50,000 other things, I typed up a short letter to our local newspaper's editor.

Corporations and Corruption

At the end of [editor's name] article he commented that although Abraham Lincoln was not considered one of the "Founding Fathers" of this great nation of ours he did have the ability to see into its future. I couldn't agree more, especially after reading this quote by our 16th President:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was right, of course. The money power in the form of the mega-corporation has rigged our democratic system and the laws it creates so much in their favor that the majority of citizens are uncertain about the future and have little or no faith in their government, as [editor's name] alluded to in his letter last week. But I wonder why instead of singling out the power of the federal government he didn't go after the power of the mega-corporation. If Lincoln could see this starting to happen back in the 1860's why can't [editor's name] see it 150 years later?

We've Colonized Ourselves

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (Probably my favorite environmental organization.)posted this on Facebook yesterday:

End "capital-ism" for corporations--- you can help shut down the widespread acceptance of "corporate personhood" even before we amend the U.S. constitution.

It's a tell tale sign of the biases institutionalized in our society that each time I try to send an e-mail or write in a "word" document using the name of a corporation, my spell-checker tries to correct me for not having capitalized the name of the corporation. If we assert that corporations are things and not persons, then honoring the names of corporations with capitalization and accepting their names as personal pronouns seems to me to be a contradiction of the idea that they are things, not persons.

I think that if "microsoft" deserves to be capitalized, then why not Dog, or Dolphin, or Box Turtle...all of which I hold in higher regard than the corporation? In fact, I want never again to capitalize the label ("name") of a corporation.

We at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund often capitalize local "Ordinances," because they are laws of communities. So too County, and Township and Borough -- respecting community self-governance. I generally capitalize People and Nature.

So, we can make a statement not only with what we say, but how we type it. And if we do not, we still make a statement...and it is that we continue to be colonized by the dominant culture, which elevates corporations (property) above People and Nature.

Who will join us in de-capitalizing corporations?

I like the idea of ending "capital-ism" for corporations. I also think they make a good point in saying that Dog, Dolphin, or Box Turtle should capitalized well before Microsoft (This computer does not allow me to not capitalize Microsoft.) Robert Bly was right when he pointed out in "The Sibling Society" that we are the first culture to have colonized ourselves.

Back After a Few Days

It's been close to four days since I've posted anything on here. Been busy with building a pole barn, canning garden produce, and just being dad. I've noticed my day goes better when I put something on here. A few thoughts and a quote below.

I think I've figured out the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon: people are craving ritualistic sex.

It's the third day of school in these parts. It has caused me to reflect a bit on my school days some 30 years ago. Reflection: School would have been a whole hell of a lot more interesting if we would have been introduced to myth, the gods, and the other world. In other words, spent a lot more time on mythology than we did. Michael Meade has said no learning takes place unless psychology is involved.

"One always thinks you get your ideas from the masters, the mentors, the teachers. I found that ideas are connected with eros, and that where the eros is alive, the two work together. That's a crucial part of all the work. We always had parties surrounding it all. Eros is the whole key."--James Hillman, pg. 580, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Jesus on My Mind

Here is an interesting psychological insight by James Hillman on Jesus Christ:

"Of all Jesus' strengths, above all his weakness stands out, his sympathy and understanding for weakness, 'Jesus wept.'"--Pg.521, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

This quote out of the bible was posted by a Facebook friend a few weeks back. I like the language. I also like how it challenges the sanitized-peace-loving version of Jesus that I was fed throughout my childhood. Mind you I never sat through a day of bible study or went to church on a regular basis but the ideas and images are still there.

“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”--Luke 12: 49-53

No Mommy, Daddy, Me

Ever since hearing James Hillman mention in one of his talks that when he did therapy he always tried to make sure his patients talked about their grandparents instead of their parents, I have been fascinated. He said one thing that this did is help move the patient's mind away from so-called concrete events and into fantasy and imagination which is basically all it is anyway. In other words, what I'm hearing him say is our behaviors, habits, and emotions are fantasy based. Here is what he has to say in the Lament of the Dead. If I understand it right this was the final project he was working on before he died.

J.H:"When I was doing therapy, back in another period of history, I always tried to escape the parents, which was the story that the person always wanted to tell me--what their mother did and what their father did. You notice Jung hasn't a lot to say about them anywhere in the Red Book."

Sonu Shamdasani: "There's no 'Mommy, Daddy, me,' as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would put it."

J.H: "But to go and ask people about their grandparents and their great-grandparents and imagining all their great-grandparents sitting down at a table. That would be eight people. Could they eat the same food? Could they talk the same language? Could they even sit with each other? But the ancestors in the book--see the reason being that it shows the enormous complexities in human nature and the incompatibilities in human nature. And the fact that your actual parents whom you think cause everything are actually the result of those tremendous incompatibilities themselves. It frees them up too." --Pg. 3, Lament of the Dead

My Mini Ms. Pac-Man Marathon

Had a good evening yesterday. We went out with family to have pizza at a local spot. I ended up sticking close to two dollars in Ms.Pac-Man. I was taken by it. It brought back all kinds of memories from my days growing up in Beaver Dam (For those of you who aren't familiar this is a small town in southern Wisconsin). There were my friends with me once again giving me advice over my shoulder as I was trying to escape Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. You see, I was always terrible at video games. I didn't have much interest in them. My friends knew this and they tried to help me out as much as they could and at the same time gave me a lot of shit while doing so. Anyway, I'm still terrible at it. I may have broke 20,000 points once. What interested me though was that towards the end of my mini Ms. Pac Man marathon is that my 14 year old son looked over my shoulder and said: "You know, Dad, Ms.Pac-Man was Dionysus's favorite video game." That makes a dad smile. I know he's learned something in this unschooling adventure we're on.

From Tittilation to Toxicity in No Time

It's interesting how it all works. Yesterday I mention in a post that I'm right where I need to be. Less than 24 hours later I'm ready to move the hell out of here. Last night around midnight Annie and I are sitting on the couch in the living room feeling a bit romantic. We've shared a few drinks which is rare these days. The kids are sound asleep. The night has got a saltry feel to it. It's 82 degrees in the house. We can hear a pair of fans blowing cool air from outside the windows they've been temporarily placed into. All is going well until the smell of burnt plastic wafts through the air. The romantic feeling is instantly gone and reality hits: We're being poisoned by one of our neighbor's burning barrells to the east or west. Then reality hits again: There is no place to go to escape things like this. The nights over. We go to bed feeling helpless and wondering how this is going to effect our kids.

My Morning So Far

It's 7AM. It's been a busy morning so far. The kids have been up for an hour or so. I bitched a little to Annie about Scott Walker turning the federal money to help fun Badgercare before she left to carry mail for the USPS. Hayden (4 yrs. old) made a captive toad swim multiple laps in our kiddy pool than released it back into our garden. Now he's making me bacon and eggs with green play doh as Waylan Jennings plays in the background on my 14 year old son's stereo. And as I type this Sophia (1 year) attempts to waddle her diapered-butt across the room a little bit further than she did yesterday. Life couldn't be better. I'm right where I need to be.

Citizens Getting Pushy

One word comes to mind when hearing about citizens working to stop big corporations from destroying their landbase at the city, county, and town government levels: Patriotism. Also it's a sign they've given up on the idea that their state and federal governments will have any success changing the corporations behavior. It's what the spiritual father of our American democracy Denis Diderot had in mind when he said: "If we look to the city rather than the state it's because we've given up hope that the state may create a new image for the city."

Now the question is how long will take for citizens across the country to push hard enough for it to be recognized in the United States Constitution that Nature has rights.

Intercourse

Reading about sex and intimacy this morning. This quote interested me:

"It's no accident that the word intercourse means both physical lovemaking and intimate conversation."--Thomas Moore, pg.171, Soul Mates

How Do They Do It?

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about Thomas Moore's book, Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism, which I read two summers ago. During our talk I mentioned to my friend that I'd heard Moore mention in a radio interview that I downloaded last year that he felt compelled to write that book because he'd just started out practicing psychotherapy and a lot of his patients were coming to him with dreams filled with kinky sex, death, and murder. It has always fascinated me how an analyst can handle sitting across from a patient and listen to them reveal the different dimensions of their soul. Well, this morning, while reading James Hillman's biography I ran across this quote in a letter that he wrote to his mother in his early thirties:

"To be an analyst is a hell of a burden, since the questions one must face are not to be answered easily, else the patient himself would have found the answers. Every hour of working with someone involves the whole personality, with all it weaknesses especially in this Jungian method where the two people sit face to face, and not where one does all the talking lying down and the other hides behind a note book out of sight.. So this autumn I have been depressed over facing all the implications of my work, my shortcomings, mistakes...It has never been clear sailing but the difficulties become more apparent as one gets nearer the port. One can only have an effect on the other person if one can experience certain symbols and certain problems and certain wounds. In ancient times the physician was symbolized as having a wound himself, or the same disease as the patient. Or he carried or caught the patient's disease and thus by curing himself cured the patient. Since most of the illnesses brought to the consulting room are the standard illnesses of our day, illnesses which everyone has and shares, I have to work these things in myself before they can be of any use to anyone else."--[James Hillman in a letter to his mother in 1957, pg. 441, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

On a different note but somewhat related. Yesterday I ordered Lament of the Dead: Psychology After Jung's Red Book. It was the last project James Hillman was working on before he died.

Writing Down Dreams

This past week or so I've found myself writing down my dreams first thing in the morning. I've been writing in a journal for years now and have never written down my dreams. One thing that I've learned so far is how fast I forget them before I write them down. It seems like I should have my notebook next to the bed so when I wake up in the middle of the night I can get it all down on paper before it slips into nothingness. Ironically, I ran across this quote in the James Hillman autobiography this morning:

"We may also understand our resistance to dreaming as a resistance in our 'natural' nature to Hades. We 'can't remember' go vague, forget to jot it down, or scribble it beyond deciphering, and excuse ourselves by pointing to the obvious slipperiness of dreams. Yet if each dream is a step into the underworld, the remembering a dream is a recollection of death and opens a frightening crevice under our feet."--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld.

Yes, indeed Mr. Hillman, they're definitely slippery.

On another note someone the other day had mentioned that when I get done reading Hillman they've got something more immediate for me to read. It was a book about the role religion and Rockefeller money played in colonizing Indians in the early part of the 20th century. At the time I wish I would've asked, what can be more immediate than the souls immanence in a culture that shows very little concern for the soul?

Jung on Yoga And Eastern Religion

Carl Jung on practicing yoga:

"The European who practices yoga does not know what he is doing. It has a bad effect upon him, sooner or later he gets afraid and sometimes it even leads him over the edge of madness."-- Carl Jung, Pg. 346, The Ideas of James Hillman

You've got to wonder if this psychological insight still holds true today to some degree.

Unexpressed Tolerance Felt as Hoplessness

I'm still immersed (captivated might be a better word to use) in the biography titled: The Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. There are so many new and refreshing ideas in his work I think it would take me a couple lifetimes to understand them all. Also, since I'm learning more about his life I've been inspired to listen to some of the talks I have downloaded of his. I have been delivering mail quite a bit the past couple of weeks so I've had plenty of time alone in the car for listening. I'll share a quote out of the talk titled Myths of the Family below.

"Family love allows family pathology. An immense unexpressed tolerance felt as hopelessness for the hopeless shadow in each. The shadow that we carry as a permanent part of our baggage and which we unpack when we go home."--James Hillman, 32 minutes into disc one of Myths of the Family

This is fascinating to me and I'll tell you why. He's expressed elegantly what happens when we go home to our family. For who better knows our shadow than our families? Robert Bly once said that you usually can't see your own shadow but your family and friends can. Also paralysis is the greatest form of acceptance there is because there is no attempt to change anyone. In other words, the regressive needs of the soul are contained within the family.

Character

"To make sense of later years and the often absurd predicaments and ridiculous degradations congruent with age, we do well to return to one of the deepest questions human thought has posed: What is character, and how does it force us into the patterns we live? What ages is not merely your functions and organs, but the whole of your nature, that particular person you have come to be and already were years ago. Character has been forming your face, your habits, your friendships, your peculiarities, the level of your ambition with its career and its faults."-- James Hillman, Pg. xv, The Force of Character

Pray To The Animals

Thinking about animals this morning.

Years ago I heard a story of an American Indian spiritual leader who was in a circle with a bunch of environmentalists who were drumming and singing. One of the environmentalists prayed, "Please save the spotted owl, the river otter, the peregrine falcon."

The Indian got up and whispered, "What are you doing, friend?"

"I'm praying for the animals."

"Don't pray for the animals. Pray to the animals." The Indian paused, then continued, "You're so arrogant, you think you're bigger than they are, right? Don't pray for the redwood. Pray that you can become as courageous as a redwood. Ask the redwood what it wants."-- Derrick Jensen, Pg.132, Thought To Exist In The Wild: Awakening From The Nightmare of Zoos

Thank You Mr. Mussolini

"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." - Benito Mussolini

Thank you Mr. Mussolini for summing up our current state of political affairs.

Hard Books

In the past my wife has given me a hard time about reading serious books all the time. For example, I read a half a dozen psychology books by James Hillman this winter. It used to bother me to a certain degree. I, of course, thought it was some kind of neurosis or obsession. There just aren't many people around me that read the stuff I read, at least that I know of. It sort of gives one the feeling of an expatriate. It also reminds me of an interview that I listened to with the poet Robert Bly recently. In it he mentioned how our culture has really fallen apart in the last 10 to 15 years. One of the reasons he gave was that no one tackles hard books anymore. It also takes me back to a comment that a guy I work with made a year or so ago: "I don't read because I don't have the time. I've got more important things to do. I'm too busy."

I wish I had more time to read. I don't because I've got responsibilities to my family. Or perhaps it's like I've heard Hillman say in one of his interviews: I'm stuck in family values. Something the republican part and new age Christians continue to hammer home to their followers. If you ever want to listen to a really good talk about family that James Hillman did well ever 20 years ago google: Myths of The Family. Or I could find a way to email it to you.

Here is a quote related to the subject at hand:

"Studying literature or other things is just study, but philosophy is living and is part of you. I sit and think about it all the time. I have tried to get back to reading a novel or two, but just can't [get] interested or started. It is the first time such a thing has happened, I usually have a lot of books I should read and want to read."-- Pg. 212, James Hillman writing in his early twenties, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

That quote resonates with me. I've always been really attracted to philosophy and can't find the time to start and get interested in a good novel.

Joy Forever

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."--John Keats

Man Of Action

"The saddest of all America's complexes is its idolatry of the man of action. Will we never leave the frontier stage?"--James Hillman, pg.169, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Writing A Bit More These Days

And because of that this advice by George Santayana to James Hillman about writing interested me after running across it in my morning reading:

"If you to write it is not necessary to be complete (formal education, knowledge) but be in harmony with yourself, read what interests you."--Pg.160, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Children and Childhood

The other day a friend of mine sent me Michael Meade's Alchemy of Fire lectures. And in it he mentioned an idea that I've heard repeated by others (Robert Bly, James Hillman) in the men's movement of the late eighties and early nineties: We Americans idealize childhood and hate our children. Perhaps this explains why funding is being cut for the arts and general education in the public sphere, or how we've made sex into a plaything.

Delivering Mail Again Today

My God, I'm living at the end of the Oil Age and my wife is delivering car advertisements to everyone on her mail route today. Most of the people I've talked to say they take those flyers and walk straight from the mailbox to the garbage can (Notice I didn't say recycling bin) or they take great joy in watching them burn in their burning barrels.

Also, here is a quote out of a 1973 mystery novel that a friend shared with me this morning:

"Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don't dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and the shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well, materially, as we once did. And now, as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might manage it. But no one else."--John D MacDonald, The Scarlet Ruse

Not Enough Death

"Our Culture is singular for its ignorance of death. The great art and celebrations of many other cultures--ancient Egyptian and Etruscan, the Greek of Eleusis, Tibetan---honor the underworld....The soul...desires to go beyond, to go ever inward and deeper."--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

The Bible and Last Sunday's Visit With My Grandparents

Last Sunday I was over visiting my grandparents (My mom's parents) and we got on the subject of gay marriage. Of course the conversation then moved to God and the Bible. The conversation was short. And to close it I repeated a statement that my grandmother (My dad's mom) was fond of saying when she was alive: The Bible was written by the hand of man, so I don't trust it. My grandpa smiled at me and said she was right.

I have never read the bible cover to cover. I've only read bits and pieces, usually opening it up when it has been quoted by an author that I'm reading at the time. Anyway, while reading James Hillman's biography this morning I ran across this quote by his grandfather. He was a Jewish rabbi during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"We recognize the truth in every religion...We discard the belief that the Bible was written by God, or by man under the immediate dictation of God, and that its teachings are therefore infallible and binding upon all men and all ages... it is the work of man and shares all the faults that characterize the religious writings of bygone ages; its self-evident contradictions, its conflicts with the indisputable facts of science, show conclusively the human and the primitive human mind." [Joseph Krauskopf, Page 66, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

A hundred years later his grandson went on to write in A Terrible Love of War (A book I highly recommend):

"To consider the events in the Bible as legends, myths, and stories, or as exemplary lessons for learning life's truths, opens the mind to imaginative speculation, shaking belief in the Bible's revelation of the true words of its God."--James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War

In other words, don't take it literally. I've heard Robert Bly say that angry people have forgotten how to think metaphorically.

There it is, a blog post by 8:30 AM. Now it's time to get a bite to eat, then go out and dig some fence posts in bone-dry, sandy soil. We desperately need a good rain. We haven't had a notable amount of rainfall since late June or early July I believe.

Ruling The World

"Male rule of the world has its emotional roots in female rule of early childhood."--Dorothy Dinnerstein

Started A New Book This Morning

This morning I started officially reading The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. In the past month or so I've been randomly opening it up and reading bits and pieces.

Yesterday I made it a point to tune into Wisconsin Public Radio and listened to local author Michael Perry. As always it was a pleasure to listen to an interview with him. There were a couple of things I took from the interview: One, he mentioned that he was an amateur fan of Montaigne. I'd consider myself an amateur fan of James Hillman. Secondly, he said that he'd never come out of the room that he writes in if given the chance. I often fantasize about that, but it's pretty much impossible right now given that I have three children. I help unschool our 14 year old son and have a 4 and 1 year old that demand a lot of my attention.

One of the quotes out of The Life and Ideas of James Hillman that gives me a better idea of what the soul is.

"Hillman's approach takes psychology back to its ancient origins where the word literally means 'study of the soul,' deriving from the Greek psyche. For Hillman, soul is not a substance but a perspective, 'an inner place...that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse.' It is also 'the imaginative possibility in our natures...that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern."[pg.xix]

I do a lot of reading of footnotes. I learned today that Hillman made a book proposal back in 2002. It's title: The World's Playground: How and Why America is a Child Among Nations. Sounds fascinating. I wish it would've seen the light of day.

Are Fantasies Alive?

I wrote down two quotes this morning. One out of Sit Down and Shut Up, by Brad Warner. The other out of The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. I'm confused by them. I'm hearing in them that Buddhists don't think fantasies are alive and archetypal psychology views them as living beings that are archetypal. Perhaps, here again, spirit is claiming itself to be superior to soul.

"'...through the imagination man has access to the gods: through the memoria the gods enter our lives.' So it might be that psychological language must 'find its kinship, not with the logics of scientific reason or with the exercises of a behaving will, but with the arts.' 'Why are our fantasies embarrassing to tell, and why are we embarrassed hearing the intimate tales of another's imagination?...The shame about our fantasies gives testimony to their importance.' Our will and intelligence do not embarrass us in the same way, yet 'the revelation of fantasies exposes the divine, which implies that our fantasies are alien because they are not ours. They arise from the transpersonal background, from nature or spirit or the divine, even as they become personalized through our lives, moving our personalities into mythic enactments."[pg.617, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

"To a Buddhist everything is alive, including wells. The only things that aren't alive are those fantasies we create in our heads." [Brad Warner, pg. 240, Sit Down and Shut Up]

I'm wondering if one denies that fantasies are alive then one is denying the existence of the gods. If you've read The Holy by Daniel Quinn you might have a better understanding of where I'm coming from. What I got from that book is that the gods and our fantasies are beyond our minds but yet influence our actions. So how could they not be alive? I thought the gods are eternal and immortal.

Getting Old

This 10 minute video is well worth the time it takes to watch. It helped me understand my grandparents (I lived with them for 5 years). It also helped me realize that aging is no accident and with it comes a level of vitality if one has the right perspective.

If I Had More Money

I donated $25 to the making of this film this morning. If I had more money I'd donate more. Thomas Linzey's work is truly inspiring. It has inspired me to do what I can to help challenge illegitimate structure of law that keeps communities from moving in the direction of sustainability.

Letter to the Editor

It was nice to take a 48 hour break from the internet. I finally got on to sit down and write a letter to our local newspaper's editor.

Sustainable Communities

It was a pleasure to read [Insert Name] letter to the editor last week. Why? Because a fellow citizen mentioned local government doing something about global warming in the first paragraph of his letter. Then that fellow citizen went on to point out that we can't expect federal and state government bodies to do much about the future of humanity on this planet.

A number of thinkers over the years, like Thomas Linzey from The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, have pointed out that state and federal environmental laws do more to protect the rights of corporations over the rights of communities and ecosystems. In other words, what environmental regulations regulate is environmentalists.

Perhaps this is why we're seeing militant environmentalism in the Penokee Hills. Maybe their actions are a result of the inherent injustice in the laws that have been written to protect the environment. As a result they've taken it upon themselves to do something about this in ways that most of us would not approve of. This is nothing new, of course. We've seen this throughout history surrounding many injustices. Slaves formed underground railroads and the Black Panthers fought back by any means necessary when faced with overt racism.

So this has got me wondering: If more citizens got together in their communities to lay out their visions of what a sustainable community is there would be no need for militant environmentalists because they'd have local laws in place to protect themselves and their landbase from destructive activities like the one being proposed in the Penokee Hills or the various frac sand mines to the south of us.

I think it's time for us to take the advice of Rene Diderot--the spiritual father of our American democracy-- when he said "If we look to the city rather than the state it's because we've given up hope that the state may create a new image for the city." That's what our country was founded on and perhaps that's what it is going to take for it to survive into the future.

What Family Is

Thank you to James Hillman for helping me understand what family is instead of what it ought to be.

"The measure of a family's magnanimity is not what it gives to charity but rather its capacity to shelter the shadows of its members." [Pg.199, A Blue Fire]

The desire to win and Lombardi

Vince Lombardi is on my mind today. I learned today from author Phil Cousineau that Lombardi is didn't say "Winning isn't everything but the only thing," but "The effort to win is everything." The latter having much more to do with the desire to excel.

Our Name

"No one knows our name until our last breath goes out."--Rumi

On My Own This Morning

I finished up Hardcore Zen this morning.

"It's a frightening thing to be truly honest with yourself. It means you have no one left to turn to anymore, no one to blame, and to no one look to for salvation. You have to give up any possibility that there will ever be any refuge for you. You have to accept the reality that you are truly and finally on your own. The best thing you can hope for in life is to meet a teacher who will smash all your dreams, dash all of your hopes, tear your teddy-bear beliefs out of your arms and them over a cliff."--Brad Warner, pg.184, Hardcore Zen

I wonder how alone we really want to be in this. I think of archetypal psychologist's James Hillman's statement that meditation feeds the capitalistic-individualistic, developing ego, and personal growth fantasy. In other words, the child archetype.

I've heard the Buddha once said "work at your salvation with diligence." Why can't this be a community activity? Perhaps that's what the Sangha is for. I don't know that much about Buddhism to say for sure.

Brad Warner asks on page 184 of Hardcore Zen: "Why is it that we prefer fantasies to what our life really is?" I think of Carl Jung's statement that "Fantasy creates reality everyday." The goal in Zen Buddhism, the way I understand it, is to get beyond your fantasies and see reality for what it is. But I'm hearing thinkers like Jung and Hillman say there is nothing more powerful than fantasy, it creates our reality. It is reality. Perhaps they're speaking from the perspective of soul and Brad Warner is speaking for the perspective of spirit. And, like I've heard Hillman say many times, spirit posits itself as The Truth. Or to use another quote from Joseph Campbell, “The only problem with Yahweh is he thinks he's. God!" It's an old Gnostic saying.

Just some random thoughts this morning...

How Old?

"How old are we before we realize someone inside doesn't wish us well?"--Robert Bly in The Sibling Society

When?

A few minutes ago I was trying to figure out what to post then out of the blue my son said this:

"I wonder how many times they have to predict the end of the world before it actually happens?"

I often wonder this myself.

What's Right

Ran across this gem in Hardcore Zen, by Brad Warner. "Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what's right."-- Isaac Asimov

Some Rumi On A Sunday Morning

I haven't cracked open my daily readings of Rumi in awhile. I decided to this Sunday morning. Yesterday's poem resonates.

Now I return to the text.

And He is with you,
wherever you are.
(Qur'an 57:4)

But when have I ever left it?

Ignorance is God's prison.
Knowing is God's palace.

We sleep in God's unconsciousness
We wake in God's open hand.

We weep God's rain.
We laugh God's lightning.

Fighting and peacefulness
both take place within God.

Who are we then
in this complicated world-tangle,
that is really just the single straight line
down at the beginning of Allah?

Nothing.
We are emptiness.--Rumi (Pg. 216, A Year With Rumi, Coleman Barks translator)

Vico and Universali Fantastici

"The basic layer of mind is poetic, mythic, expressed by universali fantastici, which I translate as acrchetypal patterns of imagination."--James Hillman, Pg.7-8, A Terrible Love of War

Some Questions To Ponder Before Bed

"Every event and circumstance in this world is dependent on complex causes and conditions that are constantly arising and disappearing. The pleasures, conditions, beliefs, and relationships that I rely on — which of them is genuinely reliable and lasting? What am I taking for granted? As I observe the world about me, I can see that everything changes — nothing stays the same. The inhabitants of the world come and go. Every one of them will die. Though I see change, impermanence, and death all around me, I act as though I were going to live forever — but I too will die. My death will definitely come, and I have no idea when. I may live a long time, or I may die today. What I do know is that each day brings me one day closer to my inevitable death. Nothing — not wealth, intelligence, strength, power, friends or family — will prevent me from dying. Where in my life do I ignore change? What am I trying to cling to? What is really important to me? Am I living the life that I want?"-- George Draffan

Peter Pan and Puer Projections Of The Future

"Hopeful Greening: A New Age of Aquarius. Global village, self determination of ethnic cohesive societies like Slovakia and Slovenia. New conflict-resolution models. Billions of trees reforested like a thousand points of light; biotechnology for 'cleaning up' after environmental disasters. Racial and gender equality. Community care, hospices, day-care centers, parental leave, integrated schools, rebirth of the arts with spiritual and social purpose. Peace dividends. Permissive suicide, permissive sexual affiliations. All the walls tumbling down. Legalized prostitution, legalized marijuana. Creative education. Universal access for the impaired and deprived. Health care and wealth share." James Hillman, Pg. 228, Kinds of Power

Still Riding Rilke's Wings

No matter how deeply I go into myself
my God is dark, and like a webbing made
of a hundred roots, that drink in silence.--Rainer Maria Rilke

Digging Up Rilke

I had to dig up this Rilke poem this morning:

Sometimes a Man Stands Up

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.--Rainer Maria Rilke

A Poem By A Crazy Japanese Monk

You do this, you do that
You argue left, you argue right
You come down, you go up
This person says no, you say yes
Back and forth
You are happy
You are really happy--Ikkyu

Happiness Happens

"Robert Johnson wrote that the word happiness comes from to happen. Our happiness is what happens. That's different from the Declaration of Independence, which states that each person has the right to pursue happiness, meaning that if we don't have it we have a right to go after it. But Johnson says that as soon as we pursue it, we lose it." -- Jeff Bridges, Pg.33, The Dude and The Zen Master

This isn't the first time I've come across this line of thinking. James Hillman has said the right to pursue happiness should be taken right out of the Declaration of Independence.

The Wild Man Then The Witches

"The burning of the Wild Man preceded the burning of the witches by several centuries, and it proceeded from the same fear and anger."-- Robert Bly, pg. 246, Iron John

Enemies Keep You Sharp

"Plutarch declares enemies keep us on guard and sharp...the ability to have enemies keep us on guard and sharp...the ability to have enemies might be a sign of a sound ego."-- Pg. 476, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Men Moving

"Men do unite by moving toward each other directly but only by losing themselves in the same god."-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Inside and Outside

"Are you able to remember yourself at age five, seven, nine, ten? Do you recall yearning to be allowed to sit in a classroom for six hours a day? No, neither do I. Do you remember where you wanted to be? Or can you imagine where you might have wanted to be? Well, yes, certainly out-of-doors, not in a school, but..."--Daniel Quinn, pg. 122, Providence

A Man After My Heart

"I said we were addicted to innocence, we're also addicted to newness. Every bloody thing in America has to be new, why?...Why are we talking about emergence, evolution...Why are we talking about what the hell's coming, let's face that right off the bat. We know what's here, and it's pretty bloody serious...we are in a very serious destructive phase, and it doesn't do us any good to be wishful and hopeful, it does us a lot more good to be faithful to what is, what really is, and to struggle with it."-- James Hillman in a 2005 debate with Deepak Chopra

It's A Good Fight

"A [Psychiatric] clinic was opened in NY City. In the first 31 months, 10,750 individual people came for free or cheap psychotherapy! Strain is the best thing we have. The breakdowns, strains, cracks are the ultimate answer to the big technological machine. The machine gets better and better and the people crack...either the machine will slow to a halt because the people can't manage it any longer, or the machine will win and the fittest people (i.e. most mechanized and oiled) will survive. It's a good fight." James Hillman in a letter to Mike Donleavy

It Can With Courage

"The soul can become a reality again only when each of us has the courage to take it as the first reality in our own lives, to stand for it and not just 'believe' in it."--James Hillman, Pg. 100, Suicide and The Soul

No Need To School

For a couple of days now I have been trying to come up with a post to express my frustration with other homeschooling parents that I've come into contact with in my community. Why? Over the years every parent I've talked to assumes that we keep our kids out of public school based on Christian values. In other words, they think that we think there needs to be more Christianity taught in our schools. That's not the case. And here is where I think my frustration is coming from: I don't think children need to be schooled (Daniel Quinn convinced me of this back in the late nineties), but I never say it. That would be blasphemy. And I think it would open up can of worms that I don't want opened.

"I'm not in the least favor of home schooling, Julie. It's not merely linguistic whimsy that connects the schooling of children with the schooling of fish. Schooling of any kind is unnecessary and counterproductive in human children. Children no more need schooling at age five or six or seven or eight than they need it age two or three, when they effortlessly perform prodigies of learning. In recent years parents have seen the futility of sending their children to regular schools, and the schools have replied by saying, 'Well, all right, we'll permit you to keep your children at home, but of course you understand that your children still must be schooled, you can't just trust them to learn what they need to learn. We'll check up on you to make sure you're not just letting them learn what they need to learn but are learning what our state legislators and curriculum writers think they should learn.' At age five or six home schooling might be a lesser evil than regular schooling, but after that it's hardly even a lesser evil. Children don't need schooling. They need access to what they want to learn--and that means they need access to the world outside the home."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg.166, My Ishmael

Facts and Essences

"He who begins with facts will never arrive at essences." --Jean Paul Sartre

Inspired by The Theory of Truth

I found myself inspired by this small excerpt out of The Theory of Truth, by Robinson Jeffers.

Because only
tormented persons want truth.
Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind
Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness:
then it hates its life-cage and seeks further,
And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private
agony that made the search
Muddles the finding.--Robinson Jeffers

Children and History

"I do endorse the teaching of everything, because everything is what children want to know. What children very deeply want to know of history is HOW THINGS GOT TO BE THIS WAY--but no one in your culture would think of teaching them that. Instead they're overwhelmed with ten million names, dates, and facts they 'should' know, but that vanish from their heads the moment they're no longer needed to pass a test. It's like handing a thousand-page medical text to a four-year old who wants to know where babies come from." -- Daniel Quinn, pg.148, My Ishmael

Depth and World

"Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world."--Miyamoto Musashi

This advice would've helped in my early twenties. Perhaps this is why male initiation is so important. Oh well, I'm alive to talk about it now.

American Marriages

A curious thing:

"American marriages are the saddest in the whole world, because the man does all his fighting at the office." -- Carl Jung

Who Cares About Gays, Guns or Abortions.

Forget about gays, guns and abortions for a minute and ask whether or not our actions are fostering life.

The Law of Life

Here’s a more general statement of the law as it’s followed by goats: "If your resources are of doubtful sufficiency for two offspring, then you’re better off giving ALL TO ONE than giving HALF TO EACH.” Among goats, it’s the mother who enforces this law.

Among eagles (and many other bird species) the law is similar, but it's not enforced by the mother. The female eagle will typically produce two eggs a few days apart, which is naturally a better survival policy than producing a single egg. It's when the second egg hatches that the law comes into effect, and it's the first-born chick who enforces it. The law is: "Kill the newcomer," which it does by pecking or starving the second-born to death. By living through the first few days, the first-born has a survival value that is PROVEN. The survival value of second-born is UNPROVEN and so it must not be allowed to reduce the first-born's resources. (If the first-born DOES NOT survive the first few days, then the second-born will be unharmed and allowed to have its own chance to live on.)

In lions and bears, females will often abandon a litter that has only one survivor—even if this one survivor is in perfect health. This isn’t "good for the species" in any way. Rather, it’s good for the individual’s lifetime reproductive success. Her representation in the gene pool will definitely improve if she invests exclusively in litters LARGER THAN ONE.--Daniel Quinn

Some Things Never Change

“We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.”--Thomas Jefferson

Fishing and Essence

Henry David Thoreau once said, “The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover that it was not fish you were after.” Carl Jung, I think, was getting at the same thing by saying, "In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted."

I remember hearing someone say that Carl Jung thought that this is what the second half of life was about. James Hillman didn't think so. He thought it could be realized earlier (The Souls Code describes this well), especially in adolesence. It just takes the right person to see that fish or essence.

Control and Influence

"We overestimate our control and underestimate our influence."--George Draffan

Sooner Or Later It'll Collapse

"But all too many people--most people, I'm afraid--tend to think, 'Well, so what? Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. Since we're separate, it doesn't matter how many species we destroy--and since we're superior to them anyway, we're actually improving the world by eliminating them!'

"We're like people living in the penthouse of a tall brick building. Every day we need 200 bricks to maintain our walls, so we go downstairs, knock 200 bricks out of the walls below and bring them back upstairs for our own use. Every day. . . . Every day we go downstairs and knock 200 bricks out of the walls that are holding up the building we live in. Seventy thousand bricks a year, year after year after year.

"I hope it's evident that this is not a sustainable way to maintain a brick building. One day, sooner or later, it's going to collapse, and the penthouse is going to come down along with all the rest."-- Daniel Quinn out of The New Renaissance

Play or Pay

The other day the library sent me Phil Jackson's new book Eleven Rings. Outside of coaching two baseball teams, practicing with my sons, and taking care of life's other priorities I've had the opportunity to read twenty pages or so out of ER. This morning I was taken by this quote by Lao Tzu:

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy...
All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.

This is probably one of the biggest challenges I have noticed when I'm coaching, especially in tight games. The spirit of play (I don't know if play necessarily needs to be light) turns into a must-win situation. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's just an observation, I guess.

There is something deeper that I got from the Lao Tzu quote, though. As a culture we don't keep that spirit of play in mind when we engage The Community of Life. We annihilate our competitors in the biological community. If they're competing with our food and our food's food we are at war with them. And we're going to go extinct if we don't stop this.

Responsibility To The World

I downloaded and listened to this interview on the mail route yesterday. JCP said something that really resonated with me: "We're not responsible for the world but to the world."

In my experience keeping this attitude has been easier said than done.

Not Looking Up

If you see the Buddha on the road kill him.

"On Problem with the sibling society is that, in its intense desire to get away from hierarchy, it unintentionally avoids all vertical longing."-- Robert Bly, pg. 213, The Sibling Society

I'm Not A Believer In Evolution

The other day I had a family member tell me that they believed in evolution. I bristled. I almost responded by saying I don't believe in anything. But then I thought do I really know that? There must be a belief somewhere up there that I believe in. Anyway, like usual, I ran across a quote in a book that I'm currently reading that speaks to this. The idea of believing in evolution, or anything for that matter, just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

"Everything exists in the moment. This moment is the basis of all creation. The universe wasn't created the Biblical six thousand years ago or even the scientific fifteen billion. The universe is created right now and right now it disappears. Before you have time to recognize its existence, it's gone forever. Yet the present moment penetrates all of time and space."-- Brad Warner, pg. 80, Hardcore Zen

Saving The World

"Saving the world can only mean one thing: saving the world as a human habitat. Accomplishing this will mean (must mean) saving the world as a habitat for as many other species as possible."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.6, Beyond Civilization

The Schooling Question

Our kids don't go to school. When asked about it I usually say we homeschool our kids. From now on I'm going to differentiate and tell them we unschool.

I have to admit unschooling is tough to deal with at times. The very idea of allowing our children to follow their nose in their pursuit of learning can be frightening. Being a parent who has spent close to 14 years in the public compulsory schooling system probably has something to do with it. Given that most adults around me keep telling me that kids need structure and schooling probably has something else to do with it. Of course, there's the fact that my grandma was a grade school teacher who grew up during The Great Depression and came of age during The New Deal may be a factor too...

My First Day of School

This morning I found myself sitting on the couch looking out the front window at our birdfeeder. There were cardinals, nuthatches, pine siskins, and various other birds (Even a few chipmunks) that were feeding on black sunflower seeds and playing around. As I was doing this a thought came to mind: This really lightens the heart. Generally, in the morning, I'm pissed off about some aspect of our way life. I don't know why. It could be the coffee or it could be the books I read. Who knows.

While doing this it occurred to me that the kids in my community were on the school bus on the way to school at that moment. Then it occurred to me the same was true for me when I was child. At that time in the morning I was either on the school bus or in my parent's car on the way to my grandparent's house, and if not their house then the babysitters. Then I was taken back to my first day of grade school. I spent the first twelve years of my life growing up in a trailer court. And on school mornings all the kids of the trailer park would meet down at the bus stop at the main entrance of the park. On that morning the school bus pulled up and the kids that have done this before were getting in line to await the opening of the sliding door. As they did this I took off running down the highway that ran along the front of the court. It wasn't planned, it just happened. My mom had to run down the highway and drag me back to the bus. I was in tears. I did not want to go to school. I hated the idea of being away from home all day.

Eventually the bus driver and my mom got me calmed down. I ended up sitting in the front seat of the school bus that day. The bus driver assured me everything would be okay and she'd take care of me.

Throughout my life I've looked back on that experience simply as a young boy not wanting to be away from his mother. But it occurred to me this morning that it wasn't just about a young boy being too attached to mom. I may not have wanted to leave my family. And I'm not just talking about my parents and my sister. I'm taking it beyond mom and dad and sister. I'm thinking about the frogs in the crick alongside the house, the baseball diamond just a few hundred yards away, the old abandoned camper that used to sit in the field, the red recliner that my dad used to sit in after work, the old basketball hoop in the yard behind the house.

There was something inside of me that morning that just didn't want to go to school. And there are days like today when that something is alive and well.

Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty?

"Another way to put it is that people under thirty-five cannot teach themselves or others to eat the shadow. The initiation rituals hinted at in 'Iron John' imply and suppose old men who teach younger men how to eat the shadow. That teaching did not appear in the sixties, and it's not appearing now. Old men like Reagan, in fact, are teaching younger males how to project their shadow, not how to eat it."--Robert Bly, Pg.56, A Little Book on The Human Shadow

Not Innocence But Beauty

Once and awhile, as a father, I'm able to remember this.

"Not its innocence makes the child's psyche so susceptible to corruption of its desire, but its attachment to beauty. Eating disorders, media addiction, hyperactivity and victimization by exploiters are based in the child's native desire for beauty in this world comparable to the richness of its fantasy in the unconscious soul."--James Hillman, pg. xv, Inscapes of the Child's World

Tribal Denial

"People are fascinated to learn why a pride of lions works, why a troop of baboons works, or why a flock of geese works, but they often resist learning why a tribe of humans works. Tribal humans were successful on this planet for three millions years before our agricultural revolution, and they're no less successful today wherever they manage to survive untouched, but many people of our culture don't want to hear about it."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg.12, Beyond Civilization

Separate

"International trade and the whole corporate state are based on a set of delusions that have been institutionalizing and hemming us in for six thousand years. We weren't always so destructive. But for some reason maybe six thousand years ago we began to see ourselves as separate from the world, separate from--and set against--other tribes, other cultures, other species: others. How you behave depends on how you see and feel your self. Once we see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, we start to see every other being as a mere thing, and we begin to believe that we can get away with working our will on the world, that there wouldn't be negative consequences for attempting to do so, for pretending we're separate. But as you once wrote, Derrick, ignorance or denial of ecological law in no way exempts us from consequences of our actions."--George Draffan

Melancholy, Madness, and Morning Coffee

For years now I've made it a habit to get out of bed before everyone else does in my house. I sit alone with a book, pencil, notebook and coffee. This morning I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with a black cup of coffee reading this passage out of A Blue Fire.

"We find the senex in our solitary taking account, sorting through, figuring out; alone behind the wheel on the way to work; head under the shower, under the dryer; alone at the kitchen table looking down into black coffee, in bed staring into night--the senex mind tying together the unraveled fringes of the day, making order.

"Here is our melancholy trying to make knowledge, trying to see through. But the truth is that the melancholy is the knowledge: the poison is the antidote. This would be the senex's most destructive insight: our senex order rests on senex madness. Our order is itself madness."[James Hillman, pg. 215, A Blue fire]

I sit here frozen and distant with my cup of coffee...

What To Do, What To Do

A smart insight into depression.

"Dame Melancholy may also appear as the embodiment and vision of depression, where she brings wisdom, as she did to Boethius, who was betrayed and thrown into prison when not yet forty. There his suicidal melancholy conjured the feminine figure of Wisdom, who dictated to him his Consolation of Philosophy. Depression and the awakening of one's genius are inseparable, say the texts. Yet for most of us there is much depression and little genius, little consolation of philosophy, only the melancholic stare--what to do, what to do." -- [James Hillman, Pg.212, A Blue Fire]

My experience with depressions have been plagued with ideas like: You're born with a chemical imbalance. This is just the way your great-grandfather was. What sin have you committed? You've got to get out of this and get yourself together.

Perhaps the consolation of philosophy wipes those away.

Chainsawing Brush

Chainsawing brush out of fence rows this morning. Body sore before and afterwards. Now I turn to The Te of Piglet for some inspiration. A few minutes later it's found:

"High winds do not blow all morning;
Heavy rain does not fall all day.
Are not these made by heaven and earth?
If the power of heaven and earth
Cannot make violent activity last,
How can you?" --Tao Te Ching

Time to start gearing up for baseball practice.

Believing in Fictions

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.”--Wallace Stevens

I pulled this quote from this blog post titled: Real Presences. A big thank you to Thomas Moore for keeping James Hillman's work present.

No Need To Remember

"The story is held in your soul, and the soul has no need to remember."--Daniel Quinn, At Woomeroo

Work and Pleasure and God

As a child I was told by a family elder that "God put you on earth to do one thing: Work. And don't you forget it." If I could go back in time I would've responded with "Work is a beautiful thing if it brings you pleasure."

Perhaps that should be the final measure of your work's worth. In other words, maybe the question that should be asked: Does my job bring me pleasure?

Rules and People

"The longer I live the more I worry about people and the less about rules."--Ingrid Maritine

Brief Comment on Gayness

I don't understand the problem with Jason Collins (NBA center) coming out of the closet. If you don't like gay people then don't date one. It's pretty simple to me. The day we get sex and our sexual orientation under control it's all over for us.

Got The Old Journals Out

Penciled in on July 7th, 2009:

"Peoplehood is impossible without cultural independence, which in turn is impossible without a landbase."--Vine Deloria Jr., Pg. 180, Custer Died For Your Sins

Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I've posted this before. Oh well, it's worth posting again.

The Food is Locked Up

"Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key--and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn't under lock and key, who would work?"--[Daniel Quinn, Pg.5, Beyond Civilization]

Our two hanging birdfeeders were raided last night. The black sunflower seeds have been emptied out of one and the brand new suet cake missing out of the other. While walking out to the mail car this morning Annie noticed fresh bear tracks in the crusty snow. So, I'm assuming it was a black bear that had itself a snack last night. The interesting thing is that it didn't knock down any of the feeders or bend over our pole. In other words, no damage was done. I don't think a human could have made less of a mess.

It's the opening day of the Wisconsin fishing season today. There is still ice on a lot of lakes around here. I noticed on the front page of one our local newspapers one of the headlines read "This will probably be one of the latest ice outs ever recorded in modern history."

Pain and Pulpwood-Cutting

The quote below speaks to me. Why? I had to decide who I was when I was eighteen, and I did. I became a pulpwood cutter. I went numb from the neck down. But it wasn't about being comfortably numb, it was painful as hell.

"As adolescence ends--if there is no effective initiation or mentorship--a sad thing happens. The fire of thinking, the flaring up of creativity, the bonfires of tenderness, all begin to go out, It's as if the Army Corps of Engineers channels wild rivers into concrete banks. This happens to many boys, perhaps most. They become consolidated. They take what is around them--the pulp-cutting job, the few local opinions, the drinking culture, the 'Vocational School'--and they consolidate. They feel they have to decide who they are right now. They have no time to feel the traumas; and now that numbing of pain takes over; that numbing often becomes the essence of male life, much more of essence than domination or power over others. They adopt their dad's way of 'holding it in.' They store anger in their bodies, but worse, as John Lee has said over and over, the men do not learn how to express the anger in healthy, eloquent, or fruitful way. They experience anger but don't know what to do with it. There is a continuum that runs from experiencing anger to expelling anger in two seconds, skipping over verbal expression completely, and the result for some men will be domestic violence, hitting wives and children."

"Most men will not be violent. They will live in this state of expressionless consolidation all their lives, without violence, but without spontaneity or creativity either. The numbing of anger and grief will be the primary task of their psyches.

"The man who remains creative will make art for the rest of his life out of the remnants of infantile and adolescent conflicts. For other men, the end of adolescence means a shutting down of expressiveness and a fading of the fires. That is the way it has been for hundreds of years."--[Robert Bly, Pg. 127, The Sibling Society]

Close To A Foot Of Snow

There is close to a foot of snow on the ground here in northwestern Wisconsin, and it's still falling. I just got off the phone with my nearly eighty year old grandfather. He said that he's never seen anything like this in the seventy years that he can remember. He said that he has seen four inches on the 5th of May, and that has been gone by noon. He also holds the offices of Town Chairman and County Board Representative. In his twenty years of serving in those capacities he's only had to order the roads to be plowed once in the month of April. Today will be the fifth time since the beginning of April he's had them plowed.

Yesterday I visited with a neighbor who'd mentioned that the United States will be the world's biggest producer of oil in at least five years. He of course was talking about the fields they are currently fracking out in North Dakota. He said it in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. There was no mention by either of us of climate change.

A couple of weeks back my mother-in-law called to let us know that she'd recently watched a documentary that pointed out that with the recent oil discoveries we now have the ability to consume oil at our current rate for a couple of decades. They also predicted that in fifteen to twenty years the human species could become extinct because we will not have cut back on our consumption.

Our batting cage that we recently bought from a family near Minneapolis has collapsed under the weight of the snow. We've had it up for only a week or so. We've had a chance to hit balls in it three or four times. I would have taken the net down, but I never expected this much snow. I'll be going out in a few minutes to start digging the wreckage out from underneath the snow.

The overall feeling in the house this morning is sadness. Personally, I'm pissed and sad that our cage is laying ruined and flat on the ground. But there is much deeper grief that has set in. Why? It's been said for at least a couple of decades now that if we continue to emit the amount of carbon dioxide that we have been into the atmosphere we're going to experience more extreme weather patterns. We've been warned about it, we didn't do anything about it, and now we're in it. I can only imagine what it will be like in ten years,

Political Feminism and The Absolutism of Equality

"Wherever we would do something as agents, power appears, and where power appears so does our Western history in the word. We dominate in the image of our God, Dominus.

"We can immediately see why political feminism has focused on hierarchical organization as the keystone of 'patriarchal consciousness.' Hierarchy subordinates; power becomes domination and despotism. So, dismantle the table of organization and the declension of power downward from above. Restructure, either in utter equality or into flexible, cooperative, leaderless groups--production gangs, assembly teams, task forces--so as to remain horizontal and not pinnacle upward.

"For this radical shift in direction, sideways rather than up and down, new sins replace the old. Ruthless leveling--no head dare stick up too high. No one to look up to is the price of not looking down on anyone. Respect, admiration, awe go by the board. Other kinds of conformism and political correctness begin to dominate. A new tyranny emerges: the absolutism of equality."--James Hillman, Pg. 99, Kinds of Power