Musings of a late bloomer

The Big Snow

2012-01-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

Well, the PNW has just been through an epic snowstorm. First, some perspective: last year we got one snowfall of about two inches, and a couple other days where it snowed but didn't stick. It's usual for us to get a little more snow than that, but anything over two inches is extraordinary.

This time it snowed for three days straight. I have a foot of snow at my house, and that's packed down because it was really wet snow. Other places around the Sound got between 18 inches and two feet. I haven't moved my car since Monday; not because I'm afraid to drive in snow, but I fear the other drivers. And anyway, I had laid in supplies and made a big pot of soup and another of stew and was good to go. We have underground powerlines so I never lost power. I went out walking and cross-country skiing, worked on my dissertation, and indulged my guilty pleasure of watching America's Next Top Model re-runs. (Am I becoming a fashionista in my senior years? Stranger things have happened!)

Pictures tell the story better. Day One (actually, the Sunday before, when we got a little preview):

Day Two (Tuesday):

I was out walking when the wind came up and it became very blizzard-like - scuttled home for hot chocolate!

Day Three (Wednesday):

I went cross-country skiing and picked up a friend who accompanied me for part of my tour:

Day Four (Thursday):

Lots of action at the birdfeeders.

I swept off this pathway constantly . . .

True (my neighbor/landlady) showing me some of the nearby trails

Me 'n' True

My landlords are artists; this is one of Dennis's sculptures.

I am you, you are me

2012-01-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

Today I read an essay put up on Facebook by "tiny buddha" that I had to share because I think it is true, and also wonderfully put. You can read it by clicking here.

I've learned over the years that whenever a particular person or particular behavior is getting on my nerves, it's because I'm about ready to admit that I behave that way too. Admitting that I have a problem is the first step to dealing with it, say the 12-steppers. But it's a whole lot easier to see it in others than in myself, and to put all my anger and disappointment onto them instead. Every time I've finally stepped up and said "I do this," I immediately feel horrible. I'm ashamed, I'm disappointed in myself, I don't like myself at all. Much easier to get mad at someone else than to open myself up to that.

But I've learned that when someone else's behavior that I've tolerated, perhaps for years or even decades, suddenly becomes intolerable, it's because I'm ready to change that in myself.

The first time I saw this happen was incredibly painful. There was a behavior that I absolutely despised in others. But one night I finally let myself admit that I did it too - and not only that, but with the people I loved most in the world. That was a real "dark night of the soul" for me. I stayed up most of the night feeling like the biggest hypocrite and manipulative bitch ever.

I can't really explain what happened next. I'll just say that I finally asked for help and help was given - something I have slowly learned to trust will always happen when one is truly penitent and open to change.

I took a vow not to do that any more. Have I succeeded? Not entirely. But I'm a lot better. And a lot more aware of when I am slipping back to that. I did go see a counselor to find out why I had that pattern in the first place, and that helped a lot too.

But that doesn't mean I stopped projecting my other crap onto others. Then next time, it was all about being a controlling person. I had a high need for control for most of my life. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Universe likes to whap people like me upside the head with a situation we cannot control so that we let go of that. (I was lucky; for me the spiritual 2x4 to the side of the head was a divorce, not a life-threatening disease like I've seen happen to other controllers.) But before I could come to terms with it, I went through a stage of being incredibly annoyed by the controlling behaviors of others. I went on a weekend boat trip with some friends and one of them was a controller; I wanted to push her overboard by the end of the trip! If only it were that easy.

I'm still learning that when I become hyperconscious of someone else's behavior, I need to look at myself. Just last week I took someone to task over what I see as their addiction. (My "recovering" friends yelled at me for that.) As I listed off the signs of addiction for this person, I came face to face with the reality that I have an addiction. It's sugar, and thus a socially acceptable addiction - unless it gets out of control and you get fat, and then you get the shame, because you can't pretend you don't have a problem any more. I have a sugar problem. I'm almost ready to deal with it. But not quite, and that's why I have lost my tolerance for other people's addictions all of a sudden.

But their addictions are not my problem to solve. Mine is.

It begins - officially

2012-01-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

Monday is the official start of my dissertation-writing process. In our school's jargon, I "start the clock" on January 9. What this means is that I can send my officially-accepted concept paper to the professor I want to chair my committee, along with the form for her to accept the job. She will contact the professor I want to be my "reader" or second person on the committee, and if that person is okay with it, I will then send her the concept paper with another form. Then I have to find a third person who has a PhD in a relevant field but is not associated with Pacifica to be my "external reader." Those people will be my committee.

Next step is the proposal. The concept paper was just to prove to the Research Coordinator, one of our professors, that I have a reasonably good sense of what I will have to do to write a good dissertation. The proposal consists of the first two chapters of the actual work, to show that I can actually do what I'd said I would do. I send that to the chair and reader with another form for them to sign off on. Only then will I have permission to go ahead with my topic as planned. Which is a bit scary considering I've written quite a bit of it already. At least one of my cohort has already run into the problem of a chair who thinks she should do something very different from what she wants to do, and one of my friends in the class a year ahead of us totally rewrote her concept paper after she'd started her clock. But given that I'm asking the professor who helped me write my concept paper in the first place to be my chair, and she loves my idea and has told me she wants to be my chair, I'm not too worried.

Chapter 1 is done. My (potential) chair has already warned me she won't be ready to read anything until February, which means I have a month to get Chapter 2 drafted. I'm now settled into my new place, finally got the DSL installed, and the holiday visiting is over as of yesterday, so it is TIME TO WORK.

More about Introverts

2011-12-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

I have to get this book: The Introvert Advantage (How To Thrive in an Extrovert World), by Marti Laney, Psy.D. I just read a review by Carl King that said "It felt like someone had written an encyclopedia entry on a rare race of people to which I belong. Not only had it explained many of my eccentricities, it helped me to redefine my entire life in a new and productive context."

Most of Carl's review summarized points about the differences between extraverts (people who get their energy recharged by being around people) and introverts (people who recharge by going off by themselves). But this was new to me:

A section of Laney’s book maps out the human brain and explains how neuro-transmitters follow different dominant paths in the nervous systems of Introverts and Extroverts. If the science behind the book is correct, it turns out that Introverts are people who are over-sensitive to Dopamine, so too much external stimulation overdoses and exhausts them. Conversely, Extroverts can’t get enough Dopamine, and they require Adrenaline for their brains to create it. Extroverts also have a shorter pathway and less blood-flow to the brain. The messages of an Extrovert’s nervous system mostly bypass the Broca’s area in the frontal lobe, which is where a large portion of contemplation takes place.

I'm fascinated by how neuroscience can explain this stuff! This part made sense to me. I do get exhausted by too much stimulation, which for me includes groups of people larger than, say, three. And I have no tolerance at all for "if it bleeds it leads" journalism, overly loud music (seriously, why must music be amplified to the point of pain? I don't get it. You can enjoy it and dance to it at much lower decibel levels!), and political arguments where everyone is just ranting and repeating their own points of view in a louder and louder voice without ever listening. I also get exhausted when someone thinks they have the right to interrupt me when I'm reading or, God forbid, just sitting there thinking, and talk at me about themselves for hours on end. So it's really nice to hear that this isn't because I'm a self-centered type who doesn't care about others, but because my brain is about to explode from too much dopamine.

It made me wonder how many people I know who suffer from anxiety are really introverts suffering from dopamine overload. We don't need tranquilizers; we need quiet. Or a walk out in nature. The Japanese have done studies that show that "forest medicine" - getting out in nature - strengthens the immune system and helps you heal.

So while I'm sure what you have to say to me is fascinating, excuse me, I'm going for a walk.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-12-07T14:55:00.001-08:00

After I got divorced, I started having trouble with one of my friends. It seemed to me that she had changed. She's never been what you might call a "direct" person (there's a cultural reason for this); instead, her friends usually have to guess at what she means or wants, because she's not going to come right out and tell you. But it seemed to me that she got even more oblique over time, and the things she would say sounded more and more like lies to me. At the time I took it to mean that she didn't like me any more, but wasn't going to tell me what she really thought. Being me - a very direct person - I pushed her on it, but only pushed her away even more, until we both gave up.

It only occurred to me a year or so ago that she wasn't the one who changed. It was me. The experience of finding out that my husband had consistently lied to or deliberately misled me caused me to lose the tolerance I'd previously had for my friend's obliqueness. I needed and demanded the bald truth, but what I saw as "truth" she saw as incredible rudeness, which she isn't capable of. I'm sure from her end, it seemed like I suddenly went from a tolerant and understanding person to someone who hounded her about everything she said.

A similar thing is happening now, but this time (I hope) I can see both sides. Grad school has been a life-changing experience for me. One of the things that changed was a way of looking at the world that I shared with another friend. We validated this outlook for each other for some 20 years. But last year I had one of those moments where you see it all differently, and you never go back to the way you used to see things once that happens. The problem is, I stopped being able to validate my friend in the way she was used to. And even though I've been trying to listen and be supportive like always, apparently I'm not. She feels impatience from me, feels that I am trying to push her to change in a way she's not ready for yet. What I get from her is a message to "change back and be the friend you used to be."

I have had several people whom I thought were good friends "change away" from me in the past. It's always hurt, and I've always taken it personally, wondering if I did something wrong. But I'm finally seeing that it wasn't anyone's fault. People change. And when one person changes but another person that they are close to doesn't, the relationship suffers. There's no blame here, no right or wrong; it's just how life is. All we can hope for - and this has happened to me as well, so I do have hope - that eventually the two of us might find ourselves on parallel tracks once more. And with even more to talk about thanks to taking different paths for a while.

Unfortunately, as happened with my first friend, if you're not conscious of what's going on, you can hurt each other in a way that's not reparable.Which is sad, because all the emotion comes from the fear that you are losing each other - and that fear can make people do things that ensure that they do lose each other.

The sad truth is, most people are terrible at handling change. I think of little kids who are happy playing somewhere, and then you have to tell them it's time to go somewhere else. Usually, much wailing and tears result. But once they get to the "somewhere else," they are fine. It's just the transition part they can't handle. A lot of us never really grow out of that.

A few years ago I did the Nine Gates Mystery School program (which I cannot tell you about or I'll have to kill you). This required a group of us to spend two 10-day periods together. We became very close, and leaving was hard. One of the teachers sang us a song at the end that went "good where you've been, good where you're going to." I sing this phrase to myself now when I'm going through the pain of a transition. What we had in the past was good. What we are going to have in the future will be good. It's just a bit bumpy getting from one to the other.

Moving Again

2011-12-03T15:26:00.001-08:00

I've been in the little hobbit hole (my daylight basement apartment) for almost a year now. There are things that are problematic, but overall I've been happy here. And it's hard to beat the rent, which is 1) low and 2) includes all utilities except phone.

However.

Yesterday I walked into the holiday bazaar put on by my former church (I'm still on good terms, I just don't go any more) and fell into conversation with a man I know pretty well. He, along with about 8 other guys, painted my house before I sold it. He's an awesome artist/sculptor/potter, and his wife does gorgeous fabric art. A few years ago they purchased 10 acres south of 10 and built a beautiful home on it. But first, they built a small house to live in. Now they're in the big house, and for a while they tried having the little one as a vacation rental, but that didn't fly. She really wanted to have someone living in the house, and both of them agreed that it was "perfect for a writer." So they had gotten to the point of wondering how to advertise it to writers, but hadn't done anything about it.

Until yesterday.

I don't even know how it came up, but I said something about living the constraints of living in 600 SF, and Dennis said "I have a 900 square-foot house for rent." He mentioned the rent - same as I'm paying now, and all utilities included - including cable TV and a washer and dryer, which I don't have now. He told me it was private and quiet (which I also don't really have now, unless the landlords are gone or on the third floor).

And then he said I could have a dog there.

Today I went over there to look at it, and was sold pretty much as soon as I turned in the driveway. Have I mentioned they are both artists? The whole property is an art gallery, both inside and out. Plus, it's got the most welcoming and mellow vibe.

The little house is great. It's basically two rooms like I have now, with a kitchen and bath, but the rooms are much larger. It's got a solar envelope design, so the entire south wall is windows and that room can be shut off or opened up to warm the rest of the house. My "office" would be there. It was cloudy today, but True told me that I will be able to see from the Cascades to the Olympics, including Mount Rainier. I'll get both sunsets and sunrises. I have my own private patio on the far side, with nothing but forest beyond it. I can see a neighbor's barn and that's it.

And my cell phone works there, so I can lose the landline, which more than compensates for the extra gas I'll probably burn going to town. Especially if I ride my bike - I can do backroads and a bike trail for most of the trip, with just a mile-and-a-half along the highway.

This guy was sitting on the wall when I got there:

Entrance, with Annie (Dennis & True's Hovhaness)

View from "office"

Patio in back

View from parking area:

I said yes.

Cat Names

2011-11-14T16:43:00.001-08:00

The very first pet I had was a black-and-white cat named Solomon Firebucket III. There's something about cats that makes us hang extravagant names on them. Perhaps it's because they don't actually respond to their names (as opposed to the sound of a can opener, a door opening, or that tick-tick noise you make with your tongue up against your hard palate). So the name is purely for decoration and you can do what you want.

We had a cat named Kitty once. It wasn't our fault, we inherited him from someone who died. The vet was not pleased with us for not giving the cat a better name. In fact, at home we called him Booge, Binks, and a host of other nicknames.

T. S. Eliot wrote a poem, The Naming of Cats , wherein he suggested names like Carbucketty, Rum Tum Tugger, Mungojerrie, Rumpelteazer, and Macavity. He named his own cat Jellylorum. Mark Twain had cats named Blatherskite, Beelsebub, Sour Mash, and Zoroaster. President Carter's daughter Amy had a Siamese named Misty Marlarky Ying Yang while they lived in the White House. Wilberforce lived at 10 Downing Street while four Prime Ministers came and went. Cheddar was the Prime Kitty of Canada. Khouli-Khan sailed around the world on the HMS Centurion, and Mrs. Chippy went to the Antarctic with Shackelton (but sadly, did not return).

My younger brother and I co-owned Gaby and Cirocco, who were named after the heroines of a sci-fi series. After them I had a sweet little plush grey kitty for a while whom I named Phydgit. Then I had Mandu (get it?) who lives with my other brother now.

My sister's pet names were all puns for a long time (her ducks were Ova, Via, and Aqua). She had a silver tabby whom she named Platapuss, which her Spanish-speaking vet (plata means silver in Spanish) loved. After that they went through a phase of naming cats for whales. Orca was black-and-white, Minke was all black.

A boyfriend got a cat that was black with a white stripe that spiraled around his body. I thought of course he should be Helix the Cat, but this idea was rejected and he became Skookumchuck.

One time on vacation we were adopted temporarily by another black-and-white cat. She looked like a nun, so we named her Sister Mary. This got us talking about pope names, and someone wondered if there ever would be a Pope Buster, and so the cat became Sister Mary Buster. She was also about as wide as she was long, and someone said she was built like a dump truck, so by the end of the weekend she was Sister Mary Buster Dumptruck. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?

Last year at school we watched a televised lecture by a woman named Phyllis Tickle, and I immediately decided that my next cat must be Felix Tickle. But now we're singing the Bach Magnificat, and since it's a German work we have to pronounce the Latin like Germans do, "Mog ni fi cat." My friend Sydney and I have decided that one of us needs to get a magnificent cat and name it Magnificat, pronounced the German way so it can be Moggy for short -- "moggy" is the British equivalent of our "kitty".

Your Turn

2011-11-13T09:09:00.001-08:00

Today I read a guest essay in the Washington Post by a 31-year-old man who has "lost faith" with his parents' generation. "They have failed us, over and over and over again.. . .They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations." He goes on to list how easy we had it when we were young and how we blew it.

We boomers know, none better, that every generation focuses mostly on what their parents did wrong. It's necessary if we are to progress at all. Outrage, for most people, fuels change, gives us the energy to work towards something better.

It does, however, blind you to a lot. Then you get a little older, you get tired of being angry, which is a powerful fuel but burns out quickly, and you look for another kind of fuel to keep you going, and if you're lucky, sooner or later you realize that love and hope are more sustaining. When my generation got to that point, that's when you started hearing all about "The Greatest Generation." When we started to recognize that despite not being perfect, our parents' generation had managed to stop a great evil at an enormous cost to themselves. I can see that the problems that seemed so huge to us paled next to Hitler.

I wrote a reply:

Thomas, those of us in your parents' generation were not here to lead. (Sadly, although we had some great leaders, most of them got assassinated!) We were the "hinge" generation that decided to put a stop to the old ways that included sexism, racism, alcoholism, and abuse. Instead of perpetuating these things we raised consciousness, held teach-ins and demonstrations, and above all, looked to ourselves for the things we needed to change. Ours was the generation that brought the concept of reflexivity to scholarship, where the scholar realizes he or she is not objective and does not stand apart from or above the thing (or people) studied, so they better look at their own attitudes first.

We knew what we didn't want. But as anyone who has been an adolescent has to realize sooner or later, knowing what you reject can only define you so far. We had no model for what would be better. We have tried many things to see if they would work. Most haven't. Some have. But I'll tell you this: we changed a lot of things. Things are better - not perfect, certainly, but better - for women, for minorities, for the disabled, and for victims of abuse who are now believed and comforted instead of shamed and punished.

Rather than complaining about how we have failed you, I suggest your generation get over your sense of entitlement that mom and dad will hand you everything (which I admit we instilled in you in an attempt to make sure you grew up with a better sense of self-esteem than we had), and take responsibility for yourselves.

We took the change as far as we could. Your turn.

I too look forward to the leaders that will emerge from your generation.

James Hillman

2011-11-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

My scholarly community has lost a great one, and we are in mourning. I had the good luck to meet Hillman and hear him lecture once before illness overtook him, and his charismatic brilliance was much in evidence. But his main influence on me has been through his books, many of which are best-sellers; I quote from him in almost every paper I wrote for school, and his thinking guides my approach to my dissertation.

Jim was a man with a mission: to wake Western civilization up to the vital importance of understanding and working with our own psyches and what he called the anima mundi, the soul of the world. As he put it:

"Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi."

He challenged the medical model followed by most psychiatrists and psychologists today of "diagnose and treat" in Re-Visioning Psychology. He explained why fighting has such a grip on the male psyche in A Terrible Love of War. He told us how to recognize and honor our true calling in The Soul's Code. He taught us how to work with our own unconscious selves in The Dream and the Underworld and Healing Fiction. He showed us how to age gracefully and well in The Force of Character. This is just a partial list of his works.

He was also a teacher and mentor who has left a rich legacy in the field of archetypal psychology, and as such, part of the lineage of gurus that I bow before. He took Carl Jung's ideas and deepened them, elaborated on them, challenged them, and made them relevant to today. Thomas Moore, author of the best-selling Care of the Soul, is one of his disciples - or "Hillmaniacs" as we call them. (It was Moore who taught me that I was not crazy to think my marriage ought to be very different from what it was, and so gave me the courage to leave it.)

Another Hillmaniac is Rick Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Another is Patricia Berry, author of Echo’s Subtle Body: A Contribution to Archetypal Psychology. Ginette Paris, a professor at Pacifica and author of Wisdom of the Psyche, is the Hillmaniac who had the most direct influence on me (hence, my "generation" in this lineage is the "Post-Parisians").

Rick Tarnas had this to say about Hillman:

May I just add, in tribute to him as a friend, how deeply James has enriched us with his unending flow of insights, placing so many things in new light—and in shadow. His depth of soul and reading and culture, his trickster wit, his heretic originality, his sharp-edged individuality. He will be deeply missed, but he left us with so much that we will be integrating for a long time to come. It was just over thirty years ago that he came to San Francisco and presented what would later become his profound and influential essay, "Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World"—a turning point in depth psychology.

Pythia Peay, who interviewed him many times, adds:

For most who knew him, Hillman will be primarily remembered for two things: his groundbreaking ideas on the psyche and culture, and the remarkable force of character with which he both lived and delivered those ideas.

From Hillman I learned the radical idea that depression is not merely an illness to be cured, but a kind of suffering that, when meaningfully borne, yields wisdom and beauty; that we are each guided by an invisible "daemon" who safeguards our calling; that we are here not to rise above life, but to "grow down" into it; and that dreams are not just symbols to be analyzed, but vivid encounters with a very real psychic realm.

This is my favorite quote from Hillman:

"The way we imagine our lives is the way we are going to go on living our lives."

It's hard to imagine a life without him in it - but as I type that, I hear his irascible voice telling me "stop looking to me - get on with doing what you are supposed to do in this life!"

Okay, Jim. But first, just let me say "thank you." We all owe you more than can be said.

No one found it possible to say "rest in peace." That just wasn't Hillman's style. We imagine him, instead, asking questions and shaking everything up wherever he is.

I may not know anything about it, but I know what I like . . .

2011-10-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

On The Daily Show the other day, Jon Stewart went after the "anti-science" stance of Fox News. Now I hate Fox as much as anyone, and I don't have much patience with science deniers, and also I adore Jon Stewart, so at first I applauded this. Particularly when they got Noelle Nikpour, a party girl with no known qualifications who poses as a "political consultant" on Fox, to say that "scientists are scamming the american people [...] for their own financial gain." When asked if she had any evidence or data for such a claim, she responded that "Every American [...] would have a gut feeling that some of these numbers that scientists are putting out are not right." In other words, no evidence, just "a feeling." Aasiv Mandvi, who was interviewing her, had a lot of fun poking holes in her argument that "average Americans" are better experts on what scientists do than scientists are, asking her things like "so it's wrong that the only people who can say whether or not someone is a good surgeon is other surgeons?" (To which she said "right!")

I too spent some time thinking about how ridiculous this stance is. Do we really want to fly on planes piloted by people who haven't been checked out for their flying skills by other pilots? Or have an operation done by a surgeon who hasn't passed the board exam set by the College of Surgeons?

But then I realized that I was doing what most people do when faced with a statement by someone they think they already disagree with: I was taking their argument to the extreme, stretching it out until I could find the holes in it, so that I could marginalize it, dismiss it, and feel good about my own superior notions, instead of trying to feel into the underlying fear or concern being expressed.

This is precisely why I hate Fox. Their people do just that. They are masters at marginalizing the people who are making a certain argument by stereotyping them (e.g., "socialists") or belittling them ("scam") instead of actually talking about the issue. I had a boyfriend in college who was terrific at this. He would turn everything I said into an issue of semantics and argue with my use of a particular term as a way of avoiding the real issue that I was trying to bring up. I kept saying "but you know what I mean" - but I could never get him to engage on that level. Now I realize that's because he would have lost control of the conversation if he had done so. Keeping it to semantics allowed him to dismiss my concerns and kept him in control.

This is not how a good relationship works.

The more I tried to "feel" the emotion behind the (misleading) words, the more I found myself in sympathy with what Noelle said. (Believe me, the part of me that reflects my scientific upbringing is horrified that I'm saying that, but stick with me.) One of the threads that keeps running through the books I've been reading for school and my own papers is the pendulum swing we are now experiencing as a culture as regards our attitudes towards science. Western society choose, centuries ago, to put science and logic and rationalism on a big pedestal and to ignore all other ways of knowing, such as intuition, empathy, and Noelle's "gut feelings." Not just to ignore but to denigrate them and make them ridiculous, stupid, and wrong.

(And, incidentally, feminine.)

I realized that in the examples Aasiv Mandvi gave and I just gave above, what we were really talking about was skill. Of course another person who is skilled in a particular field is the best judge of whether or not your own skills are sufficient to do what they do. But I don't think that's what Noelle meant. I think she was trying to say - very poorly, because she's obviously not been trained as I have in how to construct an argument - that there's something wrong with the purely scientific approach to problems. Something's missing. Something's being ignored. Something that isn't wrong.

And I agree. My problem with much scientific endeavor is that all too often it is about what we can do instead of what we should do. How much of our scientific endeavors have gone into making weapons, for example? My MD has now told me that I don't need that expensive and painful mammogram every year, because it won't make a bit of difference to my longevity. My mechanic nephew says the hydrogen-fueled car could happen tomorrow if people really wanted it. Imagine fueling your car with water! Imagine no more wars over oil, no more environmental destruction for the sake of fueling our huge SUVs. Now imagine the oil companies letting that happen . . . yeah, I can't either. (But what if we all decided that's what we want and stopped buying gasoline?)

I've said before that the Republicans (who are now led by Fox/Rupert Murdock/Roger Ailes, not the other way around) are much, much better at tapping into the underlying emotions of people than the Democrats are. The Dems are still wedded to facts and logic and believe religiously that all you need to do is present those facts to people and they will understand and do the right thing. I'm afraid this idea - as appealing as it is to me personally - has gone past its expiry date. There is a huge cultural revolution going on, as happens every 500 years. Last time, we opted to let science take the lead. This time, we're reacting against what went wrong - that is, what is wrong with science, what science leaves out and ignores. Every time you deny or repress some aspect of life, it goes underground and gains strength until finally it erupts. It's erupting now.

(Which is good news for us feminine folks.)

But unfortunately, the folks at and behind Fox know how to manipulate that energy. They acknowledge it, first of all. That's all I ever wanted my boyfriend to do: to acknowledge that there was a problem, instead of trying to "logic" me out of my feelings that would not go away. If he had ever said "you're right," I would have stuck with him forever. Because we all want to be validated. It may be the strongest human need, to have our egos stroked in that way, to be told "yes, what you feel has validity." Fox does that. Very smart.

And then - and here's where the genius comes in - they give the problem a name and they tell people WHO TO BLAME. They are turning a cultural/psychological phenomenon into a political one. Like my boyfriend, they want to control others. So they are channeling this energy for their own purposes.

And it's working.

It won't keep working, because despite what Fox says, we are not facing an issue of left-versus-right politics. Leftists are just the folks who put the community first, and rightists put the individual first (although, interestingly enough, leftists tend to be independent and rightists are more "joiners" - talk about how what you repress controls you!). The rights of the polis vs. the rights of the individual has been an issue ever since people started living in tribes, and I suspect we're never getting rid of it. And we shouldn't. If we always put the polis first, we'd have a totalitarian state, but the other extreme is anarchy. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in Nazi Germany or in Somalia. So, it's good we keep each other in balance.

The entire world is changing now, and the problem is waaaaay more complex than that. No matter what the Republicans tell their followers, no matter what the Tea Party claims, we are as inexorably moving away from the "old white males in control" paradigm and the "unlimited growth is good for the economy" paradigm as we are from the "science is the only answer" one. (Just as we moved away from "the Church knows everything" 500 years ago, despite the Inquisition's attempts to squash that change.) You can see the signs everywhere.

But it would help a lot if the Dems wised up to this and started listening to what people mean instead of arguing with the actual words they say.

Note 11/13/11 - Not sure whether to laugh or cry at Ronin's comment. He doesn't understand what I'm saying: he wants me to be logical, make a judgment as to the right-and-wrong of the issue, explain away how anyone could think like Noelle, and ends up saying that even if we listen to our intuition, science will still win out because it's right. Yup, Ronin, you completely missed the point, but is it my writing or your attitude that's keeping you from getting it?

Dido Speaks at Last

2011-10-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Aeneas, running away, looked back and saw the flames.
Was it guilt or pride that let him think it was my funeral pyre?
So quick to believe that without him, I became nothing?

Oh yes, I was angry all right.
He'd broken every vow he'd made to me.
So much for the brave warrior's word.

I told my people to wail and shriek. And I let the rumors fly unchecked.
Let him think he meant that much to me.
(Heroes need a lot of bolstering.)

In truth, I was cleaning house.
Burning everything he'd left behind: trophies, ratty underwear, that ugly bed.
I wanted no reminders.

Oh, I know it wasn't his fault, any more than it was mine.
Juno tricked us both. She does that.
Who can withstand it when a goddess decides to intervene in your life?

It was a temporary insanity.
But as soon as he was gone, I was free,
And could get back to building my secret city.

Imagining the future

2011-10-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've written before about all the encounters I have with people who don't understand my love of fantasy and science fiction (or, for that matter, myths). I also have arguments with people about science being the only way to know truth (I don't think so.) The best answer I've come across to both is from the brilliant English author Terry Pratchett, author of the "Discworld" series, in his book Hogfather. The Hogfather is the Discworld equivalent of Santa Claus. The one who speaks in all caps is Death; Susan is his adopted granddaughter, who has had a very strenuous night and is tired, hence all the stuff about beds.

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need . . . fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO, HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little ---"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all."

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWEDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET---Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point ---"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

She tried to assemble her thoughts.

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT.

"Yes, but people don't think about that," said Susan. Somewhere there was a bed . . .

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

"Talent?"

OH YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.

"You make us sound mad," said Susan. A nice warm bed . . .

NO. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

* * * * *

One of the things I'm saying in my dissertation is that women's literature can sometimes be seen as speculative fiction like fantasy and science fiction, because it's so often an attempt to imagine a better world. As Betty DeShong Meador puts it, "I do not condemn male-imagined culture. Rather, I grieve the lack, the loss, the absence of a concomitant female-imagined culture which could flourish side by side, if only there were breathing room."

People so often see things as either/or. Either we have it this way, or that way, but never both at once. But that's exactly what I want, what many women really want. The women's movement has never been an attempt to take over from men or emasculate them, it has been about establishing true partnership where the styles and strengths of both sexes are equally valid and valued. Which would mean that some men would feel free to be more "feminine" and some women more "masculine," because we'd stop caring so much who took on which traits: it wouldn't threaten anyone's sense of self if an individual was nurturing at the appropriate time, or decisive and take-charge at others.

Women have been trying for centuries to write about such a world, to imagine it into being. And you know what? We're getting there. The "millenial" generation is waaay ahead of my generation (their parents) in this. I don't think this could have happened without our ability to believe in things that aren't "true" - and write about them.

What is depth psychology?

2011-10-15T18:23:00.001-07:00

My professor Ginette Paris says it beautifully. Click here.

The Quarter-Life Crisis

2011-10-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

In the course of my reading for my dissertation, I came across a brief remark about "the psychic break of late adolescence." It had nothing to do with my topic so I didn't mark it, and can't remember where I read it, but it keeps reverberating in my brain.

I had one of those. In 1971 I had what was then called a "nervous breakdown" and was hospitalized for four days. After one intense session with my counselor there that lasted three hours, the dam broke, and within a couple of days I was fine and back to life.

Later on I found out that many of my acquaintances from high school and college also went through a major depression or nervous breakdown somewhere between the senior year of high school and the first year or two after college. There were also a couple of kids whose schizophrenia manifested at this time. For years I would see a boy who'd been a friend from junior high through college, busking at the Pike Place Market, clearly living as a homeless person. He didn't know me any more.

Then there were those who killed themselves. At least one a year, in my high school. These days, all too often the would-be suicide takes a gun to school and takes a few others with him.

But most of us got over it in time and didn't have a lifelong problem. And after reading that phrase, I started thinking: Is this really that common? And if it is, shouldn't parents know? Shouldn't schools know? Shouldn't kids know? Because depression (and its counterpart anxiety) does several things. Because you usually don't know why it's happening in the first place, you have no hope, no belief that things will get better. It isolates you from other people and makes you feel like a weirdo, like you're not doing things right, and that's particularly difficult for adolescents to handle, because they have not yet developed a strong sense of individuality and are very bound to "the group."

But what if you were told, say at the outset of high school, "it is a very common thing for people in their late teens and early 20s to lose their grip for a while. It happens to a lot of kids. What you need to know is that this is normal, not weird, and that it will not last. And that there are people who can help you move through it faster." Wouldn't that help?

I had that help, and I did get through it quickly. I've fallen into a depression a few times since then, but after that first time, I could believe that it would end. I even came to see these down times as fallow times where something was being worked out that I wasn't ready to deal with consciously yet. So I didn't despair when I felt depressed. I knew it was necessary and it would end. And afterwards I usually could figure out what it had all been about, and usually I made changes in my life.

But the first time, you don't know that. You have no prior experience to hold on to, that lets you say "oh yeah, been there done that, I know it will be okay again."

It seems to me that we need to talk about this a lot more. We need to treat the "quarter-life crisis," as it's called, almost like a rite of passage. Recognize it, validate it, and give kids some tools for managing it.

I suspect this is going to be my next book . . .

Dissertation Update

2011-09-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's time to report in on the Big D, as I am calling it for short. My concept paper was accepted, meaning I have permission to go ahead and start writing. I am officially on leave for fall quarter and will "start my clock" in January. I did that so I could be on vacation from reading and writing, and I did take all of August off for trips and playing (you can see pictures from my travels here). But by the end of the month I was rarin' to go, so I am now working on Chapter One.

Chapter One is the biggie. In it I must state what the "problem" is that I am addressing, my hypothesis for a "solution," the approach I will take, and then review all the different schools of thought on the issue and discuss the ideas of a representative sample of recognized thinkers and writers from each school. In the humanities, every paper is a new voice or new thought in a conversation that's been going on from the dawn of time (or at least 3,000 years - seriously, I have quoted sources from 800-1000 BC). You can't just work from accepted principles, as you can in the sciences, because there's no such thing in the humanities. So you have to show that you know what's been said to date. As one of the books we read for Dissertation Research Strategies puts it, you have to acknowledge what "they say" before you can get to "I say." It's . . . not a small task.

The "I say" part includes claims, reasons, evidence, acknowledging your allies (schools of thought that would agree or support your ideas), and addressing in advance probable objections from enemies (schools of thought that disagree or oppose). It also includes warrants, a slippery concept. As I understand it, a warrant is an assumption based on a general assumption that most people share that you then connect to your specific hypothesis. For example, "where there is smoke there's fire" is a commonly held warrant that often gets tied to a specific case to indicate suspicious behavior. In the movie "Get Shorty," the hitman always justifies his behavior by saying that if he gets sent to kill someone, they must have done something to deserve it. He doesn't know that they have done anything. A claim would be more specific and could be backed up by evidence: "You stole a million dollars. Don't deny it, we know it was you - there was a camera in the store and we have pictures that show your face clearly. Also, you left a fingerprint on the safe."

(And I just can't help adding this: how much of what politicians and demagogues say is based on warrants instead of evidence-backed claims? Once you start noticing that it's like taking the red pill in "The Matrix" . . . you wake up a lot.)

One of the things that's become clearer to me during this process is how much I am a "both and" thinker. The West is big on binarism: either/or thinking that says it must be either this or that. It's either on or off; it's either good, or it's evil. Folks from the eastern tradition are more dualists, saying that both exist at the same time (think yin/yang symbol, black and white always separate but always touching), and in fact neither can exist without the other. There's no shadow without a light. Then there's the dialectical thinkers who say the apparent opposites are temporary and will eventually lead to something new that integrates both points of view. For example, Christianity denied many scientific findings for a long time (round earth, earth goes around the sun, evolution, etc.). And some sects still do, but the mainstream churches have found a way to include science in their theology.

Me, I'm a cat. "Are you in or out?" one asks the cat, but the cat sits right on the threshold, keeping the door open. Sometimes it's better to be in, as when it's stormy out. When it's a beautiful sunny day, outdoors beckons more strongly. But there are days when you want to keep all your options open.

So what I'm doing now is talking about different points of view not with the aim of saying "this one is right and this one is wrong" but rather "here's what I like and find useful about this one, and here's where I part company with them." Mostly, I part company when they insist that their view is the right one and others are wrong, since I also see what's interesting and useful about those other ideas.

My claim comes down to this: I see something in women's stories that no one has yet described. So I'm describing what I see. I'm not taking sides, I'm staking a new claim. Another way I think about it is that the topic area is like a globe, and all of us are scattered around the globe, looking at it from different angles. Of course what I see is going to be different from what someone on the opposite side, or 90 degrees from me in any direction, is seeing. That doesn't mean any of us are wrong. In fact, it ought to be interesting to know what someone way over there sees. If we put our data together, we could build up a pretty good model of the globe.

That's the final goal of all scholarly inquiry. I think it's also the ultimate goal of art. Scientists seek models of the physical world. We in the humanities are after something else, something intangible, something we only approach or hint at but never actually reach in all our works of art. That's why I'm a "both and" thinker, because when one deals with the ineffable, with what exists only in imagination - "soul" is as good a term as any - I think it's rather arrogant to say "of course it's this and not that!"

Chapter One will be the "proposal" for the dissertation. I don't actually have to write on the topic outlined in my concept paper at all; it served primarily as proof that I know how to go about writing a dissertation. But of course almost everyone does expand their concept paper into their proposal. Once it's accepted by my committee, then I have permission to write the rest. But it's not unheard of for people to write most of the thing ahead of time. Last year a woman in the class ahead of me started her clock in October and defended the finished dissertation in December! Which meant she sent in all her chapters after the proposal was accepted, got feedback and revised accordingly, and got the final product accepted in about a month. She had to have written most of it ahead of time. I won't be that fast, but at this point, I think I'll be defending sometime next spring. Pretty exciting!

How Not to Go Crazy over Politics

2011-09-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post for myself, because for the last two days I have been fretting pretty nonstop about American politics. For one thing, I discovered that almost ALL of our news media is owned by Republican-supporting corporations. Fox, yes, we knew that - but NBC, ABC, CBS, even CNN are also owned by huge corporations that donate millions to the Republicans. So much for the "liberal" media.

The more I looked into that, the more I kept feeling like there's a giant shell game going on where the corporations are blinding us all - whatever "side" you are on - to the reality of what they are up to, by making us all angry with each other instead. And my immediate impulse was to run out and tell everyone. I did post a few things here and there on the Internet, and wrote a letter to the local paper. And stayed awake most of the night stewing.

And then I caught myself.

I have a friend who got caught up in an environmental issue about a year ago, and began educating herself about it. At one point she told me she was spending 12 hours a day researching it. It was the only thing she could talk about, and she couldn't stop talking either. I dropped by a yard sale she held one day and she talked at me for two hours straight before I could get away.

Later she told me that she had had a dream where she was floating in the ocean and a voice told her to forgive herself. She didn't understand what she had to forgive herself for - wasn't she doing all she could to bring awareness of the issue threatening the ocean to others? But I think I know what the dream meant.

There's a two-fold trap people fall into that turns them into fanatics:
1. Thinking that they have total responsibility for solving the problem
2. Thinking that the only way to solve the problem is to get other people to change.

I figured some of this out after reading Marion Woodman's Addiction to Perfection. In there she said something about people going a bit crazy when they make too much of the world "sacred" - for instance, all animals. There is no way one person can protect all the animals in the world! But that's exactly what the animal rights activist feels obligated to do. Every time an animal dies or is harmed, that person takes it personally, both as a failure on their part and an attack on what they hold sacred. They realize the job is beyond them, but the only option they can see is to convince the rest of the world to see all animals as sacred as well. Another impossible task. But because they feel this huge obligation to FIX THE WORLD, they can't stop trying. So everyone they meet must be enlisted to the cause. They end up focused all the time on what is wrong with other people that they don't "get" it and attacking them for that.

Not effective.

But that's exactly where I went the last couple of days. If only I could get other people to understand what is really going on with our politics . . . yeah. Good luck with that.

It's so hard not to fall into the trap. Because you can't not care, not try to make things better, right? What kind of person would I be if I didn't care? And the problems are so huge and so immediate! Armageddon is coming! How many people do you know who think that?

Makes you crazy all right.

That's what I think my friend's dream was about. Forgiving herself for being one person who doesn't have the power to solve the problem in its entirety. Letting go of that responsibility and instead just taking on as much as she personally can do. That may mean educating others, sure, but not thinking that she has to convince everyone. Letting herself take a break from always being "on" the issue. Letting herself be one human being. Letting herself not go crazy.

I recently heard a talk by a woman in my program whose dissertation was on the myth of Demeter and Persephone as experienced by a mother of a son with an addiction problem. She related to Demeter because her daughter was taken by the lord of the underworld, just as this woman's son had been "taken" by drugs. She could not stop trying to fix him, to get him back into the daylight world as Demeter managed to get Persephone back for half the year at a time. But what she had to realize, she said, was that she is no goddess. She doesn't have the power to change the world. She can't fix addiction.

She will never give up on her son. She will never stop trying. But she has forgiven herself for not being able to solve the problem. When her son falls back into using, she no longer blames herself. She has stopped making herself crazy over something she can't control.

And so must I. Wish me luck.

Diversity

2011-09-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went for a long walk on the beach. One of things I love about my favorite beach walk is all the dogs. I said hello to many labs, a wheaten terrier, a chihuahua, a border collie mix, an australian shepherd, a newfoundland-aussie mix, and more than one Heinz 57. One woman went by carefully keeping her pit bull close until I said "hey gorgeous" to him, and she relaxed and let him come over and get petted. "Not everyone wants to greet him," she said, and I commiserated; I had met people who were terrified on principle of my german shepherd, who was the calmest, sweetest-tempered dog ever. Their loss! As one man said as I petted his fuzzy little mutt, "just think, you are lowering your blood pressure!"

Then I went downtown to enjoy the madness of the annual Wooden Boat Festival. On the way down I took a picture of all the boats anchored in the bay and amused myself by noticing the different varieties - sloops, schooners, ketches, a yawl, a trimaran, kayaks, fishing boats, and a beautiful old motor yacht. I was hungry after my walk, so I went to Water Street Creperie to have a gluten-free crepe stuffed with goat cheese, artichoke hearts, pesto, pine nuts, and spinach. Both the owners, Jim and Brandon, were there. I met Jim at my gym. I was hoping for a while that he was single so I could match him up with someone in my own family, but he and Brandon have been solid for years now, so nothing doing and I have to pay to eat his cooking :)

Then I went to the arts-and-crafts show to drop by my friend Debra's booth. Debra is a Filipino-American who makes the most beautiful hand-painted silk scarves, which you can see here. I bought a painting by her years ago and I remember having a wonderful conversation about what it meant to both of us. This last year I joined a walking group that Debra helped start, and about the third time we walked together I figured out that she was that artist! I bought a scarf from her last year to give to my sister when she graduated with her master's degree in social work.

Then I went uptown to read to my friend Doug. Doug is legally blind and right now is facing the challenge of Stage IV colon and liver cancer. He is a fantastic guitarist and singer and he and I have sung together many times at the Unity church. He's having chemo right now and finds the day after to be tough, so I go read to him to help take his mind off it, and then we chat. While I was there another friend, Lane, a lovely older man who is married to our minister, dropped by to organize all Doug's meds for the next week. Lane plays guitar too, and they often play together. Doug's got a huge support system going - people make him food, drive him to his appointments, clean his house, give him massages. He is feeling pretty loved right now.

Today, it occurred to me what a wonderful experience of a diverse community I had had in those few hours, and how it represented in a nutshell my life here. I'm not talking about how my friends are of more than one species, all ages, healthy and not so much, gay and straight and in-between, and various colors. What I love is that they are all creative in different ways. My day included the beauty of nature, mutual regard, yummy food, art, music, and intellectual stimulation. How boring life would be if everyone was the same, if there was only one type of dog or one kind of boat or one kind of food or one style of art or music. Give me diversity!

Cupcakes

2011-08-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Friday was the last day of school. Forever. Thursday night was the big send-off, with a big dinner and dance.

Classes at Pacifica are divided into two tracks so that the professors don't have huge classes and there's time for everyone to participate in discussions. E track would have classes one week, and G track the next. The only time we ever met is at the summer sessions, when for once we have class together. It's rather like two cats meeting. There's a bit of bristling and while eventually they agree to live in the same house, they liked it better before. This isn't just how it was for our year, apparently.

Our "E-3" cohort has been very close from the first quarter. As I told one of our professors at the dinner, while almost all of us are introverts, we also have Shannon. Shannon is an actress and a goddess-mother type who wears bright clothes and lots and lots of bling and whose laugh you can hear all the way across campus. She has inspired most of the women to brighter clothing and more jewelry, and this last quarter we all sprouted feathers in our hair thanks to her.

She also inspires us to more expressive behavior when we are together. At the dinner, the emotion of our last time together combined with the exultation of being DONE made us a little crazy. We toasted each other, and then we started pounding the table and calling each of the professors over to our table in turn, where we toasted them and thanked them and hugged them and cried a little (and so did most of them). Then the E-2s all stood up and held up their glasses and shouted "E-3 WE LOVE YOU!" and so we had to stand up and toast them back (we do love and admire the folks coming after us a lot). All in all, a rowdy time.

Meanwhile, across the room, the Gs sat silent. I felt rather sorry for them.

Then it came time for the class gifts to the school. The G-3s donated a gorgeous hand-carved mask - I believe it was of Dionysos - but didn't say anything else. Then we got up and presented ours: a statue of Hermes, mounted on a large rock Sharon got out of a river and carved with our initials and a design with the tree of life in the center, the alchemical symbol for Hermes (the trickster god of communication with whom we have become very familiar in our writing), a Celtic design border, and a quote from Jung: "Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks within, awakens." Sharon and her daughter designed this and she and Gay also made us all t-shirts and book bags with the design on it. So then we gave Patrick, our department head, one of the t-shirts. Then Kathie, our poet laureate, got up and recited this poem by a former Poet Laureate of the USA:

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires tailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Which perfectly encompasses my school experience.

Then we danced. At the end of the night we all - and we got the Gs to participate at last! - were on the stage of the auditorium singing "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey at the top of our lungs, another perfect summation of our experience.

Friday was quiet. We still had class, but the afternoon was given over to hearing some of each other's writings, and then the inevitable sharing circle - for which the Es and Gs separated, Patrick taking the Gs and the Es remaining with Chrissie, who was our teacher for our very first class and now our very last class. We were subdued now (I wonder if the Gs finally became exuberant?) and mostly shared memories of our first time on campus. Shannon finally broke through and went around the circle naming every person and what she saw in them, so after that it went more to appreciation. But still quiet, except for the one person who had always remained on the edges who now sobbed and sobbed and finally burst out "I love all of you!"

We then hung out together, not saying much, for another couple of hours before people started leaving. Most of us were still around that evening and went out for dinner, but we were still subdued. The letdown had begun.

The next morning I got up and said goodbye in turn to Morgaan, who got in her old beatup "Baja truck" and headed for Mexico, and then Jet the outlaw biker rabbi, who roared off in her black leather and silver jewelry on her Harley to Ojai. No one else of those remaining was up yet, so I wandered down to the beach - I always started all my trips with a walk on the beach - and wept for a bit.

Then Emma found me and we walked back up Linden Avenue, got take-out to eat on the road, and headed back to the hotel to get our luggage and catch the shuttle to LAX. She was in need of caffeine so we stopped in at the new cupcake place where she got what she said was the best Mayan Mocho espresso ever, and we both bought a gluten-free chocolate with mocha frosting cupcake for the road. We got to the shuttle, finagled seats together, and settled down for a really wonderful talk. Emma is half my age almost and half a foot taller than me but we are so alike it's actually a bit scary. She has a German shepherd :)

We toasted each other with our cupcakes and ate them. It was the perfect ending to my time at Pacifica.

Empathy and Sympathy

2011-08-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

In class yesterday our professor talked about Diltheim's definitions of empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the experience of feeling the same thing as another person, of entering so entirely into their experience that it feels like your experience. This can lead to a feeling of oneness, of fusion. A fusion experience is what people are often seeking in love or sex. Fusion moments feel wonderful: we feel loved, understand, ONE with others.

I had several friends who burst into tears when I told them my dog had died. Some had loved my dog too, and grieved like I did at her loss. But some cried because they were reminded of how they felt when they had lost a beloved pet. They weren't grieving MY loss but their own loss remembered.

When that happens, it's not exactly a fusion of selves, but rather a moment of parallel emotions that can fool us into thinking we are sharing something when we really aren't. If I cry when you tell me your dog has died, but I'm thinking about Jenny while you are thinking about Buttons, we're not actually in rapport. I'm not actually thinking about you, I'm thinking about me.

Sympathy, on the other hand, is a conscious and rational attempt to understand the other person in their own terms. It requires that one question and listen and think about the other person, and probably also requires some back-and-forth where the listener paraphrases what they think the other person said, and then allows the person to correct that impression until the listener "gets" it.

As you can see, sympathy takes a lot more work. It requires recognition that the other person is Other, not the same as me, a unique individual that I have to make an effort to understand. Realizing this can help us avoid assuming that we know something about the other that we actually don't.

I used to think empathy was "better" than sympathy, that it meant the other person really understood me, understood me so entirely that they felt what I felt. But after this discussion I'm veering the other way. And not just because of that discussion. I've spent the last three years with a group of people with whom I often had wonderful fusion moments where we would laugh helplessly together or cry together or just feel "oh yeah, YOU get me." I loved all those moments. But in another day we will be going our separate ways. While we will meet again, it will not be the same; we will no longer be a class studying and talking about the same things and experiencing the same issues. And I find that suddenly, I want to KNOW my classmates much better than I do. I "get" them emotionally in so many ways, but now that's not enough. I want DETAILS. What color do you like to paint your living room? What color hair do your children have? What was the weirdest job you ever had? I want to sit down with every one of them and ask them to tell me about the things we don't share. I've empathized with them for 3 years; now, I'd like to sympathize. I want to understand them in their differences too.

It's not just I want to do this; I've recently learned that I have to do this to keep a relationship alive. For the past 10 years or so a good friend and I have seemed to be on parallel tracks and could empathize readily with each other. But in the last year that relationship has been shifting more towards sympathy, because our issues are no longer the same. It's been a bit tricky because it had been so easy to empathize all those years, but now we have to work at our relationship. For a while both of us were frustrated because suddenly my friend didn't seem to be getting me like before, and vice versa. Empathy wasn't enough.

My professor has a wonderful love relationship with plenty of fusion moments, yet she says that while the memory and the hope of such moments often get her and her partner through a tough patch, that's not what keeps them together. What keeps them together is their appreciation of and intrigue with the other person's differences. What keeps them together is their willingness to try to understand the aspects of their lover's personality that they don't share and cannot empathize with.

Empathy allows us to feel compassion for others because of our similarities. But sympathy enlarges our ability to tolerate and even respect differences. We need both, and right now, I'm thinking we need a bit more sympathy going around.

What she said

2011-07-30T19:09:00.000-07:00

My friend Nikki wrote about why she's studying mythology, and said it all much better than I ever could.

Dream work

2011-07-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

Dreamwork is big at Pacifica. Nearly every professor and every student has a story about the dream that inspired them to change careers and/or come to Pacifica. Like the woman who was debating whether to get a PhD in Mythology or continue on from her master's in Fine Arts (she's a dancer). She came to Pacifica after dreaming that she was waiting at a train station and Joseph Campbell came up and told her which train to get on.

I've been doing dreamwork for the past 30 years. The first step is learning how to recall your dreams. The easiest technique is to keep a pad of paper and a pen by the bed so you can write down a word or phrase that will trigger memory of the dream the next morning. With practice you can actually tell yourself to wake up and write something down, then go right back to sleep.

I usually don't worry too much about this. The "numinous" dreams are usually vivid enough that I remember them without resorting to the pad. But last night I tried inducing a dream to get an answer to a specific question. I wrote down the question on the pad of paper and then went to sleep. This morning, here's what I had after waking up four times and writing down a word or phrase:

necklace of blue stones

SHRIMP

bow & arrow

driving up to a new campus

The last dream was right before I woke up for good, and I was able to recall the dream, which did turn out to have an answer for me. I also remember that I dreamed about wearing a long necklace strung with dark blue stones like lapis lazuli, and that in another dream I was shooting arrows, although I don't know at what.

But even though I evidently thought "shrimp" was important, judging by how large I wrote it, I have no idea what it means.

Which reminds me of the story a friend once told me about her father, who was one of the first people to work with computers at Boeing, back when computers took up an entire room. He had some big problem that he hadn't been able to solve for weeks. Then one night he had a dream that contained the solution. He woke up long enough to find a piece of paper and a pen and write down a phrase. In the morning he woke up again and immediately remembered that he'd found the answer. He turned to look at the paper, where he had written these words:

IT'S THE CUCUMBER!

So it doesn't always work :)

DONE

2011-07-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am done with school! Well, not entirely, because we still have one last summer session, but because we will do any writing for that class during the class and have nothing to turn in afterwards, and I have just mailed off my last assignments for spring quarter, I feel DONE!

I don't quite comprehend it, really. Three years of traveling to California and always reading and writing . . . done? What do I do now?

Well, of course, there is the small matter of my dissertation. But I'm putting that off until the fall. Which means I have the rest of the summer to PLAY. And play I will. We have plans in place for the summer session! This weekend I have a date with my niece to see the last Harry Potter movie and play in Seattle. Next week I head over to the Teanaway area for a long weekend with my "Spring Fling" group. Then my nephew Evan & his family will be around for a visit, plus I have a concert (where I have a nice big solo). Then back to school for the last time, and oh do we have plans for celebrating! In August I head to Montana for a wedding where I will see some of my school cohort again, and hopefully will get to stop off and visit my cousins and other friends on the east side of the Cascades.

But first, a look back over the last three years. Halfway through I listed the titles of all the papers I'd written for school. Here's the list again, with the second half of school added:

Stalking the Amputated Hands (paper and presentation) for Dreams, Visions, Myths

Abducted by Pirates–Demeter and the Animus (paper) for Greek & Roman Myth I

Killing the Past: Arjuna at Kurukshetra (presentation) for Hindu Traditions

The Ethical Man: Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata (paper) for Hindu Traditions

The Tree with Lights: A Bridge for Ritual, Revelation, and Aesthetic Arrest (paper) for Joseph Campbell: Metaphor, Myth and Culture

Seeing with Both Eyes: Keeping the Mundus Imaginalis Alive in the Study of Myth (paper) for Joseph Campbell: Metaphor, Myth, and Culture

The Collective Need for Outlaws: Echoes of Apocalypse and The Brothers Karamazov in Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” (paper) for Approaches to the Study of Myth

Olympic Athletes: Bearers of the Bright Shadow (presentation) for Ritual

Recovery from Childhood Trauma: Soul Retrieval Ritual with a Modern Shaman (paper) for Ritual

You Can’t Treat Her like Other Women: Anima and Animus in "The Philadelphia Story" (paper) for Jungian Depth Psychology

Gawain, the Ladies’ Knight (paper) for European Sacred Traditions

Hermeneutics (presentation) for Myth and Philosophy

The Trouble with the Truth (paper) for Myth and Philosophy

Beware of Juno: Flight, Transformation, and Sexuality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (paper) for Greek & Roman Myth II

This Rough Magic I Here Abjure: Why Prospero Broke His Staff (paper) for Alchemy and the Hermetic Tradition

The Power of Ancestors: Encounter with a Family Loa (presentation) for African & African Diaspora Traditions

The Loa Mounts: Physical, Religious, Cultural, and Psychological Aspects of Possession (paper) for African & African Diaspora Traditions

The Buddha: The First Neuroscientist? (presentation) for Buddhist Traditions

Buddhism and the Causes of War (paper) for Buddhist Traditions

Death and the Individual’s Place in the Cosmos: Iroquois Origin Myths vs. Genesis (paper) for Native Mythologies of North America

Relinquishing Grief: Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes in “Truly Madly Deeply” (paper) for Mythic Motifs in Cinema

Twilight Fan Fiction by Pubescent Girls (presentation) for Folk and Fairy Tales

Vasilisa the Beautiful: The Queen’s Education (paper) for Folk and Fairy Tales

Deception in the Odyssey: Divine Liars (paper) for Epic Imagination

A Tear Dropped in the Sea: Odysseus and Captain Ahab as Fisher Kings (paper) for Epic Imagination

The Word and the Dragon: The Dialogue between Thought and Being in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Novels (paper) for Psyche and Nature

The Influences of Marie-Louise von Franz, Evans Lansing Smith, and Native American Traditions on My Ideas about Mythology (comprehensive exam essay)

Mythopoetic Aspects of Robinson Jeffers’s “Cassandra” (comprehensive exam essay)

“Avatar” from a Mythological and Depth Psychology Perspective (comprehensive exam essay)

The Ludic Nekyia of “The Game” (paper) for Myth and the Underworld

"Dinah" (presentation) for Hebrew and Jewish Mythology

Questioning God: The Book of Job and the Bhagavad-Gita (paper) for Hebrew and Jewish Mythology

Untitled "thought paper" for Islamic Traditions

Al-qalb: The Capacity for Spiritual Intuition (paper) for Islamic Traditions

Gender and Feminism as a Methodological Critique (presentation) for Religious Studies Approaches to Mythology

Critique of Marie-Louise von Franz’s The Feminine in Fairy Tales (paper) for Religious Studies Approaches to Mythology

Horus, the Falcon-Headed God (presentation and paper) for Egyptian Mythology

Traversing the Desert of the Ego: The Fifth Hour of the Amduat (presentation and paper) for Egyptian Mythology

Leaps of Faith: Gaps in the Logic of Dorothy Sayers’s Theology (paper) for Christian Traditions

Chi Guarda Sottilmente: The Different Levels of Seeing in Dante’s Divine Comedy (paper and poem) for Mythopoetic Images

Freedom in the Shadow of Monotheism (paper) for The God Complex

Daphne Eats while Apollo Weeps: Old Gods in New Guises (paper) for The God Complex

She's Leaving Home: Enduring Motifs in Women's Stories (concept paper) for Dissertation Formulation

Annotated bibliography for the concept paper for Dissertation Research Strategies

No wonder I'm tired!

Idealism vs. Empathy

2011-07-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

I never was much of an idealist. I consider myself a pragmatist instead: my first question, when presented with some idea, is "but does it work?" I remember a pro-life activist once telling me that contraception shouldn't ever be necessary because people should just control their urges. I laughed out loud and said "good luck with that!" You have to be living in the clouds to think people will not give in to their desires from time to time, and if anything, experience teaches us that repressing desire usually leads to something much worse. Look at the Catholic Church . . .

I was in college when I first noticed that the most idealistic people were usually also assholes. ('Scuse the French but it's the most accurate word.) They loved their ideals or their cause, but they didn't like people. At best they considered other people stupid or ignorant, to be educated in right thinking (by themselves, of course); at worst, they would say outright "I hate people!" They were unpleasant to be around, because their conversation consisted of rants and complaints.

But for a while - too long - I tolerated such people, because they did have an aura of righteousness, and because I often agreed with their ideals. Then I went through a phase where I tried to suggest to such people that attacking other people or guilt-tripping them might not be an effective way of converting them. The pragmatist in me, you see, saying yes, very well, but if you want to change people I don't think yelling at them will do it, but maybe if you treated them with some respect they'd be more willing to listen?

That was never heard. They weren't even willing to listen to me. The invariable response was something along the lines of "anyone who doesn't immediately agree with me is a horrible person and I don't understand how they can be that way." After a while I realized that they don't want to understand, because they don't actually think they can change these "horrible" people. What they want to do is rant. They want to vent their personal feelings.

Which usually are not actually about the issue under discussion, but something personal to them. The writer Greg Bear says that the fanatic is someone who has mistaken his personal anger issues for a social issue. My wasband used to say that everyone's "father" issues come out during presidential elections. I've come to think of this kind of venting-your-idealism as intellectual masturbation. Might relieve a person's tension for a moment, but it doesn't do a thing for anyone else! And it doesn't solve their personal problem either, which is the lack of real connection to others.

I'm reading right now about an amazing woman named Edith Stein. (Benefit of my dissertation topic: reading about amazing women I'd never heard of before.) She was born into a Jewish German family in the late 1800s. You can do the math and see her fate right there. Edith had a daimon, a soul calling, to submit her life to something greater. But not an ideal; to life itself, in all its aspects, even the horrific. When the first World War broke out, she immediately left university to become a nurse in a field hospital. She returned to her studies after the war and titled her doctoral dissertation "On the Problem of Empathy." The essayist writing about her, Patricia Hampl, says this:

"Empathy," Edith Stein wrote, "offers itself to us as a corrective for self-deception." The point of empathy: I allow myself to be seen through the judgment and clarity of your gaze, acknowledging, as Edith Stein says, that "it is possible for another to judge me more accurately than I judge myself and give me clarity about myself." Empathy seeks truth, and along its difficult way, it makes the discovery of compassion as well. [. . . ] Truth did not exist as an abstraction for her, but as something incarnated in persons, and therefore as inconceivable apart from love.

Shortly after finishing her dissertation, Stein read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and converted to Catholicism. She continued to teach for many years. But after she lost her teaching job because of her Jewish origins, she entered a Carmelite convent (St. Teresa reformed the Carmelite order). The Carmelites got her out of Germany to Holland and were planning to get her to Switzerland, but they waited too long. The SS came knocking and put her on the train to Auschwitz, where she was probably gassed almost as soon as she arrived. There are several stories of people meeting her along this last journey, and how calm and kind she was to everyone. Later, the Catholic Church made her a saint as well, using her Carmelite name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

She never talked about her own personal feelings or about why she converted. Her focus was not on herself. She wrote "the self is the individual's way of structuring experience." In other words, our primary function as individuals is to experience the world and use our thinking brains to discover some meaning in those experiences. That's what science is really all about. Newton had the experience of seeing an apple fall off a tree (the story that it bonked him on the head is sadly not true); thinking about that experience led him to the concept of gravity, which allowed him to explain a lot of things to the rest of us.

Edith Stein saw what was going to happen because of the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies. But she didn't hate the Nazis. She was a German who loved her people, and she hated what they were doing to themselves. She foresaw all the consequences for everyone involved, not just the ones for her personally. A student of hers later said "it was heartrending to see her gentle face contorted in pain . . . I can still hear her saying 'one day this will all have to be atoned for.' " She began writing a book about what it was like to grow up in a Jewish home, in the hope that sharing her experience of being Jewish with people who didn't know any Jews might help counteract the rants of the Nazi ideal-mongers. She did not finish it before the SS came for her. The Carmelites hid the manuscript (at great risk to themselves) and that's how we know her story today.

History has shown us over and over that ideals untempered by love, not submitted to the gaze of others whose responses would give us perspective and clarity, can run away with us and lead to atrocities like the Inquisition and the Holocaust. So I distrust ideals and put my faith in my own experience. But because my experience is necessarily limited and because I need clarity as much as anyone, I submit my thoughts about what that experience means to the gaze of others, by talking with them about their own experiences, and through my writing, including this blog. I offer these thoughts with love and respect, and hope for your empathy.

What to say when . . .

2011-07-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

This last quarter at school we worked primarily on refining our concepts for our dissertations. It isn't enough just to have an idea for a dissertation (or a book, which a dissertation essentially is). It isn't enough to have a question you want to answer either. Those are just the starting points. To have a fully fleshed concept that the Research Coordinator will accept, you need:

A problem statement. It's not enough to assert your idea. You also have to explain why anyone else would be interested; you have to answer the question "so what?" Why does it matter? The problem statement explains why your idea is worth 1. two years of your time and 2. anyone else's time to read your answer.

An argument. This is where you join the conversation that's been going on about the issue, by saying "while most people who have written on this topic argue thus-and-so, I contend that blah-blah-blah." You set yourself up as someone with something to say that has not yet been said.

A claim. This is where you assert that you have seen something no one else has noticed, or found a new approach that is going to provide new answers. As a part of this you might get into what are called warrants (what scientists might call first principles): arguments that are givens in your field that support your claim.

Approach. In a scientific paper this is the "method" section. In the humanities it's the approach. Here you ally yourself with a particular school of thought, or show that your approach straddles more than one school, or is entirely new.

Evidence. Most of the first year of the actual writing will go into the research that provides the evidence for your argument, but you have to offer some evidence in the concept paper to show that you've explored the idea enough to have a sense that the evidence is out there. In a scientific paper this would be the feasibility study.

The concept paper is a tool, then, to help us get very clear about what we'll be doing in the dissertation.

If that wasn't enough, we were challenged to come up with an 'elevator speech' - to describe our topic in two minutes or less, with most of the above elements included. Here's mine:

Ever since Joseph Campbell provided a model for the masculine journey to adulthood with the "Heroic Quest" pattern he saw in myths and stories, women have been seeking an equivalent model for their lives. Many attempts have been made using myths and folk and fairy tales as sources. I contend that since we don't know who wrote these stories, the heroines of such stories may be anima figures, that is, male ideas of who women are, rather than characters women can identify with. In my dissertation I provide a model for the woman's journey that is based on stories and novels written by women. I have found a pattern in these stories that has been told over and over and is still being told. I include myths and tales when they follow the same pattern, which is evidence in itself that those particular stories were originally told by women.

Ta da! One minute. I leave out my approach, which is structuralist, phenomenological, and inductive, but explaining what all that means would put me over the limit :)

We also spent time dealing with "the monsters" - those inner voices that either tell you that you're a total idiot to even be thinking you can do this or that anyone will ever care, or that inflate you and tell you you're going to write the next The Hero with a Thousand Faces which will sell millions of copies and get you a PBS special. Our professors have insisted over and over that all we have to do is write a "good enough" dissertation - kinda like saying you just need to be a "good enough" parent, not perfect every second. In other words, get real.

As part of this, we had to come up with snappy comebacks for when people ask us why we are spending so many years and so much money on what they imply or say outright seems to be a total waste - a humanities PhD. (I actually had someone snort "you want fries with that" the other day . . .). Here's some of the snappy answers people came up with:

It's either that or buy a sailboat.

I need a fallback in case my opera career doesn't take off.

I want to die an educated person.

I'm tired of making money, so I thought I'd try something else.

Everyone else in my family is a success; we need a black sheep.

My real, not snappy, answer to this question is that even if it gets me nowhere, I will have spent five of the happiest years of my life on it.

Paean

2011-07-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

I've been dissing Apollo lately. I did an entire presentation at the Popular Culture Association this spring that basically said "the trouble with our culture is that Zeus - the daddy energy that enforces reasonable limits - has been lost and now Apollo, who loves to invent things without ever thinking about the consequences, is in charge, and that's bad." Apollo, in my talk, stood for the scientist who is so interested in what he can do that he never thinks about whether or not he should do it. And then we get nuclear bombs and oils spills from drilling in the ocean floor.

I forgot something important that I've learned in my studies. You don't mock a god. Doesn't matter whether or not you "believe" in that god; a god is just another name for energies that we don't really understand that affect us. Making light or dissing those energies is a really good way to invite a cosmic whup upside the head. Remember the Titanic? It's named for the Titans, the really old gods. And the thing about the Titans is, they live below, down in the underworld, where Zeus sent them long ago. Naming a ship after them was just such an invitation. "Here, a ship for you!" Not to mention all that hubris about "unsinkable," which was a gantlet thrown down to those energies. So they took it.

So I've been hubristic and idiotic, calling on Apollo as I have. And sure enough, he answered. Lately I've been having dreams about Apollo. He's not angry; he's just sorrowful. But he has reminded me in no uncertain terms: "Baby, you are mine."

See, I'm smart. Some of you may have noticed, although in my family I don't actually stand out that much. But then I went out for my PhD, which is an exercise in pure intellect. I went for it because I had an idea, an idea that possessed me, that I needed to follow. People ask me why I'm doing what I'm doing, what I expect to get out of earning a PhD, and I fob them off with various answers. But the truth is that I am pursuing this idea because I want to - have to, really - and I don't care about the consequences.

I am in the grip of Apollo. I am living in his domain, being just like him, and I dare to mock him? Not so smart. You have to give the gods their due, or they will take them. Apollo's actually been pretty gentle, all things considered, just messing up my sleep a bit. He could have taken my inspiration away. That happens to a lot of folks right at the point that I am: they finally get to where they get to write the big thing, and . . . they stop caring about it. But Apollo hasn't done that to me. Instead, I'm more and more inspired. I've been writing my concept paper, and the insights just keep coming. I see the entire dissertation in my head now. I just have to write it out.

And Apollo is the god of inspiration, of the oracle that speaks within. My entire time at school, I've felt like the papers I write contain wisdom that didn't come from me, but through me, that I didn't know until I typed it. That's Apollo at work.

A paean is a song of praise to Apollo. Here's part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo:

How, then, shall I sing of you who in all ways are a worthy theme of song?

For everywhere, O Phoebus, the whole range of song is fallen to you,

Both over the mainland that rears heifers and over the isles.

All mountain-peaks and high headlands of lofty hills and rivers flowing out to the deep and beaches sloping seawards and havens of the sea are your delight.

Apollo isn't just the god of the intellect. He's the god of song, and I am a singer. He loves mountains and rivers. So do I. And he loves the shoreline, the liminal space that is neither the sea nor the land. So do I.

So I give my praise and my thanks to Apollo, the sweet singer, the archer, the god of the space-between where insight can be found, and acknowledge that yes, I am his.

How Curious

2011-06-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

I just read a great article on NPR's website about the difference between "deniers" and "skeptics." It's worth reading in its entirety, so if you're interested, click here.

Here's the important part: He explains how in science, there's a long conversation that has been going on for most of human history. It's the same way in the humanities. You have to know not just what people are saying now, but what has been said in the past so you can get the sense of this long conversation and all the various twists and turns it has taken through the ages. Only then can you join in without sounding like an idiot. It's not enough to have an opinion or a theory. You have to know what others have found out so you can address their statements intelligently. As the author puts it:

True scientific skepticism, unlike like an aggressive and entrenched denial, is all about listening. Most of all it's all about curiosity. If you are truly a scientific skeptic then you are truly curious about what comes next in the call and response.

"Deniers" aren't curious. They have their opinion and they want to hang onto it no matter what others say. Their only option is, as he says, "aggressive and entrenched denial."

So they end up sounding pretty stupid, because they don't actually know enough about the issue to speak with any authority. Since they can't muster an actual argument, they have to fall back on insults. This is not scientific nor rational discourse. It's laziness. It's how children argue. "Is not! Is too!"

I just read a beautiful paper by one of my fellow students on how he dealt with his son's death in Afghanistan. He said he got through his grief by "becoming curious." He learned all he could about who his son had become in his last years, by reading his letters and talking to his friends. He also learned all he could about the war itself and about how the US military system works. It didn't lessen the mourning, but it connected him to his son and helped him understand why he had enlisted to fight.

This is what curiosity does for us. It connects us to each other. Most of us feel flattered when someone else asks us about ourselves, seems curious about us. And we like them for it. Then usually we become interested in them too, and there you are: connection.

I was raised to be a liberal, and I suppose I still am in many ways. But at some point I became curious about conservatives. I started asking questions of people I knew who were conservative in their views. Because I was curious, the conversation went far beyond the usual angry contradictions that we see on television. I learned a lot that contradicted the assumptions I had held. As I have mentioned here before, I figured out that in many cases we didn't actually disagree on what should happen, but rather on how it should happen (for example, how to prevent terrorism).

Being curious allowed me to connect to and like people whom I otherwise might have dismissed simply because they have a different opinion about a couple of things than me. Turned out we had a lot in common. Yes, we did get to the place where we had to "agree to disagree" and also agree not to talk about that any more. I'm never going to believe that it's okay to destroy the environment because Jesus is going to take us all away in time. But I understand that my friend honestly believes that (and yes, he did admit that maybe trashing the house the Lord gave us was not being responsible tenants). So I don't insult him for that, and he doesn't insult me, and we stay friends.

It's been really frustrating to try and tell my liberal friends what I found out. Sadly, most of them are not curious. They have made up their minds and that's that. No conversation possible.

I love conversations. I love finding out new stuff. I don't even mind - most of the time - finding out I was wrong about something. Every time I do, I learn, I grow, and I become more connected. "Only connect," said Evelyn Waugh. We connect by being curious.

So I'm not really interested in what labels you put on yourself as far as your beliefs. What I want to know is this: Are you curious?

Port Townsend

2011-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I'm wandering around town and something makes me look up and then think "I AM SO LUCKY TO LIVE HERE!" This last week that happened when:

1. I walked to Glass Beach with my niece and it was actually a glorious summer day. And then an eagle flew over us, did a slow turn, and came back and flew in a circle around us before soaring away.

2. I was driving downtown and there was a doe suckling her fawn right next to the road.

3. I did my usual morning walk with my walking group and there were SEVEN great blue herons on the beach!

4. We visited the new Maritime Center.

5. And there was a regatta out in the bay.

I went to see "Midnight in Paris" a couple of nights ago. This is primarily a love letter to Paris, and it starts out with five minutes simply of shots of Paris: in the sun, in the rain, during the day, at dusk, at night. Every shot is beautiful and makes you want to move to Paris right away. After the movie, I walked out and it was evening in Port Townsend, and everywhere I looked I saw scenes that Woody Allen would have put in the movie if it had been set here instead. Galatea and the stairs, the Fountain Cafe, the Rose Theater . . . and the courthouse, which Betty McDonald of "Egg and I" fame described as an enormous brooch worn on a rather flat bosom.

And then there was this day:

Yup. Living here is awesome.

My Domain

2011-05-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

The professor I am working with to formulate my dissertation concept had us do a little exercise this last session. She pointed out that the dissertation is the capstone, the culminating project of our three years in school, and asked us to reflect on what we are claiming for ourselves thereby. "What is your domain?" she asked us. This is what I came up with:

1. I am an inductive thinker, not a deductive thinker. I follow a process I once heard called "ground-truthing," which means you don't fly over the ground looking only for specific features; instead, you walk it and let the terrain tell you what it is by experiencing it directly. This is how I learn: I read and listen and discuss and write and let the insights emerge, instead of starting with a theory and looking for proof that it's right. As James Hillman insists one should do with dreams, I "stick to the image" rather than rush to an interpretation or explanation of the image. Eventually, without my seeking it, understanding dawns.

2. Which means I think mythologically, making me the opposite of a reductionist as most scholars and scientists are. The reductionist or nominalist thinks that everything can be explained away in terms of something simpler. For example, a good friend opined to me last week that myths always serve some purpose of the community, like enforcing taboos. I find this a bit too dismissive; it may be true that some myths do that, but not all, and not just that. Reductionists like to make things too simple, I think. I also suspect control issues. One of my professors put it this way: "The nominalist likes to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator so he can then punch it in the face."

Instead, I am interested in how much one can open up a story or a symbol to multiple interpretations, each equally valid, and yet never arrive at a final answer. Like people, myths can always surprise you, no matter how well you think you know them.

3. What I love best is looking for myths at work in our literature, our movies, television, politics, and any other aspect of current culture. Myths are not dead, not in the past. They are at work in our lives right here and now.

4. Artists are always the first to express what is going on in the culture, well before folks like me start pointing it out . . . and WAY before the people in charge become aware of it. I've said before that laws don't change how society works; laws are made after the fact, after people have already changed. If you want to know what's going on in the collective mind, watch TV. Star Trek showed people of color as equal members of society well before that became a legal reality. Gay people started showing up on TV shows years before any state legalized gay marriage, and have you noticed how many detective shows now pair a logical, scientific woman with an intuitive, emotional man? The old ideas about what is "masculine" and what is "feminine" are falling by the wayside, and the people who create TV shows instinctively know this. I studied mythology and now look at the output of artists because I want to know what is going on now.

5. Finally, I'm a pragmatist. These aren't theoretical, abstract ideas for me. My old job was reading medical articles and translating what they said into lay language to make it accessible to everyone, so that people could understand and have more choices in their own health care. I feel I am doing the same thing in a different arena now. I can read between the lines, "see through" as we like to say at school, to the underlying mythic themes. I want to write about this stuff in clear, nonacademic language so others can see it too. The more people understand these forces, the more conscious we can all be about the choices we make. Another prof who is also a therapist doesn't ask her clients "so how do you feel about that?" or tell them to change their behavior. Instead, she helps them see what story they are living out. Once they realize how that story ends, they change their own lives. I want to help people understand the stories that we live.

So, I am going to put "cultural mythologist" on my new business cards. That's my domain.

Phenomenology

2011-05-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I'm a Capricorn and we goatheads just love putting things into the proper place (wondering what to give a Cap? Get them something that organizes things), but one of the most enjoyable parts of my program has been learning about all the different schools of thought in Western philosophy and figuring out where I personally fit in. I am, it turns out, a phenomenologist. This doesn't mean I go looking for weird happenings. It just means that I base what I think on my own experience.

There's been a huge pendulum swing in Western thinking away from and now back to this kind of thinking. The Enlightenment, the radical shift in outlook that began in the 17th century, taught us to distrust our own perceptions. Science had shown us that they were often false: that although it sure looks and feels like we're living on a stationary flat earth with the sun circling around it, we're in fact on a round globe that whizzes around the sun while also rotating at better than 900 miles an hour. Our senses lie. Realizing this led folks like Pascal and Descartes to say that the only thing we can really trust is the thing we can prove with logic and scientific measurement and cold hard facts. Anything else is suspicious if not downright hooey.

Trouble is, people don't work that way. Even Descartes admitted that his belief in God, although he constructed some elaborate logic to support it, came before the facts. He believed in God because he had been raised to and because he choose to, and then he saw confirmation of his belief wherever he looked.

We're so strongly conditioned by our upbringings to believe the way we believe. The only thing that changes our thinking is when we have a big experience that contradicts what we believed before. Neuroscience has proved this. But the people that will really get this are the ones who have had such an experience :)

I was thinking about this today after all the silliness over Obama's birth certificate. There was a joke on facebook about how the "birthers" will be replaced with the "afterbirthers," the folks that won't be satisfied until shown the actual placenta from Obama's birth. There's all those folks who won't believe in evolution despite all the scientific proof, or global warming--which should have been called "global weather change"--or the Holocaust, or that we've been to the moon. They haven't experienced it after all. It could be a hoax, or a lie. (I know quite a few folks who doubted the reality of global warming until the last couple of years. The weather itself has now convinced them!)

So will we see the rise of "deathers" demanding photos of bin Laden's dead body? I wouldn't be surprised.

What's the point here? Just an observation that beyond the politics of who's right/who's wrong is a deeper phenomenon. The Enlightenment is being overturned by a demand to get back to an experience-based foundation for what we know. This is not a step back, but rather a spiral around again to a previous standpoint with new understanding. A spiral is not a circle. It never goes back to the same place exactly.

It's no accident, I think, that we are calling for a more "embodied" way of knowledge at the same time that technology is allowing us to experience the world around us more directly. China and now Egypt have shown us that dictatorships are vulnerable to the Internet and cell phones getting the word and pictures out to the rest of the world. My niece just spent two years in a remote village in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco, yet I could call her and see her face to face through our computers and know what was going on with her now. I could see for myself. "Reality TV" is another phenomenon I find fascinating. Some of the shows focus in on the worst of people (cough Jersey Shore cough), but then there are the shows like "Secret Millionaire" where rich people go live in the slums and discover the truly good-hearted who are trying to make life better for others, or shows like "Extreme Home Makeover" where communities band together to build a new home for a deserving family. They get changed by that experience and so do the watchers

This is a good thing. If this trend continues, it could mean that people become increasingly resistant to being told what to think by anyone. If that undercuts the power of the demagogues and the political parties and organized religion--and I think it will--I say hoorah.

Wish-fulfillment feminism

2011-04-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

I sat through several presentations at the recent PCA/ACA conference that were quite frustrating to listen to, because they reflected a mindset that I've learned to be suspicious of in my work at Pacifica. I call it "wish-fulfillment feminism." It has to do with taking a rosy - and false - view of the past.

This seems to be a human tendency. Practically every religion or mythology contains the idea of a Golden Age, a Garden of Eden, a Camelot, a perfect time which humans have lost but still hope to regain. (In America, the conservatives seem to think this was the 1950s; for liberals, it was the 1960s.) In this Golden Age, everything is right in the society, or at least headed in the right direction. Then something goes wrong and we lose it, and nothing is ever right again. However, we feel strongly that we could get it back again . . . if only it weren't for something outside ourselves, Satan or the opposite political party or whatever, that's preventing us from restoring at least some of the aspects of the perfect society. Or we think we will get it back when the Messiah returns or Arthur wakes.

This idea prevails among a certain subset of feminists as well. It was given its strongest impetus by a woman called Marija Gimbutas, an archeologist who in the early 1970s wrote a series of books "proving" by archeological evidence that humans in Indo-European areas, before the time of written history, enjoyed a peaceful, diversity-embracing culture based on worship of the Goddess and utlizing a matriarchal system where everyone had equal power and no one ever went hungry. Until, that is, big bad men called Kurgans invaded and imposed a patriarchal system instead, which led to all the evils of the world.

This idea was seized upon by many feminists and built upon by other writers, primarily Riane Eisler, a sociologist who wrote The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, which describes the "dominator culture" where power is concentrated at the top and subordination of women is a primary goal. Eisler also believes that there was an earlier, happier time where women held the reins equally with men, and proposes ways to get back to that kind of society.

It's a lovely idea, and it certainly is past time that we move into a more egalitarian way of doing things. Which, in fact, I believe we are. But the idea that things were better in the past and that we lost that better time through some kind of evil conspiracy is a fantasy. The evidence doesn't support it. Gimbutas's findings have been discredited. And not just by men seeking to undermine her, but by other feminist scholars. One of my professors, who is herself as feminist as one can be, is a former protegee of Gimbutas, and she has come to believe that Gimbutas and those who want to believe in her vision of a Goddess-centered lost civilization are just indulging in wishful thinking.

It would be so nice if it were true. But it's not. And the problem is that holding on to the fantasy may keep us from doing something about the world we actually live in now. For example, we elect our Presidents thinking that all we need to do is put the right Arthur in charge and all our problems will go away. Then when they don't, we blame the false king we ourselves chose for not making the miracle happen. The truth is there are no miracles. Change doesn't happen overnight. Human culture evolves slowly and takes almost as many backward steps as it does forward ones. This isn't because of a giant conspiracy. It's how we work. We work that way as individuals; how can our society be any different?

I sat through presentation after presentation where women bewailed the takeover of our lost perfect woman-centered culture by the evil dominator men and proposed revisions to old stories to change the hero into a heroine, the god into a goddess, etc., and I writhed with frustration. I understand the appeal of rewriting history to give people who are on the bottom rungs of society a vision of what a more egalitarian world would be like, so that they can work towards that vision. We cannot create something we cannot imagine. But let's place that vision in our future, not our past. Putting the vision in the past where it never was undercuts its power, because it can be and has been disproved. It also keeps our faces turned back, not forward.

I say keep history as it is and the old stories as they are, so that we know where we came from. And so we can let go of the idea of the Golden Age. Then perhaps we can put the vision out in front of us, in the future, so we can move towards it more quickly.

This is where pop culture is ahead of the serious thinkers--except for the serious thinkers who think about pop culture! Science fiction and fantasy books, movies, TV, and graphic novels (what we used to call comic books -- they have evolved too) are full of new visions of the future filled with women who are powerful, intelligent, strong, magical, and beautiful: goddesses in their own right.

So instead of trying to rewrite history for your daughter, tell her about the space warriors Aeryn Sun and Starbuck, and then show her pictures of real women astronauts. Tell her stories about wise queens, and then show her the list of female heads of state. Show her Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and then take her to the library and check out books like Belle did. Show her "Tangled" and take her out in the woods for an adventure. Whatever her interests are, there's a heroine today, here and now, for her to emulate. We don't need to look back in time for that.

Faux Scholarship

2011-04-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, at which I presented a paper on the mythological elements in the movie "Avatar." (Which went very well.) I had a lot of fun doing the paper and attending the other presentations, and came away with some useful information for my own dissertation as well as cards from two publishers who want to hear from me when I've written the first chapter.

I went to Pacifica after I got bogged down in trying to write the book I had in mind. The more I wrote, the more I realized I needed to read, and eventually I just got stuck. I knew that I needed to learn more, and that to have any kind of credibility I needed the degree. This was confirmed at the very first session of school. From the start, everything that I learned helped me both expand and focus my ideas.

The classwork wasn't just about "mythology." I've mentioned before that we have had classes in most of the world's religions. We've covered Western philosophy, history, literature, and culture in several classes. We've also had a thorough grounding in the concepts of archetypal psychology. One of my sister students put it this way on her blog: the name of our degree, "Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis" is "just a high fallootin' way to say that I'm studying the Humanities with an emphasis on cultural narrative and archetypal symbolism flavored with psychological theory."

I'm now in the very beginnings of the dissertation phase, writing and refining my "concept paper" that must be accepted by the faculty before I can move on to the dissertation proposal and the actual writing. I deliberately chose the toughest professor on the faculty to help me with this phase, because I know she will help me craft a bombproof concept paper. (I will probably ask her to chair my committee as well.) I'm also being helped by three other students in my year. We listen to each other and ask questions designed to help each other sharpen our ideas and strengthen our arguments.

At the PCA/ACA conference, I ran into a woman who, like me, had had an idea about the heroine's journey and set out to write a book about it. But unlike me, she steamed on ahead and produced the book and got it published. When she saw that I was from Pacifica, she said "you will want to read my book!" and let me look at a copy.

What I saw made me very glad that I had followed the course that I did. In essence, the book takes Joseph Campbell's model of the heroic quest and changes some of the names and situations to fit women rather than men, but otherwise presents few original ideas. The other major flaw is a mistake many students make when they first start out writing papers and that is all too evident in our public media and political arguments today. The writer only presents examples from mythology that support her theory - and because she can find such examples, then assumes her theory is proved. This is not good scholarship. One can find a quote from the Bible to support any stance, but that's not enough.

When we first entered Pacifica, it was borne in on us that to be a student of the humanities is to enter into a conversation that has been going on for over 2,500 years. You can't just barge in and start talking and expect to be listened to. First, you have to learn what everyone else has been saying. After three years, I've made a good start on that - witnessed by the 250 books I've read since I started - but I've got another 100 already lined up to read just for my specific topic, and I will probably need to read 100 more in addition. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I have to discuss what "they say" - what everyone else has said in regards to my topic - before I move on to "I say" - my own ideas. In other words I have to make a case for why my ideas have merit. This particular author does not do any of that.

She told the same sister student that "I pretty much have an honorary PhD as I have read over 200 books on mythology." Well, if just reading the books is enough to qualify one, I'm a physician! What is missing from this equation is the training that we have received at school in how to think critically. I don't just read a book for the information in it. The entire time I am on the watch for the author's biases and weaknesses. One of our professors told us, "you're like the plumber who feels along the pipe for the place where it leaks." We have to understand the argument being made so that we can see where it breaks down or where the author overlooks something or takes something for granted. We see beyond the words into the author's mind, as it were. One of my favorite papers that I wrote was how Marie-Louise von Franz, the leading disciple of Carl Jung, couldn't ever free herself enough from Jung to write what she thought. You can see it in her books. She will start to say something new and fresh (the most valuable parts of her writing), but then will turn around and contradict herself with what Jung said about it. It's like listening to a split personality.

Then, I put the writer in their context in terms of the various schools of thought on the topic. Do they take a reductionist view, a structuralist view, a feminist view - perhaps all three at once? Is the author someone I can cite for support for my argument, or someone I need to rebut?

This particular author has done none of that.

This encounter has made me even more glad that I went to Pacifica when I did. Otherwise, I might have written as poor a book as she has.

spice of life

2011-04-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

This last week two different men of my acquaintance have gone to some pains to tell me how they like things to be simple and straightforward. One, after asking me just what the heck "archetypes" are, anyway, thanked me afterwards for explaining it in a way he could understand. But then he said he preferred learning only about "useful" information, and not too much of that either - just as much as he personally would need to accomplish something, for example.

The other informed me that he didn't see the point of "decorations" around the house or yard. "I like things that have a function." That must explain why he has at least two if not three or more of every possible tool. (Why would you need three mallets?)

I'm familiar with this attitude. I know many people who will only accept the "scientific" explanation for phenomena; if something happens that can't be explained, they refuse to believe it. I have friends who manage to eat only "healthy" food, meal after meal, year after year, mostly raw vegetables, and never with any kind of condiments. I suspect they have no taste buds. My college boyfriend was very proud of the fact that he owned only six pairs of shoes or boots, each with a specific function, and none that could be labeled "dressy". I know gardeners who plant only edible plants and don't see the point of flowers. I can understand the people who won't read fantasy or science fiction, but not the people who only read nonfiction, and I know a lot of them. I even have a friend who only goes to movies that are documentaries.

I usually nod when they tell me these things, but say nothing. I couldn't do it. I would be so bored.

Small-town life

2011-03-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons why I like living in a small town: no traffic, quiet & dark at night, easy access to locally-grown organic food, knowing the names of clerks in the stores . . . the list is long.

Today I went into the UPS store, where I have my mailbox, to pick up my mail and send a fax. The fax cost $2.00 and I only had one dollar in my wallet. I didn't want to write a check for that amount, so I asked if there was an ATM nearby. They said yes, across the street - and made no demur at all when I said "I'll be right back" and walked out of the store without paying. Steve, who works there and is the husband of one of my walking partners, did mention that he knows where I live. When I came back with the money, one of the other employees said "okay, Steve, you can stand down."

Then I went to the local used book store to sell back some of my schoolbooks that I didn't want any more. I do this quite often, usually for credit that I then immediately use up on other books. This time the store owner commented on the books I'd brought in and asked if I was a teacher. I told him no, a graduate student getting my PhD. He asked what my topic is, and when he heard it, started suggesting certain books and asked if I'd found the literary criticism section yet. We had quite a chat, and he's going to keep an eye out for books that come in that I might want to read.

I also love it that when locals ask where I moved to, I can say "across from Jerry Perrett's glass studio" and most of them know right where that is thanks to the local artists' studio tours that are held annually here.

Another Reformation?

2011-03-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

So wrote William Butler Yeats over 90 years ago, and his words seem even more applicable today, don't they?

In February, my Christianity class watched a video of a woman named Phyllis Tickle - and by the way, my next cat is so going to be named "Felix Tickle" - who has been following everything that's being written in the last few decades about the new directions that Christianity is headed in. Her argument was that every 500 years (give or take a century), there's been a big shift.

The last big shift was the Reformation, when the power of the Pope over all of Europe was challenged on the political level by the rise of nation-states and their monarchs, like Henry VIII; on the spiritual level by people like Erasmus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin; on the intellectual level by scientists like Galileo; and on a cultural level by the invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into German, English, French etc., which allowed a lot more people to read the thing and led to the realization that many of the teachings of the Catholic Church were not, in fact, based on Scripture at all. Many other factors came into play as well, including the rise of an affluent middle class which began to erode the sharp division between powerful noble/powerless peasant. In general, people started to question authority on all levels.

A British historian named Peter Marshall (not the preacher) pointed out that the most significant outcomes of the Reformation were all paradoxes. Martin Luther really wanted to purify and strengthen the Church by eliminating practices like the sale of indulgences (pay now, get into Heaven later), but the result of his 95 Theses was a new plurality of religions (which horrified him). Henry VIII really wanted to enforce that kings were the ultimate rulers of their own countries, not the Pope, but the result of this decentralization of authority was a justification for civil disobedience if you don't like how the ruler behaves. Luther and Calvin wanted to eradicate heresy, but instead set off a movement that resulted in different belief systems that more or less could co-exist (although it's taken a while in some places like Ireland). And the idea that each person could approach and interpret the sacred for themself led not to a community of more religious people, but a wider gap between the sacred and the secular.

It was a terrible time. Lots of people died, in wars and religious massacres and revolutions. But the Reformation allowed the Renaissance to occur, and then the Enlightenment, and the beautiful, if sometimes misguided, backlash to the Enlightenment, Romanticism, a second flowering of culture that echoed the Renaissance.

Phyllis Tickle says the next shift is upon us. And because we're in the middle of it, we have no idea what, exactly, is changing. We just know that it is and it's not a comfortable time. Transitions never are. Like adolescence in human development, these big societal shifts involve "formation of identity by means of division and conflict," says my professor Norvene Vest. Adolescents define themselves by rejecting what they are not, and they're usually not very graceful about it. Or quiet. So we have a lot of yelling going on, and a fair amount of violence.

It's not just about what it seems to be about, you know? It's not just about a so-called "liberal" view against a so-called "conservative" view. It's not just about economics. The shift is much bigger and far more complicated than we can grasp. And if history is right, the results are not going to be what anyone can predict.

Although Tickle tries. These are the trends she sees for Christianity, and perhaps thus for society:

* Less emphasis on architecture. What she means by this is that the structures and the places are losing importance. People are more interested in a belief that is not tied to a particular church, a particular denomination. They want a looser definition. I see the Internet as having a similar effect, where concepts like "nation" are losing power. We are becoming a global community, like it or not.

* "Incarnational" approach. By this she means a healing of the current split between the mind and body or mind and soul. We are all of those things and the body is as holy as the others. This also means a re-sacralization of the world. The Kingdom of God is here and now, on this earth . . . so we should start taking better care of our own bodies and Mother Earth's too.

* More emphasis on social justice. Never mind what the "Christian right" says; most Christians (and I hope, most people today) really are concerned with the plight of others and with the community. They are concerned with those who are currently disenfranchised by the system. And they want to reintegrate the feminine in all its aspects back into religion.

* Shift of the energy from Europe/US to the third world. Over half of all Europeans now consider themselves atheists. The power of the church is most strongly felt in places like South America, and in the future the major churches - and the economy, and who knows what else - will be heavily influenced by the sensibilities of third world peoples.

* A return to ritual. One of the things the Romantics saw was wrong with the Enlightenment was how it stripped away the numinous - the mysterious and magical - from life. People need a sense of the numinous, and they want meaningful rituals to get them in touch with that. Just as the feminine is being valued again, the cold dry scientific view of life is being balanced by a new openness to the unexplainable.

That's what people want, what they are saying. What we will actually get as a result of all these movements remains to be seen. And not by me; I think the dust isn't going to settle in my lifetime. But every time we've gone through one of these shifts, hard as they are and as unpredictable as the outcomes are, something beautiful is born.

Today is my grand-nephew's 4th birthday. My birthday wish for him is that he will get to enjoy the new beauty that is struggling to be born now.

sailing a tiny boat across the ocean

2011-03-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

We've been reading Dante's Divine Comedy this quarter, which is an astonishing work of genius on so many levels. Dante understood that "sin" is always a perversion of love and that the Prime Mover of the universe is not a being, but Love itself, "the love that moves the sun and the other stars," as the very last line has it ("l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle"). Dante's hell is full of people who were professing Christians in life but who violated the precepts of love in some way and then refused to take responsibility for their own actions, instead blamed others or insisted they couldn't help it - or worse, knowingly and maliciously did wrong. (The very bottom of the pit is reserved for people who betrayed those who loved and trusted and helped them, so guess where my ex is headed.)

Purgatory is for the folks who know they did wrong and willingly accept punishment so they can atone. There's no "get out of jail free" card, no matter how often you accept Christ as your Savior; you still have to do the time for your own wrongs. That, I realized as I read this, has always been the sticking point for me and Christianity - at least, the Christianity that the people who proselytize talk about. If you read the more serious Christian scholars, that's not what it's about, but it seems the people who come knocking on doors don't read the theologists. My own sense of right and wrong has always been offended by the idea that someone could do wrong and expect someone else to expiate that wrong for them. I don't see that as wonderful; I certainly don't see it as something to be all smug about. And apparently Dante doesn't either. It's not what you say or even what you believe, for him: it's how you act and your willingness to be responsible. That, I like.

What I found most interesting is how he sees Heaven. It's not some pretty place where everyone sings all day long. Dante clearly had had the kind of mystical visionary experience we call "enlightenment" - literally, because he spends most of the 33 cantos of the Paradiso trying to describe a level of awareness that is about light, but light on a level we can't usually comprehend. The "levels" of Heaven, unlike those of Hell or Purgatory, are not physical. They are ever-deeper levels of insight into the true nature of the universe. You sense his frustration, as you sense it with any other mystic who has had a similar experience, at conveying what he saw. Everything is light, and the light is also love. The two terms are the closest he can get to a description of his vision. All light, all love permeating everything and everyone.

Dorothy Sayers, the famous mystery writer, also translated the Comedy and wrote quite a bit about it. Her take on the "virtuous nonbelievers" in Limbo is that they are shut out of heaven not because they didn't believe in Christ (or couldn't, since many of them lived before his time), but because they cannot imagine heaven. I agree with this idea that imagination - by which I don't mean fantasy, but our ability to visualize, to take a leap beyond what we know for sure - sets the limits of our worldview. We simply cannot believe in what we haven't experienced and can't imagine. Like a deaf person who cannot comprehend the idea of music, or the autistic who wrote a book insisting that people must be lying when they talk about feelings (after all, there's no proof they really have them!). So the scientists and the secular humanists and the logical positivist philosophers walk the Elysian Fields of Limbo engaging in rational discourse, and they're perfectly happy, because they can't imagine anything better.

At one point I couldn't either. Another commentator on the poem says that most people love the Inferno and the Purgatorio but find the Paradiso either boring or incomprehensible, and give up on it. Dante himself warns at the very beginning of the Paradiso that few readers will or should even try to follow him there - that he is about to sail across a huge ocean and unless the reader can sail right in his wake, they'll be lost. But I had an "enlightenment" experience too - which I can't and won't even try to describe - and now, I think I can follow him. At least, I want to try. It's hard. I can believe in a world of eternal torment, and I can believe in a place where one perpetually struggles to overcome obstacles. But a place of eternal light and love and joy - now that's a stretch!

So I like Dante when he tells us that the barrier is not that we're not perfect, for we can always strive to be better. The real barrier to a life lived in Love is that we can't imagine it.

Why I love my cohort

2011-03-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

Most of us in the third year have a severe case of senioritis (third-year-itis?) now. We are ready to start working on our dissertations, and we can't quite seem to take all our classes as seriously as we did last year. As evidenced by this conversation today on Facebook about upcoming presentations on the Egyptian Night Journey:

Cary: Egypt presentation due next wednesday you say? yah, I should get on that.

Lauren (2nd year student): Wednesday? But I have Film class on Wednesday ! Can't skip Ginette! How about you work on changing Egypt to Monday?

Me: yeah, I have to get going on that too.

Cary: Definitely can't skip Ginette. I can do a dramatic reenactment by the benches outside if you like..;)

Emma: I haven't even started. I should probably start. What hours do you guys have? Can we just do an interpretive dance re-enactment? Can we wear costumes?

Me: I have 5. I'm dressing like a snake and will slither across the room to depict the barque crossing the sands of the land of Sokar.

Lauren: I am sooooo skipping Ginette for this . . . ")

Me: If I can get Sharnnon to dress like Isis & Nephthys and Joe to wear a scarab costume, that is.
[Note: we all mix Shannon & Sharon up so much, we now refer to them collectively as Sharnnon or Shanron]

Emma: I was actually thinking of doing my entire presentation with sock puppets.

Cary: I've got the first hour-so I'll set the stage with a musical interlude and dance breaks, and a rams head hat as I will be the embodiment of Ra em'barque'ing on his journey.

Gay: I'm hour three -- so I'm going to present the commercial break for a Night Sea Journey Merlot that brushes the pallet w/ berries, but finishes w/ rich, dark, and mysterious chocolates.

Me: really must remember the Gay Wolff secret to a successful presentation: LOTS OF CHOCOLATE.

Emma: and hippo cake!!
[Note: hippo cake was a joke from an earlier class]

(Deanna, former student): Boy am I sorry I didn't stick around for this class...

Lauren: Emma, if you need me to call a bakery about hippo cake, I'd be more than happy! Can it be a purple hippo?

Me: PLEASE can it be a purple hippo?

Yes, this is what PhD students talk about.

what he said

2011-02-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

I think James Hillman is the greatest thinker in the US today. I was going to write a post about what I see going on politically, but this interview with him just came out in the Huffington Post and he says and sees it all so much more clearly.

Click here for his thoughts.

Shoes

2011-02-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

In case any of you are thinking that I am a serious person who thinks deep thoughts every minute of the day, I think it's time for me to confess the truth:

I love shoes. LOVE them.

If I were rich, I would have way, way too many shoes. As it is, I moved three large boxes to my new place. I have racks that hold 24 pairs in my closet, but the boots & sandals & sports-related footgear are in another place, and then there's the half-dozen I wear most often, which live under a bench in the entryway to avoid tracking dirt in.

I have shoes with four-inch heels and shoes with negative heels. I have big clunky shoes and skimpy strappy shoes. My sister once asked me how many pairs of black boots I owned. "Only four!" I protested. "And they're all different!"

I recently heard that some fashion maven - dunno who - criticized Northwest women because 1. they are "addicted to polar fleece" (come live here and find out why!) and 2. "All their shoes look like baked potatoes." I do have some shoes, boots really, that qualify for that, but again - come live here and you'll quickly realize that sometimes, only baked potato-boots will do.

I must admit that going to California as much as I do has influenced me away from the baked potatoes, though. I have a lot more sandals now because of that, sandals that lean towards the "look good but you can't walk far in them" end of the scale, as opposed to the Tevas and Chacos I used to wear all summer long. And I have two pairs of Skecher pumps now that 1. look good and 2. slip off and on easily while going through security at the airport.

As I type this I am wearing a brand-new pair of Jambus to make sure they're comfy enough to keep. Verdict: yes they are, and so pretty!

There's just something about a new pair of shoes that makes me really happy. Especially when I get them for 50% off, like I did these :)

So there you go. We all have a shadow side, said Jung; I say we all have our shallow side too, and if you want to see mine, walk me past a shop window full of shoes.

Downsized!

2011-02-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

When I was married, I lived in a 1500 SF house and owned a 2700 SF vacation home. After I divorced, I ended up for 11 years in a 1100 SF house with 1000 SF of daylight basement, where I stored a lot of stuff. After I sold that, I moved into a 900 SF house with another 500 SF of storage area.

Now I have moved into a daylight apartment that has 600 SF, period. This has involved a great deal of downsizing. I have sold or given away more than half my furniture, almost all my gardening tools, a lot of clothes, a third of my books, two-thirds of my pictures, and a bunch of odds-and-ends, like a basket full of silk flowers, a thing that heats up and pours one cupful of hot water at a time, a sarsaparilla walking stick my ex brought me from a trip into the Deep South, and several oddly shaped vases.

And one piano!

I managed to get rid of at least a third of everything I own. The next challenge was getting everything that remained into essentially two rooms, a good-sized storage space under the stairs, a pantry, and one closet. I am happy to say that I have managed this. Things are tight, but they're all here and organized, and all the boxes have been broken down and turned into mulching material in the garden.

So here's my new digs:
The walkway to my entrance

"My" entrance

Stairs down to my apartment

My "foyer"

"Living room" (used primarily as my office, and also dining room)

You can see how bright it is thanks to the big lightwell around the main window.

Lots of books still!

Notice how beautifully the bookcases fit - Matt & David worked all one day to make that happen, taking the sides off and cutting down each shelf.
My kitchen

What I call my "bed sit" - bedroom and sitting/media area

Again, a nice lightwell gives me good southern light in this room.

The bathroom

the pantry

The under-stairs storage

So everything is put away, but close to hand.

So far, I find I love living lightly. Who knows, if this trend continues I'll end up on a boat or in a treehouse!

Comedy

2011-02-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

I have just moved, and my next post hopefully will be about the process of downsizing/simplifying my life, but I want to illustrate it with photos of how I got everything to fit in 600 SF, and since I haven't actually managed that yet, I'm going to put that off. Instead, I want to talk about comedy.

We're reading Dante's Commedia, commonly known as The Divine Comedy, for a class. An hour before that class started I was grousing about having to spend an entire class on one work; about an hour after it started, I was convinced that it would be one of the most valuable classes of my program. Because 1. Dante was not just a poetic genius who invented an entirely new form of poetry called terza rima, he was a spiritual and psychological genius (the two may be the same), and 2. Everything is in this poem. Everything.

With this poem, Dante redefined comedy. Up until then, everyone in the Western world pretty much went with Aristotle's definition of comedy, which was basically that comedy is a light-hearted work that ends happily. Aristotle thought comedy a "lower" kind of work compared to the great tragic plays and epic and lyric poetry, mostly because the comedies that played in Greece were low-brow stuff, raunchy and clownish with pratfalls and fart jokes - not unlike the comic movies of today made by the likes of Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn and Adam Sandler that appeal primarily to teenage boys through their extensive reliance on toilet humor, naked boobs, and the F-word. If Aristophanes were alive today, he'd be writing for them.

But Dante realized that comedy can be dark, epic, or lyrical too, and that's exactly how he divided his Comedy. The first section is Dante's trip through Hell, the Inferno; the second is his climb up the mountain of Purgatory, and in the third he is in the blissful world of Paradise. In so doing he set the bar for subsequent authors and even our current cinema.

Infernal comedy is not funny; it's gritty, frightening, and involves a journey through a dark landscape with lots of evil people and monsters and dangers that often can only be traversed with some kind of divine aid. Evil is a separate, active force and the people who dwell in this Hell are either in collusion with it or passively acquiescent to it. At the end, while the hero survives, it's usually at great cost. The Lord of the Rings, which I love so much, has a lot of infernal comedic qualities. Frodo travels through soul-searing landscapes, bearing the soul-searing Ring, in a Quest that everyone believes is going to fail, but has to be tried anyway. There's almost no hope. Frodo does destroy the Ring, but not in the end of his own volition: fate takes a hand at the last second. So his victory is more bitter than sweet, and although he survives and the world is saved, he has lost all his joy. In the end he gets in a boat and sails away to the angelic realm where his only hope of healing lies.

It seems to me we have a lot of movies out there where the protagonist has to battle his or her way to an ending that is mostly marked by the fact that everything that needs to be destroyed has been. A lot of war movies end that way, I suppose because that's what war is, ultimately. We say we fight for freedom, but really, we fight to destroy the thing that threatens freedom. And the cost is always high . . . just not quite as high, we hope, as the cost of not fighting. These days we have a lot of movies about taking on the corporations. Again, not much hope or joy, just a sense of "it has to be done" no matter what the cost, because it will be worse for all if we don't. Most of our sci-fi movies, which are the way we imagine what the future might be like, are also infernal, which says to me that we don't have much hope for the future.

But at the same time we make TV shows like Star Trek and Farscape and Doctor Who in which people are generally more ethical and more prone to act out of love and faith in each other, at the same time that they use their wits to solve problems. Or as talk show host Craig Ferguson put it in his tribute to Doctor Who, "it's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

These shows are examples of purgatorial comedy. In Purgatory there's hope, but only at the end of a long road of trials where the protagonist has to own up to his or her responsibility for why they are in the situation in the first place. In Dante's vision, those who are in Hell are there because they never took responsibility for their behavior. Those who make it to Purgatory may have done wrong, but they recognize it and accept that they must do something to make it better. They have to vanquish the evil within themselves. Once they do that, they are able to create a community with others. Usually there's a marriage, a union of opposites, to mark this ending.

Thinking about this, I wonder if one of the differences at work in our political situation is the difference between people who think we're in an infernal situation, and those who think it's purgatorial. Do our divisions reveal a split between those who think the answer to destroy all those who oppose one so as to preserve one's individuality no matter what, or to look within and heal our own evil so we can build a stronger community?

The third kind of comedy is paradisal, in which things are pretty blissful right from the start and stay that way. The wonderful screwball comedies of the 1930s and many Disney movies (although lately, they're more laced with purgatorial elements) offer this vision. Field of Dreams is a paradisal movie. We tend to dismiss these as escapist and "fluff," but I think they serve a valid purpose. We can never realize a future that we can't imagine, someone said, and paradisal comedy allows us to imagine a happier future. We see this at work in our society in the New Age folks who are convinced that we're all evolving to a higher consciousness and the future will be a better place. I'd like to think they're right, myself.

throwing the yellow flag in

2011-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

I've recently joined a group called No Labels, for people who either don't feel the labels used by the media apply to them, or who dislike the polarized state of discussions and politics in this country today. Their tagline reads "Not Left, Not Right, But Forward."

One of the things they are doing is monitoring the statements made by politicians. If a politician makes an inflammatory statement, No Labels throws down a yellow flag, like the penalty flag in football.

I like this. It's a way of calling attention to the bad behavior, but also, it stops the game and forces everyone to regroup. We do this routinely in sports. Counselors often tell couples to take time-outs when discussions get too heated (a clear sign: when the words "you never" or "you always" come into play). It seems to me that the recent killings in Arizona were a signal that the political debate has gotten way out of hand. We need the penalty flags to make sure people go back to playing by the rules. If enough people start posting yellow flags in response to the demagogues who use inflammatory language, maybe they'll be shamed into better behavior.

So yay to No Labels for this idea.

Is that a light at the end of a tunnel, or an oncoming train?

2011-01-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

I'm partway through the very last winter quarter of my three-year program. It's the last quarter that is purely academic; in spring two of our courses will be about formulating the concept for the dissertation and research strategies for dissertation writing. And the last summer session is going to be an easy class, by all accounts. Easy work-wise, that is, but not emotionally, because it's the last time we'll be all together as a group. My cohort of 12 survivors (we started with 19) has become very close, and we miss each other a lot between sessions. So we're already making plans for "dissertation writing retreats" together.

So the end is in sight! It's gone so fast, in some ways, and yet in others I'm amazed by how much I've learned & how I've changed. (And how many books I've acquired.) The main thing that's changed, I think, is that I am now much more of a skeptic about a lot of things that I used to . . . not believe, but be interested in. Like Jungian archetypal psychology. I still think it's a useful way of looking at people, but I'm not nearly as wedded to some of the concepts as I used to be. I think of them now as "placeholders," labels you stick on a particular thing to orient yourself to it. But the label is not the thing.

The main thing I've learned in school is that there's just a whole lot of things we ultimately have to allow to be mysteries, because we'll never be able to reduce them entirely to something we understand. The most reductionist scientists have learned that the farther you take this approach, the more you end up in a territory where the only terms you can use make you sound like a lunatic or a mystic or both. The quantum physicists got there years ago, and now the neuroscientists are arriving in the same place of wonder and bafflement. It's what the artists and musicians and storytellers have always known, but of course they aren't scientists so who ever listens to them? There's some irony (that we were fully aware of from the start) in approaching the mysterious as a scholar, but I think my interdisciplinary program did a better job of straddling that line and allowing room for mystery than any other approach has ever managed.

I've learned that if you can approach life itself as an artist, not trying to understand so much as to appreciate, and perhaps find a medium to convey what you see and imagine to others at least in part, it will enrich your life immeasurably. Even the simplest things can take on a resonance and meaningfulness that can trigger joy and a sense of being connected . . . and that right there is what I think we all want from life.

For me this has meant spending more time with family, getting even more seriously into singing, and getting out into nature every chance I have. That's where I personally find that sense of connection with something larger. That's where I find the joy of life.

But of course the big thing is still ahead of me: the dissertation. I am eager to get going on it, so despite feeling a bit sad in anticipation of the breakup of my group (we call each other "monad," which is a philosophical term that means a perfect, entire-in-itself, not-fully-graspable unit . . . we could as well call each other "charmed quark", or "God"), I am also straining a bit at the leash here. I went to grad school in the first place because I had an idea for a book, and while I've learned a lot and the idea has morphed to some degree, it's still the idea that has been shaping my life for the last five years. I can't wait much longer to sit down and explore it fully!

I'm already clearing the decks for action. I have rented a smaller place that will cost me less and require almost nothing from me in terms of upkeep (unlike my current place which, as nice as it is, involves caring for a quarter-acre yard & garden). I'll no longer have room for guests apart from those willing & able to sleep on the floor, and I've gotten rid of my piano and a lot of other stuff. Basically, I will have an office/library in one room and a bedroom in the other, plus the necessary kitchen & bathroom. This will be a place where I work.

However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss the traveling, which I have just loved, and I'm going to need breaks from the grind, so y'all might find me showing up on your doorsteps from time to time! And yes Sarah-in-Italy and Joanne-in-England, that includes you!

The Cold Cure

2011-01-10T10:27:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year: virus time! I thought I would share my personal cold cure recipe:

Dan Dan Mian (Chinese cold noodles)

amounts are for one serving only

In a blender, mix the following:
1-1/2 inch of peeled fresh ginger
2-3 garlic cloves
1/4 C water
1/4 tsp salt

put this mixture in a small bowl. mix in:

1 TBSP soy sauce
1 tsp OR MORE of hot chili oil
1/4 to 1/3 cup tahini

adjust soy sauce and chili oil to taste: it should be as hot as you can bear it and then a little bit more. Should be hot enough to make your nose run and force you to gulp lots of water.

Pour over cold cooked Chinese noodles. If you wish, add chopped green onions. Enjoy!

I find that if I eat this when I feel like I'm coming down with anything, it drives the virus right out.

Learned wisdom vs. second-hand knowledge

2010-12-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

One of the things I've learned in grad school is that you can prove any point you want to make using the words of other people. Kinda like the Bible, which seems to have at least one verse to back up any stance you care to take, it's possible to find some published work that will support any argument. We certainly see this at work in the current debates about climate change, the economy, homosexuality . . . doesn't matter how many "experts" one side claims back them up, the other side finds plenty of other "experts" to debunk that view and support theirs.

The sad truth is, we tend to to pick and choose which "experts" to believe by what we already believe. I've written about this before, about how our worldview, which is formed before we're even capable of rational thought, controls what we are able to see. We see what we want and expect to see; we choose to believe those people or sources that confirm what we already believe.

As most of you know who read this, I went to grad school in the first place because I had an idea about heroines that I thought might make a book. And I've continued to pursue that idea all through grad school. Most recently I've been studying folk and fairy tales with female protagonists for what they have to teach us. The primary thing they teach, I am coming to think, is how we learn wisdom. And what they say about that is: We never become wise by believing what someone else tells us to think.

We learn wisdom through experience. The only thing that can break through our worldview is an experience that contradicts it. It shakes us up and opens our minds to a new way of thinking. Then we can learn.

In fairy tales, the hero or heroine always has to leave home and go into the wilderness - that is, leave the safety of the "known" existence and go have experiences that challenge them, open their minds. In most tales with a heroine, sooner or later she must perform a task where she has to discern or separate out what's good from what's bad: the wheat from the chaff. Or she has to take something worthless, like straw, and somehow turn it into something of value, like spinning the straw into gold. She has to do this physically, by herself. This is how she learns to recognize what is of value. Then she is wise. (Of course, usually some magical being actually does the task, but this is a metaphor for her own reason that has never been used before.)

We live in the Information Age. We're overwhelmed by information. But it's almost all second-hand. Very few of us are out there actually working as climatologists or economists or whatever. But we want to be informed; we want to be knowledgeable. So we listen to those whom we think do know more than us. Which is reasonable. But we need to remember all the time that 1) there's going to be support for every point of view; 2) we can verify very little of it ourselves directly; and 3) we all tend to believe those people who validate what we already think and discount those who don't.

So we need to be on guard against our own opinions. There's a bumper sticker I see around town that says "Don't believe everything you think." I think that's good advice. It helps one to keep an open mind to always be asking oneself, "do I know this, or do I just think it?"

There's many benefits to being skeptical about one's own opinions. For one, people tend to have an emotional attachment to their own opinions. Sometimes when someone else disagrees, they may feel personally attacked. And if they do, they may attack back. Our politics show how quickly disagreements over an issue can devolve into personal attacks. If people could maintain a more objective and skeptical approach to their own opinions, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to take offense when someone else disagrees? Maybe we could then stick to talking about the issue instead of what's wrong with other people?

Also, people who spout second-hand opinions usually don't sound intelligent or educated. Quite the opposite, much of the time. Many people respond to second-hand opinions by trying to correct them, and an argument ensues. Me, I usually just want to get away, as I'm pretty sure it's a waste of time to argue with such people. Kinda like arguing with the person behind the counter, who is just a front for the people who really make the decisions.

When people speak from experience, you can't really argue with it. I mean, they were there and you weren't, right? Also, stories of experiences are just more interesting, don't you think?

So I don't want to hear what someone else told you to think. Tell me your story. Tell me what you've learned from living your life. That's where your wisdom lies. I'm interested in that!

the bell curve of change

2010-12-17T09:59:00.001-08:00

Like a lot of people I know, I had high hopes when Obama was elected. "This is it," I thought. "Things will start to go in the right direction now."

Well, two years later, if you look at the economic situation, things aren't any better. I've hardly had any work in those two years. And the health care plan? I don't know about you, but my premiums are 50% higher than when Obama got elected. We've seen the emergence of the Tea Party. People seem determined to believe the lies of the demagogues like Palin and Beck and O'Reilly instead of looking at the facts of history for themselves. It's all pretty depressing.

But the other day, someone put a quote from Eckhart Tolle up on Facebook that went "that which you resist, persists." And all of a sudden I could see why all this is happening.

I'm a firm believer that the more we try to deny or repress some aspect of our own psyches, the stronger it becomes, and one day bammo, it bursts out. This happens in societies too. For a long time people of color and women and gays were forced down, kept away from the power. And look what has happened in the last 50 years. It's still going on, of course, and there are plenty of people who would like to turn back the clock and make things like they were in the mythical 50s before everyone got so uppity.

BUT THEY CAN'T. The change is inexorable, like when the Catholic Church lost its total control over Europe. They sure tried to take it back, but once Galileo proved that the earth went around the sun and Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the church door, the die was cast. It had nothing to do with those particular individuals; they just happened to be the ones that represented the forces of change already at work in the culture. Same with Martin Luther King. He spoke for the change that was happening in the United States regarding people of color. The shift in consciousness of the people chose him as its spokesperson; he didn't make the change, it made him, in a way. And when they tried to stop the shift by killing him, it only made people more determined. They tried to repress something that refused to be repressed.

Of course there is backlash when a major shift happens.

The marketing folks have a graph that categorizes people's reactions to any new technology, which I think works for politics as well:

The "early adopters" when it comes to a political change are the people we call radicals. They want the new millenium now, often so much they're willing to do violence and enforce the imposition of the new regime on everyone else. You find a lot of terrorists in this group because of that attitude. Sometimes they even succeed in pulling off a coup, but it rarely lasts, because they don't have enough support in the society.

What the marketers call "pragmatists" we would call "liberals." They're the people who can say "yes, this new idea is a good one, we ought to try it." And they also are willing to impose the new idea on others, not through violence, but by voting it in and saying "oh, wise up and get with the program already" to the rest of society.

Both the radicals and the liberals are "ahead of the curve" in their willingness to change. Then we have the two groups who are "behind the curve." We call the majority of this group "conservatives." In general they resist change, because they either don't see the need for it or they distrust it.

Then there are what the marketers call "laggards." They're the diehards who will refuse to change no matter what the rest of society does. And they're willing to use violence too, so you also get terrorists in this group. The Ku Klux Klan comes to mind.

Since people tend to look at things in an extreme way, most conservatives think liberals are all radicals, while most liberals think conservatives are diehards. Hence all the emotionality of politics: one group fears being forced to change before they are ready to (if they ever will be), while the other group fears being forced to return to a state that they found intolerable. (Pun intended.)

The fact is, while our country seems to swing back and forth a lot politically, we're actually changing all the time. Too slowly for the folks ahead of the curve, too fast for those behind it. But change is inexorable. We have a dark-skinned President, which would have been impossible even a few years ago. And if you can get past what you think of Sarah Palin, stop and think about what had to change in our society for the Republicans to put forth a woman as a candidate for vice-president! That is huge!

The thing is, the faster people try to push the change, the more resistance will crop up. That's why, I think, we've got the demagogues and the Tea Party now. There has been one hell of a lot of change going down in this country in the last 50 years, and it's caused a lot of resistance. This is natural. Just as it's natural, whenever people try to put the brakes on the process, for the people out front to pull harder.

What we see at work in our politics is that constant tug-of-war between those who welcome change and those that resist it. And that's okay. We are a democracy, right? As a friend of mine put it, a plane can't fly without both a right and a left wing. Whatever side of the aisle you're on, you're balancing the folks on the other side. Without each other we'd spiral down and crash.

Of course it is a big problem when folks climb out on the wings - go to the extremes of either position. That's when you get wars. Unfortunately we do have this tendency to see people as already being out on the extreme edge when, in fact, the great majority are all sitting pretty close together with just a little gap between them. And when one group thinks the other side has gone to an extreme, more of their own side will go the other way (again, seeking balance), and then the situation becomes extreme.

So whatever side you're on, I challenge you to stop seeing the other side so extremely (if you do). Stop fearing them so much, stop name-calling. Talk to someone who holds different views. You'll be surprised, I betcha, to find they aren't as different as you think.

What we resist, persists. If we really want change, we have to understand that and lighten up a little.

Diva!

2010-11-29T16:08:00.001-08:00

Last night I got the chance to feel like a real diva. I've never managed to get a solo when the local community chorus has performed Handel's "Messiah" - there are several good altos in town including my voice teacher, and although I've been in the running twice before, at the end our director Rebecca has always picked others. It mostly has to do with what kind of voice a singer has, and in Rebecca's opinion the three or four other contenders have each been better suited for a particular aria. And to be honest, I often didn't do a good job in auditions, because Rebecca scares me. It's far scarier to audition, for me, than to perform. I told Rebecca this and she understood; I also pointed out that when I do get a solo I always come through in performance. But still, she never gave me one of the "Messiah" solos.

But this year she found herself without the right person to sing one of the tenor pieces, a short recitative that requires a big, dramatic voice that can be heard over the orchestra while it plays at a fairly loud volume. I'm really a mezzo-soprano, meaning I've got some higher notes, and my voice is big, so she asked me to sing it an octave up from the tenor and it worked. At practice she told the orchestra to step it up "because she's got the voice for it." Before our first performance, she told me to pull out all the stops and really go for it, so I did.

The piece is so short (about a minute) that I didn't really get a sense of how I did on it, other than knowing that I got the notes and the timing right. At the reception I asked Rebecca "was that okay?" Rebecca is not very demonstrative, but she said "Oh Jody, it was way more than okay!" and threw her arms around me!

Apparently I surprised a lot of people, even people who have sung with me for years. "I had no idea you could do that!" was the most common reaction, closely followed by "why didn't Rebecca give you more to do?" and "you sounded wonderful!" Then this morning when I walked into my doctor's office to pick up some vitamins, and then went to my exercise class, people came up and complimented me again.

I've been taking voice lessons for years, but go back and forth on whether it's worth the effort and money. Last summer I had pretty much made up my mind that I was never going to be good enough and at this point in my life should just give up on being a soloist and remain content as a choir member. But this was just what I needed as a confidence booster. I have no doubt that the next time I audition for Rebecca, both of us will have more confidence in me, and I will live up to that.

The vocal chords are contiguous with the fifth chakra, the chakra of self-expression. I'm pretty brave about expressing myself here, where I'm hidden behind the computer screen, but to open one's mouth and sing in front of people is a real exercise in overcoming self-doubt. It's been a long road for me in that regard. But the road just got a lot smoother. :)

Longing

2010-11-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about longing, about yearning, about feeling needy, feeling a lack - especially a lack of love. I remember once hearing a performer say that the one thing we all have in common is loneliness: that no matter how good our lives are, at some point or other every single one of us feels lonely. Feels unloved.

It doesn't feel good. So we think that it must be a bad thing. And usually we look for someone to blame for that - someone we think should be loving us better than they are. I betcha most of the anger people feel towards those close to them is about this, about a perceived failure to love the person like they want to be loved. Sometimes this takes the form of depression, which is anger turned inward: we blame ourselves for not being lovable enough.

As I thought about this, it seemed to me that I could extend this idea into religion and politics as well as relationships. Isn't religion basically about finding a love that is eternal and always perfect? And isn't all the shouting in politics basically a result of people feeling despised or dismissed - that is, unloved?

But think about the other kinds of lack that we experience. Like thirst. When we feel thirsty, we don't go looking for someone to blame, usually, nor do we blame ourselves. It's a natural signal that the body needs water, and we don't fuss, we go get a glass of water.

What if this longing is just a signal telling us to get up and do something about it? After all, we yearn for other things too: adventure, beauty, to express ourselves, to have new experiences, to create or build something, to compete and win against others. Those who honor these longings accomplish things. Even if they try and fail, their lives are richer than those who make excuses or blame others instead of trying.

It is that inner longing that takes us out into life, that leads us to wider horizons and new experiences. From now on, whenever I feel lonely or unloved, I am not going to focus on the failure of a particular person to give me what I want. Instead I am going to say to myself "oh, I am longing for a richer engagement with other people!" And then I will do my best to make that happen. And be grateful for the longing that made me aware of my thirst for life.

Microscope and Telescope

2010-10-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

I went to a lecture last night on the friendship between Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist who, although he never worked on the atom bomb himself, felt responsible for and horrified by the uses that his research was put to. Pauli eventually turned to Jung for help interpreting his dreams. The two became friends, and found that their work had many parallels. For example, Pauli had discovered that the behavior of subatomic particles is acausal, meaning that you can't predict their behavior using ideas of cause and effect, at the same time that Jung was beginning to think that the human psyche is also acausal. Yet neither is entirely random either; there are patterns that can be observed, we just don't know what causes them. From this friendship came Jung's idea of synchronicity, the meaningful coincidence that cannot be explained causally.

This is all a side note to the point of this post. At the lecture I sat with a friend who has become impassioned about the current state of the environment, particularly the oceans. She has been spending 60 hours a week or more learning all she can about the issues, going to meetings, and helping organize groups and events. She wants everyone to know as much as she does and to be as concerned and active as she is. But the more she learns and tries to change things, the more impotent she feels, because the problems - both the state of the environment, and the difficulty of changing other people's behavior - are just too large for her to have much impact. No matter how hard she tries, it's not enough.

Interestingly (to me), she had a dream in which she was called upon to immerse herself in the ocean and tell the truth to the ocean about herself, to own up to all her own lies and deceptions: to admit her human failings. In the dream she felt that this was the answer to her problem.

My high school reunion was last month. Several women I know did not go and have never gone to any of these gatherings. The reason they give is that "I've done nothing." They've had children (and now grandchildren), they've stayed married which is a miracle these days, and they've created lovely homes. They don't regret any of that. But on some level they feel that their lives are insignificant, that they have not tried to do enough.

I found myself thinking about all these people as I read a book by Wendy Doniger called "The Implied Spider," which is about the difficulties inherent in the study of mythology and religion. The main difficulty boils down to this: do you look at the subject close-up, through the microscope, studying the particular, the microcosm: that is, the meaning and the effect it has on an individual person? Or do you look at it through the telescope, from far away, to find the universal meaning, the abstract view that ignores the individual?

Whatever you choose, it will immediately cause tension, the same tension that I believe my friends feel. If you look at the big picture only, you can miss the details, the human aspect. My friend who looks at the big picture of the environmental problem, like so many impassioned champions of causes, may be on the verge of losing her ability to enjoy her own life. (I think her dream was telling her that judging herself and others is not the solution.)

Meanwhile, my other friends whose focus has been on the immediate and who have lived and enjoyed entirely "human" lives of relationship to individuals, feel some guilt that they have not engaged at least a little with larger issues. Now that their children are grown, most of them are in fact getting involved in the community in a larger way.

Most people are trying to find the balance here. Sure, some people manage to ignore the problem entirely: the "happy cabbages" as one of my professors calls them who go through life not worrying very much about anything, just living life day to day, or the "ivory tower" scholars who are perfectly content to study life in the abstract and never engage with it directly. But most of us are not like that.

The point Wendy Doniger makes in her book is that myths (and epic literature) encompass both points of view, and thereby can provide some guidance on how to find that elusive balance. Most myths are about individuals caught up in huge issues. We can relate to the struggle of one imperfect person trying to cope with and understand the enormity of a war, for example, and at the same time we gain insight into war itself through the myth's ability to capture the big picture. Doniger gives the example of the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett goes to the railroad station looking for the doctor and finds the wounded evacuated from Gettysburg; the camera starts out at ground level, where just a few soldiers are shown lying on the ground, bloody and groaning, and then pulls up and away to show us that there are thousands of them. From the aerial view we cannot see individual wounds, but since we saw the agony of a few first, we now comprehend that all of these men are suffering, and in that moment we understand the horror of war.

Joseph Campbell said that myths enable us to see "with both eyes," to see things as they are. They allow us to see the world through the microscope and the telescope at the same time. Then when we raise our heads from the lens and look around at the world with our ordinary human vision, our understanding of what we see is enriched. We gain perspective when we can look at life this way.

And then, hopefully, we can see the path to take.

What "real life" can learn from virtual communities

2010-10-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

For the last 11+ years I have been an active participant on the message boards at theonering.net, the leading Tolkien fan site. (How "leading"? Well, when "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" won 11 Oscars, the director and cast & crew skipped all the fancy Hollywood parties and joined the fans at the TORn party instead - and yes, I am so kicking myself for not having coughed up the money for the ticket & flight & hotel room . . .).

All the "TORnadoes" are there because of our love of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. This gives us a common bond and the impetus for most of the discussions of the books and the movies. But we often range "off topic" onto other subjects. Sometimes, those topics can bring out a lot of emotions.

When the board was first up and running, sometimes the discussion got very hot. And as my very wise friend Charles pointed out, when that happens, usually people stop discussing the issue and start discussing each other. Not in a nice way. Humans seem inevitably to assume that if someone holds a different opinion from them, they must be stupid or deluded or evil. (Because of course the opinion that I hold is the "right" one; isn't it funny how no one ever admits to having a wrong opinion?)

After a few of these "flame wars," the people in charge of TORn made some changes. First, they made rules. Basically, the rules boil down to this: You will play nice, and you can't use the boards to sell something. Then the powers that be, as we call them (TPTB) created board moderators. They gave certain people the power to edit offensive posts or delete them altogether, and if necessary, to block repeat offenders from posting at all.

There was a lot of screaming and cries of "censorship" and "Fascists!" from those who felt they have the right to say anything they want to anyone at any time. But the system works. Those who can't or don't want to learn how to play nice are banned or leave; everyone else follows the rules. I've been on several other boards, and the ones that don't have similar rules have all degenerated into flame wars and then died within a couple of years. The ones that make people behave are the ones that last.

The "play nice" (no attacking other people) rule means that when we do stray onto politics or religion, we actually have a discussion. Where different opinions can be offered and the reasons behind them are also given. And when people make a statement, they had better be prepared to support it, because it will be challenged by others who are quite adept at using the Internet to look up the facts and to determine what sources are objective and which are biased.

I'd love to see a TV talk show that followed this model. No name-calling, no interrupting or talking over someone else, but a reasonable discussion where every statement is double-checked for accuracy and objectivity by an offscreen team, like the folks on "Jeopardy." No sound bites, no demogogues trying to stir up fear or hatred. You know: a conversation.

Okay, probably very few people would watch it. But the point is, this kind of discussion is actually happening on the Internet. I know many people who think the "virtual" world of the Internet is a negative thing that takes people away from "real life." But it's my hope that the younger generations, who are growing up within the context of the Internet in a way I can't even imagine, will learn a better way of doing things than the ones they see modeled on TV.

On-leash aggression

2010-09-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

There's a phenomenon dog owners are familiar with. You put your perfectly friendly, well-behaved dog on a leash and suddenly when it encounters other dogs or maybe even other people, it snarls and lunges and acts like a mean dog.

What's got into him is the leash. Or rather, the posture that the leash enforces on the dog. A dog's normal reaction on seeing another dog is to want to move towards that dog. They're curious about each other and want to sniff butts, maybe to play. But the leash stops them. Not only does it stop them, it forces them into a posture where they are leaning forward and upright. This is the stance an aggressive dog takes. But it also works the other way: if a dog finds himself in an aggressive stance, he may actually start to feel aggressive. Also, his posture will be read by the other dog as aggressive, and they may respond in kind (especially if their owners are there, which makes them protective). And then you have two dogs going for each other while their owners try to haul them back and swear to each other that "normally he's friendly, I don't understand it!"

In an off-leash park, where dogs are free to approach each other in their own way, you rarely see this happen. Instead there's a series of cues the dogs give each other that say "I'm not aggressive, I'm respecting your space, can we play?"

In one of my classes last week, my professor made the point that holding a rigid belief about something can have a similar effect. For instance, if you think that your religion is the One True Religion, you automatically get put into the position of always having to prove that to others. Those who don't wear that particular leash, who either don't believe in religion or think that all religions are just different roads to the same goal, don't have the same pressure on them. But when someone starts pushing their views, it's like when one dog takes an aggressive stance - it tends to cause everyone else around to take a corresponding stance, and then you have a fight. Same with politics. Same with any "ism" you care to name.

The ironic thing is that usually the person who takes the aggressive stance first feels "picked on" when everyone responds to him in kind. I can't tell you how many proselytizing Christians I know who feel they are "persecuted for my beliefs." My advice to them: try shutting up about your beliefs and see what happens!

But that's not how we do things in the U.S. of A, is it? Everyone is entitled to express their viewpoint, as often and as loudly as they can. The "winner" of any talk show debate seems to be the person who can talk over and shout down any other view.

I think a lot about politics, but as I've said before, I'm becoming more and more apolitical. Not because I don't care, but because I don't like what happens when people put on the leash of a particular party's "platform." It just leads to a lot of on-leash aggression.

Maybe we need an off-leash park for people?

whaddya know?

2010-09-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book -- when am I not reading a book? -- called The Politics of Myth, about the political aspects and ramifications of the writings and philosophies of three major thinkers in the myth field. (You've heard of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, but if you've also heard of Mircea Eliade, major brownie points to you).

The author starts out with a chapter on gnosticism, which means knowing, and rambles on for a while about how much faith people put in knowing things. Religious people trust that if one knows God, everything will be okay; most modern folks think that science will enable us to know enough that any problems we encounter, we can learn how to solve - cancer, pollution, war, etc.

The problem with this attitude, the author implies, is that it takes us away from living right where we are. The solution to our problems, you see, lies in the future, after we've learned what we need to know to fix them or transcend them. So we can wait to deal with them.

He doesn't say this, but it occurred to me that we also tend to put a lot of emphasis on trying to educate other people so that they will change or do what we think are the right things. Another way of not being right here right now: the problem is these other people who need to learn a lesson of some kind, so people spend a lot of energy trying to tell each other what to think, usually very loudly while at the same time refusing absolutely to even listen for a second to the other point of view.

Which means that while a lot of people are getting rich ranting away on television, they're actually not changing a thing. In fact they're making things worse, because they only help the people who agree with them to get even more entrenched in their rigid views and refuse to listen to any other ideas.

This may sound weird coming from a PhD student, but the more I learn, the less I know. That is, the more I become aware that I really know very little for certain. My education has been - from the Humanities "block" in high school on - primarily about how many different ways there are to learn about any particular subject. To study mythology, my program looks at it from the viewpoints of philosophy, psychology, religion, history, literature, sociology, and even science. Which is a lot of fun, but it doesn't give you a lot of answers.

For example, I have a religious friend who keeps wanting to know what my studies have taught me is "the truth" about religion. I finally answered him the other day. My answer went like this:
1. There are in fact aspects to life that many people feel or experience, yet we can't explain either logically or scientifically.
2. Different religions teach different beliefs about what it means.
3. If you follow a particular religion, usually there's some kind of practice they ask you to follow.
4. If you actually follow the practice diligently, you might have a transcendent experience of that unexplainable thing.
5. And you'll realize that the belief you were taught falls way short.
6. But you'll never be able to explain that to those who haven't had the experience.
7. Most people don't ever have that experience, so they stick to the belief.
8. Or they dismiss it all as nonsense.

A bit vague, eh? That's what a graduate-level education in the humanities will do for you.

The upside of not knowing things for sure is that it takes my focus away from things outside of myself or in the future. If I can't expect God to step in or science to solve the problem or other people to wise up and behave right, the only recourse I have left is in myself, in what I do - or what I can do with other people right now. Pollution's a problem? I try to minimize my own impact on the planet. People are always fighting? I try to understand other points of view. What if this life is all we get of existence? Let's make the best of it, for ourselves and for others too.

In my third year of grad school, I'm daunted by how much I don't know. But I think I've also become a little kinder, a little more tolerant of others, and a little clearer on my own priorities. When I'm not reading, I usually am with people I like, singing, or walking in nature. (Sometimes all three at once.) I'm much more aware of wild animals and birds. I look at - and smile at - and strike up conversations with - strangers a lot more than I ever used to.

Yesterday I talked about the TV series "Rescue Me" and post-traumatic syndrome and 9/11 with some people in the video store, then went to the library where the check-out desk ladies were excited that I'd discovered Janet Evanovich's hilarious Stephanie Plum mysteries (thank you Sue!), and then petted a German shepherd on the sidewalk which led to a 20-minute conversation about rescue dogs and dog training with another pair of strangers, which left me feeling like most of the people walking around town were potential friends and that I live in a very nice town.

I'm reminded of E.M Forster's most famous quote: "Only connect. Only connect." Here and now, connect with the world as it is. If we all did that instead of waiting for God or science or other people to learn enough to solve our problems, miracles might happen.

Yup, I am

2010-09-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

You know you are a true scholar-geek when you set aside a day to go through all of your notes from the past two years of classes to find everything that you starred as possibly relevant to your dissertation, and you find this really exciting.

more good news on the thyroid

2010-09-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I had my year check-up with the endocrinologist yesterday (which involved a ferry trip and a two-hour drive through a November storm that somehow got transported ahead in time and hit Washington on the last day of August). She continues to be perplexed by me because my lab work is not consistent with Graves disease, the usual cause of hyperthyroidism, but she's also pleased because the biopsy was negative and because I responded so fast to the medication and only had to be on it for five months instead of the usual 18 to 20 months. And my thyroid levels are still normal after six months off of it. So we're backing off on how often I have to get my blood tested.

Plus, when I first met her, she talked about how often the easiest - or the ultimate - way to deal with this problem is to kill the thyroid with radiation and then give me Synthroid for the rest of my life, an option I wasn't very excited about because everyone I know who is on Synthroid complains that they have a lot of trouble getting the right dose and they never feel quite right. The "easy" solution from the doctors' point of view isn't so easy for those who have to live with it. But now she says that even if I go hyperthyroid again, I'm so responsive to the medicine (and had no problems with it) that she'd probably put me back on it, "at a very low dose, maybe just three times a week."

But at the moment it's not an issue: I'm fine!

I have to wonder how much of the inflammation of my thyroid was due to diet. I've been off wheat for three years now, and off dairy and potatoes and peanuts and a bunch of other stuff for six months - the same period of time I haven't needed medication.

Communication vs. communiqués

2010-08-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

I have a close friend that I talk to several times a week. We e-mail daily, and if we're online at the same time we use instant chat, but very often this is not enough and we end up on the phone, often for hours. It always seems to be that we have been thinking along similar lines about a particular issue, and in the course of conversation we both work out some new ideas about what is really going on and, more importantly, a course of action if one is necessary. Lately, we seem to have a lot of conversations that end up with one or the other of us concluding that we should just back off, shut up, and not worry so much about it.

These long conversations happen because we are both the kind of person who likes to hold something up and look at it from every possible angle. To our way of thinking, the person who proclaims "this is the way it is and that is the final word" is like a person who says "the only possible view of Mount Rainier is from the north." (However, you can't say that to such a person, because they don't usually get metaphors.) My friend and I like to talk our way all the way around the mountain.

We are aware that we are a bit weird in this - that most people don't have the same need for endless discussion.

Yesterday I went for a hike where everyone else was hiking more slowly than the pace I personally find comfortable. We all have our own natural gait, a physical therapist friend tells me, and our bodies like moving at that gait best. Still, I slowed down, because even if it's more comfortable to walk at a faster pace, you can slow down, and it might be beyond their ability for others to speed up.

In a scientific experiment this is called the "rate limiting step." The slowest step in the process will be the one that controls how fast it can occur.

I feel sometimes like that's what goes on in the conversations I have with others. There's a level where I like to go, but most of the time, other people don't want to go there with me. I don't want to use the word "slow" here because it has nothing to do with intelligence; it's about personal taste, just as it is personal gait.

But it can be equally frustrating. My friend observed today that she realized that a lot of the communications she receives are not what she and I would call communication. We decided that "communiqués" is a better word. It's "just the facts, ma'am" - the necessary information without amplification. And sometimes what we really want to know requires amplification, but when we ask for it, the response is "I told you already."

I've been going through this with my school. The business office will not have our financial statements ready until Sept. 1, but tuition and fees are due Aug. 30. (How's that for a nice Catch-22?) They did send us a worksheet so we can do our own math, and I can do it, but I needed one point to be clarified. Accordingly, I e-mailed and asked for that clarification. It took three more e-mails and one long phone call before I got the information, because the two people on the other end did not understand that what they had already told me was insufficient, and just kept sending me the same information. They weren't listening to what I was trying to communicate.

My friend also drew a distinction between "community" and "connection" in this conversation. She pointed out that many human relationships are based on a single (or perhaps a couple) points of connection, something in common, some reason for interacting under the right circumstance. Perhaps you go bowling together, or belong to the same church. But this to her is very different from feeling that someone else is part of your community, that you know each other very well, share a history, feel some kind of kinship that is not just based on one connection point: the people you feel you could call on no matter what the situation.

I would never call the business office people part of my community, nor would I expect to have a deep conversation with them about my reasons for attending school. We have a single connection point: the money I pay them. And so it wasn't that annoying (or surprising) that getting more information out of them was so difficult. We expect that from bureaucracies, right?

What I find frustrating is when I get communiqués when I expect communication. What's hardest is when I realize that the communiqués mean that someone I thought was in my community views our relationship as one of "connection" instead. I had a friend for many years whom I thought of as a very dear friend. But she gradually withdrew, and then finally said to me "I'm interested only in your 'headline' news." She wanted to know the big news of my life, but not anything else; she just wanted communiqués. This upset me. But I can't make someone walk faster than their comfort level or make them walk around the mountain with me, and I can't make people communicate if they don't want to.

All I can do is back off, shut up, and not worry so much about it. That last part's the tricky one. It's pretty much the opposite of being a round-the-mountain kind of person. I'm okay with slowing down my pace to fit others. But what I realized yesterday is that maybe the real problem is that I've not felt it's okay for me to speed up and walk at the pace that I'm comfortable at. Because if I do, if I honor my own comfort, I will walk alone a lot.

And that's lonely.

Yet although I think of that kind of in-step walking as a rare thing, I can look back and see all the times it has in fact occurred, even with people who seem to me to prefer communiqués to communication. Like most things, it happens when I least expect it, and often from the people I least expect will make an effort to walk at my pace. And therefore, is that much more meaningful.

Maybe if I stop trying to be like others and fit my pace to theirs, I will be pleasantly surprised at who "steps up" to join me?

Grieving

2010-08-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'm grieving today.

Sunday was a double anniversary for me. First of all, it was what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary, had my marriage worked out. Even though I have long since come to feel that it was the best possible thing for me that my marriage ended, sometimes I still grieve the loss of what I hoped my marriage would be, the dreams I married to achieve.

It's also the fourth anniversary of my dog Jenny's death. Jenny was the center of my life for 14 years, through the dissolution of my marriage and beyond. I have no regrets at all about her life, and her death was perfect: it came at the right time, while she was still enjoying life, yet the signs were evident that her ability to do that was nearing its end. And despite missing her, I do find the freedom of a life without a pet is just what I need right now. Still, there are times when I miss her terribly, and the anniversaries of her birth and death are still potent.

There are other, more recent losses that have occurred because of the changes I am going through as a result of my decision to go back to school. I have become disaffected with my church and no longer attend it. In part this is because of my studies, which have led me towards a more psychological interpretation of spirituality; in part it's because I now know more about religion than, it seems, most of the speakers we get in church, and I'm either bored or annoyed by their talks. It's just not a fit for me any more. But I miss the community.

I've also let several former friendships slide. For the most part these have been friendships with rather difficult people. I'm not so much of a people-pleaser as I used to be; I have a bit more backbone these days it seems, and also, I'm very busy, so I just do not have time for the drama. It seems I've lost the ability to walk on eggshells that was apparently necessary to maintain a relationship with certain people. But there are things about them that I really did enjoy, and miss.

Perhaps I'm just becoming more of a realist about life and about what's possible. There are other relationships I have where I've held on for a long time to a hope that things will get better, that we'll come to a mutual understanding that will make everything much easier and enjoyable. But lately I'm letting go of that hope and resigning myself to the idea that how things are now is how things are, period.

All this is necessary and probably good. But one of the things I've learned is that you can't just push through change without acknowledging how hard it can be and how much it can hurt. The stiff upper lip is a mask to fool others, but why should that be necessary? In fact, trying to pretend something isn't wrong seems to me to make it much worse, to make it shameful. Why should I feel ashamed because I loved, because I had hope, even if it made me trust some people I shouldn't have? And above all, why should I feel ashamed because I've found a new sense of self that requires me to change?

Also, why should I have to pretend change isn't hard?

When I got divorced, I did feel shame. I also felt a huge amount of anger. It took me three years to work through those feelings. When I finally did, I experienced about two months of grief, pure and simple. It was a very quiet feeling compared to the anger and shame and rage and guilt and blame I had felt; in fact, it was quite restful. I was simply sad. And then I was done.

I learned a big lesson from that: that it's good to grieve, to let yourself feel sad. It's the final step of letting go of something that's over. And then you move on. I think if one holds on to anger or to shame or to blame - or worse, if one denies those feelings - you don't move on. You stay stuck. I know a lot of stuck people. I don't want to be one.

So: today I am grieving these losses, these changes. I'm a little bit teary, a little bit tired. But if one is grieving, best to do it properly. I've eaten a little bit too much chocolate. I'm going to soak in the tub a little bit too long, until I'm prune-y. Later I'll probably have a little bit too much Grand Marnier. Not dramatic, nothing that requires intervention: in fact, quite restful.

Belief and practice

2010-08-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

The other day I used the word "angel" to describe a person who had appeared in my life at a particular moment and changed my outlook forever, then disappeared as suddenly as he came. The friend I was talking to asked me if I believed in angels. I said no, I don't "believe" that, really, but "angel" was as good a word as any to describe how I regarded this mysterious man. My friend was a bit surprised to hear me say this. I come across sometimes as holding a lot of woo-woo beliefs, I know, but the fact is, my upbringing grounded me pretty firmly in skepticism. Whenever someone tells me about the latest health fad, for instance, I go right to Google Scholar and research the medical literature on it. (I'm having to bite my lips pretty hard these days about the hCG diet half of Port Townsend seems to be on.)

But I'm also open-minded enough to know that science can't always explain everything. I know quite a few people who have encountered wonderfully compassionate beings who show up at the precise moment you need them and do or say the precise thing you need most, and then *poof* disappear. Often no one else even notices them. If they aren't angels, at least they are demonstrations of Jung's concept of synchronicity - a meaningful event that can't be explained but is too significant to be laid at the door of pure chance. Science doesn't know how to study events that are unique and personal, but that isn't enough of a reason to dismiss such events totally in my book. A doctor friend once said to me "all symptoms are real." If a person is having a pain, that is a very real thing to that person, whether or not medical tests can find a reason for it. Same thing with experiences that normally fall under the aegis of religion or the supernatural or whatever you call it. I can't prove to you that I met an angel once, but whoever that being was, the experience and the effect it had on me was real.

Another friend keeps asking me what my studies have led me to believe is "the truth" about religion. And after two years of study, I finally have an answer. The truth about religion is, in my opinion, that whatever someone believes is not as important as what they experience. The point of following a religion is to experience something greater and thereby to be transformed, to grow, to realize one's own greater potential. And it doesn't have to be a religion as we normally define it. Studying psychology and/or getting counseling will do the same thing. Athletes who devote themselves whole-heartedly to their sport have similar experiences as those who meditate. Even scientists can be transformed by their pursuit. The quantum physicists sound like raving mystics these days, and the neuroscientists aren't far behind. Ken Wilber says that no matter what path a person takes in the attempt to understand the world, even those that seem diametrically opposed end up in the same place. All the great religious avatars and the most brilliant scientists end up saying the same thing: EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.

If that's so, then whatever someone believes doesn't seem so important, does it? But it is important for most people to believe in something. For one thing, without a belief in something other than oneself, the world looks pretty bleak, and people tend to either kill themselves or start thinking it's okay to hurt and kill other people, and that's not good. Even if all a person believes in is that there's one other person in the world who accepts them or that one day, something good is going to happen, it's often enough to keep them going and behaving reasonably.

The real purpose of belief, as far as religion goes, I think, is that it leads people to practice certain actions. I take great exception to those people who think it's enough just to profess the creed of their religion, but who don't actually "walk the talk"; those who just pay lip service as the saying goes. They have missed the point entirely. If one is a Christian, it is not enough to say one believes that Christ is the Savior; to be a real Christian means to study the Sermon on the Mount and DO WHAT CHRIST SAID TO DO. Same with other religions. If you're a Hindu, you try to follow at least one of the paths that Krishna lays down in the Bhagavad-Gita; if you're a Buddhist, you practice mindfulness; if you are a Muslim, you follow the Shariah; if you are Jew, you study the Tanakh; if you are a Navajo, you walk in constant awareness of beauty.

One doesn't have to be religious as such. The path of the scientist is the same as that of the Buddhist: mindfulness (empiricism) without attachment (bias). The path of the environmentalist is like that of the Navajo: constant awareness of and care for the beauty of the earth. The path of the athlete is not unlike that of the Zen practitioner who can control and rise above physical discomfort. The path of the parent is the purest and the hardest form of religion: to practice unconditional love while enforcing rules and structure that will foster emotional and intellectual and social growth in another. Makes me break out in a sweat just to contemplate.

It's not the particular path that matters; what matters is that one follows it. As one does, one will be tested and tempted and tempered and transformed. That is the goal. The belief is what gets one to follow the path in the first place, but it is the practice of the belief that changes one's life. For the practice leads to experiences that challenge who we are and what we think. That's the only thing that ever changes us, I think: experiences that just don't fit into the mindset we currently hold, so that we have to let that go and open our minds to a new way of thinking and being.

The first time this happens, it can be terrifying or exhilarating. People may either try to deny it, or be so changed that they feel they have to reject their former beliefs entirely and champion their new one. Converts are usually the most fanatical upholders of a belief. But if it happens again, that's when the barriers start to drop away, when one begins to see that the world holds so much more possibility than one ever dreamed of.

I've had my world rocked several times in my life. The angel was just the most recent. And that's why I don't "believe" in any particular path, but nor do I feel a need to reject any of them. They all work for different people at different times.

A few years ago, when I was talking to a mentor of mine who is called "The Wizard" by all the people who work with him for his amazing ability to forecast financial trends (economics is a valid path too!), I told him about my plans to leave my job and start writing a book. He said a very wise thing to me: that to set out on a new path is like taking ship out of the harbor. When you're in the harbor, you can only see one way out of it, straight ahead. But he predicted that as soon as I actually got out of my former safe harbor, I could turn and head in several directions, and the one that would really call me wouldn't be the one I could see from shore. He was right. I did start writing the book, and because of that, I soon realized I needed to go for the PhD, and the book I will end up writing will not be the book I thought I was going to write. But I had to leave the harbor to know that. I had to start practicing what I thought would be my path. I couldn't just believe that one day I would write a book; I had to sit down and write.

So when it comes to "the truth" about belief, what I said to this friend is that it doesn't matter which one is "true"; the important thing is to pick the one that feels right to him and then practice it. And then be open to being surprised by what happens.

Walking the wire

2010-08-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

I've been talking with a friend about the tension between that side of ourselves that wants to remain safe within the group and that side that wants to express and be seen as an individual. I don't think there's an easy answer to this, any more than there is for all the other push-me/pull-you issues of life where we seem to want contradictory things.

It seems to me that we often first have to feel safe within a particular community, feel like we "belong," before we can show our individuality to that community. I think of teenagers who want their families to see them as individuals, but at the same time have to dress and speak and act according to the accepted norms of their peer group and dread being "different" in that context. The first place we feel safe enough to explore our individuality is at home. This process repeats throughout life, it seems.

We all long to belong, to be accepted. But not if the price is giving up our individuality. Finding a group that accepts one's uniqueness, now that's a real trick. And sometimes it's counterproductive. One of the reasons why liberals can't organize as well as conservatives, I suspect, is because while liberals have a lot of tolerance for differences, very often it's those very differences that prevent the group from functioning smoothly.

In our depth psychology classes our teachers say that this is the essential difficulty for the person: to feel one's individuality and yet at the same time to feel one's connection to others, to the world, and to the sacred (however you define that). This is the tension we all have to learn how to manage, because it never ends. We never (hopefully) end up entirely submerged in the group, nor entirely outside it. And the more we exercise that "muscle" that moves us from the group to our individual Self and back, like any muscle, it gets stronger and we move more gracefully. We are not graceful at all, at first, as anyone who has been or had a teenager knows!

We not only have to learn how to move from one to the other position gracefully, we have to learn when to do it. We have to learn discernment so we can know when it is time to be part of the group and when it is a time to assert one's individuality. It's a balancing act on a high wire, and we all have had our falls.

Life in the Bughouse

2010-08-15T08:03:00.001-07:00

When I was moving into this house, my friend Peter proudly informed me that he had done the man-thing and saved me from the huge hobo spider that was in the sink by killing it. I was tempted to call Peter at 3 am the next morning when I got up for a potty break and saw another big hobo on my bedroom wall, and again the next day when I found another in the living room. But instead I put a glass over each, slid a piece of paper under it, and escorted both spiders outside.

I wintered through the house without incident. But in the early spring, as soon as the sun would hit the eastern wall, I started finding yellowjackets in the living room - 2 or 3 per day, always in the same corner of the living room window. Evidently they were getting in or hatching from somewhere, but I searched & searched and could never find where. All in all I had 14 yellowjackets. These, I am afraid, I dealt with by putting jars over them and leaving them until they were dead. Spiders, I see the use of; yellowjackets not so much.

Later on I evidently had a hatch of baby hobo spiders, because I started finding them everywhere. They were transparent tiny things at first, then got darker and a little bigger. I found one a couple days ago that was now the size of my little fingernail. These usually get vacuumed.

Also, I started noticing these teeny little black ants in the bathroom. They seem to come out from behind the wall somewhere. I got some caulk and tried to fix any holes I could find, but they are still showing up. Usually they are around the tub, and many times in it, so a lot of them have gone down the drain. Yesterday I was in the bathtub (cooling off, it was hot) and one crawled down on my shoulder and bit me. And it hurt!

A few nights ago I was headed to bed when I saw not one but TWO earwigs on my pillow! Eeeeuwww! They got vacuumed. Then last night I was lying in bed reading when something black ran across me (fortunately, over the sheet). I shrieked and leapt out of bed, then went hunting, and found another big hobo lurking under a pillow. This too got vacuumed. (Have I mentioned that hobos are venomous and their bites not only hurt but tend to go necrotic and not heal?)

I've had it with sharing my home with these critters. Today I am buying one of those devices that emits a pulse that drives bugs out of your house.

The square root of - 1

2010-08-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

A lovely Persian man I know was telling me the other day about imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are useful concepts that are "imaginary" because they aren't "real" in the sense that you can experience them physically. For example, zero is imaginary. You can have one of something, or 10,000, but if you have zero, there's nothing there to look at or touch. But it's very useful to know sometimes if you have zero of something, like when you are making out a shopping list.

Negative numbers are also imaginary, but useful. If your checking account has a negative number in it, you need to put more money in. And it matters a lot whether you have negative five dollars or negative five hundred, even though both of those numbers only really mean that there is no money in the account.

The most interesting thing about imaginary numbers, said my friend, is that there are some math equations that can't be solved without them. For example, some equations require the use of the square root of -1, which is not a real number. Yet the result of the equations is always a "real" number, a number that can be demonstrated physically, that everyone can look at and agree is a real number. Like, say, 10. We all know 10; we just have to look at our fingers to see "10." So the result is real by commonly accepted wisdom, even if a necessary part of the equation is not.

In other words, sometimes you need to use your imagination to explain things that are real.

I think this is a lovely metaphor for what I'm studying now. There are many aspects of human existence that are obvious and real to everyone, but we can only understand them through an act of imagination. Like love. Pretty much everyone will agree that love is a powerful factor of human existence. But what is it, really? More importantly, why do we love? What does it do for us? Humans have discussed this issue for millenia, yet we still talk about it - and read books and watch movies and plays and listen to music and read poetry and look at works of art that take as their theme the issue of love in all its forms. All acts of imagination.

Right now the "Twilight" books and movies are extremely popular. They aren't "real" - there are no vampires living in Forks, Washington - but they make use of something that is not real to talk about something that is. (By the way, I don't think they are so much about boy-girl love as they are about love within the context of family.) Romeo and Juliet never "really" lived, nor did Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, but when we read their imaginary stories, we understand a bit more about love.

Here's a work of art by my friend Debra Brochin on the theme of love. Hearts don't really look like this, but doesn't this capture what it feels like to be in love with someone else, with all their faults and all your faults part of the scenario, better than any scientific analysis or long-winded blogpost ever could?

That's what Pacifica's Mythological Studies program is about: the acts of imagination that are necessary when we seek to understand our world and each other.

Fambly

2010-08-08T12:20:00.001-07:00

I went to a wedding reception for the daughter of a cousin yesterday. In the last few years, even as I pursue my wild & crazy dream--or perhaps because of that--I find that family is mattering more and more to me. It just feels good to sit down with kin, with those people who have the same associations you do with "Aunt Connie's place on the Cape" and all the other stories that make up a particular family's culture. Who can reminisce together about Toodles, Blitz, Gain, Creature, Sam, Jenny and all the other family pets. Who look at little Mark and baby Lillian and recall their mother at the same age. Who look at Nat and remember him as he was before his stroke, or at Jeff and give thanks that he's still here after his heart attack. Who know that Uncle Al can be relied on to explain exactly what it means to be "first cousins once removed."

There's a lot of shorthand in family conversations, a lot that never has to be explained but can be taken for granted. When I was younger, I often resented the "taken for granted" things, because sometimes they felt restrictive, but now they seem to me to form a solid foundation that makes for a lot of easiness between people. That includes Patty and Noel and Ann and Fred, who may not technically be related by blood or marriage, but three generations' worth of friendship makes them family too.

So while it may have rained and been unusually cold for August, no one cared. The warmth of being with family was all we needed.

Taking life as it comes on your own terms

2010-08-06T15:58:00.001-07:00

I went over to my friend Doug's house yesterday to practice a piece of music we're going to perform. After we'd worked out all the kinks we sat around and talked for a while. Doug & I are about the same age and have come to believe in the same things over time. We were talking about how it wasn't until we were in our 40s that we really started to follow our own interests and passions instead of doing what other people thought we should do, and why that is true of so many people (in our generation anyway).

I said that I thought that in your 20s and 30s, it's a time of having experiences, of getting out there and doing things, seeing places, getting knocked around a bit. You can't sit back and muse on what life has taught you until you've lived it for a while.

Doug's take is that we can't judge what is right for ourselves until we've tried out the alternatives. For instance, he and I agree that while we have both had times in our lives when we've been quite successful career-wise and financially, we weren't as happy then as we are now, when we're both living on a shoestring and hence have a much simpler lifestyle. (Well, if you can call a lifestyle simple that involves flying to California once a month . . .) But no one is going to believe that "money can't buy happiness" until they've found that out for themselves.

I read a while ago that people who win the lottery or get a great job or fall in love become happier for two years. And then they go back to where they were before, emotionally. Even if they still have the money or the job or are married. The same thing is true of people who suffer a life-changing illness or injury: they're more depressed for two years, but then they reach equilibrium again and are pretty much the same as before. So the trick is not to expect something external to make you happier, but to get happier in yourself. For me (and Doug) that meant counseling, but really what it meant was that we had to learn to trust that we knew better than anyone else who we are and what makes us happy, and to follow that sense no matter what other people said or thought. Both of us had to learn this lesson the hard way, by not listening to our own gut instincts but following what others thought instead. There's no teacher like a bad experience!

I was watching a DVD of one of my favorite TV series, Farscape, yesterday, and in that particular episode the crew found themselves in a situation where they didn't know what was waiting for them. "What should we do?" asked one. "What we usually do," said another, and a third person immediately said " Walk right into it! Agreed!" and hit the button to open the door. I laughed, but I also thought how wise that was. So much of life can't be predicted, but the more experiences you have, the more you can learn about your own ability to handle things, and that's where your wisdom lies and where you can put your trust: in yourself.

And that takes a few decades to learn.

TWO YEARS!

2010-07-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've just finished the summer session of my second year at Pacifica. Two years down, one year - and a little thing called a dissertation - to go!

I have one 6-8 page paper to write in the next three weeks and then I will have completed all the requirements for the MA degree. W00T!

It has been a long and grueling journey, but at the same time it seems to have passed in an eyeblink. It seems only yesterday that we all arrived on campus for our very first day. There were 20 of us then; at the beginning of our second session there were 17; at the end of the first year, only 12. But those 12 have stuck it out and all are committed to finishing the PhD.

Most of us have a good idea now what that dissertation will be on, and we're starting to get excited about writing it. In fact some of us are impatient to get going and wish we didn't have to wait. But in winter we get to start talking about how to approach the dissertation, and in spring we get to write the concept paper that has to be accepted by the faculty before we can move on to the actual writing of the dissertation, so it's not so far off really. We just have to get through Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Egyptian Mythology, Dante's Inferno, Religious Studies Approaches to Myth, and the God Complex (a class devoted to human beings' psychological need to believe in God) first. Piece of cake :)

Blooming

2010-07-19T09:58:00.001-07:00

I went to a psychic last weekend. This lady sees auras and paints yours for you, plus she sees other stuff, like health issues (the first time I saw her, she sort of squinted at me and said "so . . . you've had a hysterectomy."). I first went to her in 1993, then again in 1998. I hadn't been since then but was curious about how things might look now that I'm on this new path, so when a friend mentioned she was going to see her again I went along and got a new portrait done.

The first thing the woman said to me was "you are a late bloomer." I laughed and laughed!

And then she said "you're blooming NOW. You're finally doing what you were meant to do here."

This is what I really look like:

Muscles!

2010-07-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

So, I've been euthyroid (meaning "GOOD THYROID!") since the beginning of March, five months now, and I am getting reacquainted with a body that actually works the way it's supposed to.

One of the things that happens when you are hyperthyroid is that your muscles atrophy. All of them. Now, I am pretty diligent about working out, but for the last 10-12 years, it hasn't made much of a difference to my muscles. In fact, I've been losing muscle mass despite it.

But now that's reversing. Slowly (my bicep muscles are still about half what I remember them being like), but I can tell. It's a strange thing to get up out of a chair and realize 1. that it's easy to do and 2. that it hadn't been so easy in quite a while.

I've always been a hiker, but hikes got pretty hard for me in the last few years. I actually thought I had exercise-induced asthma for a bit, I would have such a hard time getting my breath, and my heart would pound (not surprising when your resting heart rate is between 100 and 110). I still hiked, but I was s-l-o-w. Well, that's over. The other day I got on the stair stepper at the gym out of curiosity and cranked up the elevation and went at it for 30 minutes. My heart rate went from 80 to 120 and stayed there. As for breathing: I really didn't notice it!

So now I'm walking all over the place. I've joined a walking group that does 3.5 miles in an hour every morning, and then I go out for another hour in the afternoons. Monday I got in a total of 6 miles, yesterday I did 6.5, and today I did 5.5. My legs feel great; I'm not even tired when I get done.

This is in addition to my strength-training class that I attend three times a week (which is still hard because I'm using heavier weights!). I was just told that the latest science is that the best exercise for osteoporosis is to jump up and down, so I'm thinking of adding jumprope to my routine.

this is what my office looks like at the end of paper-writing time

2010-07-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Now We're Cookin'

2010-06-28T17:12:00.001-07:00

I know a lot of good cooks, several of whom are or have been professionals. The other day it occurred to me that writing is not unlike cooking. First, you have to come up with the menu: the theme or basic idea of the piece you are going to write. Then, you have to find the right recipes to use; in my case, that means finding the right sources. Once you have the recipes, you have to go to the store and buy the ingredients. I have to read through my sources and make notes to support the points I want to make in the paper. Often, I realize I need to read another book or article, just as a cook often has to go back to the store or to a different store to find a particular ingredient.

Once you've got the recipes in front of you and the ingredients assembled, it's simply a matter of combining them in the right amounts and the proper order. Some ingredients have to be chopped fine first, just as I have to tease out the meaning of some of the quotes I intend to use. Other ingredients need to be combined and cooked together first. In the same way I often have to compare and contrast two or more of my sources. Sometimes the cook has to pick over and discard some things, as I have to edit my words.

And just as with cooking, there's the moment where it all comes together, when the batter rises and starts to look and smell like a cake or the stew stops being a hodgepodge of ingredients and becomes a recognizable, delicious dish with its own character. Just so, there is a moment when all the separate elements I've assembled for a paper suddenly lock into the right place, like a crystal matrix forming, and the paper takes shape. I love that moment. That's where the joy of writing is found.

Babies in the neighborhood

2010-06-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

It's spring - well, technically it's summer, but we had winter in spring this year and it's finally warmed up enough to warrant the title of "spring" - and in my little backwater neighborhood, there are babies all over.

I never seem to have my camera in reach when the does go through my yard with their spotted fawns. There's one big doe with two fawns and at least two more that have one each. Yesterday I watched the doe with twins as they all helped themselves to my neighbor's vegetable garden. Actually I went out and yelled and waved at them, but they just looked at me and kept on munching. The deer are so used to people here that I'm pretty sure they think we plant gardens just for them. They are also used to traffic: they all know to look both ways before crossing the street.

update: today I had the camera, and the twins came back and spent over an hour right outside my office window!

The other day there was a lot of cawing going on, and I went out to find a fledging crow on the lawn. The parents were going crazy trying to get it to fly, but it couldn't. Apparently baby birds learn to fly on the wing, as it were, but I wonder if these were first-time parents who had pushed this one out of the nest too soon. I got him onto a leaf rake and put him back up in the tree, fearing the cats and raccoons that walk through my yard every day. But he tried to fly again an hour later, and ended up on the ground again. Again, I put him back - parents madly screaming at me the entire time. The third time he flew down, I decided it was time to let nature take its course. He eventually made it, in short flights, over to the gravel road, and then hopped down the road, parents yelling all the time "no! no! fly!" Then he sat right in the middle of the intersection with the side road. We don't have a lot of traffic, but we get some, and I didn't like him sitting there looking like a rock. So I went back out again and scared him into hopping to the side of the road and then through a hole in a fence into someone else's yard. I got hit on the head a couple of times by crow wings as I did this; of course the parents thought I was going to eat the baby. As far as I could tell by the cawing, he survived the night somehow, but I don't know if he's the young crow that comes back and sits in the same tree where the nest is, or if that's a different one.

Today there was a different kind of screeching. This time it was a fledging Stellar's Jay on the lawn. This one can actually fly a bit, and when he saw me he flew up into a bush. The parents are around, swooping back and forth, trying to get him to fly farther, but he has apparently decided that was enough for now. At one point the screeching escalated, and I went out again to find two crows sitting in a nearby tree, eyeing the baby jay. I went closer and the crows flew off and everyone calmed down. The baby's still sitting in the bush thinking it over, and the parents are on the lawn eating and occasionally swooping past the bush and calling encouragement.

update: today one of the jay babies flew INTO my office window (he's okay). There are two of them.

My cherry tree is in fruit and this morning there were cedar waxwings and cowbirds in the tree. Yesterday I heard a great deal of fuss from the crows and looked out to see a raccoon in the tree. I don't think the fruit's quite ripe yet - probably the minute it is, I'll know by the traffic.

What's Your Default Setting?

2010-06-20T20:07:00.001-07:00

The other day a friend of a friend made a remark about archetypes that was erroneous (he thought they are the same thing as stereotypes), and I in my wisdom corrected him. This did not go over well; he reacted by insulting all Jungians in general and me and my friend in particular, at length. I shut up and backed out of the discussion entirely, but my friend called him on his behavior, and he excused himself by saying he reacts badly to "authority."

My friend later apologized to me on his behalf and said he is really a sweetheart, just insecure. But we are talking about a 40-year-old man, not a teenager. Seems to me that by 40, one ought to be able to handle something this small without throwing a tantrum.

Lately I've become aware of what I call people's "go-to" or default settings. When something happens that is upsetting, what's your first reaction? Where do you go? Usually I go to "what did I do wrong?" Most people I run into seem to go right into attack mode. Sometimes I go there too, especially if it's someone who finds fault with me a lot.

Occasionally though I run into someone who doesn't do either of those things. Who doesn't take it personally at all, but just sort of raises their eyebrows at the person and then gets on with their life. I envy that. I'm trying for that.

I was with friends once when the wife - a journalist - had been in the other room on the phone, then came bouncing into the room and announced with a big smile that she had just been on the phone talking with a really interesting group of people who were sending food to some distressed place in Africa. Her husband looked up and snapped "that's the stupidest thing I ever heard." I blinked and cringed, waiting for the reaction. If it had been me, I would have been crushed; most other people would have probably blown up. But this woman looked at him, shrugged, said "boy, are you in a bad mood," and then walked right back out of the room.

I was extremely uncomfortable. I hate being around couples when they are fighting. (Especially if they try to enlist me in the fight.) Fortunately, he said nothing. We could hear her talking on the phone again. A few minutes later, she walked back into the room, and with a big smile said "I've just been talking to the most interesting man who is a photographer. He's taking pictures of food and sending it to Africa."

I blinked and so did her husband. There was a beat, and then he burst out laughing. She had taken his "that's stupid" remark and come right back with the stupidest thing she could think of. Instead of arguing with him, she had done what Jungians call "reflecting" - she had managed to hold up a kind of mirror to him of his own behavior by magnifying it until he couldn't help but see it. And she did it without taking on responsibility for his own bad mood or without attacking him in return.

That was over 20 years ago. And yes, my friends are still married. Quite happily.

Like I said, I'm still trying to get to the place where I can do the same thing. Not there yet, but at least this time I didn't take it personally or get defensive, so I figure I've made some progress.

Respecting Imagination

2010-06-17T13:53:00.001-07:00

We had a guest speaker at school this week who had studied directly with Joseph Campbell. From all accounts Campbell was an amazing person to be around; everyone I've met who got to spend any time with him lights up like a candle when he is mentioned. And tells stories about him. Campbell was a storyteller, but he also generated stories; just being around him usually meant an unforgettable experience. Here's one that our guest told us about.

He and Campbell were going to some event in San Francisco, and were looking for parking. Finally they spotted an empty space on the street, drove up to it, and parked. As they got out of the car, they noticed a small boy standing by the curb.

"You can't park here," he informed them.

"Why not?" asked Campbell.

"Because I'm a fire hydrant," replied the child.

Campbell looked at him, then at his friend, and said "get in the car." They got in and drove away.

He could have pulled rank on the kid, said our speaker, as adults so often do. Or just ignored him. But Campbell valued the imagination above everything, and when he came up against it in life, he respected it.

(Although a friend of mine wonders why he didn't say "well, I'm a dog and . . .")

Vampires and introverts

2010-06-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I need to write, oh, four more papers in the next month, I've been burning my way through the Southern Vampire Mysteries in the evenings. These are the books by Charlaine Harris that the TV series "True Blood" is based on, although the TV series is going in different directions from the books some of the time. The books have plenty of gore and dead bodies, but they are hilarious. The heroine, Sookie, has a wonderful wry wit that makes me laugh out loud repeatedly. Oh, and I don't usually care for explicit sex scenes in books, as they are usually way too clinical, but Harris writes really great ones. I think it's because you always believe that the two people involved do really, really like each other in every way. That's sexy. In most books these days it seems like people have sex who don't actually like each other; it's more like a fight than lovemaking, and what is the appeal of that?

Sookie is a telepath. She struggles to keep from hearing other people's thoughts, because frankly, most of the time, most people's thoughts aren't anything you really want to hear. At best, they're boring and banal; at worst, judgmental or offensive. But this isn't easy for her to do. She tends to spend a lot of time by herself, and she avoids certain people as much as she can. So of course most of the town thinks she's weird or there's something wrong with her.

Then vampires show up. The premise of Harris's books is that the Japanese have invented a synthetic blood that works just like real blood. And because of this, vampires can "come out of the coffin" and live openly, because as long as they have True Blood to drink, they don't need to prey on people. Of course, all the vampires are gorgeous and stylish and sexy and just plain cool, as vampires have always been in our imaginations.

The books have a lot to say about tolerance and lack of same, although Harris never preaches. It's wonderful that she sets them in a backwoods hamlet in the Deep South, because I'm betting most people would think that's the last place that differences would be tolerated. But the people of Bon Temps, Louisiana, are individuals, and yes, some of them are bigots. And some are not, and most of them struggle somewhere along in the middle and then, once they actually get to know a vampire who's a pretty nice guy (and fought alongside their ancestors in the Civil War - or WAS their ancestor), they find out they can in fact tolerate him pretty well.

But for me the books are about being introverted. Sookie is attracted to vampires because she can't hear their thoughts. Being around them is a wonderfully restful experience. She doesn't have to make an effort all the time to screen her mind; she doesn't have to worry about inadvertently hearing something she'd really rather not know. She can relax and be herself.

If you're introverted, it's often stressful to be around other people. So many people seem to need to say whatever is on their minds, and most of the time, it's really not anything you want to hear. And they never ask if it's okay if they talk. They just launch into whatever, as if they have a perfect right to expect that others want to listen to them, even total strangers. There's no way to screen them out!

But there are people who are like Sookie's vampires, for me. People that I can be around and not get exhausted or drained, which is ironic. Aren't vampires the ones who suck you dry? But in Sookie's world, the vampires give as much as they take. When Sookie is wounded, her vampire friends bite themselves so she can have some of their blood, which is marvelously healing.

And that's what my "restful" friends do. They give. Not only are they able to be silent, not only do they check with me if I'm in a place where I have the time and energy to listen to them, but they listen to me with interest.

So today I am thinking about the people in my life with whom I never feel like an introvert, never feel like a weirdo, but instead can relax with and be myself. I think you know who you are. To me you are gorgeous and stylish and sexy and oh, so very cool.

Eye of the beholder

2010-06-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

A while ago, some Muslim cleric came out and said that scantily-clad women cause earthquakes. A student at Purdue who blogs about science said "well, let's run an experiment and see if that's true!" and created Boobquake, a day on which women were to dress revealingly, to see if there were more earthquakes or more severe earthquakes that day.

Stephen Colbert reported on what actually happened.

As a result I started following this young woman's blog. But today she lost me; she came out and said that if you can't prove it scientifically, it's not real. Specifically, she said there is no such thing as intuition.

I was reminded of a book I recently read by someone who has Asperger's Syndrome. At one point he says that there is in fact no such thing as empathy, and all those people who say there is, are lying. At first I kind of snorted, but then I felt sorry for the guy. I thought, "how could you ever convince a deaf person that there is such a thing as music? How could you scientifically prove a sunset to someone who is blind? This guy will never know empathy, and there is no argument that can convince a person that something is real that they can never experience."

Maybe this student has Asperger's too, I don't know. But clearly she has never experienced a moment of intuition - or if she has, she has squashed it. When I was her age I refused to pay attention to my gut feelings too. Some major slaps to the head resulted, and finally I got the message that my gut instincts are always right. But it took me a while.

According to the Meyers-Briggs, I'm more "intuitive" than "sensing" (more likely to act from a hunch than grounded in the physical senses) and more "feeling" than "thinking" (meaning I make decisions based on values rather than logic). But I was not raised that way. I was raised to be more sensing and thinking. From an early age I was taken out into nature to hike and ski and camp out. When you are out in nature, you use your senses a lot more. We spent a lot of time observing what was around us. Plus, my dad's way of helping me with my homework was to ask me questions that guided me to think my way through the problem. I think now that this upbringing has given me a great advantage. I actually come out fairly close to center on the test on both these axes, and I do very well at scholarly pursuits that require empirical observation and linear thinking.

By the same token, althoughh I'm introverted, I figured out in college that most people were never going to understand that about me, and if I didn't want to go through life having people think I was stuck up and aloof, I was jolly well going to have to make some kind of effort. I actually made myself make small talk with strangers in grocery lines and elevators. I hated it - I still hate making small talk with strangers - but I can do it.

Depth psychologists think that the main thing we need to accomplish during life is to learn how to use all the functions, not just the ones we're naturally inclined to. I was lucky to be raised from the start to use my weaker functions. When those failed me it was not hard for me to switch over to the other functions. Many crises people get into at midlife or after are because they aren't able to do that.

For example, I know a "thinking" person who is severely depressed and anxious right now because of things going on with other people in his family. It's clear to those around him that this is a person who does not know how to deal with his feelings, which are hammering him hard. He doesn't even know what he is feeling, and he gets angry at his wife when she tries to put it into words for him. Instead he is running around trying to do something, find the right answer, the logical answer. He thinks if he can get enough facts together, he will be able to control his sister's cancer and his son's mental issues. But what he can't do is sit down with either of them and just be with them. He can't even tell them that he loves them.

On the other side of the scale, I know an extremely intuitive and feeling person who is having a very hard time writing a book. She has something to say, but she doesn't have any discipline; she can't whip herself to go into that little room and shut the door and turn off the phone and tell everyone else to stay away while she focuses on her writing. She's been saying that she's writing a book for several years now, but as far as I know, she hasn't gotten a single chapter written. She doesn't know how to think her way through the situation.

I hope someday that our education system includes an assessment of what people's strong and weak functions are, and a way of helping people strengthen that part of them that isn't their primary go-to way of dealing with the world. Because sooner or later, we all need all those abilities. Whether we believe in them or not.

Meanwhile, I have to go thank my dad :)

Good news . . . at a price

2010-06-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

I had to have another thyroid biopsy last week, as the first one was "inconclusive." No wonder, as the first radiologist only stuck me once (which I thought was plenty, believe me, at the time). This time I went to a different guy who not only saw another nodule the first two never saw, but stuck me NINE times. Nine needles into the throat. And I am here to tell you two things: 1. Xanax doesn't do a damn thing for me and 2. it doesn't matter how far in they go with the lidocaine, the biopsy needle goes farther. In other words: not fun.

The actual chance that the nodules were cancerous was miniscule. And after the first failed biopsy, at first my doc said "well, we'll just watch it to make sure it doesn't grow." But she changed her mind later. And I do have to say, getting the phone call today that the nodules are in fact benign was a load off my mind.

But I look like a vampire got me. This was right after the biopsy.
Over the next couple of days the bruising got much worse. Fortunately I have a pretty choker that covers the area nicely.

Legacy

2010-05-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

It's the time of year for weddings and wedding anniversaries. Yesterday I read a post on Facebook by a friend reminiscing about meeting a strawberry blonde in the rain 29 years ago, and managing to hold off on marrying her for six whole weeks before embarking on a long and happy partnership. Together they created a farm where they still live and had children and now grandchildren.

I admit, I read this with a pang of jealousy. I wanted that. It didn't happen.

The other day someone remarked that they thought I was going to grad school "just for personal reasons." I'm not sure what they meant, but it occurred to me yesterday that I really don't have anything to point to in the way of a legacy. I didn't have kids, I can't point to a long and successful marriage (and believe me, those of you in one, I am well aware of just how much work that takes and what an achievement it represents), I haven't created anything of lasting value. Yes, there are books out there with my name on them as editor or contributor, but they're factual books and already out of date. Yes, I built a house once, but it's no longer in the family. I've created gardens everywhere I've lived, but I doubt there will be tours.

I was raised to practice what they call "no-trace camping." You come into a place, set up camp, live there for however many days you want, but when you leave, you leave no trace that you were ever there. Not a scrap of paper, no visible signs of a campfire. No one coming there after you would ever know you'd even been there.

In a way it feels like that's how I have lived my life.

I chose this particular graduate school program because it's the one area where I feel I might have something original and new to say, something that others might get something from and build upon. I realized yesterday that it's the only way I can think of to leave something behind me when I go. Is that a "personal reason"? I don't know. All I know is that I need to believe that I still could create something that will live on after me.

Remedial Mythology

2010-05-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I'm hanging out in the procedure room at the radiology center waiting for the doctor to come and stick needles in my throat for another thyroid biopsy. The last biopsy, they didn't get enough cells for the pathologists to look at. So this time I went to another place where they actually have a pathology tech in the room who prepares the samples right then and there and tells the doc if there's enough. So he's there, and I'm there, and we're waiting, so we start talking. Eventually it comes out that I'm studying mythology. He gets all excited and says "can I ask you to explain something that has always bothered me?"

"Sure!" I say, mentally preening a bit as I prepare to share some of the extensive and expensive wisdom I've acquired in the last two years with another myth enthusiast.

And he asks, "in Greek and Roman mythology, how come sometimes they say 'Athena,' and sometimes they say 'Minerva'?"

Ulp. I explain that the Romans called the Greek gods by different names, and manage to avoid my once-father-in-law's favorite joke about how those foreigners have a different word for everything.

Fortunately the doc showed up right then.

Paradigm Shift

2010-05-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back from another session of school (only two more and I'll have completed two years!). This session rocked, rocked, rocked. Not only were all my classes great, but we got to sit in on a dissertation defense by Nan Savage on Toni Wolff, one of the several women in Jung's life who contributed important ideas to his work without getting full credit for them - not, I suspect, because Jung wanted to claim all the credit for himself, but because their ideas had to do with the feminine psyche as opposed to the masculine psyche, and Jung's "inner ear" wasn't attuned to the importance of what they were saying. He noted their comments down but didn't explore them as they didn't resonate with him as a male. But there are quite a few of us women students now, like Nan, who are saying that it's time for archetypal psychology as a field to look more deeply into the work of Toni Wolff and Marie-Louise von Franz and Emma Jung. At least Sabina Spielrein is getting attention: there's a film about her coming out soon.

Because it's time. One of the things we talked about in one class is paradigm shifts, shifts in the collective consciousness. Our professor pointed out that nothing ever changes in the culture until the majority of the people are already thinking that way. And once they are, nothing can stop the change. But in every such shift, there are people who are ahead of the curve and people who are behind it. And right there is your definition of extremists.

Our professor mentioned the very same thing I've noticed and mentioned before here: that the abortion debate is actually about two different things, not two opposing views. The people who are anti-abortion are talking about souls and God. They represent a mindset that says religious doctrine should guide individual action. The people who are pro-choice are talking about a woman's right to control what happens to her body. They represent the emerging mindset that says people should think for themselves. This particular shift in consciousness has been going on for a good long time, since the 1600s at least. At first people just tried to rein in the Church's control wtih the Reformation; then the Enlightenment came along and science began to erode the very underpinnings of Church doctrine.

At the same time people were beginning to reject the idea that some people have an inherent or God-given right to control other people's actions. By the late 1700s revolutions and reform movements had begun that either toppled or curtailed the power of kings and "nobility" and started to glorify the idea of "the people" as the real heart of the nation - an idea that still has a lot of energy.

Of course there have been lots of pendulum swings and contradictory behaviors throughout this period, as there always are during transitions. The very people in our country who argue most vehemently for religious control tend to fear governmental control replacing it, and vice versa. So you get conservatives trying to control what an individual can do with her body, but rejecting the idea of government control over what an individual person can do with their land (e.g., pollute it), and the liberals arguing for just the opposite. Libertarians may be the leading edge here with their insistance that the individual has the right to do whatever he damn well feels like.

But there are other shifts going on. For millenia, there has been a movement away from an emotional and physical connection to the world around us to a disconnected intellectual analysis of that world instead. Now there are signs that that particular pendulum has started to swing back the other way. And this too is fueling some of the debate over the environment, between those who feel no connection to the earth other than as something to be used, and those who feel the earth itself is a living entity that we can interact with. The movie "Avatar" puts its finger right on that particular debate's pulse, which is why people either love or hate it.

And because emotional connection rather than intellectual distance is regaining importance for people, women are also gaining a stronger position in the culture. Because women in the aggregate represent that capacity for feeling and relationship (although individual men and women can and do fall anywhere along the continuum from purely intellectual to purely feeling). As we begin to value that capacity more, we value women more. As the Church that demonized women and threw away the Goddess loses power, we value women more. As the political view that certain groups of people have the right to control other groups of people loses power, we value women more.

Many have pointed out that the Tea Party's rage is, at essence, because they are the very people who are losing power, the very ones who are being left behind. But they're the extreme edge. My own field of archetypal psychology which sees everyone as individual, is to my mind the leading "feeling" edge of psychology, where the "scientific" clinical psychologists who follow the medical model of diagnose-and-treat-by protocol are the trailing edge. Yet the leading thinker after Jung for many decades now has been James Hillman, who is as intellectual as you can get. Which is understandable. Archetypal psychology needed a warrior who could battle the intellects of mainstream psychology in their own arena, because it was the arena.

But that's changing. Hillman's protege Thomas Moore, who is a wonderfully compassionate man, feels no need to challenge the old guard in his books like Hillman does. Instead he writes directly for "the people" - and his books are best-sellers. (Care of the Soul is the most famous and well worth a read. It is the book that helped me leave my bad marriage.)

Women, as I noted at the beginning, have been part of the archetypal psychology movement since its early days. Yet their wisdom has not yet been fully brought out and integrated, much less built upon. It is time, and it is my generation of archetypal psychologists that will do that.

Euthyroid!

2010-05-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Time for a thyroid update, and the news is all good. The methimazole started working, as promised, after four months. So the doc cut my dose in half. A month later she cut it in half again, and a month later she took me off it entirely. I've now gone almost two months without it, and my labs are completely normal, my pulse is 80, I sleep like a rock, and I feel great.

I'm also rediscovering what it's like to have a body that works correctly. I was working out all the time I was hyperthyroid, to no effect. Apparently it makes your muscles atrophy (and your bone density go down). But once the thyroid started working right, I noticed that I was gaining strength. Working out became a lot more fun - and as a result, I started working out more.

This last week I noticed something new. We do a fair amount of stretching in the class I go to 3-4 times a week. This week I noticed that my muscles seem to have a lot more "give" in them: I can stretch, then relax a bit, then stretch again and my muscles actually will relax and let me go an inch or two more into the stretch. It doesn't hurt, it feels lovely.

And what do you know, I've lost 10 pounds and two inches off the tuchas. I've done a fair amount of beating myself up for my weight the last 15 years, but now I'm thinking it was not my fault. I actually did have a "glandular" problem! That feels good too.

what's your degree in?

2010-05-06T07:58:00.001-07:00

I have to take a deep breath before I answer this question. My degree will be in "Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis." Which usually earns me a blank look, so then I have to explain.

I downloaded Zotero yesterday. This is a program that helps people manage the citations for their papers. A big deal for a dissertation that could have hundreds of citations! And also: Capricorn heaven. (Want to know what to get a Capricorn for her birthday? Something that organizes things in a tidy and yet attractive way. I'm jonesing for a really nice jewelry box here . . .)

Anyway, they ask you to fill out your profile, including your major. But they have a drop-down list you have to choose from, and none of those, oddly enough, were "Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis." Or even "Mythology." No "Depth" or "Archetypal" Psychology, just - "Psychology."

But you could choose more than one. So here's what I chose from the list to represent what I am studying:

•Classics and Classical Studies
•Film Studies
•History of Science and Medicine
•Literature
•Philosophy
•Religion
•Cultural Studies and Ethnic Studies
•Psychology
•Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
•Neuroscience

That covers it, more or less.

Graduate School

2010-05-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to reorganize all my school books by topic. Halfway through, the bookshelves collapsed.

I put this picture up on Facebook; one of my sister students commented that it looked like a metaphor for what's happening to our brains.

I have to agree. It's pretty overloaded in there these days.

The Chicken Flock Story

2010-05-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

I went for a hike with my siblings & one nephew yesterday. As we paused to admire a waterfall, my sister mentioned how, in our family, we call them "water fallings" because that's what I called them as a child. This prompted a discussion of family jargon. Every distinct culture - including families, workplaces, and academic disciplines - has its own jargon, its own set of idioms and terms that only those within the culture understand.

Often this jargon is shorthand for a story or shared event or circumstance. For instance, in my family "nothing with dop sauce" literally means vanilla ice cream with Hersey's chocolate sauce. The story behind it is that when we would ask our mother "what's for dessert?" and she answered "nothing," it meant she hadn't made a dessert. But there was always vanilla ice cream - actually, Lucerne vanilla ice milk, because my dad made us go low-fat long before anyone else - in the freezer. Hence "nothing" came to mean "vanilla ice cream." "Dop sauce" is just one of those childish pronunciations, like "hangaber" for hamburger or "pasketti" for spaghetti, that stick in the family.

For over 30 years I've been privileged to be part of an informal group of women who go away for a long weekend together every year. We have developed our own culture (such as the Chocolate Shrine we build each time) and jargon over these decades. Some of the jargon is easily explained; for instance, once time we hiked to a beautiful spot and Joy said "We should eat something so we'll remember this place!" I don't know how many actually remember the place, but we remember that phrase in connection with Joy (and remind her of it every year).

Sometimes the culture requires the retelling of the entire event. For me, the most memorable event of our 30-odd years of shared adventures is the chicken flock story. It goes like this:

One year we rented a vacation home on the bay side of Ocean Shores. (A/k/a "Open Sores" in my family jargon, but that's a different culture.) This bay is very shallow, and when the tide goes out, about a mile of sandy tideflats are exposed. Then when the tide comes back in, it is warmed up nicely by the sunbaked sands. So Martha and I decided to go swimming at high tide. We waded out into the water . . . and waded . . . and waded. We got about a quarter-mile from shore and were still only up to our knees in water.

At this point I stepped on a flounder. Flounder like to lie half-buried in sand. I reasoned this out later, but at the time all I knew was that I stepped on something with my bare foot, and it wiggled. This startled me and I leapt into the air and let out a little shriek. Which startled Martha and she leapt into the air as well and screamed. Which scared me even more, and I screamed, and she screamed again, and then the two of us panicked and tried to run back to shore.

Have you ever tried running through knee-deep water? It really can't be done. Soon enough we were gasping for breath. And then we started laughing. Meanwhile our friends are watching from the porch of the house, totally perplexed and not sure whether to come help us or not.

When we finally struggled back to the house and explained, Martha took most of the blame for our mutual panic on herself, admitting "I would make a great member of a chicken flock."

Years later, I found the perfect birthday card for Martha. On the cover was a photograph of a chicken wearing a snorkel, flippers, and one of those child's inflatable swim rings that looks like a duck.

The inside of the card read simply "You had to be there."

Halfway through

2010-04-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

I am halfway through the academic portion of my PhD program. Six quarters down, six to go, with no breaks. One of my sister students called the program "marathon academia." And as happens in marathons, a bunch of us "hit the wall" after the last session of winter quarter. Two took leaves of absence for spring quarter and say they will rejoin us in the summer. I came very close to doing the same thing, or at least skipping one session, and I know two others thought seriously about it as well.

It's hard. We are assigned 3,000 pages of reading each quarter, but most of us read a lot more than that when we write our papers. I've read at least six extra books for one paper. And then there's all the writing, which works out to one 10-15 page paper per class, although some teachers ask for two papers, one short and one longer. That's at least 120 pages of writing a year. No doubt getting us ready for the two years we will spend churning out a 250-page dissertation. We also have presentations in many of our classes. This year we have three extra papers to write, but fortunately they are only 4-5 pages.

I thought I'd commemorate the halfway point by listing the titles of the papers and presentations I've written so far:
Stalking the Amputated Hands (paper and presentation) for Dreams, Visions, Myths
Abducted by Pirates–Demeter and the Animus (paper) for Greek & Roman Myth I
Killing the Past: Arjuna at Kurukshetra (presentation) for Hindu Traditions
The Ethical Man: Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata (paper) for Hindu Traditions
The Tree with Lights: A Bridge for Ritual, Revelation, and Aesthetic Arrest (paper) for Joseph Campbell: Metaphor, Myth and Culture
Seeing with Both Eyes: Keeping the Mundus Imaginalis Alive in the Study of Myth (paper) for Joseph Campbell: Metaphor, Myth, and Culture
The Collective Need for Outlaws: Echoes of Apocalypse and The Brothers Karamazov in Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” (paper) for Approaches to the Study of Myth
Olympic Athletes: Bearers of the Bright Shadow (presentation) for Ritual
Recovery from Childhood Trauma: Soul Retrieval Ritual with a Modern Shaman (paper) for Ritual
You Can’t Treat Her like Other Women: Anima and Animus in "The Philadelphia Story" (paper) for Jungian Depth Psychology
Gawain, the Ladies’ Knight (paper) for European Sacred Traditions
Hermeneutics (presentation) for Myth and Philosophy
The Trouble with the Truth (paper) for Myth and Philosophy
Beware of Juno: Flight, Transformation, and Sexuality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (paper) for Greek & Roman Myth II
This Rough Magic I Here Abjure: Why Prospero Broke His Staff (paper) for Alchemy and the Hermetic Tradition
The Power of Ancestors: Encounter with a Family Loa (presentation) for African & African Diaspora Traditions
The Loa Mounts: Physical, Religious, Cultural, and Psychological Aspects of Possession (paper) for African & African Diaspora Traditions
The Buddha: The First Neuroscientist? (presentation) for Buddhist Traditions
Buddhism and the Causes of War (paper) for Buddhist Traditions
Death and the Individual’s Place in the Cosmos: Iroquois Origin Myths vs. Genesis (paper) for Native Mythologies of North America
Relinquishing Grief: Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes in “Truly Madly Deeply” (paper) for Mythic Motifs in Cinema

Sixteen papers and six presentations. No wonder we're tired!

By the way, if you want to read any of these, just ask; I'm happy to share.

the Myers-Briggs test explained

2010-04-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

The Myers-Briggs test was developed by a woman (Katherine Briggs) and her daughter (Isabel Briggs Myers) during World War II to help women entering the workforce pick the type of work they were most suited for by personality. It is based on Carl Jung's Psychological Types published in 1921. It remains one of the most reliable and useful tests of personality around. Unlike most psychological tests, it does not identify pathology; it is used primarily as a tool to help groups of people understand their different approaches and needs so that they can work together.

The test identifies 16 different types of people, based on four separate measures: whether they are Introverted or Extraverted, Sensing or iNtuitive, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceptive. The results are expressed as a group of letters. For instance, I am an INFJ: introverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging. (The least common type btw; we represent only 1.5% of the population.)

The first letter refers not to how shy or friendly you may be, but to how you recharge energy. Introverts may be as social as anyone, but they need quiet or alone time to recharge, whereas extraverts get their energy refilled by being around other people. Introverts usually find a large, noisy party becomes wearisome after a while and will escape to the library or TV room, while an extravert may become restless and bored if left alone and at least pick up the phone to call someone.

Sensing means that the person perceives the world primarily through their five senses. If it can't be felt, smelled, heard, tasted, or seen - or measured by a machine - it's not real. Intuitive types tend to trust hunches or gut feelings; a sensing type never does. Sensing types look for facts; intuitives look for patterns.

I struggled with the difference between thinking and feeling for a long time. How does feeling differ from intuition? But I finally figured out that this category refers to how one assigns value to something. A thinking type assigns value or priorities intellectually and logically, like with a "pros and cons" chart. A feeling type is more likely to assign value based on emotion: what he or she likes. You'd think most intuitives would also be feeling types, but that's not true, as we will see.

The final category wasn't in Jung's original book; Briggs and Myers added it. A perceptive person is open to everything while a judging person tends to see only what they are looking for. Perceptives like to keep their options open while judging types like to get things settled and over.

There are plenty of web sites out there that will allow you to take the test and read about your particular configuration. I won't duplicate that here. Instead I will tell the story of what happened when the 20 people who worked with me in the writing department of a publishing company were given the test and then had a workshop on it. In the workshop, the facilitator had us divide into four groups: SPs, SJs, NTs, and NFs. He then asked each of the groups to answer two questions: How do you deal with change, and what do you do when you get lost? The answers explain more about the differences between types than anything I've read on the subject.

We only had one SP in our group, the librarian. SPs tend to be loners and free spirits; they like to be left alone to figure something out until they completely understand it. So they pick work that is concrete but allows them autonomy. She said that change was part of life and fun, and that getting lost was too.

The next group up was the SJs. All of these people had been scientists of some kind before coming to write for the company. They said that they greeted change "with suspicion and sabotage." As for getting lost, they made sure it never happened, because they had their maps from the AAA and their GPS and they double-checked everything and getting lost was not an option!

The NTs were next. Most of these people had been teachers before, and they outlined their answers for us on a blackboard and took us through the logic of it. They would change, they said, if shown a good reason for it. As for getting lost, they reasoned that before one gets lost, there is a place where one was NOT lost, so all you have to do is back up to that point and start again. (Here you see the combination of logic and gut feeling of the NT. They are good teachers because they can connect emotionally with students, but then present facts to them logically and clearly.)

The NFs were last because, the facilitator said, we talk more than the others and if we went first the workshop would drag on too long. But that didn't actually happen. Like the SP, we said that change was part of life and might represent an opportunity, so why not? But when it came to the bit about getting lost, we needed clarification: did he mean physically lost, or just kind of emotionally at sea? At this point the room burst out laughing and we lost our audience.

But that brought out the key difference, for me, between the types. It seems to me that the real difference is at what level the person is most engaged with life and things other people. An SP can delve very deeply into one thing at a time until she or he knows how it works, but in general the SP likes to keep a distance and doesn't make judgments. An SJ takes life much more seriously, but only that part of life that is evident to the senses and useful (classic scientist thinking). An NT goes deeper and recognizes the value of emotion for helping us make decisions. But the NF - there's just no bottom to the world for an NF. Everything is symbolic of something else, a metaphor, a poem that can be studied forever from a million angles and still something will remain forever out of reach.

NFs tend to understand the other points of view, if not share them, but sadly, this is usually not reciprocated. Most SJs find us exasperating at best and loonies at worst. NTs wish we could be a little more logical sometimes. SJs and NTs respect each other, although SJs sometimes find NTs too emotional while NTs can think that SJs lack perspective. SPs don't judge anyone, just take them as they are.

I worked in the SJ and NT worlds for most of my life, and I was a round peg in a square grid there. In the humanities I'm finally where I fit, and oh, what a relief it is!

for all those who wonder why I am getting a PhD

2010-04-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

Ithaca

C.P. Cavafy

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
�
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber, and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
�
Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
�
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
�
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean.

Hospitality and good conversation

2010-04-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to see a friend. She welcomed me into her home, sat me down at the table, and spread a variety of foods before me. Then she asked me what was going on in my life. We talked for several hours. At first it was all news - what happened at school, what's going on with my mom, what her kids are up to. She showed me the plans for the house she and her husband will be building soon. We took a walk to see the spring blooms, and as we walked, we began to talk on a deeper level, sharing the kind of things one can share with an old friend whom one trusts utterly.

We didn't talk constantly. Especially on our walk, we noticed things around us and stopped to appreciate them - like the flicker who seemed determined to make a home in the new house on the corner and the purple blossoms of the tree in front of the purple house on the next block. Our time together was relaxed and enjoyable. We were at ease with each other.

I've just read "The Odyssey" for school, and our professor pointed out that one of the main themes of the work is hospitality. Most of the time when Odysseus or Telemachos or Pallas Athene enters a home, they are welcomed in, invited to wash, seated in a comfortable chair, fed, perhaps invited to spend the night. After they are sure that all their guest's needs have been met, the hosts sit down, pull their chairs closer, and ask the guest to speak. "Tell us your story, stranger. Who are you, and how did you come here? What news do you bring us? What can we do for you?" Sometimes, however, they don't start right in with questions. Instead, they tell stories that are amusing or full of news. They charm the guest, make him or her feel at ease, and wait for the right time to ask why they have come.

When this does not happen, when the people are hostile or rude to the stranger, disaster inevitably finds them. The Greeks had a tradition that the guest may be a god in mortal disguise, so better be nice to them!

It works both ways. At the beginning of his trip home from Troy, Odysseus is a thug. When he and his men need supplies, they go into a village and take it. But after he gets punished repeatedly by the gods, he starts to learn better manners. Near the end of his journey, he is shipwrecked once again and ends up alone on a beach with nothing, not even clothing. He crawls under a tree and covers himself with leaves to sleep. He is awakened in the morning when a ball hits him. He hears the sound of girls' voices and looks out to see the local princess and her attendants playing. He recognizes that she's his key to get to the local king and enlist his help. But he can't just go barging out, naked, and demand that she help him - the girls will only scream and run away, and probably send soldiers back. He has to get the princess to want to help him. So he finds a suitable leafy branch to hide his nudity, and calls to her from a distance. Once she sees him, he compliments her, telling her he thought she was Artemis at first, she is so beautiful and so athletic. (This is important because no one ever has sex with Artemis, who is eternally virgin, so he's letting her know he has no sexual intent.) Then he tells her his situation, that he's been shipwrecked and has nothing and needs her father's help. She pities him and gives him a robe to wear, then tells him how to get to her father's palace and to approach her mother first. Odysseus gets home at long last through the help he receives at the palace, which he gets through being respectful, not demanding it or taking it as his right. He has to be hospitable to the people he needs to be hospitable to him. He needs to put them at ease.

There are people - and I seem to know quite a few - who immediately start talking every time they see me. There's no warm-up to this, barely even a greeting. If they bother to ask me about myself, I only get one sentence out before they start in with what it is they want to say. I am not made welcome, nor do these people check that I am ready to listen. Nor do they give me any opportunity to respond to them. It is not a conversation. I am not at ease; in fact, I am uncomfortable. Most of the time I want to get away from them as fast as I can.

I know plenty of people who can talk your ear off, but many of them I can listen to forever. Part of it is that what they have to say is funny or interesting. But a big part of it is that they first put me at ease. I enjoy listening to them.

The people I want to run away from don't welcome me in and set the table. They go on the rampage as soon as we meet. Some even seem to lie in wait for me, just ready to pounce the moment they see me. There's a frantic neediness in their communication, as if they've been storing it up for a long time and are seizing the opportunity while they can. I get the feeling they think that if they don't talk to me now, there will never be another chance.

Hospitality is essential to good communication. And it is a two-way street. Before I can expect you to listen to me, I have to make sure that you are in a place where you can and want to listen. I do that by treating you respectfully and making sure your needs are met. And I wait for the right time. When people do that with me, I am ready to listen when they want to talk. When they ambush me, not so much.

I like blogging because it's entirely your choice to read this or not, and you can do it at the time that works best for you, and you can respond or not when and as you feel moved to do so. But when we meet face to face, I prefer a good conversation around the table, with good things to eat, a nice bottle of wine, and everyone at their ease.

Dreams

2010-04-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Being the good little archetypal psychologist that I am, of course I believe that dreams are important; although a lot of them are simply the brain muttering to itself about all the various inputs it has received recently, some of them are messages from the deeper levels of the psyche. And you know which ones. They have a quality to them that we call "numinous" - they are powerful and ring like a bell.

I had a numinous dream last night. It sucked.

I dreamt I was at school and there was some kind of ceremony we were all attending. I arrived a bit late and there weren't many seats left, but I found an empty one and sat down. And then looked to my right to see that my ex-husband and his new wife were sitting next to me. I've never met her, but in my dream she was six feet tall, blonde, very well-kept, and gorgeous.

I recognize that person. She's not my wasband's actual wife, but she exists all right. I have a distant cousin who looks like that. She represents to me the societal ideal woman. To be successful, that inner voice of our culture insists, is to be tall, thin, wealthy, married with children, living in a huge house, and above all, BLONDE.

And in the dream I am really fat. Much more so than I am in real life. And I'm sitting there with, for some reason, my lap full of stuffed toys, like a child. So there I am, all wrong, not just physically too short and too fat and unkempt but also emotionally stunted, childish . . . a failure. A failure in front of the very people I would like most to impress.

I woke up feeling really depressed.

But you know, this is how it works. There's stuff inside I would like to keep down, not admit to. Fears and shame and, worse of all, despair. This is the shadow. We all spend most of our lives running from the shadow. Well, you can see why. Who wants to turn and look at that ugliness? Who wants to admit it's there? I don't.

But I can't run from it, because it's part of me. It's like trying to run from your own back. We can't see our own backs, except in the mirror. Dreams are a mirror that help us see our shadows. This isn't a rational process, because the psyche is not rational. The only part of us that is "rational" is the very late addition of the frontal lobes, and we only use those about 5 percent of the time, and as I've metioned before, we don't actually see things as they are but as we expect them to be. The rational mind puts filters on how we see, colors our view. The unconscious psyche is worse. It shows us things reflected in funhouse mirrors, distorted almost out of recognition. Which makes the shadow we fear and run from SOOOO much worse than the reality. I'm not that fat. I'm not a failure. I'm not pathetic. But I fear these things. So much so that my unconscious makes them bigger problems than they are.

I know why I had this dream. My 40th high school reunion is coming up. What I wish for is to walk in to that reunion looking fantastic and slim in my PhD robes with my bestselling book in one hand and my incredibly sexy guy holding my hand. The dream showed me what I fear will happen instead.

I didn't go to my last reunion for these very reasons, that I was ashamed of appearing like a failure before people who, to be honest, mean almost nothing to me. And there's the key. I don't feel like a failure around the people who DO mean something to me. So why do I let the opinions of almost-strangers have so much more power over me? (I don't think I'm alone in this. Why do we all care so much about what people who don't know us think of us?)

When I worked a little more with the images of the dream, I came up with this: stuffed animals = comfort = comfort food I stuff myself with. (Did I mention that the unconscious loves puns?)

I think this was the real message of the dream: I'm worrying way too much about the opinions of people who don't know me or care for me, I'm letting that fear have too large a place in my life, and it leads me to seek comfort in ways that are childish and self-defeating.

Now the rational mind can go to work. Because it's the problem-solving, action-taking part of us. Although I've actually already started taking those actions. This is how it seems to go for me: once I've changed my behavior, then the mind follows along. I've been taking VERY good care of myself recently, diet-wise and exercise-wise, plus I've been tracking down the physiological reasons behind my health issues, and the clues are all starting to point in one direction. More on that after the next round of doctor visits/tests, but we think we're on to something and that it's FIXABLE.

So there's actually hope on the horizon. And because I have hope to hold on to, I could handle a closer look at my fears. This is how the psyche works.

What is Wrong with the Democrats?

2010-04-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I usually leave politics alone, but I have to rant a little here.

I was on the elliptical climber at the gym sort-of watching Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, and she had a commentator on who said some things I completely agree with: that the Democrats have not seemed to figure out yet that they WON the last election and are instead running scared of the Republicans. WTF?

This guy said he had been going out in the Midwest and talking to farmers who were upset about the new healthcare bill, "because the Republicans have been telling them so many lies about it," but when he would explain exactly what the new bill entails, the farmers would go oh, okay, that sounds good actually, thank you.

And his question was "Why aren't the Democrats doing that?" Why aren't our senators and representatives going out to their constituents and counteracting the lies and fear being spread by Fox news and Limbaugh and Beck and that crowd? (who are surely earning a ton of bad karma for how they are misleading the people who trust them. For instance, that Obama is going to take away Medicare, which somehow they have convinced people is a private thing they somehow don't have to pay for. That's a federal program paid for by your taxes, number one, and two: no, he's not.)

Well, okay, the death threats might be playing a bit of a role. And the hysterical yelling. But still. They should be fighting this crap. Instead they are acting like it's true.

I wonder if it's because the Dems have gotten so unused to being the ones in power instead of the ones doing all the yelling about how the ones in power are misusing that power? And not just since Clinton. It seems to me that ever since Reagan and the Silent Majority, somehow this country has bought into the idea that the majority of the voters are conservative. But they're not, according to the polls. Actually, the majority are pretty much right in the middle. They're not the extremist whackos (on either side) that get the screen time.

The problem is, most Americans' political views are probably too boring for TV.

But that means they're also reasonable and can be talked with. Here's the thing that really chaps my hide: Obama put out a call to his party and to all Americans to behave differently towards each other. He's forging ahead, trying to show us all how it's done - meeting with the Republicans and treating them with respect - but are we following? Are we trying to act like that? No, we're retreating into our old patterns of slinging mudballs at each other from covered positions.

I am some disgusted with this.

There was a recent New York Times editorial that said the fuss over the healthcare bill is not about the healthcare bill. Instead, the real issue fueling the furor is that the old white guys' time is just about up, and they know it. The article says:

Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority.

What's got the Tea Party so upset, says the editorial, is that we have a black President, a Latina on the Supreme Court, a female Speaker of the House, and one of the most powerful men in the Senate is openly gay. The country is changing, and all the screaming by those who are about to lose power isn't going to change that. Yes, they're not going to go without a fight, and the more they feel their loss of power, the nastier they will get, and the more desperately they will lie and manipulate people to keep it.

But they are losing. Their time is nearly at an end, and ain't nothin' going to change that. And someday, hopefully, those people who have believed the fearmongers will figure out they've been lied to - and what will happen then to the liars?

So why are the Democrats acting like they're a real threat? Time to step up and act like wise parents when the kids throw tantrums, instead of cowering and hiding. Which means the Dems have to grow up too. It's a lot easier to sink to an opponent's level than to take responsibility and behave better. But we have a role model for how to do that in our President. Step up, Democrats. It's time.

Riding the Bicycle of Life

2010-04-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

The other day I ran across one of those "inspirational" thoughts that run around the Web. This one said something like "life is like riding a bicycle; you have to keep moving."

Last summer my neighbor taught his young daughter to ride. This is one of the major rites of passage for an American kid, I suspect: the moment when Dad lets go of his firm hold on the back of the bike and lets his child peddle on without help. Usually, after earnestly promising that he won't let go, so the kid relaxes. Like I said in my last post, usually we don't actually believe we can do something until we actually do it. Fathers all over know this and lie to their kids, to trick them into that first unassisted ride.

Once Dad lets go, that's it. You have to keep peddling, keep moving forward, or you'll fall over. Which usually hurts. But you learn from it, and get back on, and keep going. Your balance improves, you don't fall so much, and you start to get good at it. Soon you're riding all over without even thinking about how to do it. And you don't get on the bike and then just sit there.

But I'm been thinking about this, and it seems to me that too many people do figure out how to stay on the bike without moving forward or falling over. It's easy. All you need is something to prop you up, something to lean on. And there are plenty of choices out there for props. Things we're convinced we absolutely need to keep us from falling or getting hurt, but can't see are just holding us in one place.

And it struck me that sometimes, other people consent to be our props. They hold us up, thinking they are doing us a favor, keeping us from being hurt, but they are only keeping us stuck. This behavior has a name: "enabling." The addiction folks are wise to it. They counsel the loved ones of the person with the problem to let go and let him fall, because it's the only way to get him riding the bike again. They call that "tough love."

Because that's what dads do when they lie to us and pretend they're still holding on when in fact, they are watching us ride away from them. It's not easy to let go and let someone you love take such risks. You have to be tough with yourself.

Belief and Experience

2010-04-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

So I've been reading this book called Buddha's Brain, which isn't about Buddhism at all, but rather about how you can use techniques similar to the practices Buddhists follow to not only control but actually change your brain in ways that will help you stay calm and focused and actually be happier.

But maybe that is Buddhism in a nutshell. I've been studying it as well, and have come to realize that one of the major differences between the Western monotheisms and some of the Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism is not that they believe in different gods or have different beliefs about the afterlife or what we're supposed to be doing here anyway. It's a bigger difference than that.

In the Western monotheisms, belief is paramount. Although there are rituals and practices that you're supposed to follow, as far as I can tell the primary requirement for belonging to one of them is professing belief that your particular god is the only God and your religion is the only way to that God.

Buddhism has no such requirement. In fact, the Buddha said over and over, "don't mistake me or my teachings for the goal." He said things like "the finger may point at the moon, but the finger is not the moon" and "do not mistake the raft that carries you over the river for the shore." And he didn't say "let me tell you what God thinks, what God wants you to do." In fact, he said there is no god at all. Buddhists are atheists! They don't believe in God!

What is most important to them is actually following the practices that the Buddha taught. He never said "believe in me and you'll get there." Instead, he said "do what I do and you'll get there." There being awakening to the true nature of everything - yourself, the world, the cosmos. He was saying "hey, I found a way that works - try it!" So Buddhism isn't about belief at all. It's all about what you do.

I have Christian friends who tell me that Christianity is all about what you do, too. But they also say that you can't start doing the right things until you believe the right things. Because (as I understand it), it's not until you accept Jesus as your Savior that God will start guiding you in the right ways.

I don't think that's how it works at all. My very first counselor, on my very first visit with him, gave me an assignment to behave in a certain way every time a certain circumstance occurred. This was the opposite of the way I usually behaved, but because my counselor was 6'4" and twice my age and in every other way a pretty imposing guy, and because I knew I was going to have to report back to him, I did what he said. (Kinda how Weight Watchers works - if you know you're going to have to get on the scale in front of someone in a week, you skip the ice cream!) So I did it - and lo and behold, people reacted in a new way to me and I found that changing my behavior could change my life! At my next visit I blurted out "I did what you said and it worked!" And he just smiled, and taught me another new way of behaving.

He was doing what Buddhists do. Instead of professing a belief and waiting for that to change their life, they practice new skills until something shifts within them and they see the world in a new way. The more they practice, the happier they become, the less attached to their own emotions, the more able to see others in a loving way. Yes, their beliefs about the world and themselves change - but only because their experience of life changes as a result of their practice.

This is precisely what the Buddha was after. "Do these things, and you will experience what I'm talking about for yourself. Don't just 'believe' what I say, that won't change anything for you. You can see it for yourself, and here's how."

That's not religion, that's empiricism, the basis of science. It's not real unless it can be experienced, and it's not valid unless others who do the same thing have the same experience.

Too often science goes too far, though, in its refusal to even consider things that can't be experienced in a way that can be quantified. They want numbers. And they ignore those things that don't lend themselves to that particular way of validation. That's the blind spot of science.

The neurologist and neuropsychologist who wrote the book say in their introduction that "something transcendental is involved with the mind, consciousness, and the path of awakening - call it God, Spirit, Buddha-nature, the Ground, or by no name at all. Whatever it is, by definition it's beyond the physical universe. Since it cannot be proven one way or the other, it is important - and consistent with the spirit of science - to respect it as a possibility." Don't dismiss it out of hand because we haven't yet built the machine that can measure it somehow. They don't say "believe it" either, although they provide plenty of scientific explanations for how and why the practices in the book work. The point is to try the exercises. To practice, with an open mind, and see what happens.

Talking It Out

2010-03-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

On my continuing mission to integrate neuroscience, spirituality, and psychology, I've been reading Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Love, Happiness, and Wisdom. It explains how your brain works and how some of the basic practices of Buddhism can help you actually change your brain for the better.

Yesterday this bit leapt out at me:

Here's the problem: your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls, and reacts to unpleasant experiences; as we've said, it's like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. Consequently, even when positive experiences outnumber negative ones, the pile of negative implicit memories naturally grows faster. Then the background feeling of what it feels like to be you can become undeservedly glum and pessimistic.

Sure, negative experiences do have benefits: loss opens the hear, remorse provides a moral compass, anxiety alerts you to threats, and anger spotlights wrongs that should be righted. But do you really think you're not having enough negative experiences? . . .

That made me laugh! It continues:

. . . The remedy is not to suppress negative experiences; when they happen, they happen. Rather, it is to foster positive experiences - and in particular, to take them in so they become a permanent part of you.

They then provide some exercises to help you internalize and hang onto positive experiences, and say:

Positive experiences can also be used to soothe, balance, and even replace negative ones. When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other. That's one reason why talking about hard things with someone who's supportive can be so healing: painful feelings and memories get infused with the comfort, encouragement, and closeness you experience with the other person.

This struck me, because it's exactly what I do with my friends. I share my problems with them, and they listen and maybe have suggestions, and then they share theirs with me and I listen and maybe have suggestions. I feel comforted by their understanding and willingness to listen to me, and honored by their willingness to share their own issues and take my advice. We grow closer through this process. And a lot of the time, we laugh! Overall, it's a good experience for me to talk with my friends, and yes, it's healing. I move past a lot of stuff this way. And when I do make a shift, I get a lot of enthusiastic support from them which makes it easier to maintain that new awareness.

So this kind of sharing is good for me. I do feel love and happiness, and I do grow in wisdom (I think!).

But there's another kind of sharing that has the opposite effect: when someone just wants to vent bad feelings and is not interested in any suggestions, nor do they want to move beyond the situation. What happens in this case is the opposite of the model above. The person only reinforces their own negative state of mind by dwelling on the wrongs they've suffered, esepcially when it's not just the current offense that gets brought up, but all the related offenses that the person is reminded of. Instead of countering a negative feeling with a positive one, as happens when we talk to a trusted friend and feel cared for, the negative feeling is reinforced by more negative feelings. The more this happens, the more the negative emotions become deeply entrenched in that person's brain. And the more they are likely to see other events in those terms.

In Daughters of Copper Woman, Anne Cameron tells the story about a supposed women's circle that used to take place within one of the Northwest Coast tribes. An individual woman could stand up in the circle and complain about an issue two times. Each time the circle would listen and offer advice. But if she came before the circle a third time and started to complain about the same problem, without a word everyone else would stand up and move a little distance away, then sit down again, leaving her outside the circle. The message was "if you can't move on, that's your choice, stay there - but we are moving on without you."

So lately, I've just been getting up and walking away when certain people start complaining. I don't know that I'm helping them any by doing this, but at least I'm no longer reinforcing their negativity. And oh, what a relief it is not to have to sit and listen to it!

Guilt-Tripping vs, Sharing the Love

2010-03-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

This has been making the rounds on Facebook:

People need to understand that special needs children don't have an illness,they are not looking for a cure ONLY acceptance. 93% of you probably won't copy and paste this. Will you be in the 7% that will and leave it on your status for at least an hour?

Now, what is the point of couching a message in that kind of language? To me, it only undermines the validity and importance of the intended message. The first sentence is great and I entirely agree. But the way I read the second and third sentences, whoever wrote this is saying "people will not do the right thing unless they are shamed into it." Which implies a further message, which is that most people are stupid or thoughtless (or worse) and the only way to deal with them is to manipulate them into doing what you want them to do.

This is so wrong in so many ways.

I have this argument with people who feel strongly about issues all the time, and they never do seem to hear what I'm saying, but I'll keep saying it: "YELLING AT PEOPLE IS NOT THE SAME AS EDUCATING THEM." What would you do if your child's teacher yelled at them and shamed them every morning at the start of school? Would that be okay? Would you expect your children to learn well under such a teacher? I'm pretty sure most of you would say "No, I'd insist that the teacher be fired and the school district hire someone who would treat my children with respect for their abilities." Isn't that, in fact, what the person who wrote this is asking for in the case of special needs children?

One thing I know is how to train dogs. And this is what I know: a dog will learn what you want them to do a whole lot faster if you use praise and rewards instead of punishment to train them. And there are plenty of books out there saying exactly the same thing about raising children or dealing with employees. People respond a whole lot better to praise than to criticism. They tend, just like dogs, to want to please the person who praises them even more. But if all they ever get is criticism from a particular quarter, while at first they may try to "reform" and please the critical person, eventually they will become resentful. It's a short step from resentment to avoidance, covert resistance, or overt opposition. What's being accomplished then?

I get that probably the original poster has a lot of anger over how special needs kids are treated and wants to change that. But taking that anger out on everyone around them is not the way to do it. (Go see a counselor instead - people are much more willing to listen to your anger when they're paid to do it, and they might even help you get past it.)

What if instead of yelling at other people, social activists thought back to the best teacher they ever had and used that teacher's methods as a model for how to educate others about an issue? When I think back to my favorite teachers, here are some of the things I remember:
- Mrs. Paget, my fourth grade teacher, loved books and good writing. Every day she took half an hour from our class time to read to us. Her love for the books she read to us came through in her voice. No one fidgeted or talked while she read; we were all under her spell, the spell of the story. My love of reading and my desire to become a writer I owe to Mrs. Paget.
- In high school, Miss Couden loved math so much that every time she taught us a new concept, she would say enthusiastically "oh, you guys are going to like this!" At first most of us rolled our eyes and snorted derisively - who loves math? - but in time, she won us over, because she had so much fun talking about math that she made it fun for us. Even the jocks at the back of the room stopped making jokes to each other after a while. In fact, I think most of them fell in love with her, a little bit. Every Thursday she would announce that we'd done so well that week, we wouldn't have a lesson Friday; instead we'd have a party. She'd bring in cookies or cake and we'd goof off and talk for the entire class. We finished the year two chapters ahead of the other math teacher's class.
- Also in high school, Mr. Mitchell approached physics with a sense of wonder and humor. We learned about friction and intertia by playing with hockey pucks and dry ice. There's a picture in my yearbook of kids gathered around the hockey-puck table, and you'd think everyone was playing foosball or something from the interest and laughter on their faces. Mr. Mitchell is in the middle of the group and he looks like he's having more fun than anyone.

I don't remember any of these teachers ever shaming or blaming a student for not feeling the same way they did about the subject. I don't remember any of them ever publicly criticizing those who didn't do well - if there were any who didn't, the rest of us never knew it.

That's what really bothers me about that statement. I have known professors who said something like "93% of you will never get an A from me" on the first day of class. And they were right. Most of their students resented them and the class and didn't do well! But when a teacher starts out by treating students with respect, they respond.

I don't know about you, but most of the people I know are good people at heart who want to do the right thing. If I were to guess how many people I know support the idea that special needs kids are just fine as they are and don't need to be changed, I'd put the percentage pretty much exactly opposite as the statement posted on facebook. I don't know how many of them would actually post as their status a statement to that effect, nor do I care. I don't have a personal need for them to make a show of their political correctness on this issue or any other. Perhaps because I do trust them to do the right thing, when it comes to it.

Too bad the person who wrote that post doesn't.

Thyroid update

2010-03-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

Well, things continue to improve on the thyroid front. Although my endo kept decreasing my dose of methimazole, I went into a hypothyroid state, so finally she took me off the drug entirely for 10 days. Then she had me start again at a much lower dose, but I went hypothyroid again, so she threw up her hands and had me stop it entirely. We'll test my hormone levels again in a couple of weeks to see what's going on. My hope is that my thyroid has been kick-started back to normal function and this whole thing is OVER - so those of you as are praying or good-wishing types, please send some my way!

It was kind of interesting being hypothyroid. For the first time in my life I was cold most of the time, something I rarely experience. Usually I'm a furnace and run around in a t-shirt when other people are bundled up. But I was wearing my polar fleece jacket in the house with the heat turned up and sleeping in PJs (also a rarity) with a hot water bottle. Some nights I even turned the heat on in the bedroom at night. And sleeping - I just couldn't wake up in the mornings, another strangeness. Usually my eyes pop open by 7 and I'm up and doing. The worst part was that I got depressed and had no energy.

But now I feel fantastic. I'm sleeping deeply for 7-8 hours a night and waking up ready to go. I have a lot of energy and am exercising 2 hours a day. I don't feel too hot, I don't feel anxious, and my heartrate is in the 80s, where it has not been for the past decade. (I got up to 110 by the time I started treatment.) I'm not hungry all the time either like I was when I was hyperthyroid.

I've not yet told my endocrinologist, but this isn't entirely due to the methimazole. That drug just knocks back the thyroid a bit. It doesn't do anything to heal whatever caused the imbalance in the first place. So I worked with my dietician friend who also had hyperthyroidism to identify and correct nutritional imbalances. She had me collect my urine for 24 hours and sent off a sample to a lab that checked it for all kinds of stuff. They identified that I was deficient in zinc, coenzyme Q10 (an enzyme that helps your cells work better), and most of the B vitamins. The doctor's note attached to the analysis said that this is typically seen in hyperthyroidism. They also recommended plenty of probiotics, the healthy bugs that keep your innards in good order. So I added all those to my daily pill regimen some weeks ago. I'm also making a huge effort to eat a very healthy diet - lots of vegies, beans, nuts, fish, fruit, and only a little bit of whole grains, dairy, and other meat. I'm also trying to avoid sugar. I don't entirely succeed but I'm a lot better about it. I don't think it's coincidence that my need for methimazole dropped as soon as I made these nutritional changes and has kept dropping.

I went in to see my regular MD and he verified some of this stuff (he tested me his way for zinc deficiency and got the same result), so he's supportive of my new regimen. He added more vitamin D and A to the regimen because recent research is showing that most of us need a lot more of those vitamins, and also told me to take vitamin E as long as I'm taking zinc to protect my stomach. (Zinc is not something you take long-term, just as needed; over a long time it can increase the risk of cancer.)

I'll keep on eating this way. I think the thyroid was my wake-up call, as diabetes was for one family member and a massive heart attack was for another. Given those choices I'll take thyroid problems, thank you very much! Like them I know I need to make these changes permanent. But given how I feel these days, that won't be hard.