| dames rocket 8 part 1 - october 1977 | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
October 7 or 8 1977 [Jam's cousin Kadir dies and she asks me to come to the funeral.] Now I'm going to write the coldness (with its crying under) that I should be telling you. You. Not that you're wrong. Why I was also glad when I woke and began to remember that we may be disconnecting ourselves. You like to conceal yourself. You are committed to concealing yourself and it's your vow from age fifteen, your thesis is full of religion that you give someone else, feeling that you give someone else in order to be free to know about things. The posture bugging your eyes out at things that don't really interest you. You and Sandy your ideal symbiosis of one feeler and one thinker. We transcend our lovers when we're disappointed in their companionship. Convulsion to throw you out. We had, I think, a near miss. The eroticism of the body seems a thin uninteresting. The eroticism that interests me is the exchange of person and physical world. As Paz' love poems to landscape. Fucking when it enters dreamland brings landscape with it. Maybe writing comes back when I'm willing to start lying again, that is to stop foraging for safety/sincerity. So you've had your use you got me out of my helpless sincerity with T and C. I conned you into it by putting myself at the mercy of the opening I made in you by the visions in my work (spirituality). You/accused: you don't want to be the live soul you have in you, you aren't ready to chance yrself without the protections of money and lying speech. You're lovely. The struggle to stay out of your language, your dead language that you don't mind. "I'm central because I have access to more than one level of being, any one of them feels they can tell me anything." She went through the rooms hugging. What I'm furious about is that you denied me in front of your family, you refused, as if ashamed, your popsie, she was there by a courtesy, you cunning brat you calculate just the amount and kind of gift you need to keep your female body accessible to you. You wouldn't meet that. It's very interesting, what you are. You're an interesting phenomenon. And it is unpleasant for me to bring my naïve visions and feelings to you and find you know all about them, as of long ago. You can quote from Plotinus. But you haven't been willing to feel them. Ah yes it touches me, the way you have all the positions covered, the mentat, I begin to see what you are and you are magnificent but there's no room for me next to you, I'm forced into Sandy's position or else to force myself into a coldness parallel to yours, and there I can only be less than you because you have all the positions already covered. "Affection without understanding." What you understand in me is only my incompletion in your sensibility. In my sensibility I cannot exist with you. When I look at you and see your face like a drawn blind. I have never seen such cold eyes. How interesting you are, at night suddenly finding the delicate girl. Oh oh oh oh oh. And yet that girl can only be a picture. Well I'm tempted by how interesting you are, I like to see the person shift and your range is wonderful, I'd like to study it, I was thinking in that separation that I'd like to learn to write that shifting as we find it. I was angry with you today and had given up. There was something in the way you left that I didn't like. In this the I and you are foolish. I don't mean to constitute you as the bad one but it's here and it's the old form of parting. The anger isn't deep. Its other strikes up from under it, loving flashes. Yet I think I have to methodically invent a complete refusal. You are a pig with a princess in you. She must have seen that smile. "I saw your face as it is when it isn't smiling on me in that way." "What did you see." "The watcher." "And how was it." "It's the things you don't say that make me nervous." "So you keep telling me." "I'm a very stiff dancer." In Tony the detachment made a kindliness and skill. You make so much of your fine perceptions of skin and flesh/voice. The headache pushed two horns back into right and left lobes. The stupid intelligence of the old boar. "There's a bluff in what you're doing, I just came to tell you that." It's true that the accusations I have, have many of them come from you. I loved that you came north with me. But is it possible that you lost your interest then? Somewhere you lost interest in what I see and think. - The day of the funeral, and its night and catastrophic dream. I ran after her for a while. The sting of compassion and recognition. You don't know who I am, or I'd have myself. In your protected life you can only see that I'm a fool. It's not that you will not feel, it's that I was not, as it turned out, the avatar who could compel you to. And you are not going to feel for less than what you feel is your better. Except for your ruined wife who was willing to hold you by the cunning of her need to stay with you and it's the prince she wants, not you. Oh yes your paradox is very fine but you're seduced by your seduction and in time the old baron will have you all. I wonder if you'll know. I wonder if you'll like it, no I think your method is what you want. I will not be crucified in this world, she said, because there are no rewards in heaven. The elegant conceit, life in an elegant age, "Robin is very spiteful." You can't be got except by goodness and that goodness gets you in a way you cannot admire and so is the exclusion from you made. Imagining games, as you did, because you do. Did they make what I love in you. Ezra the good, you love goodness but will not love it where it could cost you something. - You'd been up in the night and said I was with you. Silence. The lane's brilliant colors, rain and red and yellow. The little unformed hand on the gearshift. At Anna's house, she's in a raincoat. You tell her anxiously not to bring the wine into the house. We can laugh in the little car, Anna's in good spirits (I know to sit in the back). He went to Ukrainian classes and she to Cantonese, Anna says she imagines Chinese would teach her a different way of thinking and I cringe thinking how naïve I am to you. (On account of my humble origin, and I damn it for that.) (Will I never make it to the ease of companionship. Maggie has her way but loved me for my class. - In the end it's class that got us.) Tony was working class! The cemetery is an expanse of neutralized landscape, geometrized shrubs. Death is given nothing here but the barest notice, formal death and traditional death. The aluminum and scaffolding shelters are fine raw things. Gathering audience stands under them. You range wild and everyone is bound to your movements. In the black coat and headband you look like a samuri and an emperor. You stick close to Anna the other principle. The two of you - "I'm restless, do you want to walk" - in the lovely intimacy of two striding through such a distance of grass. Sandy pale lump in brown, humble lugubrious in her little eyes and pinched mouth is visibly anxious, she looks for you, touches my arm. I say you're walking very fast with Anna. I had such a cut of jealousy. We're waiting for the wife. Her car arrives with you and you are being whispered to, consulted, bending your owl ear, central. She arrives and although the car is full of people, you must be visible meeting. You move so fast from one thing to another and Sandy bends her eyes after you, hunched in sorrow for you. The assorted people. A young man tries to speak to you and you're off diving into space peering peering. They are ready to take the coffin out, ask for young men to help. The imam in green plastic coat and embroidered cap. The thin woman with a frown squeezed between her line eyebrows is always there pushing into the action. The men who are Islamic stand in a line, Uncle Ronnie quite lovely with his ears out under his cap. The prayer and you cry and I'm watching so desolate at the separation from you, trying to find a right position, bending my mind toward you and away from you, peering. To be like you truthfully I'd have watched like Sandy out of misery of your dishonesty. To be like me truthfully, if it hadn't been for that hole in my being, I'd have watched as I did, but without the strain that put those horns into my head. We both failed this test when it came. She wanted to mourn with me. The line that went past in such a hurry, the one who threw her eyes for a second. "Those who want to look at our brother may come now." The lid opening away from the gathering. Sandy looking intently and her face winding up into a quiet howl. Wheelchair. The relatives. I became spiteful, I had become spiteful by this time. My goodness couldn't hold out. How ugly we both are now. Then straggling after the hearse, the discussion of whether to bring the flowers. Oh Anna with your poem about Allah. "When I could find him he was so much. He was hard to get through to. I was always noticing him on the edge." Brown face surrounded by white. You were faithful to him and needn't reproach yourself. She and the widow went through the papers, with the intimacy of their shock and curiosity for the secrets this person had. The next tin roof shelter, tarp-covered hill, they set down the coffin. Three men climb down and are directed to take out the larger stones. All the thoughts of that time, the fractions of that furious time, finding you on the other side of the hill, seeing down into, furious enthralled, noticing things for the purpose of sharing them with you, the stains on the shroud, the stains on the white paper towel they'd laid him on. Newspaper padding under it. Lift him out long and slight. They reach up for him, take him clumsy down into the lined well. He says put the feet first and they do, and then the rest. They untie head and feet. A little more to the right, he says. They adjust. Muss begins to hand up the tie. The imam says "No, leave it in, leave it in." The two white tying strips head and foot left thrown down scribbles. I am by now, looking from the other side staring to share your time, I am being as you because I can't be with you and am helpless. As she. I see Uncle Ronnie half out of the grave stumbling and she his wife grabbing onto the back of his coat making creases, a wild moment in this poised form. Even here you're ghosting me, I read your contempt as mine and am not free. I saw for you, thinking to see for me. Can no one hold out against you, only she, but what it cost her. How it hurts me when you remember things I forget. Oh mentat, I fancied myself intelligent and couldn't help but compete. And blame you. I want to tell you about the I Ching. [sketch of the image for Retreat]. Do you remember doing it on the yellow carpet, and wiping it out. Your lovely house is in no way yours. Your office is a grey Oh Bachelard what you did and became, countryman, and didn't give up. Ah mon cher Bachelard que tu as fait de la compagne, de la povreté. Un rapport honnête et heureux. Stupid smug country girl that I was, fighting, deformed (as everyone? no). Trust that? Oh no in your presence I cannot trust myself and this will tell oh person other I have pain and am trying to amplify my anger to tell me everything I don't want to know. You find me so foolish and I've been seduced into believing. I have given it up. I'm sorry, I was wrong from the beginning. Unless you want to give it up because you think you'll be able to work and get yourself back. "Yes of course I think about that." Affection without understanding. "Well then we'll have to try it." Her voice leapt with relief. I knew it was time for you to go, you're such a coward you won't even speak for yourself. You used to be able to fight with me. I'm longing to tell you all this and reinforce my stubborn pride as you do. You are not candid. Roy's here, I'll never be willing again to give myself to be martyred but I smiled so much describing how I worked, campaigned, to keep myself alive in him. "I have never had to campaign." Not true. What do you know? Silence of evasion. Why's it so hard? It isn't that it's hard, it's that we're in different places. It wasn't kindness but self interest, I don't want to risk losing her in case I might find that I still want her, later. You don't care. I gave it up this afternoon, I didn't like the way you left. Your courtliness, because you think yourself the prince. It is as if I leave you in punishment for what you did give me, by candour, but we had to find out. It's awful it coincides with funeral time. How can I not fail you. I knew I would have to fail you from the moment Sandy arrived with her shock new power. But she won't get what she wants for long. Our eyes crossing. It was war declared, but I fooled you old wife, because I'm willing to give her back to you. We weren't going to make it anyway and if you'd looked you'd have seen so. [In Jam's handwriting:
A beautiful thing that's honest too, Marie-Claire Wolf. Brutality. Marie-Claire Blais 1974 The wolf trans. Sheila Fischman - Apples on the trees. Shouting to Trudy in Honey's, this windy bright day, "Where's to travel to?" Bright east. Lights up. Defeated good and defeated evil. I'm sorry for your loneliness in what you have. I was willing to make myself stupid for sexuality, and now I've been stupid for so long it may be too late. Xios truer than I knew. And I can't catch up, and your stupidity is all superficial, inside you're There was the moment with the gnomon. When you tell me I'm brilliant I bask. You were and are smarter, your strategy has kept you alive and always will even when you are a fat seal with a gold chain, oblivious with a cigar. The fairytale has to show the love I have for you. - What I have to know: no, what it is - that I only know you in essence. And so can't be comfortable. Will you learn not to do your tricks on me. Dominance tricks. You have to learn to be obedient. T and C have to admit that they changed me and I chose it out of deep right. Did Ronnie know that I was choosing him when I sat at his feet. When you were angry your voice came from a taller person - that was on the phone. - The thin man, skeleton head, very alive though ill, he thinks aloud and it doesn't matter that we didn't listen. He reminds me of my stoned self, the head rush.
Maggie planted something in me by her long study in stone. To learn the uses of documentary and fantasy. Can I concretize you. L'Atalante marrying is river. We could try, spend some time finding out if we have images. For me brain has to keep touching into world I think. -
That you give up trying to make me -
- You'd have to be ready to change, ie do what you believe. You have to go back to Joyce. My direction is toward obedience. Yours toward perversity. I feel that if you don't give up perversity your conventions will get me. - Sensation of trying to make decisions as commitments, this is about how I have set up my life to be open to chance of action.
Rehinge mind to world. God is right here, the change. Child is touchstone. Conscience as now not then. Child is heresay. Writing - can show the crossing out - aim through at true and form is. Thank you Rosalynd. The cock can come but behind it an elision. - Imitate the spirit of the animal or thing inside me. God the hawk. Oh whoever I miss you. There's a thought of you at my right hand next to my working and talking. In the journal talking to you. I am waiting until the returns are in, yours and mine. If we can bear to stay apart we'll understand that we Oh you when I came into this book it seemed possible to speak to you. More fantasy. A letter's a letter. Out - Lacan Language of self regaining the curiosity which had been repressed during oedipal difficulties the need not to know hallucinating satisfaction equate wish with satisfaction every moment retells the whole story 'Instinct' would imply preadaptation to reality. Libido is sexual, ie pleasure seeking. The earliest version of instinct conflict already organized in a mind that sees defeats and victories Uses imagination to make one of the other (lies) Ie it relates events to self as indications of right or wrong existence ie child born into structure of its history The baby constructing itself of reflections must construct a false thing. Male and female set to compete at early age. It is this dilemma, in which the subject is still resolving the precise point of the place he occupies in the world, in terms of his (and her) wish for it not to be the feminine place, which is the only, and everpresent, alternative to where anyone really wants to be - in the male position within the patriarchal human order. Juliet Mitchell 1974 Psychoanalysis and feminism Penguin The history of desire A screen memory covers an important one. Ego forming itself of given-up objects. Does Father have a secret? In the id, which can be inherited, are residues of the existence of countless egos. Conscience. Notions of one's double. F talks of origins, others use the material to make other worlds. Knowing and not knowing = the split. As in despair and despite she turns from the mother to the father The dream thoughts are turned into visual and sensory images
Masochism = guilt The fantasy of being beaten by the father. Is unmarried sex incest more than married is. A special irritability toward 'fathers' The fixed stare by which the eyes stand for erect phallos Reich - went to biology and physics to discover the visible material nature of the libido. Sex economy. Energy and frustration. Anxiety. Aggression. Through his microscope he found this energy concentrated in sand particles. Distance from the object is the price of nearness to himself. but dreams of an opaque plenitude that nevertheless would be endowed with consciousness. This dream incarnated is precisely woman. I believe that she has the power to choose between the assertion of her transcendence and her alienation as object [Mitchell quoting De Beauvoir 1949 The second sex] Overdetermination = simply multiple and complex causality The human aspiration to be a subject and express one's alienation in another. - Philosophy has to be observational and experimental. Laing experience used to be called the Soul. The relation of behavior and experience is mysterious. There is no language for it? Schizophrenic is someone trying to preserve self separately from experience in world, objective. Ie the self lives in fantasy. - The de-realization of what one falsely takes to be unreality, and the re-realization of the real, ie social fantasy system. Restore the process to the praxis. Psychical acts often occur which can be explained only by presupposing other acts, of which consciousness has no evidence. [Mitchell quoting Freud 1891 The unconscious ] Laing - different modes of experience - imagining, memory, perception. The unconscious is what we do not communicate, to ourselves or to one another. [quoting RD Laing 1961 Self and others] A new kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer. [Laing 1969 Politics of experience] Direct satisfaction in experience. - The story of an I and a you. Strictly and fantastically. The sensation of choice = anxiety = not seeing the openness of time/space. Josie, at her house - we painted fast and talked about sex, whited the shape of the room-cave, were thrown almost clear of ourselves (dimly understood). Jamila there small shining bright person who must have seen how far away but thought to kiss. I deny what I know about her. It isn't modesty, it's not knowing the intimate person there that suggests they're something private. My persona acted embarrassed at Makara and got that response that I couldn't stay out of. No to write looking at the thing, and in this one, the you/you/ sliding. We will not fall out of this world. the state of continuous intense physical and emotional radiance which lovers can evoke in each other Attraction is not appetite but meeting of eyes. The erotic focus is shifted to the goddess in the other. For certain rituals the woman's vital energies should be at their peak. anointing of different parts of the woman's body with differently perfumed symbolic oils transsubstantiate into [forgotten book on tantric sex] - 1. Wondering about religion and whether it's possible to live in a way that coincides with the structure of religion in me (you). 2. These are steering thoughts in a practical voice. Practical thoughts about thinking, in the way of crafting. The pleasure dream of Judy, Paul and I passing through the willow underbrush curly dark to the store (lake) where we took what we needed and went back out door #4, and through the willow bush and home. In an orchard with Paul. Pick a melon that tastes of my nausea, we throw it away (over the fence), but going up the stairs I meet the Turkish young guardians on their way. They take Paul off to jail. Father's cardboard house I pull down. In the basement Olivia's piano. The area of land, Bohns' barn steeple, that territory my dreams often go back to. My slides are a ghost's memoirs, memories, dreams, they are about death and disturb me. They are not the dreams of a happy person. - What happened today. Waking heavy. She talked about Jo haunting her, she's seeing her violence to the small quick bright blond thing "like a piece of sunlight." She was hurt already, you didn't tell her. That frightens me. You reassured me, the bodies went together yearningly, the chest had rays grabbing you, the two were imagining being together forever, as some have done. She woke at night and tried to twiddle me. I would not. In the morning I touched you before, you said, you knew you wanted me to. I knew your motion and was right onto it and that's love. And then I was in a hurry to take my happiness to show my friend and be with her, and I didn't have to tell you. Are you careless of lovers or not, it seems not. Doing your dishes. [Cheryl moves] Moving the furniture, the quality of push and presence moving well, Rhoda most. She was attending to C, T excited, C coming gradually in, C in the dignity of turning her eyes with such a power behind them, the fuel, smoke and spirits, coffee, our relief today we can be together without war or coldness. The questions I asked: What was an artist in you, when did you see what they were. C said "All I knew was not that, not that, not that. I came to it very late." Somebody who thought about - Telling T I don't think about drawing. When I came into the house I was afraid for Luke and tried to hold him in existence by forbidding his death. I could die for Luke. To give him a look. Do mothers ever die for their children. It happened. - I transgressed, having a child without marriage, boldly I did a dangerous thing, I said that life is too small for me I have to go outside it, I will make life illegally. I was closed to him at his birth, I said I'd not be a womanly woman who would live inside my child. I refused to be with my child, I said, I will not lose myself here, I will remember my single self, and the child was born. When the child was laid in my arms by strange people I could not imagine that this was a new One until his small foot came out and touched my arm, it was a lover, it was a shock of intimacy I had never imagined. I didn't imagine except in the beech forest when I imagined myself sharing the marvel and pleasure of the autumn with a child. It was that I would be able to share it again, a friend. I was willing to photograph him crying. He looked a long way up and saw my face replaced by a camera. I went to another place and was timid, I left my child into the timing of the institution because I hadn't understood what he would be. Dumbly I waited for the birth, but obediently and patient, I did not imagine. And then the child touched the outside of my skin and the thrill that put into my stomach. The small head and breast. The head tugged at my nipple. Talking to CTR I was held on the three sides to see what is there. I said I find it hard to take his fallen language. T says "It mirrors you." I say he has to go into it and I don't want to be so large in it. It happens that I see him, he sees it and I see it and it's enough that he knows it's there. "You feel good about his being away?" "No! I feel very frightened." "What are you afraid of?" I look at her and take silence but find it and say "I don't know how he is, I'm afraid he might be grieved. He probably is. I know he is," I say. "There have been times when I've seen him very well." "What about the power?" C said. "Sometimes it's been corrupt." "They are so forgiving at this age. It's a way of finding the limits of it" C said. When C talks to me in her level way I am so startled I can't remember what it says. What is it like to be with you, again and again your head and body are in my space, your head filling the space sometimes, your eye large (you're like a mother in your obedience, you are willing to come with me into underground). Walking next to me a joy. The black in the sweater and how your hair is. Oh this marvel, it could stop. Oh I had a joy in me, the world opened around me, but at a distance. I said I'd have to be in the airplane alone. When in acid our eyes closed holding / opened my eyes alone and saw you the beautiful angel / the small angel of smiling war. The black gleam. Josie's sister's poem, Your eyes gleam like a rained-on wilderness. Then when you saw my eyes open your face reformed, red spots, a slack mask, the flesh loosened to hide you. "Are you saying goodbye to me?" "Do you want me to say goodbye to you?" "No." "Are you certain?" "Yes I am certain, my imagination is that it might be necessary to go away from you for a while." At the Cinemateque thrilled to hear your firm voice telling David [Larcher] to speak louder. It cut clearly in the dark. The small warrior stands lightly, it is an Islamic angel, again the sight of them. Angel is different from goddess. The sight of transcendence. The angel of vision. Trudy wants an acre to make paradise. (She thinks an acre is bigger than it is.) They came down into the black wind spaced rain striking into the room of the garden where they loved the moonlit shine of the television growing down into the ground. I lit with gratitude to their pleasure, giving Rhoda bits of smells broken from my private intimacy with the garden. There are bulbs buried here. She felt them. I told them the story of plants brought from other gardens, some of them that won't show themselves for years. The moment when the body gathers the right posture and the picture is taken. She said Thank you very much. She knew I'd given love on. They went to Paul's and looked at his work. "Was he afraid of you?" "He was but he likes it and is curious." Telling Trudy about not thinking about drawing. "I can think about it, I have those thoughts but not in that form, I think more in terms of narrative." J and I both storytellers and Paul is. J's story, at breakfast we talked about how I resist the ready-made voice of her story until she tells the end of it and my pleasure in the shape of it overcomes my resistance to her distance from me. The friendliness and confidence. You don't try to change me. This morning I was dreaming her clothed going through the door into the other room with some numbers, I opened my eyes and you were sitting next to me. The number of Borges in the shelf, Rilke, Tagore. Proximity of Rosalynd [de Lanerolle], Trudy in me in the way I was dancing around my friend. I was on Trudy's doorstep kissing her goodbye. You make it possible for me to dance. "Where did you get the freedom to say that you wouldn't do it anymore unless I learn to move?" "That freedom was there. Wasn't it?" (In the car.) With Rhoda and C when I felt my obedience it reminded me of you and I liked myself for it. At the Khanka, what I remembered was the tasks, music, people being led out of their habitudes, a community without junk language, I thought of Luke not having to violate himself so much. [Later: It was full of junk language.] We said we imagined leaving town. No, I have things to finish here, but my life in this town is getting ready to leave for a while. I noticed there's less to carry than before. Rhoda. You corrected me and I found myself seen in my confusion. A sign that said Moses with Burt Lancaster and I made it Ten commandments with Heston and saw it and out of a dream made that lie, and for what: I wanted to put myself to Rhoda as - automatic, the automatic spoke it out of a certain impulse I have with them only to say I am different from them. Try to imagine this difference. Try to imagine that when I am with you I go into you too and it often costs me. It is that I want to bring that person. My private operation breaks into the public time mistakenly. The pleasure of their pleasure in Paul. "More men should be like him." Religion is when you do it inside and don't think about trying to make it outer. In the back corner of the car with three dark narrow shoulders, the car going quietly dry, quiet a roofed little moviehouse, a formation, the four going through the streets held in a certain position. I felt a prisoner with alarming guards, until they came to my house and I set up my hospitality. Talking about terrorists, Trudy imagined them angry, I imagined them giving themselves permission for the most intense acts (a morality said C) in a community, the way people have to live. T telling about the two Irish housewives getting the Nobel Peace Prize. C saying that after the Buddhist monks set themselves on fire, the consciousness of Viet Nam changed. Rhoda agreed. T said it was amazing that the two Irish housewives refused to enjoy the war and made their refusal grow. I said it was amazing that there are people who love to be at war. Often with Rhoda I would see my foolishness and tonight I felt myself forgiven it. T was forgiven her foolishness by the liveliness she puts into us. R was being unfoolish. I think of her loneliness and truthfulness when I argue against the sense of shelter I have in you and then I remember how I see the possibility of being wrecked in my trust and am not saved. Oh risking the soft bed, risking a betrayal on a level where it would hurt past mending. "You want me to crack you? I can do that for you. I've done that for other people who've wanted it," in a hard voice. Trudy dreamed both C and R going off with me and she said "But what about me?" And I came to help move and got in a car with C and R, and named J in the second sentence and noticed how my posture in the car embraced C who was preoccupied by the tasks. And was ashamed at the rivalry with R, who later was so generous and that because my rivalry with her was in automaton. - Talking to J about religion: wasn't clear, it had to do with not being an artist and having to hit some kind of spiritual path. T and C are dressing like women these days. - "Highly evolved Chinese minds." Practical insights of loses himself in ideas that never would have originated in Europe's brain a cowardly trick to get psychic superiority that ancient cultural life of China, which has grown consistently and coherently from the deepest instincts J believes in fulfilling the instinctive demands of 'our nature.' Intellect does, in fact, harm the soul when it dares to possess itself of the heritage of the spirit. It is in no way fitted to do this. The old gods who ensure health but make us conservative hold consciousness enthralled. Signs of error: absence of instinct, nervousness, disorientation, an unconscious in complete rebellion against the values of c Conflicts resolved by changing level: a new thing enters the life. If it rose from outside, it became a deep subjective experience, if it arose from within, it became an outer event. The new thing presented by fate seldom or never corresponds to a conscious expectation ... though the new thing contradicts deeply rooted instincts as we have known them, it is a singularly appropriate expression of the total personality. Jung Introduction to Richard Wilhelm 1931 The secret of the golden flower: a Chinese book of life Routledge and Kegan Paul complete and faithful observation of letting things happen accepting what never was accepted before The change keeps the previous values, or else - Only integrity guarantees that it is not an absurd adventure. Spontaneous fantasy products become more profound and concentrate themselves gradually around abstract structures which apparently represent principles. Gnostic archai The other source is life, which, if lived with complete devotion, brings an intuition of the Self. the magical furrow around the centre, to prevent flowing out The split-offs that don't remember. She said at night I was willing. Not to take as truth the figures of religion when consciousness has begun to detach itself from its contents. The case only when life has been lived so exhaustively and with such devotedness that no more unfulfilled obligations to life exist, when therefore no desires that cannot be sacrificed unhesitatingly stand in the way of inner detachment from the world. It is futile to lie to ourselves about this. Where god is not acknowledged egomania develops. Full payment of all debts to life. On the low level, the animus is an inferior logos, a caricature of the differentiated masculine mind, just as the anima on a low level is a caricature of the feminine eros. The eros of woman. Fate, destiny, interweaving relatedness, animus is differentiation. Anima in man as personification of unconscious in general The East, based on the standpoint of the unconscious, sees consciousness of effect of anima, ie relatedness to unconscious Freud makes unconscious derivative of consciousness (ie repressed contents), J makes c derivative of the structure of the brain The unc has a personified nature, ie we experience the leftovers as a person. The East can reject fantasy because it has indulged it so much and extracted its essence. Experience of it. (My quarrel with R.) Our fantasy he says has to be different from the East's, because we have scientific and historical fantasy. The world has lost none of its richness and beauty but consciousness is no longer dominated. The magical realm of things has ceased because the original interweaving of consciousness with the world has come to an end. The unconscious is no longer projected, and that ends the participation mystique. Then c turns away from intention to contemplation, nondifferentiation of subject and object. This is enthrallment. And magical struggle. Cult of will. If we shift the sense of self out of c or ego, to someplace where unc is seen as codetermining, a detachment results. "I have reasons for believing this sets in after the middle of life and is actually a natural preparation for death. To the psyche death is just as important as birth. The Chinese are without that impulse towards violent repression of the instincts which hysterically exaggerates and poisons our spirituality. In most loving bondage, free. The feeling of having been replaced. Compulsion and impossible responsibility of participation mystique. Duty to give reality to one's deepest conviction. It seems indeed as though time far from being an abstraction is a concrete continuum which contains qualities or basic conditions manifesting themselves simultaneously in various places. Astrology is not about stars but - whatever is born or done in this moment of time has the quality of this time. As the moment is, so do the stalks fall. - The secret life of comics. Little Orphan Annie, because she was alone and a traveler; always for some reason Dagwood, because it takes place inside a house and a family Came from the comics on acid. "Big feet?" C said yes. She doesn't ever read comics, Rhoda and T do. The fascination. The row of mentalities displayed. Prince Valiant. Tarzan was very nice T said.
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