April 12, 2012 · 10:42 am

… here is everywhere …

Nationalism is the pathology of modern developmental history as inevitable as neurosis in the individual.   – Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain

The growth dynamics of nations and those of individuals have striking parallels, especially when it comes to the forming of an identity in relation to the other, and the ongoing struggle to maintain or adjust set habits to changing circumstances. For instance, when religious authority declines, the blame for the ills of a nation can no longer be projected onto the omnipotent godhead. People find themselves challenged to reflect on how they contributed towards the ills and become accountable for their actions.   The psychological development towards spiritual independence and interdependence – for individuals or nation states – is a humbling process in that it confronts us with our failures, imperfections, and the need to learn from our experience and cultivate human qualities.

I’m German-English, my official citizenship is Dutch. Though I live in England, I have felt at home in the Arabian deserts, along the Mediterranean coast, among friends wherever they are. But is there one location from where I look out onto the world, one place that is traditionally called home? To not betray all my loves it would have to be the bridge, in a metaphorical sense. The theme of my first novel starts out with a bridge across opposites. On that bridge my protagonist has an encounter with herself where here becomes everywhere.

I feel like an ancient being torturing language to express the simplicity of experience, digging through layers of false evidence, sifting through sediments of unreliable gossip for grains of truth. Words fall from my pen like dust settling after another hole dug, showing the trifle of an image that needs a night of dreaming to cohere into a sentence, and then more sentences, resonating with a universal narrative, re-arranged in time as if the story is yet to happen.

Germany – Before print was instrumented by Luther’s Reformation, the Latin language represented the voice of divine authority – the father. A lone human hero, Martin Luther (1483-1546), Doctor of Theology, not a prophet, disputed the church’s practice of selling indulgences, which urged him to write his 95 thesis, among them: Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?’ When Luther’s followers printed his 95 theses and displayed them in public places, their controversial contents spread like wildfire. The papal hegemony was rattled. Convinced that salvation was not gained by merit but by the grace of God alone, Luther went into hiding and translated the bible into the most spoken vernacular. Time seemed to call for a voice like his. In some historic records he is accused of hiding under the mantle of the princes rather than siding with the folk, of not grasping the opportunity towards the forming of a German nation. Luther’s theme of grace was limited. When his efforts of converting the Jews failed, his loathsome sentiments incited their persecution. Yet he was seen as encapsulating the struggle of the German people for an identity while living under the shadow of the slain father, the Roman Empire, which compelled the German psyche to emulate its glory.

A.J.P. Taylor writes in The Course of German History: ‘Since Charlemagne founded the Reich in 800, more political energy went into maintaining German states independent of the Reich, or even hostile to it, than into the Reich itself.’ By the fifteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations was divided against itself. Through the intense struggle for wholeness emerged some of the world’s finest philosophers, scientists, writers, musicians and mystics, as well as the most ignorant and corrupted leaders.

Walter Benjamin had a vision of Hope and Despair, inspired by a painting:

A Klee drawing named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.    

                   – Walter Benjamin, Ninth Thesis on the Philosophy of History

The extremes of enlightened spirituality and regressive brutality happen wherever human fallibility seeks to reconcile itself with the divine ideal. A geographically hemmed in Germany was not relaxed about its identity, which was further knocked by the Versailles Peace Treaty. Debates about the effects of the treaty are ongoing. Germany was blamed for the First World War and had vindictive reparations imposed that aided hyperinflation. The crushed self-respect of its people called in a saviour, who tragically sublimated his oppressed childhood with vastly inflated ideals.

Sanity might have prevailed in the darkest hour had Germany given more value to its folk tales. They leave nothing of human nature untold. The secret mysteries of the heart are found in mythical tales all over the world, and while set in local landscapes, their themes are similarly transcending race. These coded treasures are basically the stuff of all yearning for the home or source, a human phenomenon riddled with the tensions of fixation and avoidance.

A hint of the tenacity available to the German people can be found in the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm when storytelling was still practised with the potency of embodied memory. Children growing up with the characters, animals and landscapes of these stories are absorbing timeless themes through symbols and metaphors. Censors protested, and still do, that these themes are cruel and unfit for the innocent child.

The Grimm brothers comment in the introduction to the second, updated 1819 edition of their collection: ‘The right usage discovers nothing bad is in these tales, but as a beautiful word has it – a testimony in our heart. Children point without fear into the stars while others, as popular belief has it, would insult the angels.’

Was the melancholy that gripped so many German people their nemesis or their salvation? Tales that contain symbols of mythic time need to be deciphered again and again within a temporal context. Yet because the emotive power of symbols defies rationality, the sentiments evoked are always in danger of being abused by myopic national concerns. When a nation loses balance by being overly defended or irrationally unleashed, differences of religion, race or politics are thought to explain the matter – yet we all know there is no pure race.

England, like Germany, struggled through internal conflicts but achieved a sense of unity by conquering the world. Felling forests to build boats which sailed under the banner of the Royal Navy, explorers and missionaries spreading across the waters formed a Colonial Empire that brought great wealth and influence. The Commonwealth still lingers like a halo and gives Britain a sense of sovereign pride. Cultural Imperialism, natural to nations with access to the sea, had created the other at a safe distance rather than at home. Yet spoils of victory, too, come at a cost.

When the flagship of King Henry VIII was lifted from the depth of the Solent Estuary into the twentieth century on 11 Oct 1982, the Mary Rose flared back into view and boosted national confidence, adding a powerful impetus to Mrs Thatcher’s resolution to win back the Falklands. It worked – just. Yet now it seems conflicting images of the past, informed by freed-up information providing more and more varied perspectives, are testing every nation’s conscience.

In the twenty-first century, with migration being a global reality, nations are obliged to open their doors to the other. Given changing policies, foreign individuals are often able to acquire legal membership. Since the Schengen agreement, European borders, apart from Britain’s, can be crossed freely, though the agreement is regularly challenged by exceptional circumstances. http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=859 

Migrants – who are we?  If there are tendrils resembling roots, they connect to the deep impressions left by parental figures and childhood landscapes, and to the layers of national symbolic themes, ancient, historic and contemporary. Social and ethnic codes ricochet among children in every school-playground, even between neighbours like Germany and Britain. We use icons to sum each other up. At times they move us to tears, at times to laughter, often they serve humorous self-reflection, but mostly they envelope us in a ritualistic trance:

Bratwurst with Sauerkraut, Fish & Chips, Schubert and Kurt Weil songs, God save the Queen, the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th symphony, a blinking eye of Shakespeare in a hologram,   Goethe’s Faust, the Thatched Cottage, das Edelweiss, The Royal Jewels, der Adler, Jack and Jill, King Ludwig’s Castles, Stonehenge, Rapunzel, Big Ben, Karl Valentin, Spike Mulligan, Lorelei, or the Mary Rose:

In order to preserve them, we gave the Mary Rose Trust a chemical solution called polyethylene glycol. Once these items (such as wooden bowl and leather shoes) have been soaked in this solution, they undergo a freeze-drying process that will preserve them for posterity … ‘You can be sure of Shell.’     (Shell advertisement  1985)

Patrick Wright in his book ‘On Living in the Old Country,’ recounts the findings of a young journalist, Charles Moore. He was commissioned in 1982, after Lord Scarman’s report on the Brixton disorders, to interview the really oppressed people in the area, defined as the elderly white people of Lambeth. The findings expose a national sentiment which, in essence, could equally apply to other nations and individuals: it remembers the state of grace and laments the fall which is said to occur when ‘the blacks’ and the welfare state arrive:

In the beginning there was order, friendliness, dignity, sharing and mutual respect: ‘Everyone mucked in and was properly neighbourly.’

A betrayal of the idea of paradise – in the absence of divine certainty someone or something other needs to become bad, in order to preserve the good.

Seeking fault with the other is meant to shield paradise. An oversight – truth stagnates in the fenced gardens of eternity. Enduring human vitality flows from change and is born of vulnerability. The trance of blame sucks us into its gravitational slow time. Unawares, we perpetuate the shielding in the collective psyche, leaving it for the next generation to absolve.

Recorded history is like a rope broken in many places and knotted together again and again. In the light of new truths these knots are strained and made brittle until they snap. Tribes, nations and ideas are strung along this rope. But new concepts of time are changing our perceptions; many individuals struggle to free themselves of knotted history. The desire to make things solid is an automatic reaction to the fear of losing the familiar we nurture – people, environments, passions and beliefs we bond with, that are mirroring us and allow us to discover ourselves. The problem is not loss, but the manner in which we deal with loss, as if it is destroying our identity. Inevitably, if not death, someone or something will be the agent of change in our lives.  Something dear is wrenched from us, a way of life is gone, those around us and the rest of the world may care for a moment, but our identity, the sum of all our embodied experiences, is ours to keep or lose. The valid anger in the face of change is not lifted by words of wisdom, only plastered up. The heart has to suffer and soften before the conscious decision of an individual can unplug resentment and embrace the enduring presence that truly connects us within. Only individuals can release blame and lift the veil of ignorance.

Dich im Unendlichen zu finden, must du unterscheiden und dann verbinden.

To find yourself in the infinite, you must first distinguish then combine.

–  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A truly global citizenship must be composed of enough individuals brave enough to explore their own psyche, brave enough to think for themselves and realise that our collective identity unfolds beyond the existence of individual transitory lifespans. We know that, given respect, tolerance and stimulation, a child will engage with life creatively and trusts in the future. Applying this insight to how we educate our children nourishes the collective intelligence of humanity.

The German filmmaker Edgar Reitz has with great sensitivity restored a balanced meaning of the German Heimat in his TV series of the same name, spanning from 1919 to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The series follows three ordinary families and comprises 52 hours of film. The yearning to belong, so distorted by the idealism of the Third Reich, is shown in localised context and conveys the human aspects of the war story. The impetus for the creation of this document was an American Holocaust series on TV in 1978. Reitz was horrified that German intellectuals seemed to accept the sentimental spin as treatment for national guilt.

The knots in the rope of time we constructed are brittle with guilt, the burdening guilt of not loving humanity enough to fully take on its pain, the way Christ did. He said, ‘Thy will be done.’ Does such surrender of will, even if taken symbolically, really release us of using our own will to effect change?    The concept of surrender is more subtle than giving up the power to will. I see surrender as an alignment of our conscious will to the dynamic flow of change, the universal will, enabling evolution to happen and work freely through us, so that here is everywhere. In instances when this shift happens inside, we are.

*    *     *

References other than mentioned in the text:

The Angel of History: Walter Benjamin’s Vision of Hope and Despair – by Raymond Barglow, published in ‘Tikkun Magazine,’ November 1998

Recently 500 more tales, collected by a contemporary of the Grimm Brothers, were uncovered:

http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany

 

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April 1, 2012 · 7:23 pm

Parmenides – Philosopher – Poet

Last week, while re-working an article I wrote 18 years ago on the symbolism of  two West European Nations, namely Germany and England (having lived equal decades in each), I lost myself in the history of these nations, back to the Roman Empire and its fall. Something was missing. Reeling back another thousand years, to my beloved philosophers, I found IT.

I was reminded of the only ever poetry course I attended, where a tutor told me ‘You have to decide whether you want to be a philosopher or a poet.’  Over the years I’ve come to realise that some good people, in order to be respected, have sadly allowed their inner voice to be silenced by the academic system.                                                                                                                           *    *    *                                                                                                                                                                         Here an excerpt of Parmenides’s poem as it appears in Kingsley’s ‘In the Dark Places of Wisdom’. The text is subtle, humorous, with repetitions that are no accident. The poem induces a journey that appears in many traditions throughout the world under many names.

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach

rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary

road of divinity that carries the man who knows

through the vast and dark unknown. And on I was carried

as the mares, aware just where to go, kept carrying me

straining the chariot; and young women led the way.

And the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe

blazing from the pressure of the two well-rounded wheels

at either side, as they rapidly led on: young women, girls,

daughters of the Sun who had left the mansions of Night

for the light and pushed back the veils from their faces with their hands.

There are the gates of the pathways of Night and Day,

held fast in place between the lintel above and a threshold of stone;

and they reach up into the heavens, filled with gigantic doors.

And the keys – that now open, now lock – are held fast by

Justice: she who always demands exact returns. And with

soft seductive words the girls cunningly persuade her to

push back immediately, just for them, the bar that bolts

the gates. And as the doors flew open, making the bronze

axles with their pegs and nails spin – now one, now the other –

in their pipes, they created a gaping chasm. Straight through and

on the girls held fast their course for the chariot and horses;

straight down the road.

And the goddess welcomed me kindly, and took

my right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me:

‘Welcome young man, partnered by immortal charioteers,

reaching our home with the mares that carry you. For it was

no hard fate that sent you travelling this road – so far away

from the beaten track of humans – but Rightness, and Justice.

And what’s needed is for you to learn all things: both the unshaken

heart of persuasive Truth and the opinions of mortals,

in which there is nothing that can truthfully be trusted at all.

But even so, this too you will learn – how beliefs based on

appearances ought to be believable as they travel all through

all there is.

*    *    *

The hero travels the road of death while still alive, making the connection between this world and the other.  He goes to the depth of ignorance – the ignored – to unknowing – in search for wisdom instead of straight to the light

Kingsley says when Plato and his followers took over these ideas from the Pythagoreans they cleverly amputated the ambiguities: focussed only on the true and the good and the beautiful, and cut out the need for the descent.  He makes a link to inscriptions  discovered during the 60s in Velia, Italy. Three words puzzled …  Ouliades – Iatromantis –Apollo … The healer who can access special states of awareness, look beyond appearances, give voice to what has no voice. In Sept 1962, at the same place, Mario Napoli found a small block of marble with another inscription: Parmeneides son of Pyres Ouliades Physicos

These findings must present a challenge to historians. Obviously they stayed clear of the mystic drone carrying the song of Parmenides and the Pythagorean’s. The incubatory practice and its profound wisdom were rationalised out of western history. Kingsley writes:

Between them, Parmenides and Empedocles laid the most basic foundations for the world and culture we now live in. But with the passing of time we have forgotten who they were. The truth about the real nature of their work has been neglected, distorted, ignored—transformed into just another of those empty illusions that they themselves tried to set us free from. There is nothing accidental about the fact that we in the West are starved for some real sense of meaning and crying out for something that, in spite of all our apparent sophistication and material success, we are no longer even able to name. This western civilization of ours was created for a purpose. Until we start to discover that purpose again, our lives will be meaningless. Unless we touch our roots and make contact again with the essence of our past, we can have no future.

http://www.peterkingsley.org/pages.cfm?ID=5

One of the many resources Peter Kingsley used:

/www.amazon.com/The-Fragments-of-Parmenides-ebook/dp/B002ZVPTEY

 

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March 25, 2012 · 11:13 pm

… boredom – gratification – creation …

You’re sitting in front of the latest evolutionary creative gadget, your laptop screen, bored, uninspired, the familiar feeling before singularity strikes. You have an appetite for – you don’t know what – sweet – maybe – but not too sweet. You go to the fridge. A little pot says: pleasure is everything – give in to happiness – prudence is sooo 1658 – trust your impulses – break free – all hail to the Gu decadents – light and velvety chocolate mousse made to our chef’s family recipe … the text shrinks to list the calories, you don’t want to know …

Anyone remember Levi from Peter Blegvad’s fabulous cartoons?

And Leviathan, the famous character in the bible?

Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering

His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn

He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment

… the never-ending story of creation …

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March 15, 2012 · 2:41 pm

… smoking elegies – another facet …

Fusion

He was clear-minded and ambitious, with precise plans for his career. We met at Munich’s Domicile, a jazz bar, where an intimate haze of smoke welcomed and embraced you like an accomplice. The cool gaze and pure intent of his grey-freckled eyes took exclusive possession of me. Jazz and smoke fused us. Our cellular resonance defied the gravity of committed brain cells and gave my heart wings. He moved into my flat, warning me upfront that on completion of his apprenticeship at the most prodigious hotel in town he would return to the States to put his culinary management knowledge to the test. He was going to own not just one restaurant, but a chain of them. He convinced on several points.

One: he totally and reliably engaged with what was before him. The moment he stepped through the door after his day at the hotel, the outside world was no more, only us, together. We showered, cooked delicious meals, listened to music and spent  most of our time in bed. The pure intensity of his presence ricocheted like a charge between us and left no room for anything besides. In this rarefied sphere, lovemaking became a cycle of small deaths and resurrections. Some of my friends had angry fits under the porch of my door, knowing full well I was home but inaccessible. My king-sized futon had become a sacred island floating in a vast ocean.

Two: he was a strategist, which, together with point one, makes an unbeatable combination for material success. But most of all, he understood branding, the powerful imprint repetition leaves in the mind. It happened religiously during our celebratory smoke after lovemaking and became a surreal ritual. With his thumbnail he cut a cross into the filter of his cigarettes. The cross was tied to a mantra he kept secret. I thought this was cute and took up the habit, inventing my own mantra.

Two months passed in eternal bliss of now, until the appointed time for his flight back to the States approached. I started hurting bad. He wanted no soppy goodbyes at the airport. He was not going to be tied down. Only when he had made a million by the age of 30, he said, would he focus on having a family. He left no address. For months I continued punching crosses into my cigarette filters to strengthen my ambition, and, inadvertently, remember him. It became an obsession. Only my mantra, unlike his, was not based on a strategy. And the branding thing annoyed me after a while. I favoured the meandering dance of a poetic life.

His clarity left a strong impression. Hopefully he found what he was looking for. I came to perceive my early ambition as metaphor, and owned up to a misspelling. The path my aim prescribed sharpened many skills, but was littered with Freudian slips that lead into emotional woods. And yet, looking back, every re-start, every detour in my life stimulated creativity and inventiveness, crucial unlearning, greater tolerance with myself and others, and a more symbolic understanding of my existence.

The ideal is the means – its breaking is the goal.   Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

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March 12, 2012 · 11:43 pm

… smoking elegies …

Her

I admired her calm, her mystery, unaware that she mirrored an enigma in me, hidden as yet under a muddle of neurotic insecurities. I didn’t have a clue who I wanted to be. She was a fellow art student, more mature than the rest of us. Her perceptions had a poetic flavour. Her contemplations surprised. I doubted the value of my perceptions. She was not beautiful by any means, with her dull and pockmarked skin. She was no Marlene …

Her eyes, inquisitively curious, were like gleaming coals, deep set. And her movements were a little wooden, apart from one gesture that made her elegant – the way she held her cigarette, the way she cast her eyes upwards and inhaled with deep satisfaction, and exhaled what seemed like all her woes by lowering her head. I had the impression her unwanted thoughts and feelings were ploughed into the ground and recycled. Because after each exhalation she had a Zen-like presence.

I accepted my first cigarette from her and thereby initiated myself into the eccentric tribe of smoking connoisseurs. Our rituals saw us through tumultuous college years. Camel was the brand in fashion at the time, evoking the image of adventurous travelling – desert excursions, vast horizons and hermit-like independence.

It was my caterpillar phase. The eerie red light in the photographic dark room offered a solitude I treasured. Bending over the emerging images in the chemical developing bath I took pleasure in my seeing, my metaphors. The feedback from tutors, who assumed I had planned my compositions, confused me. I hadn’t planned anything. Things appeared as in a mirror …

I was webbing a secret chamber in which to connect up all the dots before meaning would unfold its wings. A kind of trance was needed for that process. Smoking provided the trance. For our group of students any significant discussion required smoke, voluptuous swirls and veils lifting upwards between us. And as the mind raced ahead of itself, excited by ideas, there was the sucking pause, obligatory, to invest a thought with significance before it was voiced along with feathery wisp, ghostly white and blue cyphers suspended against light.

Unedited thoughts jotted down. More elegies to come …

 

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March 4, 2012 · 4:42 pm

… Haiku – recalling Japan’s tsunami …

Next Sunday, March 11, one year will have passed since Japan’s people experienced a wave of change through a devastating tsunami. Reflective times, especially for the many families who lost dear ones, friends, homes, livelihoods, and all those who were touched in one way or another by the traumatic events of the day, and all of us around the world who hold the images indelibly etched in our heart’s memory. May the healing presence of the divine illuminate our future …

 

hawthorn flowers white

among a debris of homes

families vanished

*    *    *    *

a field of rubble

faded snapshot of a child

splashing in a wave

 

 

*    *    *

sunlight in a puddle

a bird dowses its feathers

no other sound

*    *    *

emerald seedlings

loosen the concrete highway

soft patter of feet

*   *   *

http://facts.randomhistory.com/tsunami-facts.html

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February 27, 2012 · 11:19 pm

… the cast in the shadows …

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives
are princesses who are only waiting to
see us once, beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible is in
Its deepest being something
that needs our love.                — Rainer Maria Rilke

Last week I volunteered a short session in the context of a variety of monthly events organised by a group of friends under the umbrella of Archventures.

… the cast in the shadows …  …

We have inside us a cast of players for every imaginable scene. Occasionally banned and hidden characters pop up. Excluded from our script, they emerge inadvertently through surprise encounters, act irrational and appear cartoon-like. Unacknowledged, a wild player roams in the unconscious unconnected, until an emotional trigger hits a sensitive node. We are not amused when an unsophisticated trait breaks to the surface with behaviour that will embarrass and shame us, belying our self-image.

We learn as children to shield ourselves from rejection and injustice. Our strategies are endless and contrary …  like being compliant and withholding or defensive and angry. Think of a natural and well-meaning quality persons in your early environment disapproved of in the name of moral perfection. Your trust may have been betrayed, manipulated and taken advantage of. We adjust as best we can. Rules are needed for societies to function.

We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put in the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again. – Bly

In relation to our genuine nature, the sacrifices we make in order to belong can be as disproportionate as the sacrifices we make to defy authority. Feelings we edit out of our lives gather a strange luminosity and succumb to an archetypal force beyond our command. Yet a closer look at the rawness and imperfections of disowned players may surprise. They invariably hold a gift, often the very essence of our creativity.

A way to re-own the locked up energy is to honour our battle scars and weaknesses. We don’t have to agree with inner and outer adversaries, only accept their existence in us. This acceptance opens the heart to tolerance, rapport, understanding, empathy – and insight.

‘Our friends show us what we can do – our enemies teach us what we must do.’ – Goethe

We make room for imperfection … 25th Feb 2012

What is uplifting about our monthly Archventures gatherings are the hugs … yup … never underestimate the invigorating power of hugs. What I also appreciate – and this applies to many groups whose core members meet regularly – is that we form a different entity each time, enriched by everyone’s fresh constellation of experience and insight. Newcomers feel welcome and at ease in this irreverent group that does not follow any one creed, ideology or person.

The most powerful player this afternoon was the seven-year-old son of a participant. The boy was fascinated by the boxes of miniature world-objects I had brought along.

He outplayed us all, instantly creating a legion of his world.

The young will be forever potent in their ability to play and invent …

We adults shared unique and moving stories about early misdeeds, raising questions to be explored individually. (The photo is of a  different occasion)

Some shadows we drag along are not of our own making, a dilemma that also applies to families and nations.

‘The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.’  ― C. G. Jung

Understanding the origins of shadow-projections softens the compelling affect they have in defining us, and our reactions to being fitted into a frame. Observing politics, it is obvious that negotiations are not enough to solve longstanding conflicts. It takes the awareness and inner work of individuals to let go of resentment, release the spark of creativity that enables lateral thinking, and the flow of compassion tied up in the entanglement of righteousness.

And there remains the unknowable, luminous black hole, and a sixth sense of something that evades us. What is mysterious, not accessible emotionally or through analysis, drives us on to dig deeper, expand our consciousness, and re-discover the link to our innermost self.

‘We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.’ ― C. G. Jung

With only three hours’ time available, the session at least inspired us to remember what is in our power to do. There remains the ever impelling potential of greater intensity and more poise between safety and risk on the tightrope of our life.

Our dear friend Rahima outlined the shadow theme as C. G. Jung defined it. If you have not heard of the term ‘shadow’ in this context you might want to investigate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

And in relation to the activity of writing – here a dream image in the eye of its beholder  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M19S89UcaKQ&feature=related

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

*    *    *

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February 18, 2012 · 11:28 pm

… lap of fate … part five

This is the fifth and final part of a short story inspired during a recent visit to Spain. If you enjoyed the read, and are so inspired, please leave me some much needed feedback in the comment section. I’m happy to return the favour, and will soon do reviews again. If you have come here for the first time, you might want to scroll down the home page to get to ‘part one’ of the short story, posted on April 30th. Thanks you dear readers who followed the evolving narrative, and those of you who left comments and/or pressed the ‘like’ button.

I’m still learning how to operate this site, but this is post no 80 since I started this blog last April … hurrah! And I have another reason to celebrate. A dear friend helped me today clean up the first three chapters of my novel, Course of Mirrors, a final leap towards sending out queries. No more excuses.

*    *    *

Here then the final instalment of … Lap of Fate…

… The weight of my revelation receded like a wave sucked back into the sea. Confused by the señora’s flat response, I latched onto the distraction of soft paws resounding from the spiral stairs. Abu, the dog, poked his head through the opening to sample the mood. Neck tilted, he sneaked towards me and pushed his wet snout into my lap. Touched by his show of affection, I stroked his pelt, at which he burst into a whirling dance, trying to catch his own tail. Abu’s antics dispersed the static air around my chest. I cried and laughed in one.

The senora’s worried face softened to a smile. ‘What a pretty dog.’

Straightening her back, she regarded me as if seeing me for the first time. ‘My dear child,’ she said. ‘You released a ghost I created. Antonio may or may not have believed my story. The truth is, I miscarried at four months, there was no Juanita, but I had so strongly wanted her to exist in the world, like a fresh and blameless me, I made her up.’

I flinched, recalling my own painful miscarriage, when a river of hormones came to a drastic halt and left a dark hole in my body, like a consuming abyss. I had other children, who thrived. Though my past held secrets, it never detained me from living, unlike the señora, whose child was held captive in the tabernacle of this studio.

‘Antonio cherished me. He was intuitive. He sought to restore my creative spirit by painting me expectant.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘He died. I was desolate and clung to my old story, imagining Juanita out there in the world having a better chance at life. I must have dreamed you into being.’

The synchronicity of our longing astounded. ‘When I learned of my adoption, I started daydreaming too, convinced my birthmother was out there somewhere regretting her decision to abandon me. I imagined her looking for me, wanting me back.’

Her eyes shone as she took my hands. ‘Does it matter – mi angel?’ she said. ‘All children, born from mind or body, are wanted by life. They deserve to be loved.’

A car horn sounded.

‘Oh dear, we must apologise to the agent,’ she said.

I begged her to stay on, offering a lift to her hotel later in the day. The senora accepted, which freed the agent to drive back to town. His wide grin showed he was happy my break-in had been absolved, and I had made friends with his client.

Alma was her name. Alma Ruiz Gonzales. First, we opened all shutters of the studio to let the sun in and more – a peculiar hint from heaven. Light coming from a far window hit a round mirror standing at an angle on the wall. The reflection in the glass rebounded to cast a circular sunspot on one of the paintings, framing the cardinal with the girl sitting on his lap.

Alma shrieked – with excitement, struck by a sudden idea. With her dazzling crown of hair she looked like a crazed woman as she rummaged in a toolbox. In triumph, she held up a Stanley knife. I thought for a moment she was going to lash out and slash the painting. Instead she found a sharp pen, marked the lit area on the canvas, cautiously inserted the knife, and began to cut with small sawing movements round the curved line. It may have been poor eyesight, but it seemed as if  she put her ear to the cleaving sound of the blade. Her lean and leathery hands nudged along with amazing precision, until the severed circular shape could be lifted from the canvas. Her dedication was riveting. Moving on to the second painting, of the cardinal with the snake in his lap, she cleanly sliced out another circle. Both canvases now had a hole large enough to crawl through, edged only by the backdrop of lavish chandeliers, a facet of the cardinal’s scarlet skull-cap and his polished shoes.

‘Why waste good frames?’ she said.

I shook with laughter, bringing Alma to the edge of hysterics. She slumped on a chair to clutch her belly. Our unrestrained mirth thoroughly cleared the air of any lingering ghosts.

I suggested we eat something. Alma opened the backdoor to an enclosed courtyard adjoining the semi. She wiped clean a bench and table, while I fed Abu more of my chocolate and prepared a snack for Alma and me. We had our meal in the yard and chatted about mundane things, like the weather, and neighbours.

I poured us some Merlot. During an isle of silence, the chime bells in a nearby branch moved to a breeze. The melodious ring unsealed more tragedy. Alma shared she had given birth to an actual child, from Antonio, a son, who was stillborn.

‘It’s odd, but at the time I thought of the cardinal’s fixation on me,’ she said, ‘it could have been him … trying to return. Maybe his soul feared I would make his life a misery.’

Mother, Son and a not-so Holy Ghost, I thought. There is no end to the novel ways we make sense of what happens to us. And until we mourn our losses and move on, the meaning we give to what life throws at us could be right, or wrong.

After our meal we went to work. During sunset, the art world was impiously deprived.  The cut-out centrepieces of two magnificent paintings, depicting a cardinal’s obsession, were released into the ether. The fire was moderate, and held in check by a bed of stones. Leaning on her cane, Alma watched the flames lick at the snake and gnaw at the flawed beatitude of her abuser. ‘May his soul find peace,’ she said.

The historic aura of the paintings mingled with the cooling air in the hills of Granada and rearranged the past. Brilliant purple, white and scarlet paint simmered and charred, turning canvas into a crumbly leaden tablet with white markings that looked very much like a snake eating its own tail.

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February 12, 2012 · 11:54 am

… lap of fate … part four

The fourth sequence …  not the last yet … if you like to read the whole story so far, scroll down the page to part one.

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Silence contains an ocean of possibilities. The silence between us churned with muffled presences pushing up for light and air. Breaking into the old woman’s secret tabernacle had been wrong, and yet, curiously apt. I felt the same inevitability when I saw the house for the first time. Words buzzed in my mind, vying for attention, wanting out. I took a risk. ‘They’re masterful paintings,’ I said, ‘and deeply stirring.’

She faced me, the stranger mirroring her grief. And, as if she craved the occasion to share this burden of her conflict, tears came, unchecked. I helped her to a chair.

‘Esta bien?’ the agent called from the bottom of the stairs, probing, to allay his unease.

‘Toda esta bien,’ she sobbed, ‘espere en el coche.’ She sent the man to wait in his car, and added, to my amazement, ‘Dejame en paz con mi angel ingles.’ I had been called many things before, but never an angel. She pointed to the cardinal. ‘Los Rojos … fue asesinado.’ There was no anger in her voice, only sadness. From what I had read of events during the Spanish Civil War, and the Red Terror, the cardinal must have died a terrible death.

I pulled up a chair and gently touched her back, picking up a dull quiver, as from the neglected body of a guitar that lacks timbre. I had met women and men trying to come to terms with incestuous compulsions, victims and perpetrators, yearning for spiritual love. Some never strike the right note to connect heaven and earth, like the cardinal, a child-man, who sought innocence and destroyed it.

‘I was a daughter to him. He spoiled me.’

‘You speak English!’

‘I went to live in London when I came of age.’ Sensing my tolerance, she said, almost inaudible, ‘I worked there for many years … in a nightclub … until I met my love, Antonio.’

‘The painter!’

‘Yes.’ She reached across the table for an object wrapped in black silk and unpeeled a small canvas. Her fingertips traced over painted brows before she handed me the mediocre portrait of a sombre man, whose eyes were nevertheless genial, even humorous. ‘Not a good likeness, I can’t paint well,’ she said. ‘I only copy surfaces. He was the artist. He perceived through the heart.’

‘You caught his spirit,’ I said. ‘As for his brilliant art, you allowed him to see your truth, in that place where betrayed hearts waver in a limbo of doubt.’

‘Yes, you understand. His seeing helped me endure the contradictions. Still …’ she looked through fresh tears towards the painting of herself in the shadow, ‘… the past ensnares.’

On impulse, I held the candle to the woman’s naked image among snakes and noticed what I had missed, the slight bulge of her belly.

‘I told Antonio of my years in London. How I got myself pregnant and gave birth between the pews of a church. How I couldn’t care for the girl and never heard what happened after I left her on a bench,  clean, wrapped up warm, with a name written on her belly, Juanita. Later, there was nothing about the event in the news. Nothing, as if she never existed.’

In my ears rung the refrain – she never existed. Thoughts raced. I had been abandoned, and was adopted. My mother found me in a chapel near Basing. No other woman ever claimed me.

She sensed my distress and misread its source. ‘St Patrick’s Church was a safe place. There was no 0ne I could trust. My work in London was illegal.’

A nauseating sensation of floating made me clasp the frame of my chair. St Patrick was mother’s favourite saint. My parents moved from Soho to Hampshire when I came into their lives. Before I knew of my adoption, father once remarked about a streak of Spanish blood in his family, to justify my dark hair.

The woman looked forlorn, gazing inward. ‘It’s a dream I must let go,’ she said.

Palms sweating, I likened myself to the woman before me, her intense blue eyes, and the shape of her forehead, elongated fingers … ‘What year was it?’ The question burst out involuntarily. Embarrassed, I added, ‘Sorry, it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t pry.’

She absorbed herself in the layers of cracked paint coating the floorboards. ‘I think it was the year this man, Armstrong, stepped on the moon with the wrong foot.’

‘The wrong foot?’

‘The left foot! It was on TV…’ She looked up. ‘Or maybe it was the year before.’

Hysterical – comedy and tragedy blurred. She couldn’t even remember the year.

‘Why do you ask?’

A genuine concern in her voice made me respond, ‘I was adopted in 1967.’ Wasted words, she had not heard me. Lost in a faraway place, she said, ‘So long ago.’

My anguish finally caught her attention. She pressed my hand. ‘What’s wrong dear?’

I had started this madness with my fixation on the hacienda. I raised the stakes with my blind bet on the semi. And now I pledged my heart on a wild speculation over my birth. The senora’s recall was nebulous, as through a misted glass. My hope was based on nothing but fuzzy coincidences. And the dots I was joining up might yield no more than bizarre scribbles, but it was too late to quit. The dim studio space with its little stray light and the lone flame of a candle had become a womb. I wanted the shutters open. As my chest tightened with apprehension, I jumped to my feet and walked round my chair. Catching my breath, I braved the truth. I faced the old lady and filled in my fantasy:

‘Imagine a woman after a string of miscarriages. She finds Juanita in St Patrick’s Church and thinks her favourite saint granted her prayers. She whisks the infant off to a chapel in Hampshire to blur the trail in case the birth-mother has regrets … I was adopted and called Jane. My birth certificate shows 10 July 1967.’

The senora swallowed her breath. ‘A mi Dios …’

Her exclamation was one of mild surprise. Nothing. No heart-rocking epiphany, no jubilant outburst, no falling into each other’s arms. No … something was terribly wrong …

On more instalment at … https://courseofmirrors.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/lap-of-fate-part-five/

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February 6, 2012 · 12:36 am

… lap of fate … part three

Anticipated by some, here is another instalment of Lap of Fate.  The short story is under construction and open to changes. I am grateful, well, hungry for feedback. Thanks.

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I recited a short prayer and pushed the wall section until the opening was big enough to step through. The staircase! … I rushed to get a candle. Bracing myself, I climbed up the spiral, shielding the wavering candle-flame with my hand. Sunlight needled through the shutters and revealed a lofty space with a further staircase leading to galleried sections under the roof.

I noticed a scattering of shrivelled oil-paints tubes, brushes in jars and an array of structures. Three easels held frames shrouded by dust-sheets. I removed the first covering. An exquisite oil painting of a beautiful woman standing naked and serene, eyes closed, in a pit of snakes –  so lifelike I expected them to slip from the canvas and drop to the floor.

Absurd, how slithery creatures scare and repulse me. My feet itched to run. Instead, I warmed to the composed calm of the woman and had the sensation of a déjà vu that felt strangely like coming home.

Feeling brave, I pulled away the cloth from the second frame. Clergy never appealed to me, though this seated, scarlet-clad cardinal beguiled me with a beatific smile … until I noticed his hands caressing a snake coiled in his lap.

I drew back, not from the snake, whose singularity had a stylised quality,  but from the allusion that piety and sexuality might energise each other, and the underlying desire for unity could be seen to satisfy the same end. An idea my adopted mother might have called blasphemous. The painting would cause a scandal in this still deeply-religious country. I stretched my imagination towards a symbolic interpretation, the lore of circular time, but dismissed it as an excuse to silence lingering doubts. I began to grasp the ambiguity behind keeping this space in darkness. Yet there was a sincerity. The depiction of sexuality, intimacy, devotion and parody showed no attempt to glorify or vilify.

Contents aside, I was awed by the genius of the artist and anticipated another masterpiece, being fairly snug about my capacity for tolerance. The third painting made me flinch – the same clergyman in the same chair, rapt by the same exalted smile. His frock parted, he held a young girl to his lap. What made the image truly disturbing were the hands of the man, fine hands, bunching the girl’s lifted nightdress round her waist ….

Abu was barking outside. I had been too captivated to hear the car. ‘Oh Madre de dios … me ayude!’ A woman sounded hysterical as she dragged herself up the narrow stairway, causing the metal structure to judder with the clanging prod of her cane.

‘La senora!’ called the familiar voice of the agent, anxious for his client.

‘Su estancia alli abajo, el Sr Lopez Diaz.’ The harsh command warned him to stay out of this.

I stuck my candle to the last easel and faced the inevitable showdown. A shock of white hair surfaced from the stair-hole. Fragile, much older than I had expected, she gave the impression of a china doll, dressed with meticulous care. Her gaunt body was dominated by intense blue eyes. Like mine – a fleeting thought. She was the woman in the first painting, and the girl whose trust and dependency for love was exploited by the cardinal. I reached out – afraid she might fall, but remained rooted to the spot, petrified. The exposed paintings seemed to claim her, pull at her with invisible tentacles. Finally she gasped for breath and shuffled to a table for support. She shot me an anxious glance, weighed my reaction to the appalling image, and stepped towards it, leaning forward on her cane. I sensed a struggle, as if she tried to borrow my eyes, while hers misted, veiling infinite sadness.

Candlelight caught on the cardinal’s scarlet skull-cap, the pale legs of the girl, and the angelic face, raised adoringly towards her abuser’s smile …

Continued at … https://courseofmirrors.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/lap-of-fate-part-four/

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