Hurricane (Plus a Treatise on Mantras)

It's Saturday afternoon in New Jersey. I have done all of my weekend errands early, like everyone else in the state the last two days, because tomorrow we are under a "state of emergency". Hurricane Irene is supposed to bring fire, flood, earthquake, a plague of locusts...oh wait, that was a literal reading of the Book of Revelation. Sorry about that.

Someone from the Fire Department knocked on my door a couple of hours ago, to give me a hurricane preparedness pamphlet, and to tell me that power would be out for a very long time if it did go out, as the electric company was only stopping at stations long enough to make them safe before moving on. I looked at the pamphlet, which was from the town's Office of Emergency Management. I'm surprised we have one of those. We don't even have a police department in this town (we use State police).

In any event, I suppose it's not bad to be too prepared, but I do think that's what this is. I just read somewhere that the brunt of the storm is heading for Atlantic City, and may wipe it out. With all due respect to those who live there (who I hope are evacuated), I sincerely hope that happens. Atlantic City could stand to be razed and start from scratch. It's really become a hell-hole. Maybe Trump will finance it.

My indoor cat is fully prepared for this, snoring away on my bed. I am also prepared, as I managed to fight the crowds in the grocery and liquor stores yesterday, and I also have two boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I've removed every possible thing from my porch and patio that could turn into a projectile in high winds, and I've prepped the basement for flooding. I have a plan for vacuuming out water every few hours--provided the power does not go out. And there is a tarp secured over the root cellar door. Where I live, I can't do more than that. In retrospect, maybe I should have brought cat carriers inside if I have to evacuate, but again, I don't think that will happen.

This is going to be a "personal intuition versus scientific weather forecasting equipment" weekend. I am told that this will be the most catastrophic storm to hit New Jersey in 25 years. I'm not sure I believe it will be any worse than the torrential downpours we had 2 weeks ago--which did flood my basement, but not in a catastrophic way. By this time tomorrow afternoon, it will already be winding down. I was told the big threat was that it would be a Cat 2 or 3 when it reached here. My "intuitive" prediction was that it would make landfall and weaken to a Cat 1 or less before hitting New Jersey and New York. So, guess what category Irene is now? Yep, a 1. With a less organized center of circulation. We will see if science or personal intuition wins out in the end. I suspect we will both be right--some places probably will be hit hard. But I doubt here will be one of them.

You'll be reading plenty about the hurricane elsewhere, so I figured I would turn to the topic I'm focused on during the wait--Enochian magic. I'm reading several books at once right now, and one of them is Lon Milo DuQuette's excellent "Enochian Vision Magick". This is one of my first forays into Enochian, but I've been told by practitioners that this is easily a one-stop-shopping guide to Enochian chants and ritual. It's also helpful that Lon's writing style isn't obtuse--he's very clear and straightforward, and gives easily understandable examples. This is true of all of his books.

For those of you who don't know, "Enochian" is the term for the language spoken between Adam and the angels, before the "Fall", traditionally. This was a language and system revealed to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Apparently the men received this rather complex system, but never used it themselves.

In reading the opening section with his chant, I can't help but notice some similarity, at least in cadence, between this:

Pa Med Fam Med Drux Fam Fam Ur Ged Graph Drux Med Graph Graph Med Med Or Med Gal Ged Ged Drux.

And this, from the "prana pratistha" (establishment of life) in the Kali puja:

Om am am hrim krom yam ram lam vam sam sam sam hom ham sah

Yes, different sounds, but using monosyllables to establish something. In the former case, the Enochian chant is used prior to scrying (as part of a much longer chant), and is a prologue to the work. In the latter case, the chant is to "establish life" in a murthi or image--hence, I do not recommend that you use this second chant at all. I don't use it. I'm not trying to establish "life" in an image. (This is a ritual used when Hindu temples are opened, and prayers are said over the carved images being installed there--in this case, a Kali temple).

In Hinduism, such monosyllabic mantras are called "bijas", or "seed" mantras. They are derived from the primary sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet laid out in the Maheswara Sutras. The number of syllables used is significant. Most mantras used in pujas have 24, 28, or 30 syllables, and are referred to as gayatri, usnig, and anustup mantras respectively (creation, preservation, destruction).

There is a mantra referred to as the "gayatri" mantra that has two variations: "Om bhuh bhuvah svaha tat savitur varenyam bargo devasya dimahi dyo yo na pracodyat", and "Om tat savitur varenyam bargo devasya dimahi dyo yo nah pracodyat". The second variation is a true Gayatri mantra, with a meter of 24. The former is the gayatri including the mahavyahriti (great utterance). They both refer to that goddess known as Gayatri, a goddess of learning, and "mother of all the Vedas", though the deity invoked through this mantra is Savitri, who is usually not worshipped directly, but known as the "rouser".

This tells you a lot about the working of the mantra. It is meant to bring true knowledge, and it does so through an invocation of Savitri, the "rouser" (i.e., one who stimulates the kundalini flow from its sleepy base of the spine towards the sahasrara chakra at the top of the head). The chakras below the anahata (heart) are thought to be "survival" chakras--they represent impulses that help us in our mundane, day-to-day lives, and in survival. From the anahata upward comes spiritual knowledge (and the anahata is known as the center of the "Virgin Birth"--the birth of true spiritual man), and raising the kundalini consciousness to this level and beyond allows us to become aware of that knowledge. Hence, the mantra's association with the Sun--that which "illuminates us".

But back to the bijas. According to another book I've read, "The Tantra of Sound", reciting these bijas leads to a slowing of the heart rate and of bodily functions, so that one can enter a still, meditative state. It puts one "in between the worlds", you might say. The idea of sound connecting us with this other Mystery is incredibly old; if you think of the notion of the Harmony of the Spheres, you can work backwards from that to these Indian ideas that are thousands of years old.

Speaking from personal experience, I can say there is a connection. For years I did puja daily, and sometimes I would recite mantras for 3 hours straight. That definitely changes your consciousness, without question. In Lon's book, he prescribes a formula that includes 18 minutes of chanting, and this does indeed lead to an altered state of consciousness. It's hard to cultivate awareness when you're hearing so much external noise--both in the physical world and in your brain. Mantras are a way to overcome that noise with noise. It tricks you into a deeper awareness.

Ramakrishna's wife, Sarada Devi, once said that mantras were necessary, as there was "too much distraction in the Age of Kali" (Kali Yuga) for humans to focus their minds. From my own workings, I think she is right. A case of fighting fire with fire, in a sense.

With that--it's only a few more hours til storm time. Not sure if I'll be able to sleep upstairs with rain pounding on my skylights. Maybe I should just recite my mantras to drown out the rain...

Waste

It’s been awhile since I’ve worn a wristwatch. The last one I bought was very loose, and the clasp on it eventually broke. I only paid 5 bucks for it, so it wasn’t a real loss. This time I used a gift card I received and bought a man’s watch. I happen to prefer the sensible leather wristbands of men’s watches to the wimpy and delicate bands that usually hold together women’s watches. I’ve lost more watches because the pathetic wisp of leather used as a wristband has worn out. Not likely to happen with this one.

In any event, I found myself staring at the ticking clock today, and realizing that time is appearing to slip away. Autumn term begins in about three weeks, which means I am back to teaching, and not long for a trip to the UK, mostly to see John Foxx on an 8-city tour. August has been a tiring month; Mercury retrograde has thus far eaten two Macbook power supplies and one VCR, has screwed up at least two important mailings, and four programs that I use regularly suddenly decided to stop working or crash in medias res. Perhaps the desire to return to bed and stay there until September is not entirely unwarranted.

But back to time. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but when I find that my ability to produce work is stymied in some way, I get very frustrated. This can result in minor temper flares, major temper flares, complete inertia, or a sudden binge of cleaning everything in the house just to feel like I’m doing something useful. But it begs the question—why can’t one just spend time doing nothing, without feeling like one is wasting time?

We used to joke about my mother growing up. She was contending with five of us, and it seemed like she was forever cooking, cleaning, doing yardwork—my brother once said that if she had nothing else to do, she’d wax the driveway. In high school, I had a friend who came over quite often. She and I were watching television, and my mother was washing the living room walls. She looked at me and said, “Um, why is your mother washing the walls?” I shrugged. “She’s bored, I guess.”

In retrospect, though, I think I get my mother’s behavior. What often happens when we have spare time is that we sit around speculating about the future, and not in a good way. If I’m busy, I’m not sitting around worrying about finances or relationships—I’m focused on doing something, and in the end, I hope I’ve accomplished something. People are surprised at how clean my house is, given how much I work (at my day job, at my teaching job, and at my writing). But I think I have become like my mother—I always have to be doing something, and when I’m not, I feel like I’m wasting precious time.

This attitude may not be unjustified, in one sense. I find myself hearkening back to my Heidegger seminar days, and his notion of “authentic existence”. The bottom line is that you don’t know what will happen in the next minute, if there will be a tomorrow. Life should not be wasted. However, I’m not sure the problem is not wanting to use time wisely. The problem is how we define “waste”.

What is a “waste of time”? If I’m laying on the beach enjoying the sounds of the ocean, is that a waste of time? If I’m out with friends having a drink instead of sitting at home researching, am I wasting time? I guess it depends, and it largely depends on others. If we have a deadline of some sort, we might harm someone else if we “waste” time by not doing our part by the deadline. We may create more mental anguish by procrastinating (though some people work well under pressure). But it’s hard to convince our productive little selves that slowing down is not a waste of time.

I have to wonder where this comes from. It may be a regional phenomenon, and it also may have to do with our Protestant/Puritan work ethic roots. I hear all the time how the unemployed are “lazy” (before you yell at me, yes I know this is a fallacy). Life in the Northeastern U.S. is certainly fast-paced; if you go down South or to the Midwest, you don’t find the level of frenzy that you find on the East Coast. Walking through New York Penn Station, or through Times Square, is like a video game. You’re constantly bobbing and weaving through crowds of people, some moving fast, some moving too slow, some suddenly changing directions without warning. I read an article recently about “sidewalk rage” in New York City—native New Yorkers getting furious with tourists in Times Square who stop and gawk at everything, blocking the sidewalk traffic. I’ve experienced this myself (and I’m not even a New Yorker, though many people view New Jersey as an extension of New York, rightly or wrongly). And it’s a perfect example of what I mentioned above—the frustration of having the momentum and not being able to move forward.

Fast movement does not guarantee swift movement of time. I’ve done an entire morning’s worth of work, only to find that 2 hours have gone by instead of the whole morning. Other times, when you feel leisurely, you find that a whole day has gone by, and you can’t imagine where it went.
I sometimes think surrendering to our motion might be the best thing. If I’m fired up and do all of my Spring cleaning, I don’t think that’s bad. When I crash out the following week and don’t feel like doing much, at least all that is done. There are times to charge ahead with new projects, and times when you should finish old ones. Scheduling is good, but I never schedule too much in a day—I try to allow for the unpredictability factor. If anything is predictable—it’s that the obstacles we face are unpredictable.

Spook File

While doing some things around the house the other day, I popped in a VHS tape of some old episodes of "Scariest Places on Earth". I've commented on this show before, with regard to how much I felt Alan Robeson's dramatics ruined any potential credibility the show may have had. Those were the "family investigates haunted place" episodes; these were the regular Robeson-free episodes.

The episode I was watching was about Athens, Ohio, supposedly #21 in a worldwide list of the most haunted places. (I can't remember now who made the list--possibly the British Society for Psychical Research). The story centered around an abandoned lunatic asylum and the local university campus in Athens. The library archivist kept something called the "Spook File". It was a folder in a vertical file full of newspaper clippings and photocopied articles about the weird goings-on in the city. According to the archivist, it was the most heavily-used item in special collections.

I had forgotten about this episode, and it occurred to me how cool the idea was of having a campus "spook file". I started to wonder why more universities didn't have them. After all, I've heard strange stories about almost every university campus I've ever visited. Maybe some of them do have that kind of information. On the whole though, I suspect that they are not looking to encourage student interest in ghost stories or legends regarding the campus. This is a shame, because I think it would make the site more interesting, not less. If I had been aware of such legends about the universities I attended when I was a student, that would make me more interested in my school, rather than being a largely apathetic commuter student. (OK, I was pretty involved as an undergraduate, namely because I had an amazing major department that kept us involved. But that's a digression.)

It's probably been almost 10 years since I went on the Chester (NJ) ghost tour. It was a big tourist draw for the town. I was working in a public library at the time, and I went to dinner with a group from work, and then went on the tour. The tour guide informed us that we were the second to last tour ever--they were closing it down. Why? The Chester Lions Club, which apparently has control over town events, said they no longer wanted it because it "attracted a bad element" to town. He then looked at us--who were mostly library staff and high school teachers--and said, "There you go, folks. You're a bad element." I guess that's where Chester's Mendham neighbor, NJ governor Chris Christie, got his idea that teachers were evil and must be destroyed.

Chester is a nice town, and I still like to visit there, but it's always been hard to deny the undercurrent of snobbery there. One might chalk up the Lions Club's assessment to that, but it really reveals a pervasive attitude among "polite" society. It goes back to what I've said about esotericism and mysticism--the religious are afraid because it may be "demonic", the non-religious are afraid of appearing mired in "superstition". Interest in "weird" and sometimes unexplainable happenings is often a guilty pleasure in "normal" people.

I think it's a sad fallout of demythologized society. We're convinced that science explains everything, so stories are no longer needed. Upper class social events in Victorian society (and earlier) often included the telling of ghost stories. In fact, it was a tradition at Christmastime. Some stories were just for fun, but today even the "true account" tales would be picked apart by skeptics. Certainly a large portion of them probably could be written off as imagination, or an illusion of some sort created by an external event. But there is a smug superiority we have about the unknown that really has its roots in fear. The reasonable mind cannot endure things that it can't explain. So, it has to find any explanation to keep from succumbing to fear. Fear of what? Probably that some of the unconscious myths that we reason away might have a grain of truth to them.

I think there's something of a sickness in this. Unconscious fear doesn't go away with reasoning alone. I think it's legitimate to want to explore these things--either for historical reasons, or to see if such things "really happen", and what they are. But our modern worldview doesn't allow for it; anyone who would take it seriously is seen as a crackpot. To be fair, I think discussion of such things has always been a bit taboo. In early societies, there was a great fear of the "other world", and only the shaman approached it. The shaman was revered, but also feared--he wasn't part of the rest of society. He was "other". In our modern, "non-superstitious" world, we've just exchanged one fear of the unknown for another one that's probably worse, because it tries to pretend that it doesn't have any "real" reality to it. The unknown and unexplained will always be with us, and pretending there is no such thing creates a psychological fracture.

It is interesting how culture has tried to balance this out. Shows like "Ghost Hunters" and others attempt to look at "paranormal" activity from a skeptical point of view, only giving credence to what can be recorded with equipment. That is not enough to satisfy skeptics, who will always say it is faked. But there is clearly an attempt to put together two myths--the old ones about ghosts and spirits, and more modern myths about truth that can be gained using technology as a medium. Such beliefs don't go away because they are integral to human consciousness, and our vehement dismissals of such things is foolish. As Aleister Crowley said, such priori considerations "have done more to retard the progress of science than any other form of human folly." It is foolish to think that we can absolutely "know" anything.

Normal

I've been reading Aleister Crowley's lectures on yoga this week, as well as some of his other writings on meditation. He's pretty on-target vis-a-vis the things I learned from my guru about meditation. Some things I don't agree with (e.g. if a dog interrupts your meditation, shoot the dog), though I'm pretty sure Crowley revised such ideas later in his life. It is impossible in this century (or even in his) to meditate without distraction. If the distractions don't come from the outside, they come from the inside. I do recall a later Crowley anecdote, where he complained about the noise of London while trying to meditate, but then realized it was the perfect training ground. Anyone can be still when everything around them is still. Being still amid chaos is really the point.

I have great admiration for Crowley's writings, while still thinking he's a touch "insane". He certainly did things that most "normal" people would not think about doing or pursuing. But is that a negative?

Monday's Colbert Report episode featured Nassir Ghaemi, author of "A First Rate Madness". Ghaemi is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University, and the premise of his book is that those with mental illnesses may actually make better leaders, especially in times of crisis. Those in mania, for instance, have a rush of ideas coming to them, and are likely to come up with more creative solutions to problems. Those who are depressed tend to be more compassionate to others, and have an empathy for suffering. They also have a more realistic view of the world.

If you've seen the extremes of manic-depression, you know it is definitely an imbalance, and definitely a difficulty for the person living with it, and those close to them, especially if untreated. But it is clear that characteristics of the illness are vital to human advancement. I start to wonder about our whole mechanism for measuring psychological norms when I think about this.

Psychological norms seem to represent a group of perceptions accepted by a majority of people. These norms may not be any more "right" or "wrong" than other viewpoints, but they are treated like the "facts of reality". Most "normal" people have no grasp on the scope and magnitude of reality. This is clearer with every new article I read on quantum mechanics. The universe is much more complex and mind-blowing than our perception of it. Our brain acts as a filter, so that we're only processing so much information at a time. The person with the mental illness---schizophrenia, manic depression, temporal lobe epilepsy to name some obvious examples--often takes in much more of reality than we're used to, and hence perceives things in ways that seem "crazy" to us at times. The medication they take is designed to provide them with filters, so that they can function in "normal" society. We use the term "delusional" to describe them, and assume they are hallucinating because we don't experience what they experience. It's really those who are "normal" who are delusional, because they really don't have the big picture.

In order for society as a whole to have the "big picture", we'd have to throw away our current yardstick for measuring "normative" and do something entirely different. It's hard to say if this will ever happen, though the trends throughout history would be against it. Mysticism and esotericism are the "mental illness" of religion, in a way--they seek to go beyond the "normative" dogmas and doctrines of organized religion, and therefore are viewed as "deviant". But to discount either would mean that religion is just what hardcore atheists say it is--nothing more than a means of keeping people "in their place". If reality isn't bigger than what we experience daily with our five senses, then it would be a lot of bunk. Even science tells us that there is more to reality than we experience empirically.

In a certain sense, it is all a lot of bunk. But that "bunk" makes up our existence. We tell stories, and these stories guide us through life. Most of them are false, but it really doesn't matter. In the end, there isn't any "thing" or goal you can look to, even if you are a religious person. This is why the Buddhist says we move from knowing to unknowing--and then back to knowing that we don't know. That's really the only "truth". I think insanity lies more with "normal" people who are too afraid to question their stories. We cling to the most absurd things out of fear. Not fear of "God's punishment" necessarily, but fear that our life will lose meaning and that we will face the unknown by ourselves and be swallowed up. But--if we don't question and change our stories, we never actually go through the human process of growing and maturing, and we become unable to live with others in the world. Like it or not, this is where we are, and this is the game we're playing. I prefer to look at it as a game--you want to do your best, but you don't want to take it too seriously.

Whether

Weather is a boring subject. People talk about the weather when they want to avoid talking about other, less controversial things. Someone who only talks about the weather generally is not a social magnet; unless, I suppose, they were hanging out at a meteorologist's convention. The Weather Channel tries to make weather exciting, but there's really only so much of that you can stand (though I preferred my father's Weather Channel watching habit to his Fox News habit). It occurred to me that the only time people collectively give a toot about the weather is when it generates fear. Scorching heat waves, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms--if these things are predicted for your area, you're typically glued to some weather outlet, either online or on television.

I find myself checking the weather several times a day. Maybe this just says that I'm a boring person. Sometimes there's a practical reason--planning a trip to the Shore, or just planning to do yardwork. If I hear something about flooding, I have to prepare my root cellar, which always gets some water coming up through the ground if there's excessive rain. But most of the time, it's just a compulsion. I thought about why this might be the case, and upon reflection, I think weather phenomenon is connected to our sense of the numinous. That may sound odd, but I will explain.

First, when I say "numinous", I'm referring to that awe and terror of the unknown, of the mysteries of everything, things that science can only scratch the surface of in terms of knowledge. Seems pretty heavy, but weather is something largely out of our control. We have very sophisticated tools for predicting weather, but we can only warn, we can't stop. Meteorology is like a giant, scientific divination system. Like most divination systems, the data given isn't always interpreted correctly or definitive. But the fact that we have some tool for negotiating something we have no control over is comforting, even if that tool is imperfect.

If I may take a brief detour here--divination is one of those things that our "rational" culture scoffs at, or associates with hucksters or frauds. Certainly there have always been frauds, but divination systems like Tarot are based on universal symbol systems. Jung suggested that we draw certain cards via synchronicity, and just as hearing a certain word or phrase can have an impact on us, the unconsciously-chosen symbol may tell us a lot about ourselves. Since it draws on the collective, where concepts of time and space are distorted, it is often possible to "know the future" from reading them. If used honestly and correctly, they can offer a lot of information about circumstances.

Linking this back to its relationship to weather--it is amazing what the "rational" minded person does in a crisis. I have read Tarot and various other systems for the last 25 years (not professionally, just privately). Many members of my family and some friends make a joke of it. However--these same family and friends will suddenly call me when there's a crisis, and say, "can you do a reading for me?" Why would they suddenly take stock in something they think is foolish and irrational? Because they're confronted with the unknown. The unknown doesn't follow rational rules--there's only logic and probability for predicting the outcome, and often that is not sufficient--especially if the logical outcome appears bleak. We turn back to core symbol systems when confronted with things we don't understand and have no control over. We often have to decide on a course of action, and the more accurate advance information we have (or think we have), the more confident we are in our decision. Weather related to "whether".

Now, the weather is out of our control. We hear about things like "cloud seeding" for rain and such, but in general, it's agreed that it's not a great idea to tamper too much with weather systems. One big reason I think I obsess about weather is the need for control. Not of life in general, which is impossible, but of my own circumstances. It's a difficulty, really--I have to balance my own need for discipline and structure with the fact that the unexpected can drop in at any moment and change everything. Going with the flow is more important than having a rigid plan. But I find myself comforted by plans, even though my guru has said, "You want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans."

I am one of those people whose mood can be affected by the weather. This is not extreme--I don't go into clinical depression when it rains, for instance. But I find that I can do more on cool, autumn-like days with clear skies. I don't mind rainy or snowy weather, but if it goes on for a prolonged period of time, I get impatient and frustrated. It makes my friends wonder why the heck I'd want to move to England if I'm not crazy about rainy dreary weather. But English weather is not all about being rainy and dreary--often it will change many times in one day. So--it may start out rainy and dreary, but be sunny and breezy with blue sky by lunchtime. And raining again by nightfall. At least things are broken up.

Nonetheless, for me (and perhaps others) the weather is usually part of a pattern that makes me feel secure. Like my old house, old books, bread baking in the kitchen, and a glass of wine on the patio with a book--nice weather is a creature comfort, and at least gives the illusion of everything being stable. Facts sometimes are a lot more troubling, and we cling to familiar comforts as transitional objects. Humans are usually not adventurers at heart; we like to know where we are, where we stand, what is coming down the road. Fear is dispelled by information, and despite the amount of flack meteorologists get for being "wrong" at times, the forecast is still a daily symbol of our desire to predict and control our environments.

Drained

I've been rather quiet these days, blogging-wise. I've been quiet at home, too. 3 solid months of writing has left me drained, I suppose. And to be honest, the nonsense in Washington has left me drained as well. This is a big statement coming from me. I'm fairly indifferent to politics. Certainly I vote in every election, and I sign petitions and write letters for issues I think are important, but beyond that, I don't spend too much time contemplating what goes on in D.C. Mark Twain famously said "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." And that was in 1891. I tend to look at Congressional idiocy as a lot of "same ol', same ol'"

What bothers me these days is not that Congress are idiots. What bothers me is that Congress is psychotic. Seriously. While you can't paint everyone with the same brush, the "Tea Party" contingent that has made it's way into Congress like a tapeworm has turned the Republican party into a bunch of passionate defenders of utter insanity. So insane, in fact, that if you or I started talking like they do, they'd come with a straightjacket and take us away.

Republicans have historically been against taxes, against "big government", and in favor of conservative spending. In balance, this does not have to be a bad thing. What they're trying to do now falls along those lines. But how they're doing it is what is screwed up. Just say it out loud, and you'll realize how nutty it is. "We need to cut trillions of dollars in our deficit. Right now the top 1% of earners (i.e., billionaires) make the majority of the income in this country. Because of tax loopholes, they don't pay any taxes. The people who are struggling and have the least of the money pay taxes with very few breaks. But they will have to sacrifice more, because we can't tax the billionaires, even though that would solve the revenue problem, and the billionaires would still be...well, billionaires."

When you consider how irrational that statement is, you have to ask "why"? The Republicans say it's because billionaires are "job creators", even though every bit of evidence is to the contrary. These people are GREEDY. They are not interested in sharing their money to stimulate the economy. That's why the economy broke down in 2008. The psychology of the rich has never been different--they have money because they don't spend it. And they're certainly not going to spend it on you. Trickle down economics has been proved to be utterly false, and yet they still cling to this, a piece of driftwood in the ocean that they claim is a boat. It's not coincidental that the so-called "Tea Party" movement gets a lot of its funding from the Koch Brothers--oil billionaires whose father had connections with the Nazis and the old Soviet Union. He had a falling out with the Soviet Union, then suddenly denounced Communism, and was allowed to do business in the U.S. again. The Koch Brothers are anti-regulation (environmental and otherwise), anti-green energy (they're an oil company, after all), anti-Labor, and of course, they have been financing a lot of the anti-Obama campaign as well as the Tea Partiers. Regardless of their family past, it's as Bill Maher said: "it's not a grass roots movement if it's funded by billionaires".

Now, after the fiasco of the debt ceiling debate, and the downgrading of the U.S.'s credit rating, it's incredibly obvious that much of Congress ought to be taken away and medicated. How did these people even get voted in? And why the constant battling with the President? (Who, by the way, is not blameless--he needs to stop pretending these people are sane and can be worked with. They're not going to work with him--they want to get rid of him. He's been far too weak and caves in too easily).

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am fixated on this idea of "narrative vs. fact". I believe that we are driven more by our unconscious assumptions and "stories" about what is "normal" and "moral" and "decent" than we are by any facts. We are irrational, not rational creatures in many ways. It's why I'm a big believer in the Humanities, because the point is to teach you to think outside your own narrative, and to question it. But I'm not going to repeat all of that discussion now. What I'm interested in here is the narrative driving what's happening in our country.

On one of my trips to London, I picked up a book by David Reynolds, a Professor of International History at Cambridge. It's a history of the United States, from all of its colonizations to the "Bush II" years. I like to read American history from the point of view of the British (and other Europeans as well). I'm interested in how Americans and American history look from the other side of the pond. The title of the book was "America, Empire of Liberty". Early on, Reynolds explains his thesis--the paradox in the title is deliberate. America has always boasted that it is about "freedom" and "liberty", and are not empire builders (in the way Britain once was, for example). However--we also allowed slavery in our "free" country for many many years, and were reluctant to let it go, mainly for economic reasons. The South claimed they would be financially ruined without it. But we had slavery for such a long time--and Blacks were legally second-class citizens for so long--that the inherent racism of slavery has become embedded in the narrative. How can a "free" country also have a "slave" mentality?

I wasn't sure I was convinced by his thesis until Obama was elected President. As I've said before, this brought out the ugly American narrative in all of its horror. Basically, the "normal" American citizen is white, Christian (Protestant), wealthy, and straight. America is for these people, and these people alone, according to the narrative. Everyone else is just a parasite on the system. If you are poor, it's because you don't work hard (Protestant work ethic twisted). Non-whites are poor because they don't work hard, and they want to murder and rob the good white Christian families. Arabs and Muslims have joined this narrative since 9-11. If you are a Muslim in government, you want to impose Sharia law on all of us. Capitalism is also part of the narrative, and the "dime-novel" mentality that anyone can become filthy rich if they work hard enough. Therefore, any attempt by the government to have social programs smacks of "fascism" and "Nazism". A bastardized version of Christianity completes the narrative, and branches of it are taken up by fundamentalists who believe we are in the end times and should start a revolution against the "immorality" of the United States--with things like homosexuality and abortion rights on top of their hit list, but they've also managed to extend it to the poor and needy. Yes, that's right--being Christian is no longer about helping the poor. God is obviously rewarding the rich, and it's every man for himself.

Why Obama, you might ask? Because he's a Black man. He doesn't fit the "normal" model of the President. The fact that he is also in favor of helping those in need now makes him suspicious--he's not a capitalist, he's a "socialist", which they equate with "Nazism" (even though European socialism isn't remotely like Nazism, nor is the United States becoming socialist). Also not coincidental is that people want to associate him with the "enemy" religion of Islam. It also reminds us that our slavery heritage, and its later treatment of Blacks as second-class citizens, has not left the national mentality--it has become unconscious, which makes it more dangerous.

All of this narrative is obviously and patently false. But it's clear that people believe it, and take it as the "norm". The Tea Party would not have gained traction, nor would people like Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin be taken seriously as candidates for President if this narrative wasn't embedded in our national consciousness. This is not to say everyone follows this narrative--it seems to be largely in the "red" states (which, again not coincidentally, were the former slave-holding states for the most part). But many conservatives in the North have jumped on the bandwagon as well, drinking the Kool-Aid given freely by Fox News. The people who believe this narrative aren't necessarily "stupid"--they're just unaware how afraid they are of anything outside the narrative. They may not even be aware that it's their narrative.

Jimmy Kimmel's satirical take on Michelle Bachmann is a pretty good take on at least part of the "narrative" in all its absurdity:



I could talk about having "awareness" of our hidden assumptions, but I think Bertrand Russell makes the point better than I do:



I'm not even going to apologize for soapboxing this time. Apparently most of America is sick of this crap too:

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Stranger

I was shocked to read about the tragedy in Oslo and nearby Utoeya. Norway is not a country you associate with violence. Their stiffest penalty under the law is 21 years in prison. The worst that police usually contend with are breaking up drunken brawls. The kind of massacre that went on there doesn't seem possible, as though we will all wake up and find it was just a disturbing dream.

In reading the initial news reports, there was an immediate suspicion of "al-Qaeda" terrorism. Maybe that wasn't an unreasonable assumption, given that at least some of the native population was not pleased about the influx of Muslim immigrants, and there have been conflicts about Muslim religious laws versus the laws of the country throughout all of the Netherlands. However, in a twist of fate, the person responsible was not a Muslim, not associated with al-Qaeda--he was, in fact, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigration. You would not look at the suspect's photo and think "terrorist". That should give us reason to pause.

I recall growing up, that I would hear at home and in school about "talking to strangers". Strangers who lure you into their car and then take you away and kill you, or whatever they're supposed to do. People who would put razor blades in Halloween candy. If you believed the movies they showed you, and the lectures in class, anyone who you didn't know, especially if they were "different" or appeared "shifty", clearly fell into this category and were criminals. Similarly, there were assumptions about certain "neighborhoods". To this day, I am continually amazed at the unawareness about perceptions of "otherness". I think of older family members, former co-workers, and others who I know and deal with who work side by side with others in diverse environments every day, with no conflict. Yet, you will still hear them make statements like, "That used to be a good neighborhood until the blacks moved in." And there's absolutely no awareness of the racism of that statement, no understanding that it's not the "blacks" that make a neighborhood unsafe, it's usually the economic and social conditions of the area. We're not talking about neo-Nazis; we're talking about your average nice old man or lady who has lived his or her life in a suburban neighborhood in a very socially "normal" way.

In spite of all this negative mythology, the facts are quite different. It is incredibly unlikely that strangers are waiting around corners to grab you. Statistics show that most child abductions are not committed by strangers, they're committed by family members, friends, or neighbors. Your kid isn't dumb enough to get in a car with a stranger; they are likely to get into a car with someone they know, and think they can trust. Similarly, just as much crime occurs among the "privileged white" segment of society. They're also more likely to be the ones buying drugs; after all, they have the money for it. Boredom plus money usually equals trouble in the adolescent set.

Back to Norway. The latest "outsider" group has been the Muslims. After 9/11, the cultural myth suggested that every Muslim was suspect, they were all extremists by definition and operatives for al-Qaeda. If you don't believe that, you just have to recall all the nonsense and uproar over the "Ground Zero Mosque" or the assumption that President Obama was really a Muslim. (Not that it matters if he really was, but that was something usually included in a laundry list of negatives by his opponents). Again, the fact is that Islam is not a violent religion, and its adherents are not all extremists. In fact, the overwhelming majority are not extremists. Yes, there are violent extremist cells that should be monitored, and are being monitored. But the attacks on Norway show it's not just those who are Muslim with extremist views. It's also those who profess to be Christian.

There is a lot of Christian extremism out there. The most violent of them tend to be associated with white supremacist groups or ideologies. It is clear that these groups do not represent the whole of Christianity, or even the Christian message. But--if you are a Christian--do you want people to look at the Norway events and assume that all Christians are terrorists? The young man responsible was described as being a fundamentalist Christian with right-wing ideologies. And--he was Norwegian. He was one of their own, not a foreign national. (Incidentally--another report says he was a freemason. I don't know which version is true, but I can similarly imagine the ignorant outpouring against "secret societies", and "occultism" that will ensue if that proves to be true).

This case has something in common with the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords; in both cases, the people involved were psychotic. I don't know what the diagnosis will prove to be for Anders Breivik, but there has to be a certain amount of blind paranoia and delusion to take the ideologies he espoused and take them to that extreme. There is a component of humanness missing there, that is a trademark of the sociopath. In short--these are individuals who are sick. And--when these kinds of atrocities happen, it usually centers around an individual who is mentally sick. It has everything to do with the person, and nothing to do with the group they belong to, unless the group openly espouses violence. And still--you can't take the characteristics of that group and apply that to everyone with the same characteristic (e.g., saying Al-Qaeda is made up of Muslims, therefore all Muslims espouse the views of al-Qaeda).

We tend to want to blame groups in such cases, as the attack of the psychotic is so random, so unexpected, it preys upon our worst fears. We start to study the psychotic individual, and his characteristics, and our sense of self-protection makes us wary of others with similar characteristics. We think we can protect ourselves from such future events in this way. But it is a fear response; it does not represent the reality, and usually creates more conflict and violence.

There are components of this that make me think of the "critical thinking" discussion occurring online where I teach, which I still plan to address. For now--just remember those who are suffering in Norway, who have lost loved ones, have been injured, or are traumatized from being there. It's a sobering reminder of how one person can do so much damage, and also of the sad fact that so much good could have been done with that passion instead. Humans have great potential for both.

Other

It is 3 am, and there are piles of books all over my bedroom floor. I have finally finished a draft proposal for a textbook, which has taken me much longer than expected due to publisher submission requirements. The heat index is supposed to hit 105 degrees today, so I have turned on the air conditioners already to cool the house down before I go to work. I am conscious, but cognizance comes slowly.

While I am pleased with this writing milestone, it is only a beginning, and I still have 3 articles to reformat and write abstracts for in at least one other language besides English. In addition, I have to put a proposal together for my fiction collection as well. So, life has been busy, and needless to say, blogging has fallen by the wayside.

During my researching binge this past week, I stopped in a restaurant very near to the library where I was working to get some dinner. For some reason it seemed there were a lot of children in the restaurant that evening. I think five or six of them belonged to a blonde woman who appeared to be in a Xanax-induced haze. They swarmed the area around their table like vengeful locusts, while she was the picture of Stillness, staring into space with perfect detachment, blissfully unaware of her brood. But the locusts could not compete with the wailing I heard two tables over. Turning around, I saw an Indian family--a young woman, her daughter, her mother or mother-in-law, and her baby son. It was the latter who was wailing like a goete. I expected spirits to appear from the underworld momentarily.

Seeing the family suddenly jarred my memory with a thought. I recalled being in Hindu temples, and at pujas, and the way I was treated when I walked in, looking decidedly out of place in a sea of colorful saris, chanting and ringing of bells. Even when I am dressed accordingly, I still look out of place. I remember sitting for Shiva puja, and an older Indian gentleman leaned over to me. He said, "I don't mean to sound rude when I say this, but--what are you doing here? Are you Hindu?" "Yes," I replied. "Ah. Then that would be a good reason for you to be here." He then asked me many questions about why I would embrace Hinduism, which is what usually happens if I appear in such places. There is a certain fascination that a "foreigner" would be interested in their religion. They are not unwelcoming, just curious.

"Otherness" is usually associated with a kind of xenophobia--a suspicion of strangers. The Devil is always the stranger who sweeps into town, and people seek to eject him and protect themselves. I have discovered, however, that there is a strange kind of reverse discrimination that goes on in many cases. When I mingle with traditional Indian families, they always ask if I am married. When I say I am divorced, they nod and say, "Are you going to get married again?" I tell them probably not. They will then nod vigorously, "ah well, that is good then." By contrast--I have Indian friends who are divorced. When they enter these communities, they are shunned like lepers. I noted this discrepancy to a friend of mine, who replied, "No offense when I say this, but it's because you are white. They worship white people." She was not the only one to tell me this. A friend's daughter in Dubai told me that I should go there--it would be easy for me as a white American to get work. It was the natives and Indians who were shunned for the high-paying jobs.

So, it is a case of the foreigners having elevated or exceptional status in the community. It is as though a deity has swept in, and is exempt from the normal social rules. I wonder why that is the case. Perhaps the long-standing effects of British colonialism? I didn't think that was too well received, though I've also been told that British-style education and culture is the norm in parts of India; the British are gone, but their cultural impact remains. It may be a financial thing as well--there might be an assumption that white Americans are wealthy. I don't really know. But I find it peculiar, just as I find their treatment of their own communities peculiar at times. But human nature is the same regardless of nationality.

I finished grading for my summer course, and I'm starting to notice a new trend, not specifically with these students, but over all of my classes. There are a rising number of students who are clearly very smart, but believe they can pass a course without doing any of the work or reading. They are cultivating the art of bullshit. I have to confess that this is a useful skill in the world; no one knows everything, and sometimes you have to appear as though you know. So, you "bullshit", and some people are more convincing at it than others. Politics is a career based entirely on bullshit. So is television journalism. Unfortunately for these students, I don't do "bullshit". Call us elitist if you will, but in the academic world, I need to see that you understand what I've taken the time to teach you. Even if you just understand a little.

In checking my faculty e-mail, I noticed that there was a long thread of discussion about teaching critical thinking to students, and how you know you've done it. I'm still making my way through the discussion, which is quite interesting.

But now, it is time to go to work, and brave the heat, humidity, and bloodthirsty bugs outside. I'll write on critical thinking tomorrow if I haven't melted or been drained of all my blood.

Know

I have been spending my "relax" time doing something not very relaxing--working on a textbook proposal. Textbook proposals are a lot of work--not only do you have to do your market research in terms of other similar texts, but you need to put together sample chapters (some publishers only want one, most want three--the one I'm querying wants three), and you have to have other peripheral documents like a curriculum vitae (fancy term for resume) and a list of potential reviewers. None of this is unreasonable, but it is a lot of work, especially considering that most publishers don't want you to query them with a finished product. They usually want to be involved in the process.

Writing the chapters has been tough, because I am limited in the amount of sources I have available in my home library. For all the books I have in this house, there are some topics where my holdings are sparse. Having most of the academic libraries around here closed or on limited summer hours doesn't help, especially since I have to write in between taking care of my household tasks, and I have to work full-time during the week. Since I am not writing the final product, I just want to give them an idea, but I also don't want to over-rely on one text, or inadvertently regurgitate the work of another author. This is especially true in cases where I only know a little bit about the person I'm writing about, or when I've only had access to a few of their writings.

This raised a question in my mind--how much "knowledge" of a topic is enough? What makes you an "expert"?

On some grand scale, we never really "know" anything. There is the old saying that a wise man knows that he does not know. Much of the method of Socrates demonstrated this fact; he would question the "experts" to get to the root of a subject, only to find that they really didn't know very much at all. This made him decidedly unpopular, but it's an ugly fact for the ego--there is only so much that you know.

For every book I've read on the subject I'm working on, there are probably ten I haven't read. My reading list could fill a football stadium right now. And the books I have read already might come close to filling a football stadium. Compared to other scholars, I start to wonder if I've read the "right" books. I comfort myself with the notion that other scholars must do this as well.

Pierre Bayard wrote a book that I actually read a few years ago, entitled, "How to Talk About Books You've Never Read". He notes that the great writer Umberto Eco has said that you don't even have to hold a book in your hands if you pay attention to what others have said about it. I'm sure a lot of this goes on in literary circles. In any event, Bayard argues that we don't read books to memorize their content, and we certainly can't read everything that's out there. We should understand a book's place in our library, as the books we choose speak more about ourselves than about the book, its author, or the author's intent.

Maybe this says a lot about the acquisition of "knowledge". We seek to know about things that tell us about ourselves. We become passionately interested in topics because they relate to our own inner life, the thing that we know the best. If this is the case, then "expertise" tells us more about the expert than about his or her subject. This makes learning much more subjective rather than objective. There isn't a single person out there reading this (or not) who hasn't had to slog their way through some assigned text that they have no interest in. In such cases, nothing is ever remembered about the book--except the title, maybe a line here or there--and I would bet those lines are remembered because they were mentioned by a professor in class.

As a professor, I want everyone to be interested in my subject, and to make it interesting. But, to use the old expression, we can't all "tap dance and spit nickels" for our classes. Even a basic understanding of many subjects requires effort on the part of students outside the lecture hall (and a fair amount of attention inside). And what I find fascinating someone else might find utterly boring. And vice versa.

There has been an unpleasant trend in universities in recent years, allowing the students to grade the professor. While there are some truly awful professors out there, I would say that overall this is a huge mistake. Students will declare a class "bad" because it was "too hard" or "not interesting enough". Yet you hear many stories about how years later, the person suddenly realizes the value of the class. In short--students don't know enough to know whether a professor is good or not, unless the professor really falls down on the job.

Which brings up another point--a lot of the time, when asked to give presentations or lectures, the presenter will be nervous that they'll come across sounding stupid or foolish. The fact is that most of the time, the audience knows little or nothing about the topic, and anything known by the presenter comes across as a world of knowledge. It's like the phenomenon surrounding parents and computers. Even if I only know a little about computers, the first time I figure out a problem on my mother's machine, I am suddenly an "expert", and will receive a call about every difficulty she is having with the Internet, with her Excel spreadsheets, with her e-mail. Usually they're questions I can't answer until I come over and look at it. This is because the knowledge I have is not a memorization of every program--it's a basic knowledge of how the computer works.

That's probably true in scholarship as well. I once heard that in library science, 80% of peer reviewed articles were basically re-writes of other studies; very little of it was original material. People will write what they have to for tenure, and they'll likely stick to something "safe" (something already well researched). So, if you're familiar with core readings, you don't need to know all of the peripheral material to get by.

In any event--I have to remind myself that there's no need to scale Mount Everest, knowledge-wise. Almost no one else has done it, either.

Early

I've mentioned before that my cat has a habit of waking me up at 4 am. He's now decided that he wants to eat at 3 am, and my refusal to feed him until at least 4 means that the 3:00 hour is a decidedly unsettled one, full of yowling, pawing, and being frequently nuzzled by a wet cat nose. He's going to be awfully traumatized when I go away for 2 weeks to the UK. My neighbor won't feed him until at least 8 am.

In any event, I don't know yet whether these early feline wake-ups are a curse or a blessing. I'd like to have a full night's sleep, but I also find that early morning is the best writing time for me. Last year I wrote about a Sylvia Plath documentary from the Voices and Visions series. In the documentary, A. Alvarez mentioned the last year's of Plath's life, when she was writing intensely. He said she would get up at 3 or 4 in the morning, work until the kids got up--and then she was a Mum, looking after the kids, and looking after the house. By nighttime, she was likely too exhausted to write anything. In this scene in the documentary, you see a woman portraying Plath, opening her shutters to a London sunrise, looking over the rooftops, the outside sounds dominated by deliverymen making early morning deliveries. The woman glances out the window, then picks up her tea, and heads for her typewriter. I was reminded of this scene once when I was staying in an old Bloomsbury hotel in London. I opened the curtains at around 5 in the morning in late July, and I had this view of the London rooftops with all of the pastels of an impending sunrise. I looked down, and there were very few people about--just trucks making deliveries. And, I was sitting there with my tea, taking in the morning air. While I would never compare myself to Sylvia Plath in a literary sense, I can definitely understand the charm of those early hours looking over the city, and why one would want to write at those hours.

Besides the atmosphere, the other thing about early mornings is that I've usually just woken up from REM sleep. This means that I'm fresh from dreaming, and my mind is filled with those thoughts that occur before the conscious ego has entirely taken over. Lately my dreams have been coming from the collective rather than the personal unconscious. It may be because of daytime conscious thoughts--I've finished my fiction series reflecting on various archetypes, and I've been confronted with both the Child and the Trickster archetypes in dreams. I also had an insight about a character that I created years ago--back in the mid-1980s. This character doesn't appear in any of my published writings; she is the focus of a novel I've been writing for some time, and a character like her is in the story "Animus". While the story of this character is not my story by any means, I recognize that the character's myth is also one of my own driving myths.

"Myth" is a frequently misunderstood term. I sometimes use the word "narrative" instead. I remember a conversation in New York with John Foxx during the same London trip mentioned above, when he told me there was nothing "mythical" about his work. This is because he and I are not using the same definition of myth. The work of the writer and the artist is by definition "mythical"--that work is storytelling work. Whatever imagery is used, with paint, words, photos, music--some narrative is being related. Much is made in literary theory about "intent"--there is the author's intent, and then there's how readers interpret a work. In short, the author created the piece with his or her own unconscious myth, and others viewing, hearing, or reading the piece will relate it to their own unconscious myth. Or, I should say, one myth of our many myths.

I don't want to get into the story of my character here, as it is complex. But the driving myth comes from the personal unconscious. While I did not have a perfect childhood, it was still a very imaginative one. I held onto it as long as I could. Then one day, I woke up, and everything was different. The kind of play I engaged in was suddenly childish, and I found myself with romantic feelings. This literally happened in one night. I just woke up in the morning, and this is how I felt. Life completely changed after that, and while I could never go back to being a "child", I also didn't like adolescence. Love was a hurtful thing, frequently unrequited, and it was against a backdrop of adolescent social drama. The worst part is that it was largely unavoidable--young hormones do not yield to being tamed. The myth started then, and it has to do with being thrust into the maelstrom of life without any warning or control. Because romantic love was wrapped up in all of this, that has gotten a decidedly unfavorable review from me. There is a sense of past happiness decimated, and the need to stoically keep moving forward, because going backward is impossible.

Of course, rationally I know that all of this upheaval was necessary. One doesn't stay in a single phase of life forever. But the unconscious still plays it out as a betrayal on the part of life--on the part of "God", on the part of society. And therefore, all of the above are viewed with polite suspicion.

I'm not interested in turning this into a personal therapy session, so I think that's enough said. But it is a pretty good illustration of how our unconscious stories drive our life decisions, and our creative output as well.

Noise

There was almost no one on the road when I drove to work this morning. This afternoon, I could only assume one of 3 things:

1. Everyone got over their 4th of July hangover at the same time and hit the road
2. Schools reopened early and no one told me
3. There is some major natural disaster headed our way, and everyone is stocking up on canned goods in anticipation

Seriously, there was an obscene amount of traffic driving home--unusual for highways not pointing at the Jersey Shore in the summer. If you're from New Jersey, you don't go "to the beach", you go "down the Shore". And pretty much everyone is down the Shore at this time of year. I live 2 hours from the Shore, so it's usually dead around here in the summer, except for people swimming in the local reservoirs. Which is fine with me.

I was out with a friend the other day who wondered why you can't walk into a bar or eating establishment and not have music blaring. Come to think of it, you can't go anywhere and not have music blaring--usually music anyone over 30 would hate. There was some psychological study done (there always is), that suggested that loud music causes people to drink more, which is why bars are always blaring loud music. That doesn't work for people like me, and I don't think I'm alone. So, for you entrepreneurs, here's a new get-rich-quick scheme--quiet restaurants.

I remember hating every minute of my wedding reception, even though it was very nicely done. My guests loved it, because we chose to not have loud music blaring. Some of the people invited hadn't seen each other in years. They didn't want to shout over some obnoxious band or DJ. If I ever had to plan such an occasion again, that is something I would not change.

I realize I'm far more sensitive to noise than I used to be. Mind you, I've always been a fan of hardcore punk and thrash--you would think that I'd love loud music. But I don't consider that noise. Unless I'm trying to write, in which case, it's a distraction--but it's still not noise. If there was one thing I could say for the family with 8 million kids that moved out this past year--at least their teenage boys were into the Misfits. I could handle that kind of interruption during the day. In general though, I like things quiet, which is why I listen to more ambient music these days, if I listen to anything at all. Or, I watch re-runs of my favorite TV shows; I don't have to pay attention because I've already seen them.

My big problem with music in public places is that I usually like to go out, have a meal, and either read a book or think about my writing. In spite of meditation, it's really hard to think or focus when you have loud music blaring around you. I wouldn't even mind if it was classical music, played softly. Not soft rock--soft rock is an abomination to the human race.

In addition to having my nerves rubbed raw by loud contemporary music, I really hate soft rock and all the sentiment that goes with it. It sounds terrible, but I find myself cringing at words like love, light, healing, angels, etc.--just as I am irritated by men who sing, in the immortal words of Dave Barry, like they are "having their prostate examined by Captain Hook." I'm not moved by the music of "soulful" women either--I have visions of turning a fire hose on them full blast. Whether it be some New Agey light thing or a smarmy love song about how the guy knows he has cheated on her a billion times but now he knows he loves her and it's forever, I can't help but feeling like vomiting in the best case scenario. (Worst case scenario--I want to punch the person until they stop talking or singing). It's like eating massive amounts of raw sugar--it's sickening. If I'm subjected, for example, to a group like Air Supply, or perhaps to Midge Ure's Ultravox, I feel like I need to listen to Minor Threat or DRI stat.

I don't know if I've become a cynical and crabby old lady, or if I'm just good at calling BS when I see it. I don't mind heartfelt emotion, but "heartfelt" is the key word--this isn't heartfelt, it's totally phony. There's something to be said for subtlety.

On a totally different note, in your Cthulhu moment of the day, here are Cthulhu slippers. These are almost as good as Mental Floss' Freudian slippers.

And for the heck of it, because it's my blog--here's a video of a cat ruining someone else's video. Your welcome.

Independence Day Post: Eyes

It's 3:00 in the morning. I'm wondering why I'm awake, but then I realized that I fell asleep around 6:30. Rather lame, I know, but I have been ridiculously exhausted from non-stop writing, keeping up with teaching an online class, and several trips to New York. (Going to New York wears me out, because it's a minimum 3 hours of travel each way, mainly because of train schedules). It is the 4th of July, and I can hear music outside. There has been music outside since yesterday afternoon, all of it crappy. I've had the fans in the house on full blast, just to drown it out.

I checked messages on the phone I never answer. Most new messages were hang-ups, but one was a woman's voice saying: "Yes--no. It's just that he's come to himself." Then she hung up. I'm pleased to hear it. Everyone should come to themselves eventually.

My archetype story collection is now finished, and I will be shopping for a publisher this summer. I'm now working on a different book proposal, but I won't bore you with the details. Needless to say, blogging has fallen behind. It's amazing how difficult ordinary things become when you go on a writing binge. Stuff like, "remember to pick up butter at the store" somehow get forgotten, even when it's written on a piece of paper in front of you. I keep wanting to call various friends, and my sister, but I realize that I am in no condition for normal conversation.

Added to the mix--John Foxx is now doing a UK tour in October. There are 8 dates in the UK, and one festival date in Poland. The cities are: Leamington Spa, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, York, Liverpool, and 2 London dates. The John Foxx and the Maths page has more info--that, and the Facebook page has the most up to date info with links at the moment. Metamatic should have an update soon as well. In any case--I have been scrounging to find money for tickets, as I am going to all 8 shows. (Not to Poland...I hate festivals, and I don't speak Polish).

I look at myself in the mirror, and notice that my eyes are red, and I haven't even been drinking. It's actually the kind of red that says "Hi, I have allergies, probably to the cat that sleeps under my arm all night."

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul. I find that when I look into someone's eyes, I get some kind of associative picture. For example, when I look into the eyes of Michelle Bachmann, I see this:

Her campaign slogan is "Saying what conservatives have really been thinking." I think that's a fair statement. They all seem like deluded, raging lunatics with no regard for humanity these days. I don't think conservatives were always like that--and maybe all conservatives aren't. But the ones that aren't seem to be invisible.

When I look into the eyes of Glenn Beck, I see this:

Glenn Beck is finally off the air--apparently his deranged rantings are causing Fox News to lose too much money. They wouldn't drop him because of deranged rantings--that's most of their programming. But Glenn sort of "jumped the shark", I guess. At any rate, these two sort of prove that eyes are not just windows to the soul, they are sometimes a view of evil, in the Arthur Machen sense. There's something dreadfully unnatural about both of them.

Speaking of eyes--here are 2 creepy sites--

Chicks With Steve Buscemi Eyes

Muppets With People Eyes

I don't know why these sites are so profoundly disturbing, but it goes to show you how much impact eyes have on your impression of someone.

For an entirely different (and hilarious) kind of disturbing--I bring you a 5-foot metal chicken, courtesy of the Bloggess. (If you are not already aware of this site, add it to your RSS feeds immediately. You can also follow her on Twitter at username TheBloggess).

And--speaking of RSS--I'd better go now and catch up on the 2000+ feeds that must be waiting for me, as I haven't looked at them in a week. Happy Independence Day, for those of you in the United States. Remember that we are supposed to be a democracy, not an oligarchy. So, don't vote Republican in 2012 if you want it to stay that way, and don't stand for the kind of nonsense going on in Congress right now (e.g., no taxes for big corporations or the uber-rich, while at the same time trying to eliminate programs like Medicare). Democracy requires vigilance. And--a touch of socialism. Which has to do with looking out for the welfare of people, not Soviet or Nazi-style communism or fascism.

On the Subject of Compassion

This past Thursday, I heard a lecture given by writer and religious historian Karen Armstrong. It was the first in a series of lectures in honor of Bishop John Shelby Spong, who was also present at the event. I am teaching my religion class right now, and I was hoping that I'd learn something from Karen that I could bring back to my students, especially when we got to the discussion of interfaith dialogue.

I realize that Karen was speaking for a more general audience, but I felt the lecture was a bit too generic. A lot of it was the same discussion of learning mutual respect and having compassion. She mentioned that as part of a TED prize she had won, she was going from city to city and country to country, trying to get them to buy in to a contract of compassion. She said she tended to be cynical about such things, but was really surprised and hopeful at the response.

I say good for Karen for initiating positive steps towards mutual respect among humans. However, I am not sure I agree with her vision of compassion. Karen has a new book out, a sort of 12-step program to becoming compassionate. She went over 3 of the steps in the lecture. She started off rightly enough in my opinion, by stating that compassion is not equal to pity. There is a tendency to believe that these terms are synonymous, and they are not. Compassion accepts and respects other humans as they are; pity "feels sorry for them" because they are not as wonderful as you are. Compassion does not judge.

It was her description of judgment that struck a discordant note with me. She suggests that we make statements and judgments about others in order to feel superior ourselves. In some cases, that might be true. Insecure people tend to take the world personally, and the actions of others are clearly an offense in their mind because of the other person's obvious character flaw. But Karen misses the point of the everyday judgments that people make. When people act in ways that are disturbing or inconsiderate, we often seek to find a reason for it. We don't actually want to believe the other person is just a jerk. We look at other patterns in their behavior relative to others and say, "Suzie forgets to call because she obviously can't control all the stuff she has going on in her life" (for example). If we feel positively towards people, we tend to make excuses for them. If we feel negatively towards them, we may be less forgiving. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. In the end, all of us do things that are annoying to others. I agree with her that you should detach from a tendency to demonize others because of that.

In addition, her ideas about compassion don't address personal boundaries. Perhaps she addresses this in her book, but she didn't in the lecture. Standing at the pulpit chastising people for "turning a blind eye to those who are really crying out" just perpetuates an already vicious circle. For instance--Person A may cry to me about their personal problems. Now, as humans, our first instinct would be to want to help. Person A may be describing real problems, but Person A may also be what you could call a "perpetual victim". They constantly get themselves into bad situations and use high drama to manipulate others into cleaning up for them. Now, maybe you've helped Person A, and you've gotten screwed--you gave an inch, they took a mile. The bottom line is that you don't help Person A by giving them money or other resources. You help Person A by saying, "oh well, best of luck" and letting them figure it out on their own. Person A may possibly need therapy, but that really should not be your concern.

The vicious circle comes in, because when we refuse to help, we feel guilty. To others, we may look cold and heartless. This doesn't only happen with people with fiscal or emotional problems--it may also be someone trying to wedge their way into your private life, when you're really not comfortable having them there. If you tell them to get lost, you look like a mean and heartless person. But you have a right to set boundaries--and you have a right to expect others to respect them. AND--you have a right to expect that others will be accountable for themselves. If someone is disabled, or otherwise unable to do some particular thing, that is a different story. But the examples I can think of involve perfectly healthy and capable individuals.

Perhaps it was because Karen was giving a general lecture to the group that she didn't get into these nuances. But I don't like the generalization that compassion always involves breaking down personal barriers. You may want to be friendly to everyone in a crime-ridden neighborhood, but it doesn't hurt to have your martial arts skills sharpened just in case. There is a very human need for self-preservation.

An article appeared shortly before Karen's lecture on "unconditional love without caring". The phrasing is odd, but the gist of the article is that one should not be attached to outcomes. We let other people become what they need to be, even if that means letting them drop into utter failure. Trying to control outcomes is bad enough in our own lives--it's certainly not appreciated by others if we do it to them, no matter how well intentioned. Sometimes compassion involves reminding someone that they have enough brains to figure something out on their own.

On the whole, I think Karen's message is important, and compassion is something too often missing these days, especially in extreme versions of religion. But in order to be compassionate, we have to understand the limitations and boundaries of ourselves and others. Otherwise, the move towards compassion is an empty one--it is what we're "supposed" to do, but it ends up being done with resentment. The only way to really care is to not care so much. If you are a religious person, you might better understand this as "letting God do the caring about outcomes".

Garden Ganeshas

I was out walking with a friend after breakfast on Sunday. As we walked along a bicycle path, she suddenly pointed to my right. "There's a Ganesha over there!" We walked over to take a look. A path had been created through a small clearing in the trees, and there were actually 2 Ganeshas, a Hanuman, and a couple of broken Devis. Beyond this was a parking lot, and a garden center, which had a whole display of statues--Ganeshas, Devis, Buddhas, and others.

We walked back to the path, and my friend dusted off the two Ganeshas. "This is all very bad luck. They should not put these outside." She went on to tell me about a temple created by a Western couple, that everyone said was amazing. She had been to a program at this temple, which had a Ganesha "installed" by the man's guru, who she said was just an Indian priest. (In case you don't know--it is one thing to have a statue of a deity, it is another thing to "install" it. Installation means "establishing life", and making it a real object for temple worship). She talked about a Swami that she had discussed this with--he said that the temple was tended to, but anyone who visited could do the rituals. He shrugged and said, "well, it's better for them to do that than to hang out in bars." She then went on to discuss groups that allow anyone to chant archanas, which she said would have ill effects. (While I don't entirely agree, I have heard really awful recitations of archana that really destroy the devotional mood). Things have to be done "correctly". I thought this was odd, since she had just been discussing her annoyance with traditions about women and holy rituals and places.

Later, I thought more about what she said, and I realized that I totally disagree with her. I couldn't put my finger on what I found wrong with her argument at first, but then I realized that it was a very Western way of thinking. Deity should not be in Nature--Nature is inferior and impure, and only very special "pure" people are capable of doing the rituals. I understand that this is her tradition--and perhaps taught as regular Hindu doctrine--but it's crap, as far as I'm concerned. I am sure that rituals performed in this atmosphere of reverence and "purity" are very effective. I also understand that those who have given up worldly life often feel pained or weighed down by "worldly" modes of worship. I think of Sri Ramakrishna and his wife, Sarada Devi, who cried out in pain if a devotee touched their feet. They were not living a "human" life, and were acutely aware of the weight of worldly living.

However--to say that a deity image should not be in nature is to relegate nature to an inferior status, and make the god into something "out there", something of which we are unworthy. That is completely contrary to Eastern thought. Everyone is treated with respect because everyone--and everything--is a manifestation of the Divine. This is monism, not monotheism. Not everyone does treat others with respect, but that is because of ignorance--they have forgotten their divine status, and that of others.

With regard to chanting--yes, I realize that the proper intonation of the words creates a certain vibration designed to raise awareness. However--I think of a footnote I read in the "Secret of the Golden Flower". A man overheard a monk chanting his mantra, and decided to chant it as well. However, he was saying it incorrectly, and ended up chanting "I am the latrine". However, the footnote states, "he chanted 'I am the latrine' over and over until he achieved enlightenment." Just because it is not the traditional way doesn't mean it can't work or doesn't work. Similarly, Amma has said that a mother does not reject a child's offering of a drawing because it's not a technical artistic masterpiece.

Ritual is psychological, and to believe that it "must" be done a certain way is to be attached to the ritual rather than its effect. It probably has the maximum psychological effect if one does it exactly as tradition records it, but it isn't necessary. Notions of purity and sanctity, while they have value, can also end up being alienating. The goal is to unite, not to separate. If someone is shooed away from practice because it's not "traditional" enough and therefore "bad luck", you will have created the "bad luck" by creating a separation from the "divine".

We also tend to forget that rituals are man-made, no matter how well-crafted or inspired. While they point towards something beyond the material, they are still nothing more than the material. All religions agree that on some fundamental level there is only Void--there is a No-Thingness, a state that cannot be described or comprehended through images. Out of that Void worlds are created, but they are illusory because they are temporal. The rituals, writings, experiences, and beliefs that anyone may have and subscribe to are going to be as individual as their own creation of the world via their perceptions. At a time when there was one community shaman, and the community acted as a unit, it may have been appropriate to say that there was only one way to do things. In the modern world--which focuses on the individual development towards unity rather than everyone acting as a unit--there are as many ways to do things as there are people. And if "God" isn't everywhere--especially if you are a Hindu or Buddhist--then "God" is nowhere at all.

For Example, Miscellaneous

(Post title stolen from a Dilbert cartoon).

A quick announcement--another of my archetype stories, "Umbra", will be appearing in Death Head Grin magazine, September issue. Details to follow when I have them.

Last night was once again a night full of strange dreams. Unwanted weddings (not mine), perverted priests, and strange dramas played out by people I was close to years ago. Also appearing in last night's dream was Amma, my guru. I have not dreamed of her in a long time--probably not in years. They say that a dream of Amma means she is thinking of you. After considering all the dream content, I think Amma is somehow aware of my pressure-cooker status. I have a lot to accomplish, I feel I don't have much time in which to accomplish it--and there are still many roadblocks. I'm not notorious for having a lot of patience with roadblocks--once I'm revved up and get going, I don't have any brakes--it's go, go, go at 100 miles per hour. Braking requires an emergency brake, and I don't like that. It makes me cranky, to say the least. And I think the guru has appeared to say, "Hey, chill out. It's all good, you'll get to where you're going."

Today is Father's Day, and my father's birthday was this past week as well. He is 80 years old this year, which seems really strange. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, which my grandmother also had. (Really hoping I inherited my Mom's genetics on this one). On Saturday he helped me fix the fence in my yard, and he was in pretty good shape. My mother usually comes along to "supervise", but she wasn't there today. I noted that he finished the job without supervision, and he grunted. "Your mother has all these projects for me at home. I told her she was a very ambitious person."

I had a lot more that I wanted to do this weekend, but I went shopping instead. Not the smartest thing, given that I'm not flush right now with cash, and I really want to save money. Of course, every bit of extra money I've made in the last 2 months has had to go elsewhere--to a sick cat, and now to a sick car. And there are some things I desperately need, so I might as well quit penny-pinching. That extra bit of money is not going to sort everything out.

I can't complain, though--Friday and Saturday were two days of amazing synchronicity. I'd recently written some articles that I asked a friend to review for clarity. I know he's busy, so I didn't want to rush him. On Friday I thought, hmm, it would be nice to revise those articles, but I have to wait. Then, I opened my e-mail, and there were the comments. Similarly--I was wondering what John Foxx was up to for the rest of the year, as I would like to make some travel and financial plans for the rest of the year. On Saturday, I had a call with someone out of the blue who answered those questions. And--even better--what I was told coincided perfectly with what I'd already decided on. (No, I can't say anything--what I've been told hasn't been officially announced or confirmed. Sorry about that. All I can say is what Steve Malins said already--some exciting announcements coming soon.)

I've received several communications in the last couple of weeks, and a few of them said, "Hope your well." I was puzzled, because I don't have a well. I have city water (city being a relative term out here). My neighbor has a well, but it's purely for decoration. I also don't know why anyone would "hope" my well--maybe they mean "wish", in which case, see the sentence before the last one. For anyone else, I recommend this blurb from the Oatmeal.

Speaking of recommendations, here is a short film take on H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" by Cthulhu Films. Thanks to Grim Reviews for posting:




OK, it's been a long weekend, and I'm going to bed. If you're lonely, here's a friend for you, courtesy of the Found Footage Festival.

Semi-Disturbed

I'm short on cash these days, but I still decided to hit one of my favorite restaurants for lunch after a long drive to New Jersey's illustrious capital, Trenton, to drop off some items at their huge Goodwill center. (OK, it's technically in Ewing, but that's really a Trenton neighborhood. This part sure looks like it, too).

I'm acquainted with a couple of the waiters and waitresses there. If you recall my blog posting from a couple of years ago, The Guide to Brigid for the Romantically Perplexed, I mentioned a waiter who referred to me as a "character". This is the same guy. Who is something of a character himself. On this particular day, he wasn't waiting on my table, but he dropped by with his iPhone. He showed me a picture he'd taken on the Main Street of a pile of garbage bags with a sign on top that said, "free cats". He prefaced showing me this photo by saying, "Here, you're semi-disturbed, you'll like this." My waitress then popped over and said, "yeah, he showed me that too. But I happen to love cats." "Yeah, me too," I said. "I have three of them. But it's still pretty funny."

I think my status there has moved from "a character" to "semi-disturbed" because of another visit, when I was reading D.P. Walker's "Spiritual and Demonic Magic" while having lunch. Which is an academic treatise that attempts to create a theoretical construct of magical philosophy as described in the writings of famous alchemists and occultists from the time of the Orphic hymns and Chaldean Oracle through the Reformation. In other words--not a book of magic, even though I've read lots of those too. Of course, explaining that when asked goes nowhere--it's like sitting there with Playboy and saying you're just looking at an interesting article. Even if it's true, no one believes it.

People have always treated an interest in the occult as a sign of deviance, something to be suspicious of. I recall all of those videos and TV programs that were on when I was in high school, that saw "Satan" everywhere, and urged parents to intervene with their children if they were even reading about the subject. I read Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's great history of Western Esotericism (The Western Esoteric Traditions), and one of the first things he mentions in the introduction is the fact that "occult" subjects are rarely treated in academia, except in sociological studies of deviance. (And, as a friend of mine noted--when discussing the practices of primitive cultures). Originally, "magic" had to do with shamanism, and the shaman is someone who stands between "this" world and the "other" world. They are both feared and reverenced because they have seen the Numinous and lived to tell about it. In our modern society, which dismisses the idea of the "other" world, such a person is "crazy" and "irrational". Modern "religious" people associate occultism with the "devil" and with "black magic", and that means everything and anything related to it--crystals, Tarot cards, etc. They all forget that much of our modern science, especially chemistry, medicine, and psychology, were developed by alchemists and other magicians.

I've been reading about the occult and about comparative religion since I was in the first grade. They may have been simple books in the school library, but I was always looking to get more at the public library. I could always be found in the 133.4 section (or, in some cases, 398.2. They're Dewey numbers. Look 'em up). As an adult, this has blossomed into an interest in depth psychology--the actual shamanic bridge between our material world and the "other". Magic ought to be explored, because its rich symbolism tells us much about ourselves.

My current read is a collection of Dirk Mosig's writings on H.P. Lovecraft. Mosig is a psychologist, and his psychological (and particularly Jungian) take on Lovecraft is interesting to me. He points out, as other critics do, that Lovecraft was a materialist, and would have scoffed at the occult in the same way he scoffed at religion--and at science, when it came down to it. Both religion and science act as though they can control the vast, indifferent forces of the Universe, which can't really be done. We are like ants marching in front of humans--we could be squashed or not, and there's no reason except that we've gotten in the way. In spite of August Derleth's Catholic pleading, the "Cthulhu Mythos" stories (which Mosig said should be called the Yog-Sothoth cycle instead) are not a battle between good "Elder Gods" and evil "Old Ones". The monsters confronted are nothing less than one's own archetypal Shadow, and the terrifying realization in Lovecraft's stories is that we are nothing but a speck in a vast cosmos, and our lives are meaningless. Lovecraft would have seen occultism as another way to "find" meaning where there isn't any. I tend to look at it differently--I don't think life has any meaning, but that makes it a game--it's happening just for fun. It's a puzzle that's been split into a thousand pieces, and you have to put it back together again. And--the puzzle is incredibly complex. Doing puzzles is merely entertaining and not meaningful. But that's really what we're doing. It's a long and colorful journey, sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic, back to nothing. Which doesn't have to be terrifying. We enjoy playing the game, but eventual annihilation into Nothingness means we don't have to deal with the suffering that goes with the game.

In any case, I'm glad to read more and more criticism refuting Derleth's view. I didn't know the background for years, and when I read Lovecraft stories vis-a-vis the Lovecraft knockoff stories, I found the latter very dissatisfying, while I can read the former over and over again. Mosig notes that the "knockoffs" have completely missed the point, accepting Derleth's "good vs. evil" view of the pseudomythos. And it shows.

So, now I will take my semi-disturbed self, and begin my evil, sinister day by making some tea and an English muffin, and putting some laundry into the washing machine, then washing my floors. Then I will make my bed, wash dishes, go for a walk, and then back to some reading. Oh, the scandalous and shocking life of a deviant...