AnimaMundi

Change of Seasons

The past week hasn't been great. It seems that a nasty confluence of allergies, sinus infection and seasonal cold all ganged up on me to create a wonderful mix of turmoil. It feels like I have sweated about 10 lbs of water over the course of the week. My right ear periodically phases in and out. My throat itches. I have a blustery cough. I have taken Mucinex, rhum hot toddies, benadryl, sudafed, cough syrup and Ricola. One has to be sick and go through it. No way around or under it. I had a flu shot last Thursday and God knows how that figures into it. I once before had a mild reaction. Who the hell knows? Yesterday, I was about to cancel my appointment with my cardiologist, but then went. I read quite a bit of David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". The lighting was good and the Wallace piece is a hoot. He confirmed my decision never ever to go on a Caribbean cruise. If I won one, I would give it away. My cardiologist, Sergio, is not the most personable Sicilian (he hails from Catania) that I have met. He is somewhat rote and predictable. At least he encourages me to drink red wine, which encouragement I don't really need. I had been through a week of horrible shit and he says "It must be the change of seasons. Did you get some antibiotics?" After the obligatory HDL-LDL numbers that are within range due to 40 mg of Lipitor, he says to me, "I think you should have a nuclear (I can pronounce it, Shrub) stress test". In my mind I picture a nuclear reactor bombarding me with lethal rays. He says to me that it has been some years since my last stress test, which was non-nuclear. With that, he wishes me a happy holiday season and disappears. I then check out, pay my co-pay and set up the time for the nuclear stress test. The nurse explains that I will be shot up with a glowing liquid so that I will appear radiated. I ask how long this test takes. 4-6 hours! What? Oh, they say, you have two one-hour breaks when you can leave and then come back. They look at me in a room glowing stationary and glowing a treadmill. There's a lot of waiting, they tell me. Nice way to spend the day. Had I not felt somewhat better, I would have probably told them where to put their nuclear stress test. I know the astronomical billed costs of these questionable tests. They have to pay for the multi-million dollar equipment. Plus the good doctor loves to ski and drink Sassicaia. He has young children whom he has to put through college too. I understand.

Obama and McCain

Here are two things that were barely/never mentioned in the presidential campaign: food and (remember the Crescent City of Sin?), New Orleans.

Apparently Obama has read the article on food and energy costs:

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

Undecided Voters

I have always wondered who the hell those undecided voters were too. I have lost lots of sleep over these people.

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

Writers

I first heard Maud Newton speak via telephone on our local PRI affiliate WAMC in Albany, NY as a lit-blogger along with a few other lit-bloggers in the spring of 2005. This is why I read her blog daily.

"Dance Me To The End of Love" -- Leonard Cohen

After I stumbled across the video, I decided to repost it with the poet and orchestra. It never hurts to see and hear it again.

"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic til Im gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
Were both of us beneath our love, were both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till Im gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love"

Dave McKeena, A Pianist

Dave McKenna, pianist extra-ordinary.

Mambo Meets Jazz

Back in the 1940's and 50's, Monday night in New York City was the night that jazz musicians jammed with Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. Monday was their night off and the musicians wanted to converse with each other. This is how they did it. Out of this weekly cultural conversation came a unique cross infusion of rhythms and tonalities. It was a great time to hear the meeting of two musical traditions bumping up against each other in jam sessions in NYC clubs. Dizzy Gillespie once asked when playing with Machito, "Where's the beat?" This tradition was revived in the 1970's by Art D'Lugoff at The Village Gate. Now two 20-something musicians, David Handler and Justin Kantor, have reopened the club as Le Poisson Rouge with Mr. D'Lugoff as a booking consultant.

N.B. To the New York Times, as Tito Puente said "Salsa is something you eat. The music is called mambo and cha-cha."

The All Loving God's Dark Side Part II With Liturgical Music

This post has been in draft for months. I know nothing. I do not presume to know anything about Catholicism's origins and history. I just thought it might be a good time to finally publish it after re-reading Jung's "Answer To Job" and due to some timely posts from other bloggers. You know who you are. So take it for what it is, answers and questions from one person reflected on by another.

"By means of Jung's example and method we are today each able to undo the grip of ancient ecclesiastical fingers upon our imagining hearts." (James Hillman "Healing Fiction")

"The word 'ritual' is from Latin ritus, from Greek rheo, meaning 'to flow, rush, or stream. A 'rite' is a river--rivus--'river or stream'; related to 'rival', one who uses the same stream as another. One arrives, or, as in this case, derives, by approaching or leading from the river.

To be in ritual, therefore, is to be in the river: Jesus with John the Baptist, the Buddist his raft in the river. Using the word from 'ritual' derives, Herakleitos:

'Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing is fixed.'

Everything flows: panta rhei. And again Herakleitos, in a familiar phrase: 'You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are contuinually flowing on' (epirrei: 'flowing on')

To be in ritual is to be in the river. One does not find baptism in the river; rather, one finds the river in baptism. It is the river one is searching for." -- Thomas Moore  "Rituals of the Imagination"

Dear God,

Here we go again, back down the road again. How, then, do I come to terms with Your amoral acts against Job? Now look, I am painfully aware of the divisive battle between good and evil within myself. Many sleepless nights and ragged days. It is also played out brutally in the mainstream media everyday. So to get to the point, how can I believe in a Holy Ghost-begotten Incarnation that is physically impossible? I am not talking about things like grilled cheese images of the Virgin Mary or the flying saints of southern Italy and elsewhere. Miracles do happen and I know your Church is very scrupulous at verifying their authenticity. There are many instances throughout history of miracles or quasi-miracles.

"Miracles appeal only to the understanding of those who cannot perceive the meaning...and understanding of the spirit." (Jung- "Answer To Job")

Religious symbols have  a numinous charge that represent the plangent power of psychic energy. Over the past 2000 years, the Christian God images have garnered a huge magnetic field of psychic energy, for better or worse. Many people have died because of man-made definitions of these essentially ineffable primordial images. Unknowing unconscious man is responsible for the state of the Judeo-Christian myth in our times. It is withering on the vine, bankrupt. Timely, non? Yet this mythologem of the Incarnated God who is sacrificed, entombed and reborn is the one that is most vital to western man's salvation.

"Satan Pwal Boule" (Satan Against The Wall) -- Beethova Obas

"Don't let the system make you kill your brother

Don't let money-crack make you kill your brother

Don't let the Devil make you kill your brother"

God, forgive my circumscribed way of going about this, but it is the only way I know. Though a circumambulation might be analogical to the paradoxes and spirally multivalent arrangement of Christian symbolism. Judging by Your reckless destruction of Job, are You then too unconscious to be moral? You are everything in its totality; total justice and its opposite. In my human view of You, the way You express your divine nature is at best not easily conceived or maybe inconceivable. With this in mind, one can see how things fall apart and contradict each other. Do you need the whole man for You to become conscious of Yourself in a completeness that reaches into every tormented, putrid, paltrey, groveling corner of your creation? At the same time, do You not want this to happen? Why was the covenant with the Jews necessary? Did You doubt their mortgaged worship? More demonic doubt, no doubt.

"It Ain't Necessarily So" -- Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Someone somewhere somehow has seen both your of intertwined natures. Do you sense that something is beginning to form in the background? As a pitifully defenseless puny human being, I must always be aware of my impotence before You. Do I daily? No. Are You suspicious or jealous of man for any reason? Humans are wily creatures and behave eratically, not according to Your prescribed dogma.

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without insight?" (Book of Job)

  "Alter Ego" -- Donald Byrd

Some 600 to 300 years before Your Son was incarnated, there is mention of a pre-Creation Sophia. The matriachal culture flourished many years before this but no mention was made of it because of fearful repercussions. Remember her, the Return of the (Eternal) Feminine? (out of print Amazon ranking 481,325 is telling) As Wisdom she is the feminine numen of the "metropolis" of Jerusalem the mother city. Since You know that "wisdom is better than might", how can you fail to change in light of what everyone has seen in Your self-incriminating attempt to corrupt Job?

"One can observe the same phenomenon in human beings, wherever in fact people cannot deny themselves the pleasure of their emotions. It must be admitted that a fit of rage or a sulk has its secret attractions. Were that not so, most people would long since have acquired a little wisdom." (Jung - "Answer To Job") 

What do You seek, incomplete perfection or imperfect completion? Not to get uppity, it seems that real self-reflection was needed to confront the problem of Your creation surpassing the Creator. With the help of Sophia-Wisdom You realized Job's elevation and the grave necessity of Incarnation and evolution of Your consciousness. See what happens when the Feminine is not given Her eternal due? When I look at the tragic lack of erotic relationship today, I can hear the cleaving fault lines whose vacuum is quickly filled by violence among other wondrous things. That which stirs up misunderstood ancient images andaffects births confusion and its consequences in soul, spirit and body. Jesus-on-a-pogo-stick-Christ! The Feminine has been around a hell of a long time, non?  The Feminine is what keeps me from flying off into the wild blue yonder. It keeps me in the tangled web of life's daily round. I'm afraid that the violence done to Mother Earth and the Eternal Feminine has come due.

  "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow"

   "Harry's House/Centerpiece" --

Joni Mitchell

   

"Monsters of the Id" -- Mose Allison

Getting back to the divine-human eschatological problem, it is impossible to separate Your two interpenetrating natures. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

"Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he has made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as eschatological at it is psychological...the life of Christ is the life of a god and a man at the same time, a symbolum. Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering." (Jung, "Answer To Job")

So after the Incarnation and death of Christ, what happened to Satan? Banished from heaven, he has not been cast into hell, but upon earth partially neutralized. Only at the end of time will he be locked up and his effectiveness made null. To make matters easier to integrate, the Book of Revelation says he remains eternally alive in his Satanic lair.

Before the end though, Satan has to have his last mighty say. Did you think he would take kindly to the Incarnation of God? Supposedly not to be outdone, his Satanic Majesty will or already has incarnated as the dark God.

All of which brings us back to the Holy Ghost, The Paraclete, that troublesome third member of the Trinity. The word "ghost" always was a little scary to me and, I'm sure, to most other young Catholics trying to make sense of a unified Trinity. The one substance dogma and all the other potentially heretical esoterica. For Protestants, God's authentic communications end with the New Testament. Not so for Catholics. They see the Paraclete as continuing the message of Christ and even furthering it. Evidently, your Son's message was not comprehended by the darkness so the Paraclete must broaden the process of incarnation. I guess Christ was not empirical enough (virgin birth, sinless, slim vague biographical accounts) and the wrong done to Job and man was never fully expiated. According to the Catholic Church, that's when the Paraclete steps up. The Paraclete takes up his abode in groveling in-the-ditch man. Then again the Paraclete is a rogue figure that is autnonomous, not subject to Church control. Someone to be wary of.

  "Western Man" -- Mose Allison

"Why this wearsisome forbearance toward Satan? Why this stubborn projection of evil on man, whom he has made so weak, so faltering, and so stupid that we are quite incapable of resisting his wicked sons? Why not pull up evil by the roots?" (Jung, "Answer To Job')

Salvation is a fairly convincing motivator. Sin comes in the form of mortal sin, heavy duty, and venial, a dime a dozen. Fear of God is what really backs up the fear of the consequences of sin. Maybe this consciousness of the fear of God is what strives to make us more conscious. Is this redemption? Man is a vessel filled with divine conflict. The Crux-Cross personifies the opposites in masterly way, the spared repentent right-hand-thief Barabbas , the other condemned thief on left. What then is redemption? Is it a deliverance from the ignorant dark pit in which we flail or an awareness of your dual nature?  Is the age old schism in Christianity related to this at all? Are the current opposing fundamentalist camps a reflection of this light-dark chiaroscuro? Was Ezekiel mentally deranged or did his visions prefigure the Incarnation? Christianity didn't just spring will-nilly into existence overnight. There had been a long prefigured preparation that was sustained by a timely synchronistic world view and spiritual climate of the times.

Then there's the Revelation of St. John. Was he the same John of the Epistles? Was he a bit too sure of the light? Maybe he was holed up on Patmos too long. Revelation is a strange unsettling peek at the state of the unconscious collective soul. The foreboding Antichrist is there all the while, confirmed in his might. Then there is the totally out of context: "When the seventh angel had finally ceased blowing his trumpet, there appeared in heaven, after the destruction of Jerusalem, a visison of the sun-woman, 'With moon under her feet, and on her head a corwn of twelve stars'. She was in the pangs of birth, and before her stood a great red dragon that wanted to devour her child." (Jung, "Answer To Job)

This ordinary woman is an anima mundi, reconciling nature with spirit. Does she have any relation to the Whore of Babylon or Judy Tenuta? To me this woman with her child seems a little out place. Does the bodily Assumption of Mary have any bearing on this and why did it take so long for the Church to dogmatize it? Too touchy? It's a lagniappe for New Yorkers of all faiths because alternate side of the street parking is suspended on August 15th, her feast day. There are so many confounding questions that deepen with each asking. Maybe it's that damned numinosity that makes it difficult to handle intellectually. The teachings of Christ are simple, but almost impossible to imitate. I really wonder why You do not show your face? Is it because we are not humble enough or something else more sinister? Or are these questions both bound up together in shades of black?

"Anyone in his right mind can't fail to see that John foresaw at least some of the possible dangers which threaten our world in the final phase of the Christian aeon". (Jung "Answer To Job")

In quintessence, we must love You, but also fear You, right?  

To feebly wrap things up, man now has the power to obliterate the planet. He has already begun the process. The evil is in the fabric of man's daily round. He needs help. He can't do it alone. What he needs is an advocate, a mediatrix, in high places. Who the hell do we look to? Joe DiMaggio, the Paraclete, Mary, another child? Or within ourselves alone?

"Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abyss of the earth and vast as the sky." (Jung, "Answer To Job")

"Yes Lawd" -- Roosevelt Sykes

P.S. Today is the Hunter's Full Moon in the sign of Aries, the ram.

Marfa, Texas

Alfonso On-The-Italian-Wine-Trail Cevola conjures a potent post on his visit to Marfa, Texas. Maybe it had something to do with the Chihuahuan Desert. What he finds is a vital vibe, interest in the arts, good straight forward cookin' and wine lovers. And they like things Italian. From what he writes, I might move to Presidio County.

After all, we don’t come here looking for some worn out windmills. We came out to see what was in store for us in the future, here in flyover country. In a bright, stark, clear-cut way, we were shown what might be in store for us. If we keep our eyes, and our minds, open.

Bailout Explained

This is one of the better short explanations of the bailout. It's our problem.

Oh Roger, your son is doing ok.