Is it Feelings or “Old-brain” Passion run amok

Simone Weil and Detachment

Simone Weil once said, “Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can only be attained by someone who is detached.” I have not read Weil at length though I think I will, having come across this statement this morning. And though I’m going to be critical of the tenor of her thought, I deeply admire her passionate faith and stubborn commitment to her beliefs. She definitely thought “out of the box” and, yes, I’m sure that her “god spot” was usually in over-drive. Yes, if prozac had existed back then, she could have had the gentle life of a nun, or school marm, or doting mother to occupy that mind that was fated to run amok with “big thoughts.”

I too am “detached” much like Ms. Weil but I have come to believe that one needs to be careful with any approach to life lest he/she take it (and self) too seriously and thus relegate everyone else to the category of “them” where, I am sure, there will always be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Even more so, a clinical awareness would have told Ms. Weil just how careful she needed to be with this “detachment.”

Life is to be lived and not merely noted. This detachment is a necessary stance that we need to bring to life and is sorely lacking so often. But too much of it will leave one in the position of Emily Dickinson who lived her cloistered life in her father’s attic, noting on one occasion, “Life is over there, on a shelf.” She saw life as a mere curio on the shelf for idle amusement; and, yes, I’m glad she lived her life that way as it provided us stunning poetic observations about life. But the price tag for my dear friend Emily was a very isolated and lonely life.

This detached perspective on life usually involves an analytical mind, a mind which is obsessed with making “observations” which is merely imposing the categories of one’s own subjective imprisonment onto other people. And, “mea culpa” but mercifully I have learned, and will continue to learn how to turn this feature of my cognitive apparatus off from time to time and allow others to “be” in their own right.

This does not mean that my “detachment” is wrong. It is my “gift” though I am not for sure what I have done with it or will and sometimes in private reverie fear I will one day stand before that Great White Throne and hear God say, “Well, IlliterateLew, that is not what I had in mind for you at all!” This is just who I am and it carries a price as does any stance in life, any perspective, or “cognitive apparatus” that we trot out each day of our life. But I must remember as must each of us that there is always another way of looking at the world and each day and moment of our life we need to be conscious of the need to open up our world view and give more space to some of the people we meet and especially to the ones who closest to us. I recently read someone who suggested that the real, etymological meaning of the New Testament Word “repentance” was to “let go of your small mind” and take on a larger mind that is more inclusive. In other words, Jesus was saying, “Hey, look at life a different way. That person or persons who you have subjected to banishment into “them” need to be included, to be embraced by your approach to the world.”

A Witty Look at the American South ‘Wimmin folk’

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Here is a very witty look at the American South and its women (sometimes spelt “wimmin”) Those of you who are reading from abroad might not fully appreciate this as the humor is very subtle. It is a treasure trove of clichés from my culture, some of which men also use routinely. Enjoy!

Wordsworth and a “Big Thought”

Russian Sect lacks “Moderation in all Things”

A Man’s View of Maternal Connection

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One of my blogging friends posted observations about motherhood a couple of days ago and this prompted very touching discussion on the “mama and child” phenomena, And what a beautiful sight that is, to watch a “mama and child” do their thing together at school, or at Wal-Mart, or church. They are beautiful, a lovely dyad for at first the separateness that we see is not really there.

And I often think of my dear mother who struggled so hard to raise six children in Arkansas poverty in the Fifties and Sixties. My heart is deeply troubled as I reflect back on those years and I so wish I could have offered her more compassion in her later years than I did. She was a “mother hen” and indeed often used that image to describe how she would like to keep her “brood” underneath her wings and protect us from what I would later hear described as those “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

I remember one vivid image from my childhood which reveals the attachment issues I had with her, issues which will never completely leave me. I was about two and a half and we were in a department store doing what mother loved to do when we “went to town”, walk through the bolts of cloth at West Brothers Department store and pine for the brightly colored patterned cloth. I was very much in tow, almost literally hanging on her skirt hem, but I must have been distracted because I suddenly looked up…and then around…and there was no mother! I vividly remember that moment because it must have been sheer terror and revealed how I would handle difficult emotion throughout my life—-I kept perfectly calm, rational, and under control to size the situation up and did so in a matter of a few seconds. I knew that I could not make it without a mother so, I looked to my side and saw a woman who would do and reached my hand toward her to ask her to be my mother when my dear mother came around the corner. In that split second of time “a plank in reason (had) broke(n)” and terror gripped my soul but I “categorized” the experience and was about to make a “good” decision though one that spoke, and does speak, volumes about me. In that moment of terror I experienced what Jacque Lacan was describing in France at the time as “the lost object.” And, I can today discourse at great length about that subject but I don’t know much about the experience.

But, I offer a poem from another man who I think does know something about the experience or he could not have written such a powerful poem about the maternal connection.

Taung Child by Alan Shapiro

What led you down, first mother, from the good
dark of the canopy, and then beyond it?
What scarcity or new scent drew you out
that day into the vertical-hating flatness
of the bright veldt, alone, or too far from
the fringes of the group of other mothers
following the fathers out among the herds
and solitary grazers, the child clinging to your back
when the noiseless wing flash lifted him
away into the shocked light as the others ran?
Two million years ago, and yet what comes
to me, in time lapse through cascading chains
of changing bodies, is not the tiny skull
I’m holding, not the clawed out eye sockets,
his fractured jaw, but you, old mother, just then
in that Ur-moment of his being gone,
what I’ve felt too, on crowded streets, in malls,
if only briefly, in the instant when
the child beside me who was just there
isn’t
before he is again, that shock, that panic,
that chemical echo of your screaming voice.

“Failing Boldly” Has a Place!

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Once again, one of you blog-o-sphere friends has issue a “word fitly spoken” to me. In fact, several of you did that today! Here I am sharing a post by The Journey Home (http://elizabethsjourneyhome.wordpress.com/) in which she describes the anguish and reward of “failing boldly.” I can so relate to her experience on the stage as a youth though I have never found the courage and humility to dive into the morass of my own subjective world as she did that day. (I shared with her a brief poem on the subject of failure by E.L. Mayo, “Failure is more important than success because it brings intelligence to light the bony structure of the universe.”

FAIL BOLDLY by Elizabeth

My first memory of failure is from Grade 9. I failed a Science test. I’ll never forget the shame I felt. Like I was stupid, unable to do anything well, an idiot. That’s how failure made me feel that first time.

I think I was always kind of afraid of being a failure. I think we all are.

I spent high school watching my step and setting unreachable goals. And hoping I’d never fail again.

Then, I started university. And they told me that I had to fail to pass.

I don’t remember when they said it — whether it was during orientation, in my first acting class, or when I went for my advising session. But I know I heard this strange and impossible quote: Fail Boldly time and time again throughout September, October, November, and December.

I didn’t get it. Failure wasn’t good. I’d spent my life striving for just the opposite and I couldn’t imagine why anyone else wouldn’t.

Maybe they meant that you just had to be able to admit your mistakes and show that you were humble. Maybe failing boldly was just being able to laugh at your self. Maybe it wasn’t really “failure.” Perhaps it was just an artsy phrase or a figure of speech, I convinced myself and continued to hope for perfection. Because I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would ever want to fail on purpose.

I didn’t get it. My first monologue mark in the beginning of second semester reflected that. And I hated my work, felt like a failure, and considered giving up. I just couldn’t really, flat on my face, fail boldly.

The rest of the semester unfolded in a weird, tearful mess of beauty and growth. And slowly, I learned. I began to undo, to understand, and to fail.

I can’t explain it completely. But I do remember when I willingly failed boldly for the first time.

It was the end of March. The day had been bright and spring like. I’d memorized and learned and cried over a monologue for weeks. And now I stood, a bit breathless, a bit tired, a bit nervous, after the group audition, in the middle of the stage. I was alone and absolutely vulnerable. Right there, I lay one of my greatest hopes out and put myself on the clothes’ line. And as I opened mouth and began the text, I lay everything I had down and just let it go.

I had that actor’s moment where you don’t feel memorized and the words just slide out of your tongue as if you’re saying it for the first time. I stopped thinking about my audience or how I looked. I let myself be, for a moment. I felt a strange peace in my soul and my stomach, instead of the butterflies that usually reside there. I think I let the Holy Spirit in and it felt like He carried me on His wings.

And I think I failed. Boldly.

And I realized that failing boldly isn’t really what I thought it was after all. Failing is allowing yourself to be human. Its giving yourself the freedom to live and breath and let yourself move. Failing boldly is finding rest and growing and trying again. Its submitting yourself to the gift of Jesus and letting him take control of your life and future. Failing boldly is about grace and peace and life.

I don’t know if this is really what my professors meant about failing boldly. But this is what I learned when I tried. And as I think about this coming year, I hope to stay in this state, to tumble a bit, and fall on my face and then get back up again.

I hope you’ll try it too — failing boldly isn’t so bad as we thought

Poetic Depths And Pain

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As you might gather by my blatherings, I love poetry. I wish I could write my own but am content with loving the poetic wisdom of others. Oh, let me be honest. I don’t really think I want to write my own as it would hurt too much. Good poetry involves pain as indicated by one of my favorite poets, Carl Sandburg, who noted, “The fire-born are at home in the fire.” And W. H. Auden noted of W. B Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” And just this week I came across a poet, Matiullah Turab, who composes elegant poetry in the war-torn chaos of Afghanistan, reflecting the anguish that he and his fellow Afghani brothers and sisters endure daily. (NOTE: He is almost totally illiterate and must depend on friends to transcribe his spoken word or record them.)

We are verbal creatures in a world that, according to some, is a Word being spoken in a bleak void. And, according to this notion, each of us is himself/herself an individual word being spoken, with the capacity to delve into his/her heart and find his/her own voice. I haven’t found the courage to dive there yet and am not for sure I ever will and am not for sure that I even want to and if I don’t I do not feel that I will have to answer to any punitive deity about my “disobedience.” But these poets, including some of you who read this “stuff”, have taken this “dive” into subjective experience and produce lovely poetic wisdom for which I am so grateful.

I want to share yet another marvelous bit of wisdom which I just ran across moments ago in the Christian Science Monitor:

WRITERS INVITATION
BY Richard Schiffman

to sink like a snapping turtle into the bottom-mud of memory
to repair like the bear to a den of transformation
to huddle like the mallard with the myriad ducks you are
to tuck butter-bill to feather sealed tighter than a letter
to ice over like a pond shut fast against the weather
to spin as the snowflake your own essential crystal
to rest not upon your laurels, but on something elemental
to flock not southward, but to the heart’s true north
to head not outward, but to your own magnetic core
to burst not as the blossom into a hemorrhage of petals
but like ice within some hairline crack or cranny
shattering from within the granite mask you’re wearing
revealing the clear, the sheer, the unbirthed face
that summer’s mazed exuberance swells to hide.

Another Paean to “Mama Earth”

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I stumbled across a lovely poem this morning about Mother Earth and our intricate relationship with her; specifically, we came from dust and will return to dust. And, that evokes “grim” in some level of my heart but that is only because I was taught wrongly, taught that we are separate and distinct from the earth which is really a “grim” notion and will be fatally so if we, as a species, do not get our head out of our backside. Seeing our “earthiness” is such as important discovery and is so very much the “Truth” for which we long. I’m made to think of the words of W. B. Yeats who noted, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun. Now, may I wither into the Truth.”

Agriculture Begins by Sasha West

Cleared forests and carbon for warmth
Rice in paddies and cows in pastures and the methane rising—

Failure evinces in the boy a tenderness towards the pig,
A need to kiss its soft ears and mouth.

And the family sleeps by the rotten grain,
And the workers breathe in the wasted cotton, the boles.

[Pause for the Black Death, as plows and shovels still, the world temporarily cools—]

The gods made land so we could bury in it—

From coal, release the old sunlight it holds and build again.

***

We till the fields and tend the fruit.

Bacon called the self “a grinding machine:”
One machine causes dreams of horses, another great sadness.

Returning, like Persephone,
To the scene of the crime, willingly, repeatedly.
I plant my body in the ground and in the spring I grow.

Like fire that burns the field, prepares it for crops, let the mind be seared by failure into readiness.

Smaller rabbits this year, fewer quail—

At last the animals starved by drought will eat the cactus, spines and all.

***

[crops that dissolved into earth with drought, crops that through mouths became winged things and flew, ice that wilted the lettuce, train car that stalled on tracks, water diverted to the city, that we had no wood for coffins, that I could keep no hens alive, that leaves become lace overnight, the field a gown with delicate feathers, mold that ruins the hay, in your lungs the blooms, in your lungs the delicate tendrils and trees from the mines]

***

Trees burned back to root. The long-drawn-out filaments of smoke. Saltbrush that chokes everything.

Egyptians covered mummies in wet linen to plant corn on,
Osiris sprouting green, flowers through the cloth.

Woodpeckers work to hollow the flesh of the tree.

Ten years of growth, ten years of fire.
The worst fire in the worst drought
Of recorded history.

[Cue: Each year, a new state’s announcer speaks this line.]

[Plant upon your gods, make them fields and keepers of the fields, if crops fail on the bodies of gods you have proof of earth acting upon you, proof of the sun’s vast power, proof of indifference and decay.]

—A scourge over the sky of birds and white ashy snow.

[Ancestors in the ground means you own the land.]

A slow combing through the dark warm soil—

Each year, we bury more of it.

Sasha West

Ellen Bass Poem Re Sexuality

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Ellen Bass is the author of “The Courage to Heal” which can best be described as the Bible for therapists who are treating female victims of sexual abuse. I recently discovered that she is also an accomplished poet and that her poetry reflects her sensitivity to boundaries that is so very relevant in providing therapy, especially to clients who have been traumatized. Her poem, “The Morning After” is a beautiful poem about sexual desire and how that after its fury is spent, there are different responses. In this poem, one partner wants to further sate her still burning desire and the other is obsessed with the mundane affairs of “the morning after.”

THE MORNING AFTER
by Ellen Bass

You stand at the counter, pouring boiling water
over the French roast, oily perfume rising in smoke.
And when I enter, you don t look up.
You’re hurrying to pack your lunch, snapping
the lids on little plastic boxes while you call your mother
to tell her you’ll take her to the doctor.
1 can’t see a trace of the little slice of heaven
we slipped into last night—a silk kimono
floating satin ponds and copper koi, stars tailing
to the water. Didn’t we shoulder
our way through the cleft in the rock of the everyday
and tear up the grass in the pasture of pleasure?
If the soul isn’t a separate vessel
we carry from form to form
but more like Aristotle’s breath of life—
the work of the body that keeps it whole—
then last night, darling, our souls were busy.
But this morning it’s like you’re wearing a bad wig,
disguised so I won’t recognize you
or maybe so you won’t know yourself
as that animal burned down
to pure desire. I don’t know
how you do it. 1 want to throw myself
onto the kitchen tile and bare my throat.
1 want to slick back my hair
and tap-dance up the wall. 1 want to do it all
all over again—dive back into that brawl,
that raw and radiant free-for-all.
But you are scribbling a shopping list
because the kids are coming for the weekend
and you’re going to make your special crab-cakes
that have ruined me for all other crab-cakes
forever.

literary lew

prose/poetry/philosophy/religion

Is it Feelings or “Old-brain” Passion run amok

Simone Weil and Detachment

A Witty Look at the American South ‘Wimmin folk’

Wordsworth and a “Big Thought”

Russian Sect lacks “Moderation in all Things”

A Man’s View of Maternal Connection

“Failing Boldly” Has a Place!

Poetic Depths And Pain

Another Paean to “Mama Earth”

Ellen Bass Poem Re Sexuality