Saturday, June 19, 2010

Staying Awake in the Snow

Last night I dreamed a long now-forgotten dream about "a contest between gentleness and fighting." Samantha was in the dream, my high-achieving daughter. I wanted to sleep, to rest, and she kept saying, "Mom, fight! Mom, fight!"

On waking I remembered a long-ago warning that if you're caught in a blizzard you will be tempted to fall asleep but that this is fatal. And I finally realized the meaning of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night."

My enemy tells me it's too late. The seat of the chair is too hard. The enemy grabs onto anything. If discontent, flog her with it. If content, smother her in it and she'll never get up.

Creation demands pools of time, days of staring into space and brooding over chaos. You have to have confidence that your talent will rise up and bring you back into the fray. The fray, get it? Because I fray, I gray.

One's consciousness changes and before long you don't care any more. Last night I was remembering how Thomas Aquinas said everything he'd written was of no account. Wonder how old he was.

--Thomas underwent an intense personal experience on December 6, 1273, which caused him to cease writing forever... When his several admirers asked him why, he replied, "I cannot, for all that I have written seems like straw to me." Friar Thomas died March 7, 1274, aged 49.

(From "Two Cheers for Thomas Aquinas" by David Tracy, edited by Ted and Winnie Brock at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1608)

-- Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though the wise at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The good, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild ones who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

You grave, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (edited for misogyny)

Friday, June 18, 2010

Synchronizing

The book group met Wednesday to discuss "Pompeii," and I learned Yellowstone has the world's largest volcano that is due to erupt anytime! By a phenomenon Dr. Jung used to call "synchronicity," I found a book on my shelf "Catastrophe" by David Keys, which details climate changes that what Keys calls "re-synchronizing" history. Yesterday I learned of climate changes (and plagues) in the 5th-6th centuries A.D. that left power vaccums for first Persians over Romans, then Avars and Slavs, then Turks and then Muslims.

It's appalling. First that everyone has to have an empire you know?

Secondly, that there's all this history I didn't know about. In school teacher said, "That was the dark ages when nothing happened. The church alone kept knowledge alive, the Irish saved civilization, etc." My history courses and reading never covered Yabghu, Ashina, Uighers, Ghaznavids, sacred caves, or coronations by tossing in a rug and near-strangulations.
Reading "Catastrophe," I even thought maybe this is all fiction; I've never learned it, it can't be real.

Thirdly, that apocalypse is actually possible. Any time history can re-synchronize. Of course, we take this on faith anyway, but as Jesus said, "Pray that it doesn't happen in winter."

Fourthly, re-synchronization is already going on in so many places.

Has the President read this book??

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Why I Will Never Succeed

In order to avoid my daily disciplines, I clicked onto my blog. Blogging is a good thing, right. So good-bye disciplines: prayers, writing, exercise, reading War and Peace. Sometimes I like to switch off and make the blog a discipline and War and Peace the way to avoid it.

That's one reason I will never be a success. Here's the other: When I clicked onto my blog somehow what got in front of me was a way to make money by linking to Amazon and recommending their products! Then I'm going, oh, I know I should call that woman who knows the young man who makes you a web page. While thinking this, superannuated self is reading the inducement to "monetize" my blog.

Of course all this thinking and blogging interferes w/ one's ability to concentrate, so that could be a third reason, but the conclusion is: I can't do it. Some enormous mountain of "can't" stands in the way of monetizing the blog. It translates into "don't want to."

Need to think: 1) what is self willing to do to succeed? and 2) how do you spell success? It is spelled n - o --m - o - r - e -- e-x-c-u-s-e-s.

Now ladies and gentlemen, fire up your chair and make your desk go vroom vroom.