My reading life is really inspiring and enjoyable right now. I am reading the following:
- A Sacred Conspiracy by various authors
- Seduction of the Minotaur by Anais Nin
- Erotism: death and sensuality by Georges Bataille
- The Red Book by Carl Jung
- The Feminine in Fairy Tales by Marie Louise von Franz
- Diaries of Anais Nin (1934-1939)
- Diary of Franz Kafka
The end of August brought with it an end of an era. Since May, I have been traveling around selling my jewelry at art fairs and markets. It was something new that I tried, quickly learned the ropes, and it has been completely exhausting. I am honestly so glad there are no more shows that I have signed up for and I doubt I will do them again in the future. Maybe next year, if I’m really, really bored and have nothing better to do, I would do a select one again. But overall, I’m so done. I greatly prefer selling my jewelry online for many reasons.
It felt good to finally admit this to myself even thoughI’ve been feeling it for months. It was just another thing that I wanted to work for me, but it didn’t, and I was avoiding facing it because it felt like failure. Yeah, it is a failure. Something has failed again. I’m sure it won’t be the last thing to fail either… so, moving on. What’s next? I don’t know yet. I’m not rushing into anything. Music is taking more of a center stage in my life the last few weeks, so maybe that is what’s next. I am craving absolute solitude, reading, and reflecting.
Sept 2, 2022
Dreams
Reveries through sheer curtains
Angels on hilltops
Oh the parties we would have
Emerald cakes and
Whips and chains
And one dark officer
With inky snakes wrapping his forearms
Was there, one of 14
To sign my parents’ marriage license.
Who knew so many bloodless moons later
I would know him.
Sept 2, 2022 I’m interested in psychoanalysis. One of the books I just got is by a student of Jung’s and it’s about feminine archetypes in fairy tales. I often think in terms of myths and archetypes so I think it’ll give me a better vocabulary for describing my inner world. I am continually drawn to the relationship of Hades and Persephone. I like how his need to possess her is stronger than the societal norms, which dictate they should not be together. The council of gods forbids him to have her but he does it anyway, which speaks to the strength of their connection. He really chooses her. I like how he takes her into his underworld and keeps her safe there. There is an element of taboo and rawness to their bond, but also Hades is the only Greek god who is loyal and they share true love. Under his care, Persephone comes into her full power as a fertility deity, adding the understanding of death to her knowledge of the blooming and newness of spring.
Aug 28, 2022 I had a dream that I visited my friend who was living on a houseboat at the intersection of a lake and a river. He had a stunningly powerful, glossy black stallion on the boat with him as well as a completely blind sweet dog who was always smiling and bumping into things. I showed him this huge knife I had and was delighted that with it I could scalp at least three people easily. It was fall/winter so it was pretty chilly outside. We went to sit on his porch and watch the water and he gave me some type of traditional European moccasin to put on and I wasn’t cold. Later we drove north into the city and complained about the traffic.
Aug 27, 2022
Matangi, who delights in the wildness of the forest
Sought equally among people
Send nada through my bones like thunder and rivers
And whisper truth in my ear.
You make pure the most impure residue,
Adorable maiden with swelling breasts
Made of dark emeralds and clothed in blood red petals.
Some Thoughts
I don’t really know people, I just know their dreams.
When you’re in love with a writer but he’s dead
There is a town square or I’m not interested
Feeling like being free, vulnerable, true. Love sets us free. Love is water: it flows. It erodes hardness. Its ways are mysterious. It hides underground and springs forth. It shapes nations. It sustains us and connects us.
The soft warm night rolling in like mist on the lake, legions of dead, makes me feel loved, held, and my soul set free.
There is a man out there in the world today who wants to treat you like his Queen. But first… do you unconsciously crave the feeling of groveling at the feet of a man, unworthy to be in His magnificent presence? If something is repeatedly going wrong, its worth investigating the unconscious. Just shower thoughts.
Some Quotes
“I will not be another flower picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find, and impossible to forget.” -Erin Van Vuren. This quote reminds me of the lore of the Edelweiss flower and the queen who lives far up in the mountains. The suitor that can scale the treacherous terrain and present her with this rare flower will win her love.
“I noticed that myself became a desert where only the sun of unquiet desire burned.” Carl Jung, The Red Book
“Solitude is true only when the self is a desert.” -Carl Jung, The Red Book
“Torment belongs to the desert.” -Carl Jung, The Red Book
“The only two important things in life are real love and being at peace with yourself.” Jonathan Carroll
“The problem was she wanted love so badly, she couldn’t tell it wasn’t love.” -Leo Christopher
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite start.” -Neil Gaiman, Stardust
“I put my faith in the storehouse of light—-your eyes. Because of them I saw and lived.” -Vicente Aleixandre from A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems; The Limit
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” -Bram Stoker, Dracula
“I don’t believe in Devils, in hell or hell’s black art: I only trust your eyes now, and your devil’s heart.” -Heinrich Heine, from “I don't believe in heaven”
“The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasp the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.
But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full.” -Carl Jung, The Red Book
“The green of the foliage was not like any other greens: it was deeper, lacquered, and moist. The leaves were heavier, fuller, the flowers bigger. They seemed surcharged with sap, and more alive, as if they never had to close against the frost, or even a colder night. As if they had no need of sleep.” -Seduction of the Minotaur, Anais Nin
“The canoe had once been painted in laundry blue. This blue had faded and become like the smoky blue of old Mayan murals, a blue which man could not create, only time.” -Seduction of the Minotaur, Anais Nin
“The expanse of sky was like an infinite canvas on which human beings were incapable of projecting images from their human life because they would seem out of scale and absurd. Lillian felt that nature was so powerful it absorbed her into itself. It was a drug for forgetting. People seemed warmer and nearer, as the stars seemed nearer and the moon warmer. The sea’s orchestration carried away half the spoken words and made talking and laughing seem a mere casual accompaniment, like the sound of birds.” -Seduction of the Minotaur, Anais Nin
“Golconda was Lillian’s private name for this city which she wanted to rescue from the tourist-office posters and propaganda. Each one of us possesses in himself a separate and distinct city, a unique city, as we possess different aspects of the same person. She could not bear to love a city which thousands believed they knew intimately. Golconda was hers.” -Seduction of the Minotaur, Anais Nin
“My neurosis is utterly different from Henry’s, or Artaud’s, or Helba’s, or Gonzalo’s. It is as if by a fluid quality, a facility for identification with others, I become like water and instead of separating from others, as Henry does, I lose myself in others. If people say, “I hate the tropics, I hate the country, I hate red, or orange or black,” I feel i am the tropics, Louveciennes was the country, red is my color, this person hates me. Then I get confused. This for me is the labyrinth. Identification, projection. My identification with my father which had to be broken. Myself in June. I see the double, the twins of others. Is it this deep psychological truth I will explore to the limit, and make the base of my Proustian edifice? It is at the basis of my life, analogy, interchange of souls, of identities. Doesn’t love mean just that, this growing into the other like plants intertwining their roots, this interchange of soul and feelings. Not an abyss then, but a new world. Not madness but deep truth. A principle moving us, our inner fatality. We do not act as ourselves. We act. We are possessed. These are the multiple miracles of the personality.” -Diary of Anais Nin (1934-1939)