Monday, August 22, 2005
In "Approaching the Unconscious" (in Man and His Symbols, 1964), Carl Jung wrote:
As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isloated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional unconscious identity with natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missle. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great daemon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with that has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connexion supplied.
Jung seems ever on my mind these days. That often happens as I approach the end of a novel. But, in this instance — this instance having begun about this time last year — it seems to extend beyond the relationship between me and the novel. I'm drifting away from something, some paradigm of self-identity that no longer quite fits me, towards some Unknown. I am not so alien that I do not instinctually fear the Unknown. But it's one thing to fear something, and it's another to shy away from something you need because you fear what it may represent or the simple fact of its unfamiliarity. Or the fact that it will necessarily entail Change. In my June 21st entry, I wrote, A new Age of Me has begun. Which is a very odd thing to type, especially in a public place. But it's true. Two months later, it's still true. I'm in the first days of a new Age of Me, and everything about me is still in that soft, post-molting state. I'm drifting towards some desired reunification between myself and nature, and I appreciate that I may have readers who aren't comfortable with the idea of the "Caitlín" construct as neopagan or pseudo-Wiccan or literary shaman or whatever it is that I'm becoming, half against my will. That makes two of us — you and I, we can share the discomfort.
And the dreams are loud. The dreams are too loud.
And I'm swinging like a pendulum.
But, anyway...
Yesterday, I edited The Merewife. I made a sketch that I thought might become the cover, but I was wrong. I fretted. I also doubted myself repeatedly. On our evening walk, Spooky and I watched spiders that had built elaborate funnel webs in ivy. Then, last night, we watched Kung Fu Hustle, because Neil said it was good, and it is. It's a very charming film. Then I played three hours of Final Fantasy X-2, in which Yuna sang a truly, unabashedly insipid song to unite all of Spira. The music aside, I am enjoying the game immensely. I am addicted. I've reached Chapter Five. The "dark knight" dress spheres are the best so far. Anyway, that was yesterday.
Here are a couple of links that I've been sitting on so long that they've ceased to be "news," in the sense that they are no longer "recent." But not in the sense that they're no longer relevant:
Key Argument for Global-Warming Critics Evaporates
Warming Hits 'Tipping Point'
Okay. I'm gonna go try to find a way to wake up now...
1:02 PM
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