marine jasper (www.rocksonline.com)

The photo header on this page is a labyrinth. Kenton and I built it two summers ago in our back garden, which had languished under a cover of rank African grass that had sent its snaky roots far and wide. Kenton had been spading it out yard by yard until we got the idea to build a small labyrinth. Our back yard is not large, but we came up with a design for a simple three-turn Cretan labyrinth that would be walkable and fit gracefully in about a 10′ x 14′ space once the grass was extirpated (thanks, grass, and good bye!)

It helped that we have literally tons of rocks on our property. This was discovered when we started digging toward the foundations to clear the way for the fumigation tenting (a universal ritual here in termite country when houses change hands). Amid the black widow spiders scampering out of their comfortable hidey-holes (in the warm December weather, boots, gloves, long sleeves and jeans were worn) we found a treasure trove. Every spade thrust turned up rocks, beautiful rocks. Some had been sawn and polished on a face, others were rough. Some of our very favorites are the dramatic poppy jasper, and dark round stones, the largest almost two feet across, containing lacy white marine fossils like scallops shells and loopy spiraling snails. But even more exciting were whale vertebrae, dozens of them. We didn’t know then what they were, only that we could clearly see the bone texture and they were very big and very heavy.

Garden whale vertebra. Photo: Kenton Hyatt

We live only a couple of blocks from the ocean, but that didn’t explain where these came from. We meant to research but never had until we found out a few years later, by accident, when I made a telephone call to the local natural history museum to buy advance tickets to a film screening there. I wound up talking to the director, who gasped when I said our street address. “I used to live there!” She told us her daughter, now 18, was born in the house. (That may explain why the house has always felt so friendly and happy, nary a drafty corner or chilly corridor, no monsters in any closet). We asked her about the rocks too, and she told us where her husband, also a naturalist, had collected them from a stream mouth up the coast on private land. He took the finest specimens with him when they moved.

That rocks should literally turn up on our little piece of land surprised nobody, especially those friends who have helped us move over the years and carried boxes of rocks. We are both unabashed rock hounds and have moved with our favorites for decades (even when we moved, rock, stock and barrel, to Europe). Any animist worth her salt loves rocks, and Kenton charmed me with a courting gift of a small piece of Pacific sea jade rubbed on one side with gold. His father was a dentist and Kenton inherited a tiny horde of it that would have been used for casting dental work.

Shell fossil rocks. Photo: Kenton Hyatt

The idea for the labryinth came from a vision quest during which I was permitted to visit spirits of stone. They asked me to honor the rocks we had carried with us for so long, which had lately remained crammed in boxes and cartons, as well as the rocks we kept digging up and had simply piled. The labyrinth seemed a natural way to do this, and the rock spirits affirmed it.

The labyrinth is also a natural for Daedala. I’ve named myself after two deities, or in the case of Daedalus, an ancient culture-hero sometimes regarded as a quasi-god. My Second Life avatar name is Hephaistos, after the Greek blacksmith god. That I’m a female who has named herself after gods rather than goddesss may seem odd, but the maker gods in many mythologies, not just the Greek, have a unique affinity with Mother Earth and the processes of physical creation in both their masculine and feminine aspects. Collectively, they form what Jung called a ‘complex’ known to ancients as ‘the wise ones’ or ‘the clever ones’, the ones who know secret things about physical manifestation and the mysteries of our incarnation in bodies through which we exert almost divine power in the physical plane. Other examples are the Ugaritic god Kothar-wa-Khasis (ancient Palestine), Egyptian Ptah and West African Ogun, who is also actively revered in the diaspora orisa religions, like voudun and santería. (Go ahead and Google!) Daedalus, of course, was the builder of the mythic labyrinth in Crete. Although no structure has ever been identified there that verifies the story of the Minotaur’s mazy prison, the myth has lived for millennia and inspired creations we can see, like those in many of the Gothic cathedrals in Europe, like Chartres.

Bone-stone. Photo: Kenton Hyatt

A three-turn labyrinth is a very simple structure. It simply means that the walker’s path through the labyrinth turns three times. A Cretan labyrinth is a little different than a classic Chartres labryinth, lacking the formal circular symmetry. It feels more organic, and has more or less the shape of a brain. It is claimed that each turn in the Cretan labyrinth activates a brain hemisphere in turn, right-left-right, a natural movement. The right brain has been over-priviliged in the last few decades to make up for how under-privileged it was for so many centuries in the West. In balance we use both – even when making art. Think about it.

Labyrinth-Medicine Wheel, from my journal

This labyrinth has a medicine wheel at its center. It was easy to orient the medicine wheel with the labyrinth since our sweet house faces east and backs up to the west. I use the medicine wheel as a sort of prayer- or gratitude-machine. Each direction has a gift. For me, East is the place of creativity, new ideas, starting points, like spring. Its sound is a clear bell. South is the place of community and caring support, like the gourd that holds the creative idea, like fruition in summer or a campfire where people warm themselves together and talk story; the place where ideas are grown and nurtured, to the sound of a drum like a heartbeat. West, my old friend, is the place where the sun sets, and the part of the cycle where Demeter begins her lamentation, after the harvest when Earth has shed her bounty; it is the place of sacrifice, of rattling bones and sticks, the place of letting-go where I ask for courage to release what I no longer need, shed my illusions like a snake sloughing its skin. North is the place of winter rest, where nothing obstructs the clear view and the sky widens to the biggest picture, when in a place of reflection I can slow down enough to see it in its wholeness. East begins the cycle again. Then of course there are Father Sky above (whom I have asked to teach me how to love him, tired out as I am with the old, hardened, oppressive dogmas of father sky gods), and my favorite, Mother Earth, to whom I am always grateful.

Garden Labyrinth. Photo: Kenton Hyatt

Sometimes I walk the labyrinth in my imagination, and it gives me gifts as if I were walking it with my meat feet.

About two weeks after I returned from my vision quest in the early fall and the labyrinth was new, the earth in it fresh and raw, my mother called to say the Hospice people told her to let us know that Dad was going to die very soon. My sister and brothers and I gathered in those last few days to be with Dad and love him up. He was such a sweetheart: his pucker was the last thing to go. Even when he could barely open his eyes he could still kiss. After my sister and older brother left, Dad was worn out and became withdrawn and inert, only breathing. That Sunday night I was up during the night with his overnight care, giving him palliative medication every four hours.

 

During the vigil I lay down and decided to comfort myself by visualizing walking our labyrinth. It occurred to me to bring Dad along so I did. He was naked, looking as he did at the end, a big man very shrunken, his skin a very beautiful pale color and very soft, his arms and legs emaciated but not terribly bony. I was holding him, supporting him in walking the soft bare earth path and we were about halfway around it when very suddenly and unexpectedly he became a tall, strong, shining light body. The light body wasn’t wearing the features of the body I knew but was a beautiful, ageless, humanlike form that was the spirit that animated the body of my Dad. He walked with me the rest of the way to the center of the labyrinth and the medicine wheel. There, I released him and he rose and disappeared. As much as I loved my Dad I never imagined him in that form. For some reason, I had never before reflected on our karmic connection, but I have since then. He passed away the next night. I thank the spirits of the labyrinth and medicine wheel for a special gift of seeing the invisible with loving eyes.

 

With Dad in the labryinth, from my journal

It’s been a long time since I have posted. Not because life has not been mythic! Far from it. It has been difficult. I wrote a post some time ago (”Thoughts in a Car About Karma”) in which I speculated on the sadness of a woman I call “Kathleen.” About how her sadness might have been less if she had merely held the frame that the difficulties she had living with a beloved but profoundly disabled child were the central, karmic purpose of her life. Of course I was projecting! I knew it at the time. Now perhaps I know why.

My reflections on Kathleen came during a long drive Kenton and I made from Santa Fe to our home on Monterey Bay. It was the last trip we made before Kenton crashed with a chance, completely rogue staph infection in his spine. The path to recovery has been far longer than we had been given to believe by the doctors, at least at first. Perhaps we misinterpreted, but more than one told us to expect Kenton’s complete recovery, and soon. Six months later, we may be looking at a chronic condition, at least from the diagnosticians’ point of view. For them, it’s, sadly, untreatable; meaning, they can’t correct it with surgery, and there is no other allopathic treatment. The condition is “rare”. For Kenton, it’s pain, often severe, that does not ever go completely away. And being labeled “chronic” means, mostly, that we’re on our own.

The latest MRI report says the nerves are clumped inside his lower spine, probably as a result of both the infection and the surgery that excised parts of it. These nerves are clustered in a structure called the arachnoid (hence the diagnosis “suspicion of arachnoiditis”). Interesting, that it’s named after a spider, presumably because healthy, it looks like a web. It’s hidden very deep, within the middle layer of spinal mantle, unreachable.

We’ve gone from rejoicing in his seemingly fast recovery from the infection and the trauma of the surgery to awaiting signs of healing, then to coping with the lengthening recovery time, then to steeling our patience as it seemed to lengthen ever more, showing a barely discernable positive arc. We kept hearing it would all come right, but would take time. No one has said lately that we should expect Kenton to recover at all – and if we look at “arachnoiditis” on the internet, it’s a very negative proposition.

I don’t know how to feel about all this. We keep getting bumped into successive psychological cycles – first the relief and expectation; then the waiting; more recently being confronted with the possibility that this is what life has dealt us, for the rest of this time around. We still don’t believe that, and don’t want to, but maybe that’s what the literature describes as “denial”, the prelude to subsequent emotions like anger, resignation and finally accpetance? This is still all too new.

So, back to Kathleen, dear Kathleen, whom I never knew well, and who became the screen for my projection some months ago, as we drove westward, unwittingly, toward an event waiting to happen. So, what happens when I retract that instrument of projection and simply look at myself? Am I experiencing an invitation to apply the same examination to my own life, namely that what I’m doing now is exactly what I should be doing. Waiting, being present with Kenton, and not expecting more of myself, more of my life right now? Or, at least welcoming the rest as gravy.

Kenton manages his condition very well. He researches, he manages his medications, he pushes himself to move even when he’s aching. He does this at all times except those times when the pain blows through everything. I massage the places where the nerves, trying, we hope, to sort themselves out, cause the muscles to seize and cramp and bunch and ache. It works. This is such a blessing, not only because it helps him by calming the pain. It helps me. I don’t have to sit by passively and watch his suffering without being able to help.

There are other things too. We aren’t bringing in much money. When work doesn’t come in, we don’t work. Of course this is a terrible dilemma, but it also has a silver lining. We are able to stay close to each other. And, it is calling forth new kinds of creativity. We have to live by our wits to survive this catastrophe, we can’t be complacent. What if Kenton can’t travel and know for sure he will be able to stand up in a room when he gets there, for months, years, or ever? We are sure he will eventually get better, but we can’t know when. This is calling for very different thinking. That’s what is mythic about all of this – it’s not letting us be what we were.

So, Kathleen, dear, you’re off the hook. I knew it was funny business, all those months ago when I chose you for my projection screen. Thank you for being there, even if only in my imagination. And you see, I was right all along: you did something wonderful just by being who you were, nothing else. Who knew?

Night turned mythic for Kenton and me a little more than two years ago. We encountered a man coming out of the dark night with a knife, and we were both slashed.

One might think this often happens in a city like Atlanta, where we were visitors when this happened, in a place where it was foolish for us to be on foot at midnight. However, the police, the emergency services people, and the staff we encountered in both hospitals we visited that night, all, seemingly without exception in our memory, expressed shock, chagrin, and sorrow that this had happened to visitors to their city. They offered us profound apologies, as if they felt personally responsible. The friends we were visiting became our angels. The police called them and they immediately came to Grady Memorial, where we started out. They sat with us there, ferried us to Emory for emergency plastic surgery for Kenton, and cared for us afterwards. That’s another story, for another time.

In the moments we encountered our attacker, things happened so fast that I did not know I was cut until several minutes after it happened. Shock works that way. I was slashed across the four fingers of my right hand. The tendon under the last joint of my middle finger was cut, and the wounding was described as “defensive,” meaning that it was positioned such that I was warding off rather than dealing a blow. Kenton says that he saw my arm raised to the level of my throat. If I had not put my hand up, my throat might have been cut. The slasher cut Kenton’s face without regard to where the blade traveled, and his eye would have been sliced if his glasses hadn’t deflected the blade. So perhaps the instinctive, defensive posture saved my life. Perhaps I was never really in danger of losing my life. I have no way to ever know.

It was good to know that Kenton and I could both survive, and to claim our own stories from that night.

Part of my story, or I could say, my myth, involves the spiral dance I engaged in with our attacker, a black man whom we never could have identified in daylight, and who was therefore truly a shadowy presence. So, he became night itself taking mythic form. I remember turning as he rushed at us, and turning with him when he grabbed me. I then would have put my hand up, and spun off as I managed, without knowing how, to detach myself from his grasp.

There are two mythic images at work here — and probably scores more, but I’m not aware of those as yet, and this is MY myth, after all. There is an implacable presence, black and unidentifiable, black like the night it emerges from. And, there is a spiral.

Newgrange Barrow entrance, photo by Wikipedia user Normaltales. Used with permission.

The spiral is an old image, possibly most familiar to many from the ancient Irish grave barrows. Their stone pavements are marked with spirals, and their passageways align with solstice movements. They are markers in time’s arrow and time’s cycle. In the months after the attack, I remembered I’d more than once had dreams in the years before about being led to the underworld, down a circular, spiraling staircase. The “leader” in these dreams—the psychopomp, the divinity who leads souls to the underworld at the moment of death—was a black woman. In fact, two black women were each the underworld conductor, in different dreams. (And in fact, the police personnel and many of the hospital staff, who see death every day and were so sympathetic, were also black people.)

The black women in my dreams, unlike our attacker, were not anonymous, they were women I knew from waking life. Each had been my boss, in a time before the dreams. Both are highly-educated (one with a Ph.D. from Harvard, one from Vanderbilt). They are high-level executives, both extremely capable, fascinating women in daylight reality. Dreams seem to enjoy making puns. So, these boss-women—my superiors—showing up in these dreams could be my unconscious giving me a glimpse of a “superior” archetype, namely a divinity of death and transition. The psychopomp.

The color of my psychopomps is highly significant to me. I am white. That my unconscious should present this image to me in black is not so surprising. The color can be said to be my opposite, as left is opposite to right. Or, maybe not—the left brain can get stuck in such categories. The right brain operates promiscuously, faithful only to the metaphorical power of the image itself, following in the footsteps of its nonlinear gait. The self-same archetype may present itself someone else in another color. As black is the nominal color of death in the culture I was raised in—the color of moonless midnight, the color of blindness—white in many cultures is the color of death, reminiscent of pus and decay. To many, whites are ghostly. Gweilo is the word many Chinese in North America give to Caucasians—one can overhear the term any day on the streets of Vancouver; historically and politically, it has been suggested, the term is atttributed because of the corpse-like color of the white skin of European colonialists.

So, for me, my nameless black attacker was, and is, a psychopomp. He led me very close to death, and my story is that I live to honor the dance in that liminal transition space. What has happened to Kenton and me more recently, on the anniversary of that encounter, is another chapter in the same book, another reminder to “pay attention!”

I offer my prayers and thanks to the psychomp, wherever he may be. His story is his own, but I can regard him with both compassion and gratitude in my story, my myth. May I learn the lessons I’ve been given to study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from my Hephaistos dissertation journal, 2003 

“There’s a guy following us,” says Kenton. I don’t look back. We’re already walking fast along the boulevard. It’s about midnight, and no one else is around. Who knows why this guy is here, but there’s only one of him and two of us. And anyone can tell we’re in good shape from the way our feet connect solidly with the ground.

Kenton has not conveyed urgency. But we speed up. We’re getting close to the corner of the street that leads into our friends’ “transitional” Atlanta neighborhood. There are no shops here, just a closed-up auto mechanic’s garage fronted by cracked asphalt pavement with a few weeds poking up, making an open space at the street corner. On the corner across from that is the school property, fenced in, and deeply surrounded by tall trees, the buildings well back from the street, invisible. Across the street is a continuous chain-link fence and a blank concrete berm rising up to the elevated light rail MARTA tracks that run parallel. There are no lights and no cars.

We turn the corner, leaving the cement sidewalk for the street. As we turn, I can finally see out of the corner of my eye the figure of the man who has been following us. He’s running, and as he telescopes toward us he yells that he’s got a knife.

We have both swiveled like a gate on a hinge to face him. I notice that he has full cheeks, he’s stocky, maybe Kenton’s six-foot height. He wears dark clothes, and he’s black. Part of the night is gaining form and rushing at us. There is one thought in my mind, forming in slow motion: “This is it.”

Now things occur in rapid motion, a blur. The rushing man grabs me, by my daypack strap or my arm, I have no idea which, and we rotate centrifugally. His knife arm raised, he threatens Kenton that he is going to hurt me. I don’t know if I say it out loud, but I’m filled up with NO, like a donkey straining against a bridle. I back up and twist and, breaking free, I have the sense that I have forced him to let go out of sheer force of will.

In dreams, I’ve tried to scream and couldn’t make a sound. Not so now. I’m screaming with intent, and I can hear Kenton screaming too, trying to raise attention, from someone, somewhere in the houses nearby. Straining, I’m trying to push out all the sound I can, alternating the loudest scream I can make with “Help!” Scream-Help! Scream-Help! Scream-Help! The best thing to do is run, to get out of the way. I know it will be best for Kenton, who is somewhere behind me, with the man between us, not to have to worry about where I am now. For a moment it’s back to slow motion as I struggle to run—it shouldn’t feel this slow. Fifty yards down the street, I look back, and see Kenton, his back on the pavement, knees and arms raised, to protect himself, the dark man leaning over him. I have the fleeting thought that that could be the last time I see him alive. I stop thinking, turn my head and keep running, screaming for help.

The school property on my left is endless. The first house on the right has lights on but I know from passing it this morning that it has a lock-box on it—for sale, empty. It’s only now that I start to feel something like panic. The next house is dark, but with a porch light on. I consciously register this light only as I bang on the door, still screaming, and I begin to see that I am bloodying the glass with blossoms of vermilion. I did not know I was cut.

In graduate school I was attracted to write my disseration on the Greek blacksmith god, Hephaistos. The wounded god of fire chose me, I felt, rather than the other way around. I didn’t even know his name before I came to study myth and depth psychology. Kenton said, “Be careful who you invite home!” Hephaistos and all blacksmith gods image a profoundly ambivalent archetype. They are gods of both hot chaos and cool order, intimate with the white-hot flow of molten iron as well as its rigidity when cold.  Poets of Ogun, Hephaistos’s African brother god, who is still actively worshipped in the African diaspora orisa religions, priase the god with both affection and healthy fear. In Yoruba-land, Ogun is the god of metal, accidents, technology, cutting, circumcision, medicine scars and tribal marks. Ogun’s marks make humans know who we are. We and others can read our landmarks of scars, identify our corpses as belonging to this tribe or that.

After what seems like an eternity, lights go on in the house as I continue to hammer the bloody door. A young man opens it, two women peering around from behind him to see who is there. They take me into the house and after I croak out what is happening, the young man calls the police. One of the women produces a towel for me to wrap my hand in, and wants me to sit down. I do, on the hardwood floor, trying to avoid bleeding on the carpet in the center of the room. I try to explain more, and am now feeling intense anxiety about Kenton. The young man goes out onto the porch to see, a neighbor is arriving from across the street, and Kenton lopes into the yard. The people pull both of us back into the house and we sink against the wall and onto the floor side by side. The neighbor, seeing that Kenton’s hand is badly gashed, takes off his shirt and crouches to stanch the blood until the ambulance arrives. These people are angels. Kenton seems barely aware of the tremendous gash in his face. The sliced skin pouches open. I don’t want to him to see what this looks like. My hand is not as bad. I can simply hold it up, wrapped in a towel, to control the bleeding. I don’t want to look at it. We are both artists, both right-handed, and we have both been slashed in the right hand.

Kenton thinks the man was wielding a box cutter. That would explain the cleanness of the slash on his face, which curves upward from his jaw to where his glasses stopped it entering his eye. Although the cut in his hand was so long and deep that the plastic surgeon put his entire finger into it up to the first joint to probe for anything that would injure him once it was sewed, no tendons were involved, and very little nerve damage. One of my finger tendons was cut, and I had to have surgery to reattach it. I wore a cast for twelve weeks and underwent physical therapy. My finger is crooked now, but works, and it’s strong. Kenton’s scar looks like a duelling scar, that ladies from two-centuries ago Vienna might have swooned over, deliciously. Some people think it’s rather elegant.

We both have scars, the visible traces of wounds from the event. I brought home the fiery gods of blades and fateful injury. We are marked, and have a different feeling about the archetype of the wounded maker gods. The most important thing has been that the story is ours. Sometime during the night that we waited in the emergency hospital room for the hot-shit surgeon to show up and do his magic with more metal implements, Kenton reminded me that we had to decide how we would re-myth ourselves—as victims or as something else. From that moment, neither of us has ever looked back to the victim option. We realize too that our story is powerful. Many friends expressed anger and hatred for the man who attacked us, and there are lots of explanations for why he might have done it. We could not identify him, and the police couldn’t find him, at least not that time. They all expressed real regret and sorrow that something like this should happen to visitors to their city. But we know that the story is ours. The man who attacked us has his own. We don’t know what it is, and we don’t need to.

And in more recent events, the archetype has made its presence felt. Lest we forget: we have not come to the end of this story, yet.

Being a post-Jungian quasi-Hillmaniac, I believe in daemons. The energies that visit in so many ways: dreams, hypnagogic events, hallucinations, waking events, random thoughts, synchronicities.

Thus a summer solstice dream: During a work meeting at a conference center I somehow encounter a little boy about 8 years old. There is something wrong with him, I don’t remember what, but my impression of him is that he is brilliant and calm, very mature for his age. An old soul. Then, I visit him at a clinic or hospital where he is lying in bed. The room is also a work room, and he has a computer and things he can use to work and communicate with people. His feet hurt him a lot, and he may not want them to be touched, though when a nurse comes to adjust the sheets he is standing with me, waiting. So, it’s not that he can’t stand and walk. I don’t know what his problem is. He tells me some of his ideas, and that no one will listen to him. When he calls people they are interested and intrigued, but when they find out how young he is, they won’t talk with him. I tell him that when he’s 17 he’ll have created amazing entrepreneurial things, and to keep going. I’m coaching him a bit. As a gift, he gives me a small colored drawing, a plan of some of his ideas. I feel grateful. I say goodbye and leave the room.

Although I have forgotten details, as with most dreams, I nevertheless awake with the feeling that this one is significant. I have encountered an inner child. (I would probably like the idea of “inner child” more if 1) if it were not a misunderstood, therefore trivialized and hackneyed idea or, 2) if I encountered mine more often!)

I’m intrigued that there is a problem with his feet, which, along with meeting a child since I dream so few, is also why the dream seems so significant in the first place. Lots of mythic figures limp, and it is symbolic of magical gifts or the ability to foresee. The gifts are usually attained through painful, sometimes devasting trials. Think Oedipus, who in the end attains the often unenviable ability to see things for what they are. Hephaistos, called the “wise one,” the crafty master blacksmith god who makes Zeus’s thunderbolts, has his feet on backwards both because he was clubfooted from birth and because Zeus tossed him off Olympus (for calling out things as they are; after that he becomes more choosy about when and how to express what he knows, and finds more creative ways to draw attention). Hermes, the trickster god and patron of thieves and skillful liars and conveyer of messages between worlds, has winged feet. As a precocious newborn, he popped out already scheming how to get the recognition of his father Zeus and a seat at the big table in Olympus. Apollo is very jealous of his cattle, so when they turn up missing he’s bound to raise a ruckus with Zeus. Hermes has stolen them, making them walk backward, as he does himself, covering the footprints so he can later innocently recover them and get plenty of attention.

On hearing this dream, Kenton tells me I’m smart but I don’t have “feet,” meaning a vehicle to get out there. People are interested in my ideas, but can’t take them anywhere. The ideas have to be more developed and matured, the plans, perhaps, more schematic. In short, people have a hard time following my thinking. This is a problem!

I notice the numbers 8 and 17 (the latter is numerologically summable to 8). The smarty-daemon is surely telling me that this is the year, and season, to grow and mature some ideas for harvest. And my smarty-daemon is telling me to be crafty about it. Come back, smarty-daemon, and tell me how!

Kenton and I both stress about money. We never have enough to get out of debt, to give as much as we could imagine to family, friends and those we would like to support in their work, or to work and play exactly as we please. We have our own business and work comes, or it doesn’t. Some seasons have been far more stressful than others; some give us a breather, but we are not independent of money worries. We both recognize a definite karmic theme in our attitudes toward abundance or lack of it.

Driving through the West and Southwest, to visit family, to visit networks, or to visit, period, we have some of our deepest and most reflective conversations, the kind that make a sudden difference in our world. Heading west a few weeks ago on I-40 near Laguna Pueblo, Kenton was speculating on our financial karma once again. We had been in ceremony in Santa Fe a day earlier and were musing on the subtle lessons we learned. A story came into my mind in that moment, on the surface unrelated to what Kenton was talking about, but I knew it connected.

Years ago through my loose artist network, I met Jack, and later, his ex-wife Kathleen. During the birth of their first and only child, the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck in Kathleen’s womb and he was strangled. His brain was deprived of oxygen and he was not able to move or speak. When I met eight-year-old Bobby, he lived strapped in a complex wheelchair, neck at an angle and head oddly flailing as he tried to communicate. Jack assured people meeting him for the first time that he was a happy kid, and I could see from his crooked but frequent smiles that this was true, though I was unnerved in his presence. Most of his energy was spent in his strenuous efforts to communicate, and I could not understand the words and thoughts in his insistent noises and motions. Jack and Kathleen, and others who knew Bobby better than I did, could. 

The story I always told myself about them came back to me as Kenton and I drove through springtime New Mexico more than thirty years later. Although they were divorced, Kathleen and Jack fully shared Bobby’s care between them. He lived with Kathleen. I was always curious about her. She seemed stressed and sad. This is my version, not hers, because I do not know the facts. But in my projection, Kathleen felt the inescapable guilt that parents feel who have given birth to a damaged child. In motion in the car, with the red-rock high-desert landscape sliding by, on the edge of the Malpais, the volcanic badlands of central New Mexico, the story suddenly came alive again and projected itself forward. I realized Kathleen represented an archetype for me, of the human suffering from karma.

As a child of my culture, I expect so much of my life. I expect attainment, success, recognition–and money. All these things will make me feel I am making good. At the same time I do believe that I’m working out themes I incarnated with–in fact my theory of reincarnation can be very simply stated: if I were to consider reincarnation in order to work out something that took three weeks–why bother? 70, 80, 90 years, or multiple lifetimes is more like it.

The real-life Kathleen I met a few times years ago now presented herself to my imagination as an archetypal mother suffering from terrible guilt. Although real-life Bobby was and is wonderfully intelligent–the last time I saw Jack he told me Bobby had graduated law school and was in practice–it was for some reason the karma of my “Kathleen” archetype to give birth to this difficult child, and to spend a great deal of her life devoted to the Herculean effort of caring for him, feeling both terrible guilt and terrible, biting frustration and unhappiness.

Now, I thought, what if my imaginal Kathleen had been able to understand it was precisely her karma to do what she did, caring for ths bright child encased in a problematic and painful body, and little or nothing else? She didn’t need to be an artist, she didn’t need to be a writer, she didn’t need to be anything in particular for a large part of her life other than to meet the conditions life presented to her in order to be a karmically fulfilled being. I wondered, if Kathleen had had this idea, would she not have felt much more peace of mind instead of the mental torture she seemed to be suffering? I can imagine her feeling peaceful now, doing art. Would it have been possible for her to feel peace then?

None of this is to comment on real-life Kathleen, whose real story I don’t know. In those moments in the desert, her recurrence in my memory was suddenly a powerful projection speaking to me about some mystery having to do with acceptance and peace of mind. What if I could view my “problems” with money as part of my karma, and the real work is to get to peace of mind while I take my 70, 80, 90 years working it out?

So, I told Kenton this story. He says it deeply shifted something for him about how he thinks about himself and money worries. This all happened in the aura of the ceremonial work we had done, which, apparently, was not over yet. He says his story shifted from “What do I need to do to make more money?” to “What do I need to do to live through this karmic issue?” Suddenly, the focus had pulled out to be as large as the desert sky.

When I decided to try blogging, I wondered how easy or difficult it would be to “manage a dairy herd,” i.e., posting with regularity about something worth the eyestrain. I am a consultant with my own business, which ebbs and flows. It’s not much like managing a dairy herd because, for me at least, it’s not an everyday, regular-hours thing. However, what shows up needs to be fed and watered. And, when it shows up, I need feeding and watering. My brain balloons, cells need sustenance as I try to decide how to approach a problem, which because of my work is generally a people problem, and which, because of my cognitive preferences, I usually try to figure out at least thirteen different ways.

This does not leave a lot of headroom for writing here–which, of course, I try to figure out at least thirteen different ways before I actually post a word. I am an introvert whose business is people, which means that when I work my brain is already starving for air. In the aftermath of a period of engagement, I am burned out like a match. I haven’t learned yet what I hope I will in trying to be reasonably faithful to what I take to be the point of the activity of blogging (that is, simply posting, so that there’s something filling the space): I hope to learn to simply spit it out.

We’ll see, won’t we?

Motion study by Eadweard Muybridge (public domain)

I’ve been reading a great book I stumbled onto in a used book shop, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, by Rebecca Solnit (2003). I am delighted to discover an author I was for some reason unaware of before. Looking up reviews of some of Solnit’s many other books, I can see that she has many enthusiastic admirers — and her writing is not to everyone’s taste. It suits mine perfectly. Two of her other titles, Wanderlust and A Field Guide to Getting Lost, are wonderful metaphors for what attracts me, both as a reader and writer: finding the connections between seemingly unrelated but erotically connected ideas and facts (”erotic” meaning that, placed together, they mutually shine, and give unique and unexpected pleasure and excitement). Solnit is especially good at finding these felicitous things. One amazon.com reviewer of her book Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics says it all: “Solnit makes a breathtaking connection between the bikini waxes of Playboy bunnies and clear-cutting in the Sequoia National Forest — and makes a pertinent point of it.” (Bartolo, 12/11/07)

The ravishing idea for me in River of Shadows is following Solnit as she connects threads, of technological development (the nascent technology of photography and the search for the secrets of fast motion), social upheaval (dis-memberment of local time and place) and unbridled bonanza capitalism (railroads, mechanistic exploitation of labor, and land grabbing robber barons) across this and other continents, stitched together by the peregrinations of a singularly affectless individual (although, did you know that Muybridge committed a murder? I didn’t ). The (other) surprise has been to be vividly transported to the 1860s and 70s, especially to 1872, when “a man photographed a horse,” to see through Solnit’s eyes the massive transformations offered by sudden speed: of trains over travel by horse or foot, representing the massive, giddy and thorough-going re-organization of society’s relationship to time (a century and a half ago, each spot on earth measured its own, local solar time). It is a heady treat to think of earlier times as transformed by technological advance, for good (some) and ill (much) in ways as dramatic as the digital and network revolution. It is so easy to forget that we’re no more human than the sepia strangers stiltedly gazing at us from so very long ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose– and vice-versa.

My grandmother lived from 1896 until 1970. She used to marvel at the advances that occurred during her own lifetime, when travel by stage was replaced by cars. Lindbergh remained a lifelong hero to her. She lived to see the lunar landing on TV. Her own mother’s favorite song was “There’s a Song in the Air,” (a Christmas poem by Josiah G. Holland from 1872, set to music in 1902). And, my grandmother mused, wouldn’t her mother have been amazed by radio!

There’s a song in the air,

There’s a star in the sky,

There’s a mother’s deep prayer

And a baby’s low cry….

The Bodhisattva Vajrayogini, the Dakini Sky-Dancer, is flying high in the air as she often does.

Bodhisattva Vajrayogini:  Ah, look down, what do I see? Oh, see all the dark rocks, so tortured. And the air, so nice and dry. Not unlike my home in the Himalayas. Hmm, and this one place, amid a vast landscape, covered by a tiny cloud. Now what might that be?

The Sky-Dancer flies down like a hawk toward the small, obscured spot on the Spanish landscape. The tiny cloud vaporizes as she arrows through it.

B.V.:  Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! Kye Ho! And who is this? What is he doing — or, rather, not doing here? Hmmm, could be time to have some fun.

She alights in a small green courtyard, a convent cloister with flowers and grass. Standing near a tiny hut is a very short, dark-skinned man dressed in a stained brown robe. His back is to her. She creeps up behind him, her feet just ever so slightly touching the ground.

San Juan de la Cruz:  (Moaning slightly, in apparent mystical abstraction.) Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

B.V.:  Hmm, he’s out of it all right. How small he is, just like a bird with its little beak pointed straight at the sun! Kye ho! He smells sweet, like flowers. Hmmm. He shouldn’t though, being so dirty.

She points a fingertip at his head. He starts slightly, shakes himself. His head rotates down a few degrees. He slowly turns to face the source of the disturbance behind him.

S.J.:  Ayiiiii!! Ayiiiii!! Dios mio, it’s naked! Fea! Get thee from me!

B.V. does not move but stands smilng at S.J.

B.V.:  Well, I’m here, and I’m not moving.

S.J.:  Oh, very well. If you are not going to move, perhaps I shall.

He starts to walk away, then stops, takes a deep breath and turns back to face B.V., but avoids looking at her, his head averted.

S.J.:  (To himself.) Hmmm. Or perhaps not. His Majesty may be presenting me with another test of faith. I will not hesitate to encounter it if such is the case. (Keeping his face averted he speaks to B.V.) What do you wish of me?

B.V.:  I have some time on my hands and I love a Mystery. What are you up to? And look at me when I’m speaking to you.

S.J.:  No! You’re not real, you are merely a design of my imagination. And, Dios mio, not the usual!

B.V.:  That’s no way to greet me. We might have some fun together. I can tell just by looking at you that you have something special. And, you look familiar. I have seen you somewhere before.

S.J.:  Really? (He looks at hter, then remembers to look away again.) You are a piece of my imagination. Where did I come up with the blue skin? Extraordinary.

B.V.:  How petite you are. How like a bird. Now I know! I’ve seen you floating in the air! (S.J. looks back at her, startled.) How could I forget? The air is always so crowded around the Himalayas; deities, dakinis, entities, even amateurs, practically a traffic-jam. Not so much around here. You know, you’re really cute!

She puts her tongue out. He quickly looks away.

S.J.:  Please, Señora! I wish you not to mock me. See, I address you politely even though you are an illusion. Chivalry is not entirely dead, even among we are are not of the world. I am an educated man after all. At the University, in Salamanca.

B.V.:  Hey, wait just a minute! I’ll tell you about illusion. I can make you go away!

A vajra chopper with a carved blade materializes in her right hand.

S.J.: ¡Santa Madre de Dios! (He crosses himself.) That looks sharp. Just a moment! (He is now looking straight at her.) No need for that! You can cut me if you wish, in fact, go right ahead, but you cannot make me go away. It is you who are unreal. You really ought to do something about those fangs, Señora.

B.V.:  You say so? Why?

 S.J.: They are not really so frightening, you know. The necklace of skulls, I do admit that gave me a turn for just a moment. As hard as I work to refine and pare away all imagination, I must admit I’ve done an admirable job this time. The bone skirt is a nice touch, don’t you think? However, it’s clear I have to work harder. As soon as we’re done here I’ll give myself a good scourging to refocus my attention. I don’t always need to resort to that, but in this instance, I feel I may require it.

B.V.:  Arrragggggh!! These self-styled yogis are always so prideful, pretending they’ve created the wisdom all by their own efforts, and we yoginis are superfluous. Or, at best, fruitful products of their imaginings! Hmmmph. Good for them we Bodhisattvas are about compassion. Some times I really wonder if this is a profitable line of work, I really do.

S.J.:  ¡Ay! ¡Dios en cielo! Stop that gnashing. Those fangs are really too much.

At this moment a nun dressed in a brown habit of rough cloth and wearing rough sandals, enters the cloister garden. She walks a little way into the garden, looking down and carrying something grayish and vaguely phallus-shaped. She stops and kneels, starts to dig with her fingers, planting the object sideways in the ground. She squats back, genuflects, then gets up and glances in the direction of S.J. and B.V. and faints.

S.J.:  ¡Ay! ¡Dios mio! Look what you’ve done. I have enough trouble with some of these females. A few of them are outstanding adepts with real potential, but Sister Maddelena here…. Go away for a moment, pray, will you?

B.V. disappears with a faint rattling of bones. S.J. goes to the supine form of the nun and slaps her, not too gently, on the face. She comes to.

Sister Maddelena:  (Gasping.) Padre Juan! I saw you with….

S.J.:  Calm yourself, Daughter. What were you doing in the garden just now?

S.M.:  Padre Juan! I saw….

S.J.:  Enough, Daughter. I repeat, what were you doing in the garden just now?

S.M.:  I had a rotten cucumber and asked Madre Teresa what I should do with it. La Santa Madre told me to plant it. So I asked her which way to plant it and she said “sideways.” That is what I did.

S.J.:  Yes, good. Madre Teresa is right. Obedience is indeed the best path for you, and you are beginning to excel at it.

S.M.:  Oh, thank you, Padre Juan.

S.J.:  Don’t become prideful or you will undo all the good. Now, go back inside and discipline yourself thirty times. Meditate on the falsity of the vision of the naked female demon you just saw. You saw nothing of the kind. Then, discipline yourself another thirty times and meditate on the sin of pride. And, tell no one.

S.M.:  Oh, Padre, grácias! Shall I use the large one of leather which my father gave me with my dowry when I entered the convent, or the small one with the wires?

S.J.:  The one with the wires. Though small it is effective and should aid your meditation. You need all the help you can get.

S.M.:  Oh thank you, Padre Juan!

S.M. curtsies, turns and starts to run, then stops herself, joins her hands in front of her and walks with deliberately slow steps back into the convent, eyes cast downward. B.V. reappears with a flourish of her bone skirt which knocks louder than before, as do the skulls of her necklace as they bang together.

B.V.:  Kye ho! A wonder, the stupidity of this woman. You should be ashamed of yourself. I may be tiring of this conversation.

S.J.:  Wait, Señora, wait! You know, I work hard with these women, who are my spiritual charges. Few know the power of their own natures. Madre Teresa is very excellent at this. Of course, she is very prideful, as I have told her many times. She has had such trouble, with the Inquisitors’ harrassment and Heaven knows what else. The Madre is — whatever her faults — a valorous woman, a virile woman. (He gazes at B.V. with a mixture of wonder and appreciation.) Not unlike yourself, Señora — such broad shoulders you have!

B.V. has been poised in the air about to fly, but now relaxes slightly so that her feet are very nearly touching the ground again.

B.V.:  I do keep fit.

She reaches out and draws up a sleeve of S.J.’s robe to reveal a sinewy arm and smiles appreciatively.

B.V.:  You are not in bad shape either, really. The ascetic type. You would look well sitting on an ash pile in the cremation grounds among my estimable yoginis.

S.J.:  (A look 0f distractedness clouds his eyes, which are half closed.) Oh, I so love to walk in the open, to wonder at the works of His Majesty. The flight and speech of the birds, the fields with their tender grasses and rustling, teh buzzing of the bees. Sometimes I forget where I am. (His eyes snap open.) Madre Teresa sometimes becomes very impatient with me.

B.V.:  This Madre sounds like she has potential as a yogini. But what’s with this ‘His Majesty’ stuff? Do not think I am not aware you are speaking in dualistic terms, and therefore speak error, handsome little man? Hmmmm…such dark skin you have too….

She reaches out a finger and grazes his face with a four-inch long, blood red fingernail before he can spring out of the way. She smiles and he steps closer again, firmly facing her.

S.J.:  My blessed mother Catalina was a Moor. I have her to thank for my dark skin. I am a love-child. My father’s aristocratic family disowned him when he married her. Then he died and we struggled on in poverty. It is why my growth was stunted and my brother is an imbecile. But, do you know, it is really the Moors who know God in the most mystical, not to mention imaginative, ways. They say that outside of Cordoba there was a Moorish city where even the slightest ray of moonlight could find its way deeply into the palaces into rooms painted in pure gold, to dance upon fountains filled with shimmering mercury…. (In abstraction, his eyes actually begin to roll up under his eyelids.) ¡Ay! And how we mystics are filled with the shimmering, dancing flames of love! How soothingly the Bridegroom of my soul wounds me in my profoundest center!

He takes a great breath, then pauses. His eyes narrow slightly and he seems to come back to himself.

S.J.:  The Soul, Señora, simply wishes to be united to His Majesty in a clear and essential vision.

B.V. becomes a foot taller and looms over S.J.

B.V.:  (Thundering.) Kye ho!

S.J. has stepped back two steps. Now he steps toward B.V., his head still raised to look directly up at her as she towers over him, skull necklace swinging. He seems to consider what he will say next.

S.J.:  I know well there are many images of our Mother, Mary, the blessed one. There are even many dark ones, as dark as you, like the one in Guadalupe, high in the Sierra de Gredos, two days’ ride from here. By the way, why are you blue?

B.V.:  It’s the ashes. Go on.

S.J.:  It was She, you know, who guided me out of the dark prison in Toledo where my religious brothers had cast me. Something to do with not wearing the right shoes.

He begins to pace in a circle in front of B.V. as he sees his story before his mind’s eye.

S.J.:  She came to me. Of course I knew Her, by Her scent of lilies. She counseled me — nay, ordered me, because I was quite frightened, not to mention quite happy with my condition there, what should I care? — to tear up what was left of my rags and tie them into a rope. I pulled myself onto the sill of the one, tiny window in my cell and — Holy Mother! You know how Toledo is so steep. I could not see the bottom of the ravine. I let myself down until my rope ran out. My feet were still dangling nothing, and I had to let myself drop into the abyss, where by Her grace, I escaped injury. I suppose being so small I weigh no more than a beetle and suffer no more harm when dropped.

His pacing in a circle has become almost a dance. He giggles.

S.J.:  I have seen, sister, that many years hence, a clergyman in a northern country who will also be what they will call a “naturalist,” when asked by many important people to describe for them His Majesty’s most visible characteristic, will say that it is “an inordinate fondness for beetles.” For, more than half the creatures of His world are beetles! I loved the darkness in the prison there. My guards beat me, but you know, the pain can be very sweet. What is the body but to sense the wonders of this world? The scent of flowers, the song of the wind, the tang of the salty taste of blood when licked from wounds. Oh, His Majesty the Bridegroom takes care of his Bride in most cunning and sweetly sensual ways. Mmmmmmmmm.

B.V.:  Kye ho! Look at this little hero. I swear, he’s ready. He isn’t frightened. My dakinis will take him by the left hand and carry him to the cremation ground. There they will cavort with him, and that place will become like paradise. (She sweeps one arm as if to show a large and invisible assembly of adepts.) The sacred yoginis are unstained by sin. This is a stable truth, beyond partiality.

S.J.:  Dios mio, surely you know, Señora, that each soul treads a different path to the divine! El poderoso es el señor de enriqueser las almas por muchos caminos y llegarlas a estas moradas. It is God’s power to bring souls by many different paths to meet in the same place. That is what Madre Teresa says, and there are times I really have to admire her — I could never say it better myself. See? Here are you and I. (He frowns.) Some of my honored colleagues do not understand. However, that is of little consequence. There is so much I cannot share with them.

B.V. has returned to her former stature and twists her head to give S.J. a look in the eye.

B.V.:  What do you mean? That you keep secrets from them?

S.J.:  Welll, yes. In what ways the Bride converses with the Bridegroom are only known to the soul.

B.V.:  Of course that would be only natural. My ways and those of my adepts are entirely secret. Why should that trouble me or anyone? (She raises her head and speaks as if to an invisible audience.) Who speaks the sound of an echo? Who paints the image in a mirror? Where are the spectacles in a dream? Nowhere at all (her head snaps back to regard S.J. directly once more) — that’s the nature of mind.

S.J.:  Ay…. this is subtle. Your meaning eludes me. Speak more clearly, Señora.

B.V. smiles so that her pearly fangs show clearly, lowering her arms and shifting to stand straight, her bone apron rattling slightly.

B.V.:  Very well, my darling. I tell you: do nothing with your mind. Instead, abide in an authentic, natural state. Only in this way will you experience the great reality beyond the extremes. One’s own mind, unwavering, is reality. Concentrate the mind on the point of equanimity, which is not found by analysis, is not a material thing, and is free from all objective characteristics.

S.J.:  Amada mia, how can you describe such things? This is the pathway I discovered to the summit of Mount Carmel, which exists only in the minds of the most blessed of saints!

He backs up and sits down on a rock. B.V. settles in front of him, an inch off the ground, in lotus posture.

S.J.:  I have sought to explain this to my brethren. How hard it is for them to grasp — even Madre Teresa! It is so simple: to attain the enjoyment of all things, desire to enjoy none. To attain the knowledge of all things, desire to know nothing of any. To attain the possession of all things, desire to possess none. To become everything, desire to become nothing.

B.V.:  Kye ho! Yes! Recognize teh magical show of appearances as reflections of your own thoughts. Know your own mind as empty by nature. There is no need to seek elsewhere for the bliss of reality!

S.J.:   To reach that which you do not know, you must travel by a way you do not know. To attain possession of what you have not, you must travel by a way you do not possess. To become what you are not, you must travel by a way in which you are not.

B.V.:  Don’t become distracted, but don’t dwell on anything. When myriad experiences leave not a trace, how great! To practice like this is liberation!

S.J.:  Oh, yes! When you linger over anything, you cease to cast yourself upon the All, because to pass from the all to the All you must wholly renounce all — and when you have attained to all, you must hold it without desiring anything.

B.V.:  Kye ho! You may say ‘existence’ but you can’t grasp it! you may say ‘nonexistence,’ but many things appear! Reality is beyond the sky of ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence.’

S.J.:  Now that I wish for nothing I have all without wishing.

B.V.:  When you see what cannot be seen, your mind becomes innately free — reality! Leave the stallion, the wind, behind — the rider, the mind, will soar in the sky!

They sit, staring at each other intensely, faces glowing.

S.J.:  I brought you into the land of Carmel, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof. That’s Jeremiah, 2. (He blushes.) We shall go at once to teh deep caverns in the rock which are all secret. There we shall enter in and taste the new wine of the pomegranite.

B.V.:  Your face shines with moon splendor. Your eyes, like lotus petals, are exquisitely tapered. Fragrant and white as a snowy conch shell, you hold a glistening rosary of immaculate pearls.

S.J.:  Only look at me as you do now. Your gaze leaves me with lovelier features where it plays.

They both rise and move toward one another.

B.V.:  You are adorned by the beauteous blush of dawn; like a lotus lake, your hands exude nectar. Youthful one, white as an autumn cloud, many jewels cascade from your shoulders. The palms of your hands are tender and fresh as delicate leaves. Your navel is soft as a lotus petal.

S.J.:  Amada mia, my senses tell me of your unnumbered graces, and all wound me more and more, and something leaves me dying. Reveal your presence and let your beauty kill me!

B.V.:  Place my feet upon your shoulders and look me up and down. Make the fully awakened scepter enter the opening in the center of the lotus. Move a hundred, thousand, hundred thousand times in my three-petaled lotus. Wind, inner wind, my lotus is unexcelled! Aroused by the top of the diamond scepter, it is red like a bandhuka flower.

S.J.:  I entered — yes! But where? Knew nothing being there, burst the mind’s barrier….

They levitate,  joined in glorious, passionate union, rising slowly at first, then faster toward the sky abouve the convent garden. Sister Maddalena enters the garden.

S.M.:  Oh, Padre Juan…. ¡Ay! (She runs into the garden, points upward and shrieks.) It’s Padre Juan with a blue deeeeeeeeeeemooooooooooonnnnnnnnnn!

She crumples into a brown pile. The poor thing has a weak heart. Tomorrow, the sorrowing nuns will bury her in the cloister garden. A cucumber plant will grow over her grave, causing wonder among the nuns, who will spread the miraculous story of the germination of the rotten cucumber. Eventually she will be beatified. Gardeners everywhere will pray to her for miracles.

© 2008. All rights reserved.

Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her discovery, decades earlier, of mobile genetic elements, the control mechanism for genetic material to move from one part of the chromosome to another, allowing for variability. This theory helps to explain, for example, the diversity of antibodies in mammals, and ultimately, evolution.

McClintock’s work was based on observation and relationship to her subject rather than statistics and probabilities. For me, it is easier to think about what this means when taking a mythic perspective. In my most recent post, I wrote about the qualities of Eros and Logos. Eros — think “erotic” — draws us toward real qualities of things and people in the world (like the cute angle of that left eyebrow of your special someone). Logos allows us to take a sufficiently distant view to categorize and make objective evalutations.

McClintock made her scientific discoveries studying corn plants, and compiled careful observations from which she drew her conclusions. This is the work of Logos. But her scientific work is also a beautiful example of Eros, the archetypal force that draws us into fascinated relationship with a unique Other. ”No two plants are exactly alike,” she said. “They’re all different and as a consequence you have to know that difference. I start with the seedling, and watch the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them.”

McClintock is also a good example of how little Eros is valued in our society. Her Nobel came long after her work of discovery, and after others had in effect re-discovered her conclusions using newer technology, where McClintock used chiefly eyes, hand holding pencil, and brain. In 1973 she wrote to the maize geneticist Oliver Nelson, “Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled. It is now equally painful to recognize the fixity of assumptions that many persons hold on the nature of controlling elements and the manners of their operation. One must await the right time for conceptual change.”

I teach creativity to people in organizations — or, perhaps I should say, I create the conditions in which people in organizations can experience their own creativity. As an artist as well, my own definition of creativity is very simple: continually overturning assumptions. Art is Erotic, always. Even when it is conceptual, its aim is always to direct the attention.

And, cliché disqualifies anything from being art. One of the clichés that puts my teeth on edge every time I hear it is defining creativity as “out of the box thinking.” Lately, I have found that a few people in organizations are catching on to the beauty of seeing what’s inside the box. So few of us spend any time actually noticing what is around us that we are at a loss to describe it; and the cliché is very powerful. It has a way of directing thinking, of diverting attention away from the wondrous Erotic value of what’s right in front of us. We don’t see it.  But there are plenty of techniques for developing the ability to see what is really there.

Our Logos jones keeps us self-confined in a series of boxes without being able to see either what is in them or beyond them. Take corn. The label on the corn box is being re-stenciled, from “food” to “energy.” But do we have a clue of what this means? Beyond its food uses since ancient times, corn is rapidly replacing petroleum in many industrial applications, from plastic containers to ethanol. Unlike their petroleum counterparts, corn products are a biodegradable and renewable natural resource.

Corn is changing the face of the global economy. As China, historically the world’s second or third largest corn exporter, becomes a net corn importer, foreign grain users will be compelled to turn to the U.S. to fill corn needs. The scenario is complicated by the conversion of corn for food to corn for ethanol. Milk and meat producers “fear they cannot sustain their operations alongside a robust and growing ethanol economy.” At the beginning of last year, the Washington Post reported that “Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history.” Spiraling corn prices “spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol” have triggered a tripling to quadrupling or prices. Mexican workers canont afford to buy their lunches.

Analysts have said that U.S. policymakers need to start asking themselves whether fuel is the best use of grain. The amount rquired “to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol will feed a person for a year,” says one economist. “If we’re not careful, the United States could be seen as reducing corn exports for the sake of fueling bad-mileage vehicles. That would not be a positive image.” (Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070203/food.asp)

For the sake of Eros, and seeing what else is in the box, how about a taste of some additional corn mythology:

Almost anyone reading this may have seen “corn dollies” for sale at local harvest festivals. The corn dolly is an animal or human figure made from the last sheaf of corn from the harvest, most often symbolizing renewal, and once thought to provide a home for the corn spirit over the winter until the corn dolly was ploughed into the first furrow of the new season. St. Eligius warned the Druidic pagans of Flanders to desist from making such figures, known as vetuta or “Old Woman.”

Corn dollies appear in many folk traditions. In some, they are sacrificed by burning, symbolizing the necessity of death in the cycle of life. The corn dolly is thus related to John Barleycorn, the Green Man, and, more anciently, the Sumerian Tammuz, consort of the goddess Inanna, who dies as the crop is harvested and is reborn each spring. Julius Caesar recorded in Commentarii de Bello Gallico the Druid harvest-time ritual of sacrificing a human (a.k.a. the Wicker Man, most recently incarnated by Nicholas Cage).   

The Sio Hemis or Corn Kachinas were the first to bring corn to the Hopi. The Kachina is an ancestral spirit intermediary between humans and the gods. The Hopi still practice sustainable “dry farming” which relies strictly on precipitation and runoff water. It has kept the Hopi culture intact for nearly a thousand years. Corn is sacred to the Hopi and enters into nearly every aspect of traditional life, contributing to the development of values, the sharing and passing on of tradition, and the celebration of connection with the Great Mystery.

Wonder what else might be inside the box of corn? Be creative; be Erotic: take a look for yourself. 

If you are interested in learning more about Barbara McClintock, check out Evelyn Fox Keller’s biography of her, A Feeling for the Organism (1983).

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