ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE COMPLETELY BONKERS; WE LOVE EACH OTHER LIKE POPPY AND REMEMBRANCE; WHY MORE OBESITY NOW THAN A FEW DECADES AGO; MYTHS ABOUT SLAVERY; WRITERS AND TAROT; THE WESTERN AS A CALVINIST MYTH

Roseate Spoonbill, Everglades. I never cease to be wonder about the flamboyant strangeness of America — including, to be sure, “purple mountains majesties,” but also various great American bird species.
 
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ANOTHER DREAM ABOUT MY EXECUTION

All of us at a long school desk.


We are told to tilt back our heads 

and slowly say, “Ouch, mother.”

A capsule is dropped down our throats 

sometime during the vowels. 

I fade out. Yet soon I walk, I love 

the ash trees silver after rain. 

The city hovers, half-sun, half-cloud, 

the bridge across the bay 

spun with beams of light.

This is my world, my pearl, 

my kingdom within and without. 

And dying in the night, what is it 

but another self being born

to help us carry the questions. 

I wake up refreshed 
in the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death. 

Since childhood I have climbed

mountains; my sinews and bones

know that going downhill is the killer,

not the drunkenness of heights.
I have died more than once, and look: 

I walk, I dream. Siehe, ich lebe, 

“See, I live,” I repeat after Rilke,

in the exquisite, horrifying tongue

of the executioners. How close 

leben sounds to lieben, 

long liquid notes of the same song: 


Siehe, ich liebe, See, I love:

 
it’s the story of my life, many lives.

~ Oriana



It was lovely being alive after dying, and staying right here, in San Diego. Almost like Cathy in Wuthering Heights being returned to the moors in her dream of "going to heaven." Funny how dreams are either filled with anxiety — or wish fulfillment and the most wondrous peace. I think much-needed chemicals are produced as we dream. If I have to get up even half an hour early, that half an hour of missed dream time makes me feel off the whole day, as if sleep-deprived.

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THE WESTERN: NOT EPIC, BUT MYTH INFLUENCED BY CALVINISM

Given the dense history of the American West, nearly unexplored in its most fundamental aspects and poten­tially the richest of American myths, why has there not emerged a modern novelist of the first rank to deal ade­quately with the subject? Why has the West not produced its equivalent of New England’s’ Melville or Hawthorne—or, in modern times, of the South’s Faulkner or Warren?

The question has been asked before, but the answers usually given are some­what too easy. It is true that the West­ern subject has had the curious fate to be exploited, cheapened, and sentimen­talized before it had a chance to enrich itself naturally, through the slow accretion of history and change. It is true that the subject of the West has under­gone a process of mindless stereotyping by a line of literary racketeers that ex­tends from the hired hacks of a hundred years ago who composed Erastus Bea­dle’s Dime Novels to such contemporary pulp writers as Nelson Nye and Luke Short—men contemptuous of the stories they have to tell, of the people who ani­mate them and of the settings upon which they are played. It is true that the history of the West has been nearly taken over by the romantic regionalist, almost always an amateur historian with an obsessive but sentimental concern for Western objects and history, a con­cern which is consistently a means of escaping significance rather than a means of confronting it.

*
In its simplest form, the conventional Western involves an elemental conflict between the personified forces of Good and Evil, as these are variously repre­sented by cowboy and rustler, cowboy and Indian, the marshal and the bank robber, or (in a later and more socially conscious version of the formula) by the conflict between the squatter and the landowner. Complications may enter—the marshal may be beset with worldly temptations; the landowner, imperfectly evil, may have our sympathies for a moment; and, in curious neo-classic varia­tions, passion may set itself against honor . . .

It is tempting to dismiss such fa­miliar manipulation of the myth; but the formula persists, and with a dis­turbing vigor. However cheaply it may be presented, however superficially ex­ploited, its persistence demonstrates the evocation of a deep response in the con­sciousness of the people. The response is real; but though it may have been widely identified as such, it is not, I believe, really a response to the Western myth. It is, rather, a response to another habit of mind, deeply rooted and essen­tially American in its tone and applica­tion.

That is the New England Calvinist habit of mind, whose influence upon American culture has been both perva­sive and profound. The early Calvinists saw experience as a never-ending con­test between Good and Evil. Though fundamentally corrupt, man might re­ceive, through the grace of God, a state of salvation. Of this inner state of Grace man can never be fully sure, but he may suspect its Presence by such outward signs as wealth, power, or worldly success. Since this state is the choice of God, the elect tend to be ab­solutely good; and the more numerous damned tend to be absolutely evil. This affair is wholly predetermined; man’s will avails him only in the illusion of choice; and the world is only a stage upon which mankind acts out a drama in which Good will ultimately prevail and in which Evil will inevitably be de­stroyed. In the very simplicity and in­adequacy of this worldview lies its es­sentially dramatic nature. All experience is finally allegorical, and its meaning is determined by something outside itself. 

The relationship between this habit of mind and the typically primitive Western is immediately apparent. The hero is inexplicably and essentially good. His virtue does not depend upon the “good deeds” he performs; rather, such deeds operate as outward signs of in­ward grace. Similarly, the villain is by his nature villainous, and not made so by choice, circumstances or environ­ment; more often than not these are identical to those of the hero. And even in those instances, relatively infrequent today, when the villain is Indian or Mexican, the uses of racial origin are not so conventionally bigoted as they might appear. Racial backgrounds are not explanations of villainy; they are merely outward signs of inward damna­tion. In the curiously primitive nature of this drama, it is necessary that we know at every moment the figure in whom Evil is concentrated and that we be constantly assured that it is doomed to destruction. Beneath the gunplay, the pounding hooves and the crashing stagecoaches, there is a curious, slow, ritualistic movement that is essentially religious.

But when the more serious artist can no longer sustain the religious faith necessary for allegory, then the transformed Calvinist habit of mind is likely to move toward the novel of manners. Henry James, a Calvinist out of the Emersonian transformation, was a novelist of manners less from choice than from necessity; he perceived that “essences” of tremendous complexity lay in human character, and that these es­sences existed mysteriously, obscurely. The only way to get at them was by an examination of their outward manifesta­tions, which were most precisely dis­coverable in the manners of individuals, classes, or even nations. To put it bald­ly, the novel of allegory depends upon a rigid and simple religious or philosophi­cal system; the novel of manners de­pends upon a stable and numerous so­ciety, one in which the moral code can in some way be externalized in the more or less predictable details of daily life.

It seems obvious, then, that the West­ern landscape and subject, especially in their historic beginnings, are not really appropriate to the Calvinistic formula which has most frequently enclosed them. What has been widely accepted as the “Western” myth is really a habit of mind emerging from the geography and history of New England and applied uncritically to another place and time.
 
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What gives the epic its unique force and what finally justifies and sustains both its rhetoric and repetitive struc­ture is its fundamentally nationalistic nature. The heroism, the bloodletting, the Superhuman bravery, the terrible mutilations— these are given point and intensity only by the nationalistic impulse that lies behind them. Without that impulse the adventure (handled epically) is empty, is bombast, is vio­lence without rage.

As in tragedy, the mythic subject rises from the enveloping action of history, but the events that detail that subject are invented. For example, in Moby Dick we are at all times pro­foundly aware of the social, economic, religious, and political forces that impel the Pequod and its crew upon their journey, and we believe in those forces as a matter of course. But the events and characters which specify the quest are intensely symbolic and they compel belief on a level different from that of historical reality. Like the tragic charac­ter, the mythic character is designed to generalize the subject, but whereas the tragic character gets his generalizing power from his high rank (ideally, as the functionary of the state, he is a per­fect and inclusive type whose fate is inextricably tied to that of his subjects), the mythic character gets his generaliz­ing power from his archetypal nature. The mythic subject typically involves a quest—one that is essentially inner, however externally it may disclose it­self. Thus its feeling is neither public in the large and impersonal sense that tragic feeling must be, nor private in the small and domestic sense that comic feeling must be. It is that feeling which comes with an awareness of the cost of insight, the exaction of the human spirit by the terror of truth. The outcome of myth is always mixed; its quest is for an order of the self that is gained at the expense of knowing at last the es­sential chaos of the universe.



*
The history of the West is in some respects the record of its exploitation. Its early exploitation by the Spanish moving up from Mexico was clearly nationalistic, for the open purpose of strengthening an already powerful na­tion and church. But the American frontiersman, who came From the East through Kentucky and Tennessee and out of St. Louis, was a lone human being who went upon plain and moun­tain, who subjugated nature on his own, terms, and who exploited the land for his own benefit. There was no precise ideological motive for his exploitation, and because of that lack of external motive the adventure became all the more private and intense. Removed from a social structure of some stability, im­bued to some degree with a New Eng­land Calvinist-Emersonian tradition that afforded him an abstract view of the nature of his experience, he suddenly found himself in the midst of a few desperate and concrete facts, primary among which was the necessity for sur­vival in a universe whose brutality he had theretofore but dimly suspected.

The Western adventure, then, is not really epical; no national force stronger than himself pushed the American frontiersman beyond the bounds of his known experience into the chaos of a new land, into the unknown. His voyage into the wilderness was most meaning­fully a voyage into the self, experiment­al, private and sometimes obscure.

*
Viewed in a certain way, the American frontiersman—whether he was hunt­er, guide, scout, explorer or adventurer—becomes an archetypal figure, and begins to extend beyond his location in history. He is 19th-century man moving into the 20th century; he is European man moving into a new continent; he is man moving into the unknown, into potentiality, and by that move profoundly changing his own na­ture. He and the land into which he moves may have their counterpart is in both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in Moby Dick—which is to say that, though the myth which embodies him has its locality and time, it is con­fined by neither. He walks in his time and through his adventure, out of his­tory and into myth. He is an adventurer in chaos, searching for meaning there. He is, in short, ourselves.

https://lithub.com/john-williams-considers-the-literary-western-or-lack-thereof-c-1961/?fbclid=IwAR3zrmuhnlhlZ8uoXo5cr5Zo04rufNt3nthgvbeMVCSk-Y8oRRYEHc0bB64Monument Valley, Dawn, seen from Hunt’s Mesa; Daniel Plumer

Oriana:

In the Western as a genre, we are locked into stereotypes — and audiences howl with outrage if the good guys aren't all good or the bad guys all bad. It's indeed the stuff of myth, but not of great literature.

I've known a few ardent fans of Western novels (not just movies) — all of them older men. The relentless masculinity of the genre leaves no room for rounded female characters.

And yet one could argue that Moby Dick is also a very masculine book — but it never lacked female readers. The relationships may not be romantic, but they are richly human.

One thing that the article hardly considers: while the New England and Southern writers were generally rooted to their region for several generations, West Coast writers were newcomers, often born somewhere else, with family stories about somewhere else.

(I'm not sure if it’s relevant, but the dramatic beauty of the California coast, like the beauty of sunsets in regard to painting, may simply overwhelm literature. Distracted by the palm trees? The magenta rocks too mind-blowing for existential meditations? A place like Walden Pond is easy to understand in terms of a congenial setting for writing. Rain is also congenial, I think.)
Monet: Morning on the Seine in the Rain

 
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~ “I remember the butchers on Division Street. Chicago. Their fingers like bananas. Their knives like wives they beat and raped with joy. One time when I was a child one of them told me I was a lamb he could slaughter and easily sell for a dollar a pound. My mother smiled and said it wasn’t enough, how about two.” ~ John Guzlowski

*

“I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return.” ~ Frida Kahlo

Oriana: 

That’s what a lot of physical pain will do — easily.

*
~ “When William Blake was 30, his older brother Robert fell ill and soon succumbed to consumption. As Robert died, Blake would later insist, he saw his brother's spirit rise up through the ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy." 

Clapping its hands for joy. Yay, Death!” ~ M. Iossel

Oriana:

Blake of course had tremendous imagination, but at least he understood that people get to the point of WANTING to die. I doubt that they envision paradise — it’s rather that they want a release from pain. Not being able to breathe enough causes “oxygen hunger” in all tissues, which is felt as severe pain.

That’s why dying of lung cancer (or any cancer that has metastasized to the lungs) is regarded as especially tormenting. 

But imagining the release as joyful, sure, we are permitted to dream a little. 

Blake: Albion Rose

Blake was generally at his best presenting the dark side. Here is my recent discovery: Blake’s Capaneus, the Blasphemer (in Dante’s Inferno) — magnificent in the way that Milton’s Satan is magnificent.


*

“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” ~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
 
Oriana:

I'm infinitely grateful to all those who gave me confidence. They say it takes only one person who believes in you, and you'll be OK. That may be true, but after you get used to being attacked and put down every day, and having been bullied in school, it helps if it's many supportive people rather than just one — though every supportive comment helps. I bless every editor who took a minute to scribble a note, even every man who face lit up when he looked at me (no sexual harassment, that!) I bless every unknown driver who's ever let me into a lane — that too has added to my confidence.


“What I write is smarter than I am, because I can re-write it.” ~ Susan Sontag

Oriana:

Amazing what a difference even one re-write can make!

PEOPLE VOTE FOR SOMEONE THEY IDENTIFY WITH 
 
~ “People do not necessarily — not primarily, at any rate — vote their self-interest. They vote their identity, vote for someone they identify with — someone who, they feel, is the one most like who they are inside.

Trump followers didn't fall for him slowly, gradually, as a result of some cerebral process of diligent solitary deliberations. It happened instantaneously, in the few nano-seconds it takes lighting to strike a tree, because immediately they knew, sensed in the most powerful wordless way, that he was like them, only someone infinitely more successful and powerful; that he would protect and legitimize the essential core of their inner selves — and that, consequently and just as importantly, they desperately wanted and, with luck, why not, this is the land of opportunity, could in some smaller way be like him. All it took was for their, Trump's and Trumpland's, metaphoric eyes to meet across the crowded field of much more qualified presidential contenders. It was love at first sight, as goes the opening sentence of one of the great 20th-century American novels of life's immanent absurdity.

And of course, for the 30 or so per cent of the American electorate comprising the hard core of his following, he in essence is them and they are him — "We say Lenin, we mean the Party, we say the Party, we mean Lenin," to quote from Mayakovsky's long hack poem penned on Lenin's death and one of the most common specimens of Soviet visual propaganda — and for them to abandon him would be tantamount to betraying what they believe to be their indivisible, eternal inner beings.

Similarly, it took no time at all for those staunchly and vehemently opposing Trump to become totally and permanently repulsed by his persona and by everything he stood for and represented: i.e., the absolute worst of America. That, too, happened all at once, right on the spot and once and for all.

Those firmly and passionately opposing Trump — and that's the majority of Americans — it is entirely incomprehensible how one could in fact support him, even if there might indeed, initially, a certain self-interest component have been involved there; and of course, for the smaller and more rural-bound segment of the country's population, denizens of Trumpland, the notion that someone may not be enraptured by Trump is just as confounding.

It is a nation-wide clash of self-identities we have here — an irreconcilable chasm between the emblematic Trumpland and the larger America containing it.

For as long as Trumpland remains the smaller, and steadily shrinking, part of America, there is hope for all of us.” ~ M. Iossel

Oriana:

The “US versus THEM” theory has been expounded multiple times — it does makes sense — up to a point (about this later).

The scary part is that the divide appears to have worsened — the blue area appear to be tiny islands in the ocean of red. That’s of course the urban versus rural divide, and though the islands seem tiny, they represent the majority of the population (and this trend toward the increasingly urban concentration of the population is likely to increase in the future). Education, knowing more than one language, having traveled outside the country, being secular or belonging to a progressive religion — these are all the marks of Satan, according to devout Trumpists.

Among the five main traits that distinguish Trump’s supporters, I was especially struck by this one:

“There is growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans. For example, a 2016 study found that “…the racial and ethnic isolation of Whites at the zip-code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.” This correlation persisted while controlling for dozens of other variables. In agreement with this finding, the same researchers found that support for Trump increased with the voters’ physical distance from the Mexican border.” 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201712/analysis-trump-supporters-has-identified-5-key-traits

I was also struck by the statement that German Lutherans who were the most ardent supporters of Hitler were those who believed that God manifested himself in history not once, in the person of Christ, but repeatedly, were, as one critic put it, “Painfully exposed to the euphoria of the hour.” “Christ has come to us through Adolf Hitler,” said one. ~ (cited by Peter Watson, “Nazi Religions of the Blood”)

And I continue to wonder about that puzzling confusion between Christ and anti-Christ. You'd think it would be easy to tell the difference. You'd think. But apparently it was all about the euphoria of making Germany great again, and the millennia-old capacity to divinize the ruler.

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Like all grand theories, “we vote for the candidate we identify with” does not apply in all cases. A lot of people report that mainly that vote not “for,” but “against.” They are far from thrilled with the candidate, but he or she is a “lesser evil” than the opponent. 

And some people are single-issue voters — for instance, they would never vote for someone who is either for or against abortion rights. 

Women used to vote slightly more conservative than men, but in the recent decades in the developed countries women have moved toward the progressive side. This doesn’t hold for post-communist countries or the developing countries. 

*
Cities by total wealth. ($ trillion):

New York City: 3

London: 2.7

Tokyo: 2.5

San Francisco: 2.3

Beijing: 2.2

Shanghai: 2

Los Angeles: 1.4

Hong Kong: 1.3

Sydney: 1

Singapore: 1

Chicago: 0.98

Mumbai: 0.95

Toronto: 0.94

Frankfurt: 0.91

Paris: 0.86

(New World Wealth)
via The Spectator Index
 

RELIGION AND VOTING?

Edward:

Trump has an advantage with Evangelicals. Most Evangelicals are conditioned to obey the leader. Their minds are conditioned to Pray, Obey and believe in the Second Coming. Thinking is not part of their program.
 
Oriana:

And since the world is about to end — some Evangelicals believes this could happen literally any time now — why bother about the environment? Besides, wasn’t man given “dominion” over the earth? What does it matter if the orangutang become extinct? They don’t have souls, do they?

And on and on, in a disgusting display of dark-ages mentality.

In an interesting aside, it’s more difficult to predict the Catholic vote.

*

Let’s detox with Oliver Sachs:

"Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure," Oliver Sacks wrote shortly before dying.



THE MADNESS OF A KING

~ “Historically imperial madness has come in all sorts of kooky, wonderful forms. In Suetonius, we find Tiberius in retreat on the island of Capri, where he spends his days pursuing live-action pornography and indulging in paranoid fantasies and terrible cruelties, including having the skin of a man’s face scraped off with a fish. Suetonius, adopting the tone of a very proper, upstanding Roman citizen, criticizes the emperor less for his violence and lewdness, though he finds these deeply distasteful, than for absconding into private debauchery and leaving the wheels of government and the Senate without the motive force of a leader. Caligula is even nuttier—you may recall that he made his horse a senator, but I prefer the story that he believed that Neptune, the god of the sea, was personally plotting against him. Two centuries later, Elagabalus forced Romans to worship the sun and reportedly passed much of his time dressed as a temple prostitute and forcing his guards and courtiers to bring him “clients.”

In pre-modern Europe, they were stranger still. Charles VI of France, for example, appears to have at some points believed himself to be made of glass. He had his servants sew iron rods into his clothes to protect his body from breaking. Charles II of Spain was popularly known as el Hechizado—the bewitched, the cursed. We do not know what was wrong with him precisely, except that he could barely eat, didn’t learn to speak until he was four years old, was treated as an infant by his family until he was ten, and apparently did not bathe. Ludwig II of Bavaria, one of the Trumpiest of European monarchs, frittered away his fortune building elaborate, tacky castles. To be fair, he also supported Wagner, who for all his terrible political views could sure write a tune. Ludwig may not have been actually mad, of course, merely crushingly profligate; efforts to declare him insane may have been clumsy ministerial efforts to staunch his spending.”~

https://newrepublic.com/article/140748/madness-king-donald?utm_content=buffer337b7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR0NxABlijD-sm8DZ8PxtrZOYOrkEdrQLn0177ugN0c4W6ejiE_F2MVPoug

(Actually the post is a pretext to post this wonderful image of Nebuhadnezzar by Blake.)


But here is also a lesson for our times. It seems that people who could do something about removing the mad monarch (high government officials, to use the broadest term, or the Parliament or its equivalent) do nothing. They are as if both mesmerized and paralyzed by what they see.

(As for the notorious case of King George III, the porphyria hypothesis — porphyria is a rare genetic disorder that causes an inadequate production of hemoglobin and a build-up of toxins in the blood — is on its way out due to latest research. Most likely King George was bipolar, with the predominance of mania. Hence his “incessant loquacity” — about an ordinary person, we’d probably say, “constant babbling.” In any case, the king got better, and his 60-year reign is judged by historians as largely successful ~ https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22122407)


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IT’S TIME TO ADMIT THAT PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE IS COMPLETELY BONKERS

In Arthur Herman’s “The Cave and the Light,” I came across this paragraph:
“The one principle Heraclitus did embrace was that of the Logos, which can be variously translated as the Word or the Spirit or the Reason or even the Way —in fact, the parallels between Heraclitus’s Logos and the Chinese Tao are striking. By following the Logos, Heraclitus affirmed, which he saw as a kind of spark or breath (psyche in Greek) that resides in each of us as individuals and also permeates the world, we can achieve peace. 

For Heraclitus, the discovery that nothing is permanent was meant to be a source not of nihilistic despair but of understanding, as we come to realize that the physical reality around us — buildings, trees, mountains, other people, the entire works — is not actually “real” at all, but merely the playing out of opposites, “an attunement of opposite tensions, like a bow or lyre.”

This takes me back to my twenties and the unforgettable class on comparative religions — and my delight in Taoism. But trying to define either the Tao or the Logos (which I’d translate mainly as “concept” or “information containing the essence”) does not seem fruitful. I'm still with “You can’t step into the same river twice” as the greatest gift that Heraclitus has given us. True, again it’s seductive to see that here Heraclitus uses water imagery the way water is the favorite element in the Tao.

I used to think of the Logos as the collective psyche of humanity. Then I started reading more about the Logos and the Tao, and simply gave up on theorizing about them. What proved supremely important to me were not the complicated and elusive definitions, but the practical angle. Taoism helped me more directly, with the idea of non-doing — which I took to mean not struggling, but rather being peaceful, slow, and patient. Depending on the situation, I’d either let go of the problem on the conscious level and trust that my unconscious brain processing will find the right connections; or, when it came to everyday tasks, the moment I found a task stressful I’d slow down. Doing something slowly decreases stress. Sometimes the task becomes downright easy.

It may be Aristotelean of me to have shrugged off theory and gone over to “practice.” 

Maturation has definitely made me more Aristotelean and grounded, more realistic. 

Adolescence was Platonic and idealistic — but I don’t really see that label as useful anymore. Reading Herman’s book draws the reader into playing the game that the author of playing, of trying to divide everything in the world into either Platonic or Aristotelean mentality. They are interwoven; practice isn’t devoid of vision. But it was practice that saved me from manic busyness and overdoing and despair. I keep reminding myself to slow down, take small steps (“We manage best when we manage small” ~ Linda Gregg); do less, lie down. Overall: think small. 

It’s time to admit that the allegory of the cave is completely wrong. We are not in a dim cave; we live in this amazing world woven of both sunlight and shade. The real is far more interesting than the ideal, and — surprise! — more exciting and beautiful as well. And yes, with a nod to Heraclitus — there is the playing out of opposites, an attunement of tensions. That’s what makes both the creative process and life itself so interesting.


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THE WRITERS’ ATTRACTION TO TAROT

~ “For several years, tarot has drawn attention at the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s annual conference: the poet Hoa Nguyen, a Griffin Poetry Prize finalist and author of the forthcoming Ask About Language As If it Forgets, has held tarot readings and consultations there. In 2019, writers Leslie Marie Aguilar, author of Mesquite Manual; Laurie Filipelli, author of Elseplace and Girl Paper Stone; Cecily Sailer, founder of the Austin-based Typewriter Tarot, a collective of female writers and Tarot readers; and F.T. Kola, who was short-listed for the Caine Prize, held a well-attended panel on tarot that tarot reader  and writer Leah Mueller described in Quail Magazine as “packed,” with the room “too small for the number of bodies.”)

Meg Hayertz, founder of Creative Momentum, which offers tarot readings, workshops, and coaching for creative professionals, calls tarot a means to “hush the inner critic and evoke the creative zone.” This freedom to explore, without judgment, may be tarot’s gift.

Do you see more people turning to tarot to relax, develop their creativity, or free themselves from writer’s block? 

Meg Hayertz: I think tarot is becoming more common as a tool for reflection. Many people have a practice of pulling a card every morning to help them feel centered and to engage more deeply with whatever happens that day. I know a lot of writers who pull cards for their characters, or for direction when they feel stuck in their writing.

Cecily Sailer: Absolutely. I notice more people using Tarot for all these reasons, and then some. People seem hungry for spiritual practices they can personalize, and more people are realizing that Tarot is a form of therapy—one you can use entirely on your own, without needing another human to mediate the process. I was drawn to Tarot because it shares with writing a fundamental aspiration—to articulate the complexity of human experience. Writers must journey into the murky realms of the subconscious and return with material the conscious mind can digest. Tarot can enter this process as a collaborator and compliment: It shares a writer’s desire to interrogate while providing a different language and angle for doing so. I’m noticing more writers embracing Tarot as a tool for navigating that subconscious space. When we feel stuck, we can turn to Tarot for insights or alternatives, then language can flow into that space.

MH: In Alexander Chee’s beloved essay, “The Querent,” he discusses the difference between reading the future, and reading the now. When I read the cards, I always ask the querent about their area of expertise— Is it writing, parenting, permaculture, rock climbing? From there, I help them apply the cards’ message through the lens of their craft, so that the cards’ guidance feels workable. This is important in helping the querent stay present. It often means the difference between a person leaving a reading downtrodden and distanced from themselves, or excited and full of curiosity.

MH: In many ways, my writing practice influences my tarot practice. When I first began playing around with tarot cards, I discovered that I had already been trained in intuition through the craft of writing. As writers, we read everything: books, cards, every detail of the immediate world around us. “Reading” is easy because meaning is so resonant and interconnected that as soon as we begin reading the poem of the world around us, everything connects. I’ve spent my life as a writer honing my skills of connecting the concrete details of an individual’s life to abstract themes, pursuits, and archetypes, to create a meaningful narrative. I think many writers delight in this connection between writing and tarot.

Tarot, in turn, has certainly influenced my writing practice. Tarot cards have the power to push past my self-doubt and reveal the gorgeous archetype of human experience that I am going though. This assurance that life is meaningful has been one of the biggest gifts Tarot has offered me as a writer.

 
LF: I agree with Meg. I’ve been a poet since I was a kid, which basically means I read the world as a set of images. I think writers and artists can often access the cards more easily than those who don’t use imagery as a means of creation.” ~

https://lithub.com/why-are-writers-particularly-drawn-to-tarot/?fbclid=IwAR1ygjtUlZmBZP4_hEzudmH7AKvQcaA7IXngCe4oet1J2T0khBDh9tmBhTQ

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A GIANT VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN THE (RELATIVELY) RECENT PAST
 
Caspar Friedrich, Ships in the Harbor — the vividness of the sky may reflect the giant 1815 Mt. Tambora (Indonesia) explosion which put a huge amount of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.

The exploding mountain heaved some 12 cubic miles of earthen matter to a height of more than 25 miles. While coarse particles soon rained out, finer ones traveled the high winds in a spreading cloud. “It passed,” Dr. Wood wrote, “across both south and north poles, leaving a telltale sulfate imprint on the ice for paleoclimatologists to discover more than a century and a half later.”

The global veil, high above rain clouds, reflected much sunlight back into space. So the planet cooled. The pall also spawned tempests far below.

Friedrich: Ships in the Harbor

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MYTHS ABOUT SLAVERY
 
Slaves never rebelled

Miseducation surrounding slavery in the US has led to an elaborate mythology of half truths and missing information. One key piece of missing history concerns slave revolts: Few history books or popular media portrayals of the trans-Atlantic slave trade discuss the many slave rebellions that occurred throughout America’s early history. 

C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan African Revolt describes many small rebellions such as the Stono Plantation insurgence of September 1739 in the South Carolina colony, where a small group of enslaved Africans first killed two guards. Others joined them as they moved to nearby plantations, setting them afire and killing about two dozen enslavers, especially violent overseers. Nat Turner’s August 1831 uprising in Southampton, Virginia, where some 55 to 65 enslavers were killed and their plantations burned, serves as another example.
Enslaved Africans resisted and rebelled against individual slave holders and the system of slavery as a whole. Some slipped away secretly to learn to read. Many simply escaped. Others joined the abolitionist movements, wrote books, and gave lectures to the public about their experiences in captivity. And others led or participated in open combat against their captors. 

Omitting or minimizing these stories of rebellion helps hide the violent and traumatic experiences enslaved Africans endured at the hands of enslavers, which prompted such revolts. If we are unaware of resistance, it is easier for us to believe the enslaved were happy, docile, or that their conditions were not inhumane. It then becomes easier to dismiss economic and epigenetic legacies of the transatlantic slave system.

House slaves had it better than field slaves

While physical labor in the fields was excruciating for the enslaved — clearing land, planting, and harvesting that often destroyed their bodies — that didn’t negate the physical and emotional violence enslaved women, and sometimes men and children, suffered at the hands of enslavers in their homes. 

In fact, rape of black women by white enslavers was so prevalent that a 2016 study revealed 16.7 percent of African Americans’ ancestors can be traced back to Europe. One of the study’s authors concludes that the first African Americans to leave the South were those genetically related to the men who raped their mothers, grandmothers, and/or great-grandmothers. These were the enslaved African Americans within the closest proximity to and who spent the longest durations with white men: the ones who toiled in the houses of slave owners.

A 2015 study determined that 50 percent of rape survivors develop PTSD. It is hard to imagine that enslaved and freedom-seeking African American survivors of rape — female, male, old, young, no matter their physical or mental abilities — did not experience further anxiety, fear, and shame associated with a condition they could not control in a situation out of control. Those African Americans with the most European ancestry, those tormented mentally, physically, emotionally, and genetically in the house, knew they had to get out. In fact, they fled the farthest — Southern whites are more closely related to blacks now living in the North than the South.

Abolition was the end of racism
 
A common myth about American slavery is that when it ended, white supremacy or racism in America also ended. 

Recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar variant of this myth when he said he opposed reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago.” To the Kentucky Republican, a descendant of enslavers, slavery simply was, and then it just wasn’t, as though the battlefield had leveled the playing field when it came to race. 

But the truth is that long after the Civil War, white Americans continue to carry the same set of white supremacist beliefs that governed their thoughts and actions during slavery and into the post-emancipation era.

In the South, especially, whites retained an enslaver’s mentality. They embraced sharecropping and convict leasing to control black labor in late 19th century, enacted Jim Crow laws to regulate black behavior in the early 20th century, and use racial terror to police the color line to this day. 

In the North, whites also rejected racial equality. After emancipation, they refused to make abandoned and confiscated land available to freedmen because they believed that African Americans would not work without white supervision. And when African Americans began fleeing Dixie during the Great Migration, white Northerners instituted their own brand of Jim Crow, segregating neighborhoods and refusing to hire black workers on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Slavery’s legacy is white supremacy. The ideology, which rationalized bondage for 250 years, has justified the discriminatory treatment of African Americans for the 150 years since the war ended. The belief that black people are less than white people has made segregated schools acceptable, mass incarceration possible, and police violence permissible.
This makes the myth that slavery had no lasting impact extremely consequential — denying the persistence and existence of white supremacy obscures the root causes of the problems that continue to plague African Americans. As a result, policymakers fixate on fixing black people instead of trying to undo the discriminatory systems and structures that have resulted in separate and unequal education, voter suppression, health disparities, and a wealth gap. 


Something did “happen” 150 years ago: Slavery ended. But the institution’s influence on

American racism and its continued impact on African Americans is still felt today. 

"History classes taught us everything we needed to know about slavery"

Many of us first learned about slavery in our middle or high school history classes, but some of us learned much earlier — in elementary school, through children’s books, or even Black History Month curriculum and programs. Unfortunately, we don’t always learn the entire story.

Most of us only learned partial truths about slavery in the United States. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, many in the North and South wanted to put an end to continuing tensions. But this wasn’t done just through the Compromise of 1877, when the federal government pulled the last troops out of the South; it was also done by suppressing the rights of black Americans and elevating the so-called “Lost Cause” of the enslavers. 

The Lost Cause is a distorted version of Civil War history. In the decades after the war, a number of Southern historians began to write that slaveholders were noble and had the right to secede from the Union when the North wished to interfere with their way of life. Due to efforts by a group of Southern socialites known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Lost Cause ideology influenced history textbooks as well as books for children and adults. 

The accomplishments of black Americans involved in the abolition movement, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria W. Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Still, were downplayed. Union generals like Ulysses S. Grant were denigrated, as were anti-racist whites from John Brown to William Lloyd Garrison. Generations later, there are still many people around the country who believe the Civil War was about states’ rights and that slaves who had good masters were treated well. 

Even an accurate historical curriculum emphasizes progress, triumph, and optimism for the country as a whole, without taking into account how slavery continues to affect black Americans and influence present-day domestic policy from urban planning to health care. It does not emphasize that 12 of the first 18 presidents were enslavers, that enslaved Africans from particular cultures were prized for their skills from rice cultivation to metallurgy, and that enslaved people used every tool at their disposal to resist bondage and seek freedom. From slavery to Jim Crow to civil rights to the first black president, the black American story is forced into the story of the unassailable American dream — even when the truth is more complicated.

Slavery doesn’t exist today
 
One of the greatest myths about slavery is that it ended. In fact, it evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration. 

The United States has the highest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the general population. But black men, women, and youth have outsize representation in the criminal justice system, where they make up 34 percent of the 6.8 million people who are under its control. Their labor is used to produce goods and services for businesses that profit from prison labor.

For those of us who study the early history of mass incarceration in America, these statistics are not surprising. From the late 1860s through the 1920s, over 90 percent of the prison and jail populations of the South were black. Thousands of incarcerated men, women, and children were hired out by the state to private factories and farms for a fee. From sunup to sundown, they worked under the watchful eye of brutal “whipping bosses” who flogged, mauled, and murdered them. They earned nothing for their toil. Today, labor exploitation, the denial of human dignity and the right to citizenship, family separation, and violent punishment define our criminal justice system in ways that mirror slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work. According to a 2017 report published by the Prison Policy Initiative, “the average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 86 cents.” Those assigned to work for state-owned businesses (correctional industries) earn between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour. In 2018, incarcerated Americans held a nationwide strike to end “prison slavery.” In a list of demands, striking individuals called for “all persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction” to be “paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor.”

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/22/20812883/1619-slavery-project-anniversary

Prisoners picking cotton in Texas
 
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JOSEPHUS AND THE FORGED PASSAGE

“Though we expect to find copying mistakes and other variations in our current versions of Josephus’s writings, we don’t in general suspect that the message of his texts was purposely altered in any significant way, except concerning the pivotal Jesus, James, and John the Baptist. And here nearly ever conceivable position has been proposed by scholars, including that Josephus didn’t mention any of these people, but later Christians added texts about them; that Josephus converted to Christianity, but his texts were changed to hide his belief in Jesus Christ; and that we have nearly perfect copies of what Josephus wrote.
What we can do is work from the preponderance of the scholarly evidence. Fortunately, that points us in a relatively clear direction. The passages about James and John are mostly authentic. The passage about Jesus is not. . . . No one seems to have ben aware of this particular passage until the fourth century.” ~ Joel Hoffman, The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor

El Greco: James the brother of Jesus
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THE MOST RELIGIOUS COUNTRIES HAVE THE LEAST FAITH

The awareness that blasphemy was once punishable by burning at the stake is always with me. The priests understood that in the absence of divine punishment (odd, how lightning failed to strike the blasphemers), the clergy had to be the executioners.

This morning I was thinking about capital punishment for blasphemy in Islamic countries (unbelief is the ultimate blasphemy). It struck me that such punishment itself constituted blasphemy, a lack of faith that god himself would exact revenge. Punishment simply could not be left in god’s hands! And, come to think of it, nothing could be left in god’s invisible hands. The most religious countries seem to have the least faith.

By the way, this reminds me of a friend of mine, K, who lost her job once — a job she didn’t want, so it was not distressing. But a co-worker urged her to appeal. K replied, “I think it’s best to leave it in god’s hands.” The co-worker pleaded, “I too believe in god, but I don’t think you should leave it in his hands!” 

No, we don’t leave anything in god’s hands. We know better than that.

(As someone observed: “God is supposed to be omnipotent, but in reality he can’t even say Hi”)

WHY THERE WAS LESS OBESITY JUST A FEW DECADES AGO

~ “The authors of the study found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans. 

“Our study results suggest that if you are 25, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than those older, to prevent gaining weight,” Jennifer Kuk, a professor of kinesiology and health science at Toronto’s York University, said in a statement. “However, it also indicates there may be other specific changes contributing to the rise in obesity beyond just diet and exercise.” 

Kuk proffered three different factors that might be making harder for adults today to stay thin. 

First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight. 

Second, the use of prescription drugs has risen dramatically since the ‘70s and ‘80s. Prozac, the first blockbuster SSRI, came out in 1988. Antidepressants are now one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S., and many of them have been linked to weight gain. 

Finally, Kuk and the other study authors think that the microbiomes of Americans might have somehow changed between the 1980s and now. It’s well known that some types of gut bacteria make a person more prone to weight gain and obesity. Americans are eating more meat than they were a few decades ago, and many animal products are treated with hormones and antibiotics in order to promote growth. All that meat might be changing gut bacteria in ways that are subtle, at first, but add up over time. Kuk believes the proliferation of artificial sweeteners could also be playing a role. 

“There's a huge weight bias against people with obesity,” she said. “They're judged as lazy and self-indulgent. That's really not the case. If our research is correct, you need to eat even less and exercise even more” just to be same weight as your parents were at your age.” ~

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-it-was-easier-to-be-skinny-in-the-1980s?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Oriana:

One of the most striking things is walking into an elementary classroom and seeing that almost half the children are overweight or downright obese. In my days one such child per classroom, perhaps two, was about it. The average child was slender — even skinny.
As were the young adults. And I don’t remember any skipping of dessert, either!

My bet is an overconsumption of both meat and fructose, and the change in microbiome. An overconsumption of protein mean the body becomes more and more efficient at turning protein to glucose. Higher glucose levels lead to more insulin, the fattening hormone. And fructose is worse by far than glucose; leads to obesity and a whole array of health problems in fairly direct ways. Yet nutritional advice in mass media has made people think that fruit is necessary for health — that our very survival depends on the daily consumption of fruit! Remember that the same sources tried to convince the public that margarine was better than butter. 

As for the microbiome, we are barely beginning to explore which microorganisms are good for maintaining slenderness, and which work against it. Fecal transplants showed that receiving the bacteria from an obese donor start gaining weight — without a change in their diet. This has been confirmed in animal studies. There are gut bacteria that protect us from obesity and those that promote it.

Diversity seems an important key: you need many kinds of bacteria in your gut to maintain a proper ecological balance. The key food group that appears to promote that diversity is vegetables, especially the crucifers (the cabbage family). Fermented vegetables such as kimchi and sauerkraut are a special treat for the good bacteria. 

Less meat, no bread or cereal, nothing with added sugar, no fruit (above all, not fruit juice or fruit smoothies) — and more cabbage! I realize that this diet — which needs to be lifelong — is not going to thrill hamburger lovers. The stubborn ones are never going to experience the joy of being slender.

(PS. I know what everyone will say: but kids back then used to run around! Their heads weren't stuck in screens! 

Exercises actually increases appetite. Diet is much, more more important than the amount of exercise. Not just what you feed yourself, but what you feed your gut bacteria. Also, please remember that in this study the amount of exercise was statistically controlled for. A person of the same age exercising just as much and consuming the same number of calories would still end up heavier than his peers in the 1980s.)

Ending on beauty:

We love each other like poppy and remembrance
we slumber like wine in the sea shells

like the sea in the moon’s blood jet.

We stand at the window embracing.

People watch us from the street.

It is time people knew. It is time

the stone consented to bloom.

It is time it were time.

It is time.

~ adapted from Celan’s Corona