YAHWEH HAD A BODY; WORD THAT DISSOLVES ANXIETY; ADVIL AND SCHIZOPHRENIA; FIRST HALF OF LIFE AND EXPECTING TO BE PUNISHED

Joan Miro: Constellation-Awakening at Dawn, 1941

ATLANTIS

We’re wreathed in robes of seaweed,
air bladders’ amber beads,
the hood of water
over the face of things.

Fish weave in rainbow veils.
Kelp sways like soundless bells.
we cannot tell one day
from a thousand years.

Here are our amulets, good-luck
crystals, diadems and crowns.
Here tilts the headless
statue of our god,

Lord of Mercy in whose name
we killed. Mudworm burrows
in the marble palaces.
Our purses fill up with silt.

We remember pine forests,
resin scent of the wind.
We remember having held
someone’s hand.

This glitter on the waves
like bent echoes,
those are our last words:
Hold hands. Hold hands.

~ Oriana © 2015

I know that one of the Buddhist masters said, as his final message, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” My own version would be “Affection. Affection. Affection.” 

 

DID YAHWEH HAVE A BODY?
 
During our first religion lesson, the nun told us about a strange being called Mr. God who lived in the sky. “Why can’t we see him?” one brave child asked (it wasn’t me). “Because,” the nun smiled indulgently, “god is invisible.” Even though we knew fairy-tales in which you could become invisible by holding a magic feather or putting on a magic cloak, the idea that the man in the sky, Mr. God, “could not be seen because he’s invisible” was unsatisfying. “God is invisible because god is a spirit,” the nun finished her explanation. We pretended to know what “spirit” meant. (In Polish, the word is derived from “breath,” but not identical with it.)

The first giveaway that alerted me was that in Eden “god walked in the cool of the day.” Why would “the cool of the day” matter unless you could had a body that could enjoy coolness but suffer in the later oppressive heat of noon and afternoon?

The part with Moses wanting to see god and finally getting to see Yahweh's “backside” is also very telling — and much is made of this being the backside and not the face. If Yahweh is a spirit, then there would be no “backside.” (By the way, is Yahweh naked? Is he anatomically correct?) But assuming that Yahweh can temporarily assume the human form, why the danger — why allow only the view of the backside? Greek heroes got to speak with gods face to face (e.g. Odysseus spoke to Athena and Hermes).

And later Moses is in fact allowed to see god, but by then the reader is used to contradictions. What were the editors thinking? Or was there no thinking going on? The bible warns against relying on “understanding.” Incoherence is next to holiness.

I BREATHE, THEREFORE I AM

Does the Hebrew bible ever state that Yahweh was a spirit? No. He is called a "living god," which probably implies breathing, and thus having a body. Yahweh was a breathing god. The ancient Hebrews did not believe in the soul apart from the body. And in the early books in particular Yahweh is described in pretty corporeal terms (hands, feet, walking in the cool of the day, looking for Adam and Eve when they are hiding in the bushes, etc)

But then there is the famous passage about the “spirit of god” hovering above the waters —  probably meaning his life-giving breath. The Hebrew word for spirit is “ruach,” which means breath (and also wind — more generally, a movement of air). Breath is of tremendous importance in the Hebrew bible. The “breath of life” is mentioned many times. But the Hebrew bible never states that god is a spirit in the sense of not having a body any more than it mentions an immortal soul.

(It’s interesting that the word “spirit” comes from “spirare,” to breathe; cf respiration, inspiration. So the notion of spirit has nothing to do the realm of thinking, for instance. An ancient Israelite would never have said, "I think, therefore I am." But he easily might have said, "I breathe, therefore I am.")

We underestimate how very concrete and body-based the early Hebrew was. There were no mentalistic words like “think”, “believe,” “imagine.” Life starts with the first breath and ends with the last breath. Why else have the resurrection in the body? Because there was no such thing as a soul apart from the body. There was only the body, living (i.e. breathing) or dead.

That lack of dualism is more apparent in the early bible, where for instance you have angels come down and mate with human women (so obviously the angels had genitals, as did Yahweh; considering the active love life of the Greek gods, that was fully consonant with the mentality of the times). Later there is an increase in mentalism, but without the knowledge of brain function and unconscious processing mentalism can easily lead to body/mind dualism. In spite of their beautiful and fully embodied gods, the Greeks, influenced by Egyptian mysticism, fell into it early on, creating a whole sexless theology of the imaginary. 

So, did Yahweh have a body? I suppose the most accurate answer is yes, at the beginning — but  there was no complete clarity on this matter. Yahweh was corporeal, but with special Superman powers he could assume a different form, as Zeus could shape shift into a swan or a bull — though with Yahweh it's not as explicit as that, and he stays away from animal incarnations (Ezekiel's chariot vision is perhaps a throwback, three of the four faces being animal). 

There is a vagueness — deliberate, I think, but also stemming from lack of clarity and trying to make Yahweh different from other gods, less limited by being a kind of Superman who’s actually visible to his favorites for many generations after Adam and Eve and strolling through Eden in the cool of the day.

In summary, the more I think about the early books, the more it seems that Yahweh does have a body that looks and works like the human body. But he can also speak from a burning bush and from a whirlwind, so there is an ambiguity. 

Still, the frequent references to feet, hands, face, walking and talking, coming down a mountain to see what’s up with the Tower of Babel, drawing in the smell of sacrifices into his nostrils, etc., do seem to imply a body. When he allows Moses to see his backside, is he mooning Moses under the pretext that it would be dangerous to see the face of a “living god”? — though later he lets Moses see his face anyway. 


The main mode of worship was animal sacrifice — this should give us a pause right there. Of course it was practiced in other cultures too, but what kind of god does that presume? Not the kind who is a spirit. Would a spirit draw in with pleasure the smell of Noah’s first sacrifice after the Flood? Or, much later, complain that the stench of sacrifices prickles his nostrils?

Greek gods also had bodies — perfect and immortal, but bodies nevertheless. They could choose to be in a different form, e.g. Zeus as lightning (that's why Semele was “consumed"). It makes perfect sense to me that Yahweh was imagined as having a body (never mind that people were not suppose to try to imagine him).

Conclusion: the Hebrew bible does not say that god is a spirit, anymore than it says that there is such a thing as an immortal soul. God is a living, breathing body, just as people are (allegedly made in his image).

Eventually god becomes more and more abstract. He is seen and heard less and less. He hardly does anything and finally he pretty much disappears from the late books of the Hebrew bible. This was splendidly demonstrated by the bible scholar Richard Friedman in his Disappearance of God. But let’s not forget the beginning, where Yahweh walks and talks, quite in the image of man. 

Charles:

I think that the reason God was so anthropomorphic in earlier writings is because the Israelites needed an image they could understand. It would be too drastic all of a sudden to have God be the spirit without a body.
 
Oriana:

I’ve heard this countless times, starting in religion lessons: “god is described in those terms so that the people of the time could understand.” But I don’t think that the emotional part of the human mentality has changed all that much over the centuries. We can have a real relationship with others, and also with our pets, because the creatures have a certain appearance, they do things and are responsive to us. A god that’s not human is not a god we can relate to. 
 
We can ask, “What would Jesus do?” and give some kind of answer. But if we ask, “What would Yahweh do?” things break down. Answer from the whirlwind to the effect, who are you to bother me? ~ “Where were you when I laid down the four corners of the earth? Can you draw the leviathan with a hook?” Or command you to stone the disobedient child? This is not a god who knows what it’s like to be human — or at least you are forbidden to think along those lines. 

So it’s not just back then that people needed to have an anthropomorphic god — even today, that’s the only god they can relate to. But the clergy and the theologians announce that this is too primitive, and we need to “grow beyond” the image of a parent in the sky, or, in the case of Jesus, perhaps a dear friend (“Are you running with me, Jesus?”)

I say forget it. We just can’t. We can have a great loving relationship with our dog, but not with the god of the theologians — whether it’s a person without a body, or not even a person but some kind of cosmic consciousness.

*

Once I gave outrage by speculating that Yahweh began as an actual person, a Middle Eastern warrior-god. ~ Harold Bloom, “The Daemon Knows”

*

THE SEVEN BASIC PLOTS  

Overcoming the monster (Beowolf, Jaws)
Rags to Riches (Aladdin, Oliver Twist)
The Quest (Odyssey, Watership Down)
Comedy (Aristophanes, The Marx Brothers)
Tragedy (Oedipus, Macbeth)
Rebirth (Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol)
Voyage and Return (Peter Rabbit, Brideshead Revisited)

Christopher Booker says that a few works even combine all seven basic plots, and the one example he gives is The Lord of the Rings.

Do you have a favorite plot?

Linda A:

The one forbidden thing!

Oriana:

Yes! Excellent! Thanks for reminding us of this, so abundant in mythological tales.

John G:

When I was a kid I loved end of the world stories. Asteroids heaving for earth. Plagues. Zombies. Aliens. Recently I saw a film called "seeking a friend for the end of the world." It grabbed me the way those old films grabbed me. Where does a story like that fit in? Tragedy? Probably. Or maybe overcoming the monster. But what if the end isn't overcome, and finally there is just death. Maybe the 8th basic plot should be: an old guy's story, a story that ends in silence and nothing. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307068/

Oriana:

Yes, that's another recognizable plot pattern: the apocalypse, but without the religious element. I was told that having dreams about the end of the world typical of being a victim (I was indeed going through a very stressful period when I had a lot of dreams about nuclear missiles on their way or the post-apocalyptic world with only women, children, and old people, weeds growing through cracks of the freeways). And no, there is no happy ending: either imminent destruction, or adjustment to a very sad kind of existence.

It’s tragedy, but a pattern of strength and survival can be a major sub-theme. As for the old person, the only “happy ending” is “death with dignity”: the person realizes that his/her life made a difference.

In movies where an old person dies, there is sometimes a symbolic rebirth: for instance, we see a child water a newly planted tree.



ALWAYS EXPECTING TO BE PUNISHED: a pattern in the first half of my life

In the New York Review of Books, an article about a woman who had not bothered to have an amniocentesis (these days there is a blood test) and ended up having a child with Down Syndrome. The paragraphs on the “medical freak show” interested me only slightly. Mainly I thought about my youth and the recurring thought that just because I valued the life of the mind so much, I’d end up having a “mentally handicapped” child (apologies for not knowing the current politically correct word). It would be my punishment for loving books and ideas. It would be life’s corrective action, humbling me, saying See? You wanted your child to be a genius. What a laugh!

No man expects to be “punished” by life or society for loving books and ideas. Perhaps there is some notion that reading books is unmanly, but women’s attraction to intellectual men would be a corrective. A man who can talk about literature realizes that he “speaks woman.” Tony Hoagland carried a copy of Rilke’s Duino Elegies for seduction purposes. I know it not only because of his poem where he confesses to using this ploy, but also because I remember how we met at the Yaddo Arts Colony, lined up for dinner. He was holding a red-cover copy of The Duino Elegies in his left hand (the side that showed).

Why on earth did I expect to be punished, humbled, “corrected”? I grew up in a milieu where reading and intellectual achievement were encouraged -- not that I needed to be encouraged, being a compulsive reader. Nor can I point to the slightest streak of sexism in this regard. True, I overheard my parish priest saying, “Girls . . . They are so stupid.” But I can’t claim that this harmed me in any significant way; even as a ten-year-old, I realized that the comment said something about the priest and nothing about me. (Nor did I retaliate by sending him a note: “Priests . . . They are so stupid.” No, I was a nice quiet girl. Anyway, I was too busy reading.)

So I don’t really know why I expected to be punished for being who I was. Perhaps it had something to do with the way life kept shattering my dreams. Perhaps I picked up sexist judgment from the larger culture. Or perhaps it’s more universal than that, more “female.” My mother said, more than once, that she had terrible nightmares during her pregnancy about giving birth to an abnormal child. Such nightmares, I read, are perfectly normal. Nor do I think that my brave and resourceful mother would not have managed to cope somehow. Fortunately she didn’t have to.

And for all her ability to cope (the child would probably end up in an institution), her life would have been blighted. My father, too, would have suffered terribly.

And it has crossed my mind that with my mother’s access to anesthetics, perhaps she would at least have considered euthanizing the child. Nor would I have blamed her. Nor am I horrified that my own fantasies in that situation would be to smother the child with a pillow or otherwise cause a quick death . . .  not that I’d act on such fantasies. I’d certainly explore other solutions. But that I’d have such fantasies, of that I have no doubt.

Most fears don’t come true. It’s what we didn’t think of fearing that tends to happen -- IF anything happens. And then it’s not the end of the world.

Also, I realize that I had that “doomed” feeling that I would be punished no matter what —probably the legacy of my Catholic upbringing. I expected to be punished simply for being me.

For women, it's often being kind toward themselves that's the hardest. Most of them received the message during childhood that they are of lesser worth, and don't deserve good things (e.g. a good salary, a meal at a nice restaurant rather than McDonald's, etc -- both the big things and the small). I don't generally recommend anything New Age, but Louise Hay's YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE can be a life-saver, especially for women. Louise definitely confronts the “I will be punished” mindset.

I’m also happy to report that I don't seem to have the belief anymore. I know I’ll suffer because we all suffer, but not because I’m being punished. No one is being punished by god, life, fate etc. I've seen too much innocent suffering to believe in that kind of "justice" (usually a euphemism for "revenge"). That humanity ever came up with the god of punishment (GOP) is a real shame.

But I don’t really need to analyze the possible sources of those long-ago fears. It’s in the past, irrelevant now. Onward. There are real bridges to cross.


THE SURPRISING MAGIC WORD FOR DISSOLVING ANXIETY
 
“Dr. Stanley Hibbs, an anxiety expert, shared at a conference, an innovative strategy involving a powerful, anxiety dissolving word. As Dr. Hibb's puts it, "This magic word helps combat discouragement and turns potentially disastrous days into productive ones. It's good for your health, your self-esteem, and can make you a more productive, better person." The magic word is NEVERTHELESS. Here are some examples of how he uses it:

"I'm tired and I've earned the right to goof off. Nevertheless, I can get a few more things done and then relax."

"It's very cold outside and I don't feel like walking today. Nevertheless, it's very important so I'm going to do it anyway."

"I'm upset and ice cream is my comfort food. Nevertheless, I will find a better way to deal with my feelings."

"I think I will fail this test; nevertheless, I am going to start studying and give it my best.”

If you try using this word in earnest you'll likely see its power. Dr. Hibb's states that "Nevertheless" allows us to pause and realize that we have choices. There are always reasons (or excuses) to succumb to anxiety and to do what's unhealthy, unproductive, or morally questionable. Nevertheless, we can still choose to do the right thing.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/201410/you-can-lower-your-anxiety-thinking-about-one-word?tr=MostViewedTh

Oriana:

If “nevertheless” seems an awkward mouthful, you can substitute HOWEVER.

I also used the mantra “May the best outcome manifest itself.” This reminds me that I don’t know that the “best outcome” would be, so it’s best to relax and not try too hard (or at all).

Nevertheless — a word of victory. Nevertheless — what triumph!

My first “nevertheless” came at 18, when I was reading Saul Bellow’s Herzog, the first novel I got to read in the US. Herzog lists his many flaws, then concludes, “Nevertheless, how charming we remain.” It stayed in my memory forever, that saving bit of narcissism. 


MY OWN ‘NEVERTHELESS’: “THINK SMALL”
 
Would you rather be pretty good at many things, or extremely good at one thing? This question kept battering me over the years.

Instantly I chose the second option. Of course I’d rather be fantastic doing just one thing — anything, just as long as I could learn to do it supremely well. But what exactly was the one thing I could devote my life to? This question kept returning — except for the respite I enjoyed in my mid and late thirties and early forties when I was a poet and just that. I felt I had found my calling. The siren call of all the other “fun” things was drowned out by the adventure of writing yet another poem and the rapid initial progress. A poet’s life is full of surprises: you never know where the next poem will come from. A poem is found more so than made, and that’s exhilarating as hardly anything else.

Then, unfortunately, I started publishing. This meant 99% rejection rate, which eventually — success! — went down to 95%, perhaps even 93% in my best year. I was told that was not a bad rate, and in fact I was doing great! Nevertheless, the time and energy siphoned off into “marketing”, combined with exhausting my central subject matter, did cause the predictable burn-out. Maybe it was a question of starting too late and/or living in the wrong place to find a mentor. The unthinkable happened: after finding my vocation, I lost it.

For me, alas, poetry was trauma-driven. When I was sufficiently recovered from personal wounds — not 100%, but that's neither possible nor necessary — my life as a poet was over, and I switched to prose. If I ran out of my own trauma, I wrote persona poems that still turned around similar themes, e.g. Moses being denied entry into the Promised Land, like Kafka's K. "All poetry is about loss" — you'd think that's inexhaustible, but after I ran out of the loss of homeland, the loss of great love, and the loss of the promises of youth, only mortality was left, and the celebration of life and beauty. Maybe that should have been enough, but it wasn't. After the nostalgia poems, and the suicide poems — one of my lovers had committed suicide — it was blah.

Ah, the strangeness of life! After discovering poetry and developing great love for it, suddenly I didn’t even like reading poetry all that much. And, frankly, most poetry is not worth reading. It’s instantly forgettable. I preferred quality non-fiction. Fortunately being a writer is multi-potential, so it’s not as if I had to take up working with stained glass just to have a creative outlet — any kind of creative outlet (which seems an absolute necessity for me).

Hence my blog and a variety of micro-musings. There is no ambition to become a great non-fiction writer. When writing a blog, I want to write a good blog. That’s all. I'm no trying to be a superb blog writer. Whatever wells up from the accumulated riches of my mentality is fine. One revision is enough. I know I'm not writing for the ages, but it doesn’t bother me to be writing for the moment to which I belong. There’s no long-term goal.

Having said this, I still think I owe whatever depth and skills I have to have stuck with one thing long ago. The very first thing to have come into my life was the project of mastering English. The second was of course poetry. That was my foundation in self-discipline and learning how to write in a crisp and vivid manner. Having gained the foundation, I could afford some “butterfly” behavior, delving into all kinds of flowers. I could trust my unconscious to integrate this wild collage somehow.

I no longer feel I must achieve anything. I don’t have to prove myself in any way. But I can still enjoy my microprojects. And the great thing is that when you think small, success is guaranteed.

I still think that everyone should have at last one thing they are very good at rather than go off into all the directions at once. The latter can be done recreationally, but it better not be the center of one's life. Again, the wonderful thing about writing is that with an agile mind, you can pick up what’s vivid and is likely to interest the reader. Or you an go off into a reverie and produce an atmospheric piece that takes off from a poem, or a pebble found in the woods. And I suspect the process is not all that different for other creatives, be they carpenters or gourmet chefs.

Note that I dropped words like “fantastic” and “supreme.” Just getting to be very good is challenging enough. And even that hinges on some factors not completely under our control.

GRATITUDE FOR THE PAST

Sometimes I look at an old poem of mine and I can hardly believe that I wrote it. I couldn’t produce anything that imaginative now, that beautiful. It takes peak brain function, on top of all kinds of other circumstances all coming together at once.

But it’s amazing that I did produce such poems, even if that’s in the past. What a privilege. So I am grateful for the past, its misery notwithstanding.

And I still am moved to tears when a stranger comes up to me and remembers a poem s/he heard or read twenty years ago. To have touched someone’s life with words is a great privilege.

Other writing? Only the poems count, really. Only they can provide sufficient delight.

Prose is craft. Poetry is art.

Poetry — that which lasts. The news that stays news.

JOY IN THE PRESENT

What fascinates me is the growing perception of the beauty of life the more “posthumous” it becomes. It’s ironic that we grow to love all the more intensely that which must be left behind. I love beauty more than ever — now un-distracted by career, romantic drama, etc. Those immense intensities, passions, and driving goals of the past — how unimportant they seem next to everyday beauty.

I loved having one overwhelming, obsessive vocation as long as it lasted, but in time I discovered that I also enjoy being post-poetry. For instance, I’m a cloud-watcher again, as in childhood — and as in childhood, I don’t feel compelled to describe the clouds. It’s pure, useless joy.


 EMERSON’S NEVERTHELESS: THE AFFIRMATION OF A “SECOND BEST”
Though Melville and Henry James thought Emerson knew too little of loss, they were mistaken. The three people he loved best died early: his first wife, Ellen; his brother Charles; his little son Waldo. We all know suffering and evil: Emerson had the wisdom not to let himself be darkened prematurely. Stephen Whicher is the best guide:

“His later thought is characteristically an affirmation of a second best. If a perfect freedom was clearly out of reach, man’s fate as he found it still turned out to allow him adequate means to free himself. The two chief second-best mans of freedom that Emerson found were “obedience to his genius” and “the habit of the observer” — Vocation and Intellect.” ~ Harold Bloom

Emerson managed to avoid depression. He turned to his work. If only that precise kind of wisdom had visited me earlier in life, the useless suffering I would have avoided . . .  But it would be  useless and ungracious to complain rather than celebrate the fact that the wisdom of turning to productivity visited me at all, no matter how late.

As for affection rather than passion, I don’t see affection as “second best.” Together with vocation, it’s a secure foundation for contentment. We need not yearn for happiness. It is a great blessing to have contentment. And I wouldn’t call contentment “second best” either.

COULD IBUPROFEN AND OTHER NSAIDS HELP PREVENT AND TREAT SCHIZOPHRENIA?

~ Schizophrenia could be treated with cheap, accessible anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, according to new research.

The study, published on Friday in the American Journal of Psychiatry, concluded that people at risk of developing schizophrenia showed high levels of inflammation in their brains, which was also true of patients already suffering from the disorder. They also discovered that higher inflammation levels resulted in a greater severity of symptoms in persons likely to develop the disorder.

The findings mean that, if detected early enough through brain scans, schizophrenia could potentially be prevented or at least mitigated in at-risk patients using simple anti-inflammatory drugs.

Peter Bloomfield, a doctoral student at the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Clinical Sciences Centre and the paper's lead author, says that the findings could change the way schizophrenia is diagnosed and treated. "There's potential for us to treat very early and also this is a completely new type of theory of schizophrenia, so a whole new range of medication could be produced based on this research," says Bloomfield.

He adds that over-the-counter medication could be used to treat the mental disorder in the future, subject to clinical trials. "It could be something as simple as [ibuprofen]. It would need to be tried and tested...but something like ibuprofen or just any anti-inflammatory."

The study assessed the levels of activity of immune cells in the brain—known as microglia—of 56 patients in total, including current sufferers of schizophrenia as well as those at risk of the disease and those showing symptoms of the disorder. Researchers injected the subjects with a chemical dye which sticks to microglia, which they then used to record the activity levels of the cells.

Microglial cells are the primary immune cells of the brain and spinal cord (or the central nervous system), where their function is to destroy pathogens and clean up debris. The cells also prune connections between brain cells, known as synapses.

Bloomfield explains that abnormal activity levels in microglia can lead to patients developing the symptoms of schizophrenia—including hallucinations (hearing voices) and delusional thoughts—by changing the way in which the brain is hard-wired. "If they're over or under active or active in an inappropriate way, then you would end up with the wrong number of synapses or inappropriate connections between different parts of the brain, which would fit very well with our hypothesis of how schizophrenia is actually manifesting," says Bloomfield.

Oliver Howes, head of the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre's psychiatric imaging group and the paper's senior author, told Sky News that the advance was the most significant in schizophrenia research for decades. "We're still using treatments that were essentially first developed in the 1950s and we desperately need new avenues and new approaches," said Howes. ~

http://europe.newsweek.com/anti-inflammatory-drugs-could-help-schizophrenia-treatment-study-334918

ending on beauty

Lost Landscape

Why do I remember a strange village
Like a secret I knew long ago,
Where a crowded flock of branded sheep
Filled the lane, now forever gone?

Why do I watch them so in memory today?
Recreate every movement, proven in a dream?
Time was passing. They strayed into the ignorance of time,
And, suddenly breaking rank, disappeared past the bend.

Why do I feel within a choked, divine weeping
That I will never hear the wind murmur in those fields,
Never see the distant dawn fill with light,
The shrubs littered with the lost wool of the sheep.

~ Boleslaw Leśmian, tr. Oriana Ivy 

 Rafał Borcz: February

FROM ARIEL TO CALIBAN; HEALTH BENEFITS OF WHISKY; LENNON'S “IMAGINE, THERE IS NO HEAVEN”: THE EQUIVALENT OF “GOD IS DEAD”?

 
NOT EVEN IN THE AFTERLIFE

I always thought it would be him
my great love my cruel one
he with a luminous mind
body of a wingless dragonfly

rounded at the edges but I thought
dying would improve him
he’d be the radiant spirit
waiting for me on the other side

with his inaudible stutter
his invisible scars
growing up in the mean streets
small weak lying to survive

but I thought that improved by dying
he’d take me by the hand
and we’d walk forever across
the black velvet of infinity

I thought like Dante and Beatrice
we’d stand on a ring of Saturn
his hair still mahogany
a Conquistador’s burning eyes

I thought that improved by death
he’d shimmer like a crystal butterfly
but instead this empty room
blank walls only he and I

he doesn’t take me by the hand
only starts scolding me
for something so long ago
so small I don’t remember it at all

the searing flame of his mind
pours into putting me down
he is carrying on and on
and will never stop

the room has no door
there is no welcoming white light
so this is hell a small room
alone with my great love

~ Oriana © 2015


I remember that after waking up from the dream I felt shattered all day. It took me a few days to recover. It was the final loss of a great love even in its ghostly form. As Anna Akhmatova said in “The Last Toast,” “ [I drink] to my life too awful to tell about.”

He was a narcissist, but not entirely unaware of how unworthy he was of my love. He was the one who said, “People will despise you for having wasted yourself on me.” In another poem I had another lover say that — yes, poets do lie to make the poem simpler and thus better. Art relies on the simplification of messy complexities.

It was no revelation to me that that particular man was a sadistic narcissist and it had been an emotionally abusive relationship — I didn’t need a nightmare to tell me that. I thought I had already gotten over the realization that my greatest (or at least the most intense) love had been for a man of that sort — that was just one of the misfortunes of my life. But apparently my love for him had been so great that in my wishful imagination I transformed him into a future good person, a brilliant talker I could enjoy without the pain. The fantasy still lingered in my mind for decades until the dream of hell killed it. And I did feel shattered for a while, never mind the unreality of it all.

But nothing compares to the shattering I experienced when I truly, truly understood that I wouldn’t have not just the national recognition I first dreamed about but any recognition whatever, aside from a few poet friends (whose luck wasn’t any better). I’ve recovered considerably, but is there a true recovery from that kind of emotional crash — losing the dream that guided my life during my so-called best years? I survive mainly by not thinking about it, concentrating on small goals and pleasures, counting my blessings, etc. I am in fact happier than in a long time. Except for the last years in LA when I was rapidly developing as a poet and each new poem seemed a miracle, these are the happiest years of my life. Right now I feel blessed. I feel lucky — I, who was officially pronounced as “having been born under an unlucky star.”

As I revised the poem this came together: the greatest love of my life and the greatest dream of my life (in a more legitimate form: to be a great poet) — both such sad ruins . . . The misfortune of passionate love for a man with whom a real partnership was impossible, and life circumstances that stranded me away from potential mentors . . .  All in the past now, with nothing to be done about it except to live every day that remains. Well, most people don’t get what they most want in life, do they? The Buddha had something to say about that. 

An aside: The dream was a compelling depiction of hell as non-stop put-downs from the man you loved madly in your youth — the way you can love only once. There is still some romantic glow smoldering in your psyche because he was your “great love,” however misguided or downright disastrous it turned out to be. The trembling, the held breath when you merely heard his voice in the hallway in the distance. And then waking up to reality — forever. Yes, that would be hell, that kind of ultimate disillusionment and denial of romantic fantasy. In my twenties and thirties I was already fully aware that it was the fantasy I needed, never mind the reality; the fantasy of loving and being loved was enough to keep me going.

But a simpler vision of hell was provided by a vision described by Teresa of Avila: each soul is cramped into a cubicle, alone, tearing itself to pieces. That’s the self-loathing so masterfully imparted by the Catholic church and other fundamentalist religions — and/or by having experienced an abusive childhood or abusive relationships. You don’t need an outside tormentor — you internalize the put-downs and very efficiently torment yourself. 

Another aside: some have famously imagined hell as the inability to get away from people. Sartre didn’t go for the perennial joking about hell being a place where you meet all your friends and all the interesting people besides — all the freethinkers and creatives and eccentrics. No, for Sartre it was being locked up with people with whom you can’t forge a connection, people who reject you and despise you. But others have suggested that hell is solitary confinement. Perhaps in the end there would be an equivalence: we’d grow numb, stop hearing the nagging voices of others, and feel entirely alone. That’s what happened in my dream: even though I was with my former great love, after a while I automatically tuned him out, and felt completely alone.

George Bellow, The White Horse, 1922

DO NOT PUT DOWN OTHERS, DO NOT PUT DOWN YOURSELF 
 
The dream also seemed to comment on the viciousness of constantly criticizing someone. Neither suffering or being criticized improves people. Centuries of being brainwashed to the contrary need to be overcome. This is the propaganda of bullies, and the generational chain of giving and receiving verbal abuse. 

Perhaps the most awful part is the fact that we internalize this abuse, believe it, and continue to put down ourselves long after the abuser is gone — sometimes dead. A lifetime of self-loathing can follow unless the chain is broken by awareness and conscious action to liberate oneself from this pattern of un-love.

A teacher I knew once said that she can walk into a classroom and tell at a glance which children are receiving a lot of love, and which not enough. Indeed I am tempted to divide people into those who have been treated lovingly and received more praise than criticism, and those who received mainly put downs and verbal bullying. For most, it’s a mixed pattern. But the extremes stand out.

The man in my dream fell into the first group. He had the misfortune of growing up in a family that belong to that underclass that’s dismissed with the particularly cruel label: “white trash.” Being bright, and being born at the right time in history, he availed himself of the GI bill to get educated and ultimately do well in life — at the financial level. He also learned how to appear charming and seductive. But the love he received from the women he manipulated into loving him never seemed to heal the deep wounds of childhood. He was always compulsively showing off — or, if angered, and he was easily angered, using his intelligence to put down others.

Eventually I lost touch with him, so I can’t say with certainty with recovery never happened. It happened for me, so perhaps some degree of recovery happened for him too. Perhaps.

Not all stories have a happy ending. Sometimes hell is permanent. Some people live and die never having experienced what it’s like to love and be loved. But we need happy endings because no one’s story is just an individual story. It’s part of our collective human story. The more we move away from abusive child rearing (which used to be the norm in the past — think Dickens), the more we can hope for a kinder world.

 Chagall: I and the Village, 1911

JOHN LENNON’S “IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN” — THE EQUIVALENT OF NIETZSCHE’S “GOD IS DEAD”?

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
Living for today.

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion, too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace--

You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will be as one.

~ Words and music by John Lennon. 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwUGSYDKUxU

Someone commenting on Facebook said that Lennon was imagined a world without cultural diversity (“no countries”). I don't think he was imagining a world without different cultures —  just without nationalism. And I'm sure he felt passionate about music and beauty — it's just that you wouldn't kill for those things, as people have for country and religion. For me it's mainly: no religion, no nationalism, no predatory capitalism. But it's interesting that it starts with “no heaven” = no afterlife. Imagine, people living for today. That's the truly visionary part, especially back in the seventies when saying "There's no heaven" was still a pretty daring thing. Without going to a  “better place,” you have to make this world a better place. Or, without such grand goals, at least to cultivate your own garden.

I remember that when I first heard the song, I couldn't believe I heard it right: "no heaven"?? I kept replaying the opening to make sure. It struck me as equivalent of Nietzsche's “god is dead.” But people (at least in the US) wouldn't talk about it. It was ahead of its times.

"Above us, only sky" is the motto of the Liverpool Airport. And I'm amazed, frankly, that the American fundamentalists have not objected to the song. I guess they pretend it doesn't exist. And a lot of "spiritual but not religious" people cling to the idea of the spirit world — the astral realm — as a kind of heaven, at least between incarnations. I think those who like the song say it's about world peace, and pretend the part about "no heaven" isn’t there.

“Above us, only sky” is the motto of the Liverpool Airport — in post-Christian Europe, that’s a natural thought. But I'm amazed, frankly, that the American fundamentalists have not objected to the song.g. I guess they pretend it doesn't exist. And a lot of "spiritual but not religious" people cling to the idea of the spirit world — the “astral realm” — as a kind of heaven, at least between incarnations. I think those who like the song say it's about world peace, and pretend the part about "no heaven" isn't there. Saying "There is no heaven" is even more radical than saying "There is no god." The promise of heaven has been the most attractive promise of religion, even if Christian heaven is rather tepid next to the sensual Islamic paradise. And the threat of hell has of course been the greatest tool of keeping people afraid and blindly obedient.


FROM THE TENDER ARIEL TO THE TOUGH CALIBAN

Come downe and sit in the dust; a virgine, daughter Babel, sit on the grounde: there is no throne. O daughter of the Chaldeans: for though shalt no more be called Tendre and delicate.
                      [Geneva Bible, Isaiah 47:1]

This unexpected quotation in Harold Bloom’s chapter on the Temptest (“Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human”) moved me profoundly.

“Tender and delicate” — that’s how people used to see me. But the “tender and delicate” was some years ago — the princess years of being physically attractive. A fairy child, a “little doll.” That’s when it was enough to just sit there looking pretty. Age dethrones women; now they tough “nasty women” and they “can take it” (whatever coarseness is dished out to them).

Age, which often coarsens one’s features, can create a deceptive appearance of sturdiness. “What! Martha had a heart attack? But she was tough as nails! She could take anything!”

A man is strong, an admirable trait; a woman is “tough as nails.” Interesting that the imagery is macho-shop. Did a carpenter come up with this phrase?

And anything can indeed dished out to that tough woman — no tenderness and delicacy. That’s for children and young girls. A young mother might at first encounter some protectiveness. Later, middle-aged, you’re on your own, O daughter of the Chaldeans. Tired? No man will rush toward you with a chair, much less several men, as they used to. Just be glad the ground will still accept you.

You’ve been demoted from Ariel to Caliban, who is of course expected to fend for himself without receiving any affection. Even if you were once a loved child and adored bride, who loves you now, immigrant from the past, that unknown world?

But let us end on something magical from that play. I was struck not by the famous “Our revels now are ended” — though that expresses the theme of life’s dissolution in lyrical eloquence — but by Caliban’s tenderness in explaining to the castaways that the island is enchanted:

Be not afeared; the isle if full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again.

There is something tender about telling someone not to be afraid — one’s voice naturally becomes soft. No need to invoke Ariel’s spirits making music. It’s enough to think of a forest — a true forest, with huge oaks and pines — and all the magical sounds you get to hear, be it only a bird, unseen, rustling in the brush.

This speech is full of such delicacy that I get sentimental and think of Hans Christian’s Andersen’s “Little Match Girl” freezing to death on Christmas Day, but in her last vision, having decided to light all her remaining matches, she sees a vision of a warm room with a beautiful Christmas tree in it. A tear-jerker, yes, along with countlesss movie scenes in which the protagonist dies seeing in delirium the wish-fulfilling scene of love and beauty.

Here it’s the dispossessed orphan Caliban, the dark-skinned outcast — “the beast Caliban,” as Prospero calls him — who has dreams of riches about to his as he lies penned in the hollow of a rock (“here you sty me / In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me / The rest o’ the island”).

But: be not afeared — there is much beauty in life to make up for the sorrows, and tenderness to make up for the coarseness. The human world may reject us, but never the ground — never the forest.

And those are the sacred places — not the ones “consecrated” by a priest with some absurd “holy water.” The earth is sacred, and so are its children — both Ariels and Calibans. 

 
THE SURPRISING HEALTH BENEFITS OF WHISKEY (IN SMALL AMOUNT)
 
Whiskey is a distilled alcoholic beverage that is made of some type of grain mash. There isn’t much to whiskey except for alcohol, but whiskey is also exceptionally rich in ellagic acid, which is a very powerful antioxidant, and is responsible for a great deal of the health benefits from whiskey.

Dementia: Studies have actually shown that whiskey can successfully boost your cognitive performance and reduce your chances of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Although studies are ongoing and there is quite a bit of controversy regarding alcohol as a treatment/preventative method, there is no denying that ellagic acid is extremely powerful in terms of fighting against free radicals within the body. These free radicals are often associated with interrupting neural pathways and contributing to the slow decline towards dementia. Whiskey can reduce that mental decline and improve our quality of life as we get older. Once again, this is useful when consumed in moderation; too much alcohol kills brain cells and does the precise opposite of protecting our cognitive activity.

Heart Health: A number of studies have shown whiskey to be a major player in protecting heart health. As our bodies get older, our systems become more frail, resulting in less efficient functioning of various organ systems, and weakness of our cardiovascular system. However, a study has recently revealed that those who consume a moderate amount of whiskey on a regular basis have almost a 50% lower chance of experiencing a stroke or heart attack, which is exceptional news for those at risk of cardiovascular issues.

Blood Clots: In a related note for heart health, whiskey has been shown to significantly reduce blood clotting. Blood clotting is important when you are wounded so you stop losing blood, but internally, if your blood clots at key junctures in your blood vessels or arteries, it can be disastrous. Atherosclerosis, which usually occurs due to a large build-up of cholesterol, can combine with blood clots to result in thrombosis, heart attacks, strokes, and death. Whiskey is a blood-thinner, so it significantly lowers your chances of excess clotting. It also increases the amount of “good” cholesterol, which counteracts the effects of “bad” cholesterol, further protecting your heart.

Cancer Prevention: Cancer is one of the most devastating and globally relevant diseases known to man. We are also constantly looking for ways to prevent and slow down the disease. There are new anti-cancer schemes and fads all the time, but many of them are just that, popular fads with very little medicinal information to back it up. However, whiskey has an extremely high level of ellagic acid, one of the most powerful antioxidant compounds that we can consume. An antioxidant is a compound that neutralizes free radicals, the harmful byproducts of cellular metabolism that cause a wide range of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and premature aging. This powerful antioxidant makes whiskey a very effective preventative measure against cancer.

Immune System Boost: There have been certain studies that have argued for the immune system-boosting capacity of whiskey. Alcohol does have a traditional role in preventing illness and improving the function of the immune system, but firm evidence was never in hand. Now, we see that the antioxidants and trace levels of vitamins in whiskey do in fact stimulate the immune system, thereby helping to fight off normal colds, illnesses, and infections. All of those old movies where they would pour whiskey on a wound to disinfect it is not just fiction! You can pour whiskey on a fresh wound to make sure it does not get infected!

Diabetes Control: Whiskey has been consistently shown to reduce the chances of diabetes, sometimes by as much as 30-40%. A moderate amount of whiskey can significantly improve your body’s ability to regulate insulin and glucose levels, thereby lowering the possibility of developing diabetes.

Note: Oddly, whiskey delivers antioxidants more efficiently than wine, so arguably it’s more beneficial. The whiskey used in the studies was matured in oak for 12 years. This will of course be reflected in the price.

Warning: If you show even a slight tendency to alcoholism, you have to forget all about these benefits, and substitute . . . raspberries, pecans, walnuts, strawberries. These are good for you regardless. It's just that whiskey matured in rye is a particularly rich source of ellagic acid.

But you MUST be sure you are not genetically susceptible to alcoholism before you decide to avail yourself of the health benefits of small amounts of whiskey. Since alcoholism runs in families, and since first experiments with alcohol tend to take place in one’s teens, adults generally do know. 

Please note: Ellagic acid supplements appear to be useless. They simply aren't absorbed. So we need to get ellagic acid from food and . . .  surprisingly enough, whisky. 

RILKE: ANGEL WITH SUNDIAL (redux)

ANGEL WITH THE SUNDIAL

In the storm that rages round the strong cathedral
like a denier thinking on and on,
your tender smile suddenly engages
our hearts and lifts them up to you.

O smiling angel, sympathetic stone,
your mouth distilled from a hundred mouths:
do you not mark how from your always-full
sundial our hours slide off one by one —

that so impartial sundial, upon which
the day’s whole sum is balanced equally
as though all our hours were rich and ripe?

What do you know, stone-born, of our plight?
And does your face become more blissful still
as you hold the sundial out into the night?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, tr, J. B. Leishman
  (slightly modified by Oriana; the poem is also known as “Angel of the Meridian”)

**

I fell in love with this poem at first reading, when I first discovered Rilke in my late twenties — so many years ago that it seems like another lifetime. Unpredictable, the words that may connect one stage of our life with another; timeless ripples in time.

There are so many great lines here, and the poem works so well in English (including the rhymes, often a translator’s downfall — but here we see Leishman at his best) that I am surprised that this exquisite piece from The Book of Images is little known. You’d think that many Rilke lovers could recite the second stanza by heart:

O smiling angel, sympathetic stone,
your mouth distilled from a hundred mouths:
do you not mark how from your always-full
sundial our hours slide off one by one —

**

The poem flows by itself, each word inevitable, even in translation. But this sublime angel remains largely undiscovered, obscured by its larger, lethal kin perched in the Duino Elegies.

Let’s “take it from the top,” as a quirky (but aren’t they all?) professor of mine used to say. The first stanza is interesting in itself. What is this “storm that rages round the cathedral”? I no longer remember my source for this information, but one explanation may be biographical. When Rilke and Rodin visited Chartres together, Rilke, for whom it was his first visit, was surprised by the wind around the cathedral — “the wind in which we stood like the damned.” Rodin replied that there is always a wind around the great cathedrals.

Before we go into the metaphorical meaning of the “storm around the strong cathedral,” let me dispose of a more literal interpretation. The stone walls of medieval cathedrals (which used to double as fortresses in wartime) are massive not only in height, but in thickness. That’s why it’s always cold inside, even on a hot summer day. But I never noticed much of a draft of coldness seeping out from the inside. The turbulence noted by Rilke may have been due to the complicated air currents as the wind pushes against and flows around the giant walls.

Also, Rilke might have known the legend of the wind around the Strasbourg cathedral: the wind there waits for the devil (trapped inside god’s fortress) to ride it again. Hence the “denier” might refer to the “spirit that always denies [or “always says No”), a line from Goethe’s Faust.

But let’s assume that the denier refers to an atheist who feels enraged against religion, but rather than express his hatred in a purely emotional outpouring, tries for rational arguments. Though Rilke was influenced by Lou Andreas-Salomé’s belief that all religions were human invention, like Lou he shared a longing for a “real god,” one who does not divide humanity into the saved and the damned. This “real god” understands our wounds (rather than condemn our  “sins”) and accepts everyone. Nothing could separate us from that loving essence of the universe (now if we could only find even the slightest evidence that the “real god” exists . . . )

Rilke felt that it was possible to experience this kind of divine presence, with no need for either rationalized doctrine or blind belief in what we suspect (or even know) isn’t there. Though outwardly hostile toward Catholicism (he forbade the presence of a priest at his funeral), he was drawn to the poetics of Catholicism, the tenderness embodied in Mary and, now and then, other figures — in this case an angel. In spite of the literal as well as emotional and intellectual storm around the cathedral, the angel greets us as a beautiful, loving, and all-accepting being:

your tender smile suddenly engages
our hearts and lifts them up to you

*

I especially love the lines that open the second stanza:

O smiling angel, sympathetic stone,
your mouth distilled from a hundred mouths:

The sculptor made the angel in man’s image. It’s a collective image: “your mouth distilled from a hundred mouths.” An angel is a human self-portrait. But it’s a wishful self-portrait, with wings. That’s how beautiful and serene we’d look if we’d known nothing but affection instead of being screamed at and punished. This is how we’d smile if we knew nothing about abandonment or betrayal. This is how smooth and soft our faces would be if we never experienced stress and suffering (mentally handicapped people sometimes have that soft and smooth look long past childhood — they generally encounter nothing but kindness, since no one judges them; they are granted innocence, so their faces stay unmarked by stress).

The angel, a stone man-bird, cannot know that all our hours are not “rich and ripe.” It can know nothing of the human life, and yet

your tender smile suddenly engages
our hearts and lifts them up to you

That happens thanks to the power of art and the power of a smile, whether on someone’s face or in a painting or on a statue. A smile expresses affection and trust. When we see a smile, we tend to relax and smile back, which automatically makes us feel better.

And then the final irony:

What do you know, stone-born, of our plight?
And does your face become more blissful still
as you hold the sundial out into the night?

The angel is blissful because he is blind and innocent — innocent in the sense of “ignorant.” He doesn’t even know night from day. Alas, we can’t recommend ignorance as a prescription for happiness, though “ignorance is bliss” holds in enough cases to remind me of Esther Perel’s admonition: “Not all truth needs to be told.” 

 
The angel doesn’t know our sorrows (or any sorrow), and that's why it is blissful. I’ve come to see that Nietzsche was wrong when he wrote “What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger.” This is so often quoted and assumed to be true. But most suffering damages us, physically and mentally. What makes us stronger is happiness: both the happiness of being loved and the happiness of work, of accomplishing something and loving the work we do.

What we can recommend, looking at the angel — and also at the joyful of most dogs, for that matter — is that children can be raised without constant judgment and condemnation. I HAVE seen much progress in this area, and a decline in toxic, punitive religion that encourages child abuse. Minimal punishment combined with a lot of affection seems to produce happy, friendly children to whom self-control comes more easily because they aren’t filled with hate and anger.

ANGELS IN ART: THE UPLIFT

In “The Believing Brain”, Michael Shirmer states that “we can’t help believing” for two main reasons: what he calls “patternicity” (seeking patterns) and “agenticity” (an agent must have caused this for a purpose). The human brain is wired to seek meaning, so anything perceived as meaningful, as conveying a relevant message, can serve as an angel/messenger. For instance, in Milosz’s poem “On Angels,” an angel (or a message) resides  in birdsong as well as in the smell of apples.

It could be argued that anything that makes life seem worth living falls into the angelic category. It was the literal belief in angels in America that astonished me completely. In Europe, with churches and castles crowded with angels and plump-buttocked cherubs, it’s difficult to see angels as anything but art. And art means both the aesthetic distance and a human perspective. Those who carve an angel’s smile  are undeniably human. 

It was cunning to forbid “graven images.” It is a danger to religion to allow humans to be such  obvious creators. As soon as it allowed images, dissident Christianity was already on its way to “secular humanism.” Images makes religion less abstract and more human, but eventually they also reveal religion’s mythological, man-made nature, full of human fears and longings. “Fear makes the gods.” And also the human craving to be loved and protected.

But wishful thinking will never disappear. We want the universe to love us. Or, if not the whole universe, then some element of it, kind and supportive. Guardian angels, beings of light. With luck, kindness and protectiveness is what we get from other human beings. What the universe gives us instead is beauty.

Yet even those of us who don’t believe in angels smile back at at the statue of a smiling angel. After reading Jesse Bering’s The Belief Instinct, a book I cannot praise enough, I came to see how any theist religion is a matter of universal cognitive illusions that stem from teleological (purpose-oriented) bias (again, Michael Shirmer’s “patternicity” and “agenticity”).

And still, when I think that the great cathedrals were built in honor of a cognitive illusion, I’m stunned. And I’m willing to honor the deep delight that can be provided by “human, all too human” religious art.

(Shameless digression: I just remembered how teenage St. Thérèse of Lisieux (“The Little Flower”) allegedly looked at a dazzling meadow of wildflowers (before she entered Carmel, of course; no more meadows after the doors of the convent closed), and said, “So much beauty wasted on mere earth.” This, to me, is one of the horrors of old-time religion: the rejection of this world in expectation of the future one, the only one that mattered. “Mere earth”! How far we have traveled, in the space of one century, from that dismissal to Mary Oliver’s famous question: “What is it that you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”)

My own encounter with a “smiling angel, sympathetic stone” took place in the vestibule of an ugly church in San Francisco. I forget the name of the church, but I distinctly remember that it was ugly, a stain on the beautiful city. The one beautiful object in the church was the holy-water angel near the entrance.

THE ANGEL IN SAN FRANCISCO
                                                                for Sutton Breiding

In San Francisco an angel
bears a fluted holy water conch —
a marble smile, celestial.
The Golden Gate opens into fog
on the bones of builders and suicides.

Cloud-eaten hills, views of Alcatraz;
drunks grinning to themselves
in Victorian doorways . . .
Angel, you smile as if you knew
beauty is the sole excuse.

The city like a dream rises out of fog,
falls again into fog here at the slippery
ledge of the continent.
Seagulls blur with white sails.
In the Palace of Fine Arts,

a bronze Perseus lifts
the head of the Medusa,
though he himself is headless.
But you, mild angel, bless
all who enter the dim vestibule.

At the tomb of the dead god,
you change stone into hope.

~ Oriana (c) 2012


**

Stone into hope? Me, a committed atheist, saying that?

Yes, because I need a word that’s more emotionally powerful than “uplift.” Religion can produce that uplift with its promise of heaven, but once we know it’s a lie, then religion becomes psychologically dubious at best, a form of denial. But there is an automatic response to a smile. It would be a better world if more people smiled.

And we do want a “better place” — right here, while we are alive. Nietzsche said, “Truth is ugly. We have art so we don’t perish of the truth.” Great art takes us to another plane: away from the ugly pedestrian cares, away from whatever chronic diseases are gnawing at us, the inflammation slowly eating us alive. Real art is about affirmation and uplift — not in the sense of the Pollyanna sentiments we find in greeting cards, but even simply in producing wonderment at the artist’s ability to create such visionary magic. 

IN LOVE AND HATING HER; MASS SHOOTINGS AS CULTURAL PATHOLOGY; "THE SATAN IN US"; THE SOUL IS A PROCESS AND AN EMERGENT QUALITY

Paul Klee, Ceremony and Sunset, 1920

*

ANIMULA

What do you look like, my soul,
the one left behind on a drizzle-wet
park bench in Warsaw in eternal October?
Do you have big eyes and small breasts?

Horizons that weep after you, arms that stretch
across an ocean and two continents?
A childless woman is always a virgin,
weaving a shroud, pregnant with herself.

You made my life a foreign language,
homeless without endearments.
When did you teach me to dress in the wind?
To carry speech like loose change?

Death will come to me in Spanish,
La Muerte with its music,
its slow kiss of vowels —
long returns of the Baltic,

where I swam in your cold love
like the tears of the bronze mermaid
who remembers no one’s name.
I cannot bear to think of my face

becoming ashes, but you, my
fugitive soul, say you are
most beautiful before
vanishing. Don’t kill yourself,

you whisper, and one blue eve
you’ll see me flame
then go out like the sun
and the other stars. But having been.

~ Oriana © 2015
 

 THE SOUL IS A PROCESS LIKE FLAME
 
I realize that this is really yet another immigrant poem, with soul/flame just smoke and mirrors veiling the homelessness. But let’s ignore all the aquamarines and indigos of ocean that are a pure indulgence in this poem, and pay attention to dressing in the wind. The wind is more fitting here, being likewise a process, a movement, but not a thing. Nor is there such a “thing” as the soul. It is not a little being that inhabits us only to leave for a “better place,” all memories intact — and, if we are to believe psychics, it’s wearing our clothes! (some spirit form of a shirt and pants, we presume — but it’s not nice to inquire into those mysteries). (Is there a spirit swimsuit, or do we at last get to skinny dip?)

I was very impressed with Sean Carroll’s discussion of consciousness (“soul”) and his candle flame analogy. The flame is not a thing; it's a process. When the supply of wax ends, the flame ceases. It doesn't go anywhere, it just ceases happening. And consciousness — or call it soul — is likewise a process that ends when the neurons are no longer firing. The soul is not a thing and it doesn't “go” anywhere; it ceases happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=607&v=SQ4OFAFfFrY

I'm so glad to have the analogy. When I said, "What you call soul is brain function," to most people it was too abstract. They couldn’t visualize it. The neurons generating electricity — it takes a bit of background. But everyone has seen flame.

The same with being in love; when love ends, it doesn't “go” anywhere; certain brain areas cease to be activated, certain “love chemicals” are no longer produced. If people understood the flame analogy — that the “soul” is a process, and not a thing” — I think it would be the end of religion.  Without afterlife, who needs religion?

Imagine, no more violence because someone drew a cartoon of the Prophet! Churches being transformed into art galleries and concert halls . . . The earth finally being cherished because we don't go anywhere later . . .

CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN EMERGENT QUALITY

This is a trendy new label for a behavior or pattern that “emerges” when a system becomes complex enough. Thus a flock of birds organizes itself into a certain shape and exhibits various behaviors that make migration possible. A single bird cannot give us any answers about migration. It takes a sufficient number of birds getting together and forming a complex new whole, a flock. Likewise, examining a single heart cell cannot explain the action of the heart. But heart cells working together produce the action of pumping blood. Likewise, a single neuron will generate an electric impulse, but that’s a long way from consciousness. When we get a lot of neural networks firing and interacting, then consciousness becomes one of the emergent qualities.

JESUS DIDN’T BELIEVE IN THE SOUL APART FROM THE BODY 
 
Here some might try to save the idea of the afterlife by citing religions like ancient Judaism: there was no soul apart from the body. Jesus did not appear to believe in the soul in the Western sense of the word (which came to us from Greece, but originated probably in Egypt). Rather, the body could be resurrected, the breath of life animating it again. That was the promise of the Second Coming: physical, bodily resurrection.

Otherwise, why bother resurrecting the body and all its troubles? Even assuming a perfect body, and one presumably without a sex drive (I don’t think Christians want any sex drive; Muslim men do), there’d still be the need to eat and brush one’s teeth afterwards. And if you eat and drink, there is “body waste” afterwards. Sewage in heaven? I could go on . . . 

RE-CREATING THE BODY ON THE BASIS OF DNA

We could preserve a person’s DNA. Even today the technology exists — not yet perfected — that makes it imaginable that we could use that DNA to “recreate” that person. But would we really be recreating Tom or Dick, or Alice or Jane, as they were during their natural lifetime? No.

Genes are only one component that goes into the making of a human being. It’s the complex interaction with the environment that determines how those genes are expressed. The new “Tom” would grow up in a different environment. We might get someone reasonably similar to the old Tom in terms of physical traits like height, hair color and eye color, but otherwise? The new Tom would not have old Tom’s memories, nor his education, income, spouse, and a myriad other things that life is composed of. He’d be living in the world of the future, with things like the Vietnam war, which perhaps was quite formative in old Tom’s life, no longer of interest to anyone except historians.

True, a video of the old Tom could be made where he conveys his memories, but listening to someone tell a story of his life is not in the least like having lived that life (or reading someone’s autobiography — besides, we know how completely inaccurate those are). The new Tom might not even be interested. And why should he be? He’d want to live his own life, not that of someone who lived before. Even with the same DNA, he would not be the same person.

Given how expensive the process would be, there is much to be said for old-fashioned natural reproduction: each child his or her own person, unburdened by some former identity.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ENERGY GOING OFF SOMEWHERE?

To counter the argument that the flame doesn’t go anywhere, someone might argue that after all the energy of the flame goes off into space. Might it not be inconceivable that the energy of Tom’s thoughts, having gone off into cosmic space, might somehow reassemble to give us “Tom as he was during the lunar eclipse of September 28, 2015”? Maybe a moment-by-moment reading is happening somewhere off in the vastness, or in another dimension of space, so that our life is also happening elsewhere?

But what use would be that, really, if we’d likewise cease to happen elsewhere as well? And besides, the whole context, the entire environment would have to recreated — at least in the form of energy. And when we start pondering the meaning of “environment” here, the energy patterns of the entire universe would have to be recreated precisely as they were on September 28, 2015 (I chose the date of the blood-moon lunar eclipse because the world was supposed to end — yet again).

It’s a sweet idea, I know, that a person could be translated into “energy” and that energy might then cohere somewhere in outer space, strolling about the galaxies — but think what it would take for that energy to cohere. It’s dubious that even something relatively simple like a candle flame could be transmitted without loss, stored, and then reassembled nanosecond by nanosecond. But let’s assume a fantastically “smart” multiverse that could achieve an energy-form reassembly. The physical brain would also have to be recreated, and the body with the muscles to react to the brain’s commands. Even if the enormously complex coherence of a re-created human being could be attained, without a brain to react to new events, only sheer repetition would be possible, an ongoing recreation of what has already happened.

It’s time for humanity to grow up and face reality: the only heaven and hell are right here on earth, in this life. If we are lucky, then before ceasing we’ll feel happy to have lived at all, in this one and only imperfect paradise. 

Some years ago when I was writing mainly health news and biomedical conference reports, I did write a collection called “Letters to Lucrezia.” It was loosely inspired by Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul.

THE SOUL IS A VERB

As new and rosy as the fingertips of Dawn,
the soul is an infinite verb.
It souls in the brain, creating
the world and the self. “Shall we

dance?” I ask Heraclitus. But he
just stands on the shore of time,
not even dipping his toes
in the river to test if it’s the same.

Nor can you step into the same soul
twice, for the soul is a living flame —
now kindling, now going out.
One portion of it, whirlwind;

another, deepest calm.
“Note Hera in Heraclitus,”
says Lucrezia. “There’s a goddess
dancing in those flames.”

Hera and not Aphrodite.
Because marriage is not passion
but patience. “I forgive you,”
I say to Heraclitus the timeless,

the obscure. Arm around
the Goddess of Partial Truth,
my soul goes off to dance
with other splendid verbs.

~ Oriana © 2015

**

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevski

So true. One of the wisest things he said, it's little known. What this quotation hints at is sheer torment. There is such a difference between being in love with the wrong person and loving the right person.

Also, let’s remember that the word “passion” also means suffering. Intense suffering.

Attachment-love rather than being-in-love is characterized not by high dopamine but by high oxytocin, the “love hormone.” Easiest way to increase oxytocin? Hold hands. If that's not possible, think of someone you love. No such person? Interact with your pet. Gaze at your beautiful houseplant. (Rejected by your houseplants? Try orchids.)
 Dostoyevski Day, St. Petersburg, July 5, 2014


Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us. ~ Pablo Neruda

Vermeer: Mistress and Her Maid with a Letter, 1667

“THE SATAN IN US” 
 
People who love to point to all that’s wrong with humanity often say, “There’s Satan in all of us.”  Pondering that “Satan in us,” I can’t help but think of the habit of self-loathing instilled by the church’s talk of sin and how we, weak and fallen humans, are in the power of Satan.

All my life until recently I acted according to the childhood command to keep putting myself down and see myself as a sinner: evil, worthless, full of moral failings, etc. How slowly liberation comes . . . in part thanks to friends and strangers, who surprised me statements like, “I was inspired by your generosity”; “You really care”; “You really listen”; “People like you because you have a warm personality”; etc — statements to the effect that I was a good person. A good, generous, hard-working, dedicated person.

It was immensely difficult for me to accept the idea that I was a good person rather than a sinner. The church taught me to concentrate only on my failings and imperfections. I don't mean to say that now I see myself as a saint. But I finally — a tremendous victory! — I don’t see myself as evil.

I also see a lot of misguided behavior as coming from the frustrated desire to be loved, especially in those who had emotionally abusive, authoritarian parents; the church was just an extension of the abusive parents. Especially in families stressed by poverty, some people never truly experienced being fully accepted, valued, and loved (nor did they parents -- "we are the victims of victims”). And those who were abused tend to become abusers or perpetual victims of abusers, until someone breaks the generational chain. It’s our wounds that are the “Satan within us.”

Once we become aware of it, we don’t have to live out of our wounds, but out of our goodness.
Gustave Doré, Satan and the Lake of Ice, Dante’s Inferno
 
WHY ARE THERE MORE MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE US THAN IN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED?

Australian journalist: “Obama is wrong, we are not like the US, we value life.” Australia “decided to grow up.” The US “never shed its Wild West mythology.”

“Obsessed with revenge, those aspiring to mass murder draw from the archetypal US hero who relies on gun violence to right wrongs and overturn oppressive institutions. Those who transition from fantasy to action are those who rationalize no other option than murder-suicide by ‘going out in a blaze of glory’. No doubt this rationalization represents a distinct kind of tunnel vision, distorting the traditional US hero into an anti-hero who regards society as the enemy. But in creating enemies in one’s mind, perception can be reality and moral justifications are subjective. As the saying goes: ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.’

In psychiatry, a ‘culture-bound syndrome’ is an idiosyncratic, locale-specific pattern of behavior that represents a culturally sanctioned expression of distress if not a mental illness per se. In Malaysia, for example, the culture-bound syndrome amok involves episodes of mass violence committed by an individual following a period of brooding. Unfortunately, in addition to borrowing the word amok in our own lay speech, it would appear that the US, along with other Western societies, has developed our own brand of running amok in the form of mass shootings. Once the cultural mythology of such mass murder has been firmly planted into public consciousness, a select few distressed individuals will look to this model to guide their own behavior, creating the problem of copycat killings.

Perhaps we need to look at these elements within the context of the culture itself. The US was born out of violent revolt, and the idea of the underdog responding with force to defeat an aggressor has been an archetype for the US hero ever since. As a nation, Americans see themselves as promoters of armed rebellion in the name of freedom and democracy around the globe.

In defiance of stereotypes, most mass shooters are not psychotic, delusional, ‘crazy’, or ‘insane’. A 2002 US Secret Service report found that the majority of school shooters have had a history of ‘feeling extremely depressed or desperate’ (not the same as having a clinical diagnosis of major depression) and nearly 80 per cent had considered or attempted suicide in the past. Almost all had experienced a major loss such as a perceived failure, loss of a loved one or romantic relationship, or a major illness prior to the shooting, and about 70 per cent perceived themselves as wronged, bullied or persecuted by others.

Revenge was a motive in the majority of incidents. Christopher Ferguson, a psychologist at Stetson University in Florida whose work has contributed to the debunking of the link between violent video games and violence, recently summarized the most salient features of a typical mass shooter, noting that risk factors for mass murder are similar for both adults and children. These include antisocial traits, depressed mood, recent loss, and a perception that others are to blame for their problems.

And herein lies the rub – while this kind of profile implies that mental illness could be an important risk factor, what we’re really talking about are negative emotions, poor coping mechanisms and life stressors that are experienced by the vast majority of us at one time or another. These risk factors are not necessarily the domain of mental illness, but rather the ‘psychiatry of everyday life’.

Therefore, it appears that the most important risk factors aren’t those that set mass murderers apart from the rest of us; instead, they are simply appropriated from culturally sanctioned patterns of aggression.

If mass shootings are difficult to predict, potentially self-perpetuating, and result not from easily eliminated sources but rather from untimely interactions between normal instincts, culturally sanctioned patterns of behavior and entrenched features of modern society, is there a rational approach to prevention? Inasmuch as marginalization seems to lie at the heart of the mass murderer’s grievances, further attempts to screen, identify, remove and effectively punish those with the potential to commit such violence are doomed to fail. [Instead,] we should reach out to those who have fallen away from mainstream society, bringing them back to the herd before they come to see only a single, deadly alternative.

Let’s also consider re-assessing some of our cultural values and teach our children about different kinds of heroes, how to resolve conflicts, and cope with loss. And, as a recent report from the Making Caring Common Project suggests, let’s prioritize raising children who are kind. The real solution is not about blame, but opportunity. According to the 2002 Secret Service report, mass shootings are not sudden, impulsive acts. They occur with planning that is known to at least one other person in more than 80 per cent of cases. This means that there’s time to reach out – not to a murderer, loser or weirdo; but to someone’s son, student, classmate and neighbor”.

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/what-explains-mass-shootings-in-the-us/

Richard Pousette-Dart, The Blood Wedding, 1958 

I'm struck by the similarity of mass shooters to ordinary killers. The police report that killers typically feel they are victims; they are only seeking “justice.” And the culture tells them that justice is to be sought with a gun.

SPEAKING OF MASSACRES: Numbers 31:13-18

“13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

**

So only female virgins get to survive as sex slaves. Now, maybe similar things took place and it was just the military custom of the times, but if we classified the Torah as mythology (as even some Orthodox rabbis do) then at least we wouldn't try to sanctify this sort of thing as piety. We wouldn't have to try to justify Moses in his anger that women and young boys were not killed.

I am not the only one who left religion after realizing it’s mythology. I found a great video by an ex-Muslim, Muhammad Syed, where he explains that he started studying Islam in the hope of becoming a better Muslim. After a year of study, he concluded it was just 7th century mythology.

He also points out that both the bible and the Koran are violent texts, reflecting the culture of the time. Many Christians don’t realize just how filled with violence and cruelty the bible is. 

Islam is now where Christianity was several centuries ago. The great difference, Syed points out, is the Internet. Information can spread as never before. Networking can take place more rapidly, across countries. That’s why the “apostates” from Islam (you are forbidden ever to leave Islam), some of them living in hiding, can obtain not only emotional support but actual, physical help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=xDIR3GhXszo

“THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED” ( but was continued by the Catholic church ~ P. K. Dick)
 
“To my thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, faith to begin with. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne, and grasped the sword; everything has gone on in the same way since, only they have added to the sword lying, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy. They have trifled with the most holy, truthful, sincere, fervent feelings of the people; they have bartered it all, all for money, for base earthly power. And isn't that the teaching of Antichrist?

How could Atheism fail to come from them? Atheism has sprung from Roman Catholicism itself. It originated with them themselves. Can they have believed themselves? It has been strengthened by revulsion from them; it is begotten by their lying and their spiritual impotence! Atheism! Among us it is only the exceptional classes who don’t believe, those who, as Yevgeny Pavlovitch splendidly expressed it the other day, have lost their roots. But over there, in Europe, a terrible mass of the people themselves are beginning to lose their faith — at first from darkness and lying, and now from fanaticism and hatred of the church and Christianity.”
~ Dostoyevski, The Idiot, 1868

This may seem too extreme (remember, this is D’s character speaking, not the writer himself, whose mind was more subtle and who could see many sides of the questions; still, there is no question that D hated Catholicism) — but it brings to mind the view that former Catholics are often particularly passionate atheists. It’s so easy to hate the Catholic church because of the emotional child abuse it practices (maybe less so these days, when talk of hell isn’t what it used to be). Only beauty of the old churches partly redeems Catholicism, if we omit the darker chapters in its history. And now that beauty is diminished, fifteen centuries of splendid Latin liturgy discarded, many paintings and statues removed in an effort to please the Protestants. They weren’t pleased. Possibly they were amused at the thought that any Pope could believe they’d rejoin the Catholic empire.
an abandoned church in Chicago (St. Boniface)
 
I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam . . .  ~ Gore Vidal in a letter to Warren Allen Smith, 1954, Who’s Who in Hell

**
 
LIVING NEAR TREES HAS HEALTH BENEFITS
“Controlling for income, age and education, we found a significant independent effect of trees on the street on health,” said Marc Berman, a co-author of the study and also a psychologist at the University of Chicago. “It seemed like the effect was strongest for the public [trees]. Not to say the other trees don’t have an impact, but we found stronger effects for the trees on the street.”

Indeed, given the large size of the study, the researchers were able to compare the beneficial effect of trees in a neighborhood to other well-known demographic factors that are related to improved health, such as age and wealth. Thus, they found that “having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.” (Berman notes that self-perception of health is admittedly subjective, but adds that it “correlates pretty strongly with the objective health measures” the study considered.)

Indeed, the finding wasn’t limited to self-perceived health. For cardio-metabolic conditions — a category that includes not only heart disease but stroke, diabetes, obesity and more — the study similarly found that an increase of 11 trees per city block was “comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $20,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $20,000 higher median income or being 1.4 years younger.”

[Improvement in air quality] is not the only possible explanation. Others, says Berman, include stress reduction that comes from being around greenery — a mental effect that translates into physical benefits — or the possibility that being around trees somehow increases one’s propensity to exercise.

The researchers are not shy about using these results to make policy prescriptions — they think it would be well worth the cost to plant more urban trees. “Ten more trees in every block is about [a] 4% increase in street tree density in a dissemination area in Toronto, which seems to be logistically feasible,” the study notes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/09/scientists-have-discovered-that-living-near-trees-is-good-for-your-health/

I have to keep reminding myself that the opening words here are “controlling for income.” In California, it’s the richest neighborhoods that have the most trees. Trees — including palm trees — are a synonym of wealth, and wealth and health are closely linked.
Trees are beautiful, and beauty is not cheap. The poorest neighborhoods are the ugliest. Beauty itself is health-giving.

So let us end on beauty. I look at this tiny prose poem and wonder: do I dare call it beautiful? Not quite, but it does invoke the woods, the trees.

My childhood theory about why prayers weren’t answered was that Yahweh didn’t speak Polish. So what did it matter if we politely called him Mr. God in a language he didn’t understand. The gods who knew Polish were hiding in the woods like the partisans. I wondered how they survived the winter. Their drinking songs could sometimes be heard.