La confiance n’est possible que dans la mesure où la trahison est elle-même possible. Plus grands sont l’amour et la loyauté, l’engagement et l’obligation, plus est complète la trahison. (…) De même que l’abandon enferme le germe de la trahison, la trahison enferme le germe du pardon. (…) Ni la confiance ni le pardon ne pourraient se réaliser pleinement sans la trahison.

James Hillman

Czytam “Szepty” i podobnie jak wcześniej, gdy czytałam o Stalinie, zdejmuje mnie przerażenie. Do jakiego stopnia można świat wymyślić? Zaprojektować, logicznie opisać, wprowadzić w życie. Uwierzyć w niego. Zlikwidować wszystko co tym światem nie jest. Pewnie, że świat międzyludzki zawsze jest do pewnego stopnia wymyślony, a projekt, jak to historia wskazuje, odcina jedno a przyszywa drugie. Ale żeby tak, z dekady na dekadę wymyślić świat, a potem wymyślać go tak długo, że zapomniane i zaprzeczone jest wszystko co Inne, wszystko co znajduje się poza zasięgiem rzeczywistości dozwolonej?

Inna sprawa, że tak łatwo zapomnieć o każdym z tych wymyślonych światów. Opisać inny, zapisać, przegłosować. Zdjąć jedne kurtyny, zawiesić inne. Uwierzyć, że tamto – złe – odeszło. Myślę, że może o tym też pisał Hillman mówiąc o historii jako Wielkim Uciśnionym. To właśnie budzi potrzebę patrzenia w pewien sposób wstecz. Z tego urodził się tytuł bloga.

Od pięciu dni myślę o Dzieciach Października. Dzieciach 1917 roku.

A plane is coming in for a landing at the small airport just outside of the Fond du Lac reserve community.  There are no roads that are maintained allowing the outside world to penetrate too deeply into this northern settlement.  At times during the year, a trail can be navigated by those unconcerned about the torture on their vehicle, a journey of hundreds of kilometres through an empty landscape, empty of human presence.  And, during the summer, boats serve as the predominate form of transportation between communities along the stretch of the lake and river.  This place exists in relative isolation and because of that, has a measure of insulation from the larger southern society.

Images such as this one seem to work a magic within me.  Whether I have taken a photo of such a scene or simply allowed a scene to be witnessed, the images are powerful as they work often unspoken within my psyche.  James Hillman, a post-Jungian speaks and works from his understandings of Jungian psychology, from a viewpoint he calls Archetypal Psychology.  As withing Jungian psychology, Archetypal psychology understands images as psyche (“image is psyche” – Jung, CW 13).   Hillman states:

… the soul is constituted of images, that the soul is primarily an imagining activity … (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology,1983, p. 6)

With this in mind, the photos I take have ceased being a recording of time, people, place or event; the photos are more than factual pieces of evidence that indicate my presence on the opposite side of the camera lens; the photos are also about imagining, about connecting with a larger, archetypal world, an alchemical inner world.  In discovering these scenes, I continue the journey of self discovery in relation to the larger whole.

Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was absolutely fascinating. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much squeezed into 230 pages. I will not even begin to pretend that I can fully understand the full magnitude of this text after one reading. Hillman is doing many things here: revolutionizing how we look at psychology; defining the true meaning and aim of psychology; exemplifying depth psychology; analyzing the history and importance of Greece and the Renaissance; unraveling and dissecting what makes us human; illuminating ways we get trapped by ego; arguing for a return to soul. And, after all that, his ultimate conclusion indicates that to connect psychology to soul it must not ignore religion.
There is no aspect of life, death, psychology, philosophy, sociology, psyche, and soul that Hillman leaves unexplored.

I leave you with some great summary, in Hillman’s own words, that will hopefully inspire you to dig into this text:

“Chapter 1 … was mainly a reflection from the imaginative psyche, the phantasia of the archetypes emerged. We saw there the many images of their persons, their appearances as mythical figures, as daimones and Gods. Chapter 2, mainly a reflection from the affective psyche, brought out the pathos of the archetypes. We saw there that Gods are in the styles of our suffering … shaping our case history into their myths. Now this chapter [3:], mainly a reflection from the intellectual psyche, presents the logos of the archetypes so that we may recognize the Gods and their myths in our ideas” (129).

From Chapter 4: “Thus the Renaissance achievement of spatial perspective reflects the main themes of this chapter: (a) the depth dimension of soul now entering the subjective structures of consciousness; (b) a new relation with the image and closer participation ‘in’ its ‘reality’; (c) the silmultaneous apperception of the soul’s multiplicity, its several points of view coalescing as perspective” (212).

View all my reviews >>

River and wood

I was musing on the use of the word ‘true’ in English this morning, especially as it is used by Shakespeare in “let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.” I have always taken this to mean that the minds were ‘true’ in a musical sense; that they resonated or harmonised with each other. In the older uses of the word in English, trew also meant loyal, faithful or honest. To me, this is far more useful than an abstract concept of truth. If something is true, then it is honest and faithful and resonant. To what is it faithful, though? With what does it resonate? The word has only recently been solidified into an association with the *factual*, it seems. I would guess that this solidification happened post-Enlightenment, with the Cartesian split of mind from body, leaving nothing in between. Uses of the word begin to appear in medieval times that emphasise its use in craftmanship (eg, planks being ‘out of true’). It’s not until Swift in the C18th that you get ‘truism’, a self-evident truth. Until then, it would have been a misuse of language to conceive of a truth that was self-evident, because the etymology up until then had relied on the presence of something to which one might, or might not, be true:

Here is what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say on the subject:

triewe (W.Saxon), treowe (Mercian) “faithful, trustworthy,” from P.Gmc. *trewwjaz “having or characterized by good faith” (cf. O.Fris. triuwi, Du. getrouw, O.H.G. gatriuwu, Ger. treu, O.N. tryggr, Goth. triggws “faithful, trusty”), perhaps ultimately from PIE *dru- “tree,” on the notion of “steadfast as an oak.” Cf., from same root, Lith. drutas “firm,” Welsh drud, O.Ir. dron “strong,” Welsh derw “true,” O.Ir. derb “sure.” Sense of “consistent with fact” first recorded c.1205; that of “real, genuine, not counterfeit” is from 1398; that of “agreeing with a certain standard” (as true north) is from c.1550. Of artifacts, “accurately fitted or shaped” it is recorded from 1474; the verb in this sense is from 1841. Truism “self-evident truth” is from 1708, first attested in writings of Swift. True-love (adj.) is recorded from 1495; true-born first attested 1591. True-false as a type of test question is recorded from 1923.

Ash on the way to the river

The American Heritage Dictionary says:

The words true and tree are joined at the root, etymologically speaking. In Old English, the words looked and sounded much more alike than they do now: “tree” was trēow and “true” was trēowe. The first of these comes from the Germanic noun *trewam; the second, from the adjective *treuwaz. Both these Germanic words ultimately go back to an Indo-European root *deru- or *dreu-, appearing in derivatives referring to wood and, by extension, firmness. Truth may be thought of as something firm; so too can certain bonds between people, like trust, another derivative of the same root. A slightly different form of the root, *dru-, appears in the word druid, a type of ancient Celtic priest; his name is etymologically *dru-wid-, or “strong seer.”

Yggdrasil - the World Tree

The site, Constellations of Words, links ‘true’ with the tree at the celestial pole, guarded by the dragon, or constellation Draco, or dragon, represented astrologically by the North Star:

The word ‘true‘ is cognate with Sanskrit dhruva-s, and related to Dhruva, the Hindu god representing the Pole star. True and tree derive from the Indo-European root *deru- Also dreu-. ‘To be firm, solid, steadfast; hence specialized senses ‘wood,’ ‘tree,’ and derivatives referring to objects made of wood’. Derivatives: tree (from Old English trow), truce (from Old English trow, pledge), true (from Old English trowe), truth, trow (to think, to suppose), troth, betroth (from Old English trowth), trust (‘to be solid’), tryst (from Old French triste, waiting place < ‘place where one waits trustingly’), tray, trough, trim, (these words from Old English trum, firm, strong), shelter (shield + truma, troop, from Old English truma, troop), tar¹ (resin, pitch obtained from the pine tree, also the -tar of nectar), tarpaulin, tarmac, dour, duramen (the nonliving central wood of a tree), duress, durum (a hardy wheat), dura mater or dura matter (the outermost of the three meninges that surround the brain and spinal cord), endure, indurate, obdurate, (these words from Latin drus, hard), dryad (female deities associated with trees from Greek ‘drus‘, ‘an oak tree’), hamadryad, dendro-, dendrites, dendron, philodendron, rhododendron, (these words from Greek dendron, tree), druid (from Latin druides, the Celtic priestly caste from dru, tree + wid, ‘know’, hence literally meaning ‘they who know the oak’).

If I am, or am not, true, then there something present to which I am, or am not true. Musically, there must already be something with which to resonate. One string doesn’t resonate: two do. Or a guitar string and a drum. Or a drum and a valley. One is the call, as Lawrence put it, and the other is the answer.

That with which I resonate, to which I am true, or faithful, is a priori to me. It came first, and I responded, or did not respond. Or responded unconsciously. Even in human relationships, the Phenomenon of You came before my response to You. Even if I have been around a lot longer in linear time. Linear time is part of what we do with phenomena. The soul, says Hillman, turns events into experience, and that is encapsulated in how faithful, loyal and true the soul is to the Phenomena which move it. That, for me, is why the quality of relationship being practised is the same thing as the quality of shamanism that is practised.

Birch Sisters at the Horse Field

Out of this etymology comes the strong image of the tree. The tree is crucial to my ordering of the life force that I encounter in my shamanic work, to my way of knowing. I understand it psychologically as the living balance between the upsurge of life force from the ground of its being and its ability to complexify and make ever more delicate structures from that life, which in turn increase its ability to take in light-as-food.

Shamanically, trees are people. Or, persons. The tree of green flame is my personal apprehension of this knowledge. Obviously, not human people. Oak people, ash people, eucalyptus people and pine people. I wrote the following after a long shamanic journey among trees: this is what they told me.

The Song of the Wood

The light filled up the bowl of the land
until it was brimming
and the valley couldn’t hold it
and the cup was spilled
all over the sides,
the gold falling down like liquid
and soaking away into earth.

The gold that was in the cup
is in the land, all soaked away.
The gold that was in the word
is spilled.
The cup of the land holds it invisible
The cup won’t let us sip it any more
unless we soak away too.

If we spill our longing into the land
we will sink down
and find the gold light.
If we stand in the wood
we will be soaked
in the same light
and we will know that we are the wood.
We have to keep these spaces in the wood;
give them their words back.

The shape of those spaces between trees
is infinitely unrepeatable.
The spaces are changed forever
by our presence in the wood.
Neither can forget the other,
and in that way the gold light is poured
once more into the unrepeatable
spaces between us.

We and the wood are the vessel.
We and the wood together hold the light.
Let the gold light soak into our words
and we will take them into the world,
so the world will be in the wood,
and the wood in the world:
woven, ineradicable.

As I read Maja Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics and followed the discussion about this book on the English Companion Ning, I kept thinking about a growing divide amongst teachers around the question of what we’re meant to be doing in the classroom. Are we preparing kids for the next stage in their education, or is our business bigger than that? Maja is strongly of the second camp; we are teaching kids to write well, not to jump the next hurdle. The older I get, the more I see this divide as problematic and significant . I think this blog post is going to be about this divide. But, if so, it’s going to get there in a very roundabout way.

*****

In last weekend’s Canberra Times, Ian Warden wrote a scathing review of a book called Alex and Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process. Warden writes:

You do have to have a heart like a pebble not to be left teary by her story of a parrot whose last words to her were: “You be good. I love you”, but you need to have a mind like a souffle to admire her whole, schmaltzy, ultra-anthropomorphic book. It offers hardly a glimpse of Alex as a bird. Instead, he’s discussed throughout as a feathered toddler.

Alex the bird had some considerable attributes; he could speak, think deductively and communicate in some interesting ways. You Tube has video of Alex working with Dr Pepperberg. But, says Warden,

… it’s not obvious why this is of enormous consequence.
Pepperberg thinks that it’s of enormous consequence because we can no longer dismiss animals as mere brutes – but does any thinking person think of birds, say, as stupid things? Don’t we marvel at them and their mysteriousness? Nothing about them is fully understood yet. The complexity of their songs and shouts and of their social arrangements! Their bewildering feats of migration! Their sensational aerobatic abilities! Birds, as birds, inspire awe in thinking people.
…Pepperberg expresses no interest in Alex’s birdness and no appreciation of birds per se.

I loved this angry review. This is how I feel about some of what goes on in our classrooms, with children being made to perform unchildlike tasks, often to please a teacher, parroting back information for which they can see no use and to which they feel no connection.

*****

A couple of days ago, a much-valued Twitter colleague Karen LaBonte suggested that we have a look at the following YouTube video.

I found it deeply moving. As I watched those little faces live the song, I was catapulted back in time over 55 years ago when, as a very young child, the world was a place of heart-quickening wonder.

Birds as birds. Children as children.

*****

I couldn’t stand Jane Austen when I was at school. Even doing an English unit at university couldn’t convince me that she was worth reading. Nothing of any consequence seemed to be happening in her novels, just rather meaningless social engagements, tame flirtations and inconsequential misunderstandings. Surely the world contained many more interesting things than these!

A month ago, inspired by Dana Huff and Heather Mason, I decided to give her another go. I’m reading Pride and Prejudice.

It’s wonderful. So much is happening, in every paragraph. Elizabeth and Darcy struggle with the same tensions which pull against each other in our own lives; between feeling and thought, passion and order, truth and convenience, intuition and reason. It’s like looking through another’s eyes at a world so unlike the world I inhabit, yet it’s so familiar. I’m up to page 300 and Elizabeth’s flighty young sister has just run away with Wickham. Elizabeth says:

… she is very young; she has never been taught to think on serious subjects; and for the last half year, nay, for a twelvemonth, she has been given up to nothing but amusement and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way.

On the English Companion Ning there have been over the past months a series of discussions and blog posts [here is just one of many] about literature and its contribution to our understanding of the true, the good, the beautiful and the just. Michael Umphrey often writes powerfully and poignantly about what he feels we might have lost when we left behind a world held together by shared values and an accepted authority. I first read Pride and Prejudice in my teens during the early 60s, at a time when the incense of freedom was in the air. Was this Lydia’s world? Were we then being abandoned by a laissez-faire world to ‘adopt any opinions that came our way’? Are we continually drawn back in our imaginations and longings to the world of Jane Austen because in spite of its apparent flaws and inequalities, it describes the same world of order and authority that the folk tales and myths describe? Where might we find healthy order and authority we can trust in today’s world?

****

How can we understand motivation (and its shadow, lethargy)? What gives us energy? The writer James Hillman (in a book called The Soul’s Code: in search of character and calling) links motivation with an idea about individual destiny.

The concept of this individualized soul-image has a long, complicated history; its appearance in cultures is diverse and widespread and the names for it are legion. Only our contemporary psychology and psychiatry omit it from their textbooks…

I will be using many of the terms for this acorn – image, character, fate, genius, calling, daimon, soul, destiny – rather interchangeably, preferring one or another depending on the context. This looser mode follows the style of other, often older cultures, which have a better sense of this enigmatic force in human life than does our contemporary psychology, whcih tends to narrow understanding of complex phenomena to single-meaning definitions …

We cannot know what exactly we are referring to because its nature remains shadowy, revealing itself mainly in hints, intuitions, whispers, and the sudden urges and oddities that disturb your life and that we continue to call symptoms. (page 10)

In support of his idea that each of us was born was a unique calling or fate, Hillman quotes Vladimir Nabokov as follows:

Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap. (page viii)

Hillman goes on to suggest that our ability to acknowledge or sense the existence of a calling, or fate, or necessity, is a key that unlocks energetic motivation. Without it, we drift without a rudder.

David is a 15 year old student in my English class. We’re studying satire. David is no easy conformist. Earlier in the year he wrote a satire in which he lambasted our school’s traditions and values.

Last week David and a classmate gave an oral presentation as part of our study of George Orwell, and afterwards he reflected on his performance as follows

Today in class Alan and I gave our oral presentation. Leading up to it we were both talking about how bad we were at public speaking. We both felt that we hadn’t really performed that well in the past…

Over the weekend one member of my extended family asked me what I would like to be when I grew up in life and I replied ‘a lawyer’. I am very proud of my vocabulary and my ability to find flaws in other people’s arguments. A few hours after answering their question I was pondering being a lawyer and realised that one of the major distinctions between a good and a bad lawyer was the ability to present your case well. This was when I started hyperventilating (not really, I just got kind of freaked). For a moment I felt that this was the dead end for the path in my life the ended up being a lawyer. Then I realised that there was still time. There is still a lot of time left for me and time means chances, chances to improve. Now I eagerly await our class’s next oral presentation where I can try and further my dreams of lawyer-dom (I don’t think its a word but it sounds cool!)

I’ve been reading some of my classmates’ reflections on the orals and what we’ve learned from the exercise. I somehow feel as though I have learned more than them for some reason… I think it stems from how my reflection has a larger time scale than just “the next oral presentation”.

I noticed that as English classes go I am getting along a lot better in this one. I’m kind of scared though because I know that the Doc has a radically different teaching style than other English teachers. My own style of writing goes very well with this style but I can’t help but feel that once I get outside of this class (in which I feel like I’ve performed well) I will go back to mediocrity in the field of English.

****

It’s time to try to tie all this together.

The classroom is an alive place to the extent that it has windows to the outside world. This is fundamentally different from the idea that one stage of schooling is a preparation for the next. Students have got to know, at some intuitive or conscious level, that what they’re doing is relevant to their bigger lives: that it matters in terms of the world they already experience and will experience again as adults; and that it matters in terms of the person they are wanting to become.

Maja’s writing students know that she is teaching them to become writers, to make sense of their own experiences or to learn more about the world. They’re not becoming better writers in order to pass the next exam.

Students can behave impressively in enclosed classrooms where the focus is simply on the next assignment, the next exam or the next stage. But this kind of performance is impressive in the same way that Alex the parrot is impressive. We see little of nature’s intricate watermark.

The singing children touch their (and our) hearts and sway with the music because singing together expresses a longing for the true and the beautiful which they all intuitively feel and reach out towards.

Pride and Prejudice makes sense to me now that I’m freed from the necessity of responding to my teacher’s question about the nature of Jane Austen’s irony and can instead see, through the windows of the text, the world I inhabit.

David’s motivated molecules are excited by the sense that he’s furthering his dreams of lawyerdom.

A couple of nights ago, the day after doing his oral presentation, David sent me a message via our class Ning:

Hey Dr. Shann,I just finished the English homework and I want to do more.

Ebbene sì, vi sono scrittori che non contenti della lotta con se stessi e i propri demoni, quella che avviene sulla pagina, si dilettano pure nella sacra arte del pugilato. Perdono chili (faticosamente messi su con anni e anni di ozio), si allenano quattro volte alla settimana, sviluppano nuovi equilibri, insomma rimettono in tensione quel tirante interiore tra corpo e anima che per troppo tempo era rimasto dormiente – nel migliore dei casi – se non in stato di coma nei peggiori.
Risvegliati da tali dimensioni vegetative fanno di tutto per scalare con rabbia l’opinione che hanno di loro stessi, quasi solo per la soddisfazione di starsene poi con le braccia tese al cielo come Rocky Balboa quando raggiunge la cima delle faticose scalinate del museo civico di Philadelphia. Nulla da ridire, sia chiaro, giacché anch’io, nel profondo, ho lungamente desiderato di poter fare lo stesso. Forse in tutti noi, dentro quella che James Hillman chiama “la ghianda”, la quale si trova dentro ognuno di noi e custodisce al suo interno il nostro più geloso desiderio di diventare quercia, abbiamo ulteriormente all’interno, secondo proporzioni quantistiche, un piccolo podio sullo sfondo, la riproduzione infinitamente piccola e uguale in tutto e per tutto di suddette scalinate, una microscopica cintura da campione del mondo. Scrittori così, ecco, che si commuovono su Petrarca di giorno e sognano di mandare al tappeto Ivan Drago, di notte.
Sto parlando di quelli che studiano Freud e Jung e tutto il resto della compagnia, che s’innamorano della mitologia, della scuola romana di pittura, dei poeti romantici inglesi, degli imponenti romanzi russi, dei grandi autori americani e dei loro immensi viaggi; che apprendono con passione la filologia dei più antichi haiku giapponesi e poi tengono sullo scaffale dirimpetto all’entrata di casa il cofanetto dell’intera saga dello Stallone Italiano in bella mostra, per altro in versione deluxe, che in pochissimi hanno. Coloro i quali per lunghi anni hanno fatto di tutto per trovare fra le infinite sbarbine disponibili quella che gestisse un negozio di animali e si chiamasse Adriana, per potercisi fidanzare (non importa che lei acconsentisse) e mettere su l’epopea come da copione. Purtroppo per noi ci sono toccate Claudia, Natalie, ancora Claudia, Vanessa, Federica, Leonetta, Fiammetta, ma mai che una di loro avesse mostrato una volta un po’ di buona volontà, la compiacenza almeno, dandosi da fare a trovare un impiego presso una toletta per barboncini. Il partner più prossimo al nostro ideale, quello che meno si lamentava ed era pronto a realizzare il nostro sogno, l’avevo trovato io. Gestiva un negozio di pellami (sempre di animali si tratta) e si chiamava Adriano. Ma questa, suppongo, è un’altra storia.

Ebbene accade anche che questi presunti maci masochisti maschioni maschilisti e minchioni si mettano non solo di buona lena (è il minimo se vuoi vincere il titolo mondiale) ma si prestano alle più faticose prove di sopravvivenza e dimostrazioni di vario genere della propria capacità in fatto di sopportazione del dolore (è lì che io getto la spugna, un attimo prima di salire sul ring), e che si rompano qualche osso (ma va già molto bene se non se lo sono rotto facendo il sacco).

E’ quanto è successo ieri sera a Andrea Caterini, già stimato autore del romanzo Il nuovo giorno, di un bel testo critico su autori classici di prossima uscita per Gaffi editore, nonché curatore del Diario Italiano di Enzo Siciliano. Eh sì, ieri era in Trastevere, la seconda palestra da lui frequentata già ai tempi del titolo bronzeo dei campionati italiani nella disciplina del full contact e dell’adorata kick boxing. Ed eccolo, che piegato come Rocky Marciano, furioso come Rubin “the Hurricane” Carter, nonché agile come Mohammed “butterfly” Alì, piccoletto e incazzato a morte come Jack La Motta, il Caterini sferra fra i tanti montanti un bel tentativo di gancio al suo avversario… che però…. oddio…. proprio sul più bello, si va miseramente a incastonare tra le costole di un bel toro aitante diciassettenne dei bassi fondi della Rustica, più roccioso di lui, che stupendamente incassa il colpo e lo ripaga con assai più dolenti note e contro mosse.

Alla seconda ripresa il nostro eroe si rompe il metacarpo.

E del resto, che osso poteva rompersi uno scrittore metafisico?
Eh già, é la prima frattura che il Nostro porta a casa (è convinto sia anche l’ultima).
Ma come non fosse abbastanza aver dimostrato di avere fegato e quanto assai poco bene egli regga il dolore, la sua temprante coscienza acida e incazzosa, continua a lottare, caricando sopra la frattura il peso massiccio di ben altre cinque riprese. E’ la sua occasione di spappolarsi il viso, altre ossa della mano, di lussarsi una costola, di avere gli occhi gonfi, sì perché “perdio” pensa, “stasera mi alzerò sulle corde e griderò il nome di Adriana!”, costasse tutta la sofferenza del mondo. Nel frattempo però, mentre le prendeva da tutti i lati, i due o tre pugili che erano presenti in palestra continuavano ognuno a fare il proprio dovere. Uno sparuto scenario di impiegati e ragionieri che nel dopo lavoro prendono a pugni il sacco o saltano la corda davanti allo specchio, perché è comunque meglio che starsene sul divano a guardare il Tg1.

Egli torna a casa, con la sacca di indumenti sudici, pregni di sudore che poi Marina, la mamma, dovrà pulire come al solito. Egli dorme nel dolore, si rigira nel letto. Sogna di trovarsi solo nel bosco e di cucirsi il braccio da solo ma è un incubo, un’infedeltà a Rocky che non può sopportare. Bagna le lenzuola, si sveglia, rolla una sigaretta del suo Golden Virginia con la sola mano libera. Corregge due pagine del nuovo romanzo. Riflette sullo stato di cose, si distende di nuovo in attesa dell’alba. La mattina seguente racconta alla sua amata il duro mestiere di uomo che lotta. Lo fa col tono fiacco (se non si chiama Adriana sa che non lo capirà). Lei dice tutto con un’espressione che a tradurla in parole non è azzardato pensare a un sano, romano, altruista e sicuro di sé “vaffanculo te, il pugilato, e tutte le idee tua”. Lo rincuora però come solo lei sa fare. Certamente meglio di Paolo che al telefono non s’è trattenuto dal farsi una grassa risata e un commento che non si può ripetere per decenza. Ella lo convince a recarsi al pronto soccorso, dove lo soccorrono, è vero, ma che siano “pronti” è ‘na chiacchiera.

Una volta in sala gessi, uno splendido esemplare di infermiere maschio sui cinquantacinque immerge nell’acqua le garze contenti il gesso in polvere. Ne fa l’inguacchio di rito e prende a fasciargli la mano, il polso, l’avambraccio fino al gomito. Il pugile scrittore osserva coatto l’operazione che gli imbianca l’arto ferito. Trova tutta una serie di poeticissime corrispondenze tra la nuova fasciatura e quella sportiva con cui solitamente protegge il pugno all’interno dei guantoni durante i combattimenti. Dinoccolato sul lettino d’alluminio, scomposto come un corpo greco portato in trionfo, bello e dimentico come Tiberio Mitri, egli pensa che la vita è un combattimento continuo, e che la sacra arte del pugilato continua in te anche dopo l’incontro con l’avversario, anche dopo la lotta con l’Altro.

I due si confessano. La commedia finisce. Fra i due avviene uno scambio di opinioni su certi aspetti della letteratura, che è un loro interesse. Discutono degli autori che maggiormente li hanno colpiti nell’arco della vita ed esce fuori per entrambi una passione vera per Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Ciò che avviene lì dentro non sono nemmeno troppo fatti nostri. Diciamo semplicemente che sul finire del giorno, i destini di persone si intrecciano senza che lo potessimo prima nemmeno sospettare. L’infermiere è un lettore attento, perché ha un cuore, sebbene colmo di inquietudine. Mentre il gesso si asciuga e tira il braccio, e il pugile se lo guarda come fosse la mano di un altro quella che ha addosso, l’infermiere torna a vedere la situazione. Parla di suo figlio. “Ha quindici anni”, dice al pugile, “ha letto da poco Ragazzi di vita ma temo che non l’abbia capito veramente”. L’atleta, col pollice rimasto su per il gonfiore, pare che dica “è ok”, e aggiunge, saggiamente: “A quindici anni non si può sbagliare il modo di leggere. A quell’età si legge come non si leggerà mai più nella vita: col cuore in mano e la testa libera dalle cazzate. Non fu proprio Pasolini a dire che la lettura de L’idiota di Dostoevskij gli cambiò la vita a tredici anni? E non fu ancora lui a dire che leggendo Rembaud in classe comprese cosa voleva dire essere antifascista? Per quanto intelligente fosse Pasolini, furono quegli autori con quei testi a illuminare il giovane lettore. Per quanto Pasolini fosse sensibilissimo, era merito di quegli scrittori. Se Pasolini non dovesse aver suscitato in tuo figlio lo stesso effetto, è solo a causa sua. A quindici anni non si può non capire”.

E questo è giusto.
E’ ciò che doveva dire il pugile.

“The question of evil refers primarily to the anaesthetized heart, the heart that has no reaction to what it faces, thereby turning the variegated sensuous face of the world into monotony, sameness, oneness.”

James Hillman

A minha idéia para o Alcova Moderna é dividir com vocês dicas de sites interessantes, produtos os quais gosto e por consequência indico textos íntimos e profundos que levem à reflexão.

Nas minhas andanças pela vida deparei-me com James Hillman, um estudioso que em sua obra tem retratado muito dos porquês do nosso mundo atual. Infelizmente seu livro Cidade & Alma está esgotado no Brasil, mas com alguma sorte pode ser encontrado em algum sebo. Dele extraí o texto abaixo, espero que gostem.

“Falo às questões privadas que residem na alma da cidade. Persigo os vazamentos de gás que embaçam e envenenam nossas relações pessoais, observo o escoamento de energia na insônia, na impotência, no vício. Vou atrás dos ratos, impulsos que roem os cantos do nosso espaço interior. As condições de nossas psiques refletem o interior de nossas salas. Há relação entre nossos hábitos e nossas habitações.

Muitos dos assuntos relacionados à cidade são sobre grandes edifícios, espaços públicos planejados e trânsito. Em nossa mente a palavra cidade evoca uma visão panorâmica, através de para-brisas de carros e de telas de televisões. Através de um vidro, é claro. Tudo isso denota uma cidade exterior, de horizontes, arranhas-céus e praças. Essa cidade tem mais a ver com pranchetas de projetistas, turistas e programas de televisão que com os cidadãos que vivem nela.

A verdadeira vida da cidade é interior. Dentro das salas, sentados em cadeiras, aglomeramo-nos em entradas, descemos túneis. Esperamos nos elevadores, vasculhamos gavetas, olhamos para as paredes. De fato na maior parte das vezes estamos olhando para baixo, para alguma coisa sobre a mesa, focalizados num aparelho eletrônico, num pedaço de papel, ou encarando um outro rosto.Não importa a altura do prédio ou o esplendor de sua fachada ou de sua entrada; dentro, esse sentimento elevado reduz-se a saletas individuais, corredores, compartimentos, cubículos com dois metros e meio de altura. Você sai de um elevador no quadragésimo oitavo andar e cai em um corredor cujo teto você quase pode tocar com os dedos: continuamos como que em um túnel, em alguma garagem subterrânea.

Estou sugerindo, através dos tetos, que nossos edifícios não são realmente habitáveis – que devemos nos tornar um tipo de pessoa com estranhos hábitos de alma para podermos ficar nesses tipos de ambientes sob esses tipos de teto durante a maior parte de nossa vida. Estou sugerindo que muitos de nossos males sociais e problemas psicológicos – e mesmo doenças econômicas como baixa produtividade, ineficiência, crimes sexuais, não fixação no emprego, declínio de qualidade ou vícios (álcool, café, refrigerantes) – são consequências psicológicas do design interior. Estamos hoje vivendo um tipo de repressão disfarçada e despercebida, pois a repressão como Freud descobriu, nunca está onde acreditamos que esteja. Ela é inconsciente. E hoje ela não vem de dentro de nós, mas da falta de alma dos ambientes que habitamos”.

…James Hillman em Cidade & Alma – Editora Nobel – SP…

“Business has defeated  everything in its path.  Its last enemies are the oldest: it is still defied by the ancient Gods of blood revenge, territorial tribalism and the strangely recurrent death struggles between genders, as well as by the untamed divinities of nature – the oceans, the deserts, the magma at the earth’s core and the powers of storm and rain.  They alone remain to affront and disrupt the power of business.”   (James Hillman, Kinds of Power)

]]> http://alcovamoderna.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/o-caminhar/ Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:46:46 +0000 _Van_ http://alcovamoderna.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/o-caminhar/

“Médicos têm nos recomendado caminhar. Se é necessária uma prescrição médica para que nos lembremos de caminhar, então estamos vivendo em um estranho mundo novo, onde alguma coisa básica foi esquecida. Hoje quase eliminamos a necessidade de andar. A locomoção tornou-se mecanizada. Nesse ponto podemos falar dos automóveis. Eles fazem mais que nos locomover. O uso demasiado deles fez com que perdessemos nossas expressões faciais, pois não precisam mais preparar o rosto para encontrar outros rostos já que a cara de um motorista dentro de um carro é sempre vazia, congelada atrás de um pára-brisa. As faces dos quarteirões da cidade são bem mais vívidas. O fato de não encontrarmos rostos por não andarmos entre a multidão abstém-nos de nosso próprio rosto e da própria cidade (sem faces).

Andar, meditar e passear nos acalma. Se não podemos caminhar para onde irá nossa mente? Uma cidade que não permite o caminhar nega também uma moradia para ela. Andar também nos põem em contato com a nossa natureza animal. Sou como me movimento. Há um aspecto animal em nosso movimento pelo qual somos reconhecidos. Quando essa natureza animal é rejeitada, ela procura compensação em aparatos externos: carros, jóias, times e marcas. Esses emblemas estáticos são desenhados para os que vivem sentados em carros, atrás de uma mesa de escritória ou em um programa de televisão.

Na Europa do século XVIII, na arte da jardinagem, era essencial que os olhos e pés ficassem satisfeitos: os olhos para ver e os pés para atravessar. Era essencial que o olho e o pé não percorressem o mesmo caminho. As paisagens das nossas cidades parecem construídas apenas para os olhos (shoppings centers, avenidas e condomínios). O pé é forçado a caminhar sobre aquilo que o olho já percorreu, o que torna o caminhar um sofrimento ou seja o pé fica escravo do olho.

Para Shenstone caminhar é uma maneira de descobrir novas paisagens. Em nossos cenários caminhar é apenas uma maneira lenta e e ineficiente de nos aproximarmos daquilo que os olhos já viram. Caminhar hojé é caminhar com os olhos, não queremos surpresas. As cidades antigas quase sempre surgiam em torno dos rastros dos pés. Hojé a cidade é diferente. O automóvel é um desenvolvimento da consciência do olho. Assim caminhar em uma auto-estrada (caso seu carro quebre) é uma experiência assustadora. Lá fora encontramos mato, buracos, lixo e calçadas com problemas, tudo isso graças ao fato de os pés serem ignorados. 

As ruas se tornaram um lugar de ninguém, um lugar de medo e crime. Mas o crime das ruas começa na prancha de um urbanista, onde a cidade é vista como um amontoado de arranha-céus e shopping centers com ruas que servem apenas de acesso entre um e outro. Os urbanistas esqueceram que as cidades nascem de baixo.

E assim a cidade vai desaparecendo, não fisicamente, pois um novo prédio surge a cada esquina, mas em nossa consciência que deixa de notar essas construções que flutuam como ilhas independentes em um imenso vazio.

Não podemos esquecer que não habitamos apenas quartos atrás de portas, cadeiras em volta de mesas, ou empregos atrás de balcões. Habitamos a terra na liberdade das pernas que dão liberdade à mente”.

(James Hillman – Cidade & Alma – Ed. Nobel)