A Hot Bath with Carl Jung and my dead Father

Being sick from the rear, tum, and throat, and in need of some instant relief I decided to soak in a hot tub with a textbook. While bathing in the dirty tub I read about Carl Jung, a psychiatrist I’'ve read before and enjoyed before, mostly lectures. This book however was not his own work rather it was a summary of some of his basic ideas and the tenets of his decidedly esoteric psychology.

As I read, I kept feeling a strange sensation of overwhelming appreciation, a freshness of thought, a giddiness that was so awe inspiring I actually wondered if I was sick to the point of delusion. After a few straining moments the awe I felt instantly revealed itself to me, with an absurd specificity, as the awe my deceased father would feel if he had had the gumption in his lifetime to sit down and take in alternate and highly intellectual perspectives (in this case, Jung). I felt as though I was partly my father(literally) and through my eyes he absorbed the information I took in; as though, parts of me, indistinguishable from my father and therefore parts of my father indistinguishable from me melted away the names which defined us as individuals and all that was left was mutual life and shared history. I was beset in the tub with a sense of ‘otherness’ that I have never felt before but immediately recognized as being the essence of my father. I gave in to this sensation and whimsy and after a few moments it disappeared completely.

Since the time of my father’s death in 1991 I’'ve felt his presence in only very weak ways, mostly through wishful thinking, through the childish notion of his haunting omnipotence-- perhaps right after his death in the room of my childhood home where he died, but more often his presence was never felt in any direct way —except for the dysfunctional charm and destructiveness repeatedly playing itself out in my family.

This most recent time in the warm tub though, I felt his presence, not through the sensation of touch, but through the sensation of mind, I felt as though he read through my eyes, the words on the page before us, and his delight became my delight, my delight, his. I’'m not saying my father’'s ghost entered me, in fact that’s not at all what I’'m saying, I am simply saying that through some mysterious factor the definitive quintessence of my father became intermingled with my own essence and for a time it brought my father back to me/through me, —perhaps by genetic likeness, similarity of exact thought/ –the sensation of acquiring knowledge, or the residue of a familiar life once lived and still living through lineage..

found this on the web...I wish I would've taken down the artist's name. Anyway, its great. 

dreaming of Koh Wai... 

Spring and All: William Carlos Williams

(Rhubarb: Young and Old)

Spring and All William Carlos Williams

---

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

Emile Cioran

"Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy."
from The Trouble with Being Born
-Emile Cioran


more on Emile Cioran

Sound. And connotation--- communicative emotional responses

Forgive my lack of clarity but I can’t really explain this without be longwinded so instead of writing 3 pages I figured I’d go sloppy and hope you get the message—with the bonus of brevity.

Sound. And connotation--- communicative emotional responses

So for a while I’ve been wondering about sound--- and how it so obviously adds meaning to film and/or situations. What tipped me off on it was Conan O’Brien(maybe Leno) had a not too funny skit where he took suspense or horror clips from movies and replaced the usual dark/brooding music and/or sounds with comedic ones. The subtraction of the original and addition of the comedic audio was indeed slightly humorous, but mostly cuz of the polarity of the sight and sounds.

Anyway, I am wondering if sound and the usual conception is something that is heavily innate or whether it is something that is closely tied to learning? For example, the fast screechy violins in horror flicks are obviously heard-cliché-again-and-again-and-again cuz of the cheap repetition of Hollywood, BUT was there a legitimate reason why that sound actually stimulates us in the manner it does(spook) in the first place? Is there something in the sound itself? Beyond conditioned response(repeated pairing of blood and violins)?

I am suggesting that there probably is, and if there is then that means sound(non-verbal) and especially the musical variety can in-fact add transmittable, transactive, translative meaning when paired with highly connotative visuals to match(and as Conan pointed out, when the opposite meaning is attached as well) But I would say that on its own(without a sensual counterpart) it doesn’t fair very well in communicating, thereby eliciting emotional responses.(listen to the mullholland drive soundtrack without the visuals and the strength of any emotional responses are greatly weakened---yet screechy violins probably could make you feel a lil uneasy on there own, but nowhere nearly as much as when paired with the horrific images)

I was talkling to my brother and he said that he figured that it would be a feral response that could be harkened back to birds and roars; the tweet of birds would be the equivalent of pleasant sounds and the roar of a bear or tiger would be the distressing sounds and that most music/sound (when connotative, added to film or whatnot---perhaps mood music) can be thought of with the tweet-roar analogy in mind…

Could this be true? Would a scarey, minor-keyed, dissonant, cluster of sound’s power lie in the same essential fear inducing audio of a tiger roar or scream from a downed, bout-to-be-eaten, piglet? And that a lovely, major-keyed, Mozart or Beatles deally have some emotional root in the tweet of a bird or coo gurgle laugh of a healthy baby or whispery words from a lover or comfortingmother or friend?

Is there something measurable?

Learned or innate, and to what extent?

Does this make sense?

Child of the grass

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Child of the grass
by Ezra Pound

Child of the grass
The years pass Above us
Shadows of air All these shall Love us
Winds for our fellows
The browns and the yellows

Of autumn our colors

Now at our life's morn. Be we well sworn
Ne'er to grow older
Our spirits be bolder At meeting
Than e'er before All the old lore
Of the forests & woodways
Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal
Ne'er shall we feel

Aught of sorrow

Let light flow about thee

As
a cloak of air

Pretty Calf

Calf. I loved this cow. It's momma can't feed him cuz she dried up. He had a near death experience at birth and was revived in a bath-tub in the house. He played jump and bound, leapand buck kindof tag with me. I thought he was cute and I urge you to never eat him. most specifically and in general

Calf and Alyssa's titty-fingers 

Calf at Alyssa's Farm, near Gwynne, AB, CA 

Sunshine Village, Alberta, Canada

Baker, Douglas, and Alyssa @ Sunshine Village

RJB snow-plowing towards Baker