The Goddess as Active Listener/ Parts Six-Eight

 

It is 1972. The seers of the World Maritime Empire have been swallowed by the fog. No buoys mark the locations of their ports. They were not voted out. They were utterly destroyed. 12,000 years have passed, and yet these guardians have not gone anywhere at all. Their eyes are wide. They watch. The intersection of one dimension with another is not subject to the tyranny of the calendar. One thing happens, then another. The wheel that connects them can only be seen when one has left it.

There are charts that we left spread out on our tables, stars that beg us to return them to their signs, loaves of bread that we left half-eaten, technologies that no amount of blood can reconstruct. Some people we happen to know. Others we were scheduled to meet. There are teachers who remind us that our house is not our home. No, I was not born at Fort Devens, in Shirley, Massachusetts. I did not live at 43 Richards Street. My biography was in no way the whole of my identity. I was only the small shadow of myself.

 Oddly, there was nothing supernatural about the persona of my teacher, Sue Castigliano, quite the opposite in fact. She was a middle-aged woman from Ohio, 42 years-old, the wife of an Episcopal priest, in no way unusual in appearance. She confessed that she found it difficult to lose weight from her hips and thighs. A few varicose veins were visible. The birth of two of her three children had been difficult, resulting in a number of health problems. To me she was quite a beautiful, and even glamorous, figure. Her imperfections removed her—almost—from the realm of mythological fantasy. They made her real.

 Few suspected how old my teacher really was, how many centuries she had spent preparing for her role. Her eyes were publicly accessible. How else could she teach in a public school? These eyes were not the only set I saw, nor could one read her persona without some knowledge of Cretan pictographs. Few noticed the live snakes that she wore instead of bracelets.

 I am tempted to say that Sue’s method was that of direct communication between one human and another. To some extent this was true. One might note in passing the resemblance of her approach to the “logical consequences” theory of Dreiker, the “self-awareness” model of Meichenbaum, the “reality therapy” of Glasser, and the “teacher effectiveness training” of Gordon. In retrospect, I am surprised to see to what extent her actions were informed by developmental theory. When she interacted with her students, no abstractions were allowed to show.

 As she spoke to the class as a whole, I often had the sense that she was speaking directly to me. I suspect, of course, that many other students also felt the same. As she tuned in to each student physically present in that space, she also spoke to the student hidden in the student. By the end of a class, a student might feel that he knew less instead of more, that her sense of who lived in her skin was slightly off the mark. A reflex had been tested. A memory had been activated. A chink had been opened, into which real knowledge might flow.

Continue reading: https://www.scene4.com/archivesqv6/2024/mar-2024/0324/briangeorge0324.html

My first book of essays, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence, is available through Untimely Books and Amazon: https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/

Image: Victor Brauner, Prelude to Civilization, 1946

On the Welcoming of the Unexpected Guest

 

On December 27^th, 2023, I published an essay in The Dark Mountain Project called “At First, There Were Eight.” This was a companion piece to “Entering the Tunnel of Time in Cappadocia,” which went up on December 28^th, 2022. Coming a week or so after the winter solstice in both years, both essays were panoramic views of world destructions, with hints of a larger cosmic context and hopes for cultural renewal. These were the first and last essays in my book The Preexistent Race Descends. If asked whether these essays were pessimistic, I would say they were written at a turning point, at a time when the trees have withdrawn their sap into their roots, before new growth has appeared. I would say that they were characterized by what Yeats called “tragic joy.” If the screens that monetize our vision are destined to go blank, why not take this as an opportunity to see with other eyes?

Beginnings are not that different from endings. The east is not actually separate from the west, and it’s possible, from a great enough distance, to view the seemingly flat earth as a sphere. As I’ve come to understand it, just as both essays are simultaneously present in the book, the future, to some extent, may already have occurred. We just don’t see it yet, even as we’ve moved into it through the reading of this sentence. Similarly, 99 percent of the past may not yet have taken place. There are worlds within worlds still waiting to be discovered. The one moment in which we live continuously slips by us, as does our relationship to the ground beneath our feet. If we’ve lived 10,000 times, to what culture do we belong? We may have farther to go than we think to define our true identities.

In the essay, I had attempted to explore our relationship to deep time, or really, to the high peculiarity of time itself, to the forces, both external and internal, that keep us from looking very far beyond our stage-set, that assure us that the most up-to-date of building codes were followed, that our indifference to the extent of our lost history will protect us. How wonderful it would be if this were true. How beautifully gradualist is our geology. How linear is our progression from Lascaux to social media. Yes, how miraculous such an arc would be. If only social media were not the ritual desert of our ghost dance.

I was lucky enough to receive a comment—somewhat accusatory—from a reader called Larissa. In spite of certain misunderstandings, I was, nonetheless, grateful. Since I first began to publish online essays, in 2007, in Reality Sandwich, I’ve done my best to respond to any comment on my work. These were the wild west days of the internet. Arguments could be heated. Exchanges of comments on an issue would sometimes stretch into the hundreds. The strength of disagreements would be moderated, however, by a sense of curiosity, by the excitement of being able to communicate with people half a world away.

I learned to let no source of conflict go to waste. If attacked, I did my best to flow with my opponent, to treat even the stupidest criticisms of my work “as if” they might be true. Through such exchanges, I became more aware of my flaws, and I got better at revision. I learned to welcome each seeming enemy like an unexpected guest.

Now, sadly, even in the most literate and well written of comment sections, there often seems to be some unspoken agreement to toe the party line—without, perhaps, even knowing what this is—to valorize the “Us” and demonize the “Them.” At a time of converging crises, when so much is demanded, when we must stretch our vision to the breaking point just in order to imagine and survive what will come in the next 20 years, we often seem to be shrinking rather than expanding, regressing to the thrill of schoolyard taunts, retreating to the faux-safety of the in-group. This reflexive strategy is, perhaps, a small-scale illustration of our relationship to time itself. When overwhelmed, when we are in the grip of traumas we don’t acknowledge to exist, it’s easier to focus on the foreground than the background, on the clickbait of the day. Pay no attention to the ocean as it floods the New York subways. There is a perfectly good target on that shadow over there.

My own approach is best described by the Roman playwright Terrence, who writes, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,” or “I am a man, thus nothing human is alien to me.” So, in spite of our divergent views, I was glad to hear from Larissa, that she had taken the time to read and respond to an admittedly nonlinear and challenging essay, even if this response came as a series of insinuations. I’d hoped to open up a space where real dialogue might occur. Was this no more than a pipe dream? Life is short. My patience is long.

Continue reading at Metapsychosis: https://www.metapsychosis.com/on-the-welcoming-of-the-unexpected-guest/

My first book of essays, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence, is available through Untimely Books and Amazon: https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/

Image: Salvador Dali, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1954

 

Part five of my piece “The Goddess as Active Listener” are now up in Scene4. Excerpt:

 When I remember Sue Castigliano, I think of almost naked dancers vaulting above the gold-tipped horns of Cretan bulls, to the sound of waves breaking in the distance. Wandering with the ghosts of an exploded island empire, I enter the doors of a library that I first thought was an octopus. When I think of her, I see wheat bound in sheaves, gourds hanging from a makeshift wooden peristyle, grapes being stomped by rhythmic feet in vats. I think of the minute preparations of a glad community in the month before a human sacrifice.

 When I remember her, I think of a face that encompasses multitudes, whose each component is distinct, the dark face of the goddess, projected against lowering clouds. I think of Ceres, of Inanna, of Isis, of Coatlique, and of Oshun. I think of olive oil sleeping inside of prehistoric jars, the Sibyl smoothing out her wrinkles in the shadow of the arch of Constantine. I think of a young girl standing on a cliff above the sea, the wind playing with her hair, as she listens for the voice of her drowned lover.

 Her body is the world tree. Her navel is Omphalos, the place of interconnection. Her womb is the cave where stars can get changed into their human suits. In her left palm Saturn, time’s comptroller, tilts and revolves. The fingers of her right hand touch the Earth with a gesture of abundance. And then, quite unexpectedly, she stands before me in a robe. In her eyes, I can see ships sailing back and forth. There, beneath the gigantic shadow of a wave, a wave that towers, still swelling, up and up, they go in search of a dock that is nonexistent.

 Above our heads: a roof, whose beams have disappeared. There is only a charred corner. The shore is not far away. The astringent scent of salt is softened by the scent of moss and rosemary. “Beloved, come. Like fireflies, the ghosts of all past seers flicker in the dusk, where, if you hurry, you might catch one in a jar. Our fingers touching, like our souls, by its light we will read an elegy on the metastasis of Rome, on the triumph of the Age of Iron, the last statement by a master who is called by some “Anonymous.” Upon your lips, my breath: the elixir by which your name will be alchemically removed.

 “Many years have passed since the day that you were buried, facing east, with a luminous stone clutched tightly in your hand, with much to say that would never be expressed. It is reasonable that your knees should start to tremble and give out. A drum beats in the distance, in the labyrinth of your ear. My pulse suspends you. Are you dead, or are you not, or is there some third alternative?

 Continue reading: https://www.scene4.com/0224/briangeorge0224.html

My first book of essays, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence, is available through Untimely Books and Amazon: https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/

Image: Massimo Campigli, Three Idols, 1960

Part four of my essay “The Goddess as Active Listener” is now up in Scene4. Excerpt:

 Is the ego the knower of the self, or is the self the knower of the ego? Perhaps the soul is itself a mask, soon to morph into a different form with the astronomical rotation of the fashion industry. Although, as a matter of convenience, I use it here, I do not like the word “ego.” Over the past six years or so, I have tended to use it less and less. I have just as little use for or patience with the all too popular term “seeker.” I far prefer Picasso’s formulation. He states—somewhat arrogantly, perhaps—“I do not seek; I find.” The term “teacher” I like more, but this term, if casually used, has problems of its own. Too many students of famous gurus, for example, can’t seem to wait to give away all of their own intuitive authority to the teacher. It can be difficult for the teacher to be idolized, either spiritually or intellectually, and many are tempted to want to turn their students into small, submissive versions of themselves. This can be as true in a PhD program in archeology as in an ashram.

 Clearly, good teachers are needed to transmit information, to help students to discover themselves, and to model certain skills. We cannot do without them. Even the most abstract of knowledge is not abstract; at least in the first stages, it must come attached to a living body. In this essay, however, it is the more primal concept of “teacher”—the teacher as spiritual catalyst—that I am attempting to explore. If such teachers are, in a different way, essential, they may sometimes tend to hold themselves to a lower standard than their students: They may stamp the void with their brand; they may speak highly of their total unimportance; in an energetic contest with Joe Average, they may judge themselves the victor; they may take themselves as seriously as their most obedient followers; they may believe that the light has more to teach them than the darkness; they may take as much as they give; they may have the power to catalytically intervene but be unwilling to let go.

It is not that such teachers lack the knowledge that they claim; they may very well possess it, but they do not give it freely. They do not prefer to overflow. Rather, they choose to portion this knowledge out, and, in the process, they can come to believe their own P.R. How easy it is for the once enlightened teacher—accidentally on purpose—to be sucked into the vortex of his own charisma! Power intoxicates, and the gods do like to drink. The student may then become sadomasochistically attached to his own childhood, to the deadness of his feet and the blockage in his spine. He will not make of his heart a meeting place or expect that his head will click open like an aperture. He will see his mind as an electrochemical databank, as an empty space to be filled up with the teacher’s big ideas. He will not learn how to leap from a great height, to move into and beyond death, or to hatch the universe from an egg. He will not dare to trust that his energy is a kind of self-existent vehicle.

 Continue reading at Scene4: International Magazine of Arts and Culture:

https://www.scene4.com/0124/briangeorge0124.html

 My first book of essays, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence, is available at Untimely Books and Amazon:

https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/

Image: Victor Brauner, There, 1949