Mon 28 Oct 2019

Altar

Posted by PJ under gods, quote of the day, science
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Random quote of the day:

“All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.”

—William James, lecture, Harvard Divinity School, 13 March 1884

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Sun 27 Oct 2019

And we give it

Posted by PJ under poetry, the world
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THE WEIGHING
by Jane Hirshfield

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

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Sat 26 Oct 2019

The judgment of the strange

Posted by PJ under academia, art, belief, folklore, imagination, judgment, liminality, paranormal, skepticism, tricksters
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Because I have an abiding love for folklore and all things odd, because I create art out of the liminal aspects of the world in which we live, I can’t very well be in the business of passing judgment on stories of the strange. Folklore is a living, breathing thing, a constant new creation from the imaginations and the deep psyche. So if someone tells me a story of a personal encounter with fairies, or about the ghost they saw, or the strange lights in the sky, I treasure these stories as a peek into the spontaneous eruption of spirit and imagination in the world. As long as human beings roam the earth, new beliefs and tales of the marvelous will erupt from the aether. This is the wellspring of creativity, the fundamental food of imagination.

By necessity, this food is always going to come at us from the fringes of society. It will never be found in the dead heart of academia because by its very nature it is the antithesis of academia. Academia is about cataloguing and studying that which is; folklore and the folk imagination is about creating new from old and old from new, and it is a rich source of spiritual replenishment. Academia has many important functions and I demand that it stay rigorous because we need the rigorous walking hand in hand with the fanciful. Both functions make society cohere.

I don’t buy into everything with one hundred percent credulity. Healthy skepticism is a necessary function of living in both complex societies and less complex. I grow impatient, however, with those who have taken up skepticism as a replacement for religious belief. Their skepticism is as sweeping and dogmatic as ever any organized religion. Theirs is an unhealthy skepticism. The marginal, the liminal, the odd, and the fanciful enrich the world. The more skeptics try to suppress it, the more creative ways the underworld finds to rise to the surface. One of the best analyses of the liminal I have ever seen is The Trickster and the Paranormal by George Hansen. Mr. Hansen uses exhaustive detail and thorough analysis to show why it will never be possible the suppress this underworld.

Yes, we all know about the excesses that beliefs of any kind are prone to, the persecutions that arise from the bonfires of unquestioning faith. That is not what I’m supporting here, what I’m cherishing, because that is not about the spirit. That is dogma—and I do judge dogma. If academia is the antithesis of the creative upwellings of the psyche, dogma is the antithesis of the spiritual. The silly stuff, the stuff that stretches credulity is as necessary to the health of any society as skepticism; it is the breath inside the lungs of culture. The danger comes from the other side of society’s fringe, the extremes of belief, the codifying of the spirit, the hardening of the arteries of fancy.

Judge not lest ye be judged. Judgment, sorting out the good from the chaff is healthy; judgment, the trumpeting of one belief system over another, is a form of societal death. I open my arms to extreme possibility, not to the extremes of judgment.

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Fri 25 Oct 2019

Marketplace

Posted by PJ under business, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:

“Live together like brothers and do business like strangers.”

—Moroccan proverb

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Thu 24 Oct 2019

A Tale of the Crow Tarot and of Crows and of Art

Posted by PJ under art, crows, tarot
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I was initially drawn to this deck when one of the people I follow did a reading featuring the Knight of Swords (yes, that guy again) and used the Familiars deck. The suit of swords in that deck are crows and as some of you may remember, I have something of a thing regarding crows. I thought, “Oh, I have to get that one!” (Any excuse to buy another deck.) But in poking around on Amazon I came across the Crow Tarot by MJ Cullinane. It looked great, and since I didn’t have the money for both decks, I bought that one.

I can’t tell you how much I love this deck. It’s not only beautiful it just—I don’t know, feels good. In the interview I did with the deck, when I asked, “What are your limits as a deck?” it answered with the Moon, which I took to mean, “I dwell on the shadow side and illusions.” But I haven’t found that to be so. Maybe if I work with it a bit longer I will, but so far I have found it otherwise. “How can I best learn and collaborate with you?” I asked. “I will show you play and wonder, new ideas.” (Page of Cups)

As soon as I took the plastic off the deck and looked at the first card (The Fool), the crows started cawing outside. This is not such an unusual thing as I feed the local murder and they’re always about in the neighborhood. But the timing was amusing. All through my two readings they were cawing and making noise walking around on the metal roof of the art room (also known as the bird’s room from when my pet starling lived there). They don’t often do that—but I had fed them a couple of hours earlier so maybe they were saying thank you?

This is a very “jumpy” deck. I’ve started using a loose shuffle technique to give cards a chance to “jump out” of the deck while I’m asking a question. (As the saying goes, “If it falls to the floor, it comes to your door.”) With the Aquarian and the Marseille, which I’ve also used recently, that didn’t happen too often. It happens a lot with the Crow Tarot. Also, it’s not uncommon for a small group of cards to turn themselves perpendicular to the rest of the deck, as if trying to reverse themselves. If that happens, I push them back in that reversed position and keep shuffling.

My friend came over Sunday for a “craft day,” something we do on a semi-regular basis in order to encourage each other to do work on projects outside our normal range of arty stuff. (She’s a painter, I’m mostly a writer, and taking an arty break from our usual disciplines sometimes shakes things loose in the more “serious” projects.) It’s also a great excuse for kibitzing. I was showing her the Crow Tarot because it’s so beautiful. She was going through it and talking about how she wants to get a deck and do daily cards, but she was also talking about her current struggle with her painting. She wants to go in a different direction and she has a clear vision of what she wants to do, but something inside her is resisting, holding her back.

She handed the deck back to me and I was just about the put it away when The Fool jumped out and landed on the floor between us—reversed for me, upright for her. I read out the reversed meaning, assuming it was for me, but it didn’t seem to fit my current situation without stretching things. I put the card back and asked her if she wanted to do the card a day thing with this deck. She did, and shuffled the deck, eventually turning up the top card: The Fool, upright.

“…The Fool card asks that you have faith in the universe and live fearlessly. You will come through the storm. If you allow hope to replace fear, imagine the adventures you have waiting.”

“All right, already,” she said. “I get it.”

I should also note that my card of the day for yesterday was The Fool. Upright. All right, already. I get it.

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Thu 24 Oct 2019

Meaning

Posted by PJ under being human, quote of the day, the deep within
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Random quote of the day:

“Human beings make meaning out of their existences. They pull purpose and direction out of their lives. Maybe that universal human tendency is based on delusion; maybe it’s based on a deeper wisdom than our conscious minds understand.”

—Christine Wicker, Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Wed 23 Oct 2019

Singing

Posted by PJ under art, nature, quote of the day, understanding
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Random quote of the day:

“Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand singing birds? People love the night, a flower, everything which surrounds them without trying to understand them. But painting…that they must understand.”

—Pablo Picasso, interview in Cahiers d’Art, 1935

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Tue 22 Oct 2019

Musings

Posted by PJ under compromising, earthquake, exploration, love, pain, tweets
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Some days I think that Twitter is nothing but people showing off their preciousness. Other days, when I am showing off my preciousness, I think it’s a wonderful tool for self-expression.
*

When I used to watch the show about the coroner, Dr. G Medical Examiner she often asked the question, “Why is it always guys?” Often about some scheme or stunt that went badly and fatally awry. Of course, she was in Florida.
*

Any shows hosted by Albert Lin are fascinating combinations of technology/science, history, and myth and Dr. Lin is an enthusiastic and exuberant explorer. I’ve been enjoying Lost Cities with Albert Lin on NatGeo, but I’ve also enjoyed his previous series on the Mayans, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Tomb of Genghis Khan.

https://g.co/kgs/hQaoSk
*

EARTHA KITT SPEAKS ON RELATIONSHIPS: COMPROMISE FOR WHAT? á´´á´° https://youtu.be/rlUjHu3H_L4 via
@YouTube

No one would dream of asking a man about compromising for love, especially in the 80s. This interviewer probably assumed he was scoring quite a coup here, revealing something dark about Eartha Kitt. He was revealing was something dark about himself and his assumptions.
*

I tried not to be overly concerned about the Garlock creep when I read about it the other day. Then the next morning at 12:19 we had a 3.7 quake about 15 miles from here and I thought, “Is this the beginning?” I was reassured when Dr. Lucy Jones posted this later in the day:

People are talking about the “unprecedented” movement of the Garlock fault after the Ridgecrest quake. It’s true we haven’t seen this in the 30 years of modern geodesy on the Garlock fault. But we’ve seen it many times on the San Andreas & it has never caused a quake. The movement on the Garlock is called triggered aseismic creep. It is in the top few hundred meters of the fault. No quake can occur in the shallow part because there’s no confining pressure. Big quakes begin 10-15 km down. Big quakes triggered aseismic creep on the San Andreas fault in 1979, 1992 & 1999. The creep never caused another quake. Ridgecrest was the first big quake near the Garlock since we have records so it’s the 1st time we’ve seen creep on the Garlock. But it’s not unprecedented.

Dr. Jones is always so reassuring.

So, as I was saying, we had a 3.7 quake centered about 15 miles from here. One sizable jolt traveling southeast to northwest through my house. It sounded and felt rather like the ghost of an elephant running through the attic. Being an experienced earthquake experiencer I sat there for a moment to see if there would be more (because earthquakes are sometimes sneaky and there will be a jolt, a pause, then more and sometimes harder). But there was not, so I went back to reading my book. I did hear sirens heading Compton way (the epicenter) so that may have been related. Living in California is often a question of both denial and bravado. I have my earthquake supplies and my emergency plans but I try very hard not to think about quakes the rest of the time. I did think that any out of towners at LAX (about 1/2 mile from here) or in the surrounding hotels at 12:19 got an especially memorable “Welcome to California.” I hope they appreciated it.
*

Pain is a great teacher.
It teaches anger, it teaches
self-pity and doubt,
fist-shaking, a stunning
loss of perspective.
If it goes on long enough,
it may also teach humility,
acceptance, even courage.
But that’s never a sure thing.
Mostly pain teaches pain.

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Tue 22 Oct 2019

Punishment

Posted by PJ under crime and punishment, evil, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:

“Most of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.”

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Mon 21 Oct 2019

Self

Posted by PJ under happiness, quote of the day, self-knowledge
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Random quote of the day:

“Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.”

—Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstances, Vol. III (tr. Richard Howard)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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