Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

How the Apocalypse Cured My Social Anxiety

A Short Story from the “Wormhole Series”

Before the end of the world, I lived in a really small town high up in the mountains of North Carolina. It was so small, you’ve never heard of it. Not much there except for an inn, a gift shop, a couple of restaurants, and a church. Most outsiders who came to our town came because they wanted a mountain vacation, but I grew up surrounded by mountains and felt hemmed in by them. I wanted with all my soul to see what lay beyond the mountains, out there in the real world, and eventually I got my wish, though it wasn’t anything like I expected it to be, not by a long shot.

I was the only boy in a household of women once my grandpa passed on. My mama, granny, and aunts raised me, and all my cousins were girls. Before my grandpa passed away, he lamented loudly and often that the women of the family were fixing to sissify me—but I never saw it that way. Aside from the undefined shame I felt because he apparently thought I was missing some vital piece of manhood (which he never offered to give me himself), I was not aware of anything unusual in the arrangement. I never felt that my family doted on me, as you might expect they would; they merely treated me with an absent-minded, mostly benign tolerance, not seeming to know what to do with me other than leaving me to scramble up the best I could. I spend all my early years feeling that I had missed out on developments that were crucial to becoming a man. I was horribly shy and did not know how to turn to any of the men in our town who might have been willing to share what they knew of being a man. If I had, I’m not sure they would have been willing to help—the faint hostility I sensed told me I’d been written off as a lost cause.

You may be wondering where my father was in all this, and all I can say is that I never knew him. He took off to start a new life, running off with Preacher Sizemore’s daughter when I was just a baby. He was always spoken of in dismissive terms, as if the fact of his absconding was no particular cause for regret, but I had the sense I understood something of what motivated him. I, too, longed to make a break for the freedom I imagined down in the flatlands. I wanted to see cities and coastlines and maybe even foreign countries. I was a dreamy boy, they said, always with my nose in a book. It was the books that gave me those ideas, but no one seemed really worried about it. They must have known there wasn’t much to keep a young man in such an isolated place. Or maybe, what it really it was, they doubted I had the wherewithal to break free to begin with, rendering the whole thing moot. My lack of confidence in my own abilities was so profound that it almost amounted to a disability. I saw a program on HBO the other night in which a  character kept talking about her anxiety disorder. Yep, that was me all right. Never knew there was a name for it, so that was good to find out, though it doesn’t matter that much anymore.

When I was 15, someone from outside the family finally did notice me, and that was Deacon Pilbro, an elder in our church. Despite the fact of my father’s running off with the Sizemore girl, two of my aunts still attended the church regularly, Sundays and Wednesdays both, usually insisting on taking me with them. The church was a half mile walk from our house, up a steep hill and through some trees. Deacon Pilbro at some point began asking me to stay behind to help with chores—chopping wood for the stove, shoveling snow in winter, and doing repairs to the roof. My aunts resented these occasions because they relied on me to escort them home, but because it was doing the Lord’s work, they felt unable to complain. The Deacon used to ask me questions about school and home while we worked and seemed genuinely interested, though he mostly talked about himself and how he never would have imagined being stuck in such a small parish, but when the Lord called you, you answered, until such time when you could go in for a better opportunity. He used the word “opportunity” a lot, and seemed struck by the idea that he was destined for better things. But when he asked about my plans, I just shrugged. I was shy about sharing my dreams with people—I had to keep something to myself just to make it day to day. If you had told me back then that those dreams wouldn’t come true, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have just hurled myself off the mountain.

The real trouble started (not the really bad trouble but my personal trouble, which ended up seeming like the same thing) when the Shrumfelds moved to the little house behind the Brookside Inn so that her parents could help run the place. Carlie Shrumfeld was my age and ended up in several of my classes at school. She came from New Bern, a place of unimaginable sophistication to me, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, with her clear blue eyes and long silky hair. We started spending time together after school, and although I was mostly content just to be with her and listen to her talk, watching the light in her eyes and admiring her graceful ways, she was well ahead of me in the courting and sparking department and soon let me know that she was willing to share what she knew with me. We had started finding places to be alone, and the most private place we had found was the little shed behind the graveyard where we kept the mowers and the shovels for yard work at the church. Carlie and I had already gone far enough for me to know this was something I wanted to do every chance we got, and on that spring afternoon when we finally went all the way, not once, but three times, we were found out by none other than Deacon Pilbro, who pushed open the door to find the two of us tangled in a heap on top of some coal sacks.

Carlie screamed and scrambled for her clothes, holding them against her as she jumped up and ran, without ceremony, out the door. The Deacon just stood there staring at me, so red in the face that I thought he might have a heart attack right where he stood. All I could think to do was to cover myself, because otherwise I was frozen. I could no more have thought of anything to say than if I had been struck mute, so shocked I was to see him. After staring at me angrily for several long seconds, the Deacon did something I was not expecting: he started taking off his own belt and began yelling, somewhat incoherently, about sin and absolution, and at that moment, I found my limbs again, scrambling to my feet and pulling up my pants as I hopped toward the door. The Deacon tried to catch me, but I was a good runner, and I got away, shooting off through the woods any old way, my only thought to put as much distance as I could between myself and the wild man the Deacon had suddenly turned into. I could hear him crying and shouting for me to come back, yelling that he meant no harm, but I kept going, my feet barely seeming to touch the ground until I was at the top of the mountain. I paused in the little clearing where my grandfather’s grave was nestled along with the graves of several other deceased Jaspers who had been unwilling to be buried next to the church.

It was when I paused in the clearing to catch my breath that I saw it: the cloud that would change everything. It had exploded in the north, far off beyond the ranges of the mountains, which seemed to go on forever, except that there was now something beyond them all right, this enormous mushroom cloud, billowing with fire and ash and reminding me of the throne scene in The Wizard of Oz, which I had seen on the Inn’s television as a special Easter treat several times when I was small. But I knew this was not a thing of childhood imagining—this was the end of the world. Somewhere far off, a bomb had fallen. Even as I watched the specter climb higher and higher into the sky, three similar clouds blossomed to the north and west of me.

I stood and stared. Where could I run to get away from such a calamity? It would reach us in the mountains, too, and we would all be poisoned, sooner or later. I was trying to decide if I should run back to our house and warn everyone when two more clouds appeared, and then two more, and a sound like the explosion of a volcano reached my ears. Everyone would have heard it by now. Doubtless, it was already on the TV news at the Inn. I could go back down and wait for the end with my family, a terrible certainty coming over me that it would not be a long wait. I had half-turned to go back down the mountain when I suddenly noticed a door, standing between two tall elms at one end of the cemetery plot. While I was trying to process what I was seeing, the door, which was of plain oak with a brass knob, opened from the other side, and I saw two strangers, a man and a woman, beckoning to me. Without speaking any words aloud, they conveyed to me that there was nothing I could do, that the forest would be incinerated within a minute but that there was an escape if I wanted it. We will not harm you, they said. We are here to help, but you must decide. You will be dead as will everyone on this mountain before you even go 30 paces.

Like a sleepwalker, I stumbled through the doorway, which looked as if it led only to the forest behind it until I stepped though it and found myself at the bottom of a silver staircase with the vastness of space all around me. The door shut behind us, and I had left the world completely behind. All around us was a silence broken only by a faint crystalline sound of bells. A shooting star streaked by as we climbed the staircase, through a blue-black vastness studded with stars. Up above, perhaps a mile distant, was the moon. The serenity of the scene could not have been in greater contrast to the calamity we had left behind. The staircase was broad and zigzagged gently on its way up. When we reached the top, we were standing on a tiny platform in front of a small brick building. Through the windows, I could see what looked like an office. When we stepped inside, the staircase dissolved behind us, and I found myself in a smallish room with an office desk, a filing cabinet, and a water dispenser, along with a small sink, a mini refrigerator, and a microwave oven. There was a clock with black numbers on the wall. Inside the door to my left was a small washroom. A short staircase—an ordinary one, not made of starlight—led up into the moon itself.

The man and woman were very kind, fully understanding how bewildered I was. They sat down with me at the desk and explained that they were not actually humans, although that was the form they had taken. They said they had seen the disaster unfolding from afar and had tried to save anyone who happened to be near what they called “portals.” My family’s private plot happened to have an open portal while I was standing in it, although they also told me that sometimes things happened like that for a reason. They said I would not be the only survivor, although the chances of my seeing anyone I knew ever again were unknown and not to be counted upon. They said that there were ways of mitigating the disaster, and that they would do what they could to stop it from spreading any further than North America. I would be able to go back one day, they said, if they were successful in their efforts. In the meantime, I should wait here, where there was an endless supply of food and refreshments, a comfortable bed, board games, a stereo system, a flat screen TV, a fitness room, a music studio, hot showers, and a back porch with a view of the Milky Way.

They made it clear that it was up to me whether to stay or go. I could go back to Earth at any time, though they did not recommend it due to extremely unstable conditions that would likely last for quite a while.

“We will come to visit you,” they said. “There are others of our kind, and you’ll probably meet them, too. Eventually, we hope to reestablish some form of stability on the Earth, but you must be patient. You are safe here, if you decide to wait, which we strongly suggest that you do. Any questions?”

It was strange how calmly my mind accepted what they were saying. I wondered what they really looked like but decided that I’d rather not know as that was altogether too much to chew on just then (later, it began to seem like the least important thing about them). I wondered if they were space aliens, or angels, or creatures from myth, and although they never actually cleared this point up for me, I eventually decided that the precise truth, if any, was another distinction that had no meaning.

They showed me into the moon itself, which they gave me to understand was just a simulation moon, built with all the comforts of a small house: a bedroom, a balcony with a view, and what they called an en-suite bathroom with a rainfall shower head and a sunken tub. I had never seen anything like it, even at the Inn, which was my previous gauge for fancy living. After we had talked for a couple of hours more, with their constant reassurances and quiet explanations that they were prepared to deal with just such a situation as was now taking place, and that they had long been concerned it would happen, they asked if I was tired and would like to sleep. I was about as bone-weary as I had ever been, and when they left me, with promises of seeing me again soon, I sank back on the bed, which was the softest I had ever slept in, almost like sleeping on a cloud. The soft lights dimmed even further, to a pale white that made the violet and blue of the wall coverings and bedding glow like twilight over the western mountains.

I wondered if I would ever see that sight again; the thought that I would not was overwhelming. When I thought back over the day, it seemed incredible that the first time I’d ever had sex coincided with the end of the world. It would have seemed almost funny except for the thought that I had no idea where Carlie was or if she had even survived. The space people had told me before they left that there were likely few survivors in our part of the country but not to give up hope entirely. They also reassured me that my having had sex was in no way connected to the calamity itself, even though they knew it might seem that way to me. “Unfortunate timing,” is how they described it.

So I settled into what was now my new home, with a view of the universe outside the large picture window in my bedroom. I wondered why I had been spared. Although there was never really an answer to that question, all of the space people who visited from time to time seemed to hint that despite the terrible thing that had happened, there was always an underlying order and a reason for things. It was their assurance of this that helped give me a reason to go on: I wanted to see what would happen next and how I might fit into the future that was unfolding. I had wanted to see the wider world, and now I had found the universe was vaster than I had ever realized.

Whenever I opened my refrigerator, there was always a new store of food that replenished itself by some means unknown to me. I could make things on the cooktop, since I had a whole pantry of raw ingredients, or I could take ready-made dishes out of the fridge and put them in the microwave; they were always delicious. I could make hot chocolate or coffee, which I’d always drunk at home. There was a screen behind the sunken tub that changed scenes periodically, sometimes looking like a misty forest, sometimes like a pool on the edge of a cliff with an awesome view of the ocean, sometimes like a nook at the base of a waterfall. It had sound effects, too: the singing of tropical birds and the splash of cascading water, or sometimes the sound of rain dripping off leaves. 

After a couple of days, the streaming service began to work on the stereo system. I never had to change the station, because it always seemed to anticipate what I might like to hear next. There was no news at all from Earth, an omission the space people said was for the best, but I could get Netflix, VUDU, Redbox, and Amazon Prime as well as TCM. They were all re-runs, but I had never seen any of them anyway. I shot baskets on my mini-basketball court and used the weight equipment and treadmill to get in shape. I could go out on my balcony any time and watch the shooting stars and the constellations wax and wane, as if they were on a giant scroll unwinding above my head.

The only real problem was the not knowing, the uncertainty of whether it would be months or years before anything changed. I had so many questions, and so few answers. I had felt my crippling shyness fall away, as if the shock of my new existence had suddenly revealed another much less anxious person who had always been inside me. I enjoyed talking to the space people; I learned to cook lasagna; I listened endlessly to the Putumayo World Music Hour (syndicated); I taught myself to play the electric guitar. I was rarely bored.

But sometimes in the evening (there was no real difference in space between morning and evening, but evening was when I went to bed), I would find myself thinking of my family and of Carlie, and in the moments before I went to sleep, about how much nicer it would have been to have her there with me. It seemed sort of a shame that I had to be deprived of sex right after I had learned how to do it, with the first girl who had ever told me I was a knockout. (I never knew that, and I still like to think about it, even though there is no one here now to think about it but me. God will probably strike me dead for vanity one day.) It’s a comfortable life but a lonely one. In my head, I can hear my aunts chastising me for being selfish and vain and any number of other things. But the truth is, I know: I’m a very lucky boy, and I really can’t complain. My fondest hope is that Carlie made it through somehow, and that I might see her again one day.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Eros and Thanatos in Dark Fantasy

This week, I read Roshani Chokshi’s novel The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a contemporary fairy tale for adults that includes a different slant on the theme of “kids doing magic.” When I started reading it, I wasn’t sure I’d like it, despite the siren call of fairy tale and mythological subject matter and the author’s darkly seductive storytelling voice. Actually, it was probably the latter that put me on my guard, along with the rapidity with which one character, an expert in the history of mythology, falls under the spell of an alluring but clearly dangerous woman, Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. Her name, if not her proclivities, places her in the category of things that are both very much what they seem and more than they seem.

Against a backdrop of glittering wealth and luxury, the two main characters conduct a cat-and-mouse courtship and are soon married. The Bridegroom—as the character is known throughout—agrees not to pry into his bride’s mysterious past, much in the manner of other mortals who married mermaids or selkies without fully understanding the risks involved. In this case, the bride, clearly no stranger to dangerous games, is in the role of Bluebeard to her handsome but somewhat overmatched husband. “Love is blind” is a saying that here is both metaphorically and literally true.

When Indigo gets word that her aunt is dying, she and her husband visit her childhood home, an island mansion off the Washington coast. As the house begins to reveal its secrets, voices from Indigo’s past insert themselves into the story, and we learn of another doomed relationship in which Indigo played the dominant role. As the Bridegroom searches for answers to memories he can’t explain from his own childhood, he picks up the thread of the story of Indigo and Azure, who were inseparable childhood friends until the day Azure dropped out of the story.

It would be easy to condemn Azure for falling under the sway of Indigo’s manipulations except for the fact that she’s not so much gullible as needy (and essentially orphaned). The two girls share a strong bond based on a belief in magic and the faerie realm, which they are able to indulge in Indigo’s home to their heart’s content under the eye of Indigo’s loving but indulgent aunt. The idyll the two girls share is tested as they grow older and Azure begins to feel the pull of the actual real world as an alternative to the Otherworld the girls have created in secret and which they plan to inhabit permanently one day. The descriptions of the girls’ beautifully conceived private realm, their revels, their play with costumes, hair, and makeup, and the luxuries with which they surround themselves have a seductive glamour that—at least in Azure’s case—feeds a nurturing sense of imagination. Her imaginary (and perhaps not-so-imaginary) world helps her survive adolescence.

Although the story is steeped in the seductions of Aphrodite (and Hecate), it becomes clear that the glamour, in Indigo’s hands, is more a snare than a gift. The Otherworld is really an Underworld, and Indigo is the Hades to Azure’s Persephone, a poor girl who keeps trying to return to her mother. The novel is rich in references to European and Middle Eastern mythology and folklore as well as fantasy; the girls have a special affinity for The Chronicles of Narnia (as does Indigo’s Bridegroom) and early on are determined not to meet the fate of Susan Pevensie, one of the siblings who visited Narnia and became a Queen, only to be later barred. (This apparently for the sin of growing up.)

To speak of the novel as Freud might, it’s only Azure who is really ruled by Eros and a lust for life; Indigo, whose main goal is to never grow up, is ruled by Thanatos (the death wish). For every impossibly lovely (and unsustainable) faerie feast of champagne, cake, and crushed pearls there is its dark counterpart, a still life of heavy foods surrounding a dead bird or beast. This story cleverly turns the idea of Eden on its head, suggesting that growing up and out of childhood is really the happy ending and that trying to remain in a state of stasis—no matter how agreeable—beyond one’s natural term is the true horror. This, of course, is a message one often encounters in fairy tales, in which one youth or another is being shown the way to adulthood.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride also marks the second novel or series I’ve encountered recently in which Narnia plays a significant role, the other being The Magicians series by Lev Grossman that I recently discussed. In Mr. Grossman’s novels, Fillory is a magical world that students from Brakebills sometimes find their way into. In some particulars, Fillory pays homage to Narnia: the Neitherlands is something like The Wood Between the Worlds; some of the people from Earth who go to Fillory end up as Kings and Queens there; and the passage between the two worlds is sometimes dismayingly abrupt (you might go there or come back without really meaning to). While characters in The Magicians books sometimes make nerdy references to The Lord of the Rings, their fantasy destination of choice actually resembles Narnia, a more markedly childlike world of storybook castles and talking animals than the more mature-toned LOTR.

While I don’t think it can be said that C.S. Lewis ever really went out of style, it seems noteworthy that his work is having a bit of a run in the dark fantasy of current pop culture. Several films of the first books in the series were completed in the 2000s, and there have been other adaptations in the past. In both Flower Bride and The Magicians, Narnia or a Narnia-like world seems to me symbolic of a place of “stuckness” that adults or young adults are continually longing to get to: the fixation on a fantasy world can be either a dangerous obsession or a necessary detour to recovering something lost. Narnia is a more primitive place than Middle-earth (and so, more dangerous, I would argue), so whatever the problem is, it must be buried pretty deep.

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

To Celebrate 10 Years of Wordplay, I’m Giving Out the Best Advice You’ll Ever Get

With all the activities that come with the New Year—gathering tax documents, renewing car registration, planning for retirement (more on that in a minute), I frankly forgot to mention an important milestone: Wordplay—Writing & Life’s 10-year anniversary, which occurred at the beginning of the year. Yes, it really has been that long. Though in some ways it’s difficult to believe, since I clearly remember the day I sat down and wrote the first post, in other ways it feels like every bit of 10 years and more—the longest 10 years of my life, in fact.

I was feeling very hopeful when I started this blog. I was about to embark on the great unknown of writing a dissertation, and I was also hopeful of possibly seeing other changes in my life. Successfully completing a three-year course of graduate school while working full-time had given me the confidence that I might be able to do other things I’d never done before, including, but not limited to, moving and getting a new job. I didn’t want the job I was in then to be the job I retired from, and I knew that with a library degree I was probably employable just about anywhere. I wasn’t unhappy to be in Lexington, but the idea of moving had been in my mind for so long that I figured it would probably happen sooner rather than later.

Before I started the myth studies program, I was a writer in search of a subject matter and a spark that I hoped would set something alight in my mind—and that is exactly what happened, though not in the way I thought it would. If you had asked me then what I imagined myself doing 10 years on, I probably would have said: I will be living in California, or at least dividing my time between Kentucky and California. I would have said I will be working in a creative field, publishing books, perhaps teaching part-time, and maybe even exploring my newly formed interest in working with images and film. At that point, I viewed my library career as something I was likely to transition out of. But first things first: there was the dissertation to write.

Although the end of 2009 had ushered in some unexplained and unsettling events, as I have said before, it was really more of a Dada phase in my life, not the full-on Surrealistic Nightmare that was shortly to ensue. At the beginning of 2010, I still felt that I could steer my life in the direction I wanted it to go, and in fact, that’s what I was doing. The main anxiety I had was the pressure of the dissertation, and, while daunting, this was largely a good pressure, one I had chosen for myself.

When I look back, I’m thankful that I had my dissertation to think about once all hell broke loose, because it gave me a focus, an intellectual activity that required me to gather myself together and give it my all. If I hadn’t had it to work on at the end of 2010 and during the latter part of 2011, I don’t know what I would have done. But there I was, doing the things I had always done best, gathering sources, reading, and distilling all of that into writing. In a way, completing the dissertation was like one long writing meditation, although I suppose most people wouldn’t think of an analytical process like scholarly writing as a meditation. In effect, though, it centered me and helped me keep my feet on the ground during an extremely bewildering time.

In Jungian terms, I was in dialogue with the Self throughout it all. In some strange way, despite having been semi-agnostic for long stretches of my life, I felt at that time as if I could sense a divine presence hovering at the edges of things, quietly willing me to succeed. It wasn’t just “succeeding at the dissertation.” It was succeeding at surviving. If you’re an atheist, this will probably make no sense to you, but I was a believer in the goodness of God at that time like I had never been before in my life.

Needless to say, most of the things I had hoped for 10 years ago did not come true. Once I successfully completed my dissertation, it was as if I was at a dead standstill. My ability to land on my feet upon leaving one job, which had never failed me before, had suddenly deserted me. There I was, a newly-minted PhD, with—I felt—more to offer than ever before, unable to get any kind of a job. No matter that I was more focused, more skilled, more valuable as a worker than ever before—none of that availed me. I felt stymied at every turn, even when I applied for jobs I would rather not have had. My 10-year plan certainly didn’t include using up my retirement savings just to live, and yet that is exactly what happened. In my wildest dreams I never imagined ending up homeless, and yet that happened, too.

There has, however, been at least one great good thing to come out of it all, which possibly wouldn’t have happened if none of the above had taken place, and that was that I was forced into myself and my own resources and ended up finding a way to turn my frustration and pain into writing. I had always wanted to write fiction and suddenly found that when I turned my hand to it, instead of hesitation over every word and sentence, the words came tumbling out as fast as I could write them. I was pleased with what I was doing fiction-wise for the first time, and that, friends, is no inconsiderable thing.

I’m not going to make it easy on anyone else by saying that the writing has made the last 10 years all worthwhile; what I really feel is that I succeeded in what I was doing in spite of the last 10 years. I chose to finally shed some of my innocence, to acknowledge the darkness I could not get free of, and finally, to triumph over it to some extent by bringing it to bear on my writing. I feel sure that few of the things that were happening to me were happening because of someone’s good intent—just the opposite—and yet the fight I found myself engrossed in eventually had the effect of giving me (and my writing) some much-needed edge. I would never have described my life prior to 2010 as “uneventful,” but in some ways I feel now that not enough had happened to me. I was still almost a child, comparatively speaking. One thing about fighting for your life is that it gives you heaps of fabulous material, if you choose to see it that way.

So now, the time has come to once again look to the future and answer the question of, “What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now?” And I would say, very much the same things I was thinking I wanted to do 10 years ago, as long as I am in charge of making my own choices. I have never given up on my dreams and hopes and am no further from doing that than I was 10 years ago. I’m reaching retirement age this week and have chosen to apply for social security retirement for economic reasons. Living modestly on social security and wages from Home Depot was never part of my plan but is now my reality, so I intend to make the best of it. I make a small income from my writing business (I don’t make much, but, yes, I make enough that I have to report it to the IRS, so I have in effect been a working writer all this time). Perhaps some day I’ll make more than I do now.

Being a writer is what I am, at my core; I never realized that surviving would one day depend on my holding fast to this, but that’s turned out to be the case. I can do a lot of things, but there has never been anything else that I wanted to do as much. It’s as natural to me as breathing. I also want to add that the timing of Greta Gerwig’s film, Little Women, has been rather fortuitous, because that book, given to me by my aunt when I was seven years old, loomed very large in my imaginative life as a child. The fact that several of the March daughters had talents and aspirations, including—most notably—Jo, the writer, didn’t seem at all remarkable in the book and was simply presented as a given. Ms. Gerwig would have no way of knowing this, but my experience of seeing her film on Christmas Day brought me back to one of my foundational experiences as a reader and a writer, confirming for me that, at least where it really matters, I’m right where I need to be in my creative life. It was as if I had circled back to myself.

Whatever talent or passion you yourself are nurturing, openly or secretly, I encourage you never to let go of it. Pay attention to your soul’s requirements, and you’ll never find yourself agonizing over “what might have been.” Find a way to make it happen, and resist people and situations that pull you away from what you know to be your truest self. Stubbornness, often said to be a vice, is in fact a highly underrated virtue, and one I would advise anyone to cultivate, at least in the things that really matter. It will enable you to stand up for yourself. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate my stubbornness doesn’t need to be talking to me.

Thanks for reading my blog, and maybe we’ll have the same “taking stock” talk 10 years from now. Wordplay is not going anywhere.

Monday, October 14, 2019

Deconstructing Banana Pudding

For a topic this week, it would probably be difficult to beat Wordplay’s National Dessert Day tutorial on apples, banana pudding, chocolates, and other topics, posted today on the Wordplay Facebook page, complete with photos. Therefore, I won’t try. I thought I’d said all I needed to on desserts, Aphrodite, etc. last week, but when I found out what day it was today, I just had to seize the opportunity. (And really, can you ever get tired of looking at pictures of desserts? Probably not.)

I guess I was also trying to make a point about the impossibility of putting life experiences into separate silos and the lack of neat boundaries between categories of knowledge, experience, etc. If you’re reading this page for the first time, that may sound pretty far removed from National Dessert Day, but if you think in terms of mythology, depth psychology, and layers of meaning, it’s really not. I’m a librarian, too, and while I semi-enjoyed the cataloging class I took in school—which taught us how to organize and classify areas of knowledge—I saw even then that some subjects just don’t fit into a single slot. Some librarians might argue that they actually do if you’re doing cataloging the right way, but I don’t agree. There’s too much overlap between subjects.

I have a fairly strong teacherly instinct, which I’m sure annoys a lot of people (at least, it seemed to in the past), but I have realized that I take a lot of pains to explain things because I have spent so much of my life feeling misunderstood. I don’t mean to make that sound tragic; it’s just a fact that I often felt my experiences were not like those of other people, and that people really didn’t understand my jokes, my references, or even my real feelings about things. I was not always the forthcoming person I am on this blog, and I really was one of those young people I was talking about a few weeks ago who lacked communication skills. Through much of my life, I had a hard time speaking up for myself in person (though never in writing). Actually, what someone said to me once turned out to be true, and that is that you gain greater confidence in yourself by doing. I’m much better at talking now than I used to be.

So I tend to favor clearness in communication, but it’s also true that no matter how clear you try to be, some people will never understand you because they are seeing you through the filter of their own experiences. I don’t like misunderstandings, but they are unavoidable at times, so sometimes you just have to say your piece and move on. I might say something like, “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” and really mean that just as a literal statement of fact based on the weather report. And yet I often feel that people try to read much more into my words than I intended. On the other hand, I often have to caution people not to be “too literal” when it comes to interpreting stories and mythology. Sometimes there is no “literal truth,” but rather a psychological or artistic truth. I’m really not speaking a secret code that other people are supposed to decipher (I would find that extremely tiresome myself) just because I talk about poetry, myths, art, and other things that have layers of meaning. It’s not true that a person named Daphne literally turned into a tree because someone named Apollo chased her, but it is true that it’s sometimes necessary to put your foot down and make a stand.

Others things I learned from National Dessert Day:

1. There are an awful lot of blogs out there on cooking that almost look like someone just made them up and slapped them on the Internet a week ago. It’s not that they are lacking in quality, it’s just that they don’t quite seem real.
2. Banana pudding is one of the most appealing desserts there is to look at; you hardly ever see a photo of banana pudding that isn’t mouth-watering.
3. It takes a little courage to write about food and Aphrodite, as one feels that one is almost bound to be judged, or misjudged, for the attempt, even though you may only be saying what other people are thinking.
4. Fruits are more “erotic” than vegetables, and it’s probably because of the sugar.
5. Some fruits are more “erotic” than other fruits. Never really thought it through in those terms before, but it’s true.
6. Chocolate truffles, according to one source, were named for the truffles that grow in the ground because of the “earthy” appearance of their centers. That never would have occurred to me, though both kinds of truffles are expensive gourmet items.

That’s about it for this week. Thanks for reading, but remember this: if you take an idea from this page and run with it, only to find yourself at the business end of an international crisis, don’t blame me. Learn to be a little more thoughtful about what you read; take a couple of classes or something.

Monday, October 7, 2019

Wordplay Indulges in Broad Generalizations. You’re Welcome.

With last week’s post, I thought I had gotten Aphrodite and Eros and desserts and all out of my system, but that does not seem to be the case. I know this because I keep finding myself looking up pictures of the most elegant desserts I can find on the Internet. Of course, you cool kids know that when we speak of Aphrodite, we are speaking of more than romantic love. Aphrodite encompasses luxuries and indulgences of all types: fine wines, beauty, fashion, flowers, and, of course, desserts. If you’re not sure how this works, or what the goddess of love has to do with any of this, think of it this way: Aphrodite encompasses romance, and all of the above are considered enhancements or accompaniments to romance. And certainly, it is quite all right—healthy, actually—to fall in love with yourself and to treat yourself with appropriate indulgences as needed.

I know that my readers understand this because reductionism is a kind of sin in depth psychology, and if you follow this blog, that means you have some appreciation for the nuances of the soul. In mythology, too, it’s unusual for simple mathematics to rear its head: rarely does “this” equal “that” in any kind of neatly delineated way. Aphrodite and Eros reign over an entire class of experiences, not just sensual love, and that includes a group of things we might categorize as “the finer things in life.” Most people realize that life is made up of not just one or two but a variety of different types of experiences. “To everything, there is a season,” as Ecclesiastes tells us.

Nevertheless, just as people often have one or two qualities predominating in their makeup, so do places. L.A., for instance, is one of the most Aphrodite places I’ve ever seen, and Lexington, KY, (where I live now) is one of the least. There’s nothing unusual about a place or a person having a dominant cast to it, but it’s also true that whatever is undervalued or outside the comfort zone tends to go into the shadow. Thus many people have the perception that L.A. is an anti-intellectual place and that Kentucky is a very hearth, home, and family type of place. I’ve spent enough time in Kentucky to know that there’s a lot of truth in this perception and also to feel that people here have a suspicion of “Aphrodite.” It’s not that they don’t feel it, it’s that they’re not quite at home with it. It seems like frippery, perhaps, or something that might lead you astray, away from the things that really matter: hearth, home, family, and God. Of course, if it weren’t for Aphrodite, there wouldn’t be children or families, but somehow Aphrodite seems to get divorced from the rest of the process, as if she had nothing to do with it at all, and Demeter rules the roost.

My current preoccupation with Aphrodite springs, I’m certain, from my current experiences. If you ever find yourself living in your car and getting by from paycheck to paycheck, you may discover, as I have, that a healthy person eventually rebels against all that cheapism and tries to seek balance as best it can. You throw a chocolate bar into the grocery cart once in a while or check into a hotel to experience cool sheets, pillows, and air conditioning. A person who lives in his or her intellect much of the time (Athena/Apollo) will, at the best of times, seek out sensory enjoyment just to stay in balance, and if you’re living in very reduced circumstances, it doesn’t become less important but rather more. Certainly, it’s possible to have too much Aphrodite in one’s life, which amounts to overindulgence; it’s also quite possible to have too little, which amounts to poverty.

So it was that, being off work today and still thinking about dessert, no matter how hard I tried to find other “more important” things to read about, I decided to set myself a task: to discover an Internet photo of the most luxurious fall dessert not involving pumpkin that was out there to be found. This was how I made what was, to me, an interesting observation. The majority of fall desserts that don’t involve pumpkin contain apples, and no matter how long I looked, I couldn’t find an apple dessert that seemed luxurious in the same way a profiterole or chocolate mousse is. (An exception might be a galette, simply because the French have a deft way of putting Aphrodite into their food that does not seem to come as easily to most Americans.) Vast quantities of cinnamon, sugar, butter, and cream notwithstanding, all the apple desserts I saw, as delicious and appealing as they looked, seemed wholesome rather than gourmet, and I think this has to do with the apple itself. Introduce an apple into a dessert, and you’re suddenly speaking of harvest, Grandma’s kitchen, and the farm rather than of luxury.

So, here’s my contribution to world peace: 1. Aphrodite, so often either overvalued, maligned, or misunderstood, is probably most to be feared when overvalued, maligned, or misunderstood. 2. American culture has a Puritan cast to it that gives Aphrodite sort of a bad name here, but this possibly diminishes the further you get from New England. 3. If you require an indulgent dessert with apples in it, you might have to go as far as France. 4. Kentuckians are great at getting in the harvest but suck at experiencing (or creating) sensory delight. 5. People in L.A. fear being ugly or wearing their pants too loose as much as the rest of us would fear the plague. 6. It often costs more to make things beautiful, but the payoff in psychological well-being is probably vastly underrated.

Monday, September 2, 2019

The Wordplay One-Room Schoolhouse

With school being back in session here and in other places around the country, Wordplay is feeling its teacher-y side coming out. You may be of the opinion that one college degree (or two if you really must) should be enough for anyone. Here on this blog, we realize that not everyone has our propensity for running around studying everything that interests us. If we were going to design a curriculum for a basic understanding of Western Culture that would be accessible to anyone without the time or money to sink into four years on a well-appointed campus, we’d base it on what’s essentially a twelve-course curriculum.

You should realize that, while we’re in general agreement with the basic outlines of a humanities education, Wordplay might lend more weight to certain subjects than others would do. This is based on our own experience of what’s useful, and by the way, we mean practically useful as well as just sort of “good for you in a general sort of way.” It’s practically useful because knowledge in certain areas helps you understand references that pop up over and over again in conversation, the sciences, the arts, and the media. Never again would you have to wonder, for instance, why in the hell someone would name a moon Chiron or what the Oracle of Delphi was if you had had a course in Greek mythology.

When I look back over my education, I realize that even in elementary school, I had some very formative experiences. I’m not even going into the old-fashioned way I learned how to spell through phonics class (and it’s nice to not have to worry about spelling and punctuation: it frees your mind for other things). There was the teacher who often read to us from a world folktales book after lunch, and the geography class that made me realize what an interesting place the world, with all its varied cultures, really is. There was the Shakespeare class in high school. (Everyone needs one. I’m sorry to tell you this if you don’t like Shakespeare, but maybe you’ll thank me for it some day.) There was the World History class that opened a window to the past, and the many English classes that gave me a wide introduction to reading in what is called the “Western Canon.”

I don’t think I regret a single literature class I ever took, but aside from that, here are the courses I would recommend.

1. Greek and Roman mythology. Not surprisingly.
2. Renaissance Art.
3. Introduction to Shakespeare.
4. Music Appreciation. (You can also get a long way just by listening to a lot of music. I once had a crush on a violinist, and you wouldn’t believe how helpful that was in introducing me to a lot of classical music I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.)
5. Middle English. (This means any course in which you study the literature in Middle English, not in translation. The day you start to hear the music that underlies the English language—which is most apparent when you start to separate the rhythms from the meaning—is the day you’ll agree with me about this, and not a minute sooner, I predict.)
6. Introduction to Poetry. You really ought to have a separate class on the English Romantic poets, I think. Understanding why female English majors tend to develop crushes on Keats probably doesn’t hurt the boys that are interested in the female English majors—but make responsible use of your knowledge.
7. Any course that combines literature and depth psychology.
8. Introduction to Philosophy. (And Logic, too, if you can get it.)
9. Introduction to Film.
10. World Religions.
11. A foreign language of your choice. Or more than one, if possible. Then you’ll know just enough to be dangerous, like I am.
12. World History.

Of course, everyone needs to understand science and mathematics, too; they should be part of a good education. I personally disliked Algebra II and Trigonometry and went no further than that in math, and I have trouble wrapping my mind around certain concepts in Physics, but I recommend going as far as you can. My list is more for an understanding of culture than of science—but of course, science is a part of culture, too. I really don’t believe you have to cover everything; sometimes an introduction to a subject is all you need to open up not only that topic but to lead you into connections between various areas of knowledge. That’s when things really start to get fun.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Do I Dare to Take a Selfie?

This morning I was trying to take a selfie to update my Facebook profile, a seemingly simple act that shouldn't really require much thought. I mean, I did get dressed, brush my hair, and put on a little makeup. After all, you want to put your best food forward even if you're just taking your own picture. Then I had to put the batteries in the camera, charge up the flash, figure out where to put myself, and actually take the picture--the hardest part. I see that other people take selfies all the time with apparent ease, so I guess it's easier if your cell phone has a camera, but I have a camera camera, if that hasn't become an anachronism, and can't see what I look like when I'm taking the picture.

At any rate, I took a whole series of photos and kept looking for one that seemed good enough, sitting first here and then there, deciding the bookcase would be a nice backdrop and then trying to get the lighting and angle right. Now, here's where it started to get unexpectedly complicated.

I've written several times about the way a person who has studied myth (or literature or art history or other things) often sees several layers of meaning simultaneously in an object or an event. Training in these areas teaches you to look beyond the merely literal; paint on canvas or words on a page are more than just the sum of their parts, just as a person is more than a collection of cells. It's possible to take this process too far. Just as you can overlook the true significance of things by not looking deeply enough, you can also imbue things with meanings they don't have. No one would argue that all interpretations are equally convincing, and if you say tomato and I say tomahto, as the song goes, who's right? Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar (even if Freud didn't really say it, it's true). But not always.

I'm taking a long way to get back to the selfie. The point is, I suddenly started noticing all the items on the bookshelf behind me that were ending up in the pictures and that had no real relevance except that they just happened to be there: a statue of Ganesha, a diploma from school, a book on symbols. I suddenly started to wonder how someone else seeing my selfie might view those items--could they take over the picture in a way I didn't intend? That may seem silly, like the kind of thing no one but an English major would think of, but I still wondered. After all, those items are on the shelf because they tell part of the story of my life, and it's natural they should be there. But I noticed recently while watching a movie I've seen multiple times how distracting it was when the design of the bedspread in one scene jumped out at me in a way I hadn't noticed before. I didn't know what the filmmaker intended, and the decision to have a striped bedspread could have meant any number of things. I assume that artists usually make choices very intentionally, but did it mean the same thing to me that it meant to the filmmaker?

Well, you can really go down a rabbit hole with this type of thing. The best I could say is that when I looked at that scene and for some reason noticed the bedspread had stripes, it suddenly made me think of a flag-draped coffin, such as a solider would be buried in, which was rather jarring in that particular context. For all I know, the filmmaker put that detail in not because he thought it looked like a flag but because he was trying to re-create the bedroom he lived in when he was a little boy, or perhaps the resemblance to a coffin was intentional, and it was a tribute to a friend who had died.

The end result of my selfie adventure was that I took some of the objects out of the background so that the photos would just be headshots of me, not a work by a Flemish master full of potential hidden meanings, and selected the best-looking one. The process began again when I started sorting through some outdoor photos for an updated cover picture. Again, I started wondering if people would ask why I had selected this one or that one, when really I was just in a hurry to finish updating my profile. I finally picked one of a blue sky that I liked and that seemed about the blandest of all of them. When I looked at the end result, though, I noticed rays of light that I hadn't seen in the photo until it was enlarged, and both photos together seemed to me to tell a story that I hadn't intended to tell--but it ended up that way by accident. After all my efforts to come up with a neutral photo set, I realized I still had something that potentially told a story, and that my attempts not to tell a story were all for naught.

After that line of thought, I was almost too self-conscious to go for a walk, but I went anyway. As for the clothes I had on, I suppose there was a story in them, but it was this: I wore the top I was wearing because it was unusually warm today, and I don't get to wear that shirt, which has a flattering neckline, that often. I wore jeans because I'd been wearing cords a lot and wanted a change. I wore my cream-colored fleece (which was almost too warm for today) because I thought I needed an extra layer but not a heavy one. I carried my smaller umbrella because I had a mishap with the larger one the other night while carrying in groceries and decided it wasn't raining hard enough to merit the trouble. I thought everything matched and that I wouldn't look silly while walking down the street. That was it.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "You needed a whole essay to describe what people do in the normal course of things? Most people aren't trying to imitate the Flemish masters when they go out everyday. They just want to look presentable and possibly attractive." I used to think so, too, but I'm constantly noticing how many people I encounter in the course of a day who seem determined to draw attention to themselves. It's an epidemic of exhibitionism, if you ask me, and though I may be describing a trend, I didn't start it.

So if you do see my picture on Facebook, this is the Official Artist's Statement of how that particular photo essay came to be: I was trying to take a neutral but flattering photo. But if you think every picture tells a story, you may still be right.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Wordplay Answers Your Questions

"No question is too small."

Q. Am I imagining it, or are people in a more anxious mood these days? I notice that people around me seem antsier than usual. Could this reflect some type of archetypal shift, and if so, what does it portend? Signed, Just Wondering.

A. Wondering, I, too, have noticed an uptick in anxiety, although I'm not experiencing it myself. I think it's best to avoid being beset by other people's panic unless there is actual, demonstrable need (i.e., the house is on fire). As for archetypal shifts, I don't know about that. If you want to know what's bothering people, you'll have to ask them.

Q. As an aid to active imagination and to further my goal of self-actualization, I have acquired a spirit animal. I don't want to tell you what it is because I'm afraid that would cause a power diminishment and a breach of the psychic protection it affords me; however, it is a mammal. You may think it's silly, but channeling my spirit animal makes me feel stronger and more assertive, but for some reason, it doesn't work well under certain circumstances, such as when people around me are using cell phones or laptops. Can electronic devices interfere with spirit animals? Signed, Short But Stout.

A. Short But Stout, I doubt that electronics can interfere with spirit animals. I think your problem is one of scale: next time, channel a T Rex.

Q. I understand one of your sidelines is baking. My question has two parts: 1. Do you think about the mythic dimensions of what you're doing as you're baking? 2. My biscuits are tough. Do you have any advice for how I can improve them? Signed, Aspiring Boulanger.

A. Aspiring, when I bake, I usually think about what I'm doing, because if my mind wanders, I make mistakes. As for your biscuits, try spooning your flour into the measuring cup. And make sure your butter is cold when you blend it in.

Q. I have a problem with people who invade my space. For instance, I was studying in the library recently when someone sitting next to me kept bumping into my things and hanging on my shoulder while talking into her cell phone. You'd have thought we were good friends from the way she was acting, but I didn't know her. What should I do? Signed, Nymph in Distress.

A. Nymph, did you try kicking her?

Q. What?

A. Kick her. When someone assumes an attitude of intimacy that I do not share, I always try to let them know, for their benefit as well as mine. You don't have to kick her hard.

Q. I can't believe you said that.

A. Life is not a cotillion, Nymph.

Q. I have been invited to the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I am so excited by the honor and have been told that I might be asked to say a few words about what has inspired me in my life's work. You are actually one of my main inspirations, and I wonder if you can point me to a text that might supply some helpful mythic context for the occasion? Signed, Humble Yet Proud.

A. Dear Humble, I cannot help you, because if someone came to me talking about a Presidential Medal of Freedom or such claptrap as that, I would probably chase them off with a stick.

Q. You're not supposed to say things like that!

A. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you wanted an honest answer.

Q. I have trouble meeting people and have been told that social skills are merely a question of practice. You seem so, I don't know, poised, and I know this is off the topic of mythology, but could you tell me what opening lines you use when you first meet people. It would help me so much. Signed, Wallflower.

A. Wallflower, the opening line I use most often is "Who the F are you?"

Q. I don't think you really mean that.

A. I do, though. And it doesn't have to be said out loud, although it can be.

Q. Well, you're just mean, aren't you?

A. Yes, I am.

Q. I got a splinter in my hand that I can't get out with tweezers. Can you suggest a remedy? Signed, Sore Finger.

A. Sore, good, I'm glad somebody asked that. I recently had the same problem and in researching the issue, discovered that some people swear by a paste made of baking soda and water covered with a bandage. However, I never got to try it since my splinter came out while I was doing the dishes. I don't know if it works or not.

Q. I was recently invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. I know they have rules of protocol, but beyond that, are there any particular colors that you think would be appropriate for an Athena-inspired female trying to combine Demeter qualities with a Zeus inflection? Signed, Wardrobe Challenged.

A. Wardrobe, you're trying to cause trouble, aren't you?

Q. Sometimes I feel like people are talking about me, even people I don't know, like celebrities on TV. I sometimes feel that someone has literally been looking over my shoulder and spying on me. I never used to feel this way. You won't believe this, but I know I'm in full possession of my faculties, so I suspect something strange is going on. Do you think this could be some type of government program? One hears so much about government overreach these days.

A. How long have you been feeling this way?

Q. I don't want a diagnosis, I only want to know what god or goddess might be present in all of this.

A. Is it just TV, or is it on the radio, too?

Q. You're not helping me at all. I just want to know what archetype--

A. Are you hearing voices, too?

Q. Stop it! I'm going to ask Oprah instead.

A. Wait, I have a bachelor's in psychology! I can help you!

Thursday, August 18, 2016

A Rabbit's Life

This week, from the Re-Visiting Books From a Long Time Ago department: Watership Down. If memory serves, I first read the book 35 years ago this summer, which is an amazingly long time ago when you think about it. The only thing I remembered was that it concerned a group of rabbits who were displaced from their burrow by a construction project and had to find a new home. I'd forgotten everything else, except that it had seemed a novel concept for a book-length work of adult fiction. (I just learned that some people consider it children's literature--if it is, it's an extraordinarily nuanced and sophisticated example of the genre.)

Once more, I find that the passage of time seems to have turned a work into something completely different than I remember, so different that it's hard to believe this is the same book I read all those years ago. It's almost as if, as Shakespeare puts it, it has undergone "a sea-change." Of course, I know that isn't right, because the words on the page haven't altered--it's the reader who is different. Back then, I found the book moderately diverting, but this time, I was struck at every turn by the sheer humanity of the author, if that doesn't sound like an odd thing to say about a novel about rabbits. My own imaginative powers seem to have expanded enough that I can now take in the great feat Richard Adams accomplished by entering so sensitively into the lives of non-human protagonists.

The book almost made me want to be a rabbit--in spite of the inherent hazards of the lifestyle (and the fact that you have to live underground). Humans do not come off particularly well in most of the book, and while the rabbits have their faults, it would almost be worth giving up the advantages of being human for such companions as Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Holly, and their friends. Their resourcefulness, courage, ingenuity, and loyalty to one another put the rest of us to shame, I'm afraid. I was so engrossed in the story that I had a hard time putting the book down, and I cried at the end, which rarely happens. I was hoping against hope, every time the rabbits faced seemingly impossible odds--trying to cross a river, escaping from foxes, stoats, and cats, escaping a snare, battling a formidable enemy--that their wits would carry them through just one more time. It's a spirited adventure story, well told.

It may be that the first time I read Watership Down, I objected to what I saw as anthropomorphizing. I'm glad I got over that, because I think the novel's presentation of a fully realized animal world--the rabbits have their own stories and mythology, their own games, diversions, worries, and dreams--gives us, in a totally non-preachy way, a richer, more penetrating view of our own world. It's hard to think the same way about a new housing development when you consider it from the point of view of the creatures who suffer because of it and have no say in what happens to them. Seeing the world from the perspective of a rabbit might be enough to give you pause, for a little while, at least, on the whole "might makes right" philosophy. In any case, it's a pleasant antidote to human presumption.

Besides being entertained by the spirit and humor of the rabbits' mythology and storytelling, I was struck by something else that I suspect went over my head the first time. The novel is firmly planted in the sensate world, in all the sights, sounds, tastes and scents of the Hampshire countryside. Every blade of grass, every individual leaf, has character, and the rabbits' keen senses, especially their hearing and sense of smell, pick up so much more information than I could gather at my most observant. The novel luxuriates in descriptions of wildflowers, weeds, and grasses and a multitude of other objects a rabbit would recognize instantly; I would walk through the same scene and experience it much more monochromatically.

So, who is smarter, humans or rabbits? I think it depends on what you mean by smart. There is certainly something to admire in the simplicity and economy of the rabbits' lifestyle and in the way they live their lives as part of the whole. And in the book, at least, they seem to know a thing or two about humans that most of the humans have failed to notice about themselves. (Who knows, this could be true in real life as well.) I believe these particular characters are also meant to show us how we ourselves are at our best. It's perhaps a gentle reminder that human nature is also animal nature, however evolved we may have become.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Wordplay's Ghosts of Christmas, Past and Present

By rights, this should be the post in which I write about the new Star Wars film, which has the moviegoing public all agog this holiday season (and no wonder). Except that I'm not going to write about it because I haven't seen it. I heard last year, when an early trailer for the film was released, that George Lucas was distancing himself from the promo. I don't recall the reason given, but that gave me pause about seeing the movie, despite the fondness I have for the original. I know this isn't going to stop other people from seeing it, but, as always, I recommend being a cautious consumer when it comes to any and all media that present myths for your consideration. Just because it's out there doesn't mean you have to buy it.

When I saw Peter Jackson's final Hobbit film last year, it was like an early warning system for mythic mayhem to come. My feeling was that Mr. Jackson was trying to say something in that movie relevant to our times about wealth, greed, power, and evil, that perhaps the childlike story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote turned out to be impossible for a filmmaker with any honesty to tell in the same spirit in which it was written. It was a film with many dark undercurrents. His movie was not, in my view, a propaganda piece, but the same can't be said of everything floating around out there in popular culture. I've already cancelled magazine subscriptions over what I considered extracurricular editorializing and political messaging in both stories and ad content, so let the buyer beware. These things do happen.

A brief glance at the evening news reveals that we are living in strange times. Is anyone in doubt about it? When I tell someone the bare facts about the strange events in my own life, and they say, wow, that's pretty crazy, I want to say, "Well, have you watched the political news lately? Have you seen any of the debates, or caught any of the election action? Have you noticed the demented things the candidates are saying, or the aura of a sideshow that hangs over all things political? Have you ever, in your life, known an election season quite like this one?" I'm constantly caught between a need to stay informed and a healthy wish to avoid getting tangled up in the propaganda, war of words, and general craziness of the political scene. You occasionally hear something worth hearing, from someone worth listening to, but you sure have to wade through a lot of trash talk to get to it.

Christmas is by no means immune to tampering with by those with an agenda to push. Just on a personal level, I was amazed last year to get a black Christmas card from someone I used to know named Steve--and this story illustrates what I mean about the negative potential of symbols. As soon as I saw that card, it disturbed me, for reasons I couldn't quite have articulated on the spot. I just knew it wasn't something I wanted anywhere near me, so I threw it away. This year, when I got a card from the same person, I took it immediately to the dumpster without even opening it. I'm a believer in paying attention to things that bother you and taking them seriously, even if you're not sure why they bother you. Human beings have developed many ways of sensing things they need to avoid that don't fall strictly into the category of logical reasoning. Call it survival instinct.

So here it is, Christmas Eve 2015, a most un-Christmaslike Christmas from where I'm sitting, both as to weather and to mood. It has me in a proper Dickensian frame of mind, thinking about the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. Just for one, there was that Christmas some eight years ago now, when I was in my second year of Myth Studies and taking a break from the books by watching movies on Christmas Eve. In between features, I happened to look out the window, which I do from time to time, just scanning the environment, as the healthy human animal tends to do. I was somewhat surprised to see a gathering of young men on the other side of the parking lot, just standing around outside their cars, which was odd considering the fact that there really wasn't anyone else around. They were all lined up in a row, looking toward my building in a way I didn't quite like. I was debating whether to call the police or not, but when I looked again, they had all gotten into their cars, and a few minutes later, they all left. It was, let's call it, unusual.

Actually, a lot of things happened right around then. The very next week, my then-boyfriend broke up with me. If I'm not mistaken, that was right before the incident in which a former law clerk at the firm where I worked was shot in the head at a party under what I was told were mysterious circumstances. Lots of peculiar behavior in the office and out of it. I recall going to a law librarians' event that week in which the attendees from the other firms acted like the two of us from my firm had typhoid. Odd. I happened to be in Starbucks a week or two later when I saw a former contract employee from our office who had supposedly taken a cushy job in Nashville a few years earlier. There he was, back in town, large as life--but looking, if a cliche can ever be said to be absolutely accurate, like Death Warmed Over. I have seriously never seen a human being look that haggard, as if he had aged 20 years in three.

Then there was the day I was in that upscale sandwich shop, probably only a week or so later, reading about the life of Buddha for a class, when I looked up and saw someone sitting across from me who definitely didn't look like he belonged there. In fact, he looked like a gangster, completely out of place in that yuppie sandwich shop, not doing anything, not even looking at anyone in particular, just sitting there. Sometimes, something is just out of place, and you know it. I got up and left, but not without knowing that something rather peculiar had just happened . . . it's no good trying to say I merely imagined it, though I certainly would rather have believed otherwise.

There was also that neighbor, the young man I didn't know (but who, as it turned out, knew my nephew) who knocked on the door one winter night saying that he had lost his cell phone while out celebrating his birthday and wanting to know if he could use my phone to call his. At that time being mostly unsuspicious of non-dangerous looking neighbors, I agreed. Not realizing that his cell phone number had a long distance area code, I ended up with a bunch of long distance calls on my bill, which I reported to the phone company as not being mine, since I knew I hadn't made them. Only later did I realize that they must have been the calls he placed. I think this happened close to the time of the other events, though I can't remember exactly. That was the one and only time I talked to this young man, and he moved out a few months later, if I recall correctly.

A string of events in the deep of winter eight years ago. I can't say with a certainty that they're all related, but I have the feeling that there is a pattern in there somewhere. Eight years later, with my life having gone in a direction I never would have imagined back then, I'm careful as to my locks, my computer files, and my credit cards (lest someone take my number and sign me up for something without my knowledge). It doesn't sound like a very cheerful way to live, but sometimes you just have to "keep on keeping on" until you get to a better place. Whether Winston Churchill actually said, "When you're going through hell, keep going" or not, it's good advice, whether you're caught in the bardo (as I was discussing recently with a friend), stuck on a glacier in a snowstorm in Utah, or merely making your way down the sidewalk in your own neighborhood.

It's not all gloom and doom. I have chocolate peppermint cookies, zydeco music on the stereo, a few presents under the tree (what says Christmas better than socks?), and a dinner to cook tomorrow. Life goes on, but in a somewhat reduced way. I'm not trying to dishearten anyone, but rather to do the opposite--to enlighten. I hope I've done so. Happy Holidays to all my friends, near and far, whether I see you often or not. I sincerely hope that 2016 will be a better and brighter year for us all.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Perfidy and Email in the Iron Age

"This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddamn spy." --J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

Reading the news about the Hillary Clinton email situation creates mixed feelings for me:  I'm grateful for the evidence that, even in the unfriendly environment now existing for the press, investigative reporters are still trying to do their jobs. It's very encouraging to know that some things are still working the way they're supposed to.

At the same time, I'm disappointed to see how the Democratic leadership and many usually quite opinionated officials either defend Ms. Clinton or refuse outright to comment. A bad sign, isn't it, when people shut completely down on a topic? To such defenses as "Her critics will say anything to try to destroy her" or "This is being blown out of proportion," I say, "The emails in question are public property. They belong to the American people." A public official like former secretary Clinton doesn't have the luxury of deciding what to do with communications created in the course of her duties because they aren't "hers." They're ours. Hence the lawsuit from the Associated Press, which has been attempting for some time--without success--to obtain some of these emails through the Freedom of Information Act.

I've been watching Ms. Clinton and many of our other top leaders particularly closely for the last four years--four years I can never get back. I watch the same news as everyone else, read the same stories, see the same news videos. I've become increasingly concerned about the uncritical acceptance of Ms. Clinton by many otherwise intelligent people who seem so wedded to the idea of her as our next president that they're blind not only to red flags but to giant red banners that seem to virtually scream, "Look Out!" Reading her body language and hearing her testimony during the 2013 Benghazi hearings was alarming; reading her body language and hearing her responses during yesterday's press event was downright scary.

Perhaps we really are in the Iron Age the ancient sages spoke of, where the thieves are kings, the kings are thieves, and people believe what's false instead of what's true, because I have to tell you, I blame the public in part for what's happened. I admit to being a former supporter of Ms. Clinton, for whom, rather naively, I voted in the 2008 primary election. I think I had misgivings about her then but endorsed her for some of the same reasons other people did: despite her shortcomings, she seemed to have the experience and ability for the job.

I'm not questioning her experience and ability even now, but rather her character and actions, which I've had a chance to view more closely during her time in the State Department and after. I don't doubt that some of her detractors are, let's face it, no better than she is in the transparency department, but that doesn't change the fact that she is (to all appearances) the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2016. I ask myself on an almost daily basis, "How can this be?"

It goes beyond Benghazi, of course. Actually, I suspect it would be hard to overstate her perfidy. Support of the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and banks under investigation for criminal practices; influence peddling; refusal to condemn the spying practices of the NSA . . . and this is only what's widely known. Now we come to the lack of transparency in maintaining State Department records and lame attempts to explain it away, which I must say, I've been expecting. People: do you believe these explanations? If so, I have some swamp land in Florida that I really think you might be interested in. No, seriously.

I think that many people, based on name recognition, "brand" familiarity, Ms. Clinton's smooth rhetoric, the endorsement of most leading Democratic officials, and her "record" are willing to accept her as better than the alternatives. I am not. I know everyone complains about corrupt politics and that a lot of us don't really trust politicians--but we keep voting for them anyway, and once they're in, we don't shine a light on their activities.

I sometimes think, based on the level of complacency, passivity, and unwillingness to look beyond the surface that I see all around me, that Americans don't deserve the system we have. In the end, though, it doesn't matter whether Americans deserve America or not. The important thing is that the country's founders, and countless others since then, managed to create a miracle. We have system based on freedom and protection of individual rights that's an example to the world and a beacon of hope for others (or used to be). Imperfect as it is and always has been, we can't afford to let it fail.

Our elected officials are elected for one reason only: to serve the public. They're not elected to enrich themselves, give favors to their supporters, and do end-runs around the country's laws. I see many of them using the mythology of American exceptionalism and American pride as a means of convincing people that all is mostly well in the land when it most definitely isn't: I see it every day. A true patriot is not a cheerleader. A true patriot questions things and demands answers.

If you were to ask my advice as a mythologist, I'd say: pay attention. Adolf Hitler used mythology very successfully, as we all know. Of course, if someone arrived in Washington wearing a swastika today, we'd recognize a tyrant easily . . . but no one's going to do that here. Just because someone wears a business suit, graduates Ivy League, and carries a BlackBerry, though, doesn't mean they're any less dangerous. Manners and clothes do not make the man--or the woman. Seeing them as they are and holding them accountable is our responsibility, because it's our country. While we still have a country.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Winter Dreams

I don't keep a dream journal, though a lot of people interested in Jung believe that you should. I find it tedious to describe dreams on paper, since I often remember them in a lot of detail. I sometimes jot them down when they seem especially interesting, but I don't pretend to have a system for understanding them. That's a tricky thing even for Jungians. For starters, you have to ask: Was the dream personal? Or was it archetypal? Should you refer to your own associations with things, people, and events in the dream, or do they relate to larger, universal themes? Is it the images that are more important, or the emotions? Are all dreams the same, or do some involve wish fulfillment, others compensation, and still others some kind of problem-solving?

Sometimes I notice bits and pieces of recent events in dreams and recognize the presence of issues that have preoccupied me in waking life. Sometimes I look back on a dream I wrote down a couple of years again and think, "Oh, I know why I dreamed that now." It really does seem that a part of the mind recognizes certain truths long before they become conscious. Most of the time, this seems to relate to events in my own life, not universal concerns (though, of course, the universal and the personal flow into and out of each other for all of us).

For whatever reason, I seem to be in a particularly active dreaming period right now. Over the last month or so, I've had a few dreams that were especially vivid or memorable for one reason or another, and I noted them without making much of an attempt to interpret them. I'll try to do that now, though some of my attempts may be slightly satirical. In my experience, a dream either clicks for me pretty quickly or has to be left alone until it does--which could take a while. But in the interest of science, here goes.

(From last month.) I dreamed about the Twin Towers. I dreamed I was sitting in a parked car with someone I used to work with, and the towers were behind us and by far the biggest thing on the skyline. They were farther apart from each other than they were in real life, though. I told the other person we needed to move the car away from there; it was dangerous. The city didn't look like New York--we drove to an area that looked sort of like Printers Alley in downtown Nashville.

Interpretation: Two or three days after I had this dream, I saw in the news that it was the 14th anniversary of Al Gore's concession speech following the presidential vote recount in Florida. I was not aware of this pending anniversary before I had the dream, but I'm struck by the sense of being in Tennessee, Mr. Gore's home state, and the presence of "Printer's Alley," since Mr. Gore has a journalism background. Was my dreaming mind wondering if we'd be where we are now if Mr. Gore had won the election?

(A week before Christmas.) I dreamed I was at a library conference at a retreat center in Florida. The grounds were beautiful. The building was on top of a hill, and some hazardous stone steps led down to a lower level. When I looked south from the bottom of the steps, I could see a road winding through the trees and, in the distance, a snow-capped mountain. Not quite what you expect in Florida, but interesting.

Interpretation: In this dream, I was speaking on the phone to the same person I was talking to in the car in the previous dream. It seems to me that there are things I would like to say to this person but haven't. In this dream, I was actually in Florida, but it didn't look like Florida. The terrain was beautiful, and I could see a long way, but there were all those hazardous steps and snow in the distance. Could this dream be related to the previous one? (It came a week later.) Was I thinking about politics or merely hoping for a vacation?

(From the week after Christmas.) I dreamed last night I was still going to work downtown, except you had to enter the building through the garage, and it was on the other side of the building. Some people I knew at Pacifica also worked there, and one of them was studying to be an accountant.

Interpretation: This is another dream involving a former place of employment, with a surprising connection between two different areas of my life. I was entering the building "from the ground up," maybe a sign of a deeper level of understanding on my part. While the dream itself was matter-of-fact, I think it reveals a judgment about the person studying to be an accountant.

(Last week.) Dreamed last night that a deer gave birth in front of me after I came out of a store in San Francisco. The store was a real one I've actually been in (a CVS or something similar) in North Beach. I've never seen a deer on a sidewalk, though.

Interpretation: The deer was actually on the curb, and I was looking at it from the sidewalk. There was a lot of flowing water with blood in it, and I couldn't see what was happening at first. The birth itself was very lifelike. I associate deer in mythology with magical events, like the deer that a person pursues deep into the forest that leads to an adventure. This was a deer giving birth, which seems in some way propitious, though I can't say exactly why.

(Last night.) I dreamed I was in my college cafeteria. They were serving pork cutlets. When I asked for potatoes, the chatty server gave me two noodles instead, so I had to ask again. When I inquired about salad, she said there was a salad bar, but I never saw it. The soft drink machine was noisy and messy, and there didn't seem to be dessert. When I left by a back door, someone came along and started locking doors from the outside.

Interpretation: The server seemed friendly but was actually rather passive aggressive. I left the cafeteria with my tray but didn't eat any of the food. I seemed to be rejecting what had been given to me, and seeing the doors locked added some finality to the process. This dream seems to involve recognizing dissatisfaction and saying no to the source of it. I interpret this dream, too, as positive.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Once More for Middle-earth

I don't know what you did on New Year's Eve, but I was in the middle of a Lord of the Rings home video screening, which seems as good a way to spend it as any. LOTR has always seemed to me to be a winter story, possibly because I first encountered it as a boxed set of books--including The Hobbit--as a Christmas present in my senior year of high school. I'm looking at it right now; although the books are threadbare from much handling, the box, with it shiny gold foil, is in good condition. It's covered all over with Elvish symbols that, now that I look at them, are not unlike something you'd see in Jung's Red Book, with their wheel shapes flowing around central stars and flowers. Very mandala-like, these devices are.

Of course, all of the movies have been holiday releases as well--but I'm thinking back now to my first introduction to Middle-earth all those years ago, when I spent most of Christmas break absolutely immersed in the books. I can see myself now in the small bedroom I shared with my sister, sitting up in bed, eyes intent on the page, completely absorbed in a world of Tolkien's making. I remember how strongly the characters, the settings, and the events of this strangely compelling other world impressed themselves on my imagination and how nearly impossible it was to stop reading.

I used to re-read the books periodically but fell out of the habit some years ago, though I think it may be time now to re-visit the tradition. It will be interesting to see how the intervening years, and Peter Jackson's films, have changed my reactions to the stories on the page. I've written recently about the ways in which Mr. Jackson's Hobbit films (especially the final one) seem to part company with the book, but his LOTR has always seemed remarkably close to Tolkien's vision.

In the three years since I bought the video trilogy, I've probably watched the movies once a year. Even in that time, my way of looking at them has changed from one viewing to the next. Interestingly, The Fellowship of the Ring, which was formerly my favorite part, no longer is--at least not in exactly the same way. I linger over scenes in the Shire, which used to seem merely a prelude to the action, and Rivendell, both of which I find it increasingly hard to imagine leaving on such a task as the hobbits had. The Shire, in its innocence, and Rivendell, in its elegance and otherworldly beauty, are of course as under threat as any place else in Middle-earth until the quest is done . . . but the feeling of safe harbor, ease, and peace is strong in both places.

I find myself mentally speeding the company through Moria and down the river to the place near the falls where the Fellowship breaks up. While this is a major break in the story, and a sad ending to the companionship of the nine, it's almost a relief to me to see Frodo and Sam slip off to the eastern shore. I now find myself enjoying the scenes in both The Two Towers and The Return of the King in which the remaining members of the Fellowship look for and are reunited with one another and become deeply involved in the affairs of Rohan and Gondor.

In reading the books, I always considered these aspects of the story less interesting, dealing as they do less with enchantment and more with strategy, politics, and the role of humans in events. Now, I find the people and their problems much more engaging than I did as a teenager, and the courage of not only Theoden's people but those of Gondor, along with the bravery of the companions who aid them, is very compelling to me. I like Theoden's seasoned, no-nonsense authority, Aragorn's valor and calm intelligence, Gimli's sense of humor, and Legolas's steady eye. I like the way the two younger hobbits, Pippin and Merry, seem to grow up in the course of their dealings with Ents, wizards, and warriors, while remaining essentially light-hearted and free.

While the quest of Frodo and Sam to destroy the ring is protracted and wearying (as in the books), the doings of the other characters, even though they involve a constant succession of either major battles or preparations for them, include many scenes of everyday life, love, jealousy, secret hopes, failings, renewed purpose, and tragedies of an all-too-human nature. The story in its latter stages becomes more character-driven than it was in the beginning. In the face of the big events taking place both in Mordor and the kingdoms of men, small incidents revealing the character of the players bring events back down to earth and are rewarding to watch.

One of my ideas about why this is so has to do with the fact that I don't see as much distance between the concerns of Middle-earth and those of the real world as I used to. Far from seeing it as an escapist fantasy, as I did as a teenager, I now see its contours as much closer to a map of the world as we know it. Like a true myth, LOTR gets its power not so much from its fantastic elements as from the way it resembles reality. It's a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Dryads and Fauns of March

I don't know what March is like where you live, but around here it's very changeable. I remember one year when spring seemed to start at the end of February, so that early March brought warm breezes and blossoms; another year (possibly the very next one) we had a winter storm warning and blizzard conditions in the middle of the month. Sometimes, you're wearing short sleeves on St. Patrick's Day, but that may not prevent you from seeing snow flurries when it's almost April.

Last year, it seemed to take spring a long time to get here. I'd go out for walks, and it would be bright and sunny but rather cold. March seemed to go on forever in a not-quite-winter-not-quite-spring limbo, with a few breaks here and there. It seemed to me that the buds and flowers were later than usual, though I might have imagined that.

In my mind, despite the knowledge that March is predictably unpredictable, there is an archetypal March day. I have actually experienced these, often enough that they have come to sum up the entire month for me, though I think such days are relatively few and even absent altogether sometimes (I don't remember one last year, for example). It's a day that, out of nowhere almost, is suddenly mild and even slightly balmy. Winter seems to have disappeared into nothingness. The air is still and a bit damp, and you can smell the earth. It may be sunny, or it may be cloudy, but the main thing is the returning warmth that you haven't felt for months. You may have heard birds all winter, but suddenly their singing is sweeter and more eloquent and cuts through the stillness like crystal.

So far, I haven't experienced a day quite like that this year. We began the month with a snowstorm that left things looking more like January than March, except that the quality of the sunlight, when I went walking the next day, was too mellow for winter. Earlier this week, we had temperatures in the low 70s on a day that had people driving around town with their car tops down, windows open, and radios turned up. It was undeniably a beautiful spring afternoon but more emphatic than the type of day I'm talking about, which appears without fanfare as more of a subtle awakening.

As a child in Florida, I learned about the four seasons as something that occurred elsewhere, though we pretended they applied to us, too, just to be good sports. We dutifully colored autumn leaves, as first-graders, with our thick Crayolas, imagined winter wonderland at Christmas (though we might be wearing shorts), and celebrated the return of spring with pastels and Easter eggs almost as enthusiastically as if we'd been snowed in. At that time, in the simple shorthand of seasonal images, a March day would have been signified by wind blowing an umbrella sideways.

In that, at least, today was typical. It was quite windy when I went out for my walk in the late afternoon; I took a light jacket. There was a hazy sort of sunshine that was neither here nor there. Although it was a mild day, it had more of an end of winter than beginning of spring feel to it; it lacked the raw earthiness that signals true change, and there was little, if any, greenery in evidence.

If I were to imagine a presiding deity for today, it would be a minor goddess somewhat like the image I saw in the mirror when I got home, with hair completely askew. I hadn't realized it was quite that windy, but my hair said otherwise. It looked like a coiffure a headbanger's stylist would spend hours trying to achieve with mousse and special combs; the lift was unbelievable. Yes, that might be the proper divinity for today, a sort of dryad with long, wild hair and streaming drapery who causes the wind to blow by shaking the branches of her favorite tree.

With any luck, she'll soon be superseded by the divinities of damp earth and still air, who announce their presence gently, with a scattering of tufted grass and daffodils, the loamy smell of dirt, and a lilting quality to the birdsong that turns their notes into something nearly liquid.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Spirits of the Corn

I read a few days ago about the pending acquisition of Beam Inc. by the Japanese company Suntory Holdings. Beam is the producer of Jim Beam and Maker's Mark, both legendary Kentucky bourbons. (Jim Beam is made in Clermont, KY, and Maker's Mark in Loretto, KY.) But what, you might ask, does bourbon have to do with mythology?

Actually, a lot, especially when it comes to Kentucky. I don't know if all the stories you hear about bourbon are literally true, but they are certainly colorful, like the one about bourbon being invented by a Baptist preacher, Elijah Craig. If it isn't true, it ought to be. (What is a fact is that Heaven Hill Distilleries in Louisville and Bardstown produce a bourbon named for Elijah Craig.) Other facts about bourbon: it's made from a corn-based mash requiring a very painstaking distillation and aging process, and it's aged in charred oak barrels.

The history of bourbon-making in Kentucky goes back to the 1700s, with even George Washington playing a role. When his administration levied a tax on distilled liquor, farmers and producers in western Pennsylvania protested, and the Whiskey Rebellion was born. Many distillers moved west to Kentucky. Unlike their compatriots back east, Kentucky distillers used a mash based on corn rather than rye or wheat, thus creating the special type of whiskey called bourbon.

Many of the companies that make Kentucky bourbon have been doing it for a long time, and their websites are full of facts and lore. You learn about things like the Angel's Share and the Devil's Cut, barrel staves drying in the summer air, "Old Tub," and a lot more. According to the people at Maker's Mark, a previous company chief, Bill Samuels, Sr., ceremonially burned the family's original bourbon recipe and set the drapes on fire in the process. Heaven Hill was founded by five brothers after Prohibition ended. Jim Beam's site says that when Ulysses S. Grant, a bourbon aficionado, was called a drunk, Abraham Lincoln told the critics to "Find out what he drinks and send a case to my other generals." Woodford Reserve's current Master Distiller is only the seventh in Brown-Forman's 140-year history.

You find many recipes for bourbon drinks on these websites, including one for After Midnight in Kentucky, which gets my vote for "Best Name." There's also the famous Mint Julep, the traditional drink of the Kentucky Derby. I had a Mint Julep once and didn't like the combination of bourbon and mint, but bourbon does go well with other flavors, especially chocolate. Bourbon balls, which consist of a bourbon-laced cream candy coated with chocolate, are a specialty around here. A lot of home cooks make them for Christmas, and I've seen them on the dessert menu at a well-known Louisville restaurant. Also, you really haven't lived until you've had bread pudding with bourbon sauce. It's just that good.

As it is, the Beam corporate headquarters are in the Chicago area, not Kentucky. Although these acquisitions happen all the time in the global economy, the news that a company on the other side of the world is acquiring two such iconic Kentucky brands is still a little startling. Suntory is featured in the film Lost in Translation, in which Bill Murray portrays an American actor filming a commercial for Suntory's liquors. While in Japan, he meets Scarlett Johannson's character, and they develop an unusual friendship. As I remember it, the film explored the problems of communication between individuals against the larger backdrop of a cross-cultural adventure. It seemed to make the point that some of the worst misunderstandings occur between people who can't use language and cultural barriers as an excuse.

It's fascinating to think that an enterprise with such humble origins as bourbon is now a global commodity. One thing bourbon doesn't have and seems to need at this juncture is its own god. The gods of wine are Dionysus and Aphrodite, but they really don't jibe with bourbon, which has nothing to do with grapes or lofty elegance. I imagine someone like Elijah Craig. I don't know what the real Craig looked like, but my mythical one is fiery and bearded, with piercing eyes and a commanding voice. He cusses like a sailor but can explain the finer points of corn, winter wheat, barley, rye, and Kentucky spring water like nobody's business. He's like an Old Testament patriarch, except that when he strikes his staff on the rock, 90 proof comes out instead of milk and honey.