Escaping the Jaws of Saturn

I've been watching a DVD of a seminar James Hillman gave earlier this spring on the archetypes of the senex and the puer. I hadn't considered it before, but while listening to him speak, it occurred to me that they have a lot to do with the process of writing.

Hillman describes the puer as the spirit of spontaneity, creativity, and risk. The puer is a youthful figure, light on his feet and quick-moving. He has a certain heedlessness about him, maybe even a recklessness. He might be personified by Hermes, the stealer of Apollo's cattle, who manages to talk his way out trouble, charm the other gods, and invent the lyre all in one go.

The senex, on the other hand, is a somber figure associated with age and experience. He is steady, deliberate, rational, authoritative, and concerned with measuring and ordering things. His personification is Apollo, or -- according to Hillman -- Saturn, a somewhat cold and gloomy god, whose heaviness is in sharp contrast to the light-heartedness of the puer. (Saturn is also noteworthy for eating his children.)

Puer and senex characteristics are present in both men and women, at all times of life. They are more like patterns or types of energy than rigid representations of stages of life, though it is possible to see certain correspondences between puer and senex and the respective concerns of youth and old age. I'm wondering if they can also be related to the differences between right-brain and left-brain thinking.

Writing is a skill that requires the use of both sides of the brain, though not necessarily at the same time. When I write, the part I really like is playing with the words and ideas until they come out right. I might have a hunch about something that isn't substantial at all until I write it down, so I'm actually writing to figure out what I think. Writing itself is the way of discovery.

The other aspect of writing is editing, tidying up, and citation-checking, the part where you run the spell-checker and hunt for unmatched quotation marks. I am actually very good at this; I once worked as a copy editor and often had other people wanting me to proofread their work -- but I dislike it. I consider it the necessary finishing stage in writing and am meticulous about doing it but do not consider it fun.

I never thought of myself as a puer, but now I realize that that is exactly what I am when I'm engaged in the creative, exploratory part of writing. This is all risk-taking and not knowing if something's going to fly or not; it requires looseness and willingness to leap without seeing a net. The senex comes in later with the careful, deliberate editing, the consultations with the MLA style book, and the attention to structure and the length of paragraphs, things that usually don't occur to me until the end.

The puer-senex dimension actually explains a lot of things, not just writing. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said that I had more senex in me. I was usually the careful, reasonable, responsible one, always double-checking my work and being thoughtful about the way I approached things. I am still like that. But there was a whole other side of me trying to get out, which explains why I was always scribbling poetry at Starbucks, daydreaming, and driving around without knowing where I wanted to go. I was restless, but I tried to think I wasn't. What was really happening was that my senex was sitting on my puer and trying to eat him. My puer finally fought back and took such a flying leap that he landed on the other side of the country in graduate school.

I'm thinking about the wistful little boy from my dream, the one I wrote about in my first blog post in January. I think he's important on a lot of different levels, and I'm just now recognizing him as an infant puer. He showed up in another dream later on but was bigger and stronger and didn't seem quite so in need of protection. I didn't know I had him in me, but he did.

Practical Jokes from the Universe

Yesterday was really pretty nice. I woke up to the sound of rain and distant thunder, and it felt so cozy that I stayed in bed listening until I fell asleep again and woke up rested an hour or so later. The rest was a typical Saturday: yoga, lunch, writing, and shopping for chocolate and groceries. I even got a pedicure at the little nail spa run by that nice family and emerged with shiny toenails in a lovely shade that one of the little girls picked out for me. I was feeling pretty good after all that.

So I have no explanation for what happened today. I was planning to get some things done at home and then go to a movie, but it didn't turn out like that. It all started when I decided to wash a couple of loads of laundry. I had taken one load to the laundry room and was on my way back for the second one when I put out my hand to type in the security code on the front door and suddenly could not remember it. I have been typing this code in every day for 10 years, usually without thinking about it, but suddenly it was just gone. I could remember the first digit and the last but not the middle part.

This had happened once or twice before but not in a long time. I thought at first that it would come back to me if I waited a minute or so, but it didn't. I typed in what I thought was the right code several times, to no avail. Then I became convinced that I was just off by a single digit, so I tried various combinations without getting anywhere. Fifteen minutes went by and I was still locked out, so I decided to go back to the laundry room, wait for the washer to stop, and put the clothes in the dryer. Not thinking about it for a few minutes would almost certainly make the code come back to me, or so I thought.

I did all this and came back, but I still couldn't remember. By now, I was feeling less and less certain I knew what it was. I thought of ringing a neighbor's doorbell and just saying I'd forgotten it, but aside from feeling silly I was also reluctant to disturb someone on Sunday morning. After another frustrating quarter hour or so, someone came by and I followed them in. I was now back in my apartment but still had no clue, so I felt almost as trapped inside as I had outside. I knew I had the code written on a piece of paper at one time, but after searching the kitchen drawer, I had to admit that the piece of paper was probably long gone.

I decided to wedge something in the side door so I could go out and come back, praying that no one would remove it before I had a chance to throw my second load in. I finally ate a late breakfast, then went over to put my load in the dryer. I was so rattled that I didn't realize until I closed the dryer door that I didn't know where my quarters were. I thought I had the little envelope in my hand when I went to the laundry room, but they were nowhere in sight. I went back to my apartment and looked all over.

Now I was missing the means to get into my building as well as the means to dry a sopping wet load of sheets and towels. It wasn't quite as bad as the Fellowship of the Ring trying to figure out the password to get into Moria (no sinister gurgling lake at my back or ravening wolves), but there is something disquieting about being locked out of your home. I started to feel strange hanging around the entrance, as if I shouldn't be there. The only bright spot was that I kept noticing my pedicure and thinking that at least my nails looked great. 

I went back to the laundry room to hunt around for those darn quarters. If I could at least get the dryer going, that would be something . . . and sure enough, this time, I started moving things in the dryer and found the folded envelope at the bottom. I had thrown it in along with the load.

Having solved that mystery, I thought I would feel better if I took a shower and changed clothes. After that, the last load was dry, so I brought everything back, made up the bed, and put everything else away. It was now mid-afternoon, and I was still codeless (and clueless), but I decided I wouldn't be a prisoner in my own apartment and would go about my business in the hope that the code would reappear in my memory by the time I got back. 

As it happened, a young man from my building was coming out as I was standing at the door, gazing at the lock as if it contained the mysteries of the universe. I asked him, "What is our code?" and he told me what it was, saying he hoped they hadn't changed it. I said "No, I'm just typing it in wrong" . . . and then I tried it, and it worked. Once he said it, it sounded right, but I'm not sure when I would have remembered it on my own. It was like I had gone on a trip and been away so long that I had forgotten where I left my key. Greatly relieved, I went out to the car to run my errands -- but not before writing the code down.

Perhaps Jung would say there are few accidents. I wouldn't say that everything that happens has a deeper meaning, but it's hard not to muse over such an odd occurrence. I was writing about mazes yesterday afternoon, and the sense of being lost; the experience of being locked out was a lot like ending up in a blind alley. I won't say that this was a case of unconsciously acting out a subject I've been preoccupied with, but that's one possibility. Stranger things have happened.

Deja Vu All Over Again

I attended a conference this weekend at my school. It was the first time I had stayed at Ladera, our second campus, since my first summer as a myth studies student. I drove up Thursday from L.A., met a friend for dinner in Carpinteria, and walked down to the beach for a stroll under the stars. We arrived at the campus in the dark, just like I did the first time I stayed there. I drove myself this time and was proud of being able to negotiate the winding, hilly lanes that had seemed so bewildering a few years ago.

By some quirk, my classmate had the same room in the residence hall that she had the first time through; I was still next door to her, but on the opposite side, which resulted in a very strange feeling of deja vu. It was one of those instances where time does a loop and carries you back, like a labyrinth that circles you around to the same spot from a different vantage point.

This circumstance invited a meditation on where we are now compared to where we were. I know that I listened to the conference presenters with a practiced ear, better able to evaluate both content and form, on the other side of doing multiple presentations of my own as a student. I talked to a filmmaker whose film I had seen years ago in my home town, never dreaming I would ever meet her, much less be able to talk to her seriously about my own interest in film. I played with graphite pencils, Play Doh, and crayons in the art loft, no longer so afraid of feeling silly and more willing to just see what would happen. I attended an early morning session in which people shared their nighttime dreams in what was called a Social Dreaming Matrix. (Hey, why not? -- this is California.)

I also noticed that the old Jesuit residence hall didn't seem quite as sinister at night, that the mountains are still stunning, whether viewed sharp-edged against the light or enshrouded in Arthurian mists, and that the walk up to the pretty little Vedanta temple is as steep as it ever was.

I thought the highlight of the weekend would be the pre-conference workshop on myth and the movies, until I was astounded by a lecture yesterday morning on Jung, imagination, and social consciousness. The presenter, Mary Watkins, explained the importance of bringing individuation into the wider world. A truly individuated person, she said, is an advocate for human rights and the need to heal divisions between people and countries. I flashed back to the first presentations I heard as a prospective student and remembered how exciting it was to hear someone talk about the ways depth psychology could help make a better world. Maybe that will give me a touchstone to steer by as I find my way through the labyrinth of my own research.

It's never too late to be surprised. I was heading down the hill yesterday, on my way back to L.A., with the satellite radio station cranked up in my rental car and '50s music rocking, when I realized, for the first time in four years, that the name of the road I was on -- Toro Canyon Road -- means "Canyon of the Bull." I have seen the minotaur in many places but overlooked his presence on this road until now. Of course, now I know that not only can you find him everywhere, but that he's more complicated than I used to think he was.

Adventures with Hestia

This morning I planned to do some housework that I thought would take about an hour. Instead, it turned into a marathon cleaning session lasting about three hours. Even though it threw a wrench into other plans I had for the day, it was great to get so much done. It didn't sound like a lot -- dusting, mopping the floors, cleaning the bathroom -- but it somehow turned into a cleaning odyssey.

It started yesterday when I threw away the carpet in my hallway that I've had since moving in here. It was hard to keep clean and had gotten a lot of wear and tear, and I finally decided to let it go. It was so nice to see the hardwood floor afterwards, and the hall seemed so much more spacious, that it encouraged me to start cleaning and clearing on a wider scale. This morning, I decided to dust the furniture before breakfast, and I ended up clearing away some long-term clutter from my bookshelves right off the bat.

I was moving things out of the way before mopping the kitchen and decided to tackle the accordion file containing some of my mother's papers. This was kind of a big deal because I've had it since before she died, and it's been in the kitchen for several years. I felt much the same way about it that I did about the papers, clippings, photos, and memorabilia my father gave me before he died. It was a long time before I had the stamina to go through any of it. Today, once I started going through the file, I saw that it was going to be much easier than I thought. It contained mostly monthly statements for utilities, credit cards, and insurance payments and was pretty dry as far as contents go. An object that had assumed a heaviness out of all proportion to its size was dispatched in under 20 minutes.

When I was dust-mopping my room, I encountered a flat box that's been under the chest of drawers for years. Now I was really in the mood to jettison things, so I hauled it out and looked inside: it was mostly paperwork and manuals for a computer I don't even own anymore. I also found a dream journal I was keeping a few years ago and a couple of other items worth saving, so I took those out and made another trip to the dumpster. It felt so good to be getting rid of things that I was tempted to start going through my closet. But since it was getting on toward mid-afternoon by then, I decided that could wait for another day.

After finishing the floors, I scrubbed the bathtub and the sink. Then I jumped in the shower to wash all the dust off and was surprised how much lighter and more relaxed I felt when I got out. Instead of feeling annoyed that the housework had taken so long and prevented me from getting into the shower until after 2 o'clock, I felt like I had just had a spa treatment.

I had planned to do some writing, but by the time I got dressed and ate lunch, it seemed better to go out. It was beautiful outside; rain earlier in the day had washed the air clean, and there was a pleasant breeze. I don't know if it was feeling virtuous from all the housework, the fact that I was wearing my denim shorts, the brilliant green of the summer lawns in the light, or just what it was, but I felt unencumbered, the way I remember feeling when I was about nine. It seemed impossible that I could actually be an adult with responsibilities; it felt like school had just let out.

The cleaning and clearing ritual must have jarred something loose and created more space; I seem to have swept something else out the door besides dust and cobwebs. Hestia is an unassuming goddess, but a goddess is still a goddess. It's never wise to underestimate even a modest goddess.

Esperance Me Guide

Writing a dissertation is strenuous, and you have to keep your strength up. Yesterday I had popcorn, a cherry Coke, ice cream, a brat, baked beans, lemonade, and potato chips, all in a six-hour period. A brownie, too -- I forgot about that. Getting your mind off your work is also important. I've somehow managed to watch six movies since last weekend, and all of them were frivolous. I have Kurosawa's Rashomon sitting on my living room table, and I guess I'm going to watch it . . . but really, I'd rather watch Letters to Juliet again.

This is all a counterweight to the reading I've been doing. I hit a rough patch with the scholarly tome on labyrinths I've been carrying around. It's an important book and thoroughly researched, but I realized the other day I was drowning in it. I had started to feel like a schoolgirl in pigtails in the face of the author's authoritative tone and profusion of notes. It finally dawned on me today -- this book has turned into a labyrinth! And the author is my Minotaur!

Before I admitted it was a monster, I just used delay tactics to avoid picking it up. This morning, I did a little reading before and after breakfast. That wasn't so bad. I had finally decided I wasn't obligated to study all the illustrations and read all the notes. But despite this concession, I still found myself in no hurry to pick it up again, even after taking a shower, checking my email, looking up the weather forecast, watching Old Spice commercials on YouTube (I'm serious), and paying bills.

After a bit of slow and labored reading, I found a reference in the book to a Bach composition called "Kleines Harmonisches Labyrinth" (I didn't know there was such a thing as musical labyrinths, but indeed there is). This composition is supposed to make you think of a labyrinth because of its unexpected chords, but I found it on YouTube, and it just sounded like Bach to me. I did discover by sniffing around that not everybody agrees with my author that this piece is Bach's -- a-ha! A chink in the armor! It came as a relief to find that this expert could be wrong about something . . . though I was disappointed that I couldn't hear the labyrinth in the music.

I decided to clear my head, so I went for a walk. Being on my own two feet seemed to get me oriented, and I got home 40 minutes later feeling better. I wrestled the book into the car and headed for Starbucks. In looking at the 50 pages remaining, I realized I could finish it today if I pushed, since a lot of it is illustrations. I sat by the window and concentrated; I'm sure my expression was terrifying. I read steadily, checking notes here and there, and an hour and a half later, I was finished, despite a headache.

I'm grateful to this author for providing much-needed clarity on the history of the labyrinth; I also appreciate the fact that he's clear on the difference between a labyrinth and a maze, a distinction that's important in my thesis but often ignored by others. All the same, it's nice to be on the other side of this particular labyrinth.

While fixing dinner tonight, I remembered to turn over the page on my calendar, something I always like doing because I look forward to seeing the next month's picture and philosophical quote. The theme of the calendar is The Path: Finding Your Way on Life's Journey. The picture for June shows an empty boardwalk, a study in shadow and light extending into the distance over a marsh or inlet; what appears to be the sea is a blue ribbon in the distance. The caption quotes Psalm 77 -- "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known."

Bottom's Dream

I've been thinking about A Midsummer Night's Dream for several days. I don't know why I started thinking about it, except that maybe I was anticipating summer. I love spring, but in my mind's eye, paradise is summer. It smells like newly mown grass, with a dollop of suntan lotion, and it tastes like sweet iced tea and homemade ice cream. There might even be fairies, feuding lovers, and mischief afoot by moonlight.

It didn't feel like summer when I got up this morning. Thunderstorms cleared the air Friday night (and made for great sleeping weather), and yesterday was bright and pleasant . . . but a feeling of winter persisted. Certainly, we had a long winter here, of which most everyone complained, and it hung on for a long time. Maybe the cold and rainy weather earlier this week was too reminiscent of the gray season we had trouble shaking off.

This afternoon, I hauled my copy of Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 Years down to the cafe, where I planned to finish the chapter I was struggling with yesterday. As soon as I walked outside, the warmth hit me -- no longer the balminess of spring, but a palpable, pleasant heat, like a day in June. I got in the car and searched for the right music. That's when the first good thing happened. I've been sad about the station I found recently that played such great music until they changed their format. By some miracle, it was back today to the way it had been . . . Percy Sledge was singing when I tuned in. Maybe things weren't so bad after all.

Then, another miracle. I was driving down the street when suddenly it happened, just like that: Something about the intense blue of the sky and the angle of light, and boom, I passed through an invisible portal from winter to summer. Some combination of Motown, sunlight, my summer sandals, and the leisurely afternoon ahead, and I popped right out of Lapland and onto the beach.

At the cafe, I sat by the window and despite the distractions of the passing scene and the uptempo jazz they were playing, managed to concentrate on my book and get deeper into it than I've been able to for the last couple of weeks.

I then remembered that the summer movie series is getting ready to start downtown, so I swung by to get a calendar. This Wednesday, the season opener: Raiders of the Lost Ark, a summer movie if there ever was one. When I got home, I was feeling playful, so while the water was boiling for a pitcher of tea, I opened my Pelican Shakespeare to A Midsummer Night's Dream, flipped through the pages, and let my finger fall at random. When I opened my eyes, my finger was on this passage, a speech of Oberon's to Titania:

How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, 
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

I had forgotten all about the connection of the play to Theseus, whose impending marriage to Hippolyta is the springboard for the plot. Ariadne, the Minotaur, and the labyrinth are all mentioned in the notes. It was a nice bit of synchronicity to be reminded of all this, and it might even be important for my research.

This play is my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, the lightest, dreamiest, most summery one of all. My imagination has been reaching for summer. When things veer too much toward Hamlet, it's time for some fun in the woods, where things come out all right in the end, and what seemed like tragedy is revealed by a sudden sleight of hand to be comedy instead. As for Puck, I think he's been hanging around for quite some time anyway.

A Celtic Fairy Tale

(Adapted from "The Corpse Watchers," as recorded by Patrick Kennedy, 1866)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had three daughters. One by one they came to her and asked her blessing as each set out to seek her fortune. The first two were selfish and inconsiderate, and neither girl obtained their mother's blessing. Nor did they take advantage of opportunities that came their way. Both cursed an old woman on the road who begged for a crust of bread, and both failed at the task of sitting up with the body of a young man newly dead. Some failure of nerve can be forgiven here, since the young man, dead or not, had the nasty habit of sitting up in the middle of the night and addressing each girl with the remark, "All alone, fair maid." If they did not reply, he turned them into flagstones.

The youngest daughter, though, was made of different stuff. She made sure to obtain her mother's blessing before setting out, and she gladly shared her lunch with the old woman on the road (who was really a good fairy in disguise). She came upon the house with the grieving mother and her son and agreed to sit up with the body. The mistress of the house gave her apples and nuts to eat while she kept her vigil; the young lady considered the corpse while cracking nuts and thought it a pity that he had died, since dead or not, he was still pretty hot. 

OK, you know the rest: when it was late at night, he suddenly sprang up, as he had with the other two, and hit her with "All alone, fair maid," to which she replied:

All alone I am not

For I have little dog Douse, and Pussy, the cat

And apples to roast, and nuts to crack

And all alone I am not.

Seeing that she had spirit, the young man said to her, "Well, I can see you're gutsy -- but I bet you don't have enough guts to follow me where I need to go."

"Oh, I said I'd watch you, and watch you I will," she shot back.

"Ah, well, did I mention I'll be going by way of the poisonous bog, the burning forest, the cave of terror, the glass hill, and the Sea of the Dead? What do you say to that, missy?"

"After you," she replied.

Well, he wasn't just whistling Dixie. He jumped though the window, and she followed, until they came to the Green Hills and the edge of the poisonous bog. Since he was insubstantial, he was able to hop right across, but the girl was stymied until the good fairy appeared and touched her shoes with a wand, causing them to spread and grow flat. She was easily able to cross then with her new marsh-skimming shoes.

Next, they came to the burning forest, and once again, the good fairy intervened, spreading her thick cloak over the girl as she passed through the flames. The cave of terror was filled with the stuff of nightmares, snakes and slimy things, and there were terrible screams and yells, but the girl was prevented from hearing them because the good fairy stuffed her ears with wax. (I watch scary movies with the sound turned down, and I can vouch that it really does cut down on the scare factor.)

So far so good, until they came to the glass hill. The young man bounded ahead, but the girl remained at the bottom, wondering what to do, until the good fairy came back and once again touched her shoes with her wand until they grew sticky on the bottom, so that she was easily able to cling to the glass and scale it. At the top, the young man told her to go back and tell his mother how far she had come, then plunged into the Sea of the Dead. It's unclear whether she yelled, "Turn back? -- I don't think so!" or "Geronimo!" but in any event, she jumped in after him without giving it a second thought.

They both sank deeper and deeper, and everything was confused, and she couldn't breathe, but then she seemed to be in a beautiful meadow with a green sky above, resting against the young man's shoulder, half asleep. Then she thought she was asleep, and she was asleep, and then she was awake, once more in the young man's house, and the young man and his mother were sitting by the bedside, watching her.

Now the truth came out. The young man had been cursed with a deathlike condition by a witch who was resentful when he refused to marry her. The curse could only be broken by a girl brave enough to do what needed doing. At her request, the young man turned the sisters from flagstones back into girls, and he gave himself to her as her husband. And as the story says, if they didn't live happily ever after, at least may we.

I had to tell this story in a class a couple of years ago. I didn't psychoanalyze it at the time, but now that I've had a while to think about it, here's what I get out of it:

1. Try to start out with at least a blessing and lunch, because both will come in handy.

2. Try to help those you meet in life; someday, you will need help yourself. (Especially, never, ever forget to share your bread with withered, beggarly old women; these are almost always fairies.)

3. Just in case your fairy doesn't show up, try to have a variety of shoes suitable for all occasions. The same goes for outerwear and ear accessories. 

4. Learn to swim.

5. If you see a good thing, keep it in sight.

6. Be nice to your relatives, even if they're gold-diggers. It makes for nicer photos at the wedding, and your mother will appreciate it.

7. Not mentioned in the story, but I suggest a good foot massage and pedicure before starting any adventures. Your feet will do the walking, after all.