I'm a Stranger Here Myself

It's a wet and stormy Sunday, and plans to see a movie with a friend were washed out by his flooded basement this afternoon. Instead, I decided to go out somewhere to sit with my book and a latte.

I ended up at a Starbucks I haven't been to in ages. A pleasant surprise: there was a roomy, comfortable seating area that I didn't remember from before. There were plenty of students with laptops, including a few who must have been in grad school since they were surrounded by big stacks of books, and people who looked like they had dropped in from the neighborhood. A nice mix. My inner antenna sent the message: you fit in here. I was able to get a seat in the quiet area facing the window, where I could look out on the watery world. The music was audible but not too loud for reading or thinking: Bonnie Raitt, Cat Stevens, Paul Simon.

The issue of "environment" has been a continuing one for me. Having a mother from another country and living in a different state for much of my childhood is responsible, I'm sure, for some of the strangeness I feel about where I live. Also, I'm single in a couples-oriented community. On top of that, I'm an INFP on the Myers-Briggs test, a rare personality type (Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving, less than 5 percent -- some say 1 percent -- of the population).

The book I was reading in Starbucks is James Hollis's Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path, a book I picked up in L.A. last week. I bought one of Hollis's other books the first time I visited PGI when I was thinking of enrolling there, and it was a fateful encounter. That book was part of what cemented my decision to pursue myth studies.

I almost feel that rather than just reading this new book, I'm having a conversation with it. So many questions I've been thinking about, issues that have worried me lately, have come up in these pages that this book feels like a fateful encounter, too.

One of the things Hollis stresses is the unavoidability of suffering and the possibility of finding meaning in it. For Hollis, as for Jung, the second half of life is when things really start to get interesting. The conscious individual, having established a strong ego by building a more or less conventional life in the years of early adulthood, is in a position to turn inward in midlife. A person learns to recognize the patterns at work in his life, to accept himself as he (or she) is, to stop projecting so much onto others, and to read the messages sent from the unconscious in dreams, bodily symptoms, and the small occurrences of daily life. It boils down to becoming the co-creator of your own life rather than continuing to be driven by unconscious issues.

This is always a work in progress, never fully achieved, but when you're working with your inner nature, instead of against it, there's a feeling of flow. I have a friend who calls it "riding a wave." Surfing is a good analogy for individuation, because it acknowledges the depth and force of what buoys you up but recognizes that you can roll with it, ride it in your own unique way, and allow it to take you to shore.

While reading Hollis's book, I thought of something someone said to me recently. He said it was important to remember that wherever you are now (regardless of where you may go in the future) is where you are meant to be. That's the same thing Hollis is saying. The ego may or may not like what's happening at the time, but that's not necessarily the measure of the situation. If you're on a wave, ride it, instead of wishing you were on a mountaintop. Rather than spending too much time on questions that can't be answered immediately -- Where should I live? Will I ever get married? -- I can think instead about what I can, by living with integrity, bring to the situation I'm in.

It's good to be in a place where you feel understood and at ease, but I hear Hollis saying that it's sometimes more important to understand than to be understood. My capacity to bring something valuable to a situation or a place may outweigh my need for comfort, as much as I might wish it were otherwise.

More About Personality Types

The Queen of Tarts

I went for a walk after the rain this afternoon, looking for signs of spring. From a winter landscape of brown and gray, green grass and yellow daffodils are starting to emerge. I even saw a few tulips and was imagining how things will look in a week or so, when the redbuds and weeping cherries are in bloom. After the walk, I went to see Alice in Wonderland, and maybe I'm color-starved, but I was more struck by the use of color in the movie than anything else.

The predominant colors in the film are red and white, the colors of the two opposing queens. Despite patches of color in Underland (aptly named), much of the landscape is blasted and black, a picture of nuclear winter. Although the Red Queen is the wicked one, it's almost a relief when Alice makes it to her palace, which is colorful indoors and out, an effect heightened by the lavish use of red in the costumes and decor. Red is a color of appetite, and I could almost taste the Queen's missing squimberry tarts, which I imagine as a particularly luscious kind of raspberry pastry.

Alice spends most of the film wearing blue, which goes with her dreamy youthfulness. In the Red Queen's palace, though, she gets clothes done up from red curtains that are much more fashion-forward and fun than the pale blue ones. When she escapes the palace and ends up in the castle of the White Queen, her clothes become pale and silvery again. Like the White Queen herself and her surroundings, Alice looks ghostly and ethereal.

All of this makes me think of alchemy, which Jung explored as a symbol for individuation. In this system, the substance to be refined begins in blackness. You might say this is the wasteland, the period of darkness and unconsciousness, the wintertime of the soul. It's hard to move from the blackness to the state of albedo, the whiteness. This only occurs through repeated trial and error as the individual moves ahead and falls back again and again. In albedo, the person gradually attains objectivity and inner peace as he or she integrates more and more of the material of the unconscious.

All of this is on the way to the rubedo, the redness. The rubedo is the heart awakening, the point at which individuation really begins. The heat for the reddening is supplied by emotion, so that the person feels the change in a concrete way as a newly kindled passion for life.

Alice starts out in the desolation of the blackening, but the rest of the process is out of whack. She proceeds first to the Red Queen and then to the White. As beautiful as the White Queen is, there is something chilly about her and her surroundings. It's hard to imagine living for long in her palace; the most appealing scene is the one in which the Queen and her household walk outside between two rows of what appear to be blooming cherry trees; the pink blossoms are a welcome touch of color.

The White Queen, who could use some reddening, is too ineffectual to defeat the Jabberwocky herself, and it falls to Alice to be her champion. She slays the monster, which results in the banishing of the Red Queen and the restoration of the White. While this goes against an alchemical reading, it is true that Alice has to drink the blood of the Red Queen's champion in order to return to her ordinary life (the blood itself is purple and looks more like grape juice, but close enough). Alice returns to the upper world stronger and ready to chart her own path.

This was a Disney film, so I guess a dampening down of the fire was inevitable. This is a sanitized family movie, so you're only going to see so much libido, though Tim Burton did include subversive touches: the White Queen is a little scary in her own way, even passive-aggressive, and the Red Queen has a commendable appetite for tarts. She is, after all, the Queen of Hearts (though maybe too passionate about the wrong things), and she does give Alice a styling set of new clothes.

Alice begins and ends the movie wearing blue, a color signifying spirit rather than passion. I would have liked to see her sailing into her new life wearing that red party dress snipped out of curtains, but I realize that's asking a bit much of Disney.

On a final note, I'd like to say that although I'm not the one who ate the squimberry tarts, I would have been if I had found them.

My Funny Valentine

Facing Valentine's Day with a cold and a headache, but all is not lost. I looked in my cabinet a while ago and found four varieties of drinking chocolate: Green & Black's Organic, Dagoba Xocolatl with chilies and cinnamon, Cadbury Original, and (my favorite) Ghirardelli Premium Double Chocolate. I also have my latest discovery in eating chocolate: Lindt Dark with a Touch of Sea Salt, subtle but deadly. The chocolate situation is under control.

And for a nice romantic finish, there's Olympic pairs skating on TV tonight. I just saw the Chinese couple, Shen and Zhao, and I liked their story and their lyrical style. I hope they get their gold medal.

I once did a Jungian analysis of a fairy tale for a class. In my story, "The Raven" (sometimes called "The Glass Mountain"), a princess is turned into a bird by an enchantment. A man is walking in the forest one day and hears her calling. She tells him she can be freed with his help, if he refrains from eating, drinking, or sleeping until she comes to him. He fails three times, despite swearing that he will do it.

Apparently seeing more in him than meets the eye, she leaves him some magical objects (an inexhaustible loaf of bread, meat, and jug of wine) and a letter, saying that even though he isn't quite there yet, she has faith in him. If he still wants to try, he is to seek her in a certain faraway castle. She also leaves her gold ring as a token.

The man sets off to find her, eventually encountering giants deep in the forest. These giants are dangerous, but the funny thing is, they have a lot in common with the man -- their appetites, for one thing. This is just one point in the story where external events mirror the man's own situation. The giants also have hidden resources: access to maps that reveal the location of the castle. The man uses his inexhaustible food and drink to wine and dine the giants and convince them not to eat him. Not only do they help him locate the castle, but one of them carries him many leagues and drops him off in the neighborhood.

The castle is on top of a big glass mountain, which even an Olympic skier would find impossible to climb. The man knows the princess is up there, but he is forced to bide his time, watching and waiting. He's been there a whole year when three robbers come by, arguing over three magical objects they've obtained: a stick that opens any door, a horse that can go anywhere, and a cloak that makes its wearer invisible. Seizing the moment and the objects, the man grabs the stick, mounts the horse, throws on the cloak, and rides swiftly to the top of the mountain.

He enters the locked castle with the stick, makes his way invisibly (presumably on the lookout for threshold guardians), and throws the girl's ring into her cup. Going outside to await events, he is soon joined by the princess, who has recognized him by her ring. She tells him that she is now free and that the next day will be their wedding day.

This story is about the harnessing of appetites and emotions, which, according to Jung's theory, fuels transformation on the journey of individuation. No one has to undergo this journey: It's a choice. Anyone can remain unconscious, and many people do. I like this story because of the man's persistence despite the hugeness of the task, his coolness in the face of giants, and his ability to use what comes his way. He can ride a horse, too, like a cowboy.

If this went into a personal ad, it might sound like this: Woman seeking man. Must be mature, willing to go the distance, street smart, unafraid of giants, good at negotiating slippery slopes. Must be willing to learn from experience. Must know his way around a forest. Must love travel. Must understand the importance of chocolate. (I made that last part up.)