Category: Sauntering Existentialist

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Gloria Steinem – The Power of Air – Connectivity

GloriaSteinemGloria Steinem is 80 years old, tall, unbowed and aging naturally. Her voice is strong and despite chronicling the setbacks women have faced in the last number of decades, she retains a light, dry sense of humor.  Ms. Steinem took us on an historical tour of patriarchy – in religion, government and culture.  Coming to the conference from Austin, TX (where women are fighting to retain control of their reproductive rights) I resonated with her statement that men control women by controlling reproduction.  Patriarchy has institutionalized rape, genocide and created a capitalistic system in which fealty to God, King and husband have been legislated for centuries.  She views monotheism as religious imperialism with an imperative to subjugate nature and thus, women and children.  It’s hard to argue when women are still fighting the battle for fair and equitable representation in the workplace, at home and in government.  What would the world look like if women were in charge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYpAuUzDhU

In Texas, many of us have been struggling to get out the vote.   Three of the young people in my office (students at a university) either were not registered to vote or did not know who was on the ballot.  Among other important considerations, we are electing a Governor and Lt. Governor who will control the money and the laws that will represent the wishes of the people or those of powerful elites.  Ms. Steinem rightly said that successful social movements are like a tree, starting with the roots and spreading upward.  Our power lies in how and where we spend our money  and in exercising our right to vote.

One of the most powerful stories Gloria told was the story of how Clarence Thomas eventually came to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. In 1982 John Danforth, a Congressman from Missouri narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger, Harriet Woods, by roughly 2,000 votes in his bid for reelection. He had earlier appointed Clarence Thomas as his aide, introducing him to highly placed Republicans in Washington DC.  Thomas was subsequently appointed to the United States court of Appeals by President GHW Bush. Then, only 16 months later he survived a hard fought confirmation hearing by a 52-48 vote (after Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment). He was now the most conservative supreme court justice in the United States and has cast pivotal votes in electing George W Bush, among other decisions that have changed the course of history and will continue to do so.   This is one of the best arguments I’ve heard for voting.   Gloria Many people feel disenfranchised and unrepresented by their elected leaders.  But I agree with Gloria; we really can make a difference by using our dollars wisely and by voting. There was a 13 year old girl at the conference who stood up on the last evening as we were summarizing what we would take home from our experience.  She spoke passionately about how grateful she was to know that feminism is alive and well and that she now knew that whether or not she was considered weird by her friends, she had people.  Let’s continue to fight the good fight for we are not done.

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Alice Walker – the Wisdom of Earth

Alice Walker

Desire

My desire
is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
& soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
& sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
& dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I’ve survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.   Alice Walker

Alice Walker began her talk by giving us permission to be afraid, that in times of danger it was a sane response.  It was not what I expected from the woman whose grace touched the audience with such warmth, simplicity and humor.  She was not patronizing, did not preach – but led us through war, then into peace and eventually, joy. We did not look away from the pain of families crushed by bombs as she reminded us that women and children just want to come home, sit in a cozy chair and pet their dog. We honored the sorrow and the tragedy of the innocent victims of endless war and were advised to “feel everything and want less” in order to come to peace despite the suffering –  to care and to do something for those who need our help.

She acknowledged the struggle of our divided people to get over the feeling that “she might smell nice, but . . ” when breaking bread with those whose skin is different.  She encouraged us to “get to know who stands beside you, to see her as she really is.”

Alice Walker has fought so many good fights, not least being the right for women to freely claim and respect their own bodies, and to ask for the same respect from everyone else. Womanism, a term she coined decades ago, is now the subject of a class at the University of Texas “Beyonce Feminism and Rihanna Womanism“.  She has inspired many scholars, authors and poets, including our moderator for this event, Dr. Melanie Harris, an associate professor of Religion at Texas Christian University.  To Walker, womanists are to feminists as purple is to lavender – they also recognize the struggle for racial and class equality (particularly for black women) as a central tenant of their social activism.  Also noted – wise elders can teach younger women the difference between freedom and stupidity.

Using ones’ imagination: allowing for fluid gender identities in the 11th grade and sophomore years of college are among the many ideas put forth by our wise earth woman.  Joy in non-attachment, allowing it to reside in your heart is the fruit of many years of meditation and the infusion of spirit into all aspects of her life.  I spoke with her briefly, to extend an invitation to come and speak to the students in our graduate program here at UT, and found myself teary eyed.  Her energy was so kind that it allowed a very delicate aspect of myself to engage openly in our conversation.  I will remember that impression and the other funny and poignant moments with gratitude and reverence for the wholly spirit – that which makes us whole.  Many thanks to the noble soul who is Alice Walker.  Our world is better for her caring.

 

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Deepening Women’s Wisdom – the experience

When women come together, we dance.  We dance our thoughts, our sorrows and our joy.  Flowing like water, drops in an ocean – we recognize that we are one.  Gloria Steinem said empathy arises when all five senses are present and engaged.  It was impossible not to feel  and embrace otherness – all we will never know about ourselves and each other.

Ghost Ranch, set in the high mesa of New Mexico rust-red-hillsis best known from the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, whose home is on the ranch. She spent years traveling through the box canyons, painting the cliffs from many perspectives.  They transform dramatically during the day and night and are as varied as the people who call New Mexico home.

The Deepening Women’s Wisdom workshop, led by Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem and Hyun Kyung Chung was supported by Indigenous women’s healing circles for humankind and for our mother the earth. Many of the attendees were ministers, therapists, teachers and feminists who came to share their story and to renew our commitment to move forward in the face of decades of creeping inequality.  This was the first time I attended a gathering of women and didn’t know how easy it would be to flow with the stream of our relational energy.  I felt illuminated by new friendships unfolding in the vibrant beauty of the land. TreeLight  We respected our leaders and each other in equal measure.  The conversation embraced us all, no matter our hardships, privilege or age.  I felt the gentle grace of the holy spirit settle upon us like a soft cloud when we gathered in the evening to reflect on the day’s activities.

Connecting with the earth was part of this renewing journey, something that typically encourages me to wander away from humans.  Making new friends, dancing with abandon and learning with and about the amazing journeys of the women who attended opened up my heart to people.  The stars filled the sky with dancing lights and streaming galaxies.  Our songs and stories filled my heart with love.  Thanks be to all that is and special thanks to Dr. Leona Stuckey-Abbott, the (Ir)Reverend Shannon A White, and Licia Berry for making this journey so heartfelt and memorable.

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To Have and Have Not

DignityI was in San Francisco at an American Sociological Association conference, aptly titled Hard Times. In this city of gilded and new age cultures (incongruently juxtaposed) we see the world of privilege co-existing with a street scene that could have been from the Middle Ages or from some dystopian future.Tenderloin This isn’t my first visit. I’ve been here several times, as recently last year, but I didn’t stay in the Tenderloin district. Here, feral humans mingle freely with house humans, able to express themselves openly in ways I don’t see in Austin. Of course Texas is not known for it’s tolerance and I’m pretty sure most people think we’re all packin’ heat. The homeless in Texas are allowed on some blocks, street corners and under bridges and the watchful eye of Johnny Law.  California and San Francisco, in particular, is more tolerant and offers medical care and other benefits.

Woman_muralFlower_Power I didn’t realize that Austin, Texas is such a sanitized environment. In some ways, the open presence and the number of homeless people who find community in the streets of San Francisco more truthfully reflects the proportion of people who teeter on the brink of losing their “middle class” existence. Without family or other social networks, many are at risk. Truth United_Nations
San Francisco is the site where the United Nations charter was signed. Perhaps we should move the Statue of Liberty to the West Coast, where the poor are more welcome. It is a confounding situation and one that begs the question of liberty and justice for all. I am still processing a welter of mixed emotions.

ThankYou

 

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Matisse, Oracle of the Emergent Anima

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom
Maya Angelou

Josephine Baker was a living symbol of the new 20th Century woman.  Sexually daring, athletic, funny and beautiful, she became the cultural amima of Paris in the Jazz Age.  Matisse was one of many admirers and she dined well among luminaries of the Moveable Feast.  Flappers like Zelda Fitzgerald lived on the edge, walking a tightrope between two world wars, booze in one hand, pen and paper in the other. TheCowboy  Paris embraced the world of American Jazz, Oriental art, philosophy and African and Sub-Saharan culture with a explosion of visual art, music and literature.  From Dada to Existentialism, the French avant garde movements provided vigorous intellectual fireworks, until they were overshadowed by the bombs of World War II.   Salons, like Gertrude Stein’s gathered and supported writers and artists who found patronage and creative synergy. The Cone Sisters and the Steins were among the most loyal collectors of Matisse, including most of the paintings and sculptures shown in these posts.


Matisse painted vital, often sexual imagery in the inner language of the subconscious.  Yet, he portrayed women with their own agency who were emotionally and intellectually complex.

Obviously, we have a long way to go before we achieve true equality; there always seems to be one step backward for every two forward. But, the energy of independent women in the arts, in the workforce and culturally propells us forward through interminable wars.

We started with Josephine Baker and I’ll end with a clip from Princesse Tam Tam, somewhat ironic yet apt.   Josephine Baker’s character came to Paris as an exotic Moroccan “princess” who arouses the ire of blonde society matrons. They trick her into throwing off the flimsy chains of civilization, revealing the wild beast within as she must respond to the beat of tribal drums. Notice the synchronized choreography of the white chorus girls (ala Busby Berkeley) before she leaps into the dance, a wild  woman freed.

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Wild Beasts of the Jazz Age – Matisse and Fauvism

Riverwalk1
Riverwalk by SAMA

The Matisse: Life in Color exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art, on loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art features more than 80 drawings, paintings and sculptures.  The extensive Cone Sisters collection contributes the bulk of these phenomenal works and will only be in San Antonio until September 7, 2014.  A pop up cafe  (The Wild Beast) and Matisse themed treats are offered around town, in the spirit of the man whose exquisite sense of color started a movement all its own.

Fauvism
Fauvism poster at the Wild Beast Cafe

Fauvism was a short lived but potent bridge between the impressionist and later avant-garde movements of the early 20th Century.  Henri Matisse was the acknowledged leader and the yin to Pablo Picasso’s Cubist yang. Wild beasts were loosed into Europe, through the advent of psychoanalysis, World War I and the Jazz Age.  Vibrant, living, emotive color flowed from the Impressionists into the palettes of these passionate, unruly artists.  In 1906, the 20th Century was full of promise, psychology having just lifted the lid off the unconscious mind.  ElevatorWild beasts fighting the repression of the Victorian era found a welcome home in Paris, which later became an international haven for writers, artists and African American jazz musicians in the 1920’s.  I’ve separated the photos I took at the exhibit into 2 parts.  The gallery below focuses on the undulating rhythms of color and form, the beasts.  The second post will focus on the emergence of the dark feminine, the liberated erotic woman of the new era.  Asian and Africa design themes influenced European culture in ways never imagined by colonialists who kept Queen and country sacrosanct.

Paris was the crucible of art, literature, philosophy and fashion in the early 1900s. France and Spain were always more open to the exotic influences of the Orient and of Africa than the English and Dutch colonialists. Artists began to see the world in ways that could be considered prescient, given the perspectives  science and technology afford us today. Light, form and color were transformed to capture the life of the mind, the spirit and speak directly to the flesh. It’s that experience of color splashing into the body, senses undulating with the rhythm of the paintings, the secret language of artistic seduction that a live viewing of these works convey.   Energizing the body, mind and spirit and lifting us out of the doldrums that being human imposes – this is the gift of art.  Go and see for yourself.  MatisseBed

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

Henri Matisse
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Space Time – it’s alive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry_%28string_theory%29
In superstring theory, the extra dimensions of spacetime are sometimes modeled as a 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold, which led to the idea of mirror symmetry.

Scientists are exploring the outer and inner regions of the universe in ways that challenge our culturally Newtonian  belief that we live in a world of objects ruled by gravity, which is basically centrifugal force. While I am not a scientist, I appreciate the work scientists are doing to inform the public about the amazing insights their explorations yield.

Nova’s The Fabric of the Cosmos gives a fabulously illustrated version of the way we have changed our understanding of the universe mathematically.  Like Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series, astrophysicists, mathematicians, neurobiologists and others are using new media tools to illustrate their seeming weekly breakthroughs.  We can see so far into space, both inner and outer that it’s changing how we perceive our world on the most fundamental levels.  For instance, discovering the increasing acceleration in the expansion of the universe led to a new awareness of dark energy, a force that repels in the way gravity attracts, challenging Einstein’s view of his “biggest blunder“.

The Alchemical Tree of Life

From quintessence to eternal recurrence, new theories invoke specters of 19th century spiritualism in which the aether becomes a fifth element, a medium of transmission for electromagnetic energy (light) and a new perspective on time and space (dark).  Alchemy is alive and well in the 21st Century.  Carl Jung ‘s study of alchemy provided a new interpretation of what is largely considered  balderdash.  Jung recognized the cycles of transformation as aspects of psychic integration, creating new interest in this ancient art.  In my post on the fractal nature of time I talked about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and other family traits.  After watching the Nova program on the fabric of space-time several things fell into place, resulting in the (albeit crude) model shown below.  Superstring theory reveals the vibratory interconnectedness of all there is.  That sensitivity is reflected in the responsiveness and receptivity of space-time. Is science bringing us closer to a merger of physical reality and consciousness?

Before I launch into an explanation, let’s talk about the felt experience of some of these ideas. Intuition, if not reviled, has certainly been the poor handmaiden of science, champion of the age of enlightenment.  In the 20th Century, famous examples of scientific breakthroughs linked to dreams include Friedrich Kekulé’s discovery of benzene, Otto Loewi’s chemical transmission of nerve impulses, and Srinivasa Ramanujan’ series of mathematical formulas. Many inventions and works of literature and art are beholden to information brought to light in dreams. Dreams help bridge the gap between our unconscious knowledge and our waking consciousness.

The model below suggests that space-time is the medium of consciousness as well as the physical world.SpaceTimeModelI apologize for the limitations of my model.  Try to imagine the cones as vortices, spiraling outward/inward in 6 directions (so too the arrows). Our conscious awareness is generally focused on ourselves in the center and in the areas of family and collective awareness immediately surrounding us. We tend to experience time as forward marching and linear.   If I knew how to create a 3D animated model, you would see the structure as a globular, pulsing cloud connecting to others in expanding and contracting spirals of energy.

The further out we go from the central self, the more we explore the subconscious aspects of our awareness, both personal and collective.  When the spirals overlap, we might experience foresight, synchronicity, new life themes and emergent evolutionary patterns.  Or we might meet people who facilitate our growth. Space-time is the medium in which intensely lived experiences reside. In this model, time moves in all directions and is subject to the way we define our experience more than any kind of imposed linearity. With the advent of holographic theories of the universe, it could be argued that our lives are the end of life projections of choices we have already made that are capable of change and renewal. Or perhaps the dream projects the dreamer, with no beginning and no end, backwards to the future with Aristotle. Parva_Naturalia_1210

 

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Toast World Sauntering Day with a Lotus Martini

lotus-flower-martini
Lotus Flower Martini – 6 Parts Absolut Vodka • 3 Parts Lychee Liqueur • 2 Parts Violet Liqueur • 1 Splash Blue Curacao • 1 Flower Flowers (Edible) • 4 Leaves Mint Leaf

June 19th is best known as Juneteenth, the day we commemorate the end of slavery. Galveston, Texas claims the honor of being the city of origin for this celebration, which happened to be two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I guess we like to saunter toward progress here in Tejas. When you think about it, sauntering celebrates the joy of living, freedom from the grind of our work a day lives.

From an article in Business Times by Hannah Osborne

To saunter, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is to “walk in a slow and relaxed way, often in no particular direction”.

Unlike other forms of walking, including prancing, strutting and ambling, sauntering involves walking slowly with a leisurely demeanour.

While the origin of the word is unknown, it was first used in its current form in the 17th century. A description of a saunter-er was popularised in Charles Baudelaire’ The Painter of Modern Life, in which he portrayed a flâneur – a man or woman who sauntered around town observing society.

“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.”

However, Rabe said that while you can describe a saunter, it is a gift impossible to teach: “Those who are in the know on sauntering would say you’re born with it. There probably is a technique but it would be useless to describe it.”

So, cheers (it’s also National Martini Day) and may ambiance suffuse your day.

 

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The Exquisite Corpse, Family Constellations and the Fractal Nature of Time

Iceberg
Charles Long CATALIN, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center, Austin.

One of my most haunting dreams, actually a dream into waking experience, happened several years ago.  I was just waking up from a deep sleep and felt myself rising up into my body, into consciousness.  First, I became aware of myself as a mountain, part of a range of peaks. I didn’t remember my name until I got to the very top of the mountain, and then I remembered that I am Evelyn.  It was shocking, recognizing this re-prioritized identity.  For a fleeting moment, my fundamental self was a part of a submerged (to my consciousness) ancestral range and only at the  peak lived my normal waking self.  It was an iconic moment, an anchor of knowing that has encouraged me to explore the  intergenerational transmission of talent and of trauma that I knew lurked in my family’s subconscious.  We recognize physical and intellectual traits that are passed along the family vine but what about deeply felt experiences and  patterns of behavior?   My mother’s family in Vienna, Austria experienced two World Wars and their shattering aftermath and my father was also a veteran and military officer. These traumas affected me subconsciously, while certainly impacting my parents’ capacity to nurture.

Psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s book The Shell and the Kernel describes the process by which trauma is either assimilated into the psyche of the individual (introjection), often through a process of mourning. Or, by the creation of an exquisite corpse, trauma is entombed and buried in a subconscious crypt, where healing does not occur. Further, they suggest that these corpses can become ghosts, haunting families through several generations, unless they can be uncovered and healing and understanding are facilitated.

I bring this up hot on the heels of a wonderful movie I saw, The Book Thief. The story is narrated by Death who follows a young girl, Liesel, when she goes to live with strangers after the Nazi’s imprisoned her mother, during the build up to WWII. Eventually, the war destroys the lives of the villagers, the bombs fall and many die. It might as well have been the story of my mother’s childhood. It affected me in a powerful way, evoking painful impressions of how much my mother, grandmother and great grandmother suffered during two wars in Vienna. My father was a soldier too, but it is my mother’s family trauma that I’ve been the most impacted by. Those who lose their loved ones, their homes and their lives in war or other disasters are haunted. Sometimes I think this world has become overburdened with ghosts.

As part of a guided autobiography project, I started exploring and writing about family relationships and intergenerational transmission .  A friend recommended Bert Hellinger’s work on Family Constellations. While I won’t go into a lot of detail in this post, what peaked my interest was his theory that members of a family create and interact with an energy field they share and navigate more or less successfully.  The field is an integrating mechanism and meta consciousness that can include grandparents, former partners and the dead.  Anngwyn St. Just, whose book Trauma: Time, Space and Fractals discusses the transmission of unresolved trauma in the family and at the cultural level, suggests a new way of contextualizing this in time and place. Seeing time and space as a continuum, mapped in fractal patterns creates interesting perspectives on inherited family themes.

This video from Charles Long’s show illustrates both the way individual members are positioned, their submerged aspects and the fractal element in the map behind the grouping.  He has also incorporated sound and smell, a delightful multisensory experience.

This is just a preview of family constellation therapy and  my ongoing preoccupation with non-linear models of time.  Both have excited skepticism and appreciation, which we’ll explore further, anon.