It was something of a ploy, inspired by dozens of spy movies of the 1930's and 40's, in which the agent is told to sit in a certain cafe wearing a corduroy jacket with a missing lapel button. At length, a man carrying a large potato will approach him and advise him of a one-eyed tailor whose specialty is the replacement of lapel buttons. "His wife makes the best Strudel... You like Strudel, don't you?" He will ask...
So, while I drank my coffee and sometimes dunked the scone (they had no Strudel) I let my copy of The Earth Has a Soul be clearly seen lying near the table's edge. Then I watched and waited, and it wasn't long before a man came by carrying a large potato. His wife asked if they might join me at table. I agreed, and he returned with a coffee, having left the potato elsewhere.
As you may have supposed, there was no potato anywhere evident in the above scene, perhaps not anywhere in the cafe that morning. But the two strangers did join me for coffee and conversation - which began with our mutual interest in Jung. And I have since met two other new acquaintances in the same way. One has invited me to consider participating in the annual Christmas radio play to be performed at the Ouray Opera House. Thus does the Spirit of Synchronicity move in Ouray. And I am tuning in to discover where else it may lead.
Here I have to confess that I had at first thought that, although the mountains and the forests are wild and magical, like the setting of a Brothers Grimm tale, that the life of town itself might really be only the usual cast of shoppers going in and out of pretty Kitsch emporia (yes, I like Kitsch too, almost as much as Strudel) like figures in a mechanical train set. Well, there is some of that, and I have peeked in the shop windows too, and admired the nude demoiselle painted long ago on the wall of the 1870's hotel tavern, although she much resembles Norma Shearer. But Ouray is all of that and more, with a rich cultural life that includes ravens and bears and a clear, starry sky. And I am happy to be in this place, where forested mountains rise up instead of hillside condominiums. I wish that all of you could see this too.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Thursday, October 12, 2017
A Mountain Retreat
Ouray has been nicknamed "The Switzerland of America", and there is certainly something of the Geist und Seele of Swiss-German culture and architecture here - including the Architecture of Nature. The speed limit through Ouray's Main Street is 25 mph and vehicles with loud mufflers, or none at all, are effectively discouraged in this convivial atmosphere. There is a good library, a Konditerei, a post office and historical society. So, at least for the month ahead, my thousand-miles-or-more return through the Flatlands and back to Bouton Street will be postponed.
Here, belatedly, is a photo of my Angel of Time & Navigation taken by the shores of Rockaway:
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Between Two Worlds (Continued)
A week ago I was in Rockaway Beach, Oregon. with the evening sun streaming through luminous clouds, and looking out to the far distant horizon where sea and sky meet. Seagulls might have been angels then, if only for a timeless moment. Behind me, uphill to the east, Highway 101 still carried its almost ceaseless flow of hurrying traffic, its sounds thankfully drowned out by the waves. But it was there, nonetheless. Because that was where the other world was, the world of taverns and candy shops and all night music venues. The world of getting and spending by which... "we lay waste our powers" and become ever more estranged from Nature*.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out upon the Earth, and people do not see it." And since we don't see it as such, as, in fact, an expression of the Numinous, we feel that we can trample and despoil it in any way that pleases us, especially if it is profitable, but even if it is merely convenient to do so. This, I think, is the key factor: that we do not see. Because, if we saw and recognized the Numinous aspect of Nature, we could not do what we do without experiencing a sense of shame. Jerry Mander writes on this human failing and its social and environmental effects under the title, "In the Absence of the Sacred". And Jung speaks about the psychological effects of our lost connection with Nature in a newly published collection of essays and letters called, The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology,and Modern Life.
Because I have been traveling by less-traveled roads, taking the dotted-line routes whenever possible, and avoiding the "Devil's Racecourse" as far as possible, I have seen some of the most splendid views of mountains and forests, sea and sky that I have ever experienced. And those experiences have been enriched by my readings in Jung, Merton, and others whose writings inspire remembrance of the need to always seek "the wide and luminous view". What a contrast then, to find oneself drawn into the mad tangle of rush hour traffic and "clogged arteries" (of both the roadway and corporeal kind). That we inflict this on one another and ourselves, and continue to endure its effects by choice seems to me proof of our collective insanity. Surely, if we recognized this twice daily activity as something forced upon us by a malevolent dictatorship, we would devise creative plans to escape from and overthrow those powers. But, as I said, we do this by choice and as though there were no viable alternatives. As even Krazy Kat says, "More's the pity!"
Tonight I am writing from a cabin at the edge of the Uncompahgre Wilderness, near the town of Ouray. Earlier today, after writing the first part of this post, I had almost decided to continue eastward on Route 50 and back to Cincinnati. But I checked that impulse, turned back, and took Route 550 to the south. Once again the natural vistas opened out in ever expanding grandeur, so that I asked myself aloud - "Do I really want to exchange all this for a hasty return to Bouton Street and Hyde Park Plaza?" No. I don't. This is where I am now. Near the Four Corners. In this amazing and beautiful array of desert and mountains, forest and streams and sky. Where ancient peoples and dinosaurs once lived. And, if I can find a way to stay here for awhile, even quite awhile, then what do Kansas and Missouri have to offer by comparison?
When I was on the Oregon coast, looking out to sea, I took a moment to consider the Oaxacan angel on my dashboard: The Navigating Angel who always points forward and silently commands, "Zugzwang!". I set him in place there with reference to a series of paintings by Thomas Cole, "The Voyage of Life". In that series, an angel is pictured with an hourglass that grows ever scantier in its allotted measure of sand. So too, my Navigating Angel holds an hourglass in place under his left hand. And the Sands of Time have run out. I know this to be both a metaphor and a simple fact. At 75 I know and acknowledge that I am living "on borrowed time". Na, und? How am I to best use what remaining time I may have? To think on this question has a sense of urgency for me. I feel like Peter Rabbit, caught by his coattails in Mr. McGregor's garden, and the sparrows there "implored him to exert himself". And so, I am "thinking it through, with all the brains I've got" while listening to the sparrows, the ravens, the coyotes, et al. This is where I am now. I am still searching for creative solutions and navigational guidance from Our Lady of Perpetual Help who, according to certain texts is cognate with Sophia and also the Luminous Epinoia (quod vide!!!).
* See Wordsworth: "The World is Too Much With Us"
P.S. It recently dawned on me that the number of automobile dealerships and gun shops far exceed the number of bookstores in America.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out upon the Earth, and people do not see it." And since we don't see it as such, as, in fact, an expression of the Numinous, we feel that we can trample and despoil it in any way that pleases us, especially if it is profitable, but even if it is merely convenient to do so. This, I think, is the key factor: that we do not see. Because, if we saw and recognized the Numinous aspect of Nature, we could not do what we do without experiencing a sense of shame. Jerry Mander writes on this human failing and its social and environmental effects under the title, "In the Absence of the Sacred". And Jung speaks about the psychological effects of our lost connection with Nature in a newly published collection of essays and letters called, The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology,and Modern Life.
Because I have been traveling by less-traveled roads, taking the dotted-line routes whenever possible, and avoiding the "Devil's Racecourse" as far as possible, I have seen some of the most splendid views of mountains and forests, sea and sky that I have ever experienced. And those experiences have been enriched by my readings in Jung, Merton, and others whose writings inspire remembrance of the need to always seek "the wide and luminous view". What a contrast then, to find oneself drawn into the mad tangle of rush hour traffic and "clogged arteries" (of both the roadway and corporeal kind). That we inflict this on one another and ourselves, and continue to endure its effects by choice seems to me proof of our collective insanity. Surely, if we recognized this twice daily activity as something forced upon us by a malevolent dictatorship, we would devise creative plans to escape from and overthrow those powers. But, as I said, we do this by choice and as though there were no viable alternatives. As even Krazy Kat says, "More's the pity!"
Tonight I am writing from a cabin at the edge of the Uncompahgre Wilderness, near the town of Ouray. Earlier today, after writing the first part of this post, I had almost decided to continue eastward on Route 50 and back to Cincinnati. But I checked that impulse, turned back, and took Route 550 to the south. Once again the natural vistas opened out in ever expanding grandeur, so that I asked myself aloud - "Do I really want to exchange all this for a hasty return to Bouton Street and Hyde Park Plaza?" No. I don't. This is where I am now. Near the Four Corners. In this amazing and beautiful array of desert and mountains, forest and streams and sky. Where ancient peoples and dinosaurs once lived. And, if I can find a way to stay here for awhile, even quite awhile, then what do Kansas and Missouri have to offer by comparison?
When I was on the Oregon coast, looking out to sea, I took a moment to consider the Oaxacan angel on my dashboard: The Navigating Angel who always points forward and silently commands, "Zugzwang!". I set him in place there with reference to a series of paintings by Thomas Cole, "The Voyage of Life". In that series, an angel is pictured with an hourglass that grows ever scantier in its allotted measure of sand. So too, my Navigating Angel holds an hourglass in place under his left hand. And the Sands of Time have run out. I know this to be both a metaphor and a simple fact. At 75 I know and acknowledge that I am living "on borrowed time". Na, und? How am I to best use what remaining time I may have? To think on this question has a sense of urgency for me. I feel like Peter Rabbit, caught by his coattails in Mr. McGregor's garden, and the sparrows there "implored him to exert himself". And so, I am "thinking it through, with all the brains I've got" while listening to the sparrows, the ravens, the coyotes, et al. This is where I am now. I am still searching for creative solutions and navigational guidance from Our Lady of Perpetual Help who, according to certain texts is cognate with Sophia and also the Luminous Epinoia (quod vide!!!).
* See Wordsworth: "The World is Too Much With Us"
P.S. It recently dawned on me that the number of automobile dealerships and gun shops far exceed the number of bookstores in America.
Between Two Worlds and Neither Here Nor There
Of the dozen or so friends who said they would be following these posts, I have only had any reply from two, whether by email, telephone, or here. So I don't know if anyone is tuning in, or not. In any case, this may be my final "broadcast".
The above illustration is from Alfred P. Morgan's 1913 book, The Boy Electrician. It is also the logo I had printed and affixed to the sides of my van before setting out on this journey. Around the picture, in large print, are the words, "HARZ RADIO THEATER". All these elements: Morgan's book and its contents, the illustration and reference to a radio theater represent a story, actually a collection of tales and images drawn from folklore, mythology, philosophy, and even the vaudevillian stage. In addition to these, and "cheap at half the price" were specimens, both real and imaginary, including the remains of a fossilized Trilobite and a fish that swam in prehistoric seas some 350,000,000 million years ago. An antique bottle containing what was labeled as Lactidorus Scutigerus, Third Larval Stage, said to have been removed from the Eustachian tube of a Dromedary camel circa 1888, was also "available for viewing". And there were other allegorical, metaphorical, and generally enigmatic things to be seen and heard for the asking.
But no one asked. No, actually, two people of the hundreds who passed by and looked at the words and image posted on the side of the van did stop and ask. One of them was the other old codger, like myself, Carl, whom I wrote about in a recent post. The other was in a hurry to go somewhere else, and so never "opened the cover of the book" so to speak. And, since my way has never been to bang on a drum, shout through a megaphone, or advertise with that almost guaranteed to be effective slogan, "As seen on TV!" nothing very much came of the ideas I set forth with along America's back roads and byways.
Like Christopher Morley's Parnassus on Wheels, the Harz Radio Theater is an anachronism. It is, I fear, in the same class with the many boarded up movie theaters and opera houses I passed by, and may even have something in common with the trilobite and fossilized fish in my Wunderkammer. Perhaps if I had had a partner who thought it might be more effective and even necessary to bang on a drum (and was willing to do so), or had this been an enterprise of friends, a troupe, say, then I would not have had to carry and replenish the enthusiasm for whatever we might do - right time, right place, right people. Well and so, like the young fellow in the illustration (now turned 75 and becoming somewhat more curmudgeonly - admittedly so) I am still listening in to those faint, hardly perceptible signals that belong mostly to another world and time. I find them worth listening to, and I still believe they are worth passing along in this present age, for the simple reason that they would be worth thinking about and beneficial to the larger human community in more ways than anything "seen on TV" or available at even the Mall of America.
But even Idries Shah once commented that "it's hard to tell people things that they don't think they need to hear". And I am no Sufi; not even a contender.
When I first set out on this adventure, one of the primary motivating factors (apart from my promise to Kukla - to take her to the seaside) was that I was spending far too much time in my Bouton Street hermitage, with my main social life being an occasional trip to the hardware store or grocery aisles, and the main conversation of those places usually limited to, "How much is that?" "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "Did you find everything you were looking for?" And before I began wobbling on the perch, I thought I might yet find "birds of a feather" and other versions of Paths of Affinity on such a journey as I prepared and have described here. At this point, today, in Delta, Colorado, I have not yet "found everything that I was looking for". I have traveled over 4,000 miles and still have at least 2,000 more to go. And at this point I am beginning to question whether I really want to drive all the way back to Bouton Street and the social life of Hyde Park Plaza.
I have seen a lot on this journey, and thought a lot about the world and time we live in. And I must agree with the astute observation of the psychoanalyst who managed to escape the worst of Hitler's Germany shortly before the End - because I believe it applies to our own present as well:
"Here, life goes on in a most peculiar way - sometimes as though there were nothing the matter."
But no one asked. No, actually, two people of the hundreds who passed by and looked at the words and image posted on the side of the van did stop and ask. One of them was the other old codger, like myself, Carl, whom I wrote about in a recent post. The other was in a hurry to go somewhere else, and so never "opened the cover of the book" so to speak. And, since my way has never been to bang on a drum, shout through a megaphone, or advertise with that almost guaranteed to be effective slogan, "As seen on TV!" nothing very much came of the ideas I set forth with along America's back roads and byways.
Like Christopher Morley's Parnassus on Wheels, the Harz Radio Theater is an anachronism. It is, I fear, in the same class with the many boarded up movie theaters and opera houses I passed by, and may even have something in common with the trilobite and fossilized fish in my Wunderkammer. Perhaps if I had had a partner who thought it might be more effective and even necessary to bang on a drum (and was willing to do so), or had this been an enterprise of friends, a troupe, say, then I would not have had to carry and replenish the enthusiasm for whatever we might do - right time, right place, right people. Well and so, like the young fellow in the illustration (now turned 75 and becoming somewhat more curmudgeonly - admittedly so) I am still listening in to those faint, hardly perceptible signals that belong mostly to another world and time. I find them worth listening to, and I still believe they are worth passing along in this present age, for the simple reason that they would be worth thinking about and beneficial to the larger human community in more ways than anything "seen on TV" or available at even the Mall of America.
But even Idries Shah once commented that "it's hard to tell people things that they don't think they need to hear". And I am no Sufi; not even a contender.
When I first set out on this adventure, one of the primary motivating factors (apart from my promise to Kukla - to take her to the seaside) was that I was spending far too much time in my Bouton Street hermitage, with my main social life being an occasional trip to the hardware store or grocery aisles, and the main conversation of those places usually limited to, "How much is that?" "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "Did you find everything you were looking for?" And before I began wobbling on the perch, I thought I might yet find "birds of a feather" and other versions of Paths of Affinity on such a journey as I prepared and have described here. At this point, today, in Delta, Colorado, I have not yet "found everything that I was looking for". I have traveled over 4,000 miles and still have at least 2,000 more to go. And at this point I am beginning to question whether I really want to drive all the way back to Bouton Street and the social life of Hyde Park Plaza.
I have seen a lot on this journey, and thought a lot about the world and time we live in. And I must agree with the astute observation of the psychoanalyst who managed to escape the worst of Hitler's Germany shortly before the End - because I believe it applies to our own present as well:
"Here, life goes on in a most peculiar way - sometimes as though there were nothing the matter."
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Stranger in a Strange Land
At times this journey reminds me of a recurring dream-with-variations that I had many years ago. In the dream I find myself in an unfamiliar urban landscape. People are speaking English to each other, but the syntax and so the meaning of what they are saying is unintelligible to me. In one such dream, I saw the headlines of a newspaper someone was reading on a bus. They said something like, NOW TWICE AS INVISIBLE AT HALF THE COST YESTERDAY. I asked what it meant and was told to get off the bus if I didn't like it. I walked and walked, all through the night, until morning. There was a little corner cafe. I went in. A Mozart violin concerto was playing on the radio. A girl was putting flowers into a vase. "Good morning," she said, "would you care for a cup of tea?" In that simple and sensible query, the world became suddenly coherent again.
Sometimes days pass without conversation. The ocean speaks. The sky speaks. Likewise the mountains, the ravens and seagulls, each according to its nature. But it is a rarer thing to hear words that carry as much meaning as these intimations from Nature. I think it is due to distraction and haste. As the sociologist, Clara Mayer wrote:
"Rightly used, words are the single form of expression that we have in common to convey the intricacies of meaning; they are the channel to ourselves and our universe and each other. Time is needed to use them rightly, and also tranquility. And when we have no tranquility, neither do we have time in any sense that counts."
This morning was exceptional. I met an 80 year old man in the cafe. He had been a maker of aerial maps. And he loved stories. Telling stories and listening to stories. He was 80 and he knew the keen value of time. After coffee, he walked all the way to my van with me just to see the logo on its side, an illustration from Alfred P. .Morgan's 1913 book, "The Boy Electrician" depicting a young man at his homemade radio receiver and transmitting station. "That's when you could tune into the signals between stations!" He was delighted. "I'm glad we met," he said. "Hardly anybody asks me what I think about anything nowadays... Kinda like those radio signals we don't hear anymore." I hope he comes to the cafe again tomorrow. His name is Carl.
In any case, I will walk by the sea with Kukla and listen...
"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each."
__ T.S. Eliot
Sometimes days pass without conversation. The ocean speaks. The sky speaks. Likewise the mountains, the ravens and seagulls, each according to its nature. But it is a rarer thing to hear words that carry as much meaning as these intimations from Nature. I think it is due to distraction and haste. As the sociologist, Clara Mayer wrote:
"Rightly used, words are the single form of expression that we have in common to convey the intricacies of meaning; they are the channel to ourselves and our universe and each other. Time is needed to use them rightly, and also tranquility. And when we have no tranquility, neither do we have time in any sense that counts."
This morning was exceptional. I met an 80 year old man in the cafe. He had been a maker of aerial maps. And he loved stories. Telling stories and listening to stories. He was 80 and he knew the keen value of time. After coffee, he walked all the way to my van with me just to see the logo on its side, an illustration from Alfred P. .Morgan's 1913 book, "The Boy Electrician" depicting a young man at his homemade radio receiver and transmitting station. "That's when you could tune into the signals between stations!" He was delighted. "I'm glad we met," he said. "Hardly anybody asks me what I think about anything nowadays... Kinda like those radio signals we don't hear anymore." I hope he comes to the cafe again tomorrow. His name is Carl.
In any case, I will walk by the sea with Kukla and listen...
"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each."
__ T.S. Eliot
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