Temporary Generational Amnesia

I've always marveled at what I call temporary generational amnesia. A condition wherein people who absolutely hated their parents, society, and the world at age 20 reflect upon their parents, society, and the world at age 50 and believe that contemporary society, the current world, and their children (which they shaped) pale in comparison to the glory that was the world as it was when they were 20. It's always really unnerved me.

Then today I read this quote from Thomas Pynchon and temporary generational amnesia is all so clear:

Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof, or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the particular moral habits of our grandpaernts. We produce and attend musicval comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.
--V., Chapter Seven, Part I

link: Selected Quotations by Thomas Pynchon

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

In his poem, "The Two Trees," William Butler Yeats says that one tree is holy and grows within the heart. Its branches and trembling flowers thrive on joy. The changing colors of its fruit please the stars, and its leaves give the waves their melody. The second tree has broken boughs and blackened leaves and is full of "the ravens of unresting thought." I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because in the coming week it really is up to you and your free will which of these two trees you spend most of your time with. The astrological configurations have nothing to say on that matter.

link: free will astrology
The Two Trees

Dr. Freud's couch

I've secretly always wanted this couch for my very own. I also secretly wish I could find an anaylist who has replicated one.

The New York Times writes:

"One of the most famous pieces of furniture in the world, Freud's couch, above, was where his patients reclined as their psyches were probed. It was not, however, a fainting couch or a chaise longue, like your Victorian antique. The couch where the likes of the composer Gustav Mahler and the American poet H. D. were treated was a decidedly more homespun affair hidden beneath a slipcover: a plump muslin-covered underbody with an integral sausagelike roll at one end, a large detached cushion for back support and two low fabric-covered platforms.

That analytic couch is still a feature of the cozy antiquities-strewn study at the Freud Museum at 20 Maresfield Gardens in London, a handsome brick mansion where the psychoanalyst lived from 1938 until his death a year later; it remained the home of his daughter Anna, a child psychoanalyst, until 1982. (Photographs and information are at freud.org.uk.)

The couch wasn't, however, upholstered in a kilim, which is a Middle Eastern rug with no soft pile. Then as now the couch — said to have been a gift to Freud from a patient around 1890 — was draped with a velvet-textured late-19th-century Qashqai Shekarlu wool carpet colored red and blue and patterned with flowers and diamond medallions. It was piled with soft cushions in moody shades of red, gold and green; a Persian carpet hung on the wall behind.
Freud would sit in a green velvet chair at the head of the couch while patients would recline, supported in a semi-upright position by the cushions..."

every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Tav, the final letter of the Hebrew Alpeph Beit signifies endings but suggests there is more to come. Rabbi Michael Munk tells us that "Kabbalistic literature teaches that the Aleph Beit - representing all Divine forces - does not culminate with the Tav but turns around to unite again with the Aleph." Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation, says "Their end is embedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end."

Tav also initiates one of the most crucial terms in kabbalistic practice, tikkun. Tikkun means "to repair" or "to redeem." In the 1500's Rabbi Isaac Luria taught the ultimate task of each person is to contribute to the meaning of a shattered universe, unifying sparks of holiness through perceiving the inherent sacredness of all things. He taught that we uplift and redeem the fallen sparks of holiness that are hidden in "husks" within every thing, by means of our prayers, our deepened awareness, an dour acts of loving-kindness.

Contemporary Rabbi David Cooper writes, "Our opportunities to raise sparks are boundless. The choices we make for our activities, the interactions we have with our family, friends, neighbors, business associates, and even strangers, the way we spend our leisure time, the books we read, the television we watch, the way we relate to food, everything in our daily life presents sparks locked in husks awaiting relase."

By releasing these sparks we prepare the way for the redemption of the world. Thus Tav and tikkun show us that the path to the end of all things, is also the path to the beginning.

a midsummer night

Press close, bare-bosomed Night!
Press close, magnetic,nourishing Night!
Night of south winds!
Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night!
Mad, naked, Summer Night!

- Walt Whitman

Lord Kitchener's hand

To the left: Lord Kitchener. To the right: Lord Kitchener's hand, as recorded by the lendary palm reader Cheiro in the year1894.

On the day Lord Kitchener's hand was recorded by Cheiro he was not Lord Kitchener at all. On this particular summer's day he was most commonly known as the Sirdar of the Egyptian Army. Cheiro noted that the length of his fingers portrayed his intellectuality, strong determination, will power, mentality, and firm determination of purpose. He marveled at the remarkable Line of Fate which ran up the center of his hand and turned towards the first finger denoting ambition and domination over others. He told the Sidar that he believed in the Law of Periodicity and was convinced the same numbers that governed his career when he was planning out the Egyptian campaign in 1896 and 1897 would work fin his favor again in 1898, 1914, 1915, and 1916. Cheiro offered the Line of Fate on the Sidar's hand as further proof of his claims. The Sidar humored the palm reader but left no indication to those present that he put any faith in his predictions.

Cheiro's predictions, however, were eerily accurate. The Sidar advanced in rank and became a Lord. Furthermore, Lord Kitchener was so wildly successful and famous during WWII that women knitted socks in a fashion purported to be the most comfortable to his foot. In fact to this day knitters refer to this as the "Kitchener Stitch."

Lord Kitchener died tragically in batle in the year 1916, the last year mentioned in his palm reading with Cheiro. His body was never found.

His hand print remains, an eerie testament to the art of palmistry.

a peace protest of sorts

Anne Zimmerman reports the nutmeg-colored Steinway upright John Lennon used to compose Imagine is currently on tour. Pictured above at the Virginia Tech campus where 32 students tragically lost their lives last fall, the piano has visited the sites of tragic events all over the country. Some are as famous as the Virginia Tech campus, a museum that lies in the wake of the carnage left by hurricane Katrina, and the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Others, such as private funerals, a gallery exhibit of war photography, a prison on execution eve, and a small town in Texas where an unsolved murder occurred more than 50 years ago, have also been visited by the piano.

The piano has received a warm welcome and much fanfare on most of its stops. People tend to want to be photographed alongside it, play Imagine on it's worn keys, or touch cigarette burns left by Lennon. Other locales, Columbine High School in Colorado for example, have refused admittance to the instrument.


British pop singer George Michael and his longtime partner, Kenny Goss, a Dallas gallery owner, are the force behind the tour, as well as the proud owners of the piano. The piano is currently housed in their Dallas home and will resume its tour later this year.

Link: peace protest

perfumes worthy of mention: Shalimar

Yesterday while feathering my nest I lit frankincense and myrrh incense cones to sweeten the air, which is my usual custom.

I have long loved the scents of frankensence and myrrh as well as their mystical properties and vast spiritual histories.

Today I realized that Shalimar by Guerlain, which has always been one of my favorite perfumes, brings to mind not only the smell of frankincense and myrrh, but also the smells of my most spiritual journey thus far.

It smells of winding streets in Bethany where I visited Lazarus' tomb, of little boys peddling hand made sling shots, of shopkeepers greeting me in Arabic, of mosques calling their members to prayer at midday, of temples, of time.

Having never before made the connection I am obviously delighted. It's as if I was destined to adore the fragrance, long before my travels taught me why.

Places of Interest: Tomb of Lazarus

The Book of Hopes and Dreams

Interlunar
Margaret Atwood
The Book of Hopes & Dreams

Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearances of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
Something of your own you can carry with you.

We have come to the edge:
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.

link: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal"

All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.

a very happy 75th birthday to Huxley's Brave New World.

the road to paradise is paved with peacock feathers

"To Paradise, the Arabs say, Satan could never find the way Until the peacock led him in." -Charles Godfrey Leland

The above picture is a close up of the fabric that comprises my new vintage ascot blouse, which is quite literally a little piece of paradise for me.