The last Friday of February

If it’s the last Friday of February, the Mazda and I can probably be spotted at Glasson Marina. It’s a lack of imagination perhaps, this annual if-then-goto routine, one I’d not intended programming into my life, but Glasson has a charm that’s hard to resist, and no better place to look for signs of the season of renewal.

This is the third year I’ve made the trip, and by some miracle of meteorology the weather has been the same on each occasion – a pale sunshine, a light wind to bite the ears, and a startling clarity to the air. This coincidence lends a peculiar weight to the imagining of Glasson, which is just begging for disappointment on the next occasion with the visitation of heavy rains. But for now I’m enjoying the illusion of a permanently sunny place, an illusion of timelessness, that the last Friday of February is a portal to a groundhog recurrence of the same moment in time, lived over and over.

The daffodils have been out for weeks now, snowdrops and early crocuses making an effort. There were rabbits and lambs afield, and a rumbling tingling business about the port with a grain ship alongside and her cargo being hoisted ashore. I feel movement after the frigidity of winter, a sense we’re on our way at last.

There are plenty of options for the walker here and none of them giving the impression of being well trodden. The ways are clearly marked though and there’s none of the mischief around stiles and waymarks that the landed fraternity are otherwise known to play on the landless. It can be heavy going though. I know it must rain sometimes because the meadows, and the paths that thread between them were a quagmire, a glutinous mud clogging up the boots, adding inches of lumbering clumsiness to their height.

I usually head south from Glasson to Cockerham, there to pick up the coastal way, then loop back to Crook Farm and Glasson. Today though I took a more direct way, west, out to the sea, popping up near Lighthouse Cottage. The tide was in and lapping softly over the rocky shore. It’s a silty sea here, a far cry from the crystal clarity of the Hebrides, but it has a mirror charm and reflects the sky dreamily.

Now and then along the shore, among the paler tide-worn rocks, you’ll find a rounded piece of anomalous sandstone, remains of the abbey, the ruins of which they used to build the flood-banks, to win back much of land hereabouts  from the sea. I found a small piece of it, almost spherical, the size of a tennis ball. It found its way into my pocket. I’ll borrow it as a talisman for a while, return it to the sea when this portal in time opens up again, next year.

All that remains of the abbey is the remarkably well preserved Chapter House, another apparent anomaly washed up along this lonely stretch of coastline.

Coincidences are clustering just now. I never know what this means. I finished a book recently in which I read a line about strangers being only friends one has not met yet. Then I heard it in a discussion on the radio. An unremarkable coincidence perhaps, except, stopping by Glasson’s Christ Church, during my perambulations today, I saw a notice pinned up that bore the same quotation.

I know we have to take care in how we read such things, wary always of jumping at the literal meaning, of jumping to conclusions, because then the openings in time, the portals of true meaning will close off and leave us confused or disappointed.

It’s more that there’s an interconnectedness to things, or an underlying vibration that sometimes reaches resonance and pokes a moment of strangeness clean through the fabric of space time, a thing to raise eyebrows in our more rational view of reality. If we’re open to life, open to the possibility, to the mystery of it, we invite such intimacies.

There’s a lighthouse a little way out to sea here – the Cockerham Light. There used to be two, the other on shore, raised on a platform above Lighthouse Cottage. From out at sea, vessels knew they were on the right approach to Glasson when the two lights were coincident,  one above the other. I think that’s what coincidences are, a clustering of lights in the darkness, a sign you’re on course for something – for what exactly we’ll never know, but I find their occasional presence comforting all the same.

It was good to get out for the day.

We both enjoyed the run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On My Bookshelf: The Martian – Andy Weir

First of all this is the book I’m talking about, not the film. I’ve not seen the film yet but I’ve heard it’s very enjoyable. Like all my movie purchases these days though, I’ll wait until I chance across it in a charity shop. Speaking of which that’s where I found the book, a steal for £1.00. I should also say the fact I found it in a charity shop, I mean even before all the hype for the film has died down, in no way detracts from the quality of the story. Sometimes you find a real gem, which is why I like digging around in charity shops.

Anyway, the book is interesting on two fronts, first for the story it tells, and second for the genesis of that story, it being entirely self published. Andy Weir was no novice to writing, but earlier attempts to publish his stories met with disappointment, so The Martian began as a labour of love with no intentions of it doing the usual demoralising rounds of literary agents. Instead it first appeared as a series of blog entries given away online, and from where it garnered a respectable cult following. Fans then asked for the whole thing to be pieced together as an ebook on Amazon. Since you can’t give stuff away on Amazon, Weir set the price to the minimum allowed (about 67p). Thereafter the story caught fire, first of all ending up in the Amazon top seller list, where it caught the eye of an agent who landed a conventional publishing deal and a movie contract. So there we have it: from a blog give-away by an unknown writer, to a movie starring Matt Damon – that’s quite a journey!

So, we have a lone astronaut stranded on Mars – he’s the Martian. His mission was aborted during a cataclysmic storm and his crewmates cleared out, blasted off for home, thinking he was dead. How does he survive? Well, it’s by no means certain he will, but he thinks it all through and blogs it out for posterity as he goes along. And the reason for the book’s success? Was the author just lucky? Well I’m thinking luck played some part in it, and no shame in that, but we can’t get away from the fact that a story has to be readable in the first place for it to take off at all. This is a regular sized novel and I finished  it greedily over a weekend. I couldn’t put it down.

The technology for landing people on Mars exists now. All that’s preventing us is the will and the cost. But given the extraordinarily unforgiving conditions on Mars, could a man survive alone, with existing technology and how would he do it? This is the problem the author set himself the task of solving. The technology, the science,… these things are very much what the book is about. It’s incredibly well researched – the author clearly knows his subject – but the technicalities also benefited from feedback generated by his blog, so in a sense crowd-sourcing expert advice. All of this results in a very plausible backbone for the story. The heroics depicted are triumphs of ingenuity, and all delivered at a page turning pace.

I don’t want to give too much away here, but eventually satellite surveillance of the Mars base reveals the guy is still alive and looks like hanging in there, at least for a little while. This allows a broadening of the story to include the reaction back on earth, and the second big technical challenge of how you go about rescuing someone with existing technology – i.e. no warp drive – and a flight time to Mars of about a year. Again all of this is handled in a well paced, plausible fashion, the story resting firmly on that solid foundation of realistic science and technology.

I think another reason for the story’s success is that it possesses hidden dimensions, that on top of being a good story well told, it provokes a deeper thinking in the reader, and leaves a lingering impression long after we have finished it. For me it was a reminder of the incredible engineering challenge of putting people into space, a thing that seems almost mundane now, with guys and gals regularly whizzing over our heads in the ISS. But it’s hardly without it’s dangers and it’s of great credit to the organisation, the international cooperation, and the sheer technical excellence behind space exploration that more people haven’t been killed doing it. It’s a measure of what we can do when we’re all pulling in the same direction and in the service of a common cause that’s basically altruistic.

The story hasn’t much time for philosophical musing – but towards the end our hero does reflect upon the sheer scale, cost and human involvement that swings behind the effort to bring him home. We’re reminded of the real life Apollo 13 emergency here, and I couldn’t help going off on my own tangent and asking the question what is it that makes saving one life worth the cost and the effort, when thousands of other lives are lost, knowingly, every day because the world is apparently indifferent to less favoured individuals? I guess for me the message was if we think we can save a life we’ll do it, no matter what the cost. But if we’re persuaded we can do nothing, that we’re absolutely powerless, then we’d rather not think about it at all. We shut it out. This is not the same as indifference; it’s a survival mechanism, something to keep us sane. But who is it, or what is it that persuades us in the first place which lives we have a chance of saving and which to discard?

But I digress.

There’s a risk of course that with the undoubted success of the film, the novel on which it’s based will be overshadowed, even forgotten, that in the longer term, most authors, even published ones, risk becoming the unknown seed of other people’s glory. And that’s a pity.

So,.. if you’ve not seen the film yet, do look out for the book.

It’s awesome.

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Peace of the mountain

The mountain path, the lofty peak, the plucky pilgrim. It can be read as a symbolic representation of the journey to wholeness, to self discovery, to enlightenment, individuation, and any of a hundred other labels for the psychological archetype known also as the spiritual path. It’s also misleading. It suggests the way is well trodden, easily discernible, carved into the granite of the world by the passing of the millions of eager pilgrims who have gone before us. But there’s no single correct way to climb the mountain, indeed there is no single mountain to climb. Each mountain and each route is individual, personal and pathless.

And as with any pathless hill, we take our clues from the lay of the land. We skirt the danger zones, we back track if needs must, we contour, we seek shelter when the weather closes in. But each man’s mountain rises from the plain of his own being and to an altitude and of a character that provides a challenge set by the skills he alone possesses. Success or failure is determined by the will and an awareness of one’s own ability. If a man wills it, he will succeed, but then again only if he is able to recognise first the true meaning of “success”, that the summit fever of youth is as big a danger to progress as the abyss.

The summit is an illusion. I’ve often found this in the mountains, that the summit, while indicating the physical high point is not always deserving of its symbolic importance, that the character of a hill changes once we’re on it, and of the high ground the best, the most exhilarating, and the most sublime aspects are not always to be found at the top. Indeed, the top only begs the question: what next? What about that top over there? And over there? Thus the path to wholeness becomes a treadmill, a form of consumerism, when what the path should be is the way to peace.

It’s hard to find peace, so well have we covered it up with the pretence of human affairs. It’s hard even to define it. Early stages of drunkenness come close to simulating it, for at such times there seems a rightness about the world and even a crazy kind of love for it in all its shambolic glory. Other opiates of course can similarly simulate the opening of the gates, but for this feeling to endure we have to conquer the mountain of our own being. And the first step is the realisation that the summit isn’t everything, or even anything at all, that what the mountain provides us with is more the journey of our lives. And even if, after long circumambulation, we end up back down on the plains cursing our lot that we have never once reached the heights we sought, we do well to pause and think: the journey is never wasted.

We realise this perhaps only in retrospect, and after many an ignominious defeat, driven back by foul weather, and the apparent treachery of the way, that the battle is won only by its apparent loss, that we triumph by capitulation, that we succeed by the dissolution of all ambition ever to reach the top.

Peace is more a case of knowing, and we do not come to know the mountain by  the mere token of conquering its summit. Peace comes in the realisation that we are the mountain.

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Night Journey

Our vessel crossed an ocean far from land,
Black velvet waters wide that made no sound,
No ripples burst nor sparkling foam,
Nor wake of waters churned.

An old man at the tiller held our course,
A woman in the bows to scent the wind,
A glance aside was all she’d give,
To guide the old man’s hand.

The sky was clouded thick to gift no stars,
Nor yet a hanging moon to light our way,
No charts had we, nor almanac,
Nor compass rose to play.

Our only sail was raised and lightly taut,
A swollen dart it sped us on with ease,
Yet no wind nor motion did we feel,
Nor time to count the leagues.

All form and all dimension fell away,
All progress measured only in the mind,
Imagination for my eyes,
The dark to bring alive.

I fancied islands dotted all around
And leaping dolphins arcing from the sea,
But there was just the silent night,
My two crew mates, and me.

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Approaching the unconscious

As we age we undergo a process of emotional development. Obviously we do not possess the same outlook in our middle years as we did when we were children, but what is it that drives us to change? Is it merely that we come to inhabit a progressively older body? Is it the experience of life itself that changes us, or is it that are we subject to influences from the unconscious mind that would have us seek those experiences out as a medium for change?

Life can provide any number of varied environments enabling us to grow in all manner of positive directions, but it can just as easily arrest our development if experience of life is at odds with our aspirations. So where does the aspiration, the imperative, the drive come from? Abusive relationships, personal misfortune, global upheaval, even financial ruin, all present challenges to health and well being, subverting a life’s path and running it onto the rocks. Yet in spite of misfortune some people suffer no injury beyond the initial trauma, while others are maimed for life. To avoid lasting scars appears to require an agile frame of mind and a deep intuitive sense of one’s abiding value in the face of all rational evidence to the contrary. Where does such strength, such resilience come from?

With bad experiences, what usually happens is we push the memories out of range of our emotional radar and get on with things as best we can. We are all good at this, at removing from conscious awareness those things that are most painful to us, and anyway we cannot always react to hurt in the way we would like, and in which our instincts are urging us – like punching the other guy on the nose. In the course of life, there is a lot we simply have to swallow, but the unconscious never forgets a slight. It remembers everything.

It even knows what I was doing at half past three on Wednesday afternoon, December 28th 1978. I can no longer consciously recall this moment of course – it is lost to my every day awareness but well documented cases of spontaneous and total recall suggest the memory of this moment still exists, somewhere, and if, during that moment, I was experiencing an emotional upset that was never healed, my unconscious will offer it back. And it will keep offering it back, until I deal with it.

It does this through the dreaming process, using a symbolic language in which the objects, the people, the situations we encounter in the dream world are emotionally charged in ways reflective of our life experience, including the things we’d rather not acknowledge. And the dream is saying, here, look, take this back this and then we can move on. But if we have fallen foul of a culture that devalues the dreaming process, if we never take notice of our dreams, the process of “dealing with it” can be a problem. And stuff mounts up. Some of us incubate hidden, forgotten traumas, combine them, allow them to breed, then hatch them into inexplicable and stupendously debilitating neuroses. At such times as these it seems our unconscious is overrun with demons out to do us harm. We might feel that to go poking around in there is the very last thing we should be doing, but paying attention to our dreams helps defuse things. It puts the unconscious mind in a better mood for dealing with us, if it realises we are receptive.

We all dream, every night, though some people dispute this, claiming never to have dreamed at all. But the thing with dreams is they play out in a part of the mind that bypasses the way we normally acquire memory. If we want to remember our dreams we have to make a conscious effort to do so. We have to remind ourselves, when we lay down to sleep, we would like to remember our dreams. Then, on waking, in the first seconds of awareness, we have a fleeting opportunity to drink the dream down whole, sufficient at least to recall it well enough to record it later on. But even then we must make haste, or the memory will fade to nothing like an imperfectly processed photograph. Reading my dream journal now, accounts of many dreams I had years ago are like reading the fantasies of a complete stranger.

So we have our dream. What now? Well, the best we can do is sit down and ponder upon it. What might it be showing us? What emotions does it provoke? It does not matter if we cannot understand the dream. It seems to be the conversation with the unconscious that’s the important thing. If we fail in the first dreams, to understand what it’s showing us, it will try other ways of illustrating the same thing, until we finally get it.

We can forget those dream dictionaries. What they fail to point out is that the dream is a personal thing and that, for example, a rabbit in my dream might mean something entirely different in yours. You can forget also asking advice from others because they may react to your symbols differently. Thus, slowly, respectfully, and with an attitude of genuine enquiry, we approach the unconscious, preferably on bended knee.

I worry about self-help dream techniques that sound more assertive, like a battering down of a door into unconsciousness in order to plunder its contents, in an effort to turn us into mega-star celebrities with millions in the bank, and perfect teeth. The lesson of a century of psychoanalysis tells us we are only a small part of who we think we are, that we are not entirely in charge. We can be part of the solution to the mystery of our lives, which involves being a good listener and a willing partner in the adventure, or we can remain for ever a part of the problem.

I suppose the bottom line is we do not need to be ill to take an interest in our personal development, in the rounding out and the maturation of our soul. True there are grown men and women as emotionally well developed as four year olds, or for that matter wildebeest, and for whom all talk of the dreaming process will sound ridiculous. But for those who seek meaning beyond the normal watering and rutting of the species, the dream is nature’s own gift to aid us on the path to a greater self awareness.

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On My Bookshelf – Man and his symbols – Carl Gustav Jung

The genesis for this book was a TV interview by the journalist John Freeman, for the BBC in 1959. It was to be the last book to bear Jung’s mark, though it is in fact a collaboration between Jung and several of his closest colleagues in the psychoanalytical movement at that time – namely Joseph Henderson, Marie Louise Von Franz, Jolande Jacobi and Anielia Jaffe. Snatches of that original interview appear on You tube from time to time, to be shot down by the copyright police, then to reappear. You can try here, but the link may be broken any time. It’s an important interview. Freeman sounds somewhat dated with his BBC accent, even a bit stuck up, but his respect for Jung is clear and his questions are spot on. Jung is utterly compelling.

The result was an even bigger mailbag for Jung and the realisation there was a hunger for his ideas outside of the rarefied and to some extent privileged realms of psychoanalysis. It was Freeman who later approached Jung with a view to him writing a book, this time aimed at a general audience – the book that was to become “Man and his Symbols”. According to Freeman, Jung listened to him patiently for a full two hours, then said no. For Jung all of this was coming at a time in his life when he knew his own time was running out.

Then, Jung had a meaningful dream. In the dream he was speaking to ordinary people in a marketplace – literally to the man in the street – and the people understood him. So, he had a change of heart, decided there would be some value in writing such a book after all, but insisted it was to be a collaboration. He would write the opening keynote section, titled “approaching the unconscious”, while the remainder would be left to his closest colleagues.

Jung passed away in 1961, ten days after punching in the final full stop. The book itself wasn’t published until 1964.

Jungian psychology has a potentially wide application, far beyond the analytical couch. Private analysis is strictly for those who can afford it of course, and this is to be regretted, but anyone with sufficient motivation can uncover the basics and the basics are this: if we want to restore a sense of direction and meaning to our lives, if we want to understand the world in a truly global context, we have to re-establish relations with our unconscious mind, and we can do this simply by paying attention to our dreams.

In our conscious lives we identify objects by the names we give them, but the dream deals with symbols. Symbols are objects too but their names are not as important as the emotional charge they carry. The dream speaks to us in the language of symbols and we can learn a great deal about our selves by paying attention to our dreams and the symbols that arise. But there’s more – for Jungians the unconscious mind has both a personal and a collective dimension. On occasion then we find things surfacing in our dreams of a deeper, mythic nature. These things may be of significance to us personally, or they can be prescient of happenings in the world at large. No one teaches us our old stories any more, least of all what they mean, and for Jungians a knowledge of myth, of the stories told since the earliest of times, is invaluable in understanding what is going on, both inside the individual, and in all the trouble spots of the globe that suffer under man’s influence.

There are many decent introductions to Jung, but I find this one the most accessible. His work is widely embraced now by the self-improvement movement and there’s hardly a single new age fad that is not in some way reliant on ideas that first came out of Jung’s head. But a reading of his deeper works does make for occasionally disturbing reading. The book was written at a time of dire tensions between the West and the USSR – an escalation in weapons technology that threatened to wipe out the world ten times over. But for the cold war of 1964, you can read the middle eastern crisis of the latter day, and the analysis, in Jungian terms is the same, and compelling, that what ails the West, then and now, is a loss of soul, that what we see nightly on the TV news is merely a reflection of the very thing we are incapable of seeing in ourselves. The message of Jung, outlined so succinctly in  Man and his Symbols is as relevant today as it ever was.

Much of the thinking of Jungian psychology does not chime well with the rational world and he can attract the most vehement and irrational criticism. If you are of a rational frame of mind, yet drawn to psychology at all, it will probably be the work of Freud you prefer. But for the soulful and the spiritual wanderers, and for those just trying to understand the ills of the world from a global perspective there is much in Jung to guide your path, also to explain the experience of your own life and to guide you around the occasional pothole.

So, how in touch are you with your own unconscious? Well,… tell me, do you recall what you dreamed of last night?

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