Friday, October 01, 2004
Oldies But Goodies
I’ve decided not to pound out a whole essay this morning, since I have a buttload of words and technical details waiting for me at my little cubby at work. Instead, I’ll just offer a few words for the weekend:
First: A few months ago a dear friend gave me back a book I’d lent her several years back - a textbook from college, James Hillman’s Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. I decided to read it again, so I replaced the Norton poetry anthology in the bathroom with this slender text. It’s taking a long time to read, but I do find it interesting when I have any idea what he’s talking about. Honestly, I can’t believe I ever earned a grade on what’s in this volume of bizarritude. Example, from page 117: “The entire relationship with anima is placed into the mythologem of the heroic ego and his archetypical fight with the dragon. Then efforts to integrate, ‘to bring these contents to light,’ become a depotentiating of personifications and of their imaginal power, a drying-up of the waters, and a slaying of the angel (seen to be a danergous fairy-demon by the ego), whose real purpose is to individualize itself within a personal relation to an individual.” I can’t tell you how often I repeat those words to myself as I sit on the bus wondering where that puddle under the next bench came from. Inspirational is too weak a word. I’m going to finish this book, and I may even have some clue what it’s about by the time I’m done.
Second: the Skippy List. Now, go out and have a dangerously good weekend, ya fairy-demons!
