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    Visions of Oppenheimer’s Afterlife

    By we are stardust on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 11:09am |

                       (by permission of Anthony Freda, www.anthonyfreda.com)

     

    From this plane in The Afterlife it’s impossible for me to know where my essence hovers; whether it is hell or heaven…or just an in-between place I have created from my imagination.  I sense, more than see the local Universe; the tug of force from black holes almost causes a sensation at the back of my head…or what might have been my head.  The sounds that emanate from stars almost unimaginable distances away resonate inside me, providing diversion at times from the over-arching images that dwell within me like live beings.This molten mushroom from hell, growing and expanding from the initial hoops of light energy, then folding in on itself, boiling, roiling…Prometheus unbound; in our intellectual hubris, did we create this in defiance of the gods?  What will be our punishment, and will all mankind share our resultant penalty for all eternity?

    I can mind- link to that day at Trinity and the man that I was then, and remember him thinking, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…”  Our glasses were not enough; we threw up our hands against the flash, protecting our eyes as we might thrust crosses toward vampires, sneaking peeks until the first flash resolved into the steaming organic shape it became as it grew and morphed into a vegetable gone mad.

    When the star-songs are more melancholy and the imploding suns pull at me, images of burning people in Japan fill my awareness; their screaming mouths are silent, thank the gods…the falling debris makes no sound…light so bright that shadows of humans were left on the sidewalks as they were vaporized…well, no one ever anticipated such a thing; how could we?  We never thought of humans as mass.  O, Mr. Suzuki; you should not have uttered ‘Mokusatsu’!  Perhaps the bombs would never have been unleashed if you had been clearer…and asked for more time to consider surrender. 

    At Trinity, I first felt a wave of relief…the struggle had been so long, and so hard…we had been convinced then that what we were creating was a necessity; and we hadn’t ignited the atmosphere, a blessing in itself.  We seldom spoke our doubts to each other, though some mornings we might show the signs of dark dreams and restless nights, and avoid one another’s eyes.

    We knew the world would not be the same again; a few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

    Oh, we tried to contain this unholy power later, to make sure no one nation owned it; but the Great Bear was naturally suspicious of us…when our efforts failed, we knew it would all spiral out of control, and the atomic race would commence.

    And of course some fools would later think to harness it for electricity, never realizing that radiation never dies, it just decays, bit by bit…in diminishing half-lives that almost defy the measure of time, and still exude their potent, burning poisons silently, producing cumlative effects that often don’t show themselves for years…decades…  What fools humans are to believe they can steal fire from the gods and ever hope to contain it…

    It’s of small consequence by now, but I wonder whether I will be able to overcome the karma I accrued in my life to be able to enter one of the more heavenly planes; there were so many other areas of study and discovery that were to my credit: astronomy, cosmology, particle physics: creative knowledge, not just Death-Dealing Annihilation.  Perhaps the gods will take them into consideration.  Or are there any gods?  I do not know; not even the Afterlife has shown me so far.  When the chimes of stardust tinkle, and the dark images recede a bit, sometimes I remember this from the Bagavad-Gita:

    “In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains,
    On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
    In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
    The good deeds a man has done before defend him.”

    Lord Vishnu; hear my prayers; there are no tears in The Afterlife.

     

    (cross-posted at My.fdl and correntewire.com)

    Comments

    Beautiful and poignant, Stardust


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 11:49am

    Thanks, Genghis; Freda is an inspiration.  My mind has been pinging ever since he sent me this a few days ago.  Turns out Oppy has haunted both of us for a long time...


    by we are stardust on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 12:04pm

    Very good. very strong stuff.. Thannks. 


    by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 3:57pm

    Welcome, Lulu. 


    by we are stardust on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 5:09pm

    Great imagery.

    Thanks.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 5:34pm

    Freda is an inspirational artist, and according to the Wiki, well-published, to boot.


    by we are stardust on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 6:13pm

    A reader at another site left this fragment of a poem:

    "...imagination is captured by the image
    of a girl skipping in boundless childhood joy
    seared into the pavement of the bridge
    in that diaspora between dalliance and disappearance..."

    Contemplating that moment is an exercise that's hard to leave once imagined.


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 9:25am 

    And Yeats turns to him, and adds:

    O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
    Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
    O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
    How can we know the dancer from the dance?

    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 11:27am

    I googled for the rest of the poem, especially the preceeding couplets; maybe those two standing alone make you think of the vaporized jumproper?  Sorry to be thick, here...


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 11:50am

    I was thinking of Keats responding to Oppenheimer's thoughts about his karma and his deeds.  The poem is "a meditation on life, love and the creative process written by Yeats in his 60th year."  Regarding those last lines of the poem:

    These remarkably concise lines constitute Yeats's most memorable statement about a desired but elusive "unity of being." The chestnut tree that Yeats conjures as a symbol of integrity, vitality and endurance is as well-chosen as it is striking. And obviously without the dancer there would be no dance: The person and the performance are inextricable and ultimately dissolve into one. The succession of the static, nonhuman image by an active, human one is both poignant and key, for beyond it we can sense the poet himself in the challenging and ever-changing role that was his own creative life.

    Your poem did bring the thought of the line about the dancer, which seems to always be rattling around in my mind, but I felt that it spoke to that human experience of regret, seeking reconciliation, and the ever allusive sense of closure as we look backwards with an eye to the future, the two linked, no future that is all future as Blau would say.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 12:31pm

    I seem to have found the same Yeats page!  Thanks for untwisting it for me...  Yeah; I spent time trying to get in his head about his Hindu studies; there must have been some sort of internal conflict going on in  him, no? 

    I have some suspicion that sometimes 'the dancer and the dance aren't one is part of the problem, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

    I left a message asking the poster who wrote that poem; I spent more time in Oppy's head and life and Hiroshima than was strictly healthy, but I really wanted to do it.  Dance, dancer, all that.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 12:49pm

    I have done things in my life of which I am not proud, to say the least.  And there have been moments in my life when trying to come to a livable place of self-acceptance was almost not possible. But I can't imagine trying to come to terms with being able to trace my choices and actions to anything remotely what Oppy could. 

    Yet we are a summation (too mathematical?) of our whole lives, the mundane and the glorious and the profane. What does (did) it all mean?  How we are to judge that? 

    How can we judge ourselves, when with our limitations of perception, we can't decide where two things separate, can't discern where that point of separation exactly is, and where that "moment" is when the two dissolve into one: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"  Which brings up the question: where is the dance when the dancer isn't there?  Just as we might ask, where exactly are our hopes and dreams (and fears) when we're thinking about something else?

    And your last comment reminds me of a friend who was pulled into the world of the holocaust, especially the testimonies of survivors. How could they re-enter life after they went through that?

     Is it not healthy at times?  Maybe.  But without that immersion, then we could not create blogs such as yours.  No pain no gain.

     


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 1:29pm

    On that last topic, it reminds me of one of the most powerful things I have read: the diaries of Etty Hillesum.  There are times when I find the non-fiction writings of individuals infinitely more interesting than any about some fictional character.  The unfolding of her life and how she experienced it, how she worked to find the "meaning" and understanding in Westerbork during WWII is nothing short of poignant.

    Just one quote from her diaries:

    “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.”


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 2:02pm

    I will check out Etty.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 5:27pm

    I was actually just looked it up on google books This was the editon i had and the introduction is very good at putting the book into context.

     

     


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 5:40pm

     All people are made up of good and bad (perhaps not evil as it's opposite) and we should really admit to that, and hope that most of our fuckups happened when we were young, and that we learned from them.  I can't see that there would be any mathematical balancing formula, but we can at east always look inward with consciousness and intentionality once we know how important it is.  To die well seems big to me, and that includes self-scrutiny, and every person will have different yardsticks to measure themselves by.  For instance, my very own sister has no moral yardstick;  and she's proud of it.  "you are just so much more high-maintenance than I am", she tells me.  Her death day may be easier than mine; who knows?  But I have no respect for her whatever.

    A commenter at another site advixed me that Oppy was an asshole; poisoned his tutor, sexually harassed women, a whole list.  I do know the stories that he named names to The Committee, whether because he didn't see a problem with Communism, or we just a rat, sources disagreed.  Maybe I should have chosen Teller, but Oppy's quotes have stayed with me for decades.  Anthony Freda, too, and I didn't know whom he envisioned in this piece before I wrote it.

    Yeah, even as a tween and young teen I immersed myself in holocaust stories, and listened to hours and hours of the Winter Soldiers' testimony, figuring they needed witnesses.

    One commenter left this; you may sorta like it:

    "Well, if your Japanese and part of the Shinto sect, which is the predominant religious affiliation amongst the Japanese people…much of what may be considered as an influence on current events are the ‘kami’ or spirits that are exercising a ‘rough’ presence perhaps because the ancestral spirits of Japan have been upset.

    The Japanese take the influence of their ancestral spirits and the ‘karma’ involved with past and present events very seriously…hence the early statement by the Japanese leader about some type of retribution for what is happening now following the quake, the tsunami, and the nuclear disaster. He quickly withdrew that proclamation, but it still got out.

    As a species, we have foregone and forgotten the trail of ancestry and the parallel world of spirit that exists and has influence. Of course many today think that any concept of influence from a spirit world or such is religious trivia or so that it is summarily dismissed, but I feel if we were to ponder deep within ourselves at the current plight of the world, we could quickly recognize that it all cannot simply be attributed to a series of miscalculations and human error.

    This lack of being ‘present’ as DWBartoo suggested seems to be the core of a host of problems that are manifesting themselves in ways we never imagined because of our lack of common focus and responsibilty to ourselves, our fellow beings, and this globe we inhabit!

    I feel that most individuals, down deep in their innermost being, have a sense of how this all might play out on the global stage. We seem to always be in that day in, day out illusionary stage of denial, because daily life and it’s trappings calls out for us to move forward, trying to escape the awareness that at some point some end game scenario will be upon us and we will be forced to face it!

    Maybe Oppy's quotes made me think he was more troubled than he likely was; denail can be a pretty strong force; I know Uncle Albert felt guilt for his part in it all.  But mainly I wanted to call attention to the horrors, both actual and potential, of the use of the power of split atoms.

    Oh--and I checked back, and the poem fragment left by the commenter was written by himself; his name is Sydney Vilen, and I will google later to find the whole poem.  It was called "U-235: What God Said".  Wow,

    We are not such a rough and tumble species we imagine ourselves to be, we are actually very fragile!"


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 5:26pm

    because of its length, I posted my response below.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 7:36pm

    Your title, "Visions of Oppenheimer", is very good in that it suggests both our vision of him and visions he could have of himself and try to reconcile. Maybe for eternity.
     It is about the quest to reconcile conscience with past beliefs and actions, actions made at a different time in life and of the life of the world, and while holding beliefs that turned out to be wrong if only because circumstances had changed or new knowledge was gained and maybe after he discovered that the actions he participated in were no longer justified and at a time when it was too late to prevent action and he could only then think of the consequences. When he heard that Little Boy blew and then Fat Man did too, he had to have agonized with vivid images in his mind.
     It would seem, or maybe I just hope, that karma would not involve a simple arbitrary balancing of the scales but would see the scales fairly balanced with inner belief held honestly at the time of decision to carry some weight. [Sorry if that characterization leads thinking astray towards an ugly news/ propaganda outlet.] Maybe I just internalize my thinking about your piece here and make it all about me and hope there is no karma and that I will simply keep getting lucky.
     Anyway, your piece would be pointless and powerless, and it is far from either of those, if we did not believe that Oppenheimer had a conscience and if we could not somehow relate to his attempt to reconcile it. That is part of my take, at least. As an example of what I mean, try to imagine the same sort of monologue by Edward Teller.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 2:12pm

    Certainly the arguments still roil as to the justification for dropping the bombs; so arcane are the arguments that the number of soldiers predicted to die in an assault on Japan are hotly debated!  Crazy shit!  Especially if we then think they freaking dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki!!

    Did you click the 'Mokusatsu' hyperlink?  It might give you some shivers; did me, anyhoo.  Arrggh.

    At its simplest, karma seems to mean cause and effect, and I gather different religions explain it differently, as to accumulating it, shedding it, being born to it through ancestors, and so forth.  I think we can't know any of it, and have to find our own way through the minefields of (hopefully) examined lives. 

    Queer, but I spent a lot of hours over a few days reading about all this, and then plenty of time, once I had decided to channel Oppy, sunk in silence imagining being him, or one of the others, in the afterlife.  What I read about Hinduism was probably over-simplified for a Western mind, but still I got it tangled up.  And I hadn't meant, really, to channel him as in any way penitent, not really knowing, but it seems my head stuff intruded on his.  A mistake, perhaps, according to the commenter at docudharma I mentioned above.

    In writing, like life, maybe we just choose an angle, a hook, and run with it as I did here, knowing there isn't much way to know if we got it right, or if there is a right, just what sings to a reader.

    Thanks for sharing your personal considerations; you too, Trope. 


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 5:45pm

    @ Trope and Lulu; I need more time to answer your good comments and thoughts than I have just now.  They deserve better than quickies, which I give too often because I have so little extra time. 

    A rest, some coffee, and hopefully some more dreams for me (I dream most vividly if I can sleep during my siesta, LOL!  One odd note: once the revolution in Egypt began, I started to remember dream fragments; for months my dreams had been hiding from me.  Solidarity!  (she said with hope...)  Cool

    How does one stay the least bit sane without dream awareness?


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 2:58pm

    I started this day with the notion I would take a check-out, get all march madnessy, immersed in the superfluous and mind numbing (deadening) of college basketball.  And yet somehow I can’t keep myself from coming to dagblog and suddenly I’m reflecting on Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Etty, that time when I was journaling everyday.  Meanwhile the “Coalition” is dropping bombs on Libya.  And all those people in absolute poverty still are.  And Japan struggles to deal with everything that has been dropped in its lap.

    One of the things the quote you provided made me think of was Farwell saying that Katrina was God’s punishment for the hedonism of the homosexuals.  But there is something in the notion of ancestors that seems to resonate, just as setting one’s path while thinking of the seventh generation in the future does.

    Yet, so does the notion that we need to just be in both the here and the now, to be fully present in the moment, which seems to negate looking backwards and forwards, because we can’t be in two places at once.  Or so they tell us.

    Thinking of your sister in all this, I would say we all have a moral yardstick, even if it is not more than to say we shouldn’t have a moral yardstick.  Yet I would say there is some moral yardstick beneath the surface, which has something to do with the collective consciousness.  Which means this might be the time to bring up Jung. 

    And once I came to dagblog, I felt compelled to go and continue on my next blog, which is basically my response to quinn’s response to my post-structualist  blog (and some comments on another blog), which in part deals with the accusation that I am (emotionally) detached.  And so while working on that, bringing up Etty Hillesum, just going over some of her quotes, I can feel the tears well up (and feeling self-conscious about it because I am in a cafe), like this one:

    A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body has been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face.

    Is this sadness that such a soul such as Etty is too rare in this world, or gratitude that she was on this Earth and the hope that we humans might be redeemable afterall? Or that it brings up how I have fallen too short of my own ideals?  Some mix of all that and something else? Such as the detachment that is there (and we all are detached to some extent because if we let all of suffering in our “hearts” would implode) has grown too much. 

    Yet this leads me, of course, to Herbert Blau.  In The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto in his explanation of his struggles to his production of King Lear:

    As I conceived our production, its problems resembled those at the beginning of the film Hiroshima Mon Amour (which I saw later).  As Marguerite Duras wrote in her screenplay, the initial exchange of the man and the woman—waking after “the ashes, the dew, of atomic death”—is allegorical.  “In short, an operatic exchange.”  This does not mean it isn’t played with the intensest realism.  Operatic because predicated on something almost unspeakable, because the cause is not really—as meets the eye—trivial, but almost beyond containment by the rational imagination [see the poem you posted above].  “Impossible to talk about Hiroshima.  All one can do is talk about the impossibility of talking about Hiroshima. The knowledge of Hiroshima being stated a priori by an exemplary delusion of the mind.”  What seems to be historical fact cannot be adequately documented; neither can that cause in Lear;  not as our historians and our sociologists customarily think of documentation.  The only way to document some things truly is to re-enact them in some way—as the Eichmann trial re-enacted the experience of the incinerators [and somehow Hiroshima brings up back to the Holocaust again]...

    ….After Hiroshima, what could you believe in?  And not only Hiroshima.  Gloucester, his eyes gouged out, is thrown out at gates to smell his way to Dover.  After Belsen, what benediction?

    The aim of the film was “to have done with the description of horror by horror….but make this horror rise again from its ashes by incorporating it in a love that will necessarily be special and ‘wonderful,’ one that will be more credible than if it had occurred anywhere else in the world, a place that death had not preserved.

    ….

    In such a play [as Lear]—as with Hiroshima—motives oscillate between two questions: how did this happen? why in heaven did we do it?

    In my effort to elaborate upon quinn's comment about my detachment, which is wrapped up in despair, I went to my avatar as does Blau later in the next paragraph:

    But when Gloucester, smelling his way to Dover, asks the madman to lead him to the cliffs, he is posing the problem which Camus said [at the same time Hillesum was writing in diary] was the “one truly serious philosophical problem” of our century [and now our century]: given the rational barbarity, the civilized reduction of men to things; given our common complicity—why not suicide?  If the gods kill us for sport, certain generations forget about it more easily than others.  In our time, it became possible to ask again about the death of Cordelia, not why should she die? but why should she want to live?

    As I write this, however, San Diego State, who I have winning it all, has a three point lead on Temple in the second half so there is hope, a reason to live.

    Update:  SDSU won! In freakin double OT. And Butler is ahead of Pitt! (even though I have Pitt advancing I am in Indiana, so I'll take the blow)


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 8:39pm

    But see?  LOL!  You allowed yourself to enter the realm of distraction, of contest, of the absurd, really.  Enough with all the serious, soul-changing shite!  I have a wager on; therefore, I LIVE!!!  Too great an illustration.  But back to your mind attempting to answer Quinn's (and others of ours) charges that you present yourself as though you seem to have no emotional life, and distance yourself far too far. 

    I think it's so.  At least that you present yourself that way.  In the same way that you insist my sister has a moral yardstick, you have an emotional life, but you are so untrusting of it, and so uncomfortable with its veracity or usefulness, that you have learned that speaking edgewise to it through academic/philosophical/theatrical devices or constructs serves to stand in for what you're really feeling, and I can see how you might feel they are a close approximation, but what the average intuitive/feeling reader might see is an attempt at superiority, or  head-stuff substituting for heart-stuff or gut-stuff.  I can see why you say you detachment is wrapped up around your despair, but I think you may be too afraid of despair, but it's just an opinion, and I may full totally full of shit.

    But here's where I'm coming from: my mother was a suicide, so suicide is a very er...viable option for children of suicides.  Also, my job in my family was essentially to carry all the emotinal load that the family chose not to express.  Ergo, i was overly sensitive, on constant alert, and the identified problematic one in the family, which was a pretty big load to bear at a tender age.  I did drugs, wanting to erase myself, my fragility, the guilt and shame thrust upon me for no good reason except that I performed my designated job very well.  What a bunch of shit!  I was also the designated healer, parental confidante, parental rescuer, while my sister's life was designated 'too valuable and directed to interrupt', i.e., her success in college and as an MBA and whatever stupid-ass jobs she had had value, my lot was to help my parents, even in extremis.  Feh!

    Yeah, I spent a lot of time learning what the patterns were, and then helping others sort out their internalized family jobs and guilt and shame.

    The most useful theory/practice I learned (besides learning to do great bodywork healing) was eventually called Hakomi Therapy by its originator, a man named Ron Kutrz, who did workshops at the school I attended.  A person could get free work by being one of his guinea pigs (I'm sure there's a nicer term) in the workshops, so besides paying for sessions, I was often a guinea pig. 

    But essentially his theory went like this:  When we are subjected to incredibly difficult emotional situations, either suddenly or over time our nervous systems protect us by contracting different muscle groups that aid in desensitizing us and preventing the overload of emotional sensation that might injure us, or kill us.  Seriously.  Imagine that a young child kept reaching out for a parent for help or nourishment and got truly or metaphorically pushed away.  That infant/child might reasonably need to desensitize itself by continaully contracting the muscles around its heart to protect itself.  Or learn to contract the muscles that would let it cry or wail; anyway, develop what Kurtz called 'muscular armoring', 

    Now he would allow us to try on various chronic armoring, and feel what our bodies felt like they were saying; it was astounding.  In private sessions, he would take a look at us, and offer some gentle probes to get underneath those same defenses and armoring we had pretty much built our psychic lives around, and usualluy the verbal cue we were asked to repeat was a major Bingo!  Eek; emotional meltdown and ensuing expression of hidden feelings.  Seriously fun stuff, because it always felt so fucking good to get it out with so little yakka-doodle like in talk therapy, where you can bore yourself to fucking death!  ;o)

    Whoa; this is turning into a whole book chapter; sorry.  But I wanted to answer well if I could, since you opened up a bit here...hope I'm doing okay; if not, shoot me...but after all, we are in this tiny cafe atmosphere, no one else is reading...  ;o)

    In all the years I did body/mind work with people, the one thing that impressed me the most was that the personal secrets they kept inside and guarded, the self-accusatins (that were, of course, really generated by others in their lives at the root) were almost laughably inconsequential once brought out and exposed to the light of day!  Now I can't say always; some people do some dark things...but by and large: Not.  And for me, I've learned that it's way better to get the sticks out of our asses, and not let the intellectual stuff act as insulation for our feelings.  That stuff can act to explain how common the themes are, and be shorthand, like names for flowers can be shorthand, or chemical processes or whatever can be, in communicating.  But they don't replace the feelings that are such an integral part of who we are, and who we will be on our deathbeds.  And dear god; I want to feel it all, and know I have kicked the crap out of life before I die. 

    Oh--and despair and suicide.  Oy.  that's tougher.  For me, it's not an option as long as I have kids who depend on me, and mine still do, even though they have their own kids.  And I suppose there aren't any guarantees about what comes next, though there are days of pain where I figure a nice long rest would be pretty good; but then I almost always wake up the next day with something to be excited about, and some hope, or something to write about or express.  Fuck; you must be getting bored, and my fingers are tired, and I need a soak in a hot tub. 

    Hope any of this speaks to you; if not, please feel free to ignore it at will  but thanks so much for sharing a bit of your thinking.  (Not even gonna proof it for typos, or I'd likely delete the whole frigging mess; I do that a lot, to say the truth.  ;o)

     p.s. The trick, IMO, is to learn when to protect ourselves, especially our hearts and our fear centers (solar plexes) with muscular tension, and when to open them to feel and let others have the benefits of our feelings, which are never right or wrong, they just are.

     


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 10:34pm

    In a conscious attempt not to write a whole chapter, I would say that during the time I was reading Etty's diaries and doing intense journaling, I was also (reluctantly) going throwing Reiki therapy which sounds basically similiar. 

    At the same time I was doing serious meditation.  And for most us, one way to know you're actually doing it right is that you're intense pain, as all the "knots" in ones body, where one holds one's "stress" try unknot themselves. 

    One inside joke to myself:  I am just a Gordian Knot looking for my Alexander.

    And the first time I heard of triangulation was many decades ago as half way house mental health counselor (blind leading the blind?) regarding family dynamics, where there is the victim, the victimizer, and the rescuer.  And all the "energy" goes into maintaining the dynamic, including the blantant denial of the reality in front of everyone involved.  Your sister seems to be the added facet of the distraction: see that, don't look at this.

    And one final comment: I wouldn't be here, suffering whatever flames I might suffer, if I didn't want to open up more.  In a sense, you all are my therapy.  Whether you like it or not. 

    Peace.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 11:34pm

    Well, good-o, then.  I got it wrong here, but I gave it my best shot.  And I think the triangulation concept comes from Transactional Analysis.  Useful for interpersonal dynamics, for sure.    But Dagblog as therapy?  Yikes!

    Peace to you, too.

    (I tried to delete this now that you've read it, but I find I can't.)


    by we are stardust on Sun, 03/20/2011 - 6:22am

    (This piece of Freda's deserved poetry instead; we'll let this one accompany it, too.)

     

    URANIUM 235 / WHAT GOD SAID   -- Sydney Vilen

    What they remember is the light
    Those scientists in the desert night
    Ghostly iridescence, unearthly light
    No color, merely shades of white.
    Trinity Test at Alamogordo
    Three...Two...One...Zero
    Instantly into the still dark land
    The light grew over the sand
    Galactic secrets in the predawn night
    Galactic secrets in atomic rite

    And the light grew
    Brighter than the light of twenty noons
    And still it grew
    An x-ray of the testing crew.
    Trinity Test at Alamogordo
    Three...Two...One...Zero
    Shiva Yahweh Buddha Zeus
    Father Son and Holy Goose
    Humanity with its head in the noose
    Glimpsed its form as god.

    When the light subsided and the shadows rose
    Some, returning from that light
    Tried to live again as merely human
    But others, those few
    Unable to deny or to return
    Knew we had become as gods in power
    And could not turn again.

    We have the power that once was god's
    Shiva's power, the power of fire
    The power to turn our earth into a star
    The power of Zeus' lightning rod
    To incinerate the earth maiden his bride.

    She remembered a pale, sharp, silent light
    Before darkness turned day to night
    Then woke, as in a dream
    Her mother, swirled in smoke
    Framed by the lintel
    Standing
    Arms outstretched
    Hair raised skyward
    On winds of fire
    Like a protecting goddess
    Burned to pure white bone.

    The bombardier who guided the Enola Gay
    The last two minutes on her way
    Who eyed the Aioi Bridge in his sight
    He too remembers the light
    All who have seen it remember the light
    And the rainbow sparkling cloud that follows.
    Earth the maiden asked her bridegroom
    To appear before her in his form as god
    And the god of lightning rose on earth
    In the light of twenty suns

    ...pastels and crystals...pastels and creams
    ...pastels and crystals...pastels and dreams
    i can no more separate
    the dream form the reality
    than I can separate myself from you
    it is the dream that keeps reality alive
    in these suicidal days

    ...pastels and crystals...pastels and dreams...

    Atomic fission in the brain
    The sudden evolving leap of awareness
    Luminous clarity in the heart.

     


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/19/2011 - 11:22pm

    This is an ambitious, insightful, and eloquent piece.


    by Watt Childress on Sun, 03/20/2011 - 1:37pm

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