Love’s Evolution

Ten ten.

The title theme to Untamed World, a tv show from the late Sixties, returns to my mind like it was yesterday night. This is what reading Jung can do to me, though it doesn’t feel bad to bring back the archaic, both in macrocosm and microcosm, like the tadpole to the frog. I suppose the psyche does contain all of evolution in itself, as the embryo of a chicken looks no different from a human embryo. My dog just lapped his water down to the bottom of the dish and poked about in his dry food: animal logic is not far removed from that of people… And yet progress of the individual is good, and the idea we call freedom of the will. I guess the question may be, Towards what does the individual person progress? You leave your mark on history and politics, hopefully to push the envelope of freedom and justice a little further. This is the spirit; then when everything is done, the materials of your body are recycled in the circle of life. It is the whim of fate whether your words are remembered, to say nothing of your deeds. So what is the point of it all? “Rejoice, rejoice / We have no choice / But to carry on.” And not to forget that love is coming. 

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Open Book

Four thirty. Because I skipped my medication last night, I was unwell this morning. There were some classic symptoms of schizophrenia exhibited in my writing. In addition to this, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. The point where things got worse was Saturday morning when I talked with my sister. But the fact still remains that people are not getting along with each other over silly things. We need to learn to mind our own business and to live and let live. Other people’s sexual decisions have nothing to do with me, so I have nothing to say about it…

Wee hours.

“The fortunes of fables are able / To sing the song…” As I was waking up, this old tune by CSNY swam to my consciousness, so I asked myself why what worked for the hippies doesn’t work for us today. I once had a girlfriend my age, a Lutheran who was born during the time of the Flower Children. She was a very interesting person, but we eventually broke up over the issue of religion. It seemed to me that I could be anything but a Christian. I leaned towards Emerson and maybe even a little Plato. It would have been very hard to forgive Leviticus for its message of hate toward gays and witches— if we must take scripture literally. And the same goes for Plato’s attitude of eugenics and elitism. In the end, there is no perfect religion or philosophy to guide our lives by, except perhaps a philosophy of freedom, happiness, and love. The attempt to establish any Constitution that prescribes the well-being for us all will always fail, so the book must never be sealed and made into a dogma. John the Divine closes Revelation by adding a curse to anyone who amends his vision, thus locking up the Bible with a key. But I think Emerson is right that life is in a state of constant flow and change, and cannot be confined within the covers of any book. 

Reverie

Three fifty.

In the middle of nowhere in the wee hours. It is always strange to be awake in the dark. Food pantry is this morning. If someone has a key to the sacristy, I will bring home my white bass guitar today. It’s been sitting there unplayed for three seasons. To remove it now could be symbolic of my faith, which never was very Christian. One word I’ve heard often referred to me is “intelligent.” I guess it’s true if people say it. My brother used to deny it, but lately he’s proven himself anything but intelligent. Consider the source. For some reason my mind is playing an old Stephen Stills song: “If… the eagle flies with the dove, and if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” It used to be on the radio all the time in 1970, when I was three years old. I would hear it from the backseat of the blue Chrysler while my parents obliviously smoked cigarettes and drove us south on Interstate 5 toward Salem, Corvallis, or Eugene. The frequent rain would streak the windows, each drop gliding down by osmosis. What was I thinking about at age three? And who were these people in the front seat, driving us exactly nowhere? Factory smoke and billboard signs. Old warehouses and lumber mills, places where men sweated. My imagination saw a lot of masochism. Industry was a bizarre thing, and perhaps I felt like an anachronism. On one hand, the signs of industry all around; on the other, the hippies playing music on the radio. The latter protested against the former, yet were all part of the same picture in a little boy’s mind —- flying south on Interstate 5…