Severed Heads

Nine fifty five. Aesop and I slept in. He gets his breakfast in three minutes. Yesterday I flipped and scanned through Another Country and began to suss it out. It’s really about romantic love and sex as opposed to spiritual love, and maybe for Baldwin there’s no distinction… The gabapentin is great. I feel a lot better since taking it. I used to have back pain, but now it’s virtually gone… Another Country explores the meaning of love, and it seems not to be a Christian love. It is a wanting and needing kind of love. Desire and affection. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s probably very true. I see a lot of repression in society nowadays, however. Some people hate sex, though it makes no sense to me. There ought to be a continuity of the head with the body, as if we had no neck. But this is a matter for debate. What is spiritual love, anyway? Is it a condition of being a severed head? I’m beginning to remember my Whitman and Lawrence: the body is the soul. Spiritual love is where the head dominates the body, rules it with an iron fist. The healthy way to live is for the head and body to be whole and in harmony with each other. I hadn’t thought of this in many years. I believe it’s true.

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The Number 4

Quarter of ten. Oftentimes we lose the vision of the forest for the view of the trees. Hence with the rebuilding process of my house and concomitant rebirth of my psyche as recovered Robert. It’s happening now and the project is nearly complete. The house looks very good: like a resurrected 1962 house, for that original spirit cannot be banished. It only needed a facelift for restoration. I will try to get some pictures to this blog tomorrow. I am pleased with everything: windows, cabinets, countertops, and carpets. I feel a sense of romance about life again after some harrowing doubts and fears. The ghosts of my parents I would’ve exorcised are somehow yet present, but in a benign way. It feels like being alone with them as a four year old again; perhaps however it is simply the soul of the house itself. Perhaps my own soul. In the depths of November cold and fog return the memories of how Mom and Polly used to get together when we boys were four years old and younger. My mother’s parents were still alive, and we were all together as a family in four generations. Indeed, the number 4 and the idea of squareness and perfection are coming back to me. There were also four of us boys put together. Does it matter now what messed up the harmony we originally enjoyed? I suppose it was some evil thing like alcoholism and madness. Maybe it was the ill will of the jerk that was my father. Polly is probably right about him. But it doesn’t mean that I am similar to him; not at all, for the individual soul is simple and separate, not just the aggregate of genes and chromosomes. My right mind sees it all quite differently and speaks it like a child. I welcome the coming of the holiday season, and with a little luck I might have meaningful work to do in the next few months. Cheers to wholeness and the romance of the Jungian rightness I once knew as a boy. A toast to the vision of the forest: the big picture at last!