2013.08.31 — Some Salty Fushigis* and a Poem

Hello. I have been disappointed in my self for not keeping up with my blog work. I love doing my blogs, and yet find myself doing other stuff first.

Anyway, I am struggling to keep my entries short. And, as I have mentioned before, since I do a lot of writing outside of the blog, I have decided to start including some of my creative writing here, too.

First up, a fushigi or two. They are small ones.

On 2013.08.09 I stopped in to buy spices from our local Galloway's, one of the greatest smelling stores on the planet because it is filled with exotic spices and dried fruits, chocolate and candies. Heavenly! Well, I was there to buy my usual stuff, and saw on the counter a small pouch of Smoked Himalayan Salt. So, as was intended by its placement I made it a 'spur-of-the-moment' purchase. No, I've not bought it before.

Later that day I resumed reading Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales by M.L. von Franz. Here is what I read:

Salt has a double aspect. In alchemy, salt is the symbol of wisdom, but it also has a stinging quality of bitterness — the bitterness of the sea comes front the salt in it. Wisdom, wit, bitterness and Eros — all that is associated with salt. Jung says this has to do with a specific feminine feeling of love: wen a woman is disappointed in love, she becomes either bitter or wise, developing a sense of humour or a certain wit. Eros is always combined with disappointment — anon who really loves must risk disappointment; the wisdom of love comes in accepting the disappointment without bitterness (37).

August 18-9

And since my 'short' blog has exploded out of control, I'll note an earlier food fushigi. A few weeks previously my wife heard on TV (Dr. Oz I think) about the health benefits of agave. (This echoed something Suzanne Somer's said about agave a couple of years earlier on an Anderson Cooper show.) Well, on the 18th, at the request of my wife, I went looking for Maple Water and Coconut Water, also because of more recent Dr. Oz show (Wednesday the 14th, maybe). Well, the person I asked to help me find that stuff took me to the area they would be in and asked me why I was looking for them. I explained about helping with blood sugar. She pointed out that the Agave Syrup on the shelf, which her parents use to help reduce the sugar in their diet because it is so sweet. Well, the next day, the 19th at 9:15am I accidentally found myself watching Bobby Flay barbecuing on a show called BBQ Addiction. The particular recipe he made for a drink included agave syrup. Until the 18th I didn't even know agave syrup existed.


August 28th

Here is an interesting fushigi addendum — I talked with AF this morning before lunch. During our conversation she commented that she was a perfectionist. I related to her the story about how the Pueblo Indians leave a gap in the line on their pottery so as to not 'perfect' the circle by closing it. Only the gods are allowed to be perfect and a human striving for perfection will invite their wrath. AF then added that it wasn't really her that was the perfectionist, but her inner writer/muse FP who was the real perfectionist. This completed the fushigi that began a few days earlier when I read the following from Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz:

What does it mean … to give the [woman's] shadow something to chew on? Animus possession many take the form of criticizing everybody and everything — and the damnable thing about the animus is that he is quite right, but likely to be wrong in the specific situation. A way to stop the arguing and criticizing is for the woman to say to her animus "If you are so terribly fanatical about what is wrong and what 'should' be, lets look at my shadow." Then there is an impact inside which is very helpful to the woman in sorting out what she really believes.

Women do not have such a desire as men have to be perfect. But if there is a strong animus, then there a correspondingly strong shadow, and by confronting one with the other, women have a change to become conscious. In other words, if a woman has a strong animus, and can overcome her reluctance to knowing her shadow, she can develop a degree of male objectivity about what goes on in her and thereby become conscious. She must learn to tell the difference between herself and her opinions, between her feminine ego and her masculine animus. And if she cannot, she will suffer with endless relationship problems (pg36).

Today (Aug 31) I talked with AF. She is being stressed particularly hard by life right now, and so told me she has started chewing on her tongue, lips and cheeks again. But that, for the first time, she came up with something that helped: she is chewing beef jerky. We laughed at that, at how such a simple thing helps ameliorate the problem, while providing some form of nutrition.

What makes this a funny near fushigi is that M.L. von Franz referred in the citation above to the need 'to give the shadow something to chew on'. Well, AF chewing on herself is an expression from the unconscious, her 'shadow'. Chewing on the beef jerky helps slow down her shadow from destroying her means to express herself.

Also, during my conversation with AF I mentioned how a 13 month old baby girl, who was sitting in the grocery store bask-cart, pointed at my facial hair when she noticed me. The mother explained to me that she has just recently started doing that to the men she meets who are not clean shaven like her father. AF started laughing, because she had done exactly the same thing when she was around 6 years old, pointing to men with beards.


August 28th:

At about 5:12pm I heard on the local news their announcement that the musical group The Proclaimers was playing at the PNE. I smiled at that because about 15 minutes earlier I had burnt The Proclaimers' CD Sunshine on Leith for AF. The previous night I watched for the first time in a couple of months, the dancing show So You Think You Can Dance. I used to watch this every week but this year I have been doing too much writing to allow TV to get in the way and have rarely watched it this year. I was surprised to hear for my first time a slow and odd cover of The Proclaimers' song I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) by Sleeping at Last.

Well, to top this fushigi off, I got an e.mail from SD the following day with a photo of him and his family with The Proclaimers' Charlie and Craig Reid. They had gone to their show.

A Poem! (Or maybe just a poem-like thing.)
Now for some creative writing.

to race a passed memory
from the WSS Haiku Game

The ghost car was idle.
The racer's goals had long since
become memory,
dreams of a thought of the passed
surpassed as if it stood still.