Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country

The Man Without A Story

Once there was a man who made and sold baskets. He went out and cut the rods, wove them together, and took them to the marketplace. The man and his wife lived well enough but the rods got increasingly hard to find. He had to go further and further from home and the couple fell on hard times. Finally, there were no rods to be had. Except perhaps, in the fairy glen.

The fairy glen was a tricky place and people didn't go there. The man's wife tried to discourage him but he was the optimistic type and told her, "Everything will work out alright." So the next day she packed his lunch and he took his tools and a sack and went into the fairy glen.

He found many suitable rods there and cut and cut and cut until he had a fine pile. Then it was time for lunch and he stopped to eat. The man fell asleep. When he woke up a strong wind was blowing and a thick fog rolled in and he couldn't see his hand in front of him. "This is a fine state of affairs," he thought, and began to gather up his belongings when whoosh, the wind picked him up and twirled him east, west, north, and south. Just as suddenly he was dumped who knows where, in the darkness.

The man peered all around him and spied a small light twinkling off in the distance. "Where there is a light there must be people," he thought. The man walked towards the light and sure enough a small hut came into view. An old man and his wife were sitting inside by the fire. They heard him walk up and invited him inside.

"Quite a night," the man said and the old couple agreed. They offered him some supper. He was hungry, but told them he had nothing to give in return. "We've been sitting here a while," said the old man. "Yes," said the old woman, "why don't you tell us a story." The man shook his head in dismay. "I would love to tell you a story," he said," but alas, I don't know any. I'm afraid that I have no story to tell." "Well, make yourself useful then," said the old man, "and fetch us a bucket of water."

The man took the bucket, went outside to the well, and filled it. He slowly pulled the full bucket up and set it, glistening with water droplets, on the stones at his feet. Just then a strong wind came up and lifted him above the trees. It twirled him east, west, north, and south and suddenly dropped him who knows where, in the darkness.

The man peered all around him and spied a small light twinkling off in the distance. "Where there is a light there must be people," he thought. The man walked towards the light and a wake house came into view. A group of people sat with the corpse and coffin. A young woman with long black hair heard him walk up and motioned to him to come inside and take the seat next to her.

The man went inside and sat down. After a few minutes, a big man stood up and said, "It's time to call the priest. We need to send for one." To which the black-haired woman replied, "There's no need of that. Why, we have the finest priest in all of Ireland sitting right here with us." She pointed at the man. Well, he did protest but before he knew it he was delivering the sermon and saying the prayers and offering up the blessing, and when he was done everyone agreed that it was indeed the finest service they had ever attended.

Then the big man said, "Well now it's time to call a fiddler. We need to send for one." To which the black-haired woman replied, "There's no need of that. Why, we have the finest fiddler in all of Ireland sitting right here with us," and she pointed at the man. Well, he did protest but before he knew it he was fiddling away and when he was done everyone agreed that it was indeed the finest music they had ever heard, and a wonderful dance.

Then it was time for the burial. But when the four men who were to carry the coffin hoisted it onto their shoulders, it was discovered that one of the men was way too tall. The big man said "Well it looks like we need a surgeon. We need to send for one." To which the black-haired woman replied, "There's no need of that. Why, we have the finest surgeon in all of Ireland sitting right here with us," and she pointed at the man. So the man cut off the legs of the tall pallbearer and put his feet back on and off they all marched with the coffin, to the burial ground.

Just as they got to graveyard, a strong wind came up and blew the man right off of his feet. It lifted him above the trees and twirled him east, west, north, and south and suddenly dropped him who knows where, in the darkness. The man peered all around him and spied a small light twinkling off in the distance. "Where there is a light there must be people," he thought. The man walked towards the light and sure enough a small hut came into view. The old man and his wife were sitting inside by the fire and the bucket of water still sat by the well. The man picked up the bucket and walked back inside.

"You've been gone for a little while," said the old woman. "Well I guess have," said the man, "and have I got a story for you." He told the old couple about the wake and the black-haired young woman and when he was done they both agreed that it was the finest story they had ever heard told.

The fire burned low and they went to sleep. In the morning the man woke up to find himself under a tree in the fairy glen, his head resting on his bundle of rods. He picked up the rods and his tools and went home to tell his wife the story. The rods didn't last long but the man told his story many a time. He and his wife never went hungry again.

The original version of this tale can be found in a collection edited by Jane Yolen called Folktales From Around the World. Thanks to Indy for sharing it with me.

Ripeness

Ripeness is

what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,

the pear,

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body

love this world

that gave itself to your care

in all of its ripeness,

with ease,

and will take itself from you

in equal ripeness and ease,

is also harvest.

And however sharply

you are tested---

this sorrow, that great love---

it too will leave on that clean knife.

---Jane Hisrchfield from The October Palace.

The first painting is "Still Life With Skull" by Paul Cezanne. The second is Richard Diebenkorn's "Untitled (Tomato & Knife)," 1963.

Get lost, get found, get clean, get inspired at the MBCAC Art Tour

This is the first weekend of the annual Morongo Basin Open Studio Art Tour. It's a great event and always encourages and inspires me, so many ideas, so many artists, in such a small community! This weekend is Yucca Valley and part of Joshua Tree. Next weekend is the east end of JT and 29 Palms.Click here for additional information and maps.

As an added attraction, Phillip is playing at the studio of Bonnie Brady, John Greenfield, and Susan Brady at 56790 Desert Gold, Yucca Valley, both afternoons. (Next weekend he provides music for visitors to Gretchen Grunt's print studio in 29 Palms).

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."--Thomas Merton

"Art is the proper task of life."--Friedrich Nietzsche

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."--Pablo Picasso

"I've never believed in God but I believe in Picasso."--Diego Rivera

Here, here.

High Desert Mythological RoundTable (R) Group

High Desert Mythological Roundtable

Tuesday October 27^th, 7-9PM,

Meditation Hall, Joshua Tree Retreat Center

 

What is the source of psychological insight and vitality? C.G. Jung believed the forces that give shape to our lives spring from the unconscious, imagined mythically as the Underworld. The Underworld may be experienced as a literal Hell, the bardo, a psychological state of deep darkness, or an inner spring of intuition and prophetic knowledge.

If you’ve been there, someone or something likely led you down and back up again.

Join us for a mythic exploration of the Underworld and the Trickster as psychopomp, the “guide of souls.”

 Free. Donation for the room appreciated (note the room change this month). Cookies and other goodies gladly shared.

 The High Desert Mythological Round Table meets the last Tuesday of every month at the JTRC. Coyote Trickster Painting by Valerie Porter Stancin. Reproduced with permission from the art collection of Art Kunkin...Thanks!

 

Rolling that rock

Here is one response to the Sisyphus post and the rolling of the rock (which is, as far as I know, sitting undisturbed in exactly the same spot as when I came upon it):

"This world is a place of business.  What an infinite bustle!  I am awakened almost every night by the panting of the locomotive.  It interrupts my dreams.  There is no Sabbath.  It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once.  It is nothing but work, work, work....I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, nay, to life itself, than this incessant business...."

"If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spend his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen..."

"Perhaps I am more than unusually jealous with respect to my freedom....If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for...I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.  There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of this life getting his living...."

"Life Without Principle," Henry David Thoreau (thanks to Jeff for sharing these words with me).

Sisyphus

We are so busy making things happen, feeling the push push push of the ticking clock, powered by the common belief that success lies solely in the hands of the individual. Success, we insist, is a matter of willpower and determination and grand dreams. Nothing is an accident, we say. There's no such thing as failure, just "opportunity." Failure is, well, negative. No one gets anywhere with negativity.

It's insidious, the goading and the cheer leading. No matter how lousy it feels to fail, I mean, learn another valuable life lesson, the peaceful, powerful feeling of being in charge of my life is more than adequate compensation. Ah the sweet knowledge that I am unstoppable really, as long as I get out of my own way! If you learn the lessons right, and keep trying, and stay positive, you can make anything happen, yes? Anything is possible.  I won't sell myself short damn it. 

So how am I doing?   

From diatribe to dialogue

What we talk about reflects the story that we're in. So does how we tell it, the model or method. A diatribe is different from a monologue is different from a dialogue, right? If you're like me, there are an increasing number of subjects that beg, absolutely beg, to be addressed in a good rant. But once the smoke clears the issue and the frustration are still there. (Often the conversational baton gets passed to the friend who nodded all the way through and you listen while she lets loose for awhile).

The difficult task of a genuine dialogue, an exchange of opinions with the goal of reconciliation, if not agreement, is something that we need to learn. The World Cafe, a project dedicated to radical, transformative conversation, is really interesting. World Cafe has developed a model for serious conversation among strangers that generates ideas on topics that matter. I want to share this recent post on their blog from Peter Block.

Conversation and Community
Posted: 26 Sep 2009 05:50 PM PDT
David Isaacs sent me this quote from Peter Block:

"My belief is that the way we create conversations that overcome the fragmented nature of our communities is what creates an alternative future.

This can be a difficult stance to take for we have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs.

We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list.

We want measurable outcomes and we want them now.

What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing.

We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation.

This is not an argument against problem solving; it is an intention to shift the context and language within which problem solving takes place.

Authentic transformation is about a shift in context and a shift in language and conversation. It is about changing our idea of what constitutes action."

~ Peter Block from his Civic Engagement Series, sponsored by A Small Group.

You can visit the World Cafe blog here.

Good morning from Joshua Tree

Hope you enjoy this moment Phillip captured here at the cabin we call Coyote. May it inspire you to take your cup of coffee outside at dawn.

Thinking from the heart

I've been getting up early enough in the morning to watch the sunrise. The brilliant orange line on the horizon slowly fades and sinks down into the hills, only to re-emerge, bit by bit, as a glittering ball. Phillip tries to film it and maybe he's succeeded (I haven't seen his latest efforts), but it's rare to see a memento of any sort that can match the real moment or fill me with the same gratitude for being here and being alive for another day. If you're up at 6AM, go outside, live a little.

This morning I thought about Jung's recollection of his visit to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, decades ago. Jung observed a number of Indians on the rooftops at dawn, wrapped in blankets, deep in silent contemplation. He carefully, gingerly, questioned Chief Ochwiay Biano about this practice. The chief told him that they were the sons of Father Sun, living on the rooftop of the world, and daily helped the sun make its passage across the sky. They did this, Chief Ochwiay Biano said, for everyone, for every living thing because we all need the sun. If they stopped their practice, within ten years the sun would cease to rise and the earth would be in perpetual darkness.

We also have a story about how the sun rises. We call it scientific fact, the "truth," and humans play no role in the mechanics. It's easy to privilege our knowledge and the Taos Indians appear naive by comparison. But we forget that others who went before us were equally certain of their "truths" and their facts, and if history is any indication (and the human race survives long enough), one day people will look back on us and marvel at our antiquated "truth" and the obsessions they gave rise to in our culture.

What interests me isn't whether or not the sun needs us to make its way from east to west each day. Part of me would like to believe that my dawn vigils help but I doubt that I can make that leap of faith. Not anymore. I do hope that the Taos Indians are still up there. I distrust our certainty about the mystery that enfold us.

I also wonder (along with Jung) what we have gained and what we have lost in our rush to embrace a purely mechanical cosmos, not as a matter of knowledge, but of meaning. We're so deep into our fantasy of rationality that we forget that facts are part of our story, part of the irrational, imaginative process of finding significance and meaning. In other words, it's possible to have a science of astronomy and collective reverence for the sun as a life-giver that means something to us as spiritual and biological beings. I know, it's hard to grasp. We've created an artificial divide between fact and meaning, part of the bitter heritage of the so-called Enlightenment. Jung writes, "If we set against this (helping the sun) our own self-justifications, the meaning of our lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot help but see our poverty."

What can we do now, those of us who cannot serve the sun? Think from the heart, not just the head. We don't live on facts alone.

Nikko

Nikko, Japan

light steps on a narrow bridge

bamboo

I am the moon      on the other side

a tile roof glints from the darkness

of stunted pine      you awaken

in the sleeve of a river      silk

morning      a slow brushstroke

across the sky      our voices

bend at the water’s edge      then come away

like fishermen

 ---F Caparoso

Fred is a friend from Esalen. The full moon (tonight, Sunday) brought this poem to mind---feel free to share more poetry Fred! The image is a wood block print called "Full Moon at Akashi Beach, Kobe" by Tsuchiya Koitsu.