as i walk around the woods, these words of c.g. jung haunt me, literally. faces appear everywhere, in rocks, broken tree trunks, dead leaves, bear scat. many distorted like the drawings of leonardo. ugly features, aborted gestures. and often they form scenes, both primeval and human historical. the history of the planet, mammals, birds, reptiles, everything represented. i see the voyage of the argo and the rape of the sabine women, statues of easter island. and so the imaginations of those who lived before cities must have projected many powers and fears into these pictures.
of course, they appear elsewhere, say on the grand scale of the moon. i see a sad old man's face, while the japanese call it a rabbit. how mysterious, the moon a part of the earth, knocked out of us by an asteroid. actually, the whole world one Rorschach blot where we draw our own inner life. even the city is full of it. leonardo himself said, "If you want to stimulate your creativeness, look at the stains on walls." i can't help not wanting to step on sidewalk cracks, simply due to the ancestors pictured in them.
and i deny all these signs, not wanting to be controlled from without. the most modern gift i have is human autonomy. i proceed under my own steam, make choices, ignore the savagery represented by the thrust and decay of nature. live like today your last, plan as though you will live forever. i struggle like a captured insect in the web of my own thoughts. the gods created by the greeks and jews quite abstract compared to this bit of wood i hold in my hand representing something much worse than the expulsion from paradise.
alas, living in denial, i formed my own demons as a child, the monster in the closet, the kidnapper in the dark alley, the war to end all wars being the one where we end ourselves. yes, i may feel free of creation, discounting the casual earthquake, the sporadic flood, the lightning hitting my tower and channeled into the ground. yet i never feel liberated from myself. i see the stories in the stones and tell myself, 'not me, not then.' oh happy delusion! what else do i have to keep me going? the alarms of the schizophrenic may be merely a way of living in the distant past.
moon shots:
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/moon2
the secret life: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/summer_2004
ghosts: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/ghost
