The Sacred in the Profane

My mother died on Sunday, November 29, 2020 at the age of ninety-five years old. I was fortunate enough to be with her as she took her last breath – something I was terrified of doing before I actually did it. I was so sad to lose her, and scared that her last moments would be dramatic, traumatic, melodramatic, but instead it was a quiet, peaceful departure from this realm…her breathing slowed down more and more, and then she just…stopped. She was gone. What had animated her all these years was no longer there. She was no longer “herself”. Her body was just a body, but Virginia Estelle (“Estelle” means “star” in French) was not here anymore. This experience could be looked at as a profane experience…it’s what we all must do, at some point, and it is part of existing in the first place, but it could also be viewed as a sacred experience…the passing from this world into the next, whatever that may be. Passing into the great mystery. I watched her go as I smoothed back her hair, and told her for the millionth time how much I loved her. For me, a self-declared Agnostic Pagan, it was a sacred experience. It was an out-of-the-ordinary experience, though it happens to people every day, all over the world. It is common. It could be called “mundane”. It is simultaneously both of these things: profane and sacred.

The sacred is embedded in the profane, and the profane is imbued with the sacred. All of our lives, our deaths, all of the details in-between are filled with minutiae that make up our lives, and in every fleeting moment the sacred lives, and even lives on after death, in the hearts of the ones left behind. The sacred and the profane are not separate, they are joined together, like night and day, part of the same cycle and rhythm. It is up to each of us to choose how we perceive “reality”; we can view it through a sacred lens, or a profane lens. Witnessing my mother’s last breath made me realize how sacred each breath we take actually is…something we take for granted, as our bodies breathe for us all day, every day of our lives. But what a spectacular miracle that is! A miracle that hides itself inside itself, for us to find, if we look a little more carefully.

Mircea Eliade writes in The Sacred and the Profane about Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige (The Sacred), published in 1917, in which he discussed the “modalities of the religious experience” (Eliade, 8), focusing mainly on the irrational element of the religious experience. God was seen as “a terrible power, manifested in the divine wrath” (Eliade, 9). This divine wrath may have been feared because of the death experience, or due to circumstances beyond human’s control, such as natural disasters, but ancient people saw this immense power as something outsideof themselves, something that could not be controlled; maybe not as something that they were part of, and belonged to, or that belonged to them. This divine presence presented itself as something “wholly other” (Eliade, 9), and facing this, humans felt a “profound nothingness” (Eliade, 10).

Eliade writes that the sacred “is the opposite of the profane” (Eliade, 10). I would disagree, in that my own experience has shown me that the two are not opposites, but work together in this world; what appears to be profane has the sacred embedded in it, or is supporting it; we just become so “used to it” that we take it for granted and overlook it, mistake it for something else. The sacred is in everything all around us, and inside of us all the time. It is not something to be feared, because it is part of us, and we are made from it.

Eliade writes about hierophany, which indicates “something sacred shows itself to us” (Eliade, 11). Eliade says that “all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. The cosmos in its entirety can become a hierophany” (Eliade, 12). Eliade states that “The polarity sacred-profane is often expressed as an opposition between real and unreal” (Eliade, 12). I think that the real and unreal merge together, and are one and the same. We may come from the unreal into the real, or we may come from the real into the unreal. We come from a mysterious place, that we will return to, but which is really the real, and which is the unreal? If it is a combined force, they are one and the same, so there is no polarity, there is only ebb and flow of the same cosmic force.

Eliade writes that “desacralization pervades the entire experience of the non-religious man of modern societies and that, in consequence, he finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies” (Eliade, 13). I think this is a personal choice, and not an absolute truth. I also don’t think that a person needs to label themselves as “religious” to live a life full of sacred meaning.

Eliade states that “sacredand profane are two modes of being in the world” (Eliade, 14). Eliade writes of archaic humans that “We need only compare their existential situations with that of a man of the modern societies, living in a desacralized cosmos, and we shall immediately be aware of all that separates him from them” (Eliade, 17). I think that humans can find new meaning, or renewed meaning, and new sacred experiences through scientific exploration, and a new way of finding sacred meaning through more understanding of how energy works, and that we are all a part of that energy, not separate from it.

Harvey Cox writes in The Future of Faith of “a profound change in the elemental nature of religiousness” in our time (Cox, 1). Cox speaks of the “rediscovery of the sacred in the immanent, the spiritual withinthe secular” (Cox, 2). Instead of being two separate entities, they are bound together, part of each other, and work in conjunction with each other.

Cox writes that “Faith is about deep-seated confidence” (Cox, 3), whereas “Belief…is more like opinion” (Cox, 3). Cox discusses three periods of Christianity: the “Age of Faith”, which began with Jesus, the “Age of Belief”, which occurred when the Emperor Constantine the Great utilized Christianity as a device to create an elite ruling class based on creeds and dogma, that lasted approximately 1,500 years, and the “Age of the Spirit”, which is presently unfolding.

Cox states that Fundamentalism is declining (not just within Christianity, but within all major religions around the world) and that the current “Age of the Spirit” has more in common with the first “Age of Faith” than with the second “Age of Belief”. Cox emphasizes the idea that it is more important how a person lives and acts in the world, rather than what they believe. Cox writes about the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46), speaking of Jesus: “He insisted that those who are welcomed into the Kingdom of God – those who were clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and visiting the prisoners – were not ‘believers’ and were not even aware that they had been practicing the faith he was teaching and exemplifying” (Cox, 19). I think it is possible to be a part of the sacred, to fully participate with it and in it, without even realizing it, by approaching the world with a sense of wonder and openness, by being present to the daily ebb and flow of life all around us, and from not shying away from “difficult” experiences, as they are part of the larger picture of our lives. I think we can find great meaning by just being present and aware, and can connect with a “greater power” without even labeling it as such. Cox writes that “The experience of the divine is displacing theories about it” (Cox, 20). It is a lived experience, and is around us, and inside of us all the time.

We are born into this world, into this “profane” realm. Unless we have some kind of magical powers, none of us know where, exactly, we came from, why we are here, or where we’re going. My personal belief (my personal faith?) is that we are part of the Universal Energy that created everything and that we are exactly where we’re supposed to be at any given time or place, doing what we’re supposed to be doing. The sacred is inside of us; we are the sacred.

When I was little, I had the distinct feeling that I would turn into a star when I died…I’m not sure where this belief came from, and oddly enough I still believe it today, but in a more “practical” way of merging with the Cosmos; that my energy will join the stardust, the constant flow of matter and energy. I am not a scientist, and I have no proof of this myself, but I find comfort in the thought of turning into a bright, shining star, with no pressure to do or be anything other than a glorious light in the sky. As someone who has recently lost my mother, and is left “behind” in the profane world, seeing her as a star to guide me gives me solace, too. The magic is inside of us; we are the magic.

The sacred is in the profane, in my opinion. It is found everywhere, in everyday life, from the rabbits in the field, to our most dearly held relationships with each other, to the setting sun, and on and on. We become so desensitized to the details of our “mundane” profane lives, but every breath we take is sacred, and every second is sacred…this became abundantly clear to me recently watching my mother take her last breath, and spending her last few seconds on Earth with her. As heart-wrenching as that experience was, it helped me to realize more profoundly how immensely special and sacred every single moment is, every single experience, whether labeled “good” or “bad”, and that love (the sacred) truly is the only thing that matters and is the glue that holds our profane existence together, imbues it with life and meaning. We are sacred.

Works Cited

1. Cox, Harvey, 2009. “Chapter 1: An Age of the Spirit; The Sacred in the Secular?”. In Cox, Harvey, 2009, The Future of Faith. Harper One, 2009. PP. 1-20.

2. Eliade, Mircea, 1957. “Introduction”. In Eliade, Mircea, 1957, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Harcourt Brace & Company: A Harvest Book, 1957. PP. 8-18.

"Art is the Way Through": Final Reflective Essay for HUMA 501

 

Final Reflective Essay for Humanities 501: Gateway to the Humanities

CSU-Northridge Humanities Master’s Program

“Art is the Way Through”

October 18, 2020

Linda Benskin

     When this class first began, Professor Christina von Mayrhauser, Ph.D. asked everyone what they thought “Humanities” meant. “What is ‘Humanities’”? I wagered a guess: “Arts and Culture?” It turns out that I was right…partially. Or, that “Arts and Culture” runs much deeper than I had previously suspected. Yes, Humanities is Arts and Culture, but does everyone in the world have the equal ability to practice these things freely? How does their environment shape these factors? How does their place in the world affect these things? How does their political system affect them? Their gender? Their race? Their economic status? I realized more fully that Arts and Humanities does not simply mean creating art for the benefit of humanity. It is a loaded concept, but also a simple one. Humanities means to be humane, and you would think that as human beings this would be very easy to accomplish. Not really. It’s “complicated”. In the paragraphs below are just a few of the ideas that greatly impacted my pondering of “What is Humanities?”

     The article that had the most impact for me was our last article, “Guest Column: Roundtable on the Future of the Humanities in a Fragmented World” (PMLA 2005), specifically Toni Morrison’s contribution. She speaks about hiding behind the term “Humanitarian Crisis”, wasting valuable time wondering what exactly that entails, instead of taking real action in the real world. This is something that hit home for me, and makes me want to do more research into ways I can convert my Humanitarian leanings into making an actual change, instead of just pondering about it.

     In this same article, Morrison talks about the power of art, and its ability to bring people together. She emphasizes the power of art, in that it can change people’s minds and lead them to action, the way it can influence them to inspire good things and bad things, the way it can celebrate the artist for their individual expression, while simultaneously bringing the community together to participate in this, and the idea I find most fascinating of all, the power of art to heal trauma. I had heard of this concept before, but I always thought of it more as healing an individual’s trauma, as in “Art Therapy”, something white suburban women might do, or traumatized children. But on a grander scale, it can be used to heal collective trauma, the trauma of an entire culture, or even the trauma of the entire world. I think of all the protest songs I’ve heard on the radio lately (thanks to KCRW), all the artwork I’ve seen as “memes” on Facebook expressing anger about our current political situation, the photography of behind-the-scenes views of overcrowded hospitals brimming with too many Covid-19 patients and the exhausted healthcare workers attempting to take care of them, of the paintings (some sarcastic, some not) of Donald Trump posing nailed to a cross like Jesus Christ, of all the political essays being written, the blogs, the short films and feature-length films being released dealing with the various emotions we are all experiencing right now. All of this art is powerful, and it strikes a nerve on an instinctual, primal level; it stirs emotions, it incites people to violence, but it also gets them to make positive changes in our world. I definitely want to explore the concept of art healing trauma in a more in-depth manner…it has the wheels of my brain spinning.

     Another particular article I liked was Robert Garland’s article, “The Humanities: Plain and Simple” (Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 2012), in which he discusses valuable knowledge versus “information”. We are living in a time when we are constantly bombarded with information, and not all of it is valuable. Some of it is extremely distracting, some of it is false information promoted by people we thought we could trust, used in a way to gas-light or brainwash people. Garland writes about turning students into civic-minded human beings, who not only know what good is, but they follow through with doing good in their community, which is similar to what Toni Morrison was saying: less worrying, more action, less over-thinking, more taking steps forward. Garland also talks about the political merged with humanistic values…oh, what a better world we would be living in now if only that was the case! And the concept of his I find most intriguing is that sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate between good and evil in our world, between success and failure, because it can be masked as something other than what it actually is, or can be both at the same time. This is where the critical thinking skills the Humanities provides can come in handy; analyzing things and breaking them down. What may appear as “good” may also harm countless people in a “bad” way. Not everyone has other people’s best interests in mind, especially when money and power are involved.

     Another article that I found enlightening was Ian Angus’ “Introduction to a Symposium of World Humanities: Introduction” (Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2012), in which he poses the question: is it even possible to have a “World Humanities”? There are so many imbalances in our world, and it seems that the powerful (mostly) want to overrun the less powerful to suit their own needs. He wonders if it’s possible to include everyone without diminishing their original cultures, ideals, and beliefs. This is a big question! How do we make things more equal, without losing our differences? How do we integrate people more without losing their identity? How do we globalize our world without having giant corporations decide what should be our unifying factors? And the concept that leapt out at me the most: that love must emanate beyond the self to make positive change in the world, which ties into what Toni Morrison and Robert Garland were saying: action is what is needed most right now. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but taking action may lead us out of it.

     I honestly feel like I could go on and on. I have learned so much since August, 2020 and the beginning of this class. I have become much more aware on several levels, specifically noticing more and more powerful works of art all around me. I am going to leave you with a few images, which I think speak volumes (images following bibliographic citations).

 

Post Essay Self-Commentary, October 30, 2020

     As it turns out, I re-routed my images to the front of my essay, after speaking with Professor von Mayrhauser and absorbing a few of her subtle suggestions. On our Zoom call this afternoon, she asked me a few questions about the questions I raised in this essay. She discreetly and deftly got me thinking further. What can be done? Basically, in a professional manner (and with all due respect), she asked me to put my money where my mouth is. What can be done?

     This question feels similar to balancing on a tightrope: so many ideas vibrate along the tightrope with each step forward, but which ideas would be best served where and with whom? Who would carry them out? Would there need to be teams of people? “Professionals” guiding and shaping these ideas into form, into physical matter? Or could enthusiastic participants guide themselves and each other? Would people be willing to participate? To expose themselves as their authentic creative selves to the world? What are we even talking about anyway?

     Now is the time to take action.

     Some ideas we tossed around on our Zoom call: art brings people together and art can be used to heal trauma. We are experiencing a collective trauma at the moment, due to a global pandemic, political division, economic inequality, racial injustice, the “Me Too” movement, and tangible climate change; to deny this is burying one’s head deeply in the sand. Art can help dig that out!

     There is a palpable feeling of upheaval and unrest right now. Artists and musicians and writers are expressing themselves, almost in a fever-trance, at a fever pitch. We can all feel it, because we are part of it. We are human beings, and expressing ourselves creatively (or even witnessing someone else’s creativity) can feel like popping the cork on a shaken bottle of champagne; it relieves the pressure. It calms the savage beast inside us all, the one we don’t always (or don’t know how to) face. Art helps with that…it’s like a doorway to the other side where peace is waiting for us. I’ve always loved the phrase, “The only way out is through.” Art takes us through.      

     Our communities, our nation, and our world are divided…how do we bring them together? How can we be more inclusive of everyone without offending someone? We need a middle-man or middle-woman or middle-they…art could be the bridge, the equalizer, the connector.

     Art doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be messy, just like us. We can do it really badly…it’s okay, everything in life is subjective; life and art can’t help themselves – they are subjective by nature. Every perception is different, and every expressed perception should be valid. Who is to judge? We need less critics and more artists, less passive observers and more participants.

     Some people are terrified of expressing themselves, for various reasons…how do we include them? How do we create a safe space, without judgment? An online forum for the introverts, who have just as much to express as the extroverts (sometimes more)? An interactive web site specifically for creating art in a communal and mutually respectful way? Who would set it up, moderate it, run it?      

     If people don’t know how to participate in a group art project, how are they going to do it? I recently heard a story on NPR about a theater group in South Central Los Angeles, where they recruited teenagers from the area to participate in random plays. At first the teens were hesitant because they didn’t know what to expect, but once they started, they loved it and looked forward to it. It changed them, opening new dimensions of themselves; in some cases everyday experiences of violence were replaced with creativity and self-expression. If they hadn’t heard about this theater group, how could they have participated? Art events need to be promoted, and not just in certain areas, but in all areas.

     I see in my imagination a beautiful coffee house, but an altered version of one, almost like a gingerbread house (a magical space!), where people are free to write on the walls, or sometimes eat the edible walls an artist might concoct, to paint, to sculpt, to write on paper, to play music; but it’s all collective and it’s all free (coffee, tea, and pastries are included to sustain the creative energy, or maybe cheese and crackers). Everyone who comes here must leave all judgment at the door: that is the cost of entry. Everyone must respect everyone else’s creative expression: that is the price of participating, and everyone must participate in some way, even if that only involves gluing one piece of broken glass onto a random object. Those who know a certain craft help those who wish to learn it. Sometimes the oboe player attempts to draw caricatures; he’s no expert, but he gives it a shot. Sometimes people come who feel “clogged-up”, and leave feeling lighter, almost like they are floating on a cloud, because they made something they didn’t realize they had inside them and released it into the world and feel an exhilarating sense of freedom, and might like to try it again. Sometimes people cry…that’s okay, too – in fact, it’s encouraged! There might be a workshop called “Watercolor with Your Tears”.

     There could be different rooms based on the Chakra system – a red room for releasing anger, an orange room for creative focus, a yellow room for taking action, a green room for heart-expansion, a blue room for vocal expression, a purple room for spiritual connection, a silver or white room to meditate in quietly and come up with new creative ideas, because an important part of the creative process is having the space and time to let the ideas flow in. Maybe there could be a beautiful garden attached, where people could do tasks to spark their creativity, grow vegetables and fruit and flowers, and make art projects outdoors. They could work on pottery, murals, wood-working, ceramics, and larger art installations.

     This place sounds great! I’m in!

     All we need now is the funding, the resources, the planning, the supplies, the supervision, the promotion, the will-to-make-it-happen, the action.

     It’s far easier to complain about it not happening, than to actually make it happen. Let’s just continue to call it a crisis, and leave it at that.

     The actual crisis might be as simple as inertia.

     Yet billions (trillions?) of dollars are spent on our “Space Force”. And those dollars seem to get the ball rolling, or the rockets launching.

     We’re here right now on planet Earth, being human beings with creative sparks. And I think we could launch our creativity for far less expense, with a much greater reward, right here, right now, with reverberations into the future, opening up new galaxies inside of ourselves and those around us.

     Professor von Mayrhauser mentioned habit: the act (action) of making art a habit, something we do every day, something to build upon, something we integrate, that becomes part of us. Something that would start to feel more and more natural…not like space aliens from galaxies far away and far apart, but being here right now, being human beings together and acting out our human-ness daily, collectively, each day leading into more days, weeks, months, and years of creative expression and expansion.

     Why else are we here? It seems as though all the previous questions lead to this larger one.

 

 

Alphabetical Listing of Bibliographic Citations

 

1.  Angus, Ian. 2012. “Introduction to a Symposium of World Humanities: Introduction.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 39, no. 4: 472-475.

 

2. Garland, Robert. 2012. “The Humanities: Plain and Simple.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, July 2012, vol. 11 (3):300-312.

3.     Morrison, Toni; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku. 2005. “Guest Column: Roundtable on the Future of the Humanities in a Fragmented World.” PMLA. 120, no. 3: 715-723.

 

Image Credits:

1.     George Floyd image: https://www.tmz.com/2020/10/12/george-floyd-vote-mural-unveiled-houston-before-birthday/

 

2.     “Let Them Eat Cake” image: https://mobile.twitter.com/jungabelnurse/status/967630283636817922

 

3.     The Handmaid’s Tale image: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/12/if-senate-confirms-barrett-americans-could-lose-faith-supreme-court/

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Pre-Election Jitters"

      Miss Linda could not wait until the election…or, more precisely, until the election was over. Ugh. She could not wait to get back to a time, or get ahead to a future time when her psyche was not constantly inundated with horrific news every single day, every single hour of the day, when the “President” was not shooting his anus-shaped mouth off about something asinine every single minute, every single second. She wanted to focus on what was actually important to her, instead of being continually distracted by stupidity on a National scale.

     Covid-19 was spiraling out of control, and she placed the blame squarely on Overlord L’Orange’s shoulders. Asshat. As of today, October 24, 2020, 224,339 people in the United States have died from the virus, and ironically, the places where the Overlord had been holding his narcissistic mask-less rallies had a surge in cases – places like Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, to name a few. The Overlord had been screeching about masks being irrelevant (still!), that it was the “media’s fault” that the Coronavirus had spun out of control, that the blame lay on testing more people, that everyone was being “unfair” to him. Everyone. Miss Linda found herself fantasizing about the Overlord complaining about all of this from his future jail cell (which also contained rats, a filthy toilet, stale crusty bread, and a leaking roof). She fully blamed the Overlord for his utter incompetence and stupidity, and could not wait to see him go. He was literally the largest spreader of misinformation and lies on the entire planet – look it up; it’s true! She loathed him, with a loathing she did not know she could muster for anyone, and was tired and bored of loathing him. It was exhausting.

     Miss Linda also found herself lately hating a particular red-haired male “comedian” who was really not that funny. This “comedian” went on and on about the loss of “freedom” and “censorship” while he was spreading conspiracy theories and posting photos of himself on Facebook flying on a plane full of people with his face-mask pulled down under his chin like he was some kind of f*cking hero. Miss Linda wanted to punch him square in his Ginger face! (She dyed her own hair strawberry-blonde, but that was beside the point.) She was so tired of all the Q-Anon lunatics who thought they were righteously superior, and constantly spouting complete dumb-assery all over the inter-webs. She was so tired of all the people who thought that their own personal “freedom” outweighed fighting for the common good of everyone. Selfish idiots!

     Speaking of idiots, the Overlord himself had contracted Covid-19 due to his reckless behavior. Unfortunately, he had recovered to cause more damage in the world. He was appearing to be more and more like Frankenstein’s Monster every day that passed.

     Miss Linda found herself dreaming of being in crowded spaces without a mask on. She heard the race-car drivers on the 101 freeway from her bedroom window at 2:30 in the morning drag-racing like it was the Indie-500, and dreamed of spinning out of control in her own car, doing “donuts” during rush-hour traffic. She dreamed about her roof caving in, about having sex with strangers without a condom, about the coyotes on the golf course circling and surrounding her on all sides and closing in on her, teethed bared and growling. She dreamed of fat, toothless men in red, white, and blue tee-shirts swilling beer and having belching contests while they roasted pigs over a fire-pit while sucking and spitting their chaw, chanting about their “Freedom”. She dreamed of Q-Anon conspiracy theorists being sucked up by Aliens, never to be heard from again, or to be dumped back down on Earth so they could tell their tales of anal-probing (why always anal-probing?). She dreamed of mean-spirited fake-Christians who hated everyone who was different from them, and white suburban women who secretly wanted to be ruled by their ass-hat husbands. She dreamed of pedophiles who ate pizza and lived in basements, and the Cabal who ate babies for dinner every single night of the week. She dreamed of the “End-of-Times” that never actually came, but claimed to come over and over and over again and again and agin. She dreamed of Russian spies and dismembered journalists, blonde Press-Secretaries and Newscasters who all looked exactly alike and had strings on their backs like speaking Barbies, and Supreme Court judges dressed like Handmaids from The Handmaid’s Tale. She dreamed of loud parties where mask-less naked people smeared themselves in the blood of Covid-19 victims and danced around a fire-pit purchased online from the Home Depot. She dreamed of her mail-in ballot being destroyed in a dumpster fire by a greasy Incel twenty-something in a MAGA hat holding an AK-47.

     She dreamed of the day when this would all come to a screeching halt; not due to the “End-of-Times”, but due to reason, empathy, and justice.

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda's Fourth Humanities MA Discussion Board Post"

 

 The article that stood out the most for me this week was “Good Uses of the Humanities in Bad Times” by R. Howard Bloch. I was drawn to this title because I was looking for some inspiration; the past week was a rough one with the ongoing (seemingly never-ending) pandemic, the fires raging all over California, our current political system (or lack thereof), and as one of our classmates predicted in our most recent Zoom meeting: an earthquake to top things off! It is specifically in times like this that we need the Humanities most, to comfort, uplift, and reassure people of brighter times ahead.

     The Humanities have been devalued in our society, which favors science and technology. Bloch writes about the gradual decline of the appreciation for the Humanities after World War II, which makes sense because people were attempting to put their lives back together economically and were more in survival mode than concerned with arts and culture. The Humanities are hit the hardest in a recession, because people are more concerned with feeding their families and paying their bills; there is no extraneous money to spend, and Humanities appear to be frivolous rather than essential. In our current situation, I think of our “essential workers”: doctors, nurses, firefighters, people supplying medical attention and food. These things are real and concrete needs, whereas poets, musicians, and artists might seem to be superfluous.

     This reminds me personally of all the emotional support I have received by listening to the songs being released now; songs of anger and frustration, songs expressing deep sadness, songs of hope, and how they have affected me on a deep and profound level. They have made me cry, they have made me dance alone in my bedroom, they have channeled my anger in a productive way, as I sing-shout-scream along with the lyrics, releasing my own fear, anger, and sadness with the melodies. Yes, I have needed food and shelter to survive during this time, but these songs have also helped me, if not to survive, then to thrive a little bit more than I would have otherwise. They lead me to believe there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

     Bloch says that Humanities reveal what is most important to us. In this time of crisis, I’ve realized that what’s most important to me is not money or status, or a new car or fancy dress. In fact, material objects have lost their allure for me much more than I would have previously thought. What means most is my family and friends, my sweet cats, and my connections to all of them. What has helped me get through these times the most is writing my own songs and stories, getting in touch with my feelings, and exploring what it is I really want from my one and only (that I know of) life; more love, connection, and creative expression, less buying, spending, and mindlessly consuming.

     Our focus in the recent past has been all about speed and spending. This pandemic has forced all of us to slow down. It has given us time (unless we are “essential workers”, in which case we’ve probably had less time than before) to think and revalue what is important to us. The Humanities have risen and fallen throughout history like waves…hopefully this crashing wave will lead us to clearer, cleaner, and calmer waters where it is easier to think and ponder and explore how we actually feel without having the advertising industry trying to tell us how we feel, or should feel, or are “supposed” to feel. In times like this, Humanities help us to think critically and express our ideas more effectively, which leads to action in the world, hopefully making it a better place so we can turn this ship around before it sinks.

     Certain works of art, literature, and music have helped to change the world, and have held up throughout time because they reflect our humanity back to us as we continually learn from them. These works actually have changed the course of history. Bloch says that literature can shape people, who then shape events in the world. He also says that our world functions on action and reaction, on a psychological level, not a technical one; on a human level.

     Humanities also give us insights into other cultures and their ways of doing things and being in the world. It also informs us of what worked or didn’t work in the past, so we can (hopefully) learn from our previous mistakes. Humanities teaches us about the consistency of our humanity that transcends time and place. It unites us as a human race, and enables us to interpret meaning in our lives. Humanities helps us express our ideas across all disciplines of study (not just within the Humanities).

     Humanities is not just “information” but, as Bloch says, “useful knowledge and wisdom” that brings interpretation to all subjects, which leads to meaning, which shapes our actions in the world and ultimately transforms it.

     The Humanities are not extraneous at all, but definitely essential.

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Heartbroken"

     

     Miss Linda felt completely and utterly heartbroken by the world and by her own human frailty and flaws. She was avoiding her Humanities homework to write this, and realized what a gigantic procrastinator she actually was, and most likely still is.

     The world was on fire…literally. What seemed like the entire state of California, most of Oregon, and parts of Washington were completely ablaze without hesitation or redemption. Miss Linda’s half-brother would say it was the “End of Times”, which drove Miss Linda bananas, and was completely not helpful at all during this particular moment in time. Everything smelled like smoke, and ashes were raining down from the broken sky. Pictures from San Francisco revealed an orange sky at 11:00 AM that looked like the middle of the night, if the middle of the night was bright orange…it did resemble Hell, Miss Linda had to admit with furrowed brow.

     Overlord L’Orange was caught on tape this week telling Bob Woodward that he knew the Covid-19 virus was deadly back in early February, but wanted to “play it down” to the public so the stock market wouldn’t crash (the real reason) and it would make him look better in the public’s collective unconscious eye. Later that day or the next (they’re all one big blur), he said that he was just trying to keep the public “calm”, which is completely ironic, because he loves to rile people up – that’s his schtick…he lives for it. He loves to tell the White Supremacists that “Antifa” is coming for their fancy houses in the suburbs to destroy them and eat them alive like cannibals. He loves to play up all the crime in the streets, caused by “wild-eyed Leftist Marxist Radicals” for example. Miss Linda could go on and on about all the ways the Overlord liked to stir up frenzy and chaos (kind of like the Antichrist would, if there was such a thing), but she was just too exhausted.

     She had witnessed her dear, sweet 95-year-old mother trip over a step (a small front porch step) and fall to her knees the day before, crying out like a wounded animal who just stepped into a sharp mawing trap, while Miss Linda scrambled to stop the fall and only partially succeeded. This broke her heart more than anything else that was happening in the world. It was her small, tiny world, and she was an animal, too. All of us wounded animals, isolated in our own cages, crying out, Miss Linda thought.

     The money was running out, too. Congress and the Senate could not agree on an appropriate amount of money to give the hungry masses, so they just gave them nothing instead. So many people could not go back to work (either because businesses were closed, or they were justifiably terrified of dying), but also could not find  new jobs, magically, in new fields…jobs of any kind were scarce! So…how do people buy food for example? Miss Linda wondered about this, too, and the horrible, very obvious (to most) tangible inequality in our “great” nation.

     Miss Linda had sushi waiting for her downstairs, which was a gift from one of her housemates. There was also cake (“Let them eat cake!”), because it was the German dog-trainer’s birthday today, September 11^th.

     September 11, 2020, and the world was literally on fire.

     All of this patchworked together, equaled heartbreak.

     But oddly, Miss Linda was so emotionally numb that she could not shed a tear over any of it.

     Then the tears would come out of the blue (or grey, or orange) sky while she was brushing her teeth, or watching a stupid comedy on Netflix attempting to distract herself from the misery of the world. The tears would come in a wild gushing burst, from the depths of her soul like an unclogged torrential geyser.

     She overheard her housemate downstairs talking about dog euthanasia (she also worked at an oncology pet hospital).

     Ugn.

     Too much.

     Miss Linda slumped downstairs to grab her sushi and a vodka cocktail…what else could she do?

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda's Second Humanities MA Discussion Board Post"

     As a creative writer, I was drawn to Ken Plummer’s “Stories and Storied Lives: A Manifesto” for my focus this week. When I first started reading it, I thought: how much is there to say about stories? Ken Plummer has a lot to say about stories! They’re merely the fabric that holds all of humanity and the world at large together, after all.

     Starting at the very beginning of humankind, we have been telling stories; they seem to be an intrinsic part of who we are as human beings. We’ve expressed them through oral traditions, through symbols, and paintings, and later through the written word. Not only do stories reveal our past and create our future, they give our lives meaning, and help us make sense of everything around us and inside of us.

     I found the concept of the “inner life” and “outer life” of stories fascinating; we all have personal and subjective stories, in addition to social and collective stories that we share. Our personal stories affect the collective, and our collective stories affect our personal stories; they are interwoven together through the fabric of humanity. Our stories help us see the inner and outer worlds more clearly, and our place in them; they also help us envision our future place in the physical world, as our stories are ever-changing and shifting – they have a life of their own, much the same way an author can be surprised at what his or her characters end up doing in a particular story. As we are all unique, our stories are also different, and take many shapes and forms, but we all share the same humanity, as we have since the beginning.

     There is never just one and only one story; there are as many perceptions and perspectives of stories as there are humans (which is pretty mind-blowing to me). Each story is unique to the person telling it, and also to the person hearing it, even if it is a collective story; it can be interpreted many different ways by a myriad of people.

     Plummer tells us that stories help keep us alive, ground us, and give our lives meaning. Our stories help turn chaos into order; the chaos inside our own minds, and the chaos of the world around us.

     Our stories are also clues to unravelling culture, they inspire social movements and our educational systems; our stories can literally change the world, and have changed our past into our futures.

     Our stories give shape to our lives, the same way an author gives shape to his or her fictional characters on the page, only our stories are living and breathing, alive. Our stories are our living autobiographies.

     Plummer says that we have good and bad stories “piling up” to form memories (this reminds me of the replicants in Blade Runner, who were made more “human” by their implanted memories). Stories tell us what it means to be living human beings; they help guide us in our search for meaning in our world.

     Our stories change the human-made social world. The conditions we live in shape our stories, and in turn our stories shape and re-shape our conditions. This goes on and on in a perpetual rhythm, a drumbeat of life.

     Plummer brings up the concept of stories “dying”; he urges us to question the sources of our stories, as some stories are not worth reliving, or outlive their usefulness to us. This reminds me of our current political dilemma, and all the declarations of “Fake News” by the same people who are creating it (such as “alternate facts”). Some stories deserve to die, because they do more harm than good in the world, on a personal and collective basis.

     Stories are unveiled gradually through time (just like our own lives unfold, our stores unfold too). Just as human lives have a beginning, middle, and end, stories do also, and cannot be forced to reveal themselves before their time, the same way a flower cannot be forced to bloom before it’s ready.

     Stories are always representations of reality. Plummer asks: “Where does reality start and story end? Where does story start and reality end?” (As I am working on a magical realism novel in which I am the main character, this has several layers for me to unpeel.)

     Plummer speaks of “monologic terrorism”, where there is only one voice in a story. He says that by nature, stories are “dialogic”; there is no story if there is no reader. There is no story without the personal telling of it, and the personal interpretation of it.

     He also speaks of the “Great Unheard”, the lost voices of people who are unable to get their stories heard because of inequalities among us, power dynamics and censorship. The people with the most privilege and power are the most likely to have their stories told and heard; the people with the least privilege and power are the least likely to have their stories told and heard.

     The internet has globalized our stories, bringing us closer to each other, even as we are physically distanced, generating more empathy and understanding of other people’s stories, cultures, and lived experiences.

     Plummer also warns of placing statistics over humanity, and interpreting people’s stories as numbers, charts, and graphs. He says that stories are the “royal road to our humanity”; critical humanism may see the bad, but encourages the good in us.

     Humanism includes animals and the environment, creating a better world for all, so that all of our stories will be better stories, filled with hope and promise and equality…all of our stories will be told and heard in a more inclusive humanistic world.

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda's First Humanities MA Discussion Board Post"

 

     Before I started reading “The Humanities” by J.W. Powell, I was sure it was going to be boring. I was wrong. I assumed because the article is dated 1895 that it would be outdated and irrelevant. On the contrary, it is extremely relevant in many ways. And it got me thinking in directions I certainly didn’t expect, such as the concept of time itself, different dimensions (since scientifically time is an illusion according to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli), and the power of meditation to integrate time and space and my thoughts and feelings into a cohesive whole the same way that the human race has integrated itself over time to become a cohesive whole, instead of divisions, segments, or tribes. We have all been the same in essence from the very beginning, and in this “New Age” we have more tools to utilize and realize this tangibly.

     When humankind first began, we were separated all over the Earth into little sections at different geological points. This influenced greatly what people ate, the sounds they learned from their environment around them, influencing their eventual language, the wars they fought amongst themselves, and the games that were created from these wars. These human dramas were being acted out all over the globe, differently in style, but at their core, the same. All of these things were leading humankind towards progressive evolution and greater benefits and wisdom.

     Someone on our first Zoom call mentioned that they wondered that our current technological advances of the internet, iPhone, etc. would surprise and amaze our ancestors with how effectively they bring us even closer together as a connected whole. It seems more and more evident that we, as the human race, are becoming closer and closer to each other and realizing that our ideas and actions reverberate outward and affect not only those in our immediate “tribe” anymore, but the entire planet. And, speaking of time, can do this in a matter of seconds via the world wide web; we can think a thought, and seconds later someone across the globe can access it, incorporate it, and utilize it for their benefit (or in some cases, not for benefit of the greater good).

     Powell says that as our ancestors and these ancient tribes merged with each other, they intermingled and bred with other tribes, then split, then merged again, and so on. He states that:

To speak of a nation as of one blood or as derived from one primeval tribe with its primitive industries, pleasures, speech, institutions and opinions is absurd. To search for the origin of a nation in one primeval tribe having some one or all of the primeval activities is a search for the impossible.

     This leads me to think of our current situation on our planet today: we are greatly divided. Not only by the pandemic, but we are also divided by space (not connecting physically with our tribes, but mostly through cold, hard technology). How do we maintain and support our humanity at this time? Everything (to me) feels removed, distant, and faraway at the moment. As humans, we need each other; as Powell would say, we are interdependent; we need human touch, human connection, human influence. Hopefully the situation we find ourselves in right now is merely temporary. In the grand scheme of things, I guess you could say it is.

     Going back to Powell’s quote, there are some factions of humanity (White Supremacists) who are insistent on a “pure-blood” ideology…but the joke’s on them, because that has never existed! Not in our current reality, not in past realities, and never in the wide weird Cosmic web of apace and time.

     We have always been one, and will continue to be one, as long as we can last here on planet Earth.

     After reading this article, I meditated with my Jessica Snow meditation app entitled “You Are Magic”. The meditation I chose is called “The Field” (it’s free on her web site, if you want to check it out: http://youaremagicla.com/). “The Filed” is the Cosmic Field, to which all consciousness and unconsciousness belongs. “The Field” (according to Jessica Snow and others such as meditation enthusiast David Lynch) is always expanding, always regenerating, and never stagnant. It is living, breathing, and dynamic, just like humanity itself, ever-evolving, ever-adapting, ever moving forward, integrating, re-forming, re-shaping, revolutionizing old ways of being, doing, and existing. “The Field” is a place you don’t have to enter, because you are already there (or here!), and have always been there (or here!), and will continue to be there (or here!) throughout eternity, throughout time and space.

     This tiny article, swirling around in the cosmos, packed a punch for me.

Rancho Tarzanadu: "Speaking of the Pandemic..."

     Miss Linda was at her wit’s end.

     She thought previously that she had been at her wit’s end, but this time she knew for certain that she had never been at her wit’s end before now.

     She also dreaded the fact that possibly, in the ever-looming future, that she could be even more at her wit’s end than she was now, and this made her want to imbibe a third cocktail.

     So she did.

     This would worry her cousin, the Green Goddess Minister (her mother’s only sister’s daughter) who believed basically the same way Miss Linda did, but apparently without the use of Vodka or psychedelic substances. Miss Linda found the “substances” to be the icing-on-the-cake, if you will (and for those of you that will, you understand).

     Some might say that she was pushing her feelings down by employing this technique, but if it enhanced her creative expression and helped to tap in to her feelings, who’s the loser here, really?

     Miss Linda had just attempted rousing the film editor downstairs to bum a cigarette, but he pretended he was asleep, even though she could tell he wasn’t. He was out of cigarettes anyway; she had already checked his “special box” in the garage. (Postscript: the cigarettes were actually there, but Miss Linda did not open the box within the box, so missed seeing them.)

     “I’ll just have to smoke a joint, then,” she muttered to herself on the way back upstairs with a loudly-concocted after-midnight White Russian.

     How appropriate, thought Miss Linda. A White Russian.

     Vladimir Putin had just put a hit on his rival, Alexei Navalny by poisoning. He denied it, until the Germans stormed in and said, “Yeah…it’s poisoning.” They are taking him back home with them.

     Miss Linda’s mother, who is now 95 years old (!) has been in-and-out of the hospital twice since the pandemic started. Each time, Miss Linda almost shit her pants out of sheer unadulterated fear and terror.

     Her mother is now safely back at home in the hills of Pasadena, surrounded by luxury, and tells Miss Linda that she is feeling ready to…die.

     Miss Linda puts her head in her hands and sighs deeply. She listens to the race-car drivers speeding on the 101 freeway at the Reseda onramp. She takes a sip of her White Russian. She sighs again.

     She is doing everything possible to prolong her mother’s life, and her precious, sweet, and beautiful mother turns to her, looks her in the eyes, and says, “I’m ready.”

     But Miss Linda notices other things, too. For instance her sister, China, pointed out that their mother always takes her pills on time now, the way she’s actually supposed to.

     Miss Linda has also noticed that she is extremely interested in food; in fact just this evening she demanded that her new caregiver bake her some corn bread muffins immediately! She was craving them so badly she could not wait one more second. She wanted to make sure that they were baked in the iron skillet that belonged to her own mother, Estelle (Star). The caregiver assured her that yes (twice), they were being baked in the iron skillet greased not only with butter, but also with olive oil simultaneously.

     Her mother’s new caregiver had just purchased a brand new “hybrid” car (she pointed this out specifically for some reason (maybe it was a political message?). The caregiver was making bank ($25.00 per hour…you do the math). Not that she didn’t work for it, because believe me (Miss Linda) she did! And also had to maintain the patience of a saint. Miss Linda was not quite up to Saintdom yet herself, as evidenced by her eight-year-old car that she had gotten because her previous car had been smashed to bits in an accident that was ultimately deemed her fault in the end (not drug related…at least, there were no reports taken by police at the scene).

     Miss Linda’s mother’s husband (a Republican) had called her all kinds of names over the years, but he was becoming milder as the days wore on. Both of them were…fading. Right in front of her. This was extremely hard to witness. Her mother weighted 112 pounds, and ate bird-sized portions. Her husband exclaimed that he “hadn’t eaten all day, and wasn’t hungry,”, then devoured a hearty portion of Mexican casserole and fresh-out-of-the-oven corn muffins. He had been put on Hospice, then taken off of Hospice, then his doctor said they weren’t sure if that was the right decision after all and may keep him on Hospice.

     All Miss Linda knew was that when he thought he was on Hospice he felt terrible, and when he thought he wasn’t on Hospice he felt great.

     Everyone in the family was extremely confused about all of this.

     Except Miss Linda’s half-brother (they had the same mother, but different fathers), who was certain, absolutely certain (without irony) that it was officially the “End of Times”. For real. It was the “truth”. Miss Linda thought, after almost four years of Overlord L’Orange that he of all people would realize that the truth was subjective, but NOOOOO! The “sinners” (which definitely included Miss Linda and her sister) would be “left behind”, while all the Overlord L’Orange supporters would begin to float up into the sky and disappear inside the clouds, never to be heard from again. If only, Miss Linda thought. It was almost enough to make her want to start praying for it. Almost.

     Speaking of the Overlord, “A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from Overlord L’Orange that sought to block Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s subpoena for his financial records” (Axios).

     Additionally, Steve Bannon just got arrested for fraud charges in the “Border Wall Scheme”.

     Insert Miss Linda’s heavy eyeroll here. Time for that joint…or the rest of it.

     Also, Miss Linda’s sister informed her that the Overlord is required to produce a DNA sample sometime next month (September) for the E. Jean Carroll rape allegation lawsuit. Miss Linda feels that E. Jean Carroll is a F*cking Brilliant Badass and hopes to see her wrangle the Overlord like the stupid little bitch he is and pin him to the ground, and then cough Covid-19 all over him. Miss Linda is not always “politically correct” apparently. Her half-brother thinks she’s going to Hell in a handbasket. Miss Linda does not believe that Hell actually exists, so she wonders if she could be sent there against her Pagan will? Honestly, she doubts it. If she’s proven otherwise, she might acquiesce, but it would have to be a pretty strong, verifiable argument.

     She would think that Baby Jesus could come up with the time, somehow, to convince her, if he really wanted to…if she was really worth saving.

     Speaking of Baby Jesus, there is a picture circulating on social media of Jesus standing behind the Overlord at his massive desk (tiny penis), and Jesus looks exactly like Charles Manson…coincidence? Miss Linda thinks not.

     So much other stuff is happening too…the Pandemic, for example.

     Miss Linda hears constant sirens. They are blaring right now at 1:47 AM.

     Miss Linda lights that joint for real, now.

     Now the sirens are gone, and just the comforting hum of the spiraling helicopters remain. Around and around and around.

     Speaking of helicopters, a homeless man took a shit in Miss Linda’s front yard sometime in mid-afternoon last week when she was tending to her 95-year-old mother’s needs full-time before the new caregivers started. He also smoked a couple of cigarettes while he was there, escaping one of the hottest days of the year in the shade of Miss Linda’s overgrown hedges. She understood in one way, but not at all in another. Kind of like empathizing with the Conspiracy Theorists. It made sense to a certain point. And then it completely stopped making sense altogether, and you would think any rational person with a decent IQ would realize this.

     Miss Linda thought maybe, just maybe, that whole fluoride-in-the-water thing might actually be a thing. That would explain a lot of brain-dead zombies out there with rifles and Baby Jesus T-shirts on who claimed they were “right” when everything about them screamed “WRONG”. Seriously. Come on.

     Miss Linda had an earful of Fox News while at her 95-year-old mother’s house tonight. The “newscaster”, a woman made out of Wonder White Bread was saying that Joe Biden wanted to enforce a “National Mandate” for mask wearing.

     Duh, you dumb-ass! The Overlord should have done that in early March. It is now August 22, 2020, and there is still no National mandate for mask wearing. We have the most Covid-19 cases in the entire world, with 178,000 U.S. citizens dead. We are leading in death. The Overlord keeps saying that “I think we’re doing very well.”

     The mystifying thing is, some people actually believe this. Miss Linda’s sister says that those people have “drunk the Kool-Aid”, and Miss Linda would have to agree with her.

     On top of all of this, fires have been raging all over California, and the air is gray…everywhere you look, gray. And thick like pea soup. The film editor downstairs would say, “It’s just like Florida”. Now that’s a depressing thought.

     Miss Linda would love to express more, in greater detail, all the myriad emotions that she is experiencing at this particular moment in time, but, as you might imagine, it’s difficult to put into exact words.

     So she will sum things up with feeling: Overwhelm, Fear, Angst, Mind-bending love from the purest depths of her being…unconditional love for her mother, for herself, for everyone around her, for the planet and the cosmos and the great beyond, Sadness, Depression, Anger, Hope, a Perpetual Longing to Live and Seize-the-Day, a Great and Utter Despair that Everything is Meaningless, a Numbness, Acceptance, Revolt, Denial, Belief in Angel Numbers as Messages from the Unified Field, Spiritual Depth in the eyes of her cats, who are not merely cats, but Secret Other-Worldly Muses.

     Fuuuccck…she would literally sell her soul right now for one measly cigarette.

     As Marie Antoinette said: “Let them smoke pot!”