I'm not proudhon of myself for stealing the title - indeed I have no title to it.
I've been involved in the distributing of unwanted stuff from a deceased estate - two doors down the hill from me. The house and adjacent lot are variously said to be worth somewhere between $A500,000 and $A2,000,000.
The detritus, the objects abandoned were only of nuisance value to the estate. I organised to have some of it cleaned and sold to raise money for the school my daughters attend - a lot of time and effort for a relatively small return. For my efforts I was bailed up in the Kauri Foreshore Hotel and accused of fraud.
The Mitchell Library has accessioned the family papers and photos which I think is better than them going into landfill. The Glebe Society has accepted a small number of objects into its collection and some has been included in a digital database of textile design. All good, I'd have thought.
I also forwarded on mail at the request of the last occupant of the house and the wife of the executor - seemed the neighbourly think to do. The result? - the executor now states that my redirecting of mail is a criminal act under some vague law relating to the carriage of postal items and that my touching the letter box is an act of trespass. It'll be a frosty night at Executor Mansions when the Post Office police drag me and his missus off on conspiracy charges.
Don't know the man, never met him, know nothing about him. Well, now I'm getting a sense of him. Up to a point I'd blame grief but this seems more like gold fever.
I think the whiff of free money brings out the creeps.
I also think that when someone makes a bizarre accusation against someone else it's usually a confession of a personal weakness and can be motivated by guilt and shame. Some kind of Jungian thing.
I accuse you of that which I am most disgusted of in my own character! You are the fraudster not me! You are the criminal, thief and unwelcome one, not me!
My bad resides in you, not me! I am good and you? You are bad! To the core!
It'll all blow over - bullies dissipate - little men shrink away - the greedy eat their young.
What is becoming more apparent is that my ex-neighbour's code of treating all people with patience, tolerance and respect has resulted in the assembling of a motley crew of dependents who display none of these attributes.
He was patient with the impatient, tolerant of the intolerable and acted with respect towards the unrespectable. His property going on the market was like a rock being lifted off a dark damp place.
I'm almost hoping the wreckers come through, pave it and put up a parking lot. Maybe we only get one good neighbour.
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8 comments:
Jung had this to say...let the other psyche and it's projections act upon you and observe how the projection makes you feel, observe your own response for there is gold in the darkness that may be freed by the act.
Or words to that affect.
Back when I was a mental health worker one of my mentors was big on Jung. He talked about shadow personalities and raised the idea that the people we are attracted to are people that display more actively those aspects of ourself that we like.
Conversely the people that repel us display those aspects of ourself that we don't like or would rather not have.
I did some Gestalt training at one point and all the dreamwork was based on Jungian concepts. Every component of a dream was interpreted as an aspect of the dreamer's self.
Darkness, light and shadow seem to be recurring themes for me at present. I am discovering, too, the speeches of Martin Luther King which oftentimes show an optimism that the circumstances seemed not to merit.
I met a man in London, E. David Ellington Jr, who had planned to be the first black PoTUS. The plan sounded solid if a little grandiose. I was amazed to share a house with the Duke's grandson and hear childhood stories "Now don't you go hanging out with those old fools. Music never did them any good". Dave was prone to statements like "I love America but I hate what she's done to my people".
I'll put him on my "must google some day" list.
My favourite Jung quote,
I'm glad I'm Jung and not a (expletive) Jungian.
Jung's so called shadow work came from his studying alchemical manuscripts, especially Jakob Boheme (Von Franz would prepare them for him, his sorror mystica.
Some stages in the opus,
Abledo
Rubledo
Nigredo
Sublimatio
Coagulatio
Circulatio
Coniunctio
I know little.
After reading your comment I asked one of the local photographers about Jung and the alchemists. Tom drinks coffee at Sappho's which has the best coffee for miles around. The baristas compete to be the most consistent and currently Dom has overtaken the master handling my macchiato with deft aplomb.
Seems the transmutation of base matter into gold parallels the psychotherapeutic process. Alchemists were philosophers and priests and many of the leading lights in any scientific or spiritual dimension over the last few millenia wrote alchemical treatises.
Another whole universe of darkness for me to blunder into.
After reading Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' I made a pilgrimage to Paris to see the one in the Musee des arts et metiers which seems part of a story of similar complexity. There was a sign saying that for some reason the pendulum had to be re-adjusted manually from time to time which was disappointing. The museum is fascinating:
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/?lang=ang
Tom's conversation likewise. Ranging from schizophrenia to Isaac Newton to spiritual enlightenment to the reduction of base matter to component parts - and all within the context of Jung, Jungians and post-Jungians.
Seems my understanding is on the level of a Weet-bix card. It was one of those conversations where I wish I'd taken notes.
Sappho is hands down the best of poet.
One other thing to get your teeth into, maybe, Gnosticism.
Tom sounds interesting. Jung wrote a book called Aeon, I sold all my Jung books or gave them away (except Answer To Job).
I would have given the book to you. Still, there is a synchronicity to acquired knowledge and experience.
One of my books is part dedicated to Jung.
But as the alchemists say,
Rend the books before they rend your mind.
Symbols can transform.
In an earlier life I had a market stall called Vundumuna which was a word from Zaire that means "small things you find on the ground that bring you luck". I sold TradeAid coffee, books and craft imported by the Africa Information Centre and army surplus clothing imported by an aging rapscallion and occasionally supplemented with local craft usually of a rastafarian nature. Copped a bit of flak for making the fighting for freedom connection too obvious.
Tom spoke of Gnosticism yesterday - he'd been committed to atheism for a long time but his recent study has lead him to an awareness of the spiritual in everything beginning at a sub-atomic level.
One of my neighbours is from Bavaria - he's called Hasso but my four-y-o daughter calls him Sappho.
Your daughter knows him well. Once I picked things up from the ground, from the sand. Now I leave everything as it is.
Spirit in matter, the anima mundi, very important to the alchemist, and certain poets.
Look to the small.
Hasso has an identical twin who visits often. One afternoon my daughter was amazed to see two Sapphos - both getting out of Audis in Glebe.
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