Snoballs, Hot Dogs, Coffee, Nachos

One rainy October evening in the late 1980's, I was visiting my friend Prescott, who dwelled in the Osborne, high above 57th Street, the original locale of Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby". Prescott resided just below the apartment where actor Gig Young and his wife died in a violent suicide pact.

Anyhow I was lounging in Prescott's living room, surrounded by Daubignys, Blakelocks and Porters, prattling on about the Cambridge Five, the ring of spies recruited by Moscow's KGB from a group of British aesthetes in the 1930's. I had just read Andrew Boyle's "The Fourth Man" and had recently seen Alan Bennett's "A Question of Attribution," where James Fox plays the Queen's treacherous curator. The cloak and dagger exploits of Philby, Burgess, MacLean and Blunt held great fascination for me, having been a WWI spy in a past life, according to a psychic I once dined with at the Odeon. Prescott smiled mysteriously and uttered four words I'll never forget, "I've got Blunt's shoes."

The question always remains: To what are we really committed? Is it to playing it safe and manipulating our life and the rest of the world so that it will give us security and confirmation? Or is our commitment to exploring deeper and deeper levels of letting go? Do we take refuge in small, self-satisfied actions, speech, and mind? Or do we take refuge in warriorship, in taking a leap, in going beyond our usual safety zones?

Comments

[MIVan]

Cuts like a knife but it feels so right

[PetalsAndRice]

These are good questions.

[Marco]

I believe it's a combination of systole and diastole. But then again, we are engaged in a work that is contra natura.
Thoughtful post

[D. Shite]

I don't know what most of those words mean but I do know that most people are committed to a relatively safe and painless life, no warrior leaps, unlike you Miss Eli. Contra natura? Warrior leaps sound like only nature if you ask me.

[Marco]

D. Shite, the work contra natura is one of the most warrior like leaps one can take.

[D. Shite]

Oh yeah?!? Why I oughta ...

Please don't be unnecessarily cryptic, it's __________ - what is contra natura?

[Marco]

I am not trying to be cryptic. Eli's images evoke facets of a crystal. She's a poet, I'm not. So, I sometimes have to search for words. I need more Spanish red. Maybe the word images will come via Polyhymnia.

[D. Shite]

Cool. But what is contra natura?

[MIVan]

WHo cares? You were a WWI spy in a past life?!? Man that's fantastic.

[Marco]

Eli's sure-safe-stasis vs. warriorship reminded me of a passage of James Hillmann. I'm not saying what's natural or against nature. It just brought this process to mind. Paraphrasing, it's that something within us that seems to want and yet resist being twisted into shapes that are unnatural. Alchemy came up with the deformational work, opus contra naturam, as a resolution of this dilemma. A work against nature, but yet in the service of a wider nature that is animated or ensouled. They deformed or hurt nature (all that boiling, skinning, putrefying, suffocating) to free animated nature.
Through Wiki, I learned that Gig Young and Brian Wilson had the same shrink. Also slang for a new hard drive is a gig young.

[Detroit Sh.]

God my head hurts. What is this, grad school? Thanks for the explaination, I'm going to go relieve the pressure with some good old morning television, maybe a soap opera or two, before I head to the shop to wrangle with that goddam drill press that is totally opus contra naturam.

[Marco]

Sorry if sounds like grad school to you, Deetroit Sh. The opus is only one of the most things to come along since fire.

[Detroit Sh.]

"The opus is only one of the most things to come along since fire"??? Who are you?!? Anyhow if you're behind our girl that's cool but you might wanna consider dialing it down.

[EAU]

Not another word out of the both of you.

[Marco]

I'm behind, Eli. She knows that. I'm dialed down. Check out my post about you remark.

[Marco]

Yes, Eli. I posted that before I saw your comment.