blue

It seems Life is asking me, right now, to go through a breaking. Of hope. Of wishes. Of heart. Of continuity. Of a sweetest fire and light relationship of 8 months' time. Yet another leaving, in the already incredible volume of transition, not-knowing, not-having. I'm not ready for this. About 93% of me is crying out against it. I am split into at least 5 facets right now, and each one reflects on a completely different reality. Pain. Denial. Shock. Anger. And a deep, inexplicable presence that is almost peace. Because at the same time as all my NO!s, I can say I think that this has its reasons for happening. I think I can say he has his reasons, as well. He was as kind as he could be. While I don't grasp, or even know, all of these - Life's reasons or his - I'm trying to let them be whatever they are. And not to move, or judge, or look, past the moment.

Needed a book, and picked up James Hillman again today. This guy, to me, is like a super-double espresso, with a shot of absinthe. And yes, I did try absinthe once, in a warm Portland house filled with Santa Clauses. But that's another story. Such a drink, if it existed (whether one needed it or not) would sure enough give a boost. The disclaimer about quoting Hillman: I do not for one moment claim to grasp what the hell this guy is talking about. I know he's drawing on psychotherapy, myth, alchemy, and dream analysis. My imagination and intuition have a time, at any rate, with the dreaming and the reaching his words initiate. Even on a blue, empty, open day like today. And the words the book opened to spoke right to this very here and now. I'm gonna quote them like I read them: starting off somewhat coherent, into a quick and lovely unravelling that I can only end up writing as found poetry.

Please hear this, then, as a little offering from the facet of me that needs always to go on learning and understanding. The other facets are shimmering out there in the blue for now, and may not be reachable for a while.

"The blue transit between black and white is like that sadness which emerges from despair as it proceeds toward reflection. Reflection here comes from or takes one into a blue distance, less a concentrated act that we do than something insinuating itself upon us as a cold, isolating inhibition. This vertical withdrawal is also like an emptying out, the creation of a negative capability, or a profound listening -- already an intimation of silver...

Sadness is not the whole of it. A turbulent dissolution...can also show us...anima fantasies...we can place them within the blue transition...
There are patterns of self-recognition forming
a new anima consciousness, a new psychic grounding
her depths of understanding
never cease to strike deep toward shadows
driven, images locked compulsively in behavior,
visibility zero, psyche trapped
in the inertia and extension of matter
a time of symptoms.
these inexplicable, utterly materialized tortures of psyche
can commence as a mournful regret
with the appearance of blue
feeling becomes more paramount and the paramount feeling
is the mournful
these laments hint of soul, of reflecting and distancing
necessary reduction

Believe it or not, there is more color in the alchemical desert than in the flood,
in less emotion than in more. Drying releases the soul
from personal subjectivism
Blue is singularly important here because it is
the color of imagination
calls the mythic imagination to its farthest reaches
no longer concerned with distinctions between
things and thought
appearance and reality
when the eye becomes blue, that is,
able to see through

-- James Hillman, A Blue Fire