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Week 8 – Bachelardian Reverie #4

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**sorry for the lateness, I lost my book and just acquired a new one

“What an invitation to dream what one sees and to dream what one is…Who is existing?  What a relaxation for our own existence!”  (161)

My existence is exhausting. whirling, turning, maelstrom, never resting, never ceasing, never silent.  Words and dreams and moments spinning in a vortex, nothing sorted, nothing orderly.  I try to control the internal with the external but the one doesn’t translate well into the other.  If I can only know who I am when my mind is quiet, how will I ever know who I am?  If I don’t exist as a static being I can be reborn every moment, a phoenix shaking its feathers afresh every nanosecond.  There is freedom in the ether, but can there be freedom without captivity?  Who is looking out at me from my own eyes?  Can these eyes see the many faces of the many-faceted gods who cannot exist without me to dream them into creation so that they can in turn create me?

P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie #3

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“Attached to its odor memories, a childhood smells good.”  (Bachelard, 140)

Pipe tobacco.  Scratchy brown sofas in every room, green wallpaper always made me think of Napolean.  The front room with the best bookshelves but not allowed to touch.  The secret back bedrooms.  Mixing clay, letting it run through my fingers and letting a thin layer coat my hands and harden.  A jar of candy orange slices, slightly stale, the crunch of sugar between my teeth.  Seashell soaps in bowls, too many for one room.  Petticoats in every color on a rack in the spare room, so many things we weren’t allowed to play with.  Erasers in every shape, puzzles, perpetual motion figures.  The stack of every Serendipity book, sitting on the floor with Bratty in my lap reading them to her on Saturday afternoon, one after the other, and that one picture book of Sleeping Beauty–even then I thought there was something a little off about that story.  She was too much a victim, the ultimate fantasy of a woman subdued.  Such a sharp contrast to the Twelve Dancing Princesses, in the beginning anyway.  Fairy tales again…

P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie #2

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“The man who loves a woman “projects” upon that woman all the values which he venerates in his own anima.  And in the same way, the woman “projects” upon the man she loves all the values which her own animus would like to conquer.”  (Bachelard, 73)

this vision of two conquers and divides and creates us.  we are nothing without the other. two sides to every story, two sides to every coin, two dimensions in space. many faced gods wringing their many hands as they make and unmake themselves. apotheosis. we are the gods that make and unmake themselves. our creations mirror the creator more than our autobiographies ever could. our desires are plain in our actions but muddled by our words. the only fools we are fooling are ourselves but we turn a blind eye and continue because knowing yourself too well might be just as bad as not knowing yourself well enough.  why do i keep thinking of anais nin?

P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie 1

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“…when will-o’-the-wisps–beings of very indeterminate sex–are to seduce men or women, they become precisely, according to the person to be led astray, flambettes (f.) or flamboires (m.).”  (Bachelard, 38)

Everything is changeable.  Nothing is black or white or either or.  Everything is everything.  There are no absolutes.  That a creature of folklore would need to be of a certain (opposite) sex to lure an unwary child away seems Freudian.  A human construct placed on an inhuman thing.  But is it a human construct? An animal construct.  We do  seem to work in pairs, for the most part.  (Un)matched pairs.  His and hers.  Yours and mine. Little statues on top of the cake in black and white.  Harlequin.  Hen and rooster shaped salt and pepper shakers.  Black and white.  Masculine and feminine.  Little Red and the Wolf.  Dark fur and tender white flesh.  Always fairy tales.