When your eyes have found the strength

To constantly speak to the world

All that is most dear

To your own

Life,

When your hands, feet, and tongue

Can perform in that rare unison

That comforts this longing earth

With the knowledge

Your soul,

Your soul been groomed

In His city of love;

And when you can make others laugh

With jokes

That belittle no one

And your words always unite,

Hafiz

Does vote for you.

Hafiz will vote for you to be

The minister of every country in

This universe.

Hafiz does vote for you my dear.

I vote for you

To be

God.

The Recession and Redistribution of Wealth Are the Same Thing

It may not be obvious when you read this, but it's only one of many signs. The reason I choose this one is that it shows just how wide the ripples propagate when wealth is redistributed. Don't let the circumstances of this particular redistribution end the conversation, either. Most of the accumulation of vast sums into the accounts of the very few are also the result of criminal activity.

I don't understand how people in this country cannot connect the massive fraud and consequent enriching of a few, with the unemployment, underemployment, wage freezes and wage reductions of the many. As Bill Maher points out, the riches of the rich won't simply and spontaneously explode and rain down equally on the rest.

Hidden right in front of me

This is the message of Barfield's work: Just because something isn't obvious doesn't mean it's not there. And just because it takes work, and practice, to see it, doesn't mean it's contrived or conjured.

For example: Years ago, I learned how to use a microscope in order to analyze bits of various materials - floor and ceiling tile, insulation, adhesives - for the presence of asbestos fibers. Eventually, not only could I determine whether or not there was asbestos in the sample, but also what type of asbestos (there are six), and a rough estimate of how much was in the sample. And after even more practice and experience, I could determine fairly accurately, without the microscope, whether a sample contained asbestos or not.

Another example: I was working on a piece of artwork for a friend's birthday. It was made with ink prints from a design I'd gotten from somewhere. I stamped the paper with my little stamp, but when I was done, it didn't quite look right. I stamped again, but still it didn't feel right. I'm not an artist of that sort - I was just doing what I wanted - and didn't know any 'theory' and had very little practice. My landlord and upstairs neighbor was an artist, though, and an experienced and accomplished one. I asked him to take a look at my creation, and suggest what I might do to finish it. He looked at it for about five seconds, suggested something, which I did, and it looked great.

For the last several days I've been making my way through The World of Tolkien: Mythological Sources of The Lord of the Rings by David Day. It's an oversized hardback, with lots of great illustrations by a variety of artists - that's why I bought it. After spending time reading it, though, I've found the text to be even more enjoyable and stimulating than the illustrations. And eye-opening.

What Day does that is so enlightening is to show the sources for many of the names in Tolkien's work of Middle Earth. The book is meant to read like an encyclopedia, sort of, with entries that include "Gods and Deities", "Morgoth", "Dragon Broods and Hoards", "Barrow-wights and Phantoms", and "The Reunited Kingdom of the Dunedain". Under every heading, Day gives the (primary world) history of a variety of relevant words from The Lord of the Rings, and as much evidence as possible of Tolkien's own reasons for employing those particular words.

The term 'middle earth' is of course essential to understand. It is this earth. Not another planet, or a fabrication from whole cloth. "In its origins, Tolkien's Middle-earth has much in common with the Midgard of Norse mythology," writes Day. "The theatre of my tale is this earth", wrote Tolkien.

This is just the beginning of course. Day traces the etymology of 'midgard,' (middle-erd, midden-erd), and traces Tolkien's own accounting of his use of the term throughout The Lord of the Rings. He does the same with 'elf', 'dwarf', 'star', 'Westernesse' (related to Avalon - Isle of Apples - related to Hesperides), 'Rivendell' (cleft valley, 'cleft' being 'delphi' in Greek), 'Arda', 'Numenor' (Atalante in High Elvish, Atlantis in Greek), etc..

I hate to use 'etc.', but the connections are so many, often from more than one language - Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old English, Middle English, High German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Welsh - and in more than one character or word or phrase. You simply must read the book. The effect this has had on me is to see more and more clearly just how little Tolkien invented, and how much he reconstructed. By tracing words and phrases and myths and stories back in time and across cultures, Tolkien discovers connections, additions, omissions, mistakes, misinterpretations along the way. In the end, what he was after was to reconstruct the true origins of the English nation, seen from 'the inside' - from the human mind.

So, about every third page of reading Day's book is punctuated by my saying 'OOOOOoooohhhhh...so that's what that means....aaaahhhh....I see now...'. There is an annotated version of The Hobbit; we need the same thing for The Lord of the Rings. With this edition, it will be clear just how much Tolkien has revealed, yet was still hidden from untrained eyes and minds.

Clearing out the cobwebs

The world record for the men's 200 meter dash has only improved by 3.01 seconds in over one hundred years. When that record is cut in half in one fell swoop, and soon after that, is cut in half again, then we have ourselves a revolution in the development of the human being. When the 19.19 record is broken with a 9.59, and the very next breaking is with a 4.79, then that's a revolution. Right?

I like thinking about that, because it clears certain obstacles to my thinking, by showing them as obstacles, rather than features of my personality, or laws of the physical universe. Yet, at the same time, I see that humans have developed so profoundly. We don't realize it, maybe, because that branch of the species still exists and lives right alongside the rest of us. They are called professional athletes.

My best personal time running a mile, that I have any evidence for, is about 7:30. The world record is 3:43. There's your 'cut in half' right there.

So here's this race of human beings, that can perform at physical levels twice what the rest of us mortals can. I thought to use the term 'order of magnitude', but learned that this means 10 times greater. My time is only twice what the world record is. 34:00 would be an order of magnitude greater (slower) than the record.

Or: for the record to be improved by an order of magnitude, it would have to be run in 22 seconds.

There's something to clear obstacles to your thinking.

I love language...

I was looking closely at The Empress card on the table, lined up with the four other cards I drew. I looked  closely at her dress, to see what the print was - those...they're called...

I couldn't remember.

Just a minute ago, I was reading the meaning of this card in a book - for a different deck - which mentioned 'apple tree'.

"Pomegranate!"

How did I know 'pomegranate' from apple tree? Well, I know that potato in French is pomme de terre - earth apple. Pome-granate. Had to look it up, but that means 'apple with many seeds'.

I've often tried to remember a word by going through the alphabet in my head. That rarely works. I think it's because that's not how my memories are...kept, nor retrieved. More like what happened with pomegranate.

I'm working on publishing a second edition of my book Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness. The current edition is wanting editorial attention in some large and small ways. And conceptually, I will try to tie some things together that aren't quite in the book currently.

If you've read the book, I encourage you to give me any feedback that you think would make a second edition better than the first.

The Owen Barfield Society met yesterday in Scottsdale, Arizona, during the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Modern Language Association. We heard from artist and eurhythmist Karen Bailey, author Albert Linderman, PhD student Tiffany Martin, as well as from a reading from Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul.

I also caught a Linguistics session of the conference, and heard about commodification of language and place signifiers in New Orleans, the frequency of place names with Anglo, Celtic, and other sources in Gallic France, and an analysis and defense of Noah Webster's etymologies. Good times.

I also spoke with a fellow Barfieldian at length, during which he mentioned the need for spiritual and intellectual engagemen with others, on a regular basis. I agreed; I'll check out Meetups for Steiner groups. And a google search.

Dreams are to keep me asleep

As usual, reading Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams makes so much sense of things. He argued that you could assume two things for certain of any dream:

1. The dream is keeping you asleep

2. The dream is keeping you asleep by representing your own wishes as being fulfilled

The wish fulfillment is, in general, the wish to avoid work, or effort, because, in effect, the dream keeps you asleep by representing your desires, your wishes, your plans and intentions, as having already been realized. Now. Magically. You don't need to get up out of bed for a glass of water - you can keep sleeping because you already have water.

A dream keeps you asleep by convincing you that you have no need to wake up - all of your needs are met.

I've added a twist: What if I make these same assumptions with regard to my daydreams? This is significant, because I daydream often. Often. Walter Mitty-often, and just as dense.

So, if I assume these two things about my daydreaming? Well, I'm awake, so the 'sleeping' refers to some aspect of my waking life which is, paradoxically, asleep, and which I don't want to exert any effort to change. My daydreams will depict that aspect already realized. I don't need to go back to school - I already have a degree. I'm already an expert in my field - I don't need to learn anything more, to find ways to improve my work.

I might do well to look at my daydreams as reminders that I have work to do - very specific work indicated in the dream content itself. It's time to wake up, sunshine, and see those things realized, really.

Also, I might learn some things about myself if I pay attention to what mental circumstances immediately precede an episode of daydreaming. Am I thinking of some difficulty that's blocking my realization? Lack of money? Faulty thinking? Self-pity?

Damn you, Freud ;-)