Rebaptize your badness

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"The great epochs in our lives are the points when we gain the courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche is best known as the goth philosopher who promoted nihilism in the late 19th century. In truth, he was a rebel who challenged the traditional Christian doctrines and moral compasses, and is credited, by some, as kicking off existentialism.

He believed in life, creativity, health, and living fully in this world, instead of waiting for a pastoral afterlife. His central theme was "life-affirmation," which, today,would have put him on an author tour faster than you could say "Oprah." See how timeless he is?

Nietzsche was also big into quesitoning any docrine, no matter how popular, that drained one's energy, and bummed out the creative human spirit. His philosophy inspired social and culture leaders, artists, revolutionaries, and writers.

I heard on the radio once that his famous saying, "God is dead," had been abbreviated. What he really said was "God is dead, and it's a damn shame," the second part loosely remembered/adapted by me. This could be completely wrong, but it ripped open a curiosity in a philosopher I thought of as being all Black Sky nihilism.

He wrote his "God is dead" line in a book called The Gay Science. The title was influenced by the poems of Southern French troubardours. Pretty well-rounded guy, don't you think?

If Nietzche were your personal life coach he may just ask you this:
How do you take your badness and rebaptize it into something good?
It just means turning towards it, claiming it, accepting it, seeing what it gave you, and moving on in peace. That's living in THIS life. Wanna play?

Imagine if you didn't have that badness haunting you and instead turned it on its head and loved it for what it is, what it gave you. What if....?

Here's a closing quote from our Herr F.N.
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. " --Friedrich Nietzsche

ps: I love the spirit of the quote but don't agree with "lonely often" part; how often or deeply you want to be lonely is your choice. And, consider the source: Nietzsche gave up his German citizenship and didn't claim Swiss citizenship (where he worked and taught), and travelled around a bit like a gypsy, writing, thinking, and eventually having a breakdown that could have been caused by his medications; depression, or syphillis. Nobody really knows.

Feeling faint?

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When you're at home getting cozy, reading watching TV, do you ever sit on your couch? I never do, unless I have guests. But without them, and sometimes with one or two close friends, I am stretched out on my back. Some of us are not physically able to read in any other position than lying down. So. When I went sofa shopping and saw this beauty and reclined on this beauty at the end of a long day I was sold. I can now have a second, even a third person on this thing with me and we can be comfortable beyond words and literally hang out. I can toss in some big harem-y pillows to work in the back rest and couch-ify it.

The "fainting couch" has always enticed me: the name, the curvy and/or a-symmetrical lines. Let's face it--couches, sofas, whatever we call them--they can be so boring, ugly, staid, evoke gramma or bachelor pads (black, leather, ick); and when they are beautiful they're really expensive. When they're ugly they're also expensive. Now fainting couches, there's an image, a mood, a story there. Isn't it charming that at some point in history, people needed something called a Fainting Couch? What the hell was going on? It could be that "fainting" was a euphemism for "passing out."

Couch vs. Sofa
The word "couch" comes from the French "se coucher," to go to sleep. Throughout the 17th century the couch was considered a daybed (And where do most of us take our naps? Clever French! ).

A sofa, or "sopha" is an arabic word for a raised section in the floor of one's home. Once raised, it was covered with rugs and cushions and reserved for the Esteemed Only.

The Romans put their couches in the dining rooms and called them "tricliniums." The men would pull up their tricliniums and eat together in reclined position while the women sat and watch in their upright chairs; you'd think the women had to be pretty turned off.

The sofa/couch/divan/setee/ made the transition from high-brow to every-brow during the industrial revolution when they found their way, mass-produced fabric and all--into every home.

Then came Freud
Dr F originally used the couch for his hynotherapy patients. When he moved from hypnosis to his stream-of-consciousness psychoanalysis, he kept the patient on the couch. The Good Doctor, you see, believed the visual separation between shrink and troubled dreamer was necessary.

Post-modern deconstructivism
I have no idea what that means. But my version of it started with a new carpet. I then (thanks Mom!) got the idea of a new sofa, a couple new chairs, replacing my round silly dining/writing table, and now it looks like my entire condo living room is going to get broken-down, analyzed, re-considered; old ideas and way sof living are already being thrown out and a whole new era is on its way in.

Isn't it cool how we all have our own little historical movements, births and rebirths and reincarnations within one tiny lifetime?
Simone Daybed at top of page from Crate & Barrel

A pastoral love story

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The story of Daphnis and Chloe

Once upon a time there were two orphan kids romping around on a bucolic Lesbos around the year 2 AD... they were friends, raised by shepherds and then ...

This is a sample of Marc Chagall's suite of 42 lithographs based on the story. Longus' Daphnis and Chloe is considered one of the original love stories, even inspiring Romeo and Juliet. To see and read more, and get titles, see: http://www.weinstein.com/chagall/marc-chagall.html#DaphnisChloe



... they got married and actually did live happily ever after. On their wedding night, Chloe realized that her childhood pal had been schooled in a few things by a helpful Lycaenion (sex ed was in back then). -le fin-

To see the titles and more about Chagall and this story of lithographs go to:
http://www.weinstein.com/chagall/marc-chagall.html#DaphnisChloe

If you put on a Chagall Daphne and Chloe mood, or persona, what would it look like and feel like? What would you have for dinner, what clothes would you put on (or not), how would you sit and position your body while talking to a friend, a co-worker, a family member?

You do not have to be good

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For seven years after I quit drinking, I had a scrappy piece of paper with an author-less poem glued to the inside cover of my datebook. I looked for the author for years, but just couldn't find it and finally got rid of the dayplanner with the smeared, ripped, untitled but still legible and perfect orphan poemlette. Yesterday, my friend Tim sent out an email with a poem by Mary Oliver and my first reaction was: groan, nature poetry.

And there it was. I found my "poem" inside of a bigger poem called "In Blackwater Woods."

From In Blackwater Woods

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver ~ (from American Primitive)

When Oliver gets philosophical she can really rock the Kasbah.
Another Mary Oliver knock-out is "Wild Geese." Killer first line.


You do not have to be good.

If life is about seeking freedom--the freedom to really be yourself, to love fully, to follow your passions and fill out the canvas of your life in meaninful ways that you want, rathr than what you think you should want or what other people want--how does the ideal of being "good" hold you back?

The non-meaning of life

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A wise person once told me: Life has no meaning.
Things happen and there's really no meaning attached, it's not personal. We give meaning to particular events through the stories we give them. And then we weave them together to spin one really big tale: happy, sad, tragedy, comedy, drama... For example: love affairs start, they end, love affairs come and go and someone like, okay me, could make up this story: I'm a failure at love. Or it could be this story: I've been blessed with rich and gorgeous love affairs with some great men. Story #2: my jobs have been a big roller coaster: hired, fired, self-employed, 401k-employed, back to square 1: unemployed: Sob, what a failure. Or, the story could go: what a varied quilt of cool and unusual jobs I've been graced with, and I had some balls to take some different chances, if I may say so myself. When I pass through the gates of heaven (or wherever), boy, will I have some good stories to tell. There. Much better!

Each of us can be our own best cheerleader. Others offer support and lifelines but do you give yourself the kind of unconditional support and love you expect/want/wish for from others?

e.e. cummings, both mysterious and beautiful, offers up these line in a poem (54):

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young, whatever life you wear

it will become you; and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become...

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

I'm not really sure what it means other than the playing with the theme that we have a choice about how much we want to struggle and make life difficult/tragic/melancholic -- or be content. What if our default setting was to be Happy and we just f'd things up along the way.

Ever noticed how melancholia can be like potato chips--you have a little nibble (self-pity--so nice & salty!) and you just can't stop?

Years ago during a difficult time, the image of river's current came to me, and I saw life as a series of currents and that I just had to find the right ones and go with them, rather than against them. And when I feltswept up in an undesirable current, I just had to ride it out until it dropped me into a calm eddy or pool then be ready to move!

What story can you re-tell yourself to add some pink light to your outlook. What stories can you just drop? What if we could shed our past like a snake and just possess this day?

Top painting, "Death and Life," by Gustav Klimt

Just the right amount...

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Somewhere between 460-370 B.C., Hippocrates Father of Medicine announced:
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health."

Hippocrates earned his crown by being the first known physican by making medicine it's own discipline, putting down a moral code of practice, and poo-pooing the going belief that poor health was caused by the possession of evil spirits and pissing off the Gods.

Still, do you ever feel like you've pissed the gods off a tad?

It's strange how Too little and Just enough vary. Almost three weeks ago I spent a day swimming, biking and running for 14 hours. That felt pretty triumphant. Today I went on a 15 minute walk. With three stitches in my foot, that felt pretty triumphant too.

What is just the right amount for you today?