Aldo Carotenuto

Looking at postings that've been read (in Blogger's "stats") sometimes prompts me to go back to the post and do some editing. Most recently I added links to the psychologists on the one about Maria Miles.

It's been a couple of years since I found The Vertical Labyrinth in a library's "Books For Sale" pile. What with the multiple, multi-colored page-markers, my copy looks like an anemone streaming Tibetan prayer flags.

I might have written the following myself...

"In retrospect, I must admit that I owe my very life and my realization—as in Italian we call the psychic achievement—to women, in the sense that they made possible the transformation of my inner energy by providing a canal into which it could flow." 

Curiously, there doesn't seem to be a Wiki article about Carotenuto. I took the above (an obituary or eulogy?) from the European Juournal of Psychoanalysis. It's quite a ways down.)

I do wonder if something is lost in the translation; "canal" seems a bit too Freudian -- After all, Aldo was a Jungian.

Volumizing

I'm no longer comfortable feeding in public.

   Between the boisterosity of fellow troughers, 

shrieking infants, 

       eight-year-olds closing deals on their cellphones while awaiting their appetizers, and, most recently, 

over-priced pretension ala Nello's Place, Redding, CA. Recommended by a motel clerk, it left a definitively negative stamp. I'm now committed to takeout.


I'm at a loss to convey the beauty of the redwoods. The weather was perfect.

If you're in Weaverville, CA you might stop at Bryce's Curiosity Shop. On the roof is printed COOL CHEAP STUFF -- you can't miss it. Nearly everything is 3 for $5.00 or some such. The opposite of Nello's, he has a Master's in psychology with an M.S. in Cognitive Science and hopes to get a PhD out of the jewelry with a dissertation on feminist influences of the yoni in jewelry design.

Bryce has been into jewelry since age 9. He recently expanded into art and had several East Indian story bracelets (like this one) worth asking to see. There was also a painted abalone shell depicting semi-clad couples cavorting on the green...a steal at $400.00.

But it was his displays that caught our attention. Please admire the pipe from a gas stove.

His surprise at how well mouse traps sell rings seemed as great as ours.

In Alamo, Nevada they forgot to move our reservation over one day and we got bumped. It was a blessing in disguise as the entire town had been taken over by a family reunion. It appeared to be the progeny of five couples who'd had ten children each and they, in turn, had done likewise; the grandchildren were now teenagers awaiting the dark. 

We lucked into an eighty-year-old, long-line motel (a single strip of rooms paralleling the highway) that had been lovingly cared for. 

At 10:00 pm the maintenance guy was still on duty. He demonstrated how the doorknob doesn't turn...the door yields to a well-applied shoulder. 

Our room, spacious with a huge armoire-kum-TV-stand and spotlessly clean, was elegantly appointed in pink tones with Elizabethian notes worthy of a brothel. We'd been assured -- as if they were waiting in the bushes -- we'd find no dancing girls at our door. (He made a point of looking at Michelle while delivering this as he KNEW I'd be disappointed.)

Of the twenty or so rooms, only two others were tenanted. Spread out as we were, it was, we surmised, MUCH quieter than Alamo.

In the morning after a short run to St George we holed up in the 100 degree heat until sunset. I then picked up three new 5-gallon water jugs for $6.88 each, cheapest in the nation. (Mormons aren't as greedy when it comes to preparedness essentials, you see.)

Joy of Marketing!! (From the motel)

Volumizing: A term popularized by penis-enlargement ads.

Tomorrow it's on to Zion Nat'l Park and Kanab.

Numinosity - It's All About Timing

Double click to Largen

Aldous Huxley once said, "Life is mundanity punctuated by orgies." (Harper & Row, 1989) I'm continually amazed by the way the orgies insert themselves.

After several hours at the wheel I stopped to photograph a stand of poppies. Nearby was a sign that read: Stop and rest, linger, enjoy all yea travelers, wayfarers and walk-abouts. The sign was fairly large in a cursive font that leant a creative flair to the invitation. The grounds were contained by a metal fence with stone pilasters which, although a bit closely spaced, added an aire of elegance in an otherwise nondescript, small-town neighborhood. Thinking it might be a Bed & Breakfast,  I strolled up the drive.

There was evidence of yard-work, but no one to be seen. As I approached the front door I noticed the building's facing was composed of rock inlaid between "pilasters" or, in this case, column-like accents. Four semicircular steps resembling concentric waves led to a small porch and the front door. To the side of the doorway a finely-crafted, wooden rocking chair, the glider kind, basked in its position of prominence. It was attended by a lithesome pot stand upon which rested a bird's nest. I pressed the doorbell and detected - rather than heard - it ring.

I inquired about seeing the art. He asked what I meant. I said the house was obviously the abode of an artist and as an enthusiast I was interested in seeing the work. He said I was partially right. The home had been built by an artist but he had sold it to them. His wife appeared and joined the conversation. She averred as how upon purchasing the home she had begun painting.

He left to get one and soon emerged carrying a beautiful winter landscape. The scene was of a stand of birch in front of a picket fence with a barn off to the side. Gray, rounded mountains filled the background. The painting's light was so wonderfully done it actually glowed. I had to pause.

The husband said, "I think she has talent." I agreed vigorously. She beamed. I pontificated on why (I thought she had talent) and added that the yard was beautiful too. He had been working hard on it and was glad it showed. By now the synergism was imbuing an expanded state of enthusiasm. I realized I was once again in what I'm convinced Aldous meant by an orgy...we'd reached numinosity and were basking in it.

The husband bid me happy travels and I ambled back to my carriage. (Eggbert sees himself as a Caravel with four-in-hand, dontchya know.) The "hours" at the wheel had given the poppies to appear at just the right time.


Thank you J.A.T.

Process....Not GOAL

....once we recognize the process nature of human experience and the infinite potentialities of human thinking and discovery, we give up hope of an orderly and completed system of thinking.

But having given that up, we are begun upon an intellectual adventure which has within it high excitement and genuine creative potential. Many of us will find the ambiguity and inexorable incompleteness of this approach to be threatening. Certainly I experience these feelings myself.

But I know too that once we change the conception of the enterprise in which we are engaged to that of exploration in an infinite system, once we give up the hope of making the ultimate and definitive discovery and recognize that our transaction with our experience of the out-there is a creative, artistic one, there is more to be gained than lost.

(From: The Search For Authenticity by J.F.T. Bugental 1965)

And if Manny (with cigar) sez it's so, it's so!

Originally, my first blogpost on January 23, 2011, I moved it to the beginning as I added posts that predated it.