the content of consciousness

I'm sitting in near-total darkness, the room illuminated only by a few flickering candles, the remnants of a tropical storm falling noisily beyond the glass of the sliding door that leads to the patio. To my right sits a bottle of Blue Moon's version of hefewiezen. The sounds of Van Morrison's latest album, Magic Time, drift softly in the background. I am content.

Ashley is up in Michigan for Sunni and Dan's wedding reception and, if truth be told, I am glad to have some time alone. It's not that I don't want to be with Ashley that makes me value this time; rather, it's just a penchant I have for solitude. Being alone on occasion with only my thoughts, good music, and a bottle or two of suds is something I will always appreciate. We all need to recharge now and then, and this is what works for me.

Van Morrison's new album is great - soulful, bluesy, and world-weary yet hopeful. He's got one of the all-time great voices and an appreciation for older forms of music that results in songs that are at once new yet familiar. Some lines that resonate with me lately:

You've got to fight every day
to keep mediocrity at bay

and:

Every day, every day, it's hustle time, hustle time
Every day, one more, one more mountain to climb

The lines are sung in more of a matter-of-fact way than in a despairing mood. "This is how life is", he seems to say. We needn't lament it, but neither should we shrink from it. It recalls Dylan's lyric from "Buckets of Rain":

Life is sad
life is a bust
All you can do
is do what you must
You do what you must do, and you do it well
I'd do it for you, honey baby can't you tell?

I've always found sentiments such as these to be more life-affirming than anything having to do with rainbows and lollipops. I guess you might say I prefer Sisyphus to Howdy Doody, or Pooh to Tigger. An honest hopefulness, even if difficult to sustain, is infinitely better than a deceptive, blind delirium. As Jung said, there can be no birth of consciousness without pain.

Speaking of Jung, I've found the Portable Jung reader to be very good bathroom literature of late. There are quite a few gems in there, quite a few thought-provoking tidbits that can provide something to ruminate on throughout the day.

I've also been enjoying Northern Exposure episodes over the past couple of weeks. I ordered Season 3 as a reward for finally landing a job, and I've now watched all 23 episodes. I'd have to say that it's my favorite television show of all time. I watch The Simpsons when I want to laugh, but I watch NX when I want to feel glad about being alive. There aren't many other television shows, or any that I know of, that are capable of engendering that sentiment.

I'll leave you with this:

"The intuitive is never to be found in the world of accepted reality-values, but he has a keen nose for anything new and in the making. Because he is always seeking out new possibilities, stable conditions suffocate him. He seizes on new objects or situations with great intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without any compunction and apparently without remembering them, as soon as their range is known and no further developments can be divined. So long as a new possibility is in the offing, the intuitive type is bound to it with the shackles of fate. It is as though his whole life vanished in the new situation. One gets the impression, which he himself shares, that he has always just reached a final turning-point, and that from now on he can think and feel nothing else. No matter how reasonable and suitable it may be, and although every conceivable argument speaks for its stability, a day will come when nothing will deter him from regarding as a prison the very situation that seemed to promise him freedom and deliverance, and from acting accordingly. Neither reason nor feeling can restrain him or frighten him away from a new possibility, even though it goes against all his previous convictions."

- Jung, from "A General Description of the Types"