April Rain Song
by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain. 


One thing i love about water is that it can be a mirror. On a really still day on a lake, you can see your own reflection before you dive in. I think that is an apt metaphor. I like the fact that lakes and rivers reflect the sky. As an empath, I think I can be a mirror to people. 

By the way, that is not true, that gold is the perfect balance of sulfur and mercury. That is just what alchemy believed. Alchemists also believed that metals, because they were found in veins or root-like structures in the ground, were alive and would ripen into gold. While it is a beautiful concept, it is, of course, not true as well. Such beautiful imagery, though, it made it into the book...

What I like about the ancient alchemists is that they were both scientists and mystics, thus allowing themselves to think about the world in really imaginative and expansive ways. Einstein was certainly this, Gallileo, Newton, etc... basically the greatest thinkers of modern times were all spiritually expansive. Newton spent much of his adult life seeking out the recipe for the Philosopher's Stone. He had elaborate and encoded journals with recipes for various medicines and elixirs. And, of course, everyone wanted to be able to make gold in their lab, a less spiritually expansive aspiration, however, understandable all the same. 

Some of the biggest themes and storylines of the book have come to me in dreams. I wake up in the middle of the night and know something new. The alchemy piece was like that for me. It is a strange thing, but I am going with it.  

Notes from the book-

One of the major storylines of the book is that the main character's grandfather is an alchemist. The themes of alchemy run throughout the story. One of the interesting things I have discovered along the way is that sulfur and mercury have a similar sort of meaning and play and Shiva and Shakti. There are also strong correlations between Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt and the Christian Trinity. This also comes to play in a really important way thematically in the book. Anyway, the more I learn about all of this stuff, the more it all really does seem to meld together. Different religions, similar themes playing out. Here are my notes on Alchemy from articles I've read online:


Sulfur:
The pairing of sulfur and mercury strongly corresponds to the male-female dichotomy already present in Western thought. Sulfur is the active male principle, possessing the ability to create change. It bears the qualities of hot and dry, the same as the element of fire, and is associated with the sun, as the male principle always is in traditional Western thought.


Mercury:
Mercury is the passive female principle. While sulfur causes change, it needs something to actually shape and change in order to accomplish anything. The relationship is also commonly compared to the planting of a seed: the plant springs from the seed, but only if there is earth to nourish it. The earth equates to the passive female principle.

Mercury is also known as quicksilver because it is one of very few metals to be liquid at room temperature. Thus, it can easily be shaped by outside forces. It is silver in color, and silver is associated with womanhood and the moon.

Sulfur and mercury are described as originating from the same original substance, and one might even be described as the gender opposite of the other, for example, suggesting that sulfur is the male aspect of mercury.

Salt:
Salt is an element of substance and physicality. Salt starts out as coarse and impure. Through alchemical processes, the salt is broken down through dissolving, purified and eventually reformed into pure salt, the result of the correct interactions between mercury and sulfur.

Thus, the purpose of alchemy is to strip down the self to nothingness, leaving everything bare to be scrutinized. Through the gaining of self-knowledge about one's nature and one's relation to God the soul is reformed, the impurities expunged, into a united, pure and undivided thing. That is the purpose of alchemy.


Body, Spirit and Soul:
Salt, mercury and sulfur are equated to the concepts of body, spirit and soul. Body is the physical self. Soul is the immortal, spiritual part of the person that defines the person and makes them unique among other people. The concept of spirit is far less familiar to the average reader. Many people use the words soul and spirit interchangeably. Some use the word spirit as a synonym for ghost. Neither is applicable in this context. The soul is personal essence. The spirit is a sort of medium of transference and connection, whether that connection be between body and soul, between soul and God, or between soul and the world.

All metals are a mixture of sulfur and mercury, gold is just perfect balance of them.

April 6, 2015

"Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty; Greek three; and English simply one." 
- Robert Johnson, The Fisher King and The Handless Maiden.

Can Eleanor Roosevelt be considered a hobby? I read about her and think about her a lot. It started young. When Blanche Weisen Cook came out with her two volume tome when I was in high school, I was psyched. It was more information than I had ever learned about another human being, especially someone I would never meet. If I ever get a tattoo, it will be of Eleanor Roosevelt, on my bootie. Ok, maybe not. But still a funny thought.   

To know me is to understand that I adore Eleanor Roosevelt. I know I am not alone in this. After all, she oversaw the drafting and passage of the UN’s Universal Human Declaration of Rights. She was humanitarian, a feminist, and a writer. She used her mind and great influence to churn the waters of history in the direction of human rights. Her political and humanitarian accomplishments could run off the page… but it is not her unusual beauty or her great mind that she is remembered for, Eleanor Roosevelt is remember for her great heart.

What is truly memorizing to me is how totally unconstrained she was when it came to matters of the heart. She grew up without adoration or direct love. Her troubled parents died when she was young and she was raised by her grandmother, a strict socialite. Still, Eleanor sought connection. She held an insatiable curiosity about the inner workings of the heart and soul. Her love letters to her lovers and friends were legendary. Some of the most intimate were destroyed when she died to protect her privacy. I can only imagine what depth and vulnerability those letters held. She was fearless. 

I think we vastly underestimate the heart, its capacity to expand and then expand more and more. I think Eleanor Roosevelt understood this very profoundly. She sought connection and then explored it so fully, her connection and curiosity insatiable. She met people as herself, fully with her heart open. This accessibility and warmth seemed to move the people who had the privilege of meeting her. 

To live and to love with the sweetness, grace, and fearless composure of ER. 96 words for love. I want to know them all.