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.    

Īśvarapraṇidhāna (ईश्वर-प्रणिधान) literally means contemplation of the Ishvara (God/Supreme Being, special Self, divinity within the individual). Surrendering (pranidhana) to a higher source (Ishvara).

Since I spend so much of my time alone, playing with words on the computer, there are many days when I contemplate the limitations of language. I recently read an article about the importance of eye contact in the NYtimes. The article referenced the German word for- to look through someone as though they don’t exist. Now that’s a real thing and there is no real word for it in the English language. For me, there is a shuddering loneliness and truth to such a word, the cadence of the word even mimicked the feeling it was trying to capture. Ironically, I cannot find the article so that I can even retrieve the word. Maybe it’s for the best. 

However, in search of that word, I found other, more optimistic, beautiful words that the English language is lacking. Here are a handful of my favorites.
1. Koi No Yokan
Japanese – The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.  
2. Waldeinsamkeit
German – The feeling of being alone in the woods 
3. Wabi-Sabi
Japanese – it refers to a way of living that emphasizes finding beauty in imperfection, and accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay.  
4. Nunchi
Korean – The subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. It could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation.   (I think I have some good Nunchi skills)
5. Duende
Spanish – It’s original use was to describe a mythical entity that lives in forests, sort of like a fairy or a sprite, that possesses human beings and causes them to feel awe, fear, or a sense of beauty in their natural surroundings. Since being updated by the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, in the early 20th century, it is now used to refer to the mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person. 

Ishvara pranidhana is also one of those words for me, and I think it is the thing I struggle with most in life. Ishvara pranidhana – Surrendering (pranidhana) to a higher source (Ishvara). Beautiful. It is the opposite, this haunting concept of looking through someone. Seemingly, it is the place of most connection, but also the place of most vulnerability.

When I lived in Nepal, I tasted this idea most fully. I remember being on the longest series of flights of my life, from Chattanooga, to Atlanta, to Cincinnati, to Frankfurt, to Panang, to Singapore, to somewhere in Burma, to Katmandu. I was alone and I remember looking into the mirror in the tiny airplane lavatory on the flight over the Atlantic. I stared into the mirror for a long time. There was no turning back. At that time, I felt like I was at a distinct fork in the road mentally. I could spend the next seven months scared and worried or I could surrender. I was so remote from the trappings of my ego and self, that it was really easy for me. It was like living in a dream. The only thing anchoring me was the necklace that my father had given me, a St. Christopher’s medal to wear around my neck, just like the one he wears every day. 

I had also had the great fortune of meeting Andrew in Nepal. He picked me up from the airport. He was in his mid-forties and with white hair and a young face. He sort of reminded me of Steve Martin. He had worked for NGOs all over the world. He had a strong connection to Nepal and had returned to live and work. 

What was amazing to me about Andrew was his ability to have fun in any situation and he had the laugh to back it up. His laugh was one of the laughs that bubbled up and over and was cross-culturally contagious. We would go on these epic walks through Katmandu visiting all of his friends in town. He was such an oddity, a pale white man with white hair who spoke Nepali, that he had many friends all over town. His friends would invite us in and serve us the most amazing meals you could imagine. Andrew was so funny that I would laugh so hard I would regularly cry.

About once a month, the communist party would shut down the bus system in Kathmandu. Buses would sometimes run on those days but the rioters would sometimes jump aboard and cause problems. Andrew and I need to be somewhere so he convinced me to ride the bus with him. About halfway through our journey, a group of young men jumped aboard, yelling and angry. They removed the bus driver from the vehicle and started driving the bus in the wrong direction. I was wide-eyed and rubbing my necklace feverishly. Andrew leaned down smiling with excitement, 

“We’re hostages!” he whispered, giggling like a little girl. 

We were. Our everything was in the hands of these angry teenage boys. Yet with Andrew there, I could not stop laughing. Andrew could not stop laughing. It was beyond the worst case scenario. The laughter was disarming though. It took hold of the environment. The boys lost their nerve and jumped off of the bus, running into the streets and alleys. 

There was such power in Andrew’s type of surrender. And because of his light-hearted, joyful spirit, he would take everyone right along with him. Laughter, to me is one of the more powerful forms of surrender. It takes over your body. More please, I remember thinking to myself. 

What was so easy there, in a place where I was stripped naked from my identity, my geography, my culture, is not so easy back at home. While I can taste glimmers of that childlike surrender that my friend Andrew embodied for me, I am hard-pressed to sustain it. There are reminders of it. Like for me, the moon reminds me of it. There is something innately playful about the moon, its light and the way it bounces off of things and then dances there. And there are words. I love words. For me, there is potent play and magic in a word. Words like wabi-sabi and Ishvara pranidhana, words illuminate things in a way, in such a way that you can’t look through as though they don’t exist. They meet you eye to eye every time.