Wiki says: James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, founded a movement toward archetypal (he might say imaginal) psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut on October 27, 2011, from bone cancer.
Ouch. My Dad died of this cancer and it really hurt. I am told it is one of the worst. I wish to honor Jim. This is the first I have heard of his death and he was a giant among the psychologists in the manner of Jung. Jung wanted no followers. He wanted compatriots, comrades, peers. Hillman actually complied with that, enough so that it is possible to contemplate someone coming along and gathering his works with the intention of creating a Hillmanian psychology of the imagination.
My friend Erin who blogs from Northern Ontario posted a poem today that inspired this one. To see her wonderful work *click here*
It's Complicated
You are granular
in your placement of your time
in the midst of mine.
Gravelly featured
and corrugated of soul,
that's how I'll play it
trying to forget
the divinity we left
behind on purpose
or at least as we
agreed at the start of things.
Who we once were, that
can't be helped as we
are now, too rugged to smooth
things over but I
do miss my white wings.
November 7, 2011 1:04 PM
I am amused. This is the third poem I have named It's Complicated. I don't see why not. I pulled them up side by side and I almost posted all three just to show how complicated it really is... Someday I will do that perhaps. Not today.
Beautifully crafted piece!
ReplyDeletehow dirty we are. how necessarily dirty. i love the word granular here. it allows us our dirt and some substantial being too.
ReplyDeleteand so it is in our substantial being that we live our lives, in our almost here/almost gone bodies, always held aloft and floating through the movement of time. what a masterpiece, this life.
love)
xo
erin
Erin, you are very lucky, I think, or blessed to be able to see your life this way. I hope you understand that there are many others on the planet who see embodied life differently. They are as passionate and attached to their opinions about these matters as you. The dominant opinions place sin or illusion in the heart of things. I think both of these, different from each other, are different as well from the "dirt" you refer too. I sense that you have come by your feeling from the visceral experience of motherhood. I think I would consider myself a fortunate man had you been my mother.
ReplyDelete