3.16.2005
3.11.2005
A good quote on a bad day...
I'll be moving back to my folks this weekend. I don't usually bring up persona matters on the blog but splitting up with Ashley is an event far more impacting on me than any of the socio-political/cultural shite that I babble about or point out here. Immersing myself in my classwork keeps the depression at bay, but truly, I'm sad. I came across a quote today in Edward M. Said's Culture & Imperialism (a prime example of the socio-political cultural shite I babble about here) that touched on an element of my core beliefs - spiritual beliefs actually. On the surface, he was speaking about conflicts over land and resources between cultures. But as with all of Said's writing, it is never surface level, always multi-layered and open to myriad interpretations. He said, "Everything about human history is rooted in the earth..."
Our earliest organized religions revolved around Male Rain/Sky/Storm Gods and Mother Earth Goddesses - the fertitlity parallel is, I think, completely obvious. Like rain from the sky brings the fruit of the earth, the rain from a man, brings forth the fruit of a woman. From the get go, the fertility of the earth and the fertility of humans have been at the center of our most basic ideologies. Fecundity (Saleos is, after all the demon of fecundity) has bee the simplest and most basic motivator of people ever since two of them got together and said, lets claim this garden and make some babies.
War & Love? The desire to claim the fecundity of the earth has, over years resulted in the most devastating conflicts to control it. Wars between nearly identical peoples who could share land easily, instead become the norm of our existence. And is this true too of love? The pain and sadness I feel, the quarrels Ash and I have had, the conflict that we feel - is love and pain simply the end result of our desire to honor, possess, and secure the fecundity of another person? Is love simply an emotional adaptation to deal with the innate desire to procreate? Or perhaps an innate desire to be coupled - as is naturally represented by those early symbiotic, dualistic, yin-yang gods? Is there a universal duality that we are programmed for, and as a result, we can not avoid desiring to secure both earth, and its personal embodiment in the form or a fertile (and I don't mean just reproductively, but one who is full of beautiful and powerful and necessary qualities) partner?
I thought I found my mother earth. But perhaps not. And it is the idea, fear, of being without earth that makes me so sad, and dictates my behavior so powerfully these days - controls my personal history as the quest for land has dictated political history. Indeed, my own peronsal history is deeply rooted in the earth, in my search for a complement, in my search for someone to drink my rain.
Our earliest organized religions revolved around Male Rain/Sky/Storm Gods and Mother Earth Goddesses - the fertitlity parallel is, I think, completely obvious. Like rain from the sky brings the fruit of the earth, the rain from a man, brings forth the fruit of a woman. From the get go, the fertility of the earth and the fertility of humans have been at the center of our most basic ideologies. Fecundity (Saleos is, after all the demon of fecundity) has bee the simplest and most basic motivator of people ever since two of them got together and said, lets claim this garden and make some babies.
War & Love? The desire to claim the fecundity of the earth has, over years resulted in the most devastating conflicts to control it. Wars between nearly identical peoples who could share land easily, instead become the norm of our existence. And is this true too of love? The pain and sadness I feel, the quarrels Ash and I have had, the conflict that we feel - is love and pain simply the end result of our desire to honor, possess, and secure the fecundity of another person? Is love simply an emotional adaptation to deal with the innate desire to procreate? Or perhaps an innate desire to be coupled - as is naturally represented by those early symbiotic, dualistic, yin-yang gods? Is there a universal duality that we are programmed for, and as a result, we can not avoid desiring to secure both earth, and its personal embodiment in the form or a fertile (and I don't mean just reproductively, but one who is full of beautiful and powerful and necessary qualities) partner?
I thought I found my mother earth. But perhaps not. And it is the idea, fear, of being without earth that makes me so sad, and dictates my behavior so powerfully these days - controls my personal history as the quest for land has dictated political history. Indeed, my own peronsal history is deeply rooted in the earth, in my search for a complement, in my search for someone to drink my rain.
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