Under the Spell of the Demiurge

Hello.  My name is Lucy.  Lucy Wightman.  Not Whiteman.  Wightman.  My real name is Louise.  I am 51 years old last I checked and for now I live in Hull, Massachusetts. I was many things. 

This may be the only thing I write, or not.   A blog is supposed to have some purpose, niche or focus.  I can’t find one.  That is why I have so many pages on this site, pieces of someone I called me.  After a while, the pieces grew apart and not together.  This overwhelmed me, so I turned off the pages.

Maybe I will turn them on again.  Not today.

Having a blog could be really self-centered.  I don’t want it to be though.  I still think people are curious and interesting, way more than me.  Maybe a blog is a waste of time, a way to occupy myself rather than face the inevitable.  I am not sure about anything.  I don’t know myself. Recently, a new friend told me that she can’t figure me out.  I think I know why.

I used to cry at happy and sad things. I still cry every day.  I love my dog Winkle more than anything in this world.  He has had a weighty backpack to carry and maybe I can take that off too, like the pages.  He was someone else’s dog who I took care of. Again, these are things about me.  Don’t ask what I know.

I heard that if you know what is in front of you, then what is hidden in you will be revealed.  Is that true?  I will accept insight from anywhere.  I am not so picky.  I think all religions, theories, and philosphies have something smart in them.

That whole Q’uran burning issue made me mad.  Sacred literature should not be burned as a statement of hatred.  Instead of waking up we are falling down asleep.  I tried believing in god.  I believe there is something much greater than god but we can just agree to call that, God, with a capital ‘G.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that I enjoy any of this.  I find the whole trip impossible.  If there was a sensible and neat way to exit I would have.  I don’t live in a country that believes in that though, no matter how sound a mind one has.  Besides, someone is always worse off.

Thanks for reading though.

Comments

[Sue]

mmmmm Even though we have never formally met.....I think I know who you are. You are an artist but not a common artist. You see art where others, don't even see shape. You are a writer who loves to wax poetically. You are a philosopher. You think so deeply that I am surprised that your brain has not exploded. You are a cynic but always looking for reasons not to be. You are spiritual but not religious. You see the holiness in nature and in dogs and children. You love deeply but sometimes you don't want to be loved back. You are a girl and a woman. You cry but you keep moving. You look ahead because you know in your heart that some thing is out there. You are a good listener and all of these things make you a very interesting person.

[Michaela]

You are still one of MY favorite people. Hang in there. I love reading your blog. Sometime, I will leave you a link to mine-- though it is not deep or philosophical, it's been fun to write. I wear the bracelet you gave me all the time.

[Peter]

Lucy your discussion reminds me of the Novel “The Sea Wolf” by Jack London and the discussion between Wolf Larson and Humphrey that I read and loved in high school.

Humphrey van Weyden is an effete young man of privilege who ends up stranded aboard a sealing ship under the tyrannical control of Wolf Larsen.

Summarized briefly:
Humphrey represents civilized man:
Wolf Larsen is the very embodiment of man in the state of nature--brutal, virile, amoral:
Humphrey is trapped on Wolf's sealing ship:

Larsen challenges Humphrey's artificial world view with an elemental philosophy of survival of the fittest:
"What do you believe, then?" Humphrey countered.
"I believe that life is a mess," Wolf answered promptly. "It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?"
He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.
"They move; so does the jellyfish move. They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their belly's sake, and the belly is for their sake. It's a circle; you get nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They move no more. They are dead."
"They have dreams," I interrupted, "radiant, flashing dreams -- "
"Of grub," he concluded sententiously.
"And of more -- "
"Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it."

So Lucy, I have no blog and no answers to your questions. Tough shit.
You have had many ups and downs or just lots of good and bad grub.
What do you want to do now?

[LW]

Well Sue, what you see of me and what I see of you too, it is just that - what we see. I see you as extraordinarily compassionate, funny. smart, giving, kind and complex. You win awards for your work helping others and you and I have some of the same defenses. But what do you know form the inside out? Of yourself I mean. And Michaela, if you are the Michaela I know, YOU are one of my favorite people - always have been, and now we are connected by a greater understanding of certain experiences, yes? Peter, I have not yet gotten that book you suggested a while back but I have not forgotten about it. I relate to the "tough shit," statement because I truly have battled against pity parties, but not perfectly. Your interpretation of Jack London is clear and heads down the road of streamlining, something I aim myself towards, but like a ship, I stray.

The facts of current life might be difficult to grasp. I took so much for granted. Not just in what things stay and what things go, but even on a more basic level. Like, I stuck my big toe that is not even so big through my last sheet and I cannot buy another, and my coffee maker broke so now I drink tea, or my pooch cannot go to the vet, or, my sneaker soles have separated so that the fronts look like some crazy animal... These mundane things interfere with answering/manifesting the answer to your question. Maslow was correct in his theory. There must first be the basic things needed for safety to produce.

[Peter]

Lucy

Good old Jack does take the icing off the cake a bit.

Peter

[Shirley]

I just really glad to see you here, writing something again.

[LW]

Thanks Shirls. Me too. If you are in the area stop by and see the garden...

[Al]

Dear Mr. Wolf,

You yourself could not be saying the words you are saying if it really were just all about grub. If it were just about grub, there would be no Jack-story, nor a Peter to interpret Jack-story nor a pondering Lucy to agree or disagree with the interpretation qua secondhand-Peter-Jack-story. It's just that it's not all tricked out the way you imagine it should be. Besides, accepting that what this all amounts to is not glamorous nor lucrative nor particularly worthy of attention by the vast majority, there are far more efficient means of earning grub than being a writer. But still we write. Joni Mitchell took a poem by William Butler Yates and set it to music and by doing so re-invented and revised the meaning of the poem and in so doing revised the meaning of now. We have a trace of it in the recording just as we have a trace of it in Jack's words. But the trace of it isn't the source. Maybe the value of art is that it forces one to seek out the source and has the added boon of modeling - for self and other - what something beyond grub could look like. But I think you know this, Wolf. And thanks for playing the role of counterfoil in all this. I know it's not easy being so two-dimensional.

best regards,

Al

[Peter]

I think what Jack is saying is that he and Joni write songs or books to make more money to get more grub, love, admiration or what ever they want. Grub takes many forms.
The quotes may simplify the book too much but Humphrey, who is a skinny, over educated rich kid who is trapped on Wolf's sealing ship learns to survive. Wolf gives him lessons in working for your own grub on the ship. Humphery goes through some serious uncomfortable forced character development and grub finding skills that prolong his life in the end.

[Peter]

You can rent the movie. Get the movie with Edward G. Robinson however.
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Wolf-VHS-Edward-Robinson/dp/6302717779/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1285000080&sr=1-2

[Lucy Wightman]

Dear Jack, Peter and Al,

So, um, would a grub hoe be at all relevant?

[Lucy Wightman]

someday I will rent the movie when I can

[Maria]

Dear Lucy,
I am curious to know how you feel about the idea of "Heaven"?

[peter]

I don't think so because a size 12 Gucci anything is not heaven.

Do they make any Gucci size 12?