Do You Know Of Any Myths To Live By When You're Turning 40?

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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Poncho
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Post by Poncho »

Hello Dear Friends,

I've been corresponding through the Private Messaging System just recently with one of our most popular associates. I could sense beneath their words a certain world weariness and then they let slip that this Sunday a certain milestone will be reached: 40. A dangerous age.

On the Forums over the last year or so they had publicly mentioned several times that they were 39. This had been happening for so long that I had begun to wonder whether perhaps they were one of those people who has been 39 for the past 6 years or so. I'm sure you know the type. Anyway Sunday is the night apparently.

I'm concerned that over the next few months that they may go through some sort of profound mid life experience. Can you help? Even now they seem to be on another planet - or from a meteor to be more precise judging from the address on their most recent posts on these Forums (you may recall that before that they were posting from "between the fluffy bits" - mmm! Yes, well ...)

I was wondering how other associates have been able to get through such experiences. Have there been any myths, rituals or films, or songs even, which have helped them on such occasions? The other threads on this Forum seem to be mainly about the transformation from carefree-childhood/youth (or "yoof culture" as we say over 'ere) to adulthood. There doesn't seem to be much sharing of experiences of aging as we go through the decades of 40, 50, 60, 70 and beyond. I seem to recall somewhere JC saying that when he retired the myths helped him such as adopting a new way of dressing. He also spoke of how in India, when the men reach a certain age they leave their family and their jobs and go into the forests.

Can anyone offer any advice to our friend? It's an important subject and I'm sure that each of you has something interesting and worthwhile to share.

Alternatively, having passed any of those milestones and looking back is there anything that they wished they'd done which they feel would have helped them cope more easily with those life changes?



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Siddha
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Post by Siddha »

Is 40 still "40?" I guess I ask because at one time in our human history that was about as old as any one got. Then it must have meant the end of our productive years. Now is it the midlife point. I guess one could say the point in time in which we crest the hill and start heading down. Generation is slowly being replaced with degeneration.

I'm turning 39 this year so I could potentially relate, and I do a little, but not really. Because most of the time I have stayed true to my bliss I feel that I am only getting better each year. As a matter of fact mid-life is hard to phantom because I don't feel like I have "come into my own yet" Probably never will either, the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. I know it's a cheap cliché but it's true.

The trick then is perception, do we identify with the light bulb or the energy within it, as Campbell asked.

My guess is that age is only an issue for those who identify with the light bulb instead of the energy within that is connected to something beyond thought. Following ones bliss might lead one to have to face all of ones fears and illusions; however, it does also lead to a life without regrets. And the beauty of it all is that it's never too late to start.


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Post by ShantiSong »

Hello Ivor and Cliff

I don't know how they do things on the Queen's Isles but 40 is a long way from retirement here in USA. In fact, we have a saying, "Life begins at forty." And I believe I know what is meant by this saying. You spend about 18 years being instructed, and it's going to take you about eighteen years to recover from it and figure out the difference between what you've been taught you should want and what you truly want.

If a person hasn't struggled with this I feel sorry for them. It has nothing to do with material or social success. It's just the idea that you're not second guessing your bliss. You've separated the gold of wisdom from the dross of selfish craving.

W.B. Yeats esoteric work called, A VISION is explained by Joseph Campbell in one of his lectures.

A life is represented by the phases of the moon. A newborn is represented by just the slightest sliver of the light of consciousness, the darkness, representing nature and instinct. As the moon waxes and the child grows the light of consciousness gets greater and greater until a critical stage is reached at the first quarter when the moon is half light and half dark. This represents the trauma of maturation that the young man or woman goes through at the age of eighteen or so. By thirty-six he or she is shining with the full moon of consciousness but this too is a critical stage.

Now the metaphor gets a little weird. There are times when the full Moon is hanging low in the sky and it is reflecting the orange rays of the sun. On rare occasions, it is possible to mistake the Moon for the Sun. Joseph Campbell tells us, that we must make the transition at this time from lunar consciousness to solar consciousness.

Up to this point we identified ourselves with lunar consciousness. We can’t imagine how to think otherwise. But suddenly we discover this consciousness as merely a reflection of the solar consciousness that shines eternal. This is the stage of Christ crucified, or of Buddha achieving enlightenment beneath the Bo Tree. What’s being sacrificed symbolically in the story of Christ’s crucifixion is our identity with what is temporal. And hopefully, what is achieved is an embrace of what is eternal.

But the metaphor doesn’t end there, because the moon is going to reach its third quarter when the moon is waning and the light and dark become equal again. This represents the struggle in the transition to retirement. Some people desperately hold onto that lunar consciousness. But nature and body, as represented by the darkness overtakes the light slowly and inevitably till there is just a sliver of light. At this point we don’t ‘rage against the dying of the light’ like some silly Welshman, because we learned way back in our full moon stage that the light that’s fading is merely a reflection of the light that always was and always will be.

And I’ve found that the moon

is beautiful in all of its phases

as are we,

if only we could see ourselves

as we see the moon.

Shanti


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Post by ShantiSong »




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Post by Psyche »

This Knight of the chivalrous code, I am certain, will pass this though this gate of initiation in the best fashion ever! - Paint brush in one hand, ein bier in the other, and a blossoming art practice that is finding its language - - from a fellow artist, I must say, does it get much better?

There were several paintings that seems to sum it all up: but I think this one does it nicely.

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Post by ShantiSong »

That is a beautiful painting Parcival. I tell people the most beautiful painting I ever saw was in the Cleveland Museum of Art. It's called Lot's Wife
http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/art108 ... eek11.html

But seeing it on a computer screen does little to convey the radiance. The texture consists of some rough bark and a heating coil in the lower forground and the sky is sprinkled with salt.
Shanti

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Post by Poncho »

Hi cliff, TomGix and Parcival. Hey wow! thanks for your contributions - three of the best current contributors on this site too.
On 2004-12-09 14:08, cliff w wrote:
Is 40 still "40?"
On 2004-12-09 23:20, TomGix wrote:
In fact, we have a saying, "Life begins at forty."
You're only as old as you feel is another one (Groucho Marx had a racier version).

And yet today, people still enthusiastically celebrate their 40th birthdays. Only a few days ago some people had hung a banner on a fence near where I live to tell the world that a certain member of their family had hit 40. At work, I've noticed over the years how one or two male colleagues have gone off the rails at 40. Their marriages have broken down because of other women or booze. They usually pull themselves together after several months or even years, usually in a new relationship. Whatever we may say publicly therefore, 40 still has a deep, often silent, psychological pull, like the moon on our unconscious.

In former times people got married a lot younger, often in their late teens, so by the time they reached 40, the last of their children was on the point of leaving home and so the parents had to face up to the "empty nest syndrome". Everything was down hill after that. JC has mentioned how a lot of his friends' marriages seemed to break up at that point. They weren't able to make the adjustment to their lives.

For example in a book first published in the 1930s, Every Woman's Book of Love and Marriage:
Once upon a time women dreaded to reach the age of thirty, because they felt their youth had gone - and forty marked the beginning of old age!

... If it is possible, every wife, on her fortieth birthday, should take a lazy "thinking" day. Perhaps someone kind will give you your breakfast in bed. Sit up and enjoy it; read your birthday post, and open all your parcels. Then get up and take a lovely warm bath which will make you feel glad to be alive. Here you are face to face with the fascinating forties - what are you going to do about it? First of all resolve that for your own birthday gift to yourself, you ar going to make yourself charming and shock that staid old husband of yours into realising that he has a wife who is not only an excellent wife and mother but a most attractive companion as well.
I guess for a woman the problem is more acute. Whatever age she may feel mentally and however positive her outlook on life there are still the physical and hormonal changes that her body must go through. Even with the wonders of modern science she has little choice here. We chaps can perhaps lack feeling and understanding when our chapesses enter this difficult period of their lives. Are there any myths I wonder that may help women to come to terms with this?

There is a view (plugged by the advertising industry) that "60" is the new 40; a belief acted out by Mick Jagger (one of the Rattling Bones!) and others. JC speaks of how when men reach a certain age they start taking up a new hobby like fishing. He says, something like, they go out to catch fish when what they're really hoping to pick up are mermaids! Again from that 1930s book:
Unfortunately, with increasing age, many husbands realise that they have passed their prime and unless they have very tactful and understanding wives, misery may result, for some little demon of madness seems to creep into their veins and urge them to have "one last fling." Madness it is, for it is capable of persuading an otherwise perfect husband that he has fallen in love with a girl half his age - a child young enough to be his daughter, and probably with no more brains than a babe.

He is flattered that anything so young and pretty can find him interesting enough to "fall for" - he is captivated with the idea of seeing how much charm he really has left; he plays with fire, and usually gets badly burnt.

... Husbands seem to suffer in the late forties what many wives go through earlier - a longing for romance; and it is not always only the husbands who take the first opportunity that comes along to get a little.
JC says somewhere (sorry I seem to be terible at pinning down his quotes; please forgive me!) that the mind thinks that it runs the show. It doesn't realise that it should serve the needs of the rest of the body. In one sense perhaps our dreams whilst asleep, the myths and the various gods are representations of the emotional and physical aspects of our body; they symbolise that inner conflict.

In my case, I have said several times (probably to the point of boring everyone else) on various threads that I'm following my bliss as a tour guide (my proper job during the week is as a civil servant). I've taken the left hand path out of the compound though, because I've had to turn my back on family life. Sadly women simply don't find me attractive. This was tough to take when I was in my teens and 20s; many tears were shed. Looking back now however I have little complaint. Women probably understood me better than I knew myself in those days so I'm sure that they made the right decision. Unfortunately, even today, I could be mistaken for Billy Bunter's elder brother; we even have a similar taste in trousers. From the poor woman's point of view it would be like a great wardrobe falling on top of her with the key sticking out.

Because of my failure with women, if it it wasn't for tour guiding I probably wouldn't get out of bed in the morning at weekends or I would turn to a life of crime. I can't sing, paint or draw so guiding gives me a channel for my sexual energies. I'm fortunate to have been born on a real life Treasure Island. It's crammed full of stuff not only plundered from other countries (sorry chaps!) but there's also a home grown heritage that can be shared with others. The British aren't very popular with other nations, with good reason (my dear friend Clemsy on the Drums of War thread thoughtfully threw in an article on how the British about 100 years ago brutally imposed the modern borders of Iraq without consulting the locals). On my tours, therefore, there are opportunities to show foreign visitors that although we may be a nation of pirates and ruthless b*****ds (it's all true of course), we have a creative side too. I can throw in quotes from Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Byron or I can talk about the discoveries of Newton, Darwin and Crick and Watson (DNA).

I've recently come back from a guides' course at Salisbury Cathedral, one of the glories of early English gothic. Nobody Royal is buried there (a disadvantage where Americans are concerned), but it has one of the 4 surviving copies of Magna Carta. It was brought there by the Earl of Salisbury, William Longspee (pron. Longspay!). He died in 1225. When they opened his tomb a few years ago they found a mummified rat in his skull. It had slipped in just before the tomb had originally been closed, and had eaten its way through the earl's body. What had killed the rat was not lack of air but arsenic. Had the earl been murdered? (when it comes to gold medals, I may not have the physique of an Olympian, but I can still bore for England, once I get started :smile: )

Sometimes at the end of my tours I'm lucky enough to be given an enthusiastic round of applause. I can well understand therefore how actors and movie stars can become addicted to such things and how the audience can become a surrogate family ... a bit sad really.

The point that I'm leading up to is that having chosen the left hand path and having stuck with it through thick and thin over the last 14 years you reach the point of no return. Do I continue on this life that I've chosen for myself or do I try and find my way back to the compound in the hope I can start a family before I'm too old? Life may begin at 40 or 47 or 53 or whatever but becoming a father, perhaps with 3 or 4 children, at those ages means that you're going to be well into your 60s or 70s before you can afford to retire from earning money, especially if your little angels want to go on to university.

Yet, if I choose to stay in the forest, how will I feel at the end of my life? Will all that history and culture and applause compensate me for failures in other areas of my life? The sefish gene may have the last laugh there. Once again I'm back with what JC was saying about the mind serving rather than bossing around the other parts that make us physically, emotionally and spiritually human.

The other threads on this Forum seek to discuss rites and myths for the transition from childhood to young adulthood, but as you get older you have these other difficult decisions and transitions to wrestle with. The Change Of Life that was once 40 but which, for some, may now occur later, still has to be faced even if you are following your bliss. Everything has a price, and that price must be paid. The myths help you to do that. I'm just interested to know what myths, including those in the form of films and music, have helped others to make those transitions through the different decades.

As I'm finishing this I realise it's now close to 1.30 AM (GMT) on Sunday 12th December. So if later today after you have read this post, I'm sure that our friend would appreciate your congratulations through the Personal Message System (PMS?) on his safely reaching this milestone in his life!

BTW, as you may know, our friend has a soft spot for the actress Susan Sarandon, who earned some extra pennies by providing the links on the JCF video Mythos, so if you know her phone number or e-mail address that would be a great birthday present. If she were to follow Parcival's link above to his paintings, I'm sure that she would be impressed by the size of his paint brush.


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Greetings from over the Silver Sea



ivor orr


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Post by Martin_Weyers »

:grin:

Thanks to everybody for contributing to this thread. Ivor, my best wishes to your dear friend - it happens that I, too, have become 40 last night! :smile: And, I am aware, that there 's no reason to complain about anything, because I belong to the most precious elite not only on this planet, but in the whole universe: To those who are alive!!

Parcival, thanks for your lovely words. I am so thankful to have found such a great companion on the pathway from birth to bliss!

Tom, the Cleveland Museum of Arts has an incredible collection of "neo-expreesionism" (though I don't like this term too much). I discovered several works of Anselm Kiefer, Elisabeth Peyton, Susan Rothenberg, Francesco Clemente, Sigmar Polke and some others.

Anselm Kiefer lived for twenty years very close to my own place (until he went to France, to escape from the German art critiques!)


Campbell's teachings about solar consciousness and stages of life have helped me a lot too. I love his idea of celebrating birthday as a victory, rather than feeling Oh my, again one year more on my shoulders.

However, honesty is one of the few values any artist should be true to. So I like to share two dreams, I was having during the last few days, from which I learn that there is still a lot of fear of failure among the surface of the "wise old chap".

In one of those dreams I was at the seashore, but the raft I had mad was lacking a few beams. So I wasn't able to get on sea, and the sea was quite aggressive.

In the other dream I was standing in front of a gnarled knotted blue tree in an empty and bare room, like a cellar. I probably had built the tree myself, and I think the room was representing my life. The branches of the tree were building a spiral staircase, up to the ceiling or even through it, I don't remember. The tree seemed to be out of a material like clay, but it was soft, and so the tree was not solid. The tree was in danger to collapse, like a sculpture out of clay without a propping up skeleton inside, and nobody would have been able to use it as a staircase. I was wondering, still in my dream, if maybe I'd better used the room as a store-room or other practical means...

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Post by ShantiSong »

Ivor,
I wish to remind you, Ivor, that Dr. Watson is an American thank you. Born and raised; received his PhD in Zoology at University of Indiana, Bloomington. He may be brash and ungrateful regarding his former colleague Rosalind Franklin, but he was a Yankee never the less. And we usually refer to the pair as Watson and Crick, not Crick and Watson, though I’ve heard that Crick was the brighter of the pair. In all fairness, it should be, Wilkins, Franklin, Crick and Watson, but that would be too many names for school kids to memorize.
That said, it pains me to tell you that I’ve never been to Salisbury Cathedral and that it is a superb expression of thirteenth century culture -and that it happens to be so close to Stonehenge that I haven’t had the chance to visit either. I’m reminded of the first trip I took to France and beheld the spiritual expression of Cro-Magnon man in 12,000 year old cave paintings of bison near the Dordogne. The very next day, I’m looking at Chartre’s Cathedral with all of its spiritual imagery. I just can’t tell you what its like for some of us Americans. We have natural history; canyons, volcanoes, meteor craters, giant redwoods and T-Rex bones. It’s nice, but I always say, ‘Americans have no roots.’ If that isn’t a saying it should be. We look back two or three hundred years and call it history.
As for the brutality of your history, I have to agree, that Europe in general and England in particular has a barbarous and cruel history of exploitation over the last 300 years or so, and America followed suit. But this has much to do with our perspective. Someone once said that every person deserves to be judged in the context of their own time. The human race has gone through some painful maturation in just the last one hundred years. Much of what we read about the past comes from writers who were many decades even centuries ahead of their time; Erasmus, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Thoreau, all exemplars of their time. I’ve read some common text books from the nineteenth century, and it is shocking how they describe different races and cultures. But the sins of our fathers is only half the story.

Here is a quote from the introduction to Paul Johnson’s History of the English People 1972
Now I object strongly to this drift away from English history, which is part of a wider movement away from European and North Atlantic history. Virtually all the ideas, knowledge, techniques and institutions around which the world revolves came from the European theatre and its ocean offshoots; many of them came quite explicitly from England, which was the principle matrix of modern society. Moreover, the West is still the chief repository of free institutions; and these alone, in the long run, guarantee further progress in ideas and inventions. Powerful societies are rising elsewhere not by virtue of their rejection of western world habits but by their success in imitating them, What ideas has Soviet Russia produced? Or communist China? Or Post -war Japan? Where is the surge of discovery from the Arab world? Or liberated Africa? Or for that matter, from Latin America, independent now for more than 150 years? It is a thin harvest indeed, distinguished chiefly by infinite variations on the ancient themes of violence, cruelty, suppression of freedom and the destruction of the individual spirit. The sober and unpopular truth is that whatever hope there is for mankind - at least for the foreseeable future - lies in the ingenuity and the civilized standards of the West, above all in those Western elements permeated by English ideas and traditions. To deny this is to surrender to fashionable cant and humbug. When we are taught by the Russians and Chinese how to improve the human condition, when the Japanese give us science, and the Africans a great literature, when the Arabs show us the road to prosperity and the Latin Americans to freedom, then will be the time to change the axis of our history.
-Iver Buckinghamshire 1972

We may not practice what we preach, but the defense of individual rights has not been superseded by countries outside the West and I’ve never heard of a country flatly rejecting this aspect of our culture.

It is ironic to me, that the individualism in European Art as witnessed by Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven is not even hinted at in some of the greatest works of European Art: the Cathedrals. The only Cathedral that has a recognizable name associated with it that I know of is St Peters in Rome and that is only because the architect was famous for other reasons, -thank God. Many anonymous hands and a melting pot of ideas gave us these marvels. I’ve tried to imagine what the equivalent to this would be in our modern culture. The only thing I can come up with is –The Web. Our little toiling may leave behind a Cathedral of symbols, images and ideas for future generations. Maybe.

I don’t think, Ivor, at the end of your life you will feel compensated for the failures in your life, nor will you feel smug for your successes. To understand why, one needs to embrace the current cosmology. Stephen Hawking estimates the number of stars in the visible universe at 10 to the 19th power. The universe we know and love, is estimated to be about 14 billion years old and 14 billion light-years across. The brain you’re using to read and understand these words weighs about 1.3 Kilograms and contains about 100 billion neurons. About 40 years ago that same brain consisted of just one single cell. When you consider the utter impracticality and improbability of our situation, we can either laugh or marvel, but we can’t despair. Despair would require that you somehow know the way things ought to be and I don’t know quite how a chap say that with any confidence. Our achievements aren’t to be tallied at the end of a life. I saw a T-Shirt once that said, ‘THE ONE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS.’ I tell people I’ve adopted this motto except mine says, ‘THE ONE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM WINS. Our own personal mission statement is like La Quest de Sangraal. What matters is the effort, right here, right now. That is to say, to what degree are you following your bliss. Joseph Campbell says, there is something in you that knows, when your on the beam and when your off the beam. When you wake up one morning and feel that you just can’t face another ignorant American tourist you’ll know it’s time to move on.

When I’m feeling gray, I console myself with the realization that six billion souls have to make these painful/blissful journeys around the sun. And I always try to figure out what other people’s bliss is. Often,other people’s interests seem so ridiculous to me. I always ask myself if they really enjoy it or is it just a smoke screen. But I always know when someone is on the beam because when they talk about it there’s an enthusiasm in their voice, and a light in their eyes as though they had just been plugged into some sort of spiritual light socket. It sounds to me as though you have that as a tour guide.

Shanti


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Post by Poncho »

Hi Tom,

Another great posting. Thanks.

Of course you're right. Dr Watson is an American: elementary :smile:

Maurice Watkins, the so-called Third Man of the laureates had been born in New Zealand of Irish parents, but had been living in England since his schooldays. Although he and Rosalind Franklin were at London University, they were both graduates of Cambridge.

When I was typing it, I was tempted to add in brackets Watson's nationality. It was 1.30 in the morning and I wanted to get to bed. No excuse! I think that at the back of my mind was the thought of getting across that it's the English way of life that allows these ideas to arise. Knocking back English beer in the EAGLE PUB helped as much as their nationalities.

When Francis CRICK strode into the Eagle on February 28th 1953 and headed for the bar as he announced, "We've discovered the secret of life," I'm sure that Watson would have added "Yep, I'll have a helix, and make that a double, landlord."

When I refer to DNA I generally mention only Crick and Watson (there isn't time to go into too much detail - it's not a scientific tour). Sometimes I'm asked about Rosalind Franklin, the so-called Dark Lady of DNA - always by women. The last time was by an American lady, who had also produced a microphone and recorder! I'm not a scientist; I have no scientific qualifications at all, not even a school certicate for maths!

I usually say that she died in 1958, at the tragically young age of 37 from cancer; perhaps like Madame Curie, it was the radiation from her experiments that killed her. The Nobel Prize was awarded in 1962, and you cannot be awarded it posthumously.

Also, as I understand it, no more than three people in a team can win it. Even if she had been alive she would have missed out as Maurice Watkins was the more senior colleague, although some articles on the internet say that they were peers.

Certainly she didn't get enough credit during her lifetime, and in the 1950s, the English scientific community was not used to women scientists. I suspect that James Watson regrets much of what he said about her at the time.

I don't think that you can give an answer that will fully satisfy everyone, although I have never got into any arguments over it. Anyway, the husband of the lady with the microphone gave me, at her instigation, a generous tip at the end of the tour - but then in my experience Americans are very generous (in the broadest sense) people. Richard III and who killed the two Princes in the Tower seems to upset people [again, usually women!] more, but that's another story.

And we usually refer to the pair as Watson and Crick, not Crick and Watson
Yes, I've heard other guides say that they've been "corrected" by Americans on this point. It hasn't happened to me on a tour. From the English point of view, it's simply alphabetical order. I would like to think that even if their nationalities had been reversed we would still say Crick and Watson; it just seems to roll off the tongue more easily that way.

In all fairness, it should be, Wilkins, Franklin, Crick and Watson, but that would be too many names for school kids to memorize.

My dear fellow, you've only read two of my posts and you've been Anglicised already. :smile:

I always say, ‘Americans have no roots.’ If that isn’t a saying it should be. We look back two or three hundred years and call it history.

On this I would like to disagree:

In my last post, I mentioned William Longspee (he of the rat in the skull). He was the illigitimate son of King Henry II and of one of his mistresses and so he was the half brother of Richard the Lionheart and of King John.

William was a loyal brother and indeed was John's representative in the negotiations with the barons. These resulted in the Articles of the Barons which then produced Magna Carta.

I was playing around on the internet and I have just discovered that he's in fact the ancestor of George Bush! Yes, really. Press HERE and go down to the fourth block of names.

Not only that but, if you page down that same site you'll see that Longspee (aka Long Sword) is also the ancestor of Thomas Jefferson!!! Ha, ha. Brilliant. As I understand it, Jefferson would have had Magna Carta at the back of his mind, when he drafted the Declaration of Independence.

I'm sure that our dear friend, Clemsy, would love to know that from a seed, planted 800 years ago in a moment of Royal passion, have come both the man he likes least and the one he admires the most. What a coincidence, eh? Fortunately, I don't think Clemsy reads the threads on this Forum; just as well, as the shock might be too much for him. :eek: It could turn his hair grey overnight. It will have to be our secret.

Anyway, I've sent an e-mail to Salisbury to suggest that they put up two plaques near Longspee's tomb to celebrate these famous descendants. They could have another plaque to Jefferson as well in the Chapter House where the Magna Carta is kept. I've also suggested that they reserve a couple of places nearby so that when George Senior and Junior go the way of all mortal flesh that they can both be buried near their illustrious forebear.

Alternatively, if they still decide to be buried in the US, they could have memorial tombs in the Cathedral instead. Longspee's son, also called William, was KILLED on the 7th Crusade, and was buried in Acre but he has a memorial TOMB at Salisbury. It would be great. Just think of all those American tourists wanting to visit; even Clemsy might want to go (to see the Jefferson plaque only of course).

You see, history can be fun. It's not a dead subject; it's a living part of ourselves. By going into these places we come into contact with people and ideas that may be 700 or 800 years old, but they still have meaning and resonnances today. As an American, even if your forebears don't come from these islands, you can still breathe in English air (and enjoy our beer) as you share in and experience our common heritage. History doesn't just go back two or three hundred years in your neck of the woods; it flows back and forth across the silver sea to Stonehenge and beyond.

James Watson visited Cambridge on April 25th last year. A blue plaque was put on the outside of the Eagle pub to celebrate that date as the 50th anniversary of their discovery being published in Nature magazine. I'm sure that back in the US, each year when that anniversary comes round, as an educated American, he remembers his Robert Browning: "Oh, to be in England, now that April's there." And you know, I bet he is, as he experiences the eternal now.
The brain you’re using to read and understand these words weighs about 1.3 Kilograms and contains about 100 billion neurons.About 40 years ago that same brain consisted of just one single cell.
Now, I'm sure that you meant to include a few extra 0s in there somewhere. I know what you meant, but interesting Freudian slip though! We're back with the age of 40 again. As I said in my previous post:
Whatever we may say publicly therefore, 40 still has a deep, often silent, psychological pull, like the moon on our unconscious.
Out of interest, Tom, being nosey, as we tour guides often are, what is your bliss? When are you on the beam? Alternatively if you've already discussed it on another thread then perhaps you could give me the link please Also what myths or films or stories have you found most helpful at different times in your life (returning to the original point of this thread! My fault for rolling round these country roads of historical thoughts. Too much Guinness).


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Greetings from over the Silver Sea



ivor orr


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ivor orr on 2004-12-15 15:31 ]</font>

ShantiSong
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Post by ShantiSong »

Ivor,
I would keep it quiet about G and G W Bush being direct descendants of William Longspee. There's a large element in the country that wants to disprove evolution of lower life forms to higher. You needn't give them ammunition.

Browning - poetry - April. It reminds me of one of America's most famous expatriot, T S Eliot, who said, "April is the cruelest month".

I said 40 years and I meant 40 years. That a single cell can contain all the information it needs to divide and grow into a complex Guiness craving machine is really a miracle extrodinaire. And that the mechanism of this process was discovered by Crick and ... Whats his name?..., Waldo or something?

You can find out more about me from a thread called "Sycretic and Ethnic Monotheism: The world today" from Conversations of a thousand faces.

Shanti






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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: TomGix on 2004-12-14 19:56 ]</font>

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

I'm sure that our dear friend, Clemsy, would love to know that the man he likes least comes from the same seed, produced in the heat of passion one night some 800 years ago that also eventually created the man he admires most. What a coincidence, eh? Fortunately, I don't think Clemsy reads the threads on this Forum; just as well, as the shock might be too much for him. It could turn his hair grey overnight.
Hark! Clemsy survives! His knowledge of genetics allows for any number of interesting coincidental relationships, (Good heavens Ivor! I may be distantly related! My parents and one brother are Republicans!). In any case, Bush v. Jefferson may well be a wonderful example of the impact of genetic mutation: Jefferson = genius, Bush = something less than genius. Something rather less. Closer to its opposite.

But I'm in a generous mood.

Cheers,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by Psyche »

Hello ivor, cliff, tomgix, clemsy, and martin!

Martin, your dreams are vivid and fascinating - - ocean water: are you ready to travel on the toughest, uncharted road yet - ocean made me think to the collective unconscious, something deep and both life giving and life taking: art does this: it both takes/demands and gives, as you know. Maybe you need the raft...maybe you don't. Maybe it is something you need to fix, or something you need to let go of. Only you know. But is sure is fun to muse with! Maybe the raft will become wings? Or perhaps the ocean hearkens a transformative journey at 40? Gosh, what will happen to you art now??!!

TomGix, thank you for the link to the paintings...I greatly enjoyed those examples of neo-expressionism. I can see why you might like Lot's wife so much- it must be really cool in real life. Kiefer's other paintings (as displayed on that website) are also remarkable, I find. I'm familiar with Interior (which I find quite astounding also, esp with its theme of decaying of history), and I think that I quite like Siegfried also. I also like Rothberg;s Untitled 3. This one seems to me to also recall another painting done around this period also - like Schnabel, trying to describe the death of painting, and the lack of meaning anymore....but I find this problematic because there is always meaning, no matter how disparate the images, even in no-meaning - unless... (I should carry that thought over to Art thread)...

Thank you TomGix and Ivor for the History lessons -- greatly enjoyed - looking forward to more!

Ah! Clemsy does indeed survive the unfortunate teachings of ancestral lineage -thanks to the tireless historical-archeological efforts of Tomgix and Ivor. I must admit, the multiple lineages were shocking, overwhelming. I'm looking for a word to describe my dismay. While I'm rummaging through the dictionary to find one, I just thought of another: "David Icke" and the lizard-alien people (which he claim is also mixed into those above mentioned lineages).

scary.

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Oh, by the by: When I turned 40 I checked myself constantly for increased interest in younger women and Harley Davidson motorcycles.

I'm still waiting for that midlife crisis license to go a little nuts and I'm 48.

Which in itself I consider completely ridiculous.

I guess, Ivor, it all depends on who you are compared to what you've done or what you do. I have no significant regrets.

But perhaps I should get back to you in two years. If 48 is ridiculous, 50 will be absurd.

Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by ShantiSong »

Martin, Parcival,
I’m not a painter or sculptor. But I never tire of seeing what goes on in art museums. I’m familiar with the names of the major trends, like neo-expressionism, that art critics use to rationalize the Arts so they can talk about it. But I like what Thelonious Monk said about music; “there are only two kinds of music, good and bad.”

And there’s no accounting for taste. From the 20th century I’ve always loved Klee, Pollock, and Rothko, but I don’t get much from Kandinsky, Stella, or Mondrain. Go figure.
But painting is something that you have to experience live, with the proper setting and lighting. It’s not like a film that you can watch at home and pretty much get the same effect. Seeing it in a book, on a computer screen, or on a post card just doesn’t make it. It has to do with the texture. Ever since Van Gogh and others started throwing gobs of paint onto the canvas we’ve needed to see these creations live.
So I go through these museums and say, that’s nice and that’s nice and that’s nice and then all of a sudden, bam! a painting will just blow me away. That’s what happen with this Kiefer painting called Lot’s Wife.
http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/co ... 95759.html

But it wasn’t just me. I was at the Cleveland Museum of Art on a Sunday and there were church goers passing through the room with this and a few other paintings. It seemed like everyone that walked into this room spent a few moments in awe – I’m not saying they liked it – but it certainly demanded their attention. This painting shouts, “LOOK-AT-ME!” I’m reminded of what someone once said about Picasso’s Guernica that the first emotion is one of horror, before you begin to see the beauty.
Some comments on this painting suggest the holocaust and the destruction of Germany in WWII and Wagnerian tragedy. But I had a different impression and in writing this post and searching the web I found this painting.
http://www.nga.gov.au/International/Cat ... 4&SiteID=2

You see, being a Campbellist, I think in terms of the wasteland, the loss of mythology and the decline of the West. The two titles he gives for this similar work suggest that that is exactly what Kiefer was on to.

Anyway, Martin, I envy you for being able to create such works as I see at your online gallery. And I still want to know what that second dream means. Why blue? Things that grow are usually either brown or green, not blue. What does the blueness mean to you?


Shanti


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: TomGix on 2004-12-15 22:30 ]</font>

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