Losing My Religion

Like the picture? It is Salvador Dali's Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) (1940). I like Dali but if you are interested in surrealism check out the work of Magriette. You've seen his "stuff" before I'm sure, but nobody ever seems to know that the images were by Magritte (i.e. the apple head guy or the pipe one ).

I think most people have heard the saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder". With my son gone, I realize how much activity & sound accompanies his presence. I've also heard the saying that children aren't ours, but that they're loaned to us for a brief time. Of course, a line like that implies some sort of higher being that dispenses kids like a library, so I'm not sure that I'm sold on the whole idea. Speaking of the supreme being, I was reading Alice Munro's short story collection Runaway & was struck by the story of a girl who was raised by atheists who ends up joining a cult in her late teens. A character sugggests that the lack of religion in her upbringing neglected her spiritual growth, which gave rise to her desire to stengthen her spiritual side on her own, perhaps leaving her prey to opportunists & charlatans.

I realized that we haven't really explored religion or spirituality with our kids, although we've explained about the Christian view of Christmas & Easter (my son associates Easter with Jesus Christ Superstar, which he sings as "Jesus Christ Superstore" so that says a lot). My husband is an atheist & I guess I'd be classified agnostic, although I was in Catholic school from kindergarten until most of fourth grade. When my grampa died, we both told my son that Poppa went to heaven, so I guess we're imbuing certain events with a religious undertone. We had always discussed raising our kids with the freedom to choose their own path in terms of belief, but now I'm not so sure.

I finished the new Harry Potter & before I even began had guessed which character had died. I suppose that was a marketing ploy to up-sell the book but we bought this edition to continue with my son's collection of Potter books (which were given to us when I was about 7 months pregnant with him). My son has also started with the book of the month club, but I think the primary excitement with the club is that he receives his own mail & packages, with the books as a bonus. I wonder if having several books will make him value them less in the long run. I had 4 really special books, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Little House Series, & the L. Frank Baum Oz omnibus growing up & a few other assorted books (and yes I realize that that's way more than 4 but bite me!). I still have The Hobbit, a nice hardcover edition but somehow lost the other books, which I regret. I really wish I had the Oz book, maybe I can find it somewhere to quell my feeling of loss.

Now I know I've mentioned it quite a bit lately, but I was quite interested in Sylvia Plath's life & so I read her unabridged journals. She tried to write eveyday, which is a technique many people employ in the arts/music to improve well, technique. I know for drawing that just 5-15 minutes a day of sketching immensely improves one's skills, so hopefully my writing will follow (although blogging isn't really literature is it? so I prefer to see blogging as an exercise). There were two key quotes for me from her jouranls (copyright of the Sylvia Palth estate) which follow:

from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000); edited by Karen V. Kukil; first Anchor Books edition (p. 511-512):

"If I could cut from my brain the phantom of competion, the ego-center of self-consciousness, and become a vehicle, a pure vehicle of others, the outer world. My interest in people is too often one of comparison, not oif pure intrigue with the unique otherness of identity. Here, ideally, I should forget the outer world of appearances, publishing, checks, success. And be true to an inner heart. Yet I fight against a simple-mindedness, a narcissism, a protective shell against competing, against being found wanting.

To write for itself, to do things for the joy of them. What a gift from the gods."


from (p. 524):

"What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle - age. Instead of working at writing, I freeze in dreams, unable to take disillusion about rejections. Absurd. I am inclined to go passive, and let Ted {her husband, Ted Hughes} be my social self."

I think I'll let those two passages stand on their own.