Angels on Amphetamines: “The split between the Christian Right and the Nietzschean Right is partly about whether today’s problems stem from an absence of the restraining force of Christianity’s moral framework, or an absence of the passion and vigor that it seeks to restrain. The unfortunate reality, I think, is that the constraints of morality had the effect of concentrating passion and vigor, such that when it did explode out of bounds, it did so with greater power. Afterwards, with those constraints loosened by the explosion, the immediate effect was momentary exhilaration and enjoyment, but it has been followed by a slackening, dissipation and exhaustion pretty much ever since then.”
FROGS: “…the joyous leap of the frog, its flippered feet and hands splayed, jumping Kermit-like toward God, only to wind up back in the gutter.”
The Anti-Gonzo: “The power of the anti-Nixon media is still here. Their work portrays Nixon’s era as flower-children dancing, listening to music, and wanting a kinder world. But with any degree of investigation, you will see that it was a world of bombings and communists set to overthrow America. In Nixon’s words, ‘From January 1969 through April 1970 there were, by conservative count, over 40,000 bombings, attempted bombings, and bomb threats.’ The country was on fire as different radical leftist groups bombed buildings and killed cops in a mass wave of terror that lasted for years.”
The Only Thing to Do: “…collapse is where it begins — the desert between phases. You’ve depleted the soil and used up all the aquifers; the standing reserves of your old way of being are spent. So now, after exhaustion and collapse, it comes down to it: can you make the desert bloom? Because the desert is where you are right now, and THE ONLY THING TO DO IS TO GO ALL IN ON EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW.”
Walking Out: “The snow stopped in the night, and did not resume. The woods seemed to grow quieter, settling, sighing beneath the new weight. What was going to come had come.”
We Are All Wounded Healers: “…Chiron, who symbolizes the wounded healer, inhabits a cave within which is an entrance to the underworld. This symbolizes that to fully experience our wound, just like the archetypal descent of the shaman into the underworld, demands that we travel into the depths of the darkness within the unconscious. In Kabbalah, this is known as the ‘descent on behalf of the ascent.’ Those fortunate to come out the other side and return back to the human world of consensus reality bear healing gifts for the community as fruits of their ordeal. The prototypical exemplar of the archetype of the healer who carries a wound is the cross-carrying Christ himself. Symbolizing this archetypal process, after his crucifixion, Christ descended into the hell realms, only to return bearing the resurrected body. Interestingly, in the Acts of John, one of the most important apocryphal texts, Christ says, ‘I will be wounded and I will wound, Amen.'”