Journeys of a Pregnant Virgin

It's Monday and Steve and I are having a lazy afternoon while the laundry gets done. He has attended several lectures with me - on Alchemy, and on the relationship between Depth Psychology and indigeneous healing practices among the Xhosa people in South Africa - and enjoyed them considerably. And I have enjoyed our being students together, as if we were attending university in our twenties. We both feel on holiday at the moment, and that, despite the fact that he arrived from Leipzig with a very bad back and could not move without pain for the first few days. That did not leave us with a lot of choices about things to do, but on Saturday he began to feel better and yesterday there was a marked improvement.

We did manage a visit to the Cafe Spruengli, Zurich's most famous pastry cafe, and enjoyed the low key European elegance of the place, as well as excellent vanilla ice cream and mango sorbet (Steve), and wonderful coffee and pastry (me). We also had a very pleasant lunch with three other students one day, and spent the afternoon walking and talking with Marc who was visiting from Oregon with the thought of training as an analyst himself.

On Saturday afternoon we took the train, actually two, to Einsiedeln, home of the magnificent Benedictine Abbey and the Black Madonna, which Steve had not seen. It was a very hot day (I'm not complaining!) and the cool interior of the Church, golden and bejewelled with Baroque frescoes, and the quiet reverential chanting of the monks at Vespers were a lovely counterpoint to the intense, bright, tourist-filled sunshine outside. As we sat in the small chapel at the back of the Church in which the Black Madonna is held, I watched as a tiny little black child in bright pink sundress and diminuitive sandals, got up to leave with her clearly adoptive (and adoring) white parents. As she turned to the back, the little one intently offered her tiny hand to one of three nuns sitting in the row behind her, then to the second, and finally to the third one, each of them beaming with pleasure at the sweetness of this unexpected leavetaking. I wondered what prompted the little girl, a year and a half old at most, to do this, and with such seriousness on her little face, as if this was of utmost importance to her. Afterward we sat in an outdoor restaurant right in front of the Abbey, and ate Swiss specialties, including Rosti, which turns out to be a large variation of a potato pancake, tasty but very filling.

Yesterday afternoon we took the tram out to Forch again and visited with my new friends there. This time I took the meal and we drank wine and feasted and had a good and rousing discussion as usual but with the added element of the masculine this time.

It's strange to think that tomorrow is already the halfway mark of Steve's time with me in Zurich. (One day I would like to understand better how it is that I am always so aware of time, to the point where I hardly need a watch. I'm not sure whether it "means anything" in particular, but I have noticed that I have an almost visceral relationship with time, in that I feel my relationship to it very concretely, whereas I am hopeless when it comes to reading maps or finding my way around a new environment where it helps to have a good sense of spatial relatedness. I am always gratefully surprised when street signs actually correspond to the map in my hand, as if by magic.) There are still so many things I want to show Steve in Zurich, and to explore with him for the first time, and the days are flying by. Of course, if, as I suspect, I will return in the fall, there will be other opportunities, but I don't take anything for granted, and I think he too is finding my nest on the Zurichberg a very cozy little home away from home.

So that's all for now, I think.

It has been a slow, quiet Sunday, much needed after a week of whirlwind travel and visits. Outside it is raining and storming after some unexpected hours of sunshine, but I am cozy in my little nest on the side of Zurichberg, with the Bach Cantatas I bought this afternoon rippling and flowing as I write.

On Thursday I arose at 4:30 am to get the 6 o'clock train to Leipzig, where David met me at the train station with Jonas and Hannah peeking out shyly from behind his legs, to be joined a few minutes later by Jana, who had stayed behind to make sure the cheesecake was baked well enough. Then we all headed out to the airport where Steve was waiting for us. How wonderful to see him after five weeks apart - our longest separation since 1988 when we began to live together in New York - looking lean and elegant and as happy to see me as I was to see him. It was a loooong hug we shared.

Jana had prepared a lovely dinner - the cheesecake was delicious - and the little ones entertained us mightily with their antics. Then Steve and I both collapsed at the Hotel Leonardo. The next day I returned to Zurich, only to discover that two consecutive eight-hour train trips of reading and writing and watching the scenery fly by at 160 km per hour (sometimes "backwards" depending on the direction of the seats) had left me with the worst bout of vertigo I have had in a long time.

I didn't feel well on Friday night when I returned, late, but when the telephone woke me up at 4:30 am and I staggered to turn the light on, I thought I would pass out because the room was spinning at an incredible rate and I could not get it to stop. As anyone who has experienced it knows, vertigo is a very nasty thing and there is nothing to do but wait it out. The first time I had an attack Steve went out to get me some medication but I could not even keep it down. The nausea was so severe I vomited. I've never again had that terrible an attack but it always leaves me headachey, nauseated, and feeling as if my body has been through a battle.That is how I felt yesterday and today.

Yesterday I had an eight hour dream seminar located half an hour away by tram. I didn't know if I could sit in another train but decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did because the seminar was interesting and even though I felt lousy, at least the day was engaging and productive. I would not even have been able to read, had I stayed at home. Today I'm still feeling the symptoms but less acutely. I guess the lesson for me is not to assume I can spend 22 hours reading and writing on trains in 5 days, and expect to feel energetic and healthy at the end of it. Holding my head down and then lifting it up again frequently to look at the whizzing scenery must have left my inner ear completely confused and disoriented!

I am nearing the halfway point of my time in Europe and from here on in the time will pass with increasing rapidity (at least it will feel that way) because of everything still to happen. Yvonne and I have dreamed up a weekend in Paris in mid-June and then Ursula arrives to prepare for Body Soul Writing. And then it is July.

I have read some wonderful things lately and want to be sure to include some quotes again - next time.

Just a few lines tonight because I have to be up at 4:45 in the morning to catch the train to Leipzig. David and Jana and the little ones, Jonas and Hanna, will meet me at the train station and we'll all carry on to the airport to welcome Steve. I am so happy anticipating the reunion with my outer Beloved.

What a wonderful time in Geneva with Susan and her dear husband, Pierre Yves. At the end of the twenty hours we had together my head was swimming with inspiration and stimulation and the exuberance of reviving a friendship conducted only by email over the five year interval. Not quite true - we'd held each other in our hearts, to be sure, but nothing compares with face to face bodily presence with each other. There is so much to say but I can't say it now - only that my necklace of beads is growing.

Today, another day of browsing and reading my way through the Kusnacht Institute Library. I found some splendid material, then left with a stiff neck and shoulders, just short of a headache! I'm not accustomed to four hour reading marathons anymore.

Perhaps it was inevitable that, sooner or later, I would quote something from the work of Jung himself. I came across this quote in a book called THE JEWEL IN THE WOUND, the other day, and have been pondering its significance, as well as its appeal, for me. (I'm sure Jung will forgive my translation into the feminine.)

"The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden, happiness. It is the state of someone who, in [her] wanderings among the mazes of her psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles her to her apparent loneliness. In communing with herself she finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner; more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvests." (Jung, CW 14, par. 623)

What a lovely thought - to find the partner within who loves us and nurtures the tender seeds of our potential into growth. The inner Beloved, indeed.

It is exactly one month today since I arrived in Zurich. What a rich time it has been. Here are some more beads from the days since I wrote last.

I had a lovely leisurely breakfast with Ursula K-Z in Kusnacht on Thursday. She is also completing Marion's Leadership Training program, and we shared experiences with the Body Soul work over the years, and then she showed me some of her stunning sculptures and paintings. How sweet to sit at her table and talk, with good strong coffee and lovely Swiss breads and cheeses for breakfast, feeling all the while both the excitement of getting to know someone for the first time, and the immediate recognition of a kindred spirit, based on our similar experiences and perceptions in the realm of soul work.

The next day I went back to the Library at the Kusnacht Jung Institute and watched a fascinating video called "Ich Hiess Sabine Spielrein" ("My Name was Sabine Spielrein") which I have long wanted to see and could never find in Vancouver. It concerns one of Jung's more questionable relationships with a woman patient, and was very sensitively and poetically made. From what I know it gave a fair representation of all involved. And to watch it in the actual original Jung Institute and in Swiss-accented German also provided a heightened intensity to my viewing. Jung did speak German after all, and with a Swiss accent, which has a different feeling to it than if I'd watched it with English dubbing or subtitles. I will resist the temptation to go into a discussion of all the intricacies of the story, and simply say that I am glad the personal and ethical boundaries in analytic relationships are more clearly drawn today!

It was a lovely afternoon and afterward I sat in the rose garden and soaked in the sun which I have missed so much. I'd originally registered for a four hour seminar at that time but the four hour lecture leading up to it the previous afternoon was so disorienting that I decided to cancel and do what I wanted to do instead. I'm not sure why that felt like a big step but it did. I was sorry to do it, though, because I'd enjoyed the preparatory reading and was really looking forward to the seminar. But I don't think it has ever happened to me before that as one, two, three hours of lecture went by, I started to feel dizzy as a result of the speaker's abrupt and to me unreasonable digressions and almost standup comic asides. I felt a captive audience to his performance (it surely didn't feel like a lecture) and realized that if I stuck it out for the final hour I might actually feel seasick - so I left during our final break. Good move. I have so appreciated receiving email messages from friends keeping me up to date with their lives, and used the hour to catch up with them.

Yesterday I went out to see my new friends in Forch again (I should have asked if they have any objection to my referring to them by name - I'm sure they won't but I will ask first). I was determined not to stay for five hours this time, but when I said I was very concerned not to tire her out, my analyst friend said not at all and that she doesn't believe in external time restrictions when the conversation is flowing. Which it certainly did again. In fact, perhaps a little too freely on my part after a glass of wine, and afterward my inner critic, ever ready to pounce, tried to give me a hard time - even this morning - but I reminded him that I'd come to Zurich planning to be myself, not trying to be perfect. (Was it Marion, or Marion quoting Jung, who said, "It's so much easier to be better than we are, than to be WHO we are"? Whoever it was, I think it is true.) Again we moved through so many topics of conversation including our common passion for India - although they have both travelled there and I have not - and Indian art and mythology. We drank coffee and ate chocolate and strawberries and cake, and finished up with wine and a lovely dish of pasta. A feast in every way. Another luminescent bead.

Tomorrow I will take a train to Geneva and be met by my friend Susan Tiberghien whom I have not seen since 2000 when we last taught together at the International Women's Writing Guild Conference. With five years to catch up on and many shared interests, I look foward to that too.

It occurs to me that I have not included any more quotes from DIVINE BEAUTY as I earlier promised I would, so perhaps that is a good way to finish up this morning. Here is one that touches my heart (one of many).

"Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. It suggests a compassion and understanding for all the ambivalent and contradictory dimensions of the human experience and pain. This climate of kindness nurtures the sore landscape of the human heart and urges torn ground to heal and become fecund. Grace is the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness....
...In our times it is quite exceptional for a thing simply to be itself. The same is true of people. A slick politics of presentation and deliberateness now dominates most forms of presence and it is actually quite disarming to hear someone speak from their heart with no eye to the best camera angle. Such direct immediacy seems almost innocent and unsophisticated, yet it is so refreshing and real." (p. 238)

Until next time, then.....

Almost a week has passed since I last wrote here. I've always loved Marion Milner's term, "bead memories," for the experiences that glow with a particular significance. I guess Virginia Woolf would have called them"Moments of Being" in the cottonwool of everyday life. So I shall simply describe several "beads."

On Thursday and again on Sunday I went to morning services at the Grossmunster to hear Bach Chorales and Cantatas. The music was beautiful, sung by the Bach Collegium Zurich and accompanied by their orchestra. Of all my favourite composers, Bach's music conveys an irrepressible joy and energy and affirmation of life that always feeds my heart and soul like no other. It was hard not to sing along, especially during the passages I know well, but I refrained, not wanting to shock the well-behaved Swiss folk surrounding me.

Yesterday held a big bead, one of my best so far in Zurich. Last weekend I'd called a woman who is part of the older generation of classical Jungian analysts although now retired at 85, and asked if I could visit her, after two people had told me how wonderful she is. I felt a little awkward on the telephone phone but immediately liked her response. "Why not?" she asked. "But I don't know if it will be wonderful. Let's just see how it goes."

Reader, it WAS wonderful. I arrived early at 4:30 - her home was a little tricky to find and she told me to feel free to come early for our 5 PM meeting - and left at 9:30, feeling heart and soul and mind refreshed and nourished. Body too, since she kept offering me Spruengli pastry and chocolate and I kept shamelessly accepting. Neither of us could have suspected how much we had in common but synchronicities kept appearing and delighted us both (although I'm observing my reticence to go into detail, probably because I don't know how she'd feel about it). She told me funny stories about her training with Marie Louise von Franz, and shared her passionate sense that the most important thing is to experience the world freshly, with new eyes, not assuming that we know what we are looking at from past experience. Oh, but she said it so much more eloquently than that. We flew from one topic to another - what a feast of conversation - and she asked me about my desire to "get this diploma," as she put it. She wanted to know about my writing, about my work with the Jungian Women's Writing Circle, about Marion's Leadership Training program. "Why do you want this piece of paper"? she challenged me. "You already are an analyst in every important sense - do you really need it?" I heard what she was saying and really took it in (there was more to that discussion, of course, but I will leave the rest in my soul, where it needs to simmer for now). At some point - I lost track of time but probably around 7:30 - her artist friend Gabi joined us and that created a whole new conversational dynamic, also rich and deep. Literature, art, music, film, psychology, all of it in the mix, and even moments of silence, which I always love in a deep discussion.

She gave me copies of several articles she'd written over the years (although she doesn't think of herself as a writer) and asked to see my books, so we'll meet again soon. Next time I will bring the chocolate! In fact I told her Steve is arriving in two weeks and she thought we should both come out next time so that may well happen.

The lectures and seminars are interesting but there's no one there with the depth and breadth of experience that this woman has (I can well understand what Virginia meant when she told me two hours with this woman were more enriching than ten hours of seminars). Of course some lectures are better than others but I have also been quite impressed at how much I clearly learned during the course of all the BodySoul Rhythms work I did over the past five years with Marion and her team. I think at one level that my new friend is right: I have indeed already trained in analysis - just not in the orthodox way that would get me the diploma. Whether I also want to do that is still an open question for now. But Marion's way of working with dreams and archetypal energy (in particular) is so profound and deep that it's hard to imagine anything better.

At the end of our meeting last night I told my new friend that I'd found our time together a pure and rich delight, and she said, "The feeling is entirely mutual." I left feeling radiant.

Today I went to the wonderful library at the "old" Kusnacht Institute and read, and talked with several other students. It was wonderful to feel surrounded by an endless number of fascinating books awaiting my attention. Most interesting was to go through the binder that lists every dissertation completed since the C.G. Jung Institute opened more than 50 years ago, over one thousand of them. So many familiar names and so many fascinating topics, including Marion's in 1979, which was later published as THE OWL WAS A BAKER'S DAUGHTER.

Enough for now. The sun actually came out this morning and I had high hopes but by early afternoon storm clouds loomed and it was very cold. I don't know when I was last this chilled in May. I hauled out my down comforter last night. But they promise me that Spring will come again...

In the last week we have gone from 11 to 29 degrees, and I spent three days lounging in my shortest shorts and little summer t-shirts. Only at home, of course. Apparently the Swiss do not wear shorts in public and I would not wear these out in Vancouver either, except for jogging. But I did wonder whether I'd brought enough summer clothes as I climbed the hill back to my little nest after class, sweating and glowing with the heat. Now it is cooler again and grey, but apparently these dramatic changes are quite normal here.

I have never seen so much lilac in my life! It is in full bloom all through the city and I catch whiffs of its exquisite delicate scent as I walk through the streets. Every shade of dark purple, pink-purple, light lilac, white - huge trees all over. My favourite flowering tree of all and in such abundance. What glory! I thought as I walked and walked the other day that London in the spring and summer is like a big park, but Vancouver and Zurich are like endless gardens.

It was lovely to be out in the streets in broad daylight at 8 pm last weekend and see everyone in outdoor restaurants and simply walking the cobblestone alleys. I still feel delighted surprise at times that I am actually here in Zurich, doing what I've wanted to for so long. I've had an intense several days of lectures and seminars - plus a cold, which was not a good combination. I found myself so exhausted by the end of the weekend that it actually occurred to me, maybe I'm just too old for this - and then I woke up with a cold on Monday morning and realized that was reponsible for my depleted energy. Relief! I'm on the mend now and yesterday Virginia and I went to the Rietburg Museum of Asian Art and enjoyed the luscious Indian goddesses and the unabashed eroticism of lovemaking gods and goddesses. Then we ended up at her favourite quaint little Swiss cafe for coffee and cake in the Old Town, where the waiter entertained us with his cheeky English and enjoyment of his own humour. Virginia is on her way back to Calgary this morning and I will miss her warm-hearted extraverted companionship - although we will surely meet up soon, in Vancouver or Zurich or both. It was wonderful to have a buddy with whom I could laugh and share irreverent observations, and we kept discovering how much we have in common.

Now I will head into a quieter period, I think, before Steve arrives for two weeks. Tomorrow is a holiday and I will go to a morning church service in the beautiful Grossmunster to hear some Bach Chorales. I also want to do some reading, as I have really only dipped into Marie Louise von Franz from time to time, and I have several Jung Reading Seminars coming up soon. Unfortunately the library is not yet up and running but I'll take the train to Kusnacht again and spend a day in their wonderful library.

Must head out for milk and a few other things before my 10 am lecture. Perhaps I'll say more about the actual lectures and seminars another time. One last thing: I have discovered the wonderful Zurichberg behind my apartment - actually I live on the incline leading up it but I did not hike up until last weekend, and discovered fields of charming little private gardens full of flowers, and then at the edge of the woods, the most beautiful panaramic views of all Zurich and the lake, gleaming in the hot light. I will be there often, I know. And what a hike it is: about 300 steps to the edge of the woods, as good a work out as jogging, which I am not doing here. Until next time...