Journeys of a Pregnant Virgin

It's Saturday afternoon, almost 4 pm, and I am packed and ready to fly. Mark Knopfler ("Dire Straits") is serenading me with "Your Golden Heart" and I feel he is singing to me. "Nothing in the world prepared me for, your heart, your heart, Nothing in the world that I love more your heart, your heart, your golden heart." Sung deep and mellow, with wonderful acoustic guitar and drums. I love the gruff tenderness and soulful eros of his voice. In fact, discovering his solos albums, "Sailing to Philadelphia" and "Golden Heart" was actually a high point of these six weeks in Zurich. I think I've listened and danced to "What It Is" at least two or three times every day since I first heard it. (If I was not seriously computer challenged I could probably find a way to create a link to those two songs but that's a whole other story....)

One of the strange ironies of life in my two little rooms in Zurich thus far has been that although Steve and I both love music, I actually listen much more here than in Vancouver. I also dance more here. Maybe that will change in the next few months at home. In fact, I wish there were far more occasions to dance to rousing music with a good strong beat, and although every time I express that desire it meets a strong echo in other people's experience, none of us can quite figure out what to do about it. All I know is that the older I grow, the more my body wants to dance with abandon. And just dancing alone in my room isn't enough - I want the shared experience as well.

I did my ritual goodbye-to-Zurich walk earlier this afternoon but did not go into Spruengli for a last coffee, preferring to come back to my room instead. Last night Vicki cooked me a lovely goodbye dinner and we talked for the last time in a while. Hers is quite a different experience of Zurich as she has basically moved here for a couple of years and returns home to New England only for shorter visits. At times yesterday I felt uncomfortably liminal - as if I literally had one foot in Zurich and the other already in Vancouver.That's quite a stretch. The upside of my Zurich adventure is the richness of having both lives at once and I have been aware of my great good fortune in not having to give up either. But yesterday I also felt it's not easy to be forever saying hellos and goodbyes in a relatively short span of several months, each time leaving behind something dear and important and integral to my life. I'm not complaining but this is also part of my psychic reality at the moment, along with the richness of it all.

At the moment the sun is streaming into my window so brilliantly that I can hardly see the computer screen, and I can almost feel the warm breeze of a beautiful day in June as I sit on the balcony upstairs and read my Jung texts. Now there is something I look forward to, during my next period here. Last summer I could not find a place to sit in the sun, undisturbed, and read.

But now - it's home to Vancouver, Steve, and my other world, much more outwardly active than these quiet three months in Zurich have been. It has felt like a hibernation of sorts, but unlike the bear who shuts down in the cold of winter and lives off his fat reserves, I have chocolated my way through the weeks and look forward to more physical activity and energy as spring draws closer. My dreams seem to be pointing in this direction as well, so I will keep looking for times and places to dance. And perhaps I'll even see you there!

That's all for now, friends. Again I leave these lines with gratitude and appreciation for this part of my journey and will return at the end of April when I resume my time in Zurich.

Until then, stay warm and cozy, and Happy Spring to all.

It is early Monday morning, still dark (and very cold) out. Two weekend seminars kept me busy and prevented my usual leisurely Sunday morning entry here. On Saturday we completed Murray Stein's three part series on Individuation, and on Sunday, we had a follow up seminar on the limbic system and religious experience, led by an Italian analyst who is also a psychiatrist. Both she and Murray Stein are good teachers, by which I mean they are clear in their discussion of complex material, and very willing to answer questions and enter dialogue with their audience. And both, in their own ways, create a rapport that is not to be taken for granted. For me, as a teacher, it is always fascinating to see how this happens. Murray Stein does it through a kind of quiet openness and humour, combined with a wealth of interesting stories about Jung and the Jungian world (a term that Jung himself would have hated). He is surely a big wheel in this particular "world" but there is no power principle at work. Rafaello Colombo's style is very dynamic and intense, in part because she is often searching for the English equivalent for her Italian thoughts, but there is also a quick humour at play. "Do you understand me?" she asked frequently with heartfelt concern. The whole notion that neural pathways are forged through repeated experience appears to have fascinating implications for analytic work, and will give me plenty to think about in the days to come.

Otherwise, the past week was punctuated on Wednesday by a brief but most welcome visit with David (stepson), who stopped off in Zurich after a job interview in Geneva before returning to Leipzig. David very quickly received and accepted the job offer so he and Jana will be very busy over the next few months planning how best to relocate themselves and their two little ones with the least possible discomfort and distress, while at the same time bringing things to a satisfying close in Leipzig. It's hard enough to do this on one's own but when there are four people, two small children, and two careers at stake, the challenges increase exponentially, I am sure.

Shortly after accompanying David to the Hauptbahnhof, I proceeded to have dinner with Vicki and Margo, two new east coast American friends. Five hours flew by with nary a lull in the discussion. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing their perspectives on our shared training adventure and feelings about living in Switzerland. I think all three of us share a certain introversion and intensity and it was lovely to feel a sense of common ground and safety in the conversational flow. I always appreciate it when everyone speaks and listens with equal relish and that was certainly the case.

It's time now to get into the hot shower and out into the cold day, and I will come to an unceremonious halt and finish with a quote that has puzzled me since I read it a couple of days ago. I don't particularly like what Jung is saying here, but since I think it may hold a truth I have not considered before, I will offer it here.

"As we know, a complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance." (CW 9/1, para 184)

This sounds like quite a challenge. I will be giving serious thought to what it is I need to draw to me and "drink down to the very dregs", rather than pushing it away in favour of more pleasant activities.

With good wishes for the coming week to all who read these lines.

Once again, more quickly than usual it seems, it is Sunday morning and I am here with my sunflower yellow mug of hot coffee and a rousing Charpentier cantata resonating through my little speakers. And now I am a little further along that descending arc of time that will carry me to Vancouver in two weeks and I will experience my time here in terms of days rather than weeks.

The past week had a lovely pace and rhythm. There was something of interest each day by way of lecture and seminar, but also time for reading and writing, walking, a long and irreverent lunch with Vicki on Friday, and finally, a visit to my friend in Forch yesterday and good rousing discussion as always. Fuelled no doubt by the delicious chocolate truffle cake I took along and endless cups of coffee. The week's balance of solitude and society suited me well.

The most important event for me was without question finally arriving at a decision about my "Training Analyst." At least in theory this is the most important dimension of the entire Analyst Training Program and I have been pondering it since I first arrived in Zurich last April as a matriculated auditor. Once I was accepted as a training candidate this issue took center stage in my inner life but I was determined not to rush it, but rather to be receptive to various possibilities and wait for a sure sense of when and in which direction to move. And now I know, and I have the sense of having dropped in even more deeply on both the personal and professional levels of my training process in Zurich. In the interests of "containment," I won't go into further detail, but this was too significant a highlight of my week not to have mentioned it at all.

Among the books I have been dipping into recently is Gertrud Mueller Nelson's wonderful HERE ALL DWELL FREE, on how to work with fairy tales on a symbolic level. I have loved this book since I happened upon it in my favourite Vancouver used bookstore, but this was my first occasion to read her entire 170 page exploration and amplification of "The Handless Maiden," the story of a miller's daughter whose father chops off her hands in a pact with the Devil in order to save his own life, and who is subsequently given silver hands by the King who falls in love with this beautiful maiden. But of course they are not "her" hands in any genuine sense, and GMN offers a lovely and heartfelt exploration of this tale's symbolic resonance for us today. Without further comment or interpretation, here are a few of the passages that touched me during my reading.


"This 'taking of time' and 'the time it takes' to be handy in this way are also endangered values. When we TOOK time - had 'time on our hands' - I think we had a greater chance of restoring those hands to flesh. What is too much and too fast in our lives today interferes with processing the simple happenings of everyday living. It robs us of challenge and takes away purpose in simple acts. And our notion that the value of silver supersedes the value of simple, common flesh lets us forget that we do still need healing.... The object of life is to live it with feeling and passion and art - minutely - because without the paper scraps, the sticks and rags and soups, without sunrises, or compost piles, without babies, and loves, without spinning an atmosphere for family, neighbors, and friends, there is no taste of God." (p.91)

"And being human is really all that is asked of us. We always want to forget that. We always think that we have to be superhuman and then berate ourselves for failing that expectation. So that's why we have symbols and rituals, like ashes and graces and sacraments. They are there to remind us and help us and ground us.... As always, the Word must be made flesh - our sterling gestures turned to human, loving acts - the divine made incarnate in our love and dogged faithfulness to each other. In grace and sacrament we transform experience to meaning. And meaning will give form to our actions. There is no other container for the spirit than the life we live out daily." (pp.131-32)

"Freedom...is not being rid of responsibilities; it is being free of random shoulds and oughts. Freedom doesn't dwell in randomness but in conscious choice." (p. 145)

I could not end with better words, so until next Sunday, may we all be well, live well, and remember to "take" some time!