Old Patterns

I'm re-reading Sylvia Perera's Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction: an archetypal perspective. Such a wealth of insight, information, history! I told her a few years ago how much I really liked it and she said: "Oh, are you addicted? Addicts really seem to like that book." Well, that's not my point--right now.

On p. 241, she's talking about the celtic triple spiral as a reflection of lingering patterns in our lives:

We may find that our own rhythms manifest a triple pattern that repeats at each new stage oe venture through our lives. Sometimes we can see that the pattern initially tends to repeat the very processes of our birth... The way we were born often remains as the underlying mode of coalescing and pushing forth towards resolution through all of life's later discomforts and fears."

So, how were you born?

I was breech, rear end first with the umbilical cord around my neck.
My 24-year old father was told, "Mr Mack, sorry to say you'll probably either lose your wife or your baby."

We all survived. Though I do still seem to make things a bit harder than they might have to be.

Arts and Institutions

I was at a meeting yesterday discussing that the best way to get Arts Grants is to have very measurable results from ongoing arts acrivities: how many people came? how many MORE people came the next time. "Pilot projects are OK... but a measurable record of arts projects is really much better."
Oh my! ... and arts organizations wonder why it's so hard to get and keep members!

“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
Glenn Gould

"Art’s essence is its ability to engage us fully in body, emotions, mind and spirit,
to create beauty and meaning, to cultivate imaginative empathy, to disturb the peace,
to enable grief in the face of loss and hope in the face of grief.
Arts advocates have been trying to pour the vast personal and social importance of this
essential human experience into containers—into language, slogans, arguments, strategies
—far too small to hold it. Trying to explain or demonstrate this with numbers is like trying to describe a rainbow without mentioning color. It is ineffective, discouraging, and unworthy of who we really are to keep trying the same failed approach. And now it is plainer than ever that the failure is total and abject."
Arlene Goldbard