allanhunter.net Blog

Back with the archetypes, but I feel I have to spell a few things out, so here goes. 

 If, as my new, so-to-be-available book shows, there are six archetypes that heroes in great literature grow through (and have gone through in about 3000 years of European literature) - then we’re faced with a question.  What if we read a book and the hero or anti-hero doesn’t go through all the stages?   This is an important question because we have to recall that it’s not the hero who matters, it’s us as readers.  so a better question might be: Do we get the chance to see six stages of development in the course of the work?  Perhaps the main figure burns out, but we see his effects on another figure.  Actually, that’s exactly what happens with King Lear, who never really gets much beyond Orphan phase, but some of the others in the play, particularly Edgar, really do grow through all the stages. Shakespeare is very much a six archetypes man.

So, to put it bluntly, we have a yardstick that allows us to gauge art. Do we get all the six stages?  If not then, alas, it may be amusing or diverting but it probably isn’t going to be anything close to great art.  It will leave us feeling vaguely cheated. For unless those characters face up to the particular challenges that occur only at certain levels of awareness, they’re basically not fully grown.  And while we can learn a lot from a person who isn’t fully emotionally grown, we have to acknowledge that their wisdom may have its limits.

Life’s a bit too short for us to spend time looking for guidance in all the wrong places.

Every so often a black hole of life opens up and is so well camoflaged that we find ourselves falling into it without even having known it was there at all.  I’m a bit of an expert in black holes by this stage in my life and I’ve more than a few to my credit.  Credit?  Well, that’s what I give myself whenever I manage to crawl out of one.

One opened up the other day and I tumbled right in.  I should have known better, but, that’s just it.  They get you when you think you’re in the clear.  It starts with something small, like petty colleagues bickering, then that takes away time you’d needed for something else, so you feel cramped, rushed; you do less well at the tasks you’d set yourself, and - as event cannons off event, you suddenly see you’re in one of those holes.

There is only one way out, of course. I sat there thinking my brain was mush, my life a sorry series of missteps (and fill in the blanks as you wish) and that I’d never write a blog again. And that’s when the poetry of the dis-ease gave me the clue I needed.  Blog?  Write something? Now?  You’re joking!

So I began to write. Of course it wasn’t just that, but it was the dawning knowledge that I was feeling so caught and gloomy because I hadn’t made time to do any writing of my own.  Writing for others, yes.  Memos and emails for others, yes. For me, not even a shopping list.

Easily changed.  I dragged myself, complaining and protesting, to the keyboard. Had a few sharp words with the ego.  Told it exactly where to go, and not to return until bidden.  Then I knew what it was I had to do, settled in, and produced a bundle of pages for my next project.  It was on the topic of how to respond to a reading, which may not sound like much fun, but I realized as I was whacking away at the keyboard that I was putting my whole life as a reader down, assessing it in an entirely new way.  Now, I’ve been reading since I was about 5, so it was astonishing how long overdue this process was for a spot of reflection.

It was a very rough draft.  That’s fine.  As I scanned over it I knew something had arrived. And I greeted it like sunrise. I didn’t have to climb out of the blcak hole.  I just had to recognize that there never was a black hole at all, just a delusion of my own making.

The wisdom’s always there, waiting for us to shut up, be still, and let it come to us. 

It’s been another busy week, and in at least one case my time has been taken up, wasted, really, by a colleague who is intent on grinding an ax for someone else, thus making office politics a life mission devoid of good humor.  Some people have nothing better to do I suppose.

But it takes a toll on us all.  So this weekend I set out to do the only thing I can think of that is an antidote for such things - I focused on doing a few small creative acts.  I started by repairing the window on the car, then I tidied the mess in my garage, and then I set about doing a few small creative writing projects.  The air cleared remarkably, and fast.  My mood lifted.  I began to remember the good things of the week: a friend who despaired of being able to have children emailing me to say she’s pregnant; a student sending me a thank-you note with a small gift just out of the blue; a friend whose house was flooded out a couple of months ago telling me he’s found exactly the place he wants to move to and is exhilaratingly happy. Things like that.

It all depends upon where you focus, doesn’t it?

There are times, I’m sure you’ve noticed, when everything seems to happen at once, when the normally fairly calm and managable world goes into a strange version of mania.  Things break.  Lots of them.  Cars, washing machines, computers, marriages (other people’s, in this case).  And the balance that we’d been dealing with pretty well is thrown way off.  For one thing, blogging gets pushed aside for a while.

It’s been a bit like that recently around here.

What I’ve also noticed is that when things go wrong like this there’s usually something else happening as well, beneath the surface.  Anne Lamott says that it’s the universe trying to distract our attention.  And I think she’s right.  These events are all temptations to move our eyes off the target and to get stuck in the mire instead. 

But she also suggests that when we’re distracted in this way it gives space for the universe to allow something new to be born.  Perhaps it’s just that if we were still in our comfortable rut we’d never actually notice something new being born.  Or perhaps it’s something more mystical.  Who knows? But something new must surely be on the way.  The signs are all there, after all.