Election Psychosis
April 24th, 2008
By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Symptoms:
–Following all the pundits and pollsters even as their affect so often seems to be more about placing bets on the ponies or that the elections are just a longer version of the Superbowl, rather than analyzing for content, context, subtext…
–watching some on TV who seem to be experiencing a second college-hood, using ‘candidates-gone-wild’ tones of voice
–trying to see if anything new is being said by pundits who have clearly taken sides instead of reporting all sides…
–looking at columns and columns of poll numbers that are +/- so many points in either directions for adjustment, the data is statistically irrelevant…
–tivo-ing commentators so one wont miss a single boring repetition, even though their prognostications often seem to leave out enormous portions of the voting population, or their certainties are based on phantasmagoric beliefs ( I wrote about the latter here at TMV;
–general grooming gone to heck (no, wearing a baseball cap all the time will not cover all sins)
–more and more amazed at the banality of election coverage, yet unable to stop trying to parse it all
–you have dropped more food and drink into your keyboard than a lunch counter has cheese and crackers
–the only ’still small voice’ you hear is the drone of the TV snapped on first thing in the morning and last to be turned off at night. (the hard core just never turn the TV down or off. Ever. A live police scanner is considered a must too.)
–you rant and rave about the issues and elections to whomever will listen and scare chickens and small dogs
–your mate, deficit in proper attention from you, left last November when the campaigns first heated up… and you haven’t noticed yet.
Ok, ok. well, maybe not that bad.
Even so, many of us have wound up feeling a little like the person in the above painting.
The oil is by Sidney Harold Meteyard and was painted in 1913.
The painting shows a woman lying back with her eyes closed in fatigue. Her needlework embroidery is on the frame before her.
But the reason she is fatigued isn’t because of that close work.
She is exhausted because, as you see, there is a round convex mirror on the wall to her left.
In the mirror are wispy images of the future yet to come.
Perhaps a king is riding toward her, or a queen. Perhaps an abbot. But, perhaps knights. Perhaps, perhaps.
The woman has been attempting to weave into her tapestry the figures she sees in the mist of the mirror.
But, she has had to tear out the threads and start again and again, as the images in the mirror keep changing, and all her best guessing comes to naught.
Something like that in our reality too. A great deal of adrenalin spent trying to seer, scry, foretell.
But, the mirror’s images will not remain still.
Wishing into the mirror the images one wishes to see, wont work either.
What might help…
Perhaps as in the painting, it would likely help to rest our eyes
Lie back
take some deep breaths
not allow everything in us to be stolen away by those who love to whip the wispy images up.
Just follow. As one wishes. Not like a gourmand, but like a gourmet. Tasting what one has a taste for, rather than diving into the smorgasbord just because it’s there… all piled with seventeen frilly entrees, fresh whipped cream, and ten different intricate desserts.
Slower perusing might allow noting many of the forgotten but important things present; to praise them.
Allows one to note and speak up about the important things yet missing.
Keep the funny parts, no pre-grieving.
Since time out of mind, the archetypal symbol of the mirror has been this:
The magic mirror can only tell the truth “OF the moment.”
Only one iota need change in order to make everything in the mirror change too.
What was true yesterday can be false today.
This can be disheartening to those who feel they’ve seen a sure win about most anything in the mirror .
But, it can be immensely heartening also, to know matters can change for the better in a moment, too.
That way, we’d be mostly out of reach of the shadowy voices that keep saying to us, “You must watch, you must watch, listen to those shadowy voices that say, “If you dont watch, you’ll miss something important,” and other specious things…. until we’re near mad from it all. And pale and pasty from not getting enough sunlight.
The painter of the picture must have known something about Election Psychosis, for he named his painting:
I am Half-Sick of Shadows….
_______________________
Coda: I Am Half-sick of Shadows, said the Lady of Shallot, is about 45 inches wide by 30 inches high. It belongs to a school of art practiced by painters called Pre-Raphaelites.
h/t Leebot, re a start back to center
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 2:32 am and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
