The shadow=DISSONANCE “Considering the Chill Factor
“Confronting your shadow self”
We were very young when first we became aware of The Shadow. No happy moment, no celebration of joy is unaffected by its subtle miasma. But what is it exactly?
Much of childhood – history itself, in fact – is absorbed by the effort to put a name to this lurking angst.
Demonic forces, bad dreams, animals, reptiles, insects, The Invisible – entire populations of seemingly foreign persons have been stigmatized by this label. Which is not to say that somebody, somewhere, didn’t experience trouble from the reality of these forces.
Philosophers tell us that all we’re feeling is an inherent fear of death, but we can see that fear itself is hardwired into species who are otherwise unselfconscious of the limitations of existence. Perhaps all we have to fear is Fear itself, as the President put it. But who would willingly wish to walk fearless through this dangerous world? Isn’t it better to be prepared and take care?
A great man once advised us to be as wily as serpents and as gentle as doves. Good advice for gardeners! The knowledge that joy is fragile heightens its ecstatic power. Without this triple vision of past, possibility and future courage itself would be impossible.
Suspicion – There is something behind us. We can feel its unsettling presence. It seems to follow us everywhere, teasing a fine line between doubt and paranoia. In medieval times this “shadow” was represented by The Grim Reaper, complete with cape and scythe, reminding us the party would soon be over. We are warned to “Take care” by friends and loved ones; but against what exactly?
Doctors tell us to be vigilant about our health while at the same time they mock hypochondriacs. There are people who never “take care” and who insist that suspicion itself creates the monster, but on the whole, these people are not enviable. They appear to have rejected a “sixth sense” we’re all born with. Who would willfully blind themselves?
For those of us committed to exploring all our senses suspicion shadows joy as doubt shadows faith. Visually, shadows show us where things are. Like taste testers cultivating knowledge of the edge between sweet and sour we “feel” for the “turn” of the tide. The better to avoid it? Possibly to control it? At least to get an image – however brief – of the Thing that has been following, following?
Ascetics need particularly to arm themselves with some sense of when “just enough” turns into “too much.” Many authorities try to convince us that being a little “hungry” is a good thing. Certainly being “sated” triggers a drowsy, relaxed, state in which our “guard” is down. We do lose consciousness of that quiet little “frenemy” following. Following. The Shadow symbolizes a problematic development just coming into perceptive range.
Jung says we all seek our opposite, our “shadow self.” Feminists want house-husbands, wall street traders want supermodels. We yearn to recover our disavowed selves, blindly, subconsciously. Online profiles request specific “looks”, weights, backgrounds, experiences as if “soulmate” was a job. Yet we remain dissatisfied; feel shortchanged. Perhaps the shadow is fear of change. The thoughtful among us blame ourselves: “I’m not right”; the shallow blame the world: “I can never get what I want.”
The truth is we are judging plants by seeds when what we want are gardeners. We want to become gardeners, we wish to BE the garden. But how on earth can we do THAT?
Absence of understanding OR language renders our circumstances hopeless. We need another singer who will help construct a duet that doesn’t yet exist, a fellow artist of the sexual, the subconscious, the unconscious, who paints us as we photograph them. We need to be prepared to change places in a moment, to sing and redesign the other’s part. We must be willing dreamers with a huge repository of fantasy, fearless poets accessing a universal vocabulary. We will fall in love, then out of it, fall deeper, soar. It will feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar at every point as we blend swiftly changing roles of tutor and pupil. Prepare yourself to plunge into another and become them, as they remodel you.
CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR
Considering the chill factor
As I always try to do –
That day was hot
Too hot for love or war.
We sit in restaurants. I pick
The blue-veined shrimp
He picks the black-veined news.
Outside drunkards
Carom off the plexiglass like entertaining fish.
“They envy us” I say
and Andrew says
“How nice.”
I see a couple coming in; she holds him up
As I so often upheld you.
I know that touch – like
surgeons who
manipulate the dying.
She wears my dress
the one I wore the day you
Shamed me
Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk –
Shamed us both
with red red stains.
“Andrew I don’t think
I have quite forgiven you.”
Andrew says “How nice” and
Lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth –
I hate the brown stain –
it spreads like murder
Like the bad smell of death
Breeding fumes as we do
Corpses in the sun.
I rise to speak
Shrimp spewing from my mouth like
Parasites.
“We have always been
So happy, you and I-“
Alysse Aallyn 