Process

So I've been thinking about the daily process of writing poems -- combined with reading of source materials which at the time seemed especially resonant -- as a dialogue between conscious and dark selves, I and Thou, I dunno, ego and higher -- or deeper -- power, with poems as the vehicle, the conduit for some fructive spark.

But I've seen it mainly as what gets hauled up from the well, and not what gets sent down; that whatever I think I've benefitted from the process, there was a dark, unknowable benefit, too. And balanced against my purpose a greater porpoise, as if carrying me along.

Erich Neumann again from The Origins and History of Consciousness:

"The grasping and assimilation of the content by consciousness are an expression of its enrichment with libido. But by no means the whole libido charge can be absorbed. Simultaneously with the alteration and enrichment of consciousness, the splitting up of the content leads very frequently, if not always, to an activation of the unconscious as well."

Lets translate "libido" as "dark amperage" here, the energy which I cannot know but try to flow with in the process of writing poems (if they could be properly called poems; that may just have been a convenient enough handle for a much darker, noctilucent activity).


(O.K., it's sexual too, but too hot to handle directly.)

Image the dolphin-rider Arion, one of the first great singers. He had been thrown overboard by pirates and a dolphin who had always in the past admired the sound of his singing then scooped him up and ferried him back to shore. Arion sings, but does so riding naked on the back of a dolphin.

Anyway, the point here is that things get into gear, creatively, when conscious mind tries to pay attention to sub- or unconscious. I sit down to write, saying, I'm LISTENING! and the next image forms.

It reminds me of the time about 15 years ago when I was reading a lot of Jung and was faithful about writing down my dreams. I sure remembered a lot more of them! Almost every day I could retrieve the previous night's happenings in the Shadow House. To me, the math was simple: I'm listening = You speak.

Makes sense, but listen to what Neumann then goes on to say:

"We may explain the mechanism as follows: a certain proportion of the liberated libido cannot be absorbed by consciousness, and flows off into the unconscious where it 'libidinizes" associated groups of complexes or archetypal contents. these contents are then brought up by associations and are produced as random ideas, etc. -- in so far as they appear at all -- or else a new unconscious constellation is effected. the combination of this new constellation with the original activity of realization is what constitutes the continuity of all creative work, the essential elements of which are always prepared in advance by the unconscious, and are there elaborated and enriched before being produced."

So I really have been led along in this process, from image to image, Theme after Theme: well, trail, voyage, cape, dark, each has been another way to name the relation of one guy's mind at work several hours before dawn and the wild deep dark substratum that is offering up the next thing to work on.

So what happens when the process stops? I haven't been sleeping well, waking up each morning at around 2 a.m. and fighting to get some sleep afterward. It's like I'm being hauled up from sleep to get to work when there really isn't anything to do (or I'm refusing to do it). There seems to be a surplus of sexual energy fizzling about, definitely more than when I was pouring eros into poems. And without the daily vowel movement, well, there hasn't been much of a daily bowel movement, either.

Yet it doesn't seem right to write different poems. I'm void of course, stuck for now on an isle of prose, where the going seems too bright, too sayable, too known. If this is something served up by the Deeparoo, it's the strangest device so far

The next amperage may have a lucence I haven't eyes yet to see, words sufficient to say.

Or I could be hiding in a bright belly, terrified of an even darker call.