Lying with the Heavenly Woman

I heard this myth this weekend and thought it brilliant.

Lying with the Heavenly Woman is an African myth, where the heavenly anima and the mother archetype are often indistinguishable. This story portrays the double anima.

A father warns his young son that one night the heavenly woman will appear and ask to lie beside him. If the son agrees, warns the father, he will be dead the next morning. In order to keep this from happening, the father moves the family to another village. The heavenly woman comes to the son in the new village and he lets her lie with him. The next morning he is dead.

The heavenly woman is horrified because she had no intention of harming the boy. She persuades an old shaman to build a fire and toss a lizard into the hottest part of it, proclaiming that anyone who loves the youth enough to retrieve the lizard from the fire will restore his youth to him. Three people try and fail – the heavenly woman, the mother and the father. Following that, a plain girl who secretly loves the youth walks into the fire, retrieves the lizard, and the boy awakens.

The story doesn’t end here.

The shaman throws the lizard into the fire again and tells the boy that he must make a decision. If he chooses to retrieve the lizard from the fire, the girl will live and his mother will die. If he leaves the lizard in the fire, his mother will live but the girl will die. The story doesn’t tell which decision the youth makes.

In the Calm of Empty Spaces

A solo drive from Salt Lake City to Elko, NV this morning. Stunning, wide-open, empty spaces; big blue sky, Monet-esque reflections of the mountains in the heat shimmering above the salt flats. Memories of Mandy and LAG, the SPY kids on their mission trip to Mexico, of hang gliding and the enthusiasm of younger days. The MP3 player plugged into the car stereo; Cold Play, Joe Satriani, my beloved disco, ethereal meditations.

And the acknowledgement that we really do create our lives, that taking responsibility and consciously creating my future is scary, because the dream is perfectly beautiful and uncompromised, and exciting, because I almost have the faith to risk creating my bliss. And gratitude, that even though I have thus far unconsciously created my life, and in spite of my neurotic fear, anxiety and insecurity, I have been incredibly affirmed and validated.

I am a lucky man.

The future looks bright.

Heaven and Hell

Thanks to Angela for remembering this. I might slightly edit it to make it fit into Scott's World.

Heaven is Where:
The Police are British
The Chefs are Italian
The Mechanics are German
The Lovers are French
and it's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where:
The Police are German
The Chefs are British
The Mechanics are French
The Lovers are Swiss
and it's all organized by the Italians.

Dad Goes Rock Climbing

Free climbing in Colorado.