Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Journey, by Mary Daly

Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Journey, by Mary Daly

Her most autobiographical work (or I should say most comprehensive autobiographical work, as she wrote another book about events in her life after this, entitled Amazon), intended as autobiography while still developing/ expounding upon her philosophy. This helped me to place all of her other works in context with her life as well as place her life in context with what was going on in the world in general. Things make much more sense that way. Also, the book helped me to sort out once and for all the order of the books, and so how her thinking developed and progressed.

This book also gives you a view into the personal/ professional struggles Daly had in her day-to-day life, which is sometimes a revelation in contrast to what information has been given about her/ how the story has been framed by other sources. It is easy to see why she sometimes comes across as bitter.

My goodness but she was a traveler, and just an interesting person in general. I was reminded of Gertrude Stein, though Gertrude Stein came before. Three doctorates, two of them earned in Switzerland- and in Latin (all the classes, etc.)! A reading comprehension of Greek and Hebrew, obviously fluent in Latin, and also French and German. She was amazing long before she "became" a Feminist, much less a Radical Feminist. To think that she was brought up in Catholic schools, in an Irish Catholic community- to see her entire journey step by step as she grew into her own way of thinking is really quite something.

Comparatively, I feel like a total slacker. But, I know my journey is different and equal in every way to hers; mine just involves a lot less of what constitutes "legitimacy" (like degrees and other "legitimate" accomplishments). i.e., My accomplishments are regarded in the world at large, in patriarchy, as nonaccomplisments. After all, nonquestions have nonanswers, and if something isn't on the approved docket, then achieving it is hardly noteworthy. And I know that Mary Daly understood this and would agree.

I wish she had mentioned Emily Dickinson. I wonder what she thought of her poetry. Emily, I'm sure, understood too. (Especially about Words- not to mention her affinity for clover and bees!)

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.	5
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Daly's style (apparently from Gyn/Ecology on, though this is only the second of her books that I've read) is rather poetic- and challenging to read: much like a dissertation written in modern poetic form. Maybe not so extremely difficult, but certainly it demands constant conscious-level attention and awareness, presence, from your brain at all times. Each and every word is precise and intentional. It makes you think.

But she plays around with the words so much, and finds such liberating ways to use words, that the lighter, and ultimately Hopeful, side of her shines through. She liberates the reader with her style, her new/reclaimed words, her spirit, and her message, while managing to be real about it all.

The end of this book is quite abstract, and disorienting, being told almost entirely through symbols and allegory. If you haven't been following up to that point, you might wonder what she's smoking. It's in any case brave to play around with inspiration so openly.

Read November 21st through the 28th.
___

I finished the book [The Church and the Second Sex] in the summer of 1967 and waited. I did not fully realize at that time that the writing of this, my first Feminist book, would profoundly affect/effect the Outercourse of my life. It was an Act of Be-Speaking that would hurl me into conflicts that I had never anticipated. The book itself had seemed to me to be eminently sane and reasonable- and indeed it was. Yet it was very radical in its impulse and in its Time. I was, after all, "merely" trying to reform the catholic church, and that act was too threatening to be gracefully accepted by my employers and the powers they represented. (p. 91)

When you place the book in that particular time- the 1960s- one can understand what a bombshell it was, even though it was incredibly restrained and mild (in what it set out to accomplish) compared to her later work.

In recent years I have frequently heard myself saying to audiences that a cognitive minority of one cannot survive, referring to sociologist Peter Berger's dictum that "the subjective reality of the world hangs on the thin thread of conversation." Often at some point in the same lectures I have also heard myself saying: "Even if I were the only one, I would still be a Radical Feminist." This may seem a little Strange, even self-contradictory. Reflecting Now upon the Logbook material of The First Spiral Galaxy [i.e., her early years], however, I Re-member that I was then in the situation of "being the only one"- the only one known to myself, at any rate- and that I have Survived. (p. 112)

In regards to "the thin thread of conversation," David Abram (among many others) points out that one interacts with, and thus converses with, not just other humans, but with one's total surroundings. Life is not subjective. It is intersubjective, at all times. And thus, whether or not we are consciously aware of it- or whether or not we are ever allowed to clearly realize/see/ experience the connections- even if those we are connected to are dismissed themselves as unworthy and thus the connections undermined (largely the case with the natural world and frequently the case with women and other minorities)- the connections are there.

Isolation is a foreground phenomenon. (p. 290)

Exactly. Our enculturation of the foreground "reality" keeps hidden from us our connections to others (who would think outside the guidelines of the patriarchy) and to our resources/sources of personal power. But, again, these connections are there, always, in the Background. For years I thought I was a cognitive minority of one- not on Feminist issues per se but in general; my parents maintained I was left on their doorstep by aliens- and I felt very alone. But now I see that it was never so. There are many like me the world over. (To be rather cheesy: "Walked out this morning/ Don't believe what I saw/ A hundred billion bottles/ Washed up on the shore/ Seems I'm not alone at being alone/ A hundred billion castaways/ Looking for a home" /Sting)

... the Threshold, or Limen- the Time/Space when/where subliminal knowledge becomes accessible to awareness. (p. 115)

Automatically thought of my daughter, the goddess of the doorway. Also, Turgenyev's The Threshold. And Hermes, and magic, in general.

For years I had been driven by the fact that none of my degrees, that is, academic legitimations, seemed to be "enough" to bring me freedom. As I then understood "freedom," it meant liberty to live the life of a writer/philosopher/teacher who is not tied down and drained by constraints imposed by mediocre institutions. I believed that by acquiring the "highest of higher degrees" I would earn this privilege. I Now think that on a subliminal level I was seeking something more than I could articulate at that Time. I think that what I really sought was not freedom within academia, but freedom from it. But I did not want simply to leave. I wanted to Be/Leave.
As I came to understand more about academia, I still wanted to be in that world, as it were, but not of it- to be there still, but unconstrained. I wanted academia to support my real work in the world. .... Universities could offer me a meal ticket, or rather meal tickets, as well as congenial environments in which I could do my own work, or so I then believed. (p. 121)

As one who has hungered after an academic life only then to become totally disillusioned by what that really stood for, this hits pretty close to home. Even now I treat suspiciously any desire (of mine) to get a degree, and am wary that all I really want is recognition and legitimation, which don't come with those papers anyway.

[Abortion] was not at the center of my own interests. I hardly saw the right to an abortion as the ultimate goal of the Feminist movement, or as an expression of the epitome of Feminist consciousness. But I refused to see it as disconnected from other issues and I Named the connections. (p. 143)

Thank you for the obvious! What a misery that we have to spell it out. But we do.

"We are the Nothing-losers," I cried. (p. 199)

I especially like this line. I am a Nothing-Loser! It's great fun and quite empowering to say.

Feminist theory is brought forth within a certain environment, the supportive hearing of a cognitive minority of women who recognize our situation as extra-environmentals in a male-ruled system, and whose sense of reality is different from the prevailing sense of reality. We are primarily interested in speaking to each other, because this is where we find authentic communication. Others may read and comment upon our work, but genuine hearing is something else. My presence here is an experiment, questionable and problematic to myself. In a very real sense it is a contradiction. But then, as Whitehead recognized, a contradiction can be a challenge. Whether the challenge is worth the effort remains to be seen. [from a paper delivered to the 1975 Second International Symposium on Belief, Vienna] (p. 202)

I think I shall quote that entire excerpt whenever I need to talk about/quote any Feminist issues outside of a Feminist atmosphere.

When we jumped into the car, anxious to get back to my apartment on Commonwealth Avenue and continue working [on Gyn/Ecology], I was in the perplexed state of an Intergalactic space cadet struggling to cope with mundane foreground realities. I started the car, zoomed as far as the first stop sign, and abruptly stopped. Peggy sat in the passenger seat, expecting me to get moving again, since no cars were in sight. Finally, when she asked what was going on, I explained patiently that I was waiting for the sign to say "Go." (p. 215)

I wish I could say I've never done that type of thing. But I'm glad at least I'm not the only one!

...elementary pseudoreality, which is characterized by artificiality, and lack of depth, aura, and interconnectedness with living be-ing, and which is marked by a derivative and parasitic relation to Elemental Reality.
It is not always a simple matter to recognize and communicate the differences between Elemental Reality and the elementary world- in other words, between the Background and the foreground. This is in part because of the increasing pervasiveness of the elementary world and because the latter is comprised of derivative imitations of the Elemental world, which are mere elementaries [i.e. man-made simulations which distort experience and lack depth, radiance, resonance, harmonious interconnectedness with living be-ing]. (p. 250)

As Emily Dickinson put it: "Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb." (I might seriously write a paper on these two. I can easily imagine two distinct theses here- one involving the comparison/contrast of Mary Daly and Emily Dickinson, and the other, of Mary Daly and Howard Zinn.)

The idea of the will not to know on p. 135 and of existential courage on p. 136

Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopfh

Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopf

This is the second (shorter) novel in the omnibus I started with Innerfar earlier this year. Bluff, or the Southern Cross, is about a young man coming of age through a tragic accident and an unlikely friendship. Like Innerfar, it explores madness and the fine line between truth, reality, and dream.

Our land may look like Heaven on earth, but its people have a dark, untold story right under the surface, one that can be told only by someone who has not given up dreaming because of embitterment in the icy shadows.

God knows that on this path there may not be something grandiose to recognize in the final analysis. But it's important to me, because I found out about it myself. For I belong to those who can learn only the hard way, by having to experience it first myself. But then I know it for always. (p. 231)

Both Gerhard Kopf and Roberto Calasso are food for the subconscious.

Extra tidbits:

"A poet once said: We're not allowed to describe our life the way we've lived it but must live it the way we'll tell it." (p. 179)

"To find out what we are, we must again enter the dreams that dreamed us." (p. 180)

"Only where it's hard to love will it become apparent whether you are serious about it or not." (p. 200)

"Every journey contains the wish of being able to jump over your own shadow." (p. 201)

Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, by Roberto Calasso

Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, by Roberto Calasso


As usual, Calasso's narrative is as rich, intricate, and bizarre as its subject matter.

The destruction of Daksa's sacrifice, the most radical criticism of sacrifice, came from within the sacrifice itself: it showed how irresistibly sacrifice is transformed into massacre, and thus looked forward to the whole course of a history no longer yoked to sacrifice. [emphasis mine] (p. 86)

Not only was ritual no longer able contain violence but multiplied it, like a machine, not of desire now but of disaster. Indeed, might not ritual itself, this faith in the absolute precision and truth of gesture, be the very thing, in the end, that was provoking the worst of evils? (p. 314)

No one recognized him. Shiva begged before Shiva's temples. Sometimes the devout would trample him as they thronged to worship. Sometimes he would writhe and yearn like a madman lost among other madmen. He was the nameless, he who has no country, no caste, he was the lover forever bereaved, the murderer who cannot be pardoned, the missing person who is missed by no one. (p. 88)

"Wherever life is felt more acutely, that is Rudra," [y Rudra=Shiva] page 47.

Shiva felt sympathetic, and, murmuring words they would never hear, addressed them as follows: "Whether the world be a hallucination or the mind be a hallucination, whether all return or all appear but once, the suffering is just the same. For he who suffers is part of the hallucination, of whatever kind that may be. What then is the difference? This: whether in the sufferer there is- or is not- he who watches him who suffers." More than that, for the moment, he would not say. (p. 89)

shades of Edgar Allen Poe, there.

"Who is that damn woman hiding in your hair?" said Parvati. Once again she couldn't stop herself. "The sickle moon," said Shiva, as though thinking of something else. "Oh, so that's what she's called, is it?" said Parvati, in a tone that would one day be the model for all female sarcasm.

"Of course, you know that perfectly well," said Shiva, more absentminded than ever.

"I'm not speaking about the moon, I'm speaking about your girlfriend," said Parvati, snarling.

"You want to talk to your friend? But your friend Vijaya's just gone out, hasn't she?" said Shiva. Parvati went off, white with rage. (p.117)

Ahimsa doesn't mean to refrain from violence. But to exercise violence- which is there in any event and involves everyone- in a certain way, without wounding. To wound is more serious than to kill.... The obligation not to wound the living (and everything is living), and the obligation toward the truth: the two were pronounced together, and ahimsa came before satya[truth], as if getting to the bottom of the one word discovered the other. (p. 151)

"In what are you experts?" they asked us. In the sensation of being alive. (p. 163)

This much we know: that if one seeks to define almost everything- or rather; everything except a single point [as if in relation to that point]- that point must remain undefined. As in geometry, one cannot do without an axiom. And an axiom is not defined. An axiom is declared. (p. 173)

"You see that Agni means fire- and you are satisfied. You think that such a precious and dangerous element deserves a great many honors. But you are wrong. Agni's secret name, the name the gods use when they speak of him- and it is also a common word in our language- is agre, 'forward.' Before he is fire, Agni is everything that goes beyond us, the dazzling light that darts ahead of us wherever we are. When we go forward, we are merely following Agni. Man's conquests are the scars Agni leaves behind in his progress across the earth." (p. 195)

The first of all states, the one to which, after each event, one returns to as a final barrier, behind which we shall always meet the same barrier and so on and on for all time, is the birth of fire from the waters. Of Agni from Soma. The liquid fire. (p. 197)

What is the esoteric? The thought closest to the vision things have of themselves. (p. 202)

The world is a broken pot. Sacrifice tries to put it back together, slowly, piece by piece. But some parts have crumbled away. And even when the pot is put back together, it’s pitted with scars. There are those who say this makes it more beautiful. To know the head of the sacrifice also means to know the sacrifice that happens in the head, that cannot be seen, that has no need of gestures, implements, calendars, liturgies, victims- or even words. (p. 218)

"You are that" tells us that, whatever appears to us, "you are that": that thing is within you, is in the Self, which- immensely larger than any thing, spreading out from the barley grain hidden in the heart- includes within itself, little by little, every shape that appears. Nothing is alien to it. And being everything that appears gives us the basis for understanding everything that appears. (p. 369)

Of course the true word would win, but it would be diminished by the clash. Truth does not compete with facts. Truth is not a tool. (p. 383)

Residues are ubiquitous. They hem us in on every side. The crucial things is how we deal with them: do we eliminate them? cultivate them? Sometimes they contaminate, sometimes they enhance. (p. 401)

The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy

The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy

A book of poems, some of which I really like. Some I don't feel much. That's okay; poems are that way. The ones I like may not ring for other people; they may like the ones I noticed politely better.

This book has The Low Road:

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

and For Strong Women:

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

both of which I love.

note to self

Fitzgerald
Hemmingway
Sherwood Anderson
Samuel Clements
Ford Madox Ford
Mildred Aldrich
James Joyce
Gertrude Stein

Jane Heap? Bravig Inbs?

Moby Dick

Also, widen the posts column- seems way too skinny now