Access to wheels allowed for a quick visit yesterday to look in on how my nephew George is weathering his junior year at Clark University. Judging from the fact that our arrival phone call woke him at 9:30am (missed his alarm), and a subsequent tour of his and his roommates’ living quarters revealed hygienic conditions that could charitably be described as unspeakable, it would seem that all is normal. At least I noticed they’re making the attempt to recycle their bottles.
One of the most interesting parts of our tour of Clark’s lovely little campus was this statue of Sigmund Freud. Seems Clark was, and continues to be, a hotbed for those snoops who seek to pry into the human mind, and Clark is quite proud of the fact that it hosted Siggy for five early lectures in 1909 (Jung was also on the slate that year). George and I had a peek over his shoulder to see what weighty tome he was into, but it turned out to be just a Land’s End catalog.
After fueling up at Acoustic Java, we dropped in to The Spiritual Haze, a hookah lounge and gallery where George serves as server, food-whipper-upper, and bouncer(!) a couple nights a week (he’s generally an easy-going young feller, but he is 6’7” and has a karate black belt, so...). Here he is lounging, sans hookah:
Then a quick lunch at a Vietnamese joint and off we flew to Hartford to pick up Lama Bayantsagaan and his wife. We were a little early, so we found a comfy spot and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The plane from DC was delayed, the board never announced its actual arrival, and even though they were in fact on the reservation list, the plane came and went and no Mongolian lama in a bright yellow robe appeared. Bradley is not a big airport and I suspect we would have noticed.
It’s the next morning and I still have no idea what happened, or any really good way to find out. I gave them a couple of our local numbers when we were in Mongolia, but haven’t received any calls. For us, this might work out for the best, actually, and today’s plans feel like they’re going to change radically.
Stay tuned...
I just can never get used to how "Little George" looks these days!
Posted by: Cuzzin-to-George-and-You | March 25, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Aaaahhhh, it's killing me that I'm not out there!
Posted by: Carol of Seattle | March 25, 2009 at 12:15 PM
Though Freud had his quirks and has had bad press, especially among feminists, he was an incredibly brave pioneer in the exploration of the Unconscious, along with, as Freud acknowledged, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. As for Jung, who has had much better press, especially among religionists and New Agers, his great contribution was the concepts of the Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which more closely resembles the Buddhist Alayavijnana (Skt.), or Kun.shi.nam.she (Tib.), which I used to translate by "Collective Unconscious" until I realized that that was far too limiting.
For a rare glimpse of Freud as a therapist, and not just a theorist, see H.D.'s wonderful book "Tribute to Freud". I would also recommend "When Nietzsche Wept" by Irvin Yalom, the movie version of which I have just finished watching courtesy of Netflix.
Posted by: Lama Kunzang | March 29, 2009 at 09:24 AM