LOVE’S LABOUR LOST? “It’s as if I have this dream, a fishnet suspended in air” . . .

June 3, 2025

I’ve been going through old journals with the aim of getting rid of most of them, by depositing in a plastic bag, and then throwing the bag in the trash. This usually works. But one batch of letters, to and from my teacher way back in 1971-1972 — when my sudden involuntary drop into the depths of my own unconscious threatened to dismember me entirely, and he was there for me, all the way — felt so poignant and still so real that instead of trashing them, I burned them, one by one, slowly. Thank you teacher, thank you.

Besides philosophical struggles, most of my old journals center on two subjects: writing down and interpreting my dreams, and wrestling with whatever relationship with a man I happened to be in at the time.

(There have been so many that I don’t even remember some of their names! Whole sections of life blotted out!)

And yet, looking back at life from the vantage point of 82 years, I realize that we humans learn about ourselves mostly through relations we have with others. Especially intimate relationships. (And I’m not talking about “hook-ups,” casual sex; I refer here serious attempts at unification.) Usually, we come upon this understanding later in life, if at all; but there were times, for example in this excerpt from a 1984 journal, when the all-too-human situation at least briefly, clarified. I was 41 years old. Many more years would go by when what follows would still be the case

I notice that the search for a man, a mate, goes on underneath everything I do. Each one I meet I scan for its possibilities. It’s as if I have this dream, this vision, hanging there suspended in the air, a fishnet ready to be thrown over the first available man who doesn’t too blatantly contradict what the dream represents. This runs on beneath all my other daily lives — all my plans, projects, realities are of a more superficial order than this one. Even while in the middle of casting my net over someeone I can (and do! thank God!) stop and notice, look at myself — but this doesn’t change the intensity of the search one iota. I think all this originates at the Moon level, but somehow Moon is linked up to Neptune — subconscious to superconscious — so I don’t want to reduce it to a set of infantile wishes. There is something more to it. Strong as it is, no matter what my experience in real life with real men, the search continues, the fishnet waits, suspended, who will it capture next? And I, no matter how “conscious,” how “enlightened” how “aware,” am ever humbled by this single realization.

By the time I was 65, however, the situation had clarified. The fishnet no longer hung suspended. I had taken it down. Learned my lesson. Learned the real nature of LOVE.

Grateful.

A DISCOURSE ON LOVE

Let Us Manifest Our Shared Bounty!

June 2, 2025

Our Green Acres Permaculture Village garden this year is stupendous! Massive amounts of many different veggies. Never has it been this productive. Two shots from two days ago:

Every little space inside this enclosure (newly built higher to keep deer out) has been turned into a fertile garden plot. So much food that we’re getting ready to have a farm stand where we give our surplus to those who walk by.

And BTW: all this with only one two- to three-hour work party each week. Several neighbors are beginning to join in.

Indeed, I’d say that this year, our garden is The Attractor. I’ve signed up at least ten more people to the green acres list, and I do hope some of them will also begin participating in our twice-monthly Thursday dinners.

Meanwhile, once again, I wonder:

Seems obvious, does it not?

The point is, at least for me, rather than paying so much attention to terrible things going on in the world, pay attention to right here, right now, local local local!

Let us spend our precious time bringing the new world into manifestation, and let us introduce this new world — of local food! — of sharing the bounty! — to our children, that they may pass it on to their children’s children.

It’s never too late to begin.