a hallowing day

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A feature of the Classical mind, as well as Cartesian subject, was intolerance for irreverence. It insults the vanity of the traditional self (the lorded “subject”).

That kind of thought came back to mind today when I was looking at the Britannica article on “Romanticism,” which includes “…a predilection for…the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.”

The movement follows the sense of freedom exemplified by the revolutions
of France, America, and maybe even the English Revolution of 1666, soon after the Elizabethan era, coeval with the discovery of “the New World.”
Alas, Shakespeare invented us all.

A “spirit” in it all was that the people who dwell in the lorded land deserve
to determine its destiny as their homeland.

But how can they do that without freedom to determine their own lives?

Such an aspiration pre-politically inhabited the pre-Romantic aspiration for “simpler, more sincere, and more natural forms of expression” and “experi-
encing powerful sympathies,” including hallowed emotional candor about “sorrow, bereavement, death, and decay,” well-known to the priest’s confes-
sional, the doctor (the healer) of mortal lives, and the healer of minds, those who can truly care about the other’s voice more than their own.

Simply put, an intuition of “authentic potential for being” was integral to the Anglo-French inception of home and land, a sense of wholly flourishing whose artistic living also welcomed “dark” appeals. In the dark woods, scary truth loves to wait.

“I can’t wait!”

Patience. We shall not cease from exploration. When fearlessness faces the fearful, the latter may dissolve, then one is reconceived—though that may cause tears of Odysseus (no longer recognizable back home).

Nightmares feed on un-faced fears. Dracula was disarmed by fearlessness.

The goblins come to one’s door wanting to darkly play.

The Jungian “Inner Child” beckons in the artist’s welcoming of mystery
in freely, darkly associative being.

My happy irreverence is part of trusting another’s openness to uncanniness.

In the heart of Eros is a love of Psyche’s transgressiveness, beyond Dionysian emancipation from subjectivity, because freedom is beyond unfocused license.

Freedom bears inception. It may build itself into grand horizons through its light, darkly.