First time I could safely let my "freak flag" start to fly. Up till then my dad controlled hair cut aka GI cut then the mid-60's bangs over eyebrows were somewhat tolerated. At college I could be slob but "warsht" (washed) as certain Southerners would say. Army jacket came from Nam. My brother was an Army chaplain based in Cam Ranh Bay, South Viet Nam (of course).
Two vinyl albums I wore out that year (and ongoingly) were John Lennon's first solo album, and George Harrison's solo double album, All Things Must Pass, which my mom gave me for Christmas (bless her Georgia heart). Janis Joplin's Pearl disturbed the dorm but many secretly borrowed the album but cranked the volume. Can't a good Pearl down..
John's "Hold On" cut....which is what I was trying to do when I needed to fall apart...did in my senior year, dropt out at the beginning of my last semester before graduation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQy-EsNfuM&list=PLiN-7mukU_REIkMJiBC7SheVd4KKSOaF4&index=2
Looking back now, it was still the "right mistake", phrase of which I heard Huston Smith use after a talk he gave, his answer to a young man's question and concern about making mistakes in his young life. Smith said, "Well, I can only speak from my 9 decades and have concluded the obvious, we will and we must make mistakes. The essential thing is to make the right mistakes."
Note/connect now that in early 1900s Carl Jung gave final remarks at the end of a lecture tour in the United States. In the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan he addressed a large crowd gathered for his US final lecture with slides and it turned out to be an embarrassing disaster. Jung was not happy. There was a reception to get through and at the end of it folks wanted some last words from him before he would take ship back to Europe the following day.
Coming to the end of his impromptu remarks he said,
" . . .We all must do just what Christ did. We must make our
experiment. We must make mistakes. We must live out our
own vision of life. And there will be error. If you avoid
error you do not live; in a sense even it may be said that
every life is a mistake, for no one has found the truth.
When we live like this we know Christ as a brother, and
God indeed becomes man. This sounds like a terrible blasphemy,
but not so. For then only can we understand Christ
as he would want to be understood, as a fellow man; then
only does God become man in ourselves.
This sounds like religion, but it is not. I am speaking just
as a philosopher. People sometimes call me a religious
leader. I am not that. I have no message, no mission; I attempt
only to understand. We are philosophers in the old
sense of the word, lovers of wisdom. That avoids the sometimes
questionable company of those who offer a religion.
And so the last thing I would say to each of you, my
friends, is: Carry through your life as well as you can, even
if it is based on error, because life has to be undone, and one
often gets to truth through error. Then, like Christ, you
will have accomplished your experiment. So, be human,
seek understanding, seek insight, and make your hypothesis,
your philosophy of life. Then we may recognize the Spirit
alive in the unconscious of every individual. Then we become
brothers of Christ." - from Speaking of Jung, p 97 - 98
So, yes,"life needs to be undone" though I'm sure that I would not have understood this at my young age because I knew very well, factually, that I was mentally/emotionally undone from many traumas at home and many bullies beyond it.
But dropping out was intuitively the "right mistake".
And error, undoing, is part of life's dialectic -entropy, yes, and what I dreamed after about 10 years of hard Jungian analysis in my 30's, of a golden book, large (indicating to me the dreamer - THIS IS BIG - had to get through my thick complexes so yep, central casting starring BIG BOOK and it worked!
One word title large and fancy Medieval like script spelled,
S Y N T H R O P Y.
Back to my intuitive "right mistake" - looking back I remember clearly that I was not "acting out" but had concluded that my time at the college had ended. So to the dean I went, dropped out and while signing forms he was silent, I noted that he did NOT try to keep me or talk me into staying which I did not want but "told me" he was happy to shoo me out of the sacred doors of Holy Hill Inc.
I symbolically dusted my feet at the bottom of the long steep driveway of the college. Hung thumb, caught a ride hearing Paul Simon's "Peace Like a River" in my head,
"You can beat us with wires.
You can beat us with chains.
You know you can roll out your rules
but can't out run the history train.
I seen a glorious day
Ah e E EEE uh EE Ee Eeee....."
Peace Like A River - Paul Simon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgsAmUbrCnA&list=RDCgsAmUbrCnA&start_radio=1
I had a few trusted confidants, confreres at the college, lost farts in a thunderstorm like me, preachers and missionary kids at birth sucking Calvin from the teat. Having confidants was a new experience for me - trusting someone else with private thoughts?
YIKES.
With my few belongings jammed into an army backpack, a book satchel on my shoulder, I made my way down the winding 2 lane highway via the kindness of a stranger, a rusty pick up truck, brogan-ed driver pumping brakes to the valley - no atheist in a corroded truck, I prayed for safe arrival, it happened - to Chattanooga then I came. And a job.
Got a job. Found a place to get oriented in my new situation and ponder the significance of my exit from the Castle within which the very small college existed.
From the thinning seat of my bell bottom jeans I found myself working the midnight shift at the reception desk of the mid-town Chat-town YWCA, 11 to 7. A residential Y for women, some of the residents were the most unlike to be in Chattanooga, TN! The first cousin of Bernadette Devlin! Devlin was radical IRA activist, outspoken and defiant, in the world news often as the conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and the ire with Britain. The cousin would read me letters from Bernadette!
An elderly woman resident had dated Audie Murphy, famous actor, singer and soldier in WW2. She showed me letters from him. I wasn't familiar with Murphy much but hit the local library and read up on him.
I was living on 3rd Street near Tennessee River and just up from the main street of Chat. I learned that Bessie Smith had grown up on that street a few blocks up from where I shared a tinder box rotten wood roach and rodent infested apartment with fellow drop outs, and students from the college who wanted a weekend get away to smoke a cig, sip some Old Mister Boston Peach or Apricot Brandy, or Coors, the holy grail of beers then, only sold west of the Mississippi....someone always new someone who was across the Missie who'd load up the VW van or bug or trunk in the Greyhound Bus destination Coors oblivion. Fortunately, I was never a beer drinker, still ain't, so I let the Barley Hops worshippers partake of St. Colorado's pilgrim from far away brewsky. I stuck with Mr. Boston...and to be really "suave" (a big word amongst yoot then) I bought bottles Mateus wine (Portuguese pink) or, gag, a bottle of Chianti (cheap sour headache inducing sludge on bottle bottom, slimy, scary). But the bottles encased in straw of course became candle holders. Can't believe we burnt candles in that "inner city" hovel cuz we could burned down Chattanooga and reenacted Civil War battles fought right there and up on Lookout Mountain.
Hitch hiked into nearby and distant mounts to hike, camp....sometimes head north to see friends or hang with an older brother, the former army chaplain outta the army - a vet, and a seminarian in West Philadelphia ready to get on with his own sense and "gnow-ing" (as in the Greek word "gnossis" = kmow, and intuition is a way of gno-wing) that his Calling was authentic. He's still at It at 80 years old.
**
You may read Jung's talk to the Plaza Hotel attendees at this link which will open up a marvelous book of interviews and conversations with Jung early in his career to his last years.
His insight on Hitler and other dictators of his time (while we have ours champing at the bit for absolute power) are well worth a click to read them....his insights then are more than apropos our cray cray jinxster sphincters millions $$ a dozen:
https://jungiancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/cg-jung-speaking.pdf
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