What is Anagogical?

I love to come across unfamiliar words. I enjoy tracking them down to their lair and discovering their meanings, usage and pronunciation. The word today, anagogical, comes from John Granger in Harry Potter's Bookshelf. The definition comes from Merriam-Webster online: "interpretation of a word, passage, or text (as of Scripture or poetry) that finds beyond the literal, allegorical, and moral senses a fourth and ultimate spiritual or mystical sense" Of the several online dictionaries I checked, only Merriam-Webster puts anagogical in its proper literary context of four interpretations of a text. Granger applies all four interpretations to the Harry Potter books, beginning with the literal and ending with the mystical (anagogical) sense of the plot, action, dialog, names, colors and numbers in the books. Some of Granger's revelations are not only stunning to me, but so obvious once they were pointed out that I was embarrassed to not have seen them already. (Anagogical is a word new to the spell checker for eblogger - it keeps wanting me to change it to 'analogical', which is not at all the same. What a difference one letter makes.)

Friends: old, true and gone

I have reached that time in my life when nearly every week brings news of a classmate that has passed on. A reminder that we graduated as a group from high school but we graduate to what is next individually, at seemingly random times and places.

This is a time to appreciate old friends and true: the ones who look me up on Facebook to say we are still friends after all these years; the ones who send emails and letters and cards, even though my response is sporadic at best; the ones who text me their important events as they happen. All generous souls who share their love and hopes, concerns and fears, with a dollop of humor and a helping of humility.

I am so grateful to be included in their lives, however haphazardly, for I am inconsistent in communications, often turning inward with depression, something I want not to share but probably most need to. This afternoon I have an appointment with a mind doctor (aka psychiatrist). I wonder if psychic surgery were possible, would we choose to have painful memories excised? But that is a function of many anti-depressants - to repress the sad memories and enhance the good times. Too bad my biochemistry repudiates those happy pills and produces nasty side-effects. Oh well, when life gives you sh**, plant flowers!

Vampires Biting Mother Earth

A recent development in drilling for natural gas, "high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking", resonates with me as a strong corollary to vampires biting our Mother Earth. Like the mythical monsters of blood-sucking fame who inject their poison to paralyze their victims and then drain them of life, these corporate monsters inject poisons into our earth before draining her of fluids. Or at least, that is the nightmare I had last night, and waking did not dispel it, as proven here: The New York Times: Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers. What is next on the agenda? Glow-in-the-dark rivers? Glow-in-the-dark people? Perhaps when their profit-dollars also glow in the dark they will not want them quite so much? I thought Erin Brokovitch fought and won this battle for us already, but the undead monster has risen again to torment mankind. As long as profits outstrip pollution-penalties, corporations will ignore the risks to humanity.

Bit by the Inspiration Bug

Nothing else has changed - still looking for a house, still dealing with fibromyalgia, still deeply affected by unrelenting gray skies of winter BUT - my muse is back.

Don't know where she's been for two years, don't know why she popped up this week, but having a great time immersed in dirigibles, writing a steam-punk plot. Why should I be surprised? My favorite movies fall into or near this genre: The Golden Compass; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Cradle of Life; Sherlock Holmes etc.

Doing the research on dirigibles I find facts that are stranger than fiction. Who knew the Victorian Age was so scientific, so accomplished?

Winter

Skies gray and weeping, ground brown and squishy, ten percent chance of sun. Winter in the northwest. High temperatures in the forties, and high electric bills. I'm thinking about fabrics in bright colors of orange, yellow, red and purple - the energy spectrum, and what to do with them. Cushion covers, wall hangings, table cloths, enough large swatches of vivid, pulsing action colors that I forget the winter grayness. My favorite home page these days: the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, also now a book. Enjoy.

Words and Actions: Political not Personal

"Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change." Ingrid Bengis We all know the old childish taunt "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." We also know what bravado that is, and how very much words can hurt us. We need only to consider the way words of hate fed the holocaust to realize that words can indeed be fatal.

It is political free speech to say "I disagree with the legislation." It is protected free speech to lay out all the ills I might conceive could result from legislation I disagree with. It is not protected free speech to wish bodily harm upon a legislator. That becomes incitement to terrorism and targets the person and not the politics. Here in the land of free speech, it has been illegal to utter threats against the president since 1917.

Congress may soon be considering legislation to extend that protection to members of the House and Senate and Judiciary. It would only make sense in light of the attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of U. S. District Judge John M. Roll, along with five other persons, and thirteen more people wounded at a public meeting last Saturday.

Here's a non-violent response: just turn them off. Turn off the television or the radio whenever violent rhetoric is used. When the point is to foment hate for a person or a group, take action for peace and turn a deaf ear. Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Let words of violence wither away from lack of a receptive audience. Foment a word revolution, exercising free speech to spread words of hope and peace.