Pride, Shame, and Divorce

Translations of Poetry from the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Japanese by Eli Siegel

2006-05-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to be able to access the Aesthetic Realism Online Library with its wealth of literature and literary comment by Eli Siegel. As a person who cares for the study of foreign languages, I am particulary moved by Mr. Siegel's translations of poetry from the French, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin and Japanese. For example, here is one of my favorite translations.

At Thermopylae, By Simonides of Ceos
Translation by Eli Siegel

O stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians
That we lie here, true to their laws.

To translate from one language to another is to respect the sameness and difference of two different languages at the same time. This has to do with the good will that I've learned from Aesthetic Realism is necessary in a marriage, in a divorce, and in any human relationship.

To do a good job of translating, you need to be fair to the sound and rhythm and meaning in your own and in another language at the same time. This, I've learned from Aesthetic Realism, is in outline how we want to be as to other people--try to be fair to who they are and to who we are at the same time. The opposites of Sameness and Difference as Aesthetic Realism explains them are a beginning point for understanding both.

"Were They Equal?" by Dr. Arnold Perey

2005-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

"Were They Equal? ...about Tortoise, Hippopotamus, Elephant--and You!" http://www.gweofnewguinea.net/is a tale of the Ndowe people of Africa. Dr. Arnold Perey adapted the tale and illustrated it charmingly.

I include a description of it in my blog because, through the tale and the meaning of it, we see what it means truly to appreciate the difference of other things and people. And Dr. Perey shows how to appreciate another's good qualities without diminishing oneself.

Dr. Perey, whose website is "Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology" writes

"Tortoise is an animal who plays tricks in many African stories. His job is to even the score when important folks are unfair. This story comes from the feeling in people that having contempt for other people, like Hippopotamus and Elephant do, is wrong....

"While this story doesn't give a full answer to prejudice, it's on the side of one. I learned the full-scale answer from Aesthetic Realism, and I've seen it work for many years. How to be fair to people and why we can be so unfair is explained in works by [Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism], including his book Children's Guide to Parents and Other Matters...

"He explained there are two ways of thinking you are strong and big, and we need to make up our mind which represents us. You can feel strong, "just because you have an opinion something else is bad." But are we truly strong when [we] want to know what other people feel and want them to be stronger and better off? Yes, we are. This is good will. "

Gwe, Young Man of New Guinea, A Novel Against Racism

2005-10-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

Here is a review of a great anthropological novel that has us see the sameness and difference of human beings. It will be seen as a classic, like The Harmless People.

This novel--Gwe--teaches us to see the sameness and difference between ourselves and others as necessary as it is lovely and strengthening.

GWE, Young Man of New Guinea, a novel against racism by Arnold Perey, PhD, Anthropologist and Aesthetic Realism Consultant [Waverly Place Press, NY 2005]

Review by Meryl Simon and Devorah Tarrow

Gwe was born in Stone Age New Guinea.
Alan was born in New York City.
This is their story and the story of Gwe’s people.

Gwe is a stirring novel set in New Guinea and peopled by the Mengti, with whom the author, Dr. Arnold Perey, lived. When he returned to the U.S., he began to study Aesthetic Realism, founded by American philosopher Eli Siegel. Dr. Perey writes:

… “All beauty is a making one of opposites,” wrote Mr. Siegel, “and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves. To see the deep likeness of all people, the opposites are scientifically necessary. The people of New Guinea you'll meet in this story—are they concerned with respecting oneself and feeling guilty? … being angry and being pleased; being excited and being calm; being fair to people and being selfish—in circumstances unique to their island?

In every chapter, we see the answer is yes. The novel centers on Alan Hull, young anthropologist and Gwe, a young man of Stone Age culture who becomes Alan's interpreter and guide.

Through Alan, Arnold Perey courageously lays bare racism in himself and tells how he learned to see its cause as explained by Aesthetic Realism: "The addition to self through the lessening of something else," which is contempt for people and things, and is the most damaging drive in humanity—in us.

What is the opposition to that unjust state of mind? Aesthetic Realism shows it is in art! In the chapter titled “Sunset and a Poem,” Dr. Perey describes how educated he was by the response of Gwe to a magnificent sunset and also by his singing a poem his people sang at twilight. Here are lines of the New Guinea Insect Song.

Koo-reng-geng-gay
Aroong-geng-gay
Koo-reng-geng-gay
Mooroo-ro-no…

The insect is singing,
It is nearly dark
The insect is singing
Come dance…

Dr. Perey writes:

Alan was stirred by this poem about sunset the way he was stirred by the carvings on the Divanna men's arrows. He saw they had art. …And now—poetry. His experiences were altering his conception of …people whose dark complexion he had felt, despite all his anthropological training, was associated with lesser minds and lesser sensitivity.

Dr. Perey takes us into the home of Gwe’s family.

Father of Gwe, seeing Alan walk into his dwelling in his stocking feet asks: "Are your feet like ours?" When Alan removes his socks, Gwe's father asks to touch his foot, which he does, and says, "Your feet are like baby's feet." Alan explains that his feet are always in shoes, and don't meet the rough earth barefoot. Then Alan pantomimes the tickling of his own foot and asks "If I tickle you, Father of Gwe, will you laugh?" The elder says, "Ah, yes." Perey writes, "Everyone in the little house was satisfied by the mood of mutual confidence mingled with a certain daring."

Then, they want to celebrate with a Singsing. Father of Gwe guides him:

Coming to Alan, he put one old hand on the young man's back, and the other on his pale upper arm, and he began rising and falling in time to an internal music. Back and forth across the length of the house they danced….Together the old father and the young, New York-born student danced the dance of New Guinea, centuries old, in a small dwelling on a rainy slope in the Victor Emanuel Mountains, 5 degrees south of the Equator in the Eastern half of the World.

The Mengti live by sweet potatoes, taro, and pigs. But because Gwe's selfish, brutal uncle, Yug-wek-kek, has taken possession by force of the best land, and the crops haven’t grown as well as they should, most of the people are starved for protein. Alan explains to Gwe that when a baby’s head is larger than his chest, it is a sign he is malnourished. Dr. Perey describes Gwe’s distress at the condition of the babies as Alan measures them.

Meanwhile, there is something else that is new, arising from Dr. Perey’s study of Aesthetic Realism: he goes into the feelings of Yug-wek-kek—showing how against himself he is for his ill will and the effects on himself of his own injustice. We read of how his guilt takes the form of a nightmare and an episode of insanity. We see new depths in a person and we are encouraged to ask ourselves: What are the effects on me when I am unjust?

In Gwe, Dr. Perey has us see and feel our kinship to people far away in place and in time. And he shows convincingly the cause of racism and how it can end.
Visit: "A New Perspective for Anthropology"

The authors are consultants on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation (www.aestheticrealism.org), where they study in professional classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss. Ms. Simon has an MA in Anthropology and Ms. Tarrow has an MA in Sociology.

The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth

2005-10-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

October 19, 2005

Dear Readers of my blog,

Here is news of a great theatrical event on this coming Sunday, October 23:

The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth Songs about Love, Justice, & Everybody’s Feelings!

Great Musical Event

2005-10-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

October 19, 2005

Great Musical Event

I'm pleased to invite you to a Great Event--Original, for our time, and for all time!!

Here is the information:

Music lovers of all ages should not miss the Sunday October 23rd matinee performance by the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company of The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth: Songs about Love, Justice, and Everybody's Feelings! Personally, I can't wait to hear songs of many decades and genres--standards from the 40s, rock and roll, broadway musicals, history, labor and more commented on by the singers themselves. This will be entertainment at its height and at the same time an education in ethics, about this very moment and your own life.

The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth Songs about Love, Justice, & Everybody’s Feelings!

Post Katrina Sensitivity

2005-10-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Post Katrina Sensitivity

Since Katrina, I join people all over the world in caring more about the plight of our fellow human beings.

No person should be abandoned. I wanted, as on-lookers everywhere did and do, for mothers, fathers, grandparents, children and others to be safe, well-fed, decently sheltered, kindly active in schools/jobs and/or the interests of their lives.

I recommend the following articles as a beginning point in the care of child and family health and will add others:

"No Child Should Go Hungery in America," by Miriam Mondlin

and "Every Baby Deserves Health Care Based on Good Will, Not Profit," by Meryl Simon, Miriam Mondlin and Ruth Oron.

We want a new way of seeing people that turns our anguish for the Katrina victims into useful activity. I consider these article/links are a beginning point.

What Essential Things about Life Can We Learn From Photography?

2005-09-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

Eli Siegel asks this definitive question about opposites central to photography in his historic broadside of 1955, "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?":

LIGHT AND DARK: Does all art present the world as visible, luminous, going forth?--does art, too, present the world as dark, hidden, having a meaning which seems to be beyond ordinary perception?--and is the technical problem of light and dark in painting related to the reality question of the luminous and hidden?

Photography can be a means of seeing the luminous and hidden in reality and in one's life. It's important for a good state of mind to learn to see the world as both dark and light, "having a meaning which seems to be beyond ordinary perception" and also "visible." For myself, like many men and women, after a life-changing experience, like divorce, I've found how necessary it is to try to see these opposites in the world as making sense. I recommend your visiting a website that shows the art of photography valuably -- that of Len Bernstein--Photographic Education.

Len Bernstein explains how seeing people and things through a viewfinder can be accurate and beautiful, and how this purpose can be a hope of ours all the time.

Picasso as painter tried to be fair to a woman--Dora Maar

2005-09-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

Picasso as painter tried to be fair to a woman--Dora Maar. I describe this in my paper titled "Dora Maar Seated," or, Full Face and Profile: How Do they Show the Self?"

In "Dora Maar Seated," he shows her with so many colors and shapes in her face and body that we feel the dynamic presence of the inner person from his work. I think he expressed himself more fairly, told the truth more deeply in his art than he did in his daily life with Dora Maar and with other women he had to do with, had children with, was married to.It is valuable to see that a man has as deep a question about how to see a wife or a former wife as a woman has about how to see a husband or a former husband.

One large thing I am learning in the study of Aesthetic Realism is to feel as accurately expressed in my everyday life and relations with people as I do in my study of the field I see as representing me--anthropology. Our mode of expression is a major subject for every person alive. I've been learning that really expressing myself means what I say and even think needs, for the satisfaction of my self to arise from the hope to like the world, even if what I am expressing is dislike for something. A rich source of information on the subject of expression--interfered with and successful--is the website of Miriam Mondlin Aesthetic Realism and Self Expression."

Divorce and a Woman of Papua, New Guinea

2005-09-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

In Gwe, Young Man of New Guinea, a novel against racism, Dr. Arnold Perey, anthropologist and Aesthetic Realism consultant describes the people he lived with while doing research in the highlands of Papua, New Guinea. http://www.perey-anthropology.net/ Gwe is a composite of the persons who interpreted for him and guided him in the ways of their culture. Alan is the name Dr. Perey gives to the anthropologist. Alan is a fictional character but representative of much of what Dr. Perey experienced.

One of the most memorable characters is Gwe's uncle Yug-Wek-Kek's first wife, Namgas. Yug-Wek-Kek, Dr. Perey describes as unkind and land-grabbing. Though he is very handsome, he is too self-centered--as many men and women are all over the world--to try to understand his wife. Dr. Perey wrote:

"Namgas wanted to speak about meeting her husband, and what happened later. Now, a woman who did not see herself as any longer married to him, she wanted to put clearly the turmoil and how it all began, so women in Alan's land would know how women of Mengti(the name Dr. Perey gave to the Oksapmin people) fared."

When Namgas went with Yug-Wek-Kek to their sweet potato plot for the first time, she recalls her lack of interest in her new husband's treatment of other people. What mattered was how he was to her. His ethics took second place to his flattery and approval of her.

"They met ... and together walked to the new sweet potato field, far up a wooded slope. One the way, Yug-Wek-Kek told a story about his mother and they laughed at her together. In a steep uphill climb, Yugwek bent his knees and walked like his old aunt, Dara, and the young lady laughed again. When they arrived, she looked at the muscles of his chest and said: 'You're such a strong man, my Yugwek.' He told her how pretty she was. Her face became hot; she looked down and then looked up at him and said:'Oh no--that's not true.' She cast her eyes down again."

"Once she heard a little boy yell: 'You're a thief, Yugwek! I hate you!' But, he was only a little boy. What did he know?"

This is an instance, a beginning, of how a woman of stone age technology, with the human emotions of all time, began her married life--not wanting to know her husband and putting his ethics aside because he flattered her. She resembles me of once and so many women. To be continued.

Terrain Gallery 50th Anniversary Exhibition

2005-04-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Terrain Gallery 50th Anniversary Exhibition
Opening Saturday, May 7th 2-5 pm

A celebration of 50 years of groundbreaking exhibitions based on Eli Siegel's 15 Questions--Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?--first published in 1955.

I quote a statement by Dorothy Koppelman, Founding Director of the Terrain Gallery:

In exhibitions, poetry readings, dramatic presentations, and hundreds of talks and publications, the Terrain Gallery has been a trailblazer in showing that art, as Aesthetic Realism describes, arises from respect for the world, and is the real opponent to the harm of the contempt so endemic in ordinary life. We have seen that this principle by Eli Siegel is true: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Included in the exhibit will be such outstanding American artists as: Richard Anuszkiewicz, Michael DiCerbo, Alex Katz, Charles Magistro, Red Grooms, Dorothy Koppelman, Arnold Schmidt, Larry Zox, Chaim Koppelman, Robert Blackburn and many others.

The opening will be a gala event. It will take place at the Terrain Gallery--Aesthetic Realism Foundation,'>Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 141 Greene Street, in SoHo, 10012. For more information call: 212 777-4490

Owning versus Knowing

2005-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

One of the most useful things I learned from Aesthetic Realism after my divorce was to see the world--the things and people in it--as simultaneously the same as and different from me. I thought my ex-husband was very different from me and put his difference from me in comparative terms as I had done as to other people. He was either more or less, better or worse. It was a revelation to me that he, like every human being, had an ethical unconscious that judged every emotion--was either proud of it or ashamed of it. This unconscious, through study of Aesthetic Realism, a person comes to see more and more consciously. I had thought that he, and men in general, did not feel guilt, were not ashamed. Only women were burdened with such feelings. I was wrong. It is not necessary actually to talk to one's ex-spouse to learn these things, but in my case I did. When I said things to him where I had seen my own mistakes, my ex-husband was well affected by that. I learned that for my own well-being, I needed to see where I had made mistakes. Said Eli Siegel in an Aesthetic Realism class on ethics, if I didn't see the mistakes I made in my marriage, I would rook myself.

Since I was looking at myself in terms of general ethics, how I saw things, not just in relation to my husband, he respected me and began to say things about himself that he also regretted. We didn't want to marry each other again, but each of us became stronger through the seeing.
A person I learned is himself in relation to others. Early on, I was resentful of his care for the son from his previous marriage. I was seeing him as he was to me, not as he was to all the things he had to do with. When I think about Neil, I am proud to continue to try to know him, to think about his son, now a husband and father in his own right and a friend to my daughter and her family, to remember his interest in science, and what stopped him from being the person he most wanted to be. That last thing I am looking at in myself and having the pleasure of changing about. In his major work, Self and World, Eli Siegel writes about the conflict between knowing a person and owning a person:

"To love another human being simply as an outside object is decidedly hard for nearly everybody. If this were done it would mean that something external had been permitted--so it seems--to affect the autonomy of a self; nd there is a disposition fiercely, constantly, deeply, ramifiedly to maintain that autonomy...We look upon the human being we have made ours as an addition to what we have been. Consequently, when this human being acts not as if he or she were ourselves but as a human being in his or her own right, we become excessively displeased. For we have done the inestimable favor--so we deeply regard it--of making something else part of ourselves, and that something else shows the temerity and injustice of not appreciating it. That is why such great resentment has been shown and is shown to one close to us who, however, acts sometimes as if he weren't."

This understanding of the two drives in a person, to have another person become part of us as a means of our being more, of having love in our lives, and then wanting the person not to be another person, but an addition to ourselves, is invaluable knowledge. Studying this in literature and in myself and others, I have less pain and more pleasure in my having to do with anyone else. It is a way for anyone and I speak now as a divorced person, to become optimistic
about changing as one wants to change.

"The Furious Aesthetics of Marriage, by Eli Siegel

2005-02-16T08:26:00.003-08:00

In his major work, Self and World, Eli Siegel states:

"The large difference between Aesthetic Realism and other ways of seeing an individual is that Aesthetic Realism makes the attitude of an individual to the whole world the most critical thing in his life."

Mr. Siegel has placed the relation between every person and the world in a new, scientific, necessary way. It is an exciting study that has the self seen on the same basis as all the arts and sciences and it is a good time.

The one thing I thought would never be a good time to see was the trouble in my marriage, and I wanted to close the door on it completely. In my future postings, I will tell you what I learned that had me see the gems and gold in the ore that was my life with my husband. The biggest gem I got was to learn how my attitude to the world preceded my attitude to my husband, then to my daughter and how my attitude to everything had so much to do with how I saw the persons closest to me. Now, one of my proudest achievements is seeing where I made mistakes in my marriage, and learning what it means to see a person as he is, including my ex-husband, as he is, not just in relation to myself. What a surprising adventure that has turned out to be.

I will tell you about my education in seeing my ex-husband in future postings, but first I want to leave you with a quote from a classic in the field: The Furious Aesthetics of Marriage by Eli Siegel.

"In caring for someone, in loving someone, in marrying someone, our hope is to like the world...and if you don't encourage another person to like the world more, the like that that person shows to you will never satisfy you."

I wanted to add how Mr. Siegel described the world. I think it is beautiful.

"The definition Aesthetic Realism has of the world is: All that different from ourselves by which we can be affected. If we look at a finger of ours as if it were an object like any other object, we are making ourselves like the world, for the self that is looking is different from the self looked at."

And he said:

"What is different from self--is a useful definition of world. All literature, all painting, all music is about the effort of man to see the world in a way that pleases him, in a way that is valid, and in a way of which he can be proud. The world can be called man's inexhaustible, mysterious, and dazzling material." Self and World, page 361

That is how I learned to see my ex-husband, my daughter, myself and everything else and I'm still learning--as different from myself and related to the world.

To be continued.

Good Will defined by Eli Siegel, discussed by Ellen Reiss

2005-02-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

For a marriage or a divorce to have one proud of oneself and fair to another or others, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, it is necessary to have good will. Eli Siegel has spoken comprehensively and definitively about good will. He described it as "the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful."

In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, titled "Good Will, The Only True Expression," Class Chairman Ellen Reiss explains: "Good will is the oneness of criticism and care. It is the oneness of logic and feeling. It is described by this Aesthetic Realism principle: 'The world, art and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.'(From Self and World, page 83)"

She gave in outline reasons why good will is our only true expression.

"1. The purpose of our lives is to see meaning in the world--it is, Eli Siegel showed, to like the world. Therefore, any expression, anything we do, which does not go for valuing the world, has to dissatisfy us elementally.

"2. Whenever people have expressed themselves in any way other than good will--when they have expressed themselves through possessiveness, manipulating, through contempt as such--they have always felt nervous, angry, deeply and sometimes disablingly ashamed. This spurious expressioin is constant in love, business, life itself--and so is the deep shame.

"3. Mr. Siegel said that this is the greatest evidence for good will as man's necessity: No person who sees clearly that he has weakened another person can stand it.

"4. ....Art, Eli Siegel showed, tells us how we want to be. It tells us our personality is glorious as we show the value of what is--an orange, an angle, a face, or the meeting of sounds."

What is in this posting is invaluable for understanding the past, present and future. After I began studying Aesthetic Realism, I began to know who my ex-husband was. I had arranged a situation in my mind for myself that he fit into when we met. This is not uncommon, but it wasn't he I was married to, but some idea of a person. He was truly and deeply interested in chemistry and he was a go-getter in business. I did not help him to make sense of these two things. I was glad to learn from Aesthetic Realism how to think more deeply about him, even after our marriage ended.

One of the things that hurt our marriage was our conversations about people that were gossipy and belittling. Each of us was, in our own ways, an academic snob. Undervaluing other persons, in and out of the family, was hurtful to us. I didn't know it at the time, but it was.

Through what I learned from Aesthetic Realism (he didn't study it), when we did have conversations, they had more respect in them for each other and for the people we knew. I saw how this way of seeing and speaking was more strengthening than what we had gone for before.

To be continued

"Good will is the oneness of criticism and encouragement"--Eli Siegel

2005-02-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

Net-no-kwa is a chief of the Ojibways who adopts a boy--John Tanner--from Kentucky and treats him with a combination of toughness and tenderness, criticism and encouragement. I found qualities in Net-no-kwa's treatment of John Tanner that are in the field of those which make for good will, which Aesthetic Realism teaches a person to have as a conscious purpose. There are many instances in literature and in anthropological material which show that people are looking for that oneness of opposites which makes for kindness, for good will.

John Tanner or The Falcon, as the book about him by Louise Erdrich, is titled, was captured by Indians as a boy of nine years in Kentucky in 1780, because in effect, he wanted to "divorce" his family, escape from his father and stepmother, and be taken by the Indians. He loitered at some distance from his family's homestead at the edge of the forest. The first Indians who took him were cruel to him, treated him as a slave, but he was soon "bought," by a relative of those who first took him. We meet Net-no-kwa early in the narrative. She was regarded "notwithstanding her sex, ...as principal chief of the Ottawwaws(a branch of the Ojibways). The woman had lost her son, of about [John Tanner's age]by death; and having heard of [John], wished to purchase him to supply [her son's] place." Net-no-kwa, in my opinion, is critical and kind. John Tanner narrates (as Louise Erdrich tells us):

"She took me by the hand after she had completed the negotiation with my former possessors, and led me to her own lodge which stood near. Here I soon found I was to be treated more indulgently than I had been. She gave me plenty of food, put good clothes upon me, and told me to go and play with her own sons....She imposed on me, for the first year, some tasks. She made me cut wood, bring home game, bring water, and perform other services not commonly required of the boys of my age; but she treated me invariably with so much kindness that I was far more happy and content than I had been in the [former family]... I think essentially Net-no-kwa was for John Tanner and he felt she was. Being for the best thing in a person and against the worst thing in them is a crucial thing in good will.

After some years, he becomes romantically interested in Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa (the red sky of the morning). He recalls that he spent a considerable part of one night with Red Sky, and crept back into the lodge, but this did not escape the notice of Net-no-kwa "[who] rapp[ed] on my naked feet at the first appearance of dawn on the following morning. 'Up,' said the old woman, '...and start after game. It will raise you more in the estimation of the woman you would marry to see you bring home a load of meat early in the morning than to see you dressed ever so gaily, standing about the village after the hunters are all gone out.'" And John Tanner continued: "I could make her no answer, but putting on my moccasins, took my gun and went out. Returning before noon, with as heavy a load of fat moose meat as I could carry,...and said to her: 'Here, old woman, is what you called for in the morning.' She was very much pleased, and commended me for my exertion. I now became satisfied that she was not displeased on account of my affair with Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa, and it gave me no small pleasure to think that my conduct met with her approbation. There are many [people] who throw away and neglect their old people, but though Net-no-kwa was now decrepit and infirm, I felt the strongest regard for her, and continued to do so while she lived."

Some time later, when he came home after a trip to the trading post, there was this exchange, which gives some idea of one style of an Ojibway wedding ceremony of the time and the criticism of a woman who stood in the place of his mother:

"When I arrived at our lodge, I saw Red Sky sitting in my place. As I stopped at the door of the lodge, and hesitated to enter, she hung down her head, but Net-no-kwa greeted me in a tone somewhat harsher than was common for her to use to me, 'Will you turn back from the door of the lodge, and put this young girl to shame, who is in all respects better than you are. This affair has been of your own seeking, and not of mine or hers. You have followed her about the village heretofore; now you would turn from her, and make her appear like one who has attempted to thrust herself in your way.' I was conscious of the justness of Net-no-kwa's reproaches, and in part prompted by inclination, I went in and sat down by the side of Red Sky, and thus we became man and wife."

I have been studying how necessary it is for good will to be the basis of a decision to marry and also the basis of a decision to divorce. More about what I learned about good will from Aesthetic Realism in my next posting.

I learn how to understand people

2005-02-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

My first step in re-seeing my marriage and my ex-husband was learning how to see people as such accurately. Neil, my ex-husband, was related to the world, to history, to all the people he had to do with, to the things he liked and disliked. I had seen him as only having to do with me--either benefitting or dismaying me. This principle of Aesthetic Realism by Eli Siegel is at the basis of my education, including in how to see Neil: "The world, art and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." Wanting to know helps to put opposites together. Wanting to own, manage, run a person or thing disrupts the opposites. I have been testing this principle and theory and have found instance after instance where it is so.

On March 5th, 2005, there will be a class for wives conducted by the teaching trio There Are Wives: Barbara Allen, Anne Fielding, Pauline Meglino. It is titled "How Can Understanding Your Husband Be Exciting?" The announcement for this class includes this statement by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss:

"A person is deeper than the way people see him, he is more in relation with the universe than people wish to grant, and the arrangement of things in him is more intricate, flexible, diverse, surprising than people see....We want to be seen as a moving assemblage of light and shade: we abhor being 'summed up.'...The desire deepest in us, the one we're most proud of, the one that is of our substance, is the desire to be seen, known."

One surprising thing I learned about Neil is that he really did like poetry and his favorite poet was Gerard Manley Hopkins. When I began dating him, he told me that he liked poetry, but since I myself was so little interested in that subject, I didn't ask him any more questions about it. I did see it as a feather in my cap, however, that I had to do with a man who liked poetry. It was only after we had been divorced for some time and I had begun to study Aesthetic Realism that I appreciated this aspect of him. Explaining how I saw my ex-husband, as an illustration of how I saw the world, Mr. Siegel said in a class that when my husband did well, he was "my man," and when he seemed to fail at something, then I was "superior." Neither one of these responses represented me. He, like everyone else I knew, had to do with things and people in a way that was both the same and different from the way I did, and it was worth my while to find out what they were.

A major thing I learned is that what matters is that we like the way we see a person, be proud of our emotions about them, not that we do or do not speak. Whether I liked or disliked, loved or hated a person, the key thing is accuracy. The criterion is to have a person in mind in a way that makes us proud, to have emotions about them that make us proud. This I have found is well worth knowing, so crucial to any person and particularly to a person who is divorced.

MORE TO COME

My next blog will describe what I learned from "Net-no-kwa," an Ojibway chief and the adoptive mother of a man she insisted have good will for the Indian maiden he was seeing. What is good will as Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel define it? What effect did it have on me to study it, and to continue studying good will as the ethical and aesthetic thing Aesthetic Realism defines it as? How did it impact on me as a divorced person and on my daughter? And how did Net-no-kwa illustrate good will as we learn about her in The Falcon, or the life of John Tanner, as told by Louise Erdrich?

My First Post

2005-01-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

What is the best way to see oneself after divorce? How should one see one's former spouse, your own family, his relatives and the child or children you had together? The answers I have learned and continue to be finding out about will come. They will include a report of an Aesthetic Realism class taught by Eli Siegel, questions I heard in consultations and what I have learned about divorce in my study of anthropology.