s i x
s o u l m a k i n g / s o i l m a k i n g
debra goldman, 2021
We cannot inoculate the individual soul nor isolate it against the illness in the soul of the world.”
- James Hillman
A game
life plays with itself
with endless variations:
Player one locks the treasure
inside a box without a key.
Player two employs solutions
and brute, grinding
force. Zoe flows
to the winner.
"Chew your food,"
admonishes
the Great Mother.
We mill about,
hungry ghosts at
a great feast,
neglecting
our millstones.
You are thirsty
and your world has turned
to ice? Here is an
ice pick: leverage
surface area and heat.
Disrupt. Dismember.
Now is the time to break
things apart, throw the
pieces into a cauldron
and stir.
Welcome this
enzymatic apocalypse:
from the
grey husk of this
prima materia,
a peacock's tail,
a many-colored fractal,
the symbolic life.
A game: All life actively seeks sources of energy and the compounds and elements that are the building blocks of organic forms. Seeds, with their particularly dense concentration of stored energy, are a caloric prize for other organisms. In part for this reason, a hard seed coat protects the twin treasures of genetic material and energy-rich carbohydrates within.
Zoe: Greek feminine name meaning "origin, life". In a depth psychological sense, zoë refers to an instinctual, eternal life force.
"Chew your food": The physical act of mastication (from "gnashing the teeth") is important because it increases the surface area upon which digestive enzymes and the microbial life of the intestines can work. Similarly, psychological analysis ("to loosen") facilitates the "digestion" of the events of life into experience.
hungry ghosts: Although ideas and images vary widely, the hungry ghost in Buddhism generally represents a deceased spirit that is still "hungry" in that it continues to carry unquenchable desires. In Japan, the hungry ghost is often depicted as having a neck too narrow for sustenance to pass through. The hungry ghost may also relate to ancestors who are not sufficiently remembered or honored by their living ancestors.
leverage surface area and heat: In managing compost, increasing surface area (by physically breaking apart matter by "turning", leads to the corresponding increase in biological activity. The heat generated by this activity further accelerates the breakdown (i.e. digestion) of the prima materia, the organic material that has yet to decompose.
Disrupt. Dismember: Particularly in the technology sector, "disruption" has become fetishized, seen almost as an end in itself. But in a healthy ecosystem, disruption (from the Latin dis- "apart" + rumpere "to break") occurs during times of transformation, when life in one form is giving way to life in another form. Constant disruption, by contrast, does not allow for the often slow and halting periods of growth, development, and experimentation.
prima materia...: The "first material" from which the alchemical process begins.
the symbolic life: The cauva pandonis, the peacocks tail, was a stage occasionally described by the medieval alchemists. It represented a deepening from the undifferentiated mass of the prima materia into a psychological state in which the various facets of the psyche exhibited their true colors.
"Both Splendor solis and Donum Dei include images of the so-called peacock stage, the colorful apparition part of the transmutation process. In contrast to Donum Dei, which depicts the chemical reaction as a series of brightly colored dots inside a black flask, the painter of Splendor solis opted to use a figurative symbol, the peacock contained within a glass vessel." (Jörg Völlnagel, 2016, Getty Blog)