THREE POSTCARDS FROM VENICE

Venice

 V:  Missed train to Trieste. Ended up in Venice. Had some additional Active Imagination sessions with Carl (Jung) that I wouldn't have missed for the world. People are quite afraid of him, but if he likes you he is like your own psychological Santa Claus. He told me that when he isn't sure what to do, like take the train to Geneva, he will flip a coin. Heads I take the train to Geneva. Tails I stay home. Let's say it comes up heads. If he is happy about this, he has solved his confusion. If he is unhappy, he finds the information useful to help him decide how he really feels. Of course, many of his students are shocked to see the Great Herr Doktor flipping a coin. But they do not really know how much fun he is. They just see what they want to see. Projection, Carl calls this. We all do it, of course, but if you do it and know that you are doing it, that is better than doing it and not knowing that you are doing it, if you get my drift. For example, I am currently projecting that you are my perfect Muse. But I am conscious of this, so it is OK.  And I am telling you about it, which makes it even more OK. And you can "resign" as my Muse any time you wish. Carl says you would be a fool to resign as my Muse of course.  Ooops! Running out of space. Will continue on one of my Hotel Cipriani cards, where there's more room. S.

More from Venice

V: I'm sitting here sipping some lemon-ginger tea in a tiny bistro on the Piazza San Marco. Sunset. Everything swimming in golden light. Puddles on the pavement catch the glow. A golden world. An afterlife. (Where is Thomas Mann when I need him?) In the distance, delicate little bites of a Mozart opera. Even the handmade glass cup I am drinking from catches the light and plays with it. Butterfly wings. Dragonfly eyes. The dew on cobwebs that catches the sunrise. So I am drinking from this Midsummer Night's Dream cup, but it is not midsummer, it is November,and I am supposed to be in Hakone on my way to Kyoto. Back to this cup. As I write to you I am holding this glass cup up to the golden light, up to the smoldering last seconds of another Venetian day. In this glass cup, I watch great lavender-gold waves breaking, or are those hills?  I see a giant squid swimming up through a mist of bronze-green light. But the light fools me! Now it shifts into a rich pink-purple.  Have you ever smelled lemon-ginger tea? The lemons are from Portugal, the ginger is from Sri Lanka. We live like kings and queens, do we not? Suddenly, the light is gone, and I am now writing to you by one small, poor candle that flickers in the rising autumn wind. Buona Sera, San Marco, Buona Sera. S.

More from Venice

 V: The bits of Mozart that I mentioned in my earlier card were actually from a rehearsal in a nearby synagogue.  Die Zauberflote. The magic flute, filled with all that secret High Masonic symbolism. The music cascaded down on us like falling stars. A meteor shower of music, waking all the senses.  No electric light. Just hundreds of beeswax candles from the Holy Land. Incense too, hanging in the air like a thin silk veil. Sat next to a Countess, dressed in red silk from Shanghai, a gown she has had for fifty years. She told me that the reason Mozart stirs us to our depths, makes us feel so energized and alive and holy, is that he was writing in a sacred healing tonal scale, known only to a few, coded into the Hebrew Psalms. These codes have been handed down through secret societies for many generations. Mozart and Beethoven and others put them to work in their music, and that is what sends the chill down your spine. It is a real, not an imagined chill, because these are tonal combinations designed to transfigure thought. Must run. Have rented a car to drive to Florence. Are you still in Portugal? The villa sounds divine. Stay a month. Unplug. That is what I am going to do in Hakone when I get to Japan.  S.