The Double Refuge ☯️ Herr Jung

Animal Dreams

II: Forests

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The anima can be as clever as the fox in Pinocchio. In one episode of Collodi’s famous book, Pinocchio is being duped by the fox and the cat. A blackbird tries to warn Pinocchio about who he’s dealing with. In a split second the cat jumps into the air, catches the bird in its teeth, and gulps it down. The fox quickly explains the cat’s actions, justifying, as he always does, their thuggish ways.

Even when the ghost of Talking Cricket (who Pinocchio unwisely kills earlier in the story) acts as Pinocchio’s conscience and warns him not to go into the forest at night, Pinocchio ignores the warning. He tells himself that the dangers of assassins in the forest are tall-tales, made up by fathers to scare their children from going out at night. He even dares the hypothetical assassins to try something. After pronouncing these brave words, he hears a rustling in the nearby bushes. He then finds himself face to face with two murderous robbers with bags over their heads. Beneath the bags are Pinocchio’s old friends: the fox and the cat. 

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I too have wandered willfully into forests. During grad school at UBC I’d bring a few joints with me into the Endowment Lands and just start running. It was a big forest and I didn’t know where I was going. But I didn’t care; the fresh cool air, the complete escape from studying, and the crooked footpaths put me in another world. I’d turn up the volume on my Walkman, blast The Who’s Quadrophenia or Radiohead’s The Bends, and run for hours like a madman along the twisting paths. 

The whole thing wasn’t quite as reckless as it sounds, since I knew that sooner or later I’d reach a road. In my hazy state, yet focused on the intricate footwork necessary to avoid fallen branches and watery ruts, it never occurred to me that I’d meet a pack of coyotes. Although I was auditing a course on Dante at the time, it never occurred to me that I would find myself facing three wild animals — leopard, lion, and wolf — in a dark wood:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Midway in the journey of our life 
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
I came to myself in a dark wood, 
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
for the straight way was lost.    
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
Ah, how hard it is to tell 
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh -- 
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
the very thought of it renews my fear!

… una lonza leggera e presta molto,
… a leopard light and swift 
che di pel macolato era coverta;
and covered with a spotted pelt    
e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto,
refused to back away from me …

… la vista che m'apparve d'un leone.
… I beheld a lion in my way.    
Questi parea che contra me venisse …
He seemed about to pounce -- …

Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame
And then a she-wolf who, all hide and bones, 
sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza,
seemed charged with all the appetites 
e molte genti fé già viver grame,
that have made many live in wretchedness …

It didn’t occur to me that decades later I’d find myself in a dark wood, and would need Beatrice, just as much as Pinocchio needed the Blue Fairy.

Back in grad school, even if Talking Cricket himself rose from his grave of grass and crushed insects to warn me, and even if he hovered above me like the Blue Fairy in the night, I’d probably have said that he sounded just like my dad trying to stop me from going to a party.

Looking back, it’s possible that a pack of coyotes got tired of the grad-school idiot running around their forest, rampaging through their ancient realm. Perhaps they’d grouped themselves into a new formation and were ready to act. By then I was already on the road.

Nevertheless, they managed to track me down. After my first year of grad school at UBC I was attacked by thugs in Istanbul. They beat up my friend and I, and they kept us in a little room and tried to get money out of us. I’m convinced that if they had found the slim money-pouch inside my underwear we’d be at the bottom of the Bosphorus, communing with the crabs and shrimp. Two years after that I was robbed in Mexico City by two thugs, one with a sharp knife up against my stomach.

I can’t help wondering which of these figures — the coyotes of my imagination, or the thugs of Istanbul and Mexico City — are now making their way into my dreams.

The two eye-teeth were much larger than the others. She said something like, “They’re just slabs of meat,” and leaned toward me for a bite.

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According to Jung, we need to bring together the different versions of the anima and listen to what they have to say. Only this way can we move from tempting girls who put on fake vampire teeth to Blue Fairies who lead us out of the forest.

Yet how are we to deal with the forest beasts that haunt us? Dante had Beatrice, and Pinocchio had the Blue Fairy. We can pray to Mary or Saraswati, yet we also want to get at the root causes of their appearance. This is where Jung’s model, seen in terms of the double refuge, might be helpful. In dealing with my would-be vampire lesbian I might find some way to get Rosario Dawson and Mary Magdalene on the same page. I might connect with the saintly beauty and also with the sensual beauty — with that neck that curves so smoothly from the breasts (those soft arcs!), the strong nose, the lamp-black eyes that cloud my discernment and send my brain into a maelstrom…

The maelstrom is a male storm of hormones coursing through my blood. I would ride these liquid feelings upward toward the open sky, but then she puts on a set of fake vampire teeth, and leans in for a bite.

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Next: ☯️ III: When All Is One

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