Re: Interesting book on narcissism and effects on relationships

Were you a Simon and Garfunkel fan?  One of their songs
goes - You read your Emily Dickenson, and I my Robert
Frost.  We mark our place with bookmarkers that measure
what we've lost ...

It's a corny song but such were Simon and Garfunkel in their
day.

Describing the periodic table of the elements in terms
of memorization in the same discussion as poetry?  The
table IS poetry, and dance, and orchestra.  It's why it's
such genius.  It's a table of stuff that's organized into
clean and clear patterns of several sorts that overlap
better than the strings and brass in a chamber orchestra
playing Eine Kleine Nacht Musick.

A parade is fire engines, brass bands, bagpipe bands,
elephants, police cars, etc.  Nice but not nearly as
organized as a Cirque de Soeil circus performance.  The
periodic table, its far better organized than Cirque de Soeil
and far more poetic and muscial.

Consider - From one side that's burst of flame from trumpets
ranging from trebble to bass with the trumpets throwing ash.
To the other side that's cold isolated wind of piccolos through
tubas.  In between are strings and wind and wood and drums.
Light at the top, heavy at the bottom.  Whoosh on the sides,
ringing in the middle.  The table's laid out just like an
ymphonic orchestra.  Actually I tend to think that whoever laid
out the symphonic in its current set of wings used the table
as its model.

Math to music.  Music to poetry.  Poetry to prose.  Prose
to novel.  It's a continuous progression and the table
encompasses the math to poetry parts of the spectrum.

Applying the table to marriage - Like a good marriage as it
gets deeper it gets wider and covers more elements.  As it
gets deeper it gets more stable and less windy and explosive.
As it gets deeper it goes from burning to rusting to easily
polished to not needing polishing to glow in the dark.  Fine
wines have nothing on either a good marriage or the poetry
of the periodic table of the elements.  I can't do fine wine at
home, but I can do my best at good marriage.  Okay, "There's
never time to do it right the first time, but there's always time
to do it over again" aka both my wife and I are on our second
marriages.  We were a lot more picky this time and it shows.

I can't do fine wine at home, but I can do pretty good beer,
too.  Right now there's a nut brown ale in the cask that I'll
bottle in a week or two.  Should be like Samuel Smith's nut
brown.  No Orval or Chimay in the fridge today.  There is
Guiness.  A week ago there were two bottles of Guiness in
the fridge.  Today there's only one.  I'll get around to putting
more in the fridge at some point but when that other Michael
Jackson died I went out and got one of the books on beer by
the real one who died a couple of years ago.  It lists a couple
of Belgian Trappists I have not yet tried.  Life is good - I am
hunting for another untried Trappist while some ale brews.

Worth it? She's beyond words worth it. Very complex...check out a bio
or two, too, if you want to "feel" beyond the superficial. (I can get
my intro to lit students to understand the superficial pretty easily,
but the complexity elides most of them...just as the complexity of
anything beyond memorizing the Chem Table of Elements was beyond my
nonscientific brain...)

One of the authors I have not read - next on my library trip - hope
she's worth it.

Erin

On Jul 5, 6:02 pm, "Bill in Co" <surly_curmudg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

Oh, I'm not saying they're upbeat at all (the B sisters)--just that
there are highly invested characters who seem to find that spot of
"peace" (or whatever term we started with) on and off again, and
strive for it, even if some fail. (Helen and Lucy [arguably] do not
ultimatley faily; Catherine does).

As for Emily D...I think she lived in that place a lot. By the way,
the title of the book I was referencing earlier is *'White Heat*: a
quote from page 168 (aboutED): "...is like Dickinson herself, a guest
come for a moment to stay but a moment, yer grace courteous yet
unaccountably exactly, her life sequestered and yet not soundless--
never that--but provacative and beautiful."

I liked that English (or rather, literature) lesson.   So thanks for that.

Although I still don't see them quite as upbeat as you seem to do (I mean
your interpretations of their viewpoints on life, even with some of those
"tokens" thrown in at the end of their novels, as though that represented
their true optimism in humanity).    There is too much darkness there to so
blatantly dismiss and wrap up conveniently at the end with a token,
methinks.    But it's also been awhile since I've read them too, but I'd
probably still see it the same way now.

On Jul 4, 10:22 pm, "Bill in Co" <surly_curmudg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

IF you read ED's poems (and I urge everyone to do so), you will be
made breathless by her moments of grace and presence, and you will
experience them with her. Wild Nights comes to mind first, but may not
be the best example. Even Because I Could Not Stop for Death...

The Bronte sisters struggles are more prolonged, but too, you see that
they could also find peace and salvation. I'm thinking of Villette,
when Lucy comes out of her collapse or, more significantly, the final
chapter; of Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where Helen refuses the advances
of what'shisname Hargrave, knowing of something higher and better, and
even Wuthering Heights where Catherine says to Nellie, I am
Heathcliff, recognizing the one-ness of self and other.

Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Marlowe recognizes the connection with
Kurtz; Billy Budd (in Billy Budd) sees to higher planes regularly.

Dickens, Great Expectations, Pip's recognition of father-self at a
high plane of peace and salvation...

OK, English lesson over.

"....at times"???    (Kinda qualifying it just a wee bit here, n'est pas???

I thought she was pretty isolated and lonely, staying up in her room.
Maybe I'm misremembering or thinking of someone else.

And maybe Joseph Conrad?   or Charles Dickens?
As for those who actually "fell off" the cliff of life, I'd have to look
that up.

On Jul 4, 5:35 pm, "Bill in Co" <surly_curmudg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

Don't know about Maugham, guess would be no. But yes, I think Emily
and Emily and Charlotte and Anne *did* at times find it. Krishna knows
that they fell off repeatedly, but they did have those moments of
peace and salvation. (There's a great new book out on ED's
relationships with...oh shmuck, I forgot his name...too lazy to go
downstairs and find the book). Anyhow, it's in there poems and books,
thru their characters, tho as in eternal? Not falling off? Ever? No.

But did Somerset Maugham ever find that peace and salvation?    And did
Emily Dickinson or the Bronte sisters find it?

On Jul 3, 9:56 pm, "Bill in Co" <surly_curmudg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

Yup, and the book tells you you'll fall of the edge repeatedly, but
you can always keep trying to get back on and stay back on.

And that path to salvation is as difficult to walk ... as a razor's edge.
(by SM, with a few liberties taken, once again)

On Jul 3, 5:37 pm, "Bill in Co" <surly_curmudg...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

Hmmmm, guys. Today, I put up my hammock (it strings between the
clothesline and the crabapple tree), and rocked in it and read some
parts of Eckhart Tolle's *The Power of Now*--which you all have
mentioned here before.

Tolle makes a compelling case for the narcissism that you speak of
above, but also recognizes that we can in fact go beyond it, tho few
of us try or do. Given my where-I'm-at-edness" I'll just quote this
brief part, from page 128:

"If you stop investing it with "selfness," the mind loses its
compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so
to resist what *is*, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In
fact, the moment that judgment stops through accpetance of what *is*,
you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for
peace."

It's a cool book--I read it before on the recommendation of someone
here--maybe Doug A?--and enjoyed re-reading it and listening to the
silence between the cardinal song, the car sounds, the firebombs,
etc........

Fill

Except perhaps, as one well-reknown philosopher once pointed out, the basic
absurdity of life.

Close enough. I wasn't making any judgements.

That said, how well does mmmousemaid get along with her husband?

Hmmm. I disagree. To me sometimes it's nature and sometimes it's
nurture
and one second nature wins over nurture and the next it's the other
way
round. What determines which happens when? I guess it has something
to do with The Dao.

O, and little incidentals like time and space... for instance, how
much of
a hurry am I in and how much of my time have other people wasted/saved
helps to determine my mood and how far away am I from where I wanted
to be? What a coincidence: that (space and time) about sums up the
material
world, doesn't it?

- Michaela

Read what she wrote.  Michaela wrote "The question for Michaela is..."  She
didn't make any statement about the question for _you_.

Hmm.  Maybe I think the opposite.  Everyone is born a narcissist, but
most people are socialized into tempering their narcissism.

Uhm, Michaela.... how do you know I don't get along with others?
I *do*.  And I am a very kind and compassionate person by their
feedback.  However, I agree with you that Robert Hare's (e.g.)  and
the above
classic are pop psychology.  Personality psychology is more
sociological
in observation; maybe close to anthropology though more specific.
Still, in some cases this book do describe habits of thinking that may
have orginated for a number of reasons -- developmental, upbringing,
culture,  or just ill will.  I don't think anybody is born a
narcissist.

Erin

Words like 'narcissism' remind me of the theme song of Weeds.

Seems to me that labels are only useful up to a point. And motives
for abuse of such labels may be hidden even to the labeler themselves.

I imagine we all have one/some/several/many/lots of narcissistic
tendencies
that do and don't manifest at different times.

If we look carefully we might begin to see a pattern emerge.

I think of it as 'separation'. When we feel separate from anyone or
manyone
else, we tend to do things that might be labeled narcissistic and when
we are
at one with everything around us we seem to flow happily along with
the rest
of the world.

The question for me is 'why don't I just try to get along with others
more often?'

- Michaela

Popular psychology:

http://samvak.tripod.com/archive20.html