Ship-In-The-Bottle

An experiment

We have all seen this I'm sure. It raises the obvious response … ' Wow! … how did they get the ship in there?' … implying of course … the bottle opening. But something else … that draws on our interest today … is the sealed nature of the bottle … and the absence of oxygen in it. A hint of journeys … while still in a bottle … no oxygen … my! … it certainly draws the attention of the mind as to possibilities.

But it wasn't just that. The Americans came up with something they referred to as a ' pet rock ' in the 70s. I found myself asking … what on earth possessed them to do that? In the study of ethnography … the researcher is hardly likely to dismiss anything as simply nonsense. Especially if it provides an indicator to some well hidden areas in our passions and psyche … that we have not brought fully into the ken of understanding.

The instruments in the passion … such as Sye and Neu … are not without a hint about their origins in our experiences. Their fixed attitudes … a suggestion of being fallen … the powerful influence they bear on our bodily sensations … and a general attitude that dismisses the significance of the eros natures … leads a person to some likely conclusions. The references to such qualities as anteros … anaerobic natures … the death experience … are all such formidably significant … factors in our daily lives. A little experimentation was obviously in order.

So about a week ago … I got a small bottle and stone. I inserted the stone into the bottle … dropped a burning paper into the bottle … before sealing it shut. The fire slowly died out. What I had … was a conception of what the world was like before we had atmosphere. So I sat there and looked at it … and let the association of ideas flow through my mind freely. It began of course with the screen presentation of ' Total Recall ' … ' Cohagen … give them air.' But it passed.

And then I thought about Jung's theory of the shadow … and about the power of passions to wander freely in our experience. I went onto ' Jason and the Argonauts ' … and then … ' Peter Pan ' and the sight of the ghostly ship sailing on the clouds. My attention returned to the stone in the bottle in front of me … and I was inclined to ask ' What nature of life's potency did you bring to the world in the beginning?' And what … if any … have our bards been on about?

I returned to the instruments in the passion … and couldn't help feeling a certain gravity of what they represented. Certainly they seemed suggestive of something more than a complaint in us. They may well have contained the seed of progeny … whether that was in the form of elements … or wave particles … with the potential capacity to create life. And I had the model right there in front of me in the bottle. It occurred to me that it was something new in my discernment of the passions. I had always made my inquiries … in association with the eros natures … in an assertion of ' I am different from you ' ... what if I reduced my oxygen intake?

So I got a plastic bag and breathed into it … normally … while I continued to form my inquiries about the experience of the concept. Gradually I got a little sleepy … but … as a physical creation of the world in the human experience … I expected that my own faculties … would reveal themselves … in association with my inquiries. I have been in contact in some way … with such faculties … for the last about 30 years of study. It is the practice of human insight.

Nothing happened … not anything special that is. But it did produce in me … a curious rise in faith … and that led to a finer manner of engaging passions … and the instruments related to the shadow … anteros … and the anaerobic natures. About a week later … today … I find myself growing into the experience … and it diminished a little … my sharp intellectual posture on issues … and that had the corresponding effect of softening the experience of the passions … at some level … associated with its ' out-of-this-world ' nature. Its a start … and I'm hoping it'll grow.

I had some help diminishing my intellectual nature. A cyclist collided with my car door as I was opening it … and brought the window screen to slam against my cranium … leaving me dazed for a while. It shook something loose … I'll say that … because I had a hard-on later. That reminded me of Zeus … creating a manifestation of Athena … from his head … with some help from Hephaestus.

Well I know what Thomas Edison would have said about my little attempt at experimentation … ' Its not the light bulb ' … but I figure I'm going to continue with this for a while and see where it takes me. To represent a part of the passions this way … as an object … is certainly helpful. And as far as I can tell … its more than the ' pet rock.'