Thursday, September 07, 2006

Bumper stickers, campus quads, fall and spirtual matters - condensed



Shamanism is a range of traditional beliefs and practices that involve the ability to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause human suffering by traversing the axis mundi and forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits. Shamans have been credited with the ability to control the weather, divination, the interpretation of dreams, astral projection, and traveling to upper and lower worlds. Shamanistic traditions have existed throughout the world since prehistoric times.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaman



I came across this word while reading the 'about us' of a free literary magazine based in North Carolina. I admit that it was new to me. It's channelling spirits, eh? (I can say 'eh' because I'm back in the north country. Or is it because it's a blog?) I think you can diagnose, perhaps cure, and certainly cause human suffering without being spiritual. It's easy to do as a sibling or lover. Nixon did a lot of it in office. Shamanism - we're all guilty. That could work on a bumper sticker.

Speaking of bumper stickers, I'm in an area populated by progressive/liberal bumper stickers. There's lots of them. Lots that will undoubtedly change the world.

I've completed a week of classes. I've been re-acclimated with upper midwest campus life - sort of - or whatever that means. Things will be mind opening this semester and I'm due to be challenged. There's a certain excitement about that. Anxiety as well.

I'm enjoying a Moosehead and listening to Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne play a show recorded almost two years before I was born. The Detroit Tigers will be playing their most important baseball in 19 years tonight. It's against those Twin City devils that ruined their last World Series hopes.

Damn. I'm guilty of cluttering cyberspace again.
==KT==