"We all do and think funny things every day, only most of us edit them out of our consciousness, we don't share some of the most interesting things we think and do. For example, in 1981 I heard that my wife was expecting our third child, and I was suddenly filled with the archetypal need to make money."
John Boe continues with the anecdote of how he came to be teaching English at the University of California at Davis, offering one of many delightful and personal snapshots of his humorous and often revealing approach to living. In these short, witty essays, he slices life along the lines of Jungian psychology applied to such everyday topics as holidays, palmistry, Shakespeare, movies, astrology, and more, while behind the humor is a satisfying glimpse of wisdom and experience. John Boe is a lecturer at the University of California at Davis, editor of Writing on the Edge, a newsletter about teaching writing, and a frequent contributor to such publications as East Bay Express, Unte Reader, the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, and Psychological Perspectives.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Looking for the Meaning of Life
Messiness Is Next to Goddessness
Mistakes Were Made: Philosophy in an Off Key
For Me and My Anima
Religion and Basketball
The Holidays of Darkness
In the Palm of My Hand
Don't Dream It, Be It: The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Dionysian Revel
Marie-Louise von Franz and The Way of the Dream
Pleasing and Agreeable: An Interview with John Freeman
The Age of Pegasus
Part II: Looking at Literature
The Wolf in Jack London
Simenon, Apollo, and Dionysus: A Jungian Approach to Mysteries
To Kill Mercutio: Thoughts on Shakespeare's Psychological Development
The Introvert in Shakespeare
Cats and Dogs: A Theory of Literature
Part III: Looking at Life Itself
On My Back
Papa Was a Gamblin' Man
A Time to Be Born
Notes: My Mother at the Piano
Life Itself
