Mid-September Check In

I've been Twittering much more than blogging lately because I've been busy since I got back from France, but I wanted to make an effort at an update post. I've been working on edits for Parsifal and am more than 300 pages into the manuscript. I've been writing a little on The Engagement of Sir Gawain, too, and I'm researching some artist grants that are coming up. I'm still struggling to write the description of my trip - I did so much that I've just been taking it one activity at a time. I made a couple of other brief trips lately and I've been doing a lot for the artist's community where I live. I've also been re-reading a favorite book The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism by Henry Corbin. It's really speaking to me, and it seems important at the moment. There are some incredible parallels between a climactic scene I wrote for Parsifal and a mythological thread described in that book. Again, it's all archetypal, coming from a common layer in the human psyche, and again, Parsifal may have a Persian origin. Persia = Iran, so the connection is clear to me. I'm still finding interesting cross-pollinization between Islamic mysticism and medieval culture, and I'll be following that vein for a very long time. I'm still freaking out a little, too, on what a medieval studies professor from Toulouse in southern France told me - she said that the French universities have discontinued a lot of their medieval studies programs. The period has apparently fallen out of favor, pushed aside by more modern concerns. Also, it's not just France that's lost interest in the Middle Ages - other countries in Europe have followed suit. This is why I never was tempted to become an academician. The field has become too trendy, focusing on intellectual fads rather than substantive work. Giving up on one of the most important and formative periods in history is inexcusable. It would almost be more understandable if American universities were guilty of that, it's the new world after all and we have our own history and culture, but for Europe to give up on European history is mystifying to me. Not only is it a renunciation of their own heritage, studies of that period could help understand the current realities with the strained relations between the Islamic and western worlds. The seeds of present conflict were planted back then, and we need to understand that in order the resolve our differences.