Sleeping Anima on a Bus

and Video Find of the Day

Yesterday I was riding a bus north on 3rd Avenue in Seattle toward the Real Change newspaper office sitting at one of the front seats that face sideways to the aisle. One stop before mine a woman who looked like she was in her 60s walked up the aisle to get off. My feet, which are not that big, were as far out of the way as they could be, but this woman still managed to kick into the toe of one of my shoes.
She looked down as if she couldn't believe that someone would put a log in her path. Then she followed up my leg and up my body with her eyes to my face.

As she saw my face, I expected an "excuse me" or an "oh, I didn't see your foot there" or at least a "your foot was in my way" for me to argue with. Instead of apologizing or giving me an argument she just stared at me as though I were a manikin.

Instinctively I felt the need to exhibit life. So I grinned at the woman and said, "Hello!" cheerfully.

She startled! She really hadn't been seeing me as animate! I've never seen that reaction before in anyone. How sad to be unable to see other people as alive. It's like one of those weird conditions Oliver Sacks would write about.

Most of us have a built-in function that automatically imbues other humans with powers of animation, so we expect life and we're surprised when we don't see it. Jung associated the function with the Anima archetype. The woman of our example has an Anima or she wouldn't have been startled, but her Anima had been sleeping, you could say. The function usually operates unconsciously in the background of our minds and souls so we don't notice it working. Hers wasn't operating unconsciously; it wasn't operating at all.

Which brings me to why I love bellydancing. It isn't so much as you might think, that I love looking at pretty women undulating. No, it's because when bellydancing is done well it sends that animation-recognizing function into overdrive, to where I can feel it taking hold of me. It makes that unconscious conscious.

Here's a beautifully styled bellydance by a woman named Sashi, which was posted on YouTube almost a year ago, but somehow I missed it until now. It's a perfect example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. You have your own Anima handed to you.

Sashi Gothic Tribal Fusion Bellydance



and another,