Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
(W.B.Yeats)
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
(T.S.Eliot)
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
(C.Milosz)
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
Sunday Afternoon
"Still life" means "everywhere there is an orderly way of life...a tidiness of the house and a cheerfulness of mind...domestic, everyday life" and even the life of the court is only a heightened version of this: eroticized boredom.
Arcadia and the pastoral idyll: "everlasting spring", fullness and roundedness; primitivism and childhood were the only modes of authenticity against the backdrop of a once familiar landscape that was slowly receding from our eye's view, fading into our memories. The only way in which the increasing mechanical world of routine, rationalized organisation, and production could be held at bay: pleasure, art and culture as the last bastions of relative autonomy from the markets.
Nature is re-imagined as a place of respite from the onsetting forces of capital. But even here, leisure is soon colonized, brought into the folds of the space of flows.
But there is an older, "eternal sunday" that is depicted as a land of abundance where, as in the great feasts, there is " no sign of anything beyond what can be drunk, eaten boiled or roasted" and a certain innocence prevails. Here, there is the "unobtrusive enjoyment of life and carefree seriousness...an immediate other world beyond hardship." Here humanity is reconciled with nature, at ease with itself; there is only the present and self-presence and it is full, ripe, and serene.
On the negative side, however, there soon emerges another picture, "a single mosaic of boredom...vacant faces, the group of other forms for the most part wooden verticals, like puppets from a toy-box", intensely pre-occupied. We see a "hapless idleness" and "expressionless brooding...an [internal] infernal utopia of distance and such a bourgeois Sunday afternoon is the landscape of a painted suicide which does not become one only because it even lacks resolution towards itself."
"Cezanne transforms even his still life in which things are rigorous and sedentary, in which happy ripeness has settled, ...into a witness to a heavy contentment."
The dullness of modern regularity beckons, stretching across the horizon like a clouded gaze, extending its grey monopoly over anything that it approaches. Sameness hangs over us like fate. Henceforward, with the road to metaphysics closed, there could only be a detached and studied idleness, or a descent to eccentricity, random spontaneity, madness even-all signifying, in one way or the other, the presence of a genuine human soul behind the mask.
To fall, to burn a path with one's own eyes...is this not infinitely preferable to the mundane, shopkeeper's mentality? An act of the will, even if misguided, indicates the shimmering of the spark more than a thousand years of this sleepwalking, of this still life....the "repose of a settled nature".
The Allama would say: the ink is not dry!
Gaugin, who in his European world-weariness seeks happiness and colour beyond the deep blue seas. To find the "remote and primitive world", far away from the rigid, familiar world of hierarchy and stratification...as if contact with the exotic would unlock some deep part of him that had long been lost; the body, the sensual, hedonistic pleasure as an escape from the monotony of industrial society. It is the dream of freedom-freedom from anxiety, guilt and responsibility.
To be all meat and raw nerve is to exist outside of time...the stabilising old narratives of religion and divinely ordained social order were undergoing dismantlement by science, technology, and the political aftermath of the Enlightenment.
But the insipid "sunday afternoon" , with its sickly glow and peaceful slumber, its sun-and -wheat-consciousness, in so far as it expresses, with its wistful glances, rigid, well-defined personal spaces nothing but the desire for solitary contemplation, for uninterrupted being, and forgetfulness it knows nothing of real presences and connectedness-modern awareness is infinitely atomized and divided, ; in this sense, even as a negative image it carries over with it, and is structured by, the memory of the conditions it is trying to escape. Either as a temporary respite from mind-numbing routine, or as a final goal to be achieved, the afternoon is a long-drawn out realisation that the life of abundance, of the Eloi, is a shallow one.
Leisure: " a means of favouring bourgeois ends: the reproduction of working power"; the need to "kill time", to throw oneself into the whirlpools of chance through adventure, gambling, exploration, intoxicants...anything to get "out of oneself", the claustrophobia of "being" that is also an unbearable lightness of being, an eternal Sunday of sunshine. Anything can be endured except the succession of fine days. "Sociability as the form of play in a society confirms this society in even escaping it." The one-dimensional garden -as well as the desire for a dizzying escape from it in pleasure-are both marked by the closed spaces of capitalism and its work-routine.
The pressing question then becomes how can "free time" be used, "consumed", "valued". In late capitalism, leisure is either a moment of recuperation or it is a method of stupefaction: entertainment and the culture industry become a way of mesmerizing people, riveting them to series of fragmentary images and sounds, each as fleeting as the next-whether it is an image of fear or pleasure is of little import. The flight from boredom and indifference can, from now on, only be solved by the industries that manufacture dreams of escape and rebellion...the very same organizations that generated the levelled-down world in the first place!
"We have time and example neither for the grace nor the peace of happiness " because work has burnt us out. Culture: been there, done that. Tick. And move on. Only the hobby indicates " a private appearance of what activity with pleasure and love could mean."
Bourgeois presentation and administration of culture: " such cultural transmission resembles a promenade concert in small spas, and the Sunday supplement in the bourgeois conformist press."
The past then becomes "history", something to be viewed from the safe distance of behind a window plane...a museum piece. Culture is a matter for our educated tastes, our refined sensibilities, but never something that continues to inform our whole personality (rather than just the mind), rarely something that does not cease to affect our very way of thinking and living as soon as we step outside the walls of the gallery, museum, or concert hall.
"Really experienced history, namely that experienced in terms of forming history oneself, provides no legacy for ...the sunday room, instead, it is a house that has more staircases than rooms."
(Citations from J.Franzen, intro to the Gambler and from Ernst Bloch, Principle of Hope, vol II)
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
London, c'est moi
London, the mongrel city of a thousand voices, of a thousand and one dreams....
On the tube: an African woman reading the Quran, two crackheads discussing the best drugs to take, a Russian couple in love, a banker with a deeply furrowed brow, talking to himself, calculating, calculating...the East Europeans, still free enough to laugh unconsciously, like children.
Up above: Bentham and his rationalism in the abstract city.Then from nowhere a soft breeze blows this way and a few blossoms fall on my eyelids and I remember that Blake lived here as well.
Near the church:
a hearse passes by and an old man doffs his cap and stands to attention; does he "think" about this, or is it something he has learnt from his grandfather, a custom from time out of mind that he instinctively follows, not knowing why? Moved inwardly by love or outwardly be tradition? What is "inside" here and what "outside"?
On my way home:
a tramp asks me: "did you have a good day?"
Same day, same life.
"Yeah, not bad" I say, lying through my teeth, going through the rituals "And you?"
He has the gentlest of smiles...what would I know he says in the shrug of his shoulders. His face is burnt and he stinks to high heaven. What is it like to live a day facing reality, without the pretense, without the falsity of society, alone in the universe?
I place a pound coin in his outsretched hand; the curve of it folds in on it, neither accepting nor rejecting it.
"I need twelve for a roof tonight".
So much for marginal economics!
I walk on by.
I am alive , but life without beauty seems pointless.
But no, to be alive is everything. Even if we are ashes, invisible to the world, nothing but thoughts in the underground, we still dream of being leaves and dream a thousand dreams of open spaces, of drfiting and landing softly near the beloved.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like sand.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They all speak together.
ESTRAGON: Each one to itself.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
VLADIMIR: They murmur.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like feathers.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like ashes.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Long silence.]
On the tube: an African woman reading the Quran, two crackheads discussing the best drugs to take, a Russian couple in love, a banker with a deeply furrowed brow, talking to himself, calculating, calculating...the East Europeans, still free enough to laugh unconsciously, like children.
Up above: Bentham and his rationalism in the abstract city.Then from nowhere a soft breeze blows this way and a few blossoms fall on my eyelids and I remember that Blake lived here as well.
Near the church:
a hearse passes by and an old man doffs his cap and stands to attention; does he "think" about this, or is it something he has learnt from his grandfather, a custom from time out of mind that he instinctively follows, not knowing why? Moved inwardly by love or outwardly be tradition? What is "inside" here and what "outside"?
On my way home:
a tramp asks me: "did you have a good day?"
Same day, same life.
"Yeah, not bad" I say, lying through my teeth, going through the rituals "And you?"
He has the gentlest of smiles...what would I know he says in the shrug of his shoulders. His face is burnt and he stinks to high heaven. What is it like to live a day facing reality, without the pretense, without the falsity of society, alone in the universe?
I place a pound coin in his outsretched hand; the curve of it folds in on it, neither accepting nor rejecting it.
"I need twelve for a roof tonight".
So much for marginal economics!
I walk on by.
I am alive , but life without beauty seems pointless.
But no, to be alive is everything. Even if we are ashes, invisible to the world, nothing but thoughts in the underground, we still dream of being leaves and dream a thousand dreams of open spaces, of drfiting and landing softly near the beloved.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like sand.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They all speak together.
ESTRAGON: Each one to itself.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
VLADIMIR: They murmur.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like feathers.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like ashes.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Long silence.]
Monday, May 01, 2006
Stray Reflections
Fragments of a fragment....
Not wanting to place these fragments in their respective places it is, perhaps, better to just assemble them here, haphazardly, without any logic; instead of trying to harmonise the others they will just remain here, displaced, discarded; that way the past will never be completed and be always open to additions, further cancelations and deletions....
The whole world is made of fire,
the whole world is fire.
----Heraclitus.
Why so downcast, my soul
why do you sigh within me
--------Psalms.
We live and dream of other lives; our life itself is part of the life and dreams of others and just as a dream only occurs within a life, so a life only occurs within that other, dream-life which is the realm of possibility.And all are contained within the orbit of that greater circle, the iris of eternity, that single moment that is the Life of God, the "blinking of an eye"....
Shamanism is a stray descendant of Sufism.
-------Ted Hughes.
Augustine.
Our desire for the world makes it , in some sense, "the world"; fleeting, because we die even if it endures. To lose oneself in the dispersion of the world, "worldliness", is a way of losing the sense of fear that the good will pass away.
Iris M.
Anything that consoles is false. We live in an age that is sceptical of happy endings (the Romantic legacy).
Anselm.
We can 'conceive' of something beyond which nothing can be conceived. Which is to say that we can know our limits and therefore have some "idea" of infinity. To affirm transcendence requires a degree of immanence.
American Artists' congress, 1936.
The individual is identified with the private ( that is, privation of other beings and the world), with the passive rather than active, with the fantastic rather than the intelligent. such an art cannot really be called free , because it is so exclusive and private...An individual art in a society where human beings do not feel themselves to be most human when they are inert, dreaming, passive, tormented or uncontrolled, would be very different from modern art.
Outside William Morris' house.
The shimmering light on a slow, dark stream. The dull gold is broken up, fragmented, by the stream into a number of smaller circles, then stars, then points of white light and finally they disappear into the hidden depths....and then the sun is reconfigured, as if all of the points were gathered up together again in a loving embrace...and this process of flux and stillness repeats itself, endlessly, eternally. Perhaps it is the ceaseless movement of the stream that allows such an image to form in my mind; it is hard to know what keeps the sensations together otherwise. Without constant change it is doubtful whether there would be a reflection at all. Or perhaps it is the other way around, perhaps we only see the ripples of light and the passing of time because of the permanent presence of the sun?
By evening the sun will have started to fade and the stream return to being a shadow, a black hieroglyph of time. Without its illumination the stream is nothing but a memory, a thing that exists only in the mind as a possibility, empty and alone.
Courtesy: the perfect matching of inward intentions with outward gestures.
The Gita: holiness within, selfless action without.
For the moderns courtesy will appear as something wholly artifical, superfluous and trivial. The mechanical repitition of the set phrase, the cliche, spoken at just the right time and the right place, lacks "authenticity", "individuality".
However, for an aritstocratic soul it is precisely this sense of balance and proportion that is the highest virtue since it is at one with nature; from the perspective of the 'outward eye' there is only a mindless formulaic act; but the medievals would have understood "the deed" to be a sober, outward act and a state of inner freedom, "drunkenness".
Isaiah Berlin on Naivete:
The naive , in contradistinction to the sentimentalist, is not conscious of the rupture between "thought" and "action", feeling and expression. There is a pre-lapsarian harmony and unity. This will appear to be superficial, shallow, too peaceful. the sentimentalist, on the other hand, is always searching for that lost unity..he is always outisde nature, alientated from himself and from society...2 not joy or peace but conflict with nature or society, unsatiable craving, the notorious neuroses of the modern age, with its troubled spirits, its martyrs, fanatics, and rebels...."
He comes to delight in his inability to find "home".
Not wanting to place these fragments in their respective places it is, perhaps, better to just assemble them here, haphazardly, without any logic; instead of trying to harmonise the others they will just remain here, displaced, discarded; that way the past will never be completed and be always open to additions, further cancelations and deletions....
The whole world is made of fire,
the whole world is fire.
----Heraclitus.
Why so downcast, my soul
why do you sigh within me
--------Psalms.
We live and dream of other lives; our life itself is part of the life and dreams of others and just as a dream only occurs within a life, so a life only occurs within that other, dream-life which is the realm of possibility.And all are contained within the orbit of that greater circle, the iris of eternity, that single moment that is the Life of God, the "blinking of an eye"....
Shamanism is a stray descendant of Sufism.
-------Ted Hughes.
Augustine.
Our desire for the world makes it , in some sense, "the world"; fleeting, because we die even if it endures. To lose oneself in the dispersion of the world, "worldliness", is a way of losing the sense of fear that the good will pass away.
Iris M.
Anything that consoles is false. We live in an age that is sceptical of happy endings (the Romantic legacy).
Anselm.
We can 'conceive' of something beyond which nothing can be conceived. Which is to say that we can know our limits and therefore have some "idea" of infinity. To affirm transcendence requires a degree of immanence.
American Artists' congress, 1936.
The individual is identified with the private ( that is, privation of other beings and the world), with the passive rather than active, with the fantastic rather than the intelligent. such an art cannot really be called free , because it is so exclusive and private...An individual art in a society where human beings do not feel themselves to be most human when they are inert, dreaming, passive, tormented or uncontrolled, would be very different from modern art.
Outside William Morris' house.
The shimmering light on a slow, dark stream. The dull gold is broken up, fragmented, by the stream into a number of smaller circles, then stars, then points of white light and finally they disappear into the hidden depths....and then the sun is reconfigured, as if all of the points were gathered up together again in a loving embrace...and this process of flux and stillness repeats itself, endlessly, eternally. Perhaps it is the ceaseless movement of the stream that allows such an image to form in my mind; it is hard to know what keeps the sensations together otherwise. Without constant change it is doubtful whether there would be a reflection at all. Or perhaps it is the other way around, perhaps we only see the ripples of light and the passing of time because of the permanent presence of the sun?
By evening the sun will have started to fade and the stream return to being a shadow, a black hieroglyph of time. Without its illumination the stream is nothing but a memory, a thing that exists only in the mind as a possibility, empty and alone.
Courtesy: the perfect matching of inward intentions with outward gestures.
The Gita: holiness within, selfless action without.
For the moderns courtesy will appear as something wholly artifical, superfluous and trivial. The mechanical repitition of the set phrase, the cliche, spoken at just the right time and the right place, lacks "authenticity", "individuality".
However, for an aritstocratic soul it is precisely this sense of balance and proportion that is the highest virtue since it is at one with nature; from the perspective of the 'outward eye' there is only a mindless formulaic act; but the medievals would have understood "the deed" to be a sober, outward act and a state of inner freedom, "drunkenness".
Isaiah Berlin on Naivete:
The naive , in contradistinction to the sentimentalist, is not conscious of the rupture between "thought" and "action", feeling and expression. There is a pre-lapsarian harmony and unity. This will appear to be superficial, shallow, too peaceful. the sentimentalist, on the other hand, is always searching for that lost unity..he is always outisde nature, alientated from himself and from society...2 not joy or peace but conflict with nature or society, unsatiable craving, the notorious neuroses of the modern age, with its troubled spirits, its martyrs, fanatics, and rebels...."
He comes to delight in his inability to find "home".
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