And wedded man to man by purest bond
Of Nature, undisturbed by space or time;
Th' other that was a God, yea many Gods,
Had voices more than all the winds, and was
A joy, a consolation, and a hope.
Visited Chiswick House today. Mind-numbingly boring. A perfect example of 18th century classicism: rational, clear spaces and perfectly aligned columns. Too much regularity can be a form of madness. The gardens, too, were immaculately kept, planned with architectural precision and all the sobriety of a geometric mind. Only the trees seemed to resist in their own way the imposition of linearity on them. The trunk of one had managed to twist itself right around itself, as if it were trying to spiral out of control; another's branches sunk to the ground , touched the earth and then in the most bizarre and fantastical fashion surged and snaked up again so that the whole branch came to resemble a giant horizontal 'S'.
There are two ways of looking life, running throught just about everything, marking out two temperaments or the two parts in us: the individualistic, atomistic vision that starts with 'I' , the lonely self, and the desire to find one's deepest instincts, live one's soul. This duality, or division has, we suspect, been with us from the very beginning: the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
Stone, indestructible, everlasting, and abstract is the symbol of rational knowledge. It is an idea of perfection and boundedness, the lawlines of our culture, the first constructions of a mind that gradually awakens into self-consciousness. To place a stone on top of another one is also to initiate an act of remembrance, to imagine a temple, but also a grave (which is but a place of communication between life and what eludes it) . But an extreme rationalism can also lead to a fanaticsm of thought, a hypertrophy of the mind. The stones that circumscribe the hearth's fire can, in a late civilisation, become oppressive and heavy. Totalitarianism is the extension of 'home' to everywhere. Fatherland.
The fall: the Tree of Knowledge offers the promise of immortality, or an alternative way of achieving this. But Man, who is 'hasty', must approach things one step at a time..stepping stones. The rational always binds the truth to one level -even though it gives the impression of an abstract many-sidedness- creating order, harmony, and unity. A singular truth. A calm , golden circle. But at its centre is the Tree of Life, an axial symbol of all that escapes the squares of the mind; the anarchy of the heart is like her deep roots, the branches that soar up to heaven like the wings of a prayer or love. This tree, life itself, is all that cannot be captured by our systems of thought, a muddy centre that is the mythological, chaos and intuition of the universe that precedes the rational, that fires our creativity and imagination.
Our first temples, our first politics, originate here in this sacred place; a tree encircled by stones. Nature and culture, heaven and earth. Also, our first dancing grounds. Ever since that first fall we've been trying to decreate ourselves, tear ourselves away from the rigidity of thought, convince ourselves that there is a form of understanding that lies beyond analysis and 'knowledge'. But that requires a leap of faith. A faith in the uncertainties of life itself and a trust in what is unknown. And that means returning, with a child-like naivete, to simplicity and looking once again at the world and other people without any concern for perfection or imperfection. Thought and action, inward and outward, remain distinct , but united. Then, and only then, do we feel the stone, think the tree.
Often rounded, always open.
There's something about an integral intelligence that isn't pedantic, argumentative or finicky-or at least not always so. The cleverest people always know not what to say but when to say it. More importantly, it is the style of their silence that leaves a lasting impression, as if emptiness itself required a certain artisitc approach to one's personality, a learned response. Just as there are a range of voices, so are there a range of silences: one can pass over the faults one sees in one's loved ones or friends just as there is a supreme etiquette, generosity of soul, in learning to let go. Both require a sort of openness that goes beyond 'truth' or 'facts' . But always there must be an extension of the contours of our being, the ways in which we can conceive things, the depth of our perceptions, and a heightening of our awareness of the truly different.
The narrowing down of our horizons, the contraction of our hearts can, in itself, only be a phase, a possibility. Jalal cannot exist without jamal. there is a type of cleverness-an intelligence of the mind-which is like a perfect mathematical bridge, and to displace but one part of it would disrupt the whole structure. But there is another type, that of the whole person that is of sprawling nature, that sees intelligence in humour and hears music in intelligence. For a true philosopher there is no acivity from which one cannot learn. The whole earth is a mosque.
the hedgehog knows one thing but the fox knows many. Fox: quick-footed, nimble, light-hearted, often out of sight, cunning. An unhoused, roaming spirit that leaves a trail of fermenta cognitionis.
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
------Thought-Fox, Ted Hughes
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