Sunday, July 29, 2007
Black Crow
Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into the light
Black the nerves, black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun.
Bent in emptiness
over emptiness
But flying.
-----Ted Hughes.
"But the crow is something. The way it flies...The noisy caw. Listen. Just listen...Staying in touch like that. The frantic call that means danger...Their sleekness. Their shades. Its so black in there you can see purple in there. their heads. At the start of the beak that sprout of hairs, that moustache thing..probably has a name. But the name doesn't matter. Never does. All that matters is that it's there. And nobody knows why. It's like everything else-just there ..The thing about them is they're all practicality. In their flight. In their talk. Even in their colour. Nothing but blackness. Maybe I was one and maybe I wasn't."
---Roth, The Human Stain
'[T]hey have always been great survivors...crows, after all, are faintly disgusting creatures, with their pickaxe beaks and big, scrawny feet. No matter how often we see them harmlessly bouncing across open pasture or ragging through breezy skies, in our mind's eye we associate them with the aftermath of battles. We imagine them tearing at flesh and uttering harsh cries of predatory triumph.
The easiest way to distinguish crows from rooks at a distance is to count their numbers: a crow "passes its life as one of a pair isolated from neighbours by a fierce territoriality . . . Rooks, by contrast, live, feed, sleep, fly, display, roost, fall sick and die in the presence of their own kind". Hence the old East Anglian adage "When tha's a rook, tha's a crow; and when tha's crows, tha's rooks".'
---Andrew Motion
'It’s the tribalism of crows that intrigues... Individually, they might not be attractive, but together they’re almost mystical. “The rook’s voice is dark, earthy, coarse, tuneless but in aggregate it possesses a beautiful and softly contoured evenness.” The numbers are always large; 40% of Europe’s crow population is thought to be in Britain, and the largest recorded roost was 65,000 birds (in the 1970s at Hatton Castle in Aberdeenshire)...[C]rows are an integral part of British folklore. These birds were seen as legislators, hence the collective noun for rooks, a parliament. (Collective nouns for other species of corvid are “a murder”, “an unkindness” or “a parish”.) Gathering in the trees of old estates, rooks were thought to mirror the cruelty and wisdom of human affairs.
It becomes clear that there’s a fidelity to place in crows that transcends the years. [C]orvids are able to sense an “aura of sanctity” on terrain where, centuries ago, there used to be a rookery...“royal rookeries” (an overlap of rookery and roost) and “ghost rookeries” (an abandoned rookery that is now the site of a roost). '
---------
O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?
---James Weldon Johnson
-------
Black crows...Black crows invaded our country..and they pointed to me.
---Steve Reich
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Escape
We are defined by what we want to escape from.
These early hours of Sunday morning come as a reprieve from all that is dark in our world. The mist lifts to reveal an older, quieter world, one that was always close to us but never perceived. It is that second space that stands before and above all that is familiar. I know it will not last, will fall away again,but is none the less precious for being so fleeting. At least for now all is well.
I have found the perfect music. Not Morten Laurdisen's Lux Aeterna nor Jordi Savall -sublime though they are. I do not search that tune any more.
Now is the time to end this blog. I must pick up the strands again. Weave something of a pattern. Find my life again...
---------
Yesterday, I was told by an old aunt why my mother ran away. That sounds so like the swami. To fly, soar, and be done with it once and for all. To be drawn upwards by the open hand of the Sun, resting wherever one takes one's fancy. To float effortlessly over deep blue seas, wide pastures, the wild yonder, to understand something of the loneliness of the stars. To cut diagonally through space and time, feel the past rustling through one's very being. Upwards, straining like a Gothic arch, throwing off all semblance of weight. Burning, burning with a blackness that dazzles and extinguishes the self, fading, soaring, the beloved Goethe would say.
At last one becomes the pictures in one's mind. And even if it is only a moment, that moment is all. Nothing is foreign, all is embraced, the inheritance is passed down. The red mourns the loss of the blue. The stone remembers it was a diamond. The tree finds its voice. Someone calls my name.
These early hours of Sunday morning come as a reprieve from all that is dark in our world. The mist lifts to reveal an older, quieter world, one that was always close to us but never perceived. It is that second space that stands before and above all that is familiar. I know it will not last, will fall away again,but is none the less precious for being so fleeting. At least for now all is well.
I have found the perfect music. Not Morten Laurdisen's Lux Aeterna nor Jordi Savall -sublime though they are. I do not search that tune any more.
Now is the time to end this blog. I must pick up the strands again. Weave something of a pattern. Find my life again...
---------
Yesterday, I was told by an old aunt why my mother ran away. That sounds so like the swami. To fly, soar, and be done with it once and for all. To be drawn upwards by the open hand of the Sun, resting wherever one takes one's fancy. To float effortlessly over deep blue seas, wide pastures, the wild yonder, to understand something of the loneliness of the stars. To cut diagonally through space and time, feel the past rustling through one's very being. Upwards, straining like a Gothic arch, throwing off all semblance of weight. Burning, burning with a blackness that dazzles and extinguishes the self, fading, soaring, the beloved Goethe would say.
At last one becomes the pictures in one's mind. And even if it is only a moment, that moment is all. Nothing is foreign, all is embraced, the inheritance is passed down. The red mourns the loss of the blue. The stone remembers it was a diamond. The tree finds its voice. Someone calls my name.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Fanatics, Flags & Freedom
The siege of the mosque continues. Many of the fundos have surrendered, lured by the offer of 5,000 Rs. One of the leaders has tried to escape dressed in a burqa. What gave him away? His pot-belly. I kid thee not! Anyway, the sight of all these savages reminds me of a scene from Planet of the Apes.
----------
Never been able to understand this devotion to 'the flag'. Yesterday, an old uncle tells me of how Jinnah recommended that the Sikhs set up their own independent State or at least join Pakistan. Look at our flag, the green part is for the Muslims but the white boarder represents a space for minorities. "What do you say?"
To which the Sikh replied, "And what about the pole that will be stuck up our backsides"
---------
The Pakistani law minister (Fed. level) was quite peeved that a journalist had written that he could catch terrorists/criminals quite easily because of the 'long arm of the law'. As chance would have it he came across this journalist in a radio interview a few weeks later. Sensing his chance to get even with her he laid into her: "the long arm to you..the long arm on your mother, the long arm on your father"
No, minister, it's just an expression.
-------
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure any more
the blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul.
(Leonard Cohen)
The opposite of a proper order is, perhaps, an infernal order. Or maybe it is the lack of order, the endless succession of moments that have no coherence, no relation to anything that has previously happened and, therefore, no meaning(Casino Culture, Steiner).
Without a true order there is chaos. But since we cannot accept discontinuity we impose our own, man-made order on things.
Fragmenting Times. Fragmenting Time.
Our fascination and deep revulsion for authoritative voices. Authority, legitimacy amuses us (is something that can be mocked) and yet, at the same time, we dimly perceive that its origins are shrouded in mystery: the unconditioned. Our response to a lack of stability is to -re-create (never discover!) through matter what he have lost in spirit; our craving for solidity in a floating world, gravitas in an unbearably light world, our 'ontological thirst' (Eliade) for being, our fear of contingency,the transitory. Is this not akin to the search for order and conformity of the rootless, the alienated?
The more we live in pure succession, in time, the more we need to stabilise ourselves with forms that resist time (painting, architecture). An army of experts, scientific laws, the administration of things, the vast memory museums (libraries, 'from the archives,' genome projects), leisure ("organized freedom"), culture industries. The great paradox, the more man has struggled to free himself from the unconditioned, the more he has become enmeshed in a vast system (matrix?) of his own making. We live in a gnostic age. And as time goes by we have not lost any of our inclinations for ritual and repetition...
From Walter Benjamin, Illuminations:
'Comfort isolates; on the other hand, it brings those enjoying it closer to mechanization'
'The unskilled worker's work has been sealed off from experience; practice counts for nothing there.'
'His [Poe's] text makes us understand the true connection between wildness and discipline. His pedestrians act as if they had adapted themselves to the machines and could express themselves only automatically.'
'Gambling gives short shrift to the weighty past on which work bases itself...The work of the unskilled worker does not lack the futility, the emptiness, the inability to complete something which is inherent in the activity of the wage slave in a factory.' Working at a machine or gambling is 'devoid of substance' because it is cut off from previous acts.
'The mechanism to which the participants in a game of chance entrust themselves seizes them body and soul, so that even in their private sphere, and no matter how agitated they may be, they are capable only of a reflex action. '
'Gambling becomes a stock diversion of the bourgeoisie only in the 19th century.'
'The antithesis of time in hell , the province of those who are not allowed to complete anything they have started...On the boulevards it was customary to attribute everything to chance. This disposition is promoted by betting, which is a device for giving events the character of a shock, detaching them form the context of experience.'
'A series of lucky coups gives me more pleasure than a non-gambler can have in years..I live a hundred lives in one.'
----------
Never been able to understand this devotion to 'the flag'. Yesterday, an old uncle tells me of how Jinnah recommended that the Sikhs set up their own independent State or at least join Pakistan. Look at our flag, the green part is for the Muslims but the white boarder represents a space for minorities. "What do you say?"
To which the Sikh replied, "And what about the pole that will be stuck up our backsides"
---------
The Pakistani law minister (Fed. level) was quite peeved that a journalist had written that he could catch terrorists/criminals quite easily because of the 'long arm of the law'. As chance would have it he came across this journalist in a radio interview a few weeks later. Sensing his chance to get even with her he laid into her: "the long arm to you..the long arm on your mother, the long arm on your father"
No, minister, it's just an expression.
-------
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure any more
the blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul.
(Leonard Cohen)
The opposite of a proper order is, perhaps, an infernal order. Or maybe it is the lack of order, the endless succession of moments that have no coherence, no relation to anything that has previously happened and, therefore, no meaning(Casino Culture, Steiner).
Without a true order there is chaos. But since we cannot accept discontinuity we impose our own, man-made order on things.
Fragmenting Times. Fragmenting Time.
Our fascination and deep revulsion for authoritative voices. Authority, legitimacy amuses us (is something that can be mocked) and yet, at the same time, we dimly perceive that its origins are shrouded in mystery: the unconditioned. Our response to a lack of stability is to -re-create (never discover!) through matter what he have lost in spirit; our craving for solidity in a floating world, gravitas in an unbearably light world, our 'ontological thirst' (Eliade) for being, our fear of contingency,the transitory. Is this not akin to the search for order and conformity of the rootless, the alienated?
The more we live in pure succession, in time, the more we need to stabilise ourselves with forms that resist time (painting, architecture). An army of experts, scientific laws, the administration of things, the vast memory museums (libraries, 'from the archives,' genome projects), leisure ("organized freedom"), culture industries. The great paradox, the more man has struggled to free himself from the unconditioned, the more he has become enmeshed in a vast system (matrix?) of his own making. We live in a gnostic age. And as time goes by we have not lost any of our inclinations for ritual and repetition...
From Walter Benjamin, Illuminations:
'Comfort isolates; on the other hand, it brings those enjoying it closer to mechanization'
'The unskilled worker's work has been sealed off from experience; practice counts for nothing there.'
'His [Poe's] text makes us understand the true connection between wildness and discipline. His pedestrians act as if they had adapted themselves to the machines and could express themselves only automatically.'
'Gambling gives short shrift to the weighty past on which work bases itself...The work of the unskilled worker does not lack the futility, the emptiness, the inability to complete something which is inherent in the activity of the wage slave in a factory.' Working at a machine or gambling is 'devoid of substance' because it is cut off from previous acts.
'The mechanism to which the participants in a game of chance entrust themselves seizes them body and soul, so that even in their private sphere, and no matter how agitated they may be, they are capable only of a reflex action. '
'Gambling becomes a stock diversion of the bourgeoisie only in the 19th century.'
'The antithesis of time in hell , the province of those who are not allowed to complete anything they have started...On the boulevards it was customary to attribute everything to chance. This disposition is promoted by betting, which is a device for giving events the character of a shock, detaching them form the context of experience.'
'A series of lucky coups gives me more pleasure than a non-gambler can have in years..I live a hundred lives in one.'
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Hellfire Nation
There's a certain comfort to be had in imagining everyone else is evil.
All them evil folks, evil-doers. Why, there's even an axis of evil. It's them women I tells ya (witches ands women folk in general). No its, those plotters, the Jews or maybe it's them there niggers with thier voodo crap. No, its those fiendish commies..God damn and blast. May the good lawd help me now. I see it clearly now, those girly men and gays, the sodomites..the F o r n i c at o r s, corrupting the morals of our righteous youth. No, no don't hold me back now, it's those towel-head gas guzzling racoons. Jesse, strike them down and let fire and brimstone rain down on them pesky moslems. What? Injuns? Why, those savages don'ts knows what we did for 'em. Gooks? Darn and confoundations. Those yella-belly good-for-nothings. Rattlesnakes, the lot of them. And then there's ...
Why, that leaves only you and a few people in New York.
New York! That den of iniquity and vice, of liberal bleedin' hearts and scroungers. There's a curse on them people. I swear by all that is holy on this earth. The beast reisdeth in their breasts. A hell-hole of brigands, heathens, cheats, and whore-mongerers..the filth and scum of the universe congregates there, son. Why, mercy me, don't you know the Lord spoke when he struck her down.
---------------------------
What are we waiting for, gathered in the agora?
The barbarians are arriving today.
Why is nothing happening in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit making no laws?
Because the barbarians are arriving today.
What laws can the Senators make now ?
When the barbarians come they will make laws.
Why did our Emperor wake up so early?
and, in the city's grandest gate, sit in the state
on his throne, wearing his crown?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and the Emperor is waiting to receive
their leader. In fact, he prepared
a parchment to give them ,
where he wrote down many titles and names
Why did our two consuls and the praetors
come out today in their crimson embroided togas;
why did they don bracelets with so many emethysts
and rings resplendent with glittering emeralds;
why do they hold precious staffs today,
beautifully wrought in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and such things dazzle barbarians
Why don't the worthy orators
come around to deliver the speeches and say their peace?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and they are bored by eloquence and harangues.
Why should this anxiety and confusion
suddenly begin (How serious faces have become)
Why have the streets and squares emptied so quickly?
and why has everyone returned home so pensive?
Because night's fallen and the barbarians haven't arrived
And some people came from the border
and they say the barbarians no longer exist
Now what will become of us without the barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.
---Cavafy.
All them evil folks, evil-doers. Why, there's even an axis of evil. It's them women I tells ya (witches ands women folk in general). No its, those plotters, the Jews or maybe it's them there niggers with thier voodo crap. No, its those fiendish commies..God damn and blast. May the good lawd help me now. I see it clearly now, those girly men and gays, the sodomites..the F o r n i c at o r s, corrupting the morals of our righteous youth. No, no don't hold me back now, it's those towel-head gas guzzling racoons. Jesse, strike them down and let fire and brimstone rain down on them pesky moslems. What? Injuns? Why, those savages don'ts knows what we did for 'em. Gooks? Darn and confoundations. Those yella-belly good-for-nothings. Rattlesnakes, the lot of them. And then there's ...
Why, that leaves only you and a few people in New York.
New York! That den of iniquity and vice, of liberal bleedin' hearts and scroungers. There's a curse on them people. I swear by all that is holy on this earth. The beast reisdeth in their breasts. A hell-hole of brigands, heathens, cheats, and whore-mongerers..the filth and scum of the universe congregates there, son. Why, mercy me, don't you know the Lord spoke when he struck her down.
---------------------------
What are we waiting for, gathered in the agora?
The barbarians are arriving today.
Why is nothing happening in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit making no laws?
Because the barbarians are arriving today.
What laws can the Senators make now ?
When the barbarians come they will make laws.
Why did our Emperor wake up so early?
and, in the city's grandest gate, sit in the state
on his throne, wearing his crown?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and the Emperor is waiting to receive
their leader. In fact, he prepared
a parchment to give them ,
where he wrote down many titles and names
Why did our two consuls and the praetors
come out today in their crimson embroided togas;
why did they don bracelets with so many emethysts
and rings resplendent with glittering emeralds;
why do they hold precious staffs today,
beautifully wrought in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and such things dazzle barbarians
Why don't the worthy orators
come around to deliver the speeches and say their peace?
Because the barbarians are arriving today
and they are bored by eloquence and harangues.
Why should this anxiety and confusion
suddenly begin (How serious faces have become)
Why have the streets and squares emptied so quickly?
and why has everyone returned home so pensive?
Because night's fallen and the barbarians haven't arrived
And some people came from the border
and they say the barbarians no longer exist
Now what will become of us without the barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.
---Cavafy.
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