Rebel-Citizen

The State is the reality of the moral idea.
----Hegel.

The Argentine finds his symbol in the gaucho and not the soldier because the courage ascribed to the former by oral tradition is not in the service of a cause but rather is pure..The State is an abstraction; the Argentine is an individual , not a citizen...We seem to have, then, men who lived in utter poverty, gauchos and others from the banks of the River Plate and the Parma, creating without realizing it, a religion that had its mythology and its martyrs-the hard and blind religion of courage, of being ready to kill and die.A religion as old as the world, but rediscovered in the American republics and lived by herders, stockyard workers, outlaws and hoodlums.
----Borges.

One cannot but help think that in this day and age the only true rebels, outlaws, are the muslims; and this is not because they strive to be so, not because they are reacting to the state, "the system," in the way that a Dylan or a Ginsberg do with their fake pose. The problem for the western anarchist is that for the last two centuries he has been identified, he has identified himself, with the nation-state and her narratives, her victories and her language. And so they are defined by what they revolt against. Freedom is always (or invariably) freedom from something. Is this not, then, just the traditional instability between body and spirit, realism and idealism, Emperor and Pope, translated into the political realm? (G. Steiner: revelation and reason, history and the End of Time).

S.Weil: obligations

From Illuminati: Unrepresentable Citizenship:

Simone Weil: to pass through the threshold one must stop being a social being.."the social is evil".

Two options: Better representation of cultural minorities in institutions, within the system (this is the path of labour, of the trade unions who accepted the fundamental principles of the market but asked for a bigger share of the pie-not how the pie was made) or a refusal of representation, of political practice (that depend on domination -the political-and work-the economic).

The inoperative community is a bastardized surrogate of the people of God. (Blanchot): dreamers, subversives, pluralists. Refusal of the ethical-judicial-in the extreme, the abolition of the State. communism and liberalism are expressions of this (the withering away of..)

Accession to the centre of what was at first perceived as eccentric, the unceasing revolution of one's assumptions, is the modern. On the margins (dihliz) between active and contemplative life, will and vision, past and future. Neither the actor not the spectator. Flexibility and reflective judgement. That way we can see the spectacle from the margins..the privileged position of the exile, the flanneur, the muslim. [Amir: the difference between us Iranians and those in the west is that we know we are sheep..we can see ourselves as sheep!]

There is always, in this way, a critical distance, a distance that is critical. One does not identify with power (see Said: Representations). One remains an amateur, naive, turns one's face away from the common self of the social contract.

The spectator guarantees the plurality of interpretations discussed by the public but doesn't himself-or herself-in them..escapes the collective representation of will.

[It's always amusing to hear journalists and idiots talk about the soldiers as 'our boys'... so many years of the Enlightenment and still so much tribal thinking. The soldier: for Queen and Country! Looking back at yesterday's remarkable press conference I wondered: how many western leaders would talk about "the people", how many about Justice. Fraternity and equality are banished from their lips..all one hears is the empty talk of freedom!]

The community of lovers (saints) vs the society. The apolitical. Arendt: Is the individual a pre-political formulation or is he only constiuted by the political? In which case: what of human rights? Are only citizens afforded them (Nazi Germany)? An axiomatic view of the indivdual as resistance to, or at least a check on, state power

From Luc Nancy's Inoperative Community:Between atomization (a false individualism) and the tendency of a social or institutional representation to force subjectivities together.Bataille: The fundamental right of humans is to signify nothing [to escape imposed meanings, narratives, projects, 'assigned roles' (Levertov), the 'dots or dreams' of planners]. To be or not to be is a political stance , not an ontological description.

Democracy depends on openness-Janus looking-the exiled god of thresholds and beginnings, not on Terminus: god of confines and outcomes. The non-totalizing Utopia within its own horizon.

We tend to think of citizenship in terms of law and equality. Is it possible to think of it in terms of difference and plurality, prior to formalization, institutionalization? A city of deserters [the synthesis of Mecca and Medina].

Recognition without being represented by the State order. A space of freedom to be . In this sense, more than a juridical concept , citizenship is a plural style of life, a mosaic that demonstrates a unitary tonality..communication that is fraternity..that is fraternity among subjects of communication not mediated in the objectification of discourse.

Rimbaud: I is another.

No longer belongs exclusively to a race, territory, ideology: one has become a stranger (to others and oneself). Can there be a city of such beings? Mecca and Medina. [compare with the idolatry of the last century: blood and soil, the sacralization of the nation, of Life.."we love Life, they love Death"!]

The diffusion of sociality in favour of individuality brought about by the state and the capitalist system is of a different order to this individuation: the rule of law, which administratively distributes legality, so as to reintegrate the underprivileged classes within the fiction of a guaranteed community in exchange for the guarantee of renouncing the subversiveness of difference. Whence the cult of belonging: the flag, an anthem, can bring tears to their eyes.

Defection: Exit rather than voice (Hirschman) or/and a degree of self-determination. A multitude and not a people that is identified with one will, the State. But in a time of globalisation it is worth remembering that such a de-linking is exactly what is desired. The market ideal as a false universalism, a de-politicized individual who lives only for the "now". The market sociey (an oxymoron!) as a society of Robinson Crusoes (Gauthier). And this rebellious individual (not citizen), emerging from the Romantic legacy or existentialism, is what is actually sold to the masses..Rebel Sell!

It expresses itself as an ensemble of acting minorities, none of which, however, aspires to transform itself into a majority. It develops a power that refuses to become govt. Very poetical, I'm sure, but what or who is that minority? Does one need a tradition to sustain individuality unless the multitude is fragmented?

Nancy: in-op.the fanatic..the lumpen proletariat

The Queen and the Soldier

The Soldier asked the Queen: "Is there another room here within the room, an innermost chamber, where we will be alone and speak sweetly to one another?

~

The Queen smiled to herself and lowered her head. "Is that what lovers do?!But why, then, do you drape this melancholic blue tunic around your breast in my presence?"

~

She said something to him, and something in him died.

~

He stared at her red dress, thinking he could never tame or win such a one as her. And since that day he has thought:

~

Rose is fire, rose-twig is fire, the garden is fire, the river bank is fire.

~

And so now he kills and slays, the sword of negation, fighting his way back. He remembers her lips,

~

like a kiss of death to drink.

.

(quotations: H. Hesse and Galib Dede)

All these things

Today the light is near perfect (and near perfect is perfection itself, perhaps). A dazzling, resoundingly clear day: every object is well defined-not mathematically, but as if the essence was there for all to see, without its shadows. All these things are not without sadness, but not without beauty either. Perhaps it is always like this, a gift, and it is only the light within that fails.



You cannot stop time. It is not yours to own, bind, or possess. But you cannot stop wanting to stop it-that is, after all, the definition of civilisation, and that longing for stillness speaks to us of what is human, all too human.



Today, more than any other day, I am simply thankful for the words, images, and loved ones around me, for the time that has been given to me. Autumn is over, the winter light is now upon us. Chains of frail light gently falling, in the morning silver paths traced out by my footsteps through the lawns, heavy with dew; the harshness of our faces softens, as the light glances off window panes, alights on a piece of metal and shines brilliantly. Time conserves, and then moves on. There is always this tremendous opening up of other times and other places. Keep this with you. It will be useful. The world is a broken circle. Second spaces, re-vision. Capstones shift. Remember that.



Every beautiful form you have seen, every meaningful word you have heard-be not sorrowful all this must be lost; such is not really the case. The Divine Source is immortal and its outflowing gives water without cease; since neither the one nor the other can be stopped wherefore do you lament?...from the first moment when you entered this world of existence, a ladder has been set up before you...

--Rumi.



The good and just life is thus a process of clarification, a movement towards selfless lucidity, guided by ideas of perfection which are objects of love...The sun may be far away but its reflection in beauty is near..a sense of renewal in a particular place, a sudden vision in art and nature, joy experienced as pure, witnessing a virtuous action, a patient suffering, an absence of resentment, humble service, persistent heroism, innumerable things...Every individual has a collection of such things which might be indicated by various names and images: refuges, lights, visions, deep sources, protections, footholds, icons, starting points, sacraments, ..ritual forms, holy images. Thus may we learn that other worlds and other centres exist.

--Iris Murdoch.

Manifest Destiny

Over the last few weeks I've been following the American election campaign with some dismay and what I've seen depresses me no end. I thought it was only Walker who was monumentally thick but...

Obama "pals around" with terrorists, he's a Muslim goddammit ! , a "redistributor"(I don't think Rawls would go down too well!), a socialist* for Christ's sake! Why, he ain't even a "real" American. I'm not even sure if he "loves" Israel like me! That's the level of the 'debate' in the world's most advanced democracy! And no, what catches the eye of commentators and bloggers alike: let's talk about Palin's $150,000 spending spree, not her right-wing fanaticism. "Who is Obama?" and other insidious nonsense.

* For most normal people, of course, socialism is not a bad word, nor is liberal. I must admit, I love seeing the libertarians squirm, fearful that their 'rugged individualism' and 'the American way of life' is under threat once again from the commies, big govt. and a whole host of other ghouls and demons...Hell-Fire Nation

~~~~~

Manifest Destiny: to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated and self-government entrusted to us.

In the light of the most current attempts at the sacred mission of spreading democracy and freedom to the rest of the world, liberating those pesky towel-heads from their convoluted ways-and socking one to 'Old Europe' at the same time-such age-old religious zeal is not that surprising.

But how did it begin?

America was bought. From the Russians (Alaska for five million dollars) and the 'Louisiana Purchase'. But what was there before? Nothing. Just wilderness , emptiness, wild spaces for miles on end. But in another sense, here was the promised land, the land of milk and honey, a place where one could begin again, a place of redemption of salvation. Praise the Lord!

But how did it all begin?

The land of the free! This is the land of the free! Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I've never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his country-men....

What did the Pilgrim Fathers come for, then, when they came so gruesomely over the black sea? Oh, it was a black spirit. A black revulsion from Europe, from the old authority of Europe..they came her largely to get away - that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? In the long run, away from themselves. Away from everything. That's why most people have come to America , and still do come. To get away from everything they are and have been. ..Which is all very well, but it isn't freedom. Rather the reverse. A hopeless sort of constraint. it is never freedom until you find something you positively want to be.

America soon killed the belief in the spirit. but not the practice. The practice continued with a sarcastic vehemence. America, with a perfect inner contempt for the spirit and the consciousness of man, practices the same spirituality and universal love and KNOWING all the time, incessantly, like a drug habit. And inwardly gives not a fig for it. Only for the sensation. The pretty-pretty sensation of love, loving all the world . And the nice fluttering aeroplane sensation of knowing , knowing, knowing. Then the prettiest of all sensations, the sensation of UNDERSTANDING. Oh, what a lot they understand, the darlings!
---D.H. Lawrence, Selected Essays

Is there something inherently restless in the American character and does this derive from the frontier experience? The attitude to the land, as something that is only worth talking about in terms of its commercial value, may itself be one enduring characteristic of the wild west experience. Inalienable property rights-and not property-are the foundation of democracy, and perhaps the rugged individualism is also linked to this formative stage as well.

The Promised Land.
America as the New Jerusalem, the city on the hill, taking on the mantle of civilisation; America as the emblem of universal history, a universal nation: Empire. California was the shangri-la, and people were told that one could live to the ripe old age of 200 there. Myth and history are deeply intertwined. From 1841-48 about 15,000 people move west, mainly middle income farmers and their families but with the gold rush this soon changes: a quarter of a million from 1849-61. and the composition changes as well; this is the birth of individualism, the 'pioneering spirit', that is the dynamo of the land of opportunity. The Romantic individual, the outsider, and the outlaw, are all myths that owe something to the frontiersman. But the self-made man, independent of state and society, seething with his contempt for those on welfare and hand-outs is also, perhaps, an indirect legacy of a life forged under those harsh realities.

Turner, 1893, Chicago exposition.
The frontier permanently marks the American psyche. Could American economic and political life if there wasn't an area to be expanded into, conquered? If so, the closing of the frontier is a crisis. The tension of garden/wilderness would be meaningless without it, the forward drive, the ever pushing forward into the future too. Utopia, like American happiness , is always just across the border...

Frontier Life.
Wanted, dead or alive. That Bush has to repeat what he's heard from t.v. films is ironic; it comes on the back of a president who actually acted out the wild west : Reagan. We're gonna smoke 'em out, track 'em down. This isn't even genuine cowboy talk, not even a nostalgia for the passing away of a golden era, but a phony attempt to tap into something deep in the collective memory-except that the memory is largely that of the electronic media.

Our words give us away. No matter how hard American cowboy films tried to cover up the atrocities against the 'savage Red Man', the truth would always out. White man speak with forked tongue , the Red Man would say in his slow, deliberate way. And every school child knows that the shout of Geronimo ! is synonymous with courage. But all that changes. 1869 and the transcontinental railroad ensure that land is too valuable to be left to the unproductive savages.

Settler mentality.
Settlers always see emptiness where there are people. People are always irritating 'dots and dreams' in their schemes. The Black Man was 3/5 ths of a person under the constitution and the Red Man? Nothing. Pure and simple. The frontier must be kept open, otherwise it would collapse under its own weight, and political interests, 'factions', would take over. Only a vast and expanding net could ensure the vitality of the political system.

Reality: savage+ rum =0.

The Leap

Next time,

'I'll live, in a dream, in a stranger's house

Where perhaps I have died

Where the mirrors keep something mysterious

to themselves in the evening light'.

Next time,

I will leap into the fire

To find your name.

Not lament the deepening of the shadows

Nor stop to hold the ashes.

Next time,

I will beckon you to my side

Raise a candle to your face.

Softly whisper, move closer, gently now

So to see who is who.

Next time,

I will not let the silver inherit the black

Or let the blue mourn the fading of the red.

Next time,

My loving gaze will pierce the dark glass

So there be no time after time.

Next time,

I will be true

----b

~~~~

The Choice

I walked with my reason

out beside the sea,

We were together but it was

keeping a little distance from me.

Then it turned saying:is it true you heard

that your beautiful white love

is getting married early on monday?

I checked the heart that was rising

in my torn swift breast

and I said: most likely;

why should I lie about it?

How should I think that I should grab

the radiant golden star,

that I would catch it and put it

prudently in my pocket?

I did not take a cross's death

in the hard extremityof Spain

and how then should I expect

the one new prize of fate?

I followed only a way

that was small, low, mean, dry,

lukewarm,

and how then should I meet

the thunderbolt of love?

But if I had the choice again

and stood on the headland

I would leap from heaven or hell

with a whole spirit and heart.

---Sorley Maclean

alone with the Alone

Do not vilify Time for Time is your Lord
---a Prophetic saying.

We are more than God in the knowledge of Death.
------Allama Iqbal

Loneliness means at last I am whole.
---from The Wings of Desire.

Every single creature on this earth dies alone.The search for God is absurd if we die alone.
-----Donnie Darko.


Is Religion possible:The absence of God hasn't made the world any less opaque, any more comprehensible; in fact, if anything it has made it more mysterious. Things that are abandoned, people that are forgotten, burn with their own muted light, their own melancholic blue flame, when previously they would have been absorbed in a dazzling whiteness. Is it only now that man is confronted with the problem of time in all of its purity? The withdrawal of God only heightens the question of whether faith is possible-it does not abolish it.

The fire in the stone is its inner sense of the passage of time. It is only a trick of the mind that imagines any permanence inheres in its being. Its shape is never fixed or still, but always formless, striving to overflow its own bounds, undergoing an endless process of metamorphosis. This transfiguration which we measure in millions of years is but the blinking of an eye in the life of the stone. What is this restlessness but a search for God? But even so, it is a striving that is imposed on it, from without , as it were. It is like an angel that thirsts for more knowledge.

If we could go back in time would we change a single thing? The one thing necessary?

A rabbi once said that in order to establish the reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup, or this brush, or this stone just a little, and thus everything.
-------Agamben, The Coming Community

Donnie starts out as an unbeliever...he doesn't even question this. But then he gradually realises -at the theoretical level at least-that if one could see all of the possible outcomes of a life then we would be able to see that God commands time. But what of free choice in those circumstances asks the teacher. This is not a possibility that arises since to place oneself in that 'God's time' is to accept a higher fatality that is like an arrow: destiny is a direction not an outcome.

At this stage he is now an agnostic since he cannot 'prove' his faith one way or the other. Faith is possible but not necessary...something that exists within the bounds of reason.

Only with an act of love does he realise time. Then time is not a concept or a biological fact but a lived experience; love is an act of sacrifice that redeems time and makes other futures possible. And like God's absence, it is a supreme opening up, a sublime act of generosity, to the loved one.

Love means freedom from the idol-temple of the days.
---Allama Iqbal

claws

I was sent these wonderful photos by Rinks and have to share them. she has them captioned as:

1. Really?

2. Go on, I'm listening old chap.

3. Don't worry, you can count on me.

4. You feel this claw?

~~~

Scruffy dog to incredibly cool cat: do you have hands or claws?

The red room

Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place?
Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask.
Originally?
And I hesitate.
--Carol Ann Duffy.

The heaviness of pears
under the late summer sun
is not a matter of weight.

The heaving amplification of space
under fateless stars,
is not a solution to lizard-time.

The heaviness of pears
is not like the mark of time on our hands,
unbeknown to the eye's downward gaze.

It is not Spring, or Autumn,
Nor is it like
the drowning of a bee in yellow dust.

This sigh for the fall,
the desire for tender hands.
The revelation of flesh,
the longing to be devoured.

All this is a kind of darkness
for pears under late summer suns.

Sunflower

Why does the princess smile?
Why does the prince weep?

---the swami.

Ah, sunflower, how distant your light seems to me today. As if it was a memory. Or a fading image. Frail light, no longer the dazzling seam of imperial robes, no longer the resplendent glory of kings. You have become something utterly simple, elemental. Neither possessed of inner strength or of intrinsic value, and unable to shrug off your weariness of time, to set hearts ablaze, and yet still we wait for you to turn your face this way, still you mean the world to us.

~~~

I think one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to was Lucio Fontana at the Hayward. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any images of his 'Harlequin' online.

But this is what I remember of it:

Fontana's harlequin, patchwork being, with a patchwork heart, like a sufi of old, ancient shaman. That golden mosaic running through him, a diagonal of burnished gold-or was it gleaming, glimmering?-that held him together, that went through his heart. The quintessential line of thought, beauty. Perhaps harlequin was struck by lightning, the golden flash of insight and intuition fused, has made its way to the surface, like the veins of gold in a rock, a truth that inheres in the body, that pierces it, a gash, a wound, the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary...

And I think to myself: what a mystery it is to ponder: who placed it there? Are you not, too, like this Harlequin, with your golden band and streak of morning sunshine in your eyes, all the time weaving a blue ribbon in the hearts of men?

Gold is a constant element, gleaming solidly in the underground vaults, on the breasts of queens or the arms and regalia of warriors on the mead benches.

How far away is the black sun, she asked.
I don't know, but about this far away from home.

A sorrow dance

Long after you have swung back

away from me

I think you are still with me:

.

you come in close to the shore

on the tide

and nudge me awake the way

.

a boat adrift nudges the pier:

am I a pier

half-in half-out of the water?

.

and in the pleasure of that communion

I lose track,

the moon I watch goes down, the

.

tide swings you away before

I know I'm

alone again long since,

.

mud sucking at gray and black

timbers of me,

a light growth of green dreams drying

.

(Wanted to add the sublime 'Morpheus' by Patricia Barber...if anyone has a link to it please pass it on. Danke).

Katie

Here's a clip from a wonderful old film. I think most of it is online. I love all the phrases like "my dear child", "poor girl". [Alok, if you're reading this: it is possible to be a kid again..don't let all the pointy heads convince you otherwise !]

Als das Kind Kind war, erwachte es einmal in einem fremden Bett und jetzt immer wieder, erschienen ihm viele Menschen schön und jetzt nur noch im Glücksfall

anton and roxana, I will translate this for you...

When the child was a child, it awoke once in a strange bed, and now does so again and again. Many people, then, seemed beautiful, and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

~~~

Last month a bat came in through our window. I know this may sound slightly blasphemous but surely God made a mistake by creating such an ugly animal ? [Perisan proverb: God made only two mistakes: creating flies and arabs]. Anyway, called someone in to get rid of it/her.

Reverence for life and being, for otherness, is something which can be taught or suggested very early. 'Don't kill the poor spider, put him out in the garden'. Even the use of 'him' or 'her' instead of 'it' may help..

Last week, the chap who did that came to my office and asked me to phone his supervisor to say what a wonderful job he and his friend had done. And make sure you tell him you're a 'doctor'. I think they get an extra 200 Rs for getting a shabash (a 'well done'). An old man, whose hair has been dyed red to remind him of his youth, Sarwar sahib, with his childish, mischievous grin and a glint in his eyes was so endearing that I had to oblige.

The supervisor was terribly puzzled.

'No, I just wanted to say what an absolutely splendid job they did..no, it was above the call of duty,..no, it wasn't "nothing it all", why, it was nothing short of heroic. I think I overdid it a bit but hey, I've finally worked out that a Ph.D isn't completely useless!

For celia, roxana, astarte, anton and folded (the famous five!)-and beth..jeez, nearly forgot!

Roxana, I can't send you these sweets but at least you can look at them

Celia, I wanted to send you some pictures of 'rallis' but realised that you've written about them and so there's not much point. Instead, I hope you like this picture of a kalash girl.

Folded, see picture above.

Sadia, have you been here?

Anton, wanted to show you this picture of some hats. They're the coolest hats in the world. I used to wear one every day in the late eighties and people would often stop me and say: that's a really cool hat, where are you from? I don't wear them any more. White people would just think I'm one of the Taliban!

Well, anyway, just wanted to show you some of the good things here (even if we don't have ready-to-eat beetroot!).

Beth, hope you like this:

Wild Blue

Out of the blue.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances..
---R.Hass.

Let us love this distance , which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.
--Simone Weil.

Nothing is given; everything is fresh, wild. Unanticipated. If the wonder is that death, the impossibility, all of a sudden becomes a possibility; if the truly amazing thing is that life emerges from the infinite silence of stone, then it is also true that we are dazzled by the fact that death itself-even though for a flickering moment-becomes an impossibility.

This earth, this sky, this place I call home. Nothing seems more beautiful to me right now. I am the space where I am.

Near Snaresbrook, on the Central Line, a young girl looked at me as I sat absorbed in Richard Ford's Sportswriter. Her mother and aunt sat there like some commanding matriarchs, stone-like in their solemnity, the world rolling off their sad blue-grey eyes, making no impression. Mountain people. One always recognizes them. They've seen it all before. The elaborate and profuse red and gold embroidered patterns on their black veils indicating the presence of a human soul. Three young white kids got on, boisterous, full of themselves. The young girl just plays with her pony tails-a dreamer who curls up in contemplation of loops, who sees the end in the beginning- and then places her head gently on her mother's shoulder, pulling her closer to her by the arm, nesting in that immense black assurance: 'Mother, you mean the world to me'.

I listen to the Molla and Reijseger. To listen to this is to hear the music of the earth before human beings set foot there, an earth still quivering, still holding something of the memory of the Creator's hands, the clouds still clinging to the mountains, like a dream, the stone dimly aware that a thousand images lie captive in its heart: But a voice made me come out of the angle where I was beginning to die of an angel's dream.

Or, better still, it is the soaring cry of the First Man. The infinite is placed in us finite beings (if only Descartes had been a Muslim!). This is why we break. This is why we long so much for other skies, for the wild blue. Every act of true perception takes us there.

I am not the space where I am.
I am not what I am.

All the looseness, the dispossessed details, the faint hints, of the rest of the poem settle into the firm order behind the last line. We discover in retrospect what Lowell was doing was keeping all the ingredients of the poem in a state of fluid suspension, floating in readiness for the net with which, in a single moment, he could scoop them up and contain them.
---Raban on Lowell.

The poet sees earth and sky; the scientist or philosopher: only earth-and that too through a prism. The more this earth, this sky reminds us of others, the more we come to love them.
(originally posted, Saturday, 28th of July)

~~~~~~~~~~

Today I was thinking of how little wild blueness is left; instead, we tend to speak in terrible cliches or, worse still, try to beat every ounce of "meaning" from anything we touch or come across. So, I instinctively flinch when I hear someone harp on about "class consciousness" when it comes to a film-in the same way I would if I saw a donkey being thrashed. Or the "nausea " of Hollywood, the "decadence" of the west (yesterday a student actually came up to me and said 'in the west they think freedom means you can have incest.' Yeah, like, keep on taking the pills bro')

Have you ever thought, maybe the beast was within.It's like hearing a mullah speak, or a Communist or George Bush. The same old record, stuck on the same old track. Thinking by slogans, painting by numbers! (Incidentally, found Mao's the Red Book last evening. What a load of utter crap! ) Science, Freedom, Progress..keep on repeating these words enough and, hey, who knows, you might actually convince yourself to believe them! There's no place like home, there's no ...

Came across Murakami's 'South of the Border' and paid 100 Rs for it. Regretting it now, could have had a coffee for the same price. Read 8 pages and trashed it.

As with all twelve year olds ..our conversations were strained. Strained??

We listened to those fifteen records a thousand times, and even today I can recall the music-every single note.Listening to Liszt's Piano concertos: I felt elevated, lifted to another plane of existence.

Don't know. Reading over some of what I've written I can't help but cringe. So much of what's on the blogosphere-or whatever it's called-is just so fake, phoney and full of this melancholy brooding.

[dougal, this is what your friend wrote in a review of this book for The Independent: This simple prose acquires a luminosity which raises it to the height of poetry]

Of Elephants and Hats

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What I've learnt from blogging:

1.1 I used to think there were only two types of people in the world: people who wear hats and those who don't. But now I've come to realise that there is also a (small) number of people who do not wear hats and yet are still -miraculously-good people.

~

1.2 Bowler hats (or the Bolivian ones) only look good on women.

~

1.3.In any case, it's people who like beetroot and those who don't.

~

2. Not all Americans are confrontational and defensive.

~

2.1. Actually, it was just Bob.

~

2.2 To utter the word 'socialism' in the States is like saying the word 'vegetarian' here.

~

3. Not all mullahs are damned to hell.

~

4. Blogging is a cheap form of therapy.

~

5. Blogging leads to the need for therapy.

~

6. The autumn of your soul does not remember; the autumn of your soul is that remembrance.

~

A discussion with a French colleague here:

'You know, back in France we sometimes have Cheddar as a novelty item because it's not really considered a proper cheese. '

Er...that put me in the incredibly awkward position of actually having to defend England and I felt like saying 'steady on, old chap' but she's so charming that I let it pass.

7. Beauty trumps Truth.

The Return

Many are stuck in la (negation); many have come to a halt there, mistaking the stepping-stones for a final destination. The negative way.

The hunters, with their fragile fellowship, look at the multitude which is 'the world' and imagine her to be empty, an illusion of dust and ashes, so many "dots or dreams". The truth of life is elsewhere. Rooted in their tracks, exhausted, they dare not retrace their steps into the wilderness, but return to the nothingness of the world, carrying the desert that is in the heart of man with them....

The hunter, with his cold exacting eye, looks on at the life that carries on without him and this only confirms to him that everything is passing, save the Face of God. Can there be love or knowledge of what is beyond the senses? The world is reduced to a place of frozen absences; devoid of human warmth and light, this no-place like home is necessary for there to be a leap of faith.

He remembers the ancient raag:
No-one is mine it seems,
This world is full of dreams.

Only the saint "knows how to bless". There are no saints. But this affirmation comes, if it comes at all, when he himself is nothing; only against the purity of the snow can one see any tracks....on the road Saint Paul was blinded and saw nothing, nothing but God.

Then the hunter wonders if he isn't mistaken: it is not only at the extremes, at the limits of finitude, when all possibilities have been exhausted, that such an awareness emerges; in the very heart of life and the ordinary one can hear the faint ringing of its arrival...the winter sun, tired but still giving in her ceaseless generosity, a bird taking flight after resting in a tree, a thought that comes to nestle in his tangled hair, and today, unseen to many, a girl smiling to herself in a dark corner of the world sighed, the brilliance of the fire spread its wings....a friend extends a hand to a stranger and a dog stops barking, content with the day's work; a tree dreams of infinity and the ice melts an inch.

In a thousand ways and more nature gives thanks for the gift of existence; only we humans-the multitude- have the freedom to accept or reject this gift, to praise or to blaspheme. But even this is not ours in an unqualified way: only through grace is it so. The more we blaspheme the more we praise God.

But Rumi said it better: Freedom is the ability to give thanks to God for His Beneficence.

And so he trudges home, weary, but glad at the sight of his loved ones, and he forgets what he was hunting for, forgets his melancholic thoughts, the search for contact in uncharted territories.

The world, the body, is no longer a prison that he must flee or escape from. He learns to live with the small fires in the cave, to care for them, to tend to them. The good life is not about contemplation, or 'knowing' goodness but enacting it, about returning to the ordinary life full of jumble and imperfections, and its pleasures: happiness, health, friendship, love, deep attachments. The correct approach to Reality is Reality. No, not Icarus.

This, which flickers at night
the thin glimmer striking down there
wasn't that of a match.
--Montale.

But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in
the rain's bright glaze,
the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.

And eventually a thought comes to him: perhaps it is he who is the one who is being stalked and hunted by the Lover...and so he chants Holy, Holy, Holy....

We find God everywhere in the world, seeing in material things the spiritual reality which is beyond them. For the spiritual and the holy we are to look at toward all the world, not toward our isolated self-will.
---Iris Murdoch

Wild Blue Yonder

Some of the music from the stunningly beautiful the wild blue yonder

I gave you the beautiful journey
Without her you would not have set out on your way
She has no more to give you
And if you find her poor, I did not betray you
With all your wisdom, all your experience
You understand by now what Ithaka means
---Cavafy


For the Baroque soul:

Baroque form is dynamic; an indeterminacy of effect (in its play of solid and void, light and darkness, with its curvature, its broken surfaces, its widely diversified angles of inclination; it conveys the idea of space being progressively dilated. Its search for kinetic excitement and illusionary effect leads to the situation where the plastic mass in the Baroque work of art never allows a privileged, definitive, frontal view; rather, it induces the spectator to shift his position continuously in order to see the work in constantly new aspects, as if it were in a state of perpetual transformation....
---Umberto Eco.

To escape the flatlands, the pettiness, boredom, and emptiness of the cycles. Who, I wonder, hasn't dreamt of moving in another dimension, of cutting diagonally through space, orthogonal to all identity, sense and meaning. Wasn't our very beginning such a zig-zag movement, the imagining of the impossible, the flash of spurs that left the animal world behind? To stray and wander, to be restless, to love and hate home at the same time...a broken circle...

You sit on the train, alone and content, with just enough warmth from the familiar world: a good book, hot coffee, a forest-green lead pencil, old tattered shoes. And then, like a child, or a horse, something in you stirs, instinctively. You move to the window. You place your warm forehead against the cold pane and seek out the open skies, the distant blue, mesmerized and lost by all that is strange. I am not the space that I occupy.

Let me run, run, and never find...

The barzakh: neither constrained nor at liberty; neither free nor bound. Like the souls in-between, stuck between memory and desire. A sense of something utterly completed vied with a sense of something startled into scope and freedom.

The sea, the sky, the blue mourning the loss of the red as it is transformed into gold. Broken, breaking free. I return. We do not recognise eachother.

What money can't buy

Bob, an american desi, thinks that we can quantify things like love, friendship, loyalty and a whole host of other things. Another american coined it : time is money!

That we can go from quantification to dollarization isn't that surprising (see Bernard Williams' comments on Bentham in 'Morality'). Once we start to conceptualize things in market terms, as commodities that are alienable and cease from thinking of them in relation to notions of personhood, or duties or rights then we're on a slippery slope to what Sandel calls 'corruption'. What matters here is the narrow conception of freedom: negative liberty and, ultimately, a shallow view of happiness (wealth and material goods).

What's really being commoditised here is Time itself (Marx:"Time is everything, Man is nothing" (see the excellent online article by Barbara Adam: "When time is money: contested rationalities or E.P's 'Time-Work discipline'). The Church saw this early on with its prohibition of usury (Le Goff: no-one "owns" time, and therefore it cannot be traded).

What Bob and his like are really saying is that other pursuits like poetry or art can be thought of as leisure and valued in terms of their opportunity cost (foregone income). Again: quantification implies commensurability. This obsession with reducing all behaviour (motivations and evaluations) to a single dimension for "tractability" at the theoretical level. It goes deeper than that, though: it's a political move. As Abe Lerner said, markets solve the political problem. Once we have the measure of life do we get the emergence of a new type of politics (the bio-political)? Once everything is reduced to life and the process of consumption do we lose the world as a place where human beings dwell, meet, tell stories to one another? The decline of public man, of trust, the view of nature as a resource (pure extension), are surely linked to these developments.

Americans -and we're all americans now-reared on the myth that the pursuit of happiness is a right suddenly realise that this obsession with happiness is part of the problem: I can, therefore I must (Zizek).


Well, what's wrong with that, bob asks? Who determines which things are alienable and which aren't, and to what degree? what's the process and what are the justifications for excluding us from thinking on those terms.


I don't think that's the right question..not to start off with anyway. I think we must recognize that throughout human history there's been the idea of the sacred and the profane, of different realms (or "spheres of justice") with their own set of principles to determine allocations of the 'goods' (rights, duties, equality, fairness, happiness, security, needs, merit, capabilities and so on). So, we must start the other way round: on what grounds should we say that one principle-the market- should dominate as a distributive mechanism?


But quite frankly, someone who thinks that friendship, happiness, art or love can be thought in terms of quantities already holds such an extreme view that I really don't know how to respond. Why this perverse need to calculate everything (Sen: evaluation is not calculation) ? Can we really order life, desires, time in that way?

For the other world is like a mirror: everyone sees their own form in it.
---Ostad Elahi.

Darkest Peru, London, and Hollywood

okay, okay, I know he doesn't have any shoes on and so he can't tap like Gene but still, dougal, you have to admit that he ain't half bad for a bear.

Uniqueness

Love is never directed to this or that property of the loved one, but neither does it neglect the properties in favour of a generality: universal love; the lover wants the Loved One with all of its predicates, its being such as it is.

--Sebastian Smee

I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was

what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch,

matchwood, immortal

diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

---Gerald Manley Hopkins

~~~

Okay, you know I don't give advice on this blog, especially since my own life is messed up and because I detest missionaries, "experts" and busy-bodies who feel they just have to tell you how to live your life, but I did want to say this, and it's contained in the words of this song.

Against the false universalism of the market and the boxing-in of our identities by 'the religious' today we have to-more than ever- once again learn how to speak of the 'I' in all its specificity and dazzling uniqueness. And that means we cannot stay silent, we have to speak about You. The world's shortest poem-and probably one of its best-is: Me. You.

May God preserve us from the 'intelligence' of the academics and the narrowing down of our horizons by a false, abstract notion of the individual. We can see other people clearly only to the extent that we see ourselves clearly. 'To see' is not so much an intellectual act as a moral act. To see, with awe and wonder, the awe and wonder of others, is to be at the right distance from them and ourselves; it is a matter of being attentive to what differentiates us and what unites us.

The fateful slumber floats and flows
About the tangle of the rose.
But lo the fated hand and heart
To rend the slumberous curse apart.
---William Morris.

Down in the orchard
I met my death
under the briar rose
I lie slain

I was going
to gather flowers
my love waited
among the trees

Down in the orchard
I met my death
under the briar rose
I lie slain

the leaves glint in the wind
turning their quiet song
the wings flash and are still
I sleep in the shade

when I cried out you
made no reply
tonight I shall pass
without a sound

If the night is dark
and the way is short
if the way you take
is to my heart

say though I never
see you again
touch me I shall shiver
at the unseen

the night is so dark
the way so short
yet you do not wake
against my heart

emptiness ever thronging
untenable belonging
how long until this longing
end is unending song

and soul for soul discover
no strangeness to discover
and lover keep with lover
a moment and for ever

I shall live
in grief desiring
still to grieve

I shall go down to the lover's well
and wash this wound that will not heal

beloved soul
what shall you see
nothing at all
yet eye to eye

---G. Hill

brier:Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips

The end of religion?

[Watch this first..hilarious!]
-----------------------------------

I was sent this.

Not really my cup of tea (Charles Taylor's online 'Social Imaginary' is so much better than this plodder's crab-like thoughts)

Claim: secularization means the devaluing of religion and a religious mentality (perhaps even a contempt for it). Liberals in the States or Pakistan think of religious folks as backward, simple, naive, and/or fanatical. They don't even understand the modern world or science.

Revisionist claim: Well, no, actually, religion hasn't gone away. Look at America and the growth of conservatism everywhere (Iran, Pakistan, Algeria)

Here's what Habermas calls the resurgence of religion:
a) missionary expansion (tablighis and the Protestants are everywhere)
b) a fundamentalist radicalisation
c) "the political instrumentalisation of the potential for violence innate in many of the world religions"

This was such utter crap that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Since when are those things religion? Are we to say that the Taleban or the God-forsaken Saudi expansion, or the evangelical movement is a resurgence of religion? God forbid!!

a) these missionaries are laughed out of town when they go to the rural areas. Most of them are modernists anyway with their half-baked notions of science and modernity.

b) As many others have argued, the fundamentalists are actually just a reaction against modernity and in that sense are also a part of it. I mean, their critiques of the West -to the extent that they even have them- are just re-hashed versions of the counter-Enlightenment.

c) The "mullah regime" and violent extremists are denounced by ordinary muslims so does it make any sense to say they -and only they-define what is meant by religion?

More crap by Habermas: "In fact, Muslim immigrants cannot be integrated into western society in defiance of their religion but only with it"

What bollocks! Most of the muslim immigrants I know (my parent's generation) never even thought in those terms, nor did the majority of the people I grew up with or know indirectly. And the same holds here, in the land of the pure: identity is a mix of all sorts of factors: class, education, ethnicity, language, local religious affiliations, tribal or feudal cultural practices, etc. It's ridiculous to assume that immigrants or 'muslims' should, or can only, be thought of exclusively in terms of their 'religion'.

Does Habermas even know what religion is?

Kumayl said:

"I asked my master Ali (RA): Is there only one soul? He replied: O Kumayl, there are four souls: the vegetal, nutritive soul; the sensitive, animal soul; the rational, holy soul; and the universal, divine soul."

By another name

Unmöglich ist immer die Rose,
unbegreiflich die Nachtigall
---Goethe.

For Heaven's sake, do not talk about the rose!
Talk of the nightingale who is separated from his rose
---Rumi.

I am amazed, o rose, to see your kindness,
that you can sit together with the thorn...
---Hafiz

Joy and pain are the same shape:
you can call the rose an open heart, or a broken heart.
---Mir Dard

The nightingale read from the rose petals a word which a hundred commentators can explain only with difficulty
---Jami.

It looked to me from afar like a bouquet of roses
When I saw it from near, it was fire
---Khaqani.

And the night flowed back into the rose until the night was the night no longer. And who could say if it was the sadness in the rose or if it was the fire in the night that led one to the other. But this much is true: the rose is but an image of Beauty, and is destined to fade and die. A painted bird for a painted rose.

The nightingale still has grace as long as it remembers springtime and dreams of the fragrant rose. Even in a black sun there is the faint memory of the rose, like a single red thread. But what of crow?

If the crow were to see its own ugliness,
it would melt like snow.
---Rumi.

The Gift

God is not an accountant, but if He was I think the only things in His books would be a record of what we gave to other people and what we lovingly received from others.


C had asked what the first story was I could remember (it was the magic porridge pot, a story of how a gift is not used properly ) but this one also came to
mind. That an idea "comes" to us says what, exactly?Hyde's words are simple but profound...To give is to receive. By giving we have more, we are more.

(and now I remember that I had promised this book as a gift to someone! Sorry, I've lent it to a student, Z. Will try and get it to you. Promise.)

The gift does not stop with me-if it does then it is just a matter of private accumulation. Can market transactions be social exchanges? What do we give of ourselves (to others, to nature, to God)? One of the worst types of people, or one of the worst aspects of us all, is this miserliness of the self...as if we could store some things up against Time; this fear of emptiness means we surround ourselves with things. An american desi tells me of how americans are obsessed by this idea of "my" (my space, my life...)

What is it to live a life with an open hand, to not calculate the returns ? What would it be like to accept that some things are given to us and other things are not? Is our life only of our own making, or is it only given meaning by what is shared, by what we share?

Hazrat Ali (RA) says: you should possess your possessions, they should not possess you.

You don’t know how hard it’s been,
to find you a gift.
Nothing fits.
Why bring gold to the seam, water to the sea?
Every idea of mine seemed like hauling spice to
the East.
No good to give you my heart, soul,
you own both already.
So I got you a mirror.
Look at you.
Think of me.
---Rumi, courtesy of 'Copenhagen'

Gould, the Taleban, and Crows

I don't know why, but I find myself increasingly listening to this. Just listening to it, not seeing it. Wish I had a musical ear. At the moment it seems the more I listen to it the more I pick up on their distinctness. Perhaps later I will see the unity in it.When I first listened to it I had the semi-blasphemous thought that, you know, when one reads the Quran the text seems to be the same in different places but when you hear it each surah has its distinct flavour, tone.

The playing itself is so 'alive', as if there was a perfect meeting of structure and inspiration, spontaneity after years of dwelling in the music, rather than performing it. It's as if the technical was brought within the folds of human meaning again.

Said on Gould: order and "new thinking"..a rejection of the vertical. A 'late style' means revisiting origins.

~~~

But I mainly listen to it to blot out what's going on around me..the disintegration of the country into the chaos of poverty, lawlessness, violence, fanaticism and stupidity. Of course, art and poetry are futile, extravagances even, in the face of so much suffering (as is an academic life) but..

Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught poetry and the imaginative arts are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity, they strike and stake out the ore of the self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil-no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense, it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which the accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed.

~~

oh yes, crows. Talking to KP yesterday. He's been attacked by two crows almost every day for the last two weeks.

"They only attack me, not the person I'm walking with..what do you know about crows?"

Corvidus...

"That's not much help. Why me??I need to go to some 'elder' or sage who can tell me what this means"

"Well, in England they're sometimes associated with battles and carrion"

"Here", KP says, "if one sees some crows outside one's house that's very auspicious..something good will happen to you"

And then he adds, gingerly:

"Either that or death is coming for you"

"Er...that bit of folk wisdom isn't very reassuring!"

No poetry

"There's no poetry", said Bush, the Taleban, the engineers and the accountants, shuffling the pack..."there's only the dealing out of reality".

"There's no poetry", said the poet, poetically, picking the joker...there's only the silverpoint of memory, fingers smudged with ink, the kajol running from her eyes.

Total Recall

There's something terribly sad about bloggers (or maybe it's just the ones I read are a bit melancholic). For others, though, this is the way of the future (there's always been resistance to new forms of communication). One even hears the word 'community' quite amusingly bandied about (yeah, right, whatever) and no doubt there are 'theorists' hard at work analyzing how it all ties in with late capitalism, post-modernity, Foucault or Zizek.

What interests me though is the sheer self-conceitedness of it all (for a little while, anyway. After that the interest wanes). I-am-the centre-of the -world. Please notice me. Confess! (and don't miss out the juicy bits!)

C, in her characteristically lucid way said: it's a bit obscene, having the image of someone up there long after they've passed away.

Start the week:

We may be the first civilisation that doesn't leave a trace of what we thought and felt in any memorable public monuments. Creative destruction and 'instant living.' And yet, paradoxically, it is just this rapid shifting of our background scenery that impels us to collect the fragments of our lives and hold them ever so closely to us. I think this accounts for the conservation movement but also for the vast cathedrals of the minds, the public libraries in Washington, Paris, London ...(see Steiner, 'Errata'). No matter that no one reads 'linearly' any more..as long as it's there. (So think the Eloi). And we'll soon be able to watch everything on Youtube or read everything on google books. Fantastic!

From the archives:

Does anyone actually go back over their previous blogs and think: what was the point of writing that? I have catalogued..er ..what, exactly? The life I didn't live -a bit like the archetypal Japanese tourist who enjoys the experience of watching the video of his trip to Europe more than the actual bloody thing!

New Yorker: Alec Wilkinson:
(you're going to like this, C)

Some people are now running a project so that every detail of their lives is meticulously recorded, scanned, noted, digitalized, taped, and stored. It's called lifelogging. Friends, family, former students and children: avert your eyes now. Done? Good.For fuck's sake!

Open eyes.

Of course, it could be argued that this is just an extreme form of blogging, just as blogging is the accentuated form of a diary. What is this pre-occupation with the authentic self ? A fear of death, of missing out on the lives we never had, of organizing chaos? Maybe it's the desire to weave a thread through the different pieces of our lives and say, at last, here is a coherent story.

Your lifebits could be surfaced, made present as patterns on an ambient display. Or compressed and shaped like a movie so that something emerges from the mess , the enigma, that is a human life. 'Lifebits'? You've gotta laugh.

Horwitz, president-elect of The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence:

I would like to see computers provide a fabric that would extend us in areas where we're weak. If you look at 20th century cognitive psychology what it showed was that people had vast abilities coupled with limitations and bottlenecks. ...[such as] people forgetting things, and being biased in their judgements. To create a computation that understands those grooves and nooks and crannies ..using it in places where a computer can do well in a complementary way to extend people....

It comes to understand how you organize your memories, by what you choose. It learns to become like you, to help you be a better you.

I kid thee not. Computer geeks may be fantastically intelligent in a limited way but there's a reason it's called artificial intelligence!

On hearing the computer fan whizzing late at night Bell (the man running the experiment) says: My system is consolidating new memories. It's like a human being dreaming.

Logging everything means we can go back and analyse our tone in an argument, re-examine our stated life-goals and see if we've met them. Then we can see what went wrong (will certainly save a lot of money on therapy). The pattern of things that happens to us is what we are. That's deep, real deep...more to the point: we should be able to make some money out of it. And like real memory we'll be able to delete those inane memories or events we don't want to recall (like me blogging about this). Forget the Madeleines.

Z. Bauman:

In Borges' story Funes, thrown from his horse, is incapable of Platonic ideas..that is, of abstracting: of putting certain aspects of what he saw in focus by leaving the rest out. Instead he was able (had to!) to perceive every grape that had been pressed into the wine, and all the stalks and tendrils of its vineyard where you and I, with one quick look, perceive three wine glasses on a table. Two or three times Funes reconstructed an entire day without without once erring or faltering, but each reconstruction itself had taken an entire day. Having found not only the task he had set himself was interminable, but that the whole idea of such a task was pointless, Funes complained: 'My memory, sir, is like a garbage heap'.

The Invisibles

I was thinking today of all the invisible people on blogs (readers, anons) and all those who are trying to become visible ('writers'), thinking of missed conversations, and things I've never said as well. I mean, despite all the fanfare, does blogging actually connect people in any real way? I don't know, talking with someone over coffee, hearing their voice, seeing their face (er..and bodies) just isn't the same.

I've nothing against invisibility. Growing up as an outsider/foreigner one is acutely aware of the desire to be seen and not to be seen..the freedom of not being seen, of being on the margins, roaming around there, is something the mainstream probably just doesn't get.

We all become invisible, loosed from body and duty, left to drift on the night breeze, to do as we will, to cast about for what we like to be when we next occur.That, let me promise you, is not an empty moment...Just to slide away like a whisper down the wind is no small freedom, and if we are ever lucky enough to win such a setting-free, we should use it, for it is the only naturally occurring consolation that comes to us, sole and sovereign, without props or the forbearance of others-among whom I mean to include God himself, who does not let us stay invisible long, since that is a state he reserves for himself.
---R. Ford, The Sportswriter

But even this seems so different from the forced invisibility of marginal groups (women, the poor).

In T's village over the weekend:
Wonderful hospitality,as expected. And to see the shrine of the saint who's at the head of the main Sufi order in the Punjab was something special. The saint, sick of the world, moves here to escape the prying eyes of the world, to be alone with the Alone. But I'm not religious and so wasn't really moved. What did stick, though, was this:

Standing in the fields at 1 in the morning, erecting these long nets, set in the shape of a large 'L' so that we could shoot quail in the morning. No-one around for miles-and certainly no quails-just darkness and the moonlight floating effortlessly on the swaying grass, and the recording of the quails chirping away in the background so as to attract them to this spot.

And then someone told me that an old woman, a sixty-year old woman, who had been collecting firewood had been brutally raped one mile from here. And all the ghoulish details followed. And I thought to myself : most people in this country-the rural and urban poor-are just invisible in a way that is as close to being nothing, a no-one, as is possible.

The human figure is progressively disappearing from pictorial art, as no object is present except in fragmentary form. This is one more proof that the human countenance has become ugly and outworn, and that the things which surround us have become things of revulsion.
---Hugo Ball.