Anabasis

For anton:

And Man was created restless
---Q:

Again, I go.

A country here, not mine. What has the world given me but this swaying of grass?

....from the moment when, for the first navigators, a new land was in sight to the moment when they set foot on the shore, from the moment when a certain learned man became convinced that he had witnessed a phenomenon hitherto unknown, to the time when he began to measure the import of his observation-all feeling of duration abolished by the intoxicating atmosphere of chance- a very delicate flame highlights or perfects life's meaning as nothing else can...

I am only counting on what comes of my own openness, my eagerness to wander in search of everything, which, I am confident, keeps me in mysterious communication with other open beings, as if were suddenly called to assemble.

-----Breton

For us moderns there is, perhaps, only this desert, this wandering: worldlessness. The world has flown away, and the land seems strange to our senses. The search is everything. Process and striving-the legacy of Romanticism, Protestantism, capitalism. To live in time (Eliade). But maybe it has always been like this. The world is not the world. We have always lived with absence, with bewilderment. Why lament it now?

Blessed is the man who hears the crash of thunder and doesn't think of home.

--Basho

Part of our soul longs for rest and peace ('the Garden') but part of our soul is anarchic, nomadic. If we 'reflect' the divine then part of us is unknown, cannot be captured by thought or image: a Jewish thought. Burckhardt has an intriguing comment on depictions of heaven: crystalline forms (perfection, completion) and plants (life, growth). A German thought: the soul is forever fading, soaring.


Notes from Badiou:

(a) Xenophon describes the collapse of the old order that gave meaning to the collective presence of the Greeks..after Cunaxa they find themselves brutally deprived of any reason for being where they are. They are nothing now but foreigners in a hostile country...a principle of lostness.

(b) They have only themselves, their own will and discipline to rely on..from now on they must invent their own destiny.

(c) The way home is not a pre-established path. Only by walking, only by wandering, is the path revealed.

Again, I begin.
The root of all politics: hope.

May I run, run, and never find.
---Shah Latif.

Love would never leave us alone

This can be read in more ways than one. Do I only imagine Marley singing this? Wasn't it: 'the past would never leave us alone'?

Why speak of the past if it is truly past?Because that is the way back. All roads lead to..But it is gone. I allow it to slowly slip through my fingers-or at least I like to think so. By doing so nothing is lost. The tree still stands outside my window, bearing witness to my fragmented self. There is no escape. No journeys. Only a return. Desire is always memorable. Creation is always a loving return to the origin..the late style, full of re-vision, open possibilities: the first note contains all others -as well as the unheard.

If we occasionally forget it is only because the pain of remembrance is all the more sweeter, delightful. If I walk in a different city to you do not think my stride has changed any, that my panache is no more. These things were always with us, from time out of mind. Love would never leaves us alone. Yes, eyes grow dim, flesh weary, hands sadder. I am not me, and you are not you. Don't let go, but don't hold on. Mirrors sigh. But still I trace your image, still I hear your voice. Even a distant echo. The walls do not lie. The unconquered flame.

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

I am a stranger to myself. Is it the land, or Time itself? Is open the same as broken? My voice sounds cracked, crooked, and I speak unfamiliar, barbarian words. But still, for you, I sign my name.

---b.