The Queen that dwells in the dark
feeds on the death of stars,
comes to eat at my heart-
a poor feast for a poor soul.

She reminds me of a song
I've always somehow known.
We walk in tune, until I forget
everything I'd remembered off by heart.

half-hiding

How did it begin?

I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age
I know nothing of cities
I cannot die
Unless I walk outside.
---Kavanagh.

To come accidentally upon
My self.
Like a fool,
who finds himself
Lost.
"I caught myself...," said the Buddha-soul.
How strange your fall.

The placeless heaven.
was always there.
never here.

I have become a question to myself,
I think I am.
We hide ourselves
from one another.

and you?
where were you
when the questions stopped?

But when did it begin?

Why, my soul, do you sigh within?

...

me against the world.

Well, fuck this for a lark. If the terrorists don't get you the mosquitoes will. Dengue fever has spread. Estimates are that 2,000 people have been infected in Lahore alone. Two thousand and not counting. Fumigate the rooms and do a Howard Hughes. Q U A R A N T I N E . Mosquito repellent lotion (after deodorant, talc, sun block etc. etc...)If the mosquitoes don't get you the chemicals will. Damn those multinationals and Zionists.

At the same time you're supposed to be working on a talk on ethics and economics for the policy centre. Right, the last thing on my mind right now is the connection between logical positivism and early 20th century economic thought.

~~~

Met an old uncle. Ex-army man. No nonsense sort of person. Doesn't think much of "intellectuals." Or "pseudo" intellectuals. Not real men. A bit gay, in the final analysis. He's been shot three times, caught one of the most notorious Balochi bandits, and had a testicle blown off while retrieving a tank that had strayed across the border during the '65 war. Wasn't even his.

Commanding office: bailed out. Crikey! There's a good chap and go and get my tank back for me , won't you? Well, that's the upper classes for you. If the capitalists don't get you, the landed gentry will.

He asks me: "what do you think of the economy's chances?"

Me: "Have you seen the film 'The Titanic'?"

Him (very seriously): "I think I understand what you are saying."

Meanwhile, Ubo is in great form, spinning out stories about legendary cricketers he's seen (the three W's, for example). As if by talking incessantly we could stave off the impending doom. He doesn't take very kindly nowadays to anyone who he suspects of being an "optimist". To anyone of such inclination he shakes his head as if to say, "you silly bastard, can't you see this country's ruined, have you lost your marbles, you silly old goat?".

~~~

So, I was standing in line waiting to pay for my creamy tea (don't ask) and this student turns round and asks me:

Is it true Ghazala Irfan has a 3-series?"

Me: What?

him: "is it true..."

me: sorry, what are you saying.

him: "is it true...."

me: listen, I'm sorry, but I simply don't understand what you're saying.

him: "a 3 series, a BMW."

I turn to a colleague. Well, looks like when it comes to the non-crazies it's me and you kiddo. But even here I'm beginning to have my doubts about you!

There are a lot of weird people out there. Much safer in here, blogland, talking to the girls.

In praise of folly

By a strange co-incidence Paris, London, fundamentalism and 'conversation' seem to be finding their way to these blogposts. One of the disadvantages of never actually finishing a book, of reading bits of books at the same time, is that one's mind strays and finds such senseless connections all the time. Freud: 62. No doubt, if I'd been reading Gibbon this post would have been about fancy, instead of folly.

"To them (the zealots), freedom of mind, a mastery of sense and a liberty in thought and action imply debauch, corruption, and depravity."
---Shaftesbury.

"In primitive societies people tell tales and expect their listeners not to question them...without intelligence man is not social, he is only gregarious."
---Samuel Johnson.

"There is... a real satisfaction of living in Paris from the great Number of sensible, knowing, and polite Company with which the city abounds above all places in the universe...Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company.
---Hume.

"Every woman in Paris gathers in her apartment a harem of men more womanish than she."

Conversation is for wimps, as my friend might say.

"Bring a wiseman to a party: he will disrupt it either by his gloomy silence or his tedious cavils...If he joins a conversation , everyone suddenly 'clams up.'"
---Erasmus.

the black and the blue

Not only kids, primitives, and southern women love bright colours-war does too.

---Taussig, What Color is the Sacred?

~~~

Extremely idle, extremely independent, both by nature and by art. He was ruled by 'freedom and laziness.'

---Sarah Bakewell on Montaigne.

~~~

Free spirited people [are perfectly satisfied] with a minor position or a fortune that just meets their needs; for they will set themselves up in a way to live that a great change in economic conditions, even a revolution in political structures, will not overturn their life with it.

---Nietzsche.

Music: well, could have been Pink Floyd's 'Us and Them' but I guess it has to be the great Louis.

WtF !

WHORE: hore [hoere, Dutch]. A prostitute. A woman who receives men for money. Dryden. A woman who converses unlawfully with men; a fornicatress; a strumpet.

"The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression."

Interestingly, the modern urban dictionary concurs.

So, what makes for a good conversationalist, or a good conversation (in our sense of the term, not Johnson's above)? What makes for a bad one?

1. a good listener (does such a beast exist?)

2. must have wit, charm, but only when not called upon to exhibit these characteristics.i.e naturally witty...or must at least appear to be natural. But not too witty.

3. flexibility:
a) ability to converse with both sexes
b) doesn't make silly sexual innuendos (some of you may think a) is an example of)
c)shouldn't be patronizing (some of you think b) is a good example of)
d)shouldn't be too self-conscious (some of you think a), b) and c) are.

Flexibility: not dogmatic (fundamentalists and ideologues of all stripes make poor, very poor conversation. Inveterate bores.

Flexibility: to not always talk about the same thing..like 'flexibility'. Fielding: "He can talk of Fashions and Diversions among the Ladies..can likewise talk on a Fan, or a Horse-Race."

4. Sober. Not too sober.

5. 'Anals'. Always talking about themselves, their work, or what's wrong with their body. Intellectuals and academics tend to be anals and are to be avoided at dinner parties where they usually discuss their own petty politics.

Too much to say is nearly as bad as having nothing to say.

7. Raillery. Nothing like it! Love it. But not too much and not the kind of vicious 'taking' that is part of Punjabi culture. Not too rude, not too polite.

8. Not always light. Not always dark. You know the type I'm talking about: existential angst, wears lots of black, very profound, has to fit in some Zizek or Derrida in every line of the conversation..doesn't "do" trivial. Chit-chat and small talk is for the bourgeoisie. We're talking about VERY SERIOUS things here indeed.

But too light as well. The airheads and buffoons. Always smiling..."those men and women whose face is ever in a smile, talk ever with a smile, condole with a smile, etc." (Swift)

Get this, the other day I was told (not for the first time I might add): come over K, always need some light entertainment. WtF ! Swift: : "Your Business is only to laugh in Season..while this merry Companion is acting his part."

9. Name-droppers and people who feel compelled to sneak in foreign words into their conversation.

10. People who always agree with you and those who suffer from "the Itch of Dispute and Contradiction."

And I'd dearly like my friends, both
Young and old up there to gather
All of us in German babbling
Paradisal words together
---Goethe

The Real...

"Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak."

---from William Hogeland, The Boston Review.

Much the same from Jonathan Raban and a slightly different angle from Sean Wilentz in the New Yorker. Daniel Bell in The Cultural Contradictions: small-town America against the cosmopolitans.

Anti-elitism. Anti-state: John Birch (great song by Dylan, of course).

Easy to dismiss "them" as simply paranoid, nuts, like all the other right-wingers: Hindu extremists, Muslim fanatics, Israeli settlers, the BNP and other thugs/racists.

Easy, but correct! Their so-called "legitimate grievances" are really, for the most part, just the inability to accept other people and the decline in their own power (Norman Mailer may have been on to something here). If you believe in universalism and are against ignorance you're being elitist! Gawd help us!

And the "real Americans", the "pioneers" were really slaughtering the Red Man, creating a wilderness for him, one that matched the wilderness in their own hearts.

In a similar vein: the nihilism of the Muslim fundamentalists and the degeneracy of the conservatives who support them or turn a blind eye to them.

Once you start talking about the real American, or who's really a muslim, then you set up all sorts of distinctions: the pure and the impure, the true and the untrue.

David Marquand makes the intriguing point in The Decline of the Public...

the dougal

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the sources of the sun
in an hour before the sun's going down

and this, of course.

the open field

somewhere. not here. someone. not you. what goes to make up a life must be that which goes up. the hour before the hour. it goes on. with or without you. when life would be in the finding, the clearing...an open field, raw, broken, that does what it knows the case to be, is what its own silence tells it, has learnt to dispense with mirrors.

stone, tree. your absence. shaking my heart like a storm in old trees. the affinity of the high leaf for roots, the richest vein, there from the beginning, in stone. open to the light, vertical shadow. morning brightness, spiked, startling, loosened into deathless afternoon conventions. fearless timekeepers mark the abundance of time, which is really the lack of time. this was you, after all.

speak for yourself. who else could? you're so full of yourself. unselfing: as though he came from a region inhabited by no one else. but the act of hiding is still an act. light reflected, with all its settled qualities, is still not the thing.

~~~

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the sources of the sun
in an hour before the sun's going down

whose secret we see in a children's game
of ring a round of roses told

often i am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos.

---R. Duncan.

From Russia with love

Started Lesley Chamberlain's Philosophy Steamer (wish I had got Applebaum's Gulag instead). So far, not half as interesting as her fascinating Motherland.

Started with a conversation about Berlin and whether-or to what extent-he was attracted by thinkers from the counter-enlightenment. Was there something very Russian in this? (and what of your own fondness for Tarkovsky, Rothko, icons, Akhmatova?)

Part of me-and not just the wahabi part-isn't very interested in the "mystical"...in fact, reading about Berdyaev one almost longs for a cool autumn mind to dispel all that fogginess and bagginess, the mystifications and darkness, the emphasis on folk, the land, and tradition; and one needs to assert, again and again, the 'I' so that it is not subsumed by the 'We'. There, see, even there it creeps in with a metaphor! Where's Bronk when you need him?! Did Spengler really say Russia was the future?

A bit like at the National, when you suddenly come across Poussin or the Flemish painters (winter scenes, Vermeer, northern sobriety, austerity, the solid, plain world of the bourgeoisie: black, not the sun) and heave a sigh of relief: Thank God! Or when you return to the patient, sombre, unfussy reasoning in economics. One wonders if others felt the same toward the end of the late middle ages (Huizinga is brilliant on this).

Rilke: "Russia because for me...the deep, daily insight that reality is something strange, something that comes infinitely slowly to those who have patience."

why so blue ?

A reader once asked why the black sun is so blue. Well, yes. My thoughts exactly!

Does anyone know which city this is? A city with so many bridges must be great...

I walked across the 'millennium bridge' with the swami, the very first day, when it shook and swayed from one side to the other. Linking the old (St. Paul's) to the new (the Tate). What else is a bridge but a quivering memory spanning differences in time and culture? We all held hands and I looked down. Remembered the sea. Only then realised it was with me all along...

Montaigne on a lazy Sunday morning

Nothing could be better than picking up some useless book on a Sunday morning, when everyone else is asleep, and sitting quietly in your room, the sun lovely and weak, as you eagerly await the perfect breakfast (hash browns, grapefruit juice, baked beans, a French scrambled egg and some good, strong coffee).

Well, perfection never arrives and was more in the anticipation of it. (Made do with Cheerios and toast, if you must know).

Montaigne's cat:

'We have some mediocre understanding of their meaning; so do they of ours, in about the same degree. they flatter us, threaten us, and implore us, and we them.'

There's something quite appealing in the idea that we should make do with what we have, with what we are; gratitude for the time we have. The idea of perfection on the other hand...there's something fanatical about it. Not just the religious zealots and settlers, the moral brigade and inveterate do-gooders, but a certain kind of academic, too: like a man who walks alone, and in the dark. If things aren't perfect then does it follow that the world must be a dark place indeed?

Always been sceptical of people who try to paint a picture of modern society as somehow angst-ridden, full of existential doubt, plagued by meaningless desires, etc., etc. Modern-day gnostics, really. A leap out of the mechanical world into faith. Isaiah Berlin was right here: two extravagances: to include only reason; to exclude reason.

You read a silly quote today: all progress comes from the unreasonable man. I'm sure that appeals to a certain temperament, or is popular amongst undergrads., but it comes across as childish and naive. Much prefer, this lazy Sunday morning-even without my coffee!-these words:

We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside.

Dada, Gaga, there, there...

For Nabs:

Dada: empty language of meaning ...the world already has too much meaning and must grow light again: the heavy burden of the word must be destroyed in a counter-culture. Iconoclasm.

Lady Gaga. Crikey! The desire to shock soon becomes quite tedious, moronic even. Guenon was surely right here: the carnival only makes sense against the backdrop of a stable world. Which doesn't, of course, mean one sides with the stifling and pernicious woolly-minded ramblings of the conservatives and the orthodox. It doesn't mean taking sides at all: I prefer not to.

The hyperinflation of the word (G.Steiner), the lack of what Illich calls the 'commons of silence,'...very much in line with the instantaneity of late capitalism, with all this fake mumb-jumbo about gnosticism and spirituality: the truth is within, words are heavy and deceptive, not the real thing.

The Declining Art of Conversation: yeah, like, whatever. Facebook, for example. Not a substitute, to my mind anyway, for the day-to-day conversations (informed discussions, or just joking around with friends) that go to make up the social fabric of our lives. You might be there, but what if there's no there, there? What if experience cannot be communicated because we have such little experience of the world, of other lives?

The old tension-which led to so much creativity-between the word and life, text and experience, presence and absence, is lost in the swamp of information, all 'downloadable' at the click of a button. Does a world of all possibilites cease to be 'a world'? And what happens to imagination, memory, and reticence in the headlong rush to take it all in: been there, done that?

The speed of conenctivity doesn't necessarily foster the ability (or desire) to connect.

joy & sorrow

There is no way out of the song of gratitude and complaint
As long as the wisp of breath exists, this harmony remains the same.

---from Mir Dard.

relearning the alphabet

I wrote you. I wrote you somewhere. I wrote darkly on your white soul, the loops of the letters like so many nooses. composed myself. crossed what needed to be crossed, joined what had to be joined. some slanting at the right angle to the universe, others shook with a brightness, clearly for you. still you wrote back:

'The writing wrong, the meaning wrong,
the style wrong, the spelling wrong.'
---Sarmad.

so, what is it? must one learn or forget?

A

to relearn the ah! of knowing in unthinking

B

to be. to love an other only for being

C

clear...the seeing that burns through, comes through to the fire's core.

K

but find my face clenched
when I wake at night
in limbo.

N

something in me wants to cling
to never.

R

from dark of yearning into
a soft day...
as acts of magic I would perform.

Z

the blaze addresses
a different darkness.

---D.L.

as the bishop said...

This had me rolling in laughter. The punch line: "Naturally, a job of that sort could be given to a woman who in any event is licentious in her ways."
Hmm. Expect a sudden surge in the number of muslim terrorists!

And here's another joker.

And in the news today we have these charming people

Now, what is it: is it that there's just this exogenous amount of crazy people out there, some of whom become 'religious,' or is it that religion itself encourages such sort of loopiness?

now and then

" I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."
---Sebastian Smee on Lucian Freud.

The Platonist might think "there is no whiteness so white as the memory of whiteness", as the memory of lost whiteness, but such is not really the case. The eternal's love of time; the eternal one's love of the particular one...he bears his fate like an old infidel, waiting for it to crack.

Lights turned down. The wisp of the low blue flame. The slow understanding within bounds, circling, retracing. The inevitable drift to the South, your name like a ray of sunshine amidst the world. Silence, followed by speech. Now and then.

The same. The same.
then once, in a flash,
fresh ground,...
black, grey, green, and blue
water, stone, grass and sky
and each unique set stone!
---Robert Lowell.

constellations

is this the place? no, this is not the place and never was. this was never the place where I met you or left you. never. but if it was? this is the place where someone mentioned your name. you weren't real, like the story of a long forgotten queen in a book. then, the red blush of your cheeks set hearts on fire. and if once, then why not again?

From Rebecca Solnit:

The belief that places in the imagination can be contained, versus narrative, wandering, wondering across genres, disciplines, and time.

Jimmie Durkham: "nothing could be more central to American reality that the relationship between Americans and American Indians, yet those relationships are of course the most inviolable and the most lied about."

R.S. The greatest tragedy of the new technologies may be their elimination of the incalculable-the coincidences and provocations and metaphors that take us out of ourselves and put us in relation to other things. To live inside a mechanical world is to live inside plotted possibility, what has already been imagined; and so technologies that are supposed to open up the future instead narrow it.

N. Klein: 'virtually lost, virtually found'

'The sky is consciousness of the landscape'

Hannah: metaphors are the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about.

R.S. Another rupture is between stars and constellations, information and stories..after the telescope the sky began to fill with objects that had no place in culture, that were accessible only to specialists, and that outreached the ability of culture to assimilate new objects into existing patterns.

M. Foucault: constellations of meaning linked by metaphor were being replaced by expanding galaxies of information.

constellations: routes for the imagination to travel, approach the unknown through the known, the abstract through the concrete.

Aristotle: A good metaphor implies intuitive perception of the similarity of dissimilars.

Trust, trust in the unknown, in what you don't know. Incredibly difficult. But still, the wonderful example of the Crow Indians.

Tierno Bokar writes beautifully (and simply) of the 'three lights'...at the first level "the darkness of superstition surrounds them, the cold of incomprehension makes them tremble. They remain huddled up in a small corner of their tradition..at this stage adepts cannot go beyond the stage of imitation (taqlid) and the letter...

The second light is like that of the sun...Just as the physical sun gives light and warmth to all beings, who from this perspective are all brothers, the adepts who have reached this degree of light see and treat everything that lives under the sun and receives its light as brothers...It will always come from the same source and will never falter throughout the ages.

Q: 30:22.