The Green Knight

I don't know what it is about this book but it has always struck me as wonderful and slightly mysterious. I suppose half the charm rests in the fact that it predates the novel and any 'psychological' depth. This idea that something can work in a different gear, a different plane to the one we're accustomed to. Like a dream, it is two-dimensional, a story surrounded by a vague and indistinct fog of memories and half-buried truths. A story, then, that touches on the mythical and symbolic. The pentangle, for example. The Green Knight does sound like a figure deep out of folklore. Khidr in the incredible Surah 19 or Khwaja Khizr in the Indian tradition.

Benjamin's Storyteller...What counts as experience, tellable experience?Can the storyteller exist without listeners? The novel, on the other hand, requires 'readers'-and it's not clear that these are always the same thing. Transmission vs novelty. the circle-and breaking out of the circle. Our old themes, right from Day One.

The Grand Old Duke of York. I don't know why, but I suddenly felt very sad when making up a story about  the Grand Old Duke for little r. And tears welled up in little r's eyes as well. Yes, he defeated the wicked old man. And yes, he was invited for chocolate eclairs and cinnamon rolls and piping hot tea to the King's castle. "As much as he could eat". But he was wounded in the battle and never quite the same again. Why this subservience to the King or to the Queen? Is there not something futile about it all? Would not a tragic death have been a more befitting end?

Adam Smith's parable of 'the Poor Man's Son'...

So, there's this kid who is born into a very poor family. He sees lots of rich people around him and they seem happy. He resolves that he too will find this happiness. And so it comes to pass, after many years of hardship, that he makes lots of money. And yet, and yet...he is not happy. What's gone wrong in this story? Was he wrong to aim for happiness or was it that the means he chose were the wrong ones, that he made  a mistake in his selection? since economics is forward looking it is hard to imagine that the boy made an error. systemic mistakes aren't allowed for. We see the world all panned out in front of us, time flat like a map.

To tie the threads together: time (t) is abstract time, not lived experience.

What we seem to have is a 'preference reversal' (though preference is probably the wrong word). What the poor boy (now man) realizes is that the attainment of happiness (or that type of happiness) isn't really what he was after. I don't think it's just a matter of regret (which, again, is not permissible from the economist's point of view). The point is that values can and do change. We seek a conclusion to our deliberations, but have to keep ourselves open to the possibility of them changing. These "provisionally fixed points" would suggest that thought is a broken circle.

How ought I to live, to live well? Who could know this but a dead man-and he won't tell.

Iris's Green Knight...Peter Mir!...

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To lose touch.

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