But there was time, a time between me & you. A space to be traversed, and so time passed. There was nothing but time. We had time on our hands. When he held his arms out and high he saw the wrists of certainty.
'But there was time? No.
There was never time.
Can I come back to you?
No-one was there.
The mask of the holy man
has faded now...'
The paint dries and cracks, the powder crumbles. The face is a human mask now and there is no need for mirrors. Their silver has darkened anyway from the weight of expectation.The thousand-year old mirror on which we wrote defiant words against the times. The slow thought, the patient heart, is older, moves to a different time.
The great silver race, the dash, the life lost under the sun. Everything flows and only a trace of an image remains. As you walk past St. Giles you think to yourself: how many gestures, how many words spoken in this city in a single day.
You walk too quickly to catch anything but a stray sentence, the odd Irish accent, a Jamaican asking three times if the coke is ice and the Italian man rolling his eyes heavenwards.
You sit in a park full of half-dressed people. You read somewhere: "Those who are in love do not need to read". Lovecraft?
No man is an island-except each man is.
The masks we carry in our hands now, like Perseus. The holy man a fool, his head in his hands, out of the skies, his feet firmly rooted to the spot; finally, he's in pace with each step he takes, his heart following his stride.Hands that would know fall silent.
The Sanskrit of the heart. Old words, forgotten or vaguely recalled. There was a time when each syllable was pronounced with clarity, remembered with devotion.
A random line: Hopkins's ten years of silence, so that he could live. A kinder time.
'But there was time? No.
There was never time.
Can I come back to you?
No-one was there.
The mask of the holy man
has faded now...'
The paint dries and cracks, the powder crumbles. The face is a human mask now and there is no need for mirrors. Their silver has darkened anyway from the weight of expectation.The thousand-year old mirror on which we wrote defiant words against the times. The slow thought, the patient heart, is older, moves to a different time.
The great silver race, the dash, the life lost under the sun. Everything flows and only a trace of an image remains. As you walk past St. Giles you think to yourself: how many gestures, how many words spoken in this city in a single day.
You walk too quickly to catch anything but a stray sentence, the odd Irish accent, a Jamaican asking three times if the coke is ice and the Italian man rolling his eyes heavenwards.
You sit in a park full of half-dressed people. You read somewhere: "Those who are in love do not need to read". Lovecraft?
No man is an island-except each man is.
The masks we carry in our hands now, like Perseus. The holy man a fool, his head in his hands, out of the skies, his feet firmly rooted to the spot; finally, he's in pace with each step he takes, his heart following his stride.Hands that would know fall silent.
The Sanskrit of the heart. Old words, forgotten or vaguely recalled. There was a time when each syllable was pronounced with clarity, remembered with devotion.
A random line: Hopkins's ten years of silence, so that he could live. A kinder time.
4 comments:
"The self and the world disappear..all that remains is a bright spark trapped in a room, left to reconstitute both by its own means (thought)"
"thought" to the rescue?
best,
fff
No, didn't get across what I wanted to say here, fff. This was an allusion to Descartes and how abstract thought-starting from the beginning, sceptical of the common world and common sense is what Arendt calls "the second turning inwards". In that sense it's a variant of Gnosticism (the bright spark trapped). Follows on from the title of the previous post-which was also the title of a great essay by Hans Jonas.
ok - doubting everything, but thought
am now digesting "not having a proper appreciation of the world[...]Materialism, hedonism and fundamentalism share an affinity. " intriguing ...
(I vaguely remember having once read that Arendt's insisting on the importance of the world, might be linked to the moral disaster Heidegger turned into, with all his un-worldliness)
Yes, I don't think materialism can easily be equated with worldliness since it ends up devouring the world and its durability (wasn't that Arendt's point about labour vs work?). In that sense both it and fundamentalism point to a virtual reality-as opposed to a "proper love of the world". No?
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