A song for old England

The last days of winter, the morning hours, the dark light on the windowpanes, the bright light that inheres, that is woven into the darkness, all this ancient light under the surface. Like an hour against which all others are measured.

An old medieval string of notes survives, passes hands. The same hour of the soul is remembered in Wales, Argentina, Spain.

At the end of the year there is a kind of remembrance of all that has been lost, of ways of speaking, standing, holding that no longer formally exist.

You listen to some great short stories..Eudora Welty, Cynthia Ozick, Steve Millhauser, Cheever, Shirley Jackson. A word from the last year carries over, as you read a book between the last and first days, across the year ( another kind of weaving).

The writing here comprises four or five word sentences. After the catastrophe the land returns to its primal state, harsh, unyielding. That is what human beings have done to it. What words are left between us? Plain spoken words as close to the things they name. But now there is no time we only keep the names, not the things. Only the real, ordinary words spoken by real ordinary people will suffice to tell of what can't be spoken. Only they can hint at an experience of what lies beyond our capabilities to understand.The words we say in prayer get closest to what we are. The sentences must be full of silence and sadness; the words like dark light in the early morning hours...

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Ozick' s 'shawl' and Millhauser retain something of that child- like innocence, as if we were reading a fable, something true about elementary human nature. In both its as if we're saying to ourselves that at this late stage in the day we have to dispense with the superfluous, with artifice, cultural padding. Underneath all those layers lies something that we'd lived with all along but had lost in this, our so called age of sophistication.

A line from Luc Sante makes me think this is the last book I'd ever pick up..." Paris was licentious. Paris was the capital of ass." This is in stark contrast to the simple language in Voices from Chernobyl.

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Listening to a lovely lecture on Ghazali. He's the best scholar of his day but still thinks there's something lacking! Something slightly fake about the whole thing. His self is exhausted-is that another name for melancholia?- and he understands that that's a result of him thinking that all his efforts and success have come only from himself.

On a journey he takes his books with him..his latest work that has consumed him for the last three years. He's stopped by a brigand. Ghazali implores him not to take his beloved books. The brigand laughs and says, " what kind of knowledge is that, that I can take away from you so easily!"