'God wills to exercise the 'abundance' of his glory-to create as many reflections as possible of his own being. But if the point of the world is the abounding plurality of such reflections, each must exist within limits, since God alone is infinite.'

'Compatible variety means the harmony of genuinely distinct subjects.'

Rowan Williams on Richard Hooker

Haven't read Achebe but did come across this:

“Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.” Achebe often used this proverb in discussing his work, and he explained its significance once in an interview: “It means there is no one way to anything….If there is one God, fine, there will be others as well…. If there is one point of view, fine. There will be a second point of view.”

Immersion

The other day I was sitting with some friends when the discussion turned to, "It's us versus them". This was not about the East versus the west; not about the religious versus the secularists but something that I hadn't thought about too much.

There is much talk about the battle within Islam, between the open-minded, tolerant, and/or Sufi version on the one hand and on the other the fanatics, fundamentalists, and extremists who have distorted the religion (in some sense this wasn't really a conflict from within because the latter group are really heretics, outsiders). 

Now, there's obviously a lot of truth to that claim. But as someone who is not that religious and who is, to use a loaded word in this country, a secularist, I can't get too enthused by the shrine culture (eclectic and pluralistic though it be). Of course, that is not to deny that some people might find the devotional songs, the rituals, the dances, the personification of holiness deeply appealing and, to dispel the notion that I'm arguing that the attraction is little else but a subjective feeling, that it is a legitimate approach. But, but...we're entering Gellner territory here...

On the 'them' side are also people like me and my family. Somewhat like the Puritans (at least that's what I imagine, from my very limited reading). To use the word 'wahabi' in this day and age is to bring the scorn of the 'liberals' and the sufi-oriented brigade crashing down on one. 

So, I just sat there quietly and listened to the three friends talk about attitudes and practices that I don't subscribe to. How the Prophet is still alive, for example. About how the holy person continues the presence of the divine (in some sense that is perhaps beyond the symbolic); about the system of dependencies on the holy man and his lineage. His cloak, his staff. Fine, but sober by nature and temperament, I can't get immersed in all that. 

~~~

In some sense the same applies to book reading. I love fiction and poetry but, at the end of the day, there's something a bit odd to giving one's life to fictions, to becoming so deeply engrossed in the lives of other people (and in the minute details of their feelings and thoughts). In a time when religion's hold is on the wane is it the case that we seek some kind of deep attachment elsewhere? If one is non-religious does this "devotion" invariably come in the form of culture (art, books, music)? Better that than getting hooked to cheap entertainments and the pursuit of money and power to fill the void.

Here, then, is the question of the balance between subjective interest/attraction and objective value. Someone who immerses themselves in useless research or in the construction of a model city using matchsticks is, no doubt, very skilled and accomplished in some sense. And one might even admire their patience, dedication, unswerving attentiveness, concentration, single-mindedness, persistence etc., etc. But can one speak of virtues without looking at the ends of action, the object of thought? Theoria, in the old sense of the word, was a knowledge of "higher things" (Hans Jonas).

So, some people swear by the loose, baggy 19th c. novels as if that was the final form that literature should take. One must wade through the accumulated debris of useless materials and observations before one gets to the "wheat". In fact, a bland and stand-alone statement of the "wheat" would defeat the whole purpose. Real life isn't like that. Time flows and carries with it lots of unspectacular moments. High times coalesce with ordinary times. To tear out the nuggets of wisdom/insight is to break up the narrative, destroy the object itself. The book, like the soul, consists of lots of higher and lower elements; is a medley of disparate characteristics and is the whole thing, take it or leave it.

Except, wasn't the novel supposed to be about experimentation and contemporary relevance? Wasn't the baggy form simply contemporaneous with a bourgeois culture (Morretti) that demanded so many diversions, escapes, entertainments, thrills? And now?

~~~

M. Robinson and the Puritans: 

  

The time of rain

I stand and watch the rain
Falling in pools which make
Our grave old planet shine;
The clear rain falling, just the same
As that which fell in Homer’s time
And that which dropped in Villon’s day
Falling on mother and on child
As on the passive backs of sheep;
Rain saying all it has to say
Again and yet again, and yet..

--Supervielle.

The time of the rain. No-one knows it. It brings with it its own world, displacing the hard-cracked one we know. The birds sense it beforehand. Watch them wait for the gathering darkness, anticipating that immeasurable freedom. It will stop and start again and no-one will know how much time has passed.

And the rain recalls those lost moments, the time you lost your heart.

The sky brightens and the light settles. Am I still here? I look at my name on the board and think to myself (who else?): who is that? 

Hasidic Tales: lost and found

I read this tale somewhere and then wondered where, in fact, I'd come across it. Much searching amidst the piled up books, notes and journal articles but it had disappeared! If only I could remember what I was reading last...Lewis Hyde, Wendell Berry? Hadn't I jotted something down? You could clearly see the word written down in your own handwriting: journey. And then, as you look at the window, the startling fact: it doesn't matter where you saw it! Why do you think you can possess it...

A Rabbi has a dream in which God tells him to travel to Prague because there, under a bridge, he will find some treasure. But when he gets there he sees that the bridge is heavily guarded. He waits patiently by the bridge, hoping the guard will fall asleep or be distracted by something. But three days pass like this; him just silently observing the guard. On the third day the guard speaks to him: What are you doing there in the shadows? I've noticed you there for the last three days".

The rabbi tells him about the dream and how he traveled all the way from Krakow just to find this treasure. The guard laughed at him: "You fool! I had a dream as well in which God told me go to Krakow where I'd find some treasure buried under the stove of a rabbi's house but I'm not so silly! I do my job here to the best of my duty".

On hearing this the rabbi returns home and, sure enough, finds the treasure under his stove.

~~~

1. The importance of trust (tawaakul).
2. What comes to fruition sometimes comes about indirectly.
3. Duty, loyalty, fidelity to what, or who?
4. What is of importance is sometimes close at hand, under one's very nose but also:
5. One has to make the journey to find home. 

Lost and found.    


~~~

Update, Horatio:

I found an old book by Buber in the library. Although locked up because it was in a "fragile condition" I managed to liberate it for a few hours. D took some photos of the small book (44 pages) and then transferred them to me (yes, technology does have some advantages!). After printing them I briefly flicked through the pages to check if the operation had been successful and noticed that all was okay except for one page. Half of the top line had been chopped off. So, I wrote the missing words out by hand:

..had never shaken his faith in God. 

Was then astounded to find that this was in fact the very same story I'd been looking for! 

The anti-economy

A

A certain amount of confusion and incomprehension is to be expected. If you inhabit a monotheistic worldview then mythological perspectives are almost certainly bound to strike one as odd, mystifying. Over the weekend you heard a number of people saying, "Hinduism..is that really a religion..does come across as wildly at odds with any sensible approach to divine matters". I didn't want to argue with that. What would be the point. We have no entry point into another's faith (this is not simply a question of scriptures and languages but of a mentality (or, more accurately, mentalities) that is shaped by a monotheistic outlook.

Of course, that is a gross exaggeration for in reality it seems to me that monotheism is never anything but a rare phenomenon. It is either distorted beyond recognition by the zealots (think: Taleban and ISIS and how infinitely distant they are from a genuine religious sensibility); or it is mixed up with ideas, attachments, and styles of thinking that are more to do with the local culture (land and language, one might say). 

So, we often look to the religions of the east and their "strangeness" as a way of reaffirming our own "pure" approach to religion. So, our lack of understanding is not simply the result of a natural (providential?) barrier, as if to say: after all, no human being can inhabit every possible perspective; it is, rather, that in addition the barrier is a psychological and political limit we construct. 

But if language and thought do not get us across the barrier then what does? To get across does not necessarily mean inhabiting the other 'realm' but it can, at the very least, be a recognition that there is some kind of inexplicable mystery across the border and that one's own position or understanding is not a sealed-off space, as it were. A certain amount of undermining, confusion and incomprehension is to be expected. Don't take one's unbelief too seriously; but do not ignore it either.

Bob would be able to say something about this image. My vague intuition is this: compassion, at the highest state of being, is universal. Nothing goes unnoticed. There is a looking back, not a looking after the self (in the final analysis is the latter only a delusion anyway?). The self is a barrier. Look and look out. The gestures of the hands. What do they mean?  

"Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously."
--K. Barth.

~~

Haven't read Achebe but did come across this:

“Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.” Achebe often used this proverb in discussing his work, and he explained its significance once in an interview: “It means there is no one way to anything….If there is one God, fine, there will be others as well…. If there is one point of view, fine. There will be a second point of view.”

world-ending fire

This is the world that we have set on fire.

This is the promised burning, darkening
Our light of hope and putting out the sun,
Blighting the leaf, the stream--and blessed are
The dead who died before this time began.

Blessed the dead who have escaped in time
The twisted metal and the fractured stone,
The technobodies of the hopeless cure.
Now, to the living, only grief has shown

The little yellow of the violet,
Risen again out of the dead year's leaves,
And grief alone is measure of the love
That only lives in rising out of graves.

--Wendell Berry.

"This supposed economy has no plan for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition."

This is the anti-economy where there is no question of intrinsic usefulness, no thought of 'final ends' or human needs. Instead there is only blind desire, "wanton preferences", and formal rationality. "Just do it". Or "go with the flow". A system that generates the wasteful, the useless, and the unnecessary. It is never asked-and can never be asked-whether the ramifications of production and consumption (and our lifestyles that are inextricably bound to them) are morally, ecologically or spiritually uplifting or whether they lead to boredom, frustration and anxiety. 

I step back, and look forward.

A form of conservatism, a retreat of sorts, but with one's eyes firmly on what is moving towards you (the opposite of Benjamin's 'angel'). The Benedict Option?  

Oy, Tolstoy! Clear off, mate. Brexit means fucking Brexit!

There's something quite sad about seeing a small island race becoming, well, ..er..a small island race. At critical junctures maybe some trait, characteristic or sensibility that has for large periods of time been hidden suddenly rises to the surface. So, even though under normal circumstances it isn't a dominant feature of an individual's or a society's make-up, at points of transition it rears its head. Hasn't there been something petty and mean-spirited brewing for the last thirty odd years of the neoliberal experiment? Is it something more permanent?

The closing of the American/British mind? This goes beyond the narrowing of horizons that results in our attention being caught up in all the trivia and information flotsam that streams in front of us, 24/7. And beyond the shallow, everyday kind of racism that offers an animal-like warmth of petty hatreds to a working class that has lost its bearings. I think it extends further: to a middle class that is enamoured by shopping or private fantasies of drug or alcohol-induced flights from reality; it extends to the self-styled religious folks whose bitterness at the direction the world is taking results in a cheap cynicism and condescension.

~~~

Calasso's The Art of the Publisher:  

k

dark;
grey, wild hunger
[for you]
[..

heart,
where are you now?

Below the surface
of the coal's equations
a small flame,

smudged,
nearly extinguished

The heart has traveled, 
reached the first twist
of her hair;
how much further?

I brought you a mirror from the East:
look at you; think of me!

And now the broken pieces
reflect the sky, floating clouds,
all that is hidden.

Where are you now, heart? 

There are mountains 
in the sea;
oh, deep down
deep down.

---lines by Bronk.

Embed from Getty Images

k

Don't tell my father that I have died.

He doesn't need to know. I promised him I'd never grow old..so at least I've kept that part of the bargain. Say I had to go. And God knows, maybe that's the truth. They say there a million gods but I only ever needed one. There are miles and miles of beautiful land but where am I now? The land's very name is mine; and now I am engraved in the land. A nameless one now. They call us the disappeared but my spirit will never leave here.

For you India is a land of mythology and colour, deep and profound mysteries. Why, then, should you look at my own pale death which tells you nothing? I don't want to speculate on your systems; they never meant much to me anyway.  

You found your way here. I lost track of you. If you saw my face now would you still take a second look? And why do you sit in the shadow of the tree?  

It is cold here. Where's my kangri !

civilisation

Years ago the incredibly perceptive Ivan Illich wrote about the idea of "internalities"; the ideology of "progress" and the preponderance of experts who were responsible for administering and justifying this ideology were not simply reducing our autonomy, our ability to give shape to our own lives, and not 'merely' generating perverse outcomes (externalities, such as pollution); no, both were actually preventing us from achieving the 'goods' that progress was supposed to be delivering in the first place.

In what sense, for example, are we healthier (and here one would have to look at and evaluate the whole distribution, even if one could agree on what constitutes 'health' in the first place). Our ability to move about in our own cities, to move about in a recognizably human way that accounts for the human body and its rhythms and its limitations, is impaired: gated communities, slums, are not 'external' to capitalistic development but central to its story. And our movement is either too quick for us to be attentive to our surroundings or slowed down to a snail's pace by congestion. The freedom to walk or cycle in a city-and what sights do we register on our journeys?- seems, to me, to be in abeyance. 

The rich, those "global citizens" who don't really live in any particular place, will always aim to bypass or transcend the city. They'll find some fast track, or live out their lives in their own fortresses (at One Hyde Park the city-and its food-is brought to you). Late antiquity withdrawal into a life of ..what, precisely? Studied leisure, self-cultivation, hedonism?

the time of the sun

Even the sun has its own time. Even the sun has its moments. 

The light is brilliant by eight o'clock. Beyond that it cannot be contemplated, only felt. The leafless tree is outlined with great clarity, as is its stark shadow on the ground-- the forked shadow almost as real as the tree itself.

~~~

In a small Butler's chocolate dish (which the kid must have swiped) there is some cold oil and a few strands of hair and next to them a dead cockroach that has given up the ghost, almost preserved in the wax-like liquid. Do cockroaches always die on their backs? The hair-my hair- looks more and more like its legs as time passes.  

~~~

But the sweet prairies of anarchy
And the thought that keeps my heart up
That at last, in Death's odder anarchy,
Our patterns will be broken all up.
Though precious we are momentarily, donkey,
I aspire to be broken up.

--Stevie Smith.

The faraway nearby

And now I look for the word 'faraway' and find it everywhere. Or rather I don't look - not trying to jinx it - and it returns.

'There's a word for each leaf and each
wall and
a word for nothing.' 

There'sawordforeachleafandeachwallandawordfornothing.

Larry Eigner, I should have said, from yesterday, in case you were wondering, faithful reader. And what of you, o faithless one?



I have felt it as they've said
there is nothing to say


there is everything to speak of
   but the words are words

when you speak that is a sound
what have you done, when you have spoken 





of nothing





or something i will remember 

Faraway one

~~~

Slow it is
a slow business
to grow a few words 
to say love
----Anselm Hollo

How long it took, the tens of thousands of generations to produce this clumsy hand. And how quickly things unravel! It took all this time to find you. What can seem most certain in life turns out to be as fleeting as a cloud, as short lived as the dance of a gnat. Where are you now? And why do you sigh, my soul? 

~~~

Where is the world in which I dream?

~~~
Will I cease to be
or will I remember
beyond the world
our last meeting together?
will I cease to be,
or will I remember
beyond the world,
our last meeting together?

Will iiiiiii

Will       

Will       

Will       

  i  wwww 

            

Where is the world in which I dream, if not here? And yet, in the dreamworld there is no world, only a remembrance of it. When you meet someone after a long time it is customary to say, "Where in the world have you been"? As if that person had crossed some invisible frontier and has come back disheveled, bringing with them a look, a word, a sentiment from that other place. 

Do we only see our true selves in dreams nowadays?  


~~~

the dark swimmers
their heads in the sun

if time shd stand still

which way does the river go?

The day in the house
each room with its own time
the sun's light enters obliquely and falls 
away
and time is marked by absences
(a pluralist till the end).