If the mind doesn't know the eye cannot see, the hand cannot feel.

--Dr. Matthew C.

I want to drink because I want to drink; to forget yesterday, today, to remember what cannot be forgotten. Khayyam, you and your words are dust. Molecules of black ink on a blank canvas fade into one another. The deep continuities of life are really a ramshackle collection of memories(in the mind or the heart), a beige jacket one tries on in a dream, the sleeve extending over your wrists, the feel of it all wrong. But you wear it nevertheless, this unique mark of falseness all that is possible these days.

At the hospital Ubo says...an English teacher asks his class: who was the greatest person to ever live? Anyone who can tell me the correct answer will get five pounds.

A Muslim says, why, that's easy, it was the Prophet Muhammad. But then a Buddhist raises his hand and says, no, it was the serene and all-wise Buddha. A certain Mr. Patel then blurts out: "No, it was Mr. Jesus Christ, Sir!"

The teacher is chuffed by this answer. "Well done, Patel!"

After the class he asks Patel: "Good answer, but aren't you a Hindu young man?"

To which he replies: "In my heart of hearts I know it's Krishna, but business is business!"

~~~

What a load of crap a Ph.D is. Really. Could there be anything that's more useless? Of course, your view is slightly warped at the moment after seeing the very attractive East European neurologist (blushing face, childish voice, and curly hair and all). But no, you've always thought that: what can the mind know on its own? Theoria (of the highest 'objects'), contemplation. That can't be it. A sign outside a door, at best.

I am almost never there, in these
old photographs: a hand
or shoulder, out of focus; a figure
in the background,
stepping from the frame.
I see myself, sometimes, in the restless
blur of a child, that flinch
in the eye, or the way
sun leaks its gold into the print;
or there, in that long white gash
across the face of the glass
on the wall behind. That
smear of light
the sign of me, leaving.

--Robin Robertson.

planet of the apes

I don't why this reminds me of Vaughan Williams and, more to the point, of the 'hail to the bomb' scene in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I hope that doesn't sound irreverent (it wasn't meant to)

But if music can express a lack of faith then it surely can also express something else: an inversion of faith? And the worship of violence (the bomb) beneath the planet was captured by that music: the devil is, after all, the 'ape of the divine'. Whence the need for true images (not the absence of images).

Well, as my readers know, I actually happen to live on the planet of the apes, and that makes me very sad (well, Celia and Roxana know that, anyway). Recently, the governor of the Punjab was shot dead because he thought the blasphemy laws were a 'black law'. And then many of the sonofabitch maulvis refused to allow his funeral prayers because of his opposition to the controversial law. How far the world -if it can be called a world-of the fundamentalists is from Ibn Arabi, who thought that the polytheists had a deeper insight into the divine than the believers; or from Hallaj who could say that Iblis was the 'true lover' of God.

Hmm. Since this post owes something to Bob I guess I should end with some quotes from Thomas Merton, but first, Charles Taylor (yes, I know, the Taylor ref. is a corny one).

"First, no one must be forced in the domain of religion, or basic belief. This is what is often defined as religious liberty, including of course, the freedom not to believe. Second, there must be equality between people of different faiths or basic beliefs; no religious outlook or (religious or areligious) Weltanschauung can enjoy a privileged status, let alone be adopted as the official view of the state. Third, all spiritual families must be heard, included in the ongoing process of determining what the society is about (its political identity) and how it is going to realize these goals (the exact regime of rights and privileges). This (stretching the point a little) is what corresponds to “fraternity.”

'the slow death of the heart'

For dear anton (thank you so much for pointing me here)...

Ten years without you

For so it happens

Days make their steady progress, a routine

That is merciful and attracts nobody

Already, like a disciplined scholar,

I piece fragments together, past conjecture

Establishing true sequences of pain;

For so it is proper to find value

In a bleak skill...

--G. Hill.

Somewhere in the heaven

Of lost futures

The lives we might have lived

Have found their fulfilment.

---Derek Mahon.

the fierceness of the heart, the afternoon shadows taking root in the earth. the slowness of your hands. memory haunted by things that did not come to pass; the gaze quiet and passive, like a low-flame, loosely centred on itself, toppling over its axis. the mind. focused. on what holds it together. words painstakingly recalled, as when one bites one's tongue. lost in thought.

there was something quite extraordinary about this novel. not the style or sharp insights. in fact, the first seventy pages or so seemed pedestrian and strangely lacking in these qualities. the life of a university professor is, after all, quite dull. what light can be shone on such a narrow range of human experience?(and you gave up reading Exley at exactly the same point). but there was a line or two at the beginning, quite oblique, understated, that kept you going. (what is that line that keeps us going, only God knows). And throughout there was the sense of distance, of looking at a life (his, our own) that was one step removed, not in an abstract or detached sense but, well, mystical in a way.

and perhaps that's what fascinated you, for isn't that precisely what the life of a teacher is? one full of masks, of deception? this figure, behind the stage, you see a glimpse of him/her now and then and find it is impossible to imagine the life that goes on within, or the life that continues beyond the solid walls of the classroom. and the teacher, acutely aware of his own contradictions, of the divisions in his soul (or, more accurately, of the particular way in which his soul is divided).

the university as a refuge from the world, from contingency and, you hope, from time itself. a kind of innocence that you think only monks or ascetics can have. but his life is often narrow, and small, in no way great. it doesn't open up to anything grand or memorable (unlike the monastic's that is open to the divine and that inscribes itself in second spaces). the life of the mind, riddled by pettiness and small-time politics. but even at best, even if free from these distractions, still at war with "life".

autonomy, for sure, but what is freedom unless it makes connections, unless the eye finally understands what the hand did? only you grow old. uniquely. providing much material for reflection. each year there's a fresh start, it goes on and on, until you are a witness to it no more. this accumulation of names, one replacing the other, until it doesn't matter. the name that names least is the name.

colleagues come and go. it is hard to explain to the newer ones. it is not a matter of forgetfulness. cynicism and indifference eats up some. but that's to be expected. happens everywhere. the snow is general. why do you complain?

what was true, then? not the formulations of the the unmoored mind or the laughter you shared in-between. there's no clown like a serious clown. what is real, then? only this: yearning makes the heart grow deeper.

the blues

post-

Soundscapes Over Landscapes - THE REDNECK MANIFESTO by Dublin Guitar Quartet

Poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Song leads us home to where we have not been...Is G-minor, in the western scale, intrinsically triste or does its desolation stem from its use?...Language will conserve, with uncanny tenacity, names of trees, of fauna, from lands they have long abandoned. They preserve configurations of mores and institutions long past and almost indecipherable to the present. The muted ritual is now eroded, but was once pivotal...
---from George Steiner, Errata.

the way of the future, the way back? these images reminded you of a scene from 'beneath the planet of the apes' but also, when you look at the other ones of books left unread on the shelves, of things utterly useless at resisting the forces of nature and decay, of 'The Time Machine' and the Eloi.

also, a trace of Hopper? A city on a peaceful Sunday, beyond all its strivings and desires. what's the problem? nothing in particular.

(music: another one of Bob's superb recommendations...do check his brill. blog:
here )

smallholdings

Perhaps, when we're half asleep

the same hand that sows the stars

trails across the galactic lyre...

the dying wave reaching our lips

as two or three true words.

~~~

My heart's all out of time...

then a tear in the clouds,

the light brightening in its lantern

of sun and rain

the sudden rainbow;

then all of it, inverted, minuscule, in each speck

of rain in her black hair

And I let it slip away again.

~~~

I'd paint you, alone

on the mirror's false depths-

alive to your heart,

dead to your poet.

~~~

So is this magic place to die with us?

I mean that place where memory still holds

the breath of your early life:

the white shadow of first love,

that voice that rose and fell

with your own heart, the hand

you'd dream of closing in your own.

~~~

Do lover's

derangements unstring the days,

cut them free from time?

I know

there was a smile on your lips...

what was it you were offering me?

Time came into fruit, stolen

from the grove? the unplayed time

of some stopped golden evening?

A [black] sun you'd caught, asleep in the river?

~~~

'winter light strained through glass, and clouds, and rain...the clock glitters on the wall...the mindless diamond keeps one spark of the planet's early fires trapped forever in its net of ice'

~~~

a border song to

forgetting, amnesty, oblivion.

Our one concern, now we are a matter of time,

is to perfect the desperate attitude

of our long waiting; but she will not fail to come.

~~~

Between departure times

the properties of our love are spread out

There

the places of the world remain undivided,

not surveyed and not findable

~~~

heard snatches of this conversation whilst scribbling down these notes, fragments:

"I read this, it was good, in a true way."

[Nicholas Cage, said a third person, totally out of the blue]

"Read the first line and see if you can read any more."

you make to get up, place the books back exactly where you found them, like a thief who's lost his nerve, note the time, the hands of the clock at a safe enough distance from one another for you to run and see if they've still got the Casals/Bach Bob recommended. 1950. Strange how you always remember numbers and not faces.

~~~

On the journey in a very fetching 50-ish woman sits opposite you. Very mousey, tall, lean. Not a particularly strong face, but striking nevertheless, and something about her, the intelligence in her eyes, perhaps, reminds you of numbers, of your math teacher at school, Mrs. Griffiths. You guess how many stops you'll be on the same line. Four or five. Doesn't really matter. By the time you come back you'd have forgotten the details, and only remembered the association. You read the lines from the Stoner book: "lust and learning, that's all there really is".

On the way back a black person talks to his girlfriend (?), an American (though she looks Iranian and is wearing some great fake-antique earrings [this makes you sound sicker than you are!])

He talks to her about how the City of London isn't really a city, how it's slightly over 1 square mile in size, (the 'slightly' is unnecessary, uncalled for, and is boring the socks off her, you just know). She puts a brave face on it, feigns interest (man, they're not even married and the girl's on it). He continues in his mind numbing way, as you watch her earrings swing and glint: "Yes, on it's own, in its very own right it's the 7th biggest economy in the world" (come on, come on already, cut to the chase).

She nods. Looks up to him. "I've never been to Wall St." she says, shyly, and laughs, hoping to loosen him up a bit.

"Well, Wall St. is only the 10 th biggest."

Dude, the earring, the earrings.

~~~

I should like these poems read to me, with the doors closed, the light shut out. Just in darkness, the words like a low flame. The poem, 'almost without words', would greet me, sitting on my comfortable chair, and fall away into the evening silence. There's enough there, even amongst the ashes, even surrounded by so many blank spaces; the point is, the quality of the print, the texture, the unsaid, the shape of the whole...you know your books (by their covers).

~~~

the ducks and hens

tread the farmyard to a shitty green

[bear with me, dear reader(s)]

the ducks and hens

tread the farmyard to a shitty green

the smallholders are indoors praying

plaster crumbles off the walls

the little stream meanders

through its soggy meadows

the willow harbours Alexander,

Caesar in the nettle stone

the great names of the world

are at large in the beet-fields,

for all that spiders weave,

and the spitz barks at vagrants

Rats pipe in the cellar

a line of verse skims in the butterfly light

the saps of the world learn to circulate

smoke rises like a fiery poem.

(D.P., and Eich)

the bridge

No longer could he see anything in the distance,

No longer could he discern anything close at hand.

Slowly, slowly he dissolved

Into the night:

His night, flowing out from him,

Into which very soon there would

Surge forth

The stars.

~~~

For look, already a flicker

passes over our faces,

now they are handsome, now ugly,

now they are day, now they're night,

now they are seasons, now years.

---Sorescu.

"Gold is the colour of time"

01 01 11

third time lucky!

Why, when you think of pears, are you reminded of Romania?

somewhere towards the end

Start the week

Great early morning discussion between Rowan Williams and D. Athill on the radio. Can one imagine a maulvi having a similar talk with a declared agnostic?! But perhaps this is more a cultural thing than a religious point, a particular way of discussing things. And in any case, it may be that with the decline of faith in the west the religious have to acknowledge that other points of view may have some legitimacy, in which case there's a genuine conversation and not just the passing down of the official dogma. Second thoughts: radio is really very reassuring at breakfast time, a bit too reassuring perhaps.

R.W.: "If what people like me are saying is right, and one never knows.." . R.W. always tries to find the common ground. And then they turn to Bach, Wittgenstein...

Well, yes, that type of tentativeness is something you find deeply appealing. not a post-modern scepticism, but a straightforward, old-world decency which allows other people/views to breathe. Also, something strange happens to agnostics in the presence of religious people; it's as if they want to be won over by other arguments. Maybe it's more than that: a matter of personality more than the arguments themselves.

D.A. made the intriguing point: maybe religion made sense in a world which was relatively small, when many things weren't just unknown but unthinkable. With the advance of science, amongst other subjects, there are lots of competing ideas/truths/approaches out there. And religion can only sometimes tangentially comment on them, rather than initiate and transmit them.

But I don't think R.W. was too phased by that; religion has, after all, always lived with the ineffable, the mysterious, with what it can, and what cannot be 'named'. The quest for knowing everything, the belief that we can know it all, does seem far-fetched and smacks of hubris. Not that we can necessarily say anything positive about limits

But I don't think R.W. was too phased by that; religion has, after all, always lived with the ineffable, the mysterious, with what can, and what cannot be named. The quest for knowing everything, for believing that we can know everything, does seem rather far-fetched. Not that we can say anything positively about limits..

The view from nowhere

"I do find it odd that people mind not knowing about God...I see that there is a very strong human instinct to want to know everything that we already don't know. This seems odd when we live with unknown things all the time; after all, we don't even know whether what we remember about our own lives is what really happened"

---Diana Athill.

With time you don't grow any wiser. With time. Though you'd like to think it wasn't so. To think of what "is" or "isn't" doesn't alter a thing. The pile of books unread grows each year, like a Talib's accumulation of ignorance. 'What can you know?' a poor substitute for who can you know? It ain't what you know, it's who you know, Bulleh.

But say you had read all those books. Then what? A few more conversations, or blog posts perhaps? A few more tangled thoughts, tumbling down. A book is borrowed, on borrowed time. Leaf through the old ones to see what's been marked: ' or + or * for something really important or profound that you simply forget when you return to your backgammon. A conceit, of course, and yet human. The great, simplifying, purifying process revealed by a few signs!

You would like to read for pleasure, just for once. No, that's not it, because you do read for pleasure, with no thought of the 'morrow. Is there another form, a higher type of pleasure that isn't so fleeting, that builds into the pattern of a life, a life lived well?Well?

Who can you cite to help you see yourself now? Not I, but another. We grow into darkness in the sense that more becomes unknown each day. The one thing needful. Memory? Not for self-identity, for Christ's sake. But for Christ's sake.For when we remember our own lives, full of lives, we learn to see, and see again, the view we have from here, this very place, this transient but beautiful bridge over the deepest of waters.

all quiet on the western front

The black ice, a shadow of its former self, crumpled, clinging to the kerb for solace; lifeless, slightly heretical, unredeemed; the grime of centuries, of history, in its veins. What has become of the sparkling crystals that fell on our face only the day before?

The Roding, frozen over, its dark stillness rising from the deep. and down, far down below, the weeds now rigid like icicles, pointing north, whilst a single fish imagines himself free.

Outside St. Barnabas's, the bright new white Christ looks on at the unreal world. Lowell, or something like that. On your way back, you're careful not to slip and fall-as if that could be avoided by mere attention.An ambulance now stands outside the church and the bells are silent. Walk past a vacant plot, the slow, brown&black guard dog too old or cold to bark.

The silence spanning out, between each word, gives pause for thought. The silences between the stars, in the snow covered fields, around old garages, is a nothing before that between people. A world made up of spaces, that is not a world.

A child leaps in slow motion, like an astronaut on the moon, aware that he is the only one here. And the locked mirrors...what awful fates they hold.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

R's oriental philosophy

wake up early in the morning. love it like this, dark and silent. the light slowly breaking. the floor still cold, bare, reassuringly solid. the rich patterns of the 'Caucasian' carpet quite mystical. objects half-visible. light the fires. as if on the first day. warmth holds things together. the soft crumpled blankets still outline a human figure-me-even when I'm not there, but simply looking at this second version.

but you're never half-asleep: always fully 'there', or not at all. time to take off your protestant hat. make porridge, swirl it around until it's the right consistency. not too much, not too little. think about it.

your hand nearly freezes as it tries to cut the butter (which has been left in the freezer for some odd reason). but you are grateful nevertheless. and eventually it will melt. such is its nature. Descartes. it nearly burns. which is beautiful. you can't think of anything spiritual. Keynes was right: One cannot enjoy good states of mind unless things work.

these lines greatly impressed you, so much so that you closed the book after reading them, so as to not let them escape:

"there are some ends belonging to human life in general rather than to particular skills such as medicine, boatbuilding [Homer?, ends having to do with such matters as friendship, marriage, the bringing up of children, or the choice of ways of life; and it seems that knowledge of how to act well in these matters belong to some people but not to others."

thought I'd tell R of this, to see what she says. but, fingers in mouth, she was dreaming up her own philosophy (so like her!).

what is important in life, she said, is to laugh, smile, sleep, play, make other people happy.

that doesn't seem like an awful lot, darling R! I mean, that seems natural, obvious, almost.

Oh, I don't know, she mumbled, there are many little acts one must think about, cultivate, and instinctively do before we become human or even talk of goodness or 'nature'. small fires are a great civilizing force, wouldn't you agree?

~~~

the flight was canceled but R was unphased by it all and even pretended that she didn't know. "do they have fires in London?" she asked, cheekily.

It makes the most telling difference whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his problems and finds in them his destiny, his distress, and his greatest happiness, or an 'impersonal' one, meaning he is only able to touch them with the antennae of cold, curious thought.

the learning tree

It's a miracle I found you in all this space.
---D. Patterson.

But who will read me, when there are only empty pages?Learn what you will, very little will be from books. Remember,off by heart, if you still can.

See what you've become. Eyes straining to read the hurried scrawl. What gives? Mark my plain words. Nothing will come of this. What you find, you cannot keep.

Children of a lesser God

Say: "We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed by their Sustainer unto Moses and Jesus and all the [other] prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto Him do we surrender ourselves."
---Q:3:84

Overall, your first, instinctive, impression was to like this film; in particular, the simple lives of the monks, the silences, and the interweaving of texts. But the silences themselves were fraught with a sense of fear, almost-as if one knew what was coming, and worse: one was not prepared, could never be prepared, for the unknown.

And to be charitable, you could feel that it was made with good intentions, was an attempt to open a door to another side of Islam- and for that one must be grateful. In fact, one of the first texts recited is, I think, the one above.

But, the are some very poor moments in the film. Cringe-worthy, in fact.

The terrorist, for example, isn't really an evil guy after all. Why can't you show evil? Instead, he recognizes the piety of the monks after they recite another beautiful Qur'anic verse. In fact, this cardboard cut-out character is shown to be in awe of the monks and leaves them alone at first. All very cliched.

Secondly, the villagers at one stage say to the monks, after learning of the escalating violence in nearby villages [this takes place in Algeria] , that they should stay in the village, that they are the "tree" whilst the villagers themselves are only the "birds" on it. All very flattering to the monks, no doubt. The monastery has been there since the beginning of the village (we are told). But the old men can't even remember the name of the last abbot there!

And this disconnect is evident throughout. The 'mayor' also is shown to be some sort of of typical nervous, bumbling oriental. And he's wholly unconvincing when he says "I know you people" to the monks.

Of course, there are specifically religious points that I find hard to deal with. For example, when prayers are said for a dead terrorist. Nope, can't buy that. Over the last few years I've been living in a country where suicide bombings have been frequent (many in the city I live in...and with a terrible loss of life). Should we pray for the souls of the people who commit these ghastly acts of violence?

In the final analysis, the Muslims aren't really important in this film-it's really about how the monks find their own true faith in suffering, hope, duty. Which is, of course, admirable. But one can't help feel throughout the film that Muslims are children of a lesser God.

[Still, much better than the crappy propaganda film, Munich !]

the return

white white white aalike
aaa a boundary in death advancing
that is our life, aa that's love,
aaaa line upon line
breaking in radiance, so soft-so dim
aaa ly glaring...

you turn, again. but what if you find yourself not quite your old self, looking slightly askew at what was deeply familiar? into darkened mirrors for what is lost. the silence between your words noted, held against you. there is no betrayal like the betrayal of one's voice. how many more times will you look at your watch, the hands, like your soul, moving in opposite directions, in a widening angle: time of arrival; time of departure.

time, time is the space between me and you, just between us. solace of winter sun. all that is human is frail. solstice, the north that runs through our blood, runs through us, like magnetic grey, tugging at our sleeves. retrace your steps to find oneself, oneself. no more. none the less.

{I would like to add: this post is not, for the most part, about God or cinnamon rolls}

I know you know

I know you.
know.
I know, you know.
the grammars of (y)our soul.

you have the most perfect mouth. except...he said, failing in his words. flailing. tongue-twisted. around her imperfect tongue. you taste as i had imagined you. absolutely. Fantsy, in the heart or in the head?


When I summon intellect it is to the melody
of this longing. Thy hand,
Beloved, restores
the chords of this longing.
Here, in the the thirst that defines Beauty,
I have found kin.

the soft rustling leaves and the shade, the green and the black. was how our time was patterned, if at all. the law of the lawless heart dancing like the light in your eyes, but still veiled.

i hate locks. i wish i could give you
such openness...
to hold.

but time is against me, unthinking, resistant to flowering. if i wrest old words from older texts, it is to win particular hearts.

religion and violence

For a while I was very fond of Burckhardt, Schuon, etc. (not Guenon, though, who was too dry). Not quite so now, though The Feathered Sun and Fez: City of Islam remain two of my favourite books. What turned me away is the subject of another post but...

Bob posted some disturbing allegations against Frithjof Schuon. I'm not sure if that makes him "controversial" or not, but it did get me thinking about why I like his books (Light of the Ancient Worlds, say) so much.

Of course, that is not to deny that 'religious' people/men (Muslims, Catholics etc.) haven't at times been involved in sickening acts of perversion towards children and women and, more generally, involved in violence towards other human beings. Not something one can easily get around. I mean, you can't really say this is a problem of human beings in general-and not just religion because surely the whole aim of religion is to reform human character? And it won't do to say that this is a problem of organized religion-as if to say, the "real" religion can be found amongst the Sufis and free-spirits.

Certainly, a greater degree of organization increases the potential for, and level of, violence (the State, for example). But on the other hand, as Peter Brown reminds us, religious institutions can sometimes actually prevent the emergence of fanaticism and exaggerated flights of the imagination. The constraints of the Law, Society, Tradition, and Community may act to deter the rootless extremist and the sickened mind.

But the difficulty remains-and is particularly pressing if you're a Muslim living in these troubled times. For what else is Islam to many people but a violent, backward, misogynist institution? How do you explain that religion is so intertwined, historically speaking, with violence (even harder, I imagine, to explain the Crusades and Holy War if you're a Christian). The real question: is it only historically speaking?

But back to Frithjof...

I think one of the reasons was that his approach tied in with my unformulated pluralism: the idea that the inner spirit (haqiqah) is one, whilst the outer paths (shariah) are many (Q:5:48) is deeply appealing. It's not just that it's a great antidote to the crushingly rigid and narrow view of the wahabis and semi-literates..it's that the idea of unity in diversity is a fundamentally beautiful approach in itself.

Secondly, there was this fascination with the 'Red Man' and his heroic, devout, and majestic way of life. "Be ye not conformed"...one can imagine the Red Man giving his assent to this.

Couldn't find quotes from The Feathered Sun but since I'm watching this film today I thought I'd end with these:

"It is metaphysically impossible to give oneself to God without this resulting in something good for the environment; to give oneself to God is to give oneself to man, for the gift of self has sacrificial value of incalculable radiance...

What is blameworthy is not "living in the world", but living in it badly and thus in a certain sense creating it...

Concentration of prayer and rhythm of prayer: these are in a sense the two dimensions of spiritual existence in general and monastic experience in particular...the condition of the monk constitutes a victory over space and time, or over the world and life, in the sense that he places himself by his attitude at the centre and in the present; at the centre in relation to a world full of phenomenon and in the present in relation to a life full of events.

The great mission of the monk is to show the world that happiness does not lie somewhere far away or in something located outside ourselves, in a treasure to be sought or in a world to be built, but precisely here where we belong to God."

brute facts

Well, the choice at Readings: Lesbian Bedtime Stories, Franzen, Dalrymple, Aristotle's ethics. It seems as if almost everything is in that very small bookshop-except the books you really want. The books are there, like so many facts stacked on the shelves, all perfectly aligned, and all you have to do is sift through them and choose...

So, you went back to what you had on your desk at home: The Vertigo Years. Reads a bit like that Johnson book on modernity. A bit like rushing through the history of the world via newspaper clippings: the ordinary, startling aspirations and stupidities of human history. Fact piled on top of fact. Interesting detail upon detail: from a poetic fragment to a scientific discovery; from a rambling discussion on walking to the political dissolution of a world in flux (and when wasn't the world in flux?). Your head begins to spin (perhaps that's the desired effect?).

And this book seems much the same. Crowd the whole world into a few pages. The endless whirl of entertaining tidbits and anecdotes, the unusual and funny, the weird and wonderful. Spliced up (Splissen), this is what you note:

Felix Salten, the creator of Bambi, also wrote the pornographic Josefine Mutzenbacher (1906).

The escape from the lack of political representation into pleasure or culture (or fundamentalism, perhaps?). [Was thinking when I read this: you used to get these miniature busts of Beethoven, Mozart, etc in your packets of Cornflakes!]

Freud...Zzzz (or maybe that's just a bit of repression creeping in there!)

Scnitzler's work aimed to "show the repressed and bewildered people on the page and on stage acting out their neuroses like electrons spinning around an empty core..propelled by unseen forces"

[Good grief! Haven't you got anything better to do?)

Language could not be relied upon...blah..blah..blah.

Reason, Truth, Nature, God. The stable world of the belle epoque. All suddenly seem a bit less real (which is to say: not real). Then what? The desiring self-or maybe not even that, for aren't we just neurons firing away in the dark abyss, or the product of vast evolutionary forces beyond our control ("A death withstood..." said the miserable bastard)..a dying animal?

"There was nothing but physiology, everything else was make-believe...Man was nothing but a mass of highly unstable perceptions creating the impression of personality."

All is provisional, in ferment, relative. The illusion of stability, of civilisation, of there being one perspective must now be put to one side. There are no more guarantors or anchors, and no more vantage points. The heart of darkness. Sovereign becoming. Learn to laugh at the human farce. Go back to the fundamental, first principles (if there are any)...the basic structure: in architecture, in music. The primitive and collectivism as an antidote. The Man of Destiny.

Loos: "This furniture lacks all style..It is a style that will not last. After it, the style of 1899 will have its day, and will be entirely different."

Singular, Unique. Singular...

This is as good as it gets.

"There was no titillation in Schiele's existentialist explicitness, no inviting curves...his were angular, breathing creatures, lonely at the very moment of embrace..[they] looked into the world with eyes wide open, shining with fear or alive with defiance, or deep loneliness; their hands either iconic claws or missing altogether...These hands do not give the warmth of human closeness, they do not grasp the world...his figures are not in touch with one another."

Bacon? Raw, quivering flesh is all there is.

Well, anyone who's been reading this blog will know my views on all this. So, I won't bore you, dear reader. Except to say, I'm sure you can guess which book I bought.

unfenced existence

No, I have never found
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim
On everything I own
Down to my name;

To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that it's not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.

Yet, having missed them, you're
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wiser to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.

---Larkin.

Truly, madly, deeply

What do people looking down see? Maybe we saw it once...There is the potential to fall into thought and out of time.

---Thalia Field.

The view from the bridge. A reflection into that other space. The ordering of the soul, an equation in which you freely move. That medieval space of the black and the white, where you are, which means 'I am'.

es animat, pro a mi tot calla encara
Qui en dira a cau d'orella la finestra
on jo vergi a la dolca cristura
que, abrusant-me amb son foc, me reviscoli

---Maragall.

Advice to (from) an old man

Do not speak of yourself (for God's sake) even when asked
Do not dwell on other times as different from the time
Whose air we breathe; or recall books with broken spines
Whose titles died with the old dreams

---Kay Boyle.

Do not speak of God, for Christ's sake.
Of death of which you do not know. Why should the beautiful dwell in anything but life?

'chance determinations'

"And long before our intelligence can help us, the new-born individual survives this tremendous question by his naive faith in the love of his elders."

[Oh, N, please don't try and spoil it by talking about evolution again!]

"Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are"

[Er..I live in a 6 X 8 room with a window overlooking the library]

"they [two young political prisoners] educated me in courage and resourcefulness and when our starvation-level rations were cut in half for me, the Jew, they shared their rations equally with me. They were socialists and lived by that ethic."

"Social definitions can turn privileged citizens into outcasts."

"Captured women were raped and stayed with their children. The invention of slavery as a means of recruiting a labour force taught men how to organize difference-tribal adherence, of race, of religion-into dominance."

On ageing:

"If we fail to make good choices in one stage there is always the next stage in which we can do better. but in old age there is only one next stage and that is death."

Ageing forces us to give up activities, skills, and enjoyments we have long practiced. We have to learn to give up more and more of what we have accomplished, what we have gathered in and what we cherish. Getting old means giving up something forever at every stage of the process...

We cannot make up for lost time. We must accept what is and prepare to let go of it..giving up what we have gathered in and what we cherish means simplifying our lives and letting go of clutter. It means choosing what is truly essential to our well-being and holding on to that...

We must develop whatever we still can develop and learn new ways of seeing, perceiving, and functioning. Learning to continue living with diminished means has its own rewards...we are still part of the great life cycle...one makes peace with one's life and one's way of living; and one learns to treasure the gifts of each day...

In old age people become what they have always been, only more so..There is no single solution-ageing is a dance on uneven ground, undertaken with weakened limbs..soothed by learning to fully experience the present. We have come this far and what there is now is all there ever will be.

Much more than at any stage of life, the old person has to be flexible.

Old people are society's best link with the past, and their knowledge and experience are desperately needed in a mechanized society that is more alienated from nature and natural processes...

In our competitive society people are trained to be self-made and independent. But they also have to learn how to help others and how to accept help without feeling demeaned and diminished.

Old age is the ripening of the fruit, the preparation for the harshness of winter, when the roots grow and strengthen..it is the closing of the circle; the fulfillment of the contract of generations. It needs to be treated with respect and honour."

a jumbled mind for a jumbled time

no, it wasn't the mind, or just the mind, but the rag-and-bone shop of the heart. you should have been reading Galor's Inequality and Land Ownership but instead you turned to what was on your desk and read randomly (or not so randomly)and from which you gathered the following...

Irfan asked you: how does one make time for reading? To which the answer was: you don't! The reason why I've failed so spectacularly as an academic-well, a bit of early-morning melodrama doesn't hurt anyone-is that, as I was saying to Antonio just the other day, I don't take it (or myself) very seriously.

Academics is a bit of a con, to be honest. A high-minded prank.

But if one reads out of pleasure and not to advance one's career, that's a recipe for disaster. Something will give. So, the essential problem is this mismatch that sees you working on your secondary, not primary, interests. Yes, obviously, but not just that.For even if that were not the case you're sure your mind would be distracted by other areas and that you'd still prefer to be a bit jumbled up, amateurish, and naive rather than a clear-headed specialist. There are many things in life.

~~~

I said to R, who was still half-asleep: what do babies dream of: dragons and clouds, I suspect!

What does anyone dream of, R answered, with a bright and serene look on her face.

No, I mean without the world how can there be dreams?

She said, some might argue that too much of 'the world' prevents them from coming to us.

Oh, R, you're impossible!

And yet here I am before you.

What I mean is this: you've had such little time in the world.

Is that why an hour with you seems endless?, she replied, giggling to herself.

Charming! You little monkey...

No, you misunderstand me, little Man, as usual! For what is true-whether it be in a dream or in reality, has little to do with time. A moment with the beloved is not something that can be counted.

You know, you're awfully clever for a little baby!

Well, reading isn't everything. And because I'm young, I'm open to the world.Now dear, go back to sleep and dream of your cinnamon rolls!

~~~

okay, next post for the quotes...

names

i sometimes catch myself. thinking to myself, my mind wandering as i walk across the path, the path i make by my own walking. never look back because you know there's nothing there. you'll never find it. instead, you look down, look down to the fragile earth. thankful. thankful of the life that has been given to you when others...

Levinas: a sobering up, wakefulness.

nothing has moved me as much as this. perhaps Rothko at the tate. yes, of course. and Tarkovsky. yes.Bach, too, at times. but no matter how much (how much?) your mind wanders it comes back. names and names..but the nameless. a letter, on the blank canvas. that is simple, -ko. but the blank page.

why crow? this is not political. why, crow? what names do you have? what names do you have now God, God of the crows?

er...

thoughtlessness

Such a cumbersome word. But still, in English at least, it hardly conveys any radical failure of character; it's more akin to being absent minded or careless. But what is this 'being absent' and is it actually possible that someone couldn't care for someone else whatsoever? I couldn't give a fig?

A thought came to me. And can it, must it, also be for someone. To put it the other way around, and less extremely: is thoughtlessness the inability to think of anyone but oneself?

"Morality is a matter of thinking clearly and then proceeding to outward dealings with men."*

Is it though? Is reason/thought about sifting through the evidence, being logically consistent, and then acting? Reason tells us what the ends are (or the means to those ends, whatever they are) and then the will moves us to act. Is that how it is? And if we take those ends as simply 'given', is that not a form of thoughtlessness?

The whole language of preference and choice seems suspect. Why? Because it appears that it's all a mere matter of pleasure or desire and we'd like to think that action, right action, is about sound judgement. In short, can pleasure be a reason?

Strange that this post should tally with the last, in particular the view about kindness and "clear thinking". What is meant by 'and' here?

My two cents.

Thinking is not the same as understanding (or, if you like, understanding is a particular and distinct way of thinking). Being clever or 'intelligent' is not necessarily the same thing as being educated or wise. God knows, you've seen many people who are formally very intelligent but still, in some respects, idiots. Also, that understanding is not always gained from books or thought, but from life and experience: music, art, love, friendships and many other things:

The quality of our attachments is the quality of our understanding

(Aristotle or Iris? It doesn't matter).

*=

"On this view one might say morality is assimilated to a visit to a shop. I enter the shop in a condition of totally responsible freedom., I objectively estimate the features of the goods, and I choose. The greater my objectivity and discrimination the larger the number of products from which I can select. (A Marxist critique of this conception of bourgeois capitalist morals would be apt enough. Should we want many goods in the shop or just 'the right goods')"

---Iris M.

Take care !

Gradually, the two [kindness and clear thinking]have come more and more together in my feelings. I find that much unclear thought exists as an excuse for cruelty, and that much cruelty is prompted by superstitious beliefs.

(Russell, in one of his somber moods, from his autobiography, via Nabs, my Old English carrier pigeon!)

"If we take pigeons as an example..."(Aristotle). Normal pigeons are not into constant work. They lounge in sun, bathe in rain. They don't travel far for a meal. They maintain close contacts.
--Thalia Field.

What is amazing and utterly astonishing about life is that people take care. Perhaps not of themselves, as much as they should, but of others, for others.

I know the boffs want to explain this by evolution but why go down that road (or any road!). Ethics as the limit of reason? No, that's not it either.

~~~

in the early morning, dew and stars still marking their presence, on course, of course. you catch a glimpse of the tired, weak sun's reflection and think to yourself: the sun itself is a distant reflection. before the light was everywhere; now it finds solace in the frames of the library's dark high windows. place has become important once again. light finds its true Form. but direction without strength is a terrible fate.

what shape will the day take? no-one can tell-even if they could. the light in this season is spent, hangs around buildings, trying to rekindle ancient affinity with brick and stone. waiting, as if that was its essence. solitary, thoughtful, as if it knew these were difficult times, its winter mind cleansed and cleansing, aware of departures. no second thoughts.

~~~

take care: a way of saying farewell. before one signs one's name or jots down some abbreviation, an initial, perhaps. the simplicity of a letter-like 'K', even though crooked. and 'R,' which folds itself around itself, which is like a thought in water, is but a derivative or relative of 'K'?

the drowned, reflected world

They are a long inspection of a drowned, reflected world, in which no sky is visible except by reflection; the water fills the whole frame. ..In these paintings, emptiness matters as much as fullness, and reflections have the weight of things. ..to conjure up the negated object, with the help of allusive and always indirect words, which constantly efface themselves in a complementary silence, which involves an undertaking which comes close to the act of creation.

What showed on its surface, the clouds and lily pads and cat's-paws of wind, the dark patches of reflected foliage.the abysses of dark blue and the opaline shimmer of light from the sky, were all compressed together in a shallow space, a skin, like the space of painting . The willows touched it like brushes . No foreground, no background; instead, a web of connections


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!

---August 11th, 2008.

(K. Clark on Monet, and R. Lowell)


.[b]efore the metal shaving mirrors
and see the shaky future grow familiar
We are all old-timers
each of us holds a locked razor...
---Lowell

Cage [ I ].
I, that I b.

~~~

Restless night. At 1 (and then again at 3) woken up by some incredibly loud music. A mix between bhangra and Prince, I thought to myself, half awake. Also, incredibly good, though infuriating. Knew I would never hear that tune again, or know what it was. Let it go.

Still in the twilight zone, wondered what Montaigne would have done. No, no use, letting it wash over as if I wasn't concerned, or thinking that it would eventually come to an end, didn't work.

H woke up at 4 and then R at 5. Early morning lecture so I had to wake up at 6 anyway. 45 minutes to find some kind of peace, some sort of space that would carry me through the day...then, out of the blue, I was suddenly at City airport, getting ready for one of those trips within a trip (like a dream within a dream). I'd forgotten my book, but wasn't overly concerned for some odd reason. And then, amongst the ruins, down a steep incline, there was this beautiful singing tree, deeply familiar, autumn leaves shimmering in the late afternoon light, the light in August caught, concentrated, reflected, drowned.