the immortalization commission

on a day like this

On a day like this you can't remember the words in your dream, just the faint rhythm of a line that escapes you. The first day of spring, the light warm and soft, crouching like a child hiding in the fields, breaking free on the horizon.

Sin and prayer:

Not for you. Never really appealed to you. If there is any guilt then it is when you're happy. Puritan upbringing, I'm afraid. Or was it just there from the beginning, in the bones? Prayer? For 'salvation'? Wasn't Lawrence right: better to live and love? In any case, the only prayer is surely for other people. Even then, you think working to help other people is better. What is the use of talking about a 'good state of mind' or spirituality?

~~~

On a day like this you think of the light and how it reminds you of other times. Late summer days in the seventies, perhaps. In a southern mood, with your sun-and-wheat-consciousness, you think how the same light falls on people in distant places today, bringing them happiness. And perhaps also a long time ago, in a tavern, surrounded by trees and their leafy shade, when a man looked up and wondered to himself: how many days have passed?

Remember me when I'm gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no longer hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turning to go, yet turning stay...

Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

cube, square

(Above: one of the rejected submissions for Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square).

This was supposed to rival Mecca and Jerusalem. A space that represented the fourth dimension, that was 'beyond' time. The attempt to build heaven on earth resulted in the all-too predictable creation of gulags and varieties of hell. The quest to build the 'New Man' invariably results in cleansing society of the impure and the unbelievers.

Anarchic peoples, like desert nomads, hate and destroy images, and a similar image-breaking streak runs through Russian history…

Malevich was touched by mystical yearnings. In his hands the non-objective canvas became an icon of anarchy and inner freedom: this is what made it dangerous to Marxist materialism. Of his painting Black Square he said he had felt 'black nights within' and a timidity bordering on fear', but as he decided to break with reality and abandon the image: 'a blissful sensation of being drawn into a "desert" where nothing is real but feeling, and feeling became the substance of my life.'

Now this is not the language of a good Marxist, but of Meister Eckhart – or, for that matter, of Mohammed. Malevich's Black Square, his 'absolute symbol of modernity', is the equivalent in painting of the black-draped Ka'aba at Mecca, the shrine in the valley of sterile soil where all men are equal before God. And if this seems far-fetched, I quote the judgement of Andrei Burov, an architect who left the Constructivist Movement: 'There was a strong Muslim influence and orthodox Mohammedanism at that; by way of decoration only clocks and letters were allowed.'

excerpt from "George Costakis: The Story of an Art Collector in the Soviet Union," in What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin

A week-long fantasy

For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

Why do you look for co-incidences? In John Gray's fascinating book (of which more later) there's this line-by H.G. Wells, I think- which goes something like: we cannot know future patterns.

And yet we surround ourselves with frames, have an eye for geometry that matches the keen vision of the nomad, are tied down by an obsession for precision: how was it, exactly? And repetition, as the memory of you fades: how was it again?

In a discussion with T about one of your favourite paintings-and a brief mention of his other one: Icarus. Desire goes unnoticed. How the world carries on; how the seas rage on without us knowing or caring.

Within these phantasmal boundaries each lord's hall is a place of refuge. Within: warmth and light; human solidarity and culture;rank and ceremony. A solidification of time.

Outside: unredeemed time.

~~~

At the medieval-like market you bought beetroot, delicious with its oak, earthy, woody covering. You cut and washed the lot, each piece gleaming like a new-born baby or a piece of glistening coal brought out from the depths. Also bought some 'black carrots'. Must take a photo of them and the market next time, next week...the market, full of tractors, donkeys, straw, mud, and shit, as if time had passed it by. Also bought a large earthenware jar in which to keep the drink. Very Roman. A few indecipherable hieroglyphs, like black crows circling around a cool well.

The black carrots, peeled and diced (by the end I began to feel a bit sorry for them..is there something as a vegetable soul?) But for the most part it was great fun preparing this fermented drink (mustard seeds, red chillies, and black salt as well). Handling them left ink-marks on my fingers . Not indelible-very little is-but still under my fingernails as I write this. Hands that would know...

Takes a week to mature. Until then, just dream on. The outer skin of the carrots piled up, like the bark of a black tree, or charcoal; the fleshy carrots put to one side, slowly secreted a light blue liquid that gradually became gray-blue, then purple. And I couldn't but help think of Bonington, and his wonderful water colours at the Wallace Collection. Twenty six! Jesus!
~~~

And then the art of (un)dressing.

Let's not go there.

But how things come together, and then fall away in their own separate way. Of this I cannot write.

originality

interview with G. Dyer to follow...

"And be not conformed to the world"

What is originality, then? At the very least an attitude, perhaps; at the best, a way of living. Of course, if you're hooked on to the 'first' then a cover or a re-make, because it always invites comparisons, will seem tainted, lacking in something: precisely: it wasn't the first, the thing that pulled you in the beginning-and there's nothing like that first movement away from yourself.

But if the artist creates, or if you make something your own, see it with your own eyes, see or make something that is fresh, vital, unique, then it's possible to imagine more than one form of beauty.

In religion as well: should we say the Truth is one.
Yes! But 'one' is not a number!

Every person is born as a unique individual, adds a different perspective to the world, is a new bridge. A child looks on the world in simple amazement. The original wonder. Parents and an education will soon see to that though, beat or coax it out of you. And if you survive that, society or religion or work will get you.

Originality. Not just 'la' but fidelity. Fidelity to what or who, though? A text, a score, is only a series of black marks on white paper. Of course, that suits you: a fragment of a quote here, a single song there; not the sustained engagement that produces any real depth. But still, these are the times you live in. The classical world is over, and so is Tradition. If that is the choice-and you think it is-then better to find one's own way of being superficial...

Learning to let go; knowing what to keep. If through all the changes, falls, deviations, swerves, doubts, you can still hear the same bright voice, always the same, never the same.

inventory

things to do. and find. it accumulates, despite your puritan tendencies. you can't stop it. an old glass jar on the bookshelf, the label worn out: a number and some indecipherable words.probably from a hospital. books and cd's strewn over the desk (Savall's Celtic tunes, still unlistened to, Geoff Dyer and Celan, a book on fairness, Coltrane and Piazzolla, Gunter Eich, The Immortalization Commission). a camera (unused), kept in a 'Servis' shoe box. the desk drawers full of old photographs, from different times and places, mostly half-forgotten.

who gave what, when. would be another.


on the (fake) wooden floor: a camera stand back from the seventies, its legs askew like a giraffe, a rusting eiffel tower, a black and gold statue of some minor egyptian god, the black mainly just layers of dirt, you suppose, but the silence is genuine. a tattered suitcase, grinning through the silver zip. been there, done that, my friend.

make things up as you go along, to pass the time, to avoid the glaring gaps, what's missing. make a note of things. which is itself not a thing. even the thing is not it.

suede brown trousers thrown on the chair (its springs have nearly given), along with torn socks, corduroy coat (brown with the cliched elbow patches), crumpled shirts (yes, a choice selection!), a tie from the wreckage of the past. above the chair, on the wall, a cloth wall hanging, made up, like everything else, of a patchwork of slightly faded or discarded pieces. never really liked it, and doesn't really belong. next to the window, a wind chime. opposite the chair/cupboard its twin, clean and cushioned. a place to observe the chaos from all angles (but don't look inwards). above your head, three old E.S.Curtis photos, yellow and brown (Apache, and all that). Also, it now transpires, made up, fake, the unreal gestures made to please, to remember.

there will be a record of all we've said and done, somewhere. the small kindnesses, but the cruelty too. God's cross falling on who knows what. what did you know?

A Certain Light

In a certain light we are not who we are. All that was false falls away. In that second space we see behind appearance, the time that generates time, the gaze before the gaze. Beyond the stones there is another reality, other orders of being. Sometimes, as in a dream, we are made aware of them co-existing with our own familiar way of seeing the world and we catch a glimpse of these other realms; we discern our name, reclaim the acts that are ours, and think to ourselves: this is home, our true reality, all else is shadow.

-

-

Anything can happen.

Those overlooked regarded.

Ground gives.

The Heaven's weight

Lifts up off Atlas.

Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.

---Seamus Heaney

-

-

Maybe this other reality is locked into stone, inheres deep in the rock, like a black bird, captive but taking flight; maybe it is our gaze that has turned the world to stone, brought about its silence, when everything is flowing? The bird dreams of a star, catches its own reflection and now waits, age upon age, to be released...

-

-

'Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw

Mistings of civilisation...

Stone likewise. A pebble is imprisoned

Like nothing in the Universe.

Created for black sleep. Or growing

Conscious of the sun's red spot occasionally,

Then dreaming it is the foetus of God.'

---Ted Hughes.

Where are you now? Where are any of us these days? These days, when a whole afternoon can slip by, as light and insignificant as a cloud; the hours fall on your lap...books, and words, and notes are rearranged, clothes folded and put away-as if any of that makes a difference. An empty, clear glass on your table, perfectly empty, and a silver spoon next to it, pointing to it in adoration, gleaming with an unknown purity, truth. Things are in order here, but what of it. Where am I?

~~~

Darling R wants to see the world from every possible angle and sleeps, in her own distinctive way, at a tangent to others. "One must create one's own space in the world," she says, pretending to frown. "Or at least find it"

I think you're going to be a great actress, I comment, trying to tease the little one.

"What? Better than you?!"

R, you cheeky monkey, don't get me started...

~~

The hours fall, and fall. Her eyes fill up with mischief. She folds her arms on the dark failings, and laughs, then opens and closes her hand, as if it was a flash. She can say the word "hippo". Perhaps that's all there is to it, even though 'the word is too frivolous in the English language' (Gunter Eich)

at moments like this

At moments like this you remember what is possible, the meaning of the word hope. Through "the arc of history" you will see that it was America that supported Pharaoh (just as they supported General Z and General Musharraf).

But nah, though it's enjoyable watching Israel and the Saudi degenerates squirm. it's time to move on, and move on up. As Otis would say, take your shoes off, get comfortable, y'know..

the red and the black

the search for Truth is not easy, especially if one is not searching, or know what the Truth is.

early morning light seeps in. grey and cold objects still finding their Form, their outlines first. A crow falls, falls, swoops down from a height like a thick blanket. why outside my home, and no other? craas blindly against the emptiness of the universe, as if hearing his own voice, awakened to his own ugliness, he could discover his unique soul.

but crow spoke. and you thought of him, was in your mind somewhere; then, by hand and red ink made his way to a blank page of your notebook. no, not blank. scrawled in black are the words: just as it is, unmisted by love. from there-after a suitable elapse of time for breakfast-he, somehow, miraculously, jumps to your computer screen and this blog...reassembled, digitally. and now, i suppose, you read of him too and, despite yourself, think of him (or me), imagine how that ugly craa sounded.

for a second he's lodged in your mind. an image forms, grey at first but bryter, clearer later. this dead crow who's made such a fantastical journey already. not all crows, crows did not fall like the snow, generally, just this particular early-morning one, the one that fell from the sky.

and then you clear your throat, your tongue loosens, moistens, and your lips move unconsciously. you whisper his name to yourself, ever-so-gently, like breath on a dark mirror.

if only the reverse were true! then I, standing upright, would write of you truly, speak to crow, find my Form, so that in a flash you would fall by my side and i would hear the beautiful craaing of your voice unfurling against the emptiness of the universe.

the quality of light

You don't need to know very much to know everything (as long as you're actually there)

---Alexander Linklater.

But what if you're not? The news from a distant star pales in comparison. We're not just talking about latest books, exhibitions, the third-hand,derivative, morsels of film and book reviews, or the reassuring voice on R4 telling you nothing in a way that you've grown accustomed to.

What of the lives that go on and on without you? And what if you've become unrecognisable to your own self, part of you 'going on', part of you coming to an end? 'I wasn't quite myself'. To lack soul is a terrible affliction; to have a heart and not be able to express oneself, or adequately reflect on what's really important...

The winter light filters through the white streaks in the sea of grey. At first timidly and then gradually strengthening until it expands, filling out the sky, opening her up, as it does. The clouds lift, the ancient pulse of things; then this new light streams into the ward, illuminating the tissue box next to the window, taking away the heaviness from other objects...down the blue drapes, forming squares down its spine. The "Gherkin" shines on one side, the light like a fire jumping from one shard of glass to another; it comes to rest on the face of a patient, his face all bruised, Christ-like in his forbearance...this light, everywhere, from some distant source, unifies, individuates, redeems (for a while). This late, last flare of a dying sun..light that reaches us even when it's just a memory, not really there, ghost-like in it's frailty.

The quality of light is like our understanding.

Walk past a bust of W. Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, his stern face and very imposing beard noteworthy. Trinity Green (1695) , across Regent's Canal, and the Guardian Angels' Church (1905). The cold on your back makes you slouch, and the flesh on your hands seems slightly withered. Some lovely old brick buildings in this run-down part of town. How the light gathers on the high windows, reflecting sky and trees, pink clouds and dreary faces. The wide pavements, the endless line of traffic lights, glowing without religion in the late afternoon; the shops mostly selling fried chicken. An old man with a Texan hat and round-rimmed spectacles walks, amazingly, down the road in the fast lane handing out leaflets. On his back he's got a sign which reads: 'Come to Ye Lord' . On the other side: 'Jesus Saves'.

Nearby is 'Oxford College of Sufism' and past that still there's 'The Centre for Advanced Studies'-in what, God knows-just above a betting shop. At the cafe they're selling hot cross buns except the brothers call them hot croissants (to avoid any reference to a cross, perhaps). Outside the station a black woman wails at the top of her booming African voice: "If you do not believe in our Lord Christ you will burrn in 'ell for all of your lives."

So much for love and peace!

all happiness is a kind of innocence

all happiness is is a kind of innocence.

Geoff Dyer writes with a light touch and returning to Anglo-English again reminds you just why you like him so much (his fantastic essay on Idris Khan is featured here, but I have yet to post notes to the Somme book). Music: Nils Molaever, Nusrat, Trane. Do I need to say much more?

Away from that pretentious European dribble and post-modern waffle. Hurrah!

England doesn't have any public spaces, just public houses [C, who said that? Starter for ten]. England doesn't have any intellectuals, either. Or of it does, then they're a very odd breed indeed. England has no eternal friends, only eternal interests. Yeah, it's a bit crap, isn't it!?

~~~

Here I am, surrounded by books. The shelves heave under the weight and sag in the centre (poor craftsmanship by Ubo!). No more in any order. Or, rather, the order is gradually being forgotten so that half a row of books are still conceivably in some sort of category, but are rapidly followed by all sorts of titles arranged haphazardly.

A glimpse, dear readers:

On Flirtation, The World of Knots, Waiting for Godot, The Ascent of Man, Shalimar the Clown, Richard Pryor, Der Gulag, Artistic Theory in Italy, Tulip in the Desert, King of the Castle (2), Alone with the Alone, The Constant Gardener, A History of Islamic Philosophy, The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, and The Ruin of Kasch.

There's an infinite pleasure in thinking of some hidden affinity between these books; in picking one up, checking the typeset, and putting it back on the shelf; even more pleasure (is that mathematically possible, nabs?) in just letting them sit there, knowing they'll never be read, maturing like a good wine. The utter superficiality of possession is intoxicating (we're still talking books here, just in case...). The sheer randomness thrown into order like the infinite city herself. This room, these books, this city...

~~~

Anglo-English.

The strange thing is that you were reading Whitsun and then, later, picked this up and in one of those freakish coincidence quickly realised that Dyer was also talking about Larkin's great poem in the essay. Spooky!

Quick and ancient eyes.

...

Black Swan

It had to be you,
make me feel blue,
or even quite sad.
It had to be you,
make me be true,
and it had to be me.

There's no time for us

there's no place for us

What's this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away

From us.

---Queen

Why did things have to turn out this way? If I had chosen left and not right would things have been so very different, would I have been someone else? The mind baulks at the thought that we had to live in this time and this space and no other, that something in our soul corresponds to the age we find ourselves in. Who, but a saint, can say what's done is done and accept that some knots of our being cannot be undone? Who but an Ubermensch can look at the pattern of his life and say: this is me...look at his friends and loved ones and say: this is my reality..look at his work, his house and think, this is the life I have scrawled in history, this is my name, 'I' and my destiny are one?

And yet, even as we reject necessity, we turn in horror at the thought that everything is mere chance, contingency: the mind intuits unity and has an inexhaustible passion for explanations and proofs, for constructing a web around the most gaping hole. Does randomness, eventually, lead to nihilism?

Some thoughts on Adam Phillips' Darwin's Worms:

Don't you think there's too much suffering in the world?
No, I think there's just the right amount.

The modern world starts with the rehabilitation of Nature. The secular passions of pain and pleasure are the only forms of redemption, the only things we can be sure of, and power is organized to harness the productivity of life: bio-power. It is, as Hannah Arendt would say, the unnatural growth of the natural, the revolt against necessity.

But if there is only Nature then it is meaningless to talk about nature being 'sublime' or 'capricious': she is what she is and these are only words we use to humanize her, they do nothing to change the phenomena itself. A rose is a rose is a rose. But, in that case, how do we actually 'think' that in the first place? To say that all is existence (or Nature) and that we can know it to be so seems contradictory unless one assumes that nature just throws up a self-reflecting being by chance. And if we, too, are a part of Nature isn't the possibility of these words a natural fact as well?

A.P. gets into a terrible flap: we are bound by mortality, transience and not transcendence [one would like to know how the mortal self can know this]. Our minds, like our bodies, are natural products and we are, essentially, un-intelligible to ourselves since the world and the self are not a product of intelligence or a part of the order of being,a hierarchy, but one of a piece in the continuum. [And yet, how can the 'piece' know that it is a piece unless it can transcend that perspective? Why does the 'piece' write a book..how can it do so?]

We long for certainty and knowledge when there's a fundamental uncertainty in the universe. There is no telos, we have entered the unredeemed stage of history. Life is life...

But why this longing? Why this desire for knowledge, for wholeness? Is this , too, a natural inclination or is it imposed from without: by society, religion, myth? But if all is Nature then there is no 'outside'! Even if one puts to one side transcendental arguments, from within Nature itself there is a desire to transcend her (Hans Jonas). As Pascal would say: if we are just reeds we differ from Nature in that we know we are so..Man is a thinking reed.

Life is not something that can be pictured (as in a biography) , only something that can be described and redescribed. We live in an age that wants to de-mythologise all pictures.

Chance disrupts the patterns, the inner constitution, the 'givens'.

How we escape from our life is our life.

The art of transience: to know that loss is a permanent feature of life ..to know time in its negative aspect and not something that leads to its fulfilment, its redemption. Well, yes, but to know that doesn't one have to be beyond time? Who is this 'I' that speaks about life ?

'With the modern age we're committed to instability'

A terrifying sentence. Again, as Bloch saw, to be committed to openness is , itself, a kind of binding.

'The will to permanence, to monumentalize the present, to stop time and resist change, is a form of idolatry.'
Had this been a Jewish prophet or a Muslim sage speaking one might give it some consideration. But it is, more likely than not, nothing but the legacy of the Romantics or a contempt for bourgeois solidity. How convenient for late capitalism one hastens to add! And what, should one say that the testimony of mankind throughout the ages, his desire for the Garden, for Arcadia, for peace, counts for nothing?!

Life is full of loss. Sure, but to recognize that isn't one already speaking from somewhere that is not lost? Nature knows nothing of loss or gain, of passing away and emergence, of fading, soaring. All is a seamless moment, it is we who construct the seasons and give her beautiful names. The only immortality Nature knows is process...

stray reflections

you write of my heart, word by word, like the january sun's sunken light. you write, to my heart, space after space, slotting in blankly without metaphor or hesitation. the deep reflected world of the life that wasn't, or that was, but lived anonymously, without knowing.

as if, of your heart. as if a believer, even though you are an infidel, unfaithful. each word key-solid, full of secrets, waiting to find you empty. the sun flares, late in the day, catching the rare essence of many things, unaware. but lateness isn't a beginning. your hands darken with time, as if guilty.

~~~

Happiness is a moment of grace. Hap: Haphazard, by chance. Robot, one of the few Czech words in the language.

~~~

on the district line today you read: '80 % of women said they trust men who txt much more than men who don't'. a woman sits opposite you with unkempt hair and light blue eyeshadow..very 70's. you thought she was egyptian. (yes, this is what this blog has come down to!). on the central line you always see much more solid figures: the boring middle classes, pig-fat, mildly content with all in the world thanks to Tesco's, Question Time, and Joan Bakewell. on the way back, a man with tightly cropped grey hair, dark slits for eyes (in fact, his eyebrows were so profusely bushy that all one could see were two deep shadows), and masses of flabby, blotched skin surrounding those eyes and tight lips.

~~~

Fascinating 'Start the Week' (for once). Must look out for John Gray's new book, Immortality. Picked up Exit Ghost for a pound at a charity shop. C bought me a book ('gifted' is what they say nowadays) and the Dougal has promised me Schama's Rembrandt's Eyes. Menashe's Collected Poems still to be found.

~~~

Ted Hughes: October Salmon:

All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,

The epic poise,

That holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his

doom, so patient

In the machinery of heaven

the philosophy of gardens

Abandon hopes to re-read Havelock's Preface to Plato since it would have to be read in conjunction with Iris Murdoch's brilliant Fire and the Sun. Then, you think to yourself, that would only be worth it if you'd read The Republic but you haven't, and you shan't, so you won't. Twice removed. And what good would it serve? You are an economist, aren't you?

~~~

At the hospital, Raymond says to Peter: Well, at our age I think we're blessed. But I can't go one step further and say 'thank God'.

On the way down the silver lift doors reluctantly close, shaking and trembling as if in an epileptic fit; only the electronic voice is constant, calm.

~~~

At the money-exchangers: do you accept Pk. Rs?

"No"

Then a long pause, a shifty look...

"Where are you from by the way?" (he says in Urdu)

I explain, not really wanting to get into this. He says he thought I was Italian or something.

"Your good name?"..."You're Kashmiri! "

It turns out that he is as well and wants me to come back on Saturday for lunch. He opens the door and walks out of the small cage he's in, hugs me and tells me that the home country is finished.

Yes, all very good. But do you have any bloody pounds for this mickey-mouse currency, I ask myself.

~~~

Walk down into the gardens, just past the small desi coffee shop (sells the worst coffee in the whole of London!Trust me). A small oasis of calm in the storm of the day. A place for sheltering oneself, disappearing. A small ribbon on a grey sackcloth, a dream within reality. You amble down to a small lily pond, surrounded by ferns (it came after this painting was made). And there it is, cool and still, dark, reflective, silent...a dream within a dream, since time out of mind.

~~~

Civilisation: books or gardens (or a book about gardens) ?

Not gardening, which is a philosophy in its own right; not philosophy as an idea either, but as away of living. Gardens as a cultivation of what's most human from what nature gives. A book on gardens, therefore, is twice removed. But that doesn't make it any less valuable...far from it. The dream within the dream is sometimes what's most real. Like an ancient park that is flattened, remodelled, renamed, so that nothing remains, except as an image in a book on a shelf near the high windows of a library.

Turn it inside out. The small pond...reminds you of Solaris. This small corner of London, unseen, stumbled upon. Proud statues of forgotten people.

Gardens as a place for individuals to breathe. Not the horrors of a family picnic. Jesus! That's too American by far. No, a place to lose oneself.

Preface to Plato

((Must finish Havelock))

"Watching it now the programme is clearly of its time."

The Guardian, 20/01/11.

A statement which is, no doubt, also of its time!

This need to place everything in a particular category, to nullify the possibility of the timeless, when did it start?

"Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable."

I remember a friend reading this and saying: "But it's so unfair, it doesn't discuss Islamic civilisation." Well, it was a personal view of western civilisation after all. Not a very interesting point, though: all roads, obviously, do not lead back to Rome and the decline in confidence in the very notion of civilisation (and western civilisation in particular) can lead to, perversely, a kind of parochialism at best; a horrifying narrowness of vision and the setting up of ineradicable distinctions at worst: us and them, purity and danger follow closely.

Isn't one of the defining qualities of civilisation openness to other currents of thought, artistic creativity, stray influences with varying degrees of self-awareness of these connections? You'd like to think so. But might not the opposite hold true? Hasn't 'civilisation' gone hand in hand with significant practices of exclusion? Isn't it about genius-which means a relation to a specific place (if not time)?

Another uninteresting question: Is western civilisation drawing to an end?

1. All this talk of an imminent end is nothing new; in fact, it might be said that the Renaissance begins with an acute awareness of death (J. Kristeva and Holbein; Hans Jonas; Pocock and the contingency of civilisation (Machiavelli)).

1. b. All those who claim it is the end are bound to be right eventually!

2. It's somewhat ironic that those who are partial to such a view are often western-educated and make their arguments using western technology and languages!

3. Even if it is the end you can't see it being replaced by any other type (Chinese, Indian or Islamic, say). What will be distinctive about India and China-even if we assume that they become the next great powers (and it's not clear that they will)? Economically, politically, and culturally, they might produce a variation of the western model but not much else (democracy, capitalism, individualism, for starters). And if anything comes out of the so-called muslim world it is more likely to be barbarism and fanaticism than civilisation.

the dark intervals

The places where we would never meet; the time between us, the time we never had together. The cliches we utter a measure of distances, the estrangement of our souls. The clocks we can't turn back. The dark wood that reflects our dark faces back to us.

A man lies in bed, pink and purple-brownish blotches on his face. He needs to phone his sister, is desperate to tell her of his illness, his fall..perhaps to seek some sort of final reconciliation or just to tell her what it's all come down to: alone amongst West Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. His posh accent and the vague smell of cats. An aunt, one of the few women to fly a Spitfire! What counts? Ultimately, I mean? Only a fanatic asks such questions. Keep the masks on, old b.

He looks at me, and says : "I envy you..nature is working in one when one is young and produces a great harmony, and balance" (I later find out that he's also worked with an orchestra). Of course, all that could be false, the bit about Rolls Royce, about being a pilot, but that doesn't matter somehow: the desire to weave together a story, to kill time...ah, yes, I know you well, my friend.

In everyone there sleeps

A sense of life lived according to love

to some it means the difference they could make

By loving others, but across most it sweeps

As all they might have done had they been loved.

That nothing cures.

---Larkin.

the deleted world

Man is air in the air and in order to become a point in the air he has to fall.

---Antonio Porchia.

It was evening. It was evening, wasn't it?

It was evening. When I first heard from you. Taken aback. Back. To the time when my words were dark. And in the darkness your face resembled mine. Staring through your mind, staring and staring, like a black sun. What was it? The random space that butterflies inhabit? This thought before the tongue moved? The world before metaphor, the silent, deleted world that was neither a beginning or an end. A moment is all it was, O my fire-born, time-thrown love.

It was evening, and the sea and sky were one.

sea and sky were one blue flag, with no design

but for the darker bluer line

but no matter what we do

you can't be me.

Waiting. Departures and Arrivals. The same old story. Nothing new there in any way. Anyway, my heart's all out of time.

An early morning walk in the dark light. Some keep the headlights on for safety, reassurance. A thin layer of frost sprinkled on the ground, like icing sugar. Tufts of grass frozen like stars, still deep in their night-thoughts. Leaves in the high tree rustling in the cold northernly. Past a vacant football field, hemmed in on three sides by a low fence and the council houses on the other. The goalposts abandoned, uneven, without any nets.

At night the dark rain falls. But no-one notices or remembers.

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.