snakes lane east

Once, just past Saint Barnabas's Church, on a bright day, an old man walking in front of me stopped in his tracks as a hearse passed us by on Snakes Lane East. I still remember his gesture to this day: a simple and elegant doffing of his hat (or was it a cap?). But the essential gesture...

Now, what motivated this person to do such a thing? This already sounds like an odd way to put it and smacks of bad faith or as if one was trying to explain something to someone who was from a  foreign land and who didn't understand the norms of the society he or she was in.. What reason did this person have to act in that way, in what we all recognize as a moral way? You're inclined to say out of some sense of duty but then you might think that such considerations appear to be 'mechanical', as if imposed from the outside, as it were (aside: criticisms of Judaism or Islam as being too ritualistic, too bound by the law, also seem to stem from the view that there's a radical disjunction between the "inner" self and the body, the act, the world).

If not that, then might we temper our view a bit and say: as a mark of respect? But how, it might be asked, can there be respect for someone who isn't really a 'person' any more and not someone you may even know? An impartial notion of respect does sound a bit weak.

We can dismiss at once the notion that he did this because it made him feel better or happier. Can pleasure ever be a reason? Yes, of course! But it seems mighty odd to conclude from that that it is always the only reason or that it always trumps other reasons? In fact, pursuing this line of thought, there's something not quite right about thinking that the reason the old man doffed his cap outweighed other considerations, other reasons to act (for example, he may have been in a hurry to buy some food for his granddaughter). Doesn't the reason we're after rule out the possibility of weighing up reasons? Is it not the case that that the man did not even think that the other things were reasons at all! Which is not to say that he was just forgetful or thoughtless, or lazy in his reasoning. But by excluding other reasons to act from consideration, things that wouldn't even have crossed his mind, was he merely acting out of instinct? Are we wrong to attribute reason to his actions in the first place or is that being unreasonable?

Was the old man really just repeating an action he'd seen his father, grandfather doing, all those years ago, when it was more likely that the dead body would be pulled by a horse rather than a car? How important is memory here? To learn something off by heart. Was he, by doing this act, placing himself in the web of connections that have defined him, his community, his traditions? Why should we think of this as an individual act independent of the world he lives in, distinct from the relations to other people, dead, alive and unborn? What, after all, is the normative force to his action? Why do we approve of his action if we're not at the same time convinced that this is how he (and we) ought to act? What is the pull of morality and why does it come across as a requirement, a demand, as a lack of choice?

you cannot be serious

'Barth, in Dogmatics in Outline, is not simply mounting a conventional attack of agape against eros, faith against culture: he is rather saying that the self before God is not serious, it is groundless. It is not something that exists in its own density and solidity: the self before God is poised on the divine word...

5 September 1966

What I see is this: that while I imagined I was functioning fairly successfully, I was living a sort of patched up, crazy existence, a series of rather hopeless improvisations, a life of unreality in many ways. Always underlain by a certain solid silence and presence, a faith, a clinging to the invisible God – and this clinging (perhaps rather His holding on to me) has been in the end the only thing that made sense. The rest has been absurdity. There is 'I' – this patchwork, this bundle of questions and doubts and obsessions, this gravitation to silence and to the woods and to love. This incoherence! There is no longer anything to pride my self in, least of all 'being a monk' or being anything – a writer or anything...

The great joke is this: having a self that is to be taken seriously, that is to be proved, free, right, logical, consistent, beautiful, successful and in a word 'not absurd'.

---Rowan Williams on Thomas Merton/ Barth.

~~~

There is something absurd about those who want to "prove" or "disprove" religion by arguments, logic, science or anything else; something slightly preposterous about the desire, or is it need?, to think that you, and only you, have hit on the truth, been delivered, found a clear view, made sense of it all.

notes

There's a false note to Dennis Johnson's Train Dreams that makes me deeply sad, profoundly regretful that I actually spent money on this book when i could have given it to charity (these are the types of consideration I often mull over in these bleak days away from home). The first bit is okay: terse, condensed, worked over like a flat piece of metal, but then it loses the plot because it tries to breeze through time. How can a novella or short story do that without appearing untrue? So, his romance with Gladys is, given their courtship and her death is covered in a few pages, almost comical and replete with cliches, like a series of notes or points that have to be made, before they can be crossed off. Shoddy.

~~~

Yesterday, at a wedding out in the back of beyond. Got lost, as usual. Strange how when the sky is really dark a place that is  utterly familiar almost becomes another city. The quality of light is the quality of our understanding. I wonder if this disorientation isn't but a sign of something else, some deeper malaise in my life? At the wedding, which we made just as they were signing the documents, there was-and yeah, this is going to surprise the secular/atheist fundamentalists who have stumbled across this blog-a lovely recitation of some Qur'anic verses by the mullah. As always, no-one has much of an idea of what is being said, but there's something satisfying about hearing solemn words repeated in a slow, ancient way, a kind of remembering and binding to previous generations. Set words, and probably the same intonation, over all these years. Couldn't help but be moved by it all as I thought how many couples over the years had sat listening to the same words, their hearts full of the same hopes..and no-one knows how anything is going to turn out, what fate will bring them. Not the smiling uncles, the proud fathers, the aunties showing off their jewelry, the bored photographers, the younger girls who wonder when their turn will come...not a single one of them.

And since most of the family is broken by fighting and pettiness, I find myself the sole male representative of this side of the family. Haven't got a clue what to say and I've forgotten the envelope for the money. Where's Ubo when you need him! 

~~~

Earlier in the day, not thinking ahead of the wedding and the great food that would be available I stuffed myself with two almond croissants-which I ate in the dark of the two-storied car park, munched down along with some piping hot milky tea. Peaceful, absent minded bliss among the vacant spaces and muffled sounds. Pure grey insulation. Was going to buy some cinnamon rolls, but for some odd reason resisted. Old age, I guess. Wiser and older?

books, etc.

When it comes to reviews of books there are only two people I trust: anton and Nick Lezard. Don't think I've actually read anything that the latter has recommended but he always writes with such gentleness and with a small-scale, unpretentious love of books that you feel that he just has to be right. So, maybe I should try and get a copy of 'The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls'.

What is it about the short story that appeals to you? The precision, the puritanical idea that no word is superfluous, no image is allowed to grow (he says, putting on his Jewish hat)? The loose bagginess of the novel, in which one can lose oneself, can find some comfort as words wash over you.

The Dougal, of course. Still half in love with Capote's Cold Blood. Not so sure of her reading of Light Years, though Salter's other work does seem horridly false, contrived. Denis Johnson's Train Dreams isn't living up to Jesus's Son. So far, that is. Not sure why I was expecting some visionary prose.

Books to read, on my shelf:

M.D. Foot: Debts of Honour
R. Hass: Collected Poems
J. Burnside: Black Cat & Selected Poems
P. Linebraugh: Magna Carta
A. Carson: Nox.
L. Moore: Collected Short Stories (dougal's choice).
Transtromer: Poems
Hutton's book on Keynes
K. Jamie: Sightlines (N. Lezard's choice)
Infinity: the story of a moment (anton's choice)

~~~

There's something funny about religious people making fun of religion; not so funny when it's by non-religious people with their own axe to grind. If there are religious people out there to convince you that there's beauty, meaning, sense in the chaotic world, then there are non-religious people out there to convince you that all we are is raw flesh, and then, eventually, dust. What both share, and what I dislike in both, is this desire to convince or bring you over to 'their side'.

~~~

Scuton's Green Philosophy is a huge disappointment. Why is it so hard to find a right-winger who writes beautifully? There's one chapter on 'home', settlement, that has some nice thoughts, but apart from that he's a one trick pony, harping on about 'big' government.

Eagerly awaiting John Broome's book on the climate. At least he's a proper philosopher, a very clear thinker, even if one doesn't always agree with his views.

~~~

Some dickhead recommended two novels written by desis. I don't think I can read any of that artificial shit. And one on 'Islamic civilisation'. I think I want to throw up.

winter breath

These first steps, footmarks, were they mine or yours?

In my coat I sit

At the window sill

Wintering with snow

That did not melt

It fell long ago

At night, by stealth

I was where I am

When the snow began.

---Menashe.

 

The book said, watch your breath, count your breath...this song of emptiness and fulness. You said, in your funny voice, "do I bring you up?" and my breath trailed away to some frozen, distant land...

 

I shall imagine that each poem I read is really about you, cast off rememberings. This was the place that was the place. Strange how strange the heart becomes, how much our faces darken with time. You, on the edge of the picture, nearly gone, my hand resting a second on a random page, against the system of loss.

The snow, the white object of our past, the splintered frames, the shards of glass on the wall to keep trespassers out, preparing us for the sharpness of the outside world....this "there" that holds us rapt. The frozen ground, gnarled roots and knotted weeds. Here, where no love is.

You said, in your sad, melancholic voice, "Do I bring you down?"

The ancient sadness falling, like forest green. The heart in its own endless silence kneeling.

Within the dream you said,

Let us kiss then,

I put my mouth close to,

Flow North, flow South..

It is not love you will find.

The narrowing sun

lights her eyeleashes

 

 

Yellow Birds

La pluie nous a débués et lavés,
Et le soleil desséchés et noircis.
Pies, corbeaux nous ont les yeux cavés

---Villon.

There is something terribly morbid running throughout this book, the chance happenings, turnings, that lead to the horror, the way in which things might not have ended up as they did, the way in which low-level failing lives might have not spiraled downwards, out of control, intercepting the trajectory of other people's ordinary lives, bringing them within the orbit of that dark story. At first, since you'd only seen the film version-the latest one, not the old one-you thought that this would be about a single theme: the lack of hatred for the killers...

You start the day knowing it's rained the night before..can sense it like an animal: the stillness of the early hours, a hint of the smell of fresh earth, the delicate sound of leaves. 5.30, for an hour, you read, when you should be preparing for the 8 o'clock class. Scoff down a croissant, buttery and not crumbly at all. 

The coincidences...you'd read a review of Yellow Birds by J.B. and thought to yourself, yes, perhaps reportage is the thing, stay clear of all the bullshit fiction, the elaborate conceits, the constructions around reality; hadn't Dyer said as much? You haven't got the stomach for Johnson's Tree/Smoke. And then, some way into the book, out of the blue, as if it's staring you in the face, as if when you can't remember if you'd dreamed something or actually experienced it, there's the dream of the yellow bird... 

without words

Beads of water collect on the back of my hand; some reach out and join with others, before rolling off to the side; others, the more individualistic ones, dart off, unexpectedly, as if with a mind of their own. Deep veins, a bundle of raw nerves, the calmness of a posture. How poor your hands are at gathering, collecting...

There's a starkness to the opening page of 'A Death in the Family' that made you return to it three times before moving on to the second page. Bleakness, a desire to stick close to the facts, shorn of too much artifice, embellishment. How few times you've spoken with a clear voice...

Find a space, a time to yourself. Your mind, the mind, stilled; not by love, but perhaps by the image of it. If I had no more words, or maybe just one, I'd say your name            ,

the sense of an ending

  (etching, courtesy of Roxana) Things draw to a close; that's okay, you're not the first one. It's not okay...

You think you can draw a circle around your life and the lives of others, protecting them from vulnerability, change, illness, but it simply doesn't work like that. You haven't got the strength of character to live with the flux, displacement-or maybe that's just the cards you were dealt.

All those books, words, stored up against life/death. The escape, home a refuge, a raft in the stream of things so that you don't have to talk to anyone, engage with...what an awful word: engage! Time passes, you've nearly lost your bearings, places and memories accumulate in you, the blue shadow behind your mind's eye, time out of mind. This great desire to shed skin, walk away. A strain in modernity: the desire for lightness, superficiality, laughter, emptiness, not too much "meaning" or the 'wisdom of the east' type of nonsense; to divest oneself of names, traditions, definitions..to speak with an authentic voice, elemental gestures, without quotations, clichés, stock phrases; to be close to nature again, putting images and mirrors to one side, striking the right note...art transformed into life. 

Whitechapel

There's something mysterious and beautiful about the flowers and plants that grown in the Underground, a dazzling darkness that seems ageless...

Life, full of ambiguities, uncertainties, stray reflections, random chances. It's been like that from the first day..it's only that you walk into the mystery right now.

The day starts of grey and sombre, the cloud cover thick and universal, the rain steady but light. But by late afternoon the sun flares, and time starts to be found again in this new, lyrical brightness. Between the tunnels there's an open stretch, light flooding down upon it, the lilacs gently swaying in the summer breeze, the sudden play of light and shade.

You walk past all the people distractedly going home, but you also see three members of some amateur music group (two lean and long haired men and a woman with strong, determined features in contrast to her soft eyes). You only hear one of the men near the Royal London Hospital say "Yeah" but it's said with such self-assuredness, such knowingness, that you could be forgiven for believing this man has proclaimed some great truth with the utmost naturalness and simplicity. Strange to think that as the day ends for some, so it begins for others.

Near the library, which you only saunter to to kill some time, there's the potent smell of fish. The Bengalis, with strong arms and tired hands pull the green and white tarpaulins down. How ancient this gesture! Sixty years ago you would have seen exactly the same co-ordination of mind, eye, and hand; would have seen the exact same thoughts of home flash across faces, the same looking out into empty space, the recognition of a hard day's work done...On the opposite side of the street, the pencil thin arms of a cross, gleaming amidst the lost light. Near the restaurant, the old brick houses, high windows, the clouds radiant, swimming across the sky..the East is dilapidated, run down, for sure, but for a moment this is like a scene from a Vermeer.

Today, Michael Foot's Debts of Honour comes in the post. Beautifully produced and a bargain at 64p.

'Books are, to me, the last link with the beautiful in England...the margins of the page are browned and there's room to read. The sober blank verse is widely spaced and...easy to the eye because it's so spaciously arranged on the page.The whole book is as delicately proportioned as a Greek temple.'

reveries for a lost innocence

This was in the news again (NYRB). In general terms the incidence violence may be decreasing but who cares about generalities?

Is there something about photographers and nostalgia, something about holding on to what cannot be held...time, itself, which is never really itself after all? Is it not the same with all of us? Or does this feeling become more intense at particular junctures in history-ones of rapid displacement or change?

Your hands grow dark with time, your smooth skin giving way to hair, blotches of sun shaped freckles. On the move again, never looking or finding, but stumbling. On your desk, right now, are sprawled many things, none of them very appealing-or if so, then only for a moment, not really a reverie one could get lost in. And still, you ask: my soul, why do you sigh within?

...

There's some great music and film making in this documentary.

70,000 (out of 240,000 applicants) were selected as volunteers for the Olympics. Individualism and the end of civil society in 'the west'? Nah, don't think so! After the Madrid bombs it is estimated that up to 20% of the population came out on the streets on one day, singing: "a people united will never be divided". 

So, here's the dope: countries in which the nation-state has had a poor run and/or those in which markets are weak are only apparently more individualistic. If truth be told-to take up an old point made by Gellner-those societies are prone to be more chaotic and more likely to be governed by autocrats (the old, "princely" form of power).

~~~

Lovely tributes to Freddie Mercury and to John Lennon last night.

pink moon

On the corner of Denmark Street: speckled stone smashed, revealing root. The memory of the young woman at Foyles still fresh; her pink dress, too modern a cut for a bookshop, her vibrant stride and wavy hair, a pink blur. You turn your head down to word, text, gaze finding the words:

There are not always melons
There are always stories.

Well, yes, indeed. 

At St. Giles a solitary pink carnation wilting in the summer light, light that is still young. Happy hour is over and the wine glasses have been emptied to the dregs. The long grass, the late shadows, the mystical emptiness of the Church, the strugglers speaking in tongues; a fat black man that you saw many moons ago, who used to sit next to you at Borders, still half crazy, speaking to himself in a wispy voice,with a newspaper folded under his arms; you imagine the folds of his skin, the stench from trying to stay alive on the edge of things, keeping afloat.

Buddhas have replaced  garden gnomes in England.  You have to be out of it. The Taleban and smashed stones, crumbling Buddhas, the nihilism of the heart. If they had their way everything and everyone would be destroyed, so there would only be God. 

Little r has six stars on her hand, one for each word she knows. Words with three letters. "Not big ones," she says. So, no 'love'? "Yes, just small ones, but not God...words like 'God'". Little r, you're such an actress, and just a  little bit pretentious! "Have you seen your blog lately!" 

The grey of pavement, dark and dry. You think you'll gain some insight this close to stone, on Kingsway. The rituals you surround yourself with; don't look back and keep your heart empty. 

Hammershoi and Five Easy Pieces, the prelude. That bit where he comes home knowing it isn't home any more, but is the closest thing there'll ever be to home. He sees a shape, walks into the silence, the black and white photos holding up something to his face. A home, a house, the great protector against the fierceness of the hours, of the mind losing track. Stone house, built next to tree, each lives in its own world and time, each a boundary to the other.

~~~

anton wrote a beautiful line, which I've just remembered:

the price of being in the world is not being yourself.

Which is complete, in itself, like 40 pieces of silver in the world, or a coin resting on a shelf, but still only half true, for the price of being in the world is also being yourself. At the time of death, there is no time for metaphors.   

Definite Hate

Who would listen to a music band that called itself by that name? Definite Hate. As opposed to, what? Vague Love? The connection between music and violence. The first time you saw it-or is this just a faulty memory-was when the President of Panama was being hounded. More recently, it appears that terrorist suspects are sometimes subjected to hours of heavy metal played extremely loudly. But is there something older, something that stretches back to our time as warring bands? Music as a way of stirring the senses, of helping us find some ancient pattern of unity, fraternity, brotherhood? The most laughable thing in these Olympics has been the sight of grown men and women crying when listening to their respective national anthems. Pathetic and funny at the same time.Is there something about music that can lead to the individual finding pleasure in some sort of collective dream? And the Proms-dear Celia will hate me for this-what is all that about?  

"These people haven't heard heavy metal. They can't take it."


Scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and a search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression—in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas—are shouted down by the drunken chants of fans in huge stadiums, the pathetic demands of rich alumni for national championships, and the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender roles of Greek organizations. These hypermasculine s

ystems perpetuate a culture of conformity and intolerance. They have inverted the traditional values of scholarship to turn four years of college into a mindless quest for collective euphoria and athletic dominance.
---Chris Hedges.

Gosh, and I thought my uni. was bad!

~~~

A comment in the Guardian on Michael Page:

"If he's a member of the master race, we're all fucked."

~~~

The first was that people hipped on sports can get overaddicted to victory. Sports, the corporate ethic (advertising), and the American flag had become a go-for-the-win triumvirate that had developed many psychic connections with the military.

--from Norman Mailer's intriguing NYRB article.

____

Another horrific case of "honour killing" draws to a close. Easy (and wrong) to generalize from a few specific cases-not least because it means glossing over individual tragedies. The mind at a depressing blank when you consider how much human stupidity and viciousness there is. Not much good saying Bach, Rembrandt...Sometimes a moderate kind of utilitarianism, whereby the ordinary lives of  large numbers of people are made better, seems attractive. In an age which is obsessed by "inwardness", "states of mind" and "spirituality" you wonder if a dose of pragmatism isn't in order: Good states of mind require things to work (Keynes). You wonder if it isn't time, if it isn't always time, to pack one's library.

You don't quite trust anyone who isn't, at some time or another, sceptical of books/academia/ religion. Not the virulent kind of fanaticism of a Dawkins, mind ; but a gentler type of questioning, which is really bewilderment. Ho hum.

~~~

The colours of the heart. What would you know!

Officially the heart is oblong, muscular, and filled with longing.
But anyone who has painted the heart knows that it is also spiked like a star
And sometimes bedraggled like a stray dog at night
And sometimes powerful like an archangel’s drum
And sometimes cube-shaped like a draughtsman’s dream
And sometimes gaily around like a ball in a net.
And sometimes like a thin line

And sometimes like an explosion.
And in it is also a river,
A weir and at most one little fish
By no means golden.
More like a grey jealous loach.
It certainly isn’t noticeable at first sight.
Anyone who has painted the heart knows 
That first he had to discard his spectacles,
His mirror, throw away his fine-pointed pencil
And carbon paper and for long while
Walk outside.

---Holub.

A few strokes are able to transform a blank page into the expression of an emotion, a still moment. The reluctance to disturb perfection--a few dashed lines hurried off, like a few choice words that say what is essential, finding the right key. Sometimes you think these direct, fresh, "open" sketches, are much more interesting than the finished article. Stokowski said something similar when speaking about rehearsals: something completed vied with a startling experience. This blank space, preserved in the Cezanne; Saskia's eyes lovingly caught; the strength of Ruben's Hercules; a brilliant, vivid satyr by Watteau, red in claw; Breugel, with his intermingling of the secular and the religious.

The paper open to the ink; the human hand open to the human heart...

Down to 'the tanks' at Tate..something like Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Got caught in a light strobe-my two minutes of fame producing guffaws of laughter from a few tourists. The books under the bridge tightly packed together, very reassuringly. Brilliant 11 0'clock light and a cool breeze on your face A few notes of Piazzolla striking out urgently, the choppy waves of the Thames as jagged.... Off to see the fantastically inventive Heatherwick. Awestruck before his creativity. Fidelity to natural limits. If one knew how shape responds instantaneously to different pressures, repetition,  materiality would be poetic, unfurl like a snail, reveal a different space, an angle that no-one in the universe had previously seen. Then to the more familiar small oil sketches (Constable) and the wonderful walking into the silence of the room that holds the 15 th century tapestries. No-one ever visits these rooms.

You think to yourself: London, Paris, New York (and Berlin, says the dougal) are still real cities. 

London Olympics: 0

If that wasn't naff I don't know what is! After an hour the family had switched the box off and friends were phoning me up or texting saying how awful the whole thing was (maybe we were just spoiled by the Chinese). Would have been better off doing slum dog east end or how "we" bombed Jerry. But here's the thing: England's always thought it was the centre of the world; a strange kind of inwardness that pushed to the extreme becomes xenophobic-as well one might expect from an island nation. As the kids today might say: anal. 


You've always thought that England is best when it does small-things like afternoon tea and religion; whenever it goes big it looks rather ridiculous (colonialism, for instance). And of course, "only connect" is something that one struggles with..no, just leave me alone with my tea and newspapers...


The papers have played it up as eccentric and irreverent, as being a reflection of the quintessential "English character". Not sure if that's true..I mean, like any other self-perceptions that people have of themselves-like the 'stiff upper lip' (which, incidentally, was apparently an Americanism!)-there's a grain of truth to them. But the ideals we hold up to ourselves and other people say more about us whether they're true reflections or not. Mr. Bean, for example, is not eccentric. Spike, on the other hand... 


Someone once wrote that the scene of English fiction is always the home whereas America, with its wide open spaces, allows for and encourages an engagement with bigger issues. So, the insular, parochial, fake inwardness character...is that really just shyness? In any case, there's something quite claustrophobic about all this domesticity.


The man of action is never the hero of English letters...


But there is a tendency with the English to dislike writes who fail to sustain their stay-at-home virtues, who fail , indeed, to devote themselves to the occasionally poetic business of nothing very much happening all the time.

Nicholson:

And all rivers were one, and they all led back to the Roding...

sweet, ordinary earth

Yes, I know, a bit of an odd way to pass a tough hour before iftar, but J.B.'s programme on parish churches in East Anglia has its moments. Old stone, leaf, dream of star; the green shade of late summer afternoons a kind of slowness, displacement, fierce resistance to serial time; the silent interiors, wood gently ageing; the words spoken, the same sound and inflection century after century; openness that was fated to give way to an indifferent gaze; history in stone and wood and glass, emptying out before our eyes, the God of absences, beyond words and theology.


~~~


there are moments when you've stopped in your tracks, grateful for something you can't name; yes, this is it, the small glimpse of understanding, of contentment: look out and look back; taste and see; no mystical flight, no awe, a very down-to-earth feeling that finitude, somehow, is not a misfortune, a sense that the clothes fit, that there is a type of ease or another life in the shade of the great trees below sweltering sun. Ubo, himself growing old, says to me: the reality of life slips into shadow, as it always has and always will; soon the shadow itself will be but a memory. Then he turns to me, mischievously: "Wah! I've become a poet in my old age." And this line, from the morning's gleaning: whatever remains green is more deeply, richly green than it was before.

~~~


Now, it has been suggested by one of my more cynical (and fairer) readers-though the scallywag shall go unnamed-that this mild epiphany of mine must have come to me whilst scoffing down one of my beloved cinnamon rolls. Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? I shall remain silent on the matter. A love that speaketh not its name!

Recently discovered a spiced teacake (in California that might be mistaken for a drug-filled after-tea indulgence, but no). A bit squidgy and chewy, but given a medieval twist, you think, with its currants and spices (cinnamon, clove,...). But hang on, those spices weren't around then, were they? Allspice, one of the great treasures of the world-even if it did lead, eventually, to colonialism. 


So, what's the difference between a Chelsea bun, a hot-cross bun, and a teacake? Forget the Ph.D...this is a real research question, one that merits some empirical testing...

debts of honour

 At Valentine's park, Il. Stop to stare at the strange assemblage of people around you at the playground. Wonder what old Enoch would have made of it all. One hundred years ago, when he was born, the ethnic and religious composition of people would have been quite different. Here there were Sri Lankans, Gujratis, other Indians that you couldn't place, Paks, some Africans, a few Chinese people and a number of mixed race people as well. Horrified, perhaps? Or maybe not...

You see a six year old podgy kid, desi, walks by stuffing down his flake 99 with great relish, wearing an Eng-er-land t-shirt. Most of the parents speak in English with their kids and, just like everyone else, make sure their own children wait their turn. The hijabis are out in full force and most  people are cool with that. It's just the way it is.

You have to think, though, if anywhere else there'd been as rapid a change in society as there's been here..well, maybe the problems would have been of a different magnitude. And of course, putting your red hat on, you have to say that race is really a red herring in that the fundamental changes in society have come about with the decline of manufacturing, Thatcher, globalisation, the decline of the public (Sennett) and a host of other factors. The best thing that can be said about ol' Enoch is that he knew Welsh. Apart from that he was, to be quite frank, a bit of a wanker.

~~~

Now, really must put in some effort to find Michael Foot's book, 'Debts of Honour'. Since you are reminded of him every time you walk past the Gay Hussar, you ought to try and scoop it up soon, to repay a debt to an honourable soul.

~~~

In one of your more pessimistic moods you get the terrible feeling that not only is socialism on its last legs but that the very notion of the social is on the decline. Of course, it might be countered that there's always been a  certain roughness to the 'north'  and if we extend our historical horizons a bit we might be inclined to say there's been an improvement in manners, civility ( N. Elias) 

Ramzan...

There's something not quite right writing about fasting-to be self-conscious of your actions..isn't the elimination of that precisely what is aimed for? Or is it? You don't think Islam works by negation but, rather, that the supreme virtue is 'balance' or moderation. But then how does one explain such extremism, such a pedantic fascination for details? This, too, seems a bit of a generalization, an ahistorical summary. A balanced view would surely say that different virtues and vices come to the fore under particular circumstances.


Not sure if I have the strength or conviction for this one. You wonder how important 'niyat' (intentions) are in the observance of any act (religious or otherwise, but especially religious). Or do you just go with it, follow a ritual and see if something comes along the way? To suppose there's some sublime moment, some perfect  clearing of one's mind and heart before..is that not another form of extremism?  


Khair...you see the elements of doubt on the dougal's brow. Confess, dougal! (And never forget the Inquisition!). Is humour allowed? Probably not. Not moored to any tradition you find such questions themselves slightly ridiculous. Ah, the Moor's/Mir's last sigh!


Ubo says I'm exempt from keeping them since technically speaking I'm still travelling (No, not "traveling" in your sort of 1960's, hippy way, but literally speaking. Well, it's been two months, but you love the sentiment behind his thoughts. 


The strength of the community? Have you actually seen the community bro'? If you did, all questions of belonging would soon be resolved! The unity of the ummah..oh, please, give me a break dude.

Anyway, let's see how it goes. Reading Rebecca West at 4 a.m. is probably not a good idea. The names of Croat kings are swirling through my mind. 


~~~


Yesterday, off New Oxford Street, past a theatre whose name you forget, you heard what sounded like seagulls...did they stray so far? This notion of an inland bird, off the radar, without a sense of verticality, out of touch with the open blue skies..was this a metaphor?

names

anton, I have to borrow-if I may-your beautiful quote. By a strange co-incidence (or maybe one just seeks them in a certain state of mind, a kind of temporal order?) I was looking for a quote-also from something I haven't read-and it turned out to have your name on it. "your name on it". That can be a terrible thing, but when said in the Pakistani context it's always-I think-in a positive sense: you're starving, have no money in your pockets, shops are closed and you see your friends at a table. They offer you the last bit of food and, judging you to be hungry, will say something like: "it's yours, it had your name on it". Okay, okay, the quotes... 


 (Xenophon): 
 [8:18]How good it is to keep one's stock of utensils in order, and how easy to find a suitable place in a house to put each set in, I have already said. 


 [8.19] And what a beautiful sight is afforded by boots of all sorts and conditions ranged in rows! How beautiful it is to see cloaks of all sorts and conditions kept separate, or blankets, or brazen vessels, or table furniture! Yes, no serious man will smile when I claim that there is beauty in the order even of pots and pans set out in neat array, however much it may move the laughter of a wit. 


 [8.20] There is nothing, in short, that does not gain in beauty when set out in order. For each set looks like a troop of utensils, and the space between the sets is beautiful to see, when each set is kept clear of it...


and, &...


'And so too, without leaving the confines of the weaving, he feels himself to be at the very centre of creation, while still in touch with its borders and frontiers. Art like this beckons man to live within its world, freed from the sins of the other one. 
When it was first woven in the eleventh or twelfth century, the tapestry must have measured six metres in length, but only three metres sixty-five survive. The passage of time -- whole epochs in revolt -- has destroyed almost half of it. But the overall structure of the work, the strands of coloured thread and the remaining mutilated fragments allow us to reconstruct the composition and imagine the themes depicted in the missing parts. What one admires in the work, beside the fine execution, handsome texture and harmony of colours, is this structure -- a structure so symmetrical, so dependable that even when incomplete, it is possible to recreate the whole, if not on the cathedral wall, then within the framework of our imagination.
There the missing parts unfurl, fragments intimating the larger harmony of the universe. What we love in any structure is a vision of the world that gives order to chaos, an hypothesis which is comprehensible and restores our faith, atoning for our having fled and scattered before life's brutal disorder. We value in art the exercise of mind and emotion that can make sense of the universe without reducing its complexity. Immersed in such art one could live one's life, engaged in a perfectly rational discourse whose meaning cannot be questioned because it resides in an image containing the whole universe.

What surprises and will always surprise is the notion that a single mind could conceive of such a convincing and pleasing structure, moreover a happy one, a structure which as well being a metaphor is also a reality.'

Cristina Peri Rossi -- The Ship of Fools


~~~


I guess in an age which revels in the fragmentary, the sideways glance, any mention of 'unity' automatically suggests 'totality'. To be of a single mind can only point to a kind of fanaticism, or rigidity at best. And yet, the simple things, the deep familiarity of a voice, the right combination of spices, the old tree outside your house, the smell of fresh grass, the same fading, slanting light flaring briefly on a cool summer's day, the light glancing off bushes, the inky Roding, full of calm mystery..all this seems eternal right now. Tomorrow your head will ache and you will stumble through the day again, not sure if you're dreaming this since, like a mirror facing a painting, you seem to have been taking this one image in for such a long time that it's something you inhabit.

take it home:

As time goes by the question of belonging, of where home really is, becomes more vexing and less important in equal measure. It sounds ridiculous to say that the music one first learns to love has anything to do with politics or the place where one lives. In any case, there's a whiff of old-time craziness hanging around any association of music with 'the land'. It would be quite interesting to know what the second-generationers (West Indians and Paks and Injuns) started listening to and how far it branched off from their parents' tastes. Classical, for example. How many working class, non-white people got hooked to it? Of course, the dougal was listening to Rimsky-K even then. But most of the music that floated our way wasn't Rafi or Bach; it was more like Marley and Otis and... of course, as time goes by, baggins becomes baggier, has fewer assumptions or convictions, thinks less of course. ry cooder: music the last bridge between people. Possibly. Probably, as little r says. the old times: nothing can be brought back and we are old now. all we have is this thin raft that is love and memory, and a few books, and a track here or there.

the world of lost chances...the gold thread loosened from your garment, straying, touching earth. your heart turned to a heart bluer than mine. 50 shades of.

Listen
 It's a question of listening with the heart, rather than the ear
You'll find bridges inside yourself, and roads that lead right to me
I'm awake all night, looking out for you

 The Secret Sea

 When nobody's looking at her
She's no longer the sea she's just as we are when no-one's looking at us
 She has other fish, other waves,
and exists for herself alone,
and for those who dream of her, as I do here.
 ---Jules Supervielle.

the destruction continues...

Hard to know what to say. I think Gellner alluded to this years ago in his 'Muslim Society'. With so much destruction and violence around, one's instincts are to fall back on your reading. Yesterday saw (but did not buy): The Death of Virgil; Death of the Heart (yeah, I know, 'death' does seem to be looming large!); Under the Volcano; Names (DeLillo); some John Burnside poetry; a new book by Chris Hedges. Did purchase Bob's highly recommended Time of Gifts (4 quid on the South Bank, under the bridge) and Anne Carson's beautifully produced Nox (about the death of her brother).

bbroken lives

you want to cut through the crap, all the false words, the fake sensibilities, the sheer scale of the artificiality of it all. Geoff dyer (I think) wrote about how some of the most clear-sighted work coming out is war material, directly out of the fog of war. A basic fact remains: higgs-Boson is a fucking joke. After all these years, the streak of violence doesn't wash away.

and there's this simple, honest piece that makes you think about the down and outs, on whom "austerity" is forced:


'We condition the poor and the working class to go to war. We promise them honor, status, glory, and adventure. We promise boys they will become men. We hold these promises up against the dead-end jobs of small-town life, the financial dislocations, credit card debt, bad marriages, lack of health insurance, and dread of unemployment. The military is the call of the Sirens, the enticement that has for generations seduced young Americans working in fast food restaurants or behind the counters of Walmarts to fight and die for war profiteers and elites.

The poor embrace the military because every other cul-de-sac in their lives breaks their spirit and their dignity. Pick up Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front or James Jones’s From Here to Eternity. Read Henry IV. Turn to the Iliad. The allure of combat is a trap, a ploy, an old, dirty game of deception in which the powerful, who do not go to war, promise a mirage to those who do.'


--Chris Hedges.

the end of the south

The end of the south, or so it seems. The train journey through small places, the land locked in its ancient ways; the desperate teenagers with escape looming large in their minds, all decked up (or is that down?). Basildon man in front of you, red-necked and a brown balding skull. A sort of bigot-or at least you imagine. Is Basildon, after all.

Fairlop Fair was a flop. 250 years of tradition reduced to a few women in beards prancing about and some awful songs.

~~~

At southend: the blustering wind, our teacups flying off in all directions; we hold on to our paper plates for dear life and gulp down our lukewarm tea with a great sense of urgency. Nothing's quite right. England's gone, and the last fish shop is closed for the summer. Even anton's author sounds a bit fake-and her recommendations are never wrong.

K

"I would have thought", said the prime minister, "that Your Majesty was above literature."

"Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You may as well say one was above humanity.”

Bennett,A. continues to charm: direct, irreverent, funny. Only time for snatches, but still...

"'Police killing was lawful' says inquest. What police killing isn't?'"

'The joy of being a mob, particularly these days, is that it's probably the first time the people on this estate have found common cause in anything'

'In England age wipes the slate clean. If you live to be ninety and can stille at a boiled egg they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.'

'I'm brushing my teeth...then a little school or class passes...Ethnically mized with Muslim women in headscarves in attendance, a couple of tired-looking teachers and young fathers too...A poor school by the look of it...But the simplicity of this little column , the tired goodness of it, reaffirms...what? A belief in common decency.'

I think that last line sums England up really. A European (or an academic) would have written: the project of inter-subjective mutual responsibility to 'the other'.

'Jesus loves everyone, except you, you cunt.'

There's nothing more boring than meeting someone who thinks books and Literature are the cheez...of course, except for meeting someone who thinks the opposite. 

Mir's syndrome...

The History of Silence [   ]

There's a book on everything nowadays; everything's tainted. The private lioves of nobodys, dissected with great care and attention to useless detail after detail. 

"Is there a history of silence in your family?" asks the copper/shrink/wife. 

Royalty: the ability to forget who one is? The giveaway line that reveals, finally, who you are?  

 

Takes a step back from the fray...he sees the whole picture in his mind, chooses the right moment, and finds time, space. Is Pirlo a sufi? Not since Zidane side-stepped the whole Brazil team has there been such a masterclass.

(proper) desire

You looked away just once
as you leaned on the chip-shop counter,
and forty years were gone.

---Helen Dunmore 

Economists are wont to speak of wants as anything but 'given'. Can there, then, be any sense to thinking of desires as wrong or of them being too many, or too few? Forbidden desires, excessive and frivolous desires..what language do we have to reflect on them and think of sharper, 'higher' desires, ones more attune to who we really are?

ploughing the field...Adam Smith:
...


The moment of recognition, that leads to intimacy, a kind of understanding. To assume we always know what we desire, who we are, is a great conceit. We stumble through, imagining the lives we didn't live but might have. "If..."..."one day...". the clauses, north of the future, the winter soul, finding true north, as if passing downriver, sparkling, far from home but clear to us at last.


~~~

One day the Earth will be
just a blind space turning
night confused with day.
Under the vast Andes sky
It will no longer have mountains,
There'll be no more mountains,

not a rock or ravine.

 

Only a balcony will remain

Of all the world’s bulidings

and of all the human mappa mundi,
limitless sorrow.
In place of the late Atlantic Ocean,

a little saltiness in the air,
and a fish, flying and magical
with no knowledge of the sea.

Picture a car of the 1900s
(no raod for its wheels!)
and three young girls of that time

traveling through the fog

They'll peer through the door
thinking they're nearing Paris

when the odour of the sky

grips them by the throat

Instead of a forest

there'll be one bird singing,

which nobody will ever place

or prefer,or even hear
Except for God who listening out,
proclaims it a goldfinch.

---Jules Supervielle.

out of the blue

I dream of the silence
the day before Adam came
to name the animals,

The gold skins newly dropped
from God's bright fingers, still
implicit with the light.

A day like this, perhaps:
a winter whiteness
haunting the creation,

as we are sometimes
haunted by the space
we fill, or by the forms

we might have known
before the names,
beyond the gloss of things.

---John Burnside.

Culture vulture

Flipping aimlessley through last Saturday's papers, couldn't but help think to myself: there's an awful lot of things to see, books to read, music to listen to. You keep on adding to your lists, which is silly, really; it only adds to your (mid-life?) anxieties: things-to-do-before-you-die sort of thing. Of course there's no time for any of it. You end up (no, you've ended up) living a life without assimilating anything, and have no sense of any inner coherence; instead, fragments of lines of poetry, quotes here and there, a few jumbled thoughts which it would take you a lifetime to untangle. The number of half-read books, half-watched films, and music listened to distractedly is staggering. Everyhting is there to be consumed, nothing to be savoured...

'The range of culture is so diffuse, the "topics" of interest so proliferated, that it is almost impossible to find a centre of gravity that can truly define the "cultivated" man.'

--D. Bell.

'World-culture', fusion music, international best-sellers. You have to wonder: how convenient all that is for capitalism and the marketeers. The idea of boundaries, limits, of something being withdrawn from one's gaze or understanding, is simply not on. The past and "exotic" cultures must be plundered, made "available" (is it a coincidence that that word is related to sex?)

~~~

The case of someone who went missing 21 years ago has been re-opened. There's something utterly mysterious about that (assuming it's not sinister, which is more likely). Someone, back in 1991, just walking out and never returning, the bowl of cornflakes on the table a sharp reminder of his presence, the room exactly as it was when he left, his loved ones greyer, wiser, sadder; or maybe they've moved on and he returns to find strangers living in his home...

~~~

As we become more competitive over luxuries we 'lose the ability to share and sacrifice. There then follows, says Ibn Khaldun the loss of "asabiyah", that sense of solidarity..that group feeling which means mutual affection...'
--D. Bell. 

But what's the evidence for that? It seems, on the contrary, that market-based societies are fairer and have higher levels of trust etc. Also, the 'group feeling' was often based on tribal instincts, ethnicity- and depended, at least in part, on excluding those not in the group. Of course, to a conservative, this falling away from unity is to be deplored. It seems unquestionable (to him) that the modern world is full of alienated, estranged, disenchanted individuals. Markets, or so the argument goes, lead to a decline in "social capital" and to "atomization".

R and R

little r's favourite song at the moment. only problem is: she sings it to the words from bleedin' julie andrews
:-(

Gotta break her out of the white man's culture.

Regret
Slips its noose
around the neck
  ---Menashe.

Skidelsky's new book is out. Chimes with my own planned book.

'Deprived of their ethical language by the collapse of religion and the strongly individualist fashion in economics and political philosophy...'

news from a strange planet

an hour before sunset and little r helps me collect some flowers; we don't know the names of any of them and so have to go by their weirdness or size (in her case). she blows at a dandelion, not knowing yet the timeless human convention of making a wish as one does so. the natural life of flowers on earth intermingling with human history, desires, expectations. at other times people have held buttercups under your chin as a proof of love...

we walk across the wooden bridge, full of cobwebs but no spiders. the Roding in full flow, dark and brooding as usual, bending back the tall grasses. r thinks she sees a fish but it's only the glimmer of the late sun on a ripple. "strange that you should remember fish at this particular moment in time," I said.

"why? don't you know that i always think of fish no matter where i am, no matter the time of day."

there's no arguing with her when she's in that mood and so i let it pass.

we pass back and forth across the bridge several times. "this doesn't go anywhere," she muses. strange, because you'd always thought of bridges and how they facilitate movement. but when you think of it, there they are, fixed in time.the world, a static bridge, and i have no desire to be anywhere else, nor any need for names.

~~~

"The Puritans have stern faces; but their eyes have looked on life."

"I came to recognize a certain humour, flippancy even, as a sign of the higest seriousness."

'And if there was asingle day when we did not meet

I would sit listless, my mind in a tangle of gloom

To think we are now thousands of miles apart

Lost like clouds on high where many high winds blow,

What chance is there of ever meeting again.'

spent

'I began to realize how much audacity, patience, and solitude are required to express one's experiences.'

'the world, my life, binds the dark and light

together, reconciles and separates

in lucid day the chaos of my darkness.'

---S. Spender.

The great language animal has run out of things to say. Which is not true, of course. More like: I've run out of things to say and of copied lines.

Have western institutions run out of steam? The ability to go on requires energy and a blind will, hope -against the odds. [Aside: no point talking about the 'Arab Spring' or other places such as China since you don't believe they have much to offer]. Well, all instituions decline. That's just par for the course. But what, if anything, can stem the rot, lead to a fresh sense of renewal and purpose? As at the personal level, one can only dig deep if one has available resources stored up. Does an increasingly exlusive focus on our predicament, the sataisfaction of our desires and goals,indicate the weakness of instituions? Surely one of the aims of any instituion is to provide background set of norms and values that spans the generations? If our relations are viewed as being fundamentally of a contractual nature then what relation do we stand in with regard future generations when they do not even exist now! 

~~~

G. Steiner: the great importance of 'if', to think north of the future.    

first words

Descent. Stars, clouds, mist, dew. I fall.

Walk into the familiar. The tree in the leaf, the flourishing of green under the seasons. Menakshe. Me.She. The narrowing down, to find the first stammering word...sparse, pared down, the singular. The sound of your re-entry into the world. the grey skies over, cast their spell. the mystery of a name, re-emerging. you find yourself. the days of deep light and dark shade. too much history floating in the clouds. you look down, small steps. for a stone no-one has tread on...

a sudden breeze picks up, an hospitable gust from a great distance. spent forces, ghostlike. it brushes through a cloud, and delivers a few splotches of rain before my feet, displacing the dust. your heart dry, remembers, imagines a word. the river/we cannot cross/ flows forever. time herself would not flow, reverse. the swami hugged me. my brow unfurrowed. little r cried.

descent/dissent. down, to your self. surround your soul with words, and stolen glimmerings.the Lord of boundaries opens His doors again. a golden chain of light links us. outside & inside my house: i live in the day, with no time to know another.

The silence is vast
I am still and wander
Keeping you in mind
There is never enough
Time to know another.
---Menashe.

On the origin of 6 pm

At 6 pm tomorrow I will be somewhere else, or here. Don't ask where my heart will be! For I haven't found it myself. Use a magnifying glass, steady your hand, and see it burn.

Human fates are simplified by names. But your multiple names are so confusing. The unnecessary complexity of mixed origins, like the ancient anarchy of the heart. We walk, dragging our love behind us. Because we can't see what's ahead, north of the future: 6:01. "There you go again," she said, "putting words into my mouth." A keepsake for my namesake. There are no words. There never were when it came to the crunch. There you go again, she said, bringing silence to my heart...

Your eyes, of course. But I shall remember your mouth. What if the image before death is death itself? 'Five minutes to six,' at St. Paul's. Time is on our hands...

London, sweet London, translate my words for her. Fortunately, I hardly ever understand you. Take my coat, and slow my pulse. Help me find my true pace, the image I keep in my top pocket. Tree and star, and dark crow; muse whose mind is a series of inter-linkages, the face of sun's dark'nd world. Raven of the heart, looks down and spies that the magnitude of things is measured by the depth of the cut. 

Your mouth, (), deeply familiar. But when I kiss you, your tongue tastes of a tenth planet...your gait is indeed royal:...infallibility of breasts. You walk without motion. Your absence noted. And so it is 6 o'clock. The same as yesterday. The same as tomorrow. 

 

Colour me once

Black also the soul, the huge stammer

Of the cry that, swelling, could not

Pronounce its sun.

Bent in emptiness

over emptiness

But flying.

---Ted Hughes.