Tiananmen Square

You have to laugh, don't you. Apart from floating millions of tonnes of shit (read: commodities) around the world-which I guess is just part of the modern world for you- what gets on your wick is the capitalists pretending to be Commies. Or, in other words: them having their cake and eating it too.

I can't think of a single place I'd rather not go to. Maybe 'sock city' which produces 60% of the world's socks would be okay-ish for a day visit. But, nah. Maybe India, which just represents a slightly better version of the stuff here. Personally, all those miniatures make me feel like throwing up and I'd rather see a dancing bear than the Taj Mahal. What about the "mystical east". Yeah, right, if you can find your way through all that garbage, the slums, the cheap materialism, the jingoistic nationalism, and the stench from refuse and dead bodies that is. The "spiritual east" is a corner shop in Bombay. Some guy who hasn't cut his nails for 20 years ain't it, bro'. For heaven's sake, haven't they heard of personal hygiene? [The best line ever: Churchill on hearing that Gandhi was back in town: Oh no! Not that bloody fakir again!]Not so "spiritual" when it comes to atrocities in Kashmir, Gujarat, or the Punjab methinks. But let's not go there. Where's Sunny Leone when you need her? Wheel in Krishnamurti, Deepak Chopra or some other fucking charlatan.

Is it me, or does the Dalai Lama smile too much? Reminds you of Peter Sellers in Being There. The saffron robes. Yes, of course. But I could just nab one from Qatar airways next time without all the hassle of the spiritual practices. Have I ever told you, Roxana, how much "religious" people piss me off? They're nearly as bad as the anti-religious.

Of course, the Paks. are just as bad. Not much of the "peace of Islam" when it comes to the rape and massacres in East Pakistan or the support of all sorts of crazies in Kashmir, Afghanistan, etc. But, no, let's talk about Sufism or 'the glories of the past', anything for Christ's sake but reality!

Bellow

[]he was in the time of life when the later action of heredity begins, the blemishes of ancestors appear-a spot, or the deepening of wrinkles,... Death, the artist, very slow, putting in his first touches.

The end is nigh ish.

vive la différence

Why do you say, Monsieur, that for all appearances you are an atheist. Why don't you just come out and say: "I am an atheist".

French intellectual: Ah! Tres bien. It is because, 'ow you say, I do not say "I". I-to the extent that I exist- must posit another's existence before I can say "I" with any confidence...but, who is this I that posits or de-posits? and ere we face the paradox of the fissure in inter-subjective relations brought about by a mechanical play of the forces of globalization which may or may not be conducive to the "heightening" of attentiveness, so to speak, as the case may be.

Was it not this 'nomadic thought' that drove Descartes to an internal wilderness, to the edge of madness that was Reason approaching its limits, the dynamic instability of the subject encountering the 'face' of the unkown object that is not an object.

French intellectual: Non!

Would you like to elaborate on this profound statement that is neither "yes" or "no" but a sort of "yes" and "no" juxtaposed to modernity's ambivalence towards the questioning self?

French intellectual: I do not say "yes" and I do not say "no"; I do not say "yes" or "no"; and I do not say "yes, but no" nor do I say "no, but yes"; I do not say "yes & no". I do not say anything because to say anything I would say "I" and I do not say "I". As I said earlier: I-to the extent that I exist-must posit the other.

Let us move on. Do you have cornflakes with cold or hot milk?

French intellectual: you raise a fascinating point, for what is meant by the word "milk"? I asked-to the extent that I exist, of course-my wife, who very much exists, for some hot milk. In a beautiful act that affirmed her existential maturity and post-colonial, post-modern, post-punk, post-God and post-natal depression vital "discourse" with modernity she said: "we are out of milk"

Is that when you divorced your fifth wife?

Voila! Mais oui.

~~~

Coming soon: the German intellectual, ya. At one with nature and eternal life and other such nonsense. Nonsense on stilts, as old Jeremy once said.

Where I was from...

Where I was from was a long time ago.

I don't know if it still exists; I suspect and half wish it doesn't.

Above 'hot spot' you picked up D. Johnson's Tree/Smoke book, some Capote and Joan Didion's Where I was From; the latter only out of nostalgia...

Under the bridge, the Thames unusually choppy, the early morning gulls very noisy. Those lovely folding wooden tables are being opened up and set out in lines. Books are hurriedly stacked on them in no apparent order-and it's this people really come for, the chance find, the sudden gleam in the eye when someone finds what they've been looking for for aeons or if they chance across a book they'd read in childhood and forgotten until that very moment. And all that parceling out of chance and randomness under the bridge a result of casual, early-morning settlements and unselfconscious arrangements by the booksellers. They keep lots of coins in solid green boxes, set themselves down for the day, light up a cigarette or warm their hands by rubbing them together.

There are few people around to witness this spectacle. Sunday light is invariably brilliant, true, spotless, almost eternal in its possibilities. Under the bridge sounds are muffled by the shadows and all the words are thick, squarish.

Always good to be there before anyone else; other people are hell. To your delight you read the opening pages of JD's book. One for later, perhaps. Except no matter how many times you return you never find it again. Perhaps that's the way with bridges, or maybe it's just London: nothing gets repeated. There's a chance, an opening, then it's irrevocably gone, sinking back into the shadows. Who would have thought an aimless Sunday morning walk would have afforded so many opportunities for useless speculations on the role of chance in our lives!

The books. do you..er..actually read them or do you just talk about them the way a starving man imagines a fabulous meal in a French restaurant? The books are now just signs, to what, God only knows; the words glint back into the sun, as unreal as California.

~~~

Today you see a person with a long rectangular beard, jet black, not totally out of control. There are probably one in ten million people with such beards in England, an old 18th century Russian patriarch's beard. Fiercely stupid but still not the fanatical beard that sprays out in all directions. The well-trimmed types are usually conservatives or semi-educated; beards without a mustache are, of course, the missionaries (tablighis) or the Saudi-influenced. Now and then you see the wispy, straggling beards of the cunning foxes. Then there are the Iranian-influenced types and even the Ahmadis once had their own distinctive style.
  

November 14th, 2012.

'The dark moon's non-existent seas'; the traces of blue shadow behind your radiant face, your sad eyes. The acrid smell of burning leaves, stinging the eyes, bringing forth a moment of awareness. November fires, unforgiving, lest we forget.

Foundation stone: that which separates the waters from civilisation, chaos from order. The seasonality, the regularity of the floods is a containment but has now broken free from time. Our law-lines, the boundaries we erect to assure ourselves of who we are. What would we do without our borders, our barbarians, the specific rituals of pacification, the pattern we throw over randomness like a nomadic kilm?

You must re-invent yourself, side-step the ongoing stream, change your clothes, look positive for once, for Christ's sake. You must lose yourself to find yourself. Get rid of that drowsy Oriental look on your face, she said. All those simple years spent near mountains, the generations of idleness, all that has mysteriously been passed down to you...

The days narrow, there is less light in the sky now. Earth grows slow, conserves its energy, keeps the dream of spring carefully tucked in its folds, like a child hides a toy, or like the way a priest keeps the sense of the goodness of the world close to his thoughts even in bad times. There are no more anchors in the world, said the poet. Things are going to slide. Time is out of joint and my bags aren't packed yet. No time to go back for three books. But you have kept a large brown dry leaf in a book and a chestnut in your coat pocket for safekeeping. Your picture books-Russian Icons and Kufic Calligraphy-have been lovingly stored, numbers have been committed to memory and your heart is at rest.

The mid-afternoon sun is weak, its pale peach light strangely linking one building to another, and for awhile it is as if each person's destiny is mysteriously related to the others under this light. Friends smoke and drink tea. We have fewer words now. There is a deep silence. Ash on our fingertips, the greyness spreading on our faces.How we got here nobody knows. No profound awareness, no deep insights for us who live day to day. Some look out blankly into the horizon. No answers there. Don't look at me, kid, I'm as clueless as you. We, the last remnants of the bourgeoisie, hold onto our possessions as if they were the world.

It is weird-and this may strike some of you as odd-but there is no talk of religion amongst us. If we do talk, it is of death or women or money and the lack of it. Like everyone else, I guess. Unless you're a woman, of course, in which case you don't talk about death. 

By now the light is fading from the windows, which grow darker by the minute. The crows near the mosque avoid the slanting light. We get up to go, nothing is resolved, nothing is made clearer. We imagine, perhaps not unwisely, that it was intrinsic values that were at the root of the matter.    

A Common Mind

The water is wide, I cannot get o'er
and neither do I have wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both will row, my love and I.
---Elizabethan song.

The Dougal finally found my copy of 'Commons'. But first, perhaps, I should go back to Annette's lovely, lovely Tanner lectures on Trust.

Trust, an acceptance of our vulnerability, our dependency on others.

Rest in peace.  

~~~

Affirmative action

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise

---Auden.

There are moments when you find the ability to slow things down in life, when the moment ceases to be a "moment", and you are distanced from it; it flows, calmly.

Of course, for most of the time your Jewishness dominates. I found a corner of the world that had my name on it; but now the wind blows through my house, as if it were the end of days.

I walked off the plane, without any baggage, straight through immigration at Heathrow. There wasn't a single person there, no lines, no people, nothing. Just a sleepy-headed official. Breezed through the corridors, sat on the train so lost in a reverie that the two hour journey flashed by; at Woodford everything was as you left it; down the hill, time running off your back..the Church, the old brick school, each passing by you as if in a dream. The Cross, brilliant white, like fine porcelain. You walk, unhurried, your steps light with a rare sense of direction. Around the corner, your heart in your mouth, your timing perfect; the great tree bronzing itself in the open sky, the first few chestnuts flung to the ground, like a try-out; the creaky black gate. Each sensation registering separately, and yet all were linked.

The swami, gingerly opening the door, with no idea of my return. The mid-morning ordinariness of the world exploding into reality. You walked into a dream, more real than the world.

"Would you like some tea?"

"I wouldn't say no"

Asian Journal

There is a certain bookstore in Lahore, close to 'Jalal Sons' and not too far off from 'Punjab Tikka House'. Not a very remarkable shop by any standards. But it does have the one remarkable feature: one will always find a book that one desires (I'm tempted to say that Providence plays its hand here and that it's actually 'needs', not desires).

Walking into that shabby little shop, which always changes its name...'old book world' to 'old book city' and now just 'old books', you imagine that you're a kind of Mr. Benn. Sadly, they've reduced the number of books they sell by about 75%, filling the shelves with cheap plastic Chinese toys, kid's magazines, piles of discarded Cosmopolitan, and other useless stuff. The shopkeeper looks up at me from his seat and asks me: "What are you looking for?" The tone of his voice makes you think there's something fateful in his question. "I don't know...nothing in particular."

Of course by now my heart has sunk just a little bit. One of the best and worst features of capitalism (or more generally, of the world) is that it keeps on relentlessly changing. Really is quite disorienting. Well, at least you have the books the Dougal has sent to fall back on...some DeLillo, A. Baier's Commons of the Mind, and New Finnish Grammar. As you move further down into the shop, the lighting becoming poorer as you do so, the books become progressively older and stranger. If there was any order in the stacking it has now gone. Genre, dates, themes, authors, all those categories that we are so dependent upon to make sense of our world are thrown out of the door. Paperback gives way to hardback. You're rocked back in time slightly. You hear a faint alarm going off in the distance; at least you think it's the distance. Twice you take out your phone from your pocket to check someone isn't calling.

By now it's becoming increasingly difficult to read some of the titles, the gold lettering having been worn down by time and dust. Some books just have plain white covers and could be just about anything. It might be Fanny Hill; it might be Aquinas. Mystery is there, you don't have to reach out for it.  One part of your mind is aware that you have to leave soon, that your friends a street away are waiting for you. A few religious books now seem to be appearing. Red and gold. The technical stuff, the useful and worldly textbooks having long disappeared. We're now in different territory. Open country. Picture books and religion. Two minutes 'till class starts. So I'll end. I guess you can make out what I bought.

~~~

You think you'll open a book at a random page and find the line you're looking for. The first one that leaps out at you is:

"I realized that what I was doing was all unnecessary work."
---Morimoto Roshi.

homesick for...

Modern man lives only on the earth and imagines no other world, except this one amplified in colour and intensity. We have become like angels, our only respite a day off. Each song is known by its first note, and each book has been made into a film. Go up to space, 100,000 feet, on hundred and twenty, lose count, the measure of night and day, only to realize how small you are. Or sink to the bottom of the vast Atlantic to note how a dark, blind fish hasn't changed its form or pathways for five million years. There are no more secrets and no more milestones; we'd blacken our faces for second spaces if we knew what we were talking about...

In a dream you see Ubo, in his 1970's navy blue three piece suit, his legs folded like an aristocrat, his 'tash thick and blooming...there he is, explaining something or the other to everyone at some grand annual family dinner. No one understands. Only when he tells it as a series of jokes is there any comprehension and by then everyone has realized it doesn't matter. You wake up, as always, with a glow of semi-understanding. Half your life is spent in this state: thinking you almost know what it's about...

If we knew what we were sick of we wouldn't be so unwell. God is 'dead' (please note the inverted commas, God) and Man isn't feeling too well either. Here it is, life thickening all around you, the dust settling on the high branches and the roots alike, in a great sweep of democratic vigour.

This lack of routine has aged you. The shadow work going on until one day you'll be caught unaware. Little r isn't a baby any more. "And how did you come to that conclusion?" I ask. "A fish living at the bottom of the sea doesn't know if he's old or young."

"Because I can draw a circle," she says.

Except the circle she draws is broken, open, the ends never actually meeting. There is something quite perfect about it.

'One day we'll say 'The sun ruled then'
Don't you remember how it shone on the twigs,
on the old as well as the wide-eyed young?
It knew how to make all things vivid
the second it alighted on them.
It would run like the racehorse.
How can we forget the time we had on earth?
 ....
We'd pick daffodils, collect pebbles, shells-
when we couldn't catch the smoke.
Now smoke is all we hold in our hands.

---Jules Supervielle.

the Individual

Rowan Williams's fantastic lecture on Personhood can be found here

You want to, at some later date, relate this to Mary Douglas's Missing Persons, since one of the most important sources of the atomized, alienated view of the individual comes from economics. Deeply connected, one thinks, with ideas of property, "inwardness" and "alienability". 

The "I' in the individual; as opposed to what Etzioni calls 'I-We'.   

"What appears to someone as a desirable goal depends on what type of person one is." 
---Aquinas.

 

England, mein England.

"...the talk of the manifold talker, glancing lightly from topic to topic, suggesting deep things  in a jest, unfolding unanswerable arguments in an absurd illustration, expounding nothing, completing nothing, exhausting nothing, yet really suggesting the lessons of a wider experience, embodying the results of a more finely tested philosophy, passing with a more Shakespearian transition, connecting topics with a more subtle link, refining on them with an acuter perception, and what is more to the purpose, pleasing.
---Bagehot.


It says something, perhaps, when you find greater charm in the language than in the people.

The character of the English people: dull and boring. But then again, isn't that just everyone?  There's something about dullness that can act as a bulwark against fanaticism and abstractions-as long as it isn't too dull, I suppose. Of course, in England there are no intellectuals, just as there are no public places. (Hurrah! Is there anything worse than a French intellectual?)Notions such as 'the life of the mind' would elicit derisory howls of laughter. And what of that much vaunted eccentricity, then? That's just a clever ruse if truth be told. A society that produces rows and rows of back-to-back houses, that delights in its subjects patiently standing in line as if it was a virtue to be ranked amongst those of any medieval saint, could hardly be said to foster eccentricity. Huxley was perhaps right after all: Bentham and straight lines.

Granted, the sea-faring history may have allowed a certain amount of paranoia to seep in, but if there is anything like an essence of a people then it is this: plodders and planners, foul-natured, self-centred to such a degree that even wild criticism will be of more interest to them than a moderate and balanced appraisal that sets no great store by such frivolous categories as "a people"; in addition to that, an incredible lack of generosity of spirit that perhaps befits an island race.

There are no wild places in England. Rolling hills, a scenic beauty: yes, that's true, but is this domestication of nature, rows and hedges, the enclosure movement, is this not symptomatic also of  a certain love of 'home' and a dreary suburban 'deadness' of spirit that wishes above all else that one not be disturbed? What passes as conversation in such strange isles: the weather, beer, football and celebrity gossip. Is there anything more depressing than the blank and vacant look on the faces of your fellow travelers, faces that are only briefly and silently illuminated, as from within, when the thought of sun and holidays provides a temporary respite from the grey drudgery of the routines of 'getting and spending'?

One of their greatest characteristics, however, is irreverence (although it is often forgotten just how deep a role reverence and conformity play in all our lives. In this case, it is not to religion, which usually gets the two finger treatment, but to class). But no, if there's one word that stands to define the English-and there isn't- then it's 'liberty'. Can there be liberty without irreverence, or a sense of humour?

The Palace of Desire

 Watching Obama's speech. As always, you're taken in a bit by the fantastically smooth delivery but, as always (thankfully!), there's an underlying sense that this is just another bit of showmanship, razzmatazz. There he is, the brilliant orator, Stevie Wonder's signature tune fading into the background, the lights focused on 'the decider'. The wait, the exhaustion (an old trick from Goebbels?) The rumours..as the Beeb said: "he's entered the building". [They've 'lost the plot', by the way. One of the commentators says: "what he's selling to ..." Huh?].

Cue family, cue flag-waving fanatics. Cue all the tried and tested cliches: move forward (blah, blah, blah); need to unite the nation (blah, blah, blah); what a great nation we are (blah...you get the picture); how great the troops are (here they missed a trick...the camera should have panned to a "veteran" in a wheelchair (or maybe an image of DeNiro from Deerhunter?)). I think of a rather tired and old advertising man in small-ish mid-west town penning this tosh in the back room of his house. Of course, my cynicism is tempered by my joy of the fact that those crazies are out of power for four more years. And then who knows, H. Clinton? Bring out the cigars...

~~~

Women in advertizing. Of course, you're not totally averse to the idea (you ain't joined the Taleban...yet!) and ol' Kimmy is quite fetching but you have to laugh at the naivete (that is, you'd have to laugh if there wasn't a serious side to this).

All the billions spent on advertizing, on the production of things that seem quite frivolous and superfluous. Fashion: the production of something that is-for a moment-seen to be desirable. 'Use-value'? You've gotta be joking, brother Karl.

Let us not talk about the process of  how we rank our desires, or whether we should or can evaluate them with the aid of ethics, reason. Instead, desires are just supposed to be raw data. It goes without saying that this is just a fiction that helps sustain the idea of 'consumer sovereignty' and the extension of desires. At no point in time should we suspect that it is because something has become a commodity through market rhetoric and practices (M.J.Radin)  that it is to be desired (the salad and/or KimK). And God forbid that we should think desires are mimetic or socially constructed! The warm glow of Obama's words, the quick of desire flashing from Kardashian's body; register them, and don't think too much about it.

So, what's the choice: the empty sign or the fanaticism of the conservatives (Republicans and mullahs)?

This is from the turn of the last century...

"I feel in these old walls, in this broken well, in these small columns which are crumbling, in a coat of arms that is obliterated, five centuries of mystery and sunshine...then I look, I observe more closely, and I notice, above approach, and what is it I make out?
Simply: Menier Chocolate..."

---cited in Vertigo, P. Blom.

And, of course, the irony is that the conservatives themselves are as much a part of the game as the people they oppose, with their made-up stories and childish romanticizing of the past.

the swerve

"The whole universe is made of curves."
---O. Niemeyer.

Was still working at the age of 102; is now nearing 105. E. Carter, who recently passed away at the grand age of 103, also worked till very late (haven't listened to him, but check bob's wonderful site, an overgrownpath for insights). Hobsbawm, of course, whose last book was published at the age of 94. D. Athill (94) on a book tour; Mary Wesley (first book at the age of 70); Fay Weldon (81) and N. Gordimer (89) published novels this year; Mary Midgely (90), still writing; Ruth Stone (96), a prolific writer. E. Fienstein (82) a British poet, playwright, and novelist. Anne Stevenson (79)...
(from The Guardian).

There's hope fro Romney yet!

Sorry, sorry.

Youtube is still down thanks to the ridiculous ban. In any case, should be getting Natalie Clein's From Jewish Life soon. Can't wait. In the meantime, downloading (er...buying) The Pledge, The Master, A. Part's Adam's Lament, and Beasts of the Wild South. 

The sudden swerve, the tyres coming to a halt on the gravel. How did we get here, mid-life and stranded, the trysts and twists of fate, like an animal caught in the lights, catching his own breath. Which way now? Unscripted, or if it is, then you can't read. 

Romney up to..er..47%

For Pete's sake, don't tell me...if you vote  for Romney, the black sun will not be amused.

Just reading Ignatieff's wonderfully acrobatic mea culpa in the NYTimes. What an ass! Simply loved his book, The Needs of Strangers, but the guy's a dickhead. He's tried to name-drop his way out of his own idiocy, citing Kant, Beckett, and God knows who else. Political theory, 'judgement', and all that jazz. The simple truth, though, is that he couldn't see what any five year-old could: the war against Iraq was a looney escapade cooked up by a bunch of vicious, nasty and insidious ideologues.

In a similar vein, you often hear people making all kinds of excuses for the rise of fanaticism. Firstly, there isn't really any such thing as 'fundamentalism' or if there is then that's a good thing: be true to the fundamentals and put to one side (read: destroy/destory) all this farangi nonsense and bastardization of culture. Secondly, there's no way a "real" Muslim could commit such atrocious acts so it must be...drum roll...those Amrikis/Hindus/Joos. Of course, if you could actually realize you were delusional you probably wouldn't be delusional in the first place. Or maybe you would, if you were schizophrenic.

Watching CNN's  "analysis" is always good for a laugh. Reading Phelps's awful trash, 'Innovation and Morality'. It is painful to think this guy is an academic. Here's a classic line from it:

"There's something revealing in the fact that European society has birth rates so low. It suggests that Europe lacks a sense of opportunity for a rewarding, challenging, fulfilling life."

I kid thee not. Then again, could it be something to with average breast size, Mr. Phelps?

And there are more nuggets of wisdom from the Nobel-prize winner:

"You can see the stultifying economy on the faces of the young people in Europe, many of whom would dearly like to get out."

Oh, I dunno, some of the faces I've seen in Europe are positively charming, old bean. Can you think of any more inane generalizations. There is a lot to be gleaned from the back of cornflakes packets, Phelpsy.

It's not surprising, really, that there should be so little sympathy for the social welfare state or its underlying philosophy (what Phelps might call Communism). Because that would mean recognizing there are alternative ways to live, to organize a society, instead of falling back on the old cliche that my way is the best way (a rather irritating tick the human species seems to have). In that sense, not too different from Muslim and Jewish nutters: we, the chosen ones, have seen the path (nay, verily verily, we are the path).

"Been around the world and I..."

"Bustling activity will more and more take the place of reasonable consideration...It is not by bustle that men become enlightened. Spinoza was content with the Hague; Kant, who is generally regarded as the wisest of Germans, never traveled more than ten miles from Konigsberg."

---Bertrand Russell.

In time we may find there is no wisdom in space or in space travel.

"A happy life must be a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live."

"What yoke can be imposed on men who need nothing?"
---Rousseau.

Notes from Xenos's lovely 'Scarcity and Modernity'..all ties in, freakishly, with Russell: the need to reflect on desires, on what is meant by need. The need for roots? Well, yes, that's a tough one. Who, today, has any roots? What is close at hand must be disparaged, denigrated in favour of borders to be crossed (is there desire without transgression)? It is often said that needs relate to the isolated individual whereas desires are by their very nature relational. What we desire is at least in part socially constructed. Does the emulative nature of desire lead, eventually, to a "black inclination to harm one another"? (Rousseau).

But is it not the case that, at least at the extreme, it is desires that isolate ( the gambler, the pornographer)? An unmoored imagination, neither constrained by Tradition or social norms or "customary expectations"(E.P.). What is desired is something that cannot be attained, a pleasure that is at once always around the corner and simultaneously satisfied. Perhaps this is a source of unhappiness, our always being on our feet, in motion, 'perpetually moving happiness machines.' Next time things will be better. If we are what we desire then who are we? Are we even sure that we really want what we desire?

If you could track a person's history by the history of what she desired. The world: the locus of the exchange of desires.

But this silent transition in the way we talk, from the language of needs and rights and obligations to the language of desires, preferences, wants: taste is just a crude, arbitrary and momentary feeling that picks up one commodity out of a dazzling array of possibilities. Prior to that, perhaps, is the making over of various 'things' into commodities. One must be made desirable. Even if you ain't got it, flaunt it.

"Trinkets and baubles", Smith said. "Deception" and illusion as the great motors of civilisation? Ever widening and finer refinements, 'conveniences', the profusion of useless things and cheap throwaway products, for nothing must be allowed to last in this shape-shifting world. The "unnatural growth of the natural" (Illich), the relentless pursuit of growth, change, innovation. All very dizzying from a certain perspective, no doubt. If we didn't have that spark would we be confining ourselves to lives of immeasurable boredom? Perhaps. And yet the irony is that the system requires us to be bored out of our wits, to be discontented with our current situation and to believe that anything passing through our hands to be dispensable, dated, never quite the real deal. Life itself is seen as a series of choices (optimality), and if you don't get the best deal in life you've been swindled-except this time it isn't the fault of God or the State but yours because, in the final analysis, it was your choice.

Red of the Soul...

Dissent: to know the price of compromise.

M.D.F's book is so beautifully produced that you almost don't want to read it, or at least you're inclined to savour it like one would a fine wine (or so I'm told). But nothing prepares you for the effortless prose; whilst glancing (yes, why is your reading always so superficial?!) through some of the essays Hazlitt's words fly off at the page and at you so that you get the distinct impression that you're swimming through a sea of words; Foot's prose on the other hand comes across as more grounded, rooted...iron in the soul.

Both have brief sketches of their fathers, something that is quite endearing. For some odd reason there isn't much of that in bloggerworld-or at least you don't come across it. Maybe that's all for the best given your distaste for cheap sentimentality (what, is there any other kind?).

"...my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue."

The red and the black.

And what is the finest essay in the whole of the English language according to Mr. Foot?

There was this line by will Self? about how Hazlitt's essays are too pre-determined, perhaps even slightly didactic-especially in comparison to Montaigne's.

The Indian Juggler is simply dazzling and one of my favourites. And the way it swerves one way then the other..also, the idea that through plain speech and common phrases something profound can emerge immediately strikes you as what counts in favour of modernity. This line of thought, that within an ordinary life there can be majesty if not grandeur, continues in art, music, and film...

The Fight:

'You talk just as well as he [Cobbett] writes.'

Hazlitt expresses a desire for a form of communication removed from the regulation and the normative power of institutions...before all theory or "educational regimes"...when expression is suddenly freed from psychological, social, or political constraint.'

That is a fantasy, of course, but a charming one nevertheless and in those rare moments when the clothes fall away, so to speak, we do speak, & we find ourselves (even) with nothing to say. None of that stuffy affected European "intellectuality" but a plain English, as a "bit of human nature" (or, if you like: "...in the last scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more pretending; we must talk plain French"). No talk of death or existential anxiety; no mention of death or time  or "the soul"; no exaggerated reminiscing about what has been irretrievably lost; no idle speculations about eternal life or ridiculously grandiose claims for art; not to speak of...of. Not the afterlife, then, not the false note of seriousness that men in hats carry around with them to hide their shallowness. Not speak, memory, but to speak now, since the small fires of November are lit, and it is a time for forgiveness.

Notes to myself from myself

Hazlitt: print removes knowledge from the esoteric and makes available to all. cp. tyranny: secrecy, ignorance, divine origin of political authority.

In politics: public opinion, public reasoning, rather than the truth. Reasoning as the ability to take a second look (re-vision); in life: the ability to take a step back or sideways and let the traffic flow..second-takes, second spaces.

Hazlitt: Radical commitment is infantile cp. the maturity of second thoughts. Egotism: the inability to see other points of view, to place oneself at the centre of everything. When one does see the other side, there is an incredible capitulation. But if one has sympathy for the other side from the beginning, is open to the possibility that there is some value/truth to the opposing view, then one can sustain one's commitments. This, ultimately, depends on a 'dramatic flexibility' of character.

Hazlitt, the 'good hater'.. Browning? ..he hated well...he hated the things that prevented him from loving. 

Democracy is made by its habit of passionate and various communications.

Any view can contradict another because there is no single vantage point. What emerges will be provisional, something subject to refinement, further inquiry, elucidation.

'Hazlitt's devotion to impossibility, failed projects, catastrophes, whatever resists redemption.' Spectacle, entertainment, diversions-'to momentarily suppress the solitary's awareness of his solitude.'

Certain movements and impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union.

On J. Cavanagh: 'His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole game, and played it.'

Remarkabale qualities, especially when most of us never see the 'whole game'.

'A form of writing which frames moments of energy or revelation in melancholic reflection' .

This notion that the stylish might be something richer, deeper than surface illumination, a way of writing/thinking as a way of being. Panache. There's something fundamentally appealing about the ease and urbanity of people settled in their ways. Even the plodding peasant has some redeeming qualities (I guess). Nostalgia for a rural idyll or some supposed lost age of innocence is quite amusing though. Peasants are sly and crafty bastards. I suppose they're  not as bad as the self-styled religious folks or Commies or, indeed, as delusional as those who hark back to some sort of lost golden age infused with Tradition, Religion.

Whilst solitude is always precious I suspect it is even more so in times of verbal hyperinflation, instant messaging, and against the background of the cacophony of gossipers and media clowns, as well as the relentless onslaught of images. On the other hand, it's overestimated: if abstract reason isolates as well, then the altenative is surely good conversation, just as a remedy for the fragmentation  of our consciousness is the icon and a training in how to stop, look, and listen (rather than an iconoclasm).  

Beasts of the wild

Buckle up, people.

Over the last 800,000 years Co2 levels have never been above 300 parts per million (ppm). Currently, the Co2 -equivalent level (i.e. including methane) is about 430 ppm. An increase of 30 ppm has never occurred in less than a thousand years but the last increase of 30 happened in just 17 years.

Co2 stays in the atmosphere for, on average, 5-200 years. But that's an average...there are some suggestions that it could be up to 1,000 years. So, even if we cut back now, there's still a chance of significant increases in temperature over time. In reality, because of "feedback effects" and the possibility of non-linear systems or "thresholds" we're not even sure in our projections of : i) how much Co2 there might be and ii) the damage it might cause. In short, we have a "cascade of uncertainty" (IPCC, 2007).

As the great natural philosopher once said: there are unknown unknowns.
~~~

Just saw the beautiful film, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Bought Yellow Birds from O'Hare. Looks good. A recent report out on sexual violence in the army. Second thought: is that so surprising? Glancing through Finley's Ancient Economy and the depressing thought strikes you:  just how many people have been treated like chattel down the years or, alternatively, how few people have or had autonomous, decent lives?

Burn the Maths

'But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules---(1) Use mathematics as a short-hand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3.'

In academia there are many ways to be clever (and perhaps not too many to be wise). But why should one believe that intelligence ought to be rooted in schools or the university ? To say that it should be institutionalized is just crazy. There are other ways to be intelligent and intelligence isn't everything anyway. You can have a Ph.D. and still be a major league asshole. That probably doesn't capture the whole of it: can still be, and probably are.

Marshall, like other critics (Morishima) was himself a mathematical economist and so there's some weight to his comments.

It does appear that what counts is technical competence as well as the desire and ability to publish highly complex stuff in journals that no-one but other technicians can read and understand. God forbid that there should be public scrutiny of one's ideas! A 'clever' person who isn't also a self-publicist isn't really that clever after all. But what other kind of intelligence could there be if precision and "rigour" aren't all they're cracked up to be?

I think the first thing is to be aware of the history of one's subject ( a history of ideas). Then one might see that a lot of work is just (moderately) new wine in old bottles. Secondly, one should be aware of first principles, assumptions, understand the 'ways of approaching'; thirdly, one should be able to make connections-within a discipline and across them. Fourthly, one shouldn't be driven by theory or techniques (Marshall's 'engine of inquiry' point); fifthly, one should have some idea of what can and should, and what cannot and should not, be studied: the attempt at universal theorizing is dangerous. Having some idea of what one doesn't know is useful. Related to these points, I guess,  is the ability to say: "I do not know" and "we may never know". Sixth, abstraction and making generalizations is all well and good, but what's the point if you can't communicate those ideas except in a specialized, obtuse language?  

He falls
but never to the depth.
Falls, the shadow,
across her face,
like the moon's blemish.

Alone, I know not where I am.
The world is false as water.
It echoes back the heart’s  desire.
Love burns in changes of the moon.

...

the devil and the blues

"I don't give a fuck what they say," is Malian rapper Amkoullel's terse answer to a question about the Islamist music ban. "We won't let them get away with it. We don't need them to teach us how to be Muslims. We're a secular tolerant country, where everyone declares their religion according to their feeling. And in any case, they know that a Mali without music is an impossibility."

"I'm a Muslim, but Sharia isn't my thing," says Rokia Traore, one of Mali's most famous international stars. "If I couldn't go up on stage anymore, I would cease to exist. And without music, Mali will cease to exist."

More news from a strange planet: At one level its heartening to hear people defiant in the face of such obtuseness; still, you can't but help feel depressed at the speed with which this plague is spreading...

Yesterday I had an intriguing conversation with someone who has gone the other way. Started out as a real firebrand, "the most hardcore person in my batch", someone who wrote polemical articles saying the killing of  certain minorities was justified to someone who now doesn't believe. Smart, articulate, and with an incredible passion for reading, understanding, this person, a historian of sorts,  is now an avid fan of classical music (Chopin). But it does make you wonder: how can one hold such views in the first place? Is it just 'natural' if you're brought up in a household were such views are rife? Also, what is it that makes someone switch? In his case it seemed to be that the defeat of the Taleban wasn't followed by the end of the world. And finally, what is it that actually changes: the content of one's thoughts, the style of thinking, a change of heart?

This is a question for all of us, really. Especially when you hit middle-age and realize that your views are becoming  even more rigid by the day and you're becoming more set in your ways, literally hungering for some sort of order in your life (you must admit that the extent of it is nothing more troublesome than not having your butter in a butter tray and having jam out of a jar rather than from a small bowl. How anal is that!).

barbarians at the gates

'They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment.'

---from The Guardian.

There's something barbaric about the Saudis. Of course, if it was just about architecture or aesthetics it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really symptomatic of a really bizarre mindset that finds expression in many walks of life (attitudes to women, other faiths, etc.). I really couldn't give a fig what the towel-heads do, but the fact that they're exporting their brand of ignorance everywhere else makes me slightly nervy.

A people or government that has such disdain for its own past is really quite delusional. I once had lunch with a local maulvi here and despite spending the first thirty years of his life in the U.S. he didn't want to talk about America at all. That was odd, very odd, for it is hard to imagine that anyone who hasn't had extremely unpleasant childhood experiences would want to willingly negate what is so obviously a part of the fabric of their life.

This is not about some sort of blind sense of nostalgia or the arrest of all development. After all, one could quite easily advocate a middle path, one of an organic development that is line with a country's history, traditions, culture and environment. To say that some buildings have value because they are of historical/cultural or aesthetic merit is not the same thing as saying there should be no change whatsoever. There's a kind of fanaticism that wants to hold on to the past too tightly-just as there's a kind of fanaticism that wants to reject it in toto.

I wonder if there's a whiff of Stalinism in all this? One of the strangest things you noticed at Essex was just how much the East Europeans seemed to hate-and hate with a venom-their own country. It was as if Communism had, in addition to creating some horrendously ugly buildings, blanked out people's memories (and maybe the two are connected).

At another, less insidious, level there is the development of the bland, monotonous shopping malls in many (American) cities, so that what is distinctive of a particular place is lost to the vision of the planners; it's all about getting from A to B with least resistance.

...

How strange you have to be to remain faithful.
---G. Hill.

In a world of constant flux, sovereign becoming, to think of how many seasons have passed without understanding and not reach out for something familiar-a book, a smile, newspapers-is no mean feat. What is an act of faith? Everything is different, you hear someone say, when viewed in a sacred light.

The last remnants of colours on the trees, high decaying bronze, earth slowing, dark places becoming darker..October is a great turning point in the course of things. In November you will forgive me, Anna. What do you remember? To your astonishment you keep the music with you, close by. You think, in a childish way really, that you can lock some sort of feeling deep in you and draw on it later. Except it doesn't work that way. Nothing's stored and nothing can be stored. And yet you can't accept the flow either. Not to speak of the heart.

Lost my way, lost count, crossed too many thresholds, and didn't cross any. Keeping, not finding. Back, step back, sit down with one knee on the floor, tying your laces outside the school on the hill. How strange, our unfaithful hearts! Most of the books I have remain unread and there were so many flowers whose name I never knew.

Needs/Desire

Need, desire. For a long time now modern man has forgotten how to talk in terms of what he needs, for to talk in terms of needs is to recognize one's limits, one's dependence on others and other things. Desires, on the other hand, are limitless and point to-at least theoretically-a person's autonomy, his or her freedom from necessity. You don't ask why you desire something or someone (let's just stick with 'thing' to avoid unnecessary complications)..tastes are just taken as given, they just 'are'.

To speak of desires is easy and nothing is lost; they are often light, weightless, nothing that reveals too much about you the person, whereas needs get to the core of what you're about; needs single you out as fundamentally lacking in something. What is more isolating than a person in need? Paradoxically, there is a tendency to reaffirm a kind of unity with other needy beings...what defines us, in this reading, is that we share the same needs. For example, the needs of the body, even if mediated by society, are held to be universal, non-relative. And around that a form of politics can be built, perhaps...universal rights. But what of the needs  that cannot be expressed such, or that are not so easily recognizable? I need you, I don't need you. Indeed!

Economics doesn't help here. Preferences or desires are not distinguished according to how they relate to what we really need. Any reflection on what we ought to desire isn't part of the story. The intensity of one's preferences or desires doesn't have to relate to some intrinsic value of the object of one's desire; in fact, one's desiring is what makes the object valuable.

Somehow you think that if you knew what you really needed you'd know yourself. 

wilderness; a jewish life...

On the road again, in-between places...looking for familiar voices, people, places...the anchors of the world when there are no anchors...the great greying tree outside the window, the tree stump in the park from which little r would deliver her lectures on what's wrong with the world; the rickety old bridge across the Roding, behind the Baptist Church, where a black dog licked little r's cheek ("why did he do that?"). The music in our lives, each note strikes then falls...finds home, leaves home.

The flailing marriages, the old ones less fluent, gasping at the loss of words, the middle-aged friends at a crossroads, the mystery...how did we end up here?! the young ones blissfully innocent of history, enraptured by the latest computer game.

Against the Day

The October light, still with a hint of summer somewhere at its back, a warmth in the details. As time passes, as you grow older, certain days and hours are picked out, like a word in a book that is underlined. The brilliance of the light falls on the sloping school yard, on rusting leaves, reflects off high windows; each person  becomes more distinct and yet less sure of themselves. Someone fumbles with a book in their pocket on the train. Two women, who are really men, sit sadly next to one another, against the world.

Q tells me the story of how Ghazali was once robbed. He pleads with the robbers not to take his books-his prize possession. But they do, and they tell him: you shouldn't value something so much that it's loss causes you such distress. After that Ghazali learns all his work off by heart, as if he could stave off the dissolution, protect himself from the randomness of life, by simply memorizing what he knew.

In a seven minute walk you come across three galleries in the swanky part of town: Rothko and some Japanese photographer (their work horribly juxtaposed); Auerbach whose beautiful brush? strokes reveal an underlying structure of a human personality (really must get R. Hughes's monograph); and Luc Tuymans, whose 'grey paintings' are something you've always wanted to see.

The flowers still stirring in their frozen dream, the sun's light gently touching their outer being. The frost creeping up on the conservatory window, a thin veil of intricate patterns webbed on the glass, refracting the light, making it dense, slow, profound. You notice the seasons more as more are stored up. The great tree hunches its shoulders like an old homeless man, preparing for a harsh winter. The accumulation of memories in its grain, against the grain...

The days are numbered. Six or seven. Time passes like a series of blank pages, until once again a word emerges, and that word was your name.   

~~~

b's great adventure in the US of A.

Back in ol' blighty after a whirlwind trip to the States. You forgot just how polite and courteous the Yanks are. Really quite remarkable. Old world charm, I guess. And the lovely accents...when C said: "are we all set here?" your heart nearly melted.

Stuck at the ungodly Newark for eight hours. A very old black woman, bespectacled, chicken-necked, looked at me and said: "looks like you is stuck here, baby!". The problem was, of course, that you looked at everyone through the prism of tv. memories. So, for instance, the taxi driver at NY was really Gene Wilder. One degree or two to the side and you could have sworn this was Lukas, your German friend. You were half expecting Starsky and Hutch to show up...

Also, everyone wanted to talk to you, to confess to some failing or heartbreak. I think that's less to do with the naive gullible look I have and more to do with the fact that a considerable amount of Americans are slightly unhinged in my opinion.

Past Chicago, the lovely blazing reds and deep bronzes of Fall. The bus driver of the Lincoln Express said he'd take me right up to the hotel for "less than a taxi". When we got there I said, trying to scam him, "I'm truly overwhelmed by your generosity, Sir"(If I'd had a southern accent it would have gone down a treat). He just looked at me and said, "That'll be five bucks". Anyway, I only had two and some change and poured them into his outstretched hands. Well, there you go...East End cunningness always beats Yankee gullibility hands down. Felt quite sorry for him, actually. He looked like an old Paul Newman with his clean half-sleeve white shirt and two-shade brown sunglasses. The driver on the way back, Mr. Lewis, was a real character. Genuinely funny. I was gonna do my Paul Newman from Cool Hand Luke there...gen-u-wine

At Newark airport, outside  Dunkin' Donuts, where I spent 4 hours gulping down sweet coffee, a man wearing light blue jeans, sneakers, and baseball cap started talking to me. Here he was, the quintessential "loser". He was "on the run". He was "hot". Had left his uncle's funeral where the money from the safe had gone missing. "Family, they mess ya up". I was going to tell him the famous line from Larkin but it would have been lost on him. He delivered newspapers for 27 years and was now in Phoenix. "And what do you do in Phoenix?"

"Not'ng..ain't much to do out there"

~~~

The talk itself went okay. Met a Mr Wang who told me this old Chinese line: each child is born to be kind. "That's lovely," I said.

"Oh no, " he replied, in a thick Chinese accent. I and my wife ah baptist for 27 yeah..we Baptist...everyone born in sin! And we both laughed.

~~~

the inventory

The things I have lost over the years...

A Gilgiti hat, my book on dinosaurs, friends, the Guinness Book of World Records, my fear of that disabled veteran in the wheelchair near the train station, South Wales, the opportunity to become rich for the rest of my life (let's not go there!), furniture, my heart, a black cardigan, sun glasses, some hair, a collection of old coins, stamps, a carefree smile, old tin soldiers, a sense of direction, marbles, my mind(?), belongingness, the ability to spell, socks, a wedding ring, time, registration papers, und einiges, was ich niemand verrate...

Some things are lost, some are irretrievable; some you forget, some you can't but help remember. A silver mirror makes your heart sink; a gold cup at your lips, and the world was full again. Learn to let go. At this age you realize there is no learning. Hold on, then, b. Ah, the wisp of regret, the mortal coil, the unfolding of a piece of paper, an indecipherable list of 'things to do', books 'to read'; little r, in a fit of beautiful destructiveness, has drawn a crazy series of circles over the lists. In all the lists in the world, and the lists of lists, there are some things the heart cannot speak of.   

taking the piss

Somehow I stumbled across an article on German humour...you're taking the piss, right?

As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,

---Denise. 

With the arctic sea ice rapidly melting (the summer arctic is half what it was in 1979 in area terms...probably even less, volume-wise), the polar bears aren't going to be so leisurely any more. How serious is this? We don't know, but it does appear that temperatures in that region are increasing at twice the global rate and it's not clear what impact that will have on the release of 'sequestered methane' and sea levels.

The swami said that her father saved some saffron that someone brought from Kashmir for the wedding of his six daughters. Good saffron was, or so the saying went, as precious as gold. A small touch can transform the whole meal. You wonder about that: the idea of saving, of storing up, of not always expressing everything, savouring...the future moment as real and wonderful as anything else even if it never arrives, is only leisurely dreamed about.

~~~

Consumer culture has made us too accustomed to getting only what we want, no more and no less. Experiences are atomised into their component parts, the extraneous excised in an attempt to maximise the impact of the parts we prefer, with no thought to how their context changes them. But if you only ever get what you know you already want, serendipity is denied and the richness of experience is reduced to the button-pushing delivery of crude hits of fun, excitement, novelty or reassurance, often consumed in the private bubble of home or headphone.

---Julian Baggini.

California and the End of Men

Was casually listening to a catchy tune by 2Pac (or Tupac). Reading up on him (Wiki..yeah, I know) there was the sad-and not wholly unexpected-story of the web of violence that he seemed to be implicated in, one way or the other. For some reason this made me think of prisons in America (Gary Wills?, NYRB, and in the current edition as well).

Many have commented on the misogyny of some parts of the 'genre' and whether one can or should relate it to people's behaviour and attitudes. Iris M: on the violent image (or pornography),  the lack of a restrained gaze (Illich), the forgetting of the ways of approaching. You really need to go back to Dudley Young, but is there something 'hard-wired' about men and violence, something ritualistic, almost?

'In the United States, for every two men who will receive a BA this year, for example, three women will do the same. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the United States over the next decade, 12 are occupied primarily by women. Indeed, the US economy is in some ways becoming a kind of travelling sisterhood: professional women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill. Our vast and struggling middle class, where the disparities between men and women are the greatest, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the workforce and from home, as women make all the decisions.'

---Hanna Rosin.


'And there were other factors for using our military skills, minor but significant: these reasons return us to the ongoing malaise of the white American male. He had been taking a daily drubbing over the last thirty years. For better or worse, the women's movement has had its breakthrough successes and the old, easy white male ego has withered in the glare.'

---Norman Mailer.

how to live

You don't give much thought -probably because you haven't got much to give in the first place-to how to live. Except the thought of first place does guide you, now and then. Don't want to see the world; silliness like the Taj Mahal doesn't interest you. Stay, stay inside.

Yesterday Irfan asked if didn't want to know the answer. Er..what was the question again? But no, I don't know what the answer is or what it even might look like. I suspect it would like something like the tree outside my house, suspect it would sound like the silence of the back room, the radio dial stuck, as it always is, on a particular frequency. Strain to find the answer. Waste so much time training your mind on it. None of that seems to matter. Little r said she wants to get married. "To who?" I asked. She smiled and said: Paddington Bear. Of course, but who else!

So many dream of being something, someone, or of finding our "true self". If this was California and the 1960's and I a Buddhist, then maybe. But this is here and now, the accumulation of all the here and nows of before (and maybe some of the future ones as well-God knows).  

'One lives with light and pleasure in spaces hitherto lost and really quite dark'
---Mercier, in Braudel's Wheel. 

A line from K. Irby...the sunshine on the sidewalk is all we had. Near Ray Lodge, you always walk on the side where the shade is deepest, out of the light. Catch your breath, hold your thought. Your skin and mind's northern aversion to too much light. Some other kind of clarity, surely? Icarus: the world turned away.

The gaze, perhaps through no effort of its own, turned inwards. Through the smoke you see a face. Memory and desire meet.

Only a dead person or a philosopher asks: how to live?

...

Picked up some Merton and last night randomly turned to a page; found the breathtaking line:

Nothing goes towards God unless it comes from God.

Of course, you've heard this before...alpha and omega, but it also resonates deeply with a Muslim perspective. I think any genuine religion-as a lived experience-tends to build bridges, see similarities, erase useless distinctions. Perhaps it is the other way around as well: those who try and connect, listen, are already in some sense 'religious'? If one does not have faith or an 'object of love' that is transcendental then what?  Is there some truth to the belief that if one desires something enough it becomes valuable, is valuable? Or must we say that only the inherently desirable is desired, truly desired?

On the one had, you're inclined to go against the 'taste model' since it would be odd to think that, for example, an irresistible desire for drugs was of any value. On the other, to ignore subjectivity or the personal point of view is a bit like saying an 'objectively' not so attractive woman cannot be desired. (Of course, using such analogies itself is indicative, you might say, of the problem at hand).

stray thoughts...

'The lack of system is a sign of generosity of mind.'
---from a review of Jonathan Meades's new book.

'Better naked than the Burqa'
---Femen.

A man in Hyderbad has, apparently, been accused of blasphemy for not closing his shop in protest or not participating in the riots.

The lack of system, you think to yourself, only makes sense against the background of a well-functioning system.  There's chaos, then there's chaos.

Just got a soft copy of Julia Kristeva's superb chapter on Holbein's 'Dead Christ' from her book, Black Sun. Anyone who wants a copy can e-mail me.

Economists don't usually think in absolutes; goodness is really reducible to 'betterness'. X is better than Y and Y is better than Z and the ordering of them or, rather, the conditions we think that should structure the ordering, are what counts as rationality (or at least the minimal version of rationality).

My first trip to America. Quite chuffed that I found an old coin-about 100 years old-in the subway. As I walk up the dark steps into the light I see hundreds upon hundreds of topless women protesting. I rub my eyes in disbelief! America! What a whacky place (admittedly, this was only New York and you suspect the rest, Larkin's 'desert of bigots', to be slightly unhinged in a different way). Which reminds you: must look out for The Master.

green philosophy

'I saw there was nothing to learn in the deep north...you get enlightenment where you are.'
---E. Bond.

We're out of time, you and me, kid. There's no two ways about it. The arctic is heating up at twice the global average. Scale down, reduce your thoughts to a minimum, to the essential, the necessary. We're old already.  Read about polar bears in a book. A world of reduced possibilities and diversities, the angles to the universe folding. What will you remember? Not Socrates or any mathematical equations. There won't be so many questions, or answers. Books, libraries, abstract thought..all that will seem so quaint, mystifying. Why did we darken ourselves with words for so long?

Crow, no longer afraid to touch the earth lightly, settles down. Once again, time will move in large sweeping arcs, free from machines and human regularities. What shall I remember, precious one? My house, the tree, stars, grey clouds, morning snails and slugs? History in stones and wood and glass. Fires still burn, the red in the green...

We will search and search for our previous life, unable to reconcile ourselves with loss (much as we do now). Or that look on your face, the recognition of so much time passing deep in your eyes; London, still a dark memory in my heart, the bridge, gently arching over the Roding, where a black dog once licked little r's face. You will remember how once she was startled, asking: "Why did he do that? .."What language does a dog speak?"

Muslims don't like dogs (Celia once said). Muslims don't like anyone! But there will be no time for such considerations. Flags, as beautiful and meaningless as silver badges loosely pasted in a scrapbook; the dizzying awareness that what held us together was just a two-dime fiction, that Shylock had it right about the great equivalences: my flesh was your flesh after all.

'Whatever remains green is more deeply, richly green than it was before.' An intense stillness..the smallest sound is easily heard.'
---J.B. 

Green spark, Montale, the district line, Bellow's green Venetian bottles, Tarkovsky's sad green of Solaris/Roding, Bonnington's lady-in-green, a "luxuriant green"...

what do you need? a tree a house to
gauge how great how small our human life
how great how small when you look up to the top of the tree
and get lost in the lush luxuriant green
how great how small when you think how short
your life compared with the life of trees
you need a tree you need a house
not all for yourself just a corner a roof
to sit to think to sleep to dream
to write to be silent to see your friend
the stars grass flower sky
—Friederike Mayröcker

...the green after the black in AnneMarie's German sufism. Bulleh...

She injured me, then turned away.
Compelled by love I dance, I dance.
She clothed me in robes of green and red.






  

the eaters and the eaten

'The table is laid according to rules of symmetry, choosing the right cutlery...Everything is controlled by aesthetic norms, and these norms, freely obeyed and freely varied, convey some of the meaning of...life...it speaks of tranquility, gentleness and things that remain forever the same..serving the food is also ritualized and you witness in the family meal the continuity of manners and aesthetic values.'

---Roger Scruton, Green Philosophy.

When your German friend was here you remember how, when going out for a meal, you or other friends would invariably put some food in his plate first, before eating their own food. A common gesture, but obviously not a universal one. And you have to confess that at times this custom has slightly irritated you. But, for my German friend it was as if his very individuality was being affronted.

One of the best meals I've eaten was in Seville...a lavish but inexpensive two hour affair with ripe watermelons, bitter coffee, dark chocolate,..sun and shade and a book. On the other hand, one of the quietest and simplest meals has been in Hunza: delicious goats cheese, apricots (of which Denise lovingly once wrote) and freshly baked bread. The etiquette there seemed very much to be: don't speak unless you have something to say. Not Wittgenstein, but a kind of natural grace and ease with oneself. None of the straining egos of 'the south', no excited and lively banter, no background music, just the mountains, clouds, and the bitingly cold air on one's face. This was, according to the locals, 'little Tibet' and it's not hard to see why...

It's tempting to look back, all misty-eyed, and reflect, Waltonesque, on the small ordering and regularity in out lives and how their dissipation is somehow a symbol of the fragmentation of modern times. Eat on the go, or in front of the television, eat on one's own or eat just because one has to, to keep the body going.

On the road to Bukhara, we stop at a roadside restaurant, a rickety wooden structure, something one imagines only existing in a medieval book; there the old man crouches on his haunches (eating or drinking standing up is usually frowned upon in many muslim countries); he pulls out a knife that he carries with him (this reminds you of Berger's fantastic essay) and starts to cut wide slices of succulent watermelon for all of us. Then, the oldest of our traveling companions is asked to break the large oval loaf of bread and divide it amongst us all. Again, there's something deeply reassuring about this ritual.

Of course, there are other norms, pernicious ones, that have profound implications. Those associated with gender biases. How do these translate into nutritional and educational inequalities? Work pioneered by Sen (I think). Other norms, rituals, strike one as very odd. For example, when in Boston, living with a Hindu family, an incredibly loving and gracious family it should be added, my entering the kitchen was frowned upon. Sharing of food or drink that has already been tasted is also considered to be quite disgusting.

Cleaning one's plate is also, you guess, a fairly widely practice. For Muslims it's considered part of the sunnah, for  northern friends it's plain old pragmatism (D. McClosky has a lovely reflection on the Dutch and their idea of "waste"). Drinking a glass of something in at least three 'goes' is also a custom, though I do confess to swigging down glasses of lassi in one go. Eating with the right hand now seems to be a fading remnant of an old tradition. Another part of that tradition: only eat so that your stomach is two-thirds full (there are other, more social ones which advocate that if one of your neighbours- up to seven houses from yours-is hungry then you have an obligation to share your food). You are told stories of how back in the per-partition days food was regularly shared by neighbours across the wall.

Cooking with someone is as enjoyable as eating with someone. But that's the subject of a whole new post. (R. Sennett: Craftsman). The politics of slow food.Food as a "political commodity" rather than a natural one (Ignatieff and Hont's fab. chapter on 'needs').

In a dark, dilapidated room in Karachi you remember how distant relatives, people you barely knew, laid out an elaborate meal for you. We sat, crossed leg on the floor, eating out of plates set out out on a brilliant white piece of thick cloth. Then they stopped and realized, in horror, that I didn't eat with my hands. There was a frantic search for a spoon and all was well in the world again. In Kashmir, you are told, there aren't always individual plates. That sounds too Arabian, barbaric, almost.Each to their own, I guess. Really must read Norbert Elias on manners.

Albert Hirschman: the common meal as a symbol...

To eat, outdoors, watching the world go by. One of the great pleasures of life. Paris. The click of high heels, the swoosh of a dress...Or a sarnie and some coffee, sitting on a bench or under a tree, a book placed down next to you, never face down, and never completely closed (a protruding pencil or bookmark makes sure of that). London. A liberating sense of freedom, equality and anonymity.

~~~

"To cook for someone is an intimate act. To prepare food that another will place in their mouth, that will be tasted and swallowed and then pass through that person's body, is a primal exchange. We care about food in literature not when it is deployed as a symbol but when it becomes a language. One cooks. Another eats. "

---from the Guardian.

Babette's Feast, of course. Courtesy of Beth.

Someone recommends a passage from Beckett...

tea for two and me for you...

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

---D.

I asked four people Scheffler's question; three were economists and all are my good friends so I was a bit surprised that their answers seemed to give greater weight to the former fact than the latter (or at least that's what I'd somehow tricked myself into believing...that friends somehow reflect and enliven our own deepest understanding of life). The fourth friend, a philosopher, didn't see how this dented consequentalism. I guess one should be thankful for such a response, but a part of me couldn't but help want a human response, one not so abstract.

I don't really believe-as some have suggested-that a training in economics makes one more prone to believe that "self-interest is the first principle" (Edgeworth).

Scheffler's question raises the question of how or why we value something. Firstly, it is unlikely that someone is going to be indifferent to the question; secondly, they are unlikely to think on the lines of an elaborate cost-benefit analysis, carefully weighing up all the bad and good consequences (no more suffering in the world, no more people able to listen to Bach, discover and create new and beautiful music, art, friendships). What is more likely is a sense of sorrow or even dismay. These feelings may be overwhelming when one thinks that loved ones will not get the chance to live wonderful lives (we commonly refer to the "premature" death of someone and are quite comfortable with commenting on how tragic that is). So, it makes sense to believe that we could think the end of a way of life, and of particular individual lives, will distress us.

This points us to the idea that we can value things without experiencing them and that consequentalism (and therefore utilitarianism) has its flaws. If it is argued that we do experience fear, sorrow, etc. that misses the point: that feeling is only derivative of an event in the future that we care about, that is important to us. Also, that we may not take into account all the consequences, may not view life from the viewpoint of the universe, suggests that a different type of thinking is going on here, one that is inextricably linked to our relationships. Value, or valuing something, then, can be for a different type of reason (if one wants to use that word). 'Valuing' is the meeting of subjective desire with "things"with objective qualities.

I desire tea. I desire tea not just for the taste of it but for, at least in part, the social dimension it has; I desire tea for two; I desire that you drink tea and desire it too and, even more, that maybe you do not like it but drink with me (not necessarily for me)... volo ut sis...or is it, perhaps, my desire for tea is really a reflection of a higher-order desire. I do not even like tea: I desire you. A new cogito: I think of tea, and I am. I sip tea with her, and am not.

What would it mean to lose the sense of continuity, of things carrying on? Radical Hope, as Plenty Coups might say. What if there is no north, north of the future? Not in the overtly religious sense but more in terms of an afterlife..a life after ours?

Scheffler's question is, for me, a question of what it means to be an individual, a question of our relation to time, of our appreciation of the fact that we find ourselves in a web of relations and dependencies and obligations that cannot be reduced to calculation or rationality. A love of place, of people, of life itself...perhaps our sense of the prospect of it perishing would enhance, in a not ambivalent way, the things we have come to love?

~~~

Train Dreams

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.

----J.B.

God needs the hermit in the forest as much as he does the preacher in the pulpit.
---Denis Johnson, Train Dreams.

Peak-effect. The last few pages certainly gave it a kick but on the whole: didn't do it for me. And the main reason is that the content demanded a different form: more detail, more pottering about, more everything; instead, what we got was a short story, a few moments of someone's life plucked out of the stream. You wanted to see a life, vast and quiet as the surroundings, an epic unfolding itself down through many various paths. touching on wider events in the world...the history of America itself, maybe.  

Lesley Chamberlain's got a new book out; was chuffed to be invited to the book launch but I fear I'll be like Rita fretting over what to say at Michael Cain's dinner party, so maybe not. Can't wait for her book on Van Gogh, though.

The posthumous Keats, or whatever it's called, is an incredible bore-so far. But I guess I'll persevere since it might link up with John Gray's fascinating Immortality book and Scheffler's question:

Say you live for a normal lifespan but that you now know that thirty days after your death the whole of human life will come to an end. What difference-if any-will that make to you in terms of your attitudes, feelings, actions?

A rather morbid and abstract thought experiment but one that leads to some interesting reflections.

Another Day

Slightly less boring than yesterday. The usual routines of exercise, the track in the evening now filling with darkness, swooping birds, flitting bats, and flying insects. Man, 'Nam couldn't have been this bad!

Dinner. superb food but everybody seemed out of sorts. Or maybe it was just me. Much more likely. I probably died and didn't realize it. I was only half there, like some ghostly visitor from another world, mystified by the whole scene of domestic plainness and the rigid artificiality. Of course, you somehow think to yourself that all this fakeness will one day give way, crumble, to reveal some sort of resplendent truth, just the way you peeled away 12 layers of wallpaper in the old house, in the old country, Wales....

It's not just the falseness in one's voice; it's the nonsense one spews forth. Desert Fathers and stones in their mouth. Out there to escape the incessant chatter, babble, idle speculation and pettiness. Not the Syrian eccentrics, of course. Bake a cake. Eat and share it. Read a book. Spend some time praying or in the garden quietly going about your way...the sudden light near the library, this wild mixture of sunshine and shadow, reminds me a pure Sunday: late lunch, roast beef and mint sauce, then the Big Match...

A looked bored out of her mind, that vacant look, the flashiness gone from her eyes...as if she'd already been married for twenty years, or lost something of great value. The discussion wheeled unpredictably from jihadi violence to "experience", then back to DFW (who no no-one has read), then back to deadlines, how the department of politics was full of shits and losers (general agreement there), the mediocrity overflowing from their department like so much refuse that hasn't been collected in the winter months. H, probably a bit drunk, his voice full of condescension and a mild resentment, urging us to fight the good fight like a parliamentarian whip, despondent (or maybe just bewildered) that we weren't all true intellectuals, didn't see what was at stake here: "the university", "academia", I guess. My heart isn't in it. Opposite me: a very attractive and stylish foreign woman. I put on my liberal hat...

The kids, dazed by it all, unable or unwilling to share anything with one another, or play together (I don't know why that's always expected of children). They're supposed to learn how to be sociable, how to listen, mix, express themselves. But from who?

Another Day

Reverence, tolerance...

There's a lovely chapter in Roger Scruton's Green Philosophy. I want to put to one side his (minor) comments on Islam but it never ceases to amaze me that people can comment on some topic about which it is abundantly clear they have little knowledge of. I mean, it would sound slightly ridiculous if a non-scientist made remarks about the scientific method. Of course, in an era which supports ever more fantastically rigid lines of demarcation between branches of knowledge it may be that no-one can say much now about anything except their own tiny area of specialization. So, yes, tradeoffs.

~~~

There's been some comment about the youtube clips which, no doubt, many Muslims will find offensive. And the recent decision by Channel 4 to pull the plug on a programme on the origins of Islam (Tom Holland?) has also brought widespread criticism (rightly so, in my opinion).

Some will say that freedom of speech isn't the real issue here; what we should be concerned about is the terrible violence and stupidity associated with some religious groups in the modern world (some may wish to go further and say that violence is inextricably linked to religion-or at least one religion-both at the historical level and at the textual/doctrinal one). I think that that's a reasonable and fair discussion, even though I don't really have much time for that point of view. Violence and the Sacred: Dudley Young, of course.

There's the minor point that it does appear that one group of people (Muslims) in the world is highly sensitive to criticism or ridicule and quite childlike in their reactions. Again, broadly speaking, that sounds about right- putting to one side Jewish complaints of anti-semitism.

My question is off tangent to those discussions: can people who have lost the sense of reverence for anything holy truly be said to be irreverent? When it was said of Eckhart: the more he blasphemes, the more he praises God, this was against a background of faith; in a similar vein, the idea of liberty, or one idea of liberty-that of freedom from constraint-was really a pressing concern when the state, custom, tradition, and religion bore down heavily on the individual. But I don't think complaints against authority were tantamount to the desire to abolish the idea of limits, restraints altogether (even the Reformation was about a reform of the Church, surely?).

This reminds of a brilliant essay by Cavell on Kierkegaard. Up there with Kristeva on Holbein and his own superb reading of Endgame. Words and concepts like "holy", "revelation" ..what can they mean in the times we live in?

What must strike the modern world as profoundly strange is that so many Muslims do in fact have a reverence for holy persons (of different faiths..as a matter of dogma, actually). Not talking about the barbaric views towards images (Buddhist and Hindu) of some, but of the day-today religious views of the majority. And then there's one of my favourite stories-which sounds authentic-about how the Prophet protected the image of Christ from being destroyed in the Kaba (see Titus Burckhardt's Art of Islam for details).

To go back to Scruton: is there something about the modern way of living, capitalist society, that destroys the sense of reverence, attachment to a place or the past or to nature? Is there something about it-its emphasis on use value, for example-that erases the boundaries between public and private, sacred and profane, the different "spheres of justice" (Walzer) so that the very notion of transgression becomes redundant? What happens when the shock of the new doesn't shock any more? Is nothing sacred, Rushdie asked, and the answer was: No!

Illich has this phrase: the 'revolt against necessity' and Hannah says: the 'unnatural growth of the natural'. To speak of "necessity" or "needs" and not wants and desires is to go against the grain. Are we in need of a different view of austerity, one that means living in one's limits with a sense of joy and responsibility?

It might be said-and with some justification-that religious people have rarely tolerated other people (minorities, unbelievers, etc) and so why should they now be afforded such space. Such a view really only mimics the hatred expressed by religious people. What would the world be like if the so-called religious people and the so-called non-religious people actually sat down and listened to one another as human beings, instead of ridiculing the other, instead of trying to determine the limits of free speech? Surely free speech is one that is easy-going, full of light-heartedness, but respectful of other people's sensibilities. Although the art of conversation still survives (despite the internet!) one does sometimes wonder if it will continue to do so when the voices of hatred and bigotry are so resoundingly loud.