Outlooks

What kind of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

--Brecht.

Who is the cause of Sedition?

'The men of law, the merchants, the gentlemen..the lords, and I cannot tell who; men that have no name because they are doers in all things that any gains hangs upon. Men without conscience. Men utterly void of God's fear. Yea, men that live as if there were no God at all! Men that would have all in their own hands; men that would leave nothing for others; men that would be alone on the earth; men that be never satisfied.'  

--Crowley, 1550.

Munch.
Knausgaard

Political possibilities were opened up or narrowed down by different ways of organizing the flow and concentration of energy, and these possibilities were enhanced or limited by arrangements of people, finance, expertise and violence that were assembled in relationship to the distribution and control of energy. 

--from Carbon Democracy.

~~~

I guess you know just how huge a fan I am of Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree. Breathtakingly good. So good, in fact, that most of what else you listen to just doesn't seem real in comparison. So, it was with great disappointment that I read his recent statement. Ken Loach responded:

"Nick Cave has a choice, either to stand with the oppressed Palestinians or the Israeli state which denies them their human rights. He chooses to stand with the oppressor.”

That, I think, is a fair assessment.

~~~

Something began me and it had no beginning; something will end me and it has no end.

--Carl Sandburg. 

How the mighty (may) have fallen

That he had many mistresses, that he consulted sites, that girls were brought to the hotel at the end of his lectures, that he invited them to undress, that some resisted and that he could become violent and aggressive, yes, but I have never heard of rapes, I am stunned," he told French magazine L’Obs.

--Bernard Godard on Tariq Ramadan.

~~~

I want to stress that these are, at the moment, only accusations and not facts. I'm not usually given to speculation but if true then this is pretty damning and horrific. For the people involved but also-and I'm not sure if it's appropriate to talk about the social ramifications right now- it means the end of one of the moderate voices on Islam in Europe. Of course, if the allegations are true that doesn't really matter. What does is that those in power are exposed. Ramadan may or may not be guilty but it is clear to me that men with money/power can be manipulative.

In a limited sense I've seen it at my university with male colleagues cultivating a 'manly' persona (in some cases having affairs with students. That's been rare but it has happened). I think the more pervasive expression of authority is to have young women hang around you. What a sad, sad state you have to be in if you want to have young women, half your age, look up to you). A more typical Lahori/Punjabi thing is to buy yourself what used to be called 'a keep' in the old days (in short, a mistress or a 'second wife' or a high-end prostitute, basically). And I've seen that, too.  

What is it a sign of? Some deep-rooted, primordial male need to dominate? A need to collect 'trophies'. Of course, I'm suspicious of such ideas. They don't mean that much. What difference does it make if these attitudes developed over the last ten thousand years of agriculture or were there right from the beginning? Or is it more specifically to do with the age we're at (since it does seem to be a particularly middle-aged thing I include myself by saying 'we')?

But back to Ramadan. Not that you've read any of his stuff but he always did come across as suave, gentle, sincere, and liberal-or at least open-minded. My sister even interviewed him for a newspaper a few years ago. Must dig that up.

        

Learning how to think/die

I haven't read Alan Jacobs's book but there was a nice review of it by Chad Wellmon. How to think alone is not really thinking. 

~~~
Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is a fascinating book (very much in tune, you suspect, with the Dark Mountain Project). A one line summary: we're fucked.

Any book that starts with these lines has me hooked:

A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation of life, not of death.

--Spinoza, Ethics, IV. 67  

This incredible sense of an ending of the immense beauty, wonder and joy that we once felt for the natural world. 

Grey whale
Now that we are sending you to the End.

The slow world of the whale, existing in another dimension to ours, out of time. None of our clocks are in sync. Time flies. 

How long have the whales been here? Humans, who once, we would like to believe, existed within nature, or at least in a more gentle relationship with her, has finally worked it out; the self-centre narcissistic species has decided how it can go it alone. 

Nature, in order to survive, must be 'killed' (that sounds like a bad joke from Vietnam but once you see the same destructive impulses at play you'll get where this is coming from). The connection between war and the environment: scorched earth policy. Shock and Awe. 

Nature is now an ecosystem service, valued at around 33 trillion dollars (roughly twice the annual world GDP). So, it's not in our interest to destroy our home (of course, if the benefits outweigh the costs then it is!). But in the process we will kill nature anyway (now priced, and spliced, the subject of speculation, 'investment'..you can be sure the MNCs won't be too far away..follow the money, as the old saying goes). Nature is big business. Instead of the 'free gift' of capitalism its value is now internalized.

And the Elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.

The Great Thinning is upon us. The Sixth Extinction. See E. Kolbert and M. McCarthy for the stats. It's horrific. And there's a built-in momentum what with urbanization and the relentless imperative of economic growth that shows no sign of waning. The increase in the numbers of people in the middle class as well as farming practices mean that the chances of limiting this to 2 C are thin (see Kevin Anderson).

~~~

I can't really write about the claims of sexual abuse that seem to be part of the daily news nowadays. Would require some serious reflection and not just a small note like this one. But Tariq Ramadan? Really? 

Well, not too surprising (if true). It's great that these stories are coming out and I'm pretty sure they're just the tip of the iceberg (violence and abuse are probably a lot more widespread than many would like to believe). But I'm a bit jaded when it comes to the question of whether this will fundamentally alter things. As long as the power structures remain in place and as long as there isn't a change in heart expect more of the same: war citizenship. 

In some sense, this is really just a footnote to what was said above: there's a deep sickness in the heart of man (read: heart of men).  





    

Three degrees

k

There is no poetry here, no words or art that might reconcile, bring comfort. No west wind that harbours the thought of spring deep within its cold gaze.

There is only withdrawal, sheltering, a kind of bewilderment, a startled recognition of what our hands have sown. It's too late, the dark forests are dwindling, the Roding runs dry by the hour waiting for the moon to turn, and with it the invisible weight that will reach our shores, leading to a surge and the flooding of the land, with no renewal on what was leased to us.

The brief life we have, only artificially illuminated by electric lights. Myself, a flickering 'I', a blue light in the glass.    

Every grain of soil of known lineage, well connected...

But us, our loves, dust. All our bridges floating now. Turn your face to me in the grey morning. We are shades of one another. This, the only breath we have so let the weight grow in your heart. Think now. Settle your heart. If I could name it, I would. 

Everyone is on the move today. Perhaps they've seen the future, a future with no past. You, with your Jewish hat, are in prime position to find your way back. 

If nothing shines no more then is it only the memory of star that holds you rapt? What brings me this way today? And now, on this dark journey, carried by silver and star and reflection.

In the time that remains, do we seek forgiveness and who would listen? Why, raven, is your tongue so bittersweet?

{words by Anselm Hollo and Ted Hughes}

And then nothing happened

Scruton writes, very interestingly, about the impossibility of mourning. Of 'closure', as the Americans would say. The specific case of Germany and Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen. 

Mourning as a way of accepting-somehow coming to terms with-loss. But what if that's not possible and there's no way, no human way, of making sense of it? And there's no sense, partly, because one is at fault, one is already guilty. How can you get out of yourself, so to speak, so to speak? Obviously we cannot forgive ourselves and only the victims-that much maligned word- truly can. 

There is almost something absurd in the idea that we can forgive ourselves. But in general parlance we do say: "don't go too hard on yourself" (or "don't beat yourself up about it").

Here, though, this is different because of the enormity of what was done. What category of thought or feeling would allow us to move on? Isn't the sign of us wanting to do so simply another aspect of our failing?

Plenty Coups:

At the reservations time has come to a standstill. There's no way of getting around this. Conceptually, he's all at sea. There was no way of preparing himself or his people for the loss of meaning, the loss of even an appropriate way of thinking and feeling about loss.

And then nothing happened.   

~~~

Hiding Behind the Screen. 

Not shyness (or not just that). The inability to encounter the real world. The construction of that inability. On the internet a friend can be discarded at the click of a button. How convenient! If you're not enjoying the conversation or are switched off by it then you can, literally, switch off (and you assume, incorrectly as it turns out, that there are no costs involved).

{This is not about me R, just in case you were wondering}

And, also, you simply 'collect' friends on the net. Tally them up. What do you really know of someone if you haven't seen their face or heard their laughter? And an online friend is just another distraction, another form of entertainment to keep you from being bored to death. Of course, there's the added thrill of anonymity when chatting with or engaging with someone of the opposite sex. What is that charm of it, though? Is it that one is free of responsibility, accountability? A bit like when you go to a hotel on holidays..or the Ibiza experience..you can be no-one and let go of all the false images of yourself that you've carried around with you for so long. No more social constructions, just words and still images. Just a body, just a mind. Never the whole person, as you simply are, warts and all. 

The narcissism of investing so much of your time online. Of course. 

{This is not about me, just in case you were wondering}.

But how do you interact with real people or the world around you if you've been conditioned to responding (or not responding) to online friends?



    



   

Misc.

One of the above was valued at $450 million. I'm sure you can guess which.

There's something to be said about preservation here-the desire to keep things from the distant past intact. The defacement of the sleeping Buddha is a tragedy (being 1,700 years old makes it the oldest of its kind). Horrible as that it is there's still some hope in the fact that it has been restored and that it will (hopefully) be exhibited. 

But the sale of the Leonardo is also a symbol of the astronomical wealth of some people, the vast inequalities of late capitalism, and not simply bout the love of art. In effect, the commodification of art is what this is all about. Will the painting be viewed by the public or will it just be an investment, part of someone's private collection?  

~~~

Point of order.

Do rats in a maze follow a strict map (if rewarded then turn right; if not, keep going straight) or do they form a complete cognitive map? And humans? Does reliance on GPS result in us losing that map since, like the rat we simply turn left or right depending on what the electronic voice tells us to do? And does our ability to notice the environment we live in subsequently dwindle? How will we ever find home?

~~~

How to Think.

Not in isolation but with others, for others. This seems like a radical overturning of centuries of a false sense of autonomy. An autonomy, incidentally-and to join up the dots-that is leading to more reliance on machines.

~~~

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death.

--Machiavelli.

I come from another planet, another time, another epoch.
--Milosz, more or less

Of course, everyone lives in the times they find themselves; lives well or badly, more or less.

What is this world but the six yards before me-and the nothing beyond. This patch of land at my feet, dry as ice. Beyond the perimeter wall the sound of a lone rickshaw, out there in the sea with its single soft white light. The light so dim now that it's almost grey. The traffic lights flickering senselessly, saying to itself, "no one obeys". 

Inside, inside the calls of crows in the windowless branches and the sound of the leaves being swept by the other ghosts, as if they were making grand preparations for the arrival of a special guest.    

Rivers.

And our lives are full of rivers.

North. Winter river. The Roding down to its last thoughts. The frozen reeds like spears in its heart. Stones hold the memory of summers gone.

Where were you born, R? I don't think I ever asked you. Under which uncontrollable star?

Stay a little longer!
I know you have other faces to see.

There is a clock in every room; each strikes a different hour. So it is, the guide of the time/ is broken up. Find centre.

Sit in the morning gloom, book in hand, soft pencil dormant; the cat has awakened as I stumble in the half-light. I am fearful of the cat. A Sicilian breakfast beckons but nothing can move me: here I am, unknown by own heart/I lay there in my shadows.

The moon is somewhere. The sun is somewhere. Earth has lost its proportions. This is like Space 1999. Out there, the seas, the night, the night in the sea. And a grain of rice lit by the moon.

The winds of the comet 
are like a whirlwind.

The silent trail of a life.

~~

At the small oblong patch of gravely land they called "a beach" we set our towels down. Stepping into the sea. Is there anything more pathetic than a grown man standing in the sea, his jeans rolled up to his knees, trying to keep his balance against the sway of the world? Little r drops a unique shell and then scrambles desperately to find it. "It is gone, you have to let it go". She pauses to think and then looks again. Everything is in motion. The moon draws the shell to itself.

~~

I keep a picture of you with me. There is something dark/in this bright sun.  

Do you know how to sing?

In a foreign land the snow falls. Introductions are made. But neither you or I will be here in this cosmos. But now, now...

Love, morning, stars.

Where are you?

Nothing happens. Marooned under this fog, waiting for it to break. Like months of rain that flood our time on earth. 

Nothing moves. 

The sun that seems now
only a stone glowing
A cloud.

Is this just a dream? Sun and stone and star and cloud all within? This dark love without love. 

This last star, this ancient fish in the deeps. There is an ancientness to your walk. The old, mechanical heart whispers to itself a word that no-one knows. This song of one note and a million intonations. 

Of all the souls I could have had I had this one. I look at myself coldly, like the moon. How did I ever come in this century?

~~~

Across the border they're burning the rice. Clouds and smoke enter our lives, burning our throats, constricting our lungs, stinging our eyes. There are no forests left anywhere in the world. I would speak as another person, hidden, as you are. I imagine what is lost. A coin left under a tree for safekeeping, London's underground streams. 

The Roding slows and slows, inches its way forward. A discarded plastic bag, some leftover from a happier time, snags on one of the reeds and flutters like the flag of some unknown country. All our lives are full of rivers.

{Words by Joseph Ceravalo}





   

'The house was quiet and the world was calm'

Winter is upon us. Earth and mind have slowed, the slow breathing around the one thought. Of winters many years ago, just surviving, still there, like a faint trace of chalk on the pavement after the rains.

The skies are killing us. I haven't seen blue for seven days now. You see a crow deep in the smog, just visible on the window ledge, little else but a bundle of black overcoats. why talk of the inner self here? Old crow, laughing to yourself like an old, senile man.

Cat and children and wife. I have no time for you.Disheveled, I look to you to feed me. 

You walk in the empty rooms in the quiet of the night. The mirrors give the impression of someone watching you, or watching over you. Solar dust from millions of years ago mingles with the dust industrially produced by weary hands. Descends in the cold air, covers my face, makes it expressionless. Fog-we call it that out of nostalgia- the great equalizer, making us unrecognizable to ourselves and to other people.

It's in my eyes now, then my lungs. Lucretius? 

I stand rooted in the morning, looking at the high sun, this small, burning and almost burnt-out orange disc.        

'The herd instinct of independent minds'

k

It's been grey and dark for four days now. In the early morning the light from the car's headlights will suddenly swerve and alight on some object, illuminating it for a brief moment. A signpost, say, receives the light and turns from a pale white and red sign to a blazing gold circle, as if it had that dimension to it all the time. 

~~

The pain of the sweepers' lives is expressed in their elbows.

They sweep the roads relentlessly, as if preparing them for death.

~~

If wage contracts are voluntary then what explains the authority of managers, bosses to dictate terms to us? A society in which the vast majority of people have to work for other people just to survive can hardly be called a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.    

Sympathy

R

To be open to the world we must surrender something of our agency.
--Tim Ingold

For Adam Smith sympathy is not simply feeling what the other person is feeling; it is not feeling what you would feel in her situation; it can also be a change of character and person such that if I were you in your situation I would understand what you are feeling.

Sympathy is a bridge that at once connects as it distances us from other people. Not 'only connect', therefore. If I were you.

I am you when I am I
--Celan.

Or,

I am I when I am you. 

~~~

Imperfection is in some sense essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.
--John Ruskin

&;
R

(Pictures courtesy of anton)

Then Father Herzog said, "I have to sit down, " Moshe. The sun is too hot for me." He did, suddenly, appear very flushed, and Moses supported him, eased him down on the cement embankment of a lawn...

"Even I feel the heat today,"said Moses. He placed himself between his father and the sun.

'The light persists, the lamp is lost'

"Real happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of garden work, in the rattle of the teacups in the next room, in the last chapter of a book."

--Barbellion.

I haven't read this, but it was recommended by anton (which means, as of necessity, that it must be worth reading).

Max Blecher, Adventures in Immediate Irreality; F. Rosenzweig.

To hold on to the world, to life, the same as holding a single flower in one's hands. Life was everywhere, then it wasn't. 

k

Of Merwin, or someone, "I", who was it now...it was said, these emotions, "these emotions they drift in from elsewhere; the vessel is empty until sadness, or grief, or expectation blows in and settles briefly inside it."

This blue flickering light of my childhood, ankle-high mist in the dry stubble of cornfields. Tell me again, fish, and see if I can remember my name, when I see you in my dream.

Early morning
quiet
When everyone's left, no-one
's left
The slow creaking of the house returns
like an abandoned ship moored in frozen water.

The slow winter sun
enters your room.
Extends its fingers to the table.
Strikes the glass like an idea. 

circles it. the only way it knows.

The light is not reflected, not refracted,
not absorbed, not sharpened,
not deflected, not delayed.

The light of the sun simply becomes more intense
in the sleeping world,
quickened into a dazzling singleness of purpose.

Holds the colours it contains at bay,
just under its surface,
like the way a face offers only a glimpse
of all its life.

Waits, waits for eternity for this one perfect moment.
Then re-merges on the other side, a line of beauty unknown.
Shadows fall all around
and the empty glass breathes again.
  

Something about the cat has got me wondering. How much of the cat is merely a bundle of instincts? Does she only have a set repertoire of gestures, actions, responses? She sees a few straws blowing in the wind and thinks: a mouse! Is she compelled to think that way or could her train of thoughts have deviated at the last moment?

What does said cat think of us human beings? Not as gods, surely? But then what, who?

When does a cat start to be an individual cat and not just a general 'cat'? Or is this some failing on our part? Why can't the Mirs get on with non-human beings (why not human beings either, you might ask!)?

What is the world to cat? Does it endure or is it a fleeting web of beautiful dreams? What does cat dream of, anyway? Escape? Does it remember the suffering and longing of yesterday?

~~~  

Crow stood on the mounds of earth, peering darkly into the shallow tunnels that furrowed the old cricket ground. "This is new, this is new". What kind of kingdom is this, he wondered to himself. And who could have done all this work in one single night?

Which animal has left its imprint here? Where do these long lines lead to? Crow was so full of questions this morning. Everything else was the same, the sun, the trees, the guards high up in the towers, with their sad, blue uniforms. His own friends would join him soon to ponder this great mystery, this irruption of the ludicrous into their ordered world.  

Crow looked at me, puzzled, as I ran past him on my third lap. "It was you, wasn't it?" he asked me inquisitively. There was no answer. But he did wonder, being formed by so many curves of the world, why human beings were so haunted by shallow graves.

Crow, formally ageless, understood for a moment what it was to be human, and something dark grew in his heart.  

k

Are you still there, my oldest and most unfamiliar of friends?