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?

The givenness of things

And the moment comes to settle on our lives.

I didn't mean by that that there's a moment when we have to settle for the life we have; it was more: a moment of blessed sleep comes to gently settle, like snow or dew. 

And in the morning I couldn't but help be amazed by the very fact we can think, speak. It sounds naff when I say it like that, but the fact that we can even reason about reason seems to me to be utterly mysterious. It points to a 'givenness' of being that is beyond reason.

Ratzinger's line held me spellbound, not knowing quite why:

Creativity is obedience to the origin.

This requires, first and foremost, a remembrance of the origin. But obedience? How can that be? I think the medievals would say, we are bound and free. And creativity is a response to that memory of what we truly are. I think Muslims would say that that entails finding our true name with God (Christians might say, our true image).

A Jewish thought:

Thou has covered me in my mother's womb.

"This Hebrew news holds me and lets me go free, whereas the Greek aspiration to return the soul to its divine source fetters me for aeons in a body cursed and to be abandoned."

--Gillian Rose. 

Here there is a deep sense of trust, an acceptance of mystery..part of which is the mystery of time. 

The old world

k

The last notes of a crumbling world. The faded photographs, drained of colour. But once, a long time ago, I have heard it said: life and religion were full of colour...

Is this the last generation? The last time a child will look at a white butterfly caught in a staggering flight and ask: why? Is this the last generation to ask what the heart has lost? 

Buddhism

I hesitate to say anything on this since I know next to nothing about Buddhism. But I am interested in understanding why eastern religions have appealed to so many people in the modern west. That is not a question about the Truth of Buddhism but, rather, why this particular 'shape' of the truth should find such a wide reception at this juncture in time.

I vaguely recall Nietzsche writing disparagingly of Buddhism..the sense of an exhausted will in the late days. And there was this by Spengler:

 It was the basic feeling of the Indian Civilization and as such both equivalent to and "contemporary" with Stoicism and Socialism. [...] Buddhism rejects all speculation about God and the cosmic problems; only self and the conduct of actual life are important to it. And it definitely did not recognize a soul. The standpoint of the Indian psychologist of early Buddhism was that of the Western psychologist and the Western "Socialist" of to-day, who reduce the inward man to a bundle of sensations and an aggregation of electrochemical energies.

It is strange when Islam is clearly more aligned to the Judaic-Christian heritage. Or is it precisely because it's so close to that heritage that it must be kept at arms length? Could it be that the interest in Sufism fits into this pattern? Any system of thought or way of living that asks serious political questions is obviously a dangerous thing. Does that, at least in part, explain the hostility and indifference? 

And why is there such a focus on 'mindfulness' right now? Does it have anything to do with current concerns that our attention has become a commodity and is being put under extraordinary pressures? Or is it just another way for capitalism to tap into the non-economic realms of life in order to extract surplus? After all, mindfulness is only useful as long as it enhances productivity/creativity.
  

In my coat I sit 

At the window sill 

Wintering with snow 

That did not melt 

It fell long ago 

At night, by stealth 

I was where I am 

When the snow began.

--S. Menashe.

Time is moving on forward with such rapidity that there's isn't even time to pause and look back, and see who I am.

The world as phantom and as matrix

A shadow on the wall

boughs stirred by the noonday wind

that’s enough earth

and for the eye

enough celestial participation.

How much further do you want to go? Refuse

the bossy insistence

of new impressions—

lie there still,

behold your own fields,

your estate,

dwelling especially

on the poppies,

unforgettable

because they transported the summer—

where did it go?

---G. Benn

~~

The summer is over, the storms grow, and your coffee doesn't taste right. Retreat, as far as you can go, to the very heart of the poppy seed, perhaps? We speak a darkness between us.

This image was brought to you...

The world, as sponsored by...

In 1956, two years before Arendt's Human Condition, Gunther Anders wrote a prescient essay describing the beginnings of a "phantom world". This is before the 'society of the spectacle' as well. In the article he talks about the mass production of "hermits" for whom the world will be brought to their private living rooms. This "phantom" world, always half-absent, the stage of representations, images, background banter and music..always brought to you with the express intent of rooting us to the spot, of making us consumers of images and therefore our own producers of a mass, isolated self.

The political ramifications of the loss of the public world, of the ability to act in the world, would be spelled out by Arendt. The loss of speech that comes about when we're beholden to the manufactured image has, of course, political consequences: thoughtlessness and speechlessness. 

~~~

Robinsons

Memory and loss are held by stone.

A boy standing calmly in the perfect still island
Just a dark name.
No age given, or blue plaques,
no announcement of the statistical chances of living.

No recollection of the diseases
gnawing at your body, tearing at your flesh.

Sometimes a boy, sometimes an angel.
and sometimes just a stone washed ashore.
But forever a golden child standing in the soft sand.

Robinson.

All the shells are broken,
small peieces of multi-coloured glass
well on their way to becoming glittering sand, or stars.
Listen!
O, this is the sea, this is the sea.

Drift, drift.
ggggdrift

One wave in a thousand brings something.
One of these stray heartbeats was yours?

and once I knew you with all my heart.
O, this is the sea.

~~~

The pages in the books are blank, 

The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair,   

Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here. 

All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson   

Calling. It never rings when he is here. 

---Weldon Kees.

'God wills to exercise the 'abundance' of his glory-to create as many reflections as possible of his own being. But if the point of the world is the abounding plurality of such reflections, each must exist within limits, since God alone is infinite.'

'Compatible variety means the harmony of genuinely distinct subjects.'

Rowan Williams on Richard Hooker

Haven't read Achebe but did come across this:

“Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.” Achebe often used this proverb in discussing his work, and he explained its significance once in an interview: “It means there is no one way to anything….If there is one God, fine, there will be others as well…. If there is one point of view, fine. There will be a second point of view.”

Immersion

The other day I was sitting with some friends when the discussion turned to, "It's us versus them". This was not about the East versus the west; not about the religious versus the secularists but something that I hadn't thought about too much.

There is much talk about the battle within Islam, between the open-minded, tolerant, and/or Sufi version on the one hand and on the other the fanatics, fundamentalists, and extremists who have distorted the religion (in some sense this wasn't really a conflict from within because the latter group are really heretics, outsiders). 

Now, there's obviously a lot of truth to that claim. But as someone who is not that religious and who is, to use a loaded word in this country, a secularist, I can't get too enthused by the shrine culture (eclectic and pluralistic though it be). Of course, that is not to deny that some people might find the devotional songs, the rituals, the dances, the personification of holiness deeply appealing and, to dispel the notion that I'm arguing that the attraction is little else but a subjective feeling, that it is a legitimate approach. But, but...we're entering Gellner territory here...

On the 'them' side are also people like me and my family. Somewhat like the Puritans (at least that's what I imagine, from my very limited reading). To use the word 'wahabi' in this day and age is to bring the scorn of the 'liberals' and the sufi-oriented brigade crashing down on one. 

So, I just sat there quietly and listened to the three friends talk about attitudes and practices that I don't subscribe to. How the Prophet is still alive, for example. About how the holy person continues the presence of the divine (in some sense that is perhaps beyond the symbolic); about the system of dependencies on the holy man and his lineage. His cloak, his staff. Fine, but sober by nature and temperament, I can't get immersed in all that. 

~~~

In some sense the same applies to book reading. I love fiction and poetry but, at the end of the day, there's something a bit odd to giving one's life to fictions, to becoming so deeply engrossed in the lives of other people (and in the minute details of their feelings and thoughts). In a time when religion's hold is on the wane is it the case that we seek some kind of deep attachment elsewhere? If one is non-religious does this "devotion" invariably come in the form of culture (art, books, music)? Better that than getting hooked to cheap entertainments and the pursuit of money and power to fill the void.

Here, then, is the question of the balance between subjective interest/attraction and objective value. Someone who immerses themselves in useless research or in the construction of a model city using matchsticks is, no doubt, very skilled and accomplished in some sense. And one might even admire their patience, dedication, unswerving attentiveness, concentration, single-mindedness, persistence etc., etc. But can one speak of virtues without looking at the ends of action, the object of thought? Theoria, in the old sense of the word, was a knowledge of "higher things" (Hans Jonas).

So, some people swear by the loose, baggy 19th c. novels as if that was the final form that literature should take. One must wade through the accumulated debris of useless materials and observations before one gets to the "wheat". In fact, a bland and stand-alone statement of the "wheat" would defeat the whole purpose. Real life isn't like that. Time flows and carries with it lots of unspectacular moments. High times coalesce with ordinary times. To tear out the nuggets of wisdom/insight is to break up the narrative, destroy the object itself. The book, like the soul, consists of lots of higher and lower elements; is a medley of disparate characteristics and is the whole thing, take it or leave it.

Except, wasn't the novel supposed to be about experimentation and contemporary relevance? Wasn't the baggy form simply contemporaneous with a bourgeois culture (Morretti) that demanded so many diversions, escapes, entertainments, thrills? And now?

~~~

M. Robinson and the Puritans: 

  

The time of rain

I stand and watch the rain
Falling in pools which make
Our grave old planet shine;
The clear rain falling, just the same
As that which fell in Homer’s time
And that which dropped in Villon’s day
Falling on mother and on child
As on the passive backs of sheep;
Rain saying all it has to say
Again and yet again, and yet..

--Supervielle.

The time of the rain. No-one knows it. It brings with it its own world, displacing the hard-cracked one we know. The birds sense it beforehand. Watch them wait for the gathering darkness, anticipating that immeasurable freedom. It will stop and start again and no-one will know how much time has passed.

And the rain recalls those lost moments, the time you lost your heart.

The sky brightens and the light settles. Am I still here? I look at my name on the board and think to myself (who else?): who is that? 

Hasidic Tales: lost and found

I read this tale somewhere and then wondered where, in fact, I'd come across it. Much searching amidst the piled up books, notes and journal articles but it had disappeared! If only I could remember what I was reading last...Lewis Hyde, Wendell Berry? Hadn't I jotted something down? You could clearly see the word written down in your own handwriting: journey. And then, as you look at the window, the startling fact: it doesn't matter where you saw it! Why do you think you can possess it...

A Rabbi has a dream in which God tells him to travel to Prague because there, under a bridge, he will find some treasure. But when he gets there he sees that the bridge is heavily guarded. He waits patiently by the bridge, hoping the guard will fall asleep or be distracted by something. But three days pass like this; him just silently observing the guard. On the third day the guard speaks to him: What are you doing there in the shadows? I've noticed you there for the last three days".

The rabbi tells him about the dream and how he traveled all the way from Krakow just to find this treasure. The guard laughed at him: "You fool! I had a dream as well in which God told me go to Krakow where I'd find some treasure buried under the stove of a rabbi's house but I'm not so silly! I do my job here to the best of my duty".

On hearing this the rabbi returns home and, sure enough, finds the treasure under his stove.

~~~

1. The importance of trust (tawaakul).
2. What comes to fruition sometimes comes about indirectly.
3. Duty, loyalty, fidelity to what, or who?
4. What is of importance is sometimes close at hand, under one's very nose but also:
5. One has to make the journey to find home. 

Lost and found.    


~~~

Update, Horatio:

I found an old book by Buber in the library. Although locked up because it was in a "fragile condition" I managed to liberate it for a few hours. D took some photos of the small book (44 pages) and then transferred them to me (yes, technology does have some advantages!). After printing them I briefly flicked through the pages to check if the operation had been successful and noticed that all was okay except for one page. Half of the top line had been chopped off. So, I wrote the missing words out by hand:

..had never shaken his faith in God. 

Was then astounded to find that this was in fact the very same story I'd been looking for! 

The anti-economy

A