One hundred and ninety in roman numerals is written as CXC. Isn't that beautiful? I mean I'm no number fanatic myself but I guess the simplicity and the symmetry of that has just the right amount of elegance, of élan. In a way it also hints at the syntax of Latin (of Latium, the province of the city of Rome), which works, basically, in a subject-object-adjective way, so that the sentence has to be grasped front to end before the complete meaning becomes clear. But I guess this simply devolves from the inherent limitations of the Roman numeral system, i.e. in comparison with the decimal Hindu-Arabic system. But consider "CXC": in a way the beauty of it is essentially human, although numbers perhaps have in some sense a priori existence, or even self-evidence; to be beautiful in spite of and also on account of its limitations.
I thought recently about the three written works I would most like to take along with me to a desert island (assuming that all other conditions are reasonable). There is no particular order of merit, but if pressed I would like most to take these in order.
1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's collected works.
2. Jorge Luis Borges' collected works.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche's collected works.
If these may seem perhaps too ungainly to clutch desperately to one's bosom when threatened with desert island maroonment, the following are the specific works I shall prefer:
1. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
2. Borges' Collected Fictions (only 576 pages, after all).
3. Plato's The Republic (alas, my dear Friedrich, alas.)
This is the extent of my great love for these works: that I do not consider my adult life to have begun until after having read these. And perhaps an item on this list may yet have to make way for one or another of Rowan Williams' works.
A few words on these writers might be given here, although one might hope to be forgiven for fumbling about in trying to quite describe what is wonderful about these works. In a way this feels a little like those horrible little quotes that are published quite crudely on the back of some immodest books.
Marquez is for me the master of exploring and portraying the singular romantic, heroic, pseudo-epic visions, fixations or delusions a person might have, and his writing embraces the thesis, the leitmotif that every person must in the end admit and relinquish himself to the particular, solitary and necessarily individualistic core of the eccentricity, and hence meaning, of his own existence. And this is not a comedic obsession, it is a deadly serious Quixotic enterprise.
Borges is perhaps more fantastic: his stories are of men as effigies, infinite libraries, an imprisoned beast visited by God. There is a touch more of the mystical, of the unending search for meaning in the enigmatic and the abstruse, of the riddle of existence. And in his stories the characters transcend that dissonance between reality and the veiled, the unfathomable; they seem to have come from that other side, speak that other language, they search for the return to that other life. There is hidden in his stories a kernel of that understanding, of reality as an illusion, a dream, a projection.
Plato, and his master Socrates, are perhaps the founding figures in philosophy, in the search for meaning through reason, logical analogy, and an unrelenting dedication to the application of the mind. We must through these works remember that everything that we see, that we use and that we believe must not be closed to probing, to questioning, and if need be, to refutation. And we must in that search not forget as well to be generous, for we, as the masters before us, must seek to search, learn and be brought together to wisdom. What is more, we must, as these masters, learn to live frugally, and well, to be virtuous, moderate and respectable.
I am exceedingly glad to more recently have found my way into the works of Williams. I think his foremost quality is in his sensitivity. His intellect is perhaps unquestioned, but I think his organisation and the phrasing of his thoughts to be so delicate as to be quite enthralling. It is also said in some quarters that his eyebrows are thought to be the finest by some measure, a comment I find both preposterous and strangely quite endearing for the man. What a wonderful man! To quote from John Wesley on fellowship, Wittgenstein on language, Marilynne Robinson on prodigality in literature, Augustine on ... heaven knows what, goodness, I think Williams' work is finally God's answer to me.
I seem to have left out Nietzsche. But my courage has deserted me: I cannot bear to describe him. I am certain that I will never understand the greater part of his writing, Never. He is too deep. His language is certainly marvelous as well; I have quoted in a previous post a passage of his in which he laments that his thoughts, whereas at conception seem to be quite wonderful, when written, have lost much of their vivacity, like a bird trapped in one's hand. But I cannot quite say, with conviction, if at all, that I will ever read Zarathustra with any firm notion of what Nietzsche was driving at. Beyond Good and Evil was slightly more comprehensible. But I have listed Nietzsche's works as something I think I would profitably spend the rest of my days mulling over in solitude, and I quite stand by that.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
CLXXXIX - (soft) voices
I often have conversations in my mind.
In a way they occur organically. Like the pulses of a crystal following some stochastic irrythmic, glowing rays expelled in idiosyncracy, interfering in secret patterns. A quanta of image, sound, smell, or touch funnels, finds its way mechanically, then chemically, then who knows? into the mind, bing! a memory, a tape rewinds and then plays back (or perhaps is recorded, or recorded over?). In some sense the moment pauses, the world stops writhing, suspends mid-breath (or perhaps it carries on, muted, dull, uninteresting).
And a little conversation transfolds. No magic, just two, three characters in a space, talking. I may be there, usually, perhaps because I would like to be there. Let us be honest. These conversations are strong dreams, strong in the sense that I would like very much for them to be real, dreams in the sense that they are not. And one more thing separates these from dreams, dreams over which one has no apparent control: there is no, or rather I endeavour seriously not to be afraid. In that way I temper myself against fear, paralysis, doubt, trepidation; by pre-enactment, or perhaps, post-enactment: I would like very much to speak on these things, to these people, to be heard. And then to hear, to be understood, grasped, embraced. To be loved.
It is thus almost always solipsistic in a weak sense, i.e. like a small, imagined play, like a dream that is not horrible, not volatile, not capricious as a swirling wind. So to describe it more accurately I am perhaps always there - I do not, I think, think seriously about conversations happening without me, because, perhaps, I almost never care what others may say when I am absent. That is one of my maxims, or at least it appears here in its converse form; its original form being never to speak (at least, poorly) of one who is not present.
This internal conversation, dialogue, in that sense I practise talking, thinking, formulating, delivery, but not listening. And listening is boring, of course, in large part due to the many who speak; but true listening requires skill and imagination. The trick in these internal conversations is thus to imagine what someone says in reply, or how someone might think, might listen. This of course requires faith, my faith in the general sympathy of the created listener; in a way, like prayer: God is our created listener in the merely formal sense that unless we speak (or at least think our concepts to God) we cannot have a listener. Or perhaps more, as Voltaire thought: "si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" (if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him). But as it is reassuring to assume (or trust) that God is sympathetic, it is reassuring to assign some measure of sympathy to a conversa-persona.
But the thing, I think, the key thing about an internal conversation is not to be dictatorial (ironic as it may seem, after all, no one else exists to disagree), but rather, to be self-aware, to truly grasp that one's listener, one's conversa-personas, are to be assigned intelligence, rationality, truly-formed human conceptions, and that they cannot be pounded into submission (or lied to, or deceived, or misled, or chagrined), rather they must be persuaded, Socrato-Plato style. Yes, one must believe that no one, to whom everything is properly shown, will choose wrongly. And thus one should strive always to guide and be guided by a sense of pedagogical benevolence, patrimony, an aristocratic (aristo - of the best) noblesse oblige (nobility obliges). And it should not surprise anyone that this approach is as germane to children as it is (or should be) for adults. In one sense children are far superior: it is that children point out when the emperor is naked.
I think this is key. An internal conversation is probably one of the strongest tools one may employ in reflection. On the one hand, to strive always to be heard, to speak louder, even loudest, is but a virtue of the most unabashed, and this should never by itself be a sufficient barometer as to the validity of one's argument. One should not by internal conversation prove to himself that he deserves, having thus had the benefit of rehearsals, always to be heard (or herself, she). Rather, internal conversation should remind you, me, one, that our thoughts and our voices must be reasoned, careful, accurate, and sympathetic, bearing in mind the vast ignorance(s) we necessarily toil under.
And of course it is of sometime importance that one should not be overcome by nostalgia, or excessive sentiment ... in their futility. I remind myself, sometimes, yes, not to think, to dream, not to get carried away ... and not to hope wistfully.
In a way they occur organically. Like the pulses of a crystal following some stochastic irrythmic, glowing rays expelled in idiosyncracy, interfering in secret patterns. A quanta of image, sound, smell, or touch funnels, finds its way mechanically, then chemically, then who knows? into the mind, bing! a memory, a tape rewinds and then plays back (or perhaps is recorded, or recorded over?). In some sense the moment pauses, the world stops writhing, suspends mid-breath (or perhaps it carries on, muted, dull, uninteresting).
And a little conversation transfolds. No magic, just two, three characters in a space, talking. I may be there, usually, perhaps because I would like to be there. Let us be honest. These conversations are strong dreams, strong in the sense that I would like very much for them to be real, dreams in the sense that they are not. And one more thing separates these from dreams, dreams over which one has no apparent control: there is no, or rather I endeavour seriously not to be afraid. In that way I temper myself against fear, paralysis, doubt, trepidation; by pre-enactment, or perhaps, post-enactment: I would like very much to speak on these things, to these people, to be heard. And then to hear, to be understood, grasped, embraced. To be loved.
It is thus almost always solipsistic in a weak sense, i.e. like a small, imagined play, like a dream that is not horrible, not volatile, not capricious as a swirling wind. So to describe it more accurately I am perhaps always there - I do not, I think, think seriously about conversations happening without me, because, perhaps, I almost never care what others may say when I am absent. That is one of my maxims, or at least it appears here in its converse form; its original form being never to speak (at least, poorly) of one who is not present.
This internal conversation, dialogue, in that sense I practise talking, thinking, formulating, delivery, but not listening. And listening is boring, of course, in large part due to the many who speak; but true listening requires skill and imagination. The trick in these internal conversations is thus to imagine what someone says in reply, or how someone might think, might listen. This of course requires faith, my faith in the general sympathy of the created listener; in a way, like prayer: God is our created listener in the merely formal sense that unless we speak (or at least think our concepts to God) we cannot have a listener. Or perhaps more, as Voltaire thought: "si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" (if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him). But as it is reassuring to assume (or trust) that God is sympathetic, it is reassuring to assign some measure of sympathy to a conversa-persona.
But the thing, I think, the key thing about an internal conversation is not to be dictatorial (ironic as it may seem, after all, no one else exists to disagree), but rather, to be self-aware, to truly grasp that one's listener, one's conversa-personas, are to be assigned intelligence, rationality, truly-formed human conceptions, and that they cannot be pounded into submission (or lied to, or deceived, or misled, or chagrined), rather they must be persuaded, Socrato-Plato style. Yes, one must believe that no one, to whom everything is properly shown, will choose wrongly. And thus one should strive always to guide and be guided by a sense of pedagogical benevolence, patrimony, an aristocratic (aristo - of the best) noblesse oblige (nobility obliges). And it should not surprise anyone that this approach is as germane to children as it is (or should be) for adults. In one sense children are far superior: it is that children point out when the emperor is naked.
I think this is key. An internal conversation is probably one of the strongest tools one may employ in reflection. On the one hand, to strive always to be heard, to speak louder, even loudest, is but a virtue of the most unabashed, and this should never by itself be a sufficient barometer as to the validity of one's argument. One should not by internal conversation prove to himself that he deserves, having thus had the benefit of rehearsals, always to be heard (or herself, she). Rather, internal conversation should remind you, me, one, that our thoughts and our voices must be reasoned, careful, accurate, and sympathetic, bearing in mind the vast ignorance(s) we necessarily toil under.
And of course it is of sometime importance that one should not be overcome by nostalgia, or excessive sentiment ... in their futility. I remind myself, sometimes, yes, not to think, to dream, not to get carried away ... and not to hope wistfully.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
CLXXXVIII - c'est que j'ai vécu
" ... Le doge a ses chagrins, les gondoliers ont les leurs. Il est vrai qu'à tout prendre le sort d'un gondolier est préférable à celui d'un doge; mais je crois la différence si médiocre, que cela ne vaut pas la peine d'être examiné."
" ... The Doge has his troubles, the gondoliers have theirs. It is true that, all things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that of a Doge; but I believe the[Pg 132] difference to be so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining."
Voltaire, Candide (1759)
" ... The Doge has his troubles, the gondoliers have theirs. It is true that, all things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that of a Doge; but I believe the[Pg 132] difference to be so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining."
Voltaire, Candide (1759)
Friday, September 4, 2015
CLXXXVII - buena música
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ryXdDjn1X8
There is for me something deeply mysterious, deeply nostalgic and wonderful in the flamboyant music of the Gipsy Kings. With my utter incomprehension of the Spanish language (and perhaps I should here greatly despair, given as I am a terrible lover of Latin American literature), it forms in me a profound longing, an almost ethereal yearning to be something, to be somewhere.
I remember hearing it on the taxi radio on the way to court once. It reminded me that life was irrefutably beautiful. I left the firm soon after that. I would like to think that there is perhaps some correlation there.
The Gipsy Kings are a favourite of my dad. That alone makes me think well of him, of our past family life.
Isn't that wonderful ... Isn't that wonderful music.
There is for me something deeply mysterious, deeply nostalgic and wonderful in the flamboyant music of the Gipsy Kings. With my utter incomprehension of the Spanish language (and perhaps I should here greatly despair, given as I am a terrible lover of Latin American literature), it forms in me a profound longing, an almost ethereal yearning to be something, to be somewhere.
I remember hearing it on the taxi radio on the way to court once. It reminded me that life was irrefutably beautiful. I left the firm soon after that. I would like to think that there is perhaps some correlation there.
The Gipsy Kings are a favourite of my dad. That alone makes me think well of him, of our past family life.
Isn't that wonderful ... Isn't that wonderful music.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
CLXXXVI - in sepia
You know, when I watch old people, when I sit down with them, ease into a sort of quiet space, calm, homely, unadorned, I like to think of what they were like thirty, forty, sixty years ago. You find out that most people, when they get old, don't have pretension in them, they don't have that nervous self awareness, the sort of anxiety about their clothes and hair and how they carry their physical bodies. I mean yes they are very proper and decently dressed, but beyond that it's all just trappings, you get the sense. Old people have this calm, maybe which comes partly out of resignation, a sense that time, having passed them by, is thereby no longer urgent. But I would like to hope that that sort of resignation is not always in them a negative one.
And so I like to imagine what they must have been like, in their twenties, their thirties. Young, full of vigor, chasing the things we now chase. With time perhaps their handsomeness has faded, but I like to think of them returned with youthful faces, supple limbs, perhaps the impatience of their past lives. What they must have been like in the glorious old days, for I take for granted that everyone must have had something they were once proud of. It's not so hard to imagine, is it? That once upon a time this old lady might have been young, with I suppose some coquetry in her ... Once upon a time this old man wore a sharp suit and shiny black shoes. Once upon a time these people seated relaxedly at this table were young, chatty, happily active, listened to deng li jun, went to the opera together, worked as clerks and secretaries, nurses and accountants, lived, had lovers, married girls, boys, bought houses ... did all the things we hope to do, before growing old.
Old people aren't old man. We're the ones that are ... fools.
And so I like to imagine what they must have been like, in their twenties, their thirties. Young, full of vigor, chasing the things we now chase. With time perhaps their handsomeness has faded, but I like to think of them returned with youthful faces, supple limbs, perhaps the impatience of their past lives. What they must have been like in the glorious old days, for I take for granted that everyone must have had something they were once proud of. It's not so hard to imagine, is it? That once upon a time this old lady might have been young, with I suppose some coquetry in her ... Once upon a time this old man wore a sharp suit and shiny black shoes. Once upon a time these people seated relaxedly at this table were young, chatty, happily active, listened to deng li jun, went to the opera together, worked as clerks and secretaries, nurses and accountants, lived, had lovers, married girls, boys, bought houses ... did all the things we hope to do, before growing old.
Old people aren't old man. We're the ones that are ... fools.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
CLXXXV - love is nothing
To have been spared my harshness, coldness, weakness, and most shameful, is that not something?
A long time ago, I did what I felt was right. I doubt I could have been any more in love than I was then. I failed. I took failing as it was, failing. It took a long time for me to understand what happened, what I did, what failing meant. For a long time, I wondered if I fucked up, if I was destined to be fucked up. For a long time, I fought to remember who I was. And finally it was revealed to me, and finally my mind could see, that my love was nothing. I hated that ending, that despicable, bastardly ending, but I knew that I could embrace it as it had embraced me. My love was nothing.
The next one, I don't know what the next one was. In a way it felt like a giant wave had ruined me, and as the waters receded I could not quite prevent it from slipping through my grasp. Oh, it is one thing to feel deadly angry, it is quite another thing to understand that in the end, love was nothing, again.
All this time, I always managed to somehow drag myself back onto a little rocky outcrop that refused to crumble away. On it was written, in the sand, a few symbols which would depict a man in a man that would not die. I traced it often with my finger and repeated the motions on my breast. There, he was meant to be, and not to die.
And now I realise that I have no idea what I'm fucking doing. And even that doesn't matter, maybe never will. Maybe that man cannot be put to death, maybe the man must live, must overcome, cannot be shut out from the light. Maybe I am he all this time. Maybe I don't know what I'm fucking doing, and it is no bad thing, in the end.
In consolation, then, to be spared all my villainy, all this time, is that not something?
A long time ago, I did what I felt was right. I doubt I could have been any more in love than I was then. I failed. I took failing as it was, failing. It took a long time for me to understand what happened, what I did, what failing meant. For a long time, I wondered if I fucked up, if I was destined to be fucked up. For a long time, I fought to remember who I was. And finally it was revealed to me, and finally my mind could see, that my love was nothing. I hated that ending, that despicable, bastardly ending, but I knew that I could embrace it as it had embraced me. My love was nothing.
The next one, I don't know what the next one was. In a way it felt like a giant wave had ruined me, and as the waters receded I could not quite prevent it from slipping through my grasp. Oh, it is one thing to feel deadly angry, it is quite another thing to understand that in the end, love was nothing, again.
All this time, I always managed to somehow drag myself back onto a little rocky outcrop that refused to crumble away. On it was written, in the sand, a few symbols which would depict a man in a man that would not die. I traced it often with my finger and repeated the motions on my breast. There, he was meant to be, and not to die.
And now I realise that I have no idea what I'm fucking doing. And even that doesn't matter, maybe never will. Maybe that man cannot be put to death, maybe the man must live, must overcome, cannot be shut out from the light. Maybe I am he all this time. Maybe I don't know what I'm fucking doing, and it is no bad thing, in the end.
In consolation, then, to be spared all my villainy, all this time, is that not something?
Thursday, August 6, 2015
CLXXXIV - paradigmatic beauty
Each one of us is, at the same time, a human soul, not less by one part in any part than any other human in the whole of any intelligible account of history (think then of how much we are obliged to one another!), and, an amalgamation of billions and billions of atoms and molecules, each obedient, precocious little block sitting next to each other in just the right configuration, each asserting its own identity and peculiarity, in accordance with the foremost laws of the natural world (think then of how much we are obliged to nature!).
Imagine that; how beautiful is that? What is beauty, if not that!
Imagine that; how beautiful is that? What is beauty, if not that!
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