Things and thoughts have been rushing by too quickly these days for me to plaster words over them, to cement them into the permanence of prose; life has been a breathless string of conversations and commotions, the kind of semi-confusion that barges in from all quarters when the future shakes you by the hand as the past taps on your shoulder, the strange meetings with people you know but don't really like, and those you like but don't really know—that sort of January where the new year comes tumbling noisily through the door and you stand by the side waiting for things to compose themselves, for the talking to cease and the dust to settle.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Romeo and Juliet
Act II, Scene VI
_____________
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
_____________
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Anna Karenina
from Part 8, Chapter 13
by Leo Tolstoy
_______________
"Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it?
"Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and living on these blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and destroy, want to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.
"Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.
"The church? The church!" Levin repeated to himself. He turned over on the other side, and, leaning on his elbow, fell to gazing into the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.
"But can I believe in all the Church teaches?" he thought, trying himself, and thinking of everything that could destroy his present peace of mind. Intentionally he recalled all those doctrines of the Church which had always seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling block to him.
"The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?... The Atonement?..."
"But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been told to me and all men."
And it seemed to him now that there was not a single article of faith of the Church which could destroy the chief thing—faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man's destiny.
Under every article of faith of the Church could be put the faith in the service of truth instead of one's desires. And each doctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man, and millions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and children—all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and kings—to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living, and which alone is precious to us.
Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. "Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a rounded vault? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it as not round and infinite, and, in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a firm blue vault, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it."
Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to mysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and earnestly within him.
"Can this be faith?' he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. "My God, I thank Thee!" he said, gulping down his sobs and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.
by Leo Tolstoy
_______________
"Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it?
"Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and living on these blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and destroy, want to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.
"Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.
"The church? The church!" Levin repeated to himself. He turned over on the other side, and, leaning on his elbow, fell to gazing into the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.
"But can I believe in all the Church teaches?" he thought, trying himself, and thinking of everything that could destroy his present peace of mind. Intentionally he recalled all those doctrines of the Church which had always seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling block to him.
"The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?... The Atonement?..."
"But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been told to me and all men."
And it seemed to him now that there was not a single article of faith of the Church which could destroy the chief thing—faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man's destiny.
Under every article of faith of the Church could be put the faith in the service of truth instead of one's desires. And each doctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man, and millions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and children—all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and kings—to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living, and which alone is precious to us.
Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. "Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a rounded vault? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it as not round and infinite, and, in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a firm blue vault, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it."
Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to mysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and earnestly within him.
"Can this be faith?' he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. "My God, I thank Thee!" he said, gulping down his sobs and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Tonight
The best place to reflect on things is in the back of a taxi in some distant hour of the night, waiting for time to lengthen and distance to contract, for the miles to be consumed by minutes, and considering how old familiarities echo and reverberate noisily down the converging hallways of shared histories.
It is strange how things you have always wanted to hear can be implied in words you never wanted said. For sheer coincidence, blind circumstance, inconceivable chance and a strange coalescence; for conspicuous contradictions and concealed concurrences; for the mad moments, for the long conversations and the lengthier goodbyes; for the sheer lateness of the hour—the night has never been darker, nor the stars as bright, tonight.
It is strange how things you have always wanted to hear can be implied in words you never wanted said. For sheer coincidence, blind circumstance, inconceivable chance and a strange coalescence; for conspicuous contradictions and concealed concurrences; for the mad moments, for the long conversations and the lengthier goodbyes; for the sheer lateness of the hour—the night has never been darker, nor the stars as bright, tonight.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
For last year and the next
When the day breaks over the river ford where Jacob has been wrestling through the night, his adversary dislocates Jacob’s leg with a strange touch in the hollow of his thigh, leaving him clinging to the other man in sudden weakness. The long tussle in the dark ends not with Jacob in a position of rivalrous dominance, but in the pose of reliance and supplication. It is not an unfamiliar situation for Jacob, who was born clutching at Esau’s ankle as they emerged from their mother’s womb as if in an effort to be first-born, who found deceit to be the only method to gain his father’s blessing, and who was consequently hounded to desperation by a powerful brother who swore to kill him. The story of Jacob is the tale of a man grappling interminably with the ineffectual strength of his mortal arms against the implacable fate of second-place.
The struggle of Jacob with the unidentifiable man in the dark is a mutual exertion; the man struggles also with Jacob in the intimacy of wrestlers, two bodies in the image of each other clashing indistinguishably by night. Implicit in the conflict was the closeness of the two combatants; the sole means of victory was not to let go of the other. When the day broke and the wrestle came to an end, the man conceded victory to Jacob, not for the strength of Jacob’s arms, but for the vigour of his will and his fervent resolve not to let go of his foe until he had blessed him. In the pose of supplication, Jacob became victor in the pronouncement of God: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Israel, or “the one who strives with God”, refers to a struggle where victory lies not in glorious conquest but in persistence itself, and where triumph is received not in a stance of dominance but in the posture of a prayer.
In 2008, a year of few alternatives, I’ve nonetheless had many experiences, not all of them positive or meaningful, but some of them truly revelational. Thanks of course to my family, which has so often been the quintessence of persistence. I’m also profoundly grateful to the people who haven’t changed in the ways that matter most to me, despite the time passed and the distance gathered, who nonetheless know in silence the words I leave unshared.
The struggle of Jacob with the unidentifiable man in the dark is a mutual exertion; the man struggles also with Jacob in the intimacy of wrestlers, two bodies in the image of each other clashing indistinguishably by night. Implicit in the conflict was the closeness of the two combatants; the sole means of victory was not to let go of the other. When the day broke and the wrestle came to an end, the man conceded victory to Jacob, not for the strength of Jacob’s arms, but for the vigour of his will and his fervent resolve not to let go of his foe until he had blessed him. In the pose of supplication, Jacob became victor in the pronouncement of God: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Israel, or “the one who strives with God”, refers to a struggle where victory lies not in glorious conquest but in persistence itself, and where triumph is received not in a stance of dominance but in the posture of a prayer.
In 2008, a year of few alternatives, I’ve nonetheless had many experiences, not all of them positive or meaningful, but some of them truly revelational. Thanks of course to my family, which has so often been the quintessence of persistence. I’m also profoundly grateful to the people who haven’t changed in the ways that matter most to me, despite the time passed and the distance gathered, who nonetheless know in silence the words I leave unshared.
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