First time I heard of Vaclav Havel was in an interview by Lou Reed in a compilation of reportage (edited by, I want to say, Hanif Kureishi). Lou Reed had been invited to the newly democratic, newly independent Czech Republic. Performed in a private jam session - just Havel and two hundred of his friends. Was given a samizdat version of Velvet Underground lyrics. This was in the New College library one night, probably in my second year. I read all of Timothy Garton Ash's books on the underground democratic opposition in Eastern Europe (Central Europe?). I read about Solidarity and the discussions at the Magic Lantern theatre in Prague. I read Havel's "Power of the Powerlessness" essay, his idea of living in truth. I read Adam Michnik's essays. For a little while this was my secret not-quite-obsession, more delighted in for having stumbled upon it accidentally. I almost did an undergraduate dissertation on democracy in Eastern Europe on the strength of all these essays. I can't say I put into practice anything I learned from them about speaking truth to power; I didn't end up doing an undergraduate dissertation; I didn't end up doing anything remotely radical. But the romance, at least, has stayed all this while.
Some things
we return to, that was going to be the title of this post. Until, reading the poem as I typed it out, I realised that I had finally outgrown it. I still love the trees in autumn and the slightly brighter sky of spring. The exhilarations of changes and the exhilarations of desire. But also - the clarity of metaphor, a clear moon in a clouded sky. Some things we can finally put aside, with thanks.
The Motive for Metaphor
You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.
In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon --
The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,
Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,
The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound --
Steel against intimation -- the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.
- Wallace Stevens
The Motive for Metaphor
You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.
In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon --
The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,
Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,
The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound --
Steel against intimation -- the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.
- Wallace Stevens
Out of Sheer Rage
Geoff Dyer's non-study of D. H. Lawrence is pitch-perfect. It was the only one of his books in the library when I went, and now I want to borrow the lot. I have no real interest in Lawrence - that is, no real interest in re-reading any of the novels, except out of duty mis-conceived, but this makes me want to read the letters and (maybe, perhaps), the poems.
Giles Duley
The courage of others is often astounding. Not just the courage displayed after sustaining his injuries, but to have travelled to these countries and taken these photographs.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
Castle in the Air
We never built our grand house on the edge
Of the Pacific, close to where we first
Drew breath, but high up in the cliffs, a ledge
Glassed in, with balconies where we would be
Enthralled to watch it hit the rocks and burst --
The ocean that still flows through you and me
Like blood, though many years have passed since we
Sailed separately away to keep our pledge
Of seeing what the world was like. Since then
We've been together and done pretty well:
You by your scholarship, I by my pen,
Both earned a living and our two careers
Paid for a house and a garden we could sell
For just enough to spend our final years
Out there where the last landscape disappears
Eastward above the waves, and once again
We would be home. We've talked about the view
So often we can watch the seagulls fly
Below us by the thousand. There's the clue
Perhaps, to what we might do for the best:
Merely imagine it. The place to die
Is where you find your feet and come to rest.
Here, all we built is by our lost youth blessed.
This is your gift to me, and mine to you:
Front windows on a trimly English park,
A back yard we can bask in, but not burn
As we loll in our liner chairs. The bark
Stays on the trees, no wood-pile is a lair
For funnelwebs. Small prospect of return
Once you're accustomed to the change of air,
The calm of being here instead of there --
The slow but steady way that it grows dark.
Sleep late then, while I do my meds and dress
For the creaking mile that keeps my legs alive.
In hospital I'd lie there and obsess
About the beauty of this house, and still
I love it. But I feel the waves arrive
Like earthquakes as I walk, and not until
I'm gone for good will I forget the thrill --
Nor will the urge to start again grow less
As always in my dreams I spread my chart
In the great room of the grand house on the cliffs
And plot my course. Once more I will depart
Alone, to none beholden, full of fight
To quell the decapods and hippogryphs,
Take maidens here and there as is my right,
And voyage even to eternal night
As the hero does, made strong by his cold heart.
- Clive James
Of the Pacific, close to where we first
Drew breath, but high up in the cliffs, a ledge
Glassed in, with balconies where we would be
Enthralled to watch it hit the rocks and burst --
The ocean that still flows through you and me
Like blood, though many years have passed since we
Sailed separately away to keep our pledge
Of seeing what the world was like. Since then
We've been together and done pretty well:
You by your scholarship, I by my pen,
Both earned a living and our two careers
Paid for a house and a garden we could sell
For just enough to spend our final years
Out there where the last landscape disappears
Eastward above the waves, and once again
We would be home. We've talked about the view
So often we can watch the seagulls fly
Below us by the thousand. There's the clue
Perhaps, to what we might do for the best:
Merely imagine it. The place to die
Is where you find your feet and come to rest.
Here, all we built is by our lost youth blessed.
This is your gift to me, and mine to you:
Front windows on a trimly English park,
A back yard we can bask in, but not burn
As we loll in our liner chairs. The bark
Stays on the trees, no wood-pile is a lair
For funnelwebs. Small prospect of return
Once you're accustomed to the change of air,
The calm of being here instead of there --
The slow but steady way that it grows dark.
Sleep late then, while I do my meds and dress
For the creaking mile that keeps my legs alive.
In hospital I'd lie there and obsess
About the beauty of this house, and still
I love it. But I feel the waves arrive
Like earthquakes as I walk, and not until
I'm gone for good will I forget the thrill --
Nor will the urge to start again grow less
As always in my dreams I spread my chart
In the great room of the grand house on the cliffs
And plot my course. Once more I will depart
Alone, to none beholden, full of fight
To quell the decapods and hippogryphs,
Take maidens here and there as is my right,
And voyage even to eternal night
As the hero does, made strong by his cold heart.
- Clive James
first day
So I've left the service, more with a whimper than a bang., and will be going to Harvard in mid-August. Which seems an improbably short time away.
There should, perhaps, be a sense of liberation, of exhilaration at limitless possibilities, of excitement. Sometimes there is, but increasingly I'm feeling a sense of dread. The real fear - apart from the obvious ones, and the practical ones, which perhaps don't worry me as much as they should, mostly because I have a limited imagination for them - is that I won't like it. This is getting out of one race to another, from one box to another, and the second is smaller, tighter, less forgiving, less indulgent. You can't run from what you're not willing to do, or have not the energy to do, or not the capacity.
There should, perhaps, be a sense of liberation, of exhilaration at limitless possibilities, of excitement. Sometimes there is, but increasingly I'm feeling a sense of dread. The real fear - apart from the obvious ones, and the practical ones, which perhaps don't worry me as much as they should, mostly because I have a limited imagination for them - is that I won't like it. This is getting out of one race to another, from one box to another, and the second is smaller, tighter, less forgiving, less indulgent. You can't run from what you're not willing to do, or have not the energy to do, or not the capacity.
The Unicorn in Captivity, from the Cloisters.
Something Like a Sky
Something in us has suddenly cleared.
-Robin Fulton
Like a sky.
Like a still-life, alive.
Behind us, our footsteps and voices.
Beyond the walls, a wide silence.
The air is white and open, ready for snow.
Jealousy
because it's hard to give and hazard all, without asking for all in return.
Painting from Edith Dora Rey.
Hipsters
Accidental Chinese Hipsters
Unhappy hipsters
Unhappy hipsters
 |
| Impersonating a Tenenbaum is rarely as satisfying as it would seem. |
Accidental Chinese Hipsters via Refinery 29.
Autumn Thoughts
To the tune of Sky-Clear Sand: Autumn Thoughts by Ma Chih-yuan (1260-1324)
Withered vine,
old tree,
crows.
A small bridge,
running water,
houses.
Ancient road,
west wind,
lean horse,
sun sinking
in the west --
and a man,
crushed,
at the sky's edge.
- trans. Arthur Sze
Withered vine,
old tree,
crows.
A small bridge,
running water,
houses.
Ancient road,
west wind,
lean horse,
sun sinking
in the west --
and a man,
crushed,
at the sky's edge.
- trans. Arthur Sze
island
How amazing would it be to stay here? For a night, or a summer, or a year (but avoid November). In a cabin for rent on a farmstead on the island of Spildra, in northern Norway. With a view of the fjords on your way here.
 |
| Norwegian sod roof! |
Via Idle Words.
Paying attention
Looking for Jonathan Franzen's 2011 commencement speech at Kenyon College (it's okay, somewhat belaboured), I find David Foster Wallace's from 2005:
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
directions
There are good ideas, and there are terrible ideas, and graduate school is clearly one of the latter.
via stopping off place
via stopping off place
Words we don't say
Oh. Oh! Oh. Words not to be used when Kurt Anderson was editor of the New York Magazine.
[fragment 138]
stand to face me beloved
and open out the grace of your eyes
- Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
and open out the grace of your eyes
- Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
Pinhole
Lucy Phillips, a British photographer, created pinhole cameras from matchboxes and sent them to anyone who asked for one, loaded with one shot. She asked participants to take "what cannot be seen" and send the camera back for her to develop the film. Which is a fantastic idea for a public project, and elicited some very touching photos (someone's birth mother, someone's foetus, a mother's old letters, a place to smoke, toadstools in a garden, music, sanctuary), and makes you wonder at the confessional (or, perhaps, artistic?) instinct in people, and raises the question that seems to always accompany projects of this kind - which part of it is art? Or perhaps - because it's photography, because it's a pretentious question (a question with pretensions to theory) - that's not at all the right question. Have a pinhole garden instead:
Out of the frying pan
- You're not the same person you used to be, he said.
- When did you last see her?
- When you were going to Cambridge. And in Cambridge, sometimes.
- But not since I came home?
- Sometimes. Not often.
Better the fire, then.
- When did you last see her?
- When you were going to Cambridge. And in Cambridge, sometimes.
- But not since I came home?
- Sometimes. Not often.
Better the fire, then.
Bookmill
Oh look at this. A bookmill!
Though if I had a bookshop it would look like this, with serendipity as an organising principle.
(Via evencleveland)
Though if I had a bookshop it would look like this, with serendipity as an organising principle.
(Via evencleveland)
The Forms of Love
Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.
I remember
Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Down-hill in the bright
Incredible light
Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars. We walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water.
- George Oppen
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.
I remember
Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Down-hill in the bright
Incredible light
Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars. We walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water.
- George Oppen
Buttercup Festival
Is buttercup festival gone? Even the archives? That's terrible. So terrible it has to be mentioned somewhere almost public.
Not even then
"I understand you're married," a man said to me at a formal lunch in New York my published had arranged. "How do you have time to write a book?"
Sir?
"Well," he said, "you have to have a garden, for instance. You have to entertain." And I thought he was foolish, this man in his seventies, who had no idea what you must do. But the fanaticism of my twenties shocks me now. As I feared it would.
- From Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Sir?
"Well," he said, "you have to have a garden, for instance. You have to entertain." And I thought he was foolish, this man in his seventies, who had no idea what you must do. But the fanaticism of my twenties shocks me now. As I feared it would.
- From Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
On Courtship
"The first intimation of a new romance [in Heian-kyo, a thousand years ago] for a woman of the court was the arrival at her door of a messenger bearing a five-line poem in an unfamiliar hand. If the woman found the poem sufficiently intriguing, the paper it was written on suitable for its contents and mood, and the calligraphy acceptably graceful, her encouraging reply -- itself in the form of a poem -- would set in motion a clandestine, love-night visit from her suitor. The first night together was, according to established etiquette, sleepless; lovemaking and talk were expected to continue without pause until the man, protesting the night's brevity, departed in the first light of the predawn. Even then he was not free to turn his thoughts to the day's official duties: a morning-after poem had to be written and sent off by means of an ever-present messenger page, who would return with the woman's reply. Only after this exchange had been completed could the night's success be fully judged by whether the poems were equally ardent and accomplished, referring in image and nuance to the themes of the night just passed. Subsequent visits were made on the same clandestine basis and under the same circumstances, until the relationship was either made official by a private ceremony of marriage or ended."
- from the introduction to The Ink Dark Moon, trans. Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani
- from the introduction to The Ink Dark Moon, trans. Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani
Blessing
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
- James Wright
From "A Blessing"
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
- James Wright
From "A Blessing"
Caged
Photographer Oscar Ciutat took pictures of the eyes of caged animals at the local zoo.
(Via Cup of Jo.)
Mockingbirds
This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing
the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing
better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.
In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door
to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,
but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give
but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them
and blessed them--
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water
from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,
and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down--
but still they asked for nothing
but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.
Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said
I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying
through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.
in the green field
were spinning and tossing
the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing
better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.
In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door
to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,
but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give
but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them
and blessed them--
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water
from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,
and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down--
but still they asked for nothing
but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.
Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said
I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying
through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.
Heat and Desperation
Preparation, she thought,
as if a pianist,
limbering, stretching.
But fingers are tendon, not spirit;
are bone and muscle and skin.
Increase of reach extends reach,
but not what comes then to fill it.
What comes to fill it is something that has no name,
a hunger from outside the wolf-colored edges.
Thirteen smoke jumpers died at Mann Gulch.
Two ran faster.
One stopped, set a match ahead of himself,
ahead of the fire. Then stepped upslope,
lay down inside still-burning ashes, and lived.
- Jane Hirshfield
as if a pianist,
limbering, stretching.
But fingers are tendon, not spirit;
are bone and muscle and skin.
Increase of reach extends reach,
but not what comes then to fill it.
What comes to fill it is something that has no name,
a hunger from outside the wolf-colored edges.
Thirteen smoke jumpers died at Mann Gulch.
Two ran faster.
One stopped, set a match ahead of himself,
ahead of the fire. Then stepped upslope,
lay down inside still-burning ashes, and lived.
- Jane Hirshfield
Overseen
"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot." (Revelations 3:15)
Indecision
Looks like this: I am ate up with anxiety.
1. If it is to be done, it must be done for love. With love.
2. If I loved it would I not be reading Rousseau in my spare time? That I am not - therefore I don't love it?
3. But love has to be worked at, and can be easily lost - through lack of application and laziness and some kind of self-destructiveness.
4. The self gets in the way of seeing clearly.
5. If I were free - but I am not, and would not exchange anything I have in you for that freedom. The thrownness of the world. And - that communion requires obligations to one another.
6. I am so afraid for you. I am so afraid for us.
7. Some days I think I might love it.
8. Think about working in Singapore - already the attraction diminishes. No cloistered place here.
9. Still, I'd like to come home.
10. How can I do this?
1. If it is to be done, it must be done for love. With love.
2. If I loved it would I not be reading Rousseau in my spare time? That I am not - therefore I don't love it?
3. But love has to be worked at, and can be easily lost - through lack of application and laziness and some kind of self-destructiveness.
4. The self gets in the way of seeing clearly.
5. If I were free - but I am not, and would not exchange anything I have in you for that freedom. The thrownness of the world. And - that communion requires obligations to one another.
6. I am so afraid for you. I am so afraid for us.
7. Some days I think I might love it.
8. Think about working in Singapore - already the attraction diminishes. No cloistered place here.
9. Still, I'd like to come home.
10. How can I do this?
January First
The year's doors open
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.
I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.
But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.
You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
--Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.
You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.
When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.
Cambridge, Mass., 1 January 1975
- Octavio Paz, translated by Elizabeth Bishop
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.
I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.
But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.
You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
--Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.
You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.
When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.
Cambridge, Mass., 1 January 1975
- Octavio Paz, translated by Elizabeth Bishop
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