this.
Except that as my friend you might feel you have to tell me that everything will be all right, and as your friend I might feel I have to pretend that everything is now indeed so. This can but only increase the likelihood of fatal flying dogs.
A moment of silence
for Adrienne Rich. I didn't bring her poems with me this time; I may not have brought them to Cambridge either, two years ago. But for a long time they were a touchstone for me, even after the Twenty-One Love Poems stopped being my favourite love poems. The poems were tender, tough, practical, rueful, passionate; they were a lesson in living honesty, in political and poetic truth. There is an Adrienne Rich phase, isn't there, like a Sylvia Plath phase? Except that a Plath phase is inward-looking and angst-ridden (and brings to mind Julian Barnes' description of a teenager as someone part willing, part consenting and part chosen for), whereas an Adrienne Rich phase could have stimulated greater thought and action on behalf of others. Could have. But still; a moment of respect.
Things I have learned to say in Teochew
The machinery is old.
How now, brown cow?
I would like some teochew porridge.
What are you saying?
Shall we go for tea?
So clever.
How now, brown cow?
I would like some teochew porridge.
What are you saying?
Shall we go for tea?
So clever.
In praise of scribes
More found notes, this time from the Met's mini exhibition on Thoth, roundabout March/April 2011
Let us praise Thoth, the accurate plummet in the balance; who rejects disorder and accepts one who is not inclined to transgression; the vizier who judges affairs and resolves conflict peacefully; the scribe of the mat, who fixes the scroll; who drives off falsehood but accepts the bearer of a healthy greeting; who supports the oath-taker in the midst of the Ennead of gods, who raises up the one who has been ignored, who has a wise face for one who has gone astray.
He who remembers the fleeting moment, who reports the hours of the night, and whose words remain forever; who enters the netherworld, finds out what is in it, and registers them in his list.
Wishing you a keris for the new year
Found not in an old notebook, but in an old, unlabelled collection of photos downloaded from my phone, probably from an exhibition at the ACM, probably some time earlier this year. There are the obvious differences in note-taking - in the labelling and sequencing of notes, in the serendipity of ideas on the same page, in the translation of experience to the page (my photography being as unmediated by art or skill as is possible to be) - but some of these differences may just be romance.
The keris was one of five things, along with a home, a singing bird, a wife and a horse, that all Javanese men believed were needed for happiness in life.
So this is the new year
I used to wish, or say I wished, for peace. In addition to happiness and health for all I guess - those are the standard wishes, like Chinese New Year greetings. That was in the university years. Then for each year to be different - in the civil service years. That was true enough a wish to keep me going for a while. And now? A clear eye, perhaps. And the courage to see.
Vaclav Havel
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
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