Into the Unknown

Like I said in an earlier posting writing during this particular week has proven a bit frustrating. I just can’t seem to get caught up with anything, work, bills, etc.. So it goes. Thus I am dipping back into my archives for tidbits that seem interesting. The following was written to a friend who was thinking about moving from one locale to another. Moving from one city to another, or moving from one phase of life to another I think the text still makes sense and is of value.

“I was reading a small book that I have always found to be of worth. Like Siddhartha I go back to it again and again. Normally several years pass between the readings. However each time I put the effort into the reread I find myself with a new feeling about some aspect of my life. This time as I am perusing it I realize that it is most likely my fourth or fifth time through the text. Last night I came upon this passage. Thought you might like it.

In essence the writer created a philosophical text relative to the nuances of caring. Not surprisingly the title is the almost eponymous, On Caring. The author is Milton Mayeroff. In one larger section of the book Mayeroff takes time to talk about what he feels are the critical components of caring. These include trust, honesty, patience and several other attributes. The one that seemed interesting relative to you and your personal journey was courage. Here it is:

Courage is also present in going into the unknown. By following the lead of the subject matter or the direction of the growing child, I have no guarantee where it will all end or in what unfamiliar situations I will find myself. The security of familiar landmarks is gone and I cannot anticipate fully who or what the other will become or who I will become. This is the courage of the artist who leaves the fashions of the day to go his own way and in so doing comes to find himself and be himself. Such courage is not blind: it is informed by insight from past experiences, and it is open and sensitive to the present. Trust in the other to grow and in my own ability to care gives me the courage to go into the unknown, but it is also true that without the courage to go into the unknown such trust would be impossible. And clearly, the greater the sense of going into the unknown, the more courage is called for in caring.”

What followed was a bit of exhortation to take action. In retrospect my comments probably weren’t the most apt. All that was necessary was to lay out the text. Most of the people I know understand how to read and can figure it out on their own. Thus I am just posting this now without further comment. Take it if you need it, leave it if you don’t. (Thank Robert Hunter for that line).

Passion and its Value In Literature

During the work week it is hard to create lots of new content. Thus for the next few days I will be digging deep into my saved correspondence for some of the material posted. If you have seen it before, be tolerant. If not enjoy. As I progress in the book on ethical philosophy I am sure I will have some other stuff to rant about.

This was a bit I wrote explaining some of my favorite summer reading…

In all the reading that I do, I am struck by the passion that pervades the souls of the writers I find meaningful. Each one of them to a person is driven by something. Not just intrigued, but really driven. Merton was drawn by his inner disquiet to find something more. He struggled and he fought with what was the way to that something more throughout his life. While he was a Catholic hermit he never stopped looking. He was drawn to the Tao. He was drawn to philosophers. I think yesterday's reading from A Year with Thomas Merton was the only time where he indicated that he had achieved several days of spiritual peace. This came only after he fully committed himself to the life of a total hermit. Not my path, I do believe.

Neruda was consumed by passion. A lust for the fullness of life is found in every line he writes. With apologies if I have sent this too you before, but I offer the following as proof:

Horses

From the window I saw the horses.

I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
was without light, the sky without sky.

The air white like wet bread.

And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.

Suddenly, led by a man,
ten horses stepped out into the mist.

Hardly had they surged forth, like flame,
than to my eyes they filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with wide pure hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.

Their rumps were worlds and oranges.

Their color was honey, amber and fire.

Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.

And there, in the silence, in the middle
of the day, of the dark, slovenly winter,
the intense horses were blood
and rhythm, the animating treasure of life.

I looked, I looked and was reborn: without knowing it,
there, was the fountain, the dance of gold, the sky,
the fire that revived in beauty.

I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.

I will not forget the light of the horses.


Yeah, passion. Neruda is definitely about passion. As to other writer's Chesterton's take on the life of Francis is passionate also. Although Chesterton's expression of passion is a quieter one, focused mainly on the contradictions of a man as holy fool, his passion is clearly evident in his careful and diligent selection of words to use. Chesterton is drawn to the saint with flaws that Francis was. I think Francis inspires Chesterton to believe that anyone can remake the world in a moment, for in reality that is all the duration of one life is.

In looking at my earlier post of what I like I thought I had better put something interactive on the site. With regard to access to media and to some extent on the topic of movies, I have discovered hulu.com. How could I not? Tons of press has been disseminated on this site in the past several weeks. It hosts old TV shows and some movies, albeit it with commercials, but otherwise free and legal. Here is one of the great modern classics for anyone who might have missed it. http://www.hulu.com/the-usual-suspects Just click on the link and register, but then you can watch the movie on your computer. Very cool stuff.

The Need For Silence in Our Age

Often I worry a good deal about what happens next here at the factory know as the State, but there is not much I can do regarding it. Lacking any real political power and the prevailing winds being what they are I must simply act stoically. In that vein I found the following piece by Thomas Merton. I came upon it when I was looking for some reading to end my day the other evening. I think it has broad applicability in the lives of those of use facing the 21st century in all its bustle, confusion and in a much broader sense despair.

“In our age everything has to be a "problem." Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by forces from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt, traveling from the area of anxiety to the area in which there is no anxiety or perhaps it may mean learning, from God, to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety.

Fundamentally, as Max Picard points out, it probably comes to this: living in a silence which so reconciles the contradictions within us that, although they remain within us, they cease to be a problem.

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.

Silence, then, belongs to the substance of sanctity. In silence and hope are formed the strength of the Saints. "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). “




Perhaps in some ways this seems to imply I should not blog. Hmmh?

Accidental Politics Part II

Following up on the accidental politics thing I found the editorial in the March 25, 2008 New York Times in line with what I had been talking about. It just came out of a scan of the morning paper but it made sense to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/opinion/25tue1.html?ref=todayspaper

"If any good can come out of this mess, it would be an understanding — by corporations, consumers and government — that the era of cheap oil is truly over. With that, the country could finally focus on developing clean alternative energy sources and reducing oil consumption, a strategy that has served other countries well.

****

A lot more needs to be done to prepare the American economy for a world of scarcer, more expensive energy. To start, the nation has to replace the oilmen in the White House with leaders who have a better grasp of the economics of energy and the interests of all Americans."

Yeah, yeah, I am a liberal. So sue me.

Oh the photo above is of Queen Street West in Toronto. Funky little street with lots of things going on. I just liked the shot's color and so there it is. On a gray day in the Midwest it is rather life affirming to see such a visual pastiche.

Accidental Politics

March 24, 2008

My hope is that this blog will be a reflection of my feelings and opinions and something more. Mostly my hope is to create an online journal that maybe someone will read. Posted comments are hoped for. Perhaps one aside will open a mental or spiritual door for me that will prove valuable. Maybe the door will be one I looked at briefly and then turned away from a long time ago. Perhaps the portal will be to a place or state I never knew existed. Serendipity that is the word isn’t it?

Jotting this entry I think of whether I should talk of the politics of the day. Body counts and milestones and people caught with their pants down. Seems just like every other day in the political world. Blogs that delve into the issues of contemporary discourse vis a vis who holds power, who should hold power and who will hold power garner wide readership. Still, when I surf those sights I rarely find the insight I am looking for. The insights I value are often caught by a sideways glance or picked up in a shred of overheard conversation.

An example comes to mind. As I was surfing the channels the other night looking for some science fiction I came upon a special on Ansel Adams. (Okay, if the thought of science fiction has distracted you, click here and go watch an episode of Eureka, I love this show http://www.scifi.com/rewind/ ). Anyway as I watched the special what I heard the narrator say struck me as profound. In that deep voice that all PBS narrators are mandated to have the speaker stated that Ansel Adams was political, but political in a sense that lay far beyond the boundaries of Republican and Democrat. It lay beyond even the gulf between democrat and communist.

The politics that concerned Mr. Adams were those focused not on temporal economic boundaries or even geopolitical boundaries. His politics focused not on man nor on nature standing alone, but rather on the total relationship between humanity and the natural order of our planet. His focus was on both bettering the welfare of humankind and the preservation of a livable world. Ansel Adams the speaker intoned matched nature with the growth and development of a dignity of spirit in the human race. I think the underlying thought actually came from LBJ, a person for whom Adam’s had helped edit a book of photos and conservation commentary. Still the narrator seemed to think it caught an important aspect of Adam’s persona. That though is good politics on a human scale.

Like I said my politics are those drawn from the sideways glance.

I am attaching here something else I though about a time ago. I put forms of this in a letter or two. If you have seen it before I apologize.

We long for that element so elusive, the taste of unlimited time. For the brief moment we actually possess it we do not realize that possession and it runs right through our fingers… There is song this is cribbed from. Surely the song cribbed it from the writings of a monk or a mystic. Surely the monk or the mystic drew it from his or her own experience, but sensation of this knowledge is dead on the mark. But what happens next, after the awareness comes is important. I think it matters a great deal.

When immortality and eternity are gone, what do we do next? I think it very, very important to make a wise choice. My life is at the point where immortality is long gone. I have been under the knife for cancer, and while I push the thought aside pretty readily now, I always have the sense that something nasty is just around the next corner. So what do I do, how do I live in this moment? I think I grabbed the following from Merton, but I lost the citation.

Early [Christian] writers loved to dwell on the paradox that the way to hell is pride, while the way to heaven is humility. Salvation to these mystics/monastics began with the ‘self-emptying’ (the ‘kenosis’) of Christ. In one of the most profoundly affecting passages of the New Testament St Paul wrote, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human form. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8). Buddhists use the expressions ‘Buddha mind’, and ‘Buddha nature’.

In writing from the Providence Zen Center there is found this passage, “a child's mind is Buddha's mind. Just seeing, just doing is truth. Then, using this mind means when you are hungry, eat. When someone is hungry, give them food.” Simplicity.

Be empty and live with simplicity. Not real easy.

Easter Memories are Complicated

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Another Easter Sunday has passed. No matter how many years may fly by I will always long to be at my Grandmother’s South Carolina homestead.  Her farm was just down the road a piece from Calabash and a stone’s throw from Ocean Drive. 

Up until I was 18, I spent the weekend of Easter traveling to or from the Palmetto state to be at my father’s mother’s farm. Longs, South Carolina was always warmer than New Jersey. Invariably you could wear short sleeves at Easter the low country. The flowers were always a month ahead of those in my little town but the place was different. 

I don’t know what made it different.   Was the time spent with my cousins and their exotic southern accents? Was it the fact that television programs weren’t really the same? On Saturday night all that aired on the tube at my Grandmother’s house was gospel quartets. Maybe I felt it was different because my Grandmother would slip a dollar bill into my hand that I would invariably spend at Stuckey’s on the ride home. No matter what it was, the experience of Easter in Horry County was such an ingrained part of my childhood and tied so inextricably to this day, that I cannot ever let the day go without thinking about it.

My childrens’ memories will be different. They will, in the mists held within reflecting imperfectly their childhoods, have snow covered sidewalks and balloons adorning the inside of pyramid shaped Lutheran church. One or two of the hymns will be the same but the rest of the experience will be totally different. Still, what they know of Easter will be their childhood memories-lamb chops and asparagus, Easter egg hunts in the living room and not out at the edge of the fields (with eggs taken from Miss Effie’s chicken coop).

When I was standing in a bookstore reading titles, I saw one that caught my attention. It was something like 30 things you need to know now. One of the 30 things was that you could not by your actions really impact on the behavior of your children. I don’t really agree in total, but I understand what the author meant. Genetics really means a great deal in the formation of personality. Right out of the box so to speak both of my children were different, really different. But some things that I have done I am sure have moderated some bad traits and encouraged a few good ones in the boys. Some things have had no effect that I can discern. Still just as my parents love of the 500-mile road that rolled across the Carolinas has impacted my love of travel, I am sure that my somewhat dogmatic (there is right and there is wrong) values have found their way into at least one of the boys’ heads. Enough of this, the evening wanes.

I have decided that when I am writing for this blog I will try and make sure that there is something more than my writing involved. It could be a link to a website I like, or an image or an audio clip. Today I went with the image. Night fall here in the western fringe of the Eastern Time zone has an austere beauty. On a cold day the shades of blue as the evening descends are just transcendent. When I lived on the east coast the sky very often seemed fire filled as the day ended. I had one friend who works in the Environmental Quality division of the government tell me that was because of pollution. Well anyway I digress. So, here is a shot of the western sky on a cool evening Easter Sunday 2008.

Stuff about me

Activities:

Coffee shop dilettante. Solitary walker.

Interests:

My interests lie at the fringe of the known. I am drawn to things that feel common and comfortable but are slightly off center. I like to write and have found that correspondence is as valuable to me as fiction. Hey, sometimes the truth is magical. I like philosophy, Canadian history and classic literature. I am sure some other people can come up more detail on my interests but I am not sure I would post their thoughts here.

Favorite Music:

My musical tastes tend to run to two areas with some side trips. I like jam bands from the sixties, people like the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane and their various offshoots. I also tend to like singer/songwriters/balladeers, Richard Shindell, Joni Mitchell and Chris Smither. I also like jazz with a fondness for Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ron Carter, John Scofield and Jaco Pastorius. My favorite instrument is the bass guitar. My desert island twelve in no particular order:

• Richard and Linda Thompson-Shoot Out the Lights,
• Joni Mitchell-Hejira,
• Elvis Costello-King of America,
• Ry Cooder-Paradise and Lunch,
• Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny-Beyond the Missouri Sky,
• Van Morrison-Poetic Champions Compose,
• Grateful Dead-Wake of the Flood,
• Nic Jones-Whichever one has farewell to the Gold on it,
• Richard Shindell-Sparrows Point,
• The Strawbs-Grave New World
• Miles Davis-In a Silent Way (or Kind of Blue),
• Emmylou Harris-Wrecking Ball

Favorite TV Shows:

Eureka, Moonlight, Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, Heroes, The Prisoner(I know this is not on the air currently, and that it is about 40 years old, but it is the precursor to most of the things on like Lost and Heroes.

Favorite Movies:

• Grand Illusion,
• Women in Love,
• Scarecrow,
• Cinema Paradisio,
• Wings of Desire.

Favorite Books:

Favorite books tend to veer toward the meditative. Blackburn’s Think, Merton’s-No man is an Island, Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi and The Courtier and the Heretic (I don’t remember the author.) My taste in fiction tends toward the classics, Hardy-Jude the Obscure, Hugo-Les Miserables, Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Of contemporary writers I like Annie Proulx and Stephen King. Oh and then there is my all time favorite, the last 10 pages of Hesse's Siddhartha.

Favorite Quotes:

It is not the answer that matters; it is the integrity of the search that is the key.

Why?

03-23-08

Because the the desire to create and think out loud is very strong. My hope is that this turns into something with usefulness, at least for me.