Sunday, November 11, 2007
A Most Scurvy Monster
I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception:"Uniting of godly and devilish elements" resounded within me. Here was something for my thoughts to cling to. This idea was familiar to me from conversations with Demian. During the last period of our friendship he had said that we had been given a god to worship who represented only one arbitrarily separated half of the world (it was the official, sanctioned, luminous world), but that we ought to be able to worship the whole world; this meant that we would either have to have a god who was also a devil or institute a cult of the devil alongside the cult of god. And now Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.
Animal viruses are usually content to remain aloof within the nucleus they invade, using the host cell's machinery to replicate themselves, but seldom mingling with the local DNA. Retroviruses work backward. They have no DNA. Their genetic instructions are coded in RNA. Like all viruses, they carry none of the other requirements for life—such as manufacturing, processing, or reproductive equipment—just a genetic blueprint sealed in a protective capsule. For the rest they must depend on the cell they infect. But a cell is not set up to process genetic instructions in RNA.
The first thing a retrovirus does when it gets inside a cell and takes off its protective coat is make a copy of itself in DNA.Retroviruses are so-called because they possess a unique cellular enzyme, reverse transcriptase, which uses the viral RNA as a template to make a DNA copy. The DNA copy of the virus then slices open a host chromosome, inserts itself, and in a kind of inner colonialization, becomes for all intents and purposes one of the cell's own genes. When the cell begins transcribing this viral DNA sequence into RNA—as it must to get a working copy of any gene for use in protein production—the result is more copies of the RNA virus and the orders for materials needed to make the virus capsules.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, retroviruses are such stuff as nightmares are made of. But they are also the stuff of wonder.That's most certain.Now part of the cell's chromosome, the virus—that is, all that's left of it, its genes—is in the catbird seat.To take an analogy from history: invading conquerors let us use the French colonialists in Indochina as an example, set out to govern a conquered country, not according to the judicial system which they find in force there, but according to their own.Like any good DNA, the viral genes may transcribe messenger RNA, which travels back into the cytoplasm, some of it directing the cells' ribosomes to manufacture new viral proteins, some of it becoming enveloped by the emerging viruses to form their new cores of RNA.
Or the integrated viral DNA may exert its influence upon the cellular genome and cause the cell to reproduce aberrantly, erratically, uncontrollably, thereby transforming it into a malignant cell. Or the viral genes may do nothing at all, may simply lie low—for years, perhaps—safe and undetected within the heart of the cell, until prompted once again to become active and produce more viruses, or a transformed cell, or both. What causes the activation isn't always entirely clear. There are many retroviral mysteries to be unraveled.
Animal viruses are usually content to remain aloof within the nucleus they invade, using the host cell's machinery to replicate themselves, but seldom mingling with the local DNA. Retroviruses work backward. They have no DNA. Their genetic instructions are coded in RNA. Like all viruses, they carry none of the other requirements for life—such as manufacturing, processing, or reproductive equipment—just a genetic blueprint sealed in a protective capsule. For the rest they must depend on the cell they infect. But a cell is not set up to process genetic instructions in RNA.
The first thing a retrovirus does when it gets inside a cell and takes off its protective coat is make a copy of itself in DNA.Retroviruses are so-called because they possess a unique cellular enzyme, reverse transcriptase, which uses the viral RNA as a template to make a DNA copy. The DNA copy of the virus then slices open a host chromosome, inserts itself, and in a kind of inner colonialization, becomes for all intents and purposes one of the cell's own genes. When the cell begins transcribing this viral DNA sequence into RNA—as it must to get a working copy of any gene for use in protein production—the result is more copies of the RNA virus and the orders for materials needed to make the virus capsules.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, retroviruses are such stuff as nightmares are made of. But they are also the stuff of wonder.That's most certain.Now part of the cell's chromosome, the virus—that is, all that's left of it, its genes—is in the catbird seat.To take an analogy from history: invading conquerors let us use the French colonialists in Indochina as an example, set out to govern a conquered country, not according to the judicial system which they find in force there, but according to their own.Like any good DNA, the viral genes may transcribe messenger RNA, which travels back into the cytoplasm, some of it directing the cells' ribosomes to manufacture new viral proteins, some of it becoming enveloped by the emerging viruses to form their new cores of RNA.
Or the integrated viral DNA may exert its influence upon the cellular genome and cause the cell to reproduce aberrantly, erratically, uncontrollably, thereby transforming it into a malignant cell. Or the viral genes may do nothing at all, may simply lie low—for years, perhaps—safe and undetected within the heart of the cell, until prompted once again to become active and produce more viruses, or a transformed cell, or both. What causes the activation isn't always entirely clear. There are many retroviral mysteries to be unraveled.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The Mournful Solace of the Night
For me, whose heart is heavy with the grief of life's struggles, the dusk comes as a mournful solace. With night so near, I feel like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world has any right to weep for me. For, truly, at dusk I feel ready to start life all over again. It is as if the great rush of daytime's anguished tumult washes me clean, empties me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars--as if I am seeing the night sky for the first time, the first--I lay my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
It is said that the day-night reversal, with its relieving sense of freedom from demand, is characteristic for people who feel detached from, or oppressed by, the world around them. It provides a kind of nonconforming rebellious and private limbo, a private world.
To feel the night so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, makes me realize that I have been happy, and that I am happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remains to hope is that on the day of my death, whenever that day might come, there should be one mourner who might remember me, who might carry my memory into the future for at least a brief time.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
One Writer's Inner Struggle
The popular literary form—as opposed to the sequestered academic one—is always straining at the inbuilt inertia of a society that always wants to deny change and the pain it necessarily involves. But it is in this effort that the musculature of important work is developed.
Hermann Hesse's literary career was closely interwoven with his personal fortunes as well as with his philosophical interests. His works before his disillusionment in World War I reflect the German literary traditions of romanticism and regionalism. In this tradition, we are dealing with a line of thought that frames clear-cut distinctions between good and evil, prudence and folly, reality and fantasy.
At any rate, in accord with his original artistic nature, and at a time when in his youth he has not yet seen any of his illusions dissipated, Hesse’s generally lower-middle-class heroes work hard, though rarely successfully, at adjusting to the technological and social change of urban industrial society. By the time the Great War ended, however, the world had undergone a complete transformation and the consequences for Hesse himself were far greater than he could ever have foreseen.
Somehow events in his life were coming to a head, but he felt that he was being lived by them, rather than living them. He became uncertain whether good and bad, right and wrong, had any absolute existence at all. Perhaps the voice of one’s own conscience was ultimately the only valid judge, and if that were so, then each man had only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal—that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern.
His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.
What more need I say?
Beginning with Demian (1919)--if we may be permitted to anticipate our story-- his heroes no longer try to conform but force themselves almost against their own wills to insist, at the price of isolation, on finding an original way of participating in a new age of human involvement and commitment.
Hermann Hesse's literary career was closely interwoven with his personal fortunes as well as with his philosophical interests. His works before his disillusionment in World War I reflect the German literary traditions of romanticism and regionalism. In this tradition, we are dealing with a line of thought that frames clear-cut distinctions between good and evil, prudence and folly, reality and fantasy.
At any rate, in accord with his original artistic nature, and at a time when in his youth he has not yet seen any of his illusions dissipated, Hesse’s generally lower-middle-class heroes work hard, though rarely successfully, at adjusting to the technological and social change of urban industrial society. By the time the Great War ended, however, the world had undergone a complete transformation and the consequences for Hesse himself were far greater than he could ever have foreseen.
Somehow events in his life were coming to a head, but he felt that he was being lived by them, rather than living them. He became uncertain whether good and bad, right and wrong, had any absolute existence at all. Perhaps the voice of one’s own conscience was ultimately the only valid judge, and if that were so, then each man had only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal—that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern.
His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.
What more need I say?
Beginning with Demian (1919)--if we may be permitted to anticipate our story-- his heroes no longer try to conform but force themselves almost against their own wills to insist, at the price of isolation, on finding an original way of participating in a new age of human involvement and commitment.
Monday, November 05, 2007
solitariness
Solitariness
1. Solitary: "1. Existing, living, or going without others; alone ... 3. Remote from civilization; secluded; lonely. 4. Having no companions; lonesome; lonely."
Synonyms: "alone, lonely, lonesome, lone, forlorn, lorn, desolate"
"Alone, solitary, lonely, lonesome, lone, lorn, forlorn, desolate may all refer to situations of being apart from others or emotions experienced while apart. Alone stresses the fact of physical isolation and also may connote feelings of isolation from others ... Solitary may indicate a state of being apart that is desired and sought for ... It often connotes sadness at the loss or lack of usual or close connections or consciousness of isolation or remoteness ... Lonely may simply indicate the fact of being alone but more often suggests isolation accompanied by a longing for company ... Lonesome, often more poignant, suggests sadness after a separation or bereavement ... Lone especially in poetical use may replace either lonely or lonesome ... Lorn suggests recent separation or bereavement ... Forlorn indicates dejection , woe, and listlessness at separation from someone dear ... Desolate is most extreme in suggesting inconsolable grief at loss or bereavement ...
"Solitary, lonely, lonesome, desolate are applied to places and locations more than the other words discriminated above. Solitary may be applied to something that is either apart from things similar or that is uninhabited or unvisited by human beings ... Lonely may be applied to what is either far apart from things similar and seldom visited or to what is inhabited by only one person or group and conducive to loneliness ... Lonesome has much the same suggestion ... Desolate indicates either that a place is abandoned by people or that it is as barren and wild as never to have attracted them ... "
Analogous: "isolated, secluded, retired, withdrawn: forsaken, deserted, abandoned"
Antonyms:
Contrasted:
2. Solitary: "Single; sole."
Synonyms: "single, sole, unique, lone, separate, particular"
""Single, sole, unique, lone, solitary, separate, particular can all mean one as distinguished from two or more or all others. Something single is not accompanied or supported by, or combined or united with, another ... Something sole is the only one that exists, that acts, that has power or relevance, or that is to be or should be considered ... Something unique ... may be the only one of its kind in existence ... or it may stand alone because of its unusual character ... Something lone ... is not only single but also separated or isolated from others of its kind; the word often replaces single in technical or poetic context ... Something solitary ... stands by itself, either as the sole instance or as a unique thing ... Something separate is not only single, but disconnected from or unconnected with any of the others in question ... Something particular ... is the single or numerically distinct instance, member, or example or the whole or the class considered or under consideration ... "
Analogous: "alone, only"
Sunday, November 04, 2007
An Old Master, His Young Disciple, and the Deep Blue Lake
The old master sat alone, in a wing-back chair, in the cozy comfort of his study. It was a snowy January evening. The old master mused.
"I can't remember. It may come back to me. At the moment I just can't remember, really I can't. It's no good chasing it. It must have been Riga, in winter." He paused and corrected himself. "No, no!"
For a moment the close observer's mind refused to engage. Then he remembered a night at . . . ("Where?") "But of course!" "Ye-e-es," he muttered. There, there, in Leipzig Richard Wagner first met the young Friedrich Nietzsche, who was enchanted by the older man’s wit, awed by his greatness and overjoyed to hear him discuss his debt to Schopenhauer. The brilliant boy, less than a year older than Ludwig of Bavaria—Nietzsche's dead father and Wagner had been born in the same year—in turn made an extraordinary impression on the composer, who encouraged him to visit Triebschen —Tribschen, a villa standing just outside Lucerne on a wooded tongue of land projecting into the Vierwaldstaetter Lake—to continue their discussion of music and philosophy.
Nietzsche later recounted: "I knew that the idea of somebody saying 'Tell me everything' and meaning it was an unbearably exciting, heady thing for me. That somebody would first allow me to say everything that was in my mind, and then would understand it, promised a kind of intellectual and emotional utopia. It was the connection with another human soul that I was after."
No clouds shaded those early bewitching and refreshing days at the lake, where Nietzsche, submissively lost in adoration, passed golden hours stolen from his professorial duties at Basel.
For the rest of his life he would remember one summer morning on the lake. They were seated in the boat, facing each other like two mirrors, Nietzsche in the stern, Wagner rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nietzsche trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning. In the early morning on the lake, sitting in the stern of the boat with his mentor rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. Years after his break with Wagner, he observed, "I pass over my other relationships lightly; but at no price would I have my life bereft of those days at Triebschen, days of confidence, of serenity, of sublime flashes, of profound moments." Nietzsche had no idea at the time how large this house would loom in his subsequent life.
Wagner liked him enormously. But completely disinterested friendship was a luxury he permitted himself infrequently. He sensed Nietzsche's abilities as a writer and wished to yoke them to his cause. Certainly he was impressed by the professor’s eminently articulate style. The relationship between the two men grew increasingly close, and during the war year of 1870—the high tide of their intimacy—each labored at a work reflecting this happiest time of their friendship, a brief period Richard Strauss considered one of the century's most significant moments.
"For me they were steps," Nietzsche wrote, "I have climbed up upon them—therefore I had to pass over them. But they thought I wanted to settle down on them."
Humanly speaking, they were worlds apart. On the one hand, an ebullient artist and man of the theatrical world who would gladly—health and wealth permitting—have been an epicurian, a go-getter whose life flowed past like a dream, a sensualist involved in the everlasting drama of existence, laughing and weeping as his emotions dictated. On the other, a brilliant but austere pedant who procured experiences and exaggerated what life had not granted him—a capacity for fun and enjoyment.
"I can't remember. It may come back to me. At the moment I just can't remember, really I can't. It's no good chasing it. It must have been Riga, in winter." He paused and corrected himself. "No, no!"
For a moment the close observer's mind refused to engage. Then he remembered a night at . . . ("Where?") "But of course!" "Ye-e-es," he muttered. There, there, in Leipzig Richard Wagner first met the young Friedrich Nietzsche, who was enchanted by the older man’s wit, awed by his greatness and overjoyed to hear him discuss his debt to Schopenhauer. The brilliant boy, less than a year older than Ludwig of Bavaria—Nietzsche's dead father and Wagner had been born in the same year—in turn made an extraordinary impression on the composer, who encouraged him to visit Triebschen —Tribschen, a villa standing just outside Lucerne on a wooded tongue of land projecting into the Vierwaldstaetter Lake—to continue their discussion of music and philosophy.
Nietzsche later recounted: "I knew that the idea of somebody saying 'Tell me everything' and meaning it was an unbearably exciting, heady thing for me. That somebody would first allow me to say everything that was in my mind, and then would understand it, promised a kind of intellectual and emotional utopia. It was the connection with another human soul that I was after."
No clouds shaded those early bewitching and refreshing days at the lake, where Nietzsche, submissively lost in adoration, passed golden hours stolen from his professorial duties at Basel.
For the rest of his life he would remember one summer morning on the lake. They were seated in the boat, facing each other like two mirrors, Nietzsche in the stern, Wagner rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nietzsche trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning. In the early morning on the lake, sitting in the stern of the boat with his mentor rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. Years after his break with Wagner, he observed, "I pass over my other relationships lightly; but at no price would I have my life bereft of those days at Triebschen, days of confidence, of serenity, of sublime flashes, of profound moments." Nietzsche had no idea at the time how large this house would loom in his subsequent life.
Wagner liked him enormously. But completely disinterested friendship was a luxury he permitted himself infrequently. He sensed Nietzsche's abilities as a writer and wished to yoke them to his cause. Certainly he was impressed by the professor’s eminently articulate style. The relationship between the two men grew increasingly close, and during the war year of 1870—the high tide of their intimacy—each labored at a work reflecting this happiest time of their friendship, a brief period Richard Strauss considered one of the century's most significant moments.
"For me they were steps," Nietzsche wrote, "I have climbed up upon them—therefore I had to pass over them. But they thought I wanted to settle down on them."
Humanly speaking, they were worlds apart. On the one hand, an ebullient artist and man of the theatrical world who would gladly—health and wealth permitting—have been an epicurian, a go-getter whose life flowed past like a dream, a sensualist involved in the everlasting drama of existence, laughing and weeping as his emotions dictated. On the other, a brilliant but austere pedant who procured experiences and exaggerated what life had not granted him—a capacity for fun and enjoyment.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
A Stark and Harshly-Demanding Winter
My entire existence, in some sense, can be viewed as the lived aftermath of an accident, or series of accidents -- a fall from grace. I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion.
I've found it takes at last two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of a snowdrift.That's the way I feel now. I feel as if I'm at the bottom of the heap, struggling to ascend from the snowdrifts that ensnare me in a winter wasteland.
At this moment, the problem is compounded by a writer's block. I feel I'm straining for something to say, something to express. I feel immobile, locked in the grip of a creative and emotional deep freeze.There is a stillness without and a confused tumult within. I gaze out my window. I seem a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that is warm and sentient in me fast bound below the surface; but there is nothing unfriendly in the silence.
The silence is a balm for my inner disquiet. I simply feel that I live in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I have the sense that my loneliness is not merely the result of my personal plight, tragic as it is, but has in it, as I've hinted many times before, the profound accumulated cold of many stark and harshly-demanding winters.
I've found it takes at last two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of a snowdrift.That's the way I feel now. I feel as if I'm at the bottom of the heap, struggling to ascend from the snowdrifts that ensnare me in a winter wasteland.
At this moment, the problem is compounded by a writer's block. I feel I'm straining for something to say, something to express. I feel immobile, locked in the grip of a creative and emotional deep freeze.There is a stillness without and a confused tumult within. I gaze out my window. I seem a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that is warm and sentient in me fast bound below the surface; but there is nothing unfriendly in the silence.
The silence is a balm for my inner disquiet. I simply feel that I live in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I have the sense that my loneliness is not merely the result of my personal plight, tragic as it is, but has in it, as I've hinted many times before, the profound accumulated cold of many stark and harshly-demanding winters.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
My Inner World, My Burrow
My inner mental life IS my life. A thing that has reached terrifying proportions in my life is the fact that I seem to make little if any contact with living people. I know what has happened. From most of them there is so little to be learned, so little to be seen or discovered in them that is original and revelatory, that I have gotten into the habit of ignoring them. It was always that way with me: the inside teeming and quick rhythm was more important. It is even more so now, but how dangerous it is, how easily it will let one fall into the habit of peopling the world with one's own desires and images! I feel it happening all the time, but seem to do nothing to prevent this loss. I have paid a truly great price for the years of my young loneliness: I am forever locked in myself, deeply imbedded in the flesh and bones of myself is a hungry peering person, astigmatic, tired, alone.
I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time; it has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead (or at least petrified)! It is of no consequence to me whether it thinks me dead; I cannot deny it, for I really am dead to the world. I am dead to the world's tumult, and I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my one-room apartment, in my imaginary friendships and in my letters! That is, when I'm not otherwise occupied with my daily workout regimen in the exercise room of my apartment building.I live out my days tunneling, tunneling through my thoughts to ever greater depths -- like Kafka's mole-rat digging into the earth below, creating a labyrinthine burrow of seemingly infinite complexity that is safe from the encroachment of others.
"And with that I lose myself in a maze of technical speculations, I begin once more to dream my dream of a completely perfect burrow, and that somewhat calms me; with closed eyes I behold with delight perfect or almost perfect structural devices for enabling me to slip out and in unobserved. While I lie there thinking such things I admire these devices very greatly, but only as technical achievements, or as real advantages, for this freedom to slip out and in at will, what does it amount to? It is the mark of a restless nature, of inner uncertainty, disreputable desires, evil propensities that seem still worse when one thinks of the burrow, which is there at one's hand and can flood one with peace if one only remains quite open and receptive to it. For the present, however, I am outside it seeking some possibility of returning, and for that the necessary technical devices would be very desirable. But perhaps not very desirable after all. Is it not a very grave injustice to the burrow to regard it in moments of nervous panic as a mere hole among which one can creep and be safe?" Ah, yes! The freedom to slip "out and in" at will, as Kafka calls it.
Yes, in my burrow, in my solitary thoughts, I dream my dreams. But they are the dreams of "the undeveloped heart." I dwell in my burrow with a gallery of images, the images of a plethora of people: the monstrous and the good -- some unbelievably good. They remain phantoms, however. I lack the ability to care enough about another person; I suffer from a deficiency of the capacity for love, joy, and empathy to occupy myself with real people. The passageways of my burrow are redolent of indifference: the benign but vaguely repellent odor of emotional emptiness.
I live in fear by day and night; fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that I am worthy of life; since everyone around me denies it as I deny it to myself; which makes all love, all trust, all joy impossible.From the tunnels of my imagination come a host of memories. All sorts of ghosts haunt these long, lonely corridors; foulness and miasma are everywhere, with here and there a vent-hole through which the phantom of one of my old acquaintances from within converses with another one of my old acquaintances from without.
My burrow is the resting place of all failure and all effort. To my life's pain it is a detritus, and to unfulfilled wishes a residue. It is the conscience of my life's experiences where all things converge and clash. There is darkness here, but no secrets. Everything has its true or at least its definitive form. There is this to be said for the muck-heap of my memories and imaginings, that it does not lie. Innocence dwells in it. Every foulness of my existence, fallen into disuse, sinks into that ditch of truth wherein ends the huge hoard of meaninglessness, to be swallowed, but to spread in endless rumination. It is a vast confusion. No false appearance, no whitewashing, is possible; filth strips off its shirt in utter starkness, all illusions and mirages scattered, nothing left except what is, showing the ugly face of what ends. Reality and disappearance: here, a bottleneck proclaims drunkenness, a basket-handle tells of home-life; and there the apple-core that had literary opinions again becomes an apple-core. Here my memories enjoy more than fraternity, they share a close intimacy. That which was painted is besmeared. The last veil is stripped away. The repository of memories that constitutes my mind is a cynic. It says everything. Endlessly. My burrow comprises the entrails of a monster. Mine is the life of a miserable sod. Ah, yes, Les Miserables!
I am in a dark place. I would live in utter darkness in my burrow but for The Word that emanates from higher realms. As the psalmist said: "Since God's word is a light for my path I will be sure not to stumble as long as it is with me. If God's word is in my heart then I can be sure that it will be there whenever I am in a dark place." Psalm 119: 105-106.
I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time; it has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead (or at least petrified)! It is of no consequence to me whether it thinks me dead; I cannot deny it, for I really am dead to the world. I am dead to the world's tumult, and I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my one-room apartment, in my imaginary friendships and in my letters! That is, when I'm not otherwise occupied with my daily workout regimen in the exercise room of my apartment building.I live out my days tunneling, tunneling through my thoughts to ever greater depths -- like Kafka's mole-rat digging into the earth below, creating a labyrinthine burrow of seemingly infinite complexity that is safe from the encroachment of others.
"And with that I lose myself in a maze of technical speculations, I begin once more to dream my dream of a completely perfect burrow, and that somewhat calms me; with closed eyes I behold with delight perfect or almost perfect structural devices for enabling me to slip out and in unobserved. While I lie there thinking such things I admire these devices very greatly, but only as technical achievements, or as real advantages, for this freedom to slip out and in at will, what does it amount to? It is the mark of a restless nature, of inner uncertainty, disreputable desires, evil propensities that seem still worse when one thinks of the burrow, which is there at one's hand and can flood one with peace if one only remains quite open and receptive to it. For the present, however, I am outside it seeking some possibility of returning, and for that the necessary technical devices would be very desirable. But perhaps not very desirable after all. Is it not a very grave injustice to the burrow to regard it in moments of nervous panic as a mere hole among which one can creep and be safe?" Ah, yes! The freedom to slip "out and in" at will, as Kafka calls it.
Yes, in my burrow, in my solitary thoughts, I dream my dreams. But they are the dreams of "the undeveloped heart." I dwell in my burrow with a gallery of images, the images of a plethora of people: the monstrous and the good -- some unbelievably good. They remain phantoms, however. I lack the ability to care enough about another person; I suffer from a deficiency of the capacity for love, joy, and empathy to occupy myself with real people. The passageways of my burrow are redolent of indifference: the benign but vaguely repellent odor of emotional emptiness.
I live in fear by day and night; fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that I am worthy of life; since everyone around me denies it as I deny it to myself; which makes all love, all trust, all joy impossible.From the tunnels of my imagination come a host of memories. All sorts of ghosts haunt these long, lonely corridors; foulness and miasma are everywhere, with here and there a vent-hole through which the phantom of one of my old acquaintances from within converses with another one of my old acquaintances from without.
My burrow is the resting place of all failure and all effort. To my life's pain it is a detritus, and to unfulfilled wishes a residue. It is the conscience of my life's experiences where all things converge and clash. There is darkness here, but no secrets. Everything has its true or at least its definitive form. There is this to be said for the muck-heap of my memories and imaginings, that it does not lie. Innocence dwells in it. Every foulness of my existence, fallen into disuse, sinks into that ditch of truth wherein ends the huge hoard of meaninglessness, to be swallowed, but to spread in endless rumination. It is a vast confusion. No false appearance, no whitewashing, is possible; filth strips off its shirt in utter starkness, all illusions and mirages scattered, nothing left except what is, showing the ugly face of what ends. Reality and disappearance: here, a bottleneck proclaims drunkenness, a basket-handle tells of home-life; and there the apple-core that had literary opinions again becomes an apple-core. Here my memories enjoy more than fraternity, they share a close intimacy. That which was painted is besmeared. The last veil is stripped away. The repository of memories that constitutes my mind is a cynic. It says everything. Endlessly. My burrow comprises the entrails of a monster. Mine is the life of a miserable sod. Ah, yes, Les Miserables!
I am in a dark place. I would live in utter darkness in my burrow but for The Word that emanates from higher realms. As the psalmist said: "Since God's word is a light for my path I will be sure not to stumble as long as it is with me. If God's word is in my heart then I can be sure that it will be there whenever I am in a dark place." Psalm 119: 105-106.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Psychoanalyst as Shaman
One of Freud's basic psychoanalytic strategies is to hide his face and act as a blank screen. This self-effacing performance encourages the patient to initiate and dominate the stage, to transfer his or her emotional attachments onto Freud in a first step toward working through childhood complexes. The analyst sits quietly, watches the play, while being in his mind also a co-actor. The analytic psychodrama leaves Freud's image an enigma, because within the walls of his office he surrenders his identity to the phantoms that haunt his patients continually attending to the form of the moment of communication while bearing in mind the whole session as it echoes and repeats the form of the patient's life drama—-
Transference to a shaman is an ancient, worldwide technique of healing, widely studied by anthropologists and scholars of the history of religion. Shamanism preceded psychoanalysis and will survive it; it is the purest form of dynamic psychiatry.
Freud might have founded psychoanalysis, but he did so, consciously or not, on much older foundations laid by practicing shamans throughout the world and over the millenia.
We are concerned here, in particular, at this moment in our journey, with the individuals who have been referred to as “lightening conductors of common anxiety”—medicine men, sorcerers, shamans—who articulate a personal reformulation through the role of healer and who seek, by the alleviation of group anxiety, their own sense of identity and security.
To both the analyst and the Shaman metaphor is essential. The shaman conveys metaphors addressed to the spirit world through drumming, chants, dance, myths, drama, or more appropriately, psychodrama and by means of this fills the void wrought in the texture of existence by the incomprehensible experience of suffering. He serves as the link that connects mystery to mystery, the known with the unknown and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, the shaman creates a metaphorical bridge between the everyday human world and the realm of the ineffable, the unconscious, or, in his subjective belief, the supernatural, and like Persephone he inhabits both worlds. He must experience the alien within himself as a prerequisite for interpreting and conferring significance upon the suffering of those who consult him for help against illness or misfortune.
The personal experience of the alien, which resembles a mental disorder, is a major source of the apparent effectiveness of his form of psychotherapy, as it encourages the development of a greater than normal psychological sensitivity for his ever-renewed attempts to heal himself and his culture mates.
To put it in a nutshell: The shaman, the man of magic so singularly capable of suffering, is ill for conventional reasons and in a conventional way; his conflicts are simply unusually intense; he is like everyone else, only more so.
Transference to a shaman is an ancient, worldwide technique of healing, widely studied by anthropologists and scholars of the history of religion. Shamanism preceded psychoanalysis and will survive it; it is the purest form of dynamic psychiatry.
Freud might have founded psychoanalysis, but he did so, consciously or not, on much older foundations laid by practicing shamans throughout the world and over the millenia.
We are concerned here, in particular, at this moment in our journey, with the individuals who have been referred to as “lightening conductors of common anxiety”—medicine men, sorcerers, shamans—who articulate a personal reformulation through the role of healer and who seek, by the alleviation of group anxiety, their own sense of identity and security.
To both the analyst and the Shaman metaphor is essential. The shaman conveys metaphors addressed to the spirit world through drumming, chants, dance, myths, drama, or more appropriately, psychodrama and by means of this fills the void wrought in the texture of existence by the incomprehensible experience of suffering. He serves as the link that connects mystery to mystery, the known with the unknown and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, the shaman creates a metaphorical bridge between the everyday human world and the realm of the ineffable, the unconscious, or, in his subjective belief, the supernatural, and like Persephone he inhabits both worlds. He must experience the alien within himself as a prerequisite for interpreting and conferring significance upon the suffering of those who consult him for help against illness or misfortune.
The personal experience of the alien, which resembles a mental disorder, is a major source of the apparent effectiveness of his form of psychotherapy, as it encourages the development of a greater than normal psychological sensitivity for his ever-renewed attempts to heal himself and his culture mates.
To put it in a nutshell: The shaman, the man of magic so singularly capable of suffering, is ill for conventional reasons and in a conventional way; his conflicts are simply unusually intense; he is like everyone else, only more so.
Monday, October 29, 2007
All Things Wished For, But Denied
Thou art my soul, though life is vain, Thou art my hope, thou art my pain, Thou art my world of joy and gladness, My heaven above my realm of sadness; Thou art my night of dream and sleep, My day when into song I leap. Thou art my rest from tears and laughter, Thou art the heaven I wait here-after. Since thou this love hast given to me, The world a place of light must be, And as on wings my soul must soar, My own, my love for evermore! Thou art my soul, though life is vain, Thou art my hope, thou art my pain, Thou art my world of joy and gladness, My heaven above, my realm of sadness, My own, my love for ever-more!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The View from the Tower
Today I am perched somewhat precariously on a high tower. It is my refuge, my retreat. From my height -- on a cold winter's day -- I inhale the chilled but bracing air that surrounds me. From my bird's eye view above the city, I observe the hubbub below, which enlivens my day.
My tower provides sanctuary and protection. I have removed myself from ordinary life. It is a precious and solitary moment. I am by myself and beside myself in my exhilaration. I stand like a puppeteer above his puppets, and in my imagination I manipulate the people I see below me, like a puppet master who animates the passive instruments under his control. I stand alone and disturb the people below me, or so I fancy.
Words, words, words . . . on some days, I have the gift . . . I can make love out of words as a potter makes cups out of clay, love that overthrows empires, love that binds two hearts together come hellfire and brimstone . . . I can cause a riot in a nunnery -- a disturbance not to be dismissed . . . but on other days . . . I feel that I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill had broken. As if the organ of the imagination has dried up. As if the proud tower of my narrative talents has collapsed. Nothing comes. And my spirits suffer.
I live to observe and to express. My capacity for vigilant scrutiny and my talent for words, for felicitous locution, enlarge my inner repository of sensual experience and permit me to make that repository accessible to my audience.Whether my published communications unite me with others or disturb the equilibrium of their world, my own inner states are transformed thereby.
Today I am in a reflective mood. I've been thinking about desolation and transformation. I have been thinking about my current condition: my lone battle with the people, the critics, in my environment and beyond. I think about my loneliness, which rises to the level of despair at times, but, fortunately does not defeat me. I revel in my lonely struggle. I revel in my ability to disturb my immediate environment and the world beyond my imagination. I view my isolation and my defiance as virtues, the tests and marks of a higher morality.
My emotional inertness pains me, but my capacity to endure my suffering and my ability to transform my distress by means of expression, by means of words, emboldens my spirit. Something in my past must have disposed me to suffering, but at the same time prepared me to endure that very torment.
My tower provides sanctuary and protection. I have removed myself from ordinary life. It is a precious and solitary moment. I am by myself and beside myself in my exhilaration. I stand like a puppeteer above his puppets, and in my imagination I manipulate the people I see below me, like a puppet master who animates the passive instruments under his control. I stand alone and disturb the people below me, or so I fancy.
Words, words, words . . . on some days, I have the gift . . . I can make love out of words as a potter makes cups out of clay, love that overthrows empires, love that binds two hearts together come hellfire and brimstone . . . I can cause a riot in a nunnery -- a disturbance not to be dismissed . . . but on other days . . . I feel that I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill had broken. As if the organ of the imagination has dried up. As if the proud tower of my narrative talents has collapsed. Nothing comes. And my spirits suffer.
I live to observe and to express. My capacity for vigilant scrutiny and my talent for words, for felicitous locution, enlarge my inner repository of sensual experience and permit me to make that repository accessible to my audience.Whether my published communications unite me with others or disturb the equilibrium of their world, my own inner states are transformed thereby.
Today I am in a reflective mood. I've been thinking about desolation and transformation. I have been thinking about my current condition: my lone battle with the people, the critics, in my environment and beyond. I think about my loneliness, which rises to the level of despair at times, but, fortunately does not defeat me. I revel in my lonely struggle. I revel in my ability to disturb my immediate environment and the world beyond my imagination. I view my isolation and my defiance as virtues, the tests and marks of a higher morality.
My emotional inertness pains me, but my capacity to endure my suffering and my ability to transform my distress by means of expression, by means of words, emboldens my spirit. Something in my past must have disposed me to suffering, but at the same time prepared me to endure that very torment.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
A State of Alienation
I was a hypersensitive, imaginative, lively and extremely headstrong child, and proved to be a constant source of despair and annoyance to my parents and my teachers. School held as little attraction for me as it did for any incorrigible. Hardly had the fourth year of high school begun before I became delinquent and was almost dismissed.
College and law school were meant to end the morbid estheticism into which I had allowed myself to drift. I hoped thereby to become an established, respected member of society. This hope was never realized. Except for the first few years, my law school education did not alleviate my feeling that life is essentially meaningless, nor could my idyllic retreat into academia long contain my inherent restlessness. By 1984, upon completion of my LL.M. program at American University, the life in the law had lost any meaning at all. It had become quite apparent to me that I could not be both a creative dreamer and a "solid citizen," a Phantasiemensch and a Burger, as the Germans would put it.
I am but a gifted misfit. My life has long been restive and discontented. I am unable to bear a comfortable, established mode of existence for any period of time. My life is grim and I live in endless mental agony.
I live the life of a romantic vagabond, forever exhausted and distraught in my quest for solitude. Before life can ever become meaningful for me, I must find and come to terms with myself. I am forever taking painful stock of myself and devote myself assiduously to solitary pleasures. I live like a hermit in my emotional and financial poverty and for years now, I have rarely left my apartment for more than routine outings.
College and law school were meant to end the morbid estheticism into which I had allowed myself to drift. I hoped thereby to become an established, respected member of society. This hope was never realized. Except for the first few years, my law school education did not alleviate my feeling that life is essentially meaningless, nor could my idyllic retreat into academia long contain my inherent restlessness. By 1984, upon completion of my LL.M. program at American University, the life in the law had lost any meaning at all. It had become quite apparent to me that I could not be both a creative dreamer and a "solid citizen," a Phantasiemensch and a Burger, as the Germans would put it.
I am but a gifted misfit. My life has long been restive and discontented. I am unable to bear a comfortable, established mode of existence for any period of time. My life is grim and I live in endless mental agony.
I live the life of a romantic vagabond, forever exhausted and distraught in my quest for solitude. Before life can ever become meaningful for me, I must find and come to terms with myself. I am forever taking painful stock of myself and devote myself assiduously to solitary pleasures. I live like a hermit in my emotional and financial poverty and for years now, I have rarely left my apartment for more than routine outings.
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Writer's Divided Self
We writers live in the limbo between expression and communication. And we do not need theology or metaphysics to remind us that as writers we cannot avoid the effort, or the temptation, to serve two masters—ourselves, what is within us, and our reader, our conjectural clients outside.
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to whom it fits.
By an ironic twist in the history of western literature, in this very age of unprecedented temptations to literary populism, an age of the sovereign and increasingly demanding public, there developed a fertile new sense of Personal Conscience. The private consciousness took on a new life and became a wondrous new literary resource. In modern transformation, conscience, an ancient laboratory of theological hairsplitting and a modern arena of ephemeral public taste, became inward, experimental, and biographical.But infinitely more.—
As prophet and pundit, as devilish, dangerous, a rebel, and yet also a martyr and sacrifice, the writer has become the bad conscience of our whole era, .and in so doing indeed he has come perilously close to defining the modern antihero who rejects received tenets of behaviour and stays true to his individuality in an always alien society.
To think of the writer as conscience of the world is only to recognize that the writer, as we shall see, is inevitably a divided self, condemned at the same time to express and to communicate, to speak for the writer and speak to others.
The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.Western literature offers us countless different ways in which authors have dealt with this divided self. I will provide only a sample from some of my favorite writers that may suggest the perils that beset writers who pretend to be the world's arbiters.
Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hermann Hesse—one of my favorites—embodied those divisions of his age which have left their mark on our culture. In a manner unique among writers, he wove his immediate experiences into his books to portray many of the dilemmas and historic crises of his time. It was this finely tuned interaction between his psychological conflict and historical events that was to make him a poet of crisis. Hesse's stories—like the dreams he collected in special notebooks—are told from both conscious and unconscious experience and therefore reveal and conceal events, encounters, and feelings from himself, his friends, his public.
The way Hesse lived and wrote about his life, constantly aware of his conflicting impulses as part of the tension of his art, made this revelation and concealment permeate all his writings. He made himself into an example for his readers, just as Rousseau, by no means a stranger to the art of disclosure and concealment, had presented himself in his Confessions. With its "pole" and "counterpole," Hesse's work became an ongoing act of instruction even as it took the shape of a continuous novel.
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to whom it fits.
By an ironic twist in the history of western literature, in this very age of unprecedented temptations to literary populism, an age of the sovereign and increasingly demanding public, there developed a fertile new sense of Personal Conscience. The private consciousness took on a new life and became a wondrous new literary resource. In modern transformation, conscience, an ancient laboratory of theological hairsplitting and a modern arena of ephemeral public taste, became inward, experimental, and biographical.But infinitely more.—
As prophet and pundit, as devilish, dangerous, a rebel, and yet also a martyr and sacrifice, the writer has become the bad conscience of our whole era, .and in so doing indeed he has come perilously close to defining the modern antihero who rejects received tenets of behaviour and stays true to his individuality in an always alien society.
To think of the writer as conscience of the world is only to recognize that the writer, as we shall see, is inevitably a divided self, condemned at the same time to express and to communicate, to speak for the writer and speak to others.
The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.Western literature offers us countless different ways in which authors have dealt with this divided self. I will provide only a sample from some of my favorite writers that may suggest the perils that beset writers who pretend to be the world's arbiters.
Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hermann Hesse—one of my favorites—embodied those divisions of his age which have left their mark on our culture. In a manner unique among writers, he wove his immediate experiences into his books to portray many of the dilemmas and historic crises of his time. It was this finely tuned interaction between his psychological conflict and historical events that was to make him a poet of crisis. Hesse's stories—like the dreams he collected in special notebooks—are told from both conscious and unconscious experience and therefore reveal and conceal events, encounters, and feelings from himself, his friends, his public.
The way Hesse lived and wrote about his life, constantly aware of his conflicting impulses as part of the tension of his art, made this revelation and concealment permeate all his writings. He made himself into an example for his readers, just as Rousseau, by no means a stranger to the art of disclosure and concealment, had presented himself in his Confessions. With its "pole" and "counterpole," Hesse's work became an ongoing act of instruction even as it took the shape of a continuous novel.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Who Am I? What Is So Special About Me?
If the truth be told I am not suited for the practicalities of life; my mind floats in otherworldly dreams, more preoccupied with the potential of the spirit than with everyday vicissitudes. I love language, books, and music, and the most splendid moments of my uneventful existence have been the few operas I have attended, or the books I have perused in isolation from my fellows. I treasure every detail of the times I have spent in isolation. As I read I imagine every sentence, every page and every chapter as a mirror of my life, my passions and my afflictions. I take refuge in this extravagant, romantic atmosphere whenever I feel weighed down by the vulgarity of life.
I am an artist, really. Or at least I am an individual with an artistic temperament. My moments of highest joy are those I have spent alone. And that is the triumph and tragedy of my existence. Despite the gratifications afforded by my splendid isolation I still long for the Other in my loneliness: the Other who might complete me. Failing to find that Other I live in perpetual disillusion and frustration.
I am a rebel individualist divorced from established dogma and institutions, a lonely incorrigible seeker of new norms. For me life presents itself as a struggle for individualism; I experience my life at times as humorously petulant and at other times as a mystically yearning estrangement from the world and the times. I sometimes feel, in my grandiose moments, that I belong to the highest and purest spiritual aspirations and labors of our epoch.
My spiritual and emotional struggles can be traced to my alienation from my family in childhood. The roots of my estrangement from established institutions and settled norms began in the peculiarities of my early family life. Like most parents mine were no help with the new problems of puberty to which no reference was ever made. All they did was take endless trouble in supporting my hopeless attempts to deny reality and to continue dwelling in a childhood world that was becoming more and more unreal. I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought up children, I managed badly. My parents seemed wedded to some vague suggestions of old-world, Victorian morality with its belief in the inherent sinfulness of man, in the necessity of breaking the will of the individual, and with its uncompromising renunciation of all that is of this world. My family was the first of many social structures which were to rouse the rebel in me.
I am an artist, really. Or at least I am an individual with an artistic temperament. My moments of highest joy are those I have spent alone. And that is the triumph and tragedy of my existence. Despite the gratifications afforded by my splendid isolation I still long for the Other in my loneliness: the Other who might complete me. Failing to find that Other I live in perpetual disillusion and frustration.
I am a rebel individualist divorced from established dogma and institutions, a lonely incorrigible seeker of new norms. For me life presents itself as a struggle for individualism; I experience my life at times as humorously petulant and at other times as a mystically yearning estrangement from the world and the times. I sometimes feel, in my grandiose moments, that I belong to the highest and purest spiritual aspirations and labors of our epoch.
My spiritual and emotional struggles can be traced to my alienation from my family in childhood. The roots of my estrangement from established institutions and settled norms began in the peculiarities of my early family life. Like most parents mine were no help with the new problems of puberty to which no reference was ever made. All they did was take endless trouble in supporting my hopeless attempts to deny reality and to continue dwelling in a childhood world that was becoming more and more unreal. I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought up children, I managed badly. My parents seemed wedded to some vague suggestions of old-world, Victorian morality with its belief in the inherent sinfulness of man, in the necessity of breaking the will of the individual, and with its uncompromising renunciation of all that is of this world. My family was the first of many social structures which were to rouse the rebel in me.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
A Distant Clock Tower
A clock tower strikes eight times in the distance.
I stood in the shadow of an arcade quietly contemplating the clock tower, the low balcony and the tiny square. No one else was there, and it seemed as though time had stopped. Then a cat appeared and walked slowly and deliberately towards the balcony; it then stopped and lay down beneath it. A few moments later, I heard the sound of footsteps and a man already advanced in years emerged from one of the narrow streets and came into the square; his presence there seemed to increase the stasis of the scene, and he stood out alone against his surroundings, seemingly isolated from them.
A person in old age knows no one. He talks to people, but he does not know them. His life is scattered in fragments of conversation, forgotten by fragments of people. His life is divided into hasty episodes, witnessed by few.
The man, with his hands in his overcoat pockets, was disconnected from everything, standing apart from his own landscape. He was the very image of the forlorn; he represented the persona and its fear of death. He was like a scrap from the morning newspaper which by noon was already out of date.
What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many scattered fragments, so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe.
Life is full of hope, of brutality, misery, sickness and death; nevertheless, it has completeness, a satisfaction and an emotional beauty which is unfathomable. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life.
But if these contradictions are improbable to us, they are not to the Indians.The ironic philosopher reflects with a smile the wisdom of the East, of India, as revealed in the Sacred Texts.
It is written: Our original teacher Shakyamuni Buddha spoke the Diamond Sutra in Sravasti. As Subhuti raised questions, the Buddha very compassionately explained for him. Subhuti attained enlightenment on hearing the teaching, and asked Buddha to give the teaching a name according to which later people could absorb and hold it. Therefore the sutra says, "The Buddha told Subhuti, 'This sutra is named Diamond Prajnaparamita, and you should uphold it by this name.'"The "diamond prajnaparamita" spoken of by the Realized One takes its name from a metaphor for the truth. What does it mean?
Diamond is extremely sharp by nature and can break through all sorts of things. But though diamond is extremely hard, horn can break it. Diamond stands for buddha-nature, horn stands for afflictions. Hard as diamond is, horn can break it; stable though the buddha-nature is, afflictions can derange it. Even though afflictions may be intractable, prajna knowledge can destroy them; even though horn may be hard, fine steel can break it. Those who realize this principle clearly see essential nature.
I stood in the shadow of an arcade quietly contemplating the clock tower, the low balcony and the tiny square. No one else was there, and it seemed as though time had stopped. Then a cat appeared and walked slowly and deliberately towards the balcony; it then stopped and lay down beneath it. A few moments later, I heard the sound of footsteps and a man already advanced in years emerged from one of the narrow streets and came into the square; his presence there seemed to increase the stasis of the scene, and he stood out alone against his surroundings, seemingly isolated from them.
A person in old age knows no one. He talks to people, but he does not know them. His life is scattered in fragments of conversation, forgotten by fragments of people. His life is divided into hasty episodes, witnessed by few.
The man, with his hands in his overcoat pockets, was disconnected from everything, standing apart from his own landscape. He was the very image of the forlorn; he represented the persona and its fear of death. He was like a scrap from the morning newspaper which by noon was already out of date.
What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many scattered fragments, so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe.
Life is full of hope, of brutality, misery, sickness and death; nevertheless, it has completeness, a satisfaction and an emotional beauty which is unfathomable. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life.
But if these contradictions are improbable to us, they are not to the Indians.The ironic philosopher reflects with a smile the wisdom of the East, of India, as revealed in the Sacred Texts.
It is written: Our original teacher Shakyamuni Buddha spoke the Diamond Sutra in Sravasti. As Subhuti raised questions, the Buddha very compassionately explained for him. Subhuti attained enlightenment on hearing the teaching, and asked Buddha to give the teaching a name according to which later people could absorb and hold it. Therefore the sutra says, "The Buddha told Subhuti, 'This sutra is named Diamond Prajnaparamita, and you should uphold it by this name.'"The "diamond prajnaparamita" spoken of by the Realized One takes its name from a metaphor for the truth. What does it mean?
Diamond is extremely sharp by nature and can break through all sorts of things. But though diamond is extremely hard, horn can break it. Diamond stands for buddha-nature, horn stands for afflictions. Hard as diamond is, horn can break it; stable though the buddha-nature is, afflictions can derange it. Even though afflictions may be intractable, prajna knowledge can destroy them; even though horn may be hard, fine steel can break it. Those who realize this principle clearly see essential nature.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
No Sex Please, We're Indian
How strange his life had been, he thought. He had wandered along strange paths. As a boy I was occupied with the gods and sacrifices, as a youth with asceticism, with thinking, and meditation. I was in search of Brahman and revered the eternal Atman. As a young man I was attracted to expiation. I lived in the woods, suffered heat and cold. I learned to fast, I learned to conquer my body. I then discovered with wonder the teachings of the great Buddha. I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood, but I also felt compelled to leave the Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the pleasures of love from Kamala and business from Kamaswami. I hoarded money, I squandered money, I acquired a taste for rich food, I learned to stimulate my senses.
I was also having trouble with the so-called parietal rules at my university which said that a woman must leave a student's room by 10 P.M. Every second that I was not studying, I spent at a local women's college, meeting women. This was a paradox that was becoming more and more pronounced in my character. While I still considered myself a spiritual person, I was becoming increasingly obsessed—an even stronger word would not be out of place—with sex. I saw it everywhere. I wanted it. I thought about it all the time. No woman seemed safe from my predations. I look back at it with horror. I had absolutely no understanding of what I was doing.
—I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself.
One evening I was invited to meet an older (perhaps forty-five) professor of Indian philosophy who was visiting from India. She had something of a following in India and was even considered a kind of guru. Somehow the discussion turned to spiritual matters. This woman said she had never felt sexual desire in her life because her mind was filled with spiritual thoughts. There was simply no room. As the guests were leaving her apartment, she asked me to stay a little bit, as there was something she wanted to tell me.
When we were alone she said: "You looked as though you did not believe what I was saying. Is that true?"
"Well, actually I don't, no," I replied.
"You don't believe I am free of sexual desire?"
"No."
"I will prove it to you. Touch my breasts."
I did as I was told.
"See, I feel nothing. Now touch my thighs."
I did as I was told.
"Again, nothing. Even if you enter me with your penis, I will feel nothing. Do you believe me?"
"No."
"Try."
I did.
"See, I feel nothing. The whole time this is going on I am thinking only about the higher self, the atman."
To whom else should one offer sacrifices, to whom else should one pay honor, but to Him, Atman, the Only One? And where was Atman to be found, where did He dwell, where did His eternal heart beat, if not within the Self, in the innermost, in the eternal which each person carried within him? But where was this Self, this innermost?
Where was it? Where was it?
It is not surprising that the very word for asceticism, tapas, is insidiously related, tied to, and involved with a word commonly associated with seemingly opposite things—with virility, with sexual prowess, especially with increased potency (evidence for this is found not only in the Sanskrit texts, but in the observations of many travelers in India). The myths of Siva show such connections in detail. It is not surprising that the concern with incontinence would lead to fantasies about the powers inherent in semen; we can see this attested to in the ancient stories containing oral pregnancy fantasies (a ubiquitous theme in the Mahabharata: e.g., Kasyapa, Rsyasrnga's father, lost his semen at the sight of Urvasi, and it was swallowed by a female antelope who subsequently gave birth to Rsyasrnga—hence his name "Antelope-Horned").These sexual fantasies of immense prowess are of course only the other side of the coin from constant fears of sexual depletion. Such concerns, universal and timeless, are particularly well documented in the case of the Indian villager.
‘The Victors’ Have you heard about it?
The sketch of ‘The Victors’ Wagner's projected music drama on a Buddhist theme pictures Ananda, a disciple of Buddha, hospitably given water by a maiden Prakriti.The Buddha warns Ananda not to speak with women; if he must speak to one to keep his eyes on the ground; and if he must look, "Then beware Ananda, beware."Prakriti falls deeply in love and seeks out Gotama, The Buddha, beneath a tree at the city gate to ask permission for union with Ananda. The Buddha reveals her identity in a former incarnation as an overproud girl who scorned the love of an unfortunate, an arrogant act she must now expiate by experiencing the torture of unsatisfied passion. Only by sharing Ananda's vow of chastity may she stay at his side. Grasping his condition of salvation, she joyfully agrees, and Ananda receives as his sister one who has risen to his own level of self-denial.
So what is it that Gotama, The Buddha, says? He says:One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it.Everything else was seeking—a detour, error.In the figure of the maiden, who was one day to become Kundry in Parsifal, Wagner sought finally to resolve his concern with the realm of unbridled sexual fantasy.These were Wagner’s thoughts; this was his thirst, his sorrow.
Wagner saw resignation as the only solution to his infatuation for Mathilde Wesendonk the object of his ill-starred adoration.
I have no inclination any more, no will!—Would there were an end to it, an end!—
He wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead. "The Victors" was a product of this frame of mind.
When the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desire were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self—the great secret.The ascetic theme of "The Victors" sustained Wagner and Mathilde in a state of exaltation after Wagner’s first wife Minna had put an end to what was evidently the less abstemious phase of their affair.
Wagner wrote that at this particular epoch of his life he had one single goal—to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow—to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought—that was his goal.
It had been more than a little characteristic of the conflict between asceticism and world-devouring hunger that made up the drama of his nature.
I believe that the concern voiced ubiquitously by the ascetic in Indian literature—‘seeing the world and the human self in one great all including vision,’ in sum, the search for mystical experiences; as if only the ecstatic stillness of trance-states could fill the void of a happiness never experienced—is an oblique reference to a sad past. The apparent reliving of a lost past in terms of grasping at the illusion of ecstasy can only represent a falsification of memory for the purpose of defence. And the dry, brittle memories of an emotionally arid childhood are as fearsome as those of more openly violent abuse.
Gradually it has become clear to me that all ascetics must have suffered from harsh and unloving parents in their childhood. I should add, however, that most analysts would disagree, and would qualify this by saying that often the harsh treatment was only imagined—often as retaliation for imagined evil in the little child himself, for his own destructive fantasies vis-a-vis his parents and siblings.
It seems to me that all ascetics suffered massive traumas in their childhood in one of three ways: they were sexually seduced, or they were the object of overt or covert aggression, or they lost those closest to them early in their lives. Their lives were pervaded with sadness; their rituals, their obsessive gestures of every kind, are an attempt to recapture the lost childhood they never had. It is not surprising to find that all addicts have suffered such loss.
At a later date I would gradually be persuaded that devastating loss in childhood figured as a probable genesis of my own disorder. Psychoanalytic studies of addiction have enabled us to see "addictive" features in many areas seemingly unrelated to pure drug or alcohol addiction. Compulsive sexuality can serve as an addiction, as can the practices of asceticism.
I was also having trouble with the so-called parietal rules at my university which said that a woman must leave a student's room by 10 P.M. Every second that I was not studying, I spent at a local women's college, meeting women. This was a paradox that was becoming more and more pronounced in my character. While I still considered myself a spiritual person, I was becoming increasingly obsessed—an even stronger word would not be out of place—with sex. I saw it everywhere. I wanted it. I thought about it all the time. No woman seemed safe from my predations. I look back at it with horror. I had absolutely no understanding of what I was doing.
—I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself.
One evening I was invited to meet an older (perhaps forty-five) professor of Indian philosophy who was visiting from India. She had something of a following in India and was even considered a kind of guru. Somehow the discussion turned to spiritual matters. This woman said she had never felt sexual desire in her life because her mind was filled with spiritual thoughts. There was simply no room. As the guests were leaving her apartment, she asked me to stay a little bit, as there was something she wanted to tell me.
When we were alone she said: "You looked as though you did not believe what I was saying. Is that true?"
"Well, actually I don't, no," I replied.
"You don't believe I am free of sexual desire?"
"No."
"I will prove it to you. Touch my breasts."
I did as I was told.
"See, I feel nothing. Now touch my thighs."
I did as I was told.
"Again, nothing. Even if you enter me with your penis, I will feel nothing. Do you believe me?"
"No."
"Try."
I did.
"See, I feel nothing. The whole time this is going on I am thinking only about the higher self, the atman."
To whom else should one offer sacrifices, to whom else should one pay honor, but to Him, Atman, the Only One? And where was Atman to be found, where did He dwell, where did His eternal heart beat, if not within the Self, in the innermost, in the eternal which each person carried within him? But where was this Self, this innermost?
Where was it? Where was it?
It is not surprising that the very word for asceticism, tapas, is insidiously related, tied to, and involved with a word commonly associated with seemingly opposite things—with virility, with sexual prowess, especially with increased potency (evidence for this is found not only in the Sanskrit texts, but in the observations of many travelers in India). The myths of Siva show such connections in detail. It is not surprising that the concern with incontinence would lead to fantasies about the powers inherent in semen; we can see this attested to in the ancient stories containing oral pregnancy fantasies (a ubiquitous theme in the Mahabharata: e.g., Kasyapa, Rsyasrnga's father, lost his semen at the sight of Urvasi, and it was swallowed by a female antelope who subsequently gave birth to Rsyasrnga—hence his name "Antelope-Horned").These sexual fantasies of immense prowess are of course only the other side of the coin from constant fears of sexual depletion. Such concerns, universal and timeless, are particularly well documented in the case of the Indian villager.
‘The Victors’ Have you heard about it?
The sketch of ‘The Victors’ Wagner's projected music drama on a Buddhist theme pictures Ananda, a disciple of Buddha, hospitably given water by a maiden Prakriti.The Buddha warns Ananda not to speak with women; if he must speak to one to keep his eyes on the ground; and if he must look, "Then beware Ananda, beware."Prakriti falls deeply in love and seeks out Gotama, The Buddha, beneath a tree at the city gate to ask permission for union with Ananda. The Buddha reveals her identity in a former incarnation as an overproud girl who scorned the love of an unfortunate, an arrogant act she must now expiate by experiencing the torture of unsatisfied passion. Only by sharing Ananda's vow of chastity may she stay at his side. Grasping his condition of salvation, she joyfully agrees, and Ananda receives as his sister one who has risen to his own level of self-denial.
So what is it that Gotama, The Buddha, says? He says:One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it.Everything else was seeking—a detour, error.In the figure of the maiden, who was one day to become Kundry in Parsifal, Wagner sought finally to resolve his concern with the realm of unbridled sexual fantasy.These were Wagner’s thoughts; this was his thirst, his sorrow.
Wagner saw resignation as the only solution to his infatuation for Mathilde Wesendonk the object of his ill-starred adoration.
I have no inclination any more, no will!—Would there were an end to it, an end!—
He wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead. "The Victors" was a product of this frame of mind.
When the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desire were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self—the great secret.The ascetic theme of "The Victors" sustained Wagner and Mathilde in a state of exaltation after Wagner’s first wife Minna had put an end to what was evidently the less abstemious phase of their affair.
Wagner wrote that at this particular epoch of his life he had one single goal—to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow—to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought—that was his goal.
It had been more than a little characteristic of the conflict between asceticism and world-devouring hunger that made up the drama of his nature.
I believe that the concern voiced ubiquitously by the ascetic in Indian literature—‘seeing the world and the human self in one great all including vision,’ in sum, the search for mystical experiences; as if only the ecstatic stillness of trance-states could fill the void of a happiness never experienced—is an oblique reference to a sad past. The apparent reliving of a lost past in terms of grasping at the illusion of ecstasy can only represent a falsification of memory for the purpose of defence. And the dry, brittle memories of an emotionally arid childhood are as fearsome as those of more openly violent abuse.
Gradually it has become clear to me that all ascetics must have suffered from harsh and unloving parents in their childhood. I should add, however, that most analysts would disagree, and would qualify this by saying that often the harsh treatment was only imagined—often as retaliation for imagined evil in the little child himself, for his own destructive fantasies vis-a-vis his parents and siblings.
It seems to me that all ascetics suffered massive traumas in their childhood in one of three ways: they were sexually seduced, or they were the object of overt or covert aggression, or they lost those closest to them early in their lives. Their lives were pervaded with sadness; their rituals, their obsessive gestures of every kind, are an attempt to recapture the lost childhood they never had. It is not surprising to find that all addicts have suffered such loss.
At a later date I would gradually be persuaded that devastating loss in childhood figured as a probable genesis of my own disorder. Psychoanalytic studies of addiction have enabled us to see "addictive" features in many areas seemingly unrelated to pure drug or alcohol addiction. Compulsive sexuality can serve as an addiction, as can the practices of asceticism.
Friday, October 12, 2007
The Philosopher in the Distant Solitude of the Woods
Thoreau required of any writer a simple and sincere account of his life, and no doubt if Friedrich Nietzsche had been able to write straightforwardly of the ugly growths and parasitic creepers infecting the dense forest of his relationship with his mentor Richard Wagner, All Too Human would not have been written or would have been very different.
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was a serious but welcome visitor, a gentle, perceptive soul who would have been an ideal companion in the woods, a young man named Friedrich Nietzsche who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers--one of my Waldensian friends.
At that time I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond.
Now I conserve pathologically precise memories of my encounters in that by now remote world: well, . . . I had last seen him a weedy youth, timid and deferential, much given to clicking of heels and bowing. Now in stalked a wiry, tough man with a masterful air whose first act was to deposit on the table a draft copy of a book with the marks of a great destiny, a collection of aphorisms that bears the title Human, All-Too-Human.
I asked him if he would like me to contribute to this book. If he would, he should tell me a story and, if he would allow me to make a suggestion, it should be our kind of story, in which you thrash about in the dark for a week or a month, it seems that it will be dark forever, and you feel like throwing it all up and changing your trade; then in the dark you espy a glimmer, proceed groping in that direction, and the light grows, and finally order follows chaos.
The young man stood in silence. He would never reply.
I wish I could say that I had supplied him with ideas as much as with support. All that was futile. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.
He embraced me then. "Good luck, good luck." I never saw him again.
There was nothing we could do but part, because neither of us had anything to give the other and neither of us could be fair to the other.
He never said just how he went about creating a new personality, but it was a difficult process.
Today I know that it is a hopeless task to try to dress a man in words, make him live again on the printed page, especially a man like my dear young friend. He was not the sort of person you can tell stories about, nor to whom one erects monuments--he who laughed at all monuments: he lived completely in his deeds, which were nothing less than the adventures of an unworldly young recluse and when they were over nothing of him remains nothing but words, precisely.
I kept Prof. Nietzsche's book on my table through the summer, though I looked at a page or two only now and then.
One thing more, which I might later forget:I finally left the distant solitude of the woods, where I was living quietly and peacefully. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was a serious but welcome visitor, a gentle, perceptive soul who would have been an ideal companion in the woods, a young man named Friedrich Nietzsche who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers--one of my Waldensian friends.
At that time I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond.
Now I conserve pathologically precise memories of my encounters in that by now remote world: well, . . . I had last seen him a weedy youth, timid and deferential, much given to clicking of heels and bowing. Now in stalked a wiry, tough man with a masterful air whose first act was to deposit on the table a draft copy of a book with the marks of a great destiny, a collection of aphorisms that bears the title Human, All-Too-Human.
I asked him if he would like me to contribute to this book. If he would, he should tell me a story and, if he would allow me to make a suggestion, it should be our kind of story, in which you thrash about in the dark for a week or a month, it seems that it will be dark forever, and you feel like throwing it all up and changing your trade; then in the dark you espy a glimmer, proceed groping in that direction, and the light grows, and finally order follows chaos.
The young man stood in silence. He would never reply.
I wish I could say that I had supplied him with ideas as much as with support. All that was futile. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.
He embraced me then. "Good luck, good luck." I never saw him again.
There was nothing we could do but part, because neither of us had anything to give the other and neither of us could be fair to the other.
He never said just how he went about creating a new personality, but it was a difficult process.
Today I know that it is a hopeless task to try to dress a man in words, make him live again on the printed page, especially a man like my dear young friend. He was not the sort of person you can tell stories about, nor to whom one erects monuments--he who laughed at all monuments: he lived completely in his deeds, which were nothing less than the adventures of an unworldly young recluse and when they were over nothing of him remains nothing but words, precisely.
I kept Prof. Nietzsche's book on my table through the summer, though I looked at a page or two only now and then.
One thing more, which I might later forget:I finally left the distant solitude of the woods, where I was living quietly and peacefully. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
A Nightmare
Several nights ago I had a terrible yet poignant dream whose themes of unsatisfiable yearning (symbolized by unquenchable thirst) and frustrated hopes still linger in my mind.
The Dream of the Deathbed
It is a hot August day, and I lay in a small room in a hospital fighting for what remains of my life. A sheet covers the lower half of my naked body, with its swollen abdomen; above it, my chest and thin arms. A tube is inserted in my nose; a second tube leads from my side into a glass jar at the foot of the bed; both are removing the wastes my body can no longer eliminate. The gallons of iced apple juice I gulp down to moisten my cracked lips and dry throat reach only the stomach and flow into the jar. Nothing moves past the stomach level, below which there are intestinal obstructions, and because my body absorbs little, whether I drink, suck lemons, or rub ice on my lips, my thirst is unslakable.
Compulsively I keep flexing my long fingers, rippling them as though playing an instrument. Whenever the powerful sedatives pumped into my body threaten to overwhelm me I wrench myself up into consciousness, forcing myself to activity. At times I extend an arm at full length, shake my fist and shout, "Gary Freedman, you have so much to do!"
I say, "I want to yell, can I yell?" And then I shout, "Yell!"-- prolonging the word interminably like a fire siren. Those who hear it forgive its theatricality because it is evident there is something penultimate in this howl.
I put into words what I think is the reason for waging my nightmare battle: "I may fool you all . . . you know, I may live. . . . Then perhaps Gary Freedman will do something to redeem the last 15 wasted years."
It becomes a matter of utmost significance to me to know what time it is, and repeatedly I ask; once, after I am told, I say, "Why don't they tell me the time, why do they keep it from me? Why do they do this to a man's courage?" It is as though I am counting the minutes that are still mine.
The Dream of the Deathbed
It is a hot August day, and I lay in a small room in a hospital fighting for what remains of my life. A sheet covers the lower half of my naked body, with its swollen abdomen; above it, my chest and thin arms. A tube is inserted in my nose; a second tube leads from my side into a glass jar at the foot of the bed; both are removing the wastes my body can no longer eliminate. The gallons of iced apple juice I gulp down to moisten my cracked lips and dry throat reach only the stomach and flow into the jar. Nothing moves past the stomach level, below which there are intestinal obstructions, and because my body absorbs little, whether I drink, suck lemons, or rub ice on my lips, my thirst is unslakable.
Compulsively I keep flexing my long fingers, rippling them as though playing an instrument. Whenever the powerful sedatives pumped into my body threaten to overwhelm me I wrench myself up into consciousness, forcing myself to activity. At times I extend an arm at full length, shake my fist and shout, "Gary Freedman, you have so much to do!"
I say, "I want to yell, can I yell?" And then I shout, "Yell!"-- prolonging the word interminably like a fire siren. Those who hear it forgive its theatricality because it is evident there is something penultimate in this howl.
I put into words what I think is the reason for waging my nightmare battle: "I may fool you all . . . you know, I may live. . . . Then perhaps Gary Freedman will do something to redeem the last 15 wasted years."
It becomes a matter of utmost significance to me to know what time it is, and repeatedly I ask; once, after I am told, I say, "Why don't they tell me the time, why do they keep it from me? Why do they do this to a man's courage?" It is as though I am counting the minutes that are still mine.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Silence of the Night
It is now early evening on this snowy December day. The storm has all but passed. The stir is over. I step forth once again to peer outside my window. I strain to make the far-off images beyond my windowpane yield a cue to the events that may come in the days ahead. Night and its murk transfix and pin me, as I stare through thousands of stars. I cherish this moment, this rigorous conception of a snowy winter evening, and I consent to play my part therein as spectator.
ImageIgloo.com
But another play is running at this moment, so, for the present, I seek a premature release. And yet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted, and nothing can avert the final curtain's fall. The January thaw will soon take off the polish of the snow's crust. I bow with grace to natural law. I stand alone. All else is swamped in fuzzy dissolution. To live life to the end, while peering back to the path one has already traversed, is not a childish task.
ImageIgloo.com
But another play is running at this moment, so, for the present, I seek a premature release. And yet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted, and nothing can avert the final curtain's fall. The January thaw will soon take off the polish of the snow's crust. I bow with grace to natural law. I stand alone. All else is swamped in fuzzy dissolution. To live life to the end, while peering back to the path one has already traversed, is not a childish task.
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