Home » (Page 6)

Archives

Memory and Expectation

Obsessed with Time

Obsessed with Time

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.—Alan Watts

Will Petrograd Fall to the Whites?

Victor Serge

Victor Serge

“Never, perhaps, have I lived in such total serenity. There is great happiness in being detached from everything and understanding everything. The happiness I feel is immense, bitter, painful, and calm. Life appeared suddenly before me stripped of everything that encumbered it: habits, conventions, duties, worries, superfluous relations. We end up abandoning our souls almost entirely to these things. Do you remember that story by Kipling we read together at Vevey: ‘The Miracle of Purun Bhagat’? It’s the tale of an old Westernized Hindu who retires high up in the mountains in order to finish out his life there with the earth, plants, tame animals—eternal reality. I’m an occidental. I have no wish to remove myself from men or from action: these too belong to eternity. I wish only to overcome my own impotence and to finally understand the curve described in the sky by the hurricane which is carrying all of us along with it.

“All man’s miseries are reduced to naked simplicity here. We live the life of the poor. And I understand the poor, their direct vision of reality, their power to hate, their need to overturn the world. I have no hate, except, perhaps, in the end, for the things I love the most—I believe we are almost all of us without hate in this prison. I may be mistaken, for I don’t observe the others enough. I don’t have the time, would you believe it?

“They say the terror is going to end; I don’t think so. It is still a necessity. The storm must uproot the old trees, stir the ocean to its depths, wash clean the old stones, replenish the impoverished fields. The world will be new afterward.”—The Counterrevolutionary Professor Lytaev in Victor Serge’s Conquered City

“Air and Light and Space and Time”

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

“–you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

© Charles Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press

For a graphic version, click here.

Beauty and Melancholia

Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand

I have found a definition of the Beautiful, of my own conception of the Beautiful. It is something intense and sad, something a little vague, leaving scope for conjecture. I am ready, if you will, to apply my ideas to a sentient object, to that object, for example, which Society finds the most interesting of all, a woman’s face. A beautiful and seductive head, a woman’s head, I mean, makes one dream, but in a confused fashion, at once of pleasure and of sadness; conveys an idea of melancholy, of lassitude, even of satiety—a contradictory impression, of an ardour, that is to say, and a desire for life together with a bitterness which flows back upon them as if from a sense of deprivation and hopelessness. Mystery and regret are also characteristics of the Beautiful.

A beautiful male head has no need to convey, to the eyes of a man, at any rate—though perhaps to those of a woman—this impression of voluptuousness which, in a woman’s face, is a provocation all the more attractive the more the face is generally melancholy. But this head will also suggest ardours and passions—spiritual longings—ambitions darkly repressed—powers turned to bitterness through lack of employment—traces, sometimes, of a revengeful coldness., … sometimes, also—and this is one of the most interesting characteristics of Beauty—of mystery, and last of all (let me admit the exact point to which I am a modern in my aesthetics) of Unhappiness. I do not pretend that Joy cannot associate with Beauty, but I will maintain that that Joy is one of her most vulgar adornments, while Melancholy may be called an illustrious spouse—so much so that I can scarcely conceive (is my brain a witch’s mirror?) a type of Beauty which has nothing to do with Sorrow. In pursuit of—others might say obsessed by—these ideas, it may be supposed that I have difficulty in not concluding that the most perfect type of manly beauty is Satan—as Milton saw him.—Charles Beaudelaire, Intimate Journals (trans. by Christopher Isherwood)

“A Heart-Breaking Shop”

Bookstore Window

Bookstore Window

But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with “Master Pinch, Grove House Academy,” inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged within—what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open; tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like hand-posts on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond; and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honored name, whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any form, upon the narrow shelf beside his bed at Mr Pecksniff’s. What a heart-breaking shop it was!—Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

Kierkegaard’s Wayfarer

“Winter Landscape” by Sesshu Toyo

“Winter Landscape” by Sesshu Toyo

Imagine a wayfarer. He has been brought to a standstill at the foot of a mountain, tremendous, impassable. It is this mountain ….. no, it is not his destiny to cross it, but he has set his heart upon the crossing; for his wishes, his longings, his desires, his very soul, which has an easier mode of conveyance, are already on the other side; it only remains for him to follow. Imagine him coming to be seventy years old; but the mountain still stands there, unchanged, impassable. Let him become twice seventy years; but the mountain stands there unalterably blocking his way, unchanged, impassable. Under all this he undergoes changes, perhaps; he dies away from his longings, his wishes, his desires; he now scarcely recognizes himself. And so a new generation finds him, altered, sitting at the foot of the mountain, which still stands there, unchanged, impassable. Suppose it to have happened a thousand years ago: the altered wayfarer is long since dead, and only a legend keeps his memory alive; it is the only thing that remains—aye, and also the mountain, unchanged, impassable. And now think of Him who is eternally unchangeable, for whom a thousand years are but as one day—ah, even that is too much to say, for they are for Him as an instant, as if they did not even exist….

Anyone not eternally sure of Himself could not keep so still, but would rise in His strength, Only one who is immutable can be in this manner so still.

He gives men time, and He can afford to give them time, since He has eternity and is eternally unchanging.—Søren Kierkegaard, Judge for Yourselves!

The Elemental Voices

Waves

Waves

The three elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful, and varied. For it is a mistake to talk of the monotone of ocean or of the monotonous nature of its sound. The sea has many voices. Listen to the surf, really lend it your ears, and you will hear a world of sounds: hollow boomings and heavy roarings, great watery tumblings and tramplings, long hissing seethes, sharp, rifle-shot reports, splashes, whispers, the grinding undertone of stones, and sometimes vocal sounds that might be the half-heard talk of people in the sea.—Henry Beeson, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

“Secret Movements of a Puppet Show”

Charles Churchill (1732-1764)

Charles Churchill (1732-1764)

Peace to such triflers; be our happier plan
To pass through life as easy as we can.
Who’s in or out, who moves this grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen.
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show:
Let but the puppets move, I’ve my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master-wire.—Charles Churchill, “Night: An Epistle to Robert Lloyd”

Trunt, Trunt, and the Trolls in the Fells

Troll

Troll

There were once two men who went up into the mountains to gather edible moss. One night they were sharing a tent, and one was asleep and the other awake. The one who was awake saw the one who was asleep go creeping out; he got up and followed him, but however hard he ran he could not catch up with him. The sleeping man was headed straight up the mountain towards the glaciers, and the other saw where a huge giantess was sitting up there on the spur of the glacier. What she was doing was this: she would stretch out her arms with her hands crossed and then draw them in again to her breast, and in this way she was magically drawing the man towards her. The man ran straight into her arms, and then she ran off with him.

A year later, some people from this man’s district were gathering moss at the same place; he came there to meet them, and he was so short-spoken and surely that one could hardly get a word out of him. They asked him who he believed in, and he said he believed in God. The following year he came to the moss-gatherers again, and by then he looked so like a troll that he struck terror into them. However, he was again asked who he believed in, but he made no reply. This time he stayed a shorter time with them than before. The third year, he came again; by then he had turned into an absolute troll, and a very ugly-looking one too. Yet someone plucked up courage to ask him who he believed in, but he said he believed in “Trunt, Trunt, and the trolls in the fells”—and then he disappeared. After this he was never seen again, but for some years afterwards men did not dare go looking for moss in that place.—Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends

Can This Be Me?

Budé

Guillaume Budé

In 1503 he married the daughter of an ancient Norman house, and it is said that, on his wedding-day, by an exceptional act of self-denial, he limited his time of study to three hours only. In his studies he was aided in every possible way by the devotion of his wife. Once, when he was busy reading in his library, one of the servants suddenly rushed in to inform him that the house was on fire. The scholar, without lifting up his eyes from his book, simply said to his informant:—allez avertir ma femme; vous savez bien que je ne m’occupe pas des affaires du menage! (Translated as: “Go tell my wife. You know I don’t concern myself with household matters.”) His health was seriously impaired by his prodigious industry, and the surgeons of the day vainly endeavoured to cure him of his constant headaches by applying a red-hot iron to the crown of his head. Happily he was enabled to find a safer remedy by taking long walks and by cultivating his garden.—John Edwin Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. II, Entry on “Guillaume Budé”