My life is very good. I am happier, on the whole, than I've been in a long time. Longer than I can remember -- maybe ever.
Yet deeper inside, there is a certain darkness. It is metaphorical and metaphysical. It's less a feeling than a sense: a sense, perhaps, of meaninglessness. Perhaps of emptiness. If you prefer large words, perhaps of The Numinous in an ontologically apophatic way.
I think this may perhaps be what Thomas Merton conceived of as "le point vierge". As for me, I call it the darkness. The part of yourself that even you don't know; though you may be aware of it precisely because of its apparent "absence."
The best comprehensions or descriptions of it come not from theology or philosophy, but often from popular song.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Saturday, October 09, 2010
interior sanctuary
I have an interior sanctuary. An imaginary land, deep northern forest, always winter. At night I see lights flickering across the lake where my cabin sits, about 100 yards away. I don't know where they come from, or why. They weave drunkenly in the night; by day, they're gone.
Or else, it's some chilly place, always gray and raining. Maybe the pacific northwest. The relentless downpour makes a thundering, echoing noise as it beats the roof. The building is now large and cavernous, perhaps some kind of equipment shed.
Wherever it is, a few things are always the same. There is a fireplace nearby. There is no electricity. And I am alone. It gets dark early. I spend a lot of time with a book and a kerosene lamp. I often hear dogs or coyotes or wolves, howling in the distance. I never see them.
I rarely dream. The nights when I do, my dreams take on shades of yellow and gray. I re-live memories. Old cities, long since changed, take on the configurations they had when I knew them. People I've forgotten -- thought I'd forgotten -- populate the cityscapes. Sunsets bleed red across the sky, behind the rooftops. Red turns to black, as the sun sets and the moon rises. I feel the touch of a small, warm hand in mine, hear laughter. See a smile, bright shining eyes. Taste her lips... The dreams never last long. Never seem to reach their consummation.
But it is okay. I have my cabin in the woods, my place out of the rain, the warmth of my fire, my solitude.
If I ever seem not to be present, seem to be somewhere else, I am. There is an interior sanctuary, where I can always be alone.
Or else, it's some chilly place, always gray and raining. Maybe the pacific northwest. The relentless downpour makes a thundering, echoing noise as it beats the roof. The building is now large and cavernous, perhaps some kind of equipment shed.
Wherever it is, a few things are always the same. There is a fireplace nearby. There is no electricity. And I am alone. It gets dark early. I spend a lot of time with a book and a kerosene lamp. I often hear dogs or coyotes or wolves, howling in the distance. I never see them.
I rarely dream. The nights when I do, my dreams take on shades of yellow and gray. I re-live memories. Old cities, long since changed, take on the configurations they had when I knew them. People I've forgotten -- thought I'd forgotten -- populate the cityscapes. Sunsets bleed red across the sky, behind the rooftops. Red turns to black, as the sun sets and the moon rises. I feel the touch of a small, warm hand in mine, hear laughter. See a smile, bright shining eyes. Taste her lips... The dreams never last long. Never seem to reach their consummation.
But it is okay. I have my cabin in the woods, my place out of the rain, the warmth of my fire, my solitude.
If I ever seem not to be present, seem to be somewhere else, I am. There is an interior sanctuary, where I can always be alone.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Reflections: The City at Night
Editorial note: This is more "stream-of-consciousness" than my usual manner of writing. It is definitely not intended to argue a point, and decidedly un-systematic in character. I'm more interested in feedback about its artistic merit than its application of logic or reasoning.
Lights, hazy, materializing slowly in mist and fog. They seem to signify wandering souls. Dante and Virgil, or St. John of the Cross, all journeying through private immaterial realms. They seem as interlopers, spiritual intruders in the profane earth. Here red, here green, here purple, here blue: they come and go.
Noise rises from the street. Words, English, give texture to the heretofore intangible dark. Clanging, brutal, short: words like blades upon armor. A barbarian tongue. Lovely, still, in spite of its brutality. Songs of love, sex, violence, death -- the whole scope of human existence has been told in its stark tones. The voices die down, die out, their people moving on in the night to other unseen doors.
It's getting colder. And colder weather reminds me of you.
Headlights, an errant car lost on a residential street. They cut sharply through the haze, jerking their little piece of the night sharply into focus. The headlights seem to draw memories in crude sketches, as they careen and veer and disappear.
In the dark once more, the sketches grow soft, grow round. They take flesh, take color, take form in my mind. Though the air is colder, the memories grow warmer. The red-green-purple-blue spirits take no notice as another shade joins them: yellow. Cream. Sunlight on snow.
Like snow, the memory melts away, and the blackness of night returns. New voices clang; the night is again shade, haze, and mist.
Lights, hazy, materializing slowly in mist and fog. They seem to signify wandering souls. Dante and Virgil, or St. John of the Cross, all journeying through private immaterial realms. They seem as interlopers, spiritual intruders in the profane earth. Here red, here green, here purple, here blue: they come and go.
Noise rises from the street. Words, English, give texture to the heretofore intangible dark. Clanging, brutal, short: words like blades upon armor. A barbarian tongue. Lovely, still, in spite of its brutality. Songs of love, sex, violence, death -- the whole scope of human existence has been told in its stark tones. The voices die down, die out, their people moving on in the night to other unseen doors.
It's getting colder. And colder weather reminds me of you.
Headlights, an errant car lost on a residential street. They cut sharply through the haze, jerking their little piece of the night sharply into focus. The headlights seem to draw memories in crude sketches, as they careen and veer and disappear.
In the dark once more, the sketches grow soft, grow round. They take flesh, take color, take form in my mind. Though the air is colder, the memories grow warmer. The red-green-purple-blue spirits take no notice as another shade joins them: yellow. Cream. Sunlight on snow.
Like snow, the memory melts away, and the blackness of night returns. New voices clang; the night is again shade, haze, and mist.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Some somethings I never told you
Thoughts of you keep me up at night.
When times were tough -- really, really tough -- the only thing which kept me from sliding into oblivion was the hope that I might see you, touch you, once more.
It's painful to be alone.
I try not to live in the past, but memories often color my perception of the present.
You were most beautiful in the morning, without makeup, in pale yellow sunlight.
I measure all my creative musical and artist efforts against yours.
When times were tough -- really, really tough -- the only thing which kept me from sliding into oblivion was the hope that I might see you, touch you, once more.
It's painful to be alone.
I try not to live in the past, but memories often color my perception of the present.
You were most beautiful in the morning, without makeup, in pale yellow sunlight.
I measure all my creative musical and artist efforts against yours.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
A City Without Streets
I want to share something important to me.
It's a story about an experience I had years ago, simple and powerful, one that would influence my thoughts about the world in profound and subtle ways (though I didn't know it at the time). Strangely, the particulars of the experience -- the exact time or date, other minute details -- have faded since it happened. But the sensations I felt -- the ideas it sparked in me -- remain vibrantly clear. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it is easy to see now how a seed was planted within me by this experience, one that has only recently started to grow to bloom as I nourished it with greater learning. After I tell this story, maybe the reason I think about cities so much will be more clear, too.
I was a college student at the University of Iowa, living in Iowa City. It was late summer, I think between my second and third years of college. On this particular day, there had been a large race of some type. Half-marathon, 10K, I don't remember for sure now. What is important is that many streets in the city around where I lived were closed off. Some of them were part of the race-route, but it seems to me that other ones were closed for spectators, or maybe some sort of street carnival.
The race itself had been held in the late morning and gotten over some time around noon. It was now later in the afternoon. I was going somewhere (I don't recall where) with a few friends.
So... we're walking along, and I noticed something odd. It took me a few minutes, but I was able to pinpoint it: there were no cars. None. The cars one might have expected were nowhere in sight, because the streets were still closed off from the race earlier in the day. There weren't even parked cars along the street. (Looking back now, I remember other times streets were closed for large events, and I believe the IC police towed cars that weren't moved from the streets to be closed.)
The next part is hard to articulate... except to say that I felt an unusual, beautiful, sense of freedom. Not just because I could walk down the middle of the street with no traffic to worry about, although maybe that's part of it. It was more like a sense of "doing something right," being "all natural," choose whatever hippie euphemism you like. It just seemed very, very COOL.
I had a vision that day. Maybe it is crazy, but it is special to me: I decided that one day, I wanted to build a new city. One without traffic. In my mind, I called it "A City Without Streets" although that name is inaccurate. There were streets, but they had no motor vehicles. They were, rather, paths for pedestrians on foot or on manual-powered devices: bicycles, rollerskates, even skateboards.
Although it was crude at the time, I started to try and imagine how to plan such a city. How would it be laid out? What would it look like? How would public services, particularly emergency services, be handled?
Sadly, I never pursued the idea much more deeply than this at the time, and never committed my ideas to paper, though I think I shared it with a few friends around the Wesley Foundation. The reasons are myriad, but not the least of them were my relative immaturity and my relative busyness. I was young and in college, preoccupied with my own chosen course of study (English Lit.) and my extracurriculars: the Wesley Foundation, getting laid, drinking.
But like I said, the seed was planted. I almost forgot it was there, until I happened to pick up a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. That book was like the first spring rain; it lead to other texts in the same field. In particular, James Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, with its expansive historical view of the effect of the automobile on the American economy and American communities in the 20th century, lead to great blooming of that little seed.
So if you've been reading my blog at all over the pst few months (all two of you!), this event is a big part of the reason I have such an abiding interest in cities, design, and the urban landscape. The external event was simple and almost unremarkable; the interior changes wrought by its sparks have been wonderful and almost mystical.
It's a story about an experience I had years ago, simple and powerful, one that would influence my thoughts about the world in profound and subtle ways (though I didn't know it at the time). Strangely, the particulars of the experience -- the exact time or date, other minute details -- have faded since it happened. But the sensations I felt -- the ideas it sparked in me -- remain vibrantly clear. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it is easy to see now how a seed was planted within me by this experience, one that has only recently started to grow to bloom as I nourished it with greater learning. After I tell this story, maybe the reason I think about cities so much will be more clear, too.
I was a college student at the University of Iowa, living in Iowa City. It was late summer, I think between my second and third years of college. On this particular day, there had been a large race of some type. Half-marathon, 10K, I don't remember for sure now. What is important is that many streets in the city around where I lived were closed off. Some of them were part of the race-route, but it seems to me that other ones were closed for spectators, or maybe some sort of street carnival.
The race itself had been held in the late morning and gotten over some time around noon. It was now later in the afternoon. I was going somewhere (I don't recall where) with a few friends.
So... we're walking along, and I noticed something odd. It took me a few minutes, but I was able to pinpoint it: there were no cars. None. The cars one might have expected were nowhere in sight, because the streets were still closed off from the race earlier in the day. There weren't even parked cars along the street. (Looking back now, I remember other times streets were closed for large events, and I believe the IC police towed cars that weren't moved from the streets to be closed.)
The next part is hard to articulate... except to say that I felt an unusual, beautiful, sense of freedom. Not just because I could walk down the middle of the street with no traffic to worry about, although maybe that's part of it. It was more like a sense of "doing something right," being "all natural," choose whatever hippie euphemism you like. It just seemed very, very COOL.
I had a vision that day. Maybe it is crazy, but it is special to me: I decided that one day, I wanted to build a new city. One without traffic. In my mind, I called it "A City Without Streets" although that name is inaccurate. There were streets, but they had no motor vehicles. They were, rather, paths for pedestrians on foot or on manual-powered devices: bicycles, rollerskates, even skateboards.
Although it was crude at the time, I started to try and imagine how to plan such a city. How would it be laid out? What would it look like? How would public services, particularly emergency services, be handled?
Sadly, I never pursued the idea much more deeply than this at the time, and never committed my ideas to paper, though I think I shared it with a few friends around the Wesley Foundation. The reasons are myriad, but not the least of them were my relative immaturity and my relative busyness. I was young and in college, preoccupied with my own chosen course of study (English Lit.) and my extracurriculars: the Wesley Foundation, getting laid, drinking.
But like I said, the seed was planted. I almost forgot it was there, until I happened to pick up a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. That book was like the first spring rain; it lead to other texts in the same field. In particular, James Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, with its expansive historical view of the effect of the automobile on the American economy and American communities in the 20th century, lead to great blooming of that little seed.
So if you've been reading my blog at all over the pst few months (all two of you!), this event is a big part of the reason I have such an abiding interest in cities, design, and the urban landscape. The external event was simple and almost unremarkable; the interior changes wrought by its sparks have been wonderful and almost mystical.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Nigerian Scam Lives
So, this text is taken verbatim from an email I recently received. (Which was filtered as SPAM, of course.) It's part of what's come to be known as "The Nigerian Scam", apparently because many such scams like this originate in that country. Something to do with rather vague laws and lax, easily-bribed law enforcement.
Anyway, I find it fun sometimes to read an email such as this and have a good laugh. I particularly enjoy the kooky English names, the slightly incoherent grammatical constructions, and the misspellings. (This one, for example, frequently has "is" in place of "his.")
GREETINGS!!!
Compliments of the day!
I and my younger sister write to seek for your assistance; we got your contact
from a noble gentleman that came to our refugee camp who came to give a seminar
about AIDS whom we confronted that we are looking for a God-fearing person that
is when your data was given to us.
I want to introduce myself to you. My name is Gift Zaki and my younger sister
Sarah Zaki a Liberian, my consignment contains More than 18 million United
States dollars and some quantity of gold and Diamond, which I cannot be specify.
The consignments are presently in the State.. The consignment gets to the State
through the help of a Governmental U.N diplomat Dr.DAVID LEE. The fact is that
(DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE is supposed to have delivered this consignment to a man
called Mr. Womack Hardee in the State.
The week (DIP)Dr.DAVID LEE is suppose to deliver the consignment to him, when he
got to the State after clearing the consignment from the Airport, he call Mr.
Womack Hardee to tell him the description to is house for the delivery, but is
wife answered the call and told (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE that her husband Mr.Womack
Hardee hard a fatal car accident which lead to his death some few hours.
Mr.Womack Hardee has already paid the demurrages from the security company,
he paid for Bullion van that took the consignment to the airport and he paid for
custom check report he also assisted us in getting the Necessary Document
covering the Consignment and Also for the DRUG / ANTI TERRORIST CERTIFICATE,
which is so expensive that he spent 25 thousand dollars to acquire it, but
unfortunately he died in a car accident, that was why (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE has to
deposit the consignment with a warehouse over there in State and called us to
informed us about what is happening.
Please I and my little sister seek for your help to Contact the Diplomat so that
he can be able to deliver the Consignment to you. I do want you to instruct him
that you have discuses this with us, and you want him to the delivery of your
children consignment to you on time now.you can contact (DIP)Dr.DAVID LEE on
this email address(drdavidlee01@yahoo.com.hk ) and here is also his phone
number, ( 903-375-3093 )
Please, Contact (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE on time and update me through mail. I await
your urgent response.
Thanks and God bless you
Gift/Sarah Zaki
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Passing Thoughts on Eliot - the Unreal Cities
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
~T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
I'll probably be accused of being too much of a literalist, but here goes anyway.
I think Eliot's assessment of the "unreal" cities is wrong. Or, at least, only half right.
The unreality he describes is perhaps best understood not as a quality of the cities themselves, but as indicative of one man's perception of them and relationship to them. In other words, the description of such cities as unreal reflects a desensitized form of detachment; what we see when reading the poem is the speaker's own delusional sense of his place in the world. Calling these cities "unreal" is a type of cultural hundred-yard-stare.
The speaker is shell-shocked -- and never sets foot in a trench.
So, how did he get that way? And why did (and DOES) the image resonate so strongly with so many people?
It would be easy at this point to impute to the poem some of the disarray of Eliot's own personal life in the period during which The Waste Land was composed. In fact, it is quite tempting. (See, for example, "Preludes", one of my personal favorites, as well as "Rhapsody on a Windy Night.")
But I'm digressing. I wanted to talk about cities. The cities are real -- as real as your body, as real as the mind that thinks deep, profound, privileged, fashionably nihilistic, avant-garde thoughts. (Eliot and I are much alike: we've both been well-cared-for.)
And the cities have a feel -- not just the spatial, or the locative, but the rhythmic and organic. Something like a kaleidoscope: a set of constants, which refract into 1,000,000 different patterns. A Greek Chorus of individual lives, moving like blood through the veins. Ballet? Modern Dance? Too-apt metaphors. Alive, and you're a part of it.
I don't know that any of this has a thing to do with Eliot. Except maybe to tell him "lighten up on London!" I've never been. But I'd like to go see it.
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
~T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
I'll probably be accused of being too much of a literalist, but here goes anyway.
I think Eliot's assessment of the "unreal" cities is wrong. Or, at least, only half right.
The unreality he describes is perhaps best understood not as a quality of the cities themselves, but as indicative of one man's perception of them and relationship to them. In other words, the description of such cities as unreal reflects a desensitized form of detachment; what we see when reading the poem is the speaker's own delusional sense of his place in the world. Calling these cities "unreal" is a type of cultural hundred-yard-stare.
The speaker is shell-shocked -- and never sets foot in a trench.
So, how did he get that way? And why did (and DOES) the image resonate so strongly with so many people?
It would be easy at this point to impute to the poem some of the disarray of Eliot's own personal life in the period during which The Waste Land was composed. In fact, it is quite tempting. (See, for example, "Preludes", one of my personal favorites, as well as "Rhapsody on a Windy Night.")
But I'm digressing. I wanted to talk about cities. The cities are real -- as real as your body, as real as the mind that thinks deep, profound, privileged, fashionably nihilistic, avant-garde thoughts. (Eliot and I are much alike: we've both been well-cared-for.)
And the cities have a feel -- not just the spatial, or the locative, but the rhythmic and organic. Something like a kaleidoscope: a set of constants, which refract into 1,000,000 different patterns. A Greek Chorus of individual lives, moving like blood through the veins. Ballet? Modern Dance? Too-apt metaphors. Alive, and you're a part of it.
I don't know that any of this has a thing to do with Eliot. Except maybe to tell him "lighten up on London!" I've never been. But I'd like to go see it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)