When you chose me ... Finale ...

Pedro Salinas is a Spanish poet who I discovered recently ... His life story is fascinating but his fate is so different from Pablo Neruda; politically and romantically  ... A road not taken is always something you wonder and I sincerely hope that "Finale" will be true for my last words on earth. At least it will be for this blog.  Tumblr is the new venture for being spontaneously combusted ... 

http://beingspontaneouslycombusted.tumblr.com/

When you chose me—
love chose—
I came out of the great anonymity
from everyone, from nothing.
Till then
I was never taller than
the sierras of the world.
I never sank deeper
than the maximum
depths marked out
on maritime charts.
And my gladness was
sad, as small watches are
without a wrist to fasten to,
without a winding crown, stopped.
But when you said: you,
to me, yes, to me singled out,
I was higher than stars,
deeper than coral.
And my joy
began to spin, caught
in your being, in your pulse.
You gave me possession of myself
when you gave your self to me.
I lived. I live. How long?
I know you will back out.
When you go
I will go back to a deaf
world that does not distinguish
gram or drop
in weight or water.
I'll be one more—like the rest—
when you are lost.
I'll lose my name,
my age, my gestures, all
lost in me, from me.
Gone back to the immense bone heap
of those who have not died
and now have nothing
to die for in life.
- Pedro Salinas


Matilde, years or days   
sleeping, feverish,   
here or there,
gazing off,
twisting my spine,   
bleeding true blood,   
perhaps I awaken   
or am lost, sleeping:
hospital beds, foreign windows,
white uniforms of the silent walkers,
the clumsiness of feet.

And then, these journeys   
and my sea of renewal:   
your head on the pillow,   
your hands floating
in the light, in my light,   
over my earth.

It was beautiful to live   
when you lived!

The world is bluer and of the earth   
at night, when I sleep
enormous, within your small hands.
- Pablo Neurda

Sleeping head ...

... by Tom Otterness at the MOMA once reminded me of someone 

... and the following from  "The book of disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa made me realise why ...

I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep.  When asleep we all become children again.  Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and the most self-absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping ...

... he's dreaming.  He's attentive to what doesn't exist.  Perhaps he still hopes.  If there's any justice in the God's injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they're impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they're trivial.  



...

A list of books ...

... which has affected me in some ways ...

November 2012

The year of magical thinking by Joan Didion

By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept by Elizabeth Smart

An unquiet mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 

The power and the glory by Graham Greene

The bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

The heart is a lonely hunter by Carson McCullers
The book of disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

It may not always be so; and I say ...

... by ee cummings is a poem which pretty much sums up what I did recently, wishing him "all happiness" from a distance via a letter ... 


It may not always be so; and I say
That if your lips, which I have loved, should touch
Another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
His heart, as mine in time not far away;
If on another's face your sweet hair lay
In such a silence as I know, or such
Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

If this should be, I say if this should be --
You of my heart, send me a little word;
That I may go to him, and take his hands,
Saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then I shall turn my face, and hear one bird
Sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines ...

... by Pablo Neruda ... is a poem someone once has written to me, and I have since written to someone else ... 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Ritual Acts (iii) ...

... is a poem by Adrienne Rich I discovered at the Strand bookshop at NYC and a part of me agrees with it a little ... 

After all - to have loved, wasn't that the object?
Love is the only thing in life
but then you can love too much
or the wrong way, you lose 
yourself or you lose
the person
or you strangle each other 
Maybe the object of love is 
   to have loved 
   greatly
   at one time or another
Like a cinema trailer 
watched long ago 

The hope of loving ...

... by Meister Echkart ...

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,

or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey

to find its source, and how the moon wept

without her lover’s

warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither

like fields if someone close

does not rain their

kindness

upon 

us.

Love at first sight ...

... is by the Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.  It reminds me a little of a little book drawn by a Taiwanese artist called "A Chance of Sunshine" ... 

They're both convinced

that a sudden passion joined them.

Such certainty is beautiful,

but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they'd never met before, they're sure

that there'd been nothing between them.

But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways --

perhaps they've passed each other a million times?

I want to ask them

if they don't remember --

a moment face to face

in some revolving door?

perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd?

a curt "wrong number" caught in the receiver?

but I know the answer.

No, they don't remember

They'd be amazed to hear

that Chance has been toying with them

now for years.

Not quite ready yet

to become their Destiny,

it pushed them close, drove them apart,

it barred their path,

stifling a laugh,

and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,

even if they couldn't read them yet.

Perhaps three years ago

or just last Tuesday

a certain leaf fluttered

from one shoulder to another?

Something was dropped and then picked up.

Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished

into childhood's thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells

where one touch had covered another

beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.

One night, perhaps, the same dream,

grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning

is only a sequel, after all,

and the book of events

is always open halfway through.

Mark Strand ...

... is a poet I discovered when I was at NYC earlier this month ...

Provisional eternity

A man and a woman lay in bed. “Just one more time,” said the man, “just one more time.” “Why do you keep saying that?” said the woman. “Because I never want it to end,” said the man. “What don’t you want to end?” said the woman. “This,” said the man, “this never wanting it to end.”

When I turned a hundred

I wanted to go on an immense journey, to travel night and day into the unknown until, forgetting my old self, I came into possession of a new self, one that I might have missed on my previous travels.  But the first step was beyond me.  I lay in bed, unable to move, pondering, as one does at my age, the ways of melancholy - how it seeps into the spirit, how it disincarnates the will, how it banishes the sense to the chill of twilight, how even the best and worst intentions wither in its keep.  I kept staring at the ceiling, then suddenly felt a blast of cold air, and I was gone.  

Our Union ...

… is a poem by a Suri poet called Hafiz.  I like the first three stanzas as it reminds me a common simile of “I love you more than sliced bread”, but I am not sure about the rope in the last stanza …

Our

union is like this:

You feel cold so I reach for a blanket to cover

our shivering feet.

A hunger comes into your body
so I run to my garden and start digging potatoes.

You asked for a few words of comfort and guidance and
I quickly kneel by your side offering you
a whole book as a
gift.

You ache with loneliness one night so much
you weep, and I say

here is a rope, tie it around me,
Hafiz will be your
companion
for life.

Kindness ...

... By Naomi Shihab Nye is a poem I came across at a bookshop at NYC and it seems to be befitting for a city post-Hurricane Sandy and an early winter snow storm ...

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Me Gustas Cuando Callas (I Like You When You Are Quiet) ...

... is a poem by one of my favorite poets Pablo Neruda and is from the book “Twenty love poems and one desperate song”.  The last stanza bought the poem alive for me ... He touches on something profound and magical in the depth of our souls of anyone who has ever loved/be loved ...



I like you quiet because its as if you are absent,
and you hear me from far away, and my voice doesn´t touch you.
It seems that your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss is closing your mouth.

As all the things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
Dream butterfly, you look like my soul,
and you look like the word melancholia.

I like you quiet and its as if you are distant.
And you are as if complaining, you cooing butterfly.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice doesn´t reach you:
let me be quiet with your silence.

Let me speak to you also with your silence
clear as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, quiet and constellated.
Your silence is as a star´s, so far and simple.

I like you quiet because its as if you are absent.
Distant and painful as if you had died.
A word then, a smile would do.
And I´m happy, happy that it isn´t true.

Palabras para Julia (Words for Julia) ...

... is a poem by José Agustín Goytisolo, written for his daughter Julia. She was named after his mother, who was killed in a bombing during the Spanish civil war in 1938. It is a poem celebrating life, against all dictators.

You cannot turn back
because life already pushes you
like a never-ending howl.

My daughter 'tis better to live
with the happiness of mankind
than to cry before the blind wall.

You will feel cornered,
you will feel lost or lonely,
maybe you'll wish you hadn't been born.

I know very well they will tell you
that there is no object to life,
that it is an unfortunate affair.

Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.

A man alone, a woman,
Taken like that, one by one,
are like dust, are nothing.

But when I talk to you
when I write these words for you
I also think of other people.

Your destiny is in others,
your future is your own life,
your dignity that of everybody.

Others expect you to hang on,
the help of your happiness,
your song among their songs.

Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.

Never give up or halt
by the road, never say
I can't take it and here I'll remain.

Life is beautiful you will see
how in spite of everything
you'll have love, you'll have friends.

For the rest there is no choice
and this world as it is
will be all you have.

Forgive me, I do not know
what else to say but understand
I am still on my way.

And always, always, remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you, like I am now thinking.

Time is ...

... by Henry Van Dyke summaries this week for me and maybe an ideal superpower will be to shape time; to relieve certain moments, to fasten certain frames but ultimately, the clock hand moves forward in its own pace, with or without our participation ... 

Time is 
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.

Also, in "The Lost Steps" by Alejo Carpentier ... 

This living in the present, without possessions, without the chains of yesterday, without thinking of tomorrow, seemed to me amazing.  And yet it was apparent that this attitude must lengthen the lapse of hours from one sun to another   She spoke of days that were very long and of days that were very short, as though they were in different tempos - tempos of a telluric symphony that had its andantes and  adagios, as well as its prestos.  The astonishing thing was that, now that time was of no concern to me, I noticed in myself different values of the intervals: the prolongation of certain mornings, the frugal elaboration of a sunset, and was lost in wonder at all that could be fitted into certain tempos of this symphony which we were reading backward from right to left, contrary to the key of G, returning to the measures of Genesis.  

The hour is lost ...

... by the Australian poet John Shaw Neilson capture the fleeting nature of time ... 

THE hour is lost. Was ever hour so sweet?
Fruitful of blessing, friends and honeyed words—
The sunlight in our faces—at our feet
The world, bright, beautiful, its flocks and herds,
Foliage of forests, choruses of birds . . .
O happy time, why did we stand downcast?
We should have leapt for love: but now, the hour is past.

The hour is lost. Scarce had we time to mark
The glory of the green, the sky's soft blue;
It came as silently as comes the dark,
Our hearts burned hot within us ere we knew . . .
Then suddenly we said, Can it be true
This golden time was ours?—and now downcast
We stand dumb and amazed. Alas! the hour is past.

a trifle (eine KleinigKeit) ...

... is a poem by the German poet Erich Fried for his Catherine ... I am not sure why he chose "water rat" but there you are ...

I don’t know what love is but perhaps
it is something like this:

When she
come home from abroad
and tells me proudly: “I saw
a water rat”
and I remember these words
when I wake up in the night
and next day at my work 10 and I long
to hear her say
the same words once more
and for her
to look exactly the same
as she looked
when she said them –

I think that is maybe love or something rather like it

Ich weiß nicht was Liebe ist aber vielleicht
ist es etwas wie das:

Wenn sie
nach Hause kommt aus dem Ausland
und stolz zu mir sagt: "Ich habe
eine Wasserratte gesehen“
und ich erinnere mich an diese Worte
wenn ich aufwache in der Nacht
und am nächsten Tag bei der Arbeit 10 und ich sehne mich danach
sie dieselben Worte
noch einmal sagen zu hören
und auch danach
dass sie nochmals genau so aussehen soll
wie sie aussah
als sie sagte –

Ich denke, das ist vielleicht Liebe
oder doch etwas hinreichend Ähnliches 

Jonathan Sacks ...

... wrote an article in the Times about Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurologist who set up the National Spinal Injuries Centre in the UK. He was a pioneer in using sports for rehabilitation and it accumulated into the first Paralympics in Rome in 1960. I don't think I agreed with all of the points made in this piece but its sentiments is staggering. The power of beliefs, whatever its source, from others or ourselves or God, can create an imperative in us that allows us to face another day, even if the journey is tortuous and full of thorns ... at least we can try to listen, admire the wonders or just breath in the cold crisp air.

He [God] sees that, in our souls if not our bodies, we are injured. Our spiritual muscles are atrophied through lack of use. We bear the scars of bruising experience of the world. Yet year after year we and those around us accept our condition, spiritually bed-ridden yet so sedated by a relentlessly secular society that we do not even feel the pain.

God does not let us lie there. He tells us to sit up, get out of bed and exercise our soul even though it hurts. He coaxes us out of our comfort zone. And though, we fail time and again, like Dr Guttmann, God never gives up on us until, through prayer and ritual and services to others, we come alive. In this game, there are no medals and no losers, but by taking part we learn to live and breath more deeply until, in the end, we find ourselves lifted to a greatness we never know we could achieve.

The Magus ...

... is a novel by John Fowles set in a magical remote Greek Island, with Nicolas being slowly caught up in a never-ending psychological games of changing identity and reality ... It is a minefield for quotes, but here are a few which spoke to me ... 

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.

Wild strawberries ...

... is a haunting film by Ingmar Bergman about a old medical professor's redemptive journey. It has several meditative stops on death, life, regrets, pains, choices and relationships, with meandering dreams and this Swedish hymn by Johan Olaf Wallin in the middle ...

Where is the friend I seek at break of day?
When night falls I still have not found Him.
My burning heart shows me His traces
I see His traces wherever flowers bloom
His love is mingled with every air.

Freud ...

... wrote the following in his case history on Frau Emmy von N. which I found to be most illuminating ...

I recite to her that is in effect a paraphrase of the old legal maxim "de minimis non curat lex" that between good and evil there is a whole class of small, indifferent things for which no one should approach themselves.  

Radetzky march ...

... is a novel set in Austria by Joesph Roth ... It deciphers a forgotten era of the Dual Monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when life moved at a different pace and honour mattered ...

"In the year before the Great War, at the time the events chronicled in these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died.  When someone was expunged from the lists of the living, someone else did not immediately step up to take his place, but a gap was left to show where he had been, and those who knew the man who had died or disappeared, well, or even less well, fell silent whenever they saw the gap.  When a fire happened to consume a particular dwelling in a row of dwellings, the site of the conflagration remained for a long time afterwards.  Fro masons and bricklayers worked slowly and thoughtfully, and when they walked past the ruins, neighbours and passers-by alike recalled the form and the walls of the house that had once stood there.  That's how it was then!  Everything that grew took long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten.  Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively".

An unquiet life ...

... is a memoir of mood and madness by Kay Redfield Jamison, a book I wish I have read before I became a psychiatrist. It is dazzling with tints of sadness, but alive with hope throughout for those "new, limitless corners" ...

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this-through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs or medication-we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness. For someone with my cast of mind and mood, medication is an integral element of this wall: Without it, I would be constantly beholden to the crushing movements of a mental sea; I would, unquestionably, be dead or insane ....

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships ...

I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I suppose I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images; I would not go through an extended one again. It bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self- respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: You're irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.

So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death "as close as dungarees," appreciated it-and life-more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty and seeing things through. I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are. Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to any illness-the intensity it gives to things and the perspective it forces on me. I think it has made me test the limits of my mind (which while wanting is holding) and the limits of my upbringing, family, education and friends.

The countless hypomanias, and mania itself, all have brought into my life a different level of sensing and feeling and thinking. Even when I have been most psychotic-delusional, hallucinating, frenzied-I have been aware of finding new corners in my mind and heart. Some of those corners were incredible and beautiful and took my breath away and made me feel as though I could die right then and the images would sustain me. Some of them were grotesque and ugly and I never wanted to know they were there or to see them again. But, always, there were those new corners-and when feeling my normal self, beholden for that self to medicine and love. I cannot imagine becoming jaded to life because I know of those limitless corners, with their limitless views.

Spring Snow ..

... is the first book in the "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy by Yukio Mishima.  It is an austere, impossible yet inevitable, destructive love story between Kiyoaki and Satoko, with Tokyo in 1912 when the ancient Meji world collides with the West as the background.

"For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible.  Dreams, memories, the sacred - they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp.  Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous.  Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch.  How strange man is!  His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles".

"As for me, I've always wanted to know the secret that enables love to evade the bonds of time and space as if by magic.  To stand before the person we love is not the same as loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her existence.  When time and space intervene, it is possible to be deceived by both, but on the other hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to her real self."

"He had lost Satoko.  And with that he was content.  For by now he head learned how to quiet even his subsequent resentment.  Every show of feeling was now governed with a marvellous economy.  If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax.  For the first time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realise the healing powers of solitude".

Dreams of a life ...

... is a film directed by Carol Morley about Joyce Vincent, an enigmatic beautiful woman living in London, whose dead body was discovered 3 years after she died.  It has been on my shelf waiting to be watched, but it is a difficult film at so many levels, raising so many pessimistic questions; Do we all truly die alone? Can we ever truly know someone?  It is a psychoanalytic minefield and the individuals I see at A&E take on a completely different meaning.... 


Watch me fall from grace
Disappear with no trace
As I try to erase you
Feel the pain and watch me bleed
Surely this is not what I need


Shut out everyone
And watch me run
Lay me under the sun
So cold I have become
Now that I have been undone

- "Undone" by Alice Temple

Democracy ...

... is a play by Michael Frayn and the production at the Old Vic was as dazzling as his "Copehagen" in my students days ... It is about Willy Brandt and his dream of daring more democracy ...

- Any scrap of information that helps us judge his intentions towards the socialist block.  

- “Reconciliation”, he says.  “Peace.”  But can we trust him? Is he really going to risk everything on such a gamble?  Is he really going to persuade people here to take their head out of the sand at last and recognize that we exist?  You and me?  The other Germany?”


- How can you see into someone’s heart if you don’t fall a little in love with them?

- You can’t help trusting him.  When you’re there in the audience. You look up at him – and there he is looking straight back at you.  You personally.  Talking to you alone.  One human being to another.

Margaret Mead ...

... once said: "One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder when you are coming home at night". The sense of loneliness is devastatingly palpable ...

The Great Gatsby ...

... is a short novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the golden jazz age ... I am not sure if it was golden for Gatsby at the end, but we all have our own green light, the goal of our existences, the summation of our dreams ...


"And as I set there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.


Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... and one fine morning - 


So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  


(the last line is engraved on the grave of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda).

Mark Grist

... is a poet I came across at Latitude this year and he read his beautiful "I want a girl who reads" ... it was one of the highlights of the festival for me (a little strange, I know) but everyone creates their own festival ... 

“So, what do you go for in a girl?”
He crows, lifting a lager to his lips
Gestures where his mate sits
Downs his glass
“He prefers tits
I prefer ass.
What do you go for in a girl?”

I don’t feel comfortable
The air left the room a long time ago
All eyes are on me
Well, if you must know

I want a girl who reads
Yeah. Reads.
I’m not trying to call you a chauvinist
Cos I know you’re not alone in this
but…

I want a girl who reads
Who needs the written word
& uses the added vocabulary
She gleans from novels and poetry
To hold lively conversation
In a range of social situations

I want a girl who reads
Who’s heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene
Or even Heat magazine
Who’ll tie back her hair while reading Jane Eyre
and goes cover to cover with each waterstones three for two offer
but I want a girl who doesn’t stop there

I want a girl who reads
Who feeds her addiction for fiction
With unusual poems and plays
That she hunts out in crooked bookshops for days and days and days
She’ll sit addicted at breakfast, soaking up the back of the conflakes box
And the information she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox
Cos she’s interesting & unique
& her theories make me go weak at the knees

I want a girl who reads

A girl who’s eyes will analyse
The menu over dinner
Who’ll use what she learns to kick my ass in arguments
so she always ends the winner
But she’ll still be sweet and she’ll still be flirty
Cos she loves the classics and the classics are dirty
So late at night she’d always have me in a stupor
As she paraphrases the raunchier moments from the works of Jilly Cooper

See, some guys prefer asses
Some prefer tits
And I’m not saying that I don’t like those bits
But what’s more important
What supercedes
For me
Is a girl a with passion, wit and dreams
So I want a girl who reads.

The Day of the Triffids ...

... by John Wyndham is an apocalyptic book, a genre I often struggle with, but he writes beautifully and hauntingly about desolation ...

"The sun comes out.  Everything looks bright and fresh, but even that, and the fact that for the next twenty miles all went smoothly, did not shift the mood of depression that was closing over me again.  Now I was really on my own I could not shut out the sense of loneliness.  It came upon me again as it had on that day when we had split up to search for Michael Beadley - only with double the force ... Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative - an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary ... That day I had learned that it was much more  It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary, and play tricks with the mind.  Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care.  It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the times its chance to frighten and frighten horribly - that was what loneliness was really trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do ..."

Marx and Divorce ...

"You don't simply dissolve marriage; divorce means that you retroactively establish that the love was not the true love" is an interesting take on the subjective and temporal nature of love ...

Metaphysics ...

... was a topic of discussion among some friends the other night.  My head has been trying to find my way through this hazy fog for a long time and I am still lost, but I believe (or hope?) ...

- God exists.
- Beauty, love and goodness persist in the darkest corner.  We just have to look very very hard.
- Love may not win sometimes but its impact is unforeseeable and unquantifiable.
- Death is not the end ...

If there is a man ...

... is the autobiography by Primo Levi about how he saves his scaffold at Auschwitz.  I started it on a rainy, grey day and finished it when the sun finally arrives.  One of those rare books changing your perspective on the essence of being a human, a man ...

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealisable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: the perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.  The obstacles preventing the realisation of both these extremes states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.  Our ever-sufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day.  The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also of every grief.  The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable ...

...Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks word to express this offence, the demolition of a man.  In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we have reached the bottom.  It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so.  Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand.  They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somewhere so that behind the names something of us, of us as we were, still remains.

We know that we will have difficulty in being understood, and this is as it should be.  But consider what value, what meaning is enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns; a handkerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherish person.  These things are part of us, almost like limbs of our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in our word, for we immediately find others to substitute the old ones, other objects which re ours in their personification and evocation of our memories.

Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possess: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself.  He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgement of utility.  It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term "extermination camp", and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: "to lie on the bottom" ...

... It grieves me because it means that I have to translate his uncertain Italian and his quiet manner of speaking of a good soldier into my language of an incredulous man.  But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilisation.  We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent.  So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves with our jackets.  We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety.  We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.

For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective.  It is providential and is our means of surviving the camp.  And this is the reason why so often in free life often hears it said that man is never content.  In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complete nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency.  And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others ...

... However little sense there may be in trying to specify why I, rather than thousands of others, managed to survive the test, I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly remind me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside of our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.

Jenni Fagan ...

... remembered being pregnant in The Independent today and the world she painted for her yet-to-be-born son is exciting and full of life.  It is exactly how I picture a friend of mine in NY will be liked when she becomes pregnant ...

The truth of it is this – we live in a world without explanation, in a galaxy and universe surrounded by galaxies and universes and nobody asks questions too loudly because the answers are sketchy at best. I can't explain to you why we arrive as seeds and leave as dust, but I can show you the truth in rainbows. I can bake you pancakes, and take you to the park in autumn so we can kick up the leaves ...

... We step onto the pavement and an old man swerves by us, singing loudly in Italian. His coat is covered in shiny badges. He gestures at passers-by as if he is ushering them off a plane, and they try to avoid him.

This is life – in all its smelly glory! I hope you can forgive me for bringing you into it, especially if you think too much like I do. It's OK really, the ache of being alive, the beat of your own heart, the silence of unanswerable questions. There are shooting stars, and music, and there is magic if you learn how to look – and it is still our world, no matter how many other people might try to convince you, it's mostly theirs.

It is yours and it is mine.

And all these other people walking by us in the snow, it's their world too.

Becoming a Jackal ...

... is a song by the Villagers. The lyrics reminds me a little of the portraits painted by Lucian Freud, not sure why ...

The most familiar room 

Every implement was leading to you
And your homely sense of dissaray
Never once the same
Always rearranged
But things would never change
In the seam between the window frame
Where the jackals preyed on every soul
Where they tied you to a pole
And stripped you of your clothes

I was a dreamer
Staring at windows
Out onto the main street
Cause that's where the dream goes

And each time they found fresh meat to chew
I would turn away and return to you
You would offer me your unmade bed
Feed me till I'm fed
And read me till I'm read
But when the morning came
You would catch me at the window again 

In an eyes wide open sleeping state
Staring into space
With no look upon my face 

I was a dreamer
Staring at windows
Out onto the main street
Cause that's where the dream goes

And when I got older
When I grew older
Out onto the streets I flew

Released from your shackles
I danced with the Jackals
And learned a new way to move
So before you take this song as truth
You should wonder what I'm taking from you
How I benefit from you being here
Lending me your ears
While I'm selling you my fears

Lucian Freud ...

... is an artist whose works I cannot fully comprehend, as he paints his subjects so violently and tenderly at the same time. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was truly astonishing. His studio, the importance of punctuality in his sitter, the silence between them, the unknowable of another person reminds me of psychotherapy and he once said,“When you find things very moving, the desire to find out more lessens rather. Rather like when in love with someone you don’t want to meet the parents.”

"Portrait of the Hound" is his last unfinished nude portrait of his long term assistant (David Dawson) and his whippet (Eli). It is a most affecting portrait, as the rawness of the human soul and its physical imperfections lie bare ...

Waiting for the dark, waiting for the light ...

.. by Ivan Klima is a book I came across at Prague earlier this year. It is set around the time of the Velvet Revolution (1989) and explores whether arts, dreams and identities can survive under a totalitarian regimen, reminding me a little of the hope aspired by the recent Arab Spring ...

But Peter began to talk about himself. He said he thought it was his responsibility to take the position when it was offered but now he felt like an interloper. Some hated him, some tried to suck up to him and others tried to curry favor with him by informing on their colleagues. Yet he had neither the inclination nor the desire to play the judge. We all lived in this country. Given the conditions that existed here, every one of us came out of it scarred in some way. And who can establish a borderline between guilt and innocence, when that borderline runs somewhere right down the middle of each and every person? People overthrew the old regimen in the hope that they would finally see justice done. There would have to be an attempt at some kind of judgement. "Someone can probably be found who can establish that borderline," Peter said, "but it won't be me. The job will probably be done by someone who will use it to cover up his own guilt".

What was justice?

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

Famous ...

... by Naomi Shihab Nye, is a poem sent to me from a friend in DC, a world full of famous people ... I love the last stanza and really hope that each of us finds a way to be famous as described in this little poem ...

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

I saw a hippy girl on 8th avenue ...

... by Jeffrey Lewis came onto my ipod this morning, and it made me smile ... I have been sitting in a psychiatry meeting for the last 2 days with quite famous professors/clinicians, and one of them did spot a long white ponytail, sang a Spanish song during dinner while in a suit ... so he is still a hippy at heart :)

I saw a hippy girl on 8th avenue
She barely looked at me for a second or two
And I suddenly realized I no longer looked much like a hippy
mmmmm

She had a long thin dress and rainbow clothes
Not long ago I wore one of those
But now-a-days I guess I don't very much like anything
mmmmm

I had a great pair of bellbottoms, I had two
My friend borrowed one and the other I outgrew
And now to the eye I'm turning into another non-descript guy

But I still travel light and my hair is still long
I still hate deoderant and I still sing songs
But over the years I've noticed I'm not dressing as colourfully and psychedelic as I used to

'Cause I wore my tye-dyes until they rotted to shreds
And I can no longer follow The Greatful Dead
And it's gotten to the point where I don't even identify with most Phish fans anymore

And someday soon I know I'll cut my hair
And a week after that I know I won't even care
It's how it all comes to all along
Everything that you feel will one day feel wrong

I was talking to my friend Eric
Just to see what he think
And he said "Jeff, it's weird
But I no longer look like a punk"
I guess we don't need our clothes for an identity crutch
And we looked at each other and we didn't look like much
And we looked out at the world like a movie theatre
At all the hippies and the punks and the skinheads and the skaters
And someday or other maybe sooner or later they'll come to the realization
That what's important is whether you can carry on a human conversation
It's not what you wear on the outside
It's how you think and feel on the inside.

Alfred Edward Housman ...

... For him, rain was always associated with lost love.  London has been bathed in rain for the last two weeks and I wonder if long buried memories are once again being discovered and pondered upon ... 


The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.

The rainy Pleiads wester,
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.