... 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 ...
29 May 2012
13 May 2012
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.
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.
12 May 2012
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.
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.
07 May 2012
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
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
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
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
06 May 2012
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?
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.
03 May 2012
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.
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.
02 May 2012
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.
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.
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