Infinite London

London had always seemed to me to be the most prosaic of cities. Sturdy, pragmatic and not especially inclined to flights of fancy; not a city in which the imagination might be let loose, or in which dreamers dream of revolution or love, but neither is she a mathematical, abstract city. But I now increasingly come to think that London is nothing but a city of memory and desire, a thousand cities whose histories continue to exist side by side, sometimes overlapping and intersecting, at other times running parallel to one another.

There is the London that is loosely connected to the old villages that went up to make London Town-and one can still detect remnants of this in the commons and heaths. Then there are the larger historical narratives that are written on her, each leaving its indelible mark: Roman London, Medieval London, Tudor London, Victorian, Edwardian-then there is the city that has been shaped by politics and international events: war and financial speculation, the crusades. In addition to this the city is shaped by her geography-and especially the silver ribbon that runs through her heart: the Thames.

But there is also a hidden city, an underground, submerged history and this includes all those interconnecting and lost rivers and tributaries: the Trent, the Walbrook-they are like reminders of archaic words whose sense we have long forgotten, ancient by-ways that signify a truth that remains out of sight.

The city shapes and is shaped by people’s desires and memories and some of these have, in turn, been shaped by other climates, other geographies: Jews and Bangladeshis, West Indians and now the latest wave of immigrants: Poles and Lithuanians, Albanians and Russians.

And then there is a London that is fractured, splintered , along class lines: not just an affluent west end and a working class east, but also within the east or the south areas that are are thriving, confident and brash and areas that are dilapidated, in slow decline-and one feels one could continue with these subdivisions right down to a single human heart.

It is hard to envisage a metaphor for a city that is constantly in the process of escaping all definitions, a city whose past never quite dies. Perhaps it is a periodic table with each part of the city just a permutation of the other. But perhaps it really is the tube map. In this case it is reality which produces the map. At first one imagines all the terminal stations and what lies beyond; then one thinks about all of those great white circles where so many of the other lines intersect. Are all of the places on any one ‘line’ connected by some sort of mysterious idea so that, for example, places on the furthest southern and northern extremities on the northern line come to share the same history?

Yesterday the air was arid, still, the sunshine bright but somewhat tired, weak. Walking through a part of the tube system that I had never seen before I had the strange feeling that I was back in the 1970’s. There was something about the darkness of that passageway, its flickering light and quietness that made me think in such a way. There are other parts of the system that are futuristic (the Jubilee line) and still others that are decidedly 1950’s in their layout and ambience. Could it be that the tube is really a series of worm-holes?

In the bus one could hear a cacophony of voices. As always, there is infinite pleasure to be derived in trying to match an accent, a word, to a particular place. London’s infinity is not her networks of communication but in the myriad languages that are spoken. I return to my book, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It is impossible to read more than a few pages at a time. The words weigh heavily on me -not in an oppressive way but like a great lead box whose key is slowly being turned, an unlocking of secrets. And I find myself closing it but keeping my finger on the page so as not to completely let go of the connection with the words on the paper:

The shallowness of a life of sanity.

The heart of darkness is not in social organization but in the blood.

the magic porridge pot

this is, like, the dream/nightmare of any self-respecting Man (we're talking of Real Man here, not some lady-boy or Aitchisonian, mind you). endless supplies of delicious, hot porridge (if you thought the dream was being married to the woman on the cover of the book, i feel sorry for you my friend..wannabe talibans are not my thing..not yet, anyway..in any case, she ain't devout enough..i can still see her hair and her wrists, and fuck, any woman that allows all that food to waste has serious problems).

~~

there are only two types of people in the world: believers and infidels. the former comprise: kashmiris (and maybe jews), people who wear hats, and people who like porridge.

~~

and damn the political correctness brigade to hell..i'm gonna say it. on the other hand there is everyone else ( excluding anton and roxana, who i forgive these november days).

~~

and the moral of the story, b?

....

the order of the soul

For mani, gnostic mani.

Are we but tired sparks in a gnostic world? Bright flashes that have cooled, worn out by time, lack-lustre, a darkening mirror?

A line from Solaris, when Kelvin is told there's no going back to the cosmos. Like when you reach the turning point and the days become visibly, palpably shorter, darker, heavier. Or when someone walks away, revealing only their back and you wonder if you'll see their face again...

To say or think 'order of the soul', or order of being makes one flinch. Now we only have an empty word for 'good', in which one can pour what one wants. Order is oppressive, burdensome, and must be broken up, resisted...verticality opposed by a flattening spirit.

But there is something else: an order of light. A unity of vision that lovingly embraces the fragments, knowing that nothing was in vain, that the past is still with you. Love: a flame, the wood, the smoke?

Clarification..to clarify. To see rightly, with love and justice. To be at the right distance. Lost and found, the heart fading, soaring. Muslim readers will know that the "eye did not rove". Prayer is for, and simulataneously is, a "good thing of this world".

"An increasing awareness of 'goods' and the attempt (usually only partially successful) to attend to them purely, without self, brings with it an increasing awareness of the unity and interdependence of the moral world. One-seeking intelligence is the image of 'faith'. Consider what it is like to increase one's understanding of a great work of art."
---Iris M.

To which one can only add, if there can be an addition, that that is not a negation of the self, but a deepening of it and the person. A greater level of connectivity with the world. Unity is not a number.And there are false unities.

We find God everywhere in the world, seeing in material things the spiritual reality which is beyond them. For the spiritual and the holy we are to look at toward all the world, not toward our isolated self-will.

Not "detachment" or "alienation", not "suffering," but Iris's: the quality of our attachments is the quality of our understanding.

the commons of silence

Today, early morning. Clear light. A few simple words, a simple tune in your head. Cohen. No need for anything grand. Listen to the crow scratching at my window. What does he want? The soft silence of the trees. Leaves. Just enough words. Walk in your own time, your own good time. Poetry, religion:a different dimension. Goes without saying. Convinced of it. Inwardly. A circular argument. Thought is tangential.

Stop. Look. Listen.

Speakless to speechless. The hardness of 'K' falls away. Tricks of the trade.The small space of silence that you find. Your space. Not belonging. As if you could keep it in your pocket. Like a b&w picture, for safe keeping, for another time.

"People called commons that part of the environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and outside of their own possessions...

Silence is necessary for the emergence of persons"
---Ivan Illich

double vision

Seeing two, when there is only one.

'An artistic discovery occurs each time as a new and unique image of the world, a hieroglyphic of absolute truth...'

'a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, the ideal...'

'I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work for the sake of 'self-expression'. Self-expression is meaningless unless it meets with a response...'

'..for thought is brief, but the image is absolute...'

'You remain for ever under the spell of its beauty and of your initial rapture...'

A few words, out of context, fragments that glimmer, open a way. Simple words. "It's" beauty, and "your" rapture..the meeting of beauty with an idea, of beauty with the self. And: "initial" rapture, as if the stone thrown in the pond produces a dynamic equilibrium, broken circles, each circle an area of concentration, attentiveness, interpenetrating the other; the point, the centre of everything.

A frog jumps into a pond
Splash!
Silence again.

sufi andrey

a hope, today,
for a thinker's
word
to come,
in the heart.
---Paul Celan

[why write? Not for self-expression, or discovery or any other such nonsense. certainly your thoughts are drying up without any commenters. why is it only women who write to you? and women who stop writing you? press on. or off. you read: "i have a cold"; "i hate my mum"; isn't silence better than blogging?]

not a double life, but half a life. can't you think of any real numbers, b?

there is no mention of the word 'sufi' in the Qur'an. yes, but there is no mention of the word 'moron' and yet still you exist.

From 'Sculpting Time':

it's all too easy to be satisfied with glimmers of intuition, rather than sound, coherent reasoning.

It is considered that time per se, helps to make known the essence of things. The Japanese therefore see a particular charm in the evidence of old age. They are attracted to the darkened tone of an old tree, the ruggedness of a stone, or even the scruffy look of a picture whose edges have been handled by a great many people. To all these signs of age, they give the name sabi, which literally means 'rust'. Sabi, then, is a natural rustiness, the charm of olden days, the stamp of time. Sabi, as an element of beauty, embodies the link between art and nature.

the saddest smile

'I can only identify the inner by my knowledge of the outer'
---Iris M.

the saddest smile, also the most enigmatic. for me, for you? the saddest smile, that remains inward.

so, there it is, there you go.
i remeber it well
you didn't turn around to say:
i need you, i don't need you.
i remember you well...

you held the world up for me
even though it wasn't real!
a clown in the moon
or the moon in the clown
still, always my clown.
the ritual of departures,
that some call life.
the tyranny of not knowing you
against the easy familairity of the hours.
how did it come to pass:
which is to say: how does time pass?

what is real, what most so?
the innermost: the universal: Truth, Freedom..?
or orange pyjamas? too late on the scene, a witness to ashes and grey embers, like the memory of a stone, a door that wasn't opened for you, a dream within a dream. is that not a kind of reality?

why is saying 'regards' a way of saying goodbye? that's no way...

v. re·gard·ed, re·gard·ing, re·gards
v.tr.
1. To look at attentively; observe closely.
2. To look upon or consider in a particular way: I regard him as a fool.
3. To hold in esteem or respect
4. To relate or refer to; concern
5. To take into account; consider.
6. Obsolete To take care of.
v.intr.
1. To look or gaze.
2. To give heed; pay attention.
n.
1. A look or gaze.
2. Careful thought or attention; heed:
3.
a. Respect, affection, or esteem
b. regards Good wishes expressing such sentiment.
4. A particular point or aspect; respect.
5. Basis for action; motive.
6. Obsolete Appearance or aspect.

[Middle English regarden, from Old French regarder : re-, re- + guarder, to guard (of Germanic origin; see guard).]

taking leave. what is taken?

"what M is trying to do is to see D not just accurately but to see her justly, lovingly"

---Iris. M.

[the names have been changed to protect D]

change the names, change your mind. repentance. how will you give a label to these thoughts? a reassessing, a redifining, re-vision. nothing is given. capstones shift. how will you escape the world? by a leap of the will? into the blue. a different world, or the old one where i meet you five minutes earlier, where you wear a hat for me, over your straight/curly hair, to make yourself known.

'love is knowledge of the individual'.

this-ness. not: that-ness.

'we grow by looking' looking out for one another, and in for one another.

'the idea of a patient loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like 'obedience'.'

like being in a white room, where everything is made clear. or even there, will you turn your face from mine and say:

'we are not always the individual in pursuit of the individual'?

cat and mouse

without mouse there is no religion.
not as Aurelius imagined it:
a ribbon of chaos thrown into the order of things,
the spherical form of the soul tardy, frayed.

but without mouse there is no chase or hunt
no frenzied mind, no swaying heart.
just the slow uncoiling of time
around a hole of oblivion.

a slice of luck, decaying.
the trap abandoned but ready to spring.
just cat, alone and bemused,
licking his own lips, unable to speak.