the heavy weight of the past

Tons Of Joy: Wrestling champ ‘Daula’ pins down his English adversary ‘Clark’, to the patent dismay of the referee, at a fundraiser for the Lahore Warplanes Fund, the Police Spitfire Fund and the Minto Park Fund, in Lahore in the late 1930s]

photo via chapati mystery.

Ubo's uncle was a wrestler and so I've always been fascinated by the story he told about him (he, himself, was going to be named 'Rustum' but when he eventually came into the world they quickly forgot about that notion!) Would love to make a short film on wrestlers (and/or on the circus).

You realise just how few links and connections you have to the past. Which is okay, that's just the way it is; you can only work with what's been for(given) you, the inheritance of dark light. No need to grasp at what isn't yours. Each of us in a particular place and time. We can plunge into it, deepen our awareness of it, find our own voice against it and within it, and even imagine distant shores, possibilities...but even when we do, those imaginings still start from where we're at. Not everything is possible. Some lines meet, others don't. People you might have loved pass by you all the time. Different paths, or different times. Same difference. You don't care much for origins. But the centre, the centre of things, that's a different story...

A grey line on wite paper. Erased, reversed. Still leaves a mark, a trace. Grey, softly drawn on the plane white, fades and fades, until there's a meeting of two minds, the breathing of one spirit.

November ends. Still unforgiven. The winter months upon us now, the slow hardening of brown earth, the chains of frail winter light that touches abandoned things, and leaves them unredeemed.

lust, caution

She not only gets inside me, she worms her way into my heart like a snake. Deeper. All the way in. I take her in like a slave. I play my part faithfully so I, too, can get to her heart...

---adapted from Lust, Caution.

how do we differ? in what we're a slave to? some to money, others to flesh, the mind; bow down to the gods of success and status. and we're all slaves to time. so where is your uniqueness, which qibla do you turn to? flesh will grey, sag, rot, the mind slow, thought slip, picking on garbage, forsaking universals or particulars; success is another word for anxiety. tell me, why was there a snake in the Garden (and therefore in every garden)?

'silence is not absence'. then what is it? idols vacantly stare into eternity, the smooth everlasting golden smile of tranquility a balm for the weary. the way out is not a way out. still. not for you. not overcome by "the desire to sleep overcomes all desires". what fiery heart you hold, that knows no sighs? what strange creature is this...that knows no bonds, that takes no captives?

~~~

a man walked in the street, holding three pieces of string. attached to them were a goat, a monkey, and a dog. the monkey to entertain, the dog for companionship. and the goat? the goat to remind him of death.

out of place

"But where are you from?", she asked.

You realized it was a mistake to talk in the interval

"err..who can say? From here or hereabouts, I guess". When 'When are you from?' might have been a better question, you think to yourself. What do you have but fragments. And you want to construct a whole world out of that? The background ordinariness of the world, the sheer, utter necessity of it, of worldliness, of "bridges" (Simone W).

"But there is real pathos in this dying people. These are my people-my own father, brother, mother, aunt and uncle...Yet I have no illusions: the death of these archaic, unprofitable, businesses is inevitable..But it is also the case that something rich and timeless that bids us to our roots and past, something central to our cultural imagination..is being lost"
---G.Bowley, on the decline of farming in England (Prospect magazine)

Perhaps the most valuable, the most useful, skill we can impart to our children now is precisely that of being able to ‘slow things down’, of being able to identify, in the fast-moving kaleidoscope of images and impressions which surround us and press on us from every side, those things which are significant. Significant, I mean, in that they enrich our life experience, are not ephemeral, have more than entertainment value. It seems to me that those of us who are old enough to have been reared and educated in what was in some respects a much simpler world, a book-based world, before the Internet, before Big Brother, when the only take-away food was fish and chips and people mended socks rather than throwing them away, when the shops remained shut on a Sunday-those of us who are that old are privileged. Because we had fewer distractions, and society in general had different values, we have resources and motivations which are harder to acquire these days. And yet, and yet-thank goodness there are some young’uns among us who are somehow managing to navigate a way through all the dross and emerge as thoughtful, intelligent people capable of discrimination and independent thought. Some of them are even here in cyberspace!

Celia Eddy.

senian

Some thoughts on Sen:

Underlying this skepticism towards the mainstream is not just dissatisfaction with what some see as an overly abstract, formal, and technical approach but, also, a much deeper suspicion: namely, that economists’ approach to human behaviour has- with their simple models and rigid conceptual framework-often been a spectacularly narrow one, an approach that is merely a "limited fragment of the whole"...

In 1987 Sen wrote a profound book entitled ‘On Ethics and Economics’ that reminded economists who were unaware of their own tradition that the origins of economics-or at least one of the origins- lay in moral philosophy (or what might loosely called ‘political economy’). It is worth recalling that it was only around the 1930’s , or possibly the early 1900’s if we include Pareto’s work, that economics made some headway in purging itself of psychological content and ethical considerations-or what some thinkers, perhaps taking the lead from the logical positivists, called "metaphysical nonsense". This development is famously encapsulated in Lionel Robbins’ words:

"It does not seem logically possible to associate the two studies [ethics and economics] in any form but mere juxtaposition"

Sen’s observations here are acute: not only should we be aware of the plural nature of the substantive theories of utility (is it happiness, desire-fulfillment, or pleasure?) but in practice, the tendency to assume that utility is both one’s welfare and the maximand in choice behaviour leads to the unlikely conclusion that one always sets out to maximize one’s welfare. This seems unreasonable because we may have limited cognitive capacities and foresight, or we may have limited information, time, and experience to make a sound evaluation of what is good for us; and even if do know what is good, we may still prefer what is bad, or lack the will to choose the good...

Amartya Sen’s work has reached a fairly wide audience in no small part as a consequence of his critique of utilitarianism, the dominant tradition in welfare economics, and his pioneering of another perspective which he called the "capability approach".

stand forgotten

"The striving for perfection leads an artist to make spiritual discoveries, to exert the utmost moral effort. Aspiration towards the absolute is the moving force in the development of mankind...realism is a striving for the truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical"

The old pond was still
A frog jumped in the water
And a splash was heard.

Reeds cut for thatching
The stumps now stand forgotten
Sprinkled with soft snow.
---Basho.

To say the most, in the shortest time; the line that connects two spaces. Learning what not to say. To keep silent. Let things come to you. Know when to jump. Thoughtlessly.

Snow melts.
Reveals stones.
Sometimes green earth.

Different Trains

This is so utterly haunting and moving that it's stayed with me for a long time-and has been in the background of all the 'crow' posts. In some ways I'm a bit reluctant in sharing it with others. And that I find strange. But since anton posted something beautiful I wanted to as well, for her...

Cd's came in: Messiaen's End of Time (Tashi); Nils Okland's 'Straum'; and Hildur Gudnadottir's 'Without Sinking'.

Someone, listening to the beautiful track Aether,asked: is this soul? Perhaps. But whose? Or is it experimental or traditional? The meeting of spontaneity with received lines of transmissions.

the life of a koala

From today's Guardian:

The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".

"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."

Koala: he who doesn't drink.

Why do we want to see human traits in animals? He/her, not "it". Of course, even in inanimate things we divine a spirit, attribute a degree of sense-perception to them, or associate them with certain feelings: trees, rocks, colours. Metaphor: only connect! Since everything is prior to human beings, and since humans are central, everything is, in a certain fashion, contained in him, present in his soul.

Creative empathy and "oceanic feelings": the ability to imagine the lives of others, founded, perhaps, on a continuity of being. The desire to penetrate the veils that separate us: to move across the frontier is to enter a trance, a bewildered state, take leave of oneself (leaves of one self), shun familiar landmarks and signposts. The shaman who finds strength in customary visions.

Berserk.Our coat of arms.

Primo Levi: The Periodic Table: a style,a temperament, corresponding to a particular element and its properties.

"If you know how you sound, God help you"
(Paula Fox)

Discontinuity:

Much of those "other lives" is boring, horrid, senseless. Very few koalas, as far as you know, drink latte or read The New Yorker. Life is a distancing, a separation, a curving away from matter; human life a zig-zag jolt, a spark of intelligence that breaks free from the cyclomania of nature, seeks the wilderness, the wild blue, knows what a horizon is and is not just constrained by it.

The dull hours of insects is truly frightening. And most people have boring, insipid lives, filled with inane chatter and pointless meanderings. The need for entertainment, diversions, to forget the slow slippage into the inorganic, the seepage of reality. What do koalas dream of when they're stoned?

redire ad creatorem

I've seen your face before, my friend
but I don't know if you know who I am
Well, I remember, I remember, don't worry
how could I ever forget
It's the first time, and the last time we ever met.

The importance of exactness; the ability and desire to say the right thing, at the right time, in the right way; to pluck out the right word, image, from the stream of impressions. Hold your nerve, the memory of the absolute past was always there for you, lovingly left in your way for you to stumble upon, just under the surface, or like fish or deep shadows in the water.

The last time opened the door to the first time; just as the first moment held the memory of the last moment close to itself, memory and desire intertwining, falling, toppling into one another. When time ceases to be time there shall be no "first" or "last".

With the force of gravity removed, objects go flying off into space. But is that not what happens in love as well?

first meetings:

'And in the dark our nakedness was radiant
As slowly it inclined...
You slept, the lilac stretched out from the table
To touch your eyelids with a universe of blue,
And you received the touch upon your eyelids
and they were still, and still your hand was warm'

"If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met"

In itself, a passer-by whom you have seen at some time in your life means nothing new..but within the terms of the image, a moment of life, one and unique, her form is recorded, truly seen, perfect and simple.

Reaching down into the furthest depths of the recreation of life, to carve out time, until only the moment remains, and only the most perfect image stands, still, fresh, open, trembling, a rolling sky-blue, the sparkling of eyes, the flash of fire, the slow burning of the blue in the red, the thawing of ice by the spring breeze, the inky waters stirring, the stuttering of words on your lips. A new time entering the old, sliding into it in the dark, the shock of the return, unscripted and unbroken.