"Imagine a mariner who comes within sight of paradise, his paradise, but loses his direction and wakes one morning to find himself lost on an unknown sea. Imagine the starving man who grasps fruit but finds it pulled from his reach. Then you will find my psychological position.
I am that lost mariner, that starving man, my suffering intensified because my goal seemed so near... the fruit was within my very grasp, the holy shore i saw with my own eyes.
Realise therefore my predicament, closed off as i am by my own rings, powerful and weighty. I myself have set them up to entrap me so. In trying to break these bonds, i only add to their malignant strength. What am i to do, therefore? I confess that my heart utterly misgives itself, and i return, again and again, to a position of dismay. There is little that can be positively stated about a stagnant life such as this. It is a fool's position, a negation, an arena of blankness. I am borne down like lead in the centre of my own spite and mistrust, fearing and hating the world, growing sickly-pale with disgust at phenomena, in the end killing every desire to sprout wings and be free of it all, to take flight.
What are the roots of this stagnant position i have described? It begins with mistrust and resentment at the adolescent stage, allowed to take root and grow. The world presents itself as a loathsome shadowplay, empty of meaning, every form alien and isolating. I look on with suspicious eyes, the desire for destruction welling up in my heart."
Thursday, 8 October 2009
sisyphus speaks part 1
"Poisoned is what i am, in the heart and infected in the bloodstream. With sorrow and fatigue. My actions become inhibited, my words drop loosely, my fury and tension increase. All because of lack of fulfillment, my particular curse, my culdesac, an isolating cell. It's a disease that cuts off connection, severs the red thread, a babe neglected in the cradle. So that i react with dismay at life, not being able to respond positively. This is not self-contempt, i am writing of desire and its refutation.
The appaling frustration of the energetic mind, of the adventurous desire instincts finding no outlet. Faced to ponder the recurring events, leading to similar conclusions, banal and grey-toned, no rich soil for the passions to thrive in, no extravagant loves to be cultivated. Instead, my reflections morbidly stray upon the same barren earth, cruelly barren, disgusted with the bitter taste of weeds. Stolen, uncertain weeds of delight, shaky and loose in the ashen soil. And yet now and then, to my surprise, while shifting agitated fingers through the weeds, i uncover some jewel-like flower, some blazing fruit, a token of love solidified and pleasing. In the bottom of my heart though i can never be sure whether these blooms are like those carelessly enjoyed by other men, or are deceptive and ersatz, too easily crushed or disintegrating too readily at the slightest touch...."
The appaling frustration of the energetic mind, of the adventurous desire instincts finding no outlet. Faced to ponder the recurring events, leading to similar conclusions, banal and grey-toned, no rich soil for the passions to thrive in, no extravagant loves to be cultivated. Instead, my reflections morbidly stray upon the same barren earth, cruelly barren, disgusted with the bitter taste of weeds. Stolen, uncertain weeds of delight, shaky and loose in the ashen soil. And yet now and then, to my surprise, while shifting agitated fingers through the weeds, i uncover some jewel-like flower, some blazing fruit, a token of love solidified and pleasing. In the bottom of my heart though i can never be sure whether these blooms are like those carelessly enjoyed by other men, or are deceptive and ersatz, too easily crushed or disintegrating too readily at the slightest touch...."
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
the spectre at the feast
Wandering in the city like a ghost, feeling very far from myself indeed, colder than a corpse, on Sunday night. But i see the following remembered autumnal sights, which seem to take me back to something antideluvian, something relating to my earliest childhood: yellow light in tenement windows, dwindling outside-pub smokers, empty streets and shopwindows. Passing by a tenement a flash of white catches my eye and i look up to see a woman at a window praying in a full, flowing white hijab, bending rhythmically toward Mecca, her arms flapping like angel wings in the amber light.
And in my mind i compose an open letter to the happy, confident freshers: "Egoism is not the way forward. He who is an artist from his heart does not need to blow his own trumpet in the self-satisfied way of some.
I know one thing; in seeking the truth it helps to be humble and even ascetic, to have a spirit of renunciation. This would literally never occur to some of the students in a million years. Their road of excess isn't leading to the palace of wisdom. It's just looping back on itself like empty feedback. They'll never understand what's noble about that renunciation, the spiritual value of it; an embrace of poverty, loneliness, all the strong, cleansing emotions, is like a dose of medicine sometimes."
And with these and like meditations i fold etc to bed.
And in my mind i compose an open letter to the happy, confident freshers: "Egoism is not the way forward. He who is an artist from his heart does not need to blow his own trumpet in the self-satisfied way of some.
I know one thing; in seeking the truth it helps to be humble and even ascetic, to have a spirit of renunciation. This would literally never occur to some of the students in a million years. Their road of excess isn't leading to the palace of wisdom. It's just looping back on itself like empty feedback. They'll never understand what's noble about that renunciation, the spiritual value of it; an embrace of poverty, loneliness, all the strong, cleansing emotions, is like a dose of medicine sometimes."
And with these and like meditations i fold etc to bed.
prelude 6
If i reach the conclusion or postulate as a theory that this is man's natural condition (which i am by no means fully convinced of), i will have to also find some way to cure it. For i know, if i know anything, that it is an intolerable position, and yet the only true one.
So i need something, some distraction or other, to give me solace, to keep me alive no less. Culture, art, religion, music, all have their good points but it's not long before i tire of them all, or rather they come to me tired and strange-seeming, and i reject them, not wishing to see or hear any more. The other great hope is companionship and love. These indeed seem to be the greatest help for the relief of my condition, but the relief they impart has the great disadvanage of being too brief, and endless attempts to recapture the feeling are not wise. The sensations fade, break apart, become corrupted.
Above all i do not want to deceive myself. A question of interpretation, how the outside world is to be interpreted. I cannot lie anymore, i cannot appear to be fulfilled if i do not feel it. In reality, i feel nothing at all.
It seems i'm getting bogged down in conjecture... If this is unreadable it will at least be honestly unreadable, a true product. I have tried to live as a free man, as an honest man, as a man of integrity, and i have found it to be intolerable. My conclusion, it seems, is a dead end, or a blank wall.
So i need something, some distraction or other, to give me solace, to keep me alive no less. Culture, art, religion, music, all have their good points but it's not long before i tire of them all, or rather they come to me tired and strange-seeming, and i reject them, not wishing to see or hear any more. The other great hope is companionship and love. These indeed seem to be the greatest help for the relief of my condition, but the relief they impart has the great disadvanage of being too brief, and endless attempts to recapture the feeling are not wise. The sensations fade, break apart, become corrupted.
Above all i do not want to deceive myself. A question of interpretation, how the outside world is to be interpreted. I cannot lie anymore, i cannot appear to be fulfilled if i do not feel it. In reality, i feel nothing at all.
It seems i'm getting bogged down in conjecture... If this is unreadable it will at least be honestly unreadable, a true product. I have tried to live as a free man, as an honest man, as a man of integrity, and i have found it to be intolerable. My conclusion, it seems, is a dead end, or a blank wall.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
prelude 5
The state of adulthood, then; sobriety, neutrality, barely concealed misery? I am driven back upon myself over n over, into a position of complete subectivity, which to me is identical with freedom, using the self as the only barometer and authority, acting and deciding with complete integrity, being honest to oneself above all else. Acting thus completely in accordance with my subjective, ephemeral whims and shiting viewpoints, i find, more often than not, i reach a position of tormented isolation, as though, by acting honestly, i have merely imprisoned myself in a straitjacket. From this position also springs what i have mentioned above: horrible world-weariness where everything appears to me dull and flat, or things i ought to rejoice in appearing as mere irritants.
Perhaps, though, this position of torment, pain, one might almost call it an illness, is only the old position, the natural one common to every man since men were men. Perhaps it is truly the human condition. What then of the people who seem content, quite glad to live and work and love and die in the world, not reflecting much on its vagaries, or protesting? Is it merely that they are unfeeling and insensitive, stupid? Or do they too have moments of uncertainty, late at night lying in bed, do they go through their own agonies?
Perhaps, though, this position of torment, pain, one might almost call it an illness, is only the old position, the natural one common to every man since men were men. Perhaps it is truly the human condition. What then of the people who seem content, quite glad to live and work and love and die in the world, not reflecting much on its vagaries, or protesting? Is it merely that they are unfeeling and insensitive, stupid? Or do they too have moments of uncertainty, late at night lying in bed, do they go through their own agonies?
prelude 4
But why do i care? Why not take all the canonical works of western civilization and consign them to the trash once and for all, the works that consensus has deigned to be worth reading? The works worth experiencing... Many of them bore and disgust me, and really my aversion springs from the simplest of reasons, that is because at one level, at face value, they are boring and disgusting, old-fashioned...
Maybe the schoolboy aversion to Shakespeare, for instance, comes from sound instincts. Maybe my aversion to religious cant comes from sound instincts, maybe its inevitable given my circumstances and it is my attempt to circumvent this aversion that is artificial and a waste of time. Is it merely because i want to appear cultured and clever? I think it's more out of curiosity. The desire to know...
And then there's the problem of boredom. I am honest about it. I have a desire up to a point. But i have no faith.
No faith; and thereby hangs a long, intricate tale whose details i could rhapsodies on endlessly. I am at the point where each thing comes to me sour and flat, not enlivened, fresh, meaningful in any way. As though, though hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling, i have somehow lost the sharp edge of my senses. A monochrome world, where each phenomenon that ought to excite me appears without meaning, flat.
Maybe the schoolboy aversion to Shakespeare, for instance, comes from sound instincts. Maybe my aversion to religious cant comes from sound instincts, maybe its inevitable given my circumstances and it is my attempt to circumvent this aversion that is artificial and a waste of time. Is it merely because i want to appear cultured and clever? I think it's more out of curiosity. The desire to know...
And then there's the problem of boredom. I am honest about it. I have a desire up to a point. But i have no faith.
No faith; and thereby hangs a long, intricate tale whose details i could rhapsodies on endlessly. I am at the point where each thing comes to me sour and flat, not enlivened, fresh, meaningful in any way. As though, though hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling, i have somehow lost the sharp edge of my senses. A monochrome world, where each phenomenon that ought to excite me appears without meaning, flat.
Monday, 5 October 2009
prelude 3
Defenceless i spose. I try n imagine each thing.. to re-enliven history, culture, for myself. By looking at it from obtuse angles.
The real approach to culture is to discover each thing as it is, to comprehend it on its own terms...
There is something in Burke after all; the theory that each generation has added something, tolerated something, and so that which remains even in terms of prevalent culture, low and high, is something generally accepted and tolerated. Otherwise people would not tolerate it, not slavery or our society as it is. Therefore the masses must accept it. Only expressed in general quiet misery and desperation, of the ordinary type.
Over the centuries a kind of consensus has been built up, of language of culture even of morals. And in the final analysis even the worst injustices and cruelties are merely human products, like everything is a human product, even political and economic systems. In a world of human products and of consensus, i, a human, ought to feel comfortable, but in fact i feel dreadfully uncomfortable. I am bored and disgusted by culture and be received wisdom, hence my attempts to enliven it by approaching it from unusual angles. Misguided, maybe, but really only a way to amuse myself. What i worry about is that thus i am deceiving myself, not acting in accord with my whole, true nature, which is the only conclusion i've been able to reach in terms of conduct. Accords with "democracy", everything the result of a consensus. What they used to call "functionalism". But if consistently followed will not lead one to conservatism. Because consensus is inclusive of change.
The real approach to culture is to discover each thing as it is, to comprehend it on its own terms...
There is something in Burke after all; the theory that each generation has added something, tolerated something, and so that which remains even in terms of prevalent culture, low and high, is something generally accepted and tolerated. Otherwise people would not tolerate it, not slavery or our society as it is. Therefore the masses must accept it. Only expressed in general quiet misery and desperation, of the ordinary type.
Over the centuries a kind of consensus has been built up, of language of culture even of morals. And in the final analysis even the worst injustices and cruelties are merely human products, like everything is a human product, even political and economic systems. In a world of human products and of consensus, i, a human, ought to feel comfortable, but in fact i feel dreadfully uncomfortable. I am bored and disgusted by culture and be received wisdom, hence my attempts to enliven it by approaching it from unusual angles. Misguided, maybe, but really only a way to amuse myself. What i worry about is that thus i am deceiving myself, not acting in accord with my whole, true nature, which is the only conclusion i've been able to reach in terms of conduct. Accords with "democracy", everything the result of a consensus. What they used to call "functionalism". But if consistently followed will not lead one to conservatism. Because consensus is inclusive of change.
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