The autumn wind chills my lips

Old friends

 

Old phrases from the past often pop into the mind. Old friends that have been part of the journey but also "home". Journey as well as home. Words morphing and evolving, becoming new yet remaining the same.

In an introduction to Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North" I first found a little poem by Buson which had the lines:-

When I speak well of myself 

and criticise another

the autumn wind chills my lips

I think these words capture a possible reality. No choice is involved, there is no "morality" as such, yet words of condemnation, of judgement, simply wither on the lips. This is where "god enters in when the self goes out." Nothing actually changes, yet all things are new.

The autumn wind. Lip chilling?

Speaking in a more prosaic way, it can be the way suffering "ends". This can be likened to our hands avoiding a red hot hob. No one need tell us to keep our hands off. We know it burns. When the reality of any "immorality" is known, seen, it is over. No choice is involved.

I love the way words and quotes evolve. Returning to them as old friends they are yet found as new.

The evolution of words and communication

One saying from the Jewish tradition comes to mind, that "No one should be judged in their hour of grief." From the very beginning it appealed. Now, after so many years of the Buddha's  "pessimistic" statement that "all is suffering" the heart knows that each and every moment is an "hour of grief" and therefore all judgement of others withers on the lips.

Words are remembered, returned to, repeated, yet are always new.

A time of grief

What has helped me clarify this is reading up on Finnegans Wake, and James Joyces playing with words within his Nightmaze. There is no apostrophe missing from the title, simply because even just two words can be known, read and understood in so many ways. To "awaken", "a ships wake", Finnegan as one man, or as a family? Even the books title has not exhausted its "meaning". Has it in fact a definitive meaning or is it rather empty and therefore having the potential to be all things to each unique and precious human being? 

The uniqueness of each

It makes me now think of the vast difference between the Word made text and the Word made flesh. Of  the tragedy of  fundamentalist and literalists of all Faiths who seek to impose one meaning for all.

Another old favourite, Meister Eckhart's "they do him wrong who take God in just one particular way; they have the way rather than God." One way can be ours and  in a sense particular, yet if not clung to, identified with, if it is accepted in gratitude, and if we "kiss the joy as it flies" (Blake) then we do have "God"  yet never one in one particular way that we might be tempted to think must be for all.  The moment comes and goes, home but also journey.

"He who kisses a joy as it flies, lives in eternities sunrise"

What word would Joyce coin to express such a thing?

I am beginning to see the beauty of Finnegans Wake, even without ever having read it. Beginning to see the intent of  Joyce, and maybe why he was chuckling to himself long into the night while poor Nora was just regretfully kissing goodbye to the thought of royalties!

According to my Bluffers Guide, the Wake has two main characters, Humphrey Chimpen Earwicker and his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle. One game for those who actually attempt to read the book is to spot how the initials of these two constantly appear in various guises and transformations. "Here comes everybody" (HCE) is one such, and extremely apt given the way this particular blog has unfolded.

"Here comes everybody". One interpretation.

"We are all one, yet we do not know it.What we must become is what we are", as Thomas Merton ( or Father Louis, or Tom) said once in Bangkok not long before his death.

There is a beautiful word in Pali, mudita, meaning to share the joy of others. Mudita is one of the four divine abidings of the Buddhist Faith. Its opposite  can be thought of as jealousy. Mudita, "an inner wellspring of joy that is always available", just as God is always there to enter when we "leave ourselves behind". The Buddha also declared mudita as the "hearts release", and love (metta) as the "liberation of the heart".

Mudimetta

Thinking of "here comes everybody", our release is to be and share with others. Not just joy, but moments of grief, in fact all things.  Just as the words of Joyce blend into one another, amalgams of multiple languages,  often far more than merely two things becoming "as one."

At one time Joyce said that any reader of Finnegans Wake was "part of the process" and therefore not a passive observer; and that in fact no one could read too much into it. Samuel Beckett, who knew Joyce, said that Finnegans Wake was not about anything, but was the thing itself. 

The thing itself

Whatever anyone else makes of all this,  for me it all has resonance with "Love has no why". Bring in a "why" and all is lost; time and distance separate us from Reality.

Maybe to finish, a quick look at one or two words used by Joyce as he chuckled his way through the night. Let me leave for now the word Joyce coined for thunder (of which he was afraid) bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk, which would require far more than bluffs to consider, but start with optimominous, which is said to be "a typical human outlook on life", of  "hoping for the best or being optimistic about what is unfavourable, threatening or ominous" - as a Wakese Dictionary has it. Others maybe will have their own take on the word, however typical it might be or not be of their own outlook, whether upon "life" or anything else.

Thunder - leave it!

Then there  is hagiohygiecynicism, which the same dictionary tells me is a "fault finding contempt for the enjoyments of life", conjuring up thoughts of the puritanical and perhaps the sour faced.

James Joyce was also, possibly, the very first to mention television in a novel. He referred to it as a "bairdboard bombardment screen", seemingly already envisaging its potential to mesmerise, even if not then being able to anticipate having 100 or more channels to choose from.

A relatively early Bairdboard Bombardment Screen

Finally for now, virtually at random, "dawncing", defined as moving in rhythm or dancing "until the beginning of the day or dawn." Joyce loved to dance and often entertained his friends by doing so. His daughter, Lucia, before her troubles, was a talented dancer. 

Dawncing, dancing until dawn.

Related Quotes:- 

"Mutual forgiveness of each vice opens the gates of paradise" 

(William Blake)

"The moon and the sun are eternal travellers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

(Basho)

Postscript:- 

Finnegan's Wake, The Dubliners

Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street,
A gentleman Irish mighty odd
He had a brogue both rich and sweet,
An' to rise in the world he carried a hod
Tim had a sort of a tipplers way
With the love of the liquor he was born
And to send the man away each day,
A drop of the craythur every morn

Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner
round the flure yer trotters shake
Wasn't/Isn't it truth I've told you,
Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake

One morning Tim got rather full,
his head felt heavy which made him shake
He fell of a ladder and broke his skull,
So they carried him home his corpse to wake
They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet,
They laid him out upon the bed
With a bottle of whiskey at his feet
and a barrel of porter at his head

His friends assembled at the wake,
and Misses Finnegan called for lunch
First she brought in tay and cake,
then pipes, tobacco and brandy punch
Biddy O'Brien began to cry,
"Such a lovely corpse, did you ever see,
Tim, auvreem! Why did you die?",
"Will ye hould your gob?" said Paddy McGee

Merry Murphy took up the job,
"O Biddy" says she "you're wrong, I'm sure"
Biddy gave her a belt in the gob
and left her sprawling on the floor
Civil did there engage,
t'was woman to woman and man to man
Shillelagh law was all the rage
and a row and a ruction soon began

Mickey Maloney ducked his head
when a bottle of whiskey flew at him
He ducked, and landing on the bed,
the whiskey scattered over Tim
Bedad he revived see how he rises
Tim Finnegan rising in the bed
Saying:" Whirl you whiskey around like blazes,
Me thunderin' Jesus, do ye think I'm dead?"