In, but not of, the words

Anne Atik

 Strange today, getting on the bus into town and whipping out my Kindle. I'd recently cleared out the downloaded library and not much was left, the biography of Samuel Beckett, "Damned to Fame" and a history book, "Rubicon", on the downfall of the Roman Republic. 

My library defaulted to the Beckett biography, right to the beginning. The author, James Knowlson, quoted a portion of a poem by Anne Atik, someone I had never heard of. I must have read this before but more than likely skimmed through it, eager to get to the actual biography. I did vaguely remember but it had left no impression. This time the words gripped, caught my mind/heart, spoke deeply of words, life - and having now read the biography - very much now of Samuel Beckett himself, his flesh and blood.

Samuel Beckett

The  excerpt:-

A Bible-reading man, he came and left between two holy days he didn’t much observe: 

the Good Friday of his birth, near the Christmas of his death.

His life between, a pilgrim’s progress with a smile

 for what he saw along the way and wrote of,

 oversleeping, age and hope and sloth.

Then saw, and wrote of, wrenched along the way,

 age and hope and helpless weeping. But he would have, reading those two states, rejected both

 as most remotely holding but one part or more than minute dose

 of the inexpressible, whole truth of how it is, it was.

He showed the shortest way to get across a line like this: 

crossed out such words as these to get to

 speechlessness. 

He crossed out rivers to get to their stones.

To get to the bottom, when the crisis is reached and truth-telling begins.

Whatever he knew he knew to music.

He found the pace for misery, 

matched distress to syncope, and joke to a Beethoven stop at the punch line.

But thought that he’d failed to find failure’s pulse.

What that says about failure, music, and us.

Where is the "meaning" of such words? Surely in relationship, hovering in cyberspace, waiting for connection, waiting for a mind/heart to hear and thus know a more intimate reality, a movement toward Buddha. The present moment is the only moment, but..........

"To get to the bottom, when the crisis is reached and truth-telling begins."

 Where and how does the truth-telling begin? What is the "one way" to the hidden ground of love that "has no explanation" - and needs none? 

Beckett was a "bible reading man", but not of the self proclaimed devout kind that drips a nauseating piety, one that sets each word into a pre-ordained theology taught and learnt from birth - creating certitudes that are equated with the "guidance of the spirit", leaving only a mind/heart of judgement of anyone or anything that would challenge the "truth" as now witnessed to and affirmed.

Thomas Merton - Sombrero......or halo?

And how do we get to "speechlessness"? My mind wanders again to Chuang Tzu, as translated by Thomas Merton:-

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find one who has forgotten words? That is the one I would like to talk to.

Certainly, in this time of so many words, with so many seeking to convince, to indoctrinate, to ensnare within their system, how refreshing it would be to hear the one who has forgotten words.

How would they tie their shoelaces?

 

Joseph and His Brothers

 I'm nearing the end of Thomas Mann's long book, "Joseph and His Brothers". Almost 1500 pages, in small type. As long as "War and Peace"? Not sure, but it has often seemed like it. 

Thomas Mann - like Joseph's coat

Way back I read a portion of the book but dropped it at the point where Joseph hit the fleshpots of Egypt. It was quite a labour then, the translation that I was reading turning Thomas Mann's German into some sort of King James Bible language. I assumed at the time that this was how Thomas Mann had originally written it in German, but apparently this was not so. Just a few years ago I read of a new translation that dispensed with such stilted diction (a diction maybe suitable for the Word of God, especially among the fundamentalist fraternity who perhaps equate it with depth and authenticity - but not for a novel such as this)

Everyman (for himself?)

Learning of such a new translation, my yearning to pick up where I had left off took roots. Let's face it, who can resist the lure of fleshpots, real or imagined? Anyway, I ordered a copy of this new translation, the Everyman Edition. When it arrived I found the small font size very daunting, but a strange determination to get the job done took hold, irrespective of my poor old eyes and the flickerings of blepharospasm. I decided to take the book with me for my stints on the till at Oxfam every tuesday, anticipating reading a small portion while listening to my favourite music. 

The world of Enid Blyton - no fleshpots here

So it has been. For two years or so I have taken the book with me and read about twenty pages or so each session. A labour of love, if often more labour than love. Much of the text is out of my league as far as the allusions and meanings and implications of Thomas Mann are concerned - maybe back to Enid Blyton next? The Secret Seven or the Faraway Tree?

Nevertheless the story is well known, at least to me, and the forward momentum of the narrative kept me going. A great story, even without the fleshpots!

 

Look for the fleshpots in vain

I must say though that the "forward momentum" did stumble just a bit when the wife of the Pharaoh began to fancy Joseph and she sought to manipulate a meeting of bodies, hers and his, this while retaining her righteousness and self-respect! The equivocation and prevarication went on and on for well over 100 pages, and there was I gagging for the juicy bits to begin. But then, really, seriously, what did I really expect but more of Thomas Mann's fine prose - Fifty Shades of Grey it is not! 

End of the road

But as I say, nearing the end now. A mere 100 or so pages to go. Even reading a few pages here in McDonald's, trying to get the job done and dusted. 

No need to issue a Spoiler Alert, as the story is well known. The final reconciliation of the brothers is still to come - and that I can understand. Reconciliation. Of all things......

 "And the fire and the rose are one"

I just love a happy ending. 

Note:-

Joseph's story is told in Genesis (37–50). Joseph, most beloved of Jacob's sons, is hated by his envious brothers. Angry and jealous of Jacob's gift to Joseph, a resplendent “coat of many colours,” the brothers seize him and sell him to a party of Ishmaelites, or Midianites, who carry him to Egypt.Thomas Mann, however, begins his book with the story of Joseph's father, Jacob, who steals the birthright of his older twin brother Esau from their father, Isaac. Mann ends it with the reconciliation of Joseph with his brothers, Joseph by then having risen to high rank in Egypt by interpreting Pharaoh's dreams.

If you google "Jacob and Essau" or "Joseph and his brothers" you will be offered various versions. You will also be offered various "meanings" of the stories, the "lessons to be learnt". Such can be taken or left. So it goes. 

Heading for 300 blogs

Heading for the light - or 300 Blogs

Just a poem for this blog. Losing my best mate this year, this just says it all. Feeling quite emotionally raw at the moment. Reading a biography of Samuel Beckett, "Damned to Fame", Beckett was quite affected by the words - his own life was nearing its end - and apparently his play "What Where" reflected this in part. He had lost many old friends in just a few short years. 

 Oft, in the Stilly Night (Scotch Air)

BY THOMAS MOORE

Oft, in the stilly night,

Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,

Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around me;

The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood’s years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm’d and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus, in the stilly night,

Ere slumber’s chain hath bound me,

Sad memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends, so link’d together,

I’ve seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather;

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed!

Thus, in the stilly night,

Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,

Sad memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

Request

 

I find writing this Blog therapeutic. The words come out from me without trying to convince anyone of anything. I thrive on correspondences and associations of words, I love quotes. 

Please, to anyone reading this blog, could you perhaps think of a quote from anyone, or any source, that supplements any particular blog entry? It can be posted in the comments section quite easily. 

(This blog has now received over 18,000 hits spread over about 20 countries - it really would be nice to get a few responses. Thank you)

Goodbye to all that

 

Well, finally I am able to dip into the Christian New Testament without an undercurrent of memories and associations surfacing from days gone by, when I got involved with a fundamentalist sect of "One Way" born-againers. My involvement never lasted long - any mind/heart, truly open to the Spirit (as we all are), must surely see through the sheer travesty of the theology championed by such people.

"One Way". Their way! In subsequent discussions with such, on various forums, I have often tried to argue that the "One Way" can never be some theological formula or creed, can not even be encapsulated into words at all. And in a way, they have often agreed, speaking of the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus. But sadly, they cannot see the implications of this. If this "relationship" is not compatible with a whole string of Bible verses - not compatible in fact with their very own life experience - it is denounced and rejected.

Thomas Merton:- 

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

Flippancy

Once or twice I have quoted bits and pieces of Merton to the ardent fundamentalists and he has been  dismissed as "facile" and of no consequence, one person even insisting that he should have been thrown out of his monastery because of certain improprieties! Talk about mercy! 

In the beginning

But whatever, I could drone on, but I do finally think/find that the "flippancy" of the self-proclaimed "saved" has been washed out of my system. I can read the prologue to St John's Gospel and hear the echoes of so many words and thoughts and beliefs of so many of our world's great faith traditions. There is a Living Truth beyond the words, yet always, paradoxically, found in them. 

Looking for the deed?

What exactly the Living Truth is awaits the next moment, the next relationship, the next exchange of words with others, our next activity in this world, where nirvana and samsara are "one" (not two!)

In the beginning was the Word, or as Goethe has said:-

In the beginning was the deed.

Deed and word as "one".

Related Quotes:-

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.

(St John's Gospel)

It is my belief that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of humanity that is most remote from our own........God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, by in the voice of the stranger.

(Thomas Merton, from "Emblems of a Season of Fury")

At the dentists

 In the waiting room at the dentists at the moment. Not the best place to be but it does beat waiting at bus stops - at least here a dentist will (I hope) eventually turn up, call my name and get out his drill. Then again, plenty now who are unable to access any dentist at all - all part of post-brexit "Global Britain" with the pot-holes, constant border delays, long National Health waiting lists and much else, where those responsible for the debacle, the lies and the misery, can look forward to appearances on "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" for a payment of £350,000. Nice reward for causing the deaths of thousands in the UK's Care Homes during Covid. No shame! And dear old Liz Truss, who trashed the UK economy in a mere 45 days before being thrown out, now publishing a book "Ten Years to Save the West". Unbelievable, truly unbelievable. Save the West? 

Beware the Deep State!

Then we have dear old Donald Trump. To open his mouth is to lie. On trial now for some fraud  perpetrated back in 2016, widely tipped to become President once more of the "Leaders of the Free World", just so long as he can avoid the shackles of the "deep state" - the new bogey words for anything at all that thwarts pure ego-mania (I think Liz Truss uses the term) Standing in his way of course is Joe Biden, into his eighties. Is he capable of another 4 years before finally keeling over for good, once and for all? Can a once great nation produce nothing better than these two options. So much for the American Dream, where a farm boy can rise to the top by effort and a handful of dreams. 

Well, I am ranting. And while at it, this blog has now had over 18,000 hits, spread over many many countries. I do love to just waffle on while in McDonald's and in many ways it is simply therapeutic, irrespective of any response. But sometimes I just wish someone, somewhere, would make a comment. The option is available. I did ask at one point for any reader to offer some related quote of their own - I feed upon correspondences and associations. Simple enough to do. No one has to agree with me on anything.

But whatever, I will plough on, casting my words into the wind, into cyberspace. 

All the best to all my readers.

Thank you

 

The One I Love

 

Just thinking lately of another song, "The One I Love" by David Gray. I seem to remember mentioning it before somewhere, but at my age the memory is sometimes not what it used to be - some say it is the first thing to go, for me it is the second.

I'm trying to learn it on my guitar, simple chords, quite easy, and I will add to my repertoire of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "The Wheels On the Bus". I first heard the song when on the night shift at Wilko's, when I was a Stock Replenishment Executive (AKA Shelf Filler) They played a tape each night and we all had our favorites. We all joined in with "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" and "Do You Wanna Be In My Gang" (don't mention the name of the artist Pike!) We all dreaded the Christmas tape, which being in the retail trade, would start early November, two months after the first Xmas stock came in.

But I'm waffling again, in McDonald's with my coffee. But yes, "The One I Love", which I liked, and not listening intently to the lyrics - concentrating instead on making sure the AnuSol was placed on the correct shelf and aisle - took to be a simple "boy meets girl" love song. "You're the One I Love" yeah, yeah, yeah. Then some of the lyrics started to penetrate my mind/heart, words about bullets whispering through the grass, and tracers in the sky, of blood leaking out.

So I looked up the lyrics, and its about a guy breathing his last on some battlefield (take your pick, there's plenty to choose from) and with his dying breath his vision is not of heavens or hells, but of his first dance with his loved one, holding hands on "the old dance floor". Or maybe his last dance. Gut wrenching, and now two weeks into kicking my anti-depressants, tear jerking. But somehow, strangely, tears more of affirmation than despair. Anyway, here is the song....

Gonna close my eyes
Girl and watch you go
Running through this life, darling
Like a field of snow
As the tracer glides
In its graceful arc
Send a little prayer out to ya
'Cross the falling dark

Tell the repo man
And the stars above
That you're the one I love, yeah

Perfect summers night
Not a wind that breathes
Just the bullets whispering gentle
'Mongst the new green leaves
There's things I might have said
Only wish I could
Now I'm leaking life faster
Then I'm leaking blood

Tell the repo man
And the stars above
That you're the one I love
You're the one I love
The one I love

Yee hee, yee hee

Don't see Elysium
Don't see no fiery hell
Just the lights up bright, baby
In the bay hotel
Next wave coming in
Like an ocean roar
Won't you take my hand darling
On that old dance floor

We can twist and shout
Do the turtle dove
And you're the one I love
You're the one I love
The one I love

Yee hee, yee hee

Not sure about the "yee hee, yee hee" bit, just might leave it out when I try entertaining the grandkids.

Who is the "repo man"? I see it as that love cannot be repossessed. Love is the hidden ground in which we live and move and have our being. Someone once said that love is the reason that there is something rather than nothing, and another (Meister Eckhart) said that "love has no why". So tell the repo man to stuff it.

Make of that what you will, meanwhile maybe think of the things "you might have said" to your own loved ones, and say them. Before you're shot down.

Mercy

 Maybe time to get back to my roots, i.e. a sequence of quotes strung together by a loose assembly of stray thought perhaps totally irrelevant. 

How to sum up how I see/understand/live things....

 "Love is why there is something rather than nothing" (Source unknown, but then, who cares?)

Those aghast at our world's suffering will find that difficult to square with the reality they inhabit, but there you go. 

 "Love had no why" (Meister Eckhart)

Maybe "conclusions" and ardent beliefs can mess us up? Hang loose. 

As far as Reality, in our relationships, then the key word is "mercy". 

"When I speak well of myself and ill of others, the autumn wind chills my lips" (Buson)

When the autumn wind blows then, as Krishnamurti would say, "it is over". When seen, it is over. As Merton once wrote:-

The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual. Spiritual life is guilt. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and you breathe it.

(from "Day of a Stranger")

 

So, love is why there is "something" rather than nothing; love has no why; and the key to life with others is Mercy. 

Merton again:-

The Cross is the sign of contradiction - destroying the seriousness of the Law, of the Empire, of the armies, of blood sacrifice, and of obsession.

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

 

A final word from Rumi:-

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation"

So be merciful towards my own translation.

Pop biographies etc

 Back in McDonald's (have I ever been away?) and some workman is repairing some piece of electrical set-up. Quite a shrieking of electric drilling, and it makes a change from children screaming. 

Well into pop biographies at the moment and one quote caught my eye...

I have always believed that rock ’n’ roll comes down to myth. There are no “facts.”  (Lester Bangs, in "Rod Stewart")

Not actually reading a Rod Stewart biography, but the quote was from another book sampled. No "facts". It makes me think of the art of translation......and it is an art. Samuel Beckett apparently suffered much as he sought to translate his own works, written in French, into English (or vice versa) Sometimes he gave up the job as impossible. Very easy to translate "the cat sat on the mat" but when you get down to nuances of expression within one language to translate/express the self-same thought/feeling into another becomes a daunting task. The implications of all this is far reaching. I leave it to you. 

For me it relates to "judgement", particularly of others. Reflect upon this:-

It’s difficult to be a legend. It’s hard for me to recognize me. You spend a lot of time trying to avoid it…. The way the world treats you is unbearable…. It’s unbearable because time is passing and you are not your legend, but you’re trapped in it. Nobody will let you out of it except other people who know what it is. But very few people have experienced it, know about it, and I think that can drive you mad. I know it can. I know it can.

 (James Baldwin, interviewed by Quincy Troupe)

It's difficult to be anybody in this world, where "hell is other people". In a preface to a bio of Elvis Presley I found this:-

“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel,” Milan Kundera wrote in what could be taken as a challenge thrown down to history and biography, too. This suspension of judgment is the storyteller’s morality, “the morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding.” It is not that moral judgment is illegitimate; it is simply that it has no place in describing a life.

To be honest, thoughts on this bring me to tears, still being emotionally raw from ditching anti-depressants (into the second week now)

We are all living "lifes" and the judgements are terrible at times. "Judge not, lest you be judged". So true. We can know ourselves in the judgements we make of others, and we can therefore stand condemned while the one we judge rests in the mercy and grace of Reality.

But whatever, back to the biographies. Reading one on Charlie Watts at the moment. A good man, beautifully flawed as we all are......" there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" as Leonard Cohen sings in "Anthem". Just stop trying to make a perfect offering! 

As Keith Richards, his bandmate, said:-

He was a very private man. I always had the feeling that I wouldn’t necessarily step over or enquire about something, unless he wanted to talk about it. There was no side on him, there was no act to follow. Charlie was just what you got, which was Charlie. He was the realest guy I ever met.

So Charlie was just Charlie, which says it all, or says nothing. Take your pick. 

PS One story from the book made me laugh, about Keith Richards in his library, on steps reaching and stretching up to get a book on anatomy by Leonardo da Vinci from the shelves. He slipped and did his collar bone. Keith reports that while he never got the book, he learnt a lot about anatomy!