Wednesday July 29th, 2009

神道 Shin tao (The Way of the Gods) has roots that go back to 500BC though it wasn’t formalised as Shinto, both a path to wisdom and quasi-religion, until the 6th century AD as an amalgam of incorporated harvest and clan traditions.

A typical Japanese might register or celebrate a birth at a Shinto shrine, while making funeral arrangements according to the Buddhist tradition. Unlike many religions, Shinto and Buddhism do not require professing faith to practice, being centered more in ritual and respect for the living spirit of each thing.

How chaos was subdued in the Japanese genesis myth (680 words)

In the eighth generation the primitive gods brought forth Izanagi, the inviting male and Izanami, the inviting female (Izanagi-no-mikoto and Izanami-no-mikoto).

They lived in a great nothingness without height nor breadth nor depth; without light or darkness, without colour or its lack.

Together they thrust their jewel-encrusted lance into the chaos which was like a fertilized egg; as they stirred, its viscousness thickened, and when they pulled the spear out, the last drops that fell from its tip formed the islands of Japan onto which Izanagi, the inviting male and Izanami, the inviting female, descended to erect the august celestial pillar.

And Izanagi asked Izanami: How was thy body made? “It grew everywhere except in one spot, and thine?” to which Izanagi, the inviting male, answered: Mine, like thine, grew everywhere, but more especially at one spot. “Were it not good to place that part of my body which is in excess into that part of your body in deficit?”

They decided to go ‘round the celestial pillar in opposite directions. The female went left while the male went right and when they met, she said: “What a beautiful and charming young man!” to which he answered: “What a lovely and loveable young woman!”

The woman showed willingness but it was the movement of a Wagtail that impelled him forward. Izanami thus bore many divinities; light, rocks and mountains, the breeze and stillness, the oceans and their waves, plants, animals and subterranean grottoes. Each, the rock or breeze as much as any animal or plant, with its Kami: its spirit and its self-ness.

When Izanami gave birth to fire, however, she did not survive it. Izanagi, the inviting male of exalted and fruitful love, in a torment of despair and stricken by grief, lay prostrate at the foot of her bed and wept for his beautiful young sister.

Thus he came to know his sorrow and his ire and he vowed to rescue his wife from the underworld and bring her back to him, but not before he killed he who had killed his love. But the fire God not only would not be defeated but raged at every blow throwing off new divinities right and left.

Izanagi gave up his struggle and went to find Izanami while behind him one of the gods created during the battle, the impetuous male, wreaked confusion and returned the celestial world to chaos. In his impetuosity he broke the dykes of the rice fields, attacked the palace and threw the stinking carcass of a dead horse onto its rooftop. He left Amaterasu’s spinning and weaving girls hurting in their most intimate parts and even chased the Goddess who makes the sky resplendent, that is, the sun, into seclusion thus turning the world dark and leaving it in a desolation filled by terror.

Izanagi finds Izanami in the underworld as a rotting corpse and she chases him away ashamed to have lost her beauty.

Friday July 24th, 2009

Noah Lukeman and the murky world of today’s book publishing (760 words)

Noah Lukeman is president and founder of Lukeman Literary agency in New York city; an agency that get books into print and on bookstore shelves by offering them successfully to publishers who, in turn, no longer deal with contract-less authors directly.

Making his agent’s fees, which easily account for greater earnings than any single writer on his list, however, was not enough for Mr Lukeman. Five or six years ago he broke into authorship himself with a book titled How to Write a Great Query letter with which he began making money from desperate writers who he would not represent and whose writing he would not read, apart from, and in addition to, the ones he does.

The downloadable pdf document with few words on few pages reached best-seller status, so desperately optimistic are authors in this shrinking printed book market. But despite recognising the exquisite irony of a literary agent with no literary pretensions in his literature, becoming a successful author by selling an instruction book to would-be writers which teaches them how to talk to him, I bought it.

Although the pages my 25 bucks got me permission to print held no secrets I could not find for free from multiple sources on the Internet (like his less money-hungry competition or long lists of successfully published writers who offer advice because they all remember their own decade of rejections) it was at least concise and all in one place- I did not regret buying it and it probably did indeed improve my query letters.

I just received an e-mail from the Lukeman agency advising us writers that in an impulse to give back to the writing community he has decided to now (since May 2007) offer the same book for free but has in the meantime, written another bestseller for the same market slice: writers who want to find agents; and he also offers the wisdom of his advice (i.e. telling writers which are the rules dictated by him and his peers) on his Web-site whose link I clicked on.

It turns out it is no more than an offer to allow you to read his comments in his own Site’s forum for a fee of twenty dollars a month. Not a big investment which might even offer a pay-off for some writers and yet, the leeching quality of his breaking into an income stream generated from the very people he is meant to represent is disheartening on principle, just as paintings galleries that rent wall-space per square metre are: both are meant to glean their earnings as middle-men from a sale transaction they themselves arrange for a buying public, not directly from the creators of the product in exchange of slim help in reaching a middle-man he, the middle-man, offers.

His agency has a slush pile of so many manuscripts that they are not accepting query letters and I wonder where, in a world that has abandoned the arts—that teaches the young that books are no more than repositories of information instead of worlds of literature (faster to find from Internet sources than the dismal task of actually having to read books), where will the next generation find the motivations to become artists of any kind? And where will the world end up when it finishes forgetting how important the arts are to every culture?

Monday July 20th, 2009

Morality and religion (490 words)

I suppose there are still people who believe religion fortifies moral infrastructure; here in Spain it wasn’t long ago that children were allowed to opt-out of Catholic training though they still pray in public schools daily.

At first they changed the class from religion, i.e. Catholicism; to the comparative study of religions, although the only relativism taught was how correct Christ’s teachings were when compared to all the other, silly, religions. When Franco’s pall was finally lifted after nearly 30 years of slow change and children really had a choice about being indoctrinated with their ancestor’s religious beliefs, they were then offered the choice between religious study and ethics, as if without the former they had no way to learn the latter.

As if without a fear of God, a fear for one’s own immortal soul or the threat of some kind of retributive punishment after death, we would just throw our hands up and say: “Well, since it doesn’t matter anyway I might as well drink blood squeezed from live babies!” In fact, in my experience, there are as many good people and villains among the demographics of theists as that of atheists.

Indeed, if we looked more closely at some widely agreed moral infraction like say: paedophilia, I bet we would find that men forced to celibacy for their religious practice are the more frequent offenders.

So why don’t we, the unafraid of divine wrath, go on rampaging binges of wildly sinful behaviour? In part, I think, it is no more than the fact our basic biological motives: the altruism that serves both society and the altruist, empathy that impels us to feel the pain we inflict on others, or the sympathy to turn the tables on ourselves when considering the personal advantage taking from another would attain—seeing ourselves reflected in our potential victim’s eye, is largely due to an innate socialising instinct that stems not only from our need to live in collaborative fashion with others of our species but even more, just like dogs, we become confused in our own identities when out of contact with our taxonomical peers.

There is also self-image which is attached implacably to the self-esteem which suffers when our judgement, skewed by self-interest, allows us to cross our own moral boundaries. To a Christian this poses a lighter threat to his psychic well-being since once the pleasure is lived and real contrition arrives, his loving God will forgive him—it is a far more difficult thing to acquire one’s own forgiveness and nothing, after all, is harder to live with than remorse.

Saturday July 18th, 2009

Music and Love (280 words)

Some friends and I went to see Omar Faruk play in the old Moorish gardens of Jerez under a crescent moon last night. We, the audience, had the added luck to have Arto Tunçboyaciyan join Faruk and his five-man band, adding his talents and humour to the proceedings.

At one point Arto, the Turk, looked across the stage at I’m not sure which, either the Greek keyboardist or the Israeli Jew on guitar—perhaps both, and said: if we can make music together all men should be able to get along; and Faruk added: “What Sufism has taught me is that we needn’t all love one another as long as we just respect each other.”

And it made me think. Even I who was not grown in religious soil of any kind and, I think, also most occidentals, know the Old testament’s teaching about loving one another (Leviticus 19:18): “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” is impossible to accomplish among mere humans and yet I had never questioned that, as an ideal, if we all loved each other as we do ourselves the world would be much improved.

When I thought about it more deliberately however, I realized that not only is our own capacity for real love limited to a small number of subjects but that it would be anything but nice to be loved by everyone else.

If we reached for less than love and just respected each other as we do ourselves instead, it would not only be enough but preferable.

Friday July 12th, 2009

Temeris Mortis (1090 words)

'Men, commonplace and ordinary, do not seem to me fit for the tremendous fact of eternal life. With their little passions, their little vices and virtues, they are well enough suited in the workaday world; but immortality is much too vast for beings cast on so small a scale'
SOMERSET MAUGHAM

As this collection of thoughts and stories, which I call my Mental Workshop, grows older—four years old a month ago—I see trends reveal themselves that reflect my mood, or the reflections consequent to my reading and conversations of the time. Periods of months together about art, theology, science, or the eternal mysteries of relations between the opposing genders of our species, (i.e. love). It is sometimes light-hearted sometimes gloomy, sometimes proud, at others insecure: and the collection of written reflections becomes in itself a reflection for their author.

I have been reading Julian Barnes’ Nothing to be Frightened of, yet another book by an old man writing about death: “…fear of death irrational?” Barnes asks, and answers himself: “Why, it is the most rational thing in the world—how can reason not reasonably detest the end of reason?”

Soothing reading I guess, as Montaigne believed: Since we cannot defeat death, the best form of counter-attack is to have it constantly in mind in order to make its abyss appear less formidable.

I am long familiar with Barnes’ shorter work which I have always read with admiration for his dominion as word-smith but upon reading my first book-length composition by him I realize he is so much more, he is a master of the word and, ultimately, that is where literature resides, in the word.

He describes being described by a literary critic with a coined word: polyphiloprogenitor, because the critic said of him: “Barnes is father to forty books and four children”.  An intriguing mind, don’t you agree?

The book gives him room to speak in what seems a breezy, spontaneous, conversational tone while, in fact, he weaves a medley of ideas and narrative in a complex web of self-reference.

Although I have yet to finish the book he has already provided me with a rare insight into each’s own mortality, an original thought added to the basket of old wisdoms and observations. He says all of us non-old people imagine, naturally enough, our extinction as a goodbye to life when in fact (for those lucky enough to reach senescence) it is not a leave-taking from life but rather a goodbye to old age.

It is heartening to realize that in a world newly turned away from the wisdom of age, a world where the young know more relevant information than the old who haven’t had time to assimilate or re-learn an unusual century’s changes, there are still some things a young man can’t know unless he is told by an old one.

Today I sat at a sidewalk café on a street of the ancient, history-soaked, horse-trading town of Jerez de la Frontera while waiting for a friend. As I idly people-watched I saw an encounter which is common enough but with the difference that today I noticed it: two young men who met accidentally in the street a few metres from my table; close enough to watch but whose voices were drowned in city noise. They fell into earnest conversation as if they really had something to talk about instead of just exchanging polite noises: dialogue instead of small talk. I was about to look away to see if my eye fell on something more interesting when a woman walked past.

She was not a beautiful woman: middle-aged, thick-ankled and generally unfit compared to the good-looking young men who talked to each other. But she wore enough sexual symbols in her tight white dress and pumps—in a place and climate where most women wear flat, open sandals and light, loose clothing—that like a baboon’s red and blue ass it drew the two men’s sub-conscious through their eyes to watch her jiggling gluteus maximus’, until they eventually disappeared from view; the whole while maintaining their engagement in their conversation with the conscious part of their minds.

And once again I had pause to consider how we primates are separated by so very little from mere monkeys.

The conscious mind’s evolution has been so much faster than the biology it stems from that it lies to each of us about a duality which is a fiction in an attempt at social contract between the fundamentally dissociative elements.

If my example of the men’s eyes being drawn to a woman they would not be consciously interested in, is an example of biology’s rule, and their conversation a manifestation of the higher, conscious mind (the one we like to think of with free will), then it follows that if I weren’t convinced just as you are that we are each indeed two: me and my mind, the witness and the subject, my mind and the brain it watches dispassionately, I would be able to fuse the two into a simple ‘me’ thereby getting rid of the only one who finds death abhorrent, the one who imagines himself its witness.

addendum:

When Mr Barnes indulges in a prophetic look at his own worst-case demise he sees it as being: "...preceded by severe pain, fear, and exasperation at the imprecise or euphemistic use of language [by those] around me."

The last time I was in L.A. someone asked me that quintessentially Californian question (from within my European kinesphere): "But are you happy?" I thought a moment in an attempt to answer such a complex but direct query with a direct answer but could only think to say: "When I am alone I tend to simply serious..."

And so, in this New Age world where I seem surrounded by those who dedicate themselves to achieving a state of emotional complacency; devotedly escaping what they consider negative emotions, if asked about the pseudo-debate between the relative values of intellectualism and emotionionalism, I would have to answer as I imagine Barnes might: In my beliefs I strive for rationalism while in my behaviour I am slave to emotion. My puny mind (or should I say: brain?) sees paradox where all around me see unity.

If it weren't for the doubt I harbour about my own sanity pointing to the probability I am actually not insane, then there really would be very little room for doubt at all; but finding books like this one provide the grace that if I am, I am at least in interesting company.

Friday June 26th, 2009

The Dream (110 words)

Last night I dreamt of a beautiful house I once lived in for a time. In the dream I remembered its every detail, its every room and shelf, and how it stood on a hillock hidden by carefully tended gardens.

Saturday June 14th, 2009

Peace (1440 words)

I have a dear old friend who is Christian, his name is Bob. We usually live in different countries though we met when we both lived in London and later, we shared NYC. Since then our long friendship has been kept alive by sporadic correspondence of great volubility spotted by occasional meetings, one of which I enjoyed in the form of a recent visit.

As always we discussed philosophy and theology while: I took him out sightseeing, between mouthfuls of food and when we weren’t occupied otherwise in general.

He once again brought up de Caussade, the early-eighteenth century Jesuit priest, theologian and mystic who has been a particular inspiration to Bob’s faith and moulder of his attitudes toward life.

Bob’s description of de Caussade’s central thesis, Abandonment to Divine Providence, goes something like this: Evil must be part of a plan too complex for us to understand since a perfect God could only create a perfect world. This reminded me immediately of Candide and since Voltaire published Candide in 1759 I wondered if his sarcasm wasn’t directed at de Caussade. When I looked it up I found Voltaire was lambasting Leibnitz instead, the brilliant Rationalist who nevertheless is remembered better by history in his alter ego as Voltaire's Dr Pangloss. After each of the terrible calamities that happen to Candide or which he witnesses, his tutor, Dr Pangloss, reminds him: “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"

Besides, it turns out de Caussade was so fearful of the Church fathers’ possible charges of quietism that his writings weren’t published until 110 years after his death and even then in a version censored by a fellow Jesuit because of the impossibility of escaping punishment under the totalitarian Catholic regime otherwise. Meaning effectively, that he wasn’t published unabridged until 1966, nearly a quarter of a millennium after he wrote.

De Caussade’s less simplistic credo actually went more like this: The present moment is a sacrament from God and self-abandonment to it and its needs is a holy state. Which, in turn, sounded to me more like a Buddhist derivate such as Bodhidharma’s Zen.

Although when I thought about it, I realised the similarity in conclusion obfuscates the very different reasons for reaching similar truths: De Caussade’s abandonment is, in fact, leagues from Buddha’s detachment.

My thoughts then took me outside the set of theology and into philosophy where I found memories of Epictetus, the Greek slave-philosopher.

I have always had a soft spot for that great thinker trapped in a life as muddy as Job’s. As a slave to a cruel master, anecdotes abound, like the one where his master, Epaphroditus, amused himself by twisting Epictetus’ leg. Because of his philosophy (it is said) he was able to look on dispassionately, even warning his master that if he continued thus he would soon break the leg and be master of an incapacitated slave; and didn’t shout-out when his master went on to break it.

Epictetus centred on his belief that suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable. The Buddhist-like detachment that results from the discipline to accept the immutable, diverges from the Buddha’s in that it strives ultimately for happiness.

When Epictetus advises: "Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them" I think it is an interesting philosophical considerations but self-defeating in terms of getting what one can from the experience that is life.

I think a successful life, within the context of ultimate purposelessness, is one that is noticed by the one who lives it—one that has events important enough to the one living them to make perduring and cherished memories; peace, balance, equanimity, denial of passions all lead to the opposite: negligence and lack of engagement. 

Epictetus himself may well have found all the reach of life’s possibilities within the small range available to him—one that includes living the full 1 to 10 scale where 5 is acceptance, 10 is joy and 1 is desperate melancholy. But in-fact his life was a pathetic example of what it might have been given the full gamut of possibilities you and I, as our own masters, can hope for.

To me it is clearly a slave philosophy formulated as a reaction to Epictetus’ circumstances when compared to say: Socrates, who refused to live any way but that which he considered correct even when faced with execution by the state. Epictetus' acceptance, like Buddha’s detachment or de Caussade’s abandonment, seem to me, more resignation than peace.

Rather than being a sophisticated attitude that aids the experience of life, the resignation is one for which one must exchange the highs and lows that make memories. Predictability is a poison that dries the sap of experience and what could be more predictable than knowing everything is okay simply because everything is always okay? 

Although Bob and I both realize our ongoing debate is futile in the sense that we argue from different platforms which overlap but do not coincide: theology and philosophy. But it is only futile if our objective is to convince the other or change his point of view because Bob’s lively mind inspires new considerations and thoughts in mine regardless, and I hope the same is true for him because it in itself, is a rare enough pleasure…

To my arguments that life is in an essential way, the accumulation of its memories, Bob answered recently: “Memories may be important to you, but to me they're not. At my age {65} I can't remember a damn thing! Barbara {his 17 year old daughter} sometimes says, 'do you remember when we did this?'  But I never have any memory of it.” I answered: “And thus you prove my point: If you don't live for the production of memories you will end in the sad condition of having none and wondering what you did with your unique and singular life.”

When Bob, who has led an unorthodox life largely dedicated to reading, writing and the search for truth, talks of his self-doubt in his observations of the differences between his life and those around him (he still lives in NYC) he uses the metaphor of the piglet who built the house of bricks and says: “…those who planned for their retirements—even early retirements—seem to have some nice and recurrent highs, as they have virtually no financial worries, travel all around the world, and spend most of their time following their bliss in doing various projects” I answered: “I think the pig who builds the brick house (sacrificing present for future) isn't the sort who can really: ‘...spend most of his time following his bliss.’ Of history's great men in any field- few lived as sensibly you describe- it is a bourgeois construct and ideal.”

Again, in a context of a pointless, existentialist universe: what difference does it make? But in terms of personal experience: I think it is a waste of a lot of potential, a disregard for the possible and the unknowable fruits of the unknown future. I'd say the proof is in the fact that difficult experiences can become as cherished as memories as joyful ones, as long as one lives them with a congruent personality.

Personally I don't believe happiness, much less joy or bliss, are within the reach of those who suffer peace.

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