kulturbrille:amanuensis

There is only really one way to go, before I completely lose sight of myself.

One of the best gifts I have received in my years of teaching is a slim volume of The Hunting of the Snark. Nonsense, but not-nonsense, in its sparse lines an entire universe for you to escape into. It is, a la Coleridge, an agony in eight fits, and it is something to relish, a way of quietly rebelling against the quelling years, during this almost annus horribilis.

Martin Gardner has written enough for an entire year’s worth of thought, and who is to say that this is no more worthy than any other pursuit? It begins, shouting:

“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”

- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

And in its pages, I find that there is hope, hope, hope for every man who dares to step up.

Every Man
Casting Crowns

Is there hope for every man
A solid place where we can stand
In this dry and weary land
Is there hope for every man
Is there love that never dies
Is there peace in troubled times
Someone help me understand
Is there hope for every man

Seems there’s just so many roads to travel, it’s hard to tell where they will lead
My life is scarred and my dreams unraveled
Now I’m scared to take the leap
If I could find someone to follow who knows my pain and feels the weight
The uncertainty of my tomorrow, the guilt and pain of yesterday

谁不曾谁不想
羽泉

有谁能体会有谁曾真的了解
有谁能将永恒变成绝对
让爱或者不爱都能倾向完美
不再有错过的约会
不曾被酒麻醉清醒看待这一切
再多的苦也要自己来背
没有当初的失败那里会有这痛滋味
再美的也总会有残缺
谁又曾真的体会谁又曾真的了解
谁又曾没有爱流过一滴泪
谁不想追求完美谁不愿永恒是绝对
谁不盼付出的一切能够换回一些安慰

不曾被酒麻醉清醒面对是与非
再多的苦也要自己来背
没有当初的失败那里会有这痛滋味
再美的也总会有残缺
谁又曾真的体会谁又曾真的了解
谁又曾没有爱流过一滴泪
谁不想追求完美谁不愿永恒是绝对
谁不盼付出的一切能够换回一些安慰
谁又曾真的体会谁又曾真的了解
谁又曾没有爱流过一滴泪
谁不想追求完美谁不愿永恒是绝对
谁不盼付出的一切能够换回一些安慰

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl was sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

Oh, look, it’s Murakami again. Hello. If only every day was a smattering of tortured philosophy, saccharine narrative, and such bittersweet reality. I read, more and more, each passing day, slowly breaking free of the shackles and sinewy vines that have ensnared me all this while, in the company of one that, just like me, drippingly fills our minds, almost as empty as the young D.H. Lawrence’s piggy bank.

One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, both along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighbourhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very centre of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in the chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fourteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don’t you think?

- On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, Harumi Murakami

All that was terrifyingly unsaid now rolls off the tongue, yes, happily. All that I should have said.

In addition to the artificial lily, the Collected Poems of Toson, and the photo of Raphael’s Madonna, O-Kimi’s second-floor room contains all the kitchen tools she needs to survive without eating out. In other words, these kitchen tools symbolize the harsh reality of her life in Tokyo. Yet even a desolate life can reveal a world of beauty when viewed through a mist of tears. O-Kimi would take refuge in the tears of artistic ecstasy to escape the persecution of everyday life. In such tears she need not think about her 6-yen monthly rent or the 70 sen it cost for a measure of rice. Carmen has no electric bill to worry her; she only has to keep her castanets clicking. Namiko does suffer as she lies dying of tuberculosis, deprived of her beloved husband by her cruel mother-in-law, but she never has to scrape up money for her medicine. In a word, tears like this light a modest lamp of human love amid the gathering dusk of human suffering. Ah yes, I imagine O-Kimi all alone at night when the sounds of Tokyo have faded away, raising her tear-moistened eyes toward the dim electric lamp, dreaming dreams of the oleanders of Corboda and the sea breeze of Namiko’s Zushi, and then – damn it, “meanness” is the least of my sins! If I’m not careful, I could just as easily be swept away by sentimalisme as O-Kimi! And this is me talking, the fellow the critics are always blaming for having too little heart and too much intellect.

- Green Onions, Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Oh, this damp day.

In 2004, in the middle of nowhere, amongst the ruins, once I found flowers.

Where there are gaps, things that come in between, the first step is to acknowledge that all is one. There are forty reasons why, and too much is at stake.

A feast of a day: it is now possible to travel, I have gently considered a superficial precautionary tale while watching excessively shapely people gyrate, and proceeded to work towards that very state, and I have more books to read, and dinner in a plastic Black Sheep, exlempified by the duck shown above. All the pieces are falling, falling into place.

The Heart of Worship
Matt Redman

When the music fades and all is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring something that’s of worth
That will bless Your heart

I’ll bring You more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You
All about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the things I’ve made it
When it’s all about You
All about You, Jesus

King of endless worth, no one could express
How much You deserve
Though I’m weak and poor, all I have is Yours
Every single breath

I’ve known this song for far too long, and now I have a name.

We complain of the darkness in which we live out our lives; we do not understand the nature of existence in general; we especially do not know the relation of our own self to the rest of existence. Not only is our life short, our knowledge is limited entirely to it, since we can see neither back before our birth or out beyond our death, so that our consciousness is as it were a lightning-flash momentarily illuminating the night: it truly seems as though a demon had maliciously shut off all further knowledge from us so as to enjoy our discomfiture.

But this complaint is not really justified: for it arises out of an illusion produced by the false premise that the totality of things proceeded from an intellect and consequently existed as an idea before it became actual; according to which premise the totality of things, having arisen from the realm of knowledge and entirely explicable and capable of being exhaustively comprehended by it. – But the truth of the matter, I fear, that all that of which we complain of not knowing is not known to anyone, indeed is probably as such unknowable, i.e. not capable of being conceived. For the idea, in whose domain all knowledge lies and to which all knowledge therefore refers, is only the outer side of existence, something secondary, supplementary, something, that is, which was necessary not for the preservation of things as such, the universal totality, but merely for the preservation of things as such, the universal being. Consequently the existence of things as a whole entered into the realm of knowledge only per accidens, thus to a very limited extent: it forms only the background of the painting in the animal consciousness, where the objectives of the will are the essential element and occupy the front rank. There then arose through this accidens the entire world of space and time, i.e. the world as idea, which possesses no existence of this sort at all outside the realm of knowledge. Now since knowledge exists only for the purpose of preserving each animal individual, its whole constitution, all its forms, such as time, space, etc., are adapted merely to the aims of such an individual: and these require knowledge only of relations between individual phenomena and by no means knowledge of the essential nature of things and the universal totality.

– Schopenhauer, Thing Itself and Appearance, Essays and Aphorisms

This week started right at the bottom; I recognize the very depths to which I have sunk and to which I have let things tumble. There is no doubt that, despite the veneer, everything is held together merely by hope and faith, and a liberal dose of desperation. My Waterloo, as I have said, it is now or never.

As I pick through the debris of my life and steel myself for the months ahead, I know that despite my frailties and imperfections I have in my mind a clear and defined vision of where I want to be; it is now that I find that in stumbling, in not being quick or conventional, that I am about to lose it all. How paradoxical, that at the end of this journey, having found and finally come to rest, having embraced my mortality and fallibility, while preserving every facet of self, that frequent and familiar theme, that I am finally brought, as if in Kafka’s Before the Law, where a man had to sit for years and years before the gates, signifying the law, and as he withered and was about to die:

“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

- Kafka, Before the Law

But in reality, I am already here, able and willing, human and prepared, except that I cannot find entry. I plod on, transforming and unbecoming, waiting.