Zobenigo

Copernican linguistics

2011-02-20T09:58:00.005Z

I gather from the comments of some of the fans of the program W Strone Sztuki (Towards Art) on Polish Radio 2, now discontinued, that they do not like the new program Jest Taki Obraz (There is such a painting) which replaced it for the same reason for which I do not like it. The new program is... well, American. It discusses contemporary art as if it were the same category of activity as the classical arts, so you get Van Eyck and Damian Hirst side by side (indeed, you get entirely meaningless comments like "Van Eyck inspired Damian Hirst"); often discusses works from which I tend to shrink -- the sort that belong in the other room; and when it does discuss works which I like, which belong in this room, it discusses them in ways which strike me as either vulgar or dumb.

Or, usually, both.

But above all, in American ways: whole programs are nothing but a repetition of what the participants gleaned in American art criticism. A better -- more honest -- title for the program would be "American Theory of Art in 100 Objects".

With such a title, the program might be considered a kind of popularizing program. Such programs do have their place, they are a kind of translation project, I suppose. But if so, then this one does not qualify because it does not translate well: it does not translate into Polish -- a language traditionally used in polite society in Poland -- but into some horribly mangled and perverted, degrammatized and gracelessly foreignized thing. Its so grammatically and phonetically inept that it sounds... unschooled, retarded -- the foreign terms used are both formed and inflected no better than an elementary school kid from the provinces might.

Thus, for instance, today's program talked about dezajnerzy, by which the participants meant projektanci (designers). It's a bad import: anyone who speaks English half-decently knows the word is pronounced [dih-zahy-ner] meaning that the Polish equivalent, if one were needed, should be dyzajner.

Of course, the participants wanted to use the word dezajner because it sounds with it (American), whereas the word projektanci sounds -- well -- old (Polish). But if that is the case, then why not have the program in American English? That would sound even more with it. Better yet, why not make the program in American English and air it in Texas and leave us alone?

More to the point: when we use the word dyzajner because it sounds better than its equivalent projektant, we are engaging in a kind of deception. Our message is not merely the equivalent of the English concept "designer", for which purpose the word projektant would do just fine. The meaning of the term dezajner is "a cool, fashionable person engaged in the old business of projektant which this person makes very exciting through his superior coolness". Clavell's readers will fondly remember the dwarf deer; Orwell's -- The Ministry of Truth.

Like any attempt to pervert language, the exercise is deeply suspect.

Just how suspect is made apparent by a parallel from the anglification of Japanese politics. When a Japanese politician uses the new word manifesto instead of the tried and true seiken kouyaku, he replaces a familiar, legible word, made familiar by its frequent use and additionally transparent by its being written in ideograms which make its semantic roots abundantly clear; he replaces this word with an unfamiliar word which is on account of its unfamiliarity naturally hard to grasp. This new word is slippery by virtue of its lack of dictionary definition, and its use allows the speaker to be vague, to make uncertain and deniable claims and promises. In short, the use of the word manifesto is intentionally deceptive.

Five hundred years ago the great astronomer Copernicus described the phenomenon known in English as Gresham's law; he was not the first to discover it: Arab scholars had written about it two hundred years ealier. The principle is summarized in the dictum that bad money drives out the good. In other words, when the government begins to debase the currency by issuing coinage with lower metal content, people prefer to use it to make payments (thereby getting rid of it) while they hoard the good money, with the result that the good money disappears from circulation.

We better take care.

If it is true that good writing depends on good thinking, then, it follows that good thinking depends on good language -- a language which is clear, or, as the evangelist puts it "Yes, yes, no, no". When we have debased our language and replaced it thoroughly with the new, useless coinage, a language of vague images rather than clear meanings, we will become even dumber than we are already.

You have been warned.

Lying about ugliness

2011-02-06T07:45:00.003Z

It is customary for women to make fun of men for being the silent types, by which they mean -- not talking through their problems like "normal" people should. But it is often not possible to talk about our problems: first, because our interlocutors generally do not understand them -- as most for instance do not understand that it really does upset me to be in ugly rooms, surrounded by ugly, badly dressed people; but, more importantly, because by talking about our problems honestly, we tip our hand. For instance, if I were to tell anyone that I have never overly loved my mother (i.e. never particularly desired to have her company, approval, or sentiment), my interlocutors would most likely say (or at least think) that I am cold, selfish and ungrateful, by which they would in fact understand that I am not likely to develop and emotional co-dependency and therefore not easily emotionally manipulated.

It would of course be all true, but unwise to advertise. People are willing to enter into barter with us when they think that they can easily have the better of us; if they suspect that may not be the case, they will simply refuse to play along.

And this is the reason why we do not talk through our problems, not because we are tough or silent or because we want to pretend that we are.

*

Now, not being able to talk to anyone is a bad thing, because it prevents us form dressing our true thoughts in words and therefore from taking a closer look at just what it is that we think we are thinking. My purpose here is to write things which I could never write in any of my public blogs -- so that I can see what they look like once they are dressed in words. Things such as as my finding that I have never overly loved my mother: which, once I have written it, makes a lot of sense to me.

(There is a downside to writing here, though: the honest view of the world, when one surveys it, is truly very dark; if taken seriously, it discourages any human contact at all).

*

Or writing openly, for instance, that looking at ugly people depresses me.

To say this seems unkind, but it is an aesthetic fact. The ugly may tell us all they want that slighting them on account of their ugliness is unfair, or even immoral, but the truth is that we pretty people simply cannot help ourselves, and trying to be otherwise is like putting a lion on a vegetarian diet -- both we and the lion will simply wither away. Of course, we pretty people have to keep mum about this fact for fear of offending the uglies -- and the timid -- and one consequence of that silence is that all public discussion of aesthetics is fake, missing its central element: the way experience of beauty differs between the pretty and the ugly.

Keeping mum about our true feelings regarding ugliness also has a negative impact on our own selves: forced to dissimulate about the way we feel about ugliness and the uglies -- which, given that the uglies are in massive majority we must for strategic reasons -- we sometimes manage to convince ourselves that we do not mind, thereby losing the clarity of mind and purpose needed for successful pursuit of happiness. It's a rare man who can talk and behave as if he thought or felt some way without letting that thought or feeling confuse his self-perception. Not speaking about ugliness, its dangers and effects, not confronting what it does to us, not staring the truth in the eye has a debilitating effect on us. Unrecognized beautism drills within us like the worm of unrecognized homosexuality might an ostensibly male man.

Self-talking cure

2011-02-05T13:36:00.004Z

Recently, by accident, the old wounds opened up. For a month I was miserable remembering how my mother tormented me and how cruelly my father, when I rebelled, rejected me.

How strange is our memory: it has been twelve years since then; six since I even remembered about it last; but now the wounds opened up and it was as if they had been cut only yesterday.

Strangely, what cured me -- quite suddenly -- was not to reflect on how undeserved it all was; and how decent I had been throughout; but the opposite: to reflect on my mother's good reasons for having treated me as she had. In some way, her love for me had been spurned, rejected, unrequited, disappointed: I had fled from her to Asia.

After all, I realize this now, I fled to Asia only in part to get away from America, but also, and perhaps mainly, to get away from my mother's demands on my time and emotions. I could argue all day, of course, that she had no business loving me as much -- or, to paraphrase a philosopher, wanting as much from me, which is, in fact, the same thing; that it was unreasonable of her to expect that I would put her above my own ambitions or my own lovers; etc. But there is no arguing with facts, and the facts are these: she did raise me expecting me to make up to her for the sacrifices she took for my sake unasked; and I refused.

Did she have the right to feel spurned? No. Had I asked her to make these sacrifices for me? No. Was I right to rebel against her demands. Absolutely.

But is it understandable that she would feel spurned?

Yes.

So the story isn't, in fact, what I had thought all these years it had been: that I'd loved my mother and she rejected me. It is the opposite: that I had rejected her long before that, long before she set out to hurt me and withdrew from me my father's love.

Realizing this suddenly parted the clouds. Not because I understood how she had felt, but because I convinced myself that it was me who did the ditching first.

The unexpected therapeutic effect of this realization showed me in stark relief how our psychology works: we don't really care to see ourselves as just -- there is actually no satisfaction in that; we just want to see ourselves as having dealt better than we got, justice be damned. We're not very different from baboons really.

Racims without the coloreds

2011-02-05T12:57:00.001Z

Polish racism is a fascinating phenomenon: it is entirely theoretical: it serves no purpose; it is entirely disinterested.

Western-European racism of the past several centuries had a purpose once: it was a useful ideology with which to justify foreign conquests: the coloreds were stupid, and therefore the White Man had to intervene for their own good. Today, in Western Europe racism appears on the wane -- mainly because the traditional roles have changed: Asians and Africans are today our customers, and increasingly -- investors. And customers, well, you know, our customers are our masters, as the saying goes. Therefore, the dominant mainstream ideology in the West today pretends that we are all equal, whether white or colored. What's more, it leans towards the sycophantic: after all, if you are trying to sell somebody a product, it's a good idea at least to say that you admire their culture.

Polish nineteenth century antisemitism, as ugly as it was, made sense, too: if you are a poor, lower-middle class semi-professional and find it difficult to compete with others on the basis of job skills alone, antisemitism can be a useful tool: the anstisemite says -- just as the South African racist did -- "Don't hire the dirty so-and-so, hire me". It's ugly, but it works.

But today there are neither Asians nor Blacks in Poland (and only 7,000 Jews). Hating them therefore serves no purpose. It is entirely theoretical. It is -- disinterested. It is, as it were, racism pure, unsoiled by self-interest.

Its source is probably the very strong desire not to be a B-class nation anymore; imagining oneself member of the Great Ruling White Race probably helps us with low perception of our own worth and status. Perhaps, also, a strong desire to join the imagined Western Team (which, basically, means The A (for American) Team) also plays a role. For people who have not thought about the issues much, the Western team seems to be European, Christian, and white. (The idea that the Western Team may really be about law abiding, human rights and personal liberties is probably too sophisticated for most of us). Strongly desiring to be on the team, we want to be European, Christian and white. And, a little like the new boy in the playground, we feel that expressing strong animosities towards those who aren't on the team will somehow buy our way in.

Ironically, our outspoken racism has the opposite effect: it embarrasses precisely those into whose sympathies we wish to creep.

Symbolically speaking, our racism is a retread. Economically, we have graduated from driving previously-owned German cars, but only in time to test drive some previously-owned German ideas.

Royal panties

2011-02-05T12:02:00.003Z

I am unable to make up my mind how to feel about Princess Royal's new line of sexy lingerie. Is it more dumb -- trading the long term value of the royal brand for a quick profit on a ridiculous product; or more pitiful -- a princess aspiring to be... a fashion designer?

What's next? Personal trainer?

The Cambodian border ado

2011-02-05T11:54:00.002Z

Watching the unfolding Thai-Cambodian border conflict is like watching a surrealist comedy: Monty Python could not have come up with anything more absurd. In one statement, for instance, the PM promised to solve the land-title problems of those Thais who live in the disputed areas. I read it at breakfast and nearly choked to death on my egg: if he does that, then Thais living in the disputed areas will be better off than the rest of the nation -- 95% of Thais don't have a clear title to their land because the state has failed to build the necessary legal infrastructure where it is perfectly free to do so. Clearly, it's in their favor, then, if Cambodia should dispute not just 4.5 square kilometers but the whole of the country. But seeing my gym assistant this morning shake his fist at the pictures of Cambodian army on TV I realize that he at least has not stopped to think about it.

The tale of two cities

2011-02-04T04:38:00.005Z

A funny thing happened on the way to the dentist: arriving at the waiting room I was assailed by the sheer ugliness of everyone there: misshapen faces, flabby bodies, shapeless feet, very bad skin, cloudy eyes, dressed in rags, with uncombed, stringy hair. The waiting room, equipped "utilitarian" -- cheapest paint and chairs unrelieved by a single picture or flower; windowless; with low ceiling -- also smelled -- on account of the "carpet" -- an idiotic idea in any climate, but absolutely deadly in the tropics. I was compelled to wait nearly thirty minutes while trying not to mind the fetor and averting my eyes from the room and towards the off-grey walls.

My toothache turned into a headache.

I returned home depressed.

This is life in the big city. In the small city, people are perhaps not better looking, but they take care to dress decently -- iron their shirts, match colors, sit properly on their chairs instead of slouching. They comb their hair. They decorate their waiting rooms with a flower or a picture.

The people here on the other hand don't do a thing to look decent. Are they so demoralized by the ugliness of the environment? Do they not bother to make themselves look nice because they know the waiting room will be relentlessly ugly and so will be everyone there? Have they -- given up? Or perhaps they never had the aesthetic sense to begin with? Are they born aesthetically blind? The way people in my apartment building can sit on the hot chlorinated jacuzzi and not suffer skin irritation from the hot acid like I do?

I spent the next few days locked up in my apartment, not daring to go out. This has happened on several occasions before, when the relentless ugliness of a place got the better of me. I got that in college, in America; the ugliness of that place cast me into a long depression which I only managed to cure by leaving. Later, I suffered the same in Taipei -- and ended up leaving soon afterwards. I will leave here soon, too. I must.

Does this happen to you?

Ignoramus XVII

2011-02-04T02:10:00.005Z

Łysiak tells us that Chinese and Japanese painting does not count because it's mere calligraphy.

I wonder what he means by "does not count". If "does not count" = "Łysiak does not like", then, I think, he is right, though I suspect one should really parse Lysiak's "X does not count" as "Łysiak does not know first thing about X". Thus "Japanese painting does not count" becomes "Łysiak does not have a clue about Japanese painting".

All's in order, then.

In order, but still an embarrassment: the dismissal of Oriental painting as calligraphy isn't novel: various Europeans have been pronouncing it since the 17th century. One must wonder at the point of writing -- and publishing a book of plagiarized nonsense. I mean, novel nonsense -- e.g. "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" -- is just nonsense, why not publish it; but plagiarized nonsense is simply shameful.

Of course, the first European to dismiss Chinese painting as mere calligraphy was not expressing an original thought, either: the idea is Chinese and goes back to Yuan dynasty, when total disappearance of official sponsorship for painting starved the profession to death and left the art in the hands of scholar-poets, who recognizing how weak they were at what they were doing, called it, self-deprecatingly, "my graceless doodles".

European painting is certainly great, but European thinking about it isn't terribly original.

I am curious what Łysiak means by The White Man, by the way. He wouldn't mean The Great Pinko-Grey Race, by any chance, would he?

Moralizing with adjectives

2011-02-04T02:10:00.001Z

The night before, still in Phnom Penh, in a vain effort to forget my misery, I took a novel to bed (I think it was Murdoch's The Sea The Sea) but I had to put it away: the introduction was that awful.

It was relentless moralizing with adjectives.

"Moralizing with adjectives" is a category of discourse. It is the favorite rhetorical form when addressing one's own party members. It's a particularly empty form of rhetoric: because an adjective can morally praise or dispraise anything, a sock could be characterized as smug, or self-sacrificing. Such a characterization does not tell us anything at all except that the author likes the sock (or does not, as the case may be).

(Is it fair to generalize that proper speech -- one conveying meaning -- should contain no adjectives at all?)

The introduction was just such a succession of meaningless, value-laden adjectives relentlessly beating up on Yuppies, Margaret Thatcher, and -- well, some kind of invisible, unnamed enemy: "we are told", "we are made to", "we are taught", all wrongly of course, but the passive mode of the expression makes it resoundingly unclear we are told by whom.

The introduction's only discernible message -- one that could actually be tautologically paraphrased -- was the -- patently wrong -- claim that Buddhism's does not recommend withdrawal from society.

The overwhelming impression of the piece was the sensation of the utter and complete A.D. (agitated discombobulation). I felt both intense pity for the author, realizing in how much pain he was writhing, but I was also terrified to know how wrong and how confused a mind could be. Here I was looking in detail at the kind of unstable state of mind in which suicides or murders are committed.

Unbelievably, the publisher let the piece run.

Why?

Sick in Phnom Penh

2011-02-04T01:13:00.002Z

Cambodia depresses in many ways. Phnom Penh is the same excrement cavity it was 5 years ago, littered with garbage and reeking of urine, and, as is the case with all 4th world countries, it is still expensive — featuring much lower standards for much higher prices than next-door 2.5th world Thailand. If anything, Phnom Penh is worse than it was five years ago: it now has hellish rush hour traffic, too.

(I suppose the minister of finance might argue that the extenuating circumstance for this traffic is that every other car on the road is a Lexus).

The National Museum’s collection is much less worth seeing than I had remembered it, perhaps because I have seen the Guimet since. Perhaps only one item’s really worth the trip — a shard of a gigantic reclining Visnhu from an island in the Western Mebon, disconcertingly smiling head plus fragments of three arms, which they will not allow you to photograph whether legally or illegally (too many staff busy selling offering flowers to bribe one’s way). There are also a gigantic Vishnu/Balarama/Rama group in black soap stone, and a sandstone headless squatting hunchback with a pigeon chest, a lintel with a Dhurodhyana-Bhima fight, and three pretty good Narasimhas — but none is worth the price of the trip.

There is no catalog for sale, either. I suppose I bought the last catalog they had — of female divinities in their collection — five years ago.

Airport departure tax is $25. This is an omission. It should be $1,000 and — I should have paid it.

Alas, the worst of the trip does not stay behind in Phnom Penh but packs into the airplane with me: they are my fellow tourists. Am I suffering from severe depression, or are they really what they seem to me: dirtier, poorer, uglier, more thoroughly tattooed and pierced and more disheveled than elsewhere? All look as if they’d been dragged out of garbage. And the faces, oh, the faces, goodness gracious, the faces: they aren't just ugly -- who of us dare cast the first stone -- they look positively wrong, misshapen, as if their maker dropped their freshly clay-shaped heads on the floor while they were still wet.

Mercifully, I say to myself, the flight is only an hour. But the seat’s so tight I am unable to move; and the back support curves inwards meaning anyone over 6 feet tall has to hunch. (Make sure you never ever fly Air Asia). Someone behind me opens a bag of some smelly... feed – chips? — and I nearly throw up smelling it.

I couldn't smell the thing without retching, but someone was eating it and no one else seemed to mind.

Absence of mind, indeed

2010-07-04T08:15:00.002+01:00

Arguments presented here are -- er... shall we say -- disarmingly naive. Their caliber reminds one of the statistic that the higher the IQ the lower the chance of being religious. Thus, for instance, neither lady appears to understand the debate regarding the concept of the "selfish gene".

Ladies: the gene is "selfish" not because it makes us selfish but because it is only interested in propagating itself (it is itself "selfish", but as it is an unthinking thing, that's only a metaphor, ok?). Now, in order to propagate itself, the gene may need us, its unwitting carriers, to behave altruistically from time to time; which, please, believe me, all of us do, the religious and the irreligious alike, although, I suppose, if one wanted to be mean about it, one could argue perhaps that religiously motivated altruism isn't really altruistic, but a self-interested pursuit of salvation? This would mean that only we atheists can be truly altruistic?

(By the way, it seems to me that the whole brouhaha regarding the altruism puzzle exaggerates greatly the frequency of the phenomenon: cases of altruism are highly notable precisely because they are so... rare. Sorry).

The final notion of the review that atheists lack spiritual life -- "long, long conversations with oneself" -- is untrue, untutored and -- intentionally offensive. It is calculated to put atheists on defense ("prove to me you have an internal life!"). And it is silly. What is spiritual about "and He shall smite them with a rod of iron"?

How John's mind works

2010-05-24T10:15:00.006+01:00

John H. of Bronte Capital writes a good financial blog -- one of the best out there, when he has the time to write it, that is, which, to our chagrin is not often enough. It is also a task from which, alas, he has lately allowed himself to be diverted to make the sort of blog entries of which the blogosphere has far too many already: you know, the sort that sport millions of hits and tens of thousands of comments, but whose point is something windy along the lines of "all Japanese/not-all Japanese are Nazis" or "Hillary wears/does not wear army boots". (The basic publicity concept being: if you violently stir the beehive, the bees will fly).

His most recent beehive-stirring-post is an exercise in political sermonery -- of which, we should think, the internet already had more than enough -- and true to the sermon genre -- it is copiously tinged with self-loathing.

The sermonery upbraids the Thai middle classes for denying the poor their vote and then -- shooting them.

(Fair enough, I suppose, about the shooting bit, though in their defense, I suppose, it could be said that the Thai government was acting in defense of private property, a principle which a financial adviser like John should not take lightly if he values his job. But John wheezes on the voting: he mistakes the right to vote for a moral principle. The view is unexamined -- a surprising thing in a man who examines so well the books of banks. I mean, can there really possibly be a natural universal human right to vote? The answer should be plain: voting is a practical mechanism we resort to because it works, not because it is somehow divinely instituted. In Thailand it has not worked for quite some time: what could possibly be the point of voting yet again?)

But I don't wish to debate any of that. Rather, I am moved by something else: when he condemns the Thai middle class, he speaks of people like me. His point is this: in the course of researching an investment idea he'd talked to a lot of Thai middle class, liked them and -- is now riven with self-loathing for having liked them -- now that they have rejected the results of the ballot box (he says) and have shot at demonstrators. I feel moved to reassure John: there is no need for self-loathing: he bears no responsibility for the crimes of the Thai middle class, whether real or imagined. They are people like him in some way; but all people are like him in some way.

John's Thai outburst is interesting in many ways. First, it is interesting to see how compartmentalized his mind is: a cool, rational, skeptical financial man can turn out to be a hot, passionate, "principled" political animal; "principles" in this context meaning something rather special: i.e. "strongly held beliefs of uncertain universality". The more uncertain a principle, the stronger the emotional commitment required to hold on to it.

Second, the post underscores the surprising proximity of moral opprobrium and self-loathing: John was inspired to write his post by the fact that he had identified with Thai middle class. Was John equally firebrand about the Burmese military shooting monks three years ago? Probably not, I imagine: he'd not identified himself with the Burmese military; therefore, there was no temptation for self-flagellation; therefore there were no condemnatory articles. Moral opprobrium would seem a kind of narcissistic navel-gazing, then.

And third: it shows that the best of minds are never safe from the rhetorical temptations of demagoguery (says Lord Vader: "the dark side... is easier... faster"). John can discuss dispassionately aspects of silicon wafer production; but disagree with his political views and you are confronted by cheap rhetoric. "Should we shoot people because they make less than $500 a year?", he asks at one point. How can we convince John that he is obliged to live up to a higher standard of discourse? That for someone of his stature this kind of discourse is simply not allowed?

On Beauty (2) Some observations on Taiwan and the Taiwanese

2010-03-07T04:23:00.004Z

The food at my breakfast place is great; so is its bustling atmosphere. But what impresses me most is the speed with which the food is cooked, served, and paid for. The workers do all the math in their heads, at lightening speed: take, pass on, and fulfill orders, wrap, bag and serve, and calculate what was consumed, total due, change to be made. Instantly. What a difference with Thailand where everything is slow and where adding two two-digit numbers requires repeat use of calculator (since so often mistakes are made on its first use, one has to calculate and then -- recalculate: 55 + 22 = 77; I am not making this up).

So: this is my first observation: these people are smart. It could be genetic -- the settlement of Taiwan was a gene-selecting process, the dummies, one assumes, stayed behind; or perhaps just didn't make it in the scramble of the settlement (throughout 17th and early 18th centuries there were about 8 men to every woman here, presumably the women preferred the smart guys and the dummies failed to reproduce); or it could be cultural -- Taiwanese, being Chinese, believe in education and rote learning; my sister's daughter must memorize the Mendeleyev chart for her high school entrance exam (do I hear you ask: what is Mendeleyev?); or it could simply be the function of a better government which provides better schools; which in turn insist on students memorizing the multiplication table. Whatever the causes, god save the Thais if they ever have to compete with the Taiwanese on anything like a level playing field.

(To some extent, they already do: prices -- other than of real estate -- are about the same in both countries; yet wages in Taiwan are about five times higher. If the difference is due to higher productivity, then Taiwanese breakfast places should be expected to serve food five times as fast. Direct observation bears this out).

The second observation: these people are ugly. The women have neither breasts, nor hips, nor buttocks. All faces are flat, all buddies tubby, all legs short -- the calves especially. The skin is often dull and mottled. This is not to condemn them: my best friends are ugly and I find their ugliness endearing; it is to state the obvious fact. Among South East Asians, Taiwanese stand out for their marked absence of good looks. This has nothing to do with racial prejudice: all Asians can see this obvious fact -- the Taiwanese themselves included. "If you see an ugly, poorly dressed girl, she's Taiwanese", they themselves say. Yes, as everywhere, some people are better looking than others, but generally, the standard is low. Good looking Taiwanese are almost always waishengren -- usually northern Chinese, but there are a few chaozhouren, too; unless they are aborigines. You can walk safely Taipei's streets: you will not be struck by sudden passion at first sight.

The causes of this deficit of good looks are mysterious. Was Taiwan (Fujian?) subject to differential migration? (Did pretty people find it easier to survive on the mainland and therefore experience less pressure to migrate?) Was there -- in an environment of arranged marriages -- a breeding preference for health, intelligence, and brawn which discounted value of good looks? (Since Mommy didn't care if her son's bride is good looking? Indeed, perhaps preferred one who isn't?)

The second suggestion -- that beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- seems to have some evidence in its favor: the Taiwanese are not just ugly; they also lack the most basic aesthetic skills. It is as if they were... beauty-blind. They normally do not dress up; but when they do -- such as when they go to national theater -- the results are so bad that they are -- funny. My dearest friends live in ugly apartments, sit on indifferent furniture, wear non-descript clothing, and when we all go shopping for porcelain together, they appreciate high price ("this stuff is expensive") and a good bargain ("I haggled 35% off this thing!"); they notice neither the color nor the shape nor the workmanship.

As a result, when the Taiwanese do make a fortune, as many do, their standard of living does not improve: they may move to a bigger house, and that house may be in a better neighborhood, but it will be just as uncomfortable and as ugly-furnished as the one before.

Yet, the second suggestion -- that sensitivity to beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- cannot be entirely true: the Taiwanese are not blind to human good looks. Which is my third notable observation about the Taiwanese. All foreigners like to visit Taiwan because the Taiwanese are so famously hospitable. (This virtue was common among all Chinese prior to the cultural revolution; Russell's famous description of the hospitality of Penkingese ca. 1930 still applies to the Taiwanese, even if it does not to the Pekingese anymore). But the good-looking foreigners -- even the mildly so -- are loved to death here: wined and dined, served, cared for and entertained. Seeing one, the Taiwanese will exclaim: oh, he is so good looking! He looks like a movie star!

It is as if, in the arms race which goes on among men, the Taiwanese have decided to specialize entirely in intelligence and hard work to the exclusion of good looks; and they have invested all their assets there. For all this, there remains with them the ability to perceive good looks in others; they have not managed to breed out the mechanism of beauty perception; when they see human beauty, they do recognize it; indeed, they are struck by it; and they then set out to secure through their native great charm and profligate gift-giving.

Beauty is a totalitarian tool

2010-03-05T04:25:00.001Z

Beauty is a tool of totalitarian power. It controls minds; and is rare enough to be easily monopolized.

Talking with Chris (or the virtues of loneliness)

2010-02-06T11:59:00.002Z

Chris is 60, thrice divorced, and, since a year ago, single for the first time in his life. I say "for the first time" because he'd never until now experienced any extended period in which he lived by himself. He'd moved from Mom's straight to his first wife's, from her to his second, and so forth. But now he is alone. To his surprise, he's discovering it is a nice way to live.

On beauty (1) On beauty and injustice

2010-02-05T11:23:00.005Z

"He... has beauty which... makes me ugly", says Iago about Cassio. Beauty -- not penis -- envy drives one of our literary canon's most diabolical intrigues.

Here, in a nutshell, is our modern aesthetics, too. The thesis that beauty is relative is pronounced most strongly by those who know themselves to be ugly. The same people produce ugly works demanding that we appreciate them. The plot is Iagonian: to overthrow what makes them look ugly. The strategy is two pronged: on the one hand, active vandalism, on the other -- verbal denial.

Democracy perhaps makes the success of the plot inevitable. At most 20% of us are good looking, the rest -- are at best plain: the theory that the beautiful are not at all beautiful but only seem that way is bound to be a smash hit.

Good old feudal injustice did not have to deny beauty: the powerful did not have to deny beauty since it was attainable: they could have it through force of arms (Yudishthira: "The cause of all war is beauty") or expenditure of resources (His Holiness to Michelangelo: "Thou shalt paint for no other man but me"). Why, by acquiring beautiful females they could in successive generations become beautiful themselves. (The looks of the ruling class over time approach its aesthetic ideal). But democracy limits the rulers' ability to sequester beauty; and it gives voice to those who can never dream of achieving it.

Beauty being unjust -- so few of us can have it -- can perhaps only be formally highly regarded in unjust societies; any society which is even remotely egalitarian will have to pretend that beauty is not important; or, as we have recently started to do, that it does not even exist.

Talking with Chris (or what to do about boring girls)

2010-01-13T04:23:00.003Z

Chris has worked all his life to build up a good gene-investment portfolio. He has six well-made children (healthy, good looking, intelligent) by three different, quality women (healthy, good looking, hard working, filial) of every different genetic stock (some European, some Asian). Should a disaster -- a flu epidemic, say -- strike the general population, at least some of his genes should survive while mine are headed directly for extinction.

Chris feels defensive about it, explaining why his women left him, and how he is not to blame. But one wonders: is there something going on here even Chris does not realize?

It's been 9 months since his last wife left him, and 7 since he's picked up a new girlfriend. She's much like his last wife: good looking, decent, hard working, and filial. Because she is filial, she won't move in with him, which is what he's complaining about. Chris is 60, but, if the girl were to move in with him, I think he'd reproduce again, diversifying even further his gene portfolior. I want to share my life with someone, he says. He means: I want to keep diversifying my gene portfolio.

His advice for me is to stay away from whores. There are so many nice girls around, he says.

There are.

The problem with the nice girls is that they all want ""relationship": they want someone to spend inordinate amounts of time with them, holding their hands, and talking to them, and this I cannot do. These girls are simply too boring -- all conversations with them are for me one way -- me talking, them listening because I know that nothing new can ever emerge out of their mouths.

This bores me; but, well, I am a generous fellow and, I suppose, could put up with boredom if the sex were great. But -- worse -- this situation irritates them. You are so intelligent, they say at first, full of amazement at my brains, but then, gradually, but not all too slowly, they begin to resent the fact that all the talking is one way, as if it were my fault that they had nothing original to say. They don't only want someone to hold their hand, they also want someone to listen to their drivel.

God.

It gets worse, of course. Few people are naturally happy and free of personality foibles; these last often emerge only in the close proximity of cohabitation; getting used to them, or "ironing things out", as people say, takes a long time and requires hard work. So, for me, any relationship is bound not only to be boring but also require hard work. Then the sex peters out. What could possibly be the point? Why not just pay for the sex instead and be done with it?

Chris's way to deal with the problem is to engage in serial monogamy: marry a girl for 10 years, play at mom and dad, and then, when he gets bored and the sex peters out, quit and move on. I wish I had his patience for personal foibles; and I wish I were not so well read and so easily bored with the untutored opinions of the uninformed. I wish girls didn't bore me to tears.

Some thoughts on filial piety

2010-01-05T04:12:00.005Z

My aunt came and stayed for four days around new year's.

I had invited her because the new year's is the anniversary of her son's death and she said she didn't want to be alone during that time. Out of desperation, and acting on past experience, I refused to put her up at home and instead arranged for her to stay in a hut next door: that way at least at night -- and in the morning, until, driven out by hunger I emerged from my bedroom -- I could be left in peace. Even so, she came over at daybreak and laid a siege to me till late at night, talking at me incessantly.

Most of the talk may have seemed harmless enough: she mainly repeated old jokes and anecdotes (all of which I had heard countless times already) or recounted to me major news events she heard on the radio or read in the press (which, of course, by then I had heard or read myself); but she disturbed my work -- she'd talk to me even though she could see I was doing something; and, worse, disturbed my peace -- those moments when I sat outside to enjoy the balmy weather and the peace and quiet of my garden.

It would have been alright, I suppose, if I had been allowed to ignore her words -- tune them out, somehow; but my aunt expected me to hear her words, process them, and make a reply, doing which placed on me a tremendous amount of pressure. I had spent years of sacrifice and hard work to cut myself off from people who bore me. Why must it be my duty now to be bored by my own aunt?

It is a truth generally held that it is my filial duty to help my aunt; the logic of this argument says that I owe her, in her gradually more and more helpless old age, the care she'd given me when I was a helpless child. Very well, then: I am happy to help her financially; and, further, I am prepared to sacrifice a great amount of my time in just helping her accomplishing ordinary life tasks -- drive her places, help her shop and move things, arrange her drivers, show her how to pay her bills, etc. But does it really need to be my duty to suffer her incessant talking?

Can there really be such a thing as right to be entertained? Or the corresponding duty to entertain?

More importantly: why does my aunt need somebody to talk at in order to feel better?

It's worse of course when she offers life advice: it is she who needs my help, not I who needs hers; what makes her think that I am remotely interested in her advice? Or wish to explain anything about my personal life?

There is a gigantic hole in the middle of my philosophy

2009-12-31T05:10:00.006Z

Over the last eighteen months or so I have been working out a new approach to life. Not new in general terms, as there have been plenty of misanthropes before, but one new in relative terms, because... one new to me. In short, I have decided to stop wasting my time on human contact. The strategy is undemonstrative: I am not going to move onto an uninhabited island or into a tree; as far as the outside world is concerned there won't seem to be any difference: I continue to be friendly and polite; I say hello to my neighbor and to my fish monger; I attend some new year and birthday parties; and I answer -- briefly, but not by any means coldly -- the correspondence I continue to receive; I am still prepared to run small errands or lend money. But, unlike before, I put no psychic energy into any of these interactions; and I limit my investment in them to the bare minimum: I smile, I say Happy New Year, and Fine, thanks!, send a card, and -- move off. In other words, the way I used to handle my interaction with 98% of the human kind -- polite but stand-offish -- I now apply to 100% of them. No more intimate conversations, no more bosom friends, no more lovers. I now live my life totally alone, in silence, between myself, my books and music, my journal and the occasional blog entry -- whose only reader I am. The only person I ever talk to about anything important is the only person who has ever had anything interesting to say to me -- myself.

The theory has been that since no one I have ever met in the flesh (including all the commentators on all my blogs past and present) has had anything interesting to say to me (and with good reason, most being less intelligent than I am, less well-read, less well-informed and less well-traveled); and since most of those I have met though their books have likewise proven undeserving of my intellectual attention (vast majority of books having been a disappointment); indeed, even many of those who have written great books -- books which I consume with passionate pleasure -- Thomas Mann, for example -- have likely been dull in personal contact; I would simply be better off not wasting my time on any of them. And, so far, it's working. The most difficult aspect of the plan, I had expected, would have been the absence of women in my bed, but even that I do not seem to miss. I no longer have disappointing conversations, I am not bored, I do not have to stoop to low intellectual levels, I do not have to unravel hidden agendas, I do not have to please. There really is such a thing as zhu-che, it turns out, self-sufficiency.

The success of this plan has led me to entertain a kind of extreme philosophical position: that the existence of other people is totally indifferent to our happiness.

But, of course, that is not true.

A typical happy day in my life will be filled with two kinds of experiences: nature and culture. Nature -- sunbathing, riding a motorbike in the mountains, watching reflections in the water, sitting through a sunset, dusk and nightfall while listening to birds and breathing in the perfume of tropical flowers wafting on the evening breeze, strolling in my garden in the moonlight or at day-break -- seems to prove the point: in those experiences the fewer people around the better, zero being the ideal number. But culture disproves it. Opera, film, drama, ballet, painting, calligraphy, philosophy, architecture -- all of these take up at least half of my time; without them my life would not be as rich or as happy as it is; and they are, alas, the work of -- men. Not the sort of men I have known, or ever can; and, if Thomas Mann is any guide, not the sort of men one would want to talk to in person any way, but men all the same.

So, it proves, that men are essential to my happiness.

And that is a very disappointing thought.

More on loneliness

2009-12-17T04:30:00.003Z

.

1.

My aunt – an elderly childless widow living in exile – feels lonely and phones me up to chat. "What are you doing today? And what did you eat for lunch?" I stifle my benign yawn, put aside the book - or perhaps the porcelain cup, or the snuff bottle, or the Ten thousand li of mountains and streams - and humor her: I am nothing if not filially pious, and if this sort of verbalization eases her loneliness, then I am glad to provide the outlet – be her receptacle, so to speak, when she needs to go. Yet, I do not have the slightest clue why or how this act of conversation should serve to make her un-lonely: I, for one, do not usually derive much spiritual gratification from learning that others have had, say, an oyster pancake for lunch. Do you?

A friend also feels lonely – despite having good, frequent relations with her family, gobs of friends whom she meets several times a week, and a job where she interacts with dozens of customers everyday. Frustrated, she’d overcome her loneliness, she is sure, if she only had a man to live with her. Taking walks together, she thinks, would splendidly do the trick.

But this is far from certain, as the case of yet another friend proves: he is married: he has a wife with whom to take his walks, a wife with whom, he says, he is intellectually compatible. Yet, he too, feels lonely, complains about his inability to connect (with her and others), and remembers wistfully some occasion on which he exchanged glances with a stranger; and another on which he told some insignificant other how he felt about this or that, stuff, he says, he couldn’t have told wife. "We connected then”, he continues downcast, as if that exchange of glances could possibly have meant a damned thing; and as if he could not have confessed his innermost feelings to a cat, or a fish, or a wall with the same result.

2.

Loneliness is one of the most basic concepts in popular psychology: it is used as self-diagnosis, as explanation for the actions of others, as a mechanism for successful business plans (e.g. Friend Finder et al.), of political ideologies even ("alienation"). It might seem therefore that we all understand it -- the term being so ubiquitous and so easily used by everyone; but the truth is that -- we don’t. The term’s dictionary definition -- “absence of others” -- how very Aristotelian of the Webster! -- seems weak. Furthermore, it does not appear to have an antonym, meaning that it is unfalsifiable (and thus, some might say, nonexistent): “presence of others” means nothing, certainly nothing good, and sure as hell does not cure the disease: as every other pop song will tell you, one can feel desperately lonely in the midst of the thickest crowd.

(OK, pop songs do not use big words like “desperately”. Still, you get the point).

The truth is that the term “loneliness” is used automatically, mindlessly, out of habit, to cover every instance of unease and discomfort for which we do not have some other, immediate explanation. If we have not eaten, we are hungry; if he have not drunk, we are thirsty; if we lack money, we are poor; if we want to take a holiday, but can’t, we are burnt out; if we experience sexual desires but have no release, we are frustrated; if we break our leg, we are in pain; but if we feel a kind of unspecific blah – well, then, we say, we must be lonely. It is a catch-all term, and like all catch-all terms, it means perfectly nothing.

"Loneliness" is a word we use out of intellectual sloth: when we do not feel like peering deeply into our souls to see just what it is that is really wrong with us.

3.

Watching The Wire (it may well be the best drama produced for TV ever) in the company of a pop-psychologists (i.e. every normal person) is instructive: observing the frustration, the drinking, the desultory sleeping around, the catastrophic marriages of the heroes and heroines, the couch pop-psychologist, if s/he gives it a thought at all (which s/he almost never will), will say:

"These people are -- oh -- so lonely".

And, having said that, s/he will get a chorus of appreciative murmurs all around from all the other pop-psychologists couch-assembled:

"Yeah, dude! Lonely!"

But the pop-psychologist is of course bullshitting us -- and himself (or herself): these people are not lonely, they are dumb. They work a frustrating, exhausting job -- in itself enough to make anyone unhappy and which therefore they should quit forthwith and god only knows why don't; but, as if it were not enough, crucially, when they are done with it, they don’t know what to do with themselves; a problem which could easily be solved if they learned how to read, for example. Really, would not an evening with Dem Zaubergberg be more satisfying than drinking and whoring and feeling miserable afterwards?

Alright, perhaps reading is not their forte, maybe they are dyslectic, or just not verbally minded -- they do all seem to know but four words of English (though they conjugate them rather well). But are there no other options? How about chess, for crying out loud, or Argentinian tango, or pickling cabbages, or collecting bottle caps?

Contentment, says Czikszentmihalyi, comes from performing an absorbing activity; but in order to discover what that activity is for us, we must be what he calls autotelic -- i.e. capable of setting ourselves our own goals ("telos"). The Wire illustrates what happens to people who can’t -- which is everyone around, it seems.

To call this problem “loneliness” is thus not just to misdiagnose it – which is bad enough, since a misdiagnosed disease is per force maltreated; it is also pathetic: an attempt to blame other people for these people's own failures. It is to say: "These folks do not feel bad because they are stupid and do not know what to do with themselves" (which comes down to saying, in simple terms, "they are so damn boring that they bore themselves"); "Oh, no! They feel bad because they are lonely!", which is to say, if you parse it with the help of the same Webster: "because nobody loves them". There: it is their parents’ fault, their wives', their girlfriends', their siblings', their colleagues’; everyone’s. Poor little unloved they. What did they do to deserve this, eh?

The maltreatment of the condition which follows from this misdiagnosis is the prescription of a relationship – usually understood as romantic love – as cure; which is bound to failure: take two bored, helpless, unhappy people, who have no inkling as to what to do with themselves, put them together and – presto! – you get... happiness? How is that supposed to work?

But the prescription is eternal: people have always and everywhere sought happiness in love -- without any proof positive that it is to be found there.

Says a philosopher: when someone tells us “I love you”, the correct reaction is to ask “what do you want?” Cute, but not especially insightful. After all, it is not necessary to ask. We know what they want. They want us to un-bore them.

Loneliness

2009-12-15T03:30:00.003Z

I found myself this morning explaining to my old acquaintance why it is that I do not plan to acquire spoken fluency in any of the three languages which I am currently learning. To illustrate the point I described the party I went to last night: there was not a single person there whose thoughts or opinions about anything I was interested to hear; or who would have understood the least bit of what I had to say has I chosen to say it. So we talked about going bald, hair cuts, and the sexual habits of our hairdresser. (Blah). Arguably, the conversation would have gone more smoothly if they (Dutch speakers to a man) spoke better English, or German, or French, or Chinese, or Japanese, or even Italian; but it would have been exactly as contentless, empty, and dull. I had known this before I set off for the party. I only went to be polite; and conversed to be polite; and then, feigning work, left early but also, I hope, politely. Had these not been my neighbors with whom I have to deal daily, I would not have gone and I am relieved to think that I shall not have to go again until New Year's Eve.

Loneliness is something people oft complain about in their lives; and the motivation commonly ascribed to their actions: meeting with the lads for beers, moving in with him or her, attending parties of last night's sort -- it is all explained by loneliness and the need to overcome it. But loneliness cannot be overcome: think about it: there is no adjective that describes its opposite, because its opposite does not exist. Loneliness is the essential human condition and the only way to deal with it is the way T. E. Lawrence dealt with his match trick (he lit a match and held it between his fingers until it burnt into a cinder, burning his fingers in the process). Ouch, said someone to him, having tried the trick and burnt himself. What's the trick?! The trick, old man, answered Lawrence, is not minding that it hurts.

Avon says

2009-12-14T02:39:00.000Z

I had proposed to Brianna four or five meetings a year in various exciting and exotic locations: Paris, Istanbul, New Delhi; I said I'd cover all expenses and on each occasion give her a nice parting gift; and in between, I said, we could stay in touch by internet and phone every day. (Over the last several months I offered her plenty of emotional support and intellectual entertainment that way, which she seemed to appreciate, having no one else at the moment to do that). Now, you'd think a girl of her looks and prospects would jump at the offer. But no: she'd thought about it for a long time and at long last said that she can't meet me four of five times a year for a week or two; she needs, she says, to be emotionally involved for sexual intimacy to take place. That can't be quite true since she also says that what happened to us on her parents' couch was a one-night stand, she never thought it would repeat, and she was OK with that -- which all goes to say that emotional involvement is not really necessary. No, she admits, but she adds that for more, for anything regular, she needs to be emotionally involved. When I ask what that means, she names hugs and conversations; but what she really means is cohabitation: she wants someone full time, all the time. In other words, she wants -- everything. She'd rather have less of a man, less of financial security, less travel, less interesting life, and no gifts, but have that less full time; indeed, she'd rather take the risk of having nothing at all (as seems the likely outcome) than to have what I offered. How strange.

More Mourad

2009-12-12T03:28:00.002Z

Though Mourad tries to sound funny, her description of her childhood does with time begin to sound whiny, and from time to time borders on that famous (and tiresome) anger of modern liberated women.

Whence does this anger come?

Perhaps her lack of understanding of her Indian family offers us a clue. Their -- Indian -- lives may be dull, enslaved even, but they are orderly: they know what to expect and how to behave in most situations; but Mourad -- a modern European woman -- is free and -- without a clue how to use that freedom. She has no access to the old models of being a woman; and the new models which she wishes to follow are incomplete, they are a work in progress, largely informed by ideas of justice and equality, they have not been sufficiently tested by life. We do not know whether they will work, or even whether they can. Many may not, especially the ones which assume that to be truly the equal of men a woman must be like a man in all ways, which probably can't be right, but which further assume in a simplistic manner that men are like this rather than like that, an assumption which is often insufficiently grounded in empirical observation, or at best based on poor sampling.

As a result the lives of modern women -- lives lived by the lights of the new ideologies -- are a work in progress, a living experiment; there are insufficient clues to know which experiments are likely to pay off and which will not; failures are frequent and painful; and the worst of it is that, given how short our lives are, and the irreversible nature of some experiments (such as having children), a failed experiment has a huge cost. Are modern women as a result more or less happy than women were in former times? Who knows; the truth is, that modern life is hard and full of pain and failure and disappointment.

And then there is the anger, intentionally released by feminist ideas, to be used as a weapon against oppressive males. It is a double edged sword: anger hurts the angry as much as it hurts those against whom it is intended to turn -- perhaps hurts the angry even more.

As was to be expected

2009-12-10T08:54:00.003Z

Cette pense m'a long perturbee --

writes Mourad a little further, describing how, in the midst of the Second World War in Europe, by near-miracle she was saved from public orphanage and taken into a well-off family after her mother's death --

qu'avais-je de plus que de milliers d'autres enfants abandonnees, envoyees a l'Assistance publique ou les plus faibles mouraient? Sinon le fait d'etre une petit princesse?

Est-ce pour cela quel'on m'a gardee? Qui donc aimait-on? Ou etait-je, moi, dans tout cela?

The note is wrong -- in as many sentences -- on three accounts:

first: true princes (and princesses) do not bewail the injustice of their elevated social status, but see it rather as a call to duty (noblesse oblige, to whom much was given, etc.): our good fortune is supposed to give us a titanium moral spine, miss Kenize;

second: there is no such thing as "moi-meme" -- a person, an individuality -- apart from being the prince or princess that we are; one does not love a princess the way one may love any other girl; no princess who expects to be loved like any other girl deserves to be one; why: no such girl is one; and,

third: what is this base whining (in itself bad enough) to one's social inferiors (ie. the general public) about being unloved and unappreciated?

You are not a princess, Mme Mourad. I don't recognize you.

Reading Mourad with trepidation

2009-12-09T08:39:00.001Z

Cover art: John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876)¹, Lilium Auratium;
the vase is an Iznik (?) Imari²

Kenize Mourad, granddaughter of the last Sultan of Turkey, and daughter of the former Raja of Badalpur, comments early in her book³, while describing her father's obsequies in the old family seat somewhere "near" Lucknow:

De compassion, aucun de ces paysants n'aurait l'idee d'en eprouver pour cette homme qui fut leur maitre mais sut aussi les proteger, les aider dans l'infortune et accompagner leur vie non sans bonte, les exploitant moins qu'il n'est coutume. Car ceux qui exercent le pouvoir ne sont plus consideres comme des humains, de par leur puissance ils appartiennent a l'univers des dieux. Et qui aurait pitie des dieux?

Suddenly I am seized by fear and foreboding: what does Kenize Mourad, raised and educated in France-egalite, know about divine kingship of the feudal society? In her first chapter she discusses frankly her emotions: anger at the family for not having notified her earlier of her father's critical condition, grudges at her brothers for having been brothers (and thus more important in her father's eyes), at her father for -- as yet we do not know what.

But do we -- do I -- want to know?

Mme Mourad sounds like a modern French woman: confident, proud, and prepared to bare her emotional entrails which she is convinced are important and deserving of universal knowing. (Georges Sand comes to mind). Modern French women are no doubt interesting in their own right; but there seems to be just one way of being a modern French woman, and we already know what that is... More importantly, can one expect them to tell us anything truly insightful about the lives and minds of real kings and princes of another time and place, even if they should be their own flesh and blood?

I will read on Kenize Mourad, but gingerly and with trepidation. I have already heard everything westerners -- especially women westerners -- have had to say about Indian divine kingship, religion, love and family relationships, and I am sure I do not want to read it yet again.

This is just the gist of my misunderstanding with Angelica, too. I had told her that the emotions and the inner states of knights are a closed book to pretty much everyone knights ever meet in the modern world. She did not believe me: "If you behave in a certain way, she says, people will always understand it". But then -- how could she possibly believe me?

Akhila has known me longer and closer; she is also older and more perceptive: "I don't get you", she says with a winning smile. That, of course, is what one aims to achieve: since to be known is to be available: to be scrutable is to be common.

¹ Lewis was a so-called Orientalist, and long dead and forgotten before that term was thrown into opprobrium. In fact, the fortunes of his art revived suddenly in the 1970's, just about the time when the infamous essay by Edward Said was being hatched; from nothing his works quite suddenly began to command seven figure prices. (Indeed, was Said perhaps responding to Lewis's reviving fame?) I'd like to read more about how Lewis was revived. Anyone can recommend a book?

² To this day the most popular style of pottery decoration in Morocco is a kind of homw-grown variation on Imari. Is this the case across the Arab world?

³ Le Jardin de Badalpour, not, apparently, available in English, though, like the Kawabata-Mishima letters, you could read it in half a dozen other European languages any day of the week.

On sharing

2009-12-01T06:33:00.006Z

(This post is obliquely related to my post on the feelings of connectedness).

Someone has recently extolled to me the deep satisfaction which followed upon his having shared with someone -- a rather emotionally distant acquaintance as it turned out, but (perhaps not insignificantly) one of opposite sex -- his feelings in the matter of the impending birth of his first child. "I could tell her", he tells me, "things I could not tell my wife".

When I probed further in order to to establish just what was so great about the experience, I learned that the person of opposite sex in question (shall we say, "the receptacle of the sharing activity"? or perhaps "the sharee", for short?) did not really have anything significant to contribute in return, and that her entire role consisted of nothing other than having heard out the sharing verbiage and then responded "adequately" to my acquaintance's sharing activity (which was, it seems, something along the lines of: "oh, that's wonderful, thank you for sharing", or: was it "I know, I know!"?) When probed further, my acquaintance admitted that the whole experience was not a matter of him learning anything interesting in return for his sharing efforts, but a matter of, er, "emotional intercourse" (as he described it, though his formulation resorted to significantly cruder terminology).

When he then, in the course of our conversation, accused me of not sharing -- being "closed", as he put it, or "secretive" -- as a matter of character, he said -- I answered that I simply saw no point in it. Bland drivel like "That's wonderful, thank you for sharing" (or "I know! I know!") has no therapeutic effect on my soul; I prefer my titillating interactions with members of opposite sex to be more consciously erotic in nature on both sides (even if it leads nowhere); but, most crucially, I can never ever ever expect any sharee of mine to have anything in the least interesting to contribute to any description of my internal states. This is, in part, because of my seven languages and nine countries (and forty-six years) on three continents (I do not know anyone who can match this sort of experience); and because of my vast reading in numerous fields (how many people do you know who read 1200 pages of non-fiction a week?); but mainly because everyone I ever speak to appears to follow the same age-long thought models which I have long since discovered to be false.

(These models assume all sorts of wrong things about the reality that surrounds us: such as that human beings search for love, that love is selfless, that parents selflessly love their children, that religion develops in us a high moral tone, blah blah blah).

Thus, in my last engagement on the subject of sharing, I described to someone my efforts on behalf of my aunt, who needs to find an apartment, a telephone, a computer, etc., all in a strange Asian country and tongue and who relies for all these things on me. Now, I genuinely like this aunt of mine, even though she bores me to tears with her conversation: I engage in that conversation, all the same, I told my interlocutor, with the sense of filial piety: yes, I am bored, but, what the heck, let her have it, I think to myself.

Replying to this, the sharee in question observed that my aunt being the only member of my family to give the least care about me, I better feel filial towards her. This, as far as I was concerned, exhausted our conversation: I had no intention of telling the sharee that human motivations are a mysterious tangle of all sorts of threads, and that not even Confucius himself could ever hope to disentangle just the extent to which my aunt actually cared for me for my own sake and to what extent she simply needed my help in her new, strange home.

Nor was I going to tell him that there was not a damn thing I ever wanted from my aunt, nor could I think of anything I might want from her, my aunt having very little of practical nature to offer; and that therefore I was indeed acting out of pure, unalloyed filial piety: not because she cared for me, as he put it, or more accurately speaking, was nice to me, but because I am generous and kind and filial and loyal. Which are, all of them, things that I am because I am a chivalrous knight.

Which is something no one I have ever met -- no living person -- seems ever to know diddly squat about.

Which is another reason not to bother sharing: what is the point of dumping on a sharee whose mental capacities are guaranteed to be exceeded by the dumping action?

Angelica says people will read the way one behaves and treat him accordingly; Angelica is mistaken: the so called people, having no conception of knighthood, cannot possibly treat me according to my behavior because they have not the brain capacity to understand it. To them I am merely odd.

That life is the enemy of philosophy

2009-11-29T03:25:00.007Z

With a regularity which is no doubt statistically meaningful (and thus calls for an explanation, a master's thesis anyone?), conversations among the unreproduced turn to the topic of their relationship with the reproduced. Upon such occasions two things are invariably observed:

1. That the reproduced desire us to reproduce. Usually they do this nicely, telling us how nice and worthwhile is the experience, or, less nicely, how we are missing out (every PR man knows that fear of missing out is the single most powerful cattle-prod in his toolbox), but sometimes not nicely at all, as when they suggest that not reproducing is unnatural ("That's what we're here for"), or even immoral ("Why should you have it easy while we labor in childbirth and child-rearing?");

and

2. How their reproduction robs us. It robs us of our friends because those who have been our favorite conversation companions on topics which interested us (which is why we picked them as friends in the first place) now suddenly prove incapable of talking of anything other than their progeny's exalted status as the ultimate blessing upon the multiverse. Which is, of course, while the progeny remains in the initial (sausage) stages (and for a very long time afterwards) both laughable and dull in the extreme.

No more Heidegger for us, or Proust, or anything; the quality of the progeny's evacuation preempts all topics now.

This second topic is part of a more sinister aspect of reproduction which is that, unless the parents have sufficient financial resources to

a) hire domestic help in order to insulate themselves from the duller aspects of child-rearing (i.e. nappies, school pick ups, part-dates) and thus preserve for themselves a reasonable amount of free time in which to continue being themselves as they have been earlier; and,

b) more broadly speaking, have resources sufficient to assure that the arrival of the offspring does not ruin them financially and chain them to the tiller till their dying day;

then the arrival of the progeny means the end of their life as their life. They become little more than an adjunct to the progeny's life: its foot servant, its cotton-picker, its babysitter, its driver, and its slave-tutor all in one.¹

They are no longer their own.

Mysteriously, they don't deny it: they readily admit that their life has but one purpose now -- to assure the best possible future for their offspring -- and are mystified by our objection to this fact. Why would you not want, they seem to want to ask, to give up all you have for the sake of your children? And already the s²-word is already lurking in the background.

Now, there is a sense in which the unreproduced are held by the reproduced to be pupae of a sort: that is, unfulfilled human beings, imperfect and incomplete; ones assumed to be merely waiting to reproduce; indeed, ones who have failed to reproduce; and thus objects of pity in the manner in which one might pity a failed athlete.

The truth is that while there are perhaps some unreproduced who are like this -- desiring to reproduce and unable to -- there are also others who are hardened career criminals: we have no intention of ever reproducing, not for five minutes, and look upon our reproduced friends, now chained to the tiller for the rest of their lives, with silent but profound pity. Silent because it would be too cruel to tell them the truth that, in our eyes, they have mocked up, messed up, and thrown away their lives. Cruel because what could possibly be the point of revealing to them their own misery in all its stark terror -- if there is nothing they can ever do about it?

So we smile benignly and pretend that the sausage-like thing in the pram is indeed the eighth wonder of the world (and its evacuation extraordinary in every measure), that we do wish for one ourselves (or at least for more of the same for them), and that we are sorry that we have not attained to our reproduced friend's exalted status as Mom or Dad. It is out of pity for our friends that we do not tell them that the miracle that they deem to have achieved was no miracle at all; that the act is an ordinary act: baboons can do as much and as well; and so can chickens; and that their joy at the arrival of the munchkins is morally suspect: parents invariably talk of "their" children and are proud of their parental authority; but the children are not their children, or at least ought not to be; they will only naturally want to be their own, not their parents, which is what parents, even the best meaning ones, always, invariably forget; while authority is something to be earned over our equals, not something to be imposed by default over defenseless little things.

I suppose one could divide all adult life into ante-reproductionis and post-reproductionis; the ante-reproductionis is characterized by many things -- free time, disposable income, higher frequency of the experience of happiness and pleasure (there are incontrovertible statistics to prove this last point but the reproduced labor incessantly to deny their truth, or at least to disbelieve it); and -- by a certain sense of searching for something. This sense is mostly quite mild, or at any rate intermittent, in most; but it can be quite powerful in some, leading them variously into religious pursuits or debauchery or extreme sports; it is sometimes described as searching for answers; and by some deemed the proper concern for philosophy.

A certain popular cultural franchise proposed once that our whole species were no more than a kind of computer devised by a higher civilization to find these answers. Being young and as yet unreproduced one can easily identify with this view. And though the franchise then proposed, rather meanly (and thoughtlessly), that the questions to which the answers are to be found are themselves unknown, and thus the whole search is a kind of confused head trip³, the truth is the opposite: the question is but one, and always the same, and very clear: how should we live our lives? What should I, Joe Blow, do with my forty or fifty years here? The resource -- life -- is finite and wasting. There is a desire, a natural economic instinct, to deploy it most efficiently: to make the most of it, and now, before any part of it wastes away, gone never to come back.

And there is that sense that the endless cycle of birth and death and birth and death, as a good Buddhist might put it, or a life lived earning a living and then eating it; a life amounting in the end to no more than a tombstone, or a Wikipedia entry if we're lucky (as some consider it) -- that such a life does not amount to anything; that it is some preposterous waste of unknown possibilities which must surely be greater, more meaningful, more satisfying.

(I do not wish to argue here that this thought process is in some way right; it is enough for the sake of my argument to observe that it commonly happens with the young).

Now, this search is naturally time consuming. Let me illustrate: Angelica, when I took her for a motorcycle trip in the hills, exclaimed at the end of the day:

"My goodness, this is wonderful, so this is what I have been missing!"

And then, being the thinking girl that she is, reflected:

"It is not easy to know what one likes, or to guess what one might like, is it? And one needs so much free time to find out!"

And she was right: one does need a lot of time to find out how one can live one's life to one's own satisfaction; especially since so many seem hell-bent on diverting us in our search to their own purposes, telling us things like "Plastics!" or "Hold up the flag!" or, most commonly, "Having your own children is the most wonderful experience you can ever have."

But, for most of us, before we can make much progress in this regard, there comes reproduction and stops our research dead in its tracks. We now no longer have the time to try different things, or the energy, or the money; and most importantly, we no longer even want to, having suddenly transformed into breathless worshipers of our progeny's magnificent poop . The question how to live our lives, the central question of philosophy (at least in the way in which the ancients saw it), becomes irrelevant; it has been answered for us by life itself; life turned us into that into which it had always intended to turn us: slaves of the species reproductive process. In accepting this role, we agree not to question it. And thus there are no more questions which need to be answered. The way we ought to live our lives is this, it turns out: we ought to reproduce. Philosophy ends.

Then, as our progeny grows it will eventually become human (i.e. acquire a mind of its own) and almost as soon as it does it will, invariably, turn to the immortal question: how should I live my life? (Thus raising philosophy back from the dead). But it's question, too, will go unanswered, because, the progeny too, will end up reproducing and abandoning the search incomplete as a result. Philosophy's quest is thus doomed to failure.

Which is how I have illustrated my point: that life is the enemy of philosophy⁴.

Footnote:

¹ Given the direction public education is taking, less and less the last, since the public appears eager for us not to educate our progeny ourselves but to desire us instead to slave breathlessly to support a child whose mind then a total stranger -- a goobment appointed "teacher" -- will pervert without reference to our desire or opinion; this last means that, really and honestly speaking, once our children leave for school, at the tender age of five or six, we are no longer rearing it.

² As in self-centered, egoistical, parsimonious, miserly, self-seeking, ungenerous, small-minded. You catch the drift.

³ It will be apparent from what follows that the authors of this BBC series were very likely already reproduced at the time of writing its script.

⁴ I have suggested elsewhere that the history of philosophy -- everywhere, East and West -- could be seen to follow this pattern: that philosophy begins with the attempt to figure out how we should live our lives, from which attempt it promptly strays into meaningless drivel like debating "intentionality" or "causation". The number of excuses which philosophers can think up in order to flee philosophy's fundamental question is vast and potentially unlimited. They are all reproduced, of course.

A report from Chiang Mai's red light district (Loi Kroh Road)

2009-11-27T00:38:00.003Z

The whores here are all uniformly ugly. Not old -- I'd say average age here is perhaps around 30 -- but ugly: they have misshapen bodies and ugly faces; the best looking are the ones which make no impression at all -- indifferent, inert. This is perhaps specific to this place: I have seen pretty whores elsewhere in Thailand (Pattaya had some pretty girls, as I remember, whores in Chiang Klang Road looked better, too).

In many ways they are like all Thai women: they are sweet to be around with, full of compliments and kindnesses and praises and agreeable noises; they are good cuddlers; this is all very heartwarming, even if they do keep asking for more money (one shouldn't take that personally, it's part of the job description). And, like all the Thai women I have ever had (all but one) they are awful in bed: they have low libido, low stamina, poor apparatus, mental reservations, and non-existent -- or at best fumbling -- technique.

Makes me wonder about all the men who keep coming back for more; and those who claim that Thai whores are great in bed. It is, I suppose, like Nahedeh said: most people simply have no idea about what sex could be. (Or else are easily satisfied). Nearly every porn-flick confirms the suspicion: every time I see one, I think to myself: they do this wrong: this cannot possibly feel good.

Relationships versus places, again

2009-11-09T04:19:00.004Z

My Angelica tells me, constantly, repeatedly, that a relationship is what all women want; and how content she is in hers; etc. but then on the day of her departure she tells me that her lover is the main reason why she cannot leave the place where she lives, which is what she really wants. My dear Angelica does not know my theory that it is places, not people, who make us happy; and she is too young to know that most men's plans -- one day we will move to Thailand and live on the beach, one day I will make a killing in the stock market -- never happen. Life, says the old adage, is what happens while we make other plans; the adage is hackneyed, but its truth is eternal.

That women should marry while virgin

2009-11-07T02:06:00.006Z

Under the heavy shawl of tropical night (embroidered densely with the clanging thread of cicadas) an older man and a young woman sat clapped in intense conversation.

He told her how it is when we had had that special lover, lost her, and then spend the rest of our life looking -- in vain -- to find another who could equal her.

How sad, she said, and, in return, she told him what she thought was a similar story: about that intense feeling of being alive which her first lover had given her -- and none has since; and how very nearly she came to throwing over everything she had when, after some years' absence, he suddenly turned up again; nearly thrown it all up for the sake of the memory of that special feeling.

This made him remember that his special she had once said the same thing -- used the same words, in fact -- "you make me feel intensely alive"; and that she, too, had been, on their first time, a virgin. He then remembered that, more broadly, all his virgins have loved him madly and forever afterwords; have been like putty in his hands; would have done for him anything he'd ever asked; and that all have remained intensely loyal to him, long after he'd left them.

And remembering this, he understood suddenly, and then most eruditely quoted the words of the very great womanizer specialist, Tanizaki, that there is no love like the love of a virgin; and seeing his interlocutor's face turn pale at these words, in a flash he understood it all and burst out: "Perhaps that is why the ancients recommended that a woman remain a virgin until she marry?"

"Perhaps yes", she said, in that quiet, barely perceptible voice in which important truths are sometimes spoken; and the quiet of the voice was confirmed by the intensity of the brief flash in her blue eye.

Such brief flashes are the stuff of life, rarer than nickel, more precious than uranium; and if there has been a gain in the quality of life of middle-aged men as a result of the last hundred years of change in European customs regulating the mutual conduct of them and young, beautiful women, it is this: Don Fabrizio could never have seen such a flash in Angelica's eye.

But then, he was able to waltz with her, so there has been a loss, too; and who knows who was the better off.

On love and unhappiness

2009-10-27T07:54:00.005Z

1. Happiness: People versus places

When N and I became lovers, her husband asked her: why doesn't he move here in order to be near you?

This amused me, the here in question being Houston, Texas, and thus about the last place on earth I would ever set my foot in (except perhaps for Khabarovsk, Siberia, and Borkou, N'Djamena); let alone live there.

You see, my life where I was then -- living on the beach within the confines of a national park -- was simply too good to compromise for a day in order to be close to any woman: it is my considered opinion that we can derive much more pleasure from agreeable surroundings -- a nice apartment, a beautiful city -- than we ever can from the presence of another person in our lives, however wonderful. (Proof: when we find ourselves in nice surroundings, other people suddenly matter to us less: just consider how often we forget to send that post card).

For this reason, it is the first requirement of happiness to find a beautiful, agreeable place to live.

(And, indeed, I might add, the second requirement may well be to limit our dependence on other people, other people having several nasty habits, among the nastiest being the tendency to turn out to be less than we had thought them, to betray us, to leave us, and -- in the end -- to die).

2. How our lovers cannibalize our own happiness to assure their own

In time, the husband's question became symbolic of our whole relationship: N lived a life she hated, in a place she hated, surrounded by people she hated and filled with duties which made her dull and at times suicidal, while I lived an interesting life of leisure and adventure, not without its risks, and certainly not easy, but definitely not dull and definitely not unhappy. I liked meeting her, when we did -- she usually came to see me -- but I did not like being with her enough to want to compromise my interesting and beautiful life; it was always understood that she would have to go back to her miserable life at the end of each visit; I made it clear that I would never follow her there.

In time our partings became tiresomely tragic: about 48 hours before her departure she'd begin to grow somber and the pitch of her emotions gradually rose to tearful despair. I will miss you so much, she would say, sobbing; but that was, of course, only part of the truth; the rest, the thing she did not say, was that having tried my life, she simply could not bear thinking about going back to hers. Perhaps she didn't see it, either: perhaps she really did believe that if only she could have me in her life in her dull, vulgar, ugly and hostile Houston, everything would be fine: the city would seem prettier, more cultured, more interesting, and even the duties of her everyday life lighter.

And maybe so they would, but, of course, at what cost to me! And, importantly, they would only seem that way: that would still be the same hopeless, helpless life she's always lived, only that I would be miserable by her side.

3. How unhappiness is often the result of sloth

Now, on occasion, sadly affected by the story of her misery, I offered her some advice from my perspective; and good advice, too, because, after all, it was not very difficult to see what she needed to change in her life to improve it: move, if you can, redecorate, change the nature of your duties, do less of x and more of y, take more time off, etc.

Pretty much all my advice she deftly deflected: x was going to be impossible, y too difficult, z too tiresome and t -- well -- t was simply not done. If ever I tried to press the point, she bristled. Attempting any changes in her life seemed to her simply too formidable a challenge; to think about it alone was distressing. Her standard line was: I am in such a bad way, I have no energy left to change it.

I have since observed this phenomenon in my other lovers: unhappy with their miserable life, yet they would not only do nothing to change it but whenever our conversation turned to the topic they would go on and on and on about how there was nothing they could do and how all attempts to change it would be in vain, or naive, or impossible.

I don't quite understand this psychological mechanism; it strikes me as sloth; perhaps it is really a disease, a kind of mild depression. (The Matthew's effect?)

4. The usual

These other lovers have ever done as N has: doing nothing to change their lot, they instead launched onto affairs with me, seeking to find in love a balm for their misery. But this was always problematic: I will simply never sacrifice my own happiness in order to make someone else's life less miserable for the simple reason that the math does not make sense; and because I know that if I do, the sacrifice will only be temporary -- unlike most people, it would seem, I am not made to suffer a miserable life for any stretch of time, and sooner or later, usually sooner, rebel; and, finally, because I know that as a result of taking such a sacrifice I will only come to resent the object of such self-sacrificing love; and why would I knowingly want to do that?

So this is how it has ever gone since: the lovers reach out to me in the hope of improving their lives; I do offer them a chance to do so by giving them good advice and offering help if they follow it; but they don't, instead expecting me to make them happy by sharing more of their crap life, instead. And when I don't, they are bitterly disappointed, call me selfish, and worse; invariably, things come to an end in the usual recriminations, so well known to me that I know exactly every next word that is about to issue from their lips.

Come to think about it, every woman I have met these twenty years has been unhappy and miserable. I should wonder, perhaps, if there is something wrong with the way I pick them; or perhaps with the market: perhaps only unhappy women make themselves available for affairs. Or perhaps that is simply the way life is: perhaps with the few exceptions like myself, people really are by definition living dull, miserable, hopeless, unhappy lives.

Think about it.

A fable with a moral point

2009-10-26T07:05:00.003Z

Several years ago, through hubris, foolishness, and lust I brought upon myself a disaster: my financial position suffered a severe set back, I became ill and severely depressed. In that darkest hour, I turned for help to friends and they all, to a man, refused. (Good honest friends, perfectly sensible logic: one does not back a losing horse).

Gradually, laboriously, I worked my way up from the depression; my health improved; and then, in the recent panic, I staked all on a wild opportunity. Like a hero in French nineteenth century opera, with blood-shot eyes and a sweaty brow, I gambled all -- and I won -- all.

O Fortuna, Imperatrix! Following on my darkest days, my best days have come. My health is not what it once was, but my life is comfortable, beautiful, and happy. It is a life of leisure in a beautiful place with a breathtaking view in one of the world's most magically beautiful cities; I eat and drink deliciously; surround myself with art and culture; and, in the afternoons, sit in stylish cafes amid blooming trees talking about love to young pretty things. Sometimes I pinch myself: am I not perhaps dreaming? But the pinch smarts: I am awake.

The best of it is this: had my old honest friends come to my aid in my darkest hour, I would now owe them in proportion to my subsequent success, ten or twelve-fold, a hundred-fold. But they didn't and I don't and my fortune is entirely my own.

I am unencumbered.

I am debt-free.

Mystery solved

2009-10-20T11:56:00.002+01:00

One has always known that the IQ distribution in the society follows the Gaussian curve, but not knowing the size of the sigma, one didn't realize just how steep the curve is. It's steepness isn't much publicized, wikipedia for instance says nothing about it. Perhaps because it is a politically-correctly charged topic: wikipedia authors fall, I would guess, by and large in the 120+ bracket and simply don't want to be seen stating what that means. Perhaps, even, they don't want to even be reminded of it.

Well, I now realize why: because it turns out that it means rather a lot. The 120+ make up 2.5% of the population, which is small enough. But now, get this, the curve keeps falling from there: the 145+ are deemed 0.1% of the population. This means that by the time you reach 146, you have excluded 96% of all those who rank over 120. If you are 146, 96% of all over-120's are dumber than you.

Think about it.

Some cultural news from the BBC

2009-10-17T10:19:00.004+01:00

Some East End gallery specializes in up and coming artists (buy it for a penny, sell it for a pound); some of these artists are then interviewed: one makes large installations of planes locked up in ice which then slowly melts (yeah, duude, cool, pass the sheesha); the interviewer asks her: you wear a chador (‘conservative’) but you make such modern works! She doesn’t have a damn clue, does she?

Meanwhile at the White House the What's-their-names are assembling a collection of borrowed art; it’s all modern (i.e. post-1950) of course, and American (probably has to be), including someone’s mediation on the square (!); except a DAY-ga (American enough when you pronounce it that way); except this last is judged risque (shhh… legs); but the former first lady was also cultured, we are told: she owned a de Koenig (along with hyper-realist representations of West Texas landscape). Ah, the uncultured me: who de hoeck was de Koenig?

Ah... upon consideration, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

An Algerian band in France plays, lousily, electric oud. You play such a mix of traditional and modern! gushes the interviewer. Huh?

Sorry, I don’t understand this language, though everyone around me seems to speak it.

Here, for instance, is Florian Zeller (who?) invited to speak at a kind of book fair in Egypt (probably because no one better would go), offering his cultural gems:

if the Islamic world generally had difficulties with the novel, it was because it was living to a large extent in an era that belonged to the period before modern times, bogged down in archaisms that were by their essence incompatible with the foundations of the novel: freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement. In this respect, the novel could easily become the battle ground between two civilisations.

Freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement? Has Zeller ever read any archaic poetry, either Islamic or -- European? And if so, which part of his anatomy does he use to think (and speak) about it?

The terrible thing: he thinks this drivel actually means something; and – oh, emperor’s new clothes! -- his Egyptian colleagues believe him! How's that for conversation: you pretend you say something meaningful, they pretend they make a meaningful response.

How do you explain to these grunts that the language they speak –which happily interchanges modern, western, good, inevitable, free, and sexually liberated is incoherent, that it is broken, that it means nothing, that it is impossible to say or think in it anything that makes any sense at all and that by speaking it they just bury themselves in some horrendous dark hole of the mind?

But then -- why would anyone even try to explain?

*

2009-10-11T20:45:00.003+01:00

We have not seen each other two and a half weeks. When she asked how I have been, lost for something to say, I told her about Salwa, what a huge impact her book had had on me: the emotional turbulence I feel when I read her; the long pensive silences into which I fall when I do not. I spoke the truth: everything else which has happened in the last two and a half weeks has been by comparison -- irrelevant, immaterial.

She asked me why and only then I realized that I cannot explain it to her; and that therefore I should not have mentioned it in the first place.

salwa dit

2009-10-06T08:56:00.003+01:00

le penseur m'a ecrit une lettre. une lettre d'amour. je me suis dit: comment peut-il employer le mot amour? je l'evite autant que je peux. avec lui comme avec les autres. je ne connais pas l'amour, je connais le desir. l'amour appartient a un au-dela qui me depasse, et je me refuse a lui courrir apres. le desire, le mien et celui de l'autre, je le connais, je le touche, je le vois, je le sens, je vis ses effets et ses metamorphoses. lui seul me prend par la main pour me conduire par vers mes espaces inexplores.

Lying about sex

2009-10-04T11:29:00.004+01:00

Salwa al Neimi is the first woman I come across to speak the voice of Nehadeh; which is also my voice. (Perhaps Marguerite Duras also does, but I have not read her). Al Neimi likes sex, finds fulfillment in it, seeks it, and does not let other things interfere -- her whole life seems to be lived so as to maximize her sexual pleasure. (Love -- she says -- I don't understand what that word means; but desire, yes, I understand it).

(This does not mean that she's a slut: people like us -- sex-maniacs -- have a such a hard time finding good partners that we tend to want to hang on to the ones we have found -- firmly, and loyally, if not always exclusively. I know).

My past attempts to speak this kind of language with my lovers have invariably led to trouble: even with the really good lovers -- those not only adept but also clearly fulfilled in the act; they often seemed to have had that amazing frame of mind in which their ability to do it well and enjoy it somehow cohabited with the strong belief that the sex was not important, merely a means to an end, the end being e.g. lazy afternoon walks in the sun to nowhere in particular, for instance (i.e. comfort of being together). Hearing me speak that language, the language of Al Neimi, they were usually offended: I was somehow not respecting -- perhaps even castrating -- a part of them that was to their minds the truer and more important part of them -- the non-sexual part. Not to mention, also, that I was proving myself base, vulgar, and -- of course, the usual -- typically male.

Beh.

It is of course preposterous to me: lazy walks in the park can be done with a dog, one does not need a well-matched lover for it. I don't want a woman for lazy walks in the park; in fact, I do not want any woman who does not want me first and foremost in that way.

Stumbling upon Al Neimi has a perverse result on me: instead of delighting me with the discovery that there do exist other people who think, feel and talk like me, I am overwhelmed by the stifling, depressing, crushing majority of those who do not; with whom one cannot be honest; with whom one has to dissimulate.

Amore nella vecchiaia

2009-08-24T08:28:00.002+01:00

"Non faccio tanto come essere cresciuta", Akhila ha detto a me sopra una bicchiera di qualcosa nella tonalità scura e scura di grande albero di bo: un albero di bo enorme e silenzioso come una chiesa.

(Albero di bo, pensa appena!)

"Perche -- anche se la mia madre (chi ora ha 57 anni) dice a me 'che desidero avevo conosciuto alla tua età che cosa conosci a la tua' -- la verità è che questa conoscenza -- è una... tragedia . La verità è, il mio vecchio amico, che la saggezza prematura è… amara..."

"Sì, è utile conoscere con chiarezza perfetta appena che cosa motiva tutto intorno me... e così come premere i loro tasti… e così come maneggiarli efficientemente nel fare che cosa voglio... il me rende efficace allo sguardo di affari… guarda: la mia casa tutto pagata prima de eta di 32 anni… E sì, è buono da sapere per non attendersi dalla gente qualche cosa più di tanto -- da se conservare così tanto disappunto non intrattenendo le aspettative sciocche…

"Ma, è -- deludendo, dopo tutto, suppongo -- noioso -- con acuto -- per sapere che la gente è tali creature semplici; che tutto nella vita è così -- prevedibile; così -- non-romantico; così -- meccanico; così -- mercenario… tutti di esso… Che tutto è appena come tutto altrimenti… quel tutti vogliono le stesse cose… e che si può fidarsi di nessuno affatto e mai mai sperano affinchè chiunque li sorprendano…"

"Quando ora penso a questo proposito, realizzo appena quanto non lo gradico: ci è una parte di me quale desidera non ho conosciuto; una parte di me quale desidera de essere sorpresa, a occhi spalancati, stupida. Voglio credere che la vita sia un mistero. Voglio essere nell'amore -- sì, suppongo che voglio essere nell'amore -- quale è, alla mia mente, ad una sensibilità del darsi a qualche cosa di più grande e migliore di me… di credere nella bontà e nell'amicizia e -- pozzo! -- amore."

"Ma, naturalmente, tutto questo è impossibile; alla nostra età sappiamo più meglio... abbiamo la conoscenza perfetta... la visione perfetta... abbiamo illusione -- zero."

Le parole della signora Akhila non me sorprendono.

Anche loro sono prevedibili: sono parole del medio evo.

Joe Campbell ha detto la stessa cosa: "quando avete quaranta anni, conoscete che cosa una persona sta andando dire prima che la apra la sua bocca; conoscete tutto; tutto lo incontrate avete incontrato già in un'apparenza differente… tutto qualcun'altro dica avete sentito… siete pronto per -- un intero nuovo filme."

E, naturalmente, questa è stata la mia esperienza, ugualmente: lo stesso-vecchio; stessi-vecchi; ancora e ancora e ancora.

E sono io, come Akhila, stanco ed annoiato di esso.

La differenza è che Joe Campbell ha avuto 52 anni quando lui pronunciato quelle parole; ed io o avuto quaranta quando le ho capite; ma Akhila ha… trentadue! Come terribile deve dovere essere disillusa alla sua età.

Io, alla sua età, ero ancora abbastanza stupido da cadere nell'amore -- per che cosa sarà, certamente spero, l'ultima volta.

Ci sono, dico a lei, due sensi di affare con il problema.

Il primo non è di diventare cinico.

Cinico, pensano i miei amici, è non credere chiunque che ci incontriamo; ammettere loro assolutamente il più male; ed allora soltanto attendendere per vedere quanto abbiamo raggione nella nostra valutazione iniziale; aspettanderli per rivelarsi de essere appena che cosa abbiamo pensato che erano in primo luogo.

Ma quello non è corretto; quello non è il significato allineare dell'essere cinico. Quello soltanto sta essendo realistico, pratico, allineare alla nostra conoscenza di natura allineare della gente e del mondo. La gente è difettoso; la gente è merde assolute.

Questo è la propria verità del dio.

È un fatto di vita.

Ma essere cinico non è conoscerla, ma è accosentiree da essere come loro.

Che è la unica cosa che non dobbiamo fare. Soltanto perché X è una merda, perché dovrei io essere lo stesso? Se X viene a mancare come amico, perché dovrei io venir a mancare? Il mondo è una cosa de merda, certamente; ma quello non significa che anche io dovrei la essere.

Così i miei amici possono contare su me anche se io non posso -- e non faccia -- contare su loro. Sono merde; merde quadrati, spesso; ma io -- io sono un cavaliere nobile, in armatura brillante, su un cavallo bianco.

Nessuno lo interferiranno mai che sono una merda.

Ed il secondo senso di affare -- e probabilmente il migliore -- poche preoccupazioni per i rapporti ed il carattere tra persone in esso, certamente pochi disappunti -- è interessarsi all'arte.

Ogni tecnica artistica -- se sta tessendo, o terraglie, o pintura, o la metallurgia -- è un genere di lotta contra le limitazioni tecnologiche del mezzo; all'interno di ciascuno ci sono numerosi racconti storici dei progetti di ricerca multigenerazionale dirette al raggiungimento di un risultato particolare. Nella pintura, questa può essere la lotta per rappresentare lo spazio tridimensionale su una superficie piana; o per rappresentare la superficie stessa-- vetro di luccichio, pelliccia lanuginosa, stoppia; in terraglie cinesi, tali progetti hanno compreso la ricerca per il colore di sangue de boeuf; o per il crackle perfetto del celadon.

A seguito di questi progetti di ricerca è intellettuale affascinante; ma la loro obiettivo è sempre fresca e nuova: lontano è rimossa dal usuale lo stesso-vecchio-stessi-vecchi; quale è perché gli artisti le hanno seguite in primo luogo, io suppongo. Anche loro hanno trovato il ciclo infinito della seduzione e del tradimento doloroso; estremamente doloroso. Anche loro hanno provato fugare della mancanza di speranza di vita... e ringraziamenti a loro ora anche noi possiamo fugare, quanto seguiamo i loro percorsi.

Love in old age

2009-08-23T08:24:00.001+01:00

I do not much like being grown up and wise, Akhila said to me over a glass of something in the dark, dark shade of the great Bo tree: a Bo tree as huge and as silent as a great gothic church.

(A Bo tree, just think!)

For, although my mother, now 57, says to me "I wish I had known at your age what you know at yours", the truth is that this knowledge is -- a burden. The truth is, my old friend, that premature wisdom is... bitter.

Yes, it is useful to know with perfect 20/20 clarity just what motivates everyone around me, and thus how to press their buttons... and thus how to manipulate them efficiently into doing what I want. It makes one effective at business... look at the house all paid off at 32... And yes, it is good to know not to expect from people anything beyond that -- one saves herself so much disappointment by not entertaining silly expectations...

And yet, it is -- disappointing, after all, I suppose -- tiresome -- dull -- to know that people are such simple creatures; that everything in life is so -- predictable; so -- unromantic; so -- mechanical; so -- mercenary... all of it... That everyone is just like everyone else... that they are all after the same things... and that one can trust no one at all, and never ever hope for anyone to surprise us...

When I think about it now, I realize just how much I do not like it: there is a part of me which wishes I did not know; a part of me that wishes to be mystified, wide-eyed, amazed. I want to believe life is a mystery. I want to be in love -- yes, I suppose I do want to be in love -- which is, to my mind, a feeling of giving oneself to something bigger and better than oneself... of believing in goodness and friendship and -- well -- love.

But, of course, it is impossible; at our age we know better; we have the perfect knowledge; the 20/20 vision. Zero illusion.

My lady Akhila's words do not surprise me.

They, too, are predictable: it is the voice of the middle age.

I once hard Joe Campbell saying the very same thing: by the time you are forty, you know what a person is going to say before they open their mouth; you know everything; everyone you meet you have met already in a different guise... everything someone else says you have heard... you are ready for -- a whole new movie.

And, of course, this has been my experience, too: same old, same old.

And, like Akhila, I am tired and bored of it.

The difference is that Joe Campbell was 52 when he pronounced those words; and I was forty when I understood them; but Akhila is... thirty-two. How terrifying it must be to be disillusioned at her age.

At her age I was still stupid enough to fall in love -- for what will be, I certainly hope, the last time.

There are, I say to her, two ways to cope.

The first is not to become cynical.

Cynical, think my friends, means not believing anyone we meet; assuming absolutely the worst about them; and then merely waiting to see how right we were in our initial estimation; waiting for them to prove themselves to be just what we thought they were in the first place.

But that is not correct; that is not the true meaning of being cynical. That is merely being realistic, practical, true to the our middle-age knowledge of people and the world. People do suck; they are absolute shits. It's god's own truth, it is.

A fact of life.

But being cynical is not about knowing it, but about agreeing to be like them.

This we must not do. Merely because x is a shit, why should I be the same? If x fails me as a friend, why should I fail him? The world sucks, surely; but that does not mean I should suck, too, does it now?

So my friends can count on me even if I cannot -- and do not -- count on them. They are shits; often shits squared; but I -- I am a noble knight, in shining armor, on a white horse.

No one will ever catch me being a shit.

*

And the second way to cope -- and probably the better one -- fewer concerns with interpersonal relationships and character in it, certainly fewer disappointments -- is to take an interest in art.

Every artistic technique -- whether it is weaving, or pottery, or painting, or metalworking -- is a kind of struggle with the technological limitations of the medium; within each there are numerous histories of multigenerational research projects each directed at the attainment of a particular result. In painting this may be the struggle to represent three dimensional space on a flat surface; or to represent texture -- glistening glass, fluffy fur, stubble; in Chinese pottery such projects included the quest for the color of sangue de boeuf; or for the perfect celadon crackle. Following these research projects is intellectually fascinating; but their ends are always fresh and new: they are far removed from the usual same old same old; which is why the artists followed them in the first place, I suppose. They, too, found the endless cycle of seduction and betrayal painful and -- dull. They, too, tried to get away -- and thanks to them now we can, too, by following them down their paths.

Versuch Eins

2009-08-22T12:43:00.002+01:00

Liebe B

Ich kann's nicht in meinem Herzen finden, um Sie, zu lieben zu stoppen, obwohl offensichtlich wenn Stoß komm zu schieben, ich Sie nicht überhaupt zählen kann.

Weil ich Sie für so viele Jahre geliebt habe, können wir fortfahren zu entsprechen, folglich; und Sie können auf mir immer zählen -- obwohl ich nie auf Ihnen zählen soll.

(Sicher, ist Ihr Ausfall kein Grund, damit ich auch ausfalle).

Weiter, können Sie im sicheren Wissen auch dich entspannen, dass ich nie noch einmal versuchen sollte, um eine Bevorzugung von Ihnen zu bitten.

Ich sollte auch zuschprechen, daß unsere neue Erfahrung von allen meinen Erfahrungen mit Ihren Landsmännern typisch gewesen ist. O, wie ich wünsche, daß meine Eltern die Vernunft gehabt hatten, ein anderes Land auszuwählen, um mich dort zu verbannen -- irgendein anderes Land, wirklich. Dann nach 25 Jahren, konnte ich Freunde dort haben; wer weiß, möglicherweise ich konnte erlernen sogar (apage satanas) den Platz mein Haus zu nennen?

Jetzt, muss ich das schwerste und schwierigste Vermächtnis meines Eltern beschäftigen: die Sprache. Ich bin kaum in sie in der literarischen Richtung vernarrt -- abgesehen von Shakespeare mag ich nicht wirklich irgendwelche seine Literatur lesen; jedoch, trotz dies, habe ich von ihr mein Hauptwerkzeug vom Gedanken und vom Ausdruck hergestellt.

Nun, als Werkzeug des Gedankens, ist es nicht ein schlechtes Mittel; aber als Werkzeug des Ausdrucks trägt es eine Hauptbeeinträchtigung: indem ich es verwende, bin ich pro Kraft zu an Leute wie Sie sprechend; welches, selbstverständlich, eine Zeitverschwendung ist: Sie Amerikanern weder konnten verstehen noch wunschten verstehen; noch möchte ich besonders von Ihnen verstanden werden. Wenn solch ein Wunder geschieht -- sehr selten -- Sie Amerikanern gewinnen etwas, aber ich -- ich gewinne nichts.

Die idiotische Anmerkungen, die ich vom Besten von Ihnen auf meinem ehemaligen Blog empfangen habe, sind der lebende Beweis der Tatsache. Ich benötige eine andere Sprache: fast jede mögliche andere Sprache würde vorzuziehend scheinen.

Aber dies wird an meinem Alter hart sein; und es wird Zeit nehmen. Und die Sprache -- es sein sollte... was?

Deutch?

***

Nah, Deutsch does not work.

Either French or Italian then.

Prova I

2009-08-21T11:35:00.003+01:00

Mia Cara B

Non posso trovarlo nel mio cuore per smettere di amarla, malgrado il fatto che, ovviamente, quando la spinta viene a spingere, non posso contarla affatto. Poiché ho amatola per tanti anni, oggi possiamo continuare a corrispondere, quindi; e voi potete contare sempre su me -- benchè non conti su voi.

(Certamente, il vostro guasto non è qualcuno motivo affinchè me venga a mancare).

Più ulteriormente, potete anche distenderla nella conoscenza sicura che io ne dovrei provare mai ancora a chiedergla un favore.

Dovrei aggiungere che la nostra esperienza recente è stata tipica di tutte le mie esperienze con i vostri connazionali. Ohime, come desidero che i miei genitori avévano avuti il buon senso selezionare un altro paese per esiliarmi -- qualunque altro paese, realmente. Allora, dopo 25 anni, potrei avere amici là; chi sa, forse io persino impara (apage satana!) denominare il posto una casa mia?

Nel frattempo, devo occuparmi dell'eredità più pesante e più difficile della questa scelta di miei genitori: la lingua. Sono a malapena affettuoso della nel senso letterario -- oltre a Shakespeare realmente non gradico leggere de la letteratura inglese o americana; ma, tuttavia, malgrado questo, ho fatto di esso il mio attrezzo principale di pensiero e dell'espressione. .

Ora, come attrezzo di pensiero, non è un mezzo difettoso; ma come attrezzo dell'espressione ha uno svantaggio principale: lo usando, per forza mi rivolgo alla gente come voi; quale è, naturalmente, una perdita di tempo: voi Americani nè potreste capire; nè volere capire. Né voglio io particolarmente essere capito da voi. Quando un tal miracolo accade -- molto raramente -- voi Americani guadagnate qualcosa, ma io -- io guadagno niente nel ritorno.

Le osservaizoni stupide che ho ricevuto dal meglio di voi sul mio blog precedente sono la prova vivente del fatto.

In breve, ho bisogno di un'altra lingua: quasi qualunque altra lingua sembrerebbe preferibile. Ma questo sta andando essere duro alla mia età; e sta andando richiedere tempo.

E che la lingua dovrebbe esso essere?

Italiano?

(Il mio dio! poichè una letteratura italiana, questa, io sono sicuro che deve essere il literaratura più difettosa mai scritta; ma ascolti appena esso, mai non si occupano di che cosa dico: non è la lingua che suonante la più bella che abbiate sentito mai? che gioia per produrre questi suoni incredibili da nostra propria bocca, che gioia per sentirsi sentire!)

Essai I

2009-08-20T11:18:00.003+01:00

Chere B

Je ne peux pas le trouver à mon coeur pour cesser de vous aimer, malgré le fait que, évidemment, quand la poussée viennent pour pousser, je ne peux pas vous compter du tout.

Puisque je vous ai aimé pendant tant d'années, nous pouvons continuer à correspondre, donc ; et vous pouvez toujours compter sur moi -- bien que je ne compte pas sur vous.

(Sûrement, votre échec n'est pas aucune raison de moi d'échouer).

De plus, vous pouvez également étendre que je devrais jamais encore essayer de demander une faveur de vous.

Je devrais ajouter que notre expérience récente a été typique de toutes mes expériences avec vos compatriotes. Comment je souhaite mes parents avaient eu le bon sens de sélectionner un autre pays pour m'exiler -- tout autre pays, vraiment. Puis, après 25 ans, je pourrais avoir des amis là ; qui sait, peut-être apprenner moi même (apage satana!) à appeler l'endroit une maison de moi même?

Pendant qu'il est, je dois traiter le legs le plus lourd et le plus difficile de la choix de mes parents: la langue. Je ne suis à peine fanatique d'elle dans le sens littéraire -- indépendamment de Shakespeare, je n'aime pas vraiment lire de sa littérature ; mais, néanmoins, en dépit de ceci, j'ai fait de lui mon outil principal de la pensée et de l'expression.

Maintenant, comme outil de pensée, ce n'est pas un mauvais milieu; mais comme outil d'expression il porte un inconvénient principal: en l'employant, je suis par force s'adressant aux gens comme vous; ce qui est, naturellement, une perte de temps: vous Américains ni ne pourriez comprendre ni vouloir à ne comprendre; ni je veux particulièrement être compris par vous. Quand un tel miracle se produit -- rarement -- vous gagnez quelque chose, mais je -- je gagne rien en échange. Les commentaires idiots que j'ai reçus du meilleur de vous sur mon ancien blog sont la preuve vivante du fait.

Donc, j'ai besoin d'une autre langue : presque n'importe quelle autre langue semblerait préférable. Mais ceci va être dur à mon âge ; et va prendre du temps.

Et qui la langue devrait il être ?

Français ?

On switching languages

2009-08-19T10:42:00.004+01:00

Dear B

I cannot find it in my heart to stop loving you, despite the fact that, obviously, when push come to shove, I cannot count you at all. Because i have loved you for so many years, we can continue to correspond, therefore; and you may always count on me -- though I shall not count on you (surely, your failure is no reason for me to fail); further, you can also relax in the secure knowledge that I should never again try to ask a favor of you.

I should add that our recent experience has been typical of all my experiences with your countrymen. How I wish my parents had had the good sense to pick another country to exile me to -- any other country, really. Then, after 25 years, I might have friends there; who knows, perhaps I'd even learn (apage satanas) to call the place a home?

As it is, I have to deal with the heaviest and most difficult legacy of my parents' choice: the language. I am scarcely fond of it in the literary sense -- apart from Shakespeare I do not really like reading any of its literature; yet, despite this, I have made of it my principal tool of thought and expression.

Now, as a tool of thought, it is not a bad medium; but as a tool of expression it carries one major drawback: by using it, I am per force addressing myself to people like you; which is, of course, a waste of time: you Americans neither could understand nor want to; nor do I especially want to be understood by you. When such a miracle happens -- rarely -- you fellows gain something, but I -- I gain nothing in return. The idiotic comments I have received from the best of you on my former blog are the living proof of the fact.

I need another language: almost any other language would seem preferable. But this is going to be hard at my age; and it is going to take time.

And which language should it be?

French?

Giorgiana

2009-08-18T13:17:00.005+01:00

I suppose this is supposed to be based on this.

But anyone who has read the book would be astonished to hear so.

Giorgiana, you see, was a socialite, a celebrity, a queen of fashion, a salon mistress, and an important political figure (even if she could not vote or become an MP herself). But the film presents her as nothing other than -- a wronged wife. I suppose this is what we have to expect from Hollywood - more of the same-old-same-old -- a narrow focus on sexual relations -- as if they were the only relations we ever had, and this in turn reflects the audience, I suppose (Hollywood being very good at serving the demand) -- the audience does not care whether Giorgiana was a queen of fashion and a huge influence on party politics in London, it cares only for one thing: did she have good sex and was there sufficient after-play?

Now, look around you: the people in the street -- the woman who has just past you (Hollywood clients are 70% female) -- care for only one thing: getting laid well.

Gaad.

Not sleeping with Akilah

2009-08-16T13:55:00.011+01:00

Do you want to sleep with me? she asked.

It's the usual woman-question, of course, even if it is usually framed differently, such as "what do you want from me?" or "who am I to you?", or some other the like. Its point is not to put us men on defense by brutally exposing our embarrassing, duplicitously veiled, filthy carnal intents -- even if it is bound to feel that way to us folks -- because, in fact, women don't really mind sleeping with us, and sometimes actually want to anyway, regardless of our answer.

The question is really about everything else: how much do I invest fin this, what more can I expect from you beyond x, etc.

Etc.

Old hat.

Now, some men would probably lie here. But I don't: years of practice have given me the opportunity to develop an established formula for answering the question and it almost always works: no love and no marriage, darling, but friendship forever, yes, willingly, till death to us part, etc.

(Besides, I do not lie in these matters... for the simple reason that to lie would be a sign of weakness; a condescension of power to the person lied-to; invariably, people lie out of fear, and, I suppose, I am either not especially fearful or too proud to admit/recognize my own fear).

In any case, what I say is no lie because I always mean it. (Like Genji, I mean to, and do, take care of my women).

Most women accept this line, though many, perhaps most, only on the face of it, hoping, perhaps not consciously, in time to turn no love into love after all.

Duplicitously, that is.

Etc.

Etc.

No matter.

No matter because -- because the way the question was asked set me on another train of thought altogether, and it is my topic here.

For indeed --

-- indeed

-- indeed

-- indeed

-- do I want to sleep with her?

...

Hmmm...

I suppose the answer could be yes -- she's good looking; and, being temperamental and adventurous, probably would not be a disappointment in bed.

Besides, why would a man say "no" to a woman he genuinely likes and whose company he enjoys this much? Friendship and sex slip into each other for men without mutating; I suppose that was the nature of the Greek gymnasium homosexuality. (We're friends, well, yes, we do, er..., but no, we are not gay, etc.)

(Not that I would know the first thing about it; I have never played team sports; aged 9 and 10 I played with girls, earning from the boys the jeering title of "women's king" -- I wonder if those boys have had since then the chance to -- er -- realize that we pick up no girls in the rugby field).

All true, old man, but -- a man of Zobenigo's age is not the sexual omnivore he once was.

(If ever he was? Even aged twenty-two Zobenigo turned down so called opportunities on various grounds -- honor, self-respect, etc., thinking beforehand, with hesitation, is not a new development to him at all; and perhaps is an evolved mechanism, as it has its genetic uses: do not risk an encounter whose potential genetic benefits are low -- i.e. do not sleep with women who are not at least close to being your equal and therefore a good genetic bet).

So, old man, indeed, do I want to sleep with her?

Until she asked the question, it did not really exist in my mind: I merely enjoyed being in her company. If I gave the possibility any thought, it was always brief: a remote possibility, too remote to entertain. It might happen, yes, I thought, but there was no plan to make it happen.

If it does, I thought, it will; but if it does not, well, no amount of planning will make the least bit of a difference.

Yet, I answered her -- somewhat sheepishly perhaps -- "yes, I would like to".

Without much conviction, I am afraid -- and mainly because it seemed too rude to say something like "I am not sure"...

You see...

I was too afraid to offend.

"There is no greater sin, says Zorba the Greek, than when a woman calls a man to bed and he does not come".

And in Wharton's Reef, the well-bred, virtuous heroine resents that her suitor does not try to take advantage of her. "Who am I to him?", she asks herself, thinking that somehow she must be to him less than the women he has actually pressed himself upon; and her pride is wounded as a result of his demurrement to make an assault on her honor; and all the while, of course, he thinks the precise opposite -- that she is more to him than all the women he has ever slept with and that -- precisely -- is why he does not press himself upon her.

Weird... Do we -- men and women -- really have this thing on backwards and upside down? Is it the women who want to get laid and us, chickens, who look for relationships?

Now, Akilah is certainly my equal; her genes are as good as mine (if not better). The benefits and risks of a coitus are therefore, genetically speaking, in favor of my DNA. The risks are small -- she's probably healthy, her husband is probably not dangerous, she has money of her own; and the potential payoff is phenomenal: there are her beautiful, sensitive, intelligent boys to prove what her womb can do.

That is not the issue, then.

The issue is -- well -- for one...

age?

Fifteen years ago I would have enthusiastically gone to bed with her. But today I am riven by doubts.

Such as: would she be good in bed?

I mean, would it be hedonistically worth it? or would I discover seven -- or thirteen -- or thirty -- minutes into the act that I would rather not, after all? For, although I firmly hold (as a sort of feminist) that a woman's performance in bed is a function of the man's skill at leading her where he wants her, half the women in the world aren't... trainable, it seems.

This gives a whole new meaning to the old Polish saying -- dating back to our horseback days -- "if you fall off a horse, make sure it's a white one".

(A moment of reflection here on the duties placed upon us by our glorious past
and our more than glorious ancestors: noblesse oblige).

Further, and more importantly:

Am I exposing myself to the usual unpleasantness which inevitably follows any (relatively short, in my opinion) sequence of sexual encounters -- that I do not live up to, or have commitment issues, or do lot long sufficiently ardently, or do not call often enough, or do not write, etc., nor otherwise wither while she is absent, thinking about her all the time, and such.

And: we are such good friends; and we talk so well -- six hours at the last meeting -- six hours, now -- what is up with that? -- would I really want to ruin that? It seems so much easier to continue being friends, no?

It is so dangerous to play with that fiery stuff -- a danger younger men have not had the chance to learn. The danger that -- it is never free.

So, why not have a bottle of Borba D.O.C. 2008 instead? The pleasure is perhaps not as great as good sex, true, but the downside is minimal: a little headache in the wee hours.

The risk-return odds are just better stacked.

On giving it up for free

2009-08-01T14:16:00.003+01:00

My dear

You say that what you have given me during the last visit -- the sex, that is -- was your free, unencumbered gift, given without calculation, merely because you felt like it.

That is a very beautiful and moving interpretation placed on what happened, and, of course, in line with the official womens-lib interpretation of sex, which is: a woman, being exactly and in all ways like any man, may feel lustful and indifferent about the object of her lust. As long as men are free to indulge their lust, therefore, so should the woman be free to do the same. You pass the femdom test with your colors flying.

Or do you?

I am of course flattered to hear that you should have been driven by nothing other than lust to take me. Repeatedly, too -- and at my age, this is quite a recommendation. (I'd like to put that in my CV).

But is it quite true?

I am very suspicious of all claims of un-mercenary-ness: my mother used to say that she loved me wholly, completely, and without any concern for a pay back; she said it repeatedly, over the years; and in the end -- it proved a dirty lie. And so in this case, too, I think the suspicion is well founded: when the sex was all finished and done with, you became angry with me because I would not huddle and kiss afterwards; or fall asleep in your arms; or promise everlasting love or propose cohabitation; or otherwise resort to any of the million other tricks of subterfuge resorted to by cheap Don Juans over the centuries.

Which means only one thing, my dear, that the afterplay is what you wanted in return for the play itself. Which means that there was a price after all.

And what may thar price be if it is not -- a quid pro quo?

The truth is, my dear, that you, ladies of the west, live in denial of the basic facts of life, which are that everything in it is done for a price, in expectation of reward. This is a blindlingly clear fact to anyone -- really, anyone -- who is, not in the throes of ideological need to uphold feminism -- and condemn prostitution. Love of God is offered in exchange for something, too, you know (i.e. heaven). (This has often made me wonder why God shoud want to be loved).

Prostitution, is the official party line, is bad because in it women sell sex; selling sex is bad; therefore we - the enlgihtened modern women -- may only have sex under circumstances in which it is absolutely clear that nothing at all is expected in return.

This seems silly to me. How is it supposed to be good for the gender to offer for free what has been its strongest asset over the millenia? To deprive it, that is, of its single greatest asset?

Not to mention that the requirement seems to put an extraorinary psychological demand on you ladies: to deliver goods for nothing. I should say, that not suprisingly in my experience, none of you has come out well under this challenge (though, to be fair, some have come out better than others). It is hard to give anything for free.

And, for crying outloud, why should we?

At any rate, the truth of what happened to us -- you and me -- during your last visit seems to me to be this: you gave it, but in the end found yourself short-changed: instead of hugs and kisses -- a lie, a pretense, a false promise of something impossible -- i.e. love -- which was your true aim -- you got good dinners, evening walks, rides on tram 28, views of the sea at sunset, and some forcks and baubles.

Your complaint, therefore, would appear to be not that I have treated you like a prostitute - giving you things and experiences bought with money -- but that I did not pay you as much as you had wanted; not that I paid, in other words, but that I paid not enough.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Bye 2

2009-07-29T13:02:00.002+01:00

A rising market lifts all boats and -- since importance of social networks is inverse-proportional to one's bank account -- deflates relationships. As in any bear market, the bear market in social networks means that the beta-trades -- the more iffy, more junky, more dangerous, more speculative stuff -- falls more precipitously than the alpha stuff; and some can now be gotten rid of at no expense at all.

I have been getting rid of -- left and right.

Here is a fragment of a letter to an acquaintance of twenty years -- twenty years! -- American, of course, how else -- who has refused to hold my mail presumably because doing so would expose her to all sorts of legal liabilities (how does it feel to live in a police state?):

As I see it, we are either Friends (朋友) or we are nothing. As my Friend, you would know that when I ask you a favor and say that this is very important to me and that you must help me, then I really do mean it - and there is no need to find out why; and also you would know that as your Friend I would not ask you to do anything that could possibly expose you to any sort of liability as a result of doing so. Further, as my Friend, you would do as asked immediately, no questions asked. But none of the three applies here, which means to me that we are not Friends but -- friends, which is an American category, and a very cheap one at that: tens of thousands of friends can be had by merely signing up on Facebook. I have never wanted to have friends, because friends are a useless waste of time; and if anything has changed in my life in the last twenty years it is that I want to have friends even less now; and since you are clearly only my friend, not my Friend, then, I am afraid, this is the end of the road for us, and a much belated one at that.

I shall not be calling you on August 7th, or any other August. Have a nice day.

Strong words?

Not as strong as the offense. The woman is half-Asian, was raised in Korea, a Confucian nation par excellence, and speaks Chinese fluently. It is impossible for her not to understand what 朋友 means. Which means that she knows what it means but excludes me from the category. Severing all ties is the least punishment she deserves for having misled me to think otherwise.

Facebook is an interesting case. Facebook -- as i understand it -- is where one signs up in pursuit of people who agree to be one's "friends"; there is a kind of competition for having the largest number of friends. ("I don't quite remember who he is, but he is my friend.")

Bill Gates has recently tried it and given up: "Ten thousand people wanted to be my friend," he confessed, "and I found myself asking myself: do I know this person? do I know this person?"
Note the repeat of the question. Do you know why he repeated it? He repeated it because he was actually going to say: "do I know this person? do I want to know this person?" but as he began to mouth the second sentence he realized that it would be perceived in America -- the land of friends -- as not nice: an American wants to be nice and friendly (i.e. friends) to all; to refuse to be friends with anyone is deemed a hostile act; Bill Gates has enough image problems as it is; he is too smart to offend the official party line, even if he does not practice it himself.

But clearly, Bill Gates did not want to be friends with the ten thousanf Facebookers who accosted him; and -- why? -- could it be possible? -- being smart as he is -- could it be that he did not want to be friends with them because he realized that there was no benefit to having "friends"?

Which makes an interesting point about the millions upon millions who sign up for Facebook in prusuit of that very asset -- "friends"; they are fools chasing after fools' gold. It has always been thus: the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor. For a reason, I might add: clearly, the poor are not especially smart.

A friend -- not a Friend -- and a friend no more (see Bye 1) did ask when I will finally get on Facebook. I said never.

Regarding a business opportunity

2009-07-28T10:50:00.002+01:00

Dear Grammaticus:

Sorry, I guess it is me who is late replying now; surely you wont hold that against me.

I understand perfectly well that you do not have the time to engage in substantial correspondence.

As my friend, i am sure you will understand me in return: search myself far and wide, can't seem to want to find the time to engage in less than substantial correspondence. I don't know about you, but i get a sufficient supply of hihowareyouiamfines in what is sometimes referred to as rl -- real life -- neighbors, bakers, contraband booze mongers, etc. -- and don't especially care for them here, either. Why go out to internet to get more?

Socially, internet and blogging have been a bust up for me: perhaps there is something to the medium -- perhaps it attracts a certain kind of mind only -- back when i ran my blog, the net result was that my comment box and my mail box were full of hihowareyouaimfines -- half of them from single females wishing to be otherwise -- and mad when i refused to oblige -- which, in the end, i have decided was too much of a waste of time to attend to.

But perhaps this is not the fault of the internet; perhaps such are the only minds that exist?

It so happens that i have lately been refused an ordinary favor by a long standing friend: I have asked her to hold my mail for me, her response to which was to go online and look up USPS regulations and discover that it opened her to all sorts of legal liabilities under the patriot act. I therefore google-searched and discovered a commercial service which will do it for 10.99 a month, or 100 a year.

The point is this: is it not wonderful abut the US how everything one might expect from a friend can be obtained at a reasonable price from a commercial provider? I wonder if thoughtful and intelligent correspondence may be procured that way. Do you reckon there is a business opportunity in that? Shall we say, 59.99 per letter?

Well, I have read The Maias, thank you for sending the book; and I have had tremendous fun with it, but do you have the time to discuss it, or should we just do the wave?

Cheers, old fellow.

Bye

2009-07-26T18:25:00.002+01:00

PRK writes to apologize for having dropped the ball, as he says, that is -- not corresponding; too busy, he says. Certainly he is too busy to keep up with the level of correspondence I have dictated -- I have given him too much to chew.

But if he is too busy for that type of correspondence, then, surely, I am too busy for his. I am not interested in jokes and weather and family doings; my life is too short for it.

For me, it's intellectual partnership or it is nothing. And since generally speaking, of course, it is never any sort of intellectual partnership, it is -- generally -- nothing.

To Anthante -- concerning mental hygiene

2009-07-23T12:11:00.002+01:00

Dear Anthanante:

I am very sorry, of course, to hear that your visit with me was so very unpleasant to you.

But I must confess to having the impression that your current memories of that visit, and the facts of the visit do not quite coincide. You see, you seemed fine to me at parting, which was on good terms. I even asked you whether you thought that I had taken good care of you and you said yes. Now your write to tell me that your visit was an unending chain of relentless awfulness and you could not wait to leave. This would strike most people as possibly paradoxical.

The only explanation for this sudden change of perception is that something has happened between the time you left and now, and that that something has colored your memories. It is perhaps unkind to speculate on what that something was, but I suspect that returning to the indifferent misery which is your every day life -- consider the nasty architecture and the awful climate as just two depressing elements which obviously are much worse there than they are here -- I suspect, I repeat, that returning there from her would have been perfectly sufficient to throw anyone into a fit of depression.

For this I may seem to you to bear some responsibility: the real problem with your visit, I suppose, was that I did not invite you to prolong it and thereby, indirectly, obliged you to return home. I can see how my decision could be perceived as an act of cruelty; how it would be hated, and resented; and how it would seem to call for revenge. Which is perhaps what your words really are.

I am saddened to see this mental process take place in you, but am not really surprised by it. I have seen it work often. It offers an important benefit: it certainly helps you adjust yourself to your former life if you are able to say to yourself that the place where you had just holidayed (and were not invited to stay longer) was really too awful to live and that, bottom line, it is far better to be home, whatever its obvious shortcomings.

The problem with this technique is, of course, the resentment that you manage to produce in yourself for your supposedly terrible experiences and my mistreatment of you while here. To be perfectly honest, I suppose that most people would consider what I have given you a pretty generous gift, and would therefore consider your resentment a gross injustice. But I neither wish to dwell on my virtues, nor make an argument which I know is not going to work.

What I wish to do is help you with your current emotional turmoil because I empathize with your suffering. So perhaps you will not mind if I share with you some mental hygiene techniques which I have developed over the years, in the hope that you find them useful in your current predicament.

First, I find that it is essential to keep a good journal. By which I do not mean to say the sort of place where one writes "sunny, dry, lunch with johnsons, walked the dog in the afternoon", but a place where one notes important observations about life's events and one's resolutions about them. This is important because memory is a pliable medium and we can convince ourselves to remember anything (psychology is familiar with such amazing things as planted false memories, etc.); and not merely often, but usually do; as you do now.

But since memory is also the data-base which we use to evaluate our present-day and future choices, false memories lead us to false choices. They are therefore an important cause of suffering. Thus, it is important to note to ourselves our mental states as they happen so that we have a record of them for the future. And, secondly, and as importantly, it is important for us to reread that journal on regular basis to force ourselves to reevaluate the current state of our memories and compare them to the written record.

Writing down one's resolutions is also important: things resolved but not written down are not really resolved; they lack a sense of finality. Writing them down, seems to do the trick. (Carving them in stone would be even better, but not practical). Also, things unwritten are readily and frequently forgotten. So I actually write to myself notes like: never again... and hence forth, always... and because I frequently reread my journal, I tend to remember my resolutions.

Second, it is important to exercise thought control: one must constantly and consciously choose to dwell on the good memories of people and places over bad ones; and, if there should be people and places about which no good memories are possible, then one should suppress all reflection on them altogether. Note that I am not recommending forgetting about the bad aspects of things: that would amount to memory manipulation which I was just advising that we do our utmost to prevent. Indeed, it is important to be very clear-minded about all the things that were bad in our life so that we can avoid them in the future.

No, what I mean is: we must not dwell on bad things; we must learn a way to compartmentalize unpleasant thoughts -- set them aside, put them in a drawer and close the drawer, so to speak -- in order to prevent riling ourselves with feelings of regret, anger, vengefulness, etc.

Many people find this impossible on ideological grounds, reasoning, with the romantics, that our feelings is what is authentically us, and that, therefore we must honor them, by which they mean that we must slavishly submit to their dictates. I disagree. To my mind, our emotions are only a part of us; and ought to play no more than subservient function, just as our thumbs do: we must learn to manipulate them for our purposes so that we can achieve our ends.

(The ideal is well expressed in a Sienkiewicz short story in which Zeus signals Thanatos, the brother of death, to come and let him sleep. What we should strive at is a mastery of our emotions which would allow us to signal contentment, for example, so that we may be content. I am not there, yet, but that is the central idea of my pursuit).

Which all amounts to a recommendation that you try to perform a very difficult trick: dwell on the good aspects of your visit with me without simultaneously regretting that that visit is over and that you have had to return home. The trick amounts to learning not to grieve that something has ended; but to be glad that it happened at all. It requires great intelligence to see it; and a great strength of will to execute it. You are a smart girl and you can be pretty determined: there is no reason why you should not succeed.

It would be too bloody American to say "I wish you all success in this endeavor", and ergo, I do not. But I do wish it all the same.

An item of Jesus lore

2009-07-22T13:47:00.003+01:00

Forgive those who trespass against you, it is explained, because by doing so you prove your moral superiority over your foolish enemies: you are greater than they, closer to god, more enlightened, more noble, more selfless, etc.

The truth is that the reason to forgive those who trespass against us, or, at any rate, to forget that they did, is entirely and wholly practical and selfish: this is because the feelings of anger and revenge are more damaging to us than they are to their objects.

In truth, revenge is rarely possible: most people trespass against us only when they feel they can do so with impunity; most trespasses against us are therefore unavengeable. What could possibly be the point of boiling with fury in such a situation?

A taxi driver nearly ran me -- and a lady walking alongside me -- over at a pedestrian crossing today and, into the bargain, showed us the finger. She was riled beyond all belief, boiled over with anger, yelling, and -- gasping for air (a heart condition?).

I wasn't. If I had a gun in my hand, and knew I could use it with impunity, I would have killed the unwed-mother's-son on the spot, of course, out of a sense of duty -- we all have the duty to punish the uncouth whenever we can. But I would not have done it in anger: I don't hate him. In truth, I don't have any feelings for him: he is like air to me.

You see, unlike my lady companion, I was not riled.

I suppose this means that, after all these years of working at it, I have at last reached the point of uppeka -- equanimity -- what was in the seventeenth century Europe called (after Seneca) costanza: an emotional indifference to the idiocies of the world.

Like all lessons in life, I learned this one from engagement with women.

A certain lady early in life caused me a great amount of grief. When we have parted, I was very angry at her for her irrational, cruel, inconsiderate behavior and considered ways in which I could punish her. Then, upon reflection, I realized that it was unnecessary for me to punish her at all: that, because of the way she thinks (or rather doesn't) and behaves, she is miserable herself; and that she will continue to be miserable for as long as she is alive; and that, in short, she will be her own punishment. It was her fate to be with herself, in her own company, every day of her life until the day she dies. I on the other hand was free to walk away from that disaster.

My feelings calmed, I did. I have been much happier since. Some years later, friends reported to me that some pretty awful things happened to her. By then, fully in command of my uppeka, I managed to express a few honest, if not really heartfelt, words of pity for her. I was right. I had seen it coming.

Poor thing, actually.

In a sense, I owe her a great deal, it would seem. But I think I have paid that tuition bill already with the pound of flesh she had extracted while we were together. We are therefore even.

That ugly girls are too stupid to date

2009-07-21T16:09:00.005+01:00

Hoping to avoid the usual psychological warfare which seems to follow intimate relations of any duration greater than one night -- psychological warfare aimed at securing "commitment" --
I have tried to select no-hopers: such as women married to rich and successful men (why would they want to marry me when they are far better married already?) or women substantially older than I am (such women seem to think the age difference an unbridgeable barrier to marital union; hence, an older girlfriend tends not to bother you about the C-word).

(Incidentally, I do not share their ageist prejudice, but, psst, do not tell them or they will come after us).

Alas, cuckolded rich, successful men can be dangerous (which is odd; why should they care if they no longer sleep with their wives); worse: as I get older, I find the pool of sexually attractive, significantly older women shrinking every year.

Thus, I have recently been forced to try a refinement on this tactic: the idea was to aim for poor ugly ducklings. These, I thought, should realize that having no leverage at all, they stood no chance of any permanent commitment, and -- given attractive sub-commitment level rewards -- such as pleasant company, travel, wining-dining, gifts, etc., -- should therefore be prepared to settle for less and give up any silly hope of what is so obviously impossible. (Marriage).

Or, I thought, if ever they should entertain marriage hopes, they would realize that their only hope of securing one lay in seducing me by being nothing but sweet, submissive, and agreeable at all times. (This actually works, I have seen it work with other men, but, er... should we tell the girls if we really mean to stay single? Perhaps it is lucky that they do not know how to please us well?)

I was led to this scheme by a relationship of just this sort -- a relationship with an ugly duckling -- which I had had once, many years ago, in Asia: it lasted over four years only because the girl was good in bed and always and invariably sweet and agreeable. This made spending a couple days a week in her company a pure and complete pleasure despite her very ordinary looks and her very common brains; it also made it easy to lavish on her small luxuries and (reasonable) amounts of attention: she was not not unpleasant to please.

In fact, the only time I ever found out that she had indeed harbored hopes of commitment was when we bid good-bye and she broke out in tears. I remember her fondly still. She should be a lesson to my other girlfriends: given that none has married me, certainly being remembered fondly (and perhaps being recommended to someone else in due time as a result) is worth something?

In fact, I have no doubt that a lesser, or a less determined man, would have fallen for the trick and married her in the end.

Anyhow, inspired by Kumiko's wonderful example, I have tried the poor ugly duckling strategy only to find that none so far has had Kumiko's sweetness; or, if you prefer: cunning. They all did in time to me what the other, better looking nubial types always do: demand commitment and (and therein lies the problem) get all nasty about it.

Why, I wondered.

Do they not think?

Do they not realize the obvious, i.e. that they have no snow-flake's-chance-in-hell of ever marrying me (so much richer and better looking than them)? And that therefore, far from making me submit, the only possible result they can attain from being nasty to me is -- to compel me to walk? Or did they really take seriously the sweet nothings I whisper to them in moments of passion ("you are wonderful", "never anything like this", etc.?)

And if they do take these things seriously -- why do they?

The reason for this is perhaps -- I have now come to recognize -- my own conceptual mistake: I assumed that poor ugly ducklings would be, on average, as smart (and therefore as cunning) as everyone else.

But they aren't.

First, they are poor: their poverty should tell you already that not everything is working well upstairs. If you look at how they spend their money and how they think about managing their careers -- the two inputs affecting their finance -- you should quickly realize they are, well, not very smart; unless they inherit, or win the lottery (which is the same thing, actually) dumb-shits are usually poor; and, of course, vice-versa, since an intelligent person born poor will find a way to climb out.

And -- second -- there is perhaps a correlation with looks: much evolutionarily-psychological research has been done in the last twenty years to show that good looking people are not merely more lucky, more successful, richer, and better educated, but also -- smarter.

This has been interpreted as a result of beautism (i.e. prejudice in favor of the good looking, as if good looks did not represent an objectively valuable good, valuable in and of itself): good looking women get to marry higher, so their (good looking) children get better education than the also-rans. But is it just possible that what we recognize as good looks tells us something about people's brains, too? Perhaps it does: the good looking mother's father had the superior brains to a) recognize her good looks and b) acquire them for himself. The kids would have 50% of his brains.

Or, perhaps, and this is the key, the explanation is much simpler: perhaps the good looking girl had the brains to know how to sell herself? How to be sweet and agreeable most of the time; and, perhaps, too, how to be mean and difficult but only just enough -- to get the boy?

I wonder: do you follow?

What I am thinking now is that -- perhaps -- the willingness to be mean and nasty and confrontational in women is like the willingness in men to resort to physical violence: it is more common among the not-so-bright and not-so very good looking; the types, in other words, who do not have good looks, wits, and personal charm to fall back on.

I confess, my idea that ugly girls may be smart was to some extent affected by my university experience. I went to a so-called "very good school" -- the academic standards of admission were very high -- but not a very posh one; my fellow students did not seem especially rich, but they certainly were a smart and hard working crowd. If you have read the above carefully, you will not be surprised to hear that my alma mater was also famous for the ugliness its girls. From this I drew the conclusion that nature is just, spreading its all various blessings around the population so that ugly girls are smart (and go to good schools) while pretty girls are dumb (and don't) and that thus, in the end, everyone ends up being about the same.

Well, I have to conclude today, upon my break up with Anthanante, my ugly girl number 4, and, I hope, my last one, that I was mistaken in my good-natured belief in general human equality.

Since my experience dating ugly girls indicates that they are not a smart crowd -- certainly not one gifted with what some would call emotional intelligence -- I am now inclined to think that the bad looks of girls at my alma mater are to be explained by the fact that pretty girls are too busy doing other things (more pleasurable ones) to want to waste their time studying for P-Chem 2; or, perhaps one should say, they are too smart to go for that sort of laborious, tiresome, and, at bottom, ineffective, route to success. One goes much further much more quickly by being good looking, sweet, and -- playing dumb.

Perhaps the good-looking girls know that knowing P-Chem, far from being useful, is in fact a disadvantage: first, it makes you seem smart (ha ha), and, second, you do not meet especially desirable men while studying P-Chem.

Except the would-be general practitioners, of course, but every really smart person knows that it is not the doctors who make the real dough, but the heirs: the best hand-surgeon can't hold a candle to a dry-cleaning king.

And thus: no more ugly girls for me. They are too stupid to appreciate the good deal I have to offer them.

Only Beatrice (1)

2009-07-18T20:16:00.001+01:00

“I have come. I have not broken the promise I had given. I am prepared to hear you out with all attention, worshipful fathers; and with great sympathy. I understand: you may not be inclined to believe in the sympathy; perhaps it would even be odd if you did. But, among all the many things which you have taught me at various times, you have also taught me the truth contained in the words of Christ, Our Savior: “You shall know them after their fruit.” Therefore note that – were I not honestly well disposed towards you – this hall would already be burning around you, above you and – with you. But I was able to impose upon your until yesterday faithful subjects an armistice, which shall last for the remainder of today, the whole tonight, and perhaps even until tomorrow noon. You smile ironically, father Bernard? You shouldn’t. This is war. Maybe not an ordinary war, but a war all the same. In wars fought by princes and counts, it often so happens to the garrison manning a fortress, when they are no longer able to resist, that the besieging forces break in and murder all defenders. You are in the same danger – precisely the same danger, even though no side here is an army of a king, prince, or count. Of course – not differently from any other war – the losing side here would also like to obtain the best possible terms upon which it might end the fight. Oftentimes, this is also the desire of the mediators; in this case, this is my role. With the difference that – if I drew the correct conclusion from my conversation which we had before daybreak – the arch-worshipful father Peter and I, your humble servant – you expect that I shall be able to save your lives without obtaining any commitments on your part in return; any commitments that is beyond merely the expression of willingness to forgive the unrighteous, godless – these are the arch-worshipful abbot’s words – rebels. I could of course discuss with your worshipfulnesses such a proposal, but I must make note, honestly and unambiguously: I could not make any guarantees to your worshipfulnesses that your lives could be spared on such terms; I could make some kind of efforts in that direction, I suppose, but without any promises as to their successful outcome.

“For the outcome would – very likely – be the opposite from the one intended; with the added result that the mad anger – quite justified, in my opinion – of your local subjects, who are now threatening you with death, might extend that danger to me, too. Yet, I would be willing to risk it – I have already said that I am guided here by a great sympathy for your worshipfulnesses. But in order for me to take that risk, it is necessary that you convince me during this armistice – and above all doubt – that, first, it is indeed necessary for you to continue to exist on earth in your current earthly form; and, second, why it is that I – yes, I – should risk my own life while trying to extend yours? Did you wish to speak, noble and worshipful father Andrew? I will be glad to hear your voice again. I have not heard it since the day when you put a dog’s muzzle on my face.”

“You wretch, you are guided by the feelings of ungratefulness, hate, and revenge towards us, not by any sort of sympathy. I was opposed to making any deals with you. Having now heard you speak, I am convinced even more thoroughly that I was right. You came here to torture and torment us; not with any thought of helping us. And no matter what we say, it will have no other end result than this: you will depart from here before daybreak laughing blasphemously, sacrilegiously, godlessly in the faces of the Lord’s martyrs; and you will gladly and contentedly watch this hall go up in flames about us, above us and – with us.

“Archworshipful father abbot, brother Bernard, and you, Urban, sweetest child, I beg you all: let us break off with this perverse man, the most unnatural of sons, this degenerate son. Let him depart from here immediately and may God himself judge him: it will be a terrible judgment!”

“Father Andrew: neither the archworshipful abbot, nor father Bernard seem to share in your opinion. As for Urban – his life, his health even – are not in the least danger. He will be able to depart from here along with me, regardless of the outcome of our talks, unless he himself chooses to share your fate. He chooses so now, I imagine; but I do hope that once he hears everything about which we shall talk here, that desire will leave him.”

Urban: “It shall not, dear brother Stanislaw”.

Andrew: “How dare you call this villain, this blasphemer, this messenger of hell – how dare you call him your brother?”

Bernard: ‘Brother Andrew, I beg of you: be careful with your words. I am not too pleased to have this man as my intercessor, either, but let us not forget: he did suffer many iniquities at our hands.”

Stanislaw: “I did not come to have my iniquities made whole. Nevertheless, you have spoken holy words, father Bernard. Worshipful Andrew ought to be careful with his words; but you have warned him too late. You did say, father Andrew, did you not: first “the most unnatural of unnatural sons” and then, much simpler: degenerate son. You aimed these words at me – in what sense? Metaphorical or literal? When saying so, did you mean me as a child of your monastery? Or rather – as your son of flesh and blood? Of course, I cannot be a son of flesh and blood of all of you. So am I perhaps – your son, worshipful Father Andrew?”

Urban: “Neither father Andrew’s; nor father Bernard’s; nor the archworshipful abbot’s…”

Stanislaw: “…and nor yours, of course. But only this last is clear and certain above all doubt, nothing more. I have intended to space out – quite widely – over the duration of the armistice various subjects which we must – must! – cover. And the time would have certainly come – I have originally expected it would come around midnight – to cover this topic, too: the identity of my father, my father in flesh and blood; but it has happened otherwise, thanks to Father Andrew. He hurried the arrival of that moment which I did not wish to hurry at all. My worshipful fathers! For some years now I have been convinced that one of you has fathered me, not quite thirty years ago, with the daughter of the Niałek miller.

Andrew: “I was not in Wieleń during the rule of the worshipful Nicholas; nor was I a member…”

“…Of the monastic complex of Obra. No. But you did come here from outside Poland twice. The first time when the Obra complex was ruled by the worshipful John, and the Wielen complex by its first abbot, Olibierus, or perhaps Henry; that is between the years one thousand two hundred seventy eight and eighty eight. And on the unforgettable night of the third day of the first week of Lent in the year ninety-six the worshipful Father Peter – today the arch-worshipful abbot – has deigned to inform me that I was then fourteen. From which it follows that I was born in the year eighty-two; perhaps eighty-one; and must therefore have been conceived in the first year of the rule of aforementioned Abbot John.

“But why are you so deeply moved, Father Andrew? Did I say that I suspect you of having fathered me? I said you could be my father; but are you more likely my father than either the arch-worshipful abbot Peter or Father Bernard? Forgive me, but you have just behaved like Achilles, the son of Peleus, when Odysseus, having struck his shield with his sword… Ah, but you know what happened then, don’t you? After all, I have heard this story from you, did I not? But then: I do not claim that you are my father, despite what could have been your inadvertent revelation a moment ago. For I happen to have found evidence that Father Bernard, when he arrived in Wielen at the side of the then Abbot Nicholas, was not in fact visiting Poland for the first time, though I do not yet know when exactly his first visit here – in Obra if not in Wielen – had taken place. But I will know it, no doubt, you will tell me, Father Bernard, will you not? No such difficulties attach to your eminent person, arch-worshipful Peter. You belonged to the Wieleń community from the very beginning. If you ever left, it was well after my birth, and never while Nicholas was abbot. Of course all three of you must be offended by now that I should bring up such filthy business – but can it really be possible that you do not understand – not one of the three of you – that I will probably lose my father within the next twenty four hours? It is a natural and noble thing to mourn for one’s father; but I must know for whom it is that I mourn. I will of course mourn for all three of you as my spiritual fathers; but only one of you as my father of flesh and blood. I wish you all well, of course, and I already said it. What’s more: I think I have the right to expect that you requite the sentiment.

Andrew: “If these cruel and sarcastic words have not been inspired – why, commanded -- by the ruler of hell himself, I’ll…”

Abbot Peter: “And now I, too, will repeat after Father Bernard: you must reckon with your words, Brother Andrew. But also you, Stanislaw. Or rather – if indeed you still remember our night time conversation, our last before your departure from here all those years ago, you must remember that I called you by a different name then. By what name did I call you?”

“Telemachos”.

“Telegonos.”

“No, you are mistaken. I am wholly certain: you called me Telemachos, not Telegonos”.

“Perhaps I am mistaken. Yet, I notice in you an unambiguous – and therefore dangerous – tendency to overestimate your memory, however impressive it may be; which memory I so greatly admire that to express this admiration I would first have to (if I do not want you to take me for your father in flesh and blood) convince you (not without difficulty, I imagine) as to the obvious truth: how wholly unimportant it is, compared to spiritual fatherhood, who begat you in flesh and blood, whether this individual, or this, or this…”

“For instance, the itinerant hurdy-gurdy player to whom you have once instructed me to give a penny; or, perhaps the opposite, one of the Piast princes…”

“Precisely. Either this, or that – it is not at all as important as it seems to you. For regardless whether it was the itinerant hurdy-gurdy player, or a Piast prince – that which you are has not been created by either one or the other. Neither could have done it even had they wanted to for the simple reason that neither had the ability to do so: neither the understanding nor the inclination. You know a lot about us; and we know a lot about you: not only that you whom we have here, in the Wieleń monastery, raised over the years, day by day, like a rare plant, and polished like a precious stone; but also about that distant you, roaming between Tartary and Cymbria. And that which we do know about you leads us – leads me at least – to be both proud of you and to fear for you. Yes, for you, not for us. Should the Lord of Heaven, our Creator and Savior at once, decide that we should stand before him in judgment within this day? What is more: should He desire that our road to Him should lead through martyrdom in flames? Well, let the name of the Lord be praised! More worthy men – more just, more holy – underwent just such a martyrdom traveling from this vale of tears into God’s presence. But what shall you do unto yourself if you do this unto us? What joy will that short moment give you? – for believe me, if it at all comes, it will be very brief indeed! The joy of having paid us back for real – not merely imagined wrongs? And believe me there were plenty more of the latter!”

“My arch-worshipful father! The death in flames which threatens you now would not go to avenge my wrongs, but to avenge for the wrongs you have dealt to your subjects!”

“Is that so indeed? I think you do not believe this yourself. Please do not say you do believe this, for if you were to say this, I would have to stop being proud of you.”

“Yet, I will say just so. When we two spoke this morning, one-on-one, in front of the house, what would I have said to you if I merely wanted to avenge my wrongs? Undoubtedly just this: you must all die. And therefore prepare yourself mentally for the fact that there is – there can be – no hope of survival for you. But what did I say? I said: if you wish to escape death in flames, you must agree to such and such demands of the peasants of Mochy. If you accepted these demands, what benefit would I have of it? Would your rebelled subjects reward me with gold? Or would they follow me unto the ends of earth in search of the Holy Grail? Surely, you do not think so.”

“We do not think so. Or at least I do not. I am not even inclined to think that you might, after burning us here, lead your colons somewhere far away, where they may escape the severe justice of the lay and church authorities. Though perhaps that would have been the smartest thing to try: become their leader, struggle through forests and marshes towards the coast, then the sea; buy – or hijack – a ship in Wolin, and sail far, far away, West, beyond England, Ireland, Iceland.

“No, you will not do it. Our peasants, well, the peasants will run away and hide in the forest perhaps; but you will remain here, above the smoldering ambers of this house, the ashes which had once been our flesh, to curse yourself and mourn for us bitterly. The prince’s – or the bishop’s – men will find you here in tears.”

“You are saying the very same thing which I have myself said here only recently: it is a noble thing to mourn one’s father. But so long as to give time for the prince’s – or bishop’s henchmen – to catch me? After all, it’s not like I would be mourning a worthy father rather than merely one who begat me in sin, with the Niałek miller’s daughter!”

“You are mistaken if you think that you are strong… No, no… do not interrupt now. Yes, you are strong but with a different strength than such as is born of hate or vengefulness…”

“Born of the hunger for justice, out of pity for wrongs done…”

“Whose wrongs? You will say not yours but the peasants’. A hunger for justice for the subjects of the monastery, not for yourself… Yes, it could be like that. Except it is not. Perhaps you yourself are not aware that it is not. Knowing you as well as I do, I am inclined to believe that you do believe yourself to be the avenger of the colons’ wrongs. But even if you had been an avenger of their wrongs, you are him no longer, you have ceased to be him. From the moment of your arrival here; from the moment in which you expressed your readiness to seek our salvation, even if we were to reject the peasants’ demands… But whence this sudden readiness to negotiate, only seemingly unexpected? Two explanations are possible: the first is that the peasants’ wrongs do not concern you at all, and that you are not at all eager to grapple with us for justice for them; and the second that considering us lost souls you want…”

“…to humiliate you and torture you, as worshipful Andrew said? Achieve that you will die cursing me?”

“On the contrary. Achieve that we will die admiring you…”

“That is not the case. But were it even the case, I could never achieve it. No one could.”

“Very probably. But you think that you just might achieve it.”

“So that I may then mourn you while cursing myself bitterly until the prince’s – or bishop’s – henchmen come? Nonsense! Your arch-worshipfulness said that you know me well. More nonsense! You do not know me at all! Nor can you know me. You said that you know a great deal about that me who roamed the great spaces between Tartary and Iceland. You do not know a hundredth part of it. That adolescent who left here, bid goodbye by your curses, in the night of the third day of the first week of Lent over thirteen years ago is no more. I have changed. You said that you were proud of me; or rather, proud of that plant you have grown, or that precious stone you have polished. Well, you have a right to that kind of pride… But do you deserve my gratitude? You had it. Plenty of it. But you still deserve a pay back. Am I not paying you back? And how generously! Here I am trying to save your life, even while risking my own; but since I am risking my own life, I must know… -- the miller’s daughter’s son will now speak to you! – that the bread I receive isn’t worth less than the price I am prepared to pay for it. This is simple – you will agree? – or at least clear?

“I repeat, you must convince me successively: first, that you deserve saving; and then: why I should do the saving while risking my own life!”

“Let us suppose that we did manage to convince you in some manner wholly satisfactory to you in respect to both the first and the second question. And let us suppose further: that you have saved us and, along with us, yourself. The Mochy peasants will receive from us forgiveness for their rebellion, but nothing else: they will have to pay their taxes in kind just as they were supposed to pay it all along (and ought to have paid before the rebellion broke out). And thus the wrongs of the peasants – as you see it – will continue unabated…”

“Ah, but you will retain the memory of the dangers which you have – practically miraculously – escaped. Your fear will remain – forever. You will be kinder to your peasants henceforth.”

“Indeed? You appear so wise, so well-raised, so well-polished – and yet you understand so little! Nothing feeds ruthlessness as well as fear… We will be far worse towards the Mochy peasants than towards any others; and the peasants will hate us even more than ever before… And they will often think to themselves: “why did we not burn them then?” And in so thinking they will also remember your intermediation; and remembering, what will they send you – near or far -- thanks? Blessings? No! Curses!”

“You appear to want the same thing father Andrew wants: that I go away already.”

“You are mistaken. Andrew does not want you to go. He merely allowed himself to speak in anger. Nor do I want you to go. But all of us here want one thing: that you avoid doing something which you will later be unable to undo; and will want to undo, badly but belatedly.”

“These are beautiful words but they do not advance the least bit the negotiations for the sake of which I have managed to arrange this truce. Arch-worshipful father, tell me, do you or do you not wish to continue living here, on earth? And if you do, please provide some argument why you should…”

“You appear here with two functions: as prosecutor and judge… But even if I were to accept to defend myself before this sort of tribunal – a tribunal which violates all rules of justice – you may want to try to afford it… if not exactly justice then – legality enough to fulfill the ancient requirement: that an accusation must precede defense. For how can the judged defend himself if he does not know wherein lies the accusation?”

“Fine.”

“But be careful. You must now set aside the wrongs of the Mochy peasants, and all monastery’s peasants in general. It is not they who want to know whether we deserve to continue our lives in flesh on earth; or whether you should be saving us. You do not wish to be a fair judge; but try at least to be a rational one.

“We have heard that you listened in Cologne, on the Rein, to the lectures of great masters of logic. Show us then how you have profited by those lectures: prove that you have not wasted your and your teachers’ time. Your accusation – if it were to reveal your ability to reason correctly – must aim to prove that we do not deserve to continue our life in flesh on earth; or, at the very least that even if we deserved to do so, then there is no reason why you should try – perhaps at risk of your own life – to save us.

“Personally, though I am very proud of you – how many times I have said it here already – I am not inclined to think that you can make such a proof; or rather that you could present such a proof without violating principal rules of correct implication. I may be mistaken in my expectations; but I say: try it, if you wish to see my defense in due course. Of course, if you do not try (which may suggest that you are not sure of your prosecutorial skills), such due course will not come. I have spoken. Or rather we have spoken, the abbot of the Monastery of the Cistercian Fathers in Wielen, and, by virtue of that fact, the shepherd of Mochy and the legal representative of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Andrew: “I object.”

“Our abbot’s “we” a moment ago was of course directed at Stanislaw here, but even more so at you, worshipful father. This mansion belongs to the Wieleń monastery; whether it stands or burns, there will be here only one legal authority: the will of the abbot.

“Stanislaw, we are ready to hear you. Oh, but wait. You have listened to lectures on the subject of correct implication, or, to say it in Greek, of logic; but, as far as I know, you have never studied law. That is a great pity since you must henceforth perform a judgment, even though your professional preparation for the task is no greater than that of a tailor (or roofer) who suddenly resolved to make shoes.

“Allow me to help you somewhat here, then, though without leading you to draw out of my willingness to help you the conclusion that this is yet one more proof of my fatherhood of you. Well then, you must begin your accusation as follows: it shall be shown in my argument above all doubt that such-and-such and so-and-so among the Cistersian monks (we know who they are) have committed criminal acts for which the laws of our kingdom foresee the penalty… but wait… what kingdom is this? It might seem that it is the kingdom of Poland… but by the command of which ruler of this kingdom are you here in the role of a prosecutor or judge?”

“I am here as a representative of all the peasants of the Obra province who have been attached to the property currently under the management – whether legal or illegal – of the Cistercian monks settled in two neighboring monasteries, in Obra and Wieleń. I am intentionally using the word “management” rather than “possession”: I have been taught that monks may not own any property, since they take the oath of eternal poverty.

“Of course, whether the lord exercises possession or management, the subjects of all degrees owe him their obedience. But is it unconditional? The church teaches us in the words of its greatest authorities – Pope Gregory VII, among others, and the doctor known as angelic – Thomas Aquinas – that in order to expect unconditional obedience, the ruler’s rule must also be wholly and unconditionally just. But should the rule prove unjust it is not only allowed; but it is required to refuse obedience because unjust rule is a tyranny; and the same church authorities teach that tyrannicide is not murder; and is therefore not a mortal sin; it may be at most an ordinary sin and, under certain circumstances it may even be a virtuous, deserving act. Mochy was ruled unjustly; they rose against tyranny; which is to say that if you do die here tomorrow in flames, your death will be an act of tyrannicide.”

Andrew: “Saint John the Evangelist, our Lord’s favorite student, wrote: “all power comes from God.”

Stanislaw: “Dear father, was that indeed John the Evangelist? I don’t think our arch-worshipful abbot would agree.”

“I don’t. You shame us, father vicar; and not for the first time today. And not the first time today Stanislaw, our beloved son, proves that we were not much mistaken years ago when we whispered to each other: this miller boy will one day grow up to be a great jewel and pride of our monastery.

“Jewel and pride intellectually – I must add; since hardly any one of us had expected that the boy whom we had taken in, and by taking him in had preferred him over all others; hardly any of us, I say, had expected that this boy would make us proud with virtues other than those of the intellect. It is true that I did fool myself for some time that I might be able to transform that boys’ – yours, Stanislaw, whom at some time I may have called Telemachos or Telegonos – that boys’ ever increasing tendency for self-love, which is to say, the most terrible sin of pride; transform it into its opposite, such as noble pride rooted in two things: the understanding that to possess great intellectual gifts is not a merit, as it is an unsolicited gift of God, of which it is well to be proud but with pride no greater than is proper to an undeservedly selected vessel; and, second, in constant meditation on the divine warning: to whom more is given, from him more will be expected. But when tested, that same Stanislaw showed above all doubt that God has not only gifted him, but also burdened him; which must not surprise us since being above all creatures, Divinity exceeds all teachers, whether of mathematics or music, in its love for harmony, and therefore with its dislike for self-loving youths who upset all harmony. Putting it differently, perhaps more clearly, I will say: tested, Stanislaw proved to be handicapped in spirit, and therefore also intellectually: he has no sense of duty, a sense which, we imagine, should characterize especially those who have received so much more than all others: an expectation that more will be expected of them; nor does he possess, the same test showed, another sense, closely connected with the aforementioned: self-respect; or what I have called earlier noble pride.”

Andrew: “Can there be anywhere on earth such a thing as self-respect – noble pride – of bastards?”

Bernard: “Allow me to put a word in, arch-worshipful abbot. Father Andrew’s interjections fill me with distaste; but your speech fills me with sadness. In different form you express the same injustice, or perhaps only insensitivity, or inability to understand the deeper aspects of human soul.”

Andrew: “Are you still in your old place – or are you already on your knees before the giver of life and death, Father Bernard? The wretches – the rebels, worthy of pity rather than anger – have boarded up the windows and my sight has always been weak… But, as a result, my hearing has always been keen… It is no surprise then that I catch in your voice a note of fear… Would you want to live in flesh, on earth, for ages and ages and ages?”

“I should like to leave my flesh at the moment appointed for it by Divine Will; and in company of just, or at least merciful, brothers. His arch-worshipfulness abbot has spoken at great length about Stanislaw’s pride; but has he never asked himself whether that pride has been no more than a shield, wrought from captured iron (metaphorically speaking) which he broke off constantly – and bravely – from spears and lances aimed at him by pseudo-friends, foster-fathers, spiritual fathers – indeed, his despisers and torturers. We took him in; but did we privilege him? Why, we had him for a puppy – metaphorically speaking, of course, until Father vicar put a dog’s muzzle on him; whether metaphorically or literally, he was for us no more than a puppy dog, sweet, and bright from birth; one plays with such dogs and teaches them all sorts of tricks; but when they begin to bore or tire us with their playfulness, we kick them. (And sometimes well before they begin to bore us, too). But we expect from such dogs – no, demand from them – that they should always remember the stroking hand, not the kicking foot. And how surprised we are when, kicked cruelly and often, a dog will suddenly jump up to our hand in order not to lick it but bite it!

“You also mentioned, your arch-worshipfulness, a trial of fate which Stanislaw failed thereby revealing a spiritual handicap, which is to say insufficient self-respect or noble-pride. Do you remember? I was opposed to such trials; as was Abbot Nicholas, who now rests in the lap of God, I expect, but then was both yours and mine abbot. But you insisted. Was your insistence then guided only by worthy motivations? Why, did you really select Stanislaw to undertake that a trial only because you thought it may lead to transform the youth’s supposed self-love into its opposite, noble pride, self-respect? Further: you say he failed the test; disappointed hopes placed in him. Did you ask him then – that night on which you sent him away – discarded him like a dog – that night which you can recall so very well since you speak of it so precisely: the night of the third day of the first week of Lent of the year so-and-so” – did you ask him: “Beloved son, we have placed such hopes in you, and you have disappointed us bitterly… Why?” You see, I did ask him, with these very words precisely. I ran after him for a long time, long after his mother, all in tears, had given up – because it was such a frosty night!”

“And what did he answer you?”

“He spoke softly, even tenderly, but his voice did not tremble; on the contrary, it was almost happy. He said: ‘Good father, the time comes when you will learn everything; you. Only you.’”

“And have you learned?”

“Your arch-worshipfulness has spoken. I received a letter from Prague in the year…”

Stanislaw: “Worshipful father! The time has not yet come to discuss that matter! But I am happy to hear that my letter from Prague reached you. I have long wanted to ask you about it; it was the first thing I wanted to ask when I arrived here at the doorstep of the monastery after ten years’ absence. But on my first day here I could not find you; and on the second the worshipful father Andrew, as you have already graciously observed, put a dog muzzle on my face. Which, of course...”

Andrew: “…creates hopes for one of us – father Bernard, of course – that he will escape Mochy with his flesh intact… My lords – noble, less noble, and those entirely devoid of nobility of any kind! -- time passes! It is completely dark already: not only inside, but also outside. Let us pay attention to the importance of the passage of time – if we cannot pay attention to self-respect. I am deeply convinced that I will not see the next night; and if therefore you are indeed Christians, allow me to prepare myself for my death. I wish for peace – nothing more, but nothing less. And if I have to pay for this right to peace the highest price, then I will pay it. It is my understanding that Stanislaw’s vengefulness – or, perhaps, as father Bernard’s words have shown us, a released dog’s madness – is really aimed only at one person: his father in flesh and blood. And if he has drawn all three of us into this trap, it is only because he does not know which one of us has begat him with the daughter of the Niałek miller. Once he knows, the trap for the remaining two will loosen. Listen, whatever your name (since you have been named Stanislaw, secretly by your mother and without permission from the monastic authorities), shall we make a deal? I will prove to you – in accordance with all the rules of precise and correct implication – that you are my bastard. It will not be pleasant for me to lower myself to the task of reasoning with a low-life like you – yet I will undertake this effort and I am sure its results will please you. But if you are pleased, will you assure me that the arch-worshipful abbot, the cowardly father Bernard, and the innocent child Urban will be able to leave this place unharmed? I do not doubt it, I have never doubted it for a moment, that this whole supposed peasant rebellion is really your work; not directly, but indirectly, of course: you have influence with your grandfather, and the cunning miller has influence over all the peasants in the possession of the Wieleń and Obra monasteries. You have caught us; not our peasants’ anger. So, if you want the death of your father of flesh and blood – his death in flames, no less – you will have that death, but only that death. Do you agree?”

Abbot Peter: “We order you, dear brother Andrew, to be silent. We are pleased of course by your readiness to sacrifice yourself for the sake of your brethren…”

Andrew: “I have already explained it: I am not guided by any sense of love; I merely long for some moments of peace before death… I need some moments of concentration to settle with God some earthly accounts…”

“We said: be silent! I warn you, I must speak to you more sharply – though I do not like doing so: you are behaving nobly, but with the nobility of a knight, not that of a monk. You are self-sacrificing, too, but with the self-sacrificing of a simpleton. And in this you are as proud as Stanislaw, but at the same time – unlike Stanislaw – foolish. Not in all things, but in that which is most important, because that which is most important is too complicated – it is insufficiently simple for you to grasp!

“You are right when you say that it was not the rebellion of our peasants’ which has trapped us here, in this trap, this ambush, this net – this most unusual net woven of fire. We agree with you, we the Wieleń abbot, your superior, as perhaps does father Bernard, too, that the rebellion here is the work of one individual and not, to use the language of Caesar, Cicero and Salust, of the oppressed people. Of course, without the people, this rebellion would not have become the success it has been; so the people have been fooled, fooled through the agency of a person of great authority among all the simpletons in the area, Stanislaw’s maternal grandfather, the miller; and they have been fooled into thinking that by threatening us – what is more, by threatening us with death – they may receive a commutation of the due labor and goods into payment in coin; and a rescission of the right of to judge criminals among our peasants back from the monastic to the secular authorities. They have been fooled because they do not know, though the miller knows it well, and his grandson, whom we have transformed into a great learned lord knows it even better – that even if we wanted to satisfy such demands, we could not, since, just as our colons are our subjects, we ourselves are subjects, indeed, slaves, of the set of rules which make up the law according to which our monastic order is ruled. And knowing as much, Stanislaw is in fact misleading the peasants; and more, since misleading the peasants is but a means to a further goal. You believe, father Andrew, that that goal is vengeance upon his father of flesh and blood; in thinking so, you reason further correctly: if the father reveals himself (which would amount to his accepting death), Stanislaw may let the other two (and the child Urban) slip out of here unharmed. But I deny it…”

Bernard: “And I join you in your denial. I believe – I have always believed – that Stanislaw’s greatest complaint against us has been that (since he assumed that one of us was his father) he’d never lived to see the day on which his father stepped forward to identify himself; for he reasoned thus: “Since he does not reveal himself – even secretly, to me alone – then I am not dear to him; worse: I must be repulsive to him.

“Which is to say, in other words, that he dearly – though secretly – wished for his father’s love; and if someone – I believe equally dearly myself – longs for his father’s love, then that proves that he loves his unknown father; and if he loves him, then it is impossible for him to be motivated by his disappointment, though the disappointment be year by year ever more bitter, to commit the crime of patricide, a crime which is more terrible than any other crime, except matricide. And thus I think that brother Andrew’s reasoning, however noble and selfless, is completely mistaken; I might agree with the supposition that Stanislaw may have been behind the peasants’ rebellion against us so as to force that among us who is his father to reveal himself; but he desires that revelation not in order to wreak revenge on his father, but – in order to save him.

“To save only his father.

“Surely, you remember, Stanislaw, the story about the wizard’s apprentice? The apprentice, while watching his master, learned the secret of how to compel evil spirits to perform works ordered by the human will; but only how to summon and order them to perform such works, but not how to dismiss them when their services were no longer required. I suppose it is with you just as it was with that apprentice: you were able, in order to serve your own ends, to transmute the resentment of the peasants’ into an open rebellion, but you would never be able to calm the rebellion you have caused: having learned how to call the evil spirits, you have forgotten to learn also how to dispel them. And therefore you know, if you are wise – and you are wise – that if we do not make concessions – and we cannot make concessions as the arch-worshipful abbot has shown to you very wisely only a moment ago – therefore you know that the rebellious peasants must – they have no choice – must murder the monks; or, to be precise, to burn us with this whole mansion. You could perhaps, in your overall impotence (so very clear to you, am I not right?), you could perhaps snatch a small part of the booty which the forces summoned by you, but now no longer obedient to you, will now take, since, after all, the killing of two or three can give as much animal pleasure to those bent on murder as the killing of three or four; especially if one tells them that among those about to be murdered such and such person was really in favor of making concessions, but was shouted down by the wolves among the others, among whom that person was but a gentle lamb. Which is all to say that – it must be obvious – what you really expect of our talk tonight – of the armistice, as you put it – is to discover the identity of your father; but with the purpose of saving him, not taking revenge upon him. That’s all for now.”

Abbot Peter: “You are very insightful, brother Bernard; certainly more so than brother Andrew; but you, too, are mistaken. I agree that, given a chance to save any one of us from the powers he has released upon us, but which he now cannot call back, Stanislaw would indeed do this: he would try to save that one of us as to whom he could now say without any shadow of doubt, or uncertainties, or fear: ‘I have found my father in flesh and blood.’

“But then again: having always wished Stanislaw well – too well, perhaps, for certainly a lot better than he has turned out to deserve – you have now taken your softness towards him decidedly too far: for it would most certainly not be love for his found father, but vengefulness towards him that would motivate Stanislaw to save only his father from among us all.

“Believe me! Love takes many forms; and so does vengefulness. We have talked so much together, brother Bernard, you and I, in the evenings in the monastery – over years and years – concerning all the most terrible dangers involved in hiding sin and crime under the mask of virtue! Do you remember? We even spoke about how even that which is the holiest can be employed by the arch-cunning Satan to mislead creatures of God which he selects as especially attractive to him and which, while being mortal are also sentient. You yourself have described how the incontrovertible proof – of great literary value, too – of Saint Anselm of Durovernum that the Holy Spirit comes from both Father and Son – a powerful proof against the Greek schismatics – was itself once subverted so as to give not brief pleasure to Satan; and since that could happen, who could claim that Satan cannot pull an even more daring subterfuge: to collect profits from Christ’s own instructions? “Man is not for Sabbath, but Sabbath for man”, said our Lord Savior; but how many opportunities for crime does this teaching create – as a result of Satanic whisperings – when it is put into practice by lazy men? The same must be true regarding other teachings of Our Lord Savior: gluttony and drunkenness spread behind the shield wrought from the gospel story of the miracle at Cana. Tell me, is it so, or is it not?”

Bernard: “You have spoken truthfully.”

Abbot Peter: “I am glad to hear this. And now you will be glad to hear this: the Lord said: “when a brother strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left”; which, we have been taught, is an injunction to gentleness, humility, and rewarding evil with good. But Satan is well capable of turning this teaching into a weapon not for the humble, but for the proud; the vengeful who are not inclined to forgive mercifully. This weapon is not intended for all; only the higher minds, of course, the higher minds among the proud, vengeful and merciless. I’ll say more, because the words “higher minds” are not sufficient; one should add “for shy, unwarlike characters, in other words – the bloodless – so as not to say…

Andrew: “…those with impotent testicles; or thoroughly lacking in honor…”

Stanislaw: “I will not rebuke you, eminent vicar, should I even care to, for we waste time here – seemingly fruitlessly, though perhaps only seemingly so – priceless and merciless time, every faster advancing towards tomorrow… all this considering of my worth, whether I have matured, whom I in fact serve, how to interpret my relationship to the rebellion of the Mochy peasants – surely, you must admit, it is exactly and no more than – and attempt at self-defense. Would I, once I have identified my father, abandon him to death in flames, or, on the contrary, try to save him from the same? Or again: by saving him, would I reveal my love for him or my feelings of vengefulness towards him? And if I intended revenge, would it be the sort especially pleasing to Satan, which lies in exposing our left cheek to a brother who strikes us on the right one, in order to punish him all the more cruelly with spiritual suffering, feelings of guilt and shame; more cruelly than striking him back, or indeed, killing him would have been?!

“Spending our time in this manner, our precious time measured not in days, but only hours till the expiration of the armistice – in fact you two – you arch-worshipful abbot, and you father Bernard – show how right is the third of you: if you can or will only engage your judge here in this manner– your judge representing here your oppressed people (despite all your arguments, I am such a judge) – then perhaps it would be better if you stopped talking to me at all leaving me in conviction that I am indeed father Andrew’s son in flesh and blood…”

Andrew: “How terribly you would be punishing me, oh Lord of Heaven, if it were to be the truth…”

Stanislaw: “How valuable this admission of yours: if by way of its form alone. But let’s set that aside. Having, as I do, a great number of well founded reasons to suspect that no other person but you, father Andrew, begat me with the daughter of the Niałek miller, I said: I will not rebuke you. But you, arch-worshipful abbot? You said a great deal to attack me, and would say a great deal more, too; but by doing so do you not undermine the dignity of your own extraordinary mind, polished by both philosophical and legal education? Were you not demanding yourself only a short while ago that, respecting the foundational principles of legality I should agree to hear your self-defense only after you have learned the content of the accusation against you? I agreed – and what followed? You were offering me help – as one who has completed legal studies – you proposed to help me formulate my accusation in agreement with the rules of law – but then you cut off your work on formulation quickly and passed on to defense. After all, your disagreement – supposedly a tacit disagreement – as the eminent vicar was kind enough to put it for us – well – well – weren’t you supposed to make peace with God?

“Yes, peace with God – Him who makes your appearance – after passing the fiery gates through which you shall pass to leave this earth – a passing ever more likely – thanks to your wasting of the precious time so generously granted you by your tribunal; ever more likely – if not by now unavoidable! Perhaps you desire to die already? Do you despise this chance of survival because – it comes from me? Or perhaps you do want to live on but do not believe that I have either the power or the desire to protect you from imminent death?

“Whichever one of these possibilities (dressed by me into the form of questions) corresponds to the truth, well, such a truth would not be contradictory to the purpose of your hearing out the accusations of your tribunal – yes, tribunal: tribunal of the people against the tyrants. Are you not able to copy me – once, just this once? I said: your every utterance strengthens my ability – it teaches me, enriches me, develops: take the arch-worshipful abbot’s mention of a term from the writings of Caesar, Cicero and Sallust: this term, precisely: the people – not in the sense which I have heretofore known – which was “the people of God” – the community of Christians – but in the sense of that collective whose interests are in direct opposition to the interests of all rulers and owners. How much I have gained by becoming acquainted with this term! Learn from me then – follow me! – and try to convince me that (no more than this really) that you deserve to continue living your life; or, if you prefer, that I should save that life. Do not waste your time on secondary question: how good is he who brings you this chance? Grab this chance! You are hereby accused that you have oppressed the people; well, present proof that, although you have oppressed them, yet you do not deserve the punishment appointed by the people rebelled against tyrannical rule. Yes, you have said already that according to the rules which make up the law code by which the international – inter-tribal? – Cistercian order is ruled, you have no power to promise to the people that you will change their duties in kind and labor into a cash payment; or that you will renounce the power to punish their crimes by life or death. I know that you do not have sufficient powers to promise such changes; but are you not able to promise the people’s tribunal that, once you have escaped the present straits alive, you will seek to obtain such powers? And more: that you will promote within the order the intellectual trend – later to be made practical – seeking to make such legal changes within the order as could improve the fate of those who subject to the order’s rule?

“Indeed, I tell you, you could easily swear as much. Yet you do not. Why not? Would such a movement serve no purpose? -- would it be impractical, unable to achieve any real changes? What of it? Your good faith – and out of it arising good will – would be sufficient that those who generously spared you would have no grounds to curse you, or jeer you: ‘they promised but in bad faith’! You believe yourself to be honest good monks, and therefore law-abiding, and precisely as such are unwilling to promise anything? But why should the receipt of copper, or silver, or, indeed, gold, not be preferable to forcing your peasants to perform labor in kind? And more: if one of your peasants should indeed commit a crime deserving the penalty of death, would it not be one hundred-fold more agreeable to you – to each and every one of you here – to send the criminal before the tribunal of the governor, the prince, or the king than to send him yourself into the hands of the executioner? I do not believe that you really prefer the former custom over these new ones – though they would indeed be new here (since they have long since been accepted as normal everywhere else). Would you really want me to think yourselves intellectually slothful as well as fools? Were I to think like this (or otherwise: were you to force me to think like this) – would you not think me forced to add another chapter to my list of accusations against you?”

Andrew: “What are the basic – the original – chapters of your accusation?”

“At last we have a sensible question! There are five basic, or original, headings of my accusation. They are: the violation of the vows of poverty, violation of the vow of chastity, violation of the vow of obedience; and further: forgery; and: a subversion of the teachings of the church, which is to say – heresy.

“Have you noticed? There are more headings of the accusation than there are accused! But I believe that, if not all three of you, then at least the arch-worshipful abbot himself has noticed that fact; and more: noticed the significance of this numerical disparity. One of you could be guilty of all these crimes, which means that the rest of you could be innocent. But this is unlikely; rather, it seems more likely that one of you has committed two of these crimes, another one also two, and the third only one; or perhaps two of you have committed one of these crimes each, which would mean that the third is accused here of the other three. But now: there is another possibility: that two of you, or perhaps all three, have committed one and the same crime, in addition to the crime which each committed separately.

“There was once here –if I am not mistaken – a blackboard somewhere here; and if it still is here, then there may well be some chalk. Then we would have before us, venerable fathers, an incredibly complex and fascinating exercise; a mathematical exercise, though it seems impossible to solve by mathematical means; or even geometric; though, luckily, when I was in the service of the ruler of Tartary (in the role of a chaplain of sorts, though not exactly chaplain’s) there was there in his service a certain Indian, very learned; he taught me a new branch of mathematics: the kind which using a special notation for the conception of void, allows one to find the solution for problems in which several known and unknown quantities are joined together by means of the four arithmetical functions; such a solution being rendered possible by the use of that special notation for no number; that is: for nothing; or: for less than one. (Indeed, numbers less than nothing, too).

“This seemed to me at first a kind of black magic – but in time I came to realize that it not was black magic; and this realization firmed up here, in Mochy: a certain peasant – a bee-keeper, shall we say – is obliged by virtue of his feudal duties to deliver to the monastery five barrels of honey; but he is free to keep all others, whether for his own consumption, or for sale. Now, were he able to collect enough honey to fill up seven barrels, we would say, according to this Indian branch of mathematics, that, in that particular mathematical relationship, he has two more than nothing; a positive number. But then let us say that the fruit of his labor comes out to three barrels; and the monastery refuses to lower his dues despite his desperate pleas; then how much shall we have in that mathematical notation? Two not above but below nothing, a negative number.

Andrew: “Black magic, or not, it is a pagan teaching, and therefore Satan’s: one more weapon in his struggle against Divine Majesty.”

Stanislaw: “I very much doubt whether you are right, father vicar. Killing is sometimes referred to as a-nihil-ation, am I not right? The peasant -- the vicar – had something here on earth; more of this, or less of this, or nothing at all other than life; but even if all he had was life, yet he had something. But when he loses the power to move and feel, then he has truly nothing; he once ruled, now he rules no more; he once suffered, now he no longer suffers. That would be an example of reducing a positive number to that number by which nothingness is denoted in India. Take yourself: if the peasants should set fire to this mansion at dawn, your journey towards nothingness will begin, in the sense that first you will suffer terribly in the flames, but then you will stop suffering, you will cease to be a thought, or feeling, or shape; you shall become dust, which is to say: nothing. Or, according to mathematics, that would be your end. But will that be your end? It is fit to show respect to our teachers by displaying from time to time before them the knowledge which we owe them; which is no more than what I am doing here now, arch-worshipful abbot, by presenting you with this proof of your teaching efforts expended upon my person – I will now pass from Latin to Tuscan –

…chi e’n quell foco che view si diviso
Di spora, che par suger della pira
Ov’ Eteocle col fratel fu misto?
Risposemi: la dentro si martira
Ulisse...

“And precisely! Foco, pira, martira! And who? Why, Ulisses, arch-worshipful father, that is to say the father of both Telemachos and Telegonos. Thus you have here a mathematical problem with both positive and negative numbers. The flames of the mansion burning above you, around you, with you – before you death, before nothingness, before the end… but then it turns out that death is not the end, and therefore not that number denoting a figure smaller than one, smaller than the smallest fraction of one, that is to say, nothing – that it is not the smallest number at all! Following it, another one will come, one bearing a negative sign; then two, then ten, then hundred, then thousand, then thousands of thousands, infinity, unto infinite time; for, after all, it is not Satan, but God’s own church that teaches us – you, worshipful fathers as well as me – that the sufferings of sinners will have no end in the flames of hell; that very hell of which the Tuscan (whom I had just quoted) says that it was formed by “la divina potestate, la somma sapienza e’l primo amore”. Will you deny this, arch-worshipful fathers? You cannot, and since you cannot, then you should be able to say to yourselves: the next Saturday – which is tomorrow – will be a great mathematician and he will undertake to solve a mathematical problem involving a number whose name is Fire; that number will appear in the problem as both positive and negative; except that where that value is positive, that value might be, let us say, one hundred; but where the negative sign appears, it will also be one hundred, but multiplied by thousands of thousands; indeed, by the infinity of the fires of hell…”

Bernard: “You are threatening us, but we are not afraid… And do you know why we are not afraid? Or at least – I? Everything you say lacks any power to convince. Do you understand?”

Stanislaw: “That is your business whether you are afraid or not. For now, as an example, and for greater clarity, I spoke about problems which you must solve, not I. But I am interested in that other problem: three accused, five crimes – five numbers and three unknowns. That is not an easy problem to solve, I repeat. It can be solved, perhaps, but solving it would take the whole night. Does that make sense? Would it not be better – for me as well as for you (a thousand fold better for you) – if you, who are aware of the facts, would simply state them here out of your own free will? Which one of you has violated the vow of chastity? And which – the vow of obedience? And which – poverty? Who committed an act of forgery, and who committed the crime of heresy? Or otherwise: shall we say that it was you, Father Bernard, who forged the document proving (falsely) the perpetual right of the Obra monastery to the services and income of the mill in Nialek? And you, father Andrew, who seduced the daughter of the Niałek miller? Come on, admit it, and having once admitted it, try to convince me that these acts were not crimes. If you can, the people’s tribunal will release you from responsibility.”

Bernard: “And also from punishment?”

Abbot Peter: “People’s tribunal! You have heard in Cologne lectures on the art of correct drawing of implications, yet here you talk only pure nonsense; worse, you cast it, like Pelion casting rocks at Ossa. First, where is the people here? Second: what do the peasants of Mochy care for monks’ infractions against some or other vows; or their forgeries; or heresy? Third: had any of us indeed committed such a crime – or any of these crimes, or any other crimes – only the Church could judge us: the authorities of the order, bishops, archbichops, the Pope. No other tribunal on earth, no provincial, nor princely, nor royal, nor imperial could; all the less – a people’s tribunal! Let’s stop this play, this nonsensical, silly play. Yes, we may die here – by fire if it comes to that; we do wish to live longer because we are mere mortal men, and every man wants to live the longest he can, if – and this is a very significant if – if his continuing life is not tantamount to the betrayal of God, which would mean the sentence of eternal tortures of hell. You have us in your power. I doubt – along with the remaining brothers – that your power is as much life-saving as it is death-dealing. Yet, let us assume that indeed, you can – if you chose to – cause it that the rebelled peasants will not burn us; if so, then we must give you something: you, not the peasants. What do you want?

“The truth.”

“About what?”

“I have already said it: I want to know which one of you has broken his vow of chastity; which – the vow of poverty; which – obedience; which one of you has committed the forgery, and which fell into heresy.”

“Why must you know this?”

“Because I am your tribunal.”

“Again, in circles! We do not recognize this tribunal’s legality.”

“You will die in flames!”

“We will die. And may our blood…”

“There won’t be any blood.”

Bernard: “Please, allow me to speak now, arch-worshipful father and lord. When we kick a dog he usually knows – and we usually know – why he is dealt that kick: he did something which we consider wrong, and for this we punish him; unless that is, being by nature cruel, we enjoy torturing dogs even when they have done nothing wrong. But the dog almost never knows why we play with him; and why we play in this manner and not another. It seems clear to me that Stanislaw, the millers boy, is playing with us, just like we usually do in the monastery with dogs; and as we did, many years ago, with the miller boy himself, who was so capable of pleasing us with all kinds of charms; so much better than any dog. Do you remember how we ordered him to play the lute and sing or recite poetry in all kinds of languages? We heard in his version fragments of Christian the French, Rambald the Provancal, and Wolfram the Thuringian…”

Stanislaw: “You said it, father Bernard! To sing such songs, to recite such poems – in a monastery! – is a violation of the vow of obedience. The rule of the Cistersian order clearly forbids such pleasures!”

Abbot Peter: “These were indeed violations, but minor ones. Ordinary sins, not mortal ones”.

Bernard: “My dear son! We taught you so much; and you have learned so many more things – incomparably more – after you have parted from us so many years ago. You could not therefore claim that you do not know that atonement, repentance, and confession blot out sins. They blot out even mortal sins – and how much more easily they blot out ordinary ones! If that is meant to be in your opinion a violation of the vow of obedience, then – believe me – this fault no longer exists! Yes, such a crime did weigh upon my conscience: I have taught a certain little miller boy not only the singing of psalms and Eucharistic hymns, but also love songs, though never – and you, having such a good memory will admit as much, will you not – never indecent ones. Yes, I did have such a sin on my conscience once, but – no more! I have confessed these sins. Not otherwise does anyone who ever violates any of the monastic vows – whether of obedience, or some other ones – or who somehow disrespected the Majesty of God; and he thereby re-acquires the salvation-giving Mercy: by confessing his sins, receiving absolution. And what God, acting through the sacramental powers of the Church, forgave – you now dare to drag out in public again, as if before some tribunal; this is a sinful self-will, blasphemous and sacrilegious, and if it is such then it is a thousand-fold more threatening to you with that world of infinitely large numbers, as you say, than it is to us (negative numbers – eternal sufferings of hell)…”

Stanislaw: “You named: atonement, repentance, confession. You forgot: satisfaction of wrongs”.

Bernard: “Forgive me, but that business is solely between me and my confessors. It is, in other words, a sacred secret. Whatever it is that they imposed upon me by virtue of satisfaction of wrongs, I have fulfilled. But what that was is not your business. Or anyone’s. Nobody’s.”

Stanislaw: “It seems that you are mistaken. You mentioned my excellent memory, and therefore do not be surprised that I remember: and I remember that the noble and arch-worshipful Nicholas once spoke at table – I served at the table that night – of the importance of seeking to understand with our human mind the minds of other natures, whether lower than our own, or our equal, that is human, or superior to ours, that is, Divine. Under the influence of that speech, I have decided to kill one of the monastery hens in order to study the shape of its skeleton. And though I was then suddenly seized by pity and stopped whipping her with that stick, she died all the same. I often dreamt about her later: she appeared to me as a skeleton, but a huge one, the size of a calf, sometimes as big as an ox. These dreams stopped when I confessed my crime before you – before you, father Bernard. But do you remember? You rebuked me severely not on account of my cruelty towards that hen, but for the sin of theft of monastic property. You refused me absolution until I make up for my sin. You ordered me to go and find another hen just like it; to find it anywhere; and then bring it into the monastery’s coop. Of course, I decided to go to Niałek, to my grandfather and mother, but since I had many duties in the sacristy at that time, I was unable to get permission to leave the monastery – for what was perhaps two weeks. And that is when the skeleton of the hen grew up in my dreams to the size of an ox. And later, at the mill, I was unable to find a hen that looked exactly the same as the other one. But my grandfather saved me: he bought from someone – in Widzim, I think – paying in silver! – a hen just like it; I returned to the monastery and threw her among the hundreds of others in the coop; and then you gave me absolution; and I have never since dreamt about a hen skeleton; even an ordinary-sized one.

“If I speak about it now, it is in order to…”

Abbot Peter: “We understand; and we thank you. You have here (in order to instruct us, that is, you think, for our benefit) revealed – precisely described, perhaps I should say, betrayed -- though this was not your intention – you have betrayed the secret motives as to why you are here with us now; and why you speak to us in this and not some other manner. Your presumed judgment over us now is just like whacking that hen was then. It comes from the same motives. Having appointed yourself a researcher of human (no longer hen-) nature, you seek to establish what lies in us, under our skin; and for that purpose you are prepared to resort to killing us. But look out! Just as the causes are the same, so the ends will be no different. First, when the rebelled peasants begin to set fire to this house, you will suddenly, bitterly regret our fate; but that regret will come too late: we will burn all the same, even if you should propose to withdraw your investigation; just as the hen died even though you said to yourself: “I should not have wanted to seek the truth about the shape of the skeleton of birds through the act of killing this hen.” Further, just as you dreamt a gigantic, terrifying hen skeleton, so you will dream ours…”

“Until the moment when I receive my absolution!”

“And who would grant you – or anyone – absolution for such a terrible crime?!”

That the women I date have a too high opinion of themselves

2009-07-18T15:09:00.002+01:00

Everyone of them wants to nest, it seems: three out of the four last ones got pregnant within three months of breaking up with me.

Of course they all strenuously deny that they want to be married; and perhaps believe their denials, too, having been fed on the women’s-lib nonsense that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, that marriage is an instrument of male dominance, etc.; which only shows that what we think we believe and what we really believe (as shown by the way we act) have really nothing at all in common; because, their words aside, they want an exclusive union, whatever its name; they want to be the most important thing in my life – certainly more important I am willing to allow them to be; they want to be the only one; they want me to think about them ceaselessly when we are apart; and notice no other woman when we are together, etc. and don’t want me to have any life of my own. A woman needs a man like a fish needs bicycle, it seems, unless that man is me.

Whence comes this ambition? Can't they see it cannot happen?

I have been intentionally dating ugly, poor girls hoping that they might see the light: that I am too much of a good catch for them to have the remotest hope of any such silly thing; but that the good times I give them they have no hope of having with anyone else (who else will take them for a week of sin to Paris? Who else will entertain them with learned discourse on art and literature and philosophy on the meaning of life? Who else will treat them gently and respectfully and chivalrously in the way in which I do? And who else will do all that while being not bad looking and not the worst in bed?) Can't they see that with all this, they are best off aiming lower; accepting that they can't have exclusive union; and settle down for less -- which is a lot more than what they have now, or ever will.

But it isn’t working. They can’t seem to recognize the good thing they have. They want to nest.

Logical thought and careful planning have nothing to do with it. The strategy is inborn and unconscious: find a guy you like and then go for it. Ducks are like that too: they naturally head for water (and chickens for trees). All that schooling and education, all that wit and those foreign languages have no effect at all; they do not feed into life strategy.

Counterfactuality

2009-06-26T08:01:00.004+01:00

Lorraine Hunt sings "Ich freue mich auf meinem Tod" (BWV82) well, but she's no match for Fisher-Dieskau.

I wonder if anyone ever will be.

The aria is remarkable: it's one of those works in which the text (happiness) and the subtext (sadness) are diametrically opposed. (The Japanese have everyday parlance terminology for this phenomenon: tate mae -- the official line -- the word means literally facade -- and honne -- the underlying truth).

The text speaks about the joyous expectation of the afterlife; but the subtext of it is: my present life is deeply unhappy; oh, please let me die. It is a sad aria; and a lesson at how to listen to people: not their words but what they are really saying.

Sho Qui

2009-06-26T07:29:00.000+01:00

Argerich, Maisky et al playing Shostak's Quintet: the group needs more practice. The best chamber music ensembles have played together for years -- the Borodin have played together these fifty years, I think. Then again, they have known Shostak personally, too; and many of his works were written for them -- incorporating things he knew they could do. The Richter/Borodin recording remains unmatched for both reasons: because they are so good as an ensemble; and because he knew them so well.

On educating the young ones

2009-06-24T06:29:00.002+01:00

We are all to some extent victims of our parent's misplaced ambitions for us. Much of that ambition has centered around college education lately: parents work extra hard, and pay through the nose, to have their offspring educated; and in the process commit their children to anything between four and nine years of economically unproductive and demoralizing, financially dependent existence in order to earn them an education which often turns out economically unworthwhile.

Consider, as an illustration of that, my two friends: Malgosia, 35, with a master's degree in architecture, who works at the city magistrate's approving construction plans at 450 euros a month and just bought her first car on credit; and Edith, 33, with barely a high school degree, a dry-cleaning queen, with a house and car paid off and a 250K a year business. Whose parents' have done a better job preparing their daughter for life?

Clearly, Malgosia's parents messed up; they should have seen that the highly reputable but fiercely competitive profession of architect is not appropriate for their laid back, somewhat dreamy, ungrasping daughter; and have tried to secure for her a renumerative profession she might enjoy: as a baker, for example, a shoe-maker, a weaver. Edith's parents on the other hand have done well: they have trained her in a renumerative profession and have set her to work for herself in it by the age of 17. Byt the time Malgosia got her degree and set about looking for a job, Edith already had 100K to her name.

Yet, Edith regrets not having college education: I wanted to go to college, she said, and my father simply, flatly said no. It is such a pity: I know I would have done well at it! I will educate my sons.

Ominous words: well, yes, she would have done well at it -- the college education -- but would she have done well by it?

It is precisely because so much college degree does nothing economically for us these days that special theories are developed in its favor: my father insisted on my degree (to which I was opposed) on the theory that college transforms the mind and makes for a totally different person. I wonder whether this is true: talking to yet another friend, Hedwig, immensely educated (two master's degrees, one in math and another in chemistry), a fantastically quick-witted, hard-working, ambitious and successful researcher in a biotech firm, seems typical of my encounters with the college educated. I do not see the transformative power of the college degree: I find Hedwig boring (she doesn't have time for art or opera or literature and therefore can't talk about them; in fact, in most things she is profoundly ignorant, knowing most things at best half-well or not at all). Worse, she is deeply unhappy: she's harried by her job, her duties as a working mother of three, and her ho-hum marriage. If her college degree has transformed her mind, it's hard to see positive effects of that transformation.

Tribal exceptionalism

2009-06-22T12:16:00.005+01:00

Somewhere (Notes from Hampstead?) Canetti writes that he ought stop reading anything other than autobiography. If he needed an example, Steiner's Errata may have been the one to quote. It is an autobiography, and as such a lot more readable than all his literary criticism, I am genuinely sorry to say.

To the extent that the book is a kind of "my life among the great works of art", it has its weak parts, too, however: one wishes there were more life and less literature in it. Steiner's digressive discussion of the classic, for example, circles around several good points without making them well -- except perhaps the one about how classics change us, but even that could have been said far more succinctly (and probably does not pick out a classic in the way in which Steiner would like it to do so). "I define a classic thus", says Steiner, and then follows a long and obscure and convoluted discussion which, if presented as a definition in math 101, would flunk the course.

Jeez.

The chapter on Jews and Jewishness is interesting, however, even if its interest lies mainly in Steiner's discussion of Jewish exceptionalism. The Jews, he feels, are an exceptional people.

(Interestingly, Steiner feels the same way about the Greeks, the West, western theater, the cafe-culture, etc. etc. ("Nothing like x anywhere in the world", put for "x" whatever you like). Perhaps his life-long interaction with being exceptionally Jewish has informed his attitudes towards everything?)

The point I would like to make (without hurting anyone's feelings) is that Jews are not exceptional and being Jewish is not an exceptional condition; the idea that the Jews are somehow special is... a kind of optical illusion. First, it is exceptional to be anything - Polish Unitate petty nobility, a descendant of the prophet, a Tutsi. Every person who sees himself as belonging to his tribe first and foremost can't help feeling that his tribe is special and unique and the rest of the world is in some sort of special (usually antagonist) relationship to him. Everyone of us feels that his condition is special and unique and for Steiner to assume this is on account of his Jewishness is silly.

And, secondly, narrowly defined social groups with long-standing religious traditions and endogamous marriage rules are in the old world not an exception but -- a rule. Right off the bat I can name several very similar groups: Gypsies, Karaims, Armenians, Parsis, Banjaras, Rajputs, Sudeten Germans, Transylvanian Saxons, Sikhs, Basques, Polish Tartars, Manchus, Ainus, Japanese Koreans, Alaxandrian Greeks, Sri Lankan Tamils, Kazakhstani Poles, Dalits, Bengali Brahmins (and Catholic Brahmins in Goa), The Amish, South Italian Albanians, Bhils, Tutsis, Ibos, Zulus, Boston Irish, Lemki, Rumelian Turks, West African Ismailis, Qashqa'is, Tekke Turkmen, Kurds, Thai Chinese Muslims, Hmong, Lisu, Akha, Hakka -- must I go on?

True: the Jews can justly claim three thousand year old history of their religious tradition, but Parsis have an equally old one (they use cuneinform script, for Chrissake); as do the Bengali Brahmins (who still carry out Vedic animal sacrifices); Gypsies, Armenians, Paris and Tamils have all lived in their diasporas for a thousand years plus -- and what is the difference between a thousand and three thousand in the history of humanity which stretches perhaps 250,000 years?

True, the Jewish scriptures have had a profound effect on much of the world; but whether this effect has been positive is not as clear to me as it seems to Steiner; and whether he should take pride in it is not clear either: he didn't write the scriptures, after all, someone else did. (The whole premise of being proud of one's ethnicity seems a little silly to me; what does it mean to be proud of being x?)

Nor is Steiner's theory of anti-Semitism (that Jews are hated for having invented superior morals) anything other than feel-good self-stroking.

Romila Thapar's theory of history of inter-group relationships is much closer to the truth: tribes fight until, unable to wipe each other out, they collapse in bloody exhaustion and -- willy nilly -- make peace (in the spirit of Godfather's "I am a reasonable man": the grand mafioso pronounces these words after losing half his family to a war). Then, the peace comes and continues for as long as people who remember the futility of struggle remain among the living; but as soon as the oldest die, the memory dies, and the conflict resumes again. But why, people then say with incredulity. Whence all this warmongering and blood spilling? Have we not lived in peace and harmony for so many hundred years? Well, yes; they have. But they slaughtered each other before that; and before that they had lived in peace; and before that they killed each other.

What I am trying to say is that a tribe does not need to be offended by the demanding morals of another tribe in order to proceed to wipe it out. Wiping each other out is what tribes do. Merely setting oneself up as a tribe automatically generates hostility (theirs against you, yours against them: setting up a tribe means excluding someone, and the excluded per force do not like it). It is therefore the duty of all enlightened men to oppose the creation and maintenance of tribes.

But Steiner's apology for Jewish exceptionalism -- "we are hated because we have invented morals" -- lies squarely in the tradition of tribe-building: to make a tribe one begins by making a nice myth about oneself; then one stokes the feelings of resentment by privileging accounts of past injustice. This sort of conduct is precisely the root of the ethnic problem. How I wish an educated man like Steiner could be enlightened in matters of nationalism, too.

As for me, I refuse to belong to any of my potential tribes: I want all my relationships with other men to be between equals; and this means -- unaffiliated individuals; if you are Ismaili, or Jewish, or Lap -- really and honestly, I do not want to know. Nor ask me what I am, because I am nothing: I am myself, that's all. If I am then killed, at least my killers will not be able to claim to have acted on tribal grounds (and therefore "nobly", because for their nation, or for the love of their country, or their religion, or their race). They will be murderers plain and simple and I will not be part of my nation's eternal hecatomb -- but merely an ordinary dead man.

Recent firings

2009-06-21T12:51:00.002+01:00

Zobie runs another blog -- the Phosophorus, if you will to Zobenigo's Hesperus -- his daylight, smiling face. (Yes, he has one, or perhaps we should say that he can at least do a good imitation of one). But he runs that blog unprofessionally; ignores comments, has no traffic counter, and, most importantly, uses the side-bar to help him navigate the web, instead of the usual marketing use to which it is put. Finding a new RSS feed to follow and sticking it in there is a joy; but so is pruning the list.

Lately, he pruned.

A website purportedly on Portuguese cultural life whose recent entries covered some PR petition regarding the Great Ukrainian Hunger; and the awfulness of the Air France disaster. Chop. (The reason why I do not watch TV is precisely that I don't want this sort of garbage).

Then the one work a day feed from the Metropolitan - two weeks of uninterrupted, relentless ugliness. Chop. (If they can't do pretty, what is their use in life).

Chop, too, the Cultural Tourist for his warm endorsement of two books (by friend, no doubt) whose goodness lay, he said, in guiding us, readers, through the thicket of literature and advising us which bits to read and which to skip. (Spence, he seemed to suggest, especially).

Now, my uncle once had a record -- a product of America, you will immediately see -- called The World's Most Beautiful Classical Music, which consisted of a daisy chain of 30-second snippets of, in no particular order, the main themes of Eroica's third movement, followed by the main theme of the Persian Market, etc. My uncle thought it was great because one only got the good stuff without the need to waste his time on the dross (modulation, development, coda, etc.).

I should dig it up and send it to Kissel as a gift. I bet he will love it; perhaps even write it up. But I will not have to read it.

Yet more on cars

2009-06-20T00:35:00.002+01:00

Not that I should deny anyone the right to spend their money anyway they see fit. Anyone who wants to have a Maierbach is welcome to it. Why, if he can afford to have a Meierbach he can certainly afford to buy it new and even carry a loan on it. I am merely pointing out that buying an expensive, uneconomical, useless car beyond one's means is not a smart economic move.

(But if it gets you the girl, perhaps it works?)

More on cars

2009-06-19T00:08:00.004+01:00

Watching a smartly dressed, enterprising man spot a parking space several car lengths back and back up into it decisively in the face of oncoming traffic -- and all within an eye-blink, too -- I could not help being impressed. I also reflected on the difference between being alert and being... smart. The car he drove was clearly too much car: it was a Range Rover SUV, expensive, famously unreliable, uneconomical, and, above all, unnecessary (an SUV -- in Lisbon? It doesn't even rain here). Add difficult to park, too, of course, though perhaps that he considered a benefit, i.e. a stimulating challenge, an opportunity to display.

The smartly dressed, alert looking man had clearly bought the car new (thus turning it into a used car and giving himself a 30% instant capital loss¹); and he almost certainly carried a loan on it (what middle class person in Portugal has 30K to put down in cash to buy a car? And, at any rate, a person who can put down 30K in cash for a car does not need to grab aggressively for free parking spaces: I am certain the man carried a loan).²

The car revealed to me almost everything I needed to know about the man's powers of cerebration. But the woman sitting next to him did not see what I saw. She was clearly impressed by his parking-spotting-backing-up skills. (What great genes my babies will have!) She was probably impressed by the car, too. And that's just as well since, if she marries him, she'll be responsible for half the interest on the loan.

Footnotes:

¹Instant destruction of about 13K of capital in the case of a Range Rover SUV.

²If he carries 50% LTV loan at 10%, he pays 2K a year in interest: more than 200 taxi rides' worth. As a result, he can't take those 200 hundred taxis (while leisurely reading a book in the back) and must drive himself. Hm.

Cars and brains

2009-06-18T10:07:00.001+01:00

Zobenigo has not owned a car for decades. When he is in Europe, he lives downtown -- walking distance to most places -- in cities with reliable and convenient public transport. A car -- parking! -- would only be a nuisance here. And in Asia he rides a bike -- a silly squeaky little thing -- a Mr Bean mobile, good for zipping over small distances in the awful traffic of Asia and easy to park anywhere. (And dirt cheap, too). When Zobenigo needs a car, he rents one. As he needs it infrequently, the annualized cost of rental comes out to far below what the costs of maintenance and parking his own car would be. In Zobenigo's case, at least, the economic calculation works clearly against owning a car.

Zobenigo tried to explain it to his friend when she mooted the idea of buying a car herself. But perhaps she has not understood it: she went ahead and bought one. Fine, Zobenigo supposes, there are economic calculations in which owning a car makes sense. But the friend went one step further on the road to middle-class normalcy: she financed her car; and, as it was a used one, she financed it at twenty percent interest. She could have used her own money to buy the car -- there is enough in the bank where she gets 0.25% annually in interest -- taxable -- but she chose to take the car loan instead. Why? One assumes that the seller explained to her the small cost of the loan -- it's only 50 euros a month. But if it is only 50 euros a month, then why does the seller not pay her instead? It's only 50 euros a month!

I happened to be sitting in a cafe in a crowded airport when I thought these thoughts to myself. I looked around me and realized that everyone there owned a car; and nearly everyone carried a car loan.

Later that day I tried to go to a concert; it was at seven and I set out at six. Since I do not usually go out at that time of day, the expedition was a revelation: the traffic jam was fantastic: the most traffic-snarled city of Asia, Bangkok, cannot do better. In thirty minutes my bus covered about five hundred meters. I got out and walked back: the heck with the concert, I'll read a book instead. As I walked, I passed tens of millions of people sitting in their cars, revving their engines and cursing.

Why don't they park somewhere and go into a cafe for a cup of coffee and wait out the traffic jam? I asked myself. Surely, in this traffic it will take them two hours to get to where they are going; but if they simply wait, by eight the roads will be wide open again and the driving will be smooth and quick. Thus, the total time taken to get there will be about the same -- and the experience will be more pleasurable.

Why don't they do it? For the same reason, I suppose, for which they all carry that car loan: brains, it would appear, is not the species strongest suit.

The other Versailles

2009-06-16T10:04:00.003+01:00

Versailles -- pronounced Ver-sigh-ish -- is one of the cult cafes of Lisbon. It was founded in 1922 and has since preserves all of its original art-deco glory: cut crystal, mirrors, polychrome marble pilasters topped with gilt capitals, stained glass a la Mucha (and perhaps it is by Mucha -- since the tall bridge is by Eiffel?), bronze statuary and sconces, polished brass counter - the works. The waiters bus around in ankle-length aprons, bow-ties and green vests complete with pocket watch chains. At tea-time -- which falls here around four o'clock -- one spots here distinguished looking silver-haired ladies, beautifully dressed and immaculately coiffed -- delicately taking their torradas and galoes with bejeweled hands.

But the majority of the clientele -- pretty much to a man all those forty and down -- make for a stark contrast: sweatpants, tank-tops, flip-flops; clothes so bad I should think one would not wear them to I take the trash out. It's an odd thing: the waiters, when they come to Versailles, dress for a cult cafe with great tradition; but the 40-and-down clientele of Versailles appears to be passing through here on their way to the garbage dump.

These are not the underclass, mind you (Versailles ain't cheap). No. This is the new dress code of the European middle class. This is how Germans get up to the philharmonic nowadays: I could not believe my eyes when I first saw it in 2005. Germans? You know, those people who look so well in smart uniforms?

It isn't smart-casual, either. It isn't even casual. It's just really really bad. It is so bad, in fact that it looks like an intentional effort to look awful; and perhaps it is intentional? Perhaps -- goodness me, perhaps it is calculated to have just the effect it does? Perhaps it is meant to... offend?

A French philosopher (one with a special hair-do) might see in this a kind of social demonstration. You, waiters, are so lowly that you must dress well (and smile and call me "sir"); but I am so high up the totem pole (relative to the little you) that I might as well come in my pajamas. (And, look at that lady over there: I think she has!) Coming in in one's pajamas --would this be the unspoken equivalent of calling the helpers "help"?

If so, it does not speak well of them.

Among the many deep and important lessons which I have learned in India was to study people by observing the way they dealt with their servants. (This is a lesson applicable very broadly in India, where nearly everyone has a servant, it seems, and even servants have servants). The employers of decently-dressed servants were invariably the better sort: better off usually, yes, but also and kinder, gentler, more accommodating. They displayed their power, if you wish to be French about it, by being generous with their underlings. But a badly dressed servant always indicated a mean -- though not always poor -- master. This is the wisdom: stay away from men with dirty, poorly dressed servants: their dirt is an index of their master's meanness.

But perhaps in our topsy-turvy world of Europe one has to tweak the wisdom: avoid the men who insist on looking markedly different from their servants (whether better or worse dressed). Insisting on marking clear differences between us and our underlings is a mark of -- well -- meanness: it is a way to emphasize the social divide; and only mean masters do: they do it only because it gives them pleasure to wallow in their thus emphasized superiority. After all, there is no social need for it: the servants always know who they are.

But in the case of the 40-and-under middle class in Versailles, something else seems worth commenting upon: the loss of the pleasure of dressing up.

One of the joys of going to a live concert has always been to me - getting ready for it: washing up and shaving, picking my clothes and tie, selecting the cuff links, polishing the shoes, combing my hair. A kind of foreplay, if you will: it puts me in the mood, it heightens the pleasure. To me, going to Versailles is a little like that too: I dress up and that very act makes the whole afternoon feel special.

It is also indispensable, I find: the pasteis in Versailles aren't all that great: being in the right mood is therefore more than half the pleasure. And here is the point: they, the badly dressed under 40's, do not get the mood effect of dressing up and making a big deal of it. And if that doesn't matter, then mood doesn't matter, then what does the ambiance of the place -- the marble, crystal and gilt -- matter to them? Why bother with Versailles, at all? Would not McDonald's across the street do as well? Why don't they go there?

Serkin sucks

2009-06-10T11:44:00.003+01:00

Rudolf Serkin, piano and wind quintets of Mozart and Beethoven: goodness gracious, I had no idea that Mozart and Beethoven could be played this badly. I have certainly lived a sheltered life: I have not studied music and therefore have not had the opportunity to listen to beginners torture their instruments; and the wonder of air travel and internet shopping have insulated me against all performances save those deemed very best. I simply did not know what was possible. What is, indeed, the -- usual?!

Hummel

2009-06-02T23:54:00.002+01:00

Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, Piano Quintet, by Trio Wanderer and friends. Priceless. Seven times in a row this afternoon and now again to bed. The great sensitivity to music occasioned by the Yundi Li concert continues. I am at some kind of a plateau, coasting. Please, keep it up, whoever you are.

A mystery

2009-06-01T23:35:00.006+01:00

I have told two migraine-tormented friends about the nose-drop cure. ( It is really quite miraculous: I have not had a migraine in years; the only time I have a headache these days is when I drink too much red wine).

But neither of my friends has tried it.

A mystery.

I really ought to make a note to myself not offer advice again: it's waste of breath. Better use that same breath to whistle. Hummel, for example.

Oriente, Lisboa

2009-05-31T22:53:00.005+01:00

The Museu d'Oriente has a rich, well organized, well-labeled collection; it's also at the end of the world across three wrong sets of tracks and therefore real hell to get to; and in a building which makes me sick (it's a converted factory, all reinforced concrete, sloping ramps and delivery size elevators).

It also has a gift shop which is not just ridiculously priced -- they buy for 3 euros and sell for 36 -- and full of utter and total junk -- not a single item of any value at all - but it is also all wrong: the Asian outfits are not Asian, Burmese "laquerware" is plastic, the cabinet with tea-pots, helpfully inscribed "China" -- has not a single Chinese item in it and the tea implements are worse than useless. The museum does a good job popularizing some aspects of Asia; but its gift shop completely undoes it all. I am entertained -- i can't help laughing outloud at some of the shop items -- but also shocked. Is the really allowed to do this? Is this not a violation of some kind of principle?

While waiting for my show I saw a documentary on Goa -- with three acquaintances in it. Mario looked younger and healthier than I remember him; perhaps it predated my stay, it was somehow cleaner than I remember it.

The shindig was Bharatnatyam by Saju George, the Dancing Jesuit; not the greatest BN I have seen, Saju also tired towards the end of the first half and began to lose balance; still, for a priest -- I mean, an amateur -- he was really remarkably good, even excellent. For a moment I had a spell of aesthetic delight.

Coming back by way of a fancy restaurant where overpriced vegetarian food is served in thalis, I noted that, it being Friday night, it was time for Oriental Dance; it wasn't Bharatnatyam, though, as the thali has always suggested to me, but North African belly dance; except it wasn't that either: it was a pretty lame ad lib by someone who has clearly not even taken lessons. That someone was pretty and was clearly having fun; she caught my glance through the window; she gave me was a pixish smirk; she was enjoying herself -- the fraud perhaps more than anything else. She was clearly English -- a tourist perhaps or a student -- it's such an English joke; and such a English smirk.

Monsieur Teste

2009-05-30T22:45:00.004+01:00

Goethe, old soul, feels sorry to have no time for me. He shouldn't: he has a busy life and I don't really fit into it. Of course, this is how it is with all my would be friends: they have families and jobs and I do not; this means two things: first, they have a lot less time for me than I do for them. And, second, it also means that I have little to contribute to their lives: as a networking resource I am worse than useless: I can't ever help them find a nanny or introduce a client. So while a part of me wants to say that by not finding time for me they are missing something, the truth is -- they are not really missing anything important. What can possibly be important about discussing South Indian dance drama or the end of literature? The opposite is also true: my friends have little to say that I am interested in hearing. What interests me -- the end of literature, South Indian dance drama -- especially as they can be seen in each other's light -- well, my friends don't know the first thing about any of it, do they.

Enough of the wishy-washy peace-loving non-violent BS

2009-05-27T08:20:00.003+01:00

Zobenigo does not normally comment on news but this time the news is such a heart-warming bit that he will make an exception.

Sikh Rivals Clash at Vienna Temple

Y-yes! Enough of the wishy-washy peace-loving non-violent BS!

1) Non-violent religions are for woosies. (One does not carry around swords -- one of the five precepts of Sikkhism -- for picking his teeth with them, eh?).

2) Clearly, as I argued here only 2 days ago, Indian immigrants revive the lost European custom of treating religion with the respect and commitment it deserves. Surely, Jean Raspail ought to approve.

3) The conflict is caste-based. Sikhism is of course famously caste-free (which had made it expand so rapidly in the first place: dalits were joining in droves to get rid of untouchability). Or is it? The preacher in question was low-caste and dissed the Holy Granth -- presumably by touching it, I assume. If you ever wondered whether high-sounding religious precepts could just possibly be bullsh*t, here's your proof.

(I am NOT dissing Sikkhism: the other non-caste religions -- Islam, Catholicism -- fare identically in India; they really are all the same).

4) Alas, even Sikhs are not spared globalization: Violent protests in Punjab after Vienna clash

Senstive days

2009-05-26T21:35:00.003+01:00

Listening to music is not the same every day of life. Some days seem better for it than others.

Who can tell just why? The air-pressure or humidity affect the brain one way; alcohol and nicotine another. Just the right amount of sleep; just the right amount of stress (key: manageable); perhaps a little beet salad in the afternoon; a coffee intentionally not taken; some stroking of the skin, preferrably by a beautiful woman but a stiff breeze off the bay will do in a pinch. Who knows what else?

But there are days when one finds himself especially sensitive to music; then Ivo playing Chopin preludes, or Emerson playing Shostak No. 8, or Argerich the Prokof toccata work a specially intense magic and one is breathless, gasping, amazed, lost in the intense, confusing solid gold brocade of sound, writhing with strong intellectual pleasure. These recordings are always good, of course, but it is only at times like tonight that I get into this stuff this much. Luckily - or perhaps unluckily - these days do not happen too often: several times a year at most. Good sex -- for all I am inclined to say about the quality of commonly available sex -- seems easier to arrange.

Psst, don't tell the Poles

2009-05-25T11:10:00.002+01:00

When I first heard Szymanowski's violin concerto No. 1 (1916) -- some 15 years ago -- I was delighted by it, though possibly less by the music itself (since it did not become part of my regular listening repertoire) but more by the strong sensation that one needed to listen to it differently, with a different part of the brain as it were, different from that part, that is, which one normally uses to listen to classical and romantic music. (Perhaps my discovery of Szymanowski was made possible by the fact that by then I had considerable experience listening with another part of the brain, so to speak, to Japanese classical music). Now, as I listen to Prokofiev's violin concerto No. 1 (1915), I realize how derivative Szymanowski's concerto really is -- 'directly inspired' - and how much less interesting. But don't tell the Poles.

The cognitive dissonance of Jean Raspail

2009-05-24T10:05:00.004+01:00

The reasons for the popularity of Le Camp des saints are easy enough to decode. Here's the novel's synopsis from the usual place:

The story begins in Bombay, India, where the Dutch government has announced a policy that Indian babies will be adopted and raised in the Netherlands. The policy is reversed when the Dutch consulate is inundated with parents eager to give up their infant children as it would be one less mouth to feed. An Indian "wise man" then rallies the masses to make a mass exodus to live in Europe. Most of the story centers on the French Riviera, where almost no one remains except for the military and a few civilians, including a retired professor who has been watching the huge fleet of run down freighters approaching the French coast. The story alternates between the French reaction to the mass immigration and the attitude of the immigrants. They have no desire to assimilate into French culture but want the plentiful food and water that are in short supply their native India. Near the end of the story the mayor of New York City is made to share Gracie Mansion with three families from Harlem, the Queen of England must agree to have her son marry a Pakistani woman, and only one drunken Soviet soldier stands in the way of thousands of Chinese people as they swarm into Siberia.

In short, it's the OYPA -- the old yellow peril alarm -- all over again.

THE OYPA seems a weird beast to me since I have spent all my life being bored with the familiar and seeking out out the exotic as its antidote. I welcome Asian immigration on several grounds: first, the wonderfully zany Indians seem a million times more interesting to me than the predictable familiar boring French, whom I have no reason to love anyway; certainly, on average, Pakistani women are prettier than the English; the food they bring is more tasty; etc.

I therefore cannot fit into my head: why would not everyone else feel the same way?

Yet, years of interacting with human beings have taught me that most appear to have their heads screwed on the other way round which means that they ceaselessly seek the safety of the familiar, prefering boredom over excitement any time of day. I continue not to empathize with this odd mental condition, but have learned to accept for a fact that they do.

(But here is an interesting thought: how comes it that the Kaiser (the author of the OYPA) should function as a philosophical authority for the same Polish and French intellectuals whose sympathies are otherwise pro-Entente and anti-German? Hate the Germans, but love their xenophobia? How weird can you get?)

What is more interesting about Jean Raspail's brain is that it appears to be internally split: while writing his Dantean yellow perilist visions about foreigners flooding (and destroying) good old France, he simultaneously writes other books of scathing criticism of the very same modern France as a rotten perversion of its former self. He is a monarchist to the core and writes movingly about the spark of divinity which resides in the person of the king; his inviolability and irreplaceability; the dire consequences of regicide; the lack of proper legitimacy in the person of a merely elected President; lack of authority; lack of respect for authority; etc. This is not merely a political fantasy: Jean Raspail senses that there is something deeply and fundamentally rotten about modern French (and, more generally, European) culture (about which he is probably right) and seeks its causes in the abolition of the monarchy two hundred years ago (I withhold my opinion).

But then he defends that very same rotten France against subversion by foreigners. Why? If France is rotten, then, heck, why not let it sink?

This is known to psychologists as cognitive dissonance.

Let me take this argument further: had Jean Raspail bothered to read anything about Indians he would have discovered how attached they are to their ancient traditions; how underacined they therefore are; and how much more deserving of his love and admiration they are on these grounds than the modern-day French. Indians are a traditional, conservative, feudal people; they respect tradition, religion, authority, primogeniture, kingship, family values; Jean Raspail should pray that they take over France soonest so that he can finally live among his kind of people at last.

Her name is admirable

2009-05-23T18:08:00.003+01:00

In one of those moments of retrospection which I have now had several times these past couple years (a clear sign that I am getting on and am no longer wasting time on imagining limitless possibilities of the future since I have learned to predict it and budget for it so very reliably) I was reflecting this morning on a person I once knew. I knew her for many years and quite intimately; yet it is only now that we have not seen each other for many years that I notice things about her which I now realize were quite ugly. To put it short, I suppose, I would have to say that my friend was greedy in the word's most ordinary, vulgar sense: she was consumed by an intense desire for money and property plain and simple.

This impression was tempered by the generosity which she showed towards her children; but this, too -- and I did not realize it then -- was really a measure of her greed: she simply did not distinguish between her and her children. Acquiring on behalf of her children was therefore an extension of acquiring for herself. She seemed generous towards me, too, but that generosity was not really generous: my friend was not giving me gifts, she was buying something she wanted: my friendship.

Throughout our association I could see signs -- behaviors and reactions in my friend-- which disturbed me, yet I was somehow able to overlook them, disguise them from myself. (Sex is a great coloring agent). I liked her and for this reason blamed what I saw on my own misperception -- I must have misobserved, I thought -- or extenuating circumstances -- perhaps she was tired, etc. Overall, I suppose, I was less blind about my friend and for a shorter period of time than I was about my mother: perhaps life has taught me something then, perhaps I have made progress.

One hopes, of course, that one can be even more astute in one's social engagements in the future; but given the nature and quality of my experience with family and friends -- the statistics are not encouraging -- it would perhaps be wiser not to bother with further engagements in the first place.

Brief introspection regarding jazz

2009-05-22T09:05:00.005+01:00

Jazz bores and irritates me and the aestheticist in me would like to know why. Alas, the following observations will have to remain superficial since, in order to understand the matter properly, I would have to hear a lot more Jazz than I possibly can manage to get through. I am not sufficiently dedicated to the question to put myself through the exercise. The following remarks are therefore trivial; you should probably skip this post.

The irritating bit has two prongs: the first is the matter of the building blocks of the music: like all improvised music it consists of standardized elements -- "lego blocks" -- which one shuffles around -- and I do not like them; this may be merely a matter of cultural association -- they seem perceptibly American to me; but it could perhaps be argued that they are in fact not as interesting as the lego blocks of its older improvised siblings, maquams and raagas. (Consider the rather narrow range of rhythmic options available to the Jazz base section and compare them to the immense variety of tals).

(Certainly the lego blocks out of which raaga's are built are more interesting to European ears on account of being "exotic" -- that is novel, or previously unheard; but, given the amount of time I have spent in India and the amount of exposure I have had to classical Indian music, novelty is clearly not the source of my pleasure in the Indian elements; something else must be; complexity, color and steepness and convolution of melodic line may be some of the answers).

The second bit is the snobbishness surrounding Jazz' status as an improvised art form. This notion is romantic -- "great art reveals something deep about us" -- and as such deeply ingrained in heavily schooled minds; but the truth is that most of us do not have an interior interesting enough to make for an interesting subject of artistic production. The truth about improvisation is that most of it is too dull to stand on its own legs; which is why fellows like Bach and Chopin -- well known in their days for their improvisatory skills -- insisted on composing.

And thus we arrive at the dull bit. There is no such thing as free improvisation: all improvisation follows some sort of rules; the rules observed in Indian classical music are very complex; this has many positive results, one of which is to impose a structure on the concert (basically, that of an accelerando); another is to make artists aware of the need to discuss and agree a plan ahead of time. Jazz performances appear to lack this kind of coherence. Perhaps there are not sufficient rules in jazz to require a structurally coherent work to emerge.

Which leaves me with the odd question why so many European practitioners of western classical music take an active interest in jazz. I suppose the answer to that must be that it feels nice to play jazz.

Surely, playing jazz must feel nicer than listening to it does.

Jazzed up Chopin

2009-05-21T08:52:00.002+01:00

Asked one's opinion about this, what can one say but state the obvious: what was wrong with the original?

This of course is the problem with all classic-inspired jazz: it dumbs down. It is precisely the opposite of the old formula; under the old formula a Schubert might take a simple folk song and smart it up -- introduce variations, harmonic parts, etc. Under this formula one takes a perfectly good complex piece and dumbs it down by adding the base section. The result is intended perhaps to be more familiar, informal and approachable but can't help making the impression of Bo Derek commenting on The Magic Mountain ("Madame Chauchat seems like a nice person but she should exercise more care when closing doors.")

Why they seem so unlike me

2009-05-16T09:14:00.000+01:00

Steiner quotes Racine writing about his art:

This is a tragic drama: it is purer and more significant than ordinary life; it is an image of what life might be like if it were lived at all times on a plane of high decorum and if it were at all instants fully responsive to the obligations of nobility.

Ought not all life be lived that way? Mine certainly is.

Are the dramatist's words to be taken as evidence that mine is a rare accomplishment?

On the importance of good promotion

2009-05-15T09:13:00.000+01:00

Many have puzzled why French classical tragedy (Corneille and Racine) has not traveled abroad as well as the English Shakespeare has. Various fanciful explanations have been proposed for this problem¹ – such as that French tragedy is cut off from archaic or vernacular roots (French poetry being “inward looking”), that it is too rhetorical (all talk and no action), too grandiloquent (pompous), too set in the political realities of the moment, and so forth.

These are classic historicist explanations (in the Karl Popper sense): they cannot be tested. (Indeed, some can't even be understood).

But they have something else in common: they use the seed-and-soil model of culture – make a seed appropriate to the soil, then throw it and it will grow into a tree.

It's wrong.

The authors forget the parable of the seed -- the essential third element of agriculture -- agriculture itself: domesticated plants don’t grow unless someone tills, rakes and waters the ground. (The seed of wheat is not robust enough to break dry ground unaided). Similarly, culture does not succeed on its own: it requires cultivation. And it seems just possible that French drama has never had in England the sort of enthusiastic and influential promoters that Shakespeare has had in France.

The promotion, or its success, need not have much to do with the quality of the art itself.

Consider that perhaps the most enthusiastic and influential promoter of Shakespeare in France was Voltaire who was, he reported, just amazed by what he saw in London. But Voltaire hardly spoke any English, so it isn’t clear that he knew what he was talking about; and in any case in his Letters From England were chiefly written for the purpose of knocking things French. Voltaire needed things foreign to praise -- with which to knock the French. For what he wanted to accomplish, he could as easily have written Letters From Peking. Indeed, practically every sentence he wrote about Shakespeare and his superiority over French drama is so abstract, vague and -- well, historicist -- that he might as well have written it about Kungqu.

Similarly, those who seek causes for the success of even mediocre American film in its qualities may also be mistaken: they simply do not realize the power of the distribution machinery or the mammoth size of the promotional budget with which American films go out into the world. Typically, a film's promotional budget is greater than its production budget, and usually is increased if the initial sales are promising.

Human beings being essentially mimicking machines, in order to make its mark, a work of art needs good promotion far more than it needs quality of design -- as the latterly success of ugly fixtures and uncomfortable furniture clearly shows.

(I'd say the analytical value of Steiner's Death of Tragedy has been about zero, so far).

----

¹It is a pseudo problem anyway: English tragedy has not traveled; Shakespeare has.

Wanting to be elsewhere

2009-05-14T16:27:00.002+01:00

On PR2, snippets from a conference on the history of Polish intelligentsia, most of it Marxist (they still take class seriously as an analytical concept there). (45 years of Marxist education has achieved a weird trick, produced a strange animal -- the Polish anticommunist Marxist).

(Verily, we shall not enter the promised land until the generation born in slavery has died).

It's very emotionally charged because the participants are theorizing about themselves: they are the intelligentsia -- lower middle to lower class in origin, urban, though not necessarily in origin, hard-working, upwardly mobile, on the make.

Their claim to be the continuation of Stanislaw Kostka seems strained to me. Marxistly speaking, they are not the same animal at all.

Problems of the 19th century are rehashed. What would have happened if the November Uprising had never taken place? National survival and independence are the main topic. Culture is a political tool.

My mind wonders off to another world, that of the paintings of Sakaki Hyakusen. This Japanese fellow was born in Nagoya and died in Kyoto, but his mind lived on the shores of the West Lake, which he repeatedly painted, taking his ideas from Chinese prints, poetry, and his own, fertile imagination.

Some notes on Definitions of Culture

2009-05-12T07:03:00.003+01:00

1

Steiner's Bluebeard's Castle isn't much better, alas: his argument that the world changed with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars because now everyone became involved in the great events of history (because war became omnipresent, there was general mobilization, troops marched outside Hegel's window while he wrote Phenomenology, etc.), "whereas in times previous war swept over human beings with tidal mystery" would surprise anyone who has lived through the total horror of the Thirty Years War (Germany lost half its population); or the French civil wars; or the English civil war; or the Khmelnitsky or Pugachev uprisings.

Besides -- excuse me -- what is "tidal mystery"?

2

Is there perhaps something lacking in the education of fellows like Geo. Steiner? Do they not get enough maths and logic? Would a course in chemistry perhaps teach them to write sentences that mean something? Should their teachers not have insisted that a sentence's best business is demonstrable truth?

Several in-depth courses on individual historical periods might have been useful, too, to teach these guys how difficult it is to make generalizations about an age (what is an "age", anyway?); and to deconstruct the trifling "grand-sweep of history" view which one acquires by reading only introductory textbooks.

(Too little education can be more dangerous than not enough of it).

3

I am not sure that Steiner is right in suggesting that ennui was more common in the nineteenth century than it was, say, in the eighteenth or seventeeth; but he is right in observing that many writers did express it. Perhaps boredom was merely generized, which is to say "made into an acceptable genre", that is, it was discovered that it's OK to write about it (i.e., if you do, someone will actually read it). But personally, I would not be surprised if the nineteenth century were in fact shown to be more bored than the eighteenth: unlike Steiner I have never thought the nineteenth century my Paradise Lost; its culture, for the most part, bores me. Why should it not have bored its own people?

I mean, come on, Donizetti?

4

But perhaps the nineteenth century did represent a kind of departure from the past: an informatics departure, if you pardon the jargon. The rise of the newspaper, the telegraph, and cheap mass-printed book meant, I am guessing, that cultural figures were now spending a far greater amount of their time chasing mundane news -- from the political (man bites dog in Bakhchisarai!) to the cultural (a new book of poetry by minor heath poets); leading to a low quality information overload. The truth is that the flood of low quality information must be interrupted (the newspaper subscription canceled, the tube turned off, the comments ignored, the minor heath poets not read); or else we become stuffed up with their mediocrity; our lives, full of it, acquire its tastelessness; and our own brains begin to bore us.