Thoreau's Christmas

I worked a few years in Washington DC and a familiar lunch-time walk along Massachusetts Avenue was to Kramerbooks near Dupont Circle.  I was then very enamoured of  Henry David Thoreau (I still am but it is more like an  old marriage now);  one day under his marvellous spell I brought the two quarto volume Dover Publications edition the The Journal of  Henry David Thoreau (the fourteen volumes bound as two). This bookshop still exists but now is linked to a coffee shop. The Dover Thoreau cost me quite a bit and as I lugged it back to my office I chided myself for being too infatuated with HDT and too indulgent with my money. Now this book is not really one you would open and read for entertainment.  It is a monument to be savoured on the shelf  and a reverential dipping-in book.  You dip into the entries which read mostly like an extraordinary naturalist's note book with painstaking and minute descriptions of  the natural world around Concord. The exception to this are the earlier years when Thoreau is more 'philosophical'. To slurp up these digressions I have another small Dover book called The Heart of Thoreau's Journals which contains his philosophical extracts. For many years now I only open my Thoreau journals on Christmas Morning when I am in a nostalgic mood charged by the numinous expectations of secular Christmas Day. This takes me back to my three years in Washington and how I have travelled since then. If I wish to see how Thoreau spent his Christmas for any year I am usually disappointed for Christmas seems the briefest interlude between his rambling in the woods. I surmise Christmas was a more restrained event then and the Thoreau family might have just gathered around the table for a special meal and some exchange of small presents.  This was a more dignified and wholesome age in which the festive day existed for the ordinary folk and not for the industrial complex and its garish and profane manipulations of appetites.

Making Soul

An important ah moment happened in my reading of James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology  (Harper Colophon, 1977) and it concerns the notion of 'making soul'.  Being a post-Jungian it is perhaps not surprising that Hillman should put a value on soul, however his idea of soul being made by the inculcation of culture, or by another name, the liberal arts, can claim some originality.  The art and science of  fiction, history, biography, poetry or philosophy is the raw material for making soul.   Hillman does nod to the Romantics as a precursor of his thesis.  Soul here has no religious or metaphysical connection.  I will particularly cite history in this respect. Reading history helps us explain the past, but it also is very important in making soul.  What would the Western soul be without the narratives of Salamis, Athens versus Sparta,  King Alfred, 1066, the Crusades or the Somme? Where would national soul be without  the stories of Trafalgar,  Henry VIII, Louis Quatorze, Gallipoli?  In the making of soul it does not matter if the events are absorbed with misunderstandings or falsehoods or even shameful aspects; they all go into the soul making process.  Neither is it reprehensible if the acting out of these soul-myths is irrational, offensive to some or even slightly absurd. This process might be better understood in the higher educational establishments which are so focussed upon reason and scholarship that they forget that it is the entire man which is being engaged in the educative process. The educative business of scholarship can go on alongside a more sympathetic treatment of soul making and its place in the full life. 

Larkin: Not Nice But Loveable

Moping around the local library I alighted upon Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica and decided to revisit this book.   Here read again was his rather prejudiced and curmudgeonly view of life. His  disparaging of  foreigners, immigrants, the lower orders, even his privileged academic milieu.  Larkin was at base a life-hater, a people hater, an everything mediocre hater.  Letters to Monica  also reveals how fragile was his psychology; his mental constitution was dominated by acute sensitivities and chronic aversions. He had a morbid fear of illness and death. He did not like to impose on or intrude upon others. He could not overtly self-promote even when he was being recognised as a major poet. An essentially lonely man he spend much effort in avoiding 'people'. He declined invitations for visiting lectureships in the USA.  He detested foreign travel. Like a lot of lonely people he escaped his affliction by work ('the toad'), a select correspondence and a few friendships. He did not seem capable of intimate relationships but no doubt had a 'sort of loving' for women. Monica was his soul-mate, she sharing many of his artistic tastes, conservative politics and habitual drinking  His admiration and affection was for books, the arts, literary figures and a nostalgic idealised England.

I discovered his poems  in thin faber and faber  paperbacks with poor quality paper published in the 1980s, The Whitsun Weddings, The North Ship, and High Windows.  I was stimulated by his  poetic skill which captured so succinctly the ferment of ordinary places and people. He was not unlike John Betjeman in seeking a blend of the comic and tragic, although Betjeman had a more kind and wholesome view of life. I was informed about his problematic personality and circumstances by Andrew Motion's  Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life and his own all-revealing Letters To Monica

Perhaps here is the kind of poet that one should not to probe into for fear of spoiling the poetic image, the stand alone value of the work (Lord Byron might be a good example).  I would disagree if only for the reason that I think the truth of the poet as man better elucidates  the poetry.  And in the truth of the poet we can discern the soil of the poem, it humus of time and place.  His cribbed and despairing life was not uncommon in a Britain of cold war angst, the bomb, and the social overhang of the War.  Ordinary people were not so converted to the need to appear nice and amiable. This was a time of character which cannot be faked.  I can appreciate his disdain for pose or self-improvement mantras or cosmetic gimmicks so popular for the media-primed artist of our time.  Those who create art out of a bare witness to reality produce the better art. And they seem to draw the sympathy from the reader and become vulnerable and almost loveable.

Day of a Stranger - Thomas Merton

What strikes you about Thomas Merton is the sheer likeability of the man.  He is a 'true man of no status' , a universal man, a shy man without a mask, perhaps what we might term in the local argot 'a good bloke'.  Towards the end of his life he wrote an essay called Day of a Stranger, (1981, Intro. Robert E. Daggy), the word 'Stranger' denoting one who is an outsider to the modern technological world, puzzled by the drives and ambitions of ordinary folk.  This little pamphlet-like work is interspersed by Merton's own black and white photographs from around the hermitage.  Unlike a lot of images in 'spiritual' writing these enhance and do not detract from the text. Of all his writing I think this essay best shows the essence of his personality and where he had arrived at in 1965.  This was an a time when he had just begun to settle into living in his hermitage in the woods at the Abbey at Gethsemani in Kentucky. He had gained separation (in part) from the suffocating world of the abbey life, what he called a 'hot environment' meaning one where busyness ruled if only in a institution of religious men fretting over purpose and meaning.  It reminds one of the atmosphere of modern bureaucracy where all must be engaged and transmitting messages, all is movement and flight. The content is not as important as that one is seen as a party to this game of exchanging messages. Merton had at this time also ripened in his understanding of  Eastern thought, of Zen, Taoism and Buddhism in its various facets. He appears to have adjusted his Christian view to find a place for this wisdom; or perhaps he was heading in the opposite - a place for Christianity in Eastern spirituality. Just to read Day of a Stranger is a 'blessing', a release from the craziness of a particular day and an odd sense of being in a still point with Merton in his hermitage in the woods, with his bare attention to the simple surroundings of the new home and the loveliness of the little piece of Kentucky nature where he lived and had his being.  Here is a self-dialogue from Day of a Stranger

--Why live in the woods?
--Well you have to live somewhere.
--Do you get lonely?
--Yes, sometimes.
--Are you mad at people?
-- No.
--Are you mad at the monastery?
-- No.
--What do you think of the future of monasticism?
--Nothing. I don't think about it.
--Is it true that your bad back is due to Yoga?
--No
--Is it true that you are practising Zen in secret?
--Pardon me, I don't speak English.

Plate 46 from Day of a Stranger

Haiku

I recently posted some self-authored haiku.  I should say that they are in the style of haiku rather than haiku.  They do not follow strict metrical patterns and some are even not about nature or the human in the setting of the natural. I am indebted to R. H. Blyth for the insight I have into haiku, in particular its origins in Japanese Zen Buddhism.  Reading the magisterial four volume Haiku (The Hokuseido Press 1975), first published in 1949, has been the core of my  induction into this gentle art.  I only possess Volume I. Eastern Culture, and have wanted the remaining volumes; I have been put off by the approximately $500 cost. Fortunately the local library had the remaining three volumes,  No. II, Spring, No. III, Summer-Autumn, and No. IV, Autumn-Winter.   Every page of Haiku is infused with the mystique of Zen and one can only surmise that  Blyth had both a scholarly understanding of the art of haiku as well as a deep appreciation of its origins in Buddhism and Zen in particular. It is clear from reading Blyth that the 'study' of Zen is the royal road to haiku both as a reader and practitioner. Blyth also compares the sentiments in haiku to extracts from Western literature which provides a unique view into the occidental genre.

I would say that Section II, of Vol. I of Haiku, Zen, The State of Mind for Haiku, is one of the most moving and profound things I have read. In this section Blyth draws from the qualities that characterise Zen and relates them to the mind of the haiku poet with examples of haiku.

1. Selflessness
2. Loneliness
3. Grateful acceptance
4. Wordlessness
5. Non-intellectuality
6. Contradictoriness
7. Humour
8. Freedom
9. Non-morality
10. Simplicity
11. Materiality
12. Love
13. Courage. 

Pumkin  Mushakoji Saneatsu
Plate 19 from Haiku by R.H. Blyth

Naturalism

Hands up those who are naturalists?  I do not see many hands up.  Perhaps some think this is related to a naturist. Not so, naturalists like to look at things plainly but do not remove their clothes. Nor in this case are they autodidactic observers of nature like Thoreau. Well, naturalism is not an ism at all; it is a world view or a way of apprehending the world; a template if you like based upon what good science has found out about the natural world. In my experience most people are unknowing and unthinking naturalists. It is their unconscious modus operandi; it is their hidden rock of common sense and expectation as to how things work. Almost none think of the balance of the  'four humours' as the basis for health, or that walking under a ladder will bring bad luck. Naturalism has brought light to the world of ignorance and superstition. It is the sine qua non of modern man.

Oddly though people fall back upon non-naturalistic world views. They take their dead to church and temple in the hope that by petitioning an unseen omnipotent being their loved one will be transported to a ultra-mundane world and spend an infinity in bliss in  the presence of celestial beings. One can multiply the examples.  These people consider themselves part-naturalist; it is based upon an assumption that the world is split into natural and supernatural components. Of course, this is a nonsense to the naturalist for naturalism can only be naturalistic; it cannot accommodate the supernatural any more than (at sea level) water might boil at 212 F in one part of the world and 250 F in another.

 So this hybrid naturalism-supernaturalism is a naive contrivance to save one from facing the facts. Better to say you are do not have a naturalistic world-view than say you have a hybrid naturalistic-super-naturalistic world-view. Yet it is so hard to say you are naturalistic.  It is to stand bare in the face of things, the buffeting and swell of what arises by necessity. You have to concede that the world is fundamentally meaningless in human terms.  And yet it is also a comfort for you do not have fall back positions that lack logic, reason and depend upon sophistry or faith assertions. The naturalist also does not fear death for death is merely the end of consciousness.

Fall of Public Man

Some books entertain, some inform and some change the way you think. Of the latter, Richard Sennett's, The Fall of Public Man (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976) was singularly important for me.  The gist of his thesis is that prior to mid 19th Century there was a facility and ease with which people of different rank and station could talk to one another in a public space, for example, in  shop, a park, or when travelling. The 18th Century picaresque novels of Laurence Sterne or Henry Fielding are characterised by these instances. These were encounters between perfect strangers which cultivated the civil society and spread a reassurance that all was well with the world. The actors in these mini-dramas were not conversing as exposed personalities rather as public persona. For example, in the neutral public space, the chimney sweep might talk to the architect, the gentleman to the labourer, the Lord to the publican without any embarrassment or suggestion of talking up or down. Not that the exchange was egalitarian was we might understand it, but that of individuals speaking from the dignity of their respective estates. 

Sennett argues that around about the mid-century things changed. This was influenced by the effects of the Romantic movement with its emphasis upon inner enquiry and self-transformation. This change was subsequently influenced by the budding discipline of psychology, which culminated by the revolutionary impact of the ideas of Sigmund Freud. The theory of the unconscious and primaeval  Id ended forever the naive notion of inner clarity and purpose. For the erstwhile 'public man' a fear developed that the unsolicited conversation of the stranger might be a prying into the inner psychological world.  Soon there was hesitancy all round in the public space, a tendency to avoid eye contact and initiate conversation with a stranger. 

I think this state of psychological vulnerability has become even worse in latter times.  This is despite the faux friendship of social media which is usually conducted between cyber drones rather than real people. The pubic person as distinct from the private  has almost ceased to exist. If a stranger initiates an exchange in a public space we worry about their ulterior motive and the risk that the veil might be penetrated over our sacrosanct inner private world. 

I would like to see a return to the manners of public exchange. There is a proper style of address, demeanour and tone to initiate a public exchange. For instance, it helps to speak to the obvious outer man or woman rather than assume a pose of familiarity; after all seeking familiarity goes with knowing.  Using a proper form of address without being pompous helps. It is notable how calling someone sir or madam puts them at ease. A dignified and pleasant tone is also important. One can also confer on people the worth and dignity of their calling no matter what the 'status' might be in our crude modern reckoning (what a shame that nurses stopped using uniforms). 

DHL 'Poet Without a Mask'

In the introduction to the Penguin edition of D.H.Lawrence's, The Complete Poems, a critic says that DHL is 'poet without a mask' and this is really what he is:  his poems (with the exception of his early rhyming poems) are beautiful effusions of feeling and imagination free from masks of poetic convention or bourgeois comportment. In a way they are slightly mad, but of the spiritual madness type rather than the mental type, or maybe a little of both. Perhaps they are influenced by his chronic TB. Anyhow you cannot fail to be swept along on these ranting flourishes even if you feel that he has gone beyond the envelope.  He could be compared with Walt Whitman; but Walt for all his randy unorthodoxy was still a Victorian in manner and unkempt mode.  Of the literary types, 'priests, prophets and purveyors' DHL is definitely among the prophets.  As a prophetic writer he speaks to the core of man and to the eternal. He speaks less to our particular  time because we are not moved by any man's mighty soul; now there are no great men. It takes a flame to catch onto another flame. 

FLOWERS AND MEN

Flowers achieve their own floweriness and it is a miracle. 
Men don't achieve their own manhood, alas, oh alas! alas!

All I want of you, men and women,
all I want of you
is that you shall achieve your own beauty
as the flowers do. 

Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.
Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of the course stem?
Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?

[I want you to be a savage] as the gentian and the daffodil.
Tell me! tell me! is there in you a beauty to compare
to the honeysuckle at evening now
pouring out his breath. 

PRAYER

Give me the moon at my feet
Put my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord!
O let my ankles be bathed in moon light, that I 
    may go
sure and moon-shod, cool and bright-footed
towards my goal.

For the sun is hostile now 
his face is like the red lion. 

Counterculture

There is a common perception that the counter-culture movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's was primarily a period of exuberant youth seeking escape through 'dropping out', irresponsible idleness, promiscuity and illicit drugs. Without doubt there was plenty of this and being so visible and salacious it attracted the attention of the media and influenced the  lazy eye of history. It is overlooked that the perhaps risible revolt of youth was cynosure of a much broader and quieter reflection about the nature of man, community and work. This can be seen in the flourish of literature on these subjects. To cite a few:  E.F Schumacher, Herbert Marcuse, Charles A. Reich, Alan Watts, Theodore Roszak, Norman O Brown and Paul Goodman. The common theme of  these writers was to question the diminished quality of human life in the industrial state with its worship of efficiency, corporatism, consumerism and conformity. This led to a discussion in society of  alternative ways of organisation and enhancement of human consciousness, in the broadest sense, in living.  

From my comfortable position I participated in this discussion and it changed my outlook of life considerably. I also noticed how society was  picking up on some of these new ideas and incorporating them into mainstream living. One can think of a growth in interpersonal sensitivity, humanistic values, changes in the lives of women, sexual tolerance and a doing away of various stigmas arising from formal religions. The counter-culture movement, of course, failed in its raison d'etre of enhancing consciousness and freeing man from the fetters of the industrial state.  Society is still pretty much the same, and worse in some respects. The survival of the status quo was, however, inevitable and is shared to some extent by all idealistic and utopian schemes. What is disturbing, however, is that the notion of a counter culture no longer exists.  We seem to have capitulated and in doing so have lost our capacity to imagine something better. In this sense the 'System' has had a double victory. A society which does not dream is in danger of losing its heart. 

Robert Persig in Lilia has this to say:

'Of these periods (WWII to 1970; then present), the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoilt children, and the period following their departure as a 'return' to values, whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values.' (my parentheses) 

William Cowper

I am drawn to 18th Century English poet, William Cowper for his personality and poetry. He lived after a mental breakdown in his youth  in the care of friends in the English country side.  His semi-invalid life was punctuated with periods of  intense depressive suffering and, to use the extant term, madness. This fall from respectability of vocation and livelihood followed an attempt to take his highly sensitive soul and precarious mental state into the world of a law clerk. His poetry is the work of a sheltered being seeking through his endeavours to find meaning in the beauty of nature and the rhythms of a retired life. This is complemented with the enlightened and refined spirit of the marvellous century of his life.  So taking his simple materials to hand, his poetry turned to rural scenes, shrubs, trees, snails, rabbits, cats and  homely objects. One might surmise that his plain style was an attempt not to put too much pressure on his fragile nerves; not to force himself into something ambitious and grand. His subjects and his style created a lovely and timeless poetry. Cowper became one of the most beloved poets of his time and emerges from a bevy of 18th Century poets to be read in modern times. His letters are also delightful exercises in gentle manners and tactful sensibility.  I am lucky to have an 1835 fine bound collected edition of his works (Saunders and Otley) and it sits in pride of place in my lounge room bookcase.  Seeking repose on a winter's night before a fire there is nothing so refreshing a to dip into the handsome bindings of my Cowper's Works.

Engraving from Cowper's Works of his house at Weston 

J. Krishnamurti: wiseman, no guru

It was around the age of 14 that I discovered the Indian thinker
J. Krishnamurti.   He is the Doubters 'guru' and was a refreshing contrast to the Jesuit indoctrination I was receiving at school. What attracted me to Krishnmurti was that he seemed to hone in on the central human problem before that problem seeks escapist solutions in religion and metaphysics. As with the core philosophy of the Buddha, Krishnamurti was concerned with the malaise of the human psych which leads to  confusion, delusion and suffering. While Krishnamurti would have disavowed it, I suggest that by some process of osmosis he spoke a variant of the language of  the Buddha.  In other words how the psych in encountering reality never really sees clearly in the present moment but is interpreting through the accumulations or the conditioning of  experience which is formed by fear and attraction, our persistent craving and desire for permanence. But K was not one for meditation or rituals or elaborate canons of scripture all of which just create more conditioning. He eschewed followers or devotees. Having said this neither Krishnmurti nor the myriad of charismatic sages make much of another stumbling block to the cure of the ills of the individual and that is that a large proportion inherit neurotic complexes; these sit in the psych and emerge at inappropriate moments to cause havoc.  For these folk it is one thing to know the source of the problem another to effect the change necessary. But it is always better to know where you stand in the neurotic scale than be ignorant.  We all know those people who pass through life causing a trail of destruction thinking that all this is normal and they are merely being true to themselves. 

Academic Poets

At the Lifeline Bookfair I picked up a copy of The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (published 1985).  It cost all of $3, a knock down price but some of the pages are falling out. As the title suggests, the poets are young and fresh in the promising stage of their poetic careers.  There is a section for each poet and  photographic portrait.   I have got into the way of looking up the poets by doing an on-line search. It is interesting to see that so many took the literary studies path, moved into academia and are now hallowed figures in American college settings. Of course they no longer look like their photographs and it is sad to see how quickly the bloom of youth fades into the nondescript blur of middle age.  Now they are seasoned college staff  with slight to significant reputations and books of poetry to their credit. Some have branched out to short stories and novels. You can see they have become part of a literary establishment.  One supposes the rage has gone out of them.  Life must be sweet with a captive audience of  students, speaking events, visiting positions and levers upon the grail of publishing. I tend to think that what is good for poetry is the precarious and simple life close to the common run of men and women. It is better to be a low-ranked colonial public servant like C. P. Cavafy or public revenue collector like the William Wordsworth, or, perhaps, just starving in a proverbial garret (but not mad was Chatterton).  The artificiality of academe, the aura of respectability, the dreary round of campus  life must be deadening to the muse.   

Here is a quotation from my commonplace book:

'In the end one comes back to the most obstinate question of all. Isn't there a certain basic antagonism between the very nature of a university and the very spirit of literature?  The academic mind is cautious, tightly organised, fault-finding, competitive -- and above all, aware of other academic minds. Think of the atmosphere of suspicion implied by the habit of fitting out the most trivial quotation with a reference, as though it were applying for a job. Think of the whole idea of regarding literature as a discipline. Literature can be strenuous or difficult or deeply disturbing; it can be a hundred things -- but a discipline is not one of them. Discipline means compulsion, and an interest in literature thrives on spontaneity, eager curiosity, the anticipation of pleasure; it is unlikely that a reader who comes to a book under duress, or weighed down with a sense of duty, will ever really read it at all, however much he may learn about it. Even the most intensely serious literature needs to be approached with a certain lightness of heart, if it is to yield it full intensity.'

John Cross
The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters

Currawongs in the persimmon

I am very fortunate to have persimmon tree outside my window.  It is in a courtyard surrounded by camellias and azaleas.  It was planted in 1972 and has never grown too big so it keeps it ornamental quality. The persimmon tracks the seasons and now it is bearing small orangey yellow fruit. The long dry spell over summer has not been kind to the tree or its fruit despite our  additional irrigation from rainwater tank. In early autumn appear the currawong  which swoop into the dark green foliage and eat the sticky pulp.  The fruit at this time is hard and the birds consume  it all before it has a chance to become ripe and edible. The fruit which falls from beak to the ground is put on the wall; if the currawong does not salvage it the possums do. Having tasted a persimmon and not liking it I do not miss the opportunity to eat the fruit. It is an acquired taste. The pictures below are glossy from the gentle rain. 

PERSIMMON TREE

Up and down on the bare stems

the currawongs sway

tugging at their find,

light flashing off

oil and black feather,

their yellow and black eyes

super-cautious, malevolent.

Every year they come,

harvesting the unwanted crop

never looking older as we do,

generations to the same tree,

while we, half-hidden, watch,

wondering what the taste is like to them;

is it the sticky, floury sweetness,

the acquired flavour

not to our taste?

The season turns into short days,

the foliage is all but gone,

far out on a thin branch,

like a Chinese lantern on a pole,

hangs one remaining persimmon.

A currawong steps out cautiously,

the head jerking in an arc,

sticks clasping a stick, watching,

ever the black seeing eye.

Bird pecks from as far as dares

and the branch bounces wildly,

the talons tighten, the wings arch,

the air flapped for balance.

The persimmon and the bird

spring in unison, a pas de deux

in black and orange; an

unintended comedy.

A reach down to the fruit

leaving V shapes in the soft skin,

then a gobbling of the pinkish pap inside.

But it is hard work and precarious.

A few more pecks and an air borne woosh.

Later we take off this hacked piece

and place it on the courtyard wall.

The currawong returns and finishes it off.

It is a shame to waste good fuel

for a frosty night. 

George Herbert

Simone Weil was deeply affected by the poem Love III by George Herbert.  I could never see what Weil saw in this poem which seems saccharine,  pious and self-pitying. 'Love' in this case is a trope for God alias Jesus.  Herbert feeling 'Guilty of dust and sin' is beckoned by Love to 'taste my meat'.  Given that Weil, a non-observant Jew, did not really believe in the personal God but, as far as I can gather, a divine mystical force to be reached by 'waiting' and 'decreation' it is strange she is moved by what is plainly a coy poetical love feast between Herbert and his personal God.  I could understand Weil's ineffable approach to the divine but am confronted by the literalness of Herbert. I have just finished reading, Music At Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury.  I am perhaps at some accord with Weil that in being acquainted with Herbert and reading his verse one can see something of the pure soul and this in itself is refreshing set alongside our confused time of shallowness, distraction and self-absorption.   Herbert so wove his humble life around the Christian project that his hallowed spirit is infused into his poems and his life. To read Herbert is to walk with him and feel welcome and trusted. Herbert is also a foil to the worldliness of contemporary Christianity with its powerful establishments, money-mindedness and pecuniary incursions into secular spheres. As for Weil - I see more Buddhism in her cosmic view than religion.  Those who 'sit' in quiet meditation are about the practice of 'decreation'. John Drury (a chaplain and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) is  sympathetic but objective, scholarly but not abstruse. 

A Take on Meditation

In amidst a conventional life of work, family and interests I have practised meditation of the sitting and watching breath type with some pretentious link to Zen meditation.  I think over the many years I have 'learnt how to meditate' - whatever that means. By my own lights my short period of sitting (on a meditation chair) has afforded a brief segue into a gentler and more somatic consciousness which is refreshing and recreating. I mention somatic as I think the posture in meditation is as important as the attentiveness to  breath. Over time these experiences have perhaps tuned my outlook to a more detached kind. (As a natural Outsider I wonder if this is the right way to go.) I have always avoided any connection of meditation with spiritual things or other cosmic penetrations. I also do not put any great store in the curative effects of meditation physically or mentally. If meditation does impact upon the person it is somewhat ineffable and subtle, certainly not usefully detectable by self-analysis or crude scientific measuring of brain waves. But oddly while the 'results' are subliminal I find myself wishing to instil the practice into  a more Taoistic view of life. I am also no fan of the word 'practice' which suggests ambition, attainment-seeking and accomplishment.  My meditation chair was made by Dynamo House, Melbourne. It is the folding variety and has collapsed several time requiring makeshift repairs.  After I developed a circulation problem in my leg a kind thread person put some padding on the seat so now I would put it into the luxury category.  

A Difficult Cat

Our cat is anything but a nice cat.  He is rather grumpy. We think we was a factory cattery cat.  The big mistake was going to a pet store to buy a kitten but being talked into taking a free cat if we brought a certain value in cat paraphernalia. It is no wonder he was free.  But I do not dwell on his negative side.  I try to avoid the nasty swings of his claws or his quite strong nipping. His frustration when he does not get what he wants is just a facet of his congenital anxiety. This also comes into play when a stranger visits the house and he heads for the hills.  He learnt distrust I suppose from being separated from his mother at an early age.  He has never got over his separation from her suckling, warmth and love. So I try to fit in with him.  He is fed on time with good quality food.  I give him affection even when he does not respond.  I try to bring out his best side.  I do not condemn him. I do not negatively compare him to the other cats we have owned.  He is not here for our amusement. He is his own cat and has his own life. He rewards us with his beauty, even present after 12 years, his sullen superiority, his quiet dwelling in the garden and his presence which is full of a transcendent silence. 

T'ao Ch'ien

T'ao Ch'ien  (Y'ao Yuan-ming) (365-427 A.D.) was one of those educated and  literary Chinese officials who fell out of favour and took refuge in country parts.  One senses in these poet-recluses that they were  square pegs in a round holes to start off  in government service. Their poetic sensibilities made heavy going of the shrewd and ruthless politics of the day.   Unlike some who create a poetic pose of their poverty T'ao Ch'ien did fall on hard times.  He was a farmer on a modest holding.  He loved playing the lute, reading, visiting friends and drinking home brewed wine. Apparently this drinking was limited to just the amount of  wine necessary to become relaxed and mellow - and no doubt soften the soul for some more poetry.  T'ao Ch'ien poems (in translation) come across as quite modern and natural.  This is remarkable given he was born in 365 A.D. Despite his hardships there is an joy in life in the poems and a counter point of stoic resignation.  It is the same attitude one finds in Taoism of Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu.  If we can only simplify ourselves (meaning empty ourselves of conditioning and contradictions) then all will be harmony under a beneficent Heaven.  Here is a favourite poem from the translations of David Hamilton in his book The Selected Poems T'ao Ch'ien. I often wonder what happened to his sons. 


SCOLDING MY SONS

My temples covered all in white. I'm
slack-muscled and loose-skinned for good. 

now. And though I do have five sons, 
not one of them prizes paper and brush. 

A-shu is already twice eight, and who's 
ever equalled him for sheer laziness?

A-hsuan is fifteen, time studies began, 
but he's immune to words and ideas. 

Yung and Tuan are both thirteen now, 
and they can't even add six and seven. 

And T'ung-tzu, who's almost nine, does 
nothing but forage pears and chestnuts. 

If this is heaven's way, I'll offer it 
that stuff in the cup. It needs a drink. 

Thoughts on Schweitzer

Black Swans near Lake Burley Griffin 

About every two weeks and in all seasons I drive a short distance  to Lake Burley Griffin and take a morning walk. I like to see happy families away from work, computers, televisions and shopping malls. I also see lots of dogs in all shapes and sizes glad to be walking beside their human friends. I also enjoy observing the black swans, the darters drying their wings in the sun, the busy sea gulls, water birds pecking in the lush grass with curved beaks. 

We are more human when we share our lives benevolently with animals. There is a co-mingling of being, a communion of spirits.  

On my walks around the lake I often recall Albert Schweitzer's ethic of reverence for life. Schweitzer thought that ultimately we can know very little about the cosmic meaning of life but it is plainly evident that the being in us, which is also will-to-live, is present in others and in animals and plants.  Will-to-live means not only basic survival  but species potential. At a higher level it is will-to-love. Schweitzer died in 1965. He is not very fashionable now. Perhaps he is forgotten. His reputation was not helped by writing most of his life as a theologian and a philosopher of an non-academic sort. He was probably a non-theist.  He also mixed this up with medical missionary work in central Africa and got into trouble for not keeping up with medical technology. He was also a bit colonial and paternalistic in this thinking (being essentially a 19th century man). These in combination were bad for his posthumous career. He made his central ethic reverence for life  and this ethic in a dynamic way he termed ethical mysticism. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about it. It is the mysticism of  the kindly touching of other beings because we are at some level of the same stuff. 

A Very Cute Family 

Book Binding Ends

I acquired a pious book titled Fathers, Martyrs and Queen of the Holy Rosary from a relation I located while doing my family history. She knew my grandparents and had met me in Melbourne with my parents when I was an infant. I do not remember the meeting. She was happy to  pass it over to me as I was a closer relative than she to the original owners.

It is perhaps a Roman Catholic alternative to a Protestant family bible.  I tend to call it 'the bible'  in the absence of a suitable name for it. As a non believer the contents do not speak to me and I suspect for present day believers it represents a fervour of another time. It is inscribed with births, deaths and marriages of some of my 1800's ancestors. 

 It was handed over in a pretty poor state, the cover boards falling off, end papers torn and spine spit in two. At the time I was learning craft book binding and took it to my recreational class as a project. It took all of one semester to repair the book. The teacher was somewhat intimidated by having to advise on the job until I assured her I was repairing it not restoring it. 
  
Recently I decided to relinquish my book binding craft. The pastime had being in abeyance for some time and I had passed on to new things. The paraphernalia of bookbinding have charm: pretty book cloth, colourful and marbled endpapers, trusty pieces of hard board, spine tape in various hues, brushes and glues. It was a little hard to bundle some for donation and some for disposal.  

A legacy of the craft is the 'bible' as well as the books I have re-covered in my library, all with a personalised sticky label attached to the end boards. I attained no great heights of bookbinding.  I lacked the dexterity, the artistic talent and drive for perfection. As well I only had a small part-time work desk and none of the larger machines or implements for proper book binding.  My projects  were salvaged old books or good quality paperbacks rendered more pleasant to look at and handle. 

I hope I have ensured that the 'bible' survives another hundred years and is still in the possession of a relative and that he or she may pause a moment to read the legend 'tipped' into the endpapers telling of its discovery and repair by the distant relative long gone. 

The Best State to Read Poetry

I find that my best experience with reading poetry comes early in the morning just after I have completed a short meditation session.  For that matter if you want to write poetry it seems to flow best in this post-meditative state.  Later in the day when you are jaded with experience, coarsened with talking and all the petty trivia of life, the poetic experience seems to flee as if in fright.  I suppose you do not have to meditate to experience this heightened receptivity; it could be garnered from being quiet and mindful for a while. So much poetry is introduced to people in the scholastic setting. The poem becomes an object to be analysed and intellectually consumed, it becomes a useful thing, a adjunct to identity.  Not much of the gist of the poem survives this process although it may have some use to put poetry into a cultural context. I do not much like poetry to be spoken aloud, formally recited or 'performed'  for I find that the poem treated in these ways becomes often just noise lost in the air. There are exceptions as when a trained actor with a beautiful voice recites a poem or when a poem is written in a style with metre and rhyme specifically to be spoken aloud.