Askew

 Hi Bob,

I loved your long newsy note! 

Which months are you now in ABQ? I didn't realize the rental manager was no longer renting your place so time really does fly by.... It is all yours now? Does the weather stay the same during those Plymouth summer/fall months in ABQ? 

Must have been FB where I saw a big new rug hung on the wall? 

Glad you get a day off every week--so important. Bob sits a LOT... AM Reads the newspaper (takes a long time to read it cover to cover) and then PM reads articles and stuff in his email. Then watches movies on his iMac and/or follows his people on UTube--He follows: Cara and Nate, now on a train across the US and back through Canada; the Sailing Doodles; the Couple building a homestead in Panama; the guy building a place in Puerto Rico; the Van Wives; Nicki Davenport.... He updates me on these from time to time over dinner. Oh, must not forget the Bumfuzzles, the only ones I have followed for years--they are on a Catamirand and are sailing around the world with their two teens. The husband supports them because he is a stock trader and runs a company to train people to do it (Wanderer Financial). I totally am an old fuddy duddy because I think making your living by filming yourselves and being an "influencer" is so... what? not respectable...  Oh well... THEN, after Bob shows up like clockwork at 6pm for dinner, we watch MSNBC news and possibly some recorded shows.... sigh... My/our boring life,,,  At least so far he can get around with his walker without me so I can go out for walks, hikes, run errands, etc.

Joann, Bob's sister, was given a subscription to Storyworth for Christmas by her son. Costs $99 for a year and they email you one question a week to write about. At the end of the year they print a 6x9 book of your musings. I have always wanted to write my autobiography but it was too hard to start... So I signed up and have written about 8 entries. I prefer to choose my own topics. I write my entries on Mondays while Bob is working out with his trainer... kind of fun! I must at some point go back to do a major edit... 

Watching our little Joey, the Bachelor... and the BORING Farmer Wants a Wife... Shows our taste in mainstream TV...

Ok, dinner time--He will arrive in 20 minutes!!!!!

CHeers,

Nancy

Within a time of reading

Here is all my growth

Through the bodies of other selves,

In books. by promise or perversity

My mutinous crew of furies—their pleading

Threw up at last the naked sprite

Whose flesh and noise I am,

Who is my jailor and my inward night. 

      167  Collected Poems 

Nicholas on his Golgonooza blog March 16 —-

In the neo-Platonism of Plotinus and in Vedanta, matter is either the most remote, disintegrated form of the One or 'Maya' fundamentally illusory - and the purpose of the soul is to realize its fundamental difference from any material entanglement - which is dissolved as illusion. 

Ironically, from the perspective of Iamblichus or Tantra, the alternative path is, in fact, seen as the one of 'dualism' - the soul detaches itself from the world, is a counterpoint to the world, the One identified with is not the One that embraces the Many but divorces it!

This set of differences is explored in fascinating and enriching detail in the text - and in many ways both Iamblichus and Tantra emerge as traditions that are fully incarnate, so what of Christianity, Iamblichus' chief rival, and one that would come to be the dominant Western tradition, eliminating its rival by force? Is not Christianity the religion of incarnation par excellence? To which Iamblichus' answer would be an unequivocal no! The fatal mistake of Christianity in his eyes was to imagine that the incarnation was singular - in one particular person - and though that event is meant to restore the possibilities of raising all humans to a new 'deified' status in theosis, the cleavage remains, the divine presence in the world is held by a human, 'rented' out to other humans (on certain conditions) and denied in its fullness to the world as a whole of which we are an interwoven, inseparable part. To Iamblichus, this was simply the definition not of cosmic theurgy or magic but of simple sorcery, a terrible demeaning inflation in the divine's proper ordering! 

. . . .

So we are back to Plato - who was his better interpreter - Plotinus or Iamblichus? Probably better both than their twentieth-century peers but for me, it would be Iamblichus because he sees better Plato in the round, is less inclined to elide those things that so often disappear in later readings, and miss the fundamentally transformative invitation of the dialogues to a spiritual life that embraces the whole of the created order, right now.

. . .

In Iamblichus/Tantra, the One, the divine, has deliberately, consciously become the Many, has alienated itself in the particular, so that it might be known, and in conscious acts of weaving be re-realized as One present to and within the Many, and not simply in the human soul but in every particular form of matter - animal, plant, stone - and the very forces of our alienation have the potential to be the energies of delight. 

found an interview with Aciman, 2019 in the Times  

I finally finished “Anna Karenina.” It was work. I never took to Tolstoy. He always struck me as the Cecil B. DeMille of literature. Epic, panoramic and gushy, but ultimately simple. I was always intrigued by Anna’s love for Vronsky and by her petty jealous husband. I’d read large bits and finally decided to read the whole thing. It did not change me.

——

Fascinating. Thanks for sending it. I hadn't seen it. It's a bit of an echo of what I was saying in the Great Work. It's a corporate dance now. Susan and I went into a Barnes & Noble in Portsmouth and it depressed the hell out of me. Honestly, the whole world seems too populated. Too many books, too many movies, too many tv shows. I don't envy young writers -- or musicians or painters, etc. -- starting out now. Busy world.

All good here. How are you doing? Everyone here is atwitter about the eclipse. I'm going to go up to Lake Tarleton to watch it. Wendy is throwing a big fete at her inn in Vermont. I guess she has booked out in a major way.

Hope you head back soon. Will you be a major landlord again?  You are NH's answer to Trump. 

Write when you can. Always good to hear from you. J

Hope you enjoy a bit of the eclipse buzz all around you there.  Cloudy here so we probably won't see much of

any kind of shadow and we're far away from the PATH OF TOTALITY!! Sounds like lame sci-fi fiction or video game.

Make sure you take a look at "Ripley" on Netflix.  Black and white and excellent.  Superb acting and stunning

photography.  Script pares it all down to essentials, adding a few embellishments here and there.  All's quiet

here.  No visitors this year.  Few might pop up in early May.  We are no longer doing any Airbnb with it and

that is a relief.  Putting our junk all around and no need to clean it up when we leave in May.  Against all of

my protestations, Virginia went ahead and booked us into a private 10 day safari to Kenya.  Hotel to jeep 

each day, riding around looking for animals.  I predict . . . . but no one cares what I think about such things

so we will see what happens.  Dread all of it even silly details like wearing those knee-high tight compression

socks to stave off blood clots in the legs on the 14 hr plane flight.  Oh well, as we used to joke in Reed house

take me out in a kayak and tip it over.  Not as much fun as a gag line now, is it?  We'll get together for lunch

in late June when we get back from Kenya and you can call me B'wana.  Two new small bookshops in town in

addition to the few that survived before everything.  Watching lots of tv.  Murder mysteries have conquered

the world.  

—-

Hi Bob and Virginia,

Hope you are both well and enjoying Albuquerque.  It continues to be warm and sunny here so it will be quite a shock to return to Plymouth next week.  I was reading Tom Sietsma’s column in the Washington Post this morning (a job I would love to have), and a reader asked for a recommendation for a restaurant in Albuquerque, and he responded that he really  liked Campo at Los Pablomas.  Of course, I immediately wanted to know if you had been there. And I am suren you are thinking that it says a lot about me that I am reading a food column at 7:30 in the morning.

We have enjoyed our time in Sarasota, but we look forward to our return to Plymouth. There was certainly a lot of hype for the eclipse in New Hampshire.  Christa and Kerim flew to Dallas to see it and they were very impressed.  Spring should be arriving in Plymouth when we return.  We look forward to seeing you soon.   Carole

Hi Carole

We are each replying so you can see if we live in overlapping worlds or not!  We once had brunch at Los Campos and thought then how much you would

like it.  Another time we had high tea on the porch of their older building in front of the first swimming pool ever in Albuquerque, built in the '30s.  Have

not had dinner at Los Campos.  Too pricey but am sure it would be super.  Today temps promised to hit the low 70s.  It has been a cool and windy spring so far.  Va's cousin Nancy is coming for a visit the first week of May, from Seattle.  We are hanging some plates and putting more on top of the kitchen cabinets.  I bought a higher step ladder for that but already feeling cautious about it so have asked niece Lisa to come and help us with that.  Now we have to find someone to trim the front bush.  Agree that the hype for the eclipse seemed a bit much.  On Netflix "Ripley" we enjoyed tremendously.  We will go to Dallas for two nights with Marilyn and Ray before heading home by May 19.  They complained that their tax bill is too high this year because they bought a third house in Irving to be used by a man who is translating their bible into Arabic and his two daughters. Earlier  this week we got a splash of photos from our family who are on the beach in Spain right now  Looking forward to seeing you too.  

love, Bob 

Dear Carole, 

Yes, ABQ IS GETTING TO BE NICE;WARM TEMPS BUT a lot of wind.

I think you mean the resto at Poblanos.  Yes we have been there and loved the food.  We have also enjoyed high tea and brunch at Campo, another place to eat  at Poblanos which is an organic farm with veggies and lavender.

So we have found some nice places to take you when you come . 

Can't believe Christa flew to Dallas for the eclipse.  We settled for seeing it on tv since it was cloudy here and we didn't have the glasses.  Not the same I'm sure,but glad so many got to see it in the NE. My sister saw it in Irving,TX.  On our way back to NH,We will be going to visit her and her husband RAY and meet her sweet little granddaughter ,Astrid as well as spending some time with our nephews, Chris and Rick who will all be there to celebrate our 80th  BIRTHDAY(you remember I am a cougar and married a younger man. Bob is 15 days younger than I am!!)  All that on our way back to NH which should be beautiful by then.  

We   assume you and Ken will be organizing another beautiful wedding anniverary  lunch in June. It was so lovely last year.

Enjoy your way back to NH.

LOVE, 

Va and Bob 

——

Hey  thanks for the photo.  It got me two "likes" or "hearts" when I posted it on my X account. I vaguely remember it

but hardly remember it at all.  Seems like it comes from centuries ago.  Very difficult to recall forty years of life in

the classrooms.  So strange it all becomes.  Now that we are both a few weeks away from being 80!  I was with my

dad when he turned 80, we were all in new orleans visiting my sister's family.  80 must be the new 72, right?  

I should have something to report but lizards basking in the sun have few thoughts and fewer obsevations.  Some

weeds sprouted up on the edge of the astroturf.  Our niece and her husband stopped by and she insisted on going out

to pull them out.  They are newly retired in their early 50s, lucrative jobs for thirty years at rocket labs here.  Now

they square dance four nights a week and travel around in their RV to square dance competitions. 

Your airstream for Maine sounds a good idea.  No word from the agent yet?  

You started on some other stories?  Pretty much realized that staring into space all day is where it's at.  Do you

remember Necker Baines who sat by the bridge in Plymouth or was that before your arrival?  

At traffic light stop other day I may have seen a cadaver for first time ever.  Guy lying on the divider strip, dirty, homeless,

couldn't see his face.  Bright flourescent paint stripe next to him as though marked for pickup by either hearse truck or

social services.  Thought I could see his belly breathing but not sure.  Unnerving.  

Finished reading Durrell.  Who should I read next?  We get back 21 May.  

Bob 

——

Durrell's views about Sade are welcome and telling.  Page 184 in Caesar's Ghost.  A strange book, his last as I suppose he knew.  So far I am avoiding much biograph, gave up skimming through Richard Pine's variant.  Have the other two but put them away so as not to browse further.  

Gerald Murnane's books perfect after Durrell.  Intense and strange in puzzling and satisfying ways.  The Plain.  The great novel about growing up Catholic!  so on the money and funny and too close to the bone for comfort.

In A Million Windows now.  Askew, askance, gay, queer, aparametric, non-parametric. 

"In quoting others, we cite ourselves." —Julio Cortázar

 "In quoting others, we cite ourselves."  —Julio Cortázar

"One should never be cured of one's passions."  Marguerite Duras 1964

"Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection."  Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus 

Greg Gerke posted a page from Deleuze:  "In reality writing does not have its end in itself, precisely because life is not something personal.  Or, rather, the aim of writing is to carry life to the state of a non-personal power.     

Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues II found this info by searching the above passage and found it on a blog    xenographic.com/2023/03/11/spring-fragments/

now to complete copying the long Deleuze passage:  "the aim of writing is to carry life to the state of a non-personal power.  In doing this it renounces claim to any territory, any end which would reside in itself.  Why does one write?  Because it is not a case of writing.  It may be that the writer has delicate health, a weak constitution.  He is none the less the opposite of the neurotic: a sort of great Alive (in the manner of Spinoza, Nietzsche or Lawrence) in so far as he is only too weak for the life which runs in him or for the affects which pass in him.  

To write has no other functions: to be a flux which combines with other fluxes — all the minority-becomings of the world.

A flux is something intensive, instantaneous and mutant — between a creation and a destruction.

It is only when a flux is deterritorialized that it succeeds in making its conjunction with other fluxes, which deterritorialize it in their turn, and vice versa.

In an animal-becoming a man and an animal combine, neither of which resembles the other, neither of which imitates the other, each deterritorializing the other, pushing the line further.  A system of relay and mutations through the middle.  The line of flight is creative of these becomings.  Lines of flight have no territory.  Writing carries out the conjunction, the transmutation of fluxes, through which life escapes from the resentment of persons, societies and reigns. 

Kerouac's phrases are as sober as a Japanese drawing, a pure line traced by an unsupported hand, which passes across ages and reigns.  It would take a true alcoholic to attain that degree of sobriety.  

—-Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues II   "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature." essay in Dialogues II

This could work so well to describe what Lax's writing is all about.  Lax's line as sober and pure as Kerouac's and the Japanese drawing.  Lax's work as lines of flight, conjunctions through the middle, where life escapes from the resentment of persons, societies and orders/kingdoms/sovereignties [churches].  

Akkad:  "From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harboring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing." Durrell Constance 343

Affad was thinking with deep desire mingled with remorse of that secret field or realm which constitutes the moral geography of the mystic.  His friend Balthazar had once said ruefully, "I thought I was living my own life but all the time it was really living me without any extraneous aid.  It had taken half a century for me to realise this!  What a blow to my self-esteem!

    The Avignon Quintet 972 

Stalag 17  

Any memories of when we staged "Stalag 17" at LaSalle?  I do vaguely recall being onstage in it, we all wore our khakis, I may have had one line.  

How innocent we were of what it was all about!!!

""The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The première took place in an unheated space in Barrack 27. A fellow-inmate drew up a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: 'Stalag VIIIA 49 geprüft [approved].' Sitting in the front row—and shivering along with the prisoners—were the German officers of the camp." -- Alex Ross, The New Yorker "

This piece showed up in a notice about a  concert coming up here in Abq in a week,

performing Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time."   And a personal tag: one day in Madrid years ago I walked past a notice saying a concert was happening that very day of a work by Messiaen with the symphony.  I had the afternoon free so bought a ticket and went in.  Afterwards everyone hung around because it turned out Messiaen was there and they all wanted to shake his hand.  I got in line and shook his hand too.  He must have been in his late 70s or 80s.  Had I even ever heard of him?  Not sure about that.  The music was astonishing.  There was a second performance the next afternoon so I bought a ticket and went again the next day.  Did we all shake Messiaen's hand once again?  Not sure about that but it may have happened.  

—-

Sat Feb 24  

Dear Bob, 

If you can retreat from winter by fleeing to New Mexico, I have engineered February in Nairobi. My excuse is two ‘important’ meetings at either end of the month and the need to hire a new Africa program manager. It has been a very welcome change of pace (though next week will be full on)! 

As I sit on the veranda of my lodge, I have continued my re-reading obsession (my astrologer friend would attribute this to my Saturn return). Presently I am in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. You never step into the same book twice - and so it is compelling to see both what is remembered (and what not) and how it resonates now. 

How is the Lawrence Durrell fest going? I had eyed the Alexandra Quartet to bring with me but skipped it on this occasion, though I am fully expecting it to join the rereading queue! Have you read the poetry? He is very good. Of all his works that I have read, it is those I remain faithful to. 

Spent the day with a friend and ex-Oxfam colleague who has retired here. She has built a beautiful house - everything redeemed from elsewhere and upcycled and overflowing with wonderful examples of Kenyan art. She also makes a formidable Long Island Ice Tea! 

Love, Nicholas   

Dear Nicholas

From the sound of your voice I thought you were some place high in elevation and sure enough Nairobi is at 5889 feet.

So on the globe we are both now at 5-6000 feet.  We have not yet driven up to Santa Fe which is at a clear 7000.  I love

the high desert air and dryness.  

I'm glad you're having this nice trip to Nairobi.  How soon are you relocating to UK?  I got the impression it would happen

this year?  But is it 3-5 years away.  Am very curious to see where you will end up.  And whether this will be a stopover before

the real retirement nest on the west coast of Scotland further down the road.  

We are having a fine quiet time so far.  Virginia has us ship out all the photos and paintings from Plymouth so we unpack those

and play house at deciding where to put them.  We will no longer short-term rent the house so it is starting to feel much more like

ours for real as we place our things all around.  We see our four friends once a week on Sunday mornings when we all go to

the "church of beethoven" as it was called when it started years ago.  Now it is called Chatter.  Meets in a sort of club warehouse venue, about 80-100 people, mostly our age group(s).  Chamber players of varying instruments and programs.  Today was very 

avante music, all brass horns and one baritone.  Always ten minutes of a poet reading and two minutes of silence. 75 mins in total.  

I have read some of Durrell's poems and just ordered a copy of the collected to have here since the other copy is back east.  I am

about two hundred pages from completing the Avignon Quintet.  Durrell would have made an excellent guest speaker at a Temenos

conference.  Late Durrell and the poet.  I am still enjoying him greatly.  

I do want to suggest that you read the Avignon quintet first.  You read the Alexandria years ago and you have some slight memory

of how stunning that work is.  Avignon is different in so many ways and the work of the older writer who now has nothing to lose

and can explore his strange collection of obsessions and curiosities as he wishes.  Alexandria is the work of the young writer 

coming into the peak of his powers and is brilliant in all those ways.  Avignon explores and meditates more serenely and darkly.  

Some of the war hovers over it for a while.  I won't give more away except to say that Durrell critiques and weaves all the themes

of the times, Freud, Jung, the Cathars, the Templars, the gnostics, the psychoanalysts.  I've been surprised that he explores

a character who is autistic.  I think I first heard of autism in Hyde Park when I became aware of the foundation there run by

Bruno Bettleheim.  Anyway, I will see how he ends the quintet, finished it seems shortly before he died.  As I mentioned I've been

purposely holding off reading much biography.  It will be good to read all of the poetry next before turning to the delightful, lesser

travel books which it seems he wrote to keep funds trickling in.  

We will both turn 80 in late spring.  There is a number for you.  It has a weight and power over one's imagination unlike any of the

previous ones.  We both saw our doctor last week.  All is basically well.  We have one friend back east who will be 89.  Your mother

is in her early 90s now I believe.  What to say?  Each day is most wonderful and on we go.  One of my colleagues has had a 

terminal cancer diagnosis for four years now.  He's only 70, a medicine has been holding the cancer at bay for longer than anyone

has expected.  He just sent me the last chapter of his memoir, a life in twenty chapters.  He already published a small book about the shock of getting the diagnosis.  He's now fly fishing in Arkansas for a few weeks.  

The museum here has a great exhibit of arts of the natives of northwestern Canada, beautiful bird masks, turtle and whale motifs.  Temperatures are starting to level into the 70s.  Always the brilliant skies and sunlight.  Almost always.  Bit overcast at the moment.

Kenya must be quite beautiful.  Where to after that?  

Love, Bob

Feb 26

Dear Bob, 

The return to the UK is planned for the summer. Initially landing relatively close to my mother while the Scottish hunt is on! I sincerely wish I could retire now - but not quite there yet! 

I have ordered the Avignon Quintet - and look forward to reading it. I will report back! 

Next stop is taking my mother to the sea in April! 

Love and best wishes, Nicholas 

Dear Bob, 

A slim Durrell book I remember with affection was: A Smile in the Mind’s Eye when the Taoist philosopher and tai chi practitioner, Jolan Chang comes to stay and they discuss Chang’s book The Tao of Love and Sex. It is funny, touching and, at times, profound. 

Best wishes, Nicholas 

Dear Nicholas

Yes, you had mentioned that book a while back and I read it.  Valuable key to how these themes thread through

the large works.  

B

——-

“how was it before we emerged, I often wonder? Perhaps trees were the original people, anterior to humankind. Man sprang from the humus when it was mixed with water. Thus the mystics desire to regress into the unassailability of plant life–the insouciant lotus–in order to recapture the down-drive into dissolution, echoing the force we call gravity upon body and mind.”

— The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx by Lawrence Durrell

"No escape from the dozing notebook of the brain."  94 Quinx 

"all the gibberings of Paracelsus are coming back to us under a Tibetan imprimatur!"  page 1261

"I am suddenly reminded of a curious fact about myself, that when I like a writer profoundly I can read anything he writes and enjoy it—and I mean literally "anything".  In a recent work Cendrars writes that he is the sort of reader who when he takes to an author not only reads him all the way through — and in the original language — but reads everything that was ever written about him.  That I can't do.  But again, what I am trying to say is — and this is undoubtedly my conscious "plaidoirie" —- what one looks for is the man, and the man is always there if you will examine the fibre of his creation."  235-236  Henry Miller to Durrell in the Durrell-Miller Letters

11 March 

Yes, that would be it! I was described recently as a widely read person and thought that was not quite right. I mean I have an outline of nineteenth-century English literature in my head yet have read very little in breadth but at a point in time I consumed George Eliot (except the poetry - not even my admiration could stretch to that)! So Miller's quote here is very apposite -I have a biographical attitude to reading - I want to see the person as whole as possible and through them, and their ideas, see the world. It works in religion/spirituality too - the world through the eyes of specific saints!

3-4 hours I expect if you factor in weekends/holidays and have always been a quick reader. Looking forward to retirement:-)

Love and best wishes, Nicholas

——

Henry Miller to Durrell June 5, 1953   "Spain is a remarkable country.  I don't think I'd want to live here, but it is certainly worth knowing.  The landscape (always wonderful) often reminded me of Greece.  But in no country have I ever been stared at so much!  They have the curiosity of primitives.  Andalusia is all it's reputed to be.  The impress of the Moors is tremendous — and always good.  Seeing the Alhambra, the Alcazar, the Mezquita (Mosque), I feel I have seen three of the seven wonders of the world.  Catholic Spain is dark, morose, sinister, brutal. [. . .]   270-271

Bob,

  Good question. It took a long time before I really began to understand and appreciate Berry. I started out, as a high school student, reading Thoreau. He really spoke to me. Which is dangerous for an 18 year old. But Berry, I eventually came to see, shared my values and, more importantly, my allegiances. And he could express them in a way I never could, even to myself. More and more I'm seeing the same thing in Aldo Leopold, the conservationist who taught in Madison but also had a small derelict farm near Baraboo. In any case, I suppose it could have been someone else other than Berry. But who?

  Just finished a long conversation with my cousin Joe about alfalfa.

 Dick

——

"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made.  A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.  They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures—and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well.  Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection . . ."  1  Bitter Lemons of Cyprus  Today is 18 March 2024

DurrellSociety (@Durrell Society) posted: 

Who among us, looking back down the path of no return, can say they followed it in the right way?

— Fernando Pessoa

"May I venture an explanation:  writing is the ultimate recourse for those who have betrayed."  Jean Genet