Year Forward 2020

 2020 Year forward

Jan 1 

Our Parisians go back home tomorrow.  Now they have gone to Lyme to visit Erin and Pete and baby.  Last night’s party at Jessica and Shaws they said was a huge success.  All the kids and all the pods in the zone.  

Managed to walk up and down Rogers Street about 2pm.  Full of butter and heavy food for the past two weeks.  Sunny and breezy, dramatic in some ways, the light.  Not warm, not cold, winter with fresh, wet icy snow a day or so old.  

Smug-o-nauts who’ve voyaged halfway around the world for charity. Oh the places they’ve seen!  Oh the things they’ve seen.”   Iyer 147. Don’t dare tweet this for fear of hurting Nicholas’s feelings.  Could be a text for the annual VV newsletter too.  Just arrived in today’s inbox.  Gorgeous photos of wildife and wild places.  

Iyer allows the phrase “suburban mystic”  “After a while, I saw that there is something about the suburbs that no one sees . . . something only a suburban mystic could describe.” 152

Crew packing and now watching the remainder of Nutcracker.  Music hard to resist.  

Call from Jim around 2.  Anne is going to Sanibel for two weeks, doctors orders it seems.  Her cancer fight not going so well.  Told Jim I would call him often.  He seemed pleased at that.  Wants me to post a review of Jesus’s Dog.  Said there is a wonderful Quaker chapel on Canyon Road in Santa Fe.  Will look up Hollendorfer’s sculpture gallery if I can.  

Nice note from a student in today’s mail.  Also news of Dick Fralick’s death at 82 on Dec 20 in California with his family.  

———-

Hi Bob,

I often think of your teachings and am most grateful for them.

Ethos, Logos, Pathos lessons you helped me understand in Rhetoric class played a significant role in my career as a sales person, and in life. Wayne C. Booth, The Dogma of Assent was the text as I recall (I unfortunately don't have that book anymore).

I hope this note finds you well and I'd love to meet up for coffee or lunch as I'm up that way regularly, my treat (reside in Bedford NH and my folks and 2 brothers are in Meredith).

Thank You Bob,

Jerry Bourgeois, 81-86

———————

Nice surprise.  Off to the nail salon with Dave and crew.  Then they get the shuttle to Logan.  

5pm catching up on world news BBC.  Kids should be at Logan by now.  Nails done, lunch at Uno’s, smooth shuttle pick-up.  

5 January    Eve of Three Kings

Photo today from Cécile of Emma holding the Eiffel tower in her fingertips.  Using distance and perspective to do the touristy trick.

I called Donald and he gave us overviews of his trip to Rome, Paris, Prague and London.  He was among the 100,000 in St Peter’s square for the canonization of John Henry Newman.  Before that he had a ring-side seat for the elevation of Czerny to the cardinalate.  

 All decorations packed away.  Earliest in years.  Getting the tree down and out to the dump yesterday in the rain was as easy as pie.  Today we have been sleepy and dozy all day.  Let-down after the wonderful holidays and visit.  

Need to post a comment on Jim’s Jesus’ Dog.  I like the comment on the back by Susan Melchior so much and that keeps me from thinking of anything.  

Jesus and the mangy dog share laughs and healing.  The soft voice and gentle touch of Jim Atwell’s imaginative add-ons to the gospels take us anew into the silence and wonder of infinite love.    take us anew into silence and wonder.  

How is that?  Sleep on it.  Deeper into the last third of White’s novel and reading it as closely as possible because it has come back to wild life again.  Such strange sentences and turns of phrase every so often.  On fire with ecstasy, perhaps, and/or with the desire to embrace its possibilities.  Normie dresses as a primordial pink bird and does a dance at the quean’s bar.  Hannah lets herself be drawn into the mystical core of his act.  464. 

Monday  Jan 6

Va walked by herself without a cane twice around Melinda’s stairwell this morning!!  M and I held loosely onto the belt around her waist but neither of us did anything to help Va do the walking.   Gift of the Three Kings!!!  M gave us tips on exercises to strengthen the two muscles that will keep her left foot straighter or turned outward more.  What we already do but more reps and more variations.  

Busy day straightening the house, taking all laundry to the massive stupa in the basement.  Post office, UPS store, cafe, printing pick-up, calling mid-state.  Now to fast the rest of the evening.  Even watched GH full on with ads.  Feel kind of zonked right now.  Now Va has us watching flash mobs on YouTube.

Eloy called.  I got the zip code wrong—-good thing I sent him photo of the mail I sent today.  Have to change the form at the post office tomorrow.  

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow—-where should I go, what should I do???  Dump, post office and then . . . . ????

7 January 

Va had a good swim and walk and Elizabeth left us with a soup and biscuits for dinner.  I wandered Bedford and Whole Foods.  Nothing too exciting.  Book group tonight for Va.  

I am looking forward to Abq.  This will be our longest stay in a place since the rental in Javea, which I think was two months.  And this might be the very first time the initiative and choice of location from the outset has been mine.  My new claim to fame?  

8 Jan. Weds.  

PEO moved to noon to let the snow squalls settle.  Sunnier now, 10:48.  

Passage from Liaisons Dangereuse Retweeted by Lars Iyer 

  “That absolute self-abandon, that ecstasy of the senses, when pleasure is purified in its own excess, all that is best in love is quite unknown to them.”

Chica Marx tweeted it saying “So much of Bataille might be said to begin exactly here.”   Good line.  Now following Chica, a Trans: she/her, prof of media and culture at “Hudson University.”  What is that??  Have to ask her “hey, whatever happened to Cultural Studies??    A fictional university from DC comics!! and Law and Order the tv show.  Real name McKenzie Wark, new book from Verso on Capital is dead.  She could be a character in Iyer’s book I guess.  Maybe is.  

9 January. 

Super bright and much colder last night and today.  Piano at 1:30 and 6Burner big dinner tonight.  Packing starts this very second!  We got through the first episode of Dracula and by the end were scoffing and laughing.  Oh well.  Still want to finish the art movie the actor made—-The Square.  More interesting and haven’t seen a good artsy type movie for a while.  Reminds me of my visit to Copenhagen because there in the Charlotte something museum is where one installation featured a naked man embedded in a big pile of leaves in a cage.  He looked like he had been there for days, weeks.  

Need to post review for Jim’s dog before I forget.  

Jesus and the mangy dog share laughs and healing.  The soft voice and gentle touch of Jim Atwell’s imaginative add-ons to the gospels take us anew into the silence and wonder of infinite love.    take us anew into silence and wonder.  take us anew into wonder and silence.   I like that ending best.  

Gave it this title—-And, Yes, the cover portrait of the dog is Perfect! 

see if anyone likes it or not.  

10 January

Bistro fling last night a success even though John stayed away.  Natalie and Martha added their zing.  Mourned Dick Fralick.  Tom works in skiing at Tahoe.  Lunch today with Greg and Gerri and then serious packing continues.  

Imagining Albuquerque during the night melded with memories and imaginations of La Paz.  Altitude and mountains.  

Jim called while we walked in Wallys.  He was cooking a beer-butt chicken in the oven.  Jesu vive dans nos coeur—-Jesus lives in our hearts forever—is the code to use with Marty Hollendorfer if I find him in Santa Fe.

Lunch with Gerri and Greg was great fun.  Book talk finally got rolling.  Thanks to young Liam, Gerri’s ? nephew? she’s reading Murakami’s latest and liking it.  Greg started into George Eliot just again.  Suggested I start with one of the smaller novels, Silas Mariner.  Middlemarch penguin just arrived in the mail.  A tome indeed.   Will try it, maybe one sentence a day instead of one page a day!!!

Gerri also like British style police novels.  One author, Todd, last name, is a mother and son collaboration!  

One suitcase looks almost full and it feels like we’ve barely begun!!  Guess it always feels that way.  

Saturday. 11 January

Watched the two popes last night.  Va fell asleep midway.  Entertainment spirituality from the same writer who did Bohemian Rhapsody!!  

One box shipped!  29 lbs. $83.00. Heavy to carry so am shifting to the smaller cubes, 14x14.  

Grateful for short nap after last of the choc chip cookies.  Va found a Spanish series on Netflix.  I found the Middlemarch hardbound with slightly larger type than the penguin which arrived yesterday of course.  I will read M all year to keep from watching the election stuff.  

In between:  few minutes ago back and forth texting with Anne and Sarah.  About 5:30.  Now 6.  Anne and Basile in Stowe since Thursday for her 70th, going home tomorrow.  Secret escape.   Sarah and Don with news of Dennis, his phone, S’s sciatica and Joe’s cracked ribs from a fall.  

Miraculously, second smaller box almost filled, it now feels like we are close to being packed !!!!  Have to decide about my shoes.  Thises and thats and surprise thing we’ve forgotten, overlooked?  Thought it was Sunday all day until after my nap so it is nice to feel there is a whole extra day.  Spanish movie about alzheimers and glad I’m not into it.  Suspicious that the theme gives scriptwriters too much leeway.  

Failure of craft.  Love that closing line from the Guardian review of this book.  Some readers will feel this, others may dismiss the book for other reasons.  Iyer, artful dodger, inspired shell gamer, disguises his latest philosophical enterprise behind a young adult faux novel.  

Sunday. 12 January 

Sunny, windy.  All packed.  Pretty much.  Which shoes to take?  what last-minute things?  Trying the Oboz now and skeptical.  Might go Seavees all the way.  Flat sneaker sole or heeled-arch sole under the orthot?  

answer on runnersworld today:  

“Jay Dicharry, author of “Anatomy for Runners” and director of the REP Lab in Bend, Oregon, agrees arch support can be detrimental because the arch is by nature dynamic, and having extra structure there can stop your foot from moving. Dicharry says flat-footed runners should put more focus on seeking out a shoe with a straight “last,” which is the mold that dictates the shape of the shoe. A straight-lasted shoe has a wider midfoot base and less of a cut-in, a profile that has fallen by the wayside in favor of hourglass-shaped shoes. Most current shoes don’t provide much of a solid support surface for flat-footed runners, he says. “The problem is all these hourglass shoe shapes look nice on the wall, but when someone with a flat foot puts weight on one, part of their foot is bearing weight on the fabric upper,” he says. “The upper doesn’t work as a midsole for foot support. Feet do well when they’re on an even surface.”      Dr. Davis says people with flat feet often have really flexible feet that never get rigid for the push-off. “The footwear industry tries to solve that by putting an arch support in there to give them an arch or create suppination in the foot,” she says. “But that foot is structurally built that way, it’s not something you can solve with a shoe.”    

what about orthotics??  one reader says he’s been happy with them for years.  

2:45 pm today. out with orthotics!!  four months?  did all of this a while back, 2007, according to doctor’s records.  Found the article today and found also this nyt piece from 2011——Dr. Nigg’s overall conclusion: Shoe inserts or orthotics may be helpful as a short-term solution, preventing injuries in some athletes. But it is not clear how to make inserts that work. The idea that they are supposed to correct mechanical-alignment problems does not hold up.”   

“We have found many of the same results,” said Dr. Hamill, professor of kinesiology and the director of the university’s biomechanics laboratory. “I guess the main thing to note is that, as biomechanists, we really do not know how orthotics work.”

The key measure of success, said Jeffrey P. Wensman, director of clinical and technical services at the Orthotics and Prosthetics Center at the University of Michigan, is that patients feel better.

“The vast majority of our patients are happier having them than not,” he said about orthotics that are inserted in shoes.

Yet Scott D. Cummings, president of the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists, says the trade is only now moving toward becoming a science. So far, most of the focus in that direction has been on rigorously assessing orthotics and prosthetics for other conditions, like scoliosis, with less work on shoe orthotics for otherwise healthy athletes.

“Anecdotally, we know what designs work and what designs don’t work” for foot orthotics, said Mr. Cummings, who is an orthotist and prosthetist at Next Step in Manchester, N.H. But when it comes to science and rigorous studies, he added, “comparatively, there isn’t a whole lot of evidence out there.”

Dr. Nigg would agree.

In his studies, he found there was no way to predict the effect of a given orthotic. Consider, for example, an insert that pushes the foot away from a pronated position, or rotated excessively outward. You might think it would have the same effect on everyone who pronates, but it does not.

One person might respond by increasing the stress on the outside of the foot, another on the inside. Another might not respond at all, unconsciously correcting the orthotic’s correction.

“That’s the first problem we have,” Dr. Nigg said. “If you do something to a shoe, different people will react differently.”

In one study discussed in his new book, “Biomechanics of Sport Shoes,” Dr. Nigg sent a talented distance runner to five certified orthotics makers. Each made a different type of insert to “correct” his pronation.

The athlete wore each set of orthotics for three days and then ran 10 kilometers, about 6 miles. He liked two of the orthotics and ran faster with them than with the other three. But the construction of the two he liked was completely different.

actually do?

They turn out to have little effect on kinematics — the actual movement of the skeleton during a run. But they can have large effects on muscles and joints, often making muscles work as much as 50 percent harder for the same movement and increasing stress on joints by a similar amount.

LEAD TO A REDUCTION IN MUSCLE STRENGTH — SEE BELOW

As for “corrective” orthotics, he says, they do not correct so much as lead to a reduction in muscle strength.

In one recent review of published papers, Dr. Nigg and his colleagues analyzed studies on orthotics and injury prevention. Nearly all published studies, they report, lacked scientific rigor. For example, they did not include groups that, for comparison, did not receive orthotics. Or they discounted people who dropped out of the study, even though dropouts are often those who are not benefiting from a treatment.

FOUR MONTHS !   comme moi—-early October Nov, Dec mid January

Every new podiatrist or orthopedist, he told me, would invariably look at his orthotics and say: “Oh, these aren’t any good. The lab I use makes much better ones. Your injury is probably linked to these poor-fitting orthotics.”

So he tried different orthotic styles, different materials, different orthotics labs with every new doctor.

That is a typical story, Dr. Nigg says. In fact, he adds, there is no need to “correct” a flat foot. All Jason needs to do is strengthen his foot and ankle muscles and then try running without orthotics.

“That is a typical story, Dr. Nigg says. In fact, he adds, there is no need to “correct” a flat foot. All Jason needs to do is strengthen his foot and ankle muscles and then try running without orthotics.

Dr. Nigg says he always wondered what was wrong with having flat feet. Arches, he explains, are an evolutionary remnant, needed by primates that gripped trees with their feet.

“Since we don’t do that anymore, we don’t really need an arch,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Why would we? For landing — no need. For the stance phase — no need. For the takeoff phase — no need. Thus a flat foot is not something that is bad per se.”

So why shouldn’t Jason — or anyone, for that matter — just go to a store and buy whatever shoe feels good, without worrying about “correcting” a perceived biomechanical defect?

“That is exactly what you should do,” Dr. Nigg replied.

————       wow. if Only I had researched this piece instead of going back for custom orthotics.  Oh well, found it today.  

Benno M. Nigg       Univ of Calgary in Alberta 

from 2011 article in Runners World 

Like others, Nigg has noted that running injuries have not changed over the years despite the massive development of the running-shoe industry. Unlike others, he hasn't jumped to the conclusion that shoes are bad, or that barefoot or minimalist-running or forefoot-striking is the answer.

Instead, looking at the same data, Nigg concludes: Okay, apparently shoes aren't a big part of the equation. So get over it.”

“On overpronation: There is no evidence that overpronation causes injuries.

On orthotics: There is "weak evidence" that orthotics can reduce running injuries..

On comfort and running shoes: Comfort is not easy to define, but it's "probably the most important variable" for sport-shoe selection.”

“According to your "new paradigm," running surfaces, shoe midsoles and perhaps even footstrike don't seem to have much effect on how the body actually experiences the forces generated by running. Is that right? What's your shortest, clearest explanation for the "new paradigm" and how it affects runners?

BN: I have proposed two new paradigms. The first is the “muscle tuning” paradigm relating to impact forces. The second one is the “preferred movement path” paradigm.

The first paradigm claims that the internal impact forces are relatively small compared to the internal active forces and – from a loading point of view – we should not be too much concerned about impact forces. There is no study that documents that impact forces are the reason for short and/or long term injuries/problems.

The second paradigm is more complex and addresses the fact that we see so little changes in the kinematics [body joint movements] when using shoe/orthotic interventions. Just remember, the running injury frequency seems not to have changed in the last 30 years (except a few minor shifts). This may be because the shoes did not improve (really?) or because the shoes are not that important for the injury development. We know that the running program and the time for recovery are much more important.”  “Through their own research at the German Sports University in Cologne, Brooks Running has developed a similar concept that is informing their shoe design and marketing. Brooks wants to build shoes that allow each runner to follow their own “stride signature.” That's not the same, however, as saying all shoes should be similar to going barefoot.”  “But assessing this requires a lot of self knowledge and often doesn’t become clear until you’re in the middle of a long run at the end of a long week. Or it can change day to day depending on your speed, your fatigue, the time of day, or even your biorhythmic cycles.

Even the Niggs admit to difficulties in our ability to accurately assess comfort. Sandro points to a 2002 study conducted by their group that showed that two-thirds of the subjects struggled to provide a consistent assessment of the comfort of shoe inserts on a sliding scale from day to day. They were more consistent with a simple “Yes/No” response to “is this insert comfortable” but still had less than 50 percent consistency.”

Time also affects your comfort assessment, Nigg points out. “You might buy a shoe and it feels good for the first or second run, but a week later you know that something isn’t right.” Pay attention to that feeling; it probably means the shoe is interfering with your stride. “It’s okay to make a mistake,” Nigg says. “Sometimes you may need to do something twice.” “In the end, what Nigg’s hypothesis suggests is that shoes that work for you are the right shoes for you regardless of any expert advice on what shoe category you “should” be in. Many experienced runners would agree that they know best what they need, which is one reason why our redesigned shoe guide in the September issue of Runner’s World starts with the question “Do you know the type of shoe that works well for your size, stride and preferred ride?”

If you don’t, we can help you narrow your choices. (You can’t, after all, put 100 test miles on every model made.) We do this by directing you to products that we expect to work for runners with your body type and running habits. In the end, your task as a runner is to find what works, what is most comfortable on the run, for the unique individual you are.”

————

wow. over reaction but says something about my urge to dump the orthotics.  Do I have a comfortable pair of shoes???  The Seavees will have to do for a while.  Will I go back to Vivo?  well, they could have thicker soles,  I was already looking for that.  

passage that tipped the whole thing:  “But with an anatomically flat foot, arch support just sends stress up into the knee where it can lead to knee problems. That’s why it’s important to know what type of flat foot you have before you settle on a shoe—and take into account not just your foot but your entire body, including knees, hips, and range of motion.”  YES 

13 Jan Monday

Concord.  No one at Target.  Shoes sans orthotics heaven.  Lunch at Bgood.  Snow showers, dark silver gray day.  

14 Jan Tues

Boxes shipped.  Dump.  David Haight goes to his family home in Flathead Lake, Montana every summer.  Marjorie is from Altoona.  Petie and Ray coming, sent them the visitors calendar!  

Echogram done.  Va fell in Wally’s earlier today after the swim.  Now I’m targeting dehydration.  Sarah called for farewell chat.  Goody-byes to Elizabeth, will she visit?  Handing this computer over to the packing genie.  Rendevous at Fosters in an hour.  

17 Jan Friday

Regular routines getting into place.  Even snowy landscape out the window.  Snow squalls all day yesterday.  Light and gentle.  Made driving around in them even more dreamlike.  Can feel the altitude adjustments in my body.  My sinus infection gone.  Took my first shower this morning.  Bought the shower chair for Va yesterday.  Worker due this morning to put on a handheld shower.  Eloy stopped in to meet us around 3.  Really nice.  From Texas, been here about ten or so years.  Owns five rental properties.  Denise his wife works at the base.  Surprise ping with photo from Feeny:  book about sacred psychedelics, says Calvin and Kant have taken him about as far as they can.  Good sign I told him.  Part of his adjustment to his loss of wife and partner and helper and life, with Sarah.  Am sure he is hiding how terrible he feels, is taking it all, in spite of all of their facebook assurances of ove and friendship.  

So here we are in Albuquerque!!  First time we’ve been here in 50 years without an event or crisis guiding us.  Well, that’s not quite.  We had a stretch at B’s townhouse after we sat the Kiger’s house.  Still, it feels different.  Is it our choice?  What we want?  Time will tell, unless money speaks.  Our boy coined that!  Maybe, a google search. 

Called Anne just before we went into Sweet Tomatoes for dinner.  Basile suggested we get the Amazon fire stick to plug into our tv here so we can get the streaming we’re so used to.  

Dinner with Barb and Ed.  They’ve decided to move here full time in the next year or so, from this year on.  How and when to sell the house in Portland the issue.  Barb a bit more reluctant than Ed.  Ed worried anew about what might happen if anything happened to him.  I have the same worries and wonder what we should do.  Half hoping their example might motivate us to move toward decisions.  But then when have I ever done well with decisions?  Why worry?  

Text note from Ken.  They are settled into their new condo, temps in the 80s.  Carole has walked on the beach, Ken got the car washed.  

We took our second nap of the day this afternoon and it felt so good.  Definitely adjustments to altitude.  Va said she is always jealous of B’s friend, Janet, who has been closer to B.  B is not a warm person.  I asked about Jim’s book on the dog and she said yes she had read it.  No enthusiasm for it and no questions about him.   Ed told us two Jewish jokes, convinced that you had to be Jewish to really get them and really laugh, but we both laughed right off and so ruined his theory.  we are amazed that he should have thought Jewishness was still so insulated.  But maybe that is part of Jewishness never to be given up.  Second joke was about the couple who had converted and gone mainstream to get into the country club membership.  final question was What religion are you? the wife says, why goy of course.  

My monkey-see, monkey-do syndrome in gear.  What if Willow would rather move to irving tx???  

Got the Amazon fire stick to work.  Va coming down with the cold, sleeping now early, walked over 3k at Target and around the parking lot for lunch at Lime a nice Vietnamese place next to two hardcore drinking bars, same plaza as the medical pot distribution center.  Tough little plaza just up Montgomery from Target.  

Seeing B&E last night gave me an anxiety-panic attack mild sort, plus we ate badly at that salad and soup place.  Va slept badly on a half-empty stomach and was cold.  Sure sign she was getting the cold.  Now how to keep from passing it back and forth.  Check the UPS tracking and boxes

due to arrive Monday and Tuesday.  We did give Va a shower sitting half out of the bath tub.  That could work but I’m asking Eloy if they could take the glass doors off the stall.  See how he responds to that.  Ray might know just how to do it.  They will get here in a few days from Anaheim.  Patsy D called earlier this evening.  

My short spells of tiredness and breathlessness still feel like altitude adjustment.  Should start some more walking.  No pencil or pen to write with!  no good light for reading a book!  Sunshine and warmth all day wonderful.  Seeing the mountain many times also wonderful.  WaPo quiz says I should vote for Buttigieg and Yang.

Monday  MLK day  20 Jan. 

Barb and Ed coming up for lunch later on.  Eloy here removing the shower glass doors.  Va coming down off her cold, extremely good night sleep, but that coffee at Flying Star was too much for me, awake a lot during the night.  

Va said yesterday or day before that she now thinks that coming here was a good idea.  Saw her email to Lou in which she actually said we’re thinking of moving here too.  Are we?  Have to be careful not to take on other people’s scenarios, B&E spooked me the other day.  No, I spooked myself.  Feel calmer now.  Yesterday was fine.  A little shopping at Smiths.  After high tea at Star we drove around the area, one development with views both east (mountains) and west (mesa), big pricey houses, lots of awful taste and design.  

untweeted tweet for today:  want to live on the edge? try older aging each day 

Sunshine each day wonderful, no doubt about it.  Text from Davey overnight.  Emma getting prepped to perform Imagine at the EK concert in two weeks.  

Maxine called to decline our offer, gave us the name of a woman near here named Clara.  Phone number is area 202 which is Washington DC!  we’ll see.  May have to go without a “day off” for six months.  Could probably survive.  After all we don’t have stairs to climb, so there is that health bonus or set-back, or both.  

Great lunch with B&E at The Range.  Met Alice next door, their car arrived on a truck just now from Cleveland.  Their second winter.  Petie called, they arrive this evening around 7.  Roy may visit tomorrow!  

Tuesday 21  Second turn on Sanditon so Petie can see the whole show.  Lunch again at the Range.  Too much food.  Petie is doing noom.  We have an appointment with a Lovelace NP in about a month.  Otherwise may go to Next Care if Va’s cough worsens.  My sinus keeps bugging me.   My stomach felt terrible after the big lunch of pancakes—yikes and bacon.  

Ken and I just had a long text chat about the bad art in our rentals . . . and how bored we are.  

22 Jan Weds. 

Ray and P off to the Ford dealership.  Willow slept well last night, sleeping in now past 11.  Sun now back.  Note to Kirsten

We are enjoying our little rental place very much so far.  On the far north eastern edge of town, an area newish and unfamiliar, foothills of the mountains.  Va's sister and husband are here now from Texas, stay a few more days.  They drive all over all the time almost in their RV.  Ray an important elder in their church, son of an itinerant bible thumper preacher in western Virginia!!   Their church by the way, Living Stream Ministries, now owns/leases all the former properties of the Episcopal diocese in Cambridge, MA!  and buying up chunks of Quincy.  

Reading:  I'm slowly finishing Riders in the Chariot by nobelish, Aussie, Patrick White.  Wonderful and very strange.  Somewhat mystical (Ezikiel's chariot) and poetic.  Every so often there is a sentence or passage that is so strange you say, can that be considered English?  And I don't know if it is him or Aussieness or both.  

Also loving Lars Iyer's newest, Nietzsche in the Burbs.  Jim could use all of Iyer's books in his courses to great effect and pleasure.  His blog gives a taste.  Spurious.  I think.  No, I no longer do a blog.  

Our niece and family having us to dinner this weekend, and a few of Va's girlhood friends having a potluck as well, so our social calendar is hopping.  We're slowly making a list of excursions around town and near.  Cousin and friends in Santa Fe too as soon as the weather hovers at 50.  It's been low to mid-40s and the sun and skies brilliant and magnificent.  

We have a roster of visitors lined up but still many openings, so hop on a plane and come for a visit to high desert.  Be a great preparation for some of the landscape of Spain, esp Madrid.  Will you be there before, during or after Easter?  Big events there.  

——————-

Walked five blocks down and back, 10, on Spain.  44 but wind takes it down to 36.  GOT MAIL ! the $7 empty priority envelope I posted yesterday at Eubank and the carrier took the messages about our Presence.  Only 1126 steps so far but shows how few I’ve been doing of late.  Huge breakfast of the leftover wagontrain from blue cows yesterday.  

23 Jan Thursday

Lunch at Sweet Tomatoes.  Big salads, sweet potato, brownie.   Just went to Lowe’s to buy a foot stool for me to use with the new toilet seat.  5 inch rise my feet now dangle! and the ring cuts into my thighs!  It saves my back and knees though.

24 Friday 

Had a half-day “off” tx to Petie’s generosity.  Drove out Alameda to Coors.

Ate big Turkish lunch.  Montaño become Montgomery after the river.  Tea with Kimberly K at Flying Star.  She invited travelers’ tales, told about bad trips to Bali when in her twenties—-you ate sugar ants in everything and sweat poured down your whole body.  In Ireland someone stole her cell phone right out of her hand, flying by on his bike.  

White’s crucifixion and burial episode, with Rosetree and Dubo the main observers and empathetic participants, oh, and Miss Hare.  A daring and strange novel.  Not even sure to call it a novel, prose-poem pageant of some sort.  Prose poem in narrative guise.  Fascinating and moving.  I might never have quite gotten it had Nicholas’s long history of enthusiasm for it prepared me.  I like it fine, it is stunning in its way and very Australian for want of something else to place it with.  Do I want to read all of his work, much more of his work?  Is it all as mystical?  Nicholas seems to suggest it is not.  From having read the final work, Memoirs of Many, it seems maybe White has many phases, many personas.  Which is right up my alley too.  Or should be or I had thought it was.  

Kim does some small-part acting too.  Dramatic persona, realtor/actress.  

25 January  Saturday 

Quiet here after pizza delivered dinner.  Party at Barbara’s at noon.  Ed and I picked up our three boxes at Robert and Lisa’s.  Happy I could give them half of the quatre-leches cake from Star.  Good visit with Ed, both of us haunted by, formed by, our religious childhoods.   He’s worried about how Barbara is slowing down and the what-if if he has a catastrophe.  Similar boats.  Petie knitting.  We’ll finish the second treatment of Anne with an E.  

Proton email  rbgz9@proton.  Chariot9

will that be more successful than yahoo or outlook?  at this point, not a problem

we ate at Sweet Tomatoes again after walking at Target.  

26 Monday. 

Visited Presb Aqutics, got some numbers of people to check with.   Yesterday we walked at Target and bought a frother.  Lunched at tomatoes.

More Greenegables in the evening.  I’m ready to have the visitors head on down the trail.  Can’t hear myself think as Marilla says in AnnE at one point.  Becky coming to see if she wants to take a day with Willow.  

William the Concretor is Jim’s punch line for his column this week.  Ouch, oy vey.  Cute puns and free association.  I loved the wandering path a wee bit more than the destination.   Lunch with the texas gang at Padilla’s.  Sublime local place from Daddy-Dee’s era.  At another table three scrawny old western types each with a skinny pony tail hold their saltnpepper strings together.  Willow keeps looking at houses in Javea.  I’ll start looking at sites here!  

Turns out Roy wants to visit Weds night on his way to the Galapagos.  On Saturday, the first day off, I’ll go out to see David Zaintz’s paintings, if that works out.  

Painting day!  Petie took us after lunch to Weems to see a landscape she liked.  As we drove into the lot, a ping from Ken about an exhibit they had just seen in Fla of works by Syd Solomon.  Abstract colors, vibrant, lifetime.

Then looking for Saturday event I found Zaintz’s paintings. Now I just finished reading in White about Dubbo’s last painting of The Deposition of the crucified body of Christ.  And then Dubbo’s death.  “Because he had grown physically incapable of hating, his capacity for wonder led him to embrace objects he had refused to contemplate until now.  So he would examine the face of Humphrey Mortimer, for instance with the same interest that he might have brought to bear on a flock of pastured maggots, or a block of virgin lard. Everything, finally, was a source of wonder, not to say love.”  596. 

Love that “block of virgin lard.”  We talked about lard earlier today over sopapillas, and Mimi’s use of leaf lard.  Paintings and lard and literary confirmations as well as email pings and website vibrations.  What a Monday, in spite of being gray overhead, even a few drops of rain.  

The main point of zing is the location of Zaintz’s studio—-Ouray and Coors, precisely where I drove to a few days ago on my half-day off.  Meant to happen, foreshadowed, fore-hunched, foretold, fore-hinted.  And then there is the Jewishness of things, from lunch with Ed and talking about Jewishness, to the wandering hero of White’s book.  And then the -tz spelling of our names, and the music background to Z’s practices.  

email to Dennis

Right.  we didn't last that long in that movie.  We've gotten over the colds and coughs we came with.  Va's sister and husband left today after a 9 or 10 day visit.  way too long for my taste.  Main thing about here is the sun every day all day.  Gray days once everyten days maybe.  A bit of rain, not much.  Temps in the mid-40s to low 50s.  Va had tea with a few old friends last week.  We found a lady who will take over one day a week to give me my day off.  Have booked a massage with a guy who also is a painter.   Trying to do a bit more walking.  Altitude adjustment was noticeable first few days.  Better now.  I like being up in the foothills of the big mountain, blocks north of Va's old house neighborhood.  Getting used to big city driving, luckily the streets are three lanes with clear left turn traffic lights.  Everyone speeds though.  Va's favorite cousin called today, going to the Galapagos for a month to celebrate his 70th birthday, see him when he gets back.  We ended up watching AnnE with an E with her sister and I was amazed that I liked it pretty much.  At least until mid-season 2.  

———-

we bought Va a new apple watch today.  Dropped the 738 phone line.  Ate another mid-eastern meal, Sahara.  Buying the watch involved a nice long chat with Sean the store agent.  Fascinating and bright guy, junior at UNM.  Mormon but stepped away from it when he was supposed to go on mission, doesn’t get along with his dad for that reason.  He went off to Dallas and made some money, now owns a house or two! wants to work as an accountant to fund he way through law school.  Majoring in business law, went to a private school here, something “classical” in its name.  Dad is a brain surgeon.  Mother and sister are ill.  Reads, loves Bach, plays the piano.  Didn’t know LDS required kids to do four years of seminary classes before doing the mission.  Up at 4 to do that before regular school.  Sounds

like a commuter juniorate.  As bad as being raised Catholic.  Maybe worse?  

———

passage from a piece on Zaintz in a magazine about Aids. “ As time went on, I became something of a loner and eventually decided I could be happy with just some good porn and a dog for company. Then six years ago I met a wonderful, sweet guy and amazing photographer, named Max Woltman. We’ve been sharing out lives together since that time.”  Born in ’63 so I guess he is 57, close to Michael’s age.  

30  Jan. Thursday

Lunch with Patsy D.  visit to West Mesa pool.  Nap now.   yesterday wasted going back to the Mac store.  sales guys couldn’t get Minnie speaking, let alone in French.  Studied them as a tribe without realizing it.  Sean who we bonded day before was friendly but didn’t offer much help either.  Blonde woman who has been there eight years finally sort of leveled with me.  Sales is sales, as I well knew.   Lunch at California Pizza.  Take home bonus for $5 more, heating that this evening.   Watched a youtube on Galapagos to be with Roy in spirit.  Confirms my hunch that I am not a naturalist, no interest in being such or traveling to such places to see flora and fauna.  He is looking for Melville and Darwin.  See if he finds what he wants.  Somehow.  

Va still transfixed by AnnE.  Solved the source of her pulled neck muscle too.  When I got up from typing a few hours ago, my neck hurt in the same place.  Table is too high.  Now putting the laptops on the tv tables found in the closet, lower than the table.  Seems to work.  The Aqua center felt huge and the prospects disappointing.  

Saturday February 1

Becky took over with Va for the day.  Eloy and yard workers bright and early too.  My day off splendid.  Even with noisy lunch at The Grove.  Avoid in future.  David Z was marvelous.  That Starbucks seemed familiar and when I checked the map, sure enough it is near B&E’s place.  David seems to have “fallen into” his life as a painter in a classic way with almost no experience and rather sudden success.  Color paramount from the first and a big splash from the outset with the public.   I stopped at the gallery to see his paintings there.  Absolutely loved the three big ones, especially the pink (Basquiat level of genius ! ). Prices are too low.  Youngest of four brothers.  Oldest is the wealthy one.  Father now 92, here, they are together this weekend to decide how to care for him.  D’s mother painted with oils.  I assume standard landscapes, figures, forgot to ask him.  He had no interest in it and when he started later he started in acrylics because he had never liked the smells and process involved with oils.  But he may try them because of the colors available.  Didn’t want to wait for them to dry.  Wanted to paint and have it done and move on to the next work.  Abstract color play drew him.  Looked at other painters very little.  Buys whatever paints are cheapest.  Uses pre-stretched canvases and likes thick frames.  6x6 are the big ones.  We may do a lunch in a week or so, maybe see his studio, although he says there isn’t much there now because too much has cut into his time of late.  

Becky and Va seem to have had a good day, reached the target of over 6k steps!!  Petie and Ray arrive tomorrow night.  Lunch with B&E on for noon.  

few more pages to go in Chariot.    Have to explore more about the tweet about Constellations one of Nicholas’s friends posted.  Body work surely belongs to this realm, a realm of knowing.  

“All was ratified again by hands.”  643

One of the last lines in Chariot.  Magnificent closing pages.  Hard to track their brilliance and exploding implications and explications.  Maybe copy the whole last two paragraphs.  

Sunday  2 February

Va insisted we sit on the terrace for coffee.  Sun wonderful.  She was right!

The novel—-as strange as it could be.  Operatic.  Painterly, ab ex.  What would D H Lawrence have said?  I think he would have been full of envy and admiration, really.  Is there any other remotely like it?  Can’t think of any off hand.  Forgive me, am going to look up some explainers.  But will say the women are a sort of Chorus?  

google  Mrs. Godbold, another chariot rider, may represent the quality of emotion. The only one of the riders alive at the novel's conclusion, she surveys the ruins of Xanadu.

Ahh, wikipedia: “The novel combines literature, mysticism and suburban life in 1950s Australia.”  

Guess they can’t be the chorus if they are the main characters!  Or I guess I focused on Mordecai too much.  “The main four characters are outsiders with deeply different lives made more difficult because they are religious visionaries. Each experience the same vision of four horses drawing a chariot into a shining future: the fiery chariot from the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew bible; visions that make them vulnerable to – and affect the way they deal with – the wily plotting of others. They are Miss Mary Hare an eccentric heiress in a decaying mansion living with her housekeeper Mrs Jolley; Aboriginal artist Alf Dubbo, painter and sometime drunk; Mordecai Himmelfarb, Holocaust survivor, professor and now migrant working in a machine shop, and Mrs Ruth Godbold, a kindly washerwoman.”

“She had her own vision of the chariot.  Even now, at the thought of it, her very centre was touched by the wings of love and charity.  So that she closed her eyes for a moment, and put her arms around her own body, tight, for fear that the melting marrow might spill out of it.”

Monday  3 Feb  

from myjewishlearning “Ezekiel’s vision of God’s chariot became the biblical text most important to Jewish mysticism. The story of the prophet encountering God spawned merkavah mysticism, aptly named for the merkavah or chariot on which Ezekiel rode to the heavens. Followers of this type of mysticism sought to recreate similar experiences and ascend into God’s realm.”  So I suppose White read up on Judaism and created his character and the vision of the whole novel this way.  

Phil sent a long piece someone sent him about Richard Rohr, still alive here in Abq as a holy hermit somewhere (Guadalupe Trail?) in a cluster of small houses known as The Little Vatican.  Oh the piece is in the new yorker no less.  Fully blessed!

Tuesday Feb 4

Snow day.  Looks like an inch on the terrace chair but deceptive I think.  Site says two inches by 8 pm.  Guess we are indeed in the Foothills.  

exchange with David Zaintz —-

Hello Bob,

Thanks again for the other day. I really appreciate it, as well as the kind words about my work.  I haven't been by in a while, so I'm not sure what they'd had up, but happy you liked it. Yes, I struggle with my pricing! I think I sold better up in Santa Fe because my prices were higher there.

We'll see what the future brings!

The band I spoke to you about was Dead Can Dance. I included a link below to their song Rakim live. The concert dvd I have starts with it. I couldn't find the original, but this is a more current version of them performing it. Most vocals are from Brendon, whom I'd mentioned sounds to my like a cross between Frank Sinatra & Jim Morrison, joined in by Lisa with some backing vocals toward the te end. I hope you enjoy it!

https://youtu.be/-qHiaoz9su0

~David 

——-

Hello David 

Great for the 22nd at 11.  Up here in the foothills we have a bit of snow, maybe a brush down there in the valley too.  

Thanks for the youtube link to the music.  I've been enjoying it both in the house and in the car.  I've got youtube on autoplay too and I like the music Dead Can Dance leads onward to.  

Three big paintings in the gallery and some smaller, all together behind the counter which gives them a sort of effective mini-exhibit look.  Love the big ones especially.  The pink and the sand each very powerful and beautiful in differing ways.  The pink makes me think of both Philip Guston and Basquiat.  The purple one and the sand one other paintings, less precise in my memory at the moment.  The purple---Esteban Vicente, and the sand, maybe Diebenkorn, maybe not.  Rich, sensuous depths in each.  Subtle touches of brilliance everywhere (like the red horizontal spots), the edge markings and layers on the sand one.  (which also feels like water!?)

Looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks,  

Bob

————

With Ed the other day we were talking about how people way back, like Kenneth Burke, actually made carbon copies of their letters, hence later we can get “collected letters.”  And way before we had to collect the letters of both the senders and recipients.  

Also with Ed—-how conventional wisdom floats through the air.  In the morning on NPR the reporter said Biden’s main theme is that four years of T may be an anomaly but that eight will permantently alter (destroy) the character of our nation.  At lunch the same day, without having heard the same report, Ed said the same notion about the eight years and voting for Warren if Biden doesn’t make it.  

I don’t buy that—-it is another version of the claims that “our time” is the “most” or “best” or “worst” in all of history and that what happens now will be as earthshaking as, ? say, ? the French Revolution or the Holocaust or the Fall of Rome.  I don’t think we can see these things while we are alive.  Or not as easily as our commentary-culture leads us to think.  

Today the Iowa caucus debacle.  Trump claiming victory of course.  Senators clueless and cowardly.  

Lou came with her accordian around 2.  Told great stories and had old photos.  Didn’t play but we’ll get her to at her dinner.  We ordered tix to Book of Mormon.  Snow has picked up again.  

5 February   Wednesday

Cliff is coming in April.  Sun back today but still pretty cold. 

Why  did it never occur to me that paintings are not ab-ex but ab-tect—-is

that the best neologism?  Shields.  Had a memory of boy scout project days when we made Indian lore stuff and one time we/I made a shield to imitate Indian war shields.  Wasn’t there even a stone tomahawk, a stone lashed to a stick of wood.  Was it my project or my brother’s.  Remember using the bottom part of a thin wooden fruit bushel basket from the store.  We covered it with something an then PAINTED it!!  And thinking of DZ’s paintings somehow in conjunction with Riders, I realized, thought, paintings (all art works) are not Expressions but Protections, shields the maker holds up to fend off the hordes attacking him/her.  Protecting the inner life from all invasions that would demean and destroy it.  The four visionaries in Chariot live obscure, hidden lives.  Isn’t that the point?  DZ’s gorgeous skins/skeins of flesh paint, clouds of color, mists of color, shields and walls.  the pink painting especially feels like a protective skrim, even a fence or wall.  Can’t help but see the walls here in town, so many variants of sand, browns, pinks, earth and flesh.  Trying to make too much of D’s massage work and painting search.  Have to ask him. But even looking at all the ab-ex painters, think of the screens as protective barriers designed to give the public sur/faces that mirror the faces it/they show to the artist and protect him from the impact of the social demands and intrusions.  Make it into a whole theory of art——not expressions, not my-story but protective coating, defensive weapon, to defend oneself from destruction.  Surely someone has said all of this.  Talisman’s to ward off evil spirits.  The devil mask that Isei was wearing for the festival—-Festival Setsubun—-from the TokyoWeekender—-Setsubun (節分) on the third day of the month, the eve of spring according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, sees the spirit realm at its closest to our human world. It is a time to take care – strange things might happen. You wouldn’t want a wandering demon to sneak through your door and take up residence for the year ahead. In the dim, dark, distant past you might have banged a drum or lit a bonfire and burned evil-smelling sardine heads to frighten off unwelcome visitors, but these days mamemaki (まめまき) or bean-throwing is the preferred method of exorcism. Of course, once any itinerant ogres have been sent on their way, it makes sense to eat up the beans but you must make sure that you eat just one for every year of your age, plus one for the year ahead – especially as they now tend to come sugar-coated!”

Art as “ Apotropaic magic (from Greek αποτρέπειν "to ward off" from από- "away" and τρέπειν "to turn") is a type of magic intended to turn away evil eye. Apotropaic observances may also be practiced out of vague or out of tradition, as in  (perhaps some token on a), or gestures such as . The Greeks made offerings to chthonic deities who grant safety and deflect evil.

Lou told us about Ivan, Mary Anne’s husband.  A German war baby, brought here by a gringo serviceman and raised in Northern NM as a New Mexican.  Taught art at Highland High, Mary Anne taught Spanish.  

Found more about Gary Komarin after one of his works showed up when I looked for Philip Guston’s pink paintings.  Komarin’s very New York/CT career (born in ’51), super long CV, contrast with DZ’s and D’s career seems much more honest and direct.  Plus his painting I like more but haven’t seen Komarin in person, even though his work has been widely located.  

Petie and Ray arrived about 6:30, very tired from the drive from Colo Sprgs.  They got snowed in one night, had to stay in the basement bedroom of friends, or nephews, were they?  

At Define Fitness today I discovered from the staffers there that snorkle masks are not permitted in most indoor pools—-probably a city/state rule against them unless a lifeguard is on duty, which is not the case is most places.  A major Stymy.  

via twitter just discovered a major writer I’ve never heard of—-or remembered—Leonard Michaels.  His essay on the personal and the individual supposed to be a major piece.  Cites Miles Davis turning his back on the audience as a way of saying “Don’t look at me.  I’m not here.  Listen to it.”    Not quite the same as my shield idea.  Which of course is not so major and not so brilliant as I’d thought last night at 3 am.  Still, glad I thought about it.  

6 Feb Thurs night

We visited Rick’s tree in Kit Carson park in the afternoon.  Nails in the morning.  Sweet Tomatoes for lunch.  Ray taking Rick’s piano board back with them.  They may leave tomorrow.  We just watched Dave’s new video.  He did a fabulous job of ratcheting up the graphics into fuller cartoon mode.  Also makes the words very clear.  Wants us to circulate it on Valentine’s day.  Email from Cliff about his visit and a ping from Feeny.  

Was trying to make great thoughts about Abq stretched out on the big canvas of the Rio Grande valley.  How opposite it is from Plymouth.  How ready we are to have such a major break.  The sweep of the whole vast high desert landscape.  Willow put the crew on to watching 800 words and Ray is loving it.  Has been to NZ twice and two of his son-in-laws are Kiwis.  

Petie called Johnson hall earlier today and thinks swimming there will work out.  She called Lisa and turns out they are going to see Book of Mormon tonight.  We will see it on Sunday.  

Ed taking a poetry course with Joy Harjo, poet laureate.  He talked about how people out here say things that feel intimate about their lives, things no one in a similar adult ed class back east, Portland, would ever say.  And I had to think to myself about the first chats with DZ.  Stranger on a train effect or Western autobiographical frankness and trustingness and openness?  He reviewed the outlines of his life and how he worked for his dad and brothers in the club they ran in an old roller skating rink.  He was the club dj, honed his tastes in music.  And then started painting——never

really ever intending to.  Was it he took an art class, wanted to do drawing but a jealous fellow student messed things up between him and the teacher so he went to do some painting,  Forget the details.  Some instant success and local fame.  Later he and a much younger photographer realized driving back from an art thing in Santa Fe that they wanted to spend lots more time together.  Younger guy (by twenty?) moved in and they’ve been together happily for seven or so years.  But they don’t have much or any sex together.  DZ says he’s a bit prudish about sex and really can’t have it successfully with anyone.  Partner is very active and so he goes off on his own pursuits and they are all happy about it.  Now why did he want to, need to, gave no worry to, telling me this?  Almost in same kind of tone and angle as talking about how he hasn’t had time to get to the studio and they’re perhaps going to set his studio up in the house.  Of course he was maybe under more stress than he realized about the state of his 92 yr old dad’s health and an upcoming meeting with his two brothers about what to do about taking care of dad.  He had had little sleep the night before.  But all of his open telling did seem to confirm Ed’s point.  Also interesting for countering all the assumptions one would make about DZ’s world if you looked around only on his websites at the smiling friends, smiling successes, wide circle of friends and acquaintances.  The gay world, the art world, parties, nude photos, looks like what magazines tout and flout.  Who would know the details I now know?  

7 Feb  Friday 

After we saw P & R off, we went to see Johnson gym and the pools there.  Quite a labyrinth semi-underground.  Steep sloping walkways, some wet, even with handrails and rubber mats, felt dangerous to attempt.  On the way out I proposed winter here for sun and walking, summer and fall for swimming and walking in NH where the ease of using the pool is amazing.  

Tomorrow a day off again.  Second.  Seem to be heading to Corrales.  Maybe even Bernalillo.  

8 Feb Monday

Nice visit with kids.  Video of Emma playing Imagine yesterday at EK recital.  Awesome job.  They are on vacay, aquarium Saturday where they saw an orca and touched a fish.  They go to Austria Friday to ski.  

Yesterday we went to Popejoy to see The Book of Mormon.  Great fun but hard to catch the words.  

11 Feb  Tuesday

Yesterday walking at Target and after lunch Wally.  Realized that Wally is really cramped.  Look for another.  

Watched Parasite.  Terrific movie, deserved all the oscars.  

Call from Dick M.  In his car going back home form O’Hare.  Aphrodita went to see her parents.  He wanted our insider scoop on the Primary.  He dated, turns out, Belgian woman named Jackie who was married to Annie Kuster’s husband.  They divorced and he married Annie McLane.  Jackie and Dick dated for a year or so.  He’s hoping Amy Klobuchar will be the candidate.  

12 Feb   Liking the Agee book so far.  Interested actually in getting more in to it.  Rarely look at an autobiography.  Aciman’s was the last one.  

PEO big success.  Few recognized Willow as looking just like her mother.  I lunched at Range on Rio Grande and then the coffee place down the street.  Spilled the specialty coffee soon as it was put on the table.  Crossbow Coffee?  no some other angler name.  Fishing and coffee tasting—-trust fund being spent I’d guess.  Heard the younguns dissing Denver as blown up and fake.  

13 Feb Thurs

Just had our late afternoon naps.  Now 5 pm.  Lunch at the Pueblo Indian center.  Walk later at the Lomas Target.  News from Karen this morning that Gloria had a heart attack a week or so ago, few nights in Dartmouth.  

16 Feb Sunday

Dinner at Lou’s last night.  Met Ivan Wright, Maryanne’s husband, and Bob Hunter, Lou’s new friend.  Sharon and Barb and Ed there.  Nice evening, interesting talk.  Ivan and Bob both really nice.  Earlier Ed and I had lunch at  the museum, walked through the main collection.  Exhibit on Jim Henson we skipped, dinner guests said it is great.  Can take visitors.  

Booked Bear House for next winter!!!  Going to Santa Fe tomorrow for overnight at Louise’s.  

Rio Rancho in its early days was a favorite relocation site for witness protection programs.  Well, quick look says that’s part of urban myth here, dislike between Abq and Rio rat-h0le as one fellow put it.  !  And Tucumcari no one knows origin of the name—-may be a version of a Plains indian word for lookout or signal peak.  

We walked at Target this morning, lunched at Lime.  Not so great.  Willow has been sleeping all afternoon.  Let her keep on or wake her for the night?  

I did take a walk earlier, up the hill and into one of the streets roughly parallel to Oso Grande.  Felt a little tightness in the chest.  Wonder if altitude is still being an issue for us?  Of course the past two nights I had more alcohol than since Christmas—-wine at the flamenco and a beer at Lou’s.  They were all happy to hear that I am liking their town.  

18 Feb Tuesday  night

Too much red wine with dinner last night with Louise and Steph.  That’s my explanation of why we didn’t sleep well.  Also talking all afternoon with Louise and then the evening.  Not used to such socializing.  Still a nice visit.  Drove back through Madrid—-looks like a pure embalmment of 60s hippiedom.  Late lunch at El Pintor pretty disappointing.  Remember taking Daddy-D there one time.  Then it was out in the country, nothing else around.  

19 Feb   

Can’t find the letter Ray gave me about the house tax info.  Of course!  Two men at the door just now, here to offer an encouraging bible message.  Thank goodness for the tv intercom system.  Time to go off and walk.  

20 Feb 

note from Nicholas canceling his visit.  Not surprised but gave him our trip dates and he says he might come in the fall.  We go to see the medical professional today.   

What an odyssey that was, trying to find the place.  Somehow I couldn’t get the right location information.  Made it with more than an hour, took the time to walk in a Target right there.  Nice woman who has just been here a month or so, from Kansas, and pregnant.  Lauren will be the baby’s name.

great poem yesterday from Chaikhana  —-  

Priceless Gifts by Anna Swir  1909-1984   Polish poet 

English version by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

 

An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.

—————-

now today on twitter  from Andrei Tarashuk @andreitr  

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk is such a great book!  “The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony”

Not quite the “same” as Swir’s poem, but a fine overlap, correspondence of attitudes  

We lunched at a Range over in that area, chatted with waiter who grew up north in Las Vegas and liked going to university in Las Cruces.  Finance grad who wants to be an accountant.

Louise still in the shock of Chuck’s death.  On the one hand we want to clarify the timeline along which all of these things happen to us.  On the other perhaps allowing them to be more vague in the mists of memory is desirable, a more merciful way of accepting things and staying in the priceless hereness of now.  

Video this morning from the kids.  On a merrygoround in Zurich waiting for the train, missed an earlier connection.  Nicholas might visit with us when we are in Paris in June.  

note to Dennis——that movie was so good I now want to go back and look at her others.  makes you recall how bad most of the stuff is we all watch these days.  Saw Last Christmas last night.  waste.  may have been a vanity project by Emma Thompson?  she plays a Croatian grandma and seems to have written the thing.  George Michael is another pop song writer whose career I missed.  Temps here usually in high 40s these days.  Wind can pick up but sun is usually out for a few hours midday.  We've settled into routines, walking at one of the three Targets within 25 minutes.  I like the driving---all spread out over a big square grid, big streets six lanes with easy left-turn slots and lights.  Speeds are steady and very little of the desperate hectic of boston area driving.  Whole vibe is relaxed, laid-back.  Every 13th person looks like the grandson of a hippie.  Show on Jim Henson and the muppets at the art museum is a big hit.  We may go see it today or in a few days.  Visitors coming next Weds-Sunday, an old college friend of Va's.  Military husband and we fear they will be trumpists.  They are on a cruise now to see the northern lights, so we'll talk about stars and flares.  Bird feeder outside so we see different little birds most every day.  

———

23 Feb Sunday   Light hail shower for about three minutes this morning around 9:30.  Heavier rain earlier, for short period.  Sun now trying to break through.  Word from Patti Harris about their arrival Wednesday.  

Remembered the big clock we saw in Tokyo.  Maybe seeing the decor at The Kosmos conjured that.  Lunched there yesterday.  Whole row of artists’ studios in the old factory buildings.  Maybe next day off I’ll use that as a base for wandering that neighborhood.  And/or campus and Nob Hill.  Six solid days of visitors because Helen arrives Sunday evening after Patty leaves!  

Nessun Dorma came on the playlist right at the moment.  And this after the story told before that of Nessun Dorma having come on the playlist right at the previous special moment, was it the week earlier?  

He quit Pink Martini management after ten years, she not a nice person at times to work for.  Also news that the Flying Star couple have not always treated their workers well.  The Range couple gets better press.  

Swedenborg said do the good that you know.  The one that is right there under your nose.  

“What cannot be translated into mystical language does not deserve to be experienced.”  E. M. Cioran   quoted by Lars Iyer on twitter today 

Dinner with Lisa and Robert last night.  Lisa showed Willow all the things in the big Milner trunk.  Robert showed me their new camper.  New white truck, Ford, to pull it.  They will test it out next weekend on the other side of the mountain.  Today we go to an OT session at Lovelace.  

Nice snack at Star on Menaul.  OT was ok, Lisa gave us an eval interview and exploration.  Finally settled on better hand-work on the shopping cart.  Willow didn’t like me saying she’s had a slight memory loss at times.  Don’t blame her, really.  After the session, we spotted First Presbyterian and took a photo.  Nice looking building.  Willow recalled the memorial for her mother and the crowd filling it, but I don’t think I was there then.  I think she and Petie returned to Abq a few weeks after Mamacita’s death for the memorial.  

Joel Agee being in Cuba when he was, 1962, gives us a fascinating impression of how things were at the start.  1959 given as date the war ended with Castro’s triumph.   Agee and his younger brother were both savy (East German) and innocent still, so their impressions ring with both sounds.  Ach, bad metaphors.  

25 Feb Tuesday   before the six days of visitors!

Agee has a fine interlude passage where he sees his two selves, the one flying high in a Cuban airplane, looking for how to move the narrative further forward. “I don’t know what to do about him.”  “Nothing to do for the time being but look for patterns in the rapids, something to orient myself by.”   The other self down below in the water slowly realizing he may be a new self, “a diver impatient to get to the bottom. But always comes up again, thwarted.”  is being drawn into a whirlpool and about to find himself trapped and clueless.   The house of fear of the title perhaps?  Or foreshadowings for it.  

Has this great line to end the passage—will use it as my tweet for the day and it chimes with the Stevie Smith line I was thinking about last night during one of the sleepless vagaries—-“not waving but drowning.”   “Someone should tell him: When you’re in a whirlpool, there’s only one way to reach bottom by way of the surface.  In time.”  

He really never knew who he was.  Does anyone?  Such statements lead no where and every where.  All his life must have seemed a lie.  All of his lives must have seemed a life.  More truths emerged over time than he knew could flow through any one life.  A lifetime gives you pause.  After most of your life you realize the pauses have outnumbered the times.  

Agee has his trope of flying and diving into the whirlpool, countrapuntal motions, actions.  Zeus and Hades he terms them.  By the end will he come round to White’s greater wisdom—-the many lives of the one living the life?

Phil sent a piece from Higher Ed Chronicle about Pete B.  Silly piece about Pete being the kid in the class you hate.  Looked up the author, a grad student in phiosophy at ND.  Emailed him about Jim Sterba and he emailed right back.  Was just amazed at the photo of the grad student and the advertisements for myself this new generation takes for granted that one puts up.  They all must learn resume building starting in the sophomore year of high school.  Or more likely that “social media” makes self-promoters of everyone from age four onward.  

1 March  Sunday  

11:03  Patti and Roger said good-bye about twenty minutes ago.  They go to Rio Rancho for lunch with two colonels, fly home tomorrow, so I guess they will be at a motel tonight.  Helen arrives tonight at 7:27.  We will pick her up.   Yesterday we toured Bernalillo and lunched at the mothership of The Range.  

Sweet video from the kids today.  Rainy and Paris.  

from Phil  So what are you doing to pass the time in A'que?   Here in MD,  Peg just takes a zillion pills every day, and I just hang around in case she needs me for something, read the newspaper or a mag if one arrives,  try to find something decent on TV (nearly always a failed search) and don't even go for walk-jogs because it's too cold and windy.  Finally, I try not to be too dismayed  about politics but worry about the new coronavirus which, if it reaches us, could kill Peg because her immune system is totally suppressed.

Have you ever heard about or read a book called "Sapiens"  by a youngish Israeli author who is featured in a recent, very long NYer article?   (The NYer has always featured overwritten articles but the habit seems to be getting worse.  The article about this author was about five times too long.)   The basic message of this book reminds me of one of my dad's sayings:  "Few things are very important, and even those don't last long.”

——-

also a hello from Pattie G.  

Hi Bob,

Hope you and Virginia are enjoying your winter break in New Mexico. The winter hasn't been so bad here, so far, but it's not over. (I feel I must say that to not tempt fate.)

Have the idea that you do not hold historical fiction in high regard which is a fair assessment. This is the kind - and there's far too little of this sort - that I enjoy reading. 

Hilary Mantel  review of her Cromwell book in Guardian

Am looking forward to a visit this afternoon of a new acquaintance I met recently at an opening and talk at Matt Brown's gallery in Lyme. I had never met this artist before but remembered hearing of her accomplishments back in the seventies. Seems we both had shows at Larry Johnson's gallery back in the day.

Glad to hear Virginia called Gloria a little while ago. She's doing okay, under the circumstances. Alane has been going to DHMC herself and has been staying overnight with her parents after her appointments, so that's been a good thing.

Take care,

Pattie

————-

2 March  Monday  

We drove Helen around town. Stop at Alumni Chapel first and probably best of the day.  Lunch at Cocina Azul.  Might have been David Ztz the painter from Sumner at the other table but didn’t say anything.  Up and around Guadalupe Trail and snack at Star on Rio Grande.  Helen wanted to see the river.  Next time that park off Montaño would be best place for such a visit request.  

Girls doll day in Japan.  Not translating carefully.  “Hinamatsuri (雛祭り, Hina-matsuri), also called Doll's Day or Girls' Day, is a special day in Japan. Celebrated on 3 March of each year, platforms covered with a red carpet-material are used to display a set of ornamental dolls (雛人形, hina-ningyō) representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.”

Helen put all her money into bonds, gets 4% to live on.  Ted is more into the market.  Wonder if we should switch to bonds.  Dad said something about he could have, should have, done that.  

3 March

Day in Santa Fe.  Lunch with Roy and then coffee.  Helen met with Sherry Gray Martin.  She has been teaching at St John’s for thirty years.  Knew the name Salvatore Scibona, “such a good writer.”  Also knows Judy Seeger.  Had forgotten the college has only 350 students.!  Another cohort in Annapolis.  Dropped their tuition by 10k recently.  

Roy was totally delightful.  Talked about everything.  His trip to Galapagos was a bit disappointing because there is nothing on the islands and too many tourists.  So he had a photo of a tortoise with a tiny yellow bird on its I remembered later that he had talked about him before and it is Hertz who thinks of Middlemarch as the greatest (traditional) novel, next to Daniel Deronda.  So with Hertz and Roy and Nicholas behind her, I guess I am ready to embrace George Eliot.  He talked about so many things it is hard to sort them again and tell them coherently.  He told them all in fascinating ways and linkages.  Layers of local lore about his hometown.  The Smith family, good Presbyterians.  Mother got polio with her third pregnancy.  Freddy did family history and found out that she/they were Jewish, had been Jewish from Russia.  Other brother at U Iowa expert on India.  Other brother, now I’ve forgotten.  Roy’s valedictory speech at his high school ended with “It is better to have loved a short person than never to have loved a tall (at all).”  

5 March  Thursday  

Watching the Mikado on YouTube because we are going to a production tonight at Popejoy.  G&S society from NYC.  Reminds me of Burgo.  Why?  Did he first play me a recording of it while we lived in I House?  

Loved watching David’s gig at the Caveau.  I think the location helped him smooth the music more toward jazz, until the ending with the song about karate!  

7 March 

He says this morning that the Home song is by Steely Dan.  Email from John Elkins—they are skiing in Zermatt!  

Game-mind was trying to figure how to save money on the May trip.  Second game mind said, forget it.  Soon as you cancel flights now you will try to re-book in late April and get scorched then.  Just do nothing as so many of your hero writers and advisors tell you.  Off to a day off today.  Highs in 50s.  Dave has a second night at the Caveau tonight.  Happy for him.  

Taking bets on when Road Scholar will bail.  And when Ewillow will bail.  !  I could easily stay here through May even.  Doubt we will do that, but you never know.  I heart Albuquerque.  Still.  Seeing the white painting the other day helped further with that.  What else is a city in high desert but a consummate artwork in minimalist mode.

Emails from our advisora have helped us decide to cancel our travel plans and wait to see if Road cancels the cruise.  As George put it, “that’s a no brainer.”  Peg said she was risk adverse—smiley emoji.  

He came away from these things usually in the same frames of mind.  Pleasant enough, interesting enough, some new tweaks and twists, but really not as big a deal as you would have thought, given the lead up into it.  Once again, anticipation and imagination might be more satisfying in the long run.  And given that we are supposed to know ourselves, by now, you would think that he could have said to himself beforehand, you know, experience has shown you more than once, that this kind of engagement or undertaking will in all probability result in the feelings and estimations you already know, have known, so well.  

Sunday night

May 8

Nice lunch with Barb and Ed.  They brought some roast chicken from Boston Market.  Good laughs about childhood cruelties and lots else.

Starting to cancel trip.  Recession worldwide seems likely.  Fear about everything.  Outlander and Beecham House.  Could I even try reading Middlemarch like a bible—one or two verses a day?  Why force such an effort?  I enjoy a few verses a day from Nietzsche And the Burbs.  I don’t want to have a brilliant portrait of early Victorian England, do I?  

We saw the new After the Wedding.  Vehicle for Juliana Moore.  Made a mess of the superb Danish original.  Found a few good reviews to back me up. 

Monday  9 March

On hold with Turkish Airlines.  Had a strong premonitional feeling last fall when I made these reservations that this trip would not take place, just didn’t know then why.  Hotel Blomet canceled.  

B&E gave us the idea so we may go up to Taos next weekend for the drive and an overnight.  They want to go to a flamenco show too.  We trade ideas back and forth.  

Eliot opens her novel with an image of St Theresa and her little brother walking forth to find saintly martyrdom.  How difficult is that?  Why did no one ever present the whole thing telling me that right away?  Guess it helps to look for oneself after all.  

Is March 9 going to be seen as the day the world fell apart, once again?  

6pm  Maybe so.  Markets plunged.  

We walked at Coors Target.  Realized we had missed the change to daylight savings!  Gorgeous full moon last night too.  The Beecham India series a nice distraction.  We ate at Range and coffee at Corrales Star.  Va said yes that was the one we first saw a few years ago with Lisa.  

Day in SF.  Arrived at noon.  Lunched at the cafe there.  Then looked at the Buena Musica exhibit.  More instruments than music.  Stopped at Target on Paseo on the way home.  Finished canceling trip.  Nancy Adam not coming.  Bobbi Edelson is.  

The Japanese exhibit more interesting even though we sped through it.  Gods and Demons.  No, ghosts and demons.  Yōkai.  

11 March  Weds 

from Ken 

B&V

We’re very relieved by your travel decision. We know it wasn’t easy.

We haven’t been watching masterpiece. We need to start!

Next year’s rental here is all arranged with our Swedish doctor—same unit. Let’s hope that the virus situation is under control by then. We put into the agreement that a pandemic would void the contract. He and his wife are due here on April 15. Wouldn’t be surprised if they cancel their flight and stay.

Natalie arrives tomorrow for a week. She and Carole enjoy the beach so we hope the weather cooperates. Sounds like you’ve had quite a few guests. Glad the Seattle group canceled.

Japanese ghosts look scarier than ours!

We’re hanging in there. We have tickets for a play on Friday. We’re considering bailing even though they’re expensive.

All our best,

Ken and Carole

——

Road Scholar does not have “Chat” available today.  I assume they are having a meeting about what to do next, especially about our cruise.  Lisa and Robert canceled their Caribbean cruise for a few weeks from now.  

I think I’ve got the whole trip properly canceled.  The premonition that it would not happen when I was booking it last fall was so strong.  

We managed to rise at 7 today!  First light in daylight savings time.  Going to be a wee rainy today.  

OK  The first three paragraphs of Middlemarch have blown me away.  Read one a day in the bedroom in between this and that.  Now I want to copy out the third one at least.  Genius indeed.  And, look, how fitting that I should finally be ready to read this book after sixty years.  I remember still how unhappy I was in Elkins Park when I was supposed to have been reading it for a course.  I could not.  I was out in the yard around the servants’ house off to the side of the big house.  I was rooming there for a semester? Or did I just enjoy visiting it because it gave the sense of an English cottage, spare Tudor stucco and beams versus the grand brick and oak speldor of the palatial main house.  I was there outside the cottage house (it had a beautiful wooden central stairway, again, plain and clean woodwork, dark against the off-white of the plaster and stucco walls inside and out.  I felt some deep flash of humiliation and frustration, anxiety and dread, complete bafflement and even a kind of angry horror at being stuck in ways I could not comprehend.  

So.  Now at last, we are ready for Eliot’s brilliance and wisdom.  And the timing is perfect, beyond perfect.  Here and now.  

Kirsten —-  

Hola Bob,

Tee HEE! I am charmed that he would "like" a positive review of his own book! (and just wrote to tell him so). Actually I think I liked Wittgenstein Jr *at least* as much. This new one is long and I may even have skimmed a bit, even though I loved it. I meant to write to you about all this in a note, because I hate email, but I guess here I am emailing (and I don't know when you and V are returning home, anyway). Jim read WJ first, after I told him you recommended, and he liked it and did a lot of chuckling, and now is reading an earlier book from his trilogy, but I'm the one who's LOVING Iyer, which isn't surprised since I LOVE Bernhard. I convinced a library patron to get and read WJ and he liked, and I told two people today they had to read the Nietzche book. I could probably reread Bernhard and Iyer endlessly, I love the experience of reading them so much. Iyer is kinder-gentler, of course. And knee-slappingly funny. Thanks so much for pointing us toward him.

I hope you and Virginia are well, and washing your hands obsessive-compulsively! Ack! Very weird times.

Kirsten

tee hee. i actually did tell him in my message that the review of wittgenstein by you on amazon is what led me to read that book, that you're a family friend, had pointed me years ago to bernhard, etc. hoping he writes back but i guess i'd better not hold my breath. (meant to mention in last note to you, btw, how much i enjoyed your amazon review of wjr)

oh--meant also to wonder aloud to you whether dyer has read him. i think i actually contemplated writing to dyer and telling him he had to read wittgenstein jr!

okay, "video time," as we call it, around here--

—————

Cosmic Laughter, Cosmological Boredom Upended

review of Nietzsche    Incomparable riotous delight.  Bernhard, Beckett, Blanchot, Bataille, Woolf, Golding, Wilde, Jung, Joyce, heck, all of ‘em, are twirling and cavorting under their headstones at the way Iyer pulls off this homageous reincarnation of N’s vision.  Iyer’s career trajectory proofed, perfected, epitomized, proactively personalized.  A genital-tickling wonder.  A triumph of sensibility, wisdom and compassion.  

title Venus in slashed jeans

Thursday  12 March

State of emergency health wise here now.  Four cases in the state.  Turns out Road Scholar says I did buy the coverage.  Dang.  Now I will wait for them to cancel because if they do they will fully refund in cash!!  

Last episode of Beecham House.  Short walk.   Post review of Iyer’s book on Amazon and two Goodread identities.  Glad Kirsten praised the wordiness

of it.  wordy  is what she used.  “wonderfully wordy” 

Friday the 13th  

stunning Rumi in the email this evening —-

Like This

By Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
(1207 - 1273)

English version by Jonathan Star

 

If someone asks,
"What does perfect beauty look like?"
Show him your own face and say,
Like this.

If someone asks,
"What does an angel's wing look like?" -- smile.
If he asks about divine fragrance
Pull him close, his face in your hair,
Like this.

If someone asks,
"How did Jesus bring the dead back to life?" --
Don't say a word --
just kiss him softly on the cheek,
Like this.

If someone asks,
"How does it feel to be slain by love?"
Close your eyes and tear open your shirt,
Like this.

If someone asks about my stature,
Stare into space with your eyes wide open,
Like this.

The soul enters one body, then another.
If someone argues about this
Enter my house and wave him good-bye,
Like this.

I am the storehouse of all pleasure,
I am the pain of self-denial.
To see me, lower your eyes to the ground
Then raise them up to heaven,
Like this.

Only the gentle breeze
Knows the secret of union.
Listen as it whispers a song to every heart,
Like this.

If someone asks,
How does a servant attain the glory of God?
Become the shining candle
That every eye can see,
Like this.

I asked about Joseph's perfume
Which rode the wind from city to city --
It was your scent
Blowing in from God's perfect world,
Like this.

I asked how Joseph's perfume
Gave sight to the blind --
It was your breeze
Clearing the darkness from my eyes,
Like this.

Perhaps Shams will be generous
And fill our hearts with love.
Perhaps he will raise one eyebrow
And cast us a glance,
Like this.

After walking Montgomery we drove around downtown looking for blooming trees.  Heavy thunder shower for twenty minutes.  Lunch at Star Rio Grande and then look into the new Sawmill market.  Really nice.  Going to spend the day off there and environs tomorrow.  Old neighborhoods, 

a park.  Watching vids now.  Call from Ray and PT.  They are laying low to avoid big gatherings.  Took a twelve minute walk.  Woman walking her dog said a friendly hello and a “stay well” as we passed.  Sent Davey money for Eliot’s new drum set.  

Saturday  March  14   

Trees budding out all over.  Good day off, walked lots but not as much as Willow—-she and Becky made 5 miles!!! went various and to the mall.  Fell, however, in front of Panera.  Resting now.  Will have a derriere bruise.  Assured Becky all is well.   

Loved reading more of Agee.  He got shot in the period when he was doing LSD.  Lots of lucid dreaming and he clearly kept detailed journals.   

Found Nob Hill bit depressing in spite of the sun and wonderful air.  Walked in a few parks.  Discovered Humble Coffee.  And right around the corner from Cinnamon & Spice a yard full of sculptures.  C&S carries good biscochitos!  

In one park college kids were dressed in medieval battle costumes and playing some game of attack and defend.  Becky says that is popular in the parks.  

Sunday  March 15  

Watched half of an old Ethan Hawke movie about a novelist in grimy Paris, Kristen Scott Thomas.  Might have watched it or part of it years ago.  Read lots of Agee yesterday and like it very much.  All about his phase of tuning into synchronicities and that’s when he got shot and the cover photo was taken.  Was he in his early twenties?  With Susan his lifetime wife.  Can’t tell however with searches if she died or they divorced or are they still together?  Obituary of her father in 2005 says yes, married.  

Last few pages left of Burbs.  Just did a short chat with Dave.  He is busy making pea soup.  

“No, dillweed.  We’ll just fail. “ Paula says.  “But that’s ok.”   How cute is that.  Iyer ends his book with a fine chuckle.  

Will we stay two weeks more into May?  Tempting today, but we’ll see.  Why leave Spring now when it is just getting started?   Wake Willow from her nap.  Five miles!  Today is ease-up day.  Took a one-turn at Montgomery before lunch.  

Remembering Roy talking about the Smith family, the mother with polio for her last son, the three sons, Freddy, professor of Sanskrit at Iowa.  Just looked him up.  Amazing list of publications.  New translation of the Mahabarata soon to come out, U Chicago Press.  

We much enjoyed Jaglom’s old movie Deja Vu.  I had seen it before, I realized.  Still a delightful movie.  Great actors.  

16 March    

Emma’s birthday.  Short visit with them and then lots of photos and videos later in the day.  She looked so happy with each of her gifts and in general.  Too bad they are now in lock-down for two weeks.  She can only ride her new scooter in the house but maybe also in the courtyard inside their building complex.  Thank goodness for that.  

Here we walked finally in Academy Hill Park after getting nails done and lunching at Star on Paloma.  Chat with the busboy Pablo who has an electronic music site called Pocket Elephant (after a children’s book I’d never heard of).  

Great message from Michael McGregor on Lax and the Coronavirus:

first though this line from Simone Weil that birkerts tweeted deserves being quoted and pondered:   “Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul.”    Great.  Iyer could have used that in the Burbs.  Well, maybe that’s a stretch.  

Michael McGregor on Lax:  copyrighted  The Robert Lax Newsletter

As I often do when I’m not sure how to think about something, I’ve been musing on how Lax might have responded to all that is happening in our country and our world right now. Self-quarantine wouldn’t have bothered him much. He tended to self-quarantine most of the time anyway. And he was used to staying in touch with friends only by mail or phone or, later in his life, email. Even when he went out, he tended to keep what we now call “social distance.” And the possibility of dying because he was older wouldn’t have caused him worry.

What I think he would have been doing is spending more time in contemplation. Not trying to figure out what a spreading pandemic meant but simply holding himself in the moment, waiting on God, resting in the reality of being alive. He would have prayed for his friends and for peace in this time as in all times. And he would have written—poems, of course, but also letters to the people on the long list of correspondents he kept--assuring them he was okay, asking if they were, making a joke and encouraging them.

Most of us live such busy lives, it can be difficult at first to slow down in the way this virus is making us slow down. But once we do, we start to see what Lax saw before he left the United States to live by himself on a Greek island: Much of what busies our lives is a chasing after things—a doing—that keeps us from simply being.

In a long meditation I quote on page 207 of my book, Pure Act, Lax wrote this:

"Deprived of being we have recourse to having, which is indispensable for us, and good, as long as we know how to use it largely and simply for our real needs. But there is a danger: having, in giving us many things (burdening us) weighing us down, gives us the disastrous illusion of making up for our deficiency of being, and we are always tempted to look for a (consistency) in it, to attach ourselves to it as to a security, and to accumulate more and more…instead of turning ourselves, as empty as possible, toward the Source of being who alone is capable of satisfying our thirst and giving us happiness joy blessedness.”

With our world shut down, now is a good time to think about our real needs, the illusions we live by, where our security lies, and what we are really thirsting for.

Yesterday afternoon, when my wife and I walked around the lake near our Seattle home, there were more people out than usual on a cold day. After the walk, my wife asked: “Did you notice that we didn’t hear the snippets of complaining we usually hear when we walk the lake?” I hadn't noticed that, but I had noticed that the people we passed seemed lighter in spirit--less burdened than usual--despite the uncertainty the virus has brought. Freed of their usual busyness, they were able to slow down. Able to let go.

Slowing down. Letting go. Being. And loving. These are the things Lax would focus on right now, I'm sure. These are the things that will get us through this.  

————-

17 March 

Boilerplate messages from all sides — companies —- and politicians seem to hope that six weeks will do it.   

Jim phoned this morning.  He has two helpers come twice a week to make sure he showers safely.  Anne still fighting the good fight but slowly losing it to the cancer.  He asked if I had found Marty so I guess if we do get back up to Santa Fe I should stop in and say hello as a diplomatic agent from Jim.   In Agee this morning a big passage from Faust in Hell.  Flamenco postponed until April 3.  Might as well finished taxes.  Refunds from Turkish air came through so Chase balance looking good.  Davey is skyping with his students right now. 

At Panera over near Cottonwood we had a good long visit with Dave.  They are using their interior patio for exercise, hope they don’t get shooed back in as some friends have in other buildings.  Their lock-down is for forty-five days, which now seems to be the universal time quoted everywhere.  

I go out for fifteen minutes to mail books to Nancy Adam and buy some books! at Page One and I come back and Va is watching some young people’s series on being lesbian.   !!  

One line in Burbs I laughed at the other day.  Iyer must be, have been, eavesdropping on not only his students but on the websites they use to have captured the slang so well.  To wit:  “Merv, does your dad mind you going out with a giant spermy hulk? I ask.” 332

At the shopping plaza I found the Parisian bistro, right down from the book store.  Closed.  Remembered the cookies at Cinnamon.  Closed too.  

Jim’s call.  Thought of him sometime during the night, short spells of non-sleeping.  After talking today I wonder if he and Anne may have separate health helpers these days?  

Va found a good Aussie soap on Hulu.  Beautiful Lie.  Chimes with the Deja Vu movie from the other night.  

18 April  Wednesday  

Party day.  News from Nancy McD about quarrels in the grocery stores.  Facebook proves its value.  

Yard workers here spraying green paint on the brown grass.  Must be a seed&fertilizer combo.  Brief chat with Eloy to keep the gate ajar for the delivery. 

Geo says Heusers and Bergstroms heading home early from FL.  Don’t want to be caught in “shelter where you are” edicts.  Guess the Bay Area beat everyone to that punch and now all of CA.  Fights among the pols about what to announce next.  

from Nicholas

Dear Bob,

Yes, at home and working from home. All shops but food, pharmacy and petrol are closed as are restaurants, bars, cinemas etc. It is very quiet and peaceful - and the weather is beautiful.

I doubt my non-existent adventures in Bali would greatly excite anyone. I did read George Eliot's Romola sitting by my first infinity pool overlooking the rice paddies of Ubud! And, narrowly avoided my first invitation to eat dog - the festival for the newly refurbished Hindu temple was the next day!

Reading an enjoyable biography of Joseph Conrad who I intermittently admire (by which I mean there are times I find I can read him with great pleasure and others where it feels like being stranded in one of those doldrums that he must often have experienced when a sailor). The descriptions of the Congo's brutalities are as horrifying as ever. The benighted country has never, I think, recovered from this trauma.

Keep well, love and best wishes, Nicholas

Positing as my strategy—-to go to stores only around 2-3 pm if possible.  Not the mornings, everyone on too much coffee.  

Agee divides himself into two selves.  Self and Counterpoint rather than good and evil.  Makes good use of it.  He is now in the anti-war period, at the start of it.  Gets a cash windfall from his grandmother’s estate, $12,000.  Wonder what to do.  Gina in diapers, just learning a few words.  They consider options.  He says “there will be a sign” of what to do.  Right up my alley there!!  Same for now, same for here.  Geo says go home early.  My sense is the opposite.  I could stay here up to or even through June.  Some nurse on facebook says expect to get sick, have advil and cough syrup and tylenol.  Wonder if Ed and Barb will just stay into summer?  If I recall Barb has a dog show she wanted to do but of course that will be canceled.  Even Amazon is canceling everything except medical supplies.  Will this be more like Y2K or apocalypse now?  The gun buyers are hoping for the latter, I guess.  

Anyway, dividing oneself into two or more sure works well.  Writers like it lots.  Here I feel very lucky to be here and could stay here as easily as anywhere else.  More so.  People here much more calm, more warm than coastal people.  High desert mountains.  Love seeing Sandia many times during the day.  

Great scene when they are on a freighter going to Europe, going to Ibiza.  He had seen a postcard from someone from there at the office or somewhere.  Is he working these days?  Not clear.  

19 March  Thursday 

Desolate after finishing The Beautiful Lie.  So brilliantly done, written, acted.  But it is a rework of Anna Karenina. So sad, heartbreaking, tragic, desolating.  We went out for a drive in the 5 o’clock sunlight, short walk in the park (Layton) and now watching GH!   

Earlier chat with Eliot for his birthday #6.  Video later of the family singing and Eliot on the drums.  Happy boy, happy family.  Beautiful.  Then I fixed the HelloFresh dish.  Chicken and potatoes and carrots.  

“Intelligence is courage, the courage to see what is in front of your nose.  When you are afraid, you can’t see.  All the stupidity in the world comes from fear.  Intelligence, courage, love, justice—they all go together.”  214

Agee, In the House of My Fear

Rich called last evening right around 6pm.  Long talk, maybe the longest in recent memory.  He said Uncle Eddie came from a poor family in Georgia.  Graduated from St Mary’s College and was an accountant.  If I ever knew any of that I had forgotten it.  Talked about much else, current topics.  

20 March Thursday 

Call from PT.  Email from Phil

Peg now has phone calls with staff at transplant center because they don't want her coming into the hospital.   So far she seems to be doing pretty well.  Getting a bit stronger.   She now goes to grocery store with me.  Otherwise we stay at  home.  This whole week I've been fighting off some "bug."  It comes and goes and I'm hoping it's gone for good today.   Am reading "Across the Rift" a novel in rhythmic prose.   Different but interesting.   So how are you guys faring?

Was just about to ask you all of these things.  Guessed that Peg's appointments could shift to online or calls.  Good, glad they can.  Things quiet here.  Everything but take-out or delivery shut down.  By luck Va said two weeks ago, let's use this coupon to get HelloFresh home meal deliveries again.  So we did and that has been helpful.  Shopping still seems ok, everybody calm and spaced out, oops, spaced away from one another.  Got a free roll of tp when I bought some cookies at the local bakery.   We now try to do all of our walking in parks, have a few nearby that are pretty nice.  So glad Peg goes to the store with you.  Does she feel resurrected?  Who does the cooking?  

I like everything here so much I'd like to stay through May but Va doesn't see the point of that.  Road Scholar did not yet cancel the cruise.  They announced that the cruise is now "postponed" until September.  Playing legal games I'm sure with the wording.  They say they will call each of us with discussion of options.  I want cash but assume they will wiggle out of that and give me coupons for any of their programs for the next two centuries.  

I'm reading an autobiography by Joel Agee and loving it.  Very well written.  He is just four years older, so in 1969 when we were getting married, he and his wife were living on a hilltop with other hippies, doing lots of drugs, on Ibiza.  Everything he talks about I can say, oh, right, that was in the air then, yep, and that was also "everywhere" then too.  In hindsight too, while at the time I might have thought of what he was doing with envy---cool hippies on Ibiza---I now know I'm glad I wasn't with those losers at all!  He has a good eye for reading people, details.  Must have written copious notebooks.  This book he wrote years later.  I rarely have read an autobiography but this gives me my story obliquely and his take on the times from a different yet similar angle.  

Will look up this rift book.  Rhythmic prose sounds exotic, especially for you.  Not noir?  

——————————

We walked in the park around 11 am.  Sunny but chilly wind.  Grateful for my heavy vest.  Divided the Star Cafe lunch into two and napped.  Va watching the Spanish Princess.  I’m planning my day off tomorrow.  Parks but stores too.  Need parchment paper for roasting veggies with these menus.  

Agee and Susan doing Macrobiotic diet on Ibiza in 1969.  Cutting edge.  I got obsessed with it five or so years later.  Agee says of himself that he is ambitious, wants to accomplish some one big thing—-before the money runs out—write a great book, attain spiritual enlightenment or found a commune.  “I am ambitious, and worse, afraid of being ordinary.”  Juliette sees through him.  

21 March Saturday

Waiting for Becky.  We decided to not have here come anymore.  Give her today’s payment.  Sunny.  What would I have done on this day off anyway under the current stay home and social distance plans?

COINCIDENCE ALERT  In reading early this morning, Agee and group heard their newcomers singing a song they had never heard before:  the Ode to Billy Joe.  Two hours or so later it plays on FIP while we are getting dressed.  

Visit with the kids planned for 11:30 today.  George messaged that we should call Delta to see about flights and consider coming home early.  Like the Florida peeps he hears from.  I’d rather stay longer even or especially if everything gets worse.  New Orleans now a new epicenter since Mardi Gras gathered everyone.  Have to call Anne later today.  Wondering what our walking will consist of today?   

Sunday  22 March  

Perfect walk in the park this morning.  Just warm enough.  Clouded over a bit by the time we came home.  Preparing one of the Hello Fresh menus now becomes a daily thing for me.  

Heusers are going home on Tuesday.  They say Sarasota is empty and shut down, partly to stave off any spring breakers.  They worry about getting hotels on the drive northward.  Sacrificing three weeks of their stay.  

Feel lucky, once more, to be here.  And lucky to be slightly out of the “east coast” mind-set crowd.  I may regret even writing private thoughts here but I can’t help wondering if we have a bit of a media hysteria about all of this.  I mean when you look at the chart of cases every day in the Guardian, yes NYC is spiking rapidly, it is a huge population after all.  But other states are not as dire looking.  Is there some sort of statistics hysteria, the numbers can look so terrible and yet 80% of cases recover and of that 80% what percent have pretty mild experiences?  We richochet between direst statistical panic and heartwarming/breaking personal stories.  A sort of bipolarity journalism has perfected, hasn’t it, over the past fifty years?  

Well, stay calm and wash your hands.  Good piece on NPR on the physician who first discovered hand-washing, early mid-18oos.  Hungarian.  Mocked and scorned for it, chlorine part of it.  Insane asylum lock-up and short death thereafter.  Should have his name.  Last night going to bed I was spinning notions about how to return, drive back, have Roy drive with us etc etc.  Monkey mind stuff.  This morning much calmer about staying with our arrangements, let the airline get us home or tell us to delay.  I will run staying by Eloy, just to go on record.  Should I try to get a smaller car for the rest of the month?  A smaller SUV instead of this heavy tank we’ve got now?  Not crucial but I might put in for it anyway.  See what Kyle tells me.  

Well, went to the store and decided to just keep this car.  It is fine.  Got a box of Kleenex along with the milk and yogurt.  

23 March Monday

Slept past the alarm by an hour!  Nice.  Sleepy Monday.  Set up a lunch tomorrow at B & E’s to have a book signing and presentation.  

Watched the start of The English Game and did some research.  Sure enough the English sport helped modernize the ancient versions and bring about professional sport, rules, and most importantly the marriage of big companies and the towns they supported through the soul-making spirit of the game.  As a headline a day or so ago said, Tom Brady now plays for the Tampa Buccaneers, Is Anyone Excited?  

Joel’s life on Ibiza continues to illumine the age.  He did a lot of acid and took great notes, and recalls it well, and re-imagines it well.  Good material for his literary excersises later on.  Seems to me I would have hated being with those wanderers on Ibiza at that time.  Couldn’t have done it even though it would have seemed so romantic and cool if I were just hearing about it from them or others.  What’s interesting too is how those guys were disgruntled but ambitious sons of comfort and stability, even if, in Joel’s case, it was East German rigidity.  His literary step-father key for him.  And his early cosmopolitanism—-Mexican childhood, speaking Spanish and then English and then German.  Quite a privileged or elite or special upbringing in and of itself.  Or at least a schooling in Outsiderness.  

note last night to Marga and others,  video clip of the kids at the window

Her reply:    

Such an energy!   In Madrid we also go out at 8 pm to applaude health eorkers, police, truck drivers, supermarket workers..

We have spent a 15 days " cuarentena" yesterday our President told us we are suppose to be confined at home for 3 weeks more. It is being very hard being at home and not being able to meet family, friends... Anyway we are all OK by now.

Are you still in New Mexico?

Are you Ok? I follow you in facebook and see you are having a nice time there. Enjoy and take care!! 

Love & kisses

Marga

reply to Marga 

Hi  Yes we are still in NM and everything is pretty much shut down but so far we are able to walk in the park every day.  

We are fine and everyone we know also.  Email from Va's cousin in Seattle that they know someone who has the virus, so they are

isolating themselves but doing fine.  Strange times.  Watching lots of tv movies and reading books.  Friends who go to Florida every

winter are all heading home early because they want to get home before hotels along the way get closed.  They drive.

We will stay with our original plan---fly home April 29.  See how everything goes.  We see the Paris kids every few days on the

screen.  

besos to you and all 

————-

While we were walking in the park Greg called.  About goûter time Dick Mertens called.  So after we finished I called Donald, caught him at the end of his meal, a quickie bolognese, with martini and wine.  Long talk with him.  Took down some names and will trace those later.  Watched the next two episodes of The English Game.  Next up is the Kate Blanchett comedy Kristen suggested.  

24 March Tuesday

Long and pleasant visit with Ed and Barb.  We took lunch from Flying Star.  Talked about everything on our minds and told stories and critiqued movis and tv shows.  Trying to remember all that they suggested.  Ed loves the Criterion Collection of old classics.  

Wanted to remember to past in Gigi’s memories all from asking about the word Piffke or however it was spelled.  But now I can’t find them—-does the plymouth.edu account erase messages?  

Mentioned to Eloy this morning that we might need or want to stay on into May and on the news later mention that the airlines might close down for a while.  That might be part of their ploy to get a big handout from the handouts coming.  Also reflects that under this quarantine no one is going nowhere.  So we might be here into and through May.  B&E are going to way until May or end of it to drive back.  I calculated for us it could be an 8-10 day driving trip—-2400 miles at 2-400 miles a day.  Could be possible and could be the spring drive northward we had talked about for years.

And staying here longer is what I wanted when we first arrived, so be careful what you ask for.  And be grateful for what you ask for.  

John Elkins called around 6pm.  He repeated the refrain we’ve heard from all our friends—-“stay inside, read books, watch movies—-mmm that’s pretty much been my life for a while now.” !  He mentioned again that ADHD has been with him all his life.  Easily bored, easily distracted. 

25 March Wednesday  

Va got lots of great messages in reply to her jacquielawson blanket emails.

Messages from others too.  Michael sent an astral hug from Vermont, says he’s chopping lots of wood.  Kents back home, canceled camping trip.  Heusers on the way home.  Karen sounds more worried.  But sounds like they might stay longer since they’re having their ac checked.  

Donald mentioned his friend Bill Aiken and driving around in Bill’s BMW convertible.  Also his dear friend of years, Suzanne.  Pinned down her names——married first to Christopher Beard, then to Mr Johnson, finally to Mr. Gowel.  Suzanne Beard Gowel.  Have to see if anything googles up.  

Movie suggestion from ? Kristen?  Suspicion of Mr Whicher

Back from a good park walk.  Not yet 71 and getting cloudy but feels warm and spotted first forsythia.  

Update from Nancy Adam in Seattle 

How are you and your family?  

Marc and I are fine.  We were in quarantine after contact with the first 2 cases on BI.  Luckily we didn't get sick.  Emmett and Brooke are OK.  We are especially concerned about Brooke since she is due 5/21/20.  In fact, Marc was on his way to Orcas to help Emmett with a building project when he received his quarantine notification so he had to turn around on Orcas and get back on the return ferry.

James now has stopped working in Seattle.  He is safer that way.  The buses are all free now so they are full of homeless people who ride all day and cough.  Jenine is trying to get a fire dept job to no avail.  She completed her EMT and her fire academy has been postponed.  She has been actively working as a volunteer first responder on BI.

Unfortunately, the dept lacks PPEs so she can't work anymore for now at least.

Please stay safe and healthy.

love,

Nancy

—————

The title alone of Agee’s book fits everything right now so well it is a bit spooky.  When I picked it up to pack in January I thought, do I really want to take a book with this title to NM?  At that time there was no news of the virus, no fear.  Google says not until Feb 29 did it seem clear and inevitable.

Anyway, the content of Agee’s story also fits, I’ve learned as I’ve read.  The suicide of his brother has not yet happened but he has talked about it a lot from the beginning.  His dreams and visions have been extraordinary and portentious and beautiful all along.  His acid trips as well.  Remembering how strange those times were for all of us helps now with the general theme of “this too will pass.”  And yet being reminded of the specifics, page by page, helps immensely too.  His reports on the meeting with Krishnamurti are superb.  That figure still holds such sway through his fame and writings and general reputation, not to say his name’s resonance, that it helps to see Agee’s reactions then to the faults and crevices of expectation and disappointment.  

Jt’s text earlier  hi Bob.  Just a touch of connection and concern from afar!  Suspended my practice for the time beng.  Difficult choice but alas it is a time for care & discipline.  All well here staying close to home & farm. building lumberjack muscles with firewood cutting . . .:) hope all well with us & loved ones. astral body hugs!  

Finished the second episode of Vienna Blood.  Had to watch second one over because we both snoozed at key moments.  

Skies grayed over but still warm outside.   Kids video of their concert delightful—-they did Marley’s “Everything’s going to be all right” and you could hear people in the streets or buildings doing the 8pm applause and noise.  David said someone was banging on pots and pans to keep time with their song.  

Virginia got the needle threaded and I tightened the loose button on the safari jacket.  

Agee tells Krishnamurti when he is in the audience with him that he hasn’t found the “choiceless awareness” that he speaks of.  “What are you waiting for?” K asks him.  And he sees and feels it at last.  Looks into the garden, sees a blackbird on the fountain.  The “whole fortress of self-defense capitulates.”  All the either -or’s that Agee has constructed for years to torment himself.  He is now 29.  So in spite of his anxiety and doubt, the interview yields insight beyond what he expected.  He turned to say forgotten thank you and felt a great pity for the old sage.  How alone he is, how even more alone his brother.  

This whole section of the book on the motif of “falling.”  The book published in 2004.  After 9/11.  Did he finalize the manuscript after that event and put the falling motif at the center of it to memorialize and honor that event?  

Found a New York History blog with mention of Ed’s family’s Catskill hotel, the Waldemere.  Had never fully taken in this about Ed’s background but now I’ve invented a backstory for him I hadn’t thought of before this:  that he too may have had a trust fund of some sort over the years, like Sarah and Don.  I mean he grew up in the town and the hotel was large and yes there must have been a cluster of uncles and aunts.  The hotel closed around 1965, in bankruptcy.  Here is a quote:  “Some larger resorts, such as the Waldemere in Livingston Manor and the Flagler in Fallsburg, had filed for bankruptcy protection. Abe Rosenthal, manager of the Waldemere, specifically blamed the hotel’s financial problems on the “new fireproof building costing $2 million” built after a fire three years before had killed three guests.”  So, given Aciman’s memoir, etc etc etc.  why not?  Could so well explain his lifelong career as writer, teacher.

26n March Thursday

Sleep morning.  Shortest walk ever in Academy Hills Park.  Wind up, ristras swaying on the patio.  Called Apple, on jazz wait, silence would have been better.  See if they can say anything about getting the watch and phone back together.  Something to do I suppose.  

Cécile’s birthday tomorrow.  

Agee now in Italy after the failed meeting July 4, 1970 in Paris.  His sense of wandering failure is familiar.  Did I have ambition?  I was in the phd program and not finishing.  For years.  Did I want to be a writer? maybe, but what did that mean?  a scholar? well, sort of.  A leading literary critic, like my profs?  Any way, the at loose ends, lostness and searching.  Still, amazing how he did wander with wife and child, while waiting for modest payments from small bequest.  That’s the source of my rush to find trust fund conspiracies behind every artist and writer who did it better than I did.  When did I first learn that trust funds even existed for some kids?  Maybe at Chicago.  Certainly in NH when I learned that however spare the Sheehans lived, David had a trust fund he would come in to at some age.  were they able to borrow against that, like a mortgage re-fi??  who knows.  

In usual times at home I “like” to be reading five or six books at a time.  Here, not at all?  What gives??  

27 March  Friday

Message from Ken.  They are in Springfield.  Home tonight.  Marianne recommended Hidden crime series.  Remembered Egon Schiele’s show we saw in Barcelona? but couldn’t recall his name.  Faces in Vienna Blood perfect.  Would I enjoy reading the novels?  Author specializes as a psychologist in obsessive compulsive disorder.  Freudian.  Might have something to say about it all.  British.

Today we swap cars so it is once again cold and rainy.  Every time we did this the weather like this.  Though today is so far windier rather than rainy.  

Agee’s acid trip with the other members of the forming commune most about fear than any of the others.  Seven men, four Germans, two Danes filming for tv and Agee.  Krishnamurti.  In Saanen.  Far from Zug, south, across the border and lake from Montreux.  He asked Krisnamurti a question about giving shelter to people living under the bridge and became a hero for the audience, or some of them.  

Ed.  Most likely the hotel went bankrupt.  All the uncles and cousins blamed each other for the rest of time.  If anyone got money, etc etc etc.  

Saturday morning  28 March  

Va chatting with Dave now.  noon.  Emma sick today, going to the doctor on Monday if she is still so.  RP doing better, most likely has covid but not tested.  Colder here today so we seem to be snowdaying it.  So far.  

Agee allows himself some long circumlocutiousness, just finished the sections about the dream of the commune in southern France.  He’s in love with Shiva but says it in most roundabout ways possible.  Wife and daughter have left and gone home.  “For there in your man’s body, in his nipples and buttocks, and hips and arms, stood the ghost of a woman, a young woman, . . . .  Fifteen years earlier, when you were a boy, there had been, for a boy, no grimmer or more awful fate than to find himself forced to admit—to confess!—any erotic impulse resembling what girls were presumed to feel in their bodies.”   (320)  The remainder of the passage continues with dialogue with the enemy.  Slithering.  “you could feel the Enemy slithering under your skin, a voiceless snicker.”   Then he expands the reference (away from the garden of eden?) to the C—-Counterpoint—It was you, wasn’t it?  It was.”   So if we are to fault Agee in parts of the book it is for obfuscating with abstract, windy wordiness when he might have been more direct, more plain.  His dreaminess, his yearings, his idealisms, his

dreams and visions, his acid trips.  He allows them to expand and interweave, yes, and at the cost of some clarity.  But then he’s not raised in the anglo-american mode and he knows a few languages and wide experiences of this sort, so he’s got the continental imagination.  

Whole chapter on Shiva.  “You didn’t want to admit your jealousy, your envy, your humiliation.”  He merges this with crucifixion imagery, the nails in the bucket.  And with tripping or just emotional confusion.  He writes it in a way that is both “What man doesn’t have an indwelling woman, and a woman an indwelling man?”  He seems to see himself as Liane, the woman he was tempted by and the woman Shiva “won” and enjoyed.  And then comes the strange guilt trip involving his use of the N word, “nigger.”  He seems to have used it against Shiva.  Or not directly but somehow so that “Shiva was meant to hear it, not so that he would be hurt by it—-he was only amused, and after the third or fourth repetition—bored, but so that you would know yourself to be confirmed, in the Law by which you were being tried, Of what?  Of every crime under the sun, but to begin with of being the kind of white man who envies black men and denies it by calling them ‘niggers’.”  (322)    

29 March  Sunday

Text saying Emma feeling her old self, fever broke overnight.  Big relief.

Nice email from Pedro.  

¿Cómo estáis? ¿de viaje o en casa? 

Nosotros estamos confinados en nuestras casas por el Coronavirus, que parece especialmente virulento en Madrid.

Estamos todos bien. La abuela Marga en su casa llena de actividades tanto presenciales de orden, limpieza, lectura, cocina y música.

Margarita con sus hijos y con Rafa metidos también en casa como Fátima y yo, con sus hijos. Todos Tele trabajando bien. Los niños con clases on-line y tareas del los Colegios, los mayores con múltiples reuniones por videoconferencia y elaborando informes en mi caso.

Estamos todos sanos y muy activos. Yo en estos días me estoy dando cuenta del esfuerzo y el trabajo espectacular durante años y años de nuestra madre Marga. Cuando Margarita y yo éramos pequeños  y ella, con su trabajo en la Universidad y además en el mismo día: hijos, colegios, actividades extraescolares, compra, médicos, recados, cocina, limpieza, ayudar con tareas... Una generación de Superwomen.

Pues nuestro día a día es similar ahora con esta situación, pero ahora es más fácil con la tecnología y porque somos dos mayores en casa todo el día. Ni comparación. Pero yo acabo agotado todos los días. 

Espero que David y Cecile estén bien y vosotros también. sigo con preocupación las noticias de USA por el crecimiento rápido de estos primeros días. Os recomiendo que toméis todas las precauciones que veáis lógicas desde ahora mismo. Sin esperar. Todo detalle de prevención ayuda por pequeño que sea. Cuando aquí la gente se queja de nuestro Presidente Sánchez (con razón, by the way) pienso en la suerte que tenemos de no tener a un Trump dirigiendo el país. Así que hacedme caso y no esperéis a las medidas que dicte un ignorante. Id tomándolas vosotros por vuestra cuenta. 

Me gustó mucho el último GiftCard con esas acuarelas tal expresivas y elegantes.

Hugs and kisses

Pedro and Family

—————

Joel is now in Surrey in meditation with Chao Kuhn Keng.  “A powerful emotion wells up in me.  It is love.  I love this grave, humorous monk.  He is my teacher.”  (343)  

And yet his torment goes on a while longer.  

Great walk in the park this noon.  Talking about what to do, when to go back.  No clear sense.  Except money.  Dr Farucci’s headline today is 100 to 200k people could die, all will get worse.  Over how long a time period not clear.  I’m wanting to stay put here a month or two longer until the dust clears.  Willow not so willing on that.  Watching episode two now of the Mysteries in Paris.  Not nearly as good as Vienna Blood, but passable.  

April 1   

Scheduled facetime with K&C in a few minutes.  We seem to have decided this morning during the shower to stay through May, until June 3 I’m saying, which was our return date from Paris on the May trip plan.  Feels just right in the current situation as we can see it and not see it.  Between media headlines and personal comments from friends.  Donald just said in an email he expects it all to go into June.  He’s in a big city.  Albuquerque is not as big and very spread out and spacious and I am really liking that, loved it from the start.  Not that it all won’t get worse everywhere and who can tell or know.  But I feel much more relieved and calm now.  We sent one box back yesterday.  With the horizon moved ahead until June we can relax and segue into the lighter clothing.  Maybe by Va’s birthday some restaurants can re-open?  Fond hopes tease us forward as well as great hopes and fears.  

Agee:  he’s lost in London by himself, thinks he is God, has lost his VW van and wanders every day following the signs.  Finally late into the 300 pages he got around to saying that his mother is Jewish so he is Jewish but what that means he has no idea.  But he does know the tale of the Wandering Jew and that fits him perfectly.  He is still in the wandering hell of his breakdown and yet the telling of the tale now becomes somehow more comfortably relaxed and piecemeal.  He now has only scattered images and memories to put together under one heading after another.  Remarkably like Ed’s new book.  And, on the Jewishness not Jewish and whatever, it occurred to me that Agee’s life could be read as a counter-mirror to Lax’s.  

A stretch but why not?  His wanderings are pretty amazing—-that he survived them, number one.  And then lived to write a pretty good book about them.   As opposite a piece of writing as Lax’s poetry.  

Straining to make connections.  April fool mea-onderings.   

Eloy says sure we can work out a covid discount for the month of May.  So we are staying.  Shuttle Melissa phoned to change the reservation before I texted Eloy, another sign that it would work out.   NM may or may not be the safe zone I thought it was, however, according to comments by the governor today.  Officials all over the country saying what their astrologers suggest they say.  We may die here, we may not.  

Enjoyed the end of the Paris Louvre Mysteries movie.  

“unprecedented situation”  a popular phrase these days.  

Chat in the park today with the sprinter.  Sure enough he was an Olympian for the Trinidad team.  Reminded me that we heard about this team from a taxi driver two years ago on one of our trips to be with Rick.  This fellow is now 34 and doing real estate—-house flipping.  New daughter, two, named Oakland, if I heard his wife correctly.  She is from upstate NY near Binghamton.  Jarrin Soloman.  Number of article show up in a google.  Lived most of his life here, wants now to move to Phoenix, for better schools and less crime,  His dad moved there recently if I recall correctly.  

Now to see if Delta will change the flight reservation with no trouble.  Good piece from the new yorker based on a tweet by Rosanne Cash that during the plague year in London Shakespeare wrote King Lear.  

Agee’s torment involves primarily it seems the idea or threat of eternal recurrence.  Have to say, that is something I’ve never latched onto as something to understand let alone worry about to the extent of feeling already or potentially destroyed by it.  

“Something horribly malignant inside of me.”  He feels that,  He also feels he is God.  That Eternal Recurrence torments him.  Madness.  Agee.  

Changed the Delta tickets to June 3 and we will go through Minneapolis and not Atlanta.  Gamble.  Like everything these days.  

Fun to visit with C&K on facetime.  They drove with their food so as to not need any restaurants.  Drank no fluids in the morning so as to not need a rest stop.  Stayed one night with a friend who unwittingly had gone out the day before and loaded up on nice foods to serve them.  She offered them her whole house to stay in while she could go down the road to another one.  I emailed to find out what peanut butter and jelly they preferred.  

Now we’re thinking when the HelloFresh box arrives we should leave it outside for twenty-four hours!  ?  And/or get some more disinfectant wipes.  

April 2 Thursday

All the big issues faced and resolved yesterday!  Air tix changed, date set ahead for return, new calm descends, arises.  Va writing a long review of Ed’s book to Ed and canceling the picnic on our porch for this Saturday.  But what if they say there’s no problem, we’re coming any way?  That would be fine too.  Learning curves for all of us on social distancing and handling pandemic anxiety.  Also got the bill for the rent for May.  And Enterprise called this morning to firm up plans on the car extension.  

——

Dear Barb and Ed, 

Should we cancel picnic planned for Sat?

PROBABLY WOULD BE SAFER. 

I am disappointed though, not to be able to tell Ed in person how much I enjoyed his book.  I was glad to have  a nimble enough mind to   appreciate his jumping from genre to genre. My favorite of the one line poems was the description of a synagogue: "BEREFT".  I loved how he brought in the various  cultural views of things. the Jewish, Christian, Native American Tao, etc.  I Especially loved all the bits of humor like the guy being critized for not staying kosher -how does he justify eating shrimp-"I'm reform".  Do  the Jews believe in heaven?  the two nudists in the Garden of Eden -A TALKING SNAKE

 "Give me a break." 

Do Jews believe in heaven?"If heaven is ham, then the Jews don't believe in it."  I was very drawn to the beginnings of stories in prose and wanted them to go on.  I would be very happy to have Ed's retelling of his family's history. Maybe that would be too hard to do .  MAYBE too painful??,but there would have to be some good humor too, right? You see how I could go on and on... 

We are now planning to stay here through June 3rd. We will see how things are going.  Right now we like where we are; our little house; walking in the local park,etc.  My birthday is May 18th.  Maybe we could set up a joint video chat to celebrate somehow. 

love, 

voo

—————

What a fine day it was.  Much warmer.  Gusty winds in the afternoon but we got a good walk in the park first.  Lunch, nap, then foray into Walmart, followed by reading on the terrace rest of the beautiful afternoon.  

Agee goes on and on.  And yet I remain intrigued and delighted and interested and want to know what happens and how it will happen.  He has subtly suggested that recovery does happen and as he brings us more and more into his present life of writing at his desk in Brooklyn, thirty years after the story, we feel assured and even more interested.  Should the book have been cut, edited more severely, shortened, re-shaped?  There are times we wonder this—-any long work has to convince us these are temporary lapses of judgment and taste on our part and not on the part of the writer or of his book.  

At lunch today I saw an alternative to the handling of this unprecedented situation.  Instead of the hospital-medical power machine being “in charge”

of it, what if the hospice industry or movement or approach were equally as powerful and monied and influential?  Or even more powerful than the medical-hospital-pharma establishments.  What would the situation look like from that way of facing, handling, caring for everyone?  Have to double-check on the headline that Holland has decided to have everyone get sick?  A hospice-controlled handling would not focus on the daily numbers game, either at all, or nearly as much.  Something of a baseball statistics mindset that produces these headlines every day and enjoys it.  Statistics are power to certain kinds of thinkers.  But what would the hospicers use instead, what would their press releases and stores be like?  Individual stories?  Or compassionate summations of encouragement and comfort?  

Friday April 3  

Hi, Bob!

I hope you and Virginia are doing well during this unbelievable time. Carole told me that you are staying put in New Mexico until June. Why not? Who would choose to travel at this point? I am sure your place is lovely and very comfortable.

I thought I would give you a heads up, in case you were not aware. To stretch out the two months of episodes that had been taped, General Hospital is going to insert some favorite past episodes into the mix. For example, today will be an older episode, and then on Monday we will see our regular show. It sounded like it might be a Friday thing. Well, that is better than running out of new episodes.

I hope David and family are okay in Paris. Those children are so cute. I assume they are pretty much sequestered, too.

Stay well!

Natalie

————

Various people have sent poems and essays about how to be quiet and solitary and so forth.  

435 A tall pale blond man in the London prison talks to Joel.  “Everything is love.”  

In those days psychiatrists believed that schizophrenics had schizogenic mothers.  Memories of the institute on the Midway, the theories of Dr ____.  Name was on the tip of my tongue, will return later this evening.

We walked in the park, took photos.  Got a video of Jarrin running but he was winding down, not doing top speed.  Chat with a woman who has loved her Prius for ten years.  

We watched The Inn at Little Washington.  Chef was a drama major at CU.  Lover and partner broke up about twelve years ago after thirty years.  So we’ve watched a cooking show.  Place Vendome in the Paris Mysteries also about a chef and his staff.  Generals, tyrants, perfectionists, control freaks.

Phil says

Yes, I saw the Burns' film.  The place has been famous here in DC for years.  One thing Burns skipped over is that it was started by TWO gay guys and about six or 10 years ago they had a big argument and one of the guys left.  I have no idea where he went or what he did at the Inn.  Maybe just handled the business end of things.

I have never eaten there, but a friend had his son's wedding dinner there.   It cost a lot.   Was it worth it?  Psychologically yes.   My friend and his German wife could brag about it.   Is the food really worth the expense.  I dunno.   Like you, I don't know that I would be able to appreciate the quality or lack thereof.   I am not a gourmet.  Peg says all the dishes they serve are tiny.  

P

———

The prison has other angels and devils.  Maybe the barrister is neither, maybe a vampire.  Stefan has taken Thorazine.  I was given that twice, in my two short hospitalizations.  And maybe I took it in the time between both instances of having been committed.  I took another pill too.  Forget the name.  While I visited the shrink in Elkins Park who signaled the end of each session by emptying his ash tray into a tissue.  The ash tray was one of those big heavy green things with a bronze inlay cup.  

“I know it is impossible to believe this, but I am helpless against the omnipotence of thought.”  He sees a headline “A Way is Opening” and it helps him feel better, being glad, being free.  All day the omen resonates.

I know these feelings.  Every day now I see headlines about now which throw me into a vague panic, or tempt with fear, or promise calm.  

4 April  Saturday

Finished Agee this morning.  Had to finish.  Last twenty or so pages just gripping and satisfying.  Then the calm sweet Coda.  What a book!  What an achievement.  Equal to his father’s?  Not impossible.  Although it doesn’t seem to have caught the attention of the era in quite the same way?  2004 a hard year to do so, date of publication.  Only three years after the 9-11 attack.  

Va had a note from Bobbi in NYC today.  Streets empty.  Only sound you hear is ambulance sirens.  

long piece from Phil on sloppiness and the Age——

The article I sent around yesterday attributed the start of the current pandemic to some likely sloppiness of workers at a Chinese research lab about two blocks away from the "wt market" in Wuhan that was originally thought to be the source.  Scary that some small inattention to detail is now threatening the entire world, but that's not all the dangerous sloppiness that has come to my attention recently.

Because of her lung transplant, Peg has to endure bronchoscopies every few weeks.  Ironically, her niece, who runs a medical research company in Minnesota, just published a paper on the maintenance of bronchioscopes in a number of hospitals. The results are  dismaying.   In 65 % of the hospitals,  staff failed to follow their own procedures, thus leaving dangerous viruses, etc. on the equipment to infect future patients.  In three hospitals nearly all steps were performed incorrectly or skipped entirely.  Such sloppiness and disregard  for proper procedures is especially dangerous to patients such as Peg, who have their immune systems suppressed.  For patients like her, such widespread inattention to detail could be lethal. 

However, it ain't just hospitals and research labs that seem to be afflicted with dangerous sloppiness.  Just last week the US inspector general issued a report on the FBI and Justice Department that found widespread failure to follow proper procedures when applying for permission of a FISA court to monitor someone.  Out of 29 cases examined, 23 were full of errors, sometimes as many as 50 errors.  Moreover, the backup process, known as starting a Woods File, wasn't done at all in three cases.   The IG noted that Trump thought he was the victim of a FBI "witch hunt"  but the truth was that the errors were all over the map, not just directed at him or Republicans. 

So it seems dangerous incompetence is dismayingly widespread these days, and I couldn't help connecting these results to a Doonsbury cartoon currently running in the Wash Post.  A math professor at "Walden University" is being sued by a student because the student didn't get an A in his course despite being pretty much an idiot.   Doonsbury makes it all seem funny, but seeing how researchers, physicians, nurses, and lawyers are doing such poor jobs these days takes the laughter out of the joke.

Maybe it's always been this way - lotsa sloppiness everywhere - and we just have the methods to catch the mistakes nowadays.  To some degree I think that's true, but only to some degree.  For one reason or another, I think standards in education have been dangerously lowered in recent years. For example:  On his blog, Robbie recently wrote about a professor he had back in college who he still admires.  The prof made the subject matter interesting and important.  Robbie responded by writing papers that the prof praised for their insights and ideas.  Nevertheless, nearly all Robbie's papers got a grade of F.  Why?   Spelling errors.  The minute I read that, I had to laugh because I remember that era only too well.  Big ideas were fine but students had to get the details right, too.   Maybe that ceased a while ago.  

P

———-

Sunday April 5  

Poaching pink salmon fillets in the last of the butter.  Want to copy the ultimate paragraph from Agee’s Counterpart about the perfect end of his search.  Now missing the book, sure sign of a great book just finished.  Bereft of it, of all of its craziness and sublimity.  What a great book.  

“There is only one self and it does not know itself as “I.” How could it? “I” is an other.  And because the one self doesn’t know itself, it does not, for itself, exist.  So the self of all selves is no-self.”  471 

Note from Rupert—-

Hi,

How are you two keeping? Ok I hope.

 

I am sitting in bed, late, reasding and surfing the net

 

The girls have been clearing out old toys, well mostly moving it to the attic, but some things are waiting to go to the charity shop, though of course they are all shut.

 

I have been painting: a small series of works to illustrate my fiend Mike’s poems, and some Italian architecture and landscapes. Not sure they are working, but an interesting experiment.

 

Do you kow this blog? atelierlog.blogspot  

 

I thought of you beuase of the Richter photos.

 

Not able to focus on reading or writing much at the moment, but been sitting in the garden in sunshin. We’re due 20 degrees today which would be good.

 

We’ve been teahcing online, though just started 2 week easter vacation. Then lots of tutorials and online submissions for assignments [which we already did], so marking ahoy.

 

Take care

Rupert

———————-

Va deep into Lilly Langtry, thanks to George’s suggestion earlier today.  

Visit with the kids.  They were preparing another song for a teacher.  Cécile is doing a little work still, administrative.  

April 6 Monday 

Started into Westlake novel, Richard Stark, Man With the Getaway Face.  Such a great title.  His writing feels now, again, like a diamond chisel compared to Agee.  Great contrast.  

Return to the busy life.  Swapped cars at Enterprise.  Nissan Rogue much better.  Just shopped at Smiths.  Green bandana over my nose and mouth.  Lots of others in masks and scarves.  Not too crowded.  No tp but lots of huggies.  One taste of the busy life and you want more more.  

Fun video from the kids again.  Song by Prince.  They enjoyed making faces as they played.  

Weds April 8  

email from March 30 

Dear Nicholas  

Pondering all these days I remembered a

burning question:  would you be permitted to install laundry machines and dryer in your flat???  

All quiet here.  Pondering whether to go home as planned at the end of April or to stay through May.  Loving the sun and mountain.  

stay well and sane!  

Dear Bob,

I trust you are both well. In belated answer to your important question: no, somethings are upheld as sacred. We would rather die than surrender our communal washing machines and all the opportunities for passive aggression that generate.

All well here - I am channeling both my inner hermit and my inner banker (at work) - back to financial scenario planning and cash flow management. Nothing like a good crisis!

Love and best wishes, Nicholas

———

PT called last night.  She and Ray just got tested.  They both had pink eye about a week ago.  Someone told them it was a symptom so they got tested.  Supposed to get the result this Friday.  Willow was a wreck all night worrying about her.  We just phoned.  PT laughed and said she is feeling fine and she should not have told us until they got the results of the test.  

Hmm, yes.   Just checked with her on text——Ray had pink eye back on March 4.  So has he just gotten it a second time?  Think so but not going to ask any more.  

On a happier note, had a wonderful call to ExpressScripts to renew the Lamictal prescription.  

Willow didn’t shower today and says we are taking a day off.  Will that mean no walking at all??  

Found Jerry Bourgeois on LinkedIn.  English major 82-86.  Account manager now at RoundTower Technologies in Boston.  “RoundTower Wins AT&T Cybersecurity Growth Partner of the Year!” 

Westlake/Stark demonstrates detective & noir as pure Classicism.  Agee felt like perfect Romanticism.  House and Fear and Riders in the Chariot both sui generis.  Unique creations like many others and yet wholly themselves, unliked any others.  

“He’d spent so much of his life jungled up he didn’t know how to make coffee any other way but in an old beat-up pot.”  86

jungled up   I’m betting Google won’t yield much on this search  Wrong.  

Word Reference says——“To jungle-up is to camp out for the evening in the company of other like companions of the road.”  also Jungle-up. Definition: to camp outside. Example: “Tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water.” thoughtco.com  Gets used in Steinbeck”s Mice and Men.  

Maybe Westlake read a lot of Steinbeck as a kid.  

Nice note from Dennis—

Are you well and staying safe? I seem to be making masks for someone every day. Took me four tries to figure it out. Saw He Who gets Slapped last night. Very good silent movie with some rather startling visuals.

Reading Cousin Bette. Never read Balzac before. Read a biography of Humphrey Bogart which was good for about the first 3/4s. Then, I later found out, the author died and another person finished it. The change in tone became evident. Read about Adrian, Hollywood costume designer in the 1930s and 1940s and Cedric Gibbons, set designer during the 30s and 40s and 50s. Reading a birgraphical account of Antoinne de Sainte-Exupery during the writing of The Little Prince.

And it's sunny out.

Everyone's fine. Still no testing unless you can get to Pittsburgh. The town bus is still running. Nothing is open to get to except Walmart. Walmart is letting a limited number of people in the store at a time. People were dumping their kids at Walmart and coming back much later to pick them up. Oh, these white trash mammas!

Flowers on the hillside out my window.

Stay well.

Hugs.

Willow asleep in the chair out on the patio.  Hope she doesn’t wrench her back, but she needs to sleep.  

PT texted around noon right after I finished a short walk in the park that her results were negative!  Ray wasn’t tested.

to Phil

Hi  You watching the new pbs series on WWII??  Va is glued to it, I'm not as taken.

Road Scholar called about our May cruise.  Practiced wording trying to get us to have them hold the money in escrow toward future trips, or take vouchers and make contributions to them as a non-profit.  I had to ask if Refund was possible and they said yes if you wish.  Took that option, including the payment on their travel protection plan.  

Va's sister called last night, said she got tested for the virus, would know in five days.  Sleepless night of worry for Va.  Crushed by the news.  Today around noon her sister texted (with emoji happy faces) that her test was negative.  

Bernie bows to the dem powers and/or realities.  Just hope the election will take place.  

Relieved to be getting the Road Scholar refund!!!  

Here’s a review in Hollywood Reporter by Robyn Bahr of World on Fire.  Agree.  

“The writing leans heavily on shocking brutality and drippy melodrama to drive the action, trying to squeeze tears out of us with crazed Nazis and noble suffering. When Harry asks his mother why she won't visit his love child, she cries, "Because it would break my heart, you foolish boy!" His face crumples: "When did you grow a heart?!" Later, she commends him for this insult. "It was witty, at least," she admits. If dialogue were actually effective, would it need to compliment itself?

The world wars are trending content right now. With the rise of fascism and strongman leaders across the globe, entertainment like the Oscar-winning 1917 and HBO's The Plot Against America exist not just to shed light on the past, but to reflect current political uncertainties. World on Fire is desperate to connect the then and the now, portraying every woman as a strident protofeminist and endowing every character with the wisdom of a 21st century therapist who has specialized training in trauma and oppression. (Sorry, I just don't buy that this many people in the 1940s were sensitive to the pain of refugees, veterans with PTSD or persecuted queer folk.) Worst of all, World on Fire doesn't teach me anything about the Second World War that hasn't been explored countless times in other formats.”

———-

9 April Thursday 

Much better night’s sleep.  New persons, both of us.  Relief to have that cash refund from Road Scholar.  Glad PT not infected, still wish she had more thoughtfully waited until she had gotten the results.  Maybe these days no one is thinking clearly.  

10 April Friday

Nelle will prove to be Nina’s daughter!  Google spoiled it and Natalie guessed it.  

Dave and Cécile are stressing about money since her job ended.  He is consulting with E&e’s agents to see if they will do a George Ezra song. 

1917 lived up to its oscars.  Cinematography but the story itself had to be worth all of that and it was.  Mendes has quite the career.  

Good Friday.  Gulp!  world on the rack.  We watched a Truffaut movie last night.  Enjoyed it, great pulp.  Va didn’t stay with it, thought it was terrible.  

Hi Ed   Thanks at last for having urged me onto Criterion.  We watched an old

Truffaut film last night from 1969.  Educational for me in the sense that I now know and acknowledge I had no clue what "pulp fiction" was and was about back then, so I had no eye for what the movie makers were doing with it.  Oh, when I was a young teen I saw "those" novels on the rack in Brown's store when we would linger there on the way home from school, but I never got hold of one, alas, to actually read them.  We watched Mississippi Mermaid.  Va gave up half way through and though it was ridiculous.  I noticed the red trim on the cabin doorway etc etc etc and enjoyed it thoroughly.  

We also saw 1917 and that blew us away.  As one critic said, Kubrick is dying again of envy. 

We got some face masks.  Hope you are well. 

—————-

According to Rune Story all the pandemic estimates have been grossly wrong by a magnitude of eight.  Let’s see if others agree with this.  Good news.  And the graphs they use point out that in 2017 during that flu epidemic there was not this mania.  Why and why not?  

Idlia cleaned while we were out on the walk.  Stopped at Walmart and things seemed calmer.  Bought TP! and coffee and olive oil.  Chipotle take-out here, forgot to get chips.  Now watching the Italian series.  Lenù has her summer on the island and turns fifteen.  

Saturday  April 11  

Last night’s show left a real hangover in dreamworld.  We each said something about it in the middle of the night on a bathroom run and then again this morning.  Somewhere in my dreams feelings of shame, guilt, confusion related to school, hometown groupings, rivalries, religion too I guess.  

Lisa dropped off two masks she had made while we were eating breakfast.   Weren’t fast enough to invite them in to the yard where we could have at least said hello from “safe” distance.  

Park walk followed by shrimp meal and then Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Anne pinged everyone with news of Todd’s birthday today.  Earlier Barbara phoned to ask which online approach would be good for her to brush up on her Spanish.  

At what stage of enclosure are we that I went ahead with orders for hot weather clothes—-shoes, pants and shirt???  consumer anxiety, covid anxiety.  

Kids’ music video fun today.  Road Scholar refunds rolling in to place.  Sent d&c some money yesterday.

Oh—-the big news is Zeitgeist Cusp In-tune-ment!:   was it Wednesday night I said let’s watch one of the Criterion movies and chose Truffaut’s “Mississippi Mermaid” with Belmondo and Deneuve!!  Friday we get our big box of forwarded mail.  In there is the March 30 New Yorker.  Open and there is a full page photo of Deneuve in her black-feathered coat from Mississippi Mermaid and a cut-line highlighting the newly available Criterion Channel with such great classics as this one!!  Wowsa, wowsa, wowsa.  

Finished the Parker novel.  Man With the Getaway Face.  Boffo Westlake.  

April 12  Easter Sunday

Lisa and Robert called to say they will stop by soon, 10 am.  Started reading Middlemarch at last.  Beautiful morning, little bit chilly.   Va now watching live stream from the Presbytery of Santa Fe on YouTube.  

Monday April 13 

Rainy and cold.  Yikes.  We stayed home yesterday to be lazy and celebratory and now we’re home today for weather.  Just like characters in 19th C novels.  Social day yesterday though.  Phone calls and a real live-person visit with Lisa and Robert.  They called and asked to stop by after they dropped her mother at the cemetery (flowers?).  They walked in wearing masks, the kind Robert has lots of for woodworking.  We told them to take them off.  Nice chat about everything.  They showed slides of Lisa’s ranch up by Cuba, 40 acres Rick gave to the three children.  There is a ruined log cabin from probably 1900 or so and a rusted car from that period.  Land is nicer looking than I had thought, more scrubby pines and some gently rolling hills or ridges.  

We managed how to get the iphone images up onto the tv screen so we can see the daily concert from the kids up there.  Elena Ferrante continues to evoke our inner Neapolitans.  Grateful not to be them for real, but it remains the best thing on tv for now.  Baptiste first episode didn’t grab us.  

Eloy said last night in a text that someone wants to rent the house June 17-20.  I said we would be gone by then.  Glad someone wants to travel then.  Headlines continue to be pretty bleak about everything.  

“the eager interest of a fresh young nature to which every variety in experience is an epoch.”  23  Eliot

At last, a year or so later, I am of a mind and mood to enjoy Middlemarch.  

This situation seems a perfect match.  Or so I can now imagine.  Oh and it is now snowing lightly outside.  More heavily now.  !  

“The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequen: and with such a nature, struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency.”  25  hear! hear!  

“making the impossible possible again.”  Jeffrey J. Kripal on page 2 of his Secret Body.  Just opened it and as excited as Dorothea at the prospect of what lies ahead.  These books all wind together.  House of My Fear, Getaway Face, Secret Body, Middlemarch.  And Nietzsche . . . . “Do I have to add that all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text?” 3

Human as Two.  Doubleness.  This consciousness is us and is not us.

Wow.  Pings perfectly with Agee.  

Donald send this for Easter message and I didn’t catch it as being by Hopkins:  “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

Extra Credit Request

Dear Professor Burgo

Mary told me last night I got the quiz wrong and failed it.  

Could I do an extra-credit mini-paper to keep my grade up?  

Please, sir, I cannot let my GPA slip or I will lose my scholarship.  

You have been most understanding in the past and I hope in

regards to this Easter verse you will permit me to write an essay

on why your elided citation of Hopkins' lines was the most

touching and brilliant message to have been sent across the internet

this Easter Sunday.   

your desperate and devoted student,

Stubbs Bettleheimer-Kowalski 

————

15 April Wednesday  

I have been most of all a wanderer.  Riding my bike all around Johnson Heights afternoon after afternoon.  Wandering around the monuments of Washington DC in the summers.  Wandering around Madrid week after week in between English tutoring appointments.  Wandering around New Hampshire for years.  Waiting and wandering.  

How to explain Pied Beauty to Dick?   His complaints:  

The problem is I see complexity in the first examples, but not change. I don't see time. I see a series of snapshots. THEN ,, what the heck does "All things original, spare, strange" mean? Nothing in the first six line seems any of these.

  I still don't get it.

Dick

————

Rather than say “complexity” could we say “imperfections and variations?”

And by putting in the line that breaks from the octave to the sestet, (All things . . .”) he has the poem itself enact variation and imperfection, the poem itself is pied, dappples itself with this disruptive wording.  

Darwin must be behind the poem.  A reply to Darwin about evolution and surprising variations and eruptions in natural development. 

I would say “complexity” is the erroneous abstract term for the dappledness celebrated in the octave snapshots.  Brinded cows, dappled sunshine, no two clouds are the same, no two snowflakes.  Not complexity but variations, variations on the norms, the themes, the standard parameters.  Imperfections.

original, spare, strange—-the freaks Nature shows forth from time to time—two-headed cows, babies with remnants of a tale, albino piglets, people with big splotches of red on their faces or necks or bodies.  Abnormalities, excesses, the ashes and red coals of a fire which change slowly as we watch them fall from burning crisp into gray ash, fields which can be “wild” and ploughed, lined, folded, ordered into farrows ripe or fallow.  

———

so I am over-replying here but later today I will send this off to Dick and see if he is satisfied in any way.  Probably not,  Meanwhile from online—people in Europe are burning down 5G towers because a doctor in Holland said the cell towers are responsible for the spread of the coronavirus!  

——-

After Dorothea announces her desire to marry Causobon, others say she should wait until she is of age to make such a decision.  Not unlike my hindsight in years later when I said to myself “people should not allow teenagers to go into holy orders or the religious life or marriage until they are of age—-old enough to see more clearly when their youthful enthusiasms have led them to.”  

West Side Story this afternoon after a decent walk in the park.  I love the music but am not as charmed by the stagey story episodes.  The dancing is great.  Next time someone makes it they could shorten the script by half.  South Pacific much more enjoyable, a comedy I suppose.  Watched Episode 1 of Fawlty Towers and that gave us good laughs.  Also a stand up woman from Winnepeg that Jann Chisholm sent to us.  

Read one piece on air travel and got me all worried about our return plans.  Still six weeks away.  But news in general not that great.  

Reading Kripal is such a relief and so helpful.  “These religious phenomena are not about mechanisms.  They are about meaning.”  And so, all the news we have of this pandemic are tickings about the mechanisms and they drain us precisely because they overwhelm us with the mechanics of it all and leave no room for us to contemplate the meanings.  Where are the blog sites about the inner religious meanings of living under pandemic?  

“we can know, intuit, this Stranger before us.  We are the Stranger, the Human as Two.”  

gnomon  

16 April Thursday

Finished Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  Neither of us remember the part about the wedding and the marriage to the other woman so perhaps years ago we saw cut versions.  Read how the whole film has been restored, twice, in the last twenty years.  Now beautiful color as originally intended.  Quintessentially 1962 French.  Sadder and more moving, really, than west side story, which has all the street violence of New York in its music.  Brilliant in its way, Bernstein, but still New York.  

Wholly enthralled by Kripal’s book.  How long have I waited to read this.  His story parallels mine quite a bit in large sweeps, he is twenty years junior.  I did read his book on Impossible.  But I want to read the earlier, personal books.  This Secret Body will give me the hindsight overview.  Kripal headed into puberty and discovered anorexia without knowing it.  Lives of the saints.  Dorothea chose Causobon, hoping for a global expansiveness of both her spiritual longing and her desire to do good.  I had lots of prayer and praying but overeating rather than anorexia.  Secret overeating in addition to eating all the baked goods Mimi could turn out.  Food is love.  Sex was something wholly mysterious but very distant, except for what I gleaned from watching my older brother’s life.  And other experiences, like Jimmy Barrett showing us masturbation after mass one Sunday.  The erotic and the religious intertwined.  And kissing the bottle parties.  

Eliot does use the word “stupid” and “stupidity” a lot in the first seventy-five pages.  Three or four times.  Her brilliance and intelligence flashing.  She gives Dorothea a beautiful voice: “the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp.”  75  A line that Kripal could use.  

17 April  Friday  

Schwartz’s coming on Sunday for picnic on our patio.  we’re going to try earlier lunch today and walking in the park in the afternoon when it will be warmest.  Just a week ago I was worried about it being too hot soon.  Might well be again but for now still feels cool.  

Kripal finally says clearly “most men ‘called to the priesthood’ are gay.”  Generation after ours can finally say these things directly and clearly.  And what about all the men in the orders and societies in the church not directly priests?  Kripal says he went to a monastery because he wanted to be a monk not a priest.  They had to work too hard!  And he doesn’t study the Orthodox or the Episcopalian or other such “heretical” churches to work out the erotic mysticism of men who live within those traditions.  In some ways he is in his early writings too Freudian.  There is the polarity of either-or in his recovery from anorexia and from monasticism—-it gives him his early set of insights which drive his studies of spirituality, but it doesn’t expand as much as it might have had his priest-therapist been a Jungian rather than a Freudian.  Nicholas is a good example of this—-he did deep Jungian analysis for a long time to work through his breakdown and subsequent searches for identity, vocation and mystical direction.  So Kripal has his “gnomons” now in his late middle age.  It is good to be reading this book first—-Secret Body—-because now he is looking back over his life and search and can rethink much of it with more fluid comprehension.  I think/hope.  Agee and our generation could say—-yes, you’ve got a lot of insight going on there but there is still too much omaha in your thinking—flat riverness—-too bad you didn’t take just a little LSD in your day, or too bad anorexia works with such a knife-edge either-or-ness, no food—-food clarity or apparent clarity.  When you went to India did you get more into polytheism??   Haven’t yet brought Donald into this discussion—-he and Tracy and Mary Jane theologians at the center of the tradition.  

And by now Kripal is old enough to be hearing from the next generation that his freudian categories are not just being debunked but re-juggled and deconstructed by new generations of queer theorists of all sorts.  

Eliot:  “there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting grounds for the poetic-imagination.”  Yes!  76

“We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos.”  Yes, Kripal, why did you not study more literary works????  

OK  he goes to Chicago and studies Tantra.  He’s still heroic enough to stay with.  Bernie McGinn and Wendy and the dying Ed Dimock, who Donald never mentioned.  And Harvard turned Kripal down.  Good.  

His explanation of Tantra is stupendous—50-51.  “coincidence of spiritual liberation (mukti) and physical pleasure (bhukti).”

So now we do have the fluidity longed for, by page 52—-this is what is still happening, this is what wants to happen now.   Brilliant.  

18 April Saturday  

Kripal’s book gets better and better.  Only on page 104.  Making up my list of experiences I could tell him about to prove I am resonating fully with his understandings.  

And this morning this is clear:  post-Covid we will see a boom in studies in the Humanities and Religion over the next ten years.  Lots of people will be having secretly weird and astonishing experiences right now.  All over the world.  

Kirsten told me Franz Werfel’s Musa Dagh novel is Jim’s favorite.  I looked him up on wiki.  Married Alma Mahler.  Alma Gropius Mahler!!  

We walked and lunched then watched Aimee and Trintignant in A Man and a Woman.  Music and driving in the rain.  Beautiful people.  Period ambience and nostalgia.  

I thought yesterday it was crucial to sort out exactly the relation between Shiva and Shakti but now I’m not concerned.  The rest of the book will settle these things.  And the other books.  

“hermeneutical gnosis” and gnosis as the interpretation practiced by some scholars of mysticism describes perfectly how Burke saw his role as a critic and interpreter.  His terms for it varied and he worked it all out before “hermeneutic” became a term in the conversation.  Reading is salvific.  He also kept and revealed secrets from his own experiences in his work.  In fact as Kripal describes his academic field could be used to describe every academic field—-the hard line between the skeptics, rationalists, reducers etc and the believers and seekers.   “personally transformative”  isn’t that how I tried to teach, have always looked to literature and art and mystical works to be?  Isn’t all of experience potentially transformative at any given moment?  

Page 79  “interests me more”  the narrator allows herself to be seen by the reader —-  Eliot or some other voice who is telling us the story.  An essayist on the drama at hand.

Causobon is lonely, Dorothea is lonely—-both are hoping for that universal Key to All Mythologies that drives Kripal and Wendy et cal in their studies of mysticism.  

Massignon I have barely heard of.  Medieval ideas of God or Christ as the bridegroom and the soul as the virgin bride ready to received him I surely did encounter, although I don’t recall precisely where or when.  I understood John of the Cross without any hesitation.  And loved the utter beauty of his poetry and his love.  

intelligible meanings synchronized, transmissable, apotropaic, chain of spiritual rings.  109  Looking in the index for Jung (and Merton, one entry) I find a discussion I’ve been looking for, for the past few years at least, maybe since adolescence without realizing it.  If I were to write to Kripal I would describe the yoga practice in the private room (as bell ringer for the month) at Ammendale.  Discovery of the one position (backward bow? forget the exact name in the Dechanet book) that yielded without trying an orgasm of mystical power and dizzying resonance.  It occurred right inside the period of our culture resurrecting William Blake.  1962

For Ginsburg it was in 1948 at Columbia.  Why did I never read a bio of Ginsberg?  Inchausti on Kerouac, and Merton.  But why not Ginsburg? I even spent a weekend of Zen Meditation with Ginsburg and Sally.  Jeez.  

Monday  20 April

Lunch here with Barb and Ed most delightful.  Told Phil the tale Barb told us about her prison pen pal.  

Two friends came for lunch today.  We sat outside on the patio a good eight feet from each other.  

Barbara told us she has been corresponding with a man on death row

in Oklahoma.  For about two years now, the letter writing.  What was his crime?  He's in his forties.  In prison about twenty years.  His wife had gotten bipolar, left him, took up with another guy.  They harassed him, taunted him.  After a while he went off, had a drunken weekend, had never done such a thing.  In a truck stop in  Oklahoma he's asking directions to some place, a fellow there, hitchiker, offers to show him the way.  Next morning they set off but the hungover guy drives first to a neighborhood, chooses a house for no reason, goes in and shoots a woman dead, wounds her sister but does not shoot the baby.  The guys go to a gas station, the police find them, the shooter says yes I just shot that woman, I'm guilty. Gets the death penalty.  The hitchiker gets life imprisonment.  

I've messed up some details in my impatience and I didn't press our friend for 

more details either.  She's a psychologist, career working in prisons. 

This doesn't quite fit the sloppiness theme, tho Barbara says the killer was never given proper legal defense.  I felt most upset for the hitchhiker!!  

Happy today that Dave has posted his video on YouTube.  Now we can send it to people and see it on the big screen.  

Phil reported—-

It doesn't help that New York is one of the most corrupt states in the country. Between 2010 and 2018, thirty-two members of the state legislature faced sanctions and criminal charges, most of them for embezzlement, campaign finance fraud, misuse of public funds, and selling political favors. Cuomo himself was tainted by association in March 2018, when his closest aide was convicted of soliciting and accepting bribes. Testimony showed the aide and his cronies imitating characters from the The Sopranos, crowing about “magic phone calls” and referring to money as “ziti.” 

Earlier he also said—

This past Friday I got a check from the Maryland Treasury for $6,902.85.  I wasn't expecting a check, and when  I looked over the computation that the state used to arrive at that amount I found a simple mistake that should have been caught.  I notified the state of the mistake.   The corona virus will have a huge effect on state, county, and city finances because all three entities are so heavily dependent on sales taxes which have been nearly wiped out as people are forced to stay home.  (The Fed gov't can print money almost without limit for its own uses these days, but states, counties, and cities have to live within their budgets.)  Therefore,  I might have not been the only one getting a check that I shouldn't.  Maryland's computers' mistaken programming could be giving away  tons of money that the state and counties will badly need in the coming months.  I hoped that I could give them an early warning so that they could prevent a possible problem from getting too big.

But I regret to say that's not the only sloppiness that has recently come to my attention.  If you recall, a research company in Minnesota found that hospitals across the nation were not following procedures in the use of bronchioscopes, which are used to examine transplanted lungs.   Since then Peg has noticed that nurses at her transplant center here in northern Virginia were not carrying out all that is necessary to keep clean another instrument that is used in the treatment of lungs:  a spirometer.  She mentioned it to a nurse, and we hope practices have changed, but don't know since we're staying home these days rather than visiting the hospital

The last time I sent an email to warn about widespread sloppiness, I was told by one person that I was pompous.   Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion.  Mine, though,  hasn't changed. There seems to be a fair amount of sloppiness around these days, some of it dangerous.  Although everyone believes one should pay attention to detail, it may not be emphasized as much in schools and elsewhere as it used to be.  (I remember getting an E on a pop quiz in 1960 because of a spelling error.)  So, as a desk sergeant in a TV cop show several years ago would say to his officers as he sent them out to the streets: "Be careful out there." 

P

PS  To help pass time at home you could do worse than read "A Pilgrimage to Eternity" by Timothy Egan.  He follows the ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.   The book is a short history of Christianity,  including descriptions of obscure figures, towns, and saints that I had never heard of.   Egan writes well and knows all kinds of interesting facts, although much of the history is depressing.   One example something I didn't know: Joan of Arc was burned to death, then her remains were burned two more times so there would be nothing left of her to be turned into a relic.  Egan then points out that the same church that insisted on the triple burning later proclaimed her a saint.   The book is filled with such blood-chilling  little ironies.  

——-

Today is much warmer.  Just walked, more humid too.  Good walk.  

Went to Albertson’s up off of Tramway.  Not busy at all.  Couldn’t find the bottle of vodka bought at last minute. Didn’t know grocery stores had liquor departments.  Went back but the checker boy nor the checker man would say anything other than we put it in a bag in your cart.  Sorry.  Big city hard edges.  

Kirsten explained why Jim likes Werfel’s novel, yesterday.  

He just says that it's epic and that Werfel has intellect and heart. I guess I'm stalling because it's long and a big commitment, and maybe I never feel quite in the mood for genocide! Also I finished War and Peace pretty recently and am not eager for war again so soon. Think I'll read The Idiot first.

We're grateful to be in our little bubble here in the Upper Valley, esp. in a time like this. Lucky to have the Coop for shopping, where people generally aren't hoarding and are trying to keep distance. I need to go there this morning, in fact, though I dread my weekly visit--it's so creepy with everyone wearing their masks. And I'm always afraid I'll forget something essential.

I started reading the Dyer in the NYorker but tired of it. I feel like I've lost faith in him. I somehow don't seem to care as much what he thinks. Not sure what happened!

———

Va has been watching Shistel, second of Ed’s recommendations.  Two Orthodox Jewish soaps in two days!!  Good acting.  Learned a bit about the Hasidim.  Founded only in 1905!!!  Or this sect of it.  The one now in Brooklyn, Williamsburg.  

21 April Tuesday 

Do you remember the circus coming to Cumberland?   I do, in particular the elephants.  When I was 5 or 6,  they came every summer.   Miller had no memory of them.    He only remember the stripper side shows that apparently showed up on roadsides just outside town.  He and Ricky Shaffer went to them when they were about 12 or so.   I never knew about them.   I guess the difference was middle class vs working class upbringing. 

If you do remember the circuses, do you remember where they set up?

P

I do remember them and do remember the elephants too.  No, no idea about stripper shows.  But some glimpse or sense that there were freaks to be seen.  

Where did it set up?  Can't recall that at all.  Fields along the tracks down where Celanese built??  

I remember the circuses' elephants helping to set up the tents in a field that was right next to the old A&P supermarket.  (Hmm, maybe the son of the owner of the Garlitz Brothers Market might not have been aware of the A&P market.   It was in an old, converted factory near where the Fairfield Motel is these days.) Trains, I think,  brought the circuses to town.    I seem to remember a parade through the downtown on the day before the circus opened for business, but I could be wrong about that.  I may be mixing a memory of a, say, 4th of July parade with a memory of the circus.     

As for Miller, he has been obsessed with perverse sex since he was 8 or 9.  I remember hiking up onto Wills Mountain with Sitter and him when we were about that age.  Miller wanted to look for used prophylactics on the ground at some "parking area" high on the mountain.  At the time I barely knew what a "rubber" was and thought looking for them was gross and weird.   Still do, for that matter.  Years ago, Miller gave away a huge amount of porn mags, but he still has a huge collection.  

Phil

Fairfield Inn seems like the right area and yes I did know where the A&P was.  Dad bought his tires from a garage near there. 

Do you remember the bookstore run by two old ladies around the corner from your Dad's office, block across from the post office?

What would Miller do with the rubbers he found?  Had a collection while others had baseball cards??  the book I'm reading now

would say well he found his divine calling early on and devoted himself to it with all of his soul.  Somehow he knew temple

prostitution was/is a sacred path some are called to and he followed it with the zeal and devotion of an Ignatius or Francis!!

Jeffrey Kripal, Sacred Body, history of religion tome).  

Private jet travel?  Peg ever use anything like it?  It just occurred to me to look in to getting home via private flights on small planes.

Might be incredibly expensive.  But the price of world oil today is something like  -40$ a barrel!!  

Also will look up hiring a private car and driving team !!! Uber cross-country???

Do you use any software security system on your laptops??  I have not in the past, betting on mac/apple security, but maybe

the ads I keep getting are getting to me.  

Quiet here and warmer, back to low 70s after a really cold snap ten days ago.  

——-

Park walk, sweet fresh air not too hot yet.  Called Jim and had a good chat.  He’s reading H L Mencken.  Good for laughs.  Took a course on him in grad school.  Had a hangman tale:  man sentenced to be hung, was collapsed on the floor of the jail so much they couldn’t get him down the hall to the place with the noose and platform.  Pure fear.  They gave him some morphine to help him.  Gave him so much he was suddenly up dancing around and happy, danced so much they couldn’t get him to walk into the hall.  Then notice comes that the governor has given him a Pardon.  To hell with that, says the sheriff, get rid of that paper and get him down to the hanging chamber!”  

Ok, did I re-tell that accurately?  Not sure!  Jim had a good chuckle telling it.  He says I used a short word in my amazon review that he didn’t know.  Have to check that out.  “Sweet Home Chicago” is the kids video today.  Nice job.  

Can’t figure what small word Jim found strange.  “anew”?  

Napped and watched some tv and then napped some more!  will we sleep tonight?  Second Israeli show Shistel became more difficult to follow so we gave up on that.  Started Annie Hall and it seemed ridiculous and not at all charming or interesting.  

I remember the tire place,  but am having trouble with the bookstore.  Dad's office was directly across the street from the front of the post office.   The street was Pershing Street, which ran ( coming out of dad's office and turning left) past South Liberty Street to South Center Street.  And (going right from his office) to South Mechanic Street.  I remember only an optician's office on Pershing Street.   Where was this bookstore?  The newspaper was on Mechanic Street.   Was it on Mechanic Street?

Miller:  As I recall he just want to see the rubbers.  I certainly didn't.  Neither did John.  But you're right that Miller found his calling with his sex obsession.   Here in DC he went to strip clubs and nudist colonies a lot.   But that's just one side of John.  The other side is a very polite, generous, good guy.   He gives away virtually any money he makes.  

Peg and I use the Russian computer security system,  Kazpersky.  We also use H-P computers and Microsoft's Office operating system.  However, Peg has Word 10 on her computer, which is still supported by Microsoft.  I have the older Word 7, which Microsoft no longer supports so I'm a little exposed to hacking but hoping Kazpersky will protect me.

Peg always had to fly Delta.  H-P had a contract with Delta.   When she worked for Mobil I think she always had to fly United.   No private jets.   But good luck in however you manage to get home.   I suppose Virginia has nixed hitch-hiking.

  

P

——-

Just looked at S Mechanic street across from the Times building on google street view.  It must have been/might have been in one side 

of that Uncle Jack's Pizza place, door to the street next to the window.  Then it felt really old and rickety.  

You lived in La Vale but went to St Pat's and your Dad's office was right there so I'm guessing you also walked all over--All Over--town

as much as I did when we were kids.  Sure was easy to do and had lots of interesting stuff everywhere, distinctive neighborhoods,

micro-neighborhoods.  

——-

Kripal is now sketching the consciousness revolution of the ‘60s.  Invokes Roszak’s definition of the counter-culture and links it to what he likes to call the Tantric Transmission.  I was much less aware that Tantra was being explored and imported back then than I was much later.  Although the whole emphasis on nudity and free love and even the nudist party at Ida Noyes was all part of this general tantra exploration without the name being used so clearly.  I read about yoga and chakras but that’s about it.  Although all of it was “everywhere” and “in the air” every way you turned so I don’t remember specifics but a historian could find them easily and set them forth.  LSD, the Summer of Love and the Beatles trip to an Indian ashram had the greatest influence on the West.  He formulates his gnomon 9 to posit counterculture as more profound shaper of the study of India and the history of religion than colonialism.  Primacy of consciousness over culture.  Consciousness itself is exotic.  139  

“banal materialism and base denial of consciousness that controls the humanities to this day.”  

22 April  Wednesday

We watched Almodovar’s lastest last night, released last year.  Pain and Glory.  Slow and beautiful, masterly as an old master wants to do it.  Autobiographical no doubt, 

Consciousness before culture jives perfectly with Agee’s conclusions about the consciousness behind all other masks (Patrick White’s as well).  The perfect realization of the rational, inquiring mind.  

the counterculture’s insistence on the primacy of consciousness over culture——

should find a good review of Almodovar’s movie—-beautifully constructed and the images stunning.  the visual motif of RED and always the same perfect red in each location within the image—-gorgeous —- 

the motif of Addicition—-heroin, sex, art, —-  

Kripal focuses on masturbation briefly as a contributor to drug use, or almost as a preliminary, “gateway” used to be the term, to drug use.  

I knew I should have read more of Harold Bloom!!! —-  If Ginsburg came to his poetic genius “through his hand,” so too did Whitman.  Bloom called it Whitman’s “masturbatory muse.”  Whitman says “ A touch now reads me a library of knowledge in an instant.”  Bloom says Whitman’s phrase for autoerotic arousal is “the headland.”  “I went myself first to the headland.”

“And Whitman’s polyamorous, often homoerotic sexuality, of course, could not possibly be fit into any heterosexual box or “straight teaching” (ortho-doxy).  Both Whitman and Ginsburg see sexuality as a way to see beyond the social order into something deeper, into something fundamentally cosmic, the transcendent witness Self beyond and within all the world’s egos.”  150

Chat with Greg late this afternoon.  Told him about Kripal’s basic story and he said no one talked about any of these things in our generation.  Agee does in his memoir, thirty years later.  Kripal thereby demonstrates pretty well and he and his generation benefitted from the triumphs of the countercultural activities before him, revealing secrets of all sorts, be it through sex, drugs or the cultural Tantric Transmission of wisdom and secrets from the East.  He features Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, which I never did read.  From this whole approach of Kripal, all the books on Merton and even Kerouac look very conservative and secretive.  I had not realized that the comparative study of history of religions was founded in the 60s.  But of course Doug’s father, the great Richard Grant, historian of religion was focused on Christianity.  Kripal says the unspoken tradition in divinity schools up until then was to honor the church tradition of your birth culture.  So Eliade brought in the new era and after him Doninger.  

Kripal notes that Blake’s figure of  revolution, Orc, “may be etymologically related to the “creative freedom and fiery passion of the testicles (Greek orcheis).  145 

“It was in this way—-through masturbation and poetic possession, mescalin and psychedelic vision, Asian religion and a modern Tantric imagination—that the American counterculture translated Blake into some specific forms of consciousness . . . . “  158  The sexual basis of spiritual vision becomes one of his principal touchstones.  But he sees all the subsequent topics of cultural identity, gender politics, race, class, gender, ethnicity—as welcome and positive developments.  If only they had not become in their own ways, used to make new forms of social rigidities that close off spiritual vision as well as the old social forms did.  

Book shifts now to his middle phase.  Away from the topics of the early books and into Human as Two meditations.  Like Philip K Dick’s revelatory experience of 2-3-74.  “I was not writing.  I was being written.  By whom or what I did not know.”  167    Can’t imagine Merton ever saying such, or Inchausti?  Lax?  maybe.  Most likely if we could ask him in these ways he might say yes of course.  Can’t help but feel that McGregor’s bio still filtered the story “too much” or in too many ways not acknowledged.  

Should I read Philip K Dick?  Massive Wiki entry about him.  

23 April  Thursday

Video visit with Rick Evans at 1.  Very pleasant since he assured us that all his algo-tools show us doing ok until we are 95.  Somehow our portfolio is fine in spite of the volatility of the current situations.  Guess our newly printed money went into the investment funds to prop up the stock market.  

The question facing us today is whether to direct the people in the park to address me as geezer or codger when they nod hi or mutter a hello as we pass on the paths.   Of course they should never preface the title with “old” or “over the hill” or any other such lame pejoratives.  Diligent research reveals that geezer goes back to mummer, that is, actor, someone who walks around in clothes designed to hide.  “The origin of geezer is an interesting one. It appears to derive from the now obsolete term guiser, meaning someone who walks around in disguise, a performer in a masquerade. So a word that was used in the Middle Ages to refer to mummers (actors in traditional plays without words) has now simply come to mean bloke.”   What about “codger?” Somehow I like the sound of that one more but better be careful and not be misled by sound alone.  One citation says it comes from the 15th century: “As for “codger,” meaning an old man, often with overtones of eccentricity, it may well be derived from “cadge,” but by a path which has no connection to falconry. The earliest use of the noun “cadger” in the 15th century was for itinerant dealers who “cadged” (carried) their wares from town to town.”  Another one notes that “cadge” connotes mooching. “cadger - someone who mooches or cadges (tries to get something free) mooch, moocher, scrounger. beggar, mendicant - a pauper who lives by begging. schnorrer, shnorrer - (Yiddish) a scrounger who takes advantage of the generosity of others.”  Other entries place it in the 18th C as meaning eccentric old man and then add in “beggar” and for more laughs “coffin dodger.”  If I insist on riding on a higher horse, I might tell these greeters in the park who are under sixty to please address me not as geezer nor codger but in my true capacity, “Monsieur Flaneûr.”  I’m sure that will go over well with these early morning perky walkers who count their strides and swing their arms with selfie-ready vigor.  

———

who wrote that!!??  I’ll blame Kripal.  Valis wrote it.  “I did not write it, I was being written.  By whom or what I did not know.”  167

The universe is God’s body.  Be interesting to hear commentary on our current pandemic from thinkers about the cosmic body, about panentheism.  Could google That!  

24 April Friday

Forgot the word coot.  Coot, codger, geezer.  

Dear Bob,

Enjoying Secret Body (as I did Super Natural, his book on the woman struck by lightning and The Flip that I suppose you might call his manifesto). Much more so than his earlier books, freighted with cleverness.  He has let his hair down as it were and you can see how it weaves into the pathways of his own experience much clearer - and, as Gary Lachman might observe, he is probably wonderfully secure in his tenure by now!

Love, Nicholas

——-

Dear Nicholas

Yes I am about mid way and have been enjoying it.  He now is moving into his Esalen phase and away from comparative history.  

Should I skip looking at the earlier books, Kali and the "Blakean" one/s ?   I guess I've read only Impossible.  The Kali book is on

its way.  Is the Blakean book just too confused??  too clever is what you said.  

I like his personal account of his early development and story.  I was sorely disappointed however in reading about the priest analyst

in the Conception monastery in the sense that he was clearly a hard-line Freudian.  Ahhh, I thought, if only, if only Kripal had 

found a Jungian analyst to help free himself from the anorexia and understand more expansively everything he was pondering,

especially the homo/hetero sexuality.  I found myself not convinced by the thesis he comes up with and which apparently drives

the early books on the hindu saint.  Too either/or, binary, but primarily too Freudian in its faith in "sublimation" a term I recall

hearing in the '60s when I was briefly in the monastery and which I believe fell away from psychology in years later.  

The flip I guess is a metaphor which which has stayed with him--starting with the sexual identity topic.  Unsatisfactory--did he

never read about Kinsey?  And does he not realize that in his classes now, a generation later, the students have a much more

fluid LGBT outlook on things, and indeed comfort with things fluid?  Did Lachman review any of his early books?  

By the way watch Almodovar's most recent movie as soon as possible.  We saw it two nights ago via Amazon Prime.  

Pain and Glory in English,  Dolor y Gloria in Spanish.  Beautiful personal recollections of his life (fictionalized for sure),

beautiful images, frank sexuality, a bit slow in the art movie mode, and afterwards I'll ask if smoking hash casually is

now widespread in euro cultures??  but I don't know if hash is the same as heroin?  

Let me know more as you work through Kripal.  I had not fully realized that comparative history of religion study had not 

really started until the mid-60s.  He notes as an aside that before then honoring the church tradition of your birth was the

primary mode of history of religion.  That fits perfectly my friend Burgo who while he studied at Div Chicago when I did,

he has never had much if any interest in comparative religious studies.  RCatholic all the way.  He went to Rome last

fall to see a younger --- but you know that already.  

Our financial guy did a screen visit with us yesterday and wonder of wonders he thinks we're still ok, so we slept well

last night!  Gorgeous weather again today.  Beautiful spring here.  Love seeing the trees leaf slowly at differing paces.  

Could easily move here and stay I think.  

all bests and loves,  astral hugs coming to you --

Bob

———

Dear Bob,

For all their discussion of the erotic, I found the early books strangely disembodied, binary (as you noticed), and lacking in the actual fluidity of both sexuality and life in general. I look forward, however, to understanding his journey better and for his defense of the 'other', the surplus normal, the adventure of consciousness, I find him very interesting. 

I will lookout for the Almodovar. Hash is a form of marijuana and yes, in widespread use, in Europe. I smoked it in Copenhagen (where it was very available)!

Love, Nicholas

P.S. I do not think I have seen Gary L refer to Kripal. I should ask him what he thinks.

Nicholas

———

Good walk.  Gorgeous breezy day.  Smoothies for lunch from a place down on San Pedro.  Drove up around more developments up in the real foothills.  Mail from home.  Video from the kids on washing your hands.  

Reading this morning in Kripal about a young man named Gopi Krishna’s experience (page 182) made me realize, at last, that my experience doing yoga at Ammendale in the private room for the bell ringer, was indeed a full and classic kundalini experience:  “a dramatic uprush of the kundalini, a bio-physical-spiritual energy that in many Tantric traditions is believed to be asleep at the base of the spine, but that can be activated by a realized guru, by specific yoga practices (the one I chanced upon) or by accident, as in Krishna’s case (or in mine, during that Night).”  Of course it was.  And others followed.  If I use these to look back at my life, can I not write it from that angle of vision?  

We just watched Black Orpheus on Criterion.  Good reminder of how cultures invite what surely are kundalini experiences, replicate them, through festivals, carnivals, mardi gras.  

Sunday April 26 

Good visit with Ken and Carole yesterday.  Privately relieved to hear Ken say they are rethinking plans to move into Colony Bay.  Hope they don’t go there.  Just occurs to me that Ken may have been wanting to in his mode of wanting the next new thing, e.g. leasing the new car every two years.  

Postscript from Nicholas this morning

“Dear Bob,

I wish once in a while someone stole Jeffrey's hermeneutical key (and, yes, a Jungian would have helped or someone like Marion Milner who might have helped him see the mind/person as 'bisexual', more fluid in its identities, even before it steps into particular social spaces)! But continue to enjoy the stories and yes, the later we travel, the more interesting it becomes. I enjoyed catching him out too - he rightly does not want to describe Ramakrishna as a 'gay' man (given where he sits in a particular historical context) but happily describes King James I in those terms (sic) ...!

I do think him beautifully right on the ability of texts to trigger conscious states (and that would be well worth a book in itself)!

Love, Nicholas

————

April 27 

Today Nicholas says he dreamed GB Shaw was his gardener.  On the phone to Guardian life about missed payment.  Finally figured out that they changed their whole website and structure.   Just back from Smith’s.  4 pm.  Lots of people waiting in line.  More  not wearing any masks.  Signs of lockdown fatigue.  Just figured out to pop on the ac here in the house.  Up to 85 outside according to the car gauge.  

——

So, now, I have, of course, Kripal dreams. Last night, I was writing a book (in a past life) about all my incarnations, past and future, two of which involved living in the same house (at different time periods). In one time period, George Bernard Shaw was the gardener (sic) attached to the house!

Love, Nicholas

my reply   Ha!  Of course you are.  GBS as your gardener is wonderful.  I like how the house is the base through which the selves and times flow.  

Last spring when we got back from Bali I began to inch my way through Divine Double and over the next six weeks or so a number of doubling encounters and images moved through.  

Nothing much these days as I read Kripal.  Probably too much bad tv during lockdown is getting in the way!  Almost finished the book.  

Love, Bob

———-

28 April Tuesday  

Had a fall last night as we came back from going to see the sunset.  Felt a bit stoved early on but after the walk felt fine.  Long afternoon.  AC working fine.  Finishing Balthazar.  Great Jimi Hendrix song from the kids.  

Once again Nicholas’s critique of Kripal’s book is better than the book itself.  

Dear Bob,

I finished. It was enjoyable if severely problematic.

First, I was expecting a more focused, articulate response to his critics - though these rarely appeared except in pantomime dress - Hindu fundamentalists or ranting secular materialists - what did/do his academic peers make of his contributions? Does he read his materials right? I mean it is perfectly possible not to imagine that the New Testament leads you to a 'gay' Jesus and a 'gay' St Paul and that the methodology of 'embarrassment' (of what might be authentically spoken by Jesus) might be embarrassing?  Personally, I have never thought of Jesus as gay (nor particularly cared)!

Second, the Freudian perspective of the erotic everywhere. It may be a lens through which to look but the reductionist effect (even if he warns himself/ourselves against it) is apparent of it being everywhere. Sometimes it probably is not or if it is it might come in happier, more related guise than Freud gave it.

Third, his hermeneutical overreach. I was reminded of Wittgenstein saying the importance of any explanation is knowing where to stop. Also, that sense that in spite of the sex, nothing is truly embodied - all the experience is reaching in from outside (or violation) nothing emerges from inside up and out.

Fourth, and following that, everything happens to you (and traumatically), nothing happens to you or embraces you peacefully, or emerges as the result (or within the context of) cultivation or practice. Everything seems (to utilize Morris Berman's Coming to Our Senses) as a result of a primal split, of an early division between self and other, that needs to be healed (or simply is an open wound). Nothing simple exists as a horizontal presence. This seems to falsify both the documented reality of religious experience - as likely to happen on buses when the mind is in neutral as anywhere else - and suggest that the Human as Two is an ontological category (rather than as Berman argues a psychological and sociological mistake). 

Fifth, the present anomalous should help us comparatively assess the past but apparently the past (which might not, in fact, be the past) might not interrogate the present - and that the categories of thought developed to assess the anomalous might not having something helpful to offer us navigate the present. Something privileges the present - evolution, science - but on what grounds?

Sixth, and finally, though he rightly distinguishes the mystical from the simply moral (as socially constructed), most mystical traditions unfold within a binary dance between knowledge and compassion, that there is something essential here, and, also, distinguish between the operation of this higher synthesis and experiences/powers that might be navigated for good or ill. A differentiation that the 'past' might happily confer on Kripal's prospective 'future'!

Stimulating, and yes, I wholly agree that we should take the anomalous seriously (and the contexts in which they are interpreted) and that we should be more empirical (and it is depressing that both science and theology as presently construed cannot wrestle with it at all).

Love, Nicholas

———

29 April Wednesday 

from Rilke today on Chaikana  

English version by Stephen Mitchell

 

I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.

Trying to frame my responses to Nicholas.  Browsed a bit in Kripal’s Kali book.  Can see how it is a brilliant dissertation reworked much and under great pressure.  No, maybe not brilliant:  Wendy in her Forward calls it extraordinary.  Hmm, yes.  Midway through Secret Body I was thinking, wow, he’s really doing it, becoming a major “public intellectual” or thinker. But later on in the book, no, he’s become a consummate academic leader/bureaucrat.  Manager and producer, organizer and orchestrater, channel, perhaps, but lacking the creative insights of artists, poets, writers, should I say true mystics?  Nah,  forget that.  

Interesting that he calls Lacan a mystic pscyhoanalyst on the final pages in the brief discussion of St Teresa.  Lacan says she is coming of course in Bernini’s statue, but from what?  Not (just) sexuality but from something beyond sexuality, “ex-istence.”  Lacan “rejected the notion that the mystical can be reduced to sexuality and instead speculated that such ecstatic experiences of “a jouissance that goes beyond” issue forth from our own ontological ground:  “Might not this jouissance which one experiences and knows nothing of, be that which puts us on the path of ex-istence?” “ (Kali’s Child 326)

30 April  Thursday

Eloy said the Cleveland couple flew home yesterday as they had planned.  Glad to hear that.  We would have gone the same day according to original plans.  

Beautiful morning here, early walk, lovely breeze.  Going to heat up this afternoon.  

May 1  Friday  

Hotter and drier.  Park walk.  Bought a corkscrew and crackers and wine at upper Albertsons.  Lots of people there, about half with masks.  Limit to 93 customers in the store at one time.  General feel that things are loosening up.  One guy said to a friend yes he had gone golfing today.  

Nicholas gave more info about things: told Va she might enjoy Romola since it is about Italian Renaissance.  But she’s now into the Mayes book.

Dear Bob,

Yes, that contextualizes him quite well. I was reminded of a conversation between C.S. Lewis and Kathleen Raine (Lewis was her doctoral supervisor at Cambridge) about the difference between literary scholarship (invaluable) and literary criticism (mostly unhelpful) and though Kathleen does not elaborate, you sense it is the difference between reading Stang and Kripal. On my gossipy note, had life unfolded differently, our lives (K and I) might have intersected as one of my potential doctoral supervisors was Bernard McGinn at Chicago (and the timing would have worked)! Bernie (who gets a mention early in the book) is another example of scholarship that leads you into a deep engagement with its subject.

I am reading the Strugatsky Bros - Russia's pre-eminent science fiction writers - I had recently watched Tarkovsky's Stalker again - and realized that I had never read, 'Roadside Picnic' that inspired it, and then Jeffrey referenced it, so thought I would. Very enjoyable  - earthy, pithy, and philosophically adept. In a circular fashion, it made me want to read Tarkovsky's 'Sculpting in Time' again as well, so I may. In contrast, I am also enjoying discovering Mary Webb - a female, more mystical version of Thomas Hardy who writes beautifully about Shropshire and the Welsh Borders, a landscape I know well and love. She is psychologically astute too - the lead character, Precious Bane, discovers in sitting in her cottage attic and refuge, the precise truth that Maslow subsequently realized that remembering a 'peak experience' is a good trigger for a repeat experience (though Webb's language is both simpler and more poetic)!

Enjoy Middlemarch - it is wonderful - though not my favorite Eliot novel. Mine is her own favorite, Romola, so atypical but a great exploration of Renaissance Italy. I read it first by a pool in Bali - those were the days!

Love, Nicholas

——-

The main viewing over the past two days was Normal People on Hulu.  Beautiful Irish teenagers growing up.  Best sex scenes we’ve ever seen.  Or can remember having seen.  

N posted a photo on Instagram of the latest pile of books.  have to note the titles for future referencing.  

Saturday May 2

Workman outside working on the wall addition.  Eloy has an artist who will paint a mural next week.  

me to Phil yesterday night

Am sure we walk as slow as you do, Va on my arm the whole time.  Her steps are max 3-5 inches, her stride.  So we inch our way around the park with stops at every bench to rest.  Her general pace and strength have slowed over the past few years, but  not much to be done about it except  soldier on.  We had a fall earlier in the week, just as we walked into the yard in front of the house.  I fell too, first time for me.  Neither of us any worse than sore muscles.  I walked next door, rang the doorbell.  Knew the live cam was showing the neighbor who I was.  We'd never seen each other.  Young guy came out and came over and helped me pick Va up.  So, yes, that worry about how fragile things are and how close we can be to breakdowns of various kinds.  Went to the store this afternoon, general sense of loosening up.  One guy said to a friend that yes he had gone golfing today.  Only 93 customers allowed in the store at one time.  About half still wore their masks.  All the clerks still in masks.  Could not find a decent jar of peanut butter!  Shelf about half full and only items left were butters with lots of sugars or extra oils or weird vaguely gourmet in some strange way.  Couldn't find the rice cakes we like but got a good corkscrew (none here) and a bottle of pinot noir.  Oh---groceries---we have been using the Hello

Fresh service for about three weeks now.  Box arrives on Wednesday, three menus, ingredients needed, fresh veggies, meats, seasonings.  I cook one a day, we usually divide the servings and get two meals out of each.  

Forces me to vary things a bit, otherwise my menus would be rice and beans every day.  Interesting that we've lost interest in doing take-out.  Got a pizza about a week ago. 

The Portland friends want to meet us in the park Sunday for a picnic, see if we still sit six feet apart.  Saw four people today doing that.  Much hotter now mid 89 now at 6 pm but humidity 8%!!!   I almost wonder if I've

ever experienced 8% humidity but it feels like Madrid so probably did in Spain.  AC inside of course.  Looking for something to watch.  

Phil—

Well, I can see if Va topples, you will likely be pulled over, too.  

Glad no real damage done.   But the feeling of vulnerability sucks, doesn't it!

Low humidity-high heat:   About 30 years ago, I was a serious jogger.   Nearly all of my jogging was done in high humidity-high temp DC, but during one week in summer  I was sent on business to a convention in Las Vegas.  Late one afternoon, I went for a jog and because the humidity was so much lower than I was used to, I felt great and ran and ran and ran....until I suddenly realized that the high temp - over 100 - and extreme dryness had nearly totally dehydrated me.  I was in trouble.   Fortunately, not far from where I stopped a big lawn sprinkler turned on.  I stood in the water spray, cooling my overheated self and lapping up as much water as I could.  I walked most of the way back to the hotel, where I drank a gallon or two and thanked god for AC.

Moral of the story:  You're from the east and may not realize how much the combination of very high temps and very low humidity can give you trouble.  Be careful.  It can be dangerous, and you may not be aware of the danger until it's too late or, in my case, almost too late.

P

PS  If we made a video of Peg and me racing you and Va we might be able to sell it as a guaranteed laugh-a-minute.

——-

Saturday afternoon.  Went to Smiths but line was at least twenty plus people (3:15 pm) and 89 degrees in the sun.  Before lunch Va talked with Eloy while he watched the two workers finish the addition to the wall.  No license plate on their truck, does that mean any thing?  He traveled all over the world in the military.  His daughter Jessica will paint the mural.  Bridges of Madison County on the screen.  Can’t warm to it yet again.  

Sunday 3 May 

UTI check today Sunday 3 May  

Visit to Best Urgent Care at 5850 Eubank NE

313-636-8472  Dr Kelvin Ogbeiwi 

prescription for 7 days (5+2?) for nitrofurantoin 100mg twice a day

Previous UTI was December 31, prescript at CVS Plymouth for "mycap"?? 

Missed this personality typology—-Helen Fuller on brain chemistry.  Nicholas had posted on twitter about it a few days ago. 

“When I did a word study of 178,000 people on Chemistry.com, I found out the top words the four types use. For the Explorer, it's adventure. For the Builder, it's family. For the Director, it's intelligence. The top word for the Negotiator is passion. I've been able to validate these personality types over and over.”   

“The Builders live in the suburbs and in the countryside. They want grass and neighborhoods and to be part of the PTA. That's the serotonin. The Explorers want the stimulation and the novelty of the big city. That's the dopamine. I think Obama is an Explorer. He's got charm, and the Explorer has charm to kill. The high-dopamine type is comfortable in his own skin. Look at the way Obama moves. It's beautiful. And McCain is an aggressive, high-testosterone Director. I saw a photograph of McCain and noticed that his fourth finger is much longer than his second. Directors are who they are.”

“In the book, I say, "You want to get along with a Director? Ask him what he thinks. You want to get along with an Explorer? Ask him what he does. You want to get along with a Builder? Ask him who he knows. And you want to get along with a Negotiator? Ask him how he feels." It sounds pigeonholing, but we have personalities that evolved for good reasons. We're subtle and flexible—but not that subtle and flexible. At the end, I have a chapter on mind mates, soul mates. For example, Negotiators really need intimacy, and they have a certain definition of what it is—face-to-face talk about how you feel. I can't get that from my Director friends. Or even my Explorer friends. I asked a man I was going out with, "What is intimacy to you?" He said, "Reading in bed at night to you." So I have to train myself to realize that he's giving me intimacy even though I don't feel it. I like it when he reads to me in bed at night, but that's not my intimacy. You ask me what we're supposed to get out of this. Are we just giving the biology of these types? No—we're trying to give tools so you can reach people.”

This piece showed up in Elle by a Thomas R Hooper.  Also wrote The Swift Diet under a pen name and/or with his wife.  

Few minutes ago I’m reading Eliot and in her descriptions of Lydgate we have both the ways of Big Pharma being discussed and we have clear demarcations and echoes, confirmations from a genius from an earlier century of all that Fuller discusses.  

Quiet day nesting.  No walking.  After the urgent care stop I did a big shopping at Smiths.  Stocked.   Watched Outlander.  They went through the stone to get away from North Carolina before the war for Independence.  Belgravia is next.  

When I took the test online the other day I got Negotiator.  Duh.  (basic questionnaire).  “Negotiator? Ask him how he feels.”  Pretty simplistic

Director what he thinks.  Explorer what she does.  Builder who she knows.

Negotiator how he feels.  Explorer Adventure, Builder Family, Director Intelligence, Negotiator Passion.  

Nicholas works for a Family.  Travels widely as an Explorer-Negotiator.  

“The Explorer, defined by high dopamine activity, is adventurous, novelty-seeking, creative. The Builder, with high serotonin activity, is cautious, conventional, managerial. The Director, pumped up with testosterone, is aggressive, single-minded, analytical. The Negotiator, more estrogen-influenced, is empathetic, idealistic, a big-picture thinker.”

Lydgate dreams of himself as being a Discover.  138  he wants a direct alliance between intellectual conquest and social good.  He is an emotional creature who cares not only for cases but for individuals, John and Elizabeth.  137    Is she giving him all of the brain chemicals?  

And then the delightful tale of young Lydgate’s adoration of the sultry actress from the south who meant to kill her husband because he would not live there, wanted only Paris, was too fond and wearied her.  She had not planned it but impetuously acted in the moment of the acting.  She would not have any more husbands!!!  Model for Bizet’s Carmen?  Eliot makes clear this is 1829.  1875 for Carmen.  

Monday 4 May  

not to Phil about the day 

most appropriate moment to ask

to ask if while in Tunisia you ever visited one of the famed brothels, 

either as practitioner or observant traveler?  

Reading George Eliot so I'm sounding faux Victorian.  

Quieter day even than usual.  Va felt she was getting a urinary tract infection, which she's prone to and which in the past triggered a seizure so she always worries about it. So yesterday we went to one of those urgent care places, this one in the closest small shopping plaza.  Young doctor born in Kenya who had done his schooling in Boston, maybe now early 40s.  Lucky no one else was there, so no waiting.  He prescribed an antibiotic and she's in her second day on that, sleeping lots today.  I got in only a fast mile walk.  Beautiful air and breeze all day, low 80s, and we sat on the patio most of the afternoon for lunch and after.  

Scanned one article in the Times convincing us this will be our lives for from one to three years.  

Thanks Warren Buffet for dumping your airline stocks all at once---very considerate of you.  How about a slowly staged gradual downscale that might have softened a few blows for at least one of the CEOs?  And the world.  

———

Va looked at two episodes of black comedy Hundroot or something.  Then we watched Princess of Montpensier, half-way.  I may have seen it a few years back.  Nice castles.  Mont-sur-Banc?  

5 May Tuesday  

 

Just finished facetime with Art and Karen.  Cold and rainy there but things are quiet.   Their drive home sounded fine, motels ok, rest stops ok, lots of fast food meals.  

Kids sent their video—-some wild song that they loved doing.  Great fun.  

We did a short walk this morning.  Va’s energy coming back.  Afternoon watched the movie of Elena Ferrante’s first novel.  Quite good, ambiguities,

hidden memories, not precisely clear what was true in the past or at her mother’s death.  Powerful images, Naples as a total world of hellish possibilities, brutalities, secrets.  

6 May Wednesday  

Wild tantric night, no sleep but sleep.  Weird.  Tantra circuitry hyperactive as result of Kripal’s book?  Jt sent a link to a tantra site yesterday, looking at that might have continued the pulsations or whatever.  Today we will facetime with Dr Larson for a neurological check-up.  And outside Jessica is supposed to start on the wall mural.  Eloy did a military career all over the world he told Va the other day.  

Phil never went to a Tunisian brother.  Oh well. 

“Scanned one article in the Times convincing us this will be our lives for from one to three years. .....Yup.  

Never visited a brothel in Tunis, but one day, when walking home from the school where I taught, I took a new path and walked right thru the red light district in the medina (the old city).  I just remember old women sitting in chairs on the street in front of these little cubicles in the wall with very obvious beds.   I was halfway thru the place before it dawned on me what was all around me.   "Dumb American."   P

—-

Listened to a little bit on tantric energy and the discussion is good.  Compiment to Middlemarch!! ha  Also finally listened to Geo’s favorite economist Rick Wolff on Socialism and liked how he talked about it.  

Predicted that the pandemic will mark the end of liberal capitalism and

the beginning of a new era of eco-global-socialism.   Dreamer.  

Thursday May 7  

Last day for Va’s antibiotic.  Unless the lab calls?  Jessica and Eloy came at night, projected her mural image onto the white wall and painted in faint outlines of the figures.  Va thinks she will do more than one panel but I think this is it.  Drama in the garden.  

Meanwhile Lydgate voted for Tyck and Featherbone lost the vicarage.  Big book, long way to go.  Fits the days.  

The kids’ video was the same:  Emma said at the start “it was a slow day” and that started the song, another Beatles, “these are the days of miracles and wonders,”  “away from the oppressive masquerade of ages,” “a masque of enigmatical costumes.”   Aaargh no not Beatles, Paul Simon The Boy in the Bubble.!!!

Those other phrases from Eliot.  Ok, I will write an epic poem by selecting phrases from the novel, like the guy did with Paradis Lost.  There it is “stupidity” again, on page 185.  “As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”  

“But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dream-like strangeness of her bridal life.” 183

5:51 pm  Only Thursday but had a feeling the mail might be here and lo it is.  It may actually be last week’s.  May 02.  

Earlier I had a feeling that we could change my appointment with eye doctor Garfinkel to jive with Va’s new appointment with Tracy in Laconia on June 16.  And lo about mid-day today we get a call and it is G’s office asking if we could change our appointment from Plymouth to Laconia and we got it set up for the 16th.  On the groove here.  

Friday  8 May  

4:30  Lunch with Barb and Ed.  They have decided to stay!  Forever.  They can put their house up for sale soon. Nice lunch of Wendy’s take-out salads and Cookies.  

Saturday May 9  

Cold yesterday morning in the park and Va felt last night she had caught a cold so she’s sleeping in right now.  Cold here this morning so I put on the heat.  It’s clear we’re not yet ready to move here, but it sure helps us consider it to have Barb and Ed decide to do so.  At the moment we can see staying on even longer as things go now.  But we feel too we need to go back when we’ve now scheduled to go back.  See the the summer goes, how the pandemic goes, how the starting ups go at various places around the country and world.  Driving over to the west mesa and back yesterday it felt like lots of people were out and things definitely loosening up.  

Marianne’s car was vandalized outside of her house for no apparent reason, tore out the front dash, broke windows.

We finished the Baptiste detective show last evening.  Terrible show.  PBS must not have enough money to bid on better ones.  We also tried to watch Mr Smith Goes to Washington because Ed likes it so much, the snappy star Jean Arthur.  But we didn’t get far enough into it to pick it up and enjoy.

Maybe another try later on.

She was “adorably simple and full of feeling.”  Ladislaw on Dorothea.

Delta gave us a refund set of vouchers on the earlier tickets.  Good for over a year, so if we return next winter we can use them.  

Saul and his wife have been on twenty-eight cruises.  Like the Princess line the best.  His story made me look up the Volga Germans of Kazakstan.  His family was deported as part of the Russian fear of Germans when the Nazis were in power.  So he was lucky that they were all together and made it into an American refugee camp where he spent four or five years until he was seven or eight.  

Read Michael McGregor’s account of his lone winter on Patmos when he was twenty-seven and set on writing a novel.  Can’t see that the novel is now in print or ever made it into print.  Even on abebooks.com only the Lax bio and a collection on Christian mysticism show up.  Essays, articles, short stores and poems listed on his bio page on his blog and tons of other achievements and honors, plus a photo of him holding a huge fish he’s caught.  Oregonian, author, journalist, writing consultant and teacher.  Taught at Portland State but now lives in Seattle.  “Now that I’m retired from teaching, I’m able to go back to my first love.  I’m working on that set-aside novel again and I recently published a short story–my first in 17 years–in Inkwell.”  

How many dissertations and books have already been written on Stupidity in George Eliot?  “We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves:” (201)  She could not yet “conceive with that distinctness which is no longer reflection but feeling . . . .”  

I took a short walk this morning and found things at the drug store, mainly a lighter antihistamine for Va.  She napped and now at mid-afternoon seems much better, and, we hope, through any cold, and/or hay fever mix with the UTI being squelched by today’s last day on the antibiotic.  Neuro—something.  

Googled the question and turns out Jessica Chastain is supposed to be developing a movie about the life of George Eliot.  

Cécile sent the concert video—#50 for the famille confineé!!  She also sent the online photo album of the wedding of her cousin, Maxime!  Lavender field in bloom, rustic country inn, beautiful people, gorgeous album.  Glad to see Dave got to play a bit with the musicians.  This was all last July.  

Sunday May 10  

Nancy’s birthday.  Mother’s Day.  

Great long visit with the kids.  Then their song today was a French favorite for Pepe and Meme and the kids were dressed in bistro fashion and then took off coats to have other costumes underneath for a Frozen song for their cousins up north.  Now we’re watching The Blue Brothers because they talked about it and about School of Rock.  

Chat with Jessica.  She has finished the mural.  Her website on Facebook shows her portfolio and it is pretty impressive.  Love how the finished mural looks and how it differs from what she started with.  Came out with more blues and purples.  Nice.  

We did walk in the morning but later after the facevisit so it was getting hot.  Va’s energy coming back well.  Roses from Walgreens look great.  Shorts from LandsEnd arrived.  Duck for lunch a bit strong but the orange blended with the red chile pretty well.  

Saw finale of Outlander.  Terrible.  Penultimate of Belgravia.  Maybe the new Mark Ruffalo on HBO later tonight.  

Enjoying Eliot.  Casaubon’s face and head used for a portrait of St Thomas Aquinas.  Will hesitate to say anything more about the novel to KG!!

“if anything at that moment could have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her noble unsuspicious inexperience.”  213 

Monday  11 May

Walked around 11.  Gray and cool but not too windy.  Short walk because it looked like a rain cloud on the mountain might move toward us.  It didn’t

and now at 5:30 sunshine is back, still cool but nice.  

saw a thing on Meenakshi Temple in Madurai — 

This Hindu temple---why have I never heard of it? seen photos---skim down to the big image of the whole thing.  Had I had a choice between seeing the Taj and seeing this place I would have chosen this one!!!!  The Taj is pure mathematical perfection, geometry, engineering, proportion, stone polishing.  Mughal.  

This Hindu place looks like LSD and heroin combined.  Or something else.  Mysticism at its finest!  Just finished reading Kripal's "Secret Body"---comparative history of religion---Wendy Doniger's student.    

note back from Donald

Regrettably, no, but I have long been familiar with it and was sorry to have missed it. I did go to a somewhat smaller complex in the same style just south of Chenai (Madras).

I hope all is well. I received from the University of Chicago Press last week copies of David Tracy's two new books, Fragments and Filaments, a gift from David. I was astonished to see he had given me an acknowledgement by name in each books (I think totally undeserved, but I was deeply appreciative).

How long do you remain in New Mexico? Are you willing to fly or are you considering driving back to New Hampshire? If so, you know you are always welcome to stay over in Saint Louis and especially at my apartment, if three flights of stairs are navigable.

All best wishes,

Donald

12 May Tuesday

Did I read the whole of Middlemarch sometime after college and forget I had done so?  Or am I still in the early pages, which I did re-read a while back?  Or is it that so many scenes now feel generic, perhaps so many bbc productions have stolen them over the years.  Fred Vincy’s debt problems right now.  

Madurai, the Temple of Meenakshi now gives me something to say when the topic of where to go next comes up.  Rather than an African Safari I would prefer to see Meenakshi.  Even Donald did not go there, so I can make it my ultimate fantasy goal,  Probably never go, probably unbearably hot.  

Little box of birthday things from Jess.  She mailed in Friday the 9th, at our door yesterday the 11th!  

Great walk.  Breeze held up.  Kids sent a French rap song—-Emma chanting it.  Eliot doing the snares and faces.  Now I’m trying a Spanish tortilla again.

13 May Wednesday 

Started two shows Anne suggested last night, Jett, and Mallorca Files.  

Eloy here to cut the grass.  Nice chat with him.  He put the grass off until tomorrow.  Showed me around the Turtle house.  Larger with an extra room and nicely decorated in every detail but not as nice, not as comfy, not as coherent as Bear House.  Patio also lacking severely.  

“he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man’s pre-eminence without too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in.”   Eliot 

Called Dick Mertens.  Up and jolly.  Has been visiting the Latino area of Chicago, looking for stories.  One undertaker told about a guy who died of covid, the whole family now positive, so no chance of a service or social gathering.  He put the body into the casket and onto the hearse and then drove to their house, opened both so they could look in and wave farewell.

Later Dick sent me a photo of that painting he bought from me!  Had forgotten it, but he always comments about it.  Glad he enjoys it so much.  Sent him a photo of Jessica’s mural but no comment back.  Eloy says she is much admired in Tucson, her work all over the place there.  He traveled lots when in the air force.  Got caught once being a translator for a general in some meetings about Nato and found out how different Spanish Spanish is from TexMex Spanish.  Had to quietly work hard to find out fast.  They are booked for a cruise in January and wonder if it will go—-.  Same about his rentals.  

14 May Thursday

Hello Fresh a day late.  Celia will marry Lord Chettam’s son, so that is happy news.  Swiss Air sent an email demonstrating their new techniques for safe travel, including a photo of cargo strapped onto seats in the passenger chamber.  Helps suggest that air travel will continue and re-make itself and for a few years at least be prohibitively expensive for most of us.  

Meanwhile I take up the study of Dravidian architecture and culture.  

Message from Marcy the other day.  She has gone back to the religious community she had left and has married a man there she has known for thirty-five years.  She didn’t want to die alone.  

“Virginia y Bob , perdón por no escribir hace mucho , pero a vecessr la vida cambia y tenemos muchas cosas por ver y arreglar ,  

Cómo estan, de salud , como está la familia deseo de todo corazón , estén bien ,la  vida hoy está muy difícil tenemos que cuidarnos mucho, ya somos personas mayores.

Virginia Bob quiero participarles que me case hace tres meses, con la persona que dirigía la comunidad, lo conozco hace 35 años tenemos mucha historia que contar, cuando murió Richard , en ese mismo mes murió la esposa del dirigente de nuestra comunidad 

Se llama Abraham Bereshit , yo regrese a mi comunidad y el también , y estuvimos viviendo estos dos años aquí en esta casa, y hace unos meses me propuso matrimonio y acepte  no quiero morir sola , es una persona muy respetable y lo aprecio mucho, es por esto que movida cambio y estoy tranquila y en paz , me da gusto comunicarselos , les envío una foto de la boda, los quiero mucho ,seguiré escribiéndoles abrazos  y 

 besos  Marcy

———

15 May  Friday

Video this morning from Marga.  Chotis dance for San Isidro’s feast today, Patron of Madrid.  

Willow very weepy during the night.  The GH scenes of Mike near death got to her I think and she worried about whether we have signed a Do Not Resuscitate measure.  Assured her that those are all in the living will documents.  

Sign among others we can’t quite see of how this isolation and confinement affects us.  Even walking in the park every day and having casual chats have their negative effects we don’t realize.  Would it be actually better to stay inside and not go out at all?  House arrest rather than glimpsing the world and then scurrying back in?  Nelson Mandela as a true role model here.  Even Bishop Walsh of Cumberland.  For how long was he held in a Chinese jail?  Could look up his story.  

Headlines keep up the conflicting levels of absurdity and unreality.  Jokes too.  Funny video someone did of a horse race, the announcer using all the tags of the current new cycles.  

Va watching White Nights now, 5:30pm.  Barisnykov and Hines and Rossellini.  We talk about renting an apartment now, but I think it is premature, maybe born of our boredom, or this “unprecedented” simulacrum of faux boredom.  Everything is unreal, even imagining what we will do next, what anyone will do next.  

Phil on our walking video—-had to ask him —-

I forwarded it to Peg.   I commented that you guys look slower than us, but not by a whole lot.  Peg needs to stop less often than Va seems to.  And while Peg needs to hold onto me, Va seems to hold onto you more than Peg hold onto me.

Funny world.   When we were 16 and going to dances at the Episcopalian church and St Peter and Paul I don't think we ever saw such futures or anything close to it.   Then again, I don't think we thought a whole lot about the future at all.  I know I didn't.   P

——

In my mind we see if we can return here next winter.  If so, then we look for a place to rent for the remainder of the year, and/or buy.  Depending on

the state of Covid pandemic state of affairs.  What if we can’t return next winter?   Fancy catalogues from Viking in today’s forwarded mail says they are betting that international travel will return.  

Will looking at their brochures lift my spirits?   Poor Marga says this is her 73rd day of isolation because people over 70 may not go out and may not have any visitors because they are higher risk.  I’m surprised really that her family doesn’t break the rules, bend them, a bit, but maybe community

surveillance, informal, is too strong.  

Enterprise is claiming a new windshield on the big Toyota car we had a while back.  Dang.  

Sunday May 17

Warmer and more gorgeous.  More we talk about things more we talk about looking here more seriously.  Should we meet with Kim now instead of waiting?  Should we come back after the balloon festival and spend the whole winter after all?  What if we stayed now!!!  

Tuesday May 19

QUERIDO DAVE Y MUY QUERIDA FAMILIA, 

How lucky we are to have such a talented musical family!  Your daily concerts always make our day but the last was THE BEST , especially for the birthday girl.  You all did such a marvelous job on the Spanish song and I loved seeing you all dance.  The parents have not lost their magic touch with the salsa and the kids are coming along very nicely. I especially loved seeing Eliot getting taller to dance with his mom and how long Emma's beautiful hair has gotten.

.

I think Bob will send you a pic of me as the recipient of a lovely party given last night  by my dear friend Barbara whom I have known and loved since we were little.  She had polio when she was two years old and  so she definitely knows what it is like to be disabled.  We ate outdoors in their patio with a marvelous view of the mountains.  It was paradise with NO MOSQUITOES! I know Cécile would appreciate that!  

We have been so happy here that we are definitely thinking of moving here  and/or of having a little place where we can escape from the cold and mosquitoes. and have space for you all to come stay with us whenever you can.

Do you have any idea when that will be again or do we all have to wait to see what state the world will be in when this nightmare is finally over?

much love and bisous,

BELA 

——

great birthday party at Barb’s last evening.  Finally registered totally that Ed’s cousin Tommy lives just a few houses down the street, has a better view of the mountain and valley and never goes out.  Terrified of everything and even more so of things now.

Too much time on the phone today about the Enterprise damage claim.  Now I see that ticking their boxes and taking their coverages will eliminate this hassle down the line.  

20 May Wednesday 

Dave’s quartet did the 60th broadcast yesterday!  

The miraculous apparition of the Enchanted Desert mural on the wall outside was/is the sign right under our noses of why we should move here!

Today a sense on the npr morning—and maybe it was the visit of Robert and Lisa last night as well—-and the birthday party Monday—-sense that the whole Covid story is easing everywhere.  So was it a pandemic, is it a pandemic and a media panic hysteria, all wrapped up together into a bundle of fear and trepidation.  Roy thinks he has had it and recovered, plans to get tested before a visit.  

Kierkegaard’s work was just entering the English speaking world in the 1960s.  So I saw his books in Hyde Park but had thought he was as established as Kant.  Not so.  I started to read the new biography “Philosopher of the Heart” by Clare Carlisle before we left but did not bring it with me.  Great review in the New Yorker gives me the gist.  Also gives me models for my life and for Kripal’s.  Paper given in Toronto explores the gay question, 2003, google search.  But then that fits Kripal’s generation’s outing mentality.  I would make a more ouroborian investigation in Kirpal.  We’ll see what Carlisle argues.  Something flatfooted about Kripal’s whole career, in everything he discusses.  Kierkegaard’s experience she says was full of “ambiguity, self-division and doubt.”  Kripal doesn’t seem to suffer from these, in spite of his seven years of deadly anorexia.  And it makes me wonder, even, if anorexia as a disease is marked by being an illness of severe either/or ness??  

21 May  Thursday

late afternoon.  Long visit with Kim about real estate.  Then a phone call to Nancy, who had phoned just as Kim was arriving (coincidence!!!), to hear her advise us to stay in Plymouth where we have a bigger support group and friends who know us.  Nancy feels her buying the Donatello time share was a mistake and sounds like she’s missing the old Plymouth gang—-that sense of coherence.   

Barbara just sent Va a site about a rental townhouse with indoor pool.  Nancy said just do the snowbird winter rental and stay put in Plymouth.  

Nancy urged us not to take on all the baggage  of ownership all over again.  Good points.  Kathy Baynes and Joel own three places now!!  Do we want to get stuck doing something like that?  

Dave Kent had a bad fall in the bath tub six weeks ago.  

May 22 Friday

Short talk with Dave.  They are out at RPs for the day, first time in a car in six weeks.  Borrowing it for a picnic tomorrow at Fontainebleau with friends.  Now feels clear we should keep renting each winter for next few years.  

Hi

We spent about two hours talking with a realtor yesterday afternoon about buying a place here.  She set up search filters and an online portal for sifting through the offerings.  We've driven around looking for three or four days before that looking up listings on our own.

Then in the evening a friend in California happened to call and when we told her all this she said what the heck are you crazy?  You don't want to take on the baggage of more home ownership no matter how attractive (the fantasy).  Keep renting every winter for a few more years, just as you did this winter.  

That seems like good sense.  I think lockdown boredom got us into that spin of thinking relocation would be super.  

Dave and family are on their first jaunt out of Paris in over sixty days.  The in-laws in the suburbs.  Little groups of high schools grads and families under the big shade trees in the park this morning.  

B

——

to Nancy

Hi

We spent about two hours talking with a realtor yesterday afternoon about buying a place here.  She set up search filters and an online portal for sifting through the offerings.  We've driven around looking for three or four days before that looking up listings on our own.

Then in the evening a friend in California happened to call and when we told her all this she said what the heck are you crazy?  You don't want to take on the baggage of more home ownership no matter how attractive (the fantasy).  Keep renting every winter for a few more years, just as you did this winter.  

That seems like good sense.  I think lockdown boredom got us into that spin of thinking relocation would be super.  

Dave and family are on their first jaunt out of Paris in over sixty days.  The in-laws in the suburbs.  Little groups of high schools grads and families under the big shade trees in the park this morning.  

B

———

Va wants to publish Dave’s hs book.  

Half an hour looking at Kim’s listings feed and you can see how many houses there are and the fine gradations of price and details.  Real search could take a long time and be really tiring.  

Here is a passage in Eliot that could seem to fit well with Kierkegaard.  Maybe Kierkegaard will become my favorite author for the next three years.  Somehow I would argue that “unhappiness” is the wrong word there, from Kirsch.  Can prove so later in Kirsch’s own words.  

“The dream-like association of something alien and ill-understood with the deepest secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense of loneliness which was due to the very ardour of Dorothea’s nature.”  

Sense of loneliness springing from deepest secrets of inner ardour—-is that Kierkegaard’s “unhappiness” also?  Celia says a few lines later that Dodo is “fond of melancholy things and ugly people.”  Exactly how others misinterpret their friends and siblings who experience this sense of loneliness.”  Apply to Pessoa as well.  And others . . . . 

Søren Kierkegaard’s Struggle with Himself

For the philosopher, unhappiness became not a condition but a vocation.

By Adam Kirsch

May 4, 2020

Imagine an educated, affluent in his late twenties, suffers crippling feelings of despair and guilt. he breaks up with a woman. He abandons career

What if it had happened not in his late twenties but in high school, ten years earlier, when he was in his late teens?  Or even earlier as in Kripal’s case?  The crippling feelings of despair and guilt—-or the despair that is guilt as experienced within doctrinaire Christian/Catholic life. 

If today—end up in a psychiatrist’s office, depression or bipolar disorder. therapist and  medication. The goal would be to get him back to normal, recognize his propensities as symptoms—evidence of a psychological problem.

In my third year in the monastery, I was sent to a therapist, given medication, sent to a hospital, twice.  Kripal found a monk in his college monastery who was a therapist.  

Søren Kierkegaard had learned from Romantic literature. “Real depression, like the ‘vapors,’ is found only in the highest circles, in the former case understood in a spiritual sense,” he wrote two months later. He considered his “melancholy” not a disease but a “close confidant . . . the most faithful mistress I have known.”   The ardor of Dorothea’s nature.  Spiritual longing, spiritual loneliness a mirroring lover.

a rigorously introspective —-ism. Søren was the youngest, under strict religious discipline, instilling a sense of fear and guilt that never left them. “Oh, how frightful it is when for a moment I think of the dark background of my life, right from the earliest days!” Like Kierkegaard I recall “The anxiety with which my mother filled my soul, [her] own frightful melancholy.”

Not a condition but a vocation. Kripal and I fled to the monastery.  Or if not fled, joined up.  At seventeen.  

In a new biography, “Philosopher of the Heart” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the British scholar Clare Carlisle shows that this calling consumed his life. After leaving school, at the age of seventeen, in 1830, he enrolled as a theology student at the University of Copenhagen, in order to prepare for a career in the church. But it took him ten years to complete his degree, 

“So the king flees—and so there is a republic,” he wrote in his journal that year. “Piffle.”

Hybrids of philosophy, autobiography, fiction, and sermon. Advancing deeper and deeper into the experience of suffering, he emerged with a profoundly new way of thinking about human existence. The dark exigency “Fear and Trembling,” “The Concept of Anxiety,” “The Sickness Unto Death.”

1849, Kierkegaard “There is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety in the face of an unknown something,” he writes.“a human self is under an obligation to obey God—in its every secret desire and thought.”

sin and redemption 

The first English translations of Kierkegaard appeared in the nineteen-thirties, and it wasn’t until the sixties, more than a century after his death, that the translators Howard and Edna Hong began to produce a complete English edition of his works.

“To be entirely present to oneself is the highest thing and the highest task for the personal life,” he wrote.

Kierkegaard, as Carlisle’s title has it, was a philosopher of the heart, “an expert on love and suffering, humor and anxiety, despair and courage.”

One of the best-known Kierkegaardian sayings, paraphrased from an entry in his journal, is that life can only be understood backward, but it has to be lived forward. In other words, at every moment, we are making a decision about how to live, one that can’t be made for us by history, society, or even religion—any of the causes that might emerge when we try to analyze the course of our lives in retrospect. My future is no one’s responsibility but my own. This is what Kierkegaard calls “the dizziness of freedom,” which he compares to the vertigo we feel when looking into a “yawning abyss.”

Carlisle, joins him on his journey and confronts its uncertainties with him.”

everything Kierkegaard detested about official Christianity.

All this made “Either/Or” a succès de scandale: one reader observed,

For Kierkegaard, straightforward autobiography couldn’t do justice to the truth of his experience, which was full of ambiguity, self-division, and doubt.

Instead, he concocted a series of nested narratives, defying the reader to say where Kierkegaard himself can be found. The introduction to “Either/Or” recounts how the book’s “editor,” Victor Eremita, accidentally discovered a bundle of manuscripts in a secondhand desk. By the handwriting, he could tell that they were the work of two unknown authors; accordingly, the book is divided into two parts, attributed to “A” and “B.” Eremita even says that he is placing the author’s fee in an interest-bearing account for A or B to claim, should they ever appear.

[Sounds so like Pessoa’s heteronymic imagination, doesn’t it? ]

“You talk so much of the erotic embrace, but what is it compared with the matrimonial!” he proclaims.

The title “Either/Or” implies that one must choose between these two ways of life, but that is just what Kierkegaard did not do. Whatever his readers may have imagined, he was not a cynical sensualist like A. He had courted Regine with the utmost propriety and was devastated by the end of their relationship. He never loved another woman, and when “Either/Or” was published he had two copies printed on vellum—“one for her, and one for me”—which he kept in a specially made cupboard.

But Kierkegaard could not become a contented husband like B. He left Regine, Carlisle argues, because marriage would mean sacrificing the freedom, the open-endedness, that he saw as the essence of an authentic life.

Kierkegaard preferred to remain dizzily suspended over the abyss of his own freedom, the only position that allowed him to keep writing.

[In the middle]

In a typically dialectical fashion—“dialectical” is one of Kierkegaard’s favorite words—he used this freedom to think about the nature of commitment. He believed that the most important commitment we can make is to God, and his work grew increasingly concerned with religious faith. Eight months after “Either/Or” appeared, Kierkegaard published “Fear and Trembling,” probably his best-known book today, which begins with the proposition that a human being becomes great “in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved.” There is no greater object of love than God, Kierkegaard writes, and the Bible’s most powerful example of what it means to love God is the story of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac, which he subjects to a powerful and dramatic analysis.

Burke does  as well.  Have to look up his version, does he not write about Kierkegaard?  Perhaps he read him in German.  Of course he did and dialectic is everywhere and he writes about Abraham and Isaac and Kierkegaard in Rhetoric of Motives.  

When God commanded Abraham to take Isaac—“your son, your only son, whom you love,” the text emphasizes in Genesis 22—and slaughter him with a knife on top of Mt. Moriah, it was contrary to every natural feeling and ethical principle.True faith, Kierkegaard insists, believes “by virtue of the absurd”—which is why almost no one has it.

“It is repugnant to me to do as so often is done, namely, to speak inhumanly about a great deed, as though some thousands of years were an immense distance,” he writes in “Fear and Trembling.” “I would rather speak humanly about it, as though it had occurred yesterday.”

A journey away from cleverness and complexity. “Christianly, one does not proceed from the simple in order then to become interesting, witty, profound, a poet, a philosopher,” he writes. “No, it is just the opposite; here one begins and then becomes more and more simple.” The final simplicity is silence, and in his last years Kierkegaard truly earned the pseudonym under which he had published “Fear and Trembling,” Johannes de Silentio—John of the Silence.

or Robert Lax 

When he became seriously ill, in 1855, he seemed content to die, even.  Kierkegaard’s niece visited him in the hospital shortly before he died, and observed that “a feeling of victory was mixed in with the pain and the sadness.”

Published in the print edition of the May 11, 2020, issue, with the headline “The Abyss of Freedom.”

Adam Kirsch is a poet, a critic, and the author of, most recently, “Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?”

Now to rework this piece a bit like Radi Os by Ronald Johnson or in other ways.  With commentary and applications.  

Nicholas on Kierkegaard?? 

Burke Contra Kierkegaard: Kenneth Burke's Dialectic via Reading Soren Kierkegaard

G. L. Ercolini

Philosophy and Rhetoric 36 (3):207-222 (2003)

————-

Just invented something that must already exist but I'll throw it to you and you tell me what you think.  I form a business relationship with Eloy (our landlord).  We find a house that we and he both like.  We buy it and he agrees to this "condo--vrbo" relationship, maybe with money involved:  We come to livein the house the months of the year we choose.  When we are not here he pulls it under his business for management, upkeep, looking after, and renting as a vacation rental.  Some sort of split of the 

income.  For this we pay him some version of an HOA fee.  If and when the house does rent, we both make some sort of income from it.   What could we call this??  Or does it exist?  Floating rental management ownership?  

Satellite partnership? Detached House Condominiumization?

————

Finished watching the Bob Dylan documentary.  Enjoyed it.   Boy does it conjure those times and those emotions.  Almost teared up a few places just on the music alone.  

After Featherstone’s funeral is where I must have stopped Middlemarch before.  Feels so much like an ending in Masterpiece Theater terms.  

“Although Burke's appropriation does not reveal much to the reader about Kierkegaard, these three sections dealing with Kierkegaard reveal much about Burke's dialectic. Through Burke's reading of Kierkegaard, one can see the powerful role that mediation and resolution play in Burke's vision as to how criticism can transform the realm of human interaction. “

Ercolini.  He says Kierkegaard come into view in the forties.  

24 May Sunday  

Yesterday an angelic event in the park.  Fellow said hello and encouragement to Virginia.  With two other friends and I think they were the guys who hailed us a week before and I took them for older frat types.  Mistake.  He asked if I had the allen wrench to adjust Va’s AFO better.  He then took it and tried to make the adjustment.  Identified himself as a PT.  

Couldn’t do it but gave us three places to call to see if they could help us.  Hoping one can see us on Tuesday.  Now wonder if both the old and the new brace are not up to snuff, don’t have the adjustable heel angle thing that he seemed to think they should have.  

May 25  

Roy showed up yesterday around no0n after texting that he could visit.  Left today as we started to nap around 3.  He says Infinite Jest is the last book he tried to read, couldn’t finish, years ago, even though his wife at that time, Judith, loved it, read it more than once,  Jonah was a child then.  Now Jonah and his wife have charged Roy with child abuse of their daughter.  Quite unbelievable and sadly ironic, given that Roy worked in the office of abuse protection for the state years ago.  Intense review of Roy’s stories.  

Took my mind off of my obsessions of the moment—-buying a house here and covid and whether Va’s brace has been faulty for years and can we get it fixed.  Or a better new one.  

Kirsten sent us news of Jim’s new book.  Telling our own story he says is not the foundation of our personal identity but its capstone.  Wish I could be more excited about wanting to read it but I can’t muster that now.  Sounds pretty academic and dull to me so far, but then I don’t know Jim.  

Have to copy in the advice I got from Nancy and from Phil—-almost identical arguments from each of them.  

Phil”s:  Well, I have some reservations about this idea.

Most important:  Corona virus.  Almost no one is going anywhere these days.  Air bnb just laid off 400 employees and probably won't rehire them for another two years or so.   So this is the absolute wrong time to start what you envision.  You will have mortgage to pay and no clients.  Lose a lot of money.   Why do you want to do that? 

Second:  If you and Va  want to use the house in winter - say, Jan, Feb, March, you couldn't rent the place to  long-term occupants - a year or more.   So it would have to be short-term occupants.   Hence, lotsa damage likely to the place from such short-term folk.  Have to fix it up and clean it up between each occupant.   Ergo, lotsa cost.   You don't make money.  You lose money.   Why do you want to do that?

P 

PS Did you get a $1,200 check from Trump yet?

Nancy’s: Sounds like you are trying to figure out a way to buy a property in ABQ. You could simply buy a property and hire a property manager... Keep it simple But, I still think, given our age/health, renting is the only way to go. Why do you need to own? Do you want a mortgage at this time in your life?  If yes, why? And, since COVID-19 will be around for 1-2 years till there is a vaccine, who is going to rent your property? If it sits empty, you have a big expense to maintain. Have you done the pro/con list of all this? what do you think?  

——-

I hope in Kierkegaard’s biography some mention will be made of that church in Copenhagen with the spiral tower.  Still something I think most 

wonderful.  

Roy told us about the great pyramid of Cholula, largest structure ever built on earth? by the Aztecs.  Now under a hill on top of which a church stands.  

I should have majored in philosophy after all.  I might have been much more successful and happy.  But then maybe not.  Will Lars Iyer write about Kierkegaard?  

Tuesday  May 26

Roy’s visited wiped me out.  Just one overnight but he talked so incessantly we wondered if he has lost his mind or if he was high the whole time on pot?  Most likely the latter.  Few weeks ago when we saw him in SF after his return from Galapagos he was much more himself. Yesterday he was wound up—-pot, nerves, adrenalin, covid isolation excitement?  

Missing the kids’ daily video.  Weather gorgeous.  Have dropped the idea of buying a place.  Va watching Cary Grant, Affair to Remember.  

I’m now into Middlemarch beyond what I remember.  Potluck planned and two other dinner invites.  

Circled back to Parabola.  

Nancy—-

So, was that the advice to Stop yourself from buying something!!!???

I think since this is the first year you rented, you owe it to you both to just repeat that since you are assured of the place...

You do have to picture yourself solo some time. Would you want to be there solo?

Do you know enough people that you would not be warm but lonesome?

In MX, I liked it so much that in the back of my mind I wanted to own a place. but look where we are  now... It would not work if our place didn't have an elevator (was never important then) and now I don't even want to go though the hassle of going and having to drag along all the

equipment!!!!! It is heavy stuff... So I complain all winter about being cold... You can't imagine all the sweaters etc I keep buying...

I think about making any big expenditure now: for example, I want solar panels on the roof.  But, as soon as I would spend that $$$, I would possibly need it for a care home!

The house needs some maintenance, and I am in denial for same reason...

having a heat wave...

Kathy and joel just flew back to Maine from Tucson and sent a photo of a near empty plane and also airport…

——-

guess her sweaters are like my shoes—-

27 May Wednesday

super quiet day.  park walk, Willow’s left leg turning and she seemed in weaker mode.  think I might do an easy day alternating with a harder day—2k one day, 4k the other.  ?  will she permit.  Called Guardian, lots of paperwork will be involved, won’t see the cash for two months or more.

notes from Donald and Nancy—-

Dear Bob and Virginia,

I absolutely loved reading Because the Night.  It flooded me with memories.  I have taken a number of the night trains Lane refers to, although not to or from Scotland.  I particularly remember the Sud Express from Irun to Lisbon in the old days.  How I enjoyed ensconcing myself in my compartment ( I always pay extra to be alone, if I can), and then going to the old-fashioned dining car, with elaborate marquetry and great service from white-gloved waiters.  Alas! the last time I took it, all that was gone.  There was the regular new bar car and you could get a bit of food at the counter.  The octopus salad wasn't bad.  But where are the snows of yesteryear?

And I love the New Mexico post card.  I fell in love with the state in 1954, when we first drove across country to Long Beach. I can still remember the motel in Tucumcari, and on the trip back in Albuquerque.  Maybe next year I can visit.  Would you take me to Santa Fe, which I have never visited?

I just finished a very long e-mail to an old friend (we met in Honolulu when I was thirteen and a freshman at St. Louis College.  I am godfather to his first born. but we lost contact about thirty years ago.  I have also just heard from Jeff Meyer from graduate school.  Did either of you

know Jeff and Lauree?  We went to Europe together in 1967.  I am delighted to have heard from him.

I hope all is well.  With love,

Donald

—————-

Solo.

Yes, I am a planner--always thinking about stuff so that has been a scenario I have thought a lot about.

When will I be lonesome (lonely?) -- in the evenings probably. I run all over in the day time when no COVID around.

Lunches, shopping, groceries, errands... etc.  Now, lots of reading--but there is someone here in the PM...

I think of the places I have not traveled (eastern europe: Prague, Vienna, Gerrmany, etc-- Australia & New Zealand)

But, will I travel solo? probably not my favorite thing to do but travel companions can be totally irritating if they don't go at same pace. 

I know on OAT you can travel solo and get a single room...

Will I be poor without Bob's income? I will have his Soc Sec as it is larger (but now I have both), I will have 1/3 of his pension instead of the whole thing.. Same bills but less income. At least we own the house so it is just insurance and prop taxes...

Yes, I could go first or be incapacitated so Bob would have to go into a care home as he can't be alone--though he manages just fine when I am out. 

See--mostly logistics... I am a tactical not necessarily a strategic thinker... I like the weeds and love to make plans... Almost loved planning trips as much as the hassle of going on them :-)

I think the hard thing for Bob and for me is there is no cure...And he seems fine and will probably go on this way until something catastrophic happens--a fall with something broken is most likely. 

So, enough of this boring depressing topic!

today my bananas were finally ripe so I made Banana almond flour muffins: NO sugar, NO oil. Google recipe 

They are delicious!!!! I had bought almond flour and went looking for a recipe. Found this one but had to wait ages for my bananas to be super ripe!

On that note... shower calls

cheers,

Nancy

p.s. we are having a heat wave!!! 100 yesterday... will cool by end of week.

———-

with buying a house cooled down we now have no “project” to distract ourselves with—-va starting a new book, I could make great headway into the Middle—-could edit last year’s journals toward uploading into KindleDirect.  

looked up Jim Murphy and found that two years ago he published a dialectical study of Girard—violence and the sacred with Girard in dialogue with great thinkers over the ages.  One blurb calls him a polymath.  Sounds like an interesting work and one that grew out of, is used for, his teaching.  Why did I “miss” Girard and why did I never do a book like this?  I never felt that committed to Burke as someone whom I should teach my students about year after year.  And Girard?  skeptical because no one I knew ever urged me to take a look and I wondered why he never referred to Burke on the sacrificial!!  Now Kripal never mentions violence or sacrifice in all of his discussions of religion.  Maybe Girard’s view concern social structure rather than personal mystical experience.  A social mysticism is one phrase that shows up in my quick skim.  Looking in the index of Kripal’s Kali I did find a fascinating passage about pansomatic orgasm as something Ramakrishna discussed and experienced.  Makes me think I might look further at that book after all.  Doing so would give me more information and understanding of “tantra” and “tantric” than any other book, even if I have prejudged it too quickly and harshly after my look at Secret Body.  

Looking through reader reviews of Kripal’s books I came upon Toby Johnson.  He was in the first class of students at Chicago’s CTU so he may have overlapped with Donald.  Or just missed each other.  He came out of the closet and became a leading social activist for gay rights and gay spirituality.

28 May Thursday

Donald has never heard of Johnson and thinks New Mexico beats New Hampshire after seeing our short video greeting.  

Johnson has a novel about the Navajo, curious to see that.  We started Gone with the Wind last night.  4 hours.  2 more today.  Why has it always left me cold?  schmaltz of highest order.  

note from Rick Evans

Hi Bob,

 

You guys are well funded to meet your expenses without cashing out the policy.  I don’t know that you need to close it out.  At the same time, you can think of the policy as a savings account and choose to use it that way to get you through the next year or so.  This is a common strategy.

 

One other thought: given the cash value, you can probably re-work the policy if you choose to keep it by letting the cash value pay the policy going forward.   I would imagine that there is enough there so that you would never have to pay premiums again. You may even be able to ‘borrow’ from the policy for income but prevent it from lapsing.  I don’t know  much about that strategy but I’ve heard that it can work.

 

There doesn’t seem to be a resounding option one way or the other but let me know if you would prefer to discuss further.   I think Virginia would fair just fine without the policy if you passed away.  After all, by using the $100k cash value today, you allow existing assets to grow a bit more and recover from  the down market.  This may nearly make up for the remaining $70k that you will  forego in additional death benefit.

——-

Va said this morning she wanted to do a shorter walk.  Might get out there earlier than ever since we started at 6:04 today.  

Must be at a crucial place in Middlemarch.  Am starting to look at other books.  Chapter 38 of Three Love Problems.  Must focus and stay the course.  Extra time today because the short walk early has us home now at 11:05 am.  Really hot, little breeze.  

Really felt skeptical once more about Kripal’s early work, glanced at the negative reviews on amazon.  Yes you can hear Indians and devotees complaining their saint and religion being deeply misunderstood by westerners.  Curious to see how Toby Johnson uses the Navajo information his collaborator gives him for his novel.  

“Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff.  The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted as easily as his mood.”  370

article in HuffPo in 2014 about Penguin pulling her book from publication in India——“The other issue is Doniger’s glee in framing an entire religion through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis when even most psychologists have moved away from psychoanalysis as a legitimate means of diagnosis. While there was quite a bit of clamor from right-wing Hindu ideologues about the book, Doniger did miss an important point: her book offended many mainstream Hindus who would have otherwise defended her right to publish her views. After all, Hinduism is itself inherently pluralistic. More alarmingly, Doniger claimed that her book was the “definitive” account of Hinduism, though her historiography seemed to read more like an unauthorized biography of a celebrity.”   by Hindu America president

29 May  Friday

Rehearsing departure moves in my head.  Good call to the Sunport got information about how to pull up, call for a redcap and get Virginia in before dropping at the rental car.  

Toby Johnson gives Kripal a kind and generous review of Secret Body:

One passage “As a straight man, Kripal looks at Western Christian religion as a production of sexually-repressed homosexuals who denied the sacredness and mystical overtones of heterosexual bonding. And sees that homosexual bias as a hindrance to spiritual insight for straight men. His first "gnomon" (meaning guiding thesis) is:

 "Heretical Heterosexuality. Whereas male heteroerotic forms of the mystical generally become heterodox or heretical, sublimated male homoerotic forms generally become orthodox."

It's a great insight. As a Catholic teenaged seminarian with devotional zeal that resulted in pathological anorexia, Kripal had to overcome this confusion of sexualities in Catholic doctrine. As a straight boy, he wasn't attracted to the naked Christ that hung over the altar. And certainly the generations of repressed homosexual priests and monks who devised and maintained the religion made it anti-sexual, and portrayed sexuality as base and properly merely biological, not uplifting and sacred.”

And then he disagrees:  

“After psychological intervention, Kripal's anorexia abaited and he overcame the devotionality—and the priestly vocation, but not the mystical quest. A grand experience a little later in his life that influenced everything thereafter was a mind-shattering experience in India of meeting an apparition of the Divine as the Goddess with whom he could have an experience of mystico-erotic, out-of-body, "tantric" lovemaking. His telling about "That Night" is one of the treats in the book.

The naked Christs notwithstanding, homoerotic love in Christianity is hardly orthodox. And the homosexuals aren't going to the monasteries and repressing their truth out of that anti-sexual thrust of Catholicism anymore. Modern self-aware gay men are no longer sublimating the eroticism. And there's a rich homoerotic spirituality bneing developed n the lives of these modern gay men. 

As myself a gay man fascinated with the same kind of spiritual religion-transcending vision as Kripal, I understand homosexuality itself as a manifestation of that idea of the "Human as Two." Just as heterosexual love witnesses to the interrelatedness of the two sides of humanity, so homosexual love witnesses to the discovery that the two sides are one. In mythic terms: God is attracted to God's complementary opposite: God loves the world: God loves opposites and creates the world as the Beloved. But also God is attracted to Godself as self and sees God's own reflection in the creation: God loves sames: Lover and Beloved are the same. Heterosexuality and homosexuality naturally demonstrate the twofold quality of divine creation. God loves the world as opposite and God is the world as the same.—“

Wonderful reply from Donald about Wendy Doniger.  I asked about her general reputation.  

“Wendy is very highly regarded by fellow scholars in Indian studies, particularly inearly periods. The current Indian government all but bans her histories because she does not agree with their Hindu nationalism She has often tried to bridge the gulf between specialists and an informed general readership. Her Sanskrit translations are considered very good. David regards her highly and they are very close friends. They have dinner together quite often. Wendy is exceptionally delightful in person and while I do not know her all that well, she has sung Moscow Nights in Russian into my ear.”

from the young minister, Bob

“ I am faring very well in Newton.  Lots of reading and running.  I have to say that this pandemic has insulated me from some of the staff dynamics, which has freed up time and energy to engage my own interests, and to become more of a teacher in the congregation.  Shifting to a focus on antiracism for the summer, and hopefully reading novels on my own, if you can believe that!  I haven't read a novel in quite some time, though I am nearly finished with "The Novel," Anna Karenina.  I started it back in December 2018, when I sensed my marriage was falling apart.  I must admit, it has been a lovely companion, and reading it slowly has made it seem more immersive in some ways.  I've been dating someone for a few months now, and that's delightful.  

How are you and Virginia doing?  Still in Albuquerque, yes?  Plans to come home?  Any good reads or ideas?

Take care,

———

Anne called late afternoon.  Penny, 5, keeping her on her toes.  

The Confineé quartet returned with Eliot on bass and Emma on drums.  

Va watching a Columbian series, the Queen and the Conquistador.  

30 May Saturday

Kids sent video yesterday.  #61?  E goes back to school this week, two days.  L goes every day.  Now at Plessis for the weekend.  

Va’s energy lower these past few days, choosing to do a shorter walk.   Getting weaker or the heat?  

Toby Johnson reminds us that before Kripal and even Wendy there was Joseph Campbell.  Interested in reading Johnson on Campbell.  

31 May Sunday

President’s security adviser says no systemic racism as country burns in many major cities.  I am surprised by Minneapolis but then what do I know about life anywhere anymore outside of our bubbles?  Ten years ago we feared the burnings in suburbs around Paris.  

Peg back in the hospital with some clotting.  

B&E due for lunch today.  Silvery, overcast day, cooler.   Started reading Grether’s book last evening—-he agrees with all I’ve thought for years now—no surprise there of course.  Bruce P Grether.  Still good to see it in print and glad he’s made it his crusade.  

Our genitals are the flowering of our bodies, “that bloom provides your sacred seed.  Your genitals are to be honored and admired just as you honor and admire flowers in a garden.” . . . .  ““Arousal and erotic ecstasy awakens phallic wisdom within your cells. All of your male ancestors stir in the DNA matrix of your body with the stimulation of your erection. Most of these men probably never had the opportunity to experience the kind of high-quality abundant erotic bliss that is now available to you as their heir, their latest embodied expression. The phallic energy is extremely powerful: creative, sustaining, and regenerative.” . . . .  “When fully activated, this energy brings back together into wholeness all that may have seemed separated or fragmented within you. It also regenerates your connection with other people and the world you live in. Your penis is the living image of that World Axis that connects the Above and the Below, that merges all dualistic polarities, and manifests the dynamic flow of creative energy—the same mysterious energy that creates the world. As you recognize this energy in your own body, you align your being with the way the world is organized. You are the microcosm of the macrocosm. To reclaim this connection aligns you with the creative processes of Creation itself.” . . . . .  “Ecstasy is surrender to the flow of feeling totally alive, fearlessly open to the full range of human experience, from the deepest suffering to the highest exaltation. As an ecstatic you must surrender resistance to what IS.” . . . . “This is the nature of your phallic liberation: you can allow the full intensity and range of embodied experience to flow through you like a river. This flow nourishes and cleanses you constantly: it’s the great adventure of feeling” . . . . “As the ecstatic energy circulates between your root and crown, the two-way traffic not only restores the open and feeling capacities of your heart—it also eventually opens what yogis call the “thousand-petalled lotus” at the top” . . . . “Your body, your genitals, your erection, your entire being expresses the Divine. The importance of your individual personality and egoic identity diminishes, and the sense of separation, which is the cause of all suffering, also gradually dissolves. Boundaries soften. You can identify all phenomena as arising and passing forms that emerge from Source and dissolve back into Source without urgency.”

— The Secret of the Golden Phallus: Male Erotic Alchemy for the 21st Century by Bruce P. Grether

Phil sent a Tunisian friends update ——

Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi died on May 22 in Paris. Most famous for his non-fiction "The Colonizer and the Colonized" and the fictional "Pillar of Salt" Memmi was born in 1920 in Tunis and lived in what he later termed a Jewish ghetto in the city. He pursued his undergraduate education at the University of Algiers and was interned in a concentration camp in Tunisia during the Nazi occupation of the country. He lived in Tunis until 1957 when he moved to France where he earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1975. He later became one of the directors of France's School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences, and, in the 1970s spent a year at the University of Washington. Early in his career he was a friend of Albert Camus, but Camus later felt that a chapter entitled "The Well Meaning Colonizer" in "The Colonizer and the Colonized" was aimed at him, and ended the friendship. Late in life Memmi struggled to explain why so many once colonized countries had sunk into poverty and religious intolerance, with rapacious leaders, poor education, and a lack of democratic freedom. "Why such failures?" he asked.

my reply 

haunting words at the end there ---  Memmi struggled to explain why so many once colonized countries had sunk into poverty and religious intolerance, with rapacious leaders, poor education, and a lack of democratic freedom. "Why such failures?" he asked."

given our cities on fire this weekend some would ask the same of us  ----  of course the vectors are wholly or partly different----and yet---I heard an interview on NPR yesterday,  distinguished prof at Yale--and hisresponse just seemed as distant and irrelevant as any other I had heard or could think of myself !!

Cornel West was on Anderson Cooper----and again---we've heard it all before, us wise codgers in our mid-70s.   Each generation has to have an awakening??  and no one trigger or leader can orchestrate or provoke it----and that is what is called History.  ?

The Yale prof---Stephen Carter? or Cooper?  said the lie of racism has tobe stopped once and for all---that being white is superior to being black.

I thought---well that lie won't be erased any time soon because history andanthropology demonstrate that every group---famiy, tribe, people, nation---define themselves always and everywhere with the "lie" that they arewho they are because they are different/superior to the others, who are defined as barbarians or lots of variations of that epithet.  From Mosesonward, from the Aztecs onward, Babylonians, Neapolitans you name it.  Roman Catholics are superior to Lutherans and Calvinists, Japanese superior to Burmese.  etc etc etc  This Lie is essential and will not be stopped by telling the Truth or any such Truth.  Framing these protests and street riots and demonstrations in this way just misses every point, is the safe and comfortable person's tone-deafness. 

Good lunch and visit with Barb and Ed.  Now watching Dirty Dancing, Ed reminded us of it.  We had a short and key chat over the table—-about why they’re happy to move here—-“we almost had no choice because Barb is getting weaker in subtle ways.”  And “what if I break a leg?  Exactly I agreed.  As we get taken to the hospital we say oh, my wife needs full-time assistance from here on.”  

Interesting that after talking a bit about the protests and anger all over the country this weekend we veered into telling where we were on 9/11.  Ed was in Florida with his mother for her birthday and his aunt and cousin Tommy was there.  His mother permitted Tommy to pay for dinner for his mother and then at the last moment Ed’s mother insisted she pay.  “Fuck you” Tommy burst out.  Wholly uncharacteristic of him.  We decided later it was the unacknowledged stress of having seen the plane fly into the second tower earlier that day on tv.  

Phil —  I agree that it's a universal habit, and I also think, in this country today, it is also politically useful to blacks.   They can blame all their troubles on whites.   Memmi's question indicates that maybe former colonies should look at themselves as possible reasons for "failure" and not excuse themselves by blaming it all on the colonizers.  But as you point out, the universal political motto/strategy is: "Blame others."  …P

1 June  Monday

Yesterday lunch with B & E.  Today we had chili dogs at the Dog House near Va’s old Middle School, on Central a few blocks from Lou’s place.  Barbara

mentioned it.  Also the movie Night of the Iguana so that might be our viewing tonight.  Found The Foundations of Caring with Paul Rudd—delightful movie last night.  

Big dark clouds over the mesa, rain this evening.  Thunder the other night.  

2 June Tuesday

3 June Wednesday  

At Lou’s last night we heard great paranormal accounts.  Barbara lived in a haunted house during her vista training in Lewisburg PA.  Lou had two major experiences in Mexico when she was first married.  

We’re now in packing and departing mode.  Not much action yet but can feel the gathering of the wave.  

Try to retell Lou’s story later.  Searching this afternoon for dove bars but alas none to be found!  Va saying she told us so.  Bought enough small ice cream noveliies to feed an army though.  

canceled hellofresh too early so no box today.  Carry-outs into the breach tomorrow onward!  

Colin and family going to stay on with us for a while.  Interesting experiment.  

note to Nancy  

Hi  Yes, happy to be snowbirds at last.  Bit longer stay than we had expected but it has been good.  Feels right to be going back now.  We will miss having the kids visit this summer for sure.  On the other hand it might help us realize that no matter what they are growing fast and we will never be very immersed in their lives anyway.  Too far away.  Maybe they will come for Christmas again this year if the covid feels quieted down around the world.  Big if it seems now.  Friends here seem to feel a vaccine will be working within eight months but that seems wishful hoping.  Also a feature of how difficult it is really to make all of this sink in on a daily basis.  Our lives are comfy and out of touch with lots of harsh realities.  Went shopping today for Dove minibars (for a last get together Sunday with about 8 people).  Could find none of the Dove brand so now have enough variations to treat a group of thirty!.  Also drove out to the airport today to satisfy my vaguely OCD worries about getting their next week.  Talked with a redcap about just what to do at 5:30 am.  So we'll see what being back home will feel like and how long the mosquitoes will give us to readjust.  

B

———

Va just read that the Minneapolis police had some training by the Israeliarmy, learned the knee-neck hold from them.  True or Russian-bot? either way, a provocative item.  I've been thinking that it is the Image, thevisual of the knee on neck along with the "can't breathe" phrase thatcaught so many people's sympathetic imagination because our entertainment and mass shootings over the years has taken such visceral power away from all other methods---guillotine, ho-hum, shootings, ho-hum, even garroting and hanging and beheading, seen that, ho-hum.  

I’ve stayed with Toby Johnson’s novel on kindle and am liking it.  Learning about the Navajo—the Diné.  Even New Mexico history.  

4 June Thursday 

Earliest at the park yet, 8:30 approximately but already hot, others even said so.  Basic walk, chat with Rita who lost her husband to a car wreck when they were engaged, fifty years ago. Father from Italy, tailor, made all of her clothes.  NYC

Packing day.  By 7:30 almost everything in the two big bags.  Shipped two more boxes by UPS.  Tomorrow cleaning day and dinner with Lisa and Robert.  Sampling some of the ice cream I bought the other day.  

Got to the park early but it was really hot and we did a short walk.  

5 June Friday

News this morning of the passing of Chris Buckley.  Such a beautiful man who suffered early tragic losses and live through them to lead a loving and radiant life.  Beautiful elegy by Susan Higgins on Facebook.  That’s where Va saw the news.  Hoping for more from others.  I assume it was a heart attack.  

Short walk, very hot morning no matter that we got to the park at 8:30.  Rita very friendly, reminded us to look up Christ of the Desert monastery next time, up near Abiqui.  

——- Susan Higgins 

I used to get "dragged" on hikes with Chris Buckley, he was forever the outdoorsman, and good at it. I resisted and complained a LOT (hiking into places where no other humans exist and then CAMPING there, cold, miserable rainy summits, rattlesnake spotting in the granite quarries of NH, mountaineering on trails much too advanced for my suburban upbringing, xc skiing in the remote NH backwoods, living in the "cabin" for an entire summer....I'm sure he was glad I didn't get into rock climbing), but he taught me so much. He introduced me to Bukowski, helped me hone my creativity, introduced me to various bird calls, and instilled in me a keen appreciation for wildlife. He was the only other person I knew who grew their own food (my grandmother was the other) and the ONLY person I knew who ate organically and cared about his impact on the environment  before it was even a thing. He taught me about NH wildflowers, including the painted trillium, pictured here (thanks Orawan Buckley for the picture). He also made me laugh harder than any human on Earth. He was a part of a very special trio of brothers, and I send my love and prayers to Brendan and Kevin Buckley as they navigate through this tough time. I will take all these gifts from Chris and carry them with me always. RIP my dear friend.

———-

No, Chris was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer back in December. We think it was radon exposure. In his house, he had a basement office that ended up testing very high for radonn

He did chemo and radiation, but it had spread to his brain, all major organs, bones

He fought the hard fight

I know, it is so sad. Jen's last name is Morris. I am not sure how old Sawyer and Carter are but one of them is in college in Montana. Orawan is Brendan's wife, yes. They live in New York; brendan is working at the Cornell Tree Ring Lab

I'll be sure to let you know if there's any service for Chris.

Brendan and Orawan have been setting up shop in Plymouth though, during chris's sickness

———

we go to dinner at Lisa’s this evening.  

6 June Saturday  

piece George sent got skepticism from me and from Phil —- it had a headline “the treason of the ruling elites”  —-

"The ruling elites are, at the same time, desperately seeking scapegoats."  

Yet Hedges seems oblivious to his own catalog of scapegoats in this article.   And he has always been like that.  He seems like a nice guy who is concerned about people.   And he's not totally wrong.  But he is also a member of the "blame others" crowd.  

As for comparing 1890 to 2020:  It's fashionable to focus on inequality these days, but I think it's far more important to focus on the level and severity of poverty.  Do we have programs to prevent poverty from becoming life threatening?  I think in 2020 we did  - at least until the virus struck - and in 1890 they didn't.  So who cares if Bill Gates has a lot of money if everyone is fed and housing is available in most of the country outside of California where the weather attracts drifters?  

I'm reading "Everything Flows" by Vasily Grossman about the horrors of the Soviet Union.  The "horrors" of capitalism can't come within a million miles of the Soviet government of the workers.  And Hedges should know that instead of blaming our system of imperfect but fairly good government...............Phil  

I get Hedges-like messages all the time from my friends from Tunisia Peace Corps, especially a woman who married a French guy.   I'll admit that the French health system is superior to ours, but,  good god! - the French pay a lot of taxes.   She thinks we should just tax the billionaires and that will take care of the problem.  I try to to tell her that it won't, but she is a follower of Piketty the French economist who talks of nothing but "inequality."  

Phil

PS I did like Hedges comment that the Russians didn't elect Trump.  That's one of my favorite points. 

———

email so unsatisfactory to my generation but Susan sent their email addresses—-

words impossible

Dear Jen and Dear Brendan and all the family

Cannot begin to say how sad I am to hear this news.  All condolences, all love to you. 

Also learned that you completed the incredible and amazing Labrador book.  So glad to hear that.  Sorrow the more that Chris cannot see the full recognition it will receive.  

In deepest sympathy and love, Bob and Virginia Garlitz

—————

the death of one dear person puts all the other considerations into wholly different lights —  so doubly, triply sad that the house he and Jen shared out on New Hebron Road became his undoing.  too ironic.  I even wonder if in hindsight the radon was a factor in her fight with cancer?  

we’ve never had our basement tested in this way — perhaps we should — granite ledge right under it ——

nice dinner with Lisa and Robert.  High winds today, we did a short walk in them.  Sun still hot “under” the winds.  

from wild heart yoga facebook site —-

A bit about Chris’s work:

“There was a time in the early days of exploration -- think Shackleton’s 1914 Endurance expedition or the Greely arctic exploration of 1881-1884 -- where the crews were entirely on their own and totally cut off from the outside world for years at a time. They might as well have been on the dark side of the moon as on their very own planet. The outside world had no idea if they were alive or dead and the explorers themselves had no inkling of current politics, social trends, or the daily functioning of their own families and communities.

Modern adventure and exploration is somewhat of a paradox. Contemporary explorers have certainly pushed the boundaries of what is possible, but with the great advances in portable batteries and all the ways to stream and communicate they are intimately hooked into the greater world on a constant basis. They post daily briefings of their progress from the top of Everest, talk to loved ones in real time, and call in rescue in the form of airlift when they get in trouble.

In 1980, my brother Brendan and I had a very different kind of adventure, an adventure of ignorance we like to call it. It was before the age of the internet and fingertip information, it was at a time when we had so little money that we couldn’t afford a SAT phone even if we wanted one. We chose the Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador as our objective and the area was empty, barely explored, and unknown. We had a romantic notion of just being dropped off and fending for ourselves and that’s exactly what we did. We traversed over 200 miles of rugged, empty terrain with our own resources, what we could carry on our backs and a resupply depot half way. 

We, foolishly perhaps, made plans on the fly, really had no concrete itinerary –certainly not one we left with anyone – and had the most ephemeral and hasty arrangements for pick up. Once dropped off at Ryan’s Bay we were truly on our own and the psychological impacts of these decisions weighed heavily on our psyches.

During the ensuing years, we made many more trips to the Torngats and northern Labrador but it was impossible to recreate anything close to the original trip. We knew too much and with that knowledge we wouldn’t and couldn’t put ourselves in a similar situation again. We did however, repeat most of our original trip in 2001 and that trip lends perspective to the trip we took in 1980. What was a major ordeal of survival in 1980 became a rugged and demanding cross country traverse for a couple of forty year olds but one filled with the sublime and the joy of living in one of the world’s last wild places.

Photo taken by Chris Buckley: Brendan Buckley on the "Torngat Thruway"

  

———-

Dennis  

Sad to hear about Chris. He was a favorite in our writing group. Sally Boland always liked his writings best. Another favorite who died too soon.

7 June Sunday   

Sweet birthday song video from the kids and later a short hello as they headed out the door to go somewhere.  

Great party here.

8 June Monday 

note from Brendan 

Dear Bob,

Many thanks for your message and your kind words. We had a beautiful, loving ceremony for my dear brother yesterday. It was a wonderful way to send him off.

Best wishes,

Brendan

——

got lots of facebook birthday salutes too  

After all the prep anxiety yesterday for the party, today seems long and super quiet not to say dull.  Short early walk.  Shower for Va.  Packing stuff

and laundry.  

Reading Eliot and the Navajo book and maybe pick up again in Kierkegaard.  Va wanted to look up a house on Escalante, 1714, small 1950s with red brick cornice.  Looks like on Realtor.com that 704 Laguna blvd 

Phil on working for Boeing  —- who knew !  

Worked for Boeing a little more than 4 years, from 1986 to 1990 or 91.   I worked for a Boeing subdivision known as Boeing Computer Support Services (BCSS), which had a huge contract to supply NASA with long distance voice, video, and data communications.  The contract was headquartered out of Huntsville, but I was stationed at the Goddard Space Flight Center here in Greenbelt, MD (which is how I re-established contact with Miller who lives in Greenbelt).  Actually I was the only Boeing employee at Goddard.   All my worker bees were RCA subcontractors. I was known as a Service Manager.  Meaning I was the person that Goddard staff had to contact if they wanted any kind of special long distance circuits or had any complaints about their long distance service in general.  I also oversaw the worker bees and reported back to Huntsville any issues.

I was also responsible for any long distance circuitry into or out of Wallops Island, Virginia, which was a rocket launch site.   Usually I drove down to Wallops Island about once a week to make sure everything was okay down there.  I had a company car, which made the trip much more tolerable.  It took slightly less than two hours to get there, and almost every time I went, I stopped off at the nearby Chincoteague Beach to look at the ocean and see if any wild ponies were cavorting about.  They, incidentally, are nasty tempered critters.  They bite and kick if you get anywhere near them.  Anyway, I must have done the job fairly well because I still get a small pension from Boeing and I know guys who worked for Boeing longer than I did but get no pension.

I quit that job when I decided I would make my fortune writing novels.  Ergo I ceased being a "wage slave" at the age of 46.

P

————

Interesting. And a win-win outcome--you followed your vaguely Marxist heart by escaping slavery and got a wee pension from the grand old oppressive corporation to boot!!

Chat with Anne.  She reminded me to have wine and cheese at 5pm.  Now 4:30.  She was making some strange noise on the phone, opening a wine bottle it seems.  Basile has long been a germophobe when they travel—wiping down the airplane seats, the things in the hotel room, especially the tv remote.  Makes sense of course.  

9 June Tuesday  

Cooler day.  Canceled lunch with Lou.  Last day jitters.  

First passage read in Eliot this morning:  “The cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown man—-what a shudder they might have created in some Middlemarch circles!  ‘Oxygen! nobody knows what that may be—is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic?  And yet there are people who say quarantine is no good!”   421  published 1871  

Grocery store for travel bars.  Chilly morning.  Not yet 60.  Should hit 68 by 1pm says the wunderground.  Willow lying down for a morning nap.  Might do similar on the black recliner.  Looking for some final statement to close our long winter snowbird visit.  Snowrunner we could say, in honor of the brilliant roadrunner.  

Can’t think of anything else to do, roasting vegetable for lunch.  Might as well close this one down and use the other one until after lunch.  Where are the great thoughts of yesteryear?  

11 June not July!  late afternoon  Plymouth

Long day of travel yesterday, 3 am Rocky Mountain Time to 1 am Eastern Daylight Time and all went smoothly.  Salt Lake City airport hopping with people at 9 am.  Atlanta airport also quite busy at 5 pm.  Logan empty at 11 pm.  

Clare, Colin and Will full of energy here.  I’ve taken two sort of naps and done this and that, including registering the car online and signing up for oil delivery program online.  And printed out the Guardian Surrender form.  

House feels so familiar-strange and Full of stuff, both ours and McIver’s.  

12 June  Friday

Got the Guardian form signed and sent after simple phone call to their customer center.  Big relief.  

We walked late morning, I had a meltdown in the car before we got out at the bridge.  On the bridge Karen came up behind us decked in pinks and kept her distance and chatted, bringing us up to date.  Got tacos at Phat Fish, took a shorty stroll and avoided our balkan geography retiree.  Hot and humid.  Felt depressed about everything.  Napped after lunch, that has helped.  Found David’s book for Va but not yet the green check plastic tablecloth.   Colin, Clare and Will in Franconia for Soaring Friday—-Colin tows gliders into place.  

Ken just texted about Chris’s death at 65 and David Blake’s, of cancer, at 79.  We will face time them tomorrow.  

Short face chat with Dave and Cécile and Eliot.  Emma in school.  

Now it seems the only way to move to Abq full time will be to keep this house as homestead and archive for Davey.  Let it be empty in the winter like the other two houses in the neighborhood.  Envy the Schwartz’s for having such a clean-break move but I don’t think we can do it that way.  The baggage of the years.  

End of the empire.  Warren Buffet can dump his airline stock easy-peezy at 92.  No one wants our silver serving dishes or our books or other artsy memorabilia, weavings, masks, bric-a-brac collected—-remember the attic collection of the grande house in Paris—the museé something andré—-Jacquemart-André.  

Kabir poem (15th C) for today from Chaikana  Robert Bly translation

Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing:
all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees,
and it never winds down.

Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon;
ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,
and the secret one slowly growing a body.
Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant for life.

———

Saturday June 13  

Cold sunny day and windy.  Walked at the Docks, which is open at 50% seating and hopping with people. Lots of kayakers.  Waved to Jean who waved recognition to us.  Yelled over that we had just come back from being in New Mexico, good to see her.   A thrill to be that guy!  Lunched here after trying Burger King in Ashland and finding no sliders there.  Sad looking place.  Craving for Dove bar minis took the day and I went to Hannaford in search.  Wore my mask.  Dr Ebner coming out with a basket full and in his mask, beaming hello.  Only one Dove bar product, three in a box on a stick.  Market permutations seem to have downscaled Dove as a brand! ?  Ken and Carole rang up at 3:30.  Nice visit with them, good spirits.  All over the place with what our plans might or might not be.  They are putting Colony Bay much farther off in the future.  Think they may not go to Florida this winter, very concerned that the virus will get much worse.  They have not been out at all except to walk campus for a daily 5k or more or less.  Also doing yard work.  Karen the other day let out some confidential information that we got a laugh out of.  When Ken does go to the market for groceries every twelve days or so, he comes home, takes all of his clothes off in the garage and takes them downstairs to the washing machine, showers and cleans off all the items purchased.  OCD?  Confirms our impressions gathered over the years.  Great sense of humor goes with it, so all’s fine.

McIvers spent the day away, moving some of their stuff out and around, to the studio I suppose.  William is the center of all operations.  They seem to have started looking for a place.  Agreement to be out in two weeks.  Does that mean by the end of next week?  Hoping so but not as anxious about pressing it as I was two days ago.  

My meltdown surprised me as much as Va.  Sort of an emotional variant of hitting my ankle sharply on the corner of the dishwasher door this morning.  Could also find a silly explanation in saying it was the travel day, long and tiring of course, and mainly the drop in air pressure and humidity indices—-from high desert at 5000 feet down to much higher humidity at Lakes Region altitude/sea level.  More so of course the presence of the strange family and the pressures to be welcoming, flexible, calm, pliant and finding the strangenesses of home as comforting as the simple illusions of our winter sojourn.  Anyway a brief explosion of pent-up anxiety and emotion, an outburst of self-pitying dramatics, a geezer tantrum.  

Middlemarch is set in 1831, year before the great Reform Act of 1832.  

Sunday  June 14  Our 51st Anniversary  Wow!  

McIvers starting to move their things yesterday.  Fourth day back here. 

Barb and Ed have given us a model to imagine how things can go and that has helped me decide to not take on the stress and emotional trauma of trying to dispose of things in the house.  They are here, they are our lives up to this point and they keep us together for now.  After we move, if we move, we can not look back and have others dispose of things as fortune divines.  Better to keep enjoying everything as it is now rather than try to plan for x or y.  God’s laughter, remember that joke.  Ed didn’t know it.  But it is a fine one for the ages.  

Shower.  Before that walk on the bridge.  Before that I walked campus north then south and got exactly two miles.  Now I know.  Before that a chat with Patsy and Doug as they slaved in their garden.  Flowers looks great there.  Before that we drove out to gawk at Newfound Inn and decide whether to eat there.  Still felt cold so nixed that.  Guys working there seemed like construction crew types, not fine dining waitstaff.  Stopped at Market Basket and bought some microwave main dishes.  Chicken on penne and lasagna.  Also fell for pastries for celebration.  Terrible stuff.  Walmart’s pastries are better, bet on it.  Campus landscaping looks great, lush.  

If I think living through the Covid isolation and quarantining is tiresome, Middlemarch gives me perfect companionship, reminding me that I might be living Dorothea’s life instead.  End of Chapter 48, Casaubon dies.  How merciful Eliot is.  Dorothea need not make the impossible decision he gave to her, to promise to continue his great work.  She has just turned twenty-one!  Good gravy indeed.  

15 June Monday

Quick visit to the eye doctor for Va.  “Testing” they called it.  Doctor will call us with results and recommendations.  Time to stop writing this foolish document, isn’t it?  I mean, what is the point, who cares?  On the other hand what if it keeps me calm and sane and no one needs to worry about anyone seeing it, ever?  If I stopped doing this, life could become much worse.  Or there could be no change. Or I could direct my attentions to staring at the trees in the yard and the silvery sky overhead.  Cool today.  

16 June Tuesday  

Ram Charan on tantra: “What if you were so complete in yourself that you didn’t need even pleasure.”  Good walk this morning.  Va walked the bridge and then we lunched at BurritoMe before going to ReFresh.  Good to hit old familiar spots, Tracy as upbeat and refreshing as ever.  Her son, 28, Dylan, was there getting a hair cut.  Two children, separated, lives in MA but moving back here soon.  Tracy’s daughter still one course shy of psu degree but is helping her friend open a new restaurant in Laconia this weekend.  Oh, my wee rant against art, culture and writing got answered this morning on npr.  Living in this isolation hurts us, we are social animals etc etc.  Need to be with people, and we need touch, and/or barring these, other forms of creative expression help us.  Yes, I thought, the writing is for me, I have always been my own best friend, or, I have always been my own best friends, We have been.  Is that the best definition of “a writer?”  Or we have always been our own best audiences for ourselves, our selves.  Lax is still a good model here—-he filled all of those notebooks to stay alive, to be alive, to stay sane, to go crazy in his own company.  Good rant from Dennis:  I had the most incredibly terrible visit with my parents yesterday. My father was on a racist rant like I haven't heard since the 1970s when I left the area. I heard all about the "niggers" and their plans for a civil war against whites. I heard about how they are not as smart as whites. And so much more. I was of the mind set that once he finished, we will move on to other topics. My mother tried to get him to stop but he was on a roll. It just confirms what I've been thinking about all winter. It might be time to move on. So I understand your desire to go to Albuquerque and find the next chapter of life. This area is so steeped in Trumpian hatred that something else is desired. I did my time here. I mended old worn out bridges. This tirade yesterday was the first my father launched into since I got here. I thought his new found religion tamed him racism, but it's just smoldering. So I will give it another year or two and start looking at subsidized housing around the Philadelphia area. I don't need to be in Philadelphia, just a bus ride or train ride away. Then I can get to a train station and go to NH or a plane ride to Albuquerque. I can visit a museum or listen to a concert that is not some local rock band with a guitarist faking it with the six chords he knows.

I should have enough money saved by then to make the move. So there's my rant. Selling out and moving on is a good idea. Take care. Enjoy the weather. Make sure you get your day off.  Love  A fine rant.  We’ve all been ranting these days.  I felt so depressed to be back in NE and NH a few days ago.  Much better now.  Take four or five days to get over continental trip.

Not to say the five months in fantasy high desert.  Weather earlier muggy and sticky, got better by the time I shaved my head and showered and now it is feeling so lovely and perfect.  He could expect to inherit the farm on Fairgrouns road.  And maybe the father is not as healthy as his age would suggest.  Dennis’s parents are perfect examples of genetic heritage and longevity.  Were they vegans?  Did they swim every day?  In what gym did they have a membership?  Golf twice a week.  Today he was out washing his car and trimming the front bushes.  Always something to do.  No peep our of Phil for a number of days now.  Spring fever laziness?  Watched Bette Davis in Little Foxes.  Gone With the Wind at first and then zeroes in on the dysfunctional family secrets and ruin.  Period, oh yes.  seems Conchita died yesterday in Miami.  She was in dementia care for many years, ten or more.  Rant comes from the Dutch ranten, "to talk nonsense." Rave is a close synonym — in fact, "to rant and rave" is a popular expression. When rant is used as a noun, it means something like tirade. The first recorded usage of rant is from the end of the sixteenth century, in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

18 June Super hot Thursday 

to Phil about spirituality  —-

I take it from the photos on yr facebook page that you are taking extended walks.  I assume that means there have been no ill effects of the plane travel for you.  Yes?  No?  For Va?  

Down here today was a good day.   I snagged a big package of toilet paper at Costco (we now have three so we're good all summer) and a big bottle of bleach at Safeway.   Funny how one measures success these days.

Odd question:  I'm an atheist and don't believe in spirituality at all.   Most men I know are similar, although one who attended Yale Divinity school retains some sort of belief in Christianity, and Miller says he's agnostic:  "I don't know, and neither do you."   But most women I know retain religion or at least some deep belief in spirituality. They pray.

How about you?   What's been your experience.

P

You have to know that atheism is taught now in the major divinity schools (Chicago) as a religious/spiritual position and tradition which fully mirrors all of the other great religions in terms of the behavior and devotion of its followers.  

Miller I take it is a spiritual master in the Tantric traditions (whether he would agree with that term or not).  I've been reading a bit about Tantra recently.  Miller has had more sex than we can imagine and by now it has to be for him a mystical practice---giving him higher states of consciousness over a long period of time not unlike LSD and other such paths.  Also agree with him on the agnostic position.  It really is the only position one can live with.  

What you're talking about with male-female spirituality seems to me to be more about soft feelings and sentimentality, feel-goodedness.  Women like poetry by Mary Oliver and Lifetime movies (and Outlander!!) and call that "spirituality."  Men read Rumi and Kabir and practice tantra!!  

All of these attempts sound pretty foolish!!  Read Wm James Varities.  Can't really beat it.  Ungodly hot today, humid.  I mutter "well I survived Bali and Bangkok and I'm not dead yet, that I cantell, so I guess I'll get through the next moment of wretched unbreathable air.  

——-

19 June   Got the day wrong for Peraza but had a drive and day over there.  

Daphnis in coat and waistcoat.  

 I am still tickled by the idea that people who study religion have decided to categorize people who don't believe in religions or spirituality are members of just another religion.   But, of course, they would do that.  That's how they see the world.  Then again,   they might have a point about atheists who organize themselves into some kind of association.   Worldwide Atheists or something like that.  It was in college religious studies courses that I realized that people join religions to get in a group and maybe even make some profitable or enjoyable connections.  For some reason, the Christian Brothers at Lasalle hadn't mentioned that aspect of religion. 

20 June Saturday   Up at 5:12, made it to docks by 7!  

Nicholas posted on twitter that Ian Holm saved his life when he was 2.  And he saved me! Aged 2 I had a fit in a pub in Stratford and Ian Holm was the only person with presence of mind to put his fingers in my mouth to prevent me swallowing my tongue. I rather ungratefully bit him apparently! Rest In Peace”   Dave says yes coming for xmas unless covid updates are bleak.  heat continues  we napped a bit  still just 10:30 am !  Jim in Convalescence and Rehab, fell off his back porch, broke his right wrist in two places, bloodied his head.  Gets taken out for walks around the gardens.  Can read.  Anne in a room a few doors down the hall.  Called the other day.  Call him back today or next.  Forms signed and sent back to Guardian.  Letter to Enterprise.  Thunder for a while, dark clouds over Stinson.  Beautiful peonies in the garden.  Searching for the fountain pump.  Dave now on vacation.  Kids out and about various places.  Found the pump within five minutes.  Civilization can continue.  Yesterday driving home (the effect of Hanover?) Va said she thought of a really dirty movie we should watch:  Last Tango in Paris.  Started it last night.  Can finish it now over goûté.  May not have accented that correctly.  Watching the rest of Creation, biography of Charles Darwin, prompted by the discovery of the keepsake box not discovered until 2000 that her parents kept in her memory after she died at age ten.  Poor Darwin suffered greatly because of his ideas and because of her early death.  Family almost moved out.  Maybe one more trip in their car loaded with last items.  Strange to have them here, strange to have them gone.  Happy they found this new apartment.  Now if Clare can get this job, that would be great.  Feeling shy about going to sleep upstairs tonight, though.  Weird how these things feel like this.  Mr Farebrother will get the Lowick living and there is joy in the old-fashioned parlour.  Thank goodness.  Now I am deep into new territory in the novel.  I don’t remember these things.  Or—-mysterious—-every so often it reminds me of being in Elkins Park, reading it or trying to read it, and I cannot tell if this is actual memory or imagined memory by powers of association.  We can at last be home alone in the silence of our house, the silence of the lives we lived in Bear House, hoping to import and extend that peaceful semi-isolation here.  Now that we’ve all gotten somewhat used to this covid isolationist way of life, will we want to stay with it more than we realize?  

Not impossible.  

21 June Sunday

How good it felt to wake up without anyone else in the house.  Drove up to Stinson Lake just for a drive.  Nice phone call from Dick Mertens during that.  I later called Jim.  He’s allowed a martini a night now.  They will move to an assisted living “mansion” rather than go back to their house.  Separate rooms with adjoining bathrooms.  He’ll get the big wrappings off of his wrist later this week.  So this is how it works.  No special planning involved.  The local place (luxury, so platinum insurance or money, he didn’t go into that at all) has openings and they’re moving to it just when they need it.  Have a feeling Anne will not last much longer but not sure of that.  Jim will clearly keep going a while—-such a positive attitude and deep Quaker silence.  Told him I looked up the meeting house in Albuquerque and he told me he had visited it and sat in it by himself, a janitor’s vacuum cleaner going off in the distance.  For lunch we had meals from the Nourish food truck next to Maggie’s farm stand.  Delicious and fresh.  Dunstan is the chef.  Great crisp crackers and asked him how he makes them.  Found a bon appetit recipe that will work and I have these big bags of sees I bought a year ago somewhere.  Loving the silence here too,  Also had a good short visit with Dave and Emma.  Eliot downstairs at a friends.  Emma about to have ten of her friends on Zoom for a belated birthday party.  Cécile has been or is about to be offered a job as Director of a law school!  She thinks she wants to stay with study abroad programs, but we’ll see how all of this plays out.  

22 June Monday night

Signed up to have cataract surgery.  Andrew Garfinkle informed me about it and it seems right.  The old language was about letting the cataract “ripen” so they could cut out the whole thing.  Techniques have changed significantly.  Nicely written and full obituary for Chris Buckley came via campus news.  Dave sent video of Emma and Eliot’s belated zoom birthday party.  We walked at Weirs at noon.  Hot hot hot even with a slight breeze off the lake.  

23 Tuesday  10:35 am 81 degrees 72 humidity 71 dew point 

walked 1.3 miles hot hot humid humid complain complain

Temp in Bali now 79  humidity 97%

24 Wednesday  

Deep gray skies this morning and a few drops but no rain yet.  Called the stair lift people.  Fun visit with Ken and Carole.  They were really up and entertaining.  Have to look up the YouTube site of Jewish old men telling jokes.  Ken enjoyed telling two.  Weather cleared just as they arrived, even a nice breeze.  Fountain dripped nicely, trees waved, sunlight bright but not too hot.  

25 Thursday  Sweet change in the weather overnight.  Breezy and cooler.  Earlyish walk at docks.  Called potential helper Donna.  Guess I’m back: starting to worry where to go on a day off, on two days off! a week if we hire both Donna and Elizabeth.  Patsy and Doug not going to make it over this afternoon.  The new Emma movie quite good.  What to call the palate? the candybox colors and style?  Regency says Sheila O’Malley on rogerebert.com.  “The needle drops—of traditional English songs thrumming over the green landscape—are perfectly placed, and all of it pours into the thematic and textual concerns of the film, highlighting not only the artificiality of Regency society (its pretensions, colors and textures) but the swirling undercurrents of human feeling, which the surfaces desperately try to hide and/or suppress. The hats perched on women’s heads look like giant predatory birds.”   

note to Dennis —  That was a great rant about your father!  Perhaps being caught between the idiot and the virus we are living in an age of great rants!!  we just saw the new Emma. movie (prime makes you pay 5$) and it is really delightful.  Regency style excesses in pale greens and pinks, great casting.  Watching Marcella on Netflix and finding it passably ok.    Glad to have our young family move out last saturday, too much to have them here.  They found a one bedroom at fox park apts.  Rich guy from Florida bought the Newfound Lake Inn and is pouring money into it.  I'm going to have cataract surgery in late Aug and early Sept.  Dick Hunnewell had it and says it's smooth and I'll be amazed at the positive results.  Read a novel by Toby Johnson, historical setting, post-civil war, young guy finds himself and his gay identity by going out to live with the Navajo and discovering how they honor "two-spirited" men.  Epilogue explains well how it is based on history and anthropology of the Navajo.  They are very similar to the twelve pueblo indian cultures that are still alive in the area between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  

———-

If only Jeffrey Kripal had read Toby Johnson’s novel when he was in college and before he went to India to study Ramakrishna.  Even wonder if Kripal has privately said the same thing to himself.  

27 June Saturday  about noon

Walk.  Grey stuffy air, still as a stale box of old cigars.  Joe came at 10:30 to look at the hall where he can install a small washer dryer unit.  Thinks we can do it and keep some closet space on both sides and not too expensively.  Knows what he’s doing, talking about.  So good to deal with someone who does.  Doug stopped and offered me Bolton’s new book, which he had just read.  Gave it back.  No time and no interest.  Yes, I watch too much tv otherwise I could read more books.  But never that one.  Yikes.  Handwritten note from Dennis on a Hokusai card.  Nice to get.  

28 June  Sunday

Early up and out to walk at Docks.  Now overcast, rain forecast for later.  Caught Dave as they were packing for their vacation journey.  First they are going to the Loire valley before heading up to the borrowed apartment in Brittany.  Nice phone call from Pat G.  Va finished watching Out of Africa and is now reading the book.  Current situation regarding Covid marks an end to lots of things that may not return for a while.  Certainly for example getting a massage would be best considered after a vaccine has been in place for a while, no matter what reports we have about chances of asymptomatic spreading.  Like taking cruises.  Don’t expect us to be interested in that for a year or more.  

29 Monday  night   Rain on the windows and skylights at last.  

30 June  Tuesday   Rain off and on all day.  Short walk at Wally’s before seeing Melinda in Campton.   Lunch sandwiches at Mad River Cafe.  Tried to say hello to Melissa and link her to Dick Mertens.  Later realized it was Michael Keller who had gone up to see her when he passed through with his family.  

1 July  Wednesday 

Sierra came to measure the stairwell.  Drove to Concord for the Orthotist.  Lunch on the curbside at Panera.  Nap.  Where are my thoughts?  where is greatness?  

2 July  Thursday

Home day.  Back in the den for TV.  Muggy outside.  Rains over.  Basement a little water.  Kids having a great time in Vendée.  Good facetime visit with them today,  Finishing Butch Cassidy now.  Way We Were started last night.  When Harry Met Sally night before.  Great movie.  In Pose they are starting to get Aids, not anxious to see those stories continue.  Melinda told us to walk much more on the cane rather than my arm or the railings.  Cane walking builds more strength even if it feels slow.  Reading Johnson seems another variant of Theroux’s novel, My Other Life.  Another fantasy form of what if, if only if, would it have worked that way, could it have been better or is different just another fantasy?  Is it helpful to think this way or is it a vague torment?  Any different from watching movies and tv shows, reading novels of every sort?  Watched some travel videos on Borobodur on Youtube.  Not at all as interesting as the Hindu temple at Madurai.  American and UNESCO funds rescued the whole thing, rebuilt it piece by piece even!  in the 70s.  Raffles found it, it got uncovered in early 20th.  

pretty scary crisis Phil and Peg just had —- 

Hope you and Va are doing well.   So far we are, although we had a Covid-caused surprise last week.   Prograf is the most important drug that Peg takes to keep her immune system supressed.   Suddenly,  Prograf was unavailable anywhere in the US.  It seems that there is some plant that is one of the ingredients, but because of Covid  this plant was not being harvested.  Hence, the drug could not be manufactured.  Luckily, the transplant center came up with an alternative, but the switch to the alternative was difficult.   For a day and a half Peg had enormous difficulty breathing.  She had to resume using her portable oxygen concentrator, something we thought she wouldn't have to do for years after getting the new lung. She seems okay now, but it was a big scare, and there was no warning about the shortage.  Suddenly,  CVS told us they had no Prograf.  Luckily the transplant center was able to locate the alternative, which is available - at least for now 

Which brings up a question:  Do you know anyone who has come down with Covid?   Or anyone who died from it?   We do not.  Even the employees at our local Safeway store have remained untouched.

Another question:  Do you have any trouble reading these days?  I find that I just lack the patience for any extended reading.  I think it's due in part to TV watching over the years.  It's allowed my mind to be "entertained" instead of working. However, I think age is also a contributing cause.   By now I've heard all the arguments and too many authors and have little patience for repetition.  And most "new viewpoints or voices" don't strike me as genuinely new. Or, when they do, I find them silly.   How about you?

—————

Check from Guardian arrived!!!  Just called TIAA and suspended payments.  See if that is a good idea long-term.  Looked up reviews yesterday of Prius and no longer interested.  Will we buy anything this year?  

to Phil

Pretty scary crisis you two had with the medicine.  Once again it gives us that feeling of how thin the veneers are on our lives, how could such a shortage even happen etc etc!  Glad you got the alternative medicine and things are back to better.  

Covid.  No know no one who has died.  Friend in Madrid's brother has had it, difficult recovery but now ok.  Cécile's dad has had it, back in Feb, tested after the fact and has the right antibodies.  Case was not severe and recovery was fine.  Otherwise know no one closer than that.  Nor of any cases close or within acquaintace earshot.  Fingers crossed on all counts.  

Reading.  Pretty much just as you say.  My expectations or parameters have shifted radically:  Early morning I read one big paragraph or a page of two of Middlemarch and feel accomplished for the day.  Have been on that novel for five or six months now.  Actually enjoying it now and feel the one paragraph/page a day is just right.  Feels like I'm watching every masterpiece theater ever shown on pbs over the past fifty years.  So many details seem to have been plundered for all those dramas.  Also read a paragraph or two of something else usually each day.  But no longer expect "to read."  I.E. read the way we used to forty years ago---few hours at a time, long stretches, lots of books.   Agree on how silly so many books seem.  

And movies!! yikes.  Va has been on a jag to watch old Redford movies! none of them were any good and right now the last half of the way we Were is on.  Terrible movie.  What surprised meas well were the old Tennessee Williams movies---Suddenly Last Summer, Night of the Iguana--wewatched some of those and as we did I thought---wow, how did we every think that TW was a great writer?  Maybe on stage they give actors parts they want to do?  the movie versions are much worse than I'd thought.  And of course the whole style of acting and production has changed so much in fifty years.  Could Elizabeth Taylor ever act?  What really was, is, acting?  

Watching a series on Netflix now called Pose.  Pretty good and interesting as sort of instant urban anthropology in the sense that it is about a period I never knew about at all---early 80s in NYC, lower class trans kids who created a "club" culture for themselves---all about fashion, dance, strutting and forming "family" structures to protect themselves.  Looks like Aids is about to wipe them all away (if I watch any more episodes---that is another thing just like reading---you finda tv series or movie that seems pretty ok maybe good and then half or one third into it you getbored and look for something else to watch.)  Over and over I think of that famous monastery in Japan we did visit briefly---the garden a rectangle of gray gravel on a terrace about ten feet below the monastic pavilion.  The gravel is carefully raked into an abstract pattern of waves and ridges.  There are one or two big black rocks.  A zen "landscape" which the retired military general or monk looks at calmly paying attention to his breathing.  Or not?  Or maybe Montaigne's tower.  Or Jung's tower.  Even George Eliot was talking today about the ease with which one goes crazy living alone or with few around in one of those great houses in villages like Middlemarch!!  

did I tell you I'll have cataract surgery in August?  Supposed to be routine and easy.  Three weeks between the two eyes. 

————

3 July Saturday

deposited the check at the bank but they have to wait six days before it clears to post it 

———-

reassurance from Phil  

Yup,  I think both you and I have learned from experiences with our mates how thin the ice is under our skates.  True of everyone even if they don't realize it.

Glad to hear that Cecile's dad recovered.  I hope it gets no closer to you - or us - than that.

Movies:   Agree that nearly all seem dated and silly.   And most actresses like Liz Taylor probably fucked their way into roles.  Can they act - ie. be convincing in their roles?  As Miller would say, "Yeah, they're pretty but most pretty women can't fuck worth a damn." 

TV:  Boredom sets in after about 8 minutes.

Cataracts.  Based on what I remember of my dad's practice, I would say these operations are very routine and nothing to worry about.   From 1929 until 1952, dad did thousands of tonsillectomies, and they could prove problematic.  Dad would get a call from the hospital and have to return to the hospital in the middle of the night to deal with a postoperative problem.   But he was very proud of the fact that he never lost a patient.  Yet not more than six weeks after he stopped doing tonsillectomies in '52, another doctor in Cumberland lost a little girl.  Dad was called in to help at the last minute, but it was too late to save the little girl.

Cataract operations, on the other hand, never posed any problem.   He did  one or more a week throughout the 1950s and early '60s and I never remember him getting calls in the middle of the night about any complications.   Indeed, cataract operations paid for Exeter and Brown and a cabin at Deep Creek, and I never heard of a single one that ever went bad.   So I would say...not to worry!

P

———-

muggy gray day.  Walked at Wallys and then watched GH reruns.  

4 July 

In this novel it happens, these things happen, those things happen, in those ways, in this way, in other ways.  That is that novel and not another novel.  Were that life to be recapitulated in that other novel, it would look even more unusual.  Even thirteen years later, it all feels dated.  All stories are true and all stories are boring when they are blended and mixed with all other stories.  Enough with the idea of our stories.  Stories mess up everything with illusions of shape and meaning.  Fragments swirl, settle, pile up, blow away.  Our lives are yard sales, estate sales.  If we’re lucky.  Conflagrations. Pyres. Food for vultures.  Finished with Thompson for now.  Spokesperson, writer, for the party.  The party line, the party propagandist.  Always the party, the brand, the team the side.  Again, hooray for Lax.  And the monk who wrote Flute Solo.  Remember that book long after even though he rode a motorcycle.  Not cool.  Otherwise he told his story too.  So Lax again avoided all story.  Or at least most.  

Ten second chat with Dave.  They are in the car, driving to Brittany in the rain.  

5 July Sunday 

It really seemed like a fulfillment of things.  Of the vocation or vocations themselves.  Not an anomalous indulgence or even experiment or satisfying of curiosity but a completion of things long pondered.  Wondered about, explored imaginatively not as idle speculation or even playful entertaining but as a strand of the much larger weaving going on over the years of the whole fabric of life-being-lived.  Meant to be lived, destined, foretold, a prediction even in some ways.  What may have been experienced at one time as a kind of condemnation, an expulsion, a breakdown and a dismissal, turned out in the long run to have been preparation for revelations yet to come, for deepenings of insights, of understandings much later given beyond thought, beyond mental comprehension and felt in the body, in the soul, as knowings hinted and understood within experience even if these could not be spoken of with any clear verbal expression.  After such events, it took time, as with every event, after these events, which at the time seemed remarkably well-clustered, coming one after another in ways that were private and comfortable and easily met, reflections gathered them together and sorted them back out in various ways, and after time the sense of satisfaction deepened and the certainty of their blessed character became manifest.  Secrets perhaps they were and secrets they were perhaps to be carried to the grave, and yet they shone with the clarity of radiant announcements, of inspired illuminations.  These might be regiven at some later date to someone or some persons who would be ready to receive them.  But perhaps not.  It was not necessary to try to anticipate such things, not necessary to look around to find someone perfect for the telling.  If there were to be any telling, that moment would present itself much in the same ways as the visitations and encounters themselves had entered into the chapters of the living life, the being-lived life.  

Reading Thompson’s book on myth and on what Joseph Campbell meant to him felt strangely unsatisfying.  Oh yes remember Joseph Campbell and how important he seemed at the time.  Bill Moyers excited to interview him on intellectual tv.  Hero with a thousand faces.  Only to live in an age now when we have had heroes galore at every turn, so many heroes.  Every fireman and helper in a crisis.  Every soldier sent to those long wars we foolishly undertook.  Patch things over by calling our noble servants heroes.  And Campbell’s project now, does it not look as abstract and weak as Casaubon’s search for the key to all mythologies?  In my ignorance I had not heart of the Black National Anthem until the other day when the NFL said they would play it before every game to combat racism.  PR gambits but still the song goes back to 1900!  who knew.  Still, the tribalist issue is what troubles, ever group has to put its identity first.  So Thompson’s writing career has featured fashioning a gay spirituality.  Which is understandable, given what he fought for and lived through.  And yet how different that project is from  doing work on spiritual theology in general, or for universal purposes.  Guess Doug might have me pinned as a Universalist after all.  Nicholas is my guide in these things and I presume he would agree with me here.  Donald also.  

We watched the start of Hamilton yesterday.  Both of us dozed off.  I wasn’t impressed.  Seems like a school term paper assignment recast into lame rap and staged as a pageant of costumed characters.  

6 July Monday

Talked with Reuben Nisley in Coshocton, OH, Amish furniture sales person.  Also spoke with Mindy for Tempurpedic.  And we went to Harris and talked with Mike.  Calling him back now to place the order for the bed.  Penwood Manufacturing.  

Took a look at more Johnson.  “Why gay spirituality?” begins and ends his book.  “The answer is that gay people are in the vanguard of a transformation in consciousness. . . . We are moved by spirits true.  And we are spirits true.”  Spirituality by definition embraces all modifers.  

“Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language into his outstretched hands.”  525   Middlemarch  

7 July Tuesday

First Day Off in months!  Donna G on the job.  one or two or three in Albuquerque with Becky O in charge.  Barb sent the listing for their house and it looks terrific.  So interesting how the photographer and realtor knew how to not show the solar collecting chamber behind the fireplace.  At least to show only the corner door to suggest “sunroom” but not to show the enormous space devoted to that amateur design, so much a sign of the 80s!!  Could make a neat picture book—-instant solar house designs of the early 80s by amateur builders and designers, usually science professors at nearby universities!  Catchy title that would be.  

Looking again at Johnson’s site.  He is darned good and in a review of one book he explains Jung’s notion of the shadow more clearly than I have ever understood it.  “What I think John Marsh misses is how much homosexuals dislike other homosexuals. By the processes that modern gay-oriented psychotherapy calls "internalized homophobia" and projection, and which C.G. Jung referred to as The Shadow, homosexuals are understood to internalize all the same anti-homosexual messages in religion and society—and the nervous silence and absence of any positive messages—that make everybody else suspicious and uncomfortable with homosexuality, and then blame it all on other homosexuals. This is part of what, at least in the old days, caused gay people, men especially, to experience difficulty in love and relationship—how can you have a relationship with somebody who is a kind of person you don't like? And it is what has caused so many factions and so much divisiveness within the "gay community." The great effort of the gay rights and gay liberation movement has been to address this self-sabotaguing dynamic. The very notion of "gay community" is an example of this effort. And the effort has been amazingly successful. The movement changed how homosexuals thought of themselves and that's changed the whole world.

The practical experience for homosexuals, at least before liberation, was that they felt different from everybody else; they were the only ones like this, and this was something wonderful and precious, even sacred, in themselves, but disgusting and reprehensible in others.

I think Whitman's denials are more like protestations even of today's youth: I don't want to be labelled. I'm not like anybody else. I'm me. And, of course, that was Whitman's great declaration: I celebrate myself.”

——-

This explains so much and it chimes perfectly with Jim Miller’s attempt to say the same thing about Whitman that I heard him deliver in class one day at Chicago.  Or maybe it was about T S Eliot I guess, but perhaps he talked about both.  Being myself and free of all labels is what we all now want even those you like to belong to groups and churches.  Paradox liberates like nothing else.  Actually the tv series we just watched, Pose, demonstrates this rather well in lots of ways.  

Now we’re talking:  “I have a lot of objects of desire.  If you pick any two random people, chances are one of them is an object of my desire.”   Dan Barry “I Wanna Be in the Middle”  in Re-Cognitions  oops  Rec-og-nize ed

Robyn Ochs   “   He ends his piece “Dedicated to all the other bi male unicorns.  I see you.”  

There we go.  So far every essay in this collection rings true.  

So the day off was a minor event.  Junk food from Hannaford and ice cream!  Still it had a sense of “breather” and do nothing just to not do.  

Identity is a journey.  

Va watching Hamilton.  I’m not at all interested.  Kind of stage musical I have no feeling for at all.  Rap pageant, spectacle, mangled “history,” as some sort of monster oratorio, shouty, singy, recitativey, grating in every possible way.  

“Natural flavors derived from oregano, flaxseed and plum.”  from label for Oatmilk Butter!  made in Sonoma.  

Too many amenities to list.  Line from the realtor’s post about Barb and Ed’s house in Windham.  Looks wonderful.  Photos make it look clean and custom contemporary, minimize the solar collecting space and the strangeness it creates as the great room.  Will appeal to buyers for sure.  I bet they will sell it soon.  349,900.  

8 July  Wednesday

House on the corner at Oso Grande now for sale!!! Kim says it is priced low to create a bidding war and will go within days even hours.  Eloy knew it was coming to market but not when.  Me thinks it is remodeled to pitch it to buyers like Eloy, airbnb speculators.  And that whole corner will become a

vacation rental.  Eloy just called and he’s seen the house on the market a few times.  At least we know now that at 259 that price is high versus where the market was last year.  So we are babes in the woods regarding home buying.  

One day off and I goof up!  Burned a plastic food container on the stove the other night.  Today we missed the appointment with Melinda because I thought today was tomorrow.  Embarrassing.  

Photos from the kids.   They are at Clohars-Carnoēt.  On a spit of land off the northwest corner of France.  

Walked at Market Basket.  Saw Lynn D.  Very overcast day.  

“And have I not thought that I invented the metaphor “oceanic” to describe what we’re talking about?”  But here is someone stealing it, using it without permission.  “I accept it as my truth  because my attraction to the sexes generally flows like tides in the ocean, buoying from one gender to another, with the occasional tsunami that pulls strongly one way for a while before its force changes direction.”  “far more an emotional element—-attraction lies strongly in my want to the individual rather than their gender.”  Joshua Hutchinson  in Rec-og-nize 

Another variant:  “I later learned that I live in the center of a bimodal curve with the very unequal modes at both extremes of the distribution, bobbing in a very shallow trough between two waves, both of which I see cresting above me—a minority within a minority.”  

from tweet by Jacob Sherman — Hast thou ever raised thy mind to the consideration of existence, in and by itself, as the mere act of existing? Hast thou ever said to thyself thoughtfully ‘It is’... Thou wilt have felt the presence of a mystery, which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder.

– Coleridge

I shoulda gone into philosophy after all. 

 

9 July Thursday

Learned about banking this morning.  Paper checks now looked upon with skance.  Looked at askance.  Called to try to verify the Guardian check and found this out.  Wiring and online thought to be secure.  Walking into the office with a check is no longer thought to be secure.  Manager asked me why I needed the money right now!!  I suggested that was an inappropriate question.  She didn’t think so.  Why should a bank want to give you the money you deposited right away?????  

yesterday from Kim —

This is cute - not as nice as your favorite AirBnB but in the same neighborhood. I predict it will be under contract in days, if not hours, and for more than the asking price. Our supply of homes for sale has dropped even more since you were here. It's still a challenge to purchase right now. But I know you are not shopping for awhile (which will probably work out better as hopefully by then we will have more homes to choose from.)

and 

One more interesting thing about this property Bob. It was on the market last summer for three months or so at $267,000, price drop to $262,000, and never sold. It's probably been a rental since, and if that's the case it may need some love and attention. Those properties do not sell as quickly as the pretty, fixed up ones. We'll see. Kim

———-

Searching for the Javea videos.  

Bank manager asked me Why do you need the money now, so soon?  And What are you going to do with this money?  After saying it’s a lot of money.  

Should I write a letter to upper management noting this as inappropriate?  

!  we've been here before, so  .  .  .  .  

I was on the phone this morning with the manager of a bank here in town to ask why the bank had put a hold on a check I had walked into the office and deposited. The teller said at the time "this is a large check, we will have to hold it until it clears in a few days."  I waited a few days and then phoned to see how things were going with the clearing of the check.  Over the phone the bank manager said "it is a lot of money.  Why do you need it now?  What are you going to do with it?"   I said are those not private questions and inappropriate?  She said, "well, perhaps, but I need to investigate whether the check will clear."

Advise:  should I write a complaint to the upper level management of the bank???  Or let it go??    

————-

we'll see how Ted's moods are!  let you know.  

we can find a time soon to catch up---

we're putting a stair lift back into the house---

I'm have cataract surgery in mid-August

what a fine poem this is

we might buy neighbor's mini-cooper

———-

Ken’s advice pure Ken!  Carole’s fun.  

B

Banks have been sensitive to clients being victims of scams. While the situation doesn’t fill all the criteria, it might be viewed in this positive way.

K

BTW, Carole wants to know what the money is going to be used for. (Joke)

——

In writing my email  about Broadway plays last night I forgot that Peg and I  saw "Rent" several years ago.   Nothing like Cole Porter or even "Hair."   Neither of us could remember a single song from the play.  (Which was also true of Miss Saigon, although MS had a helicopter appear on stage, which was sor of impressive.)   The plot of "Rust" was just young people in the East Village pittying themselves.  I lived in the East Village in the early 70s.  It wasn't too bad.   If one listened to what was spoken on the street that was even a chance of picking up some Yiddish or Ukrainian.  I remember a drunken old woman who had just been thrown out of a bar yelling from the sidewalk "Ukrainskaya bandita" at the bar's owner. 

Anyway Broadway may have been good in the past but it sure as hell hasn't been any good in recent years.   

——-

Broadway in other words has been producing many more “masques” than musicals.  

Talked with Jim briefly as we walked into Target.  Anne may be in her final days it seems.  No longer able to talk, not eating.  Jim visits with her different times during the day.  He is getting PT, wears an AFO because one achillies tendon got wrecked by medicine needed for a urinary tract infection a few months back.  And they massage the injured wrist and arm with ice.  It seems to be healing well.  

10 July Friday 

Ken sent his recs for car buying — 

Good bets: Rav4 hybrid. 2021 Crosstrek. New Toyota Venza (Luxurious). CR-V hybrid, Mazda CX-3, Mazda CX-30, VW Tiguan (is larger than, let’s say, a CR-V. Probably other good choices. Mini is too cramped, harsh ride, terrible storage, reliability not good, unsuitable for 4 people if loaned to David.
——

Succeeded in recalling the name of the young philosophy professor I had at Maryland.  William J Winslade.  Found his CV.  He was at Maryland only three years, 1966-69.  So I had him in 66-67.  Summer 67 I went to Chicago, 67-68.  68-69 Taught at Millikin.  66 was my senior year.  He wanted me to major in Philosophy, go to grad school in philosophy.  He was only three or four years older, my brother’s age.  I didn’t realize that then.  His career after that is astounding.  Lager focused on brain injury and law.  Maybe he had an injury himself? need more digging on that.  

I am happier when I read more than one book at a time.  Middlemarch is fine but one page a day is fine.  

11 Saturday  

Rainy morning.  Good dinner visit with Helen and Ted last evening.  Colin came to take the upstairs ac unit.  Feels like Bali outside.  100% humidity, rain let up so walked a hundred feet and came back!  Check deposit shows up now!  Wondering if I have Covid?  headaches off and on.  muscle aches.

We seem to have made Elizabeth feel bad.  Was afraid of that but not sure to how handle the information any differently.  Might be a letter from her in the mail.  She canceled on coming on Tuesday.  Va offered to have her over to talk but no response on that.  Am I to blame for this?  Maybe we both are?  Maybe she is deciding to be hurt too?  Adults!  all of us.  I took a Tylenol last night, taking an aspirin now at noon.  Too much humidity and caffeine?  Red wine last night was a mistake too.  Can one self-nurse through a really mild case of the virus?  Is it covid or garden variety uti infection?  Or something similar, mild, ordinary.  Ate a garlic sliver and a pepto tablet for good measure.  

Yesterday’s words:  unresolved, vacillation, stillness.  

Nice wind blowing now.  

Sunday  July 12 

Dave’s call came same time as Jim’s about ten minutes ago.  Dave fixing dinner.  They are at another place on same seaside town for the rest of this week, happy to have found a nice duplex.  Lots of others arrived.  

Jim left a message that Anne died peacefully just after 2 this afternoon.  He was with her most of the day, glad to see her struggle over, at last at peace.  

Joe came at 11 and showed us at once how the upstairs closet will not work for the washer-dryer.  He would have to build an ugly vertical box to take care of all the connections needed.  

We sent a note to Elizabeth:  

here’s what I wrote—-

Dear Elizabeth

We look forward to seeing you so we can talk all of this over and clear things up.  We realize we got a little panicked and confused.  (Yesterday we went to the Armory to get the covid test, will know in about eight days.  We both feel fine and have no symptoms.)

When we got back we let Colin and Claire and the baby stay on in the house with us.  We thought that would be ok but after a few days we could see it was not a good idea and we asked them to find a place to go to.  They eventually found an apartment and moved out at the end of a little over two weeks.  

Bob had gotten worried about me getting weaker while we were in Albuquerque.  And one day when we were walking in the park, a man stopped to chat and say that my AFO brace needed adjustment because my leg was hyperextending too much.  He said he was a PT.   We said we didn’t know what adjustment he meant and he took out his Allen wrench and bent down and tried to adjust the brace.  Oh, he said, your brace doesn’t have the sort of tension screw over the heel and ankle in the back that it should have.  

So we have been going to a new brace technician, this one at the same place you went to in Concord, and we have seen him three times now with more visits scheduled and he is gradually adjusting the brace after having installed the sort of bolt necessary.

We went to see Melinda the PT in Campton a few weeks back, as soon as we could, and she said she saw at once that I had gotten weaker.  She thinks it might be because I walked only on Bob’s arm for five months.  Because of Covid this was only in the park each day, no shopping carts in Target or Walmart, and no swimming or other kinds of exercise.  She now wants me to walk much much more on the cane because she says that gives my whole body (torso) the best strengthening exercise.  

With Bob’s visit to his eye doctor and the decision to have the cataract surgery and with the whole period of covid scare (along with deaths of a few acquaintances and friends), we got to thinking “what if” this, “what if that,” and while we looked forward to seeing you and “getting back to normal” we also thought that having someone else even on our telephone list seemed like a good idea.  We know no one else in town really who might help out, “if this,” “ if that. . . .”   We should have handled all of this better and we had no intention of replacing you.  We even thought, however, that while the weather is good into the fall we might have two people each week (two or three days “off” for Bob) just to enjoy the weather and to have a second person more experienced for later on down the road if anything changed or became necessary.  

We are having a stairway lift installed on the stairs next week.  Also having a washer-dryer unit installed in a bedroom closet to cut back on the need to go to the basement with laundry.  Bought a new bed.  Even have two gait belts handy!   And may get a portable wheelchair to have in the car.  (Also want to get a smaller car but maybe not until the winter or spring).  

Cold Springs seems unable to say whether the pool will reopen and when, so that remains an unknown.  We use our masks to walk a bit, (cane walking is slower as you know), at Wally’s and now at Market Basket (at an hour when it might not be too busy!!)

If it seems too much to have two people a week we would certainly ask Donna to step away and see if she would be “on our list” and have you do what you have been doing so well twice a week.   

We’ve eaten at Docks and that seems ok for outdoor on a good day.  Considered Phat Fish but have not been there yet.  Have gotten some take-out wraps and take-home meals.   

I hope we can visit soon.  Call us for when looks best for you.  

———-

here’s what Va wrote  —-  and what we sent  —-

Dear Elizabeth

First of all we want to say we are very sorry we have upset you.  It was never our intention to suggest your help for us has been anything but very considerate in every way.  

We would like to have you continue with me on Tuesdays as before.  We will keep Donna's information on our list of contacts if there is any emergency.  

Come see us when you can.  

Virginia 

——-

Hope that will work, smooth things over.  

Breeze outside, hope humidity has eased.  I did take a walk at 6:30 today.  

13 July  Monday  

Walked the high school path for the first time.  Cool and muggy, slight breeze.  Pair of women walkers, one younger woman with a dog.  Only 1.2 miles, 2629.  Not as far as it seems.  

Grantchester last night turns out to have been the season finale of season 5.  Someone put it out of its misery.  It was a terrible show.  All this season has been and last night’s confirmed how utterly stupid it was.  

Elizabeth visiting, lots of laughter from the den.  All sounds well.  

So Bulstrode and Lydgate are now unknowingly joined as men who are trying to leave town to get away from shame and secrecy.  In debt and in disgrace.  But they have not yet been open with each other about this.  Will they, in any way?  

I was indeed a closet philosophy major as it turns out.  Or a bi-major—lit and phil and I found in Burke a way to do both at once.  Sort of.  Would I have enjoyed more doing a dissertation on Kierkegaard?  Or on tantra and body work?  Starting into Kirpal’s history of Esalen.  

14 July  Tuesday

Concord for walking in Target, then a bit in Lowes after lunch at Panera.  Kids sent a photo, I think they had colored the placemats.  Needed to talk with them.  Tomorrow a day off with Donna at the helm.  We saw Judith this morning to catch up with her.  

Va sneezing at dinner.  Took one alka tablet.  Dust in the house stirred up by the cleaning?  House too cool when we got here?  AC in the car, strange day for heat and humidity, sitting outside at Panera.  Watching La La Land.  

 from Steve Taylor on twitter:  “New term of the day: 'spiritation.' This describes the frustration of supposedly spiritual people who aren't attaining enlightenment as quickly as they would like.”

The Oso Grande house was “pending” last night!!  

And from the Samuel Beckett twitter:  “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.”

15 July  Wednesday

If I had to choose I would buy the Rav-4 over the CRV, Toyota vs Honda.  Result of driving each car this morning.  Va got 7000 steps with Donna today.  Last day with Donna.  

Started reading multiple books.  Don’t want to have that pressure of “finishing” Middlemarch, which now feels not only like every masterpiece production but also “just like” sort of, Dickens, and many other English novels.  All at once.  So that is good.  Sunny now, 5 pm, rain clouds have moved on.  Heat wave coming. 

Big flat bed truck loaded heavily with burial vaults speeding down the interstate this morning going south.  

“Any curse alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy.”  whew!  Ladislaw they are learning had a father who was a musical Polish patriot, and “grafted in” a Jew pawnbroker.  “Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify.”  whew again.  Eliot takes us into the heart of darkness.  And I had been thinking that it is in Eliot that Conrad the immigrant had taught himself how to write English novels.  

“What is it? What is this tremendousness?  That breaks our heart with beauty, with longing, with fear and delight so weirdly mixed together?”  David Oates, The Mountains of Paris  “Stupendous beauty and power surround us.  Are us.  Whoever will become open to them will be changed.”

wish I had typed Eliot’s quip about freemasonry.  thanks to the magic of kindle I have found it:::  “It was generally known in Middlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way; and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there. Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry, wished that there were something a little more tremendous to keep to themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community, and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into the billiard-room to see what was going on.” — Middlemarch: by George Eliot https://a.co/682aSIK

16 July Thursday  

another great passage from Eliot has gotten raves from my correspondents today  

“But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was than simply to know it, for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.”

— Middlemarch: by George Eliot

and to Phil I replied—-

in context senior simply elders  ---

PSU is re-opening.  big online town meeting on zoom to assure the townspeople that all will be well---

my suspicion is that all higher ed places will take every tuition fee they can get, get the students in the computers, and into the dorms, and then sort of keep track with them, let them take the course however they wish, attend or not, log in or not, and fail as few as possible.

   Which was sort of how it was way before Covid, anyway.  Doubt that an eminence like Sitter   would ever admit to that, but then he's never had to teach at Middlemarch U!!!  

Geo Eliot---well I will say "don't hurry."  I mean I've been reading it very very slowly, and while I admire her work greatly and can see how and why it is indeed one of the great novels, she's still no Joseph Conrad !  And I'm sure Conrad learned how to write English from reading her.  Her work is great---and yet not my cup of tea---in the sense that I'm not feeling it resonantly the way I like to feel a writer I might think of as my secret sharer---a writer who has looked into my soul almost unbeknownst to me!!!  Eliot is astute student of human nature, superior intelligence, piercing insight and wit, subdued, and deep feeling masked behind British reserve of the highest caliber.  And so captures the English character (or the British character???) that the novel feels like the source of all other works of English literature that came after her.  I guess too that she learned from all the previous giants like Swift and Austen etc.  I have not read any of her other works.  One friend says his favorite is Romola---set in 15th C Florence!  I might be tempted by that.  But unlike Melville or Conrad (at least years earlier in my life) I don't immediately "want to read every word she's written.”

———

Kripal describes reading itself as mystical experience—-

“In effect, a kind of initiatory transmission sometimes occurs between the subject and object of study to the point where terms like “subject” and “object” or “reader” and “read” cease to have much meaning. And this, of course, is a classically mystical structure—a twoness becoming one, or, perhaps better, a not-two. Reading has become an altered state of consciousness.” — Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Look how Toby Johnson felt the mirror effect of knowing Toby Marotta: “I began to Toby Marotta as a messenger from God, come to reassure me and lead me on my journey.   Indeed, I saw him as an incarnation of my Guardian Angel.”   Must be something religious kids are inclined to look for everywhere.  Echo too of the Divine Double hunger.  

And now here is Eliot herself invoking a mirror motif, but in a slightly different way.   Book Eight Chapter 72 inscription

                               Full souls are double mirrors, making still

      And endless vista of far things before,

Repeating things behind.

The light today feels so dimmed and shadowed it feels like September already.  The sunny intensity of our long spring has ruined everything.  

California architect I’d never heard of—Carol Maston.  

17 July Friday 

Cool and rainy.  Looked through another of Toby Johnson’s books.  He is not unlike Kripal in that the themes of the life work emerge and become repeated more and more clearly.  I suppose that is the nature of eighty percent of writers of numerous books.  As well as journalists and diarists and chroniclers.  Who can come up with anything very new or fresh?  Spiritual seekers like me and Johnson et al come to the same conclusions, patterns, Campbell’s reformulation of Jung, or a pluralistic embrace of many languages, or the religion of no religion and variations.  

We started watching the bbc production of Middlemarch from twenty years ago.  Faded and dated yet quite good.  Rufus Sewell Ladislaw.  Do I want to read a biography of Eliot?  I began my reading career in high school with Virginia Woolf so why not end it with Eliot?  

“Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for mighty love.”  717

googled obsession about destroying books as he read them and came up with a recent essay by Anne Fadiman on the two loves of books:  courtly and carnal.  Sweet job she does of it.  

“During the next thirty years I came to realize that just as there is more than one way to love a person, so is there more than one way to love a book. The chambermaid believed in courtly love. A book’s physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller. The Fadiman family believed in carnal love. To us, a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.”  actually from her 1995 collection of essays 

Sunday  19 July 

1962  year we graduated from high school, summer I went to Ammendale —-

“Oddly—synchronistically?—at almost the exact same cultural moment the West Coast evolutionary mysticism of early Esalen was introduced to the public (in the fall of 1962), so too was the East Coast evolutionary mythology of the X-Men (in the fall of 1963). Both cultural visions, moreover, imagined an esoteric or alternative academy where the human potentialities of mystical and psychical experience could be protected, educated, disciplined, and eventually stabilized within a set of transformative practices. Finally, as with Aurobindo’s Pondicherry ashram, both Professor Xavier’s Westchester Academy and Michael Murphy’s early Esalen vision insisted that it is evolution that produces these metaphysical mutations, these uncanny superpowers (siddhis) that signal the mutant forerunners of the species’s superhuman future and its life divine.” — Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal https://a.co/1Vwfe9b

super foggy this morning, walk—-going to scorch later up to 94 — muscles all achy on this walk—-do I have the v ?   wish Larry had worn a mask yesterday at docks—-talking non-stop and very close to us on the walkway—Theo has new third child, daughter.  Christine prays with Kathy every so often, goes to mass, Fr Page.  

Wonderful long visit with Dave and kids yesterday.  They are in Quimber—beautiful old village.  Had oysters at the river’s edge.  Have run into old friends, Gwen and family, and seeing other good friends from Paris.  Heading to St Malo.  

Bought the Ekornes chair in one fell visit to Harris.  Stephen Borer the salesman who showed me all the models and sizes.  Never guessed so many.  We decided on the Admiral chair, large, for the fit it gives my long torso, something he noted as well as the way it fits behind my head.  I tried the ones that have a motorized footrest sliding out from under and decided they were too much.  The moveable hassock is nicer to look at and more flexible for lots of uses.  “Saved” a thousand bucks by ordering a common color, black, and the teak finish wooden base.  The classic design.  

Stephen a delightful rumpled character.  Retired from postal work in Hopkinton, MA.  Now fifty-seven, as I guessed.  Likes to swim at the college pool.  Direct and figurated in his speech.  Just made up or guessed up that word!  Wonder if he is dyslexic or otherwise out of the ordinary loops.  Seems like it in a delightful way.  See if we like the chair.  Willow seemed against it early this morning.  She was out on the swing the whole time I went out to shop and by the time I came back she was now all for the chair and even talking about getting one for herself.  Go figure!  Still wants the old wing back up in the bedroom again.  

Surprise message showed up on her watch from Paul Turner.  Haven’t heard from him for ages, maybe wires crossed somehow via verizon or even Russian hackers!  

Note from Nancy wondering how everyone doing, looking at her T Downs etching.  

It is amazing even to me that I am so excited about a Victorian!!! novel.  And I can feel within the curious resolve to go forward and read more, the biography and even Romola.  What has possessed me???  

“nervous exaltation”  755

20 July   Monday 

All-Way guys here before 9 to start on the lift.  

“Middlemarch is also endlessly re-readable. So many stories are woven together that at each reading you seem to become involved with someone passed over only lightly during earlier readings. Unlike Tolstoy, George Eliot is someone who becomes increasingly likeable as one learns more about her, so her all-embracing but benign imagination is like a climate in which you remain after putting the book down, to ponder its suggestions and conclusions.”  Diana Att in The Guardian 

Snafu on the lift.  Warehouse sent the wrong chair for the rail, right-hand, left-hand mixup.  They took off and the office will reschedule.  

Dear Patsy, 

Thank you very much for forwarding the obit on Claude Senninger.  We tried to see her in ABQ, but her son Warren said it was too complicated, so we had to let it go.  I really loved that woman as a prof and as a person. I told Warren to let her know that all the compliments I get on my French from our  French family are due to the excellent teaching by Claude and her then husband, Truit.

I am very glad that you could come to that little gathering we had at "our" bear house in Abq.  We felt so lucky to be there when everything had to close down because of COVID. We tried to buy that little house , but it is not for sale. at least not at this time. 

We still plan to come back there next January, so I hope we can see more of each other and of Chapter V.

Stay safe and well, 

love, 

Virginia    

—————

Keck characterised a speech by Will as being as violent as an energumen.  

Said to “have come up” during the French revolution by Keck.  possessed by a demon or evil spirit, frantic person.  

“As Lydgate said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise wherever he went.”  

 

——-

Dear  Warren, 

I was so sad to hear from a friend about your mother's "transitioning".  I loved her as a prof and a person.  I so wanted to tell her in person how her and your dad's wonderful teaching made possible such a miracle as all the compliments I get on my French from our  French family.

I never realized what a treasure I had received from my studying with your parents at UNM. I want you to know what great friends your family was to mine when you lived behind us in ABQ.  I still remember trying to babysit Pippo.  He climbed on top of the refrigerator and when he wanted to tell me off, all he could come up with was "You big, big, fat, pancake!" 

 

My family and I really appreciated your taking us up in your balloon over the mesa after my mom died.  Do you still fly?  Some time I would like to get to the balloon fiesta which didn't exist when I was living in ABQ. I hope you and your family are all well and happy,

bisous, 

Virginia    

—————-

Hi, Thanks for sending me this.  How are things doing up north?  Is everything ready for  visitors?  Let us know when you and Doug are around or just drop by  to talk some.  There is no reason why Covid should cut us all off completely. 

Hope all is well at your house.  

We were expecting to have a new stair climber put in this am, but they arrived with unusable parts so we will have to wait until another day. At least they did take one chair upstairs for me. 

Bob has ordered a new chair for himself.  Now I am thinking I need one for me too.  They are to go on either end of the couch in the living room. I guess the TV will go back to that room and the den will be free as an office again.  We have decided to stay in this house until the end so we are trying to make it as useful as possible.  For that purpose we are having a new washer/dryer put into a newly reformed space in our downstairs hall.  That way Bob can stay off the basement stairs until he needs to use the big equipment in the basement. We have also ordered a Calif king sized bed for our "big" bedroom.  We will have a headboard that hangs on the wall with little shelves attached so we can get rid of the bedside table and lamps. Are you interested in tables or lamps?  All for now.  Let us know how everything is with you and yours, 

un abrazo, 

va

————

flushed the fountain, got it to trickle again 

“palpitating anxiety”  “Marriage is so unlike everything else.  There is something even awful in the nearness it brings.”

“they said an earnest, quiet good-bye without kiss or other show of effusion:  there had been between them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially.”  

“we are now the Florida of the world.”  “And no one can leave.”  

“fearing, indeed, that there would be no surprises in his visit.”  “even badinage and lyrism had turned explosive”  “To a creature of Will’s susceptible temperament—without any neutral region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama—the revelation that Rosemund had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for him.”  

21 July  Tuesday  

Heroic morning.  After Elizabeth and Virginia took off, I sat here and read all 32 pages remaining of Eliot’s great domestic epic, even with underlinings galore!!  Breezy wind outside in the sun.  What great book it is and yes I will soon enough be willing to enjoy Romola and give it it’s due as well.  Those hot sunny afternoons in Elkins Park when I was unable to focus on this huge novel but had to try to plough through it are redeemed at last.  Eliot assures us of Dorothea and Will’s love and happiness in an absolutely perfect way and H James didn’t know how to appreciate it, it seems.  He said something about Ladislaw being “insubstantial.”  They always see gypsy lovers that way!  Perhaps it is in gypsy-defiance that I will choose not to go to the dump after all to keep my “off” sacred and secure!! 

Last Four Chapters of Middlemarh

childish restlessness O dear! nothing her mind slipped off it reading sentences twice intense consciousness preferred stay vagrant mind order beaver-like noises a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her daringly defiant for his sake timidity uncertainty afraid of her own emotion intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes embarrassment a vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection something like a sob confusion that distressed confessed that he felt very happy pale underside enjoyed the prospect of a storm the light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love never known which lips were the first to move kissed tremblingly busy and the idle pause certain awe we shall never be married some time we might don’t mind about poverty had his arms around her sobbing childlike way my unclemin cog yes to Ladislaw quite suddenly something singular in things remarkable fellow degrading herself out of her proper rank into poverty bad origin light character giving up a fortune for the sake of a man wrong because unpleasant to us his blood is a frightful mixture he is a pretty sprig he is like the fine old Crichley portraits before the idiots came in I could never do anything I like I have never carried out any plan yet will go away among queer people how can you always live in a street you would have to feel with me, else you would never know he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full confession to his wife shrouded by her doubt concealment had been the habit of his life distress at the sign of her suffering I should never like scolding any one else so well a point to be thought of in a husband husbands are an inferior class of men Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending who can quit young lives after being long in company with them the home epic harvest of sweet memories in common a solid mutual happiness write on turnips and mangel-wurzel no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else misled by his hopefulness the more spooneys they her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles white-haired placidity at the open window a disease which has a good deal of wealth on its side failure never committed a second compromising indiscretion the bird of paradise she resembled  temper never became faultless basil plant flourished on a murdered man’s brains keeping in religious remembrance the generosity bound to each other by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it not filled with emotion have been absorbed into the life of another a little boy noble impulse struggling amidst the imperfect social state great feelings the aspect of error grave faith the aspect of illusion not widely visible her full nature, like that river not so ill with you and me hidden life 

———-

sent this to Rupert and Roy—-see if they reply at all.  

Piece on Ginger people.  Aunt Dot was one and Uncle Joe.  I had blond hair and then brown and only in twenties did I grow a beard and find it was a nice dark red.  So maybe I was and in-between ginger, mid-way, as always, between blond and red.  

Day off was mild and local.  Walked into the construction site at Holderness.  Big new science building.  Sushi from Hannaford.  Is it a new sushi bar there?  Ice cream at Frosty’s.  How do they manage to make vanilla ice cream underwhelming?  Must use minimum of cream.  

22 July Wednesday

The big book is over.  Desolation.  A new hero arrives.  Pascal Quignard, b. 1948.  Worthy?  Julia Holter. "Le clair-obscur « extrême contemporain » : Pascal Quignard, Pierre Michon, Patrick Modiano et Pierre Bergounioux." Diss., 2013.  University of Washington  

here is a passage from Kripal—again—-that makes you just way “what??”  where did you get this notion??

““Murphy had taken a vow of celibacy in the 1950s. He had always found it easy to keep this vow, perhaps because, unlike so many other ascetics, his early family life was a happy one and he was not conflicted about his sexuality. More importantly, he had realized the sublime secret of both psychoanalysis and mystical practice, namely, that a practice like deep meditation requires a certain energetic momentum, and that a celibate lifestyle can effectively”

— Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

it is the early happy family life and unconflicted sexuality part that makes me say, oh, hardline freudianism all over again ??  

and then we have the transformative moment when the vow gets broken—-

supply these reservoirs of energy for spiritual transformation (another point on which he no doubt found himself in deep agreement with Aurobindo and Heard). Still, he was thirty-two. He was young, dashing, and the coleader of an exciting new institution that was attracting many talented and attractive young people, including a certain Erica Weston, a beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman who happened to be the granddaughter of the great American photographer, Edward Weston. Michael broke his vow of celibacy with Erica on the night of October 25, 1962. More positively, Murphy and Weston spent the entire night making love. The next day Weston and Murphy were traveling in a Volkswagen Bug driven by an Indian woman, all on their way to Heard’s lecture, which Murphy was to introduce. The two women sat in the front seat. Murphy was in the back. As they turned a blind curve on Highway 1, they found themselves rushing toward another car coming straight at them in”

——-Kripal is really good at a kind of gossip rather than history—-

“In many ways, Gerald Heard’s answer was very traditional both in the West and Asia: male homoerotic asceticism and sublimation have historically produced the model norms, repressions, and energies of sanctity. 38 It would not, however, be Esalen’s answer, as the defining early presence of the banned Henry Miller, the panerotic painting of Hieronymus Bosch, the kissing couple on the cliff after the Night of the Dobermans, and Michael Murphy’s first sexual experience and subsequent car accident all suggested. Such “accidents” were not experienced as accidents. They were interpreted as both ruptures with the familiar past and as signals of a different kind of future.”

In many ways, Gerald Heard’s answer was very traditional both in the West and Asia: male homoerotic asceticism and sublimation have historically produced the model norms, repressions, and energies of sanctity. 38 It would not, however, be Esalen’s answer, as the defining early presence of the banned Henry Miller, the panerotic painting of Hieronymus Bosch, the kissing couple on the cliff after the Night of the Dobermans, and Michael Murphy’s first sexual experience and subsequent car accident all suggested. Such “accidents” were not experienced as accidents. They were interpreted as both ruptures with the familiar past and as signals of a different kind of future.”   

“I take that car accident as a powerful and potentially deadly struggle between the traditional and the new, between the way of male homoerotic sublimation and the way of heterosexual expression.”

But wait—-Murphy was hetero—so did he see his celibacy as a sublimation of homo energy??  or is it that Kripal’s thesis means that all religious sublimation is homoerotic no matter what the person feels his sexual identity to be?  

back to Eliot   “This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.”   I like that last phrase.  

23 July Thursday

“The sublimity of acceptance.”   David Oates   Maybe out of context in his essay it doesn’t ring as much?  Started skimming Kripal’s Esalen rapidly last night.  After the early juicy gossip about the personalities and the gay baths era, it gets to be a company report and a committee meeting on psychology department wrangles.  Fritz Perls vs Maslow et al, not that interested.  Each had his flash in the pan at that time, in that tiny world.  Kripal wants to extract as much as he can for his ongoing projects to extend outward to all the crazy paranormal stuff.  I can now see, however, within the broader contexts how what Toby Johnson puts forth in his books about the special spiritual calling and evolutionary developments of gay consciousness is not at all unique with Johnson but his revoicing of what had been said for a long time, ages actually, linked in as it has always been with celibacy in general within spiritual communities.  The two paths—-away from the world and all of its energies vs embrace of the world and all of its energies.  The Esalen crowds were all newbies in many ways, rediscovering, and reimporting all the traditions the rush of colonialism and industrialism and modernity had forgotten and obscured.  Even the French spirituality we were indoctrinated into at Ammendale was the remnants of centuries of ossification and banishment of all things truly mystical.  Or so it seemed to us.  

“his distress at being an inadequate son”  Carlisle  on Kierkegaard 

stairlift team today in an unmarked truck, Tristan and Tyler  

interesting Percy line from Sven B  

“What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of.”

   Walker Percy

——

24 July  Friday  

Stair lift works fine.  Joyce brought muffins.  

Kripal tells us more about Campbell, more distant than Johnson, who treats him in the hero mode.  Kripal says Campbell was anti-Semitic and, of course, forced the varieties of world myths into his boxes.  

“Academic assessments of his work have been much more critical, noting, for example, that Campbell often forced the otherwise riotously various mythological material into his tidy theories and, more troubling, that he often displayed a rather obvious anti-Semitism in both his writings and his private comments. I certainly would not want to deny the latter point. Indeed, I have encountered real recognition of it in my interviewing. But Campbell’s historical presence and influence at Esalen also intersect closely with our present exploration of Esalen’s”

— Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

was anti-Semitism just part of being Irish American in our generation and older?  Immigrants on the new bottom cursing those above them.  (Birmingham)   For Campbell and Houston Smith the essence of mystical practice was “read, read and read,” which has pretty much been my approach after all and that of many others.  

CDB may not be so safe.  Came to same suspicions on my own and didn't really try that much.  Not surprising.  Rush to produce and market the stuff.  Even the legal stuff now, which I tried in NM, small servings, are like ehh, so what to me.  Good cocktail when I'm in the mood is fine, wine every few days with a meal, even that is less enticing.  we've missed so much----well, maybe not!!

“human nature . . . is a creative task for each individual life.”  Carlisle  Are we now way “beyond” such insights and claims?  Could we even say after post-modernism and within Covid-19, human singularity has been swallowed up into a new collective hermeticism, the nature of which no one is able to comprehend or voice.  Yet?   

Kierkegaard wrote as Victor Eremita.  Antonio da Silva’s latest film not yet released is Eremita.  

7:34 pm    I dream every day or so of eating two meals a day.  Not able to pull it off.  Even with nice Marley meal of Norwegian fresh salmon on arugula salad with potatoes and snap peas.  

25 July  Saturday 

“His vision severed itself from shade, broke out of the background, broke away from a night that knew no light.” 

“Our bodies are one of those images that nature has attempted to draw from light.”  

Phil:  About ten or 12 days ago, you had a comment in one of your emails that questioned the value of actors. What are they doing?   Funny thing about that.   This week I watched Godfather 1.   Back in 1972, when the film came out, I was living in NYC.  I heard about the film, and one rainy night I went to a movie theater in Times Square to see the film.   I was very impressed.  I remember thinking, as I came out of the theater, that the people who lived in a mob/mafia world were living in a more real world than I was. ( At the time I was an editor at Liveright.)  This week my reaction was totally different.  "The suspension of disbelief" seems to no longer operate in your truly. It started a couple of years ago with TV, then spread to reading, and this week all I saw in that film was "little, short Al Pacino being ridiculous as he tried to pretend hew as tough, cold-blooded mafia guy,  and all the others - Marlon Brando et al - came across as a bunch of silly, self-deluded actors, too."  Since then, the more I think about it,  the more I can't believe all the literary, musical, artistic political things that I thought were great back in the '60s and '70s.  I guess some people can look back at their younger years and enjoy the memories.  Not I.  "What the fuck were you thinking - or not thinking - Philip?" is what goes through my mind these days.  It made me turn off the TV and stop watching Godfather 1 this week.

me Yep but I guess actually this mood hits me every 12-15 days for a few days or so.  i suppose it is a weather front of depression and scepticism about all and sundry.  Maybe our pcp's would murmur, well, as we get less young.  In an opposite swing of such, we got hooked onto Salamander, a sloooowww Belgian-Dutch conspiracy theory mystery series.  Last night we said, ok, one more episode and we can wrap this thing up.  Only to see that no, there are seven more episodes yet.  Winters are long in Belgium and budgets more constrained.  But in long covid afternoons these things keep the hearth coals shimmering I guess.  

thanks for the clipping.  Americanhomes4rent have only one home "coming soon" in a far suburb of Albququerque.  Haven't looked at Cland but my guess is none.  It started in Vegas and you can picture those bast tracts of foreclosed homes over built in those such places.  still you gotta admire this storage unit--rental homes giant of an entrepreneur, I guess.  Someone has to do that shit.  I've been tracking how quickly the car markets are changing---more and more it looks like you can buy any car online and sell your own car online, thanks I guess to that genius who put car selling into a vending machine down on the corner of your subdivision---Carvana.  Have only seen ads for it but I guess it does exist.  Who could imagine??  

Morning walk in the new Converse All-Stars laughing to myself.  These size 11s now fit but still you can feel the imprint of a big basketball playing kid as the basic model for whom they are made.  Laughing at myself for even “wanting” such a brand.  Some replay of adolescence once again.  Made a basket at the wrong basket in the eighth grade and banished forever from the sports world so much shame I felt.  Did Dad take me to his doctor before or after that event.  Of which no one uttered a word that I recall.  

Still working through the doctor visit which was a curse, a blessing, a prophesy, an erroneous assumption, a magical invitation, a martyring accusation, a disembodying ecstasy.  All and more all at once spread over sixty years.  

Great photos of Mt St Michel from the kids.  They were there on Thursday with a family from home.  Two slightly older kids.  Sang happy birthday to the mom on the beach.  

——

note from Nicholas 

Dear Bob,

So where do the people of New Hampshire stand in the great culture war that is (or was, now that Mr. Trump has apparently succumbed) face masks? 

We dutiful Swiss citizens wear them when told to and take them off when not (mostly) and the decisions about this are taken at the cantonal level depending on the level of risk. Thus, on public transport everywhere, in shops only currently in two French cantons. 

Life is otherwise remarkably normal-looking especially for an asocial person like me! Even off to Germany next week (all things being equal) to see Andrei on an airplane (which I am told is healthier than a train or bus as they have better ventilation systems). The price of the ticket includes medical repatriation! This no doubt meant to be reassuring but ...

Wonderful day yesterday went for a swim, got my haircut (masked), had lunch in Lucerne at one of my favorite restaurants (in the garden in a quiet corner), and walked part of the way home in beautiful weather.   

Trust you are keeping well.

Love, Nicholas

—-

Oates:  sees a Bosch figure as full of “irrefrangible selfness.”  

hmm, aroma of thesaurus there?  ADJECTIVE

1.  that cannot be broken or violated

2.  that cannot be refracted

Toby Johnson messaged me via facebook about my review comments on his novel and Kripal.  Amazing.  Writers—-just can’t get enough attention.  

he receives this gift, secretly in silence   he looks as ordinary as a tax collector 

But one cannot deduce from a life which becomes entirely hidden that it is more innocent.  

Oates finds a major chord in Schubert:  “There is in every life a wide, deep layer of mushroominess, drawn from healthy but not altogether proper places.  From soil, from paleness and dreaming, desires, darkness.  Darkness that is not filth but is earthen and redolent of joy.”   Nice. 

“What is hidden and private, the inner life of intense emotion, becomes in the performances of Schubert’s music a pubic sacrament of sensual liberation.”  And I have missed Schubert altogether.  

More photos today:  kids on holiday in their hometown!  hair cut for Eliot, pizza at Napoli, selfies with Lady Liberty, and ice cream in Luxembourg Gardens.  

Ethan not responding at all.  Texted Bob, see if he replies.  Oates putting me onto Schubert.  Mushroom music for driving on a day off.  Title for my novel.  

“Monsieur Maume replied with the same gravity: ‘It is matter that imagines heaven.  Then it is heaven that imagines life.  Then it is life that imagines nature.  Then nature grows and shows itself in different forms which it does not conceive so much as it invents while stirring up fire in space.  Our bodies are one of those images that nature has attempted to draw from light.”  —Paul Quignard 

Primal wonder and surprise in the body of yesterday.  Found the route around Hanover on the eastern side, Enfield to Etna to Lyme and River Road.  Listened to Schubert and realized of course I’ve heard lots of him over the years, never paid much attention to differences.  Humidity lifted during mid-afternoon.  

Dear Nicholas

I'm glad you're getting over to Berlin for a visit.  Our regards to Andrei.  I suppose he is in holding and still looking for an academic position?  I was just reading about how miserable the journey by coach to Berlin was for Kierkegaard.  Swiss Air will keep your breathing purified, I'm sure.  I got a post from them a few months back with photos showing how they were flying cargo strapped in to passenger seats to guarantee no covid cleanliness.

Wonder if the new Berlin airport will ever open?  

Masks---great confusion and controversy about them but under corporate mandantes finally more people are wearing them and both large and small shops are posting signs requiring/requesting they be worn.  Virginia says she and her friend were going in to the local Walmart the other day and a woman was outside making a fuss and in tears.  She said her religion forbade wearing a face mask and what could she do?  Many observers quietly murmured "what religion, for heaven's sake?' as they walked on by.  

We've had a few front lawn get togethers with friends, we all wear our masks, sit far apart, sip water from bottles we have brought and try to find something to talk about!!  We had a few meals on restaurant outdoor terraces.  

Our media have announced we have 100 days until the election.  We can now get our absentee ballots from the town hall and are planning to use them and keep our federal post office in business even though we will be in town at the time.  I guess Va's disability makes it a legit position for us.  

We put a stair lift back into the house.  Feeling much relieved and more calm now that the walking up and down are back onto a (British!  Stannah brand, to help the brexit economy)  machine.  

Our lives feel pretty untouched and unchanged, actually.  Virginia might resume piano playing with her partner if we can find a good day for both of them.  Oh, I am due to get cataract procedure in two weeks.  In Albuquerque I was

having a hard time making out the names on the large signs of the cross streets.  Everyone tells me it is easy and

routine and I will be dazzled with the new vision.  Maybe someday spiritual renewal will be a chip you implant every three years or so!

Enjoy your Berlin holiday,  

love,

Bob 

——-

“I am a man whom images attack.” 

“I seek only thoughts that tremble.  There is a flush that belongs to the interior of the soul.”  

Tongues of fire speak unknowing wonders.  

Flaming tongues speak of wonders unknown.

On the highway this afternoon, I said no word yet of the baby being born.  Few minutes later a ping and news:  born 2:15 pm, no name yet, everyone well, 9 lbs 15 oz.  Also later a batch of photos from Le Chezet.  

The dream makes real for the soul what it has lost or lacks.  —Quignard

One professor of religion did a thesis on Kierkegaard as a mystic, published it later as a book and added in Zen:   Jack Mulder, Jr  Mystical and Buddhist Elements in Kierkegaard's Religious Thought 2005  His next book

in 2010 is Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition, Conflict and Dialogue, and then his most recent book is in 2015 “What Does it Mean to Be Catholic?” and a YouTube interview on this book with Muldur now a prof at Hope College in Michigan.  

Faith and nothingness in Kierkegaard: A mystical reading of the God -relationship

Jack E. Mulder, Purdue University

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that Kierkegaard's relationship to the mystical tradition is misconstrued in the secondary literature, and that a fuller account of his attitude toward mysticism reveals a more appreciative stance toward it, which in turn reveals a more mystical religious dialectic. To that end, in the first chapter, I give an account of what is taken to be Kierkegaard's anti-mysticism, and then show that the resources in other signed sources, like Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, allow us to see that Kierkegaard dislikes what he calls mysticism, but what he calls mysticism is not what contemporary scholarship believes it to be. Accordingly, Kierkegaard himself could be a mystic on some definitions of that term. The three chapters that immediately follow are devoted to explicating Kierkegaard's religious dialectic in such a way as to show that mystical themes pervade the work. In the second chapter, I argue that the nothingness of the self (a mystical motif) is a necessary condition, according to Kierkegaard, for any wholeness that the self might acquire. Further, in the third chapter, I argue that Kierkegaard's conception of God permits a rich notion of union with God (another mystical motif). In the fourth chapter, I explain that Works of Love picks up where the pseudonyms left off, and articulates the union with God where such union is at once loving action, for God is love. In the final chapter, I conclude by showing that Kierkegaard has marked structural similarities to mystics such as Eckhart, who is warmly received by the Japanese philosophical tradition, particularly in the writings of its Zen and Pure Land Buddhist representatives. I then go on to show that Kierkegaard's writings are a fruitful source for comparative philosophy of religion, for while Kierkegaardians can also learn from the writings of these Japanese thinkers, Kierkegaard's writings can provide responses to many objections that are commonly leveled against both Kierkegaard's thought in particular and Christian philosophy in general.

Five or so years later the book published has added Zen.  

Jack Mulder, Jr  Mystical and Buddhist Elements in Kierkegaard's Religious Thought Paperback – January 1, 2005

Critics and sympathetic interpreters alike underestimate Kierkegaard's relevance to contemporary continental and comparative philosophy because they fail to see the extent to which his philosophy is mystical. Mysticism is often characterized by, among other things, the annihilation of the self and union with God. On a standard reading of Kierkegaard, of which David Law’s is an example, Kierkegaard’s insistence upon the absolute distinction between Creator and creation would force him to reject anything like mystical union with God. But this reading fails to take adequate account of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, which assert the possibility of such a union. For Kierkegaard, when we attempt to secure some meaning for our lives that transcends the limits of those lives themselves, we meet with utter failure because of our finitude and, ultimately, sinfulness. Thus, we must “die” to our human longing to secure this meaning on our own, and must receive it from God through grace. Kierkegaard calls this openness to the divine “becoming nothing.” Only when the individual thus becomes nothing can God “illuminate” her.

And lo five or so years after that a book on finding home in Catholicism

2015

A clear, engaging introduction to the Catholic faith

What does it mean to be Catholic? Many people, both non-Catholics and even Catholics themselves, really don't know. This accessible book by Jack Mulder is ideal for all who are curious to know more about Catholicism.

Writing in a conversational style, Mulder clearly portrays the main contours of the Catholic faith. For readers who have ever wondered what exactly the Roman Catholic Church teaches about predestination, original sin, the Virgin Mary, abortion, same-sex marriage, and other issues, Mulder explains all that — and much more — in simple language.

Mulder, who was raised in the Protestant tradition and converted to Catholicism later in life, speaks from the perspective of having wrestled with his own beliefs over the years. With solid information — and without proselytizing — Mulder's What Does It Mean to Be Catholic? presents a truly fresh perspective on the distinctive features of the Catholic faith.

————-

So the trajectory he traced demonstrates the poetics of religious study pretty well.  If he can start with Kierkegaard and end in Catholicism, I could well have started at C and ended up in Kierkegaard.  Which I’ll say is exactly what I did!  Sure wish I had bought that copy of Fear and Trembling I can remember seeing in the bookstore in Hyde Park.  

31 July  Friday

Dave called.  Meme died last night just before dinner.  92.   Yesterday or day before was news of the birth of Astrid Kline in Arkansas.  

These passages in Carlisle a few days earlier had knocked my socks off. “everything.’ Each day in his familiar Berlin lodgings overlooking Gendarmenmarkt, Kierkegaard spent time in contemplation, connecting with his own inwardness and sinking deeper into it: ‘I sit and listen to the sounds in my inner being, the happy hints of music and the deep earnest of the organ. Working them into a whole is a task not for a composer but for a human being who, in the absence of making heavier demands upon life, confines himself to the simple task of wanting to understand himself.’ Writing is inseparable from this effort of self-understanding: it is through words as well as through silence that he brings coherence to the motions of his soul. Yet for Kierkegaard this is always a paradoxical exercise, revealing and concealing at the same time–like telling someone you have a secret that can’t be told. Writing gives his most solitary reflections a public aspect, exhibits the contradiction between his inward and outward life, brings his hiddenness into the open. He evasively offers to the world an image of himself, going to great lengths to explain that he cannot be understood.”

— Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle

also a great passage on Toby Johnson’s site ——   

I love the idea that we are really 5-D transdimensional hyperobjects formed out of consciousness, interacting with one another in ways that generate the world of common experience with its rules of math and matter. This was an idea in the marvelous little book from the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love: Thaddeus Golas' The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. Golas begins: "We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other."

My own "flip" experience came from studying the theories of mythology of Joseph Campbell. In a moment of insight, I understood that everything is myth and that while understanding that is higher level, it too is still myth. And all of it is "God," but that God is very different from the God the Catholic catechism that I grew up with told of. But that too was a clue. Myths are clues. In fact, everything's a clue. And then—by happy "coincidence"—I got to meet and befriend Campbell, and became one of the crew who worked his appearances in Northern California in the 70s. So that he became for me the "wise old man" of my spiritual journey. Who better for your Wise Old Man?

I have been inspired and elevated and my thinking stimulated and uplifted by everything I've read of Jeffrey Kripal's. The Flip was another such great read. Jeff Kripal would make an excellent wise old man for a new generation of seekers.

————

19th C Dine (Navajo) Prayer

English version by Gladys A. Reichard

 

Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating,
I have made your sacrifice.
Whiteshell, turquoise, abalone beautiful,
Jet beautiful, fool's gold beautiful, blue pollen beautiful,
Red pollen, pollen beautiful, your sacrifice I have made.
This day your child I have become, I say.

Watch over me.
Hold your hand before me in protection.
Stand guard for me, speak in defense of me.
As I speak for you, speak for me.
          May it be beautiful before me.
          May it be beautiful behind me.
          May it be beautiful below me.
          May it be beautiful above me.
          May it be beautiful all around me.

          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.

———-

Sunday August 2  

Phil sent an account of his toenail sensitivity and postings about my photo of Va’s toes—-

When I was a teenager, I was helping dad move the railroad rails that our dock at Deep Creek ran on because the lake water receded throughout the summer, requiring the dock to be moved farther and farther out.   At the end of the summer, we would winch the dock back up the shore to wait for new high water in the spring.  However, ice during that particular winter had moved the rails and we had to move them back into place.  To do that we used heavy industrial jacks that dad rented for the job.  I jacked the rails up, then looked for a long metal pole to move the rails back toward the proper place, but didn't notice the jack and rails started to tilt, then fall. I was wearing tennis shoes, but the entire weight of the jack and rails, perhaps a thousand pounds, came down on my left big toe. It smashed the toenail out of my foot.  Dad took me to the hospital in Oakland where they manage to put the nail back into place.  But over the years it grew out crooked.  If regular nails point at twelve o'clock, my big toe nail points at 10:30, and it is very discolored and about three times thicker than normal nails.  It's really pretty ugly and almost impossible to trim.  For that reason I'm always aware of how feet, toes,  and, in particular, toe nails appear.  

But I still suspect that those painted nails in the photo were yours

Last week I was skeptical, now I’m copying passages from Johnson—-

“We might say the whole function of the universe is to evolve consciousness through an unimaginably long and complex series of solving problems and thereby expanding awareness. As we work our way through life, solving problems, transforming difficulties, so we are in harmony with the great growth of everything. We transform things by loving them. We transform the world by loving the world, holding unconditional good intentions for everybody and not making others wrong. The thing that most needs transformation, of course, is the evil that comes from the clashing of intentions about how to solve problems. When we see the effects of that evil—like the violence in society, the intolerance in religion, the bigotry and stupidity of people, the injustice—that is when we have to remind ourselves that this is exactly what needs transforming, not by resisting it, but by loving it the way it is. This does not mean we do not try to change things. In fact, one of the things to love is our own inclination to change injustice, stupidity and bigotry through political and cultural activism. Looking at the world and seeing all the suffering and violence and learning to say, “It is great, just the way it is,” does not mean giving in. It means holding it all in a larger context. For from the larger context it is all easier to cope with. And it is easier to change.”

— Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness by Toby Johnson

Do really like this passage.  Tweeted it.  

Giles said “I am happy. I have a lovely family. I know I keep things hidden as part of my inner life and I get on with life.  In another world I would be in another reality. I deal with the cards life dealt me.” 

Monday  August 3

Blustery  winds from the hurricane.  

Some quotes from Johnson—-

“At a more spiritual level, we experience wonder and a sense of the poignancy of life in the realization of the whole process. Because we are self-trained to rise above the everyday assumptions of what things are and what they are for, we are able to see how much bigger the universe is than most people perceive. This is to achieve God’s point of view, and our doing it (however witting or unwitting) is participation in the planetary mind’s evolution into “God.” Life is wonderful even when we do not understand it. Wonder is what human life is for and it is the propelling force behind evolution. Feeling wonder puts out good vibes.”

“Meditation, of course, is the fundamental spiritual practice of feeling wonder. Meditation, sitting quiet and unmoving, focusing consciousness on the rhythm of the breath, is the major tool of spiritual awareness and introspection. The ritualized turning inward and pulling away from the distractions of the outside world allows us to see what is going on in our interior life. At it is simplest, it is like closing the curtains of a bright, sun-lit room so we can see the flickering play of candlelight on the walls. Meditation is taking time to see things differently, to shift our focus from the immediate and transitory to the transcendent and eternal. Meditation is holding a thought in mind, perhaps remembering with tender feelings, free-floating eroticism and genuine joy a major experience in our life—especially a mystical experience that seemed to explain the reason for our life. Meditation is watching ourself breathe as an exercise in being still. Meditation can be an ongoing practice of a state of receptive joy and fearlessness in the preparation for death. When our ego is turned on and busy, it dominates consciousness. We cannot see what is really going on by looking directly at it, because that turns on the ego. Meditation puts the ego functions on hold so that the larger Self can be glimpsed out of the corner of our “spiritual eye.” By allowing all distractions to”subside, meditation is an awakening to who we really are. Wonder includes a sense of insignificance. We feel wonder when we behold a mountain range or a thundering waterfall or when we stand beneath the immensity of the night sky or try to conceive the scope of cosmic time. How little each one of us is! With that insignificance comes a paradoxical sense of magnificence and magnanimity: because I am so little and insignificant, there is nothing to cling to in being me separate from the immensity of space and the depth of time. I am part of it all. And so I can be generous. “There is nothing I can call mine, ’cause everything is me,” went the old hippie aphorism (attributed to Joe Miller).”

——-

I can see him as a director of novices in a monastery.  Not unlike Brother Erminus Joseph at Ammendale.  

4 August  Tuesday  

Dark storm overhead, rains has started.  Isaias.  

Is Kierkegaard outdated?  Would Kripal discuss his value for us today?  Carlisle has been writing about him, what would she say about Kripal’s work?  

Moving from Johnson and Kripal to Kierkegaard feels like moving from the outer rings in more toward a center of some sort.  Is that an illusion of his rhetorical powers?  

“It is not sombre, for on the contrary, it tries to shed light on what generally is left somewhat obscure; it is not depressing but instead is elevating, inasmuch as it views every human being under the destiny of the highest claim upon him, to be spirit.’ 

“Just as a physician might say that there very likely is not one single living human being who is completely healthy, so anyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbour an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or something he does not even dare to try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself, so that, just as a physician speaks of carrying an illness in the body, he walks around carrying a sickness of spirit that signals its presence at rare intervals in and through an anxiety he cannot explain.”

K has never mentioned his mother.  “This is not because he has forgotten her; it is the silence owed to something sacred, which held him long before he knew how to speak.”  “The little boy who once stood here also felt himself to be outside the world he watched from his window.”  

Precisely and in my case I have proof and reminder of that both in my memory of being such a boy and the photograph in the childhood album of me standing by a window (in the apartment we lived in over the store—lace curtain on the window.  Was I five or six? Well, if it is before I learned to speak in is back at two or before.  But K is eliding things— Carlisle is.  )

In that sacred silence is where vocation began, more fully as later variations which sprang from it.  

“It comes closest to what Buddha called being “snuffed out” like a candle, nirvana, not some psychedelic mandala in the sky, but a painfully simple stepping out of self-delusions.  Life is suffering.  Life ceases, truly ceases, and suffering ceases as well.  Only bliss remains.”  —-William Schindler

Will Carlisle eventually suggest K becomes Buddhist, de facto?  

K—despair, Thoreau—desperation, Pessoa—disquiet, what was Nietzsche’s D word?  dread?  all of them proto-existentialist terms, followed by deconstruction, followed by?  hmm maybe Kripal’s Flip!!  Can’t help but wonder if Kripal would welcome using his flip terminology to reflip his earlier works?  

well, one of his critics did it for him —-  Narasingha P. Sil, Professor of History at Western Oregon University.  on a site called Invading the Sacred—

his concluding line is “If Antony Phiringhi could succeed in mastering Bengali without a glamorous degree from a famous institution of higher learning in the eighteenth century, Jeffrey’s gnosis mania could be cured and his real knowledge of the Bengali language could flourish, provided he applied himself assiduously to the task. Ramakrishna’s admonition to a smartass named Shyam Basu has a singular salience in the present context: “Just eat the mango, you asshole [Ore Podo]. What would you gain by counting the trees, branches, and leaves in the grove?” 27    

Bam Pow Wow !

The Flip passage I found earlier is thus:   

“To fathom the font of Kripal’s homoerotic hermeneutic, we need to transfer our attention from Dakshineshwar’s Ramakrishna to young Jeffrey, a novice at a Benedictine Seminary somewhere in the US. This apparently ad hominem excursus is necessary because Kali’s crazy child has been modeled after the life experiences of the Christ’s renegade child. We learn from Kripal’s reminiscences that at the seminary he was “forced to explore the interfaces between sexuality and spirituality” and he felt “more than tortured by [his] own psychosexual pathologies.” By “psychosexual pathology” Kripal means, as he puts it parenthetically, anorexia nervosa13—a pathological condition in which the patient cannot retain any food (or feces, if we choose to go by Kripal’s pet symbolism he foisted on Ramakrishna) in the body. He writes further that he felt his readings in Christian bridal mysticism somewhat unholy because of its apparent homoeroticism. This of course is a patently obfuscating statement for we are not sure who in fact considered Christian bridal mysticism “unholy.” It must not be Kripal who finds homosexuality holy enough to inspire mystical state or spiritual feeling and who is nothing if not a spiritual or a mystical homoerotic Adam.

However, upon further cogitations (or perhaps meditations) on the subject (and possibly following some unmentioned experience, most probably in graduate school) Kripal “came to a rather surprising conclusion in regard to [his] own mystico-erotic tradition: heterosexuality is heretical.” He then tells his readers that his “religious life was quite literally killing [him]”—his “body weight had sunk well below the normal.” 14 It was at this juncture that the Christian monk manqué turned his attention to stuff Hindu and chanced upon the Bengali priest of Dakshineshwar. As we have seen, Kripal had provided a psychological explanation of Ramakrishna’s reported diarrhea and constipation that the former condition indicated his desire for sodomy and the latter his fear of anal penetration. The readers of my review of the KC in the Calcutta Statesman will recall my reaction to this sort of gratuitous and purposive psychoanal interpretation.

I now think that Kripal’s personal experiences (somewhat “dark” and presumably “pathological” or, to quote his own expression, “psychosexual”) at that monastery may have something to do with his understanding of Ramakrishna’s ecstasy via what some psychologists would call “projective introversion.” What (or who) we have in the KC is not a tormented Ramakrishna that he has imagined (to the wonderment of his friends) 15 but the transformed figure of a “tormented Jeffrey Kripal” that he has concealed. His frequent protestations on his heterosexual orientation is actually a cover for his “forced” (most probably by the monastic brothers of his seminary) entry into the world of Christian bridal mysticism (which considers heterosexuality heretical) at the Benedictine seminary, or his somehow “forced” heterosexual seduction in his secular seminary (his graduate school)—both Kripal’s majar kuti (his preferred translation: “mansion of mirth”), his own religious and secular Dakshineshwar. 16 It is quite understandable why Kripal, while protesting his heterosexuality, is at the same time engaged in the viparita [contrary] enterprise of sacralizing homosexuality, through an “other” figure or (in the jargon of the back marketeers) a front man—the Hindu Ramakrishna.”

Before this section Sil has focused first on how Kripal’s comprehension of Bengali is pretty poor.  

He is also talking about the next book, Serpent’s Tongue.  And he says this: what Kripal wants to call “gnosis” is more a “hermeneutics of convenience.”

That’s pretty good—-and does it not describe precisely what Kripal does in his later books, to wit this newest on the Flip?  “It is becoming clearer now, as we read his seminal (I choose this term advisedly) discourse-cum-autobiographical tidbits, Serpent’s Gift, providing (rather, spraying) a gnostic interpretation of the Christian sacrament of the Mass as well as Ramakrishna’s mystical experiences. The Serpent’s Gift is actually a “hermeneutics of convenience” 17 (to borrow Somnath Bhattacharya’s elegant term), a third category between (medieval) faith and (Enlightenment or modern) reason, that dialectically combines both poles as gnosis. “

Was thinking of all of this, remembering Kripal’s anorexia and wondering if he had tried to describe it at length by itself, earlier today in terms of teasing out Kierkegaard’s sense of despair.  Despair as a movement inward versus a movement outward.  Here Toby Johnson’s book was still in mind—-the whole narrative of coming out is the dominant conversion, road to Damascus tale dominating cultural discussions of sexuality.  Although since Johnson was in his fifties and at his peak, everything has changed once more, and other narratives have exploded outward from the original manifestos.  

According to Sil—Ramakrishna was “Ramakrishna, a normal heterosexual Bengali but with the traditional misogynistic mentality and a retarded or repressed sexuality,”   and again  “taking recourse to casuistry and cunning is quite open and unequivocal about his enterprise of making a gay saint out of this semi-literate, misogynistic but unmistakably heterosexual (and by the same token quite scared of being so) Hindu male of renascent Bengal. 2 The author is blissfully oblivious of the saint’s penchant for female lure as well as his panic about heterosexual demands and expectations, due most probably to his personal psychosomatic condition.”

This nails something I had thought too about Kripal’s whole cluster of projects in Secret Body—-“Kripal has been voraciously reading all sorts of queer and mystical literature (instead of Bengali grammar) and has now tired of his exertions. He now boldly announces his agenda “I no longer want to study mystical literature. I now want to write it,” thus inverting Ramakrishna’s spiritual desire that the saint no longer wanted to become sugar but savor it. 21 The teacher of Hindu religious studies now wants to be a mystic, a guru in his own right. So here it is—the postmodern master’s first gift, the Serpent’s Gift, which, contrary to his pious and mystical wish, appears to provide, to borrow a term from Theordore Bernstein, a variety of windyfoggery, that may mean either pomposity or “a kind of wistful desire to make learned sounds,”or “an incapacity for direct, clear thinking.” In other words, this linguistic condition “embraces gobbledygook, that wordy, involved, and often unintelligible language” usually associated with some intellectuals driven by an uncontrollable urge to say something salacious, scandalous, and scintillating. “

That last part hits what struck me—-about Kripal’s delight in “outing” Ramakhrisna as a repeat of his outing of all of Catholicism, monks, priests, etc.  The whole thing is a homoerotic scandal—-what a way to revenge yourself on the church and monasteries that made you sick—anorexic and fearful of sex.  

Back to Kierkegaard—-despair as what in the 20th Century we might talk about nervous breakdown, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, depression.  But

which (here Oates’ discussions of music helped——) are movements inward, not against the world, but embracing the world more deeply within.  Like that old phrase about Mary meditating on her seven sorrows.  Pulling everything into the heart in love.  Loving embrace, loving protection, loving contemplation.  It is that standing by the window, removed, entangled.  

I do like how Kripal plays around with such facility with symbols and symbol-mongering.   Not unlike Burke I guess and Kripal is as annoying about it as Burke could be.  For both was it not sort of Freudian free association unbridled?  Also for H Bloom.  That segment of literary close readers who like to dig and play and throw sand.  Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity etc etc etc et al et al et al.  The careful and anal scholars are off in the other end of the play yard tisk tsk tsk-ing their hearts out.  With outrage and envy, judgment and can I play like that too?  

I was going to paste in Johnson’s loose profile of childhood experiences and types of responses.  Might still.  Because where he starts with “gays” one can easily paste in “INFPs” or “Kierkegaardians.”  Such is psychology and spiritual theology.  Loose and fluid “readings”, as open and flexible, really as Kripal knows them to be.  

———

Clare Carlisle in Prospect magazine UK 

Denmark’s most successful recent export, hygge, is difficult to translate into English—perhaps “cosiness” is the closest fit. For Danes, hygge evokes feelings of contentment, warmth and conviviality: think wood-burning stoves, knitwear, candlelight, artisanal blankets draped over a stylish sofa, and the smell of baking rye bread wafting from the kitchen. Hygge has long been important to Danish culture, but perhaps it is no surprise that many of us find this inviting fireside aesthetic especially appealing in uncertain times.

By contrast, the 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard—another famous Danish export—regarded this penchant for cosiness as pathological. Kierkegaard lived all his life in Copenhagen, where he diagnosed a spiritual complacency masking the anxiety and despair which, he argued, all human beings experience. Like almost all his fellow Danes, Kierkegaard was baptised in the Lutheran Church; during the 1840s and 1850s writings poured from his pen, challenging its teachings while also seeking a more authentic form of religious life.

Kierkegaard modelled his philosophical style on Socrates, the eccentric philosopher of ancient Athens. Socrates went around asking difficult questions. What is courage? What is justice? After conversing with Socrates, people who thought they knew the answers to these questions were left confused. He compared himself to a gadfly sent by the gods: “I go about arousing, and urging and reproaching each one of you… But you, perhaps, might be angry, like people awakened from a nap, and might slap me, and easily kill me; then you would pass the rest of your lives in slumber, unless God, in his care for you, should send someone else to sting you.” Socrates made such a nuisance of himself that he was indeed condemned to death, for the crime of “irreverence.”

Inspired by this example, Kierkegaard sought to provoke and unsettle in inventive, challenging works such as Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, and The Sickness Unto Death. He lived through a period of intense social change: new technologies such as railways, telegraphs and mass printing were making everyday life easier, at least for affluent people like himself. He thought spiritual life had also become too comfortable. Christianity was such a settled part of 19th-century culture that for many Christians it meant little more than conforming to bourgeois family values. Kierkegaard emphasised the religion’s counter-cultural origins: Jesus, like Socrates, was an unconventional, disruptive figure who was eventually executed for his provocations.

Kierkegaard’s message went beyond Christianity: above all, he was interested in the human condition, and his insights have touched generations of readers, of all faiths and none. He encouraged people to confront suffering, instead of avoiding it. This was not because he celebrated misery, but because he believed that true peace and joy come from the depths of the human heart, which can be reached only by contending with life’s uncertainties.

Ironically Kierkegaard’s suggestion that everyone suffers from anxiety and despair can be curiously comforting. In The Sickness Unto Death he wrote that: “Just as a physician might say that there very likely is not one single living human being who is completely healthy, so anyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbour an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or something he does not even dare to try to know.”

As the steady stream of new self-help literature on sleep suggests, human beings struggle to rest even when they are fortunate enough to have comfortable beds. Kierkegaard was a terrible insomniac, and habitually worked late into the night; during the day, he walked and talked his way around Copenhagen for hours at a time, fuelled by alarming quantities of strong, sugary coffee. These restless habits, which probably killed him, were symptomatic of a longing for spiritual sustenance, a passion for truth, an urgent search for an elusive God. Though this kind of existential restlessness can be very uncomfortable, Kierkegaard saw it as a vital sign of life. It often lies buried beneath more material aspirations and distractions, making its presence felt obliquely in the experience of anxiety, which we usually try to rush away from. Yet it is in this restlessness that we are most fully human: curious, questioning, searching, moving, growing.

Kierkegaard’s works are not easy to read, and his spiritual restlessness is not easy to accept. It is not supposed to be. Nevertheless, while the more soothing Danish voices of his century have long since faded into oblivion, Kierkegaard remains an anti-hygge hero. Through his eyes, we can look afresh at our own desire for comfort. Of course we want to feel cosy and secure: it is difficult to be human, and deep down we might not be sure who we are, where we are, why we are. Let’s gather round the fire by all means: those glowing, ever-changing flames hold questions for us all.

———

Never heard this—from Isei—Nagasaki is the only Catholic City in Japan.  The population of Catholics in Japan is extremely small, 0.4 percent of Japanese population, 9^th of August 1945 on this Catholic city, Atomic Bomb was dropped after Hiroshima, and many Catholics died.

Kierkegaard: Carlisle:  “not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbour an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or something he does not even dare to try to know.”   “Yet it is in this restlessness that we are most fully human:  curious, questioning, searching, moving, growing.”  

“anti-hygge hero”  K is.  

obsessed here with under the counter refrigeration possibilities —  

terrible phrase—“moiling boulevards of the metropolis”  Oates ends his essay on Vermeer with it.  

keep things in the secret cavern of your heart.  Schindler’s book is good so far.

vintage images, slides, Cespos as kids when we were in Sevilla, 

even older, me in outdoor shower in Boqueron, could be gross and say “morning after David was conceived” but won’t post that !  proof anyway that once I was a thin adult!  peak of the running period, maybe of running and macrobiotics?  

Tantric vampire novel feels right to take me over into the first eye surgery tomorrow.  Maybe even the word surgery is out.  Procedure?  

the deep present.  Bravo.  David Oates finds his theme, puling together the sublime and the German word for longing, sensucht.  Upteenth Brumaire wonderful essay, great short history of past two hundred years in France and here.  

First eye patch off today.  wow.  As good as everyone says.  Maybe want reading glasses later on?  Vivid sharp clarity.   Read more about the early German Romantic philosophers, few paragraphs.  Shoulda done a dissertation on those guys.  Why did no one tell me?  Same old moaning and groaning.  Philosop

hers of feeling.  

Gorgeous day.  

Gorgeous Eric Aho painting on Instagram.  Asked him how much.  Could I buy it?  My life insurance money?  !  

Did Willow bruise or break her left arm this morning?  In Walmart with Eliz while I was in Gilford with Garfinkel.  Second ride with Joe.  

from Inchausti 

Do you know the Portuguese writer Pessoa?  I am reading his "Book of Disquiet" and it is blowing me away.  

Merton translated a few of his poems, and Bloom included him among the 26 writers he examines in The Western Canon.

But I had no idea. 

He lived a quiet and otherwise unremarkable life--publishing a few volumes of poetry.

After his death, they found the other manuscripts--including "The Book of Disquiet."

Perfect retirement reading.

"I have made of myself what I did not know,

And what I could make of myself I did not make.

The disguise I put on was wrong.

They called my bluff straight away and I did not come clean,

                                                                             ---and lost myself.

When I wanted to take off the mask

It was stuck to my face.

When I took it off and looked in the mirror

I had aged."

from "Tobacco Shop" 

PS--He wrote under at least three different names "and souls." Pessoa is one of them.  

————

oh Yes!!  I read him, that book, about four years ago and had the Same reactions.  Why had I not discovered him years ago??  Sorry I didn't tell you about him, assumed you had found him too.  I read the older translation, penguin black copy and I bought the new version trans by the great Margaret Jull Costa but have not read it through yet.  Big questions about arrangement of the pieces of paper.  But really no matter that.  Aciman promises an essay on Pessoa and holds that we should ignore all the stage drama about the heteronymns.  But they are so similar to Kierkegaard in ways. (at least one diss I found on the two together!!)  

Do you in retirement be troubled much about woulda, coulda, shoulda?  I wish now I had read the early German

romantic philsophers!!  why did no one tell me to buy those copies of Kierkegaard I first saw in the bookstore in Hyde Park (reading Carlisle's new biography of him).  If only I had known the book of disquiet I would have made every course I taught have it as the central work !!!!  

Just had first eye of cataract surgery and the results are as amazing as everyone tells you.  Second eye in two weeks.  The body---our bodies--why are they doing these things to us, for us???  

If only Lax had known Pessoa!  Why didn't Merton write about Kierkegaard?  

Glad you wrote.

——

Phil 

Great news!   Good luck with the other eye.   BTW was the operation done with a metal blade or some more modern gizmo?  My dad used a metal blade back in the 1950s-60s.   He told me that blades used on eyes were the sharpest in the world.  And because Dad needed a steady hand during delicate eye surgery he gave up smoking before he completed his training in ophthamology in London in 1939.  P

——

“The new Romantic literature, Friedrich von Schlegel explained, would draw on the vast resources of the human imagination to produce ‘a feeling that is not sensual, but spiritual. Love is the source and soul of this feeling, and the spirit of love must diffuse through Romantic poetry everywhere, visibly and invisibly.’ Schlegel regarded human creativity as inseparable from nature’s infinitely productive powers: echoing Schelling’s new philosophy of nature–which influenced scientific as well as metaphysical theories of life–he described the ‘unconscious poetry that moves in the plant, that streams forth in light, that laughs out in the child, that shimmers in the bud of youth, that glows in the loving breasts of women’. This poetry was the true word of God, resounding throughout nature. 

“Schleiermacher had been educated at a Moravian school and seminary; Schelling and the Schlegels were sons of Lutheran pastors; and Hardenberg’s father was a strict Moravian pietist. Disenchanted with the religion of their fathers, these men had thirsted for an alternative spirituality. Yet their philosophical poetry and poetic philosophies were rooted in their shared Christian heritage, while bursting out of its constraints. Like the pietists, they turned away from the rationalizing currents of the eighteenth century, and sought spiritual ‘awakening’–for themselves personally and also for society–through feeling, within the human heart.”

Feeling, spiritual love, beauty, the heart.  

429 [29 June 1934] To receive from the mystic state only the undemanding pleasures of that state; to be the ecstatic devotee of no god, the uninitiated mystic or epopt: to spend one’s days meditating on a paradise in which one does not believe—all those things please the soul, if the soul knows what it is not to know. The silent clouds drift by high above me, this body trapped inside a shadow, just as the unknowable truths drift by high above me too, this soul captive in a body … Everything is drifting by high above … And everything happens high above as it does down below, with no cloud leaving anything more than rain, no truth leaving anything more than pain … Yes, everything that is high”

— The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa

14 August Friday  11:14  Va in the emergency room.  I’m home, could not go in with her.  Yesterday she fell at Wally’s with Elizabeth.  Could have seen that coming because the day before she had pushed to get the pedometer up toward 7k.  Yesterday morning the chair lift stopped working after we had gotten down for breakfast.  Joe took me off for the post-op bandage removal.  My new eye is wonderful.  Took a walk around the block.  Heat wave has broken, back to better weather.  

“I had the irrepressible urge to laugh at the absurdity of man’s suffering with this much Joy at the heart of existence.”  William Schindler Blood of the Goddess  

vortex of infinite possibilities   the holy Ganges from the head of Shiva 

continuous fountain of light  rush of unbearable joy  third eye shining 

ocean of living light every man appeared to be Shiva himself every woman the Goddess vortexes of light living and conscious 

Nothing broken, bones and body ok for Willow.  Parisians are heading to the Alps to visit with Valentin, then they go south to San Raph.  

Did I already post John’s review of Schindler?  Need to have him confirm that the vampire story level is not Hindu but Eastern European and leads right into Kripal’s ideas.  Johnson’s review is what sent me to Schindler’s book.  

“Schindler's Tantra is serious theology coming out of a millennium-old ascetical and monastic tradition.

Hindu gods and goddesses traditionally have both a beneficent and a wrathful appearance, often also both male and female consort of manifestation. The wrathful, female side of Shiva is the goddess Kali. Shiva is the creator, Kali the destroyer. Kali is the Blissful Mother Goddess who cradles and suckles her children, leading them ultimately to liberation. But she is also often shown wearing garlands of human heads with blood dropping from her mouth. For Kali is the mythical manifestation of "nature, red in tooth and claw" and of the simple reality of time. Kali is the Great Mother who by giving birth in human flesh dooms her children to physical decay and death. Death is part of life. Our words "thugs" and "assassins" come from the history of death and murder cults in India who in one way or another explained their violence as manifestation or worship of the Goddess Kali.

William Schindler has worked the Eastern European myth of the blood-sucking, undead vampire into this historical tradition. His first-person character is a gay man who falls in love with a strikingly handsome but mysterious character he meets in the year 1612 in India where his job as a merchant marine has taken him.  This stranger reveals to the merchant marine that he is an immortal being and that they were lovers in a previous incarnation. He leads him then into the Himalayas where he himself then becomes an immortal, a "vampire" through a mystical, bloodletting experience with the Goddess herself that takes the initiate beyond space and time. Some 300 years pass and our newly-inducted immortal comes out of the cave, leaves India and moves to New York. There's much more to the story, but it is the mythical/mystical philosophy that stands out. Our protagonist "vampire" learns that his role as taker of lives is an almost "angelic" function; it is to bring the gift of death to those who are karmically ready to go or stuck in an incarnation they need out of. He's more like the wolves who improve the life of the herd by taking the sick and dying than serial murderer—though there is a glorification of death and anonymous random murder in this novel that is unsettling, even if it is recognizably religious.

Coincidentally/synchronistically, I have been reading Jeffrey J Kripal's Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom at the same time as Blood of the Goddess. Kripal's major argument is that writing—and reading—about mysticism is itself a kind of mystical practice. William Schindler's book really demonstrates this point. There isn't a lot of plot in this novel, but there is a lot of mystical experience and shared insight into the nature of consciousness. When Schindler's blood-drinking immortal takes a life, it is to incorporate that life into his own immortality and his own experience of oneness with the Goddess. He brings rapture and completion and relief to his "victims" and, in their experience of passing over, experiences the mystical oneness himself.

There's nothing really gory in this book, just as there is nothing particularly sexual, even though sex and gore surround the story. It's a beautiful expression of visionary experience. Fans of traditional vampire horror novels might find it slow, too talky and woo-woo. But fans of Ramakrishna's might likely find it rapturous and inspiring. And certainly fans of Jeffrey Kripal's will find it solid evidence of Kripal's comparative religion and modern gnosticism.”

———

Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Secret Matter, Getting Life in Perspective and other novels and books

———

Jess:   watching a tv series "Mar de Plastico" clearly a Spanish production but in French with English subtitles. Set in some part of Spain - or Spanish speaking country - looks like hot dry arid land, adobe houses, and the sea of plastic refers to the acres of plastic housing for vegetables = big business. A crime show -don't think Va would enjoy it. She asked for suggestions, I sent "1,000 goodnights" a Chinese series, very reminiscent of where Peter and I were in China (Sha Tin in 1974) but I didn't like the language then and still don't. So if I knew what genre she liked I could make suggestions though our tracks on the Netflix highway are parallel but we're in different vehicles.

Am looking for the next good movie.

Did watch an American romance but the chemistry between leads was so flat

so non-existent it was painful to watch. I liked the male lead, not the female.

What have you two been up to since your return?

I have work tomorrow then Friday car to shop and Saturday/Sunday at home.

can hardly wait. this heat is taking it all out of me. No A/C just fans but once the nights cool off things will seem better. it's the hot nights that are even more draining. I have never liked to sweat and this muggy weather doesn't help.

I did get more hair cut off am.  down to the shortest haircut ever and am enjoying that.

Sukey is doing well, Cats both have arthritis - which is hard to watch.

Cawley is plugging away at his chosen work (setting up courses online) and in Concord so I can see him from time to time. 

Nothing else going on......

xo

——

“strength is the heart of religion”  hmm, no, not so  “freedom from fear is the essence of strength”   ok ,  and  ?   the battle with the envious evil one and the vampirism ruin the book for me—feels too much like a boy own adventure cum video game, reduces all the spirituality to the imagery of a comic book.   Was vampirism in our culture before and coincident with the aids crisis?  Now we could use Covid to bring it back?   Maybe the pilgrimage as mountain climbing also gives the tale another note of ordinary spiritual story?  All about powers and immortality and right choice and loyalty and trust.  Hmm  ho hum  sacred diagrams  ocean of nectar island of gems  white hot roaring music waves of intense feeling  blood feasting pain grief relief joy union  immortality  must go to America for a few more hundred pages and then on the last page I am an infinite piece of the Goddess herself.  

spiritual insight pretty hard to sustain, thank goodness I’m not a preacher or priest.  Can’t imagine having Bob’s vocation after all, Feeny’s.  If that’s where he’ll stay.  Or Cole’s, now over in Wolfeboro.  Can see how ritual is necessary.  Oates’ book  I got tired of too because his rehearsals of the sublime and ordinary were not impersonal enough.  

Aho willing to sell me the painting!  should I go see it in person?  What price will he ask?  I’m thinking 2 thousand.  Will Willow go along with that?  

5k?  would I go that high?  11 x 14 is pretty small.  piece of typing paper, euro size  

Birkerts quoted Pessoa yesterday:  “I’m sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.”   For your mid-term grade, write an essay explaining why this is more uplifting or rebalancing a thought than the whole of Schindler’s book about the ecstasies of Kali and the myths of vampire immortality!!  Ahh, too easy.  

Inchausti says Middlemarch is wise:  “I read Middlemarch in Sheldon Sachs' Novels Seminar at UC.  Thought it was the wisest book written in English that I ever read.  Still do. I'm afraid to read it again since my memory (probably distorted) is so vivid and remains one of my literary touchstones to this day.I think I will take another deep dive into Eliot--especially The Four Quartets. I've been reading Baldwin's No Name in the Street--brilliantly intimate. Keep me in the loop of your re-discoveries!”

brilliantly intimate is good and now I’m interested in Baldwin and I’ve never read him—-

Mark Vernon had a good tweet yesterday:  Artificial Intelligence is binary, yes or no, Emotional intelligence knows it’s yes and no; Spiritual Intelligence sees it’s simply “yes” (reality).”  

Wisest is not how I responded to Middlemarch.  But maybe I don’t think much about wisdom.   Guess I’ll go back to Kierkegaard.  Maybe a biography of Wittgenstein!  

Wd be super cool if I could go meet Aho.  

Inchausti

I thought you might get a kick out of this response to the Book of Disquiet from a Jungian analyst I met a few years ago.   

 

Hell Robert,

What a read! Can't say I've quite read such a book. My immediate reaction is to try to make sense of it. What is it? And why make sense? How nonsensical that would be. I suppose I mostly read it by just letting it move me like water lapping on the shore gently, or violently, moving grains of sand.

I get the negation of the affirmative and negation of the negation. I get the Buddhist influence. I get, in the story, the concretizing of the poor life, as though a king could not be poor in spirit as well. I get the via negativia, the literary eloquence, the philosopher, psychologist and advice giver while denying advice as an interference with our God-given right to make our mistakes. So many acute insights. In getting some of this, I get away from allowing the dream of his dreaming to simply affect me, allowing the dream, as Jung suggested, to have me and not me have the dream. I tried to make a space to let go and allow his dream to affect me and when on occasion I stopped trying, it did affect me and continues to do so.

Thank you Robert for such a fine suggestion. If you have any energy for a few of your thoughts, I'd sure welcome them; not necessary though. Hope you and your family are well and safe. Thanks again. Charles

--

Charles Asher, D.Min

Certified Jungian psychoanalyst

Licensed Marriage Family Therapist

——

poem from Eric Aho 

From the North

Follow Interstate 91 South to exit 6

Turn left at at end of ramp onto rt 103 west

Turn Left onto Meeting House Road ( soon after town garage) ( 1.1 miles)

Turn left onto Rockingham Hill Road ( (.5 miles)

Rockingham Hill Road turns to pavement at outskirt of village. Now Pleasant Street ( 3.5 miles) 

Follow Pleasant Street to intersection with rt121/Main Street. (1 mile)

Turn right entering village continue west on 121/Main Street in Saxtons River.

End of Main Street turn left at Roundabout ( in front of Historical Society)

Proceed over the bridge on Westminster Street  (Town Cemetery is on left).

Turn left onto Warner Center Drive. 

Proceed straight up the drive between a large brick building/house on left and a small gray cottage/house on the right.

Turn right at the fire hydrant and go behind larger brick building with arched windows. Turn right onto the dirt Cul-de-sac behind the big gymnasium - the building with the arched windows. 

The studio entrance (pale green doors) with long “loading dock" is on the far side of that building.    

Thinking of Brother Dermott:  God is Surprise.  Surprise Tuesday coming up.  Visit Aho and buy his painting, the one he posted on Instagram earlier this week.  Cataract cataract on the Saxton River.  Or is itWells River?  

Va dictating her life questions for PEO.  

I've just finished reading the letters I wrote my folks when I was in Tunisia. I arrived in Tunis aware that I was opinionated could be pompous and self-righteous about some of those opinions.  The longer I was there it seems the more pompous and opinionated I got.  Also condescending and even somewhat insulting to my parents as twenty-three year old Philip lectured mom and dad about the world based on my wide experience of living in Tunis for a month or two.   And it kept getting worse. If I had been my parents I would have disowned me. 

Have you had the depressing experience of reading letters or other opinions you wrote about when you were in your twenties?  

——

The Aho visit and purchase tomorrow feels right, almost perfect.  I still remember his painting for sale at the Norwich Inn thirty years ago.  Was it about $600?  At that time we couldn’t break the budget for that.  The opportunity now, the chance ping via Instagram, the impulse and response, the excitement at the gorgeousness of the image, plus the agreement of other devotees on the stream, it all feels like completing another chapter.  Another arc sweeping itself around into circles and circles within and without circles.  Loved seeing that inverted Masonic tower on a YouTube tourist video seemed just right too, right in time.  

Ethan had promised lunch tomorrow, Eric will fulfill that promise.  A visit

in the line-up of great visits, from Spencer Compton onwards.  7th Marquess of Northampton, hand shaking of the composer, Olivier Messiaen, Saul Bellow, John Lukacs, Andre Aciman, Burke of course, Booth, and how could I forget Borges?  And our MBE and friend of a friend of a new cardinal and an old, now dead, French aristocrat from the old regime!  Pretty darned sad, isn’t it.  Even making such a list.  Should delete right now.  

Agree TOTALLY and I blame Boston.  "Boston Strong" is a motto they've been using for years.  Maybe blame the Irish and the IRA?  Not sure.  Was it first used when the bombers set off a pathetic pressure cooker pot bomb at the Boston Marathon and killed a few people?  I forget if any were killed.  Stay Strong was the motto used "to unite the community" against these evil terrorist (two sad young brothers from a muslim country).  Or was the motto used during 9/11?  Anyway agree with you and with David Oates, author of the chapter I sent you, about how wrong the MLK statue looks.  Again, part of maturing with a wee wisdom to see the younger media-besotted crowds, flipping words around carelessly, adopting them as battle cries with little or no thought (how

weak and lame "black lives matter" strikes me as a political slogan, as any kind of slogan, the wording itself 

would make MLK or James Baldwin shudder in embarrassment.  I'm sure Jessie Jackson and his generation (John Lewis) found in no-drama Obama a poor legatee of the great biblical oratorical Ciceronian genius King.  

But with you I like Obama pretty much for getting done what he could and for setting a tone and style that may be the best presidency in our lifetime, in those terms.  David Oates, the author of that essay, his book is good, ok, a linked set of essays but I never paid much attention to his politics, which seemed pretty ordinary leftie either-or and in fact I sped through the remainder of the book because I got tired of his voice, he had not too much to say and alternated between complaining and looking for some ordinary version of experiences of poetic sublimity (which he found in the sounds of the great organ in a church in Paris, St Eustache, which they say has the best 18th C organ in the whole country.  

Va will want to watch the convention, so I'm planning to retire to my new easy chair and do more reading!!

——

how "lefty" the convention and campaign will look or feel.  Not much.  However there is a potential Neo-lefty stream gathering media attention from mouls like Elon Musk and another whose name I forget.  A guaranteed income "floor" to help keep everyone afloat, ensure that those so poor they will never make it without help will be reparated from the damage done to them by inequalities and so be able to both Survive & Take their rightful place in the markets—i.e.  buy stuff.  

Oh my goodness——which is exactly what I’m doing tomorrow!   Helping to keep our economy afloat.  I must be striving for hero status!!!!

Robert Natkin, David Zaintz, Dennis Brock!!  Mary Taylor, CM Judge, and the fellow in Philly, Robert Scott?  something else Scott.  Annette!  Mitchell

And in Buenos Aires Juan Jose Cambré

19 Aug   Yesterday’s pilgimmage to Saxtons River VT was wonderful.  We both liked the play of word on cataract, which I had posted under his photo of the painting on Instagram  Maybe we could rename the painting?  

Late Middle English (in the sense ‘floodgate’): from Latin cataracta ‘waterfall, floodgate’, also ‘portcullis’ (medical cataract (sense 1) probably being a figurative use of this), from Greek kataraktēs ‘down-rushing’, from katarassein, from kata- ‘down’ + arassein ‘strike, smash’.

The title he gives the piece is Falls on the River in Early April.  Could we

change it to April Cataract?  Cataract in Early April  or Early April Cataract 

Probably too much but can keep it as my private title.  

What a splendid trip that was, a fine time visiting and talking for ninety minutes.  His friend was leaving as I arrived.  Bottle of Perrier and two plastic cups on the table but we didn’t open it.  Asked about Kirkeby early and he made the perfect swoon gesture of admiration.  A magazine had suggested he interview two major painters, the magazine Modern Paintrs in fact? and they contacted Kirkeby and Ellsworth Kelly and both declined.  

[last night we watched half of Jack Lemon’s The Apartment.  Fred McMurray plays the character named Kirkeby!!!!]

Loved seeing the table spread with art books.  Asked about how he uses them while working.  Loved smelling the paint and the spaciousness of the place and how overflowing it is with canvases of all sizes in various states of work.  

He works at one piece at a time.  My painting might have taken about four hours of work.  Tries to keep a light touch so as not to overpaint.  Lots of failure.  Gave him Beckett’s line.  Not sure if he had heard it.  

Aho is 52.  Alvirne High in Hudson, Mass College of Art.  Drew and sketched a lot as a child, teen, but didn’t paint until art school.  Guessing a happy childhood, not a tormented artist but a balanced and focused guy who found what he loved and still loving it.  Maybe like David in that.  

Teaching at Putney, outdoors hiking and painting.  Steady growth and success.  Happy family life, wife a photographer,  girl and boy.  Loving local community in Saxtons River, enough other artistic types around to make a group with whom to enjoy life.  Very intelligent, curious, and maybe even well-read, talked about reading Stevens and Four Quartets (was it Inchausti who just mentioned same?).  Asked him if he was a mystic.  He mentioned the word first.  

——-

Hi Bob,

I too was delighted by your visit. I felt we could have talked for hours more. One day, we’ll get to chat again I hope.

I’m so pleased you are happy with the little painting. It is a good one. And I’m just so happy it will live with you and your wife once the show concludes.

Thank you for making the drive to my studio. 

Take good care,

Eric

———

Robert posts himself on Instagram as MrTis1968 so if that is his birth year he and Aho are exactly 52.  Thought of him lots while talking with Eric.  

This remarkable passage showed up today in a book I am reading:  

“Leaving the shadow of the cliffs we were dazzled by the glittering of the sun and the waves, the reflections of houses and boats as far as the eyes could see.  Abraham Van Berchem put his hand on the engraver’s shoulder. He said:  ‘I'm getting old, it becomes more and more difficult to tear oneself away from the splendor of the landscape one passes through.  The skin, worn out by wind and age, stretched by fatigue and many joys, various kinds of body hair, tears, fluids, nails, and hair that have fallen to the ground like dead leaves and twigs, allow the soul to emerge and lose itself more and more beyond the limits of the skin. The final flight is, in truth, only a dispersion.  The older I get, the more I feel at ease everywhere. I do not inhabit my body so much anymore.  I feel my death coming someday soon. I feel my skin becoming much too thin and more porous. I say to myself: One day the landscape will pass through me.”   —Pascal Quignard “A Terrace in Rome”   

sent it off to Eric with this note—-that passage felt like a gloss on cataract/cataract !  with an interesting suggestion about the reversal of the energies / forces——

Bob-  This is a remarkable passage! Thank you. My reading list just got bigger!

Eric

Eric Aho 

P. O. Box 436 

———

so glad he liked it.  Have to add on for here the rest of the passage—-didn’t want to include it because the whole book is so weird it could be too strange out of that whole context

now it feels like the whole trip and visit and even purchase were right because they led to this passage, to finding this passage in Quignard and being able to send it as a perfect coda to the meeting  —- overreaching as usual but then who more deserving?!!

here’s how the passage continues  

“ I feel my death coming someday soon. I feel my skin becoming much too thin and more porous. I say to myself: One day the landscape will pass through me.’

‘I have loved you!’ the engraver cried out.  Maume held the old man close and kissed his cheeks.

He leaned on a wooden piling of the bridge and jumped into the water near the bank.  The water came up to his knees. 

He then climbed back on the mud of the shore.  He didn’t look back.  He was overcome.  So much that his lips were trembling.  Finally, tears began running down his cheeks.  ‘One day the landscape will pass through me.’  That is the sentence Abraham Van Berchem had said to Meaume the Engraver before leaving him and dying. Quend is a beautiful name. 

A mezzotint is an engraving in reverse. “  

       ——A Terrace in Rome   pages 60-61

“For Bob  —- And for us both to ponder “the mystic” !  18 August 2020 Saxtons River, Vermont 

Inscription on copy of the catalog for “Transcending Nature”  Aho’s Currier show 2012  for which he did not choose the title   

When one day feels significant, or has been imagined to have been so, other days, those afterwards, pale into everythingness. 

Aho mentioned “design,” “concept,” “dual lozenges,”  at various times, meaning he starts with charcoal sketch, one white canvas on the floor clearly had that beginning sketched on it.  I might have asked more about his process, but maybe I felt such questions are pretty dumb, after all.  You start and you paint.  I am guessing that the mention of lozenges must be something taught in art schools and/or in the history of, say, the Hudson River School of landscape, which I gather he has studied on his own over the years.  He mentioned some names and picked up a book or two to refer to details but I didn’t know the references.  So painting is a kind of investigation or exploration of a design idea that he works with, some concept.  As simple as light and shade perhaps.  And the last big show of course had the black cuts in the winter ice as a big idea he examined to great effect.  I could have asked him if those paintings, the black center of things, in the ice of the lake or the river, were his mid-life crisis.  But again, a dumb question.  I was trying hard not to be too stupid.  (To honor the recent influences of George Eliot).  

Glad that Tis1968 is liking each post on Instagram.  Hoping we can visit one of these days.  His oldest must be 14 or so by now?  The twins about seven?

The purchase of a painting is not the beginning of a friendship with the painter.  Must remember that.  I want to send Aho the Kirkeby video of Kirkeby painting.  I want to give Aho all my Kirkeby books and catalogs.  I want to send Aho more quotations, to weave more significance into our having met over a business deal.  I am not familiar with doing business, nor with doing business with an artist.  That is why usually the gallery acts as intermediary.  There are reasons for that.  I should keep my Kirkeby books here in our archive.  They are part of the me who lives here.  When I pass on, my relationship with the books ends and the estate sellers can find buyers or receivers.  

I open Roving Shadows for the first time in weeks.  Quignard quotes Wen Pi’ku murmuring to Hsi-men Ch’ing: (‘When at times I weary of wandering in the forest brushes and among the streams of ink, I take off my four-cornered hat and leave the smell of old books behind me.  My hand slips beneath my silk trousers, I close my eyes.  The tears of the god spurt forth.  I bend my nostrils to the odour of the Erstwhile.  This is the life I lead.’ (7)

Earlier in Baldwin a find image to describe Aho’s move from painting ice and black holes in ice on to painting water, rushing water:  “And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up. Yet, at that very moment, there passed between us on the pavement another boy, a stranger, and I invested him at once with Giovanni’s beauty and what I felt for Giovanni I also felt for him. Giovanni saw this and saw my face and it made him laugh the more. “

Buying this painting is not that big a deal and yet it is a big deal.  The way I have posted the drama of the photos on Instagram shows me that.  The way

I look them over on there and not just on the phone in the photo stream shows me how much I want to see the reality of this move.  Begun so instantaneously on Instagram, a spark of response to the image posted by Aho, the stunning brilliance of the image to my newly renewed eye, restored, liberated, ultrasoundly scoured eye, the clouding of mucus? cleared out.  Is it mucus, the cataract?  what is it?  I’ll have to ask Garfinkel.  And now the waiting for the painting.  Bought but not yet here and the waiting for it to be first in the show and then to finally arrive here.  How will it arrive here?  Like giving birth!  Gestation and growth and delivery.  Will it be Fedexed?  mailed?  hand delivered (you wish!  fantasies about a further friendship, a possible ongoing relationship, more chat, more talk, a new captive audience if even for a short time).  And then the framing of it, how to measure it properly for a frame?  How to buy the frame Aho would prefer it have—-I could tell that.  He wants it to have the larger frame, the one with the two-and-a-half inch border around the painting, like a mat I suppose for a print.  Will he frame it for me as a favor, a gesture?  Should I have just asked him to do so when he did offer?  I thought he offered but really didn’t want to do it.  Or I couldn’t tell.  He asked if I wanted that and I asked if that was the sort of thing he usually did and he said no, it wasn’t. So I said no you don’t need to do that, I can get the frame from Metropolitan and do it.  He drew two diagrams of the two kinds of frames, the narrow, thin floating one and the larger.  Maybe he was interested that I knew really so little about it.  He instructed me.  A real novice in the buying of paintings.  

Knausgaard came up at one point.  He has read much of it, even perhaps into the final volume, where all the key actions and revelations occur, but the covid winter made him put it down.  In the new global crisis, exploring one personal set of stories seemed less compelling.  

Ventriloquist or the dummy?  Mirror man.  Divine double.  Queequeg Ishmail   Giovanni and David  

Wiki says Eric was born in 1966, not 1968.  54 not 52  did I mis-hear?  Most likely.  After high school went to art school at Univ of London.  

When I was in my storage unit recently I noticed a copy of yr book about Burke and am now (re)reading it.  I must say, in that text you sound very much like a grad student.  [smiley emoticon]  But now I have three questions.

1 Did you go to U of Chicago because you wanted to study with Burke.  Or did you end up writing yr thesis about Burke because you attended the U of C?

Had never heard of Burke until I went to Chicago and then it was only after a year or so that I first did when taking a course with Booth.  Had never heard of Booth until I was on campus.  Never took a real course with him.  A friend one day said, hey, next Quarter there are no good courses being offered, let's ask Booth to do an independent study with you, me and Margery and maybe on other person.  He had been in a course with Booth so he was the emissary and agent for setting it up. When we first sat down with Booth he looked at the three of us and said well let's read together this Quarter either R S Crane or Kenneth Burke.  I'm working on a book that will be in part about these two critics and some others.  I said well I've never heard of Burke, let's do him.  (Crane was the recently deceased leader of what had been called the Chicago School of Literary Criticism;  they had pitched themselves against the Yale school over the previous twenty or so years.  So we read one book of  Burke's and I wrote one paper about it.  At the end, Booth said to me This paper is so good you should publish it right away.  I was totally baffled and embarrassed and I had no idea how one would go about publishing a paper.  I was too shy to go talk to him again and ask these things.  Ten years later I managed to pound out the dissertation in about six desperate months.  Fifteen years later, Booth wrote (we had written back and forth a little bit in that time) that he was going to give a paper on Burke at a conference once again and looked at my dissertation again.  "It is really good, did you ever published it?"   Gee, Wayne, why the heck didn't you tell me that fifteen years ago?  And why didn't you suggest how to go about doing that?  Gee, Bob, why were you so passive agressive about it and why didn't you try to get it published.  (This is all before I finally self-published it with Xlibris in ?  2005?).  

2 What was the name of the department where he taught?   He seems more like a philosophy prof than a lit prof.  

    He was a gadfly and taught in English departments, but then late in his career he taught also in social science departments.  I don't think philosophers ever gave him the time of day.  Too undisciplined  and self-taught.  He never had a full appointment, taught one or two terms a year at Bennington for years, riding the train from his farm in western NJ up to VT.  That's where Sontag was a student of his I think, or maybe at Chicago.  He would teach a summer term there or every so often.  

3.  In the dichotomy action-motion, you seem to look at only two categories: humans (actions)  and inanimate objects (motion).   What about animals? 

Animals don't Act.  Don't see any beavers or pumas having political conventions, do you?  Only humans create Drama.  Symbol-using, and all that it develops. 

I lost that paper on Burke that Booth had liked so much.  It took a year or so after that one course for me to decide to choose Burke for the doctoral project.  I had no idea how to do any of it and in those days your director did next to nothing to help you out.  You were supposed to be/become an independent scholar/thinker.  Only around 1972 (when we were moving here) did profs at elite places like Chicago realize that the job market for their grads had dried up and that their grads had no diea of how to put themselves out into a competitive market of any kind.  Next generation after ours it became build your resume from day one, publish as much as possible, network, create a blog, get savvy on how business works, learn a skill, etc etc.  

Why did I even go to Chicago?  No idea.  Dad had taken us for a vacation one time to a grocer's convention in Chicago, then you and I took the train out to Notre Dame.  So I guess I thought going to the city would be cool.  A young philosophy prof at MD wanted me to go to Northwestern as a philosophy major, but I decided I was more comfortable in Lit.  Wish he had had me read Kierkegaard instead of contemporary theory of knowledge stuff.  Course on Plato was good, but I assumed everything had already been said about Plato.  

Why did I even go to grad school?  Mother had told me I was going to get a PhD in English long before I understood what she was talking about.  Commanded is more like it.  When I was maybe twelve?  What she wanted to do, of course.  Pressure of the draft helped focus the trajectory when the time came to graduate from college.  

———

Great visit with the family today.  They are having a super time in San Raph,  Agnes with them.  Pool and beach every day.  Kids look so tall and tanned.  

So far Pascal Quignard’s Shadows reminds a bit of Cioran but not as stunning.  

At first I was tempted to send my congrats, but then felt that he was a very, very minor character in my life, and I am not keen on Catholicism or "Lasallism."   It seems he found something - films - that he liked and could use to helpfully instruct others.  Okay, fine.  Not my enthusiasm, but if he looked back and liked what he saw...I'm happy for him.  And unlike the Brother Richard I remember, who had a pugnacious chip on his shoulder, Gerry turned out later to be a genuinely nice guy, which amazed me when I met him at a reunion.

Pertinent to our discussion:  We have cable TV and I listen to the music channel a lot.  The biographies of the orchestra conductors or big band music arrangers are usually flashed on the screen during a given melody.  And it seems like all of their lives went something like:  "He first started playing the violin or guitar when he was still a fetus in his mother's womb.  At the age of one, he composed his first sonata or flamenco piece, and at three conducted an orchestra....."   I mean...Jesus!!!  Are they from the same planet as I am???  However, I think my brother knew he wanted to be an electrical engineer by the age of three, and my father, when he was an undergrad at U of Virginia, spent nearly all his spare time at the medical school watching dissections.  Furthermore, he TAUGHT  chemistry at the university in his sophomore year and skipped his junior and senior years to enroll at Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia.   Of course, he got highest honors at Med School.    And then there's me………….P

——

“if thus you had objected that poetry cannot be wholly on the side of good, since our first parents in the Garden of Eden did not speak, communicaed in the way of flowers through bees, winged messengers, and would feel their tongues loosen only after the angel had shown them the door, if you had argued that language comes to humans after the Fall, when matter no longer sings; “ 

——Pierre Michon, Rimbaud the Son

——

mathematicians and musicians seem especially prone to these careers that start with special talent (or knack) noticed when they are five or six and from there on they become world genius composers and performers.   (Although we had a friend doing his dissertation in physics at Chicago who battled depression because he was approaching twenty four years and had not finished and everyone knew physicists di their best work before 25 or not at all.  He dropped out a year later and went on to become a successful political cartoonist for the Chicago Sun-Times.)  

I was envying the painter I visited.  Asked him if he had painted as a child, no, but he drew a lot and found painting in art school.  After that, painted, sold steadily, became famous, loves doing it, now 54 and at the top of his calling.  

Most people are like us, though.  I would be no where had I not met Va.  She has been our driving guide and energy source.  My teaching was successful in its way for a good while but did I ever really know what I was doing?  it never felt like it.  Felt like I was making it all up as I went and eventually got pretty tired of doing that.  Life has had lots of mini-chapters in my look backwards---tried this, tried that, tried there, hoped for that, always disappointed,  Beckett says it--Fail.  Try Again, Fail Better.  

Found a great passage Burke would love---for him the Fall in Genesis is the myth of the development of language/symbol using/becoming human.  Language is the Fall.

“if thus you had objected that poetry cannot be wholly on the side of good, since our first parents in the Garden of Eden did not speak, communicaed in the way of flowers through bees, winged messengers, and would feel their tongues loosen only after the angel had shown them the door, if you had argued that language comes to humans after the Fall, when matter no longer sings; “ 

——Pierre Michon, Rimbaud the Son

This short novel is the back cover says, an examination into why Rimbaud blazed out of nowhere into great French poetry, changed everything, then a few years later, quit and became a gun runner off the coast of Madagascar.  

“I can see you, many years from now, coming through our village in the ugly, fat, American motor car you will surely have by then and looking at me and looking at all of us and tasting our wine and shitting on us with those empty smiles Americans wear everywhere and which you wear all the time and driving off with a great roar of the motors and a great sound of tires and telling all the other Americans you meet that they must come and see our village because it is so picturesque.”

— Giovanni's Room  by James Baldwin

Agree that music and math are the two fields most filled with child prodigies.   

Always intrigued by Rimbaud, not because of his poetry, which, like most poems, I didn't find very moving and may not have understood, but because he chucked it all and became the gun runner.  That intrigued me.    

So....I've never been a fan of any poetry.  I can't recall any verses that ever moved me with the exception of one line from Cavafy's  "The City" which went something like "Don't you see that just as you have messed up your life in this city so you will do the same everywhere you go."  Typical of me, all I remember is the sense of the line, not the exact wording.   Moreover, I don't think I was ever truly motivated to "dig deep" and understand a poet really meant, suss out all the possibilities.  Based on yr thesis you were much more motivated than I to close read.

Another thing I discovered about myself by reading letters I wrote from Tunis:  Man, did I passionately HATE teaching 12-year-old boys.  It was a constant fight to maintain control of the room.  I was required to be a total freaking drill sergeant, and I repeatedly wrote my parents that, if I couldn't change my job in the second year, I was going to leave the Peace Corps.  Luckily I got to teach adults in my second year.  Much calmer and better.

New Question:   Did your older brother affect your life substantially?.  Mine did.  In fact, he really warped my life.   I never saw him working, which was always down in DC.  All I saw of him was his constant partying with his friends on weekends when he came back to Cumberland from DC.  Following his example, "being cool" and drinking,  more than anything, became my goals in high school and college.  Unfortunately he was from the drinking and smoking generation, and those two evils eventually killed him and many of his friends.  Mom and dad were from the 1920s so drinking was part of their social life, too.  But they kept it under tight control.  A cocktail or small glass of wine before dinner and a cold beer after 18 holes of golf.  That was it. My brother and his friends, on the other hand, who were all teenagers in the late boogie-woogie 1940s and then "young professionals" in the 1950s, did not keep the drinking under control.  Neither did I for many years. Which I regret today, but I am glad I never bought into the pot/LSD/cocaine fads.  I tried each once or twice and that was all I ever did.  Never really thrilled/interested by any of the drugs.   Like poems that I read once, at most twice, then forgot I was never entered the druggie world very far.  In fact, doctors have prescribed some drugs that were supposed to really affect me, and they didn't.  I guess my DNA just ain't moved by a lot of drugs.  But pot did give me the giggles.  I just didn't like giggling.................P

  

P   

——-

“Once he embraced his destiny, he had no need for excess weight or food to defend himself against it.”  

Baldwin’s writing astonishes, page after page.  Found a page that gave the kernel anecdote from which he spun out the novel.  A young blonde waiter he saw in a cafe who three days later was at the heart of a murder scandal.  

“In the eyes of the Ancients, the anger within melancholy is the blackness within the night.”  

“Anger is as exalting and vertiginous as pleasure.” 

“One must not say : between birth and death.   One must say in a decisive manner like God: between sexuality and hell.”  

Quignard

to Phil  

again---I didn't know, or never realized, that in Tunis you taught, first 12 year olds and then adults.  I can well imagine the hell that the twelve year olds were.English I guess?  Recall the hell we created for Brother Paul and we were fourteen.  All those guys were just learning how to teach.

Your brother and drinking---by the way did you see that LSC use among 35-49s is up like 250% now?  I tried pot a few times and didn't giggle but didn't find much to make me want to go back to it (even recently with good medical grade gummies).  

My brother was the great all-aroound athlete and he partied with the jocks and their babes.  Four years older.  He teased me mercilessly when I was about 12-14. He was the jock and I was soft and fat.  Called me names, teased the fact that I had no sports talent or interest.  He went off to college year I started high school I guess.  Didn't see much of him after that.  

—-

I picked up that vibe about yr brother's attitude toward you when we visited ND.  "You, Bob, just ain't like me and my jock friends who are all cool." 

So the effects of our older brothers wasn't exactly wunnerful in either case.   I wonder how it went in Sitter's family with an older brother who  was prez of Exxon and another who was editor of the town's newspaper.  My feeling is that the Sitter parents, especially after his father's stroke, put a lot of pressure on all the kids to succeed - and therefore to do all the things that helped that process along: join this, join that, get interesting summer jobs.  One of his parents was a Presbyterian who converted to Catholicism to marry the other.  ( I forget which one was which.)  And there was something Presbyterian about all the Sitters that I ever met.  (When someone would comment to my grandfather about how money-and-success conscious Jews were, he always inquired if the person knew any Presbyterians.   And speaking of Presbyterians, it's one reason I recommended the novel "True Grit" to Va.  However, in the novel it's just cute in the 14 year old girl, Mattie who is the one who has true grit.  I think the novel is much different from the J Wayne film which I never saw.)  

P  

—-

Now that is the line I have been waiting for all my life!!!  well, at least since I met Va!!

Presbyterians and Jews!   Describe's Va's father to a tee.  More on that later.  In town I knew one of the churches was Presbyterian (not as beautiful as the Episcopal one), but otherwise had no sense of what that was.  (Va's mother's father raised her until she was in her late teens when he remarried, first wife had died in or shortly after childbirth, he was a Fresb minister in Iowa but ethnicity was Dutch).

[Our year in Decatur.  I was planning to go on to Stanford for the doctorate but hadn't told Va that.  She was worried I would go back to Chicago without her and applied to the Spanish program there.  She got a full scholarship for it and hence we went back there.  I think I was too lazy and confused to even get the Stanford application.]

Her dad was worried about money and success his whole life and sorta ruined his son's life by never understanding why he didn't want to go into banking or business.  Her dad quit their Presbyterian church in disgust when it didn't hire him to design their new church.  His family had moved to Abq from Montgomery of course, Presbyterian way back.  

Forget how your grandfather or his father had made their fortune in Cumberland?  Did they move their from Wales?  Your grandfather's line has made my education a good deal more complete, at last!!!

——

Alas, I am weak.  Back to Kripal.  Looking at his Roads of Excess, portions, in spite of myself.  And having found Sil’s critique earlier I am more skeptical of the smoothness of Kripal’s telling of his own story, labeled here as Secret Talks, and conjecture anew that a new generation of analysts, (if even interested) will turn his tale around and upside down and find him like the Ancient Mariner obsessed with the telling not because he knows the truth about himself but because he does not, not really.  He tells it so happily because he has constructed a perfect alibi, a failproof alibi, and enjoys the security of it.  Contrast with a real artist like Baldwin.  His story about Giovanni is so true as to be astonishing for its insight, its compassion, its pain, its brilliance, its power to move us.  Kripal’s ways of telling have his generation’s sense of glib certainties.  He moves from “the structures of an enlightened Catholicism” onward and upward into the expansive enlightenment of outing ecstasized, outing as a maneuver, a hermeneutic, that has pure value, unexamined, because it is the culture’s supreme instrument of suspicion and revelation, certified and approved from Freud forward.  Almost a perfect mirror of pontifical infalibility.  If only Kripal had taken out the phrase “As I looked around at the drab bathroom stalls that surrounded me somewhere in JFK airport.”  So forth and so on.  

——

I told Va that when I started rereading her mother's autobio the word "Presbyterian" jumped out at me because Mattie in "True Grit" makes it clear she is a good, solid, clear thinking, super-determined-to get-her-way Presbyterian 14-year-old girl.   Yup, it seems Presbyterians know what they want out of life!

Physicians go back several generations in the Jones clan:  my father Emmett Jr, grandfather Emmett Sr., great grandfather Albert, and great-great Grandfather Frederick.   All were physicians, although the first two were, more or less GPs and became physicians before medical schools were widely established, so by apprenticing for another, established physician and reading medical text books.  The two Emmetts were ear nose throat  -  as well as eye doctors, a double specialty that doesn't exist anymore. (Dad gave up ear, nose, & throat in 1952 because he just had toooo many patients and was afraid being so incredibly busy would give him a heart attack.)   We can trace family lineages back to Spencers who landed in Connecticut in 1630 and, thus,  we are very distantly related to Princess Di and Churchill.  But we can only trace the Jones name back to Frederick who started out life as a clerk in the Bank of England in London and came to North Carolina and became a doctor.  His son, Albert, moved to Alabama;  Emmett Sr moved to Cumberland, and Emmett Jr stayed in Cumberland.  Mom was an orphan but her real mother was Irish and real father was German, both of them second generation in  Philadelphia suburbs, although Harry Meuller (mom's) father was an artistic photographer who temporarily moved to Richmond, VA where mom was born.  Mom's mother, Katie O'Brien, died when mom was two and Harry just disappeared.   We think we was killed in WWI but don't know that for sure.

P  

P 

——

“intertextual musings”   = history of comparative religions, maybe even all of theological thought, even all of philosophy??!!  note:  ask Lars about this 

“Certainly this has been true in my own life, for what have I done but try to “perfect” a series of dreams, to “write them out” in my own texts on a siant in order to give them a public, social form, a “body” or corpus, as it were, that might stand up to the critical scrutiny of my colleagues and readers? . . .the written corpus is a corpous written.”  300 

Scholem’s profound philology.  Mystical hermeneutics.  Mutual conversion. 

I should designate Kripal The first Chair of Kenneth Burke Logological Studies.   

what “Bataille, a modern nihilisltic mystic if ever there was one, liked to call, rather euphemistically I think, the desire for ontological continuity.”

——-

Cabinet of Dr Caligari  last night.  Kewl.  and part of Death in Venice.  Bogard so good.  Visconti’s amplifies and embellishes the text rather well.  

Won’t send that letter.  Not enough point to it.  

Paulo Borges on Peessoa:  “paradoxical thinker who lives the radical experience of having no personality and of being nobody whilst discovering at the heart of this experience the possibility of ‘imaging himself everything,’ inhabiting each moment ‘in a successive and diverse internal world,’ as one reads in a passage concerning Omar Khayyaim quoted in the introduction to this edition.”   “there’s always place for one more ebullition of the possible” “sense of horror before the definite”  “gaps in a labyrinth that no one goes through”  

I wanted to call my book The Labyrinth of Language but Booth nixed that.  

“a way of being a self, and a man, that lies beyond being”  “an abyss without subject wherein a new and radical beginning must spring forth, and open up all possibilities.”  

“the King of Gaps who is lord of what is twixt thing and thing,/of interbeings. ,”  “the secret and woodsy life of the unconscious”  

“I hate the beginnings and ends of things, for they are definite points”

“I, who am not who I am, live not only in the external world, but in a successive and diverse internal world.”  

“pass sentence of excommunication on all priests and all sectarians of all religions in the world”     a devotee in other words of the post-modernist religion of no religion 

The squad of mercenary libertine angels gave way to a posse of librarians who served jam on buttered toast.  

“You know very well, said he, that I consider writing books to be the most ridiculous thing a person can do. One surrenders oneself entirely to the power of fate and circumstance, and how can one escape all the prejudices people bring with them to the reading of a book, which work no less disturbingly than the preconceived ideas most bring with them when they make someone’s acquaintance, with the result that very few people really know what others look like? What hope can one entertain that one will fall into the hands of readers wholly ex improviso [without expectations]? Besides, I feel tied by the fixed form the essay has finally acquired and, in order to feel free again, will take it back into the womb once more, let it once again sink into the twilight from whence it came.”

— Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard 

where does art come from, how is it born?   novel in French about Rimbaud, novel in Greek about Cavafy 

a different balancing point  is this what the circus performers showed Lax? 

our bodies can lead us to these more steadily than our minds 

current, rapids, ripples, waves, river, bubbles, whirling waters, rushing, spilling, 

the novel about Cavafy in Paris, What’s Left of the Night, ended in most astonishing ways.  Might have to read the last fifty pages over again.  The author thanks a huge number of people, it took years, and one person who read 153 versions of the final paragraph!!!  

Does Kripal know this???  “From 1876 on, Nietzsche refuses to employ philosophy to "nullify reason and dream his way into an aesthetic myth" [4]. And from this date on, he agreed with Voltaire that l'étude du mythe est une occupation pour les imbéciles …”

Stephen Alexander, British philosopher and provocateur — just chanced upon his site —  blog 

he has an attack on N Frye, which I suppose echoes Burke, doesn’t it—-and does this fit Kripal’s work ?   “This sounds a little flippant, perhaps, but I think a crucial point is being made here. For despite the "dreary earnestness of so much myth-critical writing", there is little doubt that many readers find the language used strangely seductive, resounding as it does with "awe-inspiring words [...] which promise to [...] put us directly in touch with the eternal and the infinite and the Wholly Other" [4].

In short, the language used by myth-critics is basically a rhetorical trick for soliciting approval from the faithful.

But like Deleuze and Guattari, I'm more interested in critics who suggest experimental methods of reading, rather than simply interpret a text; who ask how a book works, rather than what it means; who concern themselves with surfaces and lines of flight, rather than origins and depths.

For like Deleuze and Guattari, I think the aim of criticism is not to rediscover the eternal or universal, but to locate the conditions under which something new might be produced. Great books are never really concerned with the recounting of past experiences and memories - nor are they a place in which one merely confesses one's dreams and fantasies. They are, rather, sites of becoming and, as such, concerned with multiplicities, not myths.”

have I run across Alexander before?  same name as the American painter who uses the other spelling of the first name 

Gotta say I was surprised by these students.  The impression I had was that today's students and even young faculty are all strident followers of some form of leftist-semi -Marxist cancel culture.   My impression was also that the "better" the school, the more one-sided the viewpoints were.

So it's nice to hear that at least some students in a "good  school" are genuinely open minded.   And I have to say that a gay Trumpist athlete does,  indeed,  contradict my impression of what kind of students inhabit academia these days. 

Along the same lines:  I've recently been thinking that most current political positions boil down to a Marx theory on the left and a market-oriented  captitalist theory on the right.  Both of these theories are extreme:  either all ownership is evil (Marx) or anything that interferes with capital formation and ownership is evil (capitalism).    I think we desperately need a new theory so that we're not stranded with only these two extreme views to dominate thinking.   In the interim, it's probably best to "keep an open mind"  - in other words, not to commit totally to either of the extremes, but I think it would be better if someone could come up with some theory that would help people to avoid extremes.   Believing in democracy - the rule of the majority - doesn't quite blunt the arguments of either Marxists or capitalists have.   

Change of subject:

Peg continues to struggle.   She tires very easily because she can't breathe sufficiently well to get enough oxygen.  Next week she goes back to the transplant center for a bronchiectomy, which will inspect her lungs and may help.  We shall see.  I will have to accompany her, and I'm worried about having to hang around for hours in a hospital that has treated tons of Covid cases.   

Meanwhile, my patience with the world grows ever smaller.  There is so much that I don't like and I get angry far more easily than I ever have in my life.  I don't like this growing impatience, but I guess it comes with getting older.  How about you?  Finding you're annoyed with things and people much more than in the past?

I also have trouble reading but am working my way thru "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which is really an eye opener about how right wing billionaires have been funding all kinds of academic associations and institutions in the past 30-40 years.  I was vaguely aware of some of this, but sweet jesus there was a whole lot more of it seeping into every nook and cranny of academia/think tanks than I realized.  

Have also started reading "Anna Karenina" and was bowled over by how well by modern standards Tolstoy starts the story.  (Before I wrote a couple of novels I never would have realized how difficult it is to have a really good start to a story.)

 P   

Sorry to hear about Peg.  Don't envy you hanging out in the hospital all day.  Wash and purell and wash i guess.  Go outside for short breaks as much as possible?  Disheartening for you both to have her facing trouble after all.  

Got the second eye done on weds.  Results just amazing.  Can't read however.  Print on paper just too small.  This supposed to settle down and get better.  Probably a prescription for reading glasses.  

Meanwhile I've always dissed the kindle but now it is a lifesaver because I can enlarge the font so easily.  

We visited with a few friends outside on their porch the other day and I really felt like I behaved badly, in hindsight, but I can't really tell.  Seemed I talked too loudly and about nonsense and yet demanded too much attention.  All of which could be the aging business and also the Covid Hibernation syndrome we're all developing.   Also looked up to find some discussion of the psychological problems of having the cataracts removed---not to wear glasses at all feels so strange.  And the newly hyper-sharp vision somehow adds to the overall vagueness of Who the heck am I after all?  and what are we doing?  

Yeah, ordinary brushes with people in stores etc I try to avoid any engagement of any sort because they are so stupid or irritating.  Or we all are.  We're watching the Australian film, Walkabout---helps add to the strangeness of days.  

Disappointed to see housing prices in Cumberland seem to still be falling.  Around here urban flight is shooting prices up all along the NE coast it seems. Friends in Portland sold their house in four hours on the market.  

Our two economic theories:  I asked my British economist friend just this question a few years ago.  Especially after a big story here around Market Basket grocery stores, which famously have a profit-sharing structure for all employees which makes it a shining example of both customer and employee loyalty and performance.  Why hasn't capitalism evolved into some version of enlightened democratic profit sharing?  

If workers don't have enough income we can't sustain a wholly market economy, can we?  It's all beyond me.  

If Biden loses will there be group suicides?  One consolatory desperate thing I say to myself is that had George W tweeted his thoughts every two minutes we would have known too how dumb he is.  

Carry on.  I guess!  Fail, fail better. 

——

pool day.  Might be able to reserve Cold Spring from here on out?  

 "Why hasn't capitalism evolved into some version of enlightened democratic profit sharing?  If workers don't have enough income we can't sustain a wholly market economy, can we?"

Excellent question.   As far as I know the only major countries that have established some kind of shared - workers & owners -economy are the Germans and the Japanese.  However Scandinavian countries may also have reached this point as well.  But the farther south one goes it seems the less cooperative the workers and owners are,  although Australia and New Zealand might also be cooperative societies. 

I think the reason for cooperation may just be cultural, but I sometimes think that another major reason may lie in the education of the owners.   Owners who know and love the technology of their enterprise - be it manufacturing or farming - are far more inclined to think of their workers as assets in a wonderful machine.  Owners who know just economics see workers as merely a necessary evil that costs the owners money.  So the relationship is mutual distrust and hate.  If the owner and owner's son and grandson are all engineers or scientists, a company and its workers can continue to thrive and evolve.   If the owner is just a businesman or Wall Street stock brokers, the workers will be eventually replaced or the company will be moved to Mexico before it eventually goes out of business.  No one loves what it does.  It makes money.  That's it.

American, Italian, and French auto companies  - Ford, GM, Fiat-Chrysler, and Peugeot are struggling to survive while Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagon, Honda, Suzuki, and the Koreans are doing fine.   But it would help if this cooperative method were ensconced in some theory that could resist the communist and capitalist extremes that are built upon business and economics theory, not technology.  And assumed cultures such as Germany's and Japan's and Korea's.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

P

 ——

“how right Ménalque was to reject all memories!”

— The Immoralist by Andre Gide

“Ménalque was right: Memory is an invention of misery.”

— The Immoralist 

not sure I buy these lines, but 

strange book.  dated?  had the author not gone on to become famous for other things, would have died a quiet death  part of the era   

eyesight back, reading glasses in place, the comforts of paperback books available once again  

—-I’ve thought that also, Voo. And I’m surprised I haven’t heard from her yet about Sharron’s predicament.  I’m thinking she may be in a bad way herself and unable to get back to us. 

I keep Sharron in my thoughts  And I realize something similar could happen to me any time, just as what happened to you.  Bob and I have occasional conversations about our lives at this time and how whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.  Of course, we’ll all be checking out one of these days.  Until then, each day certainly is a gift and I do my best to appreciate my good fortune so far.  I am putting more time into completing my memoir, though!  Just in case….

I remember hearing a story about our troubles.  A group of people decided to each place their crosses to bear in a paper bag.  They went into a room and put their bags in the middle.  Then they walked around the pile and picked up another bag.  When they saw each other’s crosses, each person began to look for his own bag.

We had a cold front move in a couple of days ago and there was a lot of wind.  My Internet went out for two days.  I got caught up on my reading and did more cooking than usual.

I hope you stay warm and I look forward to your return in January.  

Love,

Lou

———

“Nothing so develops a human being as adhering to a plan in defiance of the whole world.’  Kierkegaard

“Surrounded by splendor and by death, I feel happiness too close, and the surrender to it too constant. I lie down in the middle of the day to deceive the dreary prospect of time and its intolerable leisure.”

— The Immoralist 

Just off the top of my head, when I "envision"  a Protestant quest for money and power, I see a straight line.  In the Jews case, I see a big tangle, with some of the strands going in the opposite direction....producing, at times, comedy.

The Coen brothers made a remake of True Grit.  If you haven't seen it...you should.

Michon’s book on Rimbaud demonstrates how writers fall into traps of writing devout exercises to religious texts, prayerful statements of belief.   Makes me want to find out if Modiano has a new book translated.  

from Phil 

It's 1953.  Hester is visiting her putative fiancee Eben's family in Tunxis, CT, far enough away from NYC and Hartford to be small-town and rural.  Eben's father is an old-time Yankee with an earlier generation's values; Hester's and Eben's world is essentially ours, even though they are half a generation older than we are.  Hester and Eben both live in NYC; life in the big city is quite different from life in a small town.  The passage is from The Marmot Drive, an early (1953) John Hersey novel, but a very good one.

“For a moment Hester thought she saw what the cleavage was—the father living in the world of stern education personal reticence, love of nature; of respect for property; idiosyncrasy, privacy, and poetry; of literal horsepower and the slow walk; of rigid family life; of frugality and thrift, of the Classics and the Bible of charades and early-to-bed—the son living in prosy, urgent, intrusive world, a world of ‘realities’: of revolution everywhere, of war or military preparings and posturings, of fear for the future; of cities and science, of jets, reactors, and ultra-high frequencies; of cool rationality and nervous breakdowns; of the shifty images of TV; of ads, giveaways, strained budgets; gadgets bought on the installment plan; of speeding tickers and drunken picnics and sexual frolicsomeness in the small hours.  The opposition was clear in Hester’s mind for only a flash, then she began to see that her ideas was too simple:  there were qualifications and shadings and loopholes, for in the father’s world there had also been seething repressions and horrible social injustices, there had been rationalizations and pretenses and fake decencies smothered in heavy décor, while in the son’s world there were miracles of progress    .    .    .    and now she heard Eben, too, exploring the same doubts.” 

Read the book.  Sarge

——-

I can see and feel how good the book is.  And you know what?  Because of that I said after Sarge's urging---nope, not gonna !   Is Sarge a few years older

than us??  

For one thing, I'm not NE enough for the book---northeast and/or new englandish---another thing . . .  pondering and gonna fix lunch  

Yup, he's 77 or 78 and from an old New England family:  Cheever. Related somewhat distantly to John.    Groton, Harvard, Yale Divinity, Peace Corps, U of Chicago..........P

Dear Nicholas

Advert for a Jung in Ireland seminar next spring in Parabola.  So in your professional spheres is everyone guessing that business travel as you knew it might begin to revive in Spring of 2021?

We are still hoping to go back to NM then. Have booked the same place for Jan-May.  Beautiful weather here these days, cooler nights, crisper days.  Sunny walks along the lake edges.  Otherwise all is very quiet.  We see someone in person, outdoors usually, about every two weeks.  I get to the grocery store about every six days, larger grocery orders delivered to the house.  

Success in both eyes with cataract surgery and new vision amazes me every day.  Still now have reading glasses for laptop and paperbacks.  Have to find one of those decorative string things to hang them around my neck.  

Suppose Andrei's search for an academic position is on the same hold we have for almost everything?  

Reading this and that, waiting for the moment to begin the next big book.  Read Gide's Immoralist of late and thought boy was that overrated in its day!  Guess he went on to greater works later, but am not moved to look further into his oeuvre.  Patrick White sure bettered him in every way, if they can even be compared.  Bought another of Claude H's books,  might be next.  

Hope all is well there, all love and best wishes, 

—-

Dear Nicholas

Advert for a Jung in Ireland seminar next spring in Parabola.  So in your professional spheres is everyone guessing that business travel as you knew it might begin to revive in Spring of 2021?

We are still hoping to go back to NM then. Have booked the same place for Jan-May.  Beautiful weather here these days, cooler nights, crisper days.  Sunny walks along the lake edges.  Otherwise all is very quiet.  We see someone in person, outdoors usually, about every two weeks.  I get to the grocery store about every six days, larger grocery orders delivered to the house.  

Success in both eyes with cataract surgery and new vision amazes me every day.  Still now have reading glasses for laptop and paperbacks.  Have to find one of those decorative string things to hang them around my neck.  

Suppose Andrei's search for an academic position is on the same hold we have for almost everything?  

Reading this and that, waiting for the moment to begin the next big book.  Read Gide's Immoralist of late and thought boy was that overrated in its day!  Guess he went on to greater works later, but am not moved to look further into his oeuvre.  Patrick White sure bettered him in every way, if they can even be compared.  Bought another of Claude H's books,  might be next.  

Hope all is well there, all love and best wishes, 

——-

Pierre Michon’s rhapsody on Rimbaud I dismissed the other day but today I am in admiration—-that he keeps it going, that his ecstasies honor the dead poets, that he gets so far into them—- 

“But in 1848 it has become more important than ever, for ‘if the crowd is the evil, if it is chaos that threatens, there is rescue in one thing only, in becoming the single individual.’”

— Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle

“This is one of his favourite thoughts. ‘When the sea exerts all its might, then it is precisely impossible for it to reflect the image of the heavens, and even the smallest movement means that the reflection is not quite pure; but when it becomes still and deep, then heaven’s image sinks down into its nothingness,’ he wrote in 1844. ‘Just as the sea, when it is still, deep and transparent longs for the heavens above, so too does the heart that has become pure long for the good. And as the sea reflects the vault of heaven in its pure depths, so too does the heart that has become still and deeply transparent reflect the heavenly sublimity of the good in its pure depths,’ he wrote last year, 1847. There is always longing in this stillness–a longing that touches what it longs for, and desires it all the more. When he lets his longing for God fill and expand his soul, everything else is silenced.”  

Back to re-read the second half of A Terrace in Rome.  Jumbled stories, jumbled versions of linked stories.  Interesting but not.  Enough.  

PBS has a new mystery, Van der Valk, old character it turns out, from novels by Nicholas Freeling.  ?  Last night the great detective broke a key element of the case through his astute analysis of one of the great Vermeer’s in the Amsterdam museum.  Some sort of apotheosis for the pbs masterpiece audience, or orgasm.  We all know the Vermeers and love Amsterdam (very trendy over past few years, lots of techies buying houses there on HGTV).  So to see our hero using the great painting to unlock the inner dynamics of one of the players and rush us toward the solution of the case—-wow, pbs masterpiece viewing at its finest!!   The actor is British and he has perfected a fine Dutch accent, or at least a convincing one.  

So far in other words Quignard has not won me over.  Roving Shadows I’ll try some more.   Wandering Shadows—-is that more to my liking than Roving?  Perhaps slightly so.  Quignard born in ’48, Modiano in ’45.  

Huge difference!!??  And Q had autism and anorexia in childhood.  Music, Latin, Greek and Ancient Literatures.  Ahh, so now we see.  

Chapter XXV in Terrace is wonderful instance of how strange these tales are:  Meaume has been stabbed in the throat in the previous episode.  Meaume says:  “I think that all my life I’ve been jealous.  Jealousy comes before imagination.  Jealousy, it is sight stronger than eyesight.”  Good line.  My first renewed right eye and I saw Aho’s painting on Insta and wanted it, have I not always been jealous of Aho and his paintings.  I bought it.  How will it be to have it before me on the wall here?  

“Meaume responded: ‘One reaches an age when one no longer meets life but time.  One ceases to see life as living.  One sees time in the act of devouring life raw.  One’s heart seizes up.  One clings to driftwood just to see a little more of the spectacle bleeding from one end of the world to the other, and yet not fall in.’”  97

The flesh’s a fine and private place,

but none therein do embrace

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Our flesh’s a fine and private place,

But none, we know, do there embrace.

called Jim  —  afterwards located his column, not in the Crier any longer but on allotsego website —  most recent one tells of covid and Anne’s death and his move to Woodside Manor.  Photo of his grandpa’s brick house in Shady Side, MD, now a restaurant, few blocks from the bay.  

He’s got the book on saints almost through the press.  

no one home it seems at Rich’s house

we walked and then lunched at Dox  

Petie, I have finally worked  a possible visiting calendar:

mid January-end of May Bob VA in Abq.

June - Aug in Plym.

July -B and va in  Plymouth'

Aug. Dave andfamin Plym.

Sept -M and Ray in Boston and Plym

December -Dave and fam.

Rick stays in Conway; Chris and fam in Irvine?  in your house?

Dave and fam in Paris:   SEPT-with- B and V in Plym.

What do you think?   Rick and Chris work at home. 

We would travel by plane; you and Ray by van. Chris and Rick by car.

Dave and fam by plane.

What do you think?

How are  Chris and fam?

And Astrid?

You and Ray?

love.

pew

During the night Va was thrilled to learn that Eloy had offered to take care of a house if we bought one for the months we might not be there.  

Ulya Wahgi Valley, Papua, New Guinea—source of today’s coffee from Wayfarer roasters 

skimmed through the remainder of the book on Rimbaud—-tempted to do same in the southern vaguely gothic novel, but since it is a work of lesser quality, one dare not slight it 

Pierre Michon same birth year, 1945, as Modiano.  

Few weeks ago I thought the massage with Bob Fiat was the last.  This week’s with Dean near Canterbury was good, but, yes, the last.  

from a tweet today—-

When you make the rules for your own life, there is no wrong path. Only the path you chose.

When you follow the rules of others, there is no end of wrong decisions you have made. You are endlessly conformed to the particular of the external.

—some life coach named Dan Burns 

not bad, even appropo 

ancestry update from ancestry.com arrived today —  56% Germanic Europe,

32% England and Northwestern Europe and 12 % Scotland 

1700–1750

English, Scots-Irish, and Germans Flock to America

By 1700 flourishing cities and small towns dotted the eastern seaboard from Massachusetts to Virginia. New English immigrants came to colonial Virginia to settle its untamed lands. Some were prisoners or indentured servants; others were the second or third sons of landed gentry who chose to leave Britain because of inheritance laws that favored first-born sons. Pennsylvania offered land and relief to the persecuted Scots-Irish, descendants of Scots who migrated to Ulster, Ireland, in the 1600s. Germans escaping the aftermath of wars, harsh winters, and heavy taxes of the Palatinate region in Germany’s Rhine Valley also settled in Pennsylvania

——

Sat morning  19 September

photos of Emma having her long braid cut off and sporting a beautiful new bob by M. Simon.  Gorgeous look.  

Just bought a Tim McFarlane small piece—-11 x 14, same size as Aho’s.  It is called Ice Cream Corner and so I’m imposing on to it the memory that Dave 

worked for a few months at the Ben and Jerry’s on Rittenhouse across from Anthropologie the the cow suit.  

and so I’ve learned from the bio that mysticism is part of the tale of Wittgenstein—-something I don’t think Lars Iyer permitted to be quite clear in his delightful telling.   

““In a line reminiscent of certain mystics Wittgenstein writes: ‘To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole–a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole–it is this that is mystical’ (Tractatus 6.45). Linguistic analysis is not meant to deny these truths, but make room for them, in other words make room for metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, God, in short for all that which Wittgenstein subsumes under the label ‘the Higher’. Thus we do find remarks about the Higher at the end of the Tractatus. We can speak only about what is in the world, for example, the World Cup of 2006, stockmarkets, 9/ 11, climate change, social policy, molecular genetics, the solar system,etc.’” 

Feeling the world as a limited whole–it is this that is mystical’ (Tractatus 6.45)   This is so cool.  And explains, at last, why I saw G E M Anscome in Hyde Park, ready to lecture on Aquinas and Faith.  What did I know?  At Chicago, I was such a rube.  

to Dennis about his current new work —  good word for it--shimmering--esp like the first one--lots going on   maybe covid is bumping us all into new phases without us quite knowing---what's going on?  nothing it seems and yet 

Edward Kanterian, author of the book on Wittgenstein 

“I can imagine what Heidegger means by Being and anxiety. Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be mere nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics… But the inclination, the running up against something, indicates something. St Augustine knew that already when he said: What, you swine, you want not to talk nonsense! Go ahead and talk nonsense, it does not matter! 6 In addition to these conversations, what gave Wittgenstein the final reason to return to philosophy was a lecture given by the Dutch mathematician L.E.J. Brouwe”

“Obviously he felt more at home with individual people, especially young men, if they struck a particular chord in him. A good example of this is Gilbert Pattison, an undergraduate who later became a chartered accountant in London. Pattison had no interest in philosophy or in tormenting himself with ethical questions. Nevertheless, he was a close friend of Wittgenstein for over ten years, since they shared a predilection for trivia and ‘talking nonsense by the yard’. This involved watching Hollywood movies together at Leicester Square, ridiculing advertisements in magazines and shops, and exchanging silly letters, in which they would address each other with ‘Dear Blood’, sign with ‘Yours bloodily’ and generally use the word ‘bloody’ ad nauseam. Here is a typical exchange:”

“However, towards the end of his life we find the following intriguing entry in his diary: Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don’t mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the ‘existence of this being’, but, e.g., sufferings of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give us rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts,–life can force this concept on us. 54 So perhaps ‘life’ itself gives reasons to be a believer. But it is characteristic of Wittgenstein in his later years that he did not say that life has educated him to believe in God. At least, he continued to take religion immensely serious and also to pray occasionally. As he confessed to Drury: ‘I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.’ 55”

“According to Monk, the reason why Wittgenstein chose predominantly young men as his disciples and friends was the fact that he preferred being surrounded by ‘childlike innocence and first-class brains’ than by stiff professors. 13 He was working on what he considered a revolutionary conception of philosophy and hoped that his new ideas would be better understood by the younger generation. His charisma was overwhelming and left a permanent mark on many of his pupils. As one of them, Desmond Lee, has pointed out, Wittgenstein was in this respect similar to Socrates; they both had a numbing and hypnotic effect on young men. 14 This effect was not always to the students’ benefit. He demanded absolute loyalty and expected tolerance of his irascible character, while he was in no way tolerant towards others. As Mary Midgley puts it: People who go about treading on other people’s toes are peculiarly unaware of what it is like to be trodden on, so that they are naturally much surprised when it happens to themselves … Tolerance was not in Wittgenstein’s repertoire and he liked to remove it from other people’s. 15 Wittgenstein himself was not unaware of some of his flaws; he once said to a friend: ‘Although I cannot give affection, I have a great need for it.’ But was he also aware that his powerful personality could distort that of others? Since he despised academia and romanticized a ‘simple’ life, he convinced several students to give up their studies and take up a practical profession, much to the dismay of their parents. He even interfered in matters of life and death. Thus when one of his closest friends and pupils, Maurice Drury, was about to embark for D-Day in 1944, Wittgenstein gave him a piece of advice that was based on his own attitude”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein (Critical Lives) by Edward Kanterian

“It was a sense of satisfaction deeper than mere happiness—one of those rare moments when simply to Be is enough; when those thoughts and desires which normally are so insistent in their demands are at peace, lulled by a mystic acquiescence deeper than the source of their own discontent.”

Claude Houghton, Neighbors, 11 

“To stress what things ‘really’ are empowers the individual, makes him feel as a destroyer of the prejudices of other, more naïve humans. For, as Wittgenstein puts it, ‘It is charming to destroy prejudice.’”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein (Critical Lives) by Edward Kanterian

to Phil and John Sitter (!)   last night   —- occupational psychosis

 I used to joke as I neared retirement that I knew well how to talk with people who are between 18 and 28.  Uncomfortable trying to chat with older people.  

Demonstrated this to myself unwittingly these past two days.  Yesterday went to a dealership to talk about a new car, leasing. 

Nice older guy, friendly retiree, maybe 65 or 70.  As we talked about the cars available, details of leasing, etc etc I got uneasy and felt it was the same old-fashioned car selling rigamarole where I was buying a car on the lot they wanted to move.  He had his boss come over and they urged me to close the deal right away lest another buyer take it a few hours later. 

Left saying had to talk it over with Va.   

Today I went to another dealer I had visited in August.  (same brand) Younger guy I had met earlier, told him what we had decided we wanted.  He said sure we can make sure we get that for you.  His explanations of the trade-in, the leasing, and everything else clear and straight forward.  No sense of being maneuvered.  

Maybe I'm being age-ist or such! ? But I'd give the retiree a D/D- and the kid a B+ / A-!!! 

Phil’s reply today  24 Sept 

Well, it's good news that some dealers are getting away from that annoying "must buy now" routine.  Just curious: where were the two dealers?   One, I presume, was in Plymouth.   Also, were the two dealerships about the same size?    BTW:  I ran into the "must buy now" routine in May, 2019 when I shopped for a new car for Peg.  The cost of new cars these days is about $30,000 and these sales people act as if it's a box of candy!

Cheers, despite the world,

Called Donald.  He also loved Middlemarch, a few months ago.  Has been reading David’s two volumes of essays.  Reassures me, as I asked him to do, that Biden will win.  And Melania will get a divorce soon afterwards, and T himself will be in jail within six years.  Donald’s going to the island off of Charleston to visit his sister in her 6000 sq foot house and his friend Bill K?? forget the last name.  

so relieved to find this——by James Lasdun in the Guardian

“Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel is almost as hard to pin down as it is to put down. Its real subject seems to grow more, rather than less, mysterious as the book progresses. Meanwhile, the immense assurance of the writing, the deep knowledge of the settings and periods in which the story unfolds, the mingling of cruel humour and lyrical tenderness, the insatiable interest in human desire from its most refined to its most brutally carnal, grip you as tightly as any thriller.”

in the sense of—-oh, ok, so it’s not me, it IS the book itself—-whew—-thought I was losing my marbles, but the book is written that way—-

am I half way through?  not sure yet—-check the kindle —-it says I’m half way—-so, courage and onward—-

Hollinghurst writes like a master (still) and so he knows what he’s doing.  Today this passage struck because of its sheer economy and intensity—almost like a sketch, a quick sketch in pencil, that the character Johnny himself is always doing of people he runs across.  

“It was cold in Colin’s flat, too, above a busy main road just south of the river, but they jumped into bed in their underwear and got hot kissing and tugging it up or down. Johnny hadn’t been with someone so hard and rough as Colin before, and he watched him for signals as to how he should behave—he was eager but there was a fractional delay, which oddly made the game more intense. Colin showed how much he liked him as he held him down and pushed him around—“ Your hair!” he said, grinning and tutting. He did just what he liked, so that Johnny’s shyness smiled helplessly through in the moment of throwing it off. But it all worked out, and seemed inevitable, the pain as well as the brutal excitement. They lay around, Colin hopped out and lit a cigarette, which he shared with Johnny, specks of ash on their chests, as they lay side by side, Johnny’s foot trapped between Colin’s feet. It wasn’t only the area, with the motorbikes and lorries revving at the lights below, but the room itself, clean, carpetless, with a sheet for a curtain, that was so alien and convincing. Of course he thought of the room in the photograph: Londoners at Home. Colin asked him what his name was, and when he told him he said, “Oh, yes? Any relation?” “Yeah—well, he’s my dad,” said Johnny, “if that’s what you mean.” He didn’t want the whole thing of blame and pity; and being in bed with another man, of course, made it awkward.”

Now we are in the second generation within the story.  Going to try to finish the book before reading the rest of the Guardian review, but that will take discipline and such.  

Hardback fetish clarified once more—-copies of Chatwin’s Utz (one upstairs) even 1st editions, sell on abebooks for $1-3.  

Hollinghurst born in ’54.  Perfect heir to Chatwin and Modiano.  How could I have overlooked him?  Booker Prize, Magdalen College, English major, even now a Paris Review Interview.  Much to chew on here, a new cud!! for the cow.  I measure my life in paperbacks.   Now, however, Kindle Oasis seems to be in the lead.  

Birthday weekend for David.  

McGregor sent reminder that Lax died twenty years ago, on Sept 26.  Cites two great passages from his bio —- 

As he lingered on Lipsi that fall, he began to see that his vision hadn't been capacious enough. He had been looking at parts rather than the whole, searching for models rather than an understanding of the greater scheme of things. The oneness of humanity--of all of life--wasn't something to be sought, he realized, but something to be recognized and embraced. The life flowing in his veins had been flowing in veins since the beginning of time or longer. The enduring nature of life was the important thing to understand:

the continuity of life is

its meaning: it begins from

eternity & flows to eternity

there is no right way of

singing a given song: but

all ways are more or less

right

the variations of tone we

bring to our roles give life

its color: whether we will (to)

or not, we add variations

there is no one character in

whom the Lord would dwell &

not in others

he who dances in the middle

of the room, dances for me;

he who sits in the corner

watching, watches for me

...it is not that our lives

should so radically change,

but rather our understanding

of them

--pp. 320-321, Pure Act 

there are not many songs

there is one song

the animals lope to it

the fish swim to it

the sun circles to it

the stars rise

the snow falls

the grass grows

there is no end to the song and no beginning

the singer may die

but the song is forever

truth is the name of the song

and the song is truth.

————-

Lax’s lines we could copy and read each day—-

he who dances in the middle

of the room, dances for me;

he who sits in the corner

watching, watches for me

...it is not that our lives

should so radically change,

but rather our understanding

of them

—-

there is no end to the song and no beginning

the singer may die

but the song is forever

truth is the name of the song

and the song is truth.

and he would allow us to change truth to love too, I’m sure.  Suppose in fact they are synonymous in his poetics and theology.  

——-

Hollinghurst’s novel got me thinking about our local wife murderer—Tim Froncek at Newfound, now thirty years ago.   this item from 2011

One of the list's oldest cases involved Timothy A. Froncek, who taught at what was then Newfound Memorial High School in Bristol.

According to the revocation list, his credential was revoked on Jan. 12, 1982, for pleading guilty to second-degree murder. But Froncek didn't kill his wife until October 1983, and he didn't plead guilty to the murder until June 1984, according to a New Hampshire Union Leader story at the time.

According to another newspaper story, Froncek on Jan. 12, 1981, had his credential suspended for a year at the request of the Newfound Area School District. The district said Froncek gave only 24-hours notice for resigning his job, a breach of his contract.

Fillion said the credential wouldn't have been yanked until the second-degree murder plea was official. She planned to have

Froncek's entry amended.

Froncek received a 21-year prison sentence. Now 62, he has been out of prison since October 2001 and remains on lifetime parole, supervised out of the Nashua office, said state Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons. Froncek couldn't be reached for comment.

——-

my memory of him was from seeing him in the fieldhouse, probably a year or so before the murder.  Not sure we ever met or spoke.  Natalie and Carole knew him well, and his wife, Janice.  Wonder what happened to the son.  

Hollinghurst sketches well the son of Sparsholt and then his daughter.  

Va is on Zoom for her road scholar tour of New Mexico, all this week.  

McGregor puts it quite well—-forget looking for models, or, maybe, ok, models might help along the way, inevitable need most likely for everyone, but the vision is far beyond all divine doubles, however they appear and fade, fade and reappear, 

He had been looking at parts rather than the whole, searching for models rather than an understanding of the greater scheme of things. The oneness of humanity--of all of life--wasn't something to be sought, he realized, but something to be recognized and embraced. The life flowing in his veins had been flowing in veins since the beginning of time or longer. The enduring nature of life was the important thing to understand

Dave’s 42nd birthday today  28th Sept 

now we know—-Susan Sontag on twitter  “What is the secret of suddenly beginning to write, finding a voice? Try whiskey. Also being warm. 1957”

last visit to the eye doctor—-he gives me A+ on all counts, his star patient these days—-explained the problems with multifocus lenses—no night driving at all, and expensive and not necessarily great——

Amish crafters finked out on us so we bought the whole tempurpedic bells and whistles split CA King——Willow distraught at having twin structures rather than one king but after we use them I think she’ll come to like the whole set-up

this passage quoted on a tweet made my day—-

'The best way to travel, after all, is to feel,

To feel everything in every way,

To feel everything excessively,

Because all things are, in truth, excessive

And all reality is an excess, a violence,

An extraordinarily vivid hallucination.'

Pessoa - Ode Marítima

even after seeing that d Zaintz posted two new paintings and e Aho reminded us again of his opening Oct 6 

this Pessoa Ode confirms!  I should read only Pessoa for the next ten years—-another divine sign—-

Hollinghurst’s novel almost finished—-less impressive and interesting than I’d thought.  Ladsun I think said he is a chronicler.  Seems so.  “Queer as a three dollar bill.” I heard that as a kid, wondered what it meant.  H shows

how gayness changed over two generations and in current times the term queer has come back.  Lots of commentary could work on that.  

““A shame he never had children,” said Sally. “Probably a good thing,” said the tall man, and after a second gave a crinkly smile at Lucy. “I sometimes wondered,” said the short man, “if he wasn’t really queer, you know, deep down.” “Oh…”—Sally gave a worried laugh, and also a quick glance at Lucy, and then her father. “I think you’d have to ask Clover that!” “Mm, perhaps later,” the man said, and they laughed and turned with their glasses out in barely concealed rivalry as the pretty girl with the bottle of champagne came alongside. Lucy tugged her father’s hand, and they went round together, sidling, pushing, rubbing backs with these fickle drinkers. There was the Barbara Hepworth, put on a special plinth. She jumped protectively as a large man, making way for the waitress, backed into it; it jolted but didn’t fall. “Oops… must be more careful,” he said, glanced down at Lucy, the witness, with a moment’s rough calculation, then turned and went on shouting at the woman beyond him.”  

svenbirkerts (@sven birkerts) Tweeted: “Ah, it’s my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me.”

Lax probably had not known Pessoa.  Or not much, if some.  Kierkegaard?  

47 percent humidity today—gorgeous afternoon, October 1  

 24 percent in Albuquerque there today  

citing too many passages—-kindle makes it darned easy, alas—-

But it seemed that for Michael a half-dozen birds in the bush were worth one in the hand, the shimmer of potential sex was more alluring than the fact of it, here in the gold-ceilinged drawing room.”

“It seemed to him part of the tact of age.”

— The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst    the book is very good at reminding us of the vast differences in such tact, from one generation to the next 

““You’re right, I am working on my Subjectivity module. You have a good memory Johnny.” And signed off disconcertingly, “Thanks for reaching out, MX.” The phrase disturbed him, and went on doing so. There was a euphemistic kindness to it, a hint of surprise at his worthy but absurd attempt to see Michael again. He had an image of a hand stretching out through the bars of a cell—he might have reached out, but he hadn’t, by some distance, reached what he wanted; and Michael, it was clear, was unlikely to reach back.”

terrific gloss on that terrible phrase 

“There it was, for a long minute, the feared and lurking strain of loneliness—high as a lark and with no one to hold or even to talk to. It was like an ache in his arms. He waited and bought himself water, at the bar, no sign now of Graham. At the edge of the dance floor again he was moving with the music

H catches the idiom of today’s vibes and chats 

“He thought the convention was to kiss the dead parent on the brow, but a sense that that wasn’t his father’s style deterred him, and he felt he wouldn’t regret not having done so.”

indeed 

Finished.  Had an unkind thought about Aciman, thinking how good H’s work is, how much better than A’s most recent, in which he frame his earlier tale within a larger generational tale in order to carry it forward and give it greater context and hence one hopes significance.  H does it so well, especially with the minimalist method of sketching most everything and keeping the core story of the scandal as much offstage as possible.  

Secured for my, however, my sense of The English National Character.  As I wondered what the scandal was, why it wasn’t described directly, what the heck was going on with the whole evasiveness, minimalism, of the scenes and tellings, I thought of my usual complaint about the Mystery series on tv, from all the British productions.  Goodness we have seen a lot of those in our Masterpiece lifetimes.  And we know the patterns—-red herrings, false leads, etc etc, and many times confusing threads as often dropped along the way in hopes we won’t notice or care, and then the rapid final wrap-up and pulling together and “solving”, fitting enough pieces together to give us the satisfactory sense of ending.  Reading H I thought, that isn’t a thing about mystery tv shows——it is the whole British way of repressing, deflecting, denying, postponing, covering over, waiting to see if a direct telling will really be necessary.  

here’s more on feeling——from Frank Ghery no less, about his bottle design for Hennessy’s 150th anniversary !!!  talk about hype—-

"I wanted to personify the hand-made quality of Hennessy X.O with a hand-made bottle – one that feels good to hold, catches the light beautifully, and one that expresses the hand of the artisans who helped make the cognac," Gehry told Dezeen.

"If you look at the Greek sculptures like the Charioteer in Delphi or the prize fighter, they are able to transmit feelings through thousands of years with inert materials," he continued.

"That was in my mind when we were doing this bottle. I wanted to make something that transmits feeling."

Filipa de Freitas  “Naval Ode Translations”  

      she compares four translations of this ode —- focuses her analysis “on what we can call the poet’s moods or dispositions—

unlimited desire to be connected to the world, to be part of the world.”

the dispositions - “the complete emotional substrate” that constructs an individual’s point of view.”  

Campos’s “desire of belonging to everything in the world”

delirium that clarifies  storm of sensations   emotional rupture  

young Pessoa’s literary movement called sensacionismo—-

1. Sensation as essential reality

2  Art is a personalization of sensation

3  First rule:  to feel everything in every way  To abolish the dogma of personality:  each one of us should be many.     !!!!!!!!!  Yes 

4.  2nd The work of art is an attempt to prove that the universe is not real.

5.  3rd  Art intends to fixate what is only apparently fleeting.

article on eyestrain says the blue light of these screens inhibits production of melatonin !!!    Just started taking one of those pills a few nights ago and

like the sleep and relaxation.  

so strange to have today as the day off—-a Friday—-disorienting but managed—-even got a pizza at Vinnies and it really really is good—-old style, traditional, quality—-

new novel about British public schools told me something I never knew about them—-they are six years long.  That means my school was by year similar—I was in a boys school for seven years, last three were boarding, 

but the British maybe start in junior high?  

Pessoa, he’s the one—-so excited to see the First Rule of his Movement!  

Something it too Patrick White a lifetime to write as a novel—-although he realized it years before—-every real writer must even without articulating it as a manifesto, if even at all,   —— 

rain all day, now sunny    Dave says they got the cards I sent —  

Feels today like we’ve decided to stay the winter.  Abundance of caution is the catch phrase.  At least Trump has given us real “leadership” at last.  Senators too, Republicans.  

Freitas’s article on Naval Ode has a line about everything that got me thinking in a newish way about Burke.  Also has many other lines I’m liking so much.  Pessoa revelations pouring forth.  

delirium clarifies Campos’s desire of belonging to everything in the world,

an excessive storm of sensations and imagination causes an emotional rupture, sad remembrance of childhood lost happiness and sad return to consciousness of emptiness.   Could this be a pattern Burke recognized as well within himself?  Strange it never occurred to me to wonder if Burke might have been an INFP—well, ENFP, or both?  In other words his ways of analyzing and thinking and writing up his thoughts about ideas might be more the style (the emotional structure) of an FP rather than a TP.  Or—Pessoan, i.e. poetic rather an analytic.   Hence is outsider position with regard to the regular academics he hung out with, in many ways was forced to earn some living among.  

Can anyone experience saudade if they are not Portuguese?  The ways Freitas uses Heidegger is most interesting—-who knew?  I didn’t, at least.  But that use does suggest she agrees that if a writer has a universal appeal, as great writers do, then, yes, any person can recognize aspects, tinges, mirroring similarities, divine doubling resonances, of described emotional moods and dispositions.  Of course.  What else is literature, art, music, for?  

“anguish can be characterized as a discovery of nothingness, a shock that turns the subject upside down and unleashes a painful way of being in the world.”    alters the inner structure of the subject   the sudden understanding of the possibility of nothingness —-  these would be great phrases to describe my adolescent anxiety attacks while at Elkins Park, my “nervous breakdown” and the similar experiences of many people.  Burke included.  

trouble is I read the academic first.  now to read the Ode itself!  

“Campos is frightened by the mystery of the world and wishes to change that feeling.  The anguished body experiences the sadness and the anguish as a dispositional center enlightens itself.  (my times in the hospital sophomore year of college—the whole year in fact).  

Not a matter of thoughts (depression) but intense feelings of sadness associated with his wish of embracing the whole world.  Does this wish

run through Pessoa’s work all the way through his life?  Desire in going onto the sea to find new places, change perspectives, absorb everything, delirium inherent in existence.  Wanders between enthusiasm for life and fear/anguish of being aware of such a life, with a meaning impossible to apprehend.  “Everything, preferably all at once.”  

delirium I guess we would call mania, manic 

What is offered by the sea . . . is a set of meanings revealing a non-linear structure of meaning continually interlaced with others in a growing SPIRAL . . . poet’s desire of achieving, experiencing and connecting with everything through consciousness and imagination.  passion for the totality of life    cause of his delirium  emptiness caused by facing the mystery  leading to a weariness . . . saudade  .   .  . . Pessoa himself used the English word “regret”  

Pessoa and Lax  

Car swap day   6 October  Va on antibiotic for UTI got med yesterday 

NITROFURANTOIN MICRO 

car day yesterday.  Va warmed to the color as soon as she saw it up close and took a ride in the late afternoon sun.  Taylor led me over the process and the gizmos in the car.  Super job.  Paul? did the financials.  English major from a university in Tampa, creative writing, likes non-fiction, thirty, recent break-up with girl friend lawyer.  Says there’s too much drinking in that world, at least in law school.  

"You know you suffer anticipation-addiction when, on the second day of

driving your new leased car, you already look forward to being able

to get another new one in only three years!!"  

Va breakthrough on her article about the Polish count.  Writing away.  

Dr Mirkin today —-

To a large extent, a person’s diet determines the type of bacteria that live in his or her colon.

* A diet that encourages the growth of bacteria that help to prevent and treat obesity and diabetes has plenty of vegetables, fruits and seeds (beans, nuts and whole grains that have not been ground into flour).

* Foods that encourage growth of the types of colon bacteria associated with obesity and diabetes include sugared drinks, sugar-added foods, foods made from flour (ground whole grains) and all other refined carbohydrates.

clear for years but can’t give up my bread, even the whole grain pigs fly.  and realize I like oat milk because it is oat ground into powder. so we’re back to the microbiotic diet more or less, in fact !! peanut butter probably counts as a refined food, too!  

Thanks Bob! The school really lives up to its reputation for rigor and innovation. I'm having an amazing time here!

Sending my love,

Max

Hi! 

Thanks for thinking of me but I don't know if I have room in my tiny apartment for more books! My girlfriend Grace and I recently moved to Providence, RI to go to grad school at RISD. She's in the exhibition design program, and I'm in furniture design. A very happy coincidence that we both ended up going to the same school at the same time (and both are two-year programs!). She also got into CalArts in LA, so I'm very glad she chose to stay here on the east coast with me. Even with the pandemic, the furniture department has remained committed to in-person classes and workshops, so I spend pretty much every waking minute working on projects in my studio and generally living the art school dream! I also just found out that I've been offered an assistantship working for one of the curators at the RISD Museum, which has an excellent, encyclopedic collection, including some masterpieces like their astonishing Manet. Very excited that I'll be able to keep a toe in the art world while still focusing on making objects. 

Much love to you & Bob and Dave & Cécile, and hope you are all doing well,

Max

An Adventure
by Louise Glück

1.

It came to me one night as I was falling asleep

that I had finished with those amorous adventures

to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love?

my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries

awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked

to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed—

surely this counted for something?

5.

As we had all been flesh together,

now we were mist.

As we had been before objects with shadows,

now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.

Neigh, neigh, said my heart,

or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know.

6.

Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun

contentedly rising, the feather comforter

mounded in white drifts over my lower body.

You had been with me—

there was a dent in the second pillowcase.

We had escaped from death—

or was this the view from the precipice?

Nobel today for her, brava !  

Eric Aho’s show opens today.   We own one of the small paintings.  Wow.  How does that feel?  Beautiful show, stunning.  To have bought one is wonderful.  Just got the refund from VMG for Bear House cancelation and had forgotten it amounts to so much.  Covers the painting and then some.

Sorry to have money in mind—-it is the art, the beauty, the radiance of the work, possession feels strange, even for the paintings here from other artists, even mine—-from a person I used to be—-from a persons I am, among all the others who live through me.  We are multiple, as Pessoa thought we should be.  

Dwight Garner in the Times today — 

Glück was born in New York City in 1943, and grew up on Long Island. Her father helped invent the X-Acto knife. That’s a cosmically sublime detail; no other poet slices with such accuracy and deadly intent.

One of the things to love about Glück’s poetry is that, while her work contains many emotional registers, she is not afraid to be cruel — she confronts the monsters in herself, and in others, not with resignation and therapeutic digression but with artery-nicking knives.

In another poem, she asks, “Why love what you will lose?” She answers her own question: “There is nothing else to love.”

Helen Vendler, writing in The New Republic, said that Glück’s poems “have achieved the unusual distinction of being neither ‘confessional’ nor ‘intellectual’ in the usual senses of those words.”

It’s Glück’s abundant intellect, and deep feeling, that keeps pulling you back to her poems. Commenting on the poor choices the Swedish Academy has made in the past, Gore Vidal once advised to never underestimate Scandinavian wit.

In the case of Louise Glück, the academy gets one exactly right.

Garner born 1965.  Garner was born in Fairmont, WV and grew up in that state and in . Garner graduated from Middlebury, where he majored in American literature.  While in college, he wrote book criticism for The Village Voice, music and theater criticism for the Vanguard Press, a Burlington, Vermont alternative weekly, and was a stringer for The New York Times.

After his graduation from college, Garner was a reporter for The Addison Independent.  He then became the arts editor of Vermont Times, a new alternative weekly in Burlington. He also became a contributing editor to the Boston Phoenix. In the 1990s Garner was a columnist for the Hungry Mind Review. 

207 today!  fluke or trend? 

takings from an interview with an Anglican priest named Peter Dewey, friend of Nicholas—-I am selecting to highlight something in the back of my mind about people’s lives—-online magazine called beshara 

But I never intended to enter the Church. I really wanted to do politics, and that was my ambition since I was about seven years old. Someone took me out to tea once from school and asked me what I wanted to be and I said ‘foreign secretary’, which of course caused great hilarity.

but when I came out of the army I looked for a job which would support me whilst I launched my political career. I ended up doing a management training course gave me some status, as it was a Labour area and I had not been expected to get in. So after a while, I was invited to fight a parliamentary seat in Manchester Exchange. It was during this period that I read all of Gurdjieff’s works. Having already learnt to meditate, and also looked at Vedanta and Ramana Maharshi’s teachings on ‘who are you?’, I just loved Gurdjief, and became very enthusiastic about it all.

Then one day, my doctor said: ‘There’s a man upstairs who has a heart problem and needs someone to talk to. Would you be able to do that?’ So as I was up and about, I rather reluctantly made contact. He was an Anglican priest, and I spent at least two months with him, helping him to walk and such like. We talked a lot, and at one point he said to me: ‘I think you ought to be ordained’.

This was a crucial moment for me, because about ten weeks earlier I had found a cellar where I could meditate – it was actually an old chapel with pews and so on – and I had decided that I was going to make a change. I made an inner vow that I would offer myself to the Church, even though I did not have the right qualifications. But I wanted a sign that I was doing the right thing, because I still in some ways wanted to do politics. So I used this as a get-out clause, as I knew that we don’t really get signs and I was safe. So when he said ‘I think you ought to be ordained’ my whole body froze: you get a chill down the spine when these things actually happen.

——

Agree completely about both of the Gettys.  We saw them about four years ago.  The Roman villa just opened my eyes to Rome in ways nothing else ever had.  I remember seeing photos of the Swiss  thermal baths a few years ago but I didn't pay attention to the architect's name and didn't know he was a star.  They look quintessentially Swiss and photograph strikingly well.  The Lacma project seems so interesting for the saga of planning and now controversy, and of course big money.  Art museums seem less and less interesting in the sense that they end up being white boxes or capsules of some sort.  Small addition to the Dartmouth museum is such, very boring even if there is a big huge entry hall.  On the trip to Japan we visited a new museum designed by a star couple and, again, so minimalist that it looked like a showroom for venetian blinds.  I guess Zumthor's project will get built.  Reminds me because of "Swiss" and "star" I guess of the one building by Corbusier in the US, the concrete art center plomped onto the Harvard campus in the midst of all the imitation Georgian buildings right off the quad.  

The Roman villa makes me say, ok, yes, it is good that someone has the unspeakable wealth needed to do this stupid idea of a direct copy of an ancient building.  Not the same for the copy of the Parthenon I gather exists in Memphis is it or Nashville.  I glimpsed it from a taxi one time, seems like it is sunk into a park rather than on a hill.  But maybe there is one on a hill in Edinburgh?  Any way, not so interested in traveling to see things.  

Bright sunny day here.  More chill. 

Hi,

Have you read about the Los Angeles Museum designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor?  There is a long article about it in the October 12 NYer.  It sounds to me, judging from the article, to be a misbegotten idea that will have to be torn down not too long after it's built.  A museum built over a highway???   Yeah, I get that LA is about cars, but this idea of a museum as a bridge over a hiway just seems ridiculous, and Zumthor seems exactly the wrong architect for anything in Los Angeles.  He should stick to the Alps.  Which is what several prominent Angelos have said.  But construction of this...thing...will be started this fall.

I looked up Therme Vals on google, and I can see Zumthor's point that architects who added to the place after he created the new origninal look totally destroyed the ambience of Zumthor's buildings.  But I didn't think his severely modernist buildings were all that great.  Okay, but not great. And if more of his kind of buildings had been built I think the place would not have worked too well.  

Ironcially, Zumthor criticized the architects who followed him at Therme Valse for designing from a distance (they were based in the US) and not understanding the spas in Switzerlande.  Yet it seems that it is exactly what's wrong with his design for Los Angeles. 

When I was in LA, I visited the Getty Musem and Getty Villa.  The museum is a little too corporate-like for my taste, but I liked the villa, which simply recreated an ancient Roman villa in the hills overlooking the Pacific, just west of Los Angeles.  It seemed like the perfect setting for ancient Roman and Greek art.

——

Youval Noah Harari   —-  Geo sent a video interview with him.  We are hackable animals.  Twitter sent a quote from Emerson I really like—-was surprised by—-“The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics." #Emerson

Virginia said this morning, a bit wistfully, that she misses seeing the people in the park each morning.  Saul and the dog walkers.  They are all a friendly group and the Albuquerque sunshine keeps everyone in a pretty chill and nice mood. 

Today we are hoping for washing machine repair.  

Photo of Emma doing plein air painting in the Luxembourg Gardens so touching and beautiful.  “I could die of envy. Would we have had such opportunities at eight.” —- Donald

Can see how and why he would say that.  Even while he has reminded us for years that we have all lived in a golden age.  After the war and before the boomers, et al.  

Dear Barb, 

We got to talking and after seeing that we have so much set here (hospital and pcp close by)  plus swimming and  fill-in caregiver), we decided this is a time to stay home. We will miss the weather and especially not being able to hang out with you guys so I guess you will just have to come here.  We can at least zoom or something.

Hope Sharron is doing better.  I have not been able to reach her by phone.  Her sister Leslie says she is talking much better and staying awake much more, but she is not walking.  I wanted to say that after 17 years, I am not either, but I kept my mouth shut.

Never worry about being intrusive about us; not possible among good friends who are also BCs.

love, 

VOO

   

On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 8:27 PM Barbara Schwartz  wrote:

Lou says you guys have decided against coming out here this winter. We were curious why. Hope that’s not being intrusive.

Hope everyone is well.

Best wishes,

Barb

Oct 12   Petie called around noon.  Her test shows breast cancer is back.  

We drove by Art’s and honked, wished him a happy winter.  Core group standing around on the lawn sipping wine and cider. 

Touch of food poisoning for me last night?  or something.  No clear plan on what to do with the Off today.  Aho’s studio visit this afternoon.  Thinking I should go back to one book at a time for life coherence simulation!  

“the old villa at Mogador”  in roving shadows.  Lax uses the name Mogador.   forget precisely where—-Lax’s friend, the trapeze artist Lax felt closest to, the name he gives to Paul Christiani.  (Also now a golf villa on the bay of Mogador in Morocco.)

“the sleeping soul is a spectator watching an involuntary performance.  When it awakes, the mind of the sleeper, as he opens his eyes, discovers an empty mirror.  There are no gods.  Belief is a mammalian dream.  Politics, producing a family, social life and metaphysical thinking are also theatrical performances, in which the soul dreams that it plays a role, in which it dreams it will brandish a spear, that it is stamping its heel on the floor, that its eyes are delivering flashes of lightning.”  76  Quignard The Roving Shadows

do I want to walk the heuser marathon route in the pause after this rain right now?  or drive away, the illusion of the road—-

Wonder if Quignard is as much a charlatan as Harari?  always with the quotable paradoxes, the researches and clever overturnings and apparent speculations never noticed before, as if never noticed before—-the promising zing of the new sheep in old wolf’s clothing—-

sour stomach often foretells a rainy day 

“the sleeping soul is transported into an enchanting performance.  When it awakes, the mind of the sleeper, as he opens his eyes, discovers a living mirror.  The gods are in the endlessly reflecting depths.  Belief is a pure human act.  Politics, producing a family, social life and metaphysical thinking are also infinitely reverberating theatrical performances, in which the soul realizes plays multiple roles all at once, in which it dreams, as millions do, it will brandish a spear, that it is stamping its heel on the floor, that its eyes are delivering flashes of lightning.”  My flipping of  Quignard The Roving Shadows

Really nice zoom show by Eric about his DCMoore show, “Source.”  Went for about and hour and a half.  I missed the very opening.  Wonderfully articulate about his work.  Our painting discussed with the four others, it was part of the first attempts he made after Covid hit us all and the world.  I’m hoping the video will be available in recorded form.  Another visit scheduled tomorrow.   To one question he said he would invite for dinner Walt Whitman, Agnes Martin and jazz pianist Bill Evans.  Liked Agnes Martin getting prime place.  Do not know Bill Evans, so have to put his music on right away.  Whitman, I can tell, Aho knows well.  And he talked about Marsden Hartley and one piece in particular I have to look up.  Better get a good book on Hartley.  Smelt Brook Falls, 1937  Wow, one or two of Aho’s pieces directly copies, echoes, this painting!!!  With interesting variations of course.  And our piece is part of this first suite of small works.

Interesting that he says he decided to not use ultramarine or cobalt—-he wanted to keep out the blue sky and focus on the earth and the light and shadow in the forest made by sunlight without showing blue sky.  Fascinating.  

Nicholas’s tweet for today—-Today to Olten to discuss meditation and leadership and next year’s John Main seminar,  and a whirl round the town.  #staycation

Second Aho gallery talk this afternoon just finished.  They brought in my question about Agnes Martin but not the rest of it about paint itself, so my point of interest got ignored sort of.  he did say her work is so light he thinks of it as a counterweight to his approach to paint.  And in the body of the discussion with the interviewer they mentioned slightly scraping and layerings of marks and brushstrokes.  On both days Aho mentioned how big and heavy some of his brushes are and when loaded, three or four pounds. 

(Freud—hmmm) but he could have gone more into his process of working on a painting and wish he had done that.  Liked much how he sees himself in the middle of his paintings and in the middle between realist landscape painting and abstract painting.   Also wandering and binocular

Aho ish words  

wandering  topobiography  realist abstractionist 

binocular ambiguous 

Geo Bellows Tumble of waters 

unifying event winter  /  painting 

doug wheeler  void 

starting new each time  mushy 

watercolor brush yellow streak 

constant thread sourdough starter

unified surface open 

hinge work  field previous show 

next show rapids and fallen tree

protean state tableaux frames 

Palmer start of investigations 

frames within frames  

centered  proscenium centeredness

presentness  drawing understanding

figure things out make place 

fatty protein glue Hartley rootedness

Martin's black trapezoid in gray field

ice pond cut on farm she grew up on

lightness of touch  outside of weight

counterbalance to my work 

particular place in universe 

stillness of empty canvas  sensory  

telluric sensitivity in me 

Courbet  the source of the 

goal to be in the middle  compulsion

not sense up here look for in painting

share sending happy feeling 

—-

I really don’t know landscape painting much at all.  Courbet’s Source of the Loue, George Bellows, Samuel Palmer, the Hudson school, the Canadians . . . . .

———-

Hi I feel fine.  Waiting to get call for scheduling next 2 things. 1) Bone scan to see if there is cancer in bones. 2) And abdominal CT to see if cancer there...

Oncologist is waiting for more results from the biopsy regarding what markers are there.  That will determine what treatment.  As far as I know there is the possiblity of surgery, radiation and of chemo. perhaps there is something else now.

For the breast cancer on the left side I had a lumpectomy and radiation,  no chemo.

For the lymphoma I only had chemo.

Love

PT

———

Yesterday you mentioned dining with Agnes Martin.  Have you ever

tried to paint an Agnes Martin sort of work?  Discuss your feelings

about thinness and thickness of the paint in your works, how you

work on the surface, especially on the large pieces, what you are

trying to achieve, find.  What the viewer of a completed piece

will experience in relation to the thin/thick finish of the surface?

—-

should add the word “muscular” to Aho’s lexicon, he likes that word with regard to brushwork.   I guess it is pretty clear that Aho is an INSP.  Wonder if he was a wrestler in school or college?  

Cliff Rames visited last night, 15th.  Stopped over in Woodstock NY night before to see his haiku teacher.  Had not met him.  Online course in haiku.  

Also tried to find Donald Hall’s house and Eagle Pond and got lost doing that.  As disappointed as I was about the actual location.  Rainy today but he said he wanted to go back and record one of his poetry readings in front of the house.  Just googled Strand—-former senior editor at the buddhhist magazine, Tricycle!!  there you have it.  Religion and Philosophy teacher from Sewanee.  4400 friends on fcbk!!  Does a haiku course, Cliff in second year of it, $200. a month for three years.  Married to Perdita Finn [!] and lives in Woodstock.  Just published a book on the rosary as ancient form of goddess worship.  Founder of The Way of the Rose!  a former senior editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, has been studying the world's spiritual traditions for more than forty years. The author of Waking Up to the Dark, Waking the Buddha, Meditation Without Gurus, How to Believe in God, and Seeds from a Birch Tree, Strand has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog. He is the co-founder of Way of the Rose, a growing nonsectarian rosary fellowship open to people of any spiritual background, and the co-author, with Perdita Finn, of the forthcoming book Way of the Rose: The Earth Wisdom of the Goddess Hidden in the Rosary. Strand hosts a popular Haiku Challenge on Facebook where poets from around the world are invited to submit haiku weekly on a set seasonal theme.  site Upaya  Upaya is a Zen center in Santa Fe.  !  

As a collector, I feel it impertinent, what is that imp word I need here, that I now watch an interview video with Tim McFarlane.  Found a few on YouTube.  Counterbalance Aho’s muscular, woodsy, realist-mysticism.  

Great interview from August with Sandra Fele, fundraiser with her army of artists.  

Trying to decide if my left eye is being strange!?  Feels a bit different.  

McFarlane’s interview perfect counterbalance.  He mentions nature in passing but primarily he is all about the city.  Wandering the city, taking photographs of things interesting to his eye, markings, residues, layers,

and then he talks about his language of markings and colors, textures, overlays, underlayering, criss-crossing, textual-like glyphs and grids.

17 Oct  

DCMoore twitter account today posted —

Eric Aho tells us “I’m physical with the paint. Always have been. I push it around; I handle it. There remains something necessary and insistent about expressing the muscularity of the paint, that curiously, isn’t about strength or the heroic.  It’s more awkward and protean than that, unguarded, even vulnerable. One can’t help but see the fragility of the landscape on close reading of its spaces and forms while wrestling them into place on the canvas.  Although this space is invisible, it oddly registers as familiar—imbued with human-like physical qualities. After all, seeing humanizes the landscape. Looking closely humanizes everything." 

text from the catalogue.   There is wrestling along with muscularity.  Where did he get that language?   google search finds two other uses in 2013 and 2016, one gallery show in Hudson, NY and one poetry blog from Paris.  So

maybe it is simply art world cliché I’ve just never run into.  

18 Oct 

Your score on the Explorer scale is 39 out of a possible 42, or 93%.

Your score on the Builder scale is 14 out of a possible 42, or 33%.

Your score on the Director scale is 10 out of a possible 42, or 24%.

Your score on the Negotiator scale is 42 out of a possible 42, or 100%.

This is my scoring on Helen Fisher’s Anatomy of Love typology.  Slow Sunday in mid-October!!

EXPLORERS are born free. They express more of the traits linked with the dopamine system in the brain. These men and women love novelty; they are willing to take risks to experience adventures of the mind and/or body. They are optimistic, energetic, spontaneous, mentally flexible, often generous and highly curious and creative. And they often seek a partner who will go adventuring with them: another Explorer. Because they are friendly and enthusiastic, have little interest in rules or schedules, and have no desire to control others they can make a date feel comfortable quickly. Explorers are also good at listening and talking. They are inquisitive, so they are likely to ask you about yourself in order to engage you and satisfy their curiosity. But they tend to play the field and seek as much freedom and variety as possible—until they are ready to settle down.

Among Explorers, similarity attracts, so another Explorer is a good match.

NEGOTIATORS are philosophers. These women (and men) express traits linked with the estrogen system in the brain. These people see the big picture. They are imaginative and intuitive. They have superb language and people skills. They are also emotionally expressive, as well as agreeable, trusting and compassionate. Negotiators seek someone with whom they can make an intensely intimate, deeply meaningful, inspiring and spiritual connection. But Negotiators, like Directors, prefer to go out with one person at a time and to explore the depths of this potential partnership. They dislike wasting time on irrelevant, trivial or boring socializing. When they find “The One,” Negotiators are superb at generating and maintaining intimacy with this partner. They avoid conflicts with a mate, and make major personal adjustments to strengthen this cherished bond. They give thoughtful gifts, such as a treasured book or photograph. They share their most personal feelings. And they want their partner to share his or her feelings too.

Negotiators are often attracted to their opposite, Directors.

short chat with the kids just now.  They are in the Luxembourg again this Sunday morning, admirers watching the kids painting en plain air.  Off to zumba and running around.  Paris now in curfew and Dave’s gig on the pirate boat was canceled—-told Bela it would be.  He’s happy though because the gig gave them two future dates and the band wants to post videos.  

Why does Helen Fisher’s approach seem interesting now?  Who knows?  The fact that she uses four bodily or brain chemical systems seems appealing—-“each associated with one of four basic brain systems: the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen system.”    

My scores are only seven points apart, so I can re-take to see if I can reverse the ordering and what happens.  

Took it.  This time I got a Tie between Negotiator and Explorer.  How can I choose?  You have a tie between Explorer + Negotiator!

Which is more like you?

I constantly seek new adventures. (Explorer)

I’m very introspective; I’m interested in deeply understanding myself and others. (Negotiator)

I’m going to say Negotiator is really primary—-yes, I drove to Saxtons River to meet Aho and buy his painting, but then after that, and before, I spent way too much time trying to figure him out, trying to figure out his works.  

Negotiators—-philosophers, estrogen, Bill Clinton and Oprah!!!  in relation with Directors.  

Sees the big picture: “web thinking”

Verbal & people skills 

Intuitive: “The only time I have made a bad decision is when I didn’t follow my instinct.”

Compassionate: “Your company is dysfunctional and your employees are entitled”

Emotionally expressive

Educator / reader

“reader” helps clinch this for me.  Today.  Tomorrow?  we’ll see.  Dopamine Explorer a close, tied, secondary.  JFK and Angelina Jolie——now those two don’t resonate so much—-nor their texts—-John F Kennedy

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics and cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were."

Angelina Jolie

Freedom: has a tattoo of a window.

Energy, creativity, curiosity

Unconventional: vial of blood around neck at wedding.

ehh—-her details don’t excite me—-

notice how earlier in the summer I was saying to myself—-I shoulda been a philosophy major and was reading about Witt and Kierke  etc  Not to mention last spring’s visiting angel messengers with philosophic inklings. 

Fisher puts this type with estrogen/oxytocin—Do Men produce oxytocin?

In the male mammal, the small peptide hormone oxytocin is produced in similar quantities within the hypothalamo-pituitary magnocellular system as in the female, yet for the male little is known about the physiology associated with this hormone.   So . . . . ?

—-Interestingly, the highest percentage of Analytical/Tough- minded men and women were from Spain (47.2%; 24.8%); and the highest percentage of Prosocial/Empathic men and women were from Japan (25.8%; 52.2%; Table 1), even though Japan had the most men in the sample (72%). These data suggest that different cultures are composed of individuals who, collectively, express somewhat different temperament profiles, at least those who wish to find a dating partner.——

That suspicion that reading novels might not be what I want after all.  

What if I were to read more directly philosophical works and not fiction? Whoa, what terrifying prospect?  Or is it?  Why might it be what longed for and denied?  How strange to even pen these things?  But look at the painting—-painted for years, yes, but even more so read books about painters and painting.  ??  huh?   Look how much I enjoy Lars Iyer.  And after all for the diss read all of Burke and that ain’t fiction and even didn’t like trying to read his fiction.  May be occupational psychosis—-I had to teach lit and so I liked it.  Sort of.  What if I had had to teach philosophy?

Might I have enjoyed that more?  Even?  Not that they are mutually exclusive, of course.  Blur and merge them, yes.

wow  now here is what is on Lars’s blog, posted two days ago — 

One thing, however, did occur to me. It was important to carry on writing without waiting for the right moment, because the right moment never comes. Writing has never been easy for me. I knew from the outset this was my vocation. Having a vocation is not the same as having talent. One can have a vocation and no talent – in other words, feel compelled to write without knowing where to start.

Clarice Lispector, a 'chronicle' for the Jornal do Brasil, 2nd May 1970

Note: Benjamin Moser partially translate the chronicle in his biography of Lispector as follows:

When, consciously, thirteen years old, I consciously claimed the desire to write - I wrote as a child, but I had not claimed a destiny -, when I claimed the desire to write, I suddenly found myself in a void. And in that void there was nobody who could help me. I had to lift up myself from a nothingness, I myself had to understand myself, I myself had to invent, in a manner of speaking, my own truth. […] Writing was always difficult for me, even though I had begun with what is known as vocation. Vocation is different from talent. One can have vocation and not talent; one can be called and not know how to go. 

—-

love that distinction—vocation not the same as talent.  

another quote from Spurious  —-  

Life is an anarchy of light and dark: nothing is ever completely fulfilled in life, nothing ever quite ends; new, confusing voices always mingle with the chorus of those that have been heard before. Everything flows, everything merges into another thing, and the mixture is uncontrolled and impure; everything is destroyed, everything is smashed, nothing ever flowers into real life . . . Real life is always unreal, always impossible, in the midst of empirical life. But suddenly there is a gleam, a lightning that illumines the banal paths of empirical life; something disturbing and seductive, dangerous and surprising. The accident, the great moment, the miracle ; an enreachment and a confusion. It cannot last, no one would be able to bear it, no one could live at such heights – at the height of their own life and their own ultimate possibilities. One has to fall back into numbness. One has to deny life in order to live.

Lukacs, 'Metaphysics of Tragedy'

downloaded the right book from Fisher and am reading—-earlier I got a

column about it on BigThink—-had not realized that the biological influence involved a flood of one of the hormones in the womb!!

“Negotiators received a hearty helping of prenatal estrogen. Estrogen is closely related to oxytocin, the “calm and cuddle” hormone. This type is trusting, generous, imaginative, social, and open-minded. They’re also very nurturing and empathetic. Negotiators have excellent verbal skills. Dr. Fisher calls them, “prosocial/empathetic.”

I’m quite taken with Fisher’s approach and she lines it up right away with history and the MBTI, which she knew nothing about until after she started her own work.  They corroborate each other.  

Today, 21 Oct, Va fell out of bed while I was in the shower.  Wrapped up in the big duvet, soft fall.  I didn’t hear her calling but heard the thud.  She was fine, luckily missed hitting the two wooden boxes (nightstand).  We called 911, Tyler and Rachel came in the ambulance and Tyler picked her up.  Shower and breakfast as usual.  

Monday 19 Oct she got the flu shot at CVS.  

New Modiano book, translation, arrived on Kindle.  

“And if you’re a Negotiator, live on the high peaks or anywhere else; Directors have the focus and determination to find you.”  Fisher

I think Willow is a Director.  ? or Builder ? 

As an instance of web thinking: “What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”  Susan Sontag 

Negotiators highly imaginative.  Not the same drive as creativity.  A relief to see that confirmed.  My experiment in painting proved that to me.   And maybe the collaboration with Rupert on poetry too.  Fascinating that Fisher uses throughout this chapter Charles Darwin!!!  Never would have guessed that.  Web thinking.  Not “science” as I mistakenly assume.  

Super consciousness, super awareness.  Tolstoy as instance.  Will I have to read him after all?  Why not Proust?  Seek to understand themselves—-but can overdo it, self-absorbed, self-conscious and self-critical.  Nosy.  Depression.  Estrogen expressed.  Ghandi.  Search for wisdom.  

Called Don Hoover in Abq but he thought I was a spam call.  Called back and left a message thanking him for suggesting we get the AFO adjusted.  

Ben came to look at the bed.  We don’t want to move the big painting.  Question now is whether to put the headboard, a headboard, onto the wall or on the braces that can attach to the bed frame.  We/Ben tended at once to overelaborate the project I think.  Nightstands and hand grips.  

Good lunch at that salad juice place on south Main yesterday in Concord.  Read some more of Maritime Ode.  One great passage —-  

this is not it—-but another found just now while I looked for the one—

“In a divine ecstasy of revelation

During the hours imbued with silences and anguish,

It is not a bridge between any quay and The Quay!”

Every line almost is wonderful, intense, extreme, exalted, sensuous, 

He mentions an English sailor friend, Jim Barnes.  Biography confirm?

“My inward thoughts burst into spume

And my flesh is a wave breaking upon great rocks!”

———

“My life!

Make salt with spume tossed up by winds

My yearning for great voyages, 

Castigate with scourging water the flesh of my adventure.

Steep in ocean cold the bones of my existence, 

Flagellate, cut down, wrinkle with winds, spray and sun 

My cyclonic and Atlantic-like self, 

Whose nerves are hung like shrouds, 

A lyre in the hands of the winds! 

Yes, yes, yes…Crucify me into navigations

And my shoulders will enjoy my cross!

Fasten me to voyages as though to spars 

And the sensation of spars will penetrate my spine

And I will come to feel them in one vast passive spasm! 

Make of me what you will so long as it is on the seas,

On deck, in the sound of the waves, 

——Pessoa  “Naval Ode” 

Whitman, Melville, St John of the Cross, maybe Hart Crane (never read him), Eliot?  not so much Stevens?  hmm

more likely both Willow and I are Negotiators? with differing secondary temperament —-I’m Negotiator/Explorer, Va Negotiator/Builder (or vice versa?)   clearly she’s a Builder/Negotiator—builder: meticulous, cautious, plans carefully.  

second finger length 

she clarifies MBTI—P type is dopamine Explorer, S & J the serotonin Builder, T the Director and NF the estrogen Negotiator  

Fisher’s literary agent is Amanda Urban.  Kathie Min’s.  And other big writers, so Fisher is a literary player before anthropologist?  Or one who knows how to reach the widest audience.  Match and Chemistry.com etc 

22 October  Thus morning bright and warm  maple tree glorious red

scale shock—-guess who weighed in at 200!!!!  Moi?? how on earth did we do that??   Va steady too at 171.  

bought the new apple watch as a health concern after the fall yesterday.  We will both wear them full time as protection against needing help in a fall.  etc  plus health info  

Negotiators are the most romantic of the four types. In my Personality Type Study, I asked the question “How

often do you fall in love?” Negotiators fall in love the most frequently of the four basic types. If adventure is

essential to the Explorer, and loyalty is imperative to the Builder, and sex is vital to the Director, romance is

critical to the Negotiator. So these men and women plan romantic evenings and weekends; send romantic cards

and e-mails; express their love regularly with hugs and endearing words; and hope for clear, regular signals that

their devotion is returned.

Highlight (Yellow) | Page 139

Different types of Negotiators have different needs and desires, of course. NEGOTIATOR/Explorers are lovers

through and through. As Negotiators, they seek a bottomless, spiritual connection with a “true love.” As

Explorers, they are particularly attracted to individuals who are daring, playful and adventurous. But both

Negotiators and Explorers can be chameleons—so charming, personable and eager to please that they can be

difficult to get to know. The same can be said about NEGOTIATOR/Explorers. They might not know who they

are either—because they have so many angles to their personality. Yet these men and women bring much to a

relationship, regularly kindling imaginative and creative conversations and experiences that are interesting and fun. 

copying highlights from the kindle not as easy as it should be—-copying and sending —- oh well  —-

interesting note from Aciman!! 

Dear Bob,

Hope you've been well. In my forthcoming book I am thanking you for introducing me to Pessoa. Thank you once again for bringing this giant of modern literature into my life.  We still have a coffee to share--but covid and our fates have to make that happen.

Yours,

André

————-

Dear André---

How nice to hear from you.  And nice to hear you are writing about Pessoa in your new book, thanks for the mention.  I really look forward to seeing what you have to say.  Especially as, if I recall correctly, the motif of the essays is how all reading is misreading.  Should be rich and provocative thinking for all readers.  

Just yesterday I sent this passage to some friends---one in CA who had just found himself the Book of Disquiet.  I have read little of Pessoa's verse (yet?) but came upon a fine essay about the difficulties of translating him, and that featured a long poem called variously "Naval Ode" or "Ode Maritime."  So I read that long work, not that long.  Felt like a blend of Melville, (the sea), and Whitman, and St John of the Cross.  Maybe Hart Crane, but I've never read him.  Here is the passage---

“My inward thoughts burst into spume

And my flesh is a wave breaking upon great rocks!”

———

“My life!

Make salt with spume tossed up by winds

My yearning for great voyages, 

Castigate with scourging water the flesh of my adventure.

Steep in ocean cold the bones of my existence, 

Flagellate, cut down, wrinkle with winds, spray and sun 

My cyclonic and Atlantic-like self, 

Whose nerves are hung like shrouds, 

A lyre in the hands of the winds! 

Yes, yes, yes…Crucify me into navigations

And my shoulders will enjoy my cross!

Fasten me to voyages as though to spars 

And the sensation of spars will penetrate my spine

And I will come to feel them in one vast passive spasm! 

Make of me what you will so long as it is on the seas,

On deck, in the sound of the waves, 

——Pessoa  “Naval Ode” 

------

Yes, a coffee in our futures at the right time.  I had an offer to go to NYC last week for a gallery opening. Nothing else to do these days, I made my first ever purchase of art, a painting, small, which is part of a show right now at DCMoore Gallery.  So if you need an excuse to roam the city, drop in to see my painting! Ha.  A new experience.  Actually I bought two--this one and one by an artist in Philly whose career I've enjoyed following.   The Moore exhibit is Eric Aho, a Vermont painter.  He posted the image a month or two back, day my right eye cataract surgery was successful and the new vision is so intense and clear I instantly messaged him and said I must buy this one!  So a week later I drove over to his Saxtons River VT studio and met him.  I was the first person he had seen outside of his family and village, since March!   

These Covid times!!   How soon can we hope to see the book?  And what have you already begun to work on next?   

Hoping you and yours stay well,  

Bob 

———

Beauty is the beginning of a terror we're just able to bear.  Rilke --   cyberbirk posted yesterday

Wondering if David Zaintz chose a title for his red painting yet.  I gave him way too many suggestions last night.  Being nosy, like navigators do.  

Will the repairman show?  Doubting it, rainy Friday morning.  

svenbirkerts (@sven birkerts) Tweeted: “What any true painting touches is an absence—an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.” John Berger

I’ve resisted for years but finally I will ask:  how does Birkerts find all the great quotes he posts???  

Hovering in the back of my mind these past few months, Nicholas’s unspoken challenge—-to read and love Romola by George Eliot.  

What if Nicholas caves and loves Proust, after all?   Will Aciman’s book of essays satsify?  Amazon has it posted—-Homo Irrealis: Essays

by André Aciman | Jan 19, 2021

Irrealis moods are the set of verbal moods that indicate that something is not actually the case or a certain situation or action is not known to have happened . . .

André Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what the present tense means to artists who cannot grasp the here and now. Irrealis is not about the present, or the past, or the future, but about what might have been but never was—but could in theory still happen.

From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street, to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, Constantine Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, Éric Rohmer, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa, and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection of the imagination’s power to shape our memories under time’s seemingly intractable hold.

——-

This morning quiet in the house, Willow hard at work on her charlatan Count article.  Foggy outside.  

"The City"   I read it first in Tunis in '67, and it summed up how I felt at the time.

"You tell yourself that you'll be gone

 to some other city

 far lovelier than this is or ever could be...."

Those are the lines that are still with me.

P

——

I can see why—-wish I had read it back in ’67, would have memorized it also

Times today—-everyone on tik tok is gay—-homiesexual is a new term—shift in generational attitudes older people can’t quite figure out —-

“When I was in high school four years ago, maybe it was uncool to be gay, but maybe now being cool is gay,” Mr. Toteda says in the video. “Even straight boys are pretending to be gay to act cool. Just like when I was pretending to be straight to act cool, they’re doing the opposite now.”

“You know what,” he adds with a laugh, “it helps that they are attractive.”

Oh and Berlin’s airport open at last.  Fourteen years, four billion over projected costs.  Instantly vintage in appearance and styles.    Monday morning the 26—-

——-

I have a lot of sympathy with the kid working at Wegmann's.   He doesn't really know what he wants to do and is clutching at straws.  I, likewise, never knew what I wanted to do, but was luckier and snared some jobs that paid fairly well.  I got to be a book editor despite being virtually untrained for the position.  Likewise, working in computers and telecom.  I wrote some novels to see if the gods would smile down on me and make financially successful.   They didn't smile. And I still don't really know what I want to accomplish in life.  This past week I mentioned this problem to a former girlfriend who has known me more than 40 years.   She told me that she thought I would have made a good army officer, someone like General Mattis: military but well educated.   Well, my dad was in the Nat'l Guard and army for over 10 years.  Maybe some of that rubbed off on me.  But I would have had one big problem.  I don't like killing anything much less anyone.  And the you-must-salute-and-obey-orders world would have quickly proved intolerable.   So I'm back at:  I have no idea what I would like to accomplish in life.  However, there are several things I know I didn't want to do.  Because of watching dad, I wanted no part of medicine.  Besides,  that field literally stunk of shit, etc.  So did chemistry.  Really bad smells.  And because my brother was an electrical engineer who constantly explained what he did in ways that neither I nor my parents could ever understand, I didn't want anything to do with engineering.  While still in Cumberland, I heard about steel workers falling into a huge vat of molten steel, so I never wanted to work in a steel mill.   I can't take heights, so designing or constructing tall buildings was out.  Mining was out, too.   I taught in Tunisia and that was enough teaching for me.   Musician?  No talent whatsoever at both piano and guitar.  In the end, the only thing I ever recall thinking I would like to be was a multi-millionaire or billionaire.

How about you?  You wanted to be an architect at one point, I think.   Also, I think you erroneously thought you could become a Christian Brother.   Have any other ambitions?   And did you, like me, rule things out?

P

PS  I think Sitter has been exactly what he wanted to be and that he pursued it in a very single-minded fashion from an early age.

———

——-

Had forgotten he had gotten into the Naval Academy.  Didn't know he didn't get a job at Princeton.  

Have no idea what I want to be.  Had I not met Virginia, I'd have been lost and probably dead by now.  She has all the focus and drive of the happy (spoiled?) alpha daughter of two strong professional people (her mother moreso than her father.  Mother Iowa Dutch stock, father all the grace and charm of Alabama shoulda-been gentleman).  

Your old flame who wants you to be a general!  yikes.  She is describing who she wishes she had found to marry, but not you.  How little any of us know one another even after years and years.  

Read about architecture in Wright's books but had no clue how to go about becoming one and no one seemed to help, but maybe I didn't ask around much.  Suspected higher math would be necessary and knew I wouldn't be interested in that.  Joining he brothers the biggest mistake of my life!!  Why didn't a responsible adult say---hey,are you sure you want to join the military??  It will be much more like that than like joining a friendly club of fun loving guys.  Once I flunked out of that via panic attack/anxiety attack/whatever, everything since has been a series of the same pattern:  imagine something as a romantic idealistic way to go/be, try it out and find it is not as imagined and not nearly as interesting or rewarding as expected.  I expect too that even if I had gotten to architecture school I would have followed the same pattern.  So a long series of gee, maybe you shoulda tried being a poet, a painter, a novelist.  Tried writing novels but couldn't ever get much beyond a chapter or two, imitating someone else's.  And within the teaching line---endless tries with differing sorts of reading lists.  More and more thought that I had no idea what teaching was about nor that I could do it.  Became a job, show up, pay some attention to students, entertain them, provoke them, hand them on.  

Now my goal is to become a half-successful dilettante-hermit.  Over the years, looking at others, I thought maybe I coulda, shoulda become a therapist of some sort.  Most likely I would have become a staffer in some agency oroutfit, like a cultural foundation or charity, or government wing.  Paper shuffling, report-making and reading.  

The Wegman's fellow right after college went to Croatia and spent ten years there working for various groups.  Then he had another ten or so in NY in the refugee resettlement agency.  Then he became a sommelier in night school and had a fancy job at a wine spa in the Plaza Hotel for the ladies who lunch (always wanted to ask him but never did).  That outfit fired him after 2008 I guess, he  had a rough patch, is now happy to have work.  I can see why he's finding some comfort in crafting haiku.  Never married.  Brought a young woman, fifteen years younger? orten, over from Croatia, "saved" her and her parents.  She still rooms with him in NJ, now with her lesbian partner.  Most lives seem like ours---fall into this, move into that, never figure out much, really.  

I'm wondering if Rotella, the writer of the Post essay, might regret having published it later on. BC is no Harvard but he knows he's very lucky to have kids who behave well and do what their told, pretty much.   He tries his best to make the best case for his line of work, but were I a pressed hard-nosed dean, I'd say, well, books, you know, work really well with people who read in private, after all.  Your classroom skills amount to a variation on group therapy and social action and our university just doesn't have the money for this after we pay the computer techs guys and the varsity athletes.   As I read in a book last night "In 212 BCE, under the emperor Qin Shi-huang. [who became first emperor of a unified China in 221 BCE], all men of letters spotted in the empire were buried alive."  

This SlowVid period we are now in--how long will it last?  how long will repercussions ripple?  Will survivors ever look back and say, it was good, really, that we had to pause almost everything and ask, what do we want, what can we work for next?  Who are we?  Are we really never beyond the Socratic questions?  

Your list could make a good poem about our searches for livelihood, focus, meaning, respect, understanding.  All things bright and bleak.  Cold, foggy day here.  Bet you couldn't have guessed !!! 

On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 2:10 PM J. P. Jones <jpjones33@hotmail.com> wrote:

When I said "early age" I was thinking of college years. He applied to the naval academy and got in, so at that point I don't think he was thinking of any particular career.  But once he saw Harvard and met guys from Exeter who were pointed toward professorships, I think he began thinking in that general direction, too:  writing, lit, professorships.  As far as I know the only goal he didn't achieve in his career was getting that job at Princeton……….P

——

yesterday, last night too, I marked poignant passages at the end of Quignard’s book.  He, it, got to me after all.  I could copy out some of the passages.  Maybe I will, maybe I will wait.  Are they as good as I thought then?  Are they good enough to copy?  Or are they merely poignant?  Why?  

“All lives are false.

It is narration that is alive, or vital, or vitalizing or revivifying.”  All stories matter?  

Possible that only novelists realize the error engendered by all narration and the strange vitality that arises out of that fiction.  Homo Irrealis?  

See if Aciman matches Quignard’s pithiness?  Insight?  Only novelists realize that there are so many possible novels upstream.  Human beings “want to believe that there is some strange direction or promise to their days.”

Is Quignard a cynic?  here is a passage Lax would enjoy

as with Cincinnatus and his fields, so it is with

the hermit and his desert;

the fish and water;

the reader and his book;

the shadow and its corner.  

“The rejection of social belonging is a thing condemned by every human group.  Such a condemnation is the basis of every myth.  . . . But this is wrong. For there have been forbidden lovers who have known happiness.  There have been lone figures, hermits, wanderers, outsiders, shamans, marginals and solitaries, who have been the happiest of people.”  —-Quignard  171  

“We must stay close to the gushing spring.  . . . Everything is a pathway when the most intimate proximity approaches.  I would always distrust someone who says we when experiencing orgasm.”  181 

Dear Bob,

Super! Will there be a film? Move over 'You've Got Mail', enter, 'Love is a literary allusion' or 'Call me with your favorite author'. After a tempestuous exchange of email where Achebe is traded for Wilson Harris and Pramoedya Ananta Toer is swapped for Ioan Slavici, our two literary besotted protagonists meet for coffee on the fringes of a literary congress and discover they have nothing whatsoever to say to each other in person:-) (It is a European, not an American, film)! It happened to Narayan and Graham Greene apparently. They had a lively correspondence and Greene had been instrumental in bringing Narayan to the attention of a Western audience but they only met once and it proved a great let down for both parties!

Love, Nicholas

—

Nicholas’s reply combined with Carlo Rotella’s has me planning a book—-Conversations with Artists and Writers who Didn’t Want to Meet Me

Have never seen this long a text from K—-

B

We get the Post but I failed to read this fabulous essay. I was intrigued by the author’s insight into Zoom learning, but found more interested the discussion of the place of English and English literature in the college curriculum.  Having watched the last PSU faculty forum on reducing the number of majors, I’m fearful that critical or reflective thinking will give way to what some would mistakenly call “more practical matters.’ Bringing Trump into the conversation is an excellent example of how (seemingly) business or political “expertise “ goes far astray from what is important in life. I worry that the excellent potential of the cluster approach will ignore what constitutes a complete and compassionate person. There are bright faculty—maybe these fears are silly.

Thanks for sending this link. Well at least it’s not 5 below zero tonight.

——

Carlo’s reply —- 

Thanks for your kind words, Bob.  I know those guys, at least two of whom were my mother's professors at the U of C (she was in comp lit, not English).  And hey, I just don't run across "anchoritic" as much as I should.  That's a word to eat with knife and fork, and to savor.  I hope all's well with you and yours.--Best, Carlo

This makes me think of Fisher’s comment that Navigators can be nosy.  I guess my notes to the slightly famous might be nosiness envy cloaked as faint praise?  

Heading to Harris furniture to see about swapping the new beds.  And to Plymouth about a new washing machine.  Our “fixed” machine is now spinning but Zach the repairman is himself skeptical about whether the fix will work.  The clothes from last night were wet but did not seem to have been spun.  Now on a spin only.  Fingers crossed.  Need to take a walk!!

Carlo making fun with “anchoritic” helps distance Quignard again, back into his place.  Is he as profound as he wants to be?  

Phil goes back over Sitter family history—-interesting that he is as attentive to it as he is—-they had an impact on him.  Big family in contrast with his status as a really almost solo younger brother.  

There was something in all the Sitters that seemed determined to succeed.  As I recall, either John's mother or father came from Presbyterians  and converted to catholicism in order to marry.  But I think the Presby outlook remained and pushed the kids fairly hard.   Meanwhile, as late as 1860 Pope Gregory told Catholics that railroads were Satanic because they encouraged people to not remain in their communities and accept their status in life.  The whole Catholic schmear was against any kind of personal ambition.   

But I think there's more to it than that.  I think you and I grew up at a time when our world in Cumberland was very comfortable for us middle class guys while the whole world outside Cumberland was opening up - yet only in some ways.  It was a confusing situation that left guys like you and me kind of floundering around.  And still floundering in some ways.

Me in the army.  When I was in my forties I heard myself desrcribed as "an aging hippie." Of course, I wasn't, but with my deep, runner's sun tan, sunbleached hair that was somewhat long in back but receding in front, and mustache I might have looked old hippie-ish.  Conversely, for the past 10-15 years a lot of people who meet me guess that I'm retired military.  Again, off by a mile,  but I think that's because of how I carry myself and what I look like these days. Erect.  Reserved. 

How about science?   Were you ever attracted by any career in science?   From what you said about math  - it didn't interest you - I suspect science was never on the radar screen.   It seems that some kind of artistic pursuits were the only things you thought might be interesting.  I was the same way for a long while.  I wonder what pushed us in that direction. (Late in life I got interested in computers and took a bunch of math classes at U of MD and Hopkins.  These days, I remember very little of that math, and it never was a powerful attraction.   It was just something I thought I would need to know.  As it turned out, I  didn't need the math at all.)

Therapist.  I think you might have been a good one - a psychologist not a psychiatrist (too much math/biology/chemistry/physics in medical school).  You listen well, and usually are reluctant to offer your own opinion.  Rather, you always look for some expert's opinion to respond with, and that might have worked well in therapy.  But, as you note, you might have settled into the administrative side of that - researching and writing reports.  Informing people in general about what experts think.

Wegman guy is obviously older than I thought.  And more widely experienced.  But, as with you and me, none of his experience really seems to have settled things in any kind of permanent way.   Haiku is still a straw he's clutching.

Rotella:  Like you, I wonder if writing that article may come back to bite him in the ass in some way.  And you bring up a good point about "men of letters."  They can find themselves in good times when people think knowing about books and authors is a good thing.  But they can find themselves in times when citing a book or author can get you in big danger.   As for me, I confess that I used to be far more reverential about "men of letters" than I am today.  These days I'm far more likely to say Tolstoy writes well, but I don't think he has any great insight that could change my opinion about anything.  And James Joyce now strikes me as a drunken Irishman."  But I view knowledge of literature in much the same way as I view religion.  If someone believes, that's fine with me, but as for my own views, I'm as skeptical about authors as I am about religious figures.

P

Should I take offense at his characterizing me as a citer of experts?  Seems that is pretty much my mode.  “Dinners with Sources who would have preferred not to have been cited.”   I’ve always thought I had no journalistic leanings but I guess the expert thing might look otherwise.  

Quignard:  “Art, like gestation, like parturition, links us to the past, as do sexuality and passion.”  “Every work of art is this language at its source.  That is to say, it is a world that has become a past.”  “We can make no distinction between the defence of the works of the past, the defence of sexual pleasure, the defence of written language and the defence of art.”

Hmm.  Really?  “Art obeys no temporal order.  Like time itself, it has no orientation.  It knows no progress, no accumulation, no eternity, no place, no centre, no capital, no battlefront.”   Hmm again.  Phil and I will have to give all of this a dose of Allegany mountain skepticism.  Enough with pontificating French big thinkers.  

—-

One difference between us.  You wrote: "...a series of the same pattern:  imagine something as a romantic idealistic way to go/be, try it out and find it is not as imagined and not nearly as interesting or rewarding as expected." I never thought of anything as romantic or idealistic.   It was always just a way to make some money, and I usually did it until I found it boring.  At that point - usually after about four or five years - I quit and found something else to do in order to make enough to pay the rent and put some food on the table.   So we are alike in finding things ultimately boring, but it seems we started our various projects/jobs with very different motivations.  And I think this difference shows up in our reading.  I could be wrong but you seem to be searching for something exalting in your choices of what to read.  I'm far more prosaic/practical/non poetic.  

P

PS.  Got my eyes examined today. My cataracts have grown but haven't affected my vision much at all.  No operation necessary for the foreseeable future.  (No pun intended.)  

found this on worldlitforum—interesting—reminds me that those are the sites I should be staying with, focusing on, if I can’t ignore these screens at all !  

I have the feeling that French writer Pascal Quignard is the Ka (or spiritual double) of Octavio Paz.

Pascal Quignard's 'Le dernier royaume' books resemble Nietzsche's half aphorisms, half mini-essays books. The main difference between the two sets of works is that Nietzsche mostly explored one cultural heritage per book. So, Dawn explores the Christian/Hebrew writings; The birth of tragedy, studies Greek writings, some other works cover Roman writings. 

On the other hand, 'Le dernier royaume', reflecting our times, mixes all cultures at the same time, Hindu, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Chinese, modern, etc. into one tasty schoppino.

The closest thing we have in America to Quignard's erudition is Eliot Weinberger and his 'guess-the-source-of-my-quotations' books. But the spirit of Weinberger's work is completely different. Quignard is gathering different sands and pebbles to build the sand-castles of his thoughts. Weinberger is gathering little shells, beautiful rocks and odd, eroded glass pieces from the beach to show us how rich our human heritage is.

in other words, yes, those estrogen flushes have made me a gossip —- 

Plymouth Furniture has come through boffo!! new Speed Queen tomorrow—-Whichers down the block just bought one too!!!

——

I’m gathering material for a new book, a collection of interviews, “Conversations with Artists and Writers Who Really Would Rather Not have Met with Me After All.”

——

“To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations, such is a pleasure beyond compare.”

Yoshida Kenko

Plymouth Furniture men installing the new Speed Queen.  Heavy bumps getting it down the stairs but sounds like they are connecting the hoses.  Feels like a miracle, really, given the two-three weeks without a washing machine.  We did talk with Joe about doing the upstairs washing machine and he will when his schedule permits.  He’s just poured the concrete floor for a new barn in Campton.  Evidence yesterday in Walmart of how people are starting to hoard again.  Weather milder today.  

Back to thinking that one book at a time gives me a better zen tranquility mode.  Houghton’s Neighbours and Campbell’s Lord Dismiss Us vying.  Campbell’s is funnier, boarding school.  Houghton’s is in paper, not on kindle.  Good YouTube video explaining Toyota doesn’t understand why the Rav4 hybrid has issues with the fuel tank and display.  They have been working on it for six or seven months.  

Praying to the gods of plumbing and plumbers.  Tomorrow, Friday, a crucial day.  

Thanksgiving plans with Sarah and Don.  Nice to have.  Photos from the kids of halloween down at Chezet this weekend.  

Friday  30  first light snow on all the trees.  No peep yet from a plumber.  Apple watch will arrive.  It has been said.  Sent out a plumbing request via Yelp!  will that work?  

snow, sunlight, red maple, incredibly beautiful   Still, short walk to chill about the plumbers, to little avail.  Sarah texted that FBI is looking into an illegal rave at Hong Kong Gardens and phat phish lying about its workers getting covid.   “Yes, I know writing is supposed to make something more.  But this is much less . . . Perhaps it’s because I’m not going to be a writer.”  Campbell

Wordsworth——from Poetry Chaikana —-  have not read him for ages!  since the course with Maclean ??  This is from The Prelude Book 2 

Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,
From Nature and her overflowing soul,
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steeped in feeling; I was only then
Contented, when with bliss ineffable
I felt the sentiment of Being spread
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
And human knowledge, to the human eye
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
If high the transport, great the joy I felt,
Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
One song they sang, and it was audible,
Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain
Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.

———-

Felt so wretched in the early part of the day, even a short walk.  Anthony the plumber showed at noon and all was well.   He said we need to stop breathing the methane from the open sewer in the basement.  Guess so.  Should explore having Rowells do a whole treatment to stop water around the house, in the basement.  

My buyer’s remorse about the bed size played itself out yesterday morning when Mike called to off an alternative to trading for a true king.  Company won’t take back the expensive bed frames and so it would have cost us an additional $2400. to get new frames to fit the new mattresses.  Those they give to prisons for a write-off.  We said heck with it and canceled and are liking our new wide-skinny cal king bed(s) like the wise and mature elders we do be.  

Daylight fall back to upset our body clocks for this upsetting week of votes.  

Light at the end of the tunnel is that on Friday I can pre-order the most expensive iphone ever.  

Monday 2 November Blustery and snow flurries.  All Souls or Day of the Dead

Did successfully raise the painting in our bedroom.  The old headboard back behind the bed, resting on the wall.  Don’t think the mounting braces will be necessary.   

We know growing older has a lot going against it.  But geezer embarrassment needs more press.  Garbage disposal went on the blink.  I looked under the sink and told my self, now you know how to do this!!  I prodded the electrical outlet reset thingys, over and over.  No avail.  I flipped the circuit breakers two or three times over two or three days.  Hoping for magic.I got out the wrench-thing for turning the disposal by hand, and got the water to drain out, plush fished out by hand lots of gunk.  I tried poking the electrical things again, carefully using a wooden chop stick because I have to stretch under the sink and my arm is not quite long enough, plus there are scads of wires and tubes from the refrigerator hook-up hanging all over the place under there.  Finally I called an electrician.  No reply.Then I called Bert, a superb electrician who was a student years and years ago.  In just one or two classes, he was already about five years older than the regulars.  This morning he came to the front door, by surprise, about noon, cold and blustery.  He lay on the floor to look under the sink and said, oh, yes, I think I remember this one.  And we both laughed and started to remember that yes, this was a scenario we had both starred in about two or three years before.  I said in my defense, I tried poking the resets and the circuit breakers. Where is the switch that controls it? he asked.  I hit the switch and then he poked the resets and bam, there was a sort of shock on the gizmo with the green light he uses to see if wires are live, and he leapt back and the little wrench-thing fired out towards him and fell on the floor.He hadn't seen that I had left that hanging from the bottom of the disposal.  "F*** I'm glad that thing didn't put your eye out!""What the heck was that?"  And he laughed and I felt so embarrassed, and yes we figured this had all happened about three years before.The darn reset buttons don't work unless the switch for them is turned ON.  Counterintuitive to mortals because you think you don't want juice on when you are poking resets even with wooden chopstix!!  Professor Entwell will never recover from this geezer embarrassment.  

Evening.  All’s well in the house, everything works.  Sit back and enjoy.  New this, new that, new toys, new gizmos.  Embarrassment of riches.  

I’ll send Bert a copy of the tale with a Better Call Saul postcard.  That will seal the chuckle over my forgetful stupidity.  

Election day.   Phil says DC is boarded up more than he’s ever seen it before.  

Started looking at the Lars Iyer video about creative writing.  Seems dreadful, alas, at first glance, but later today (day off) it might be just the thing to keep me from watching the tv news.  

Started by wealthy Swiss worthies.  Led me to find about a French theorist who long ago professed what I came to believe about education.  “Ranciere has written about radical pedagogy in his book “The Ignorant Schoolmaster.”  Ranciere’s central thesis is that the traditional teacher-student relationship breeds stultification and reproduces hierarchies of knowledge. He posits as an alternative the education model of Joseph Jacotot, who believed students could figure shit out on their own if they were motivated.

Virginia and Elizabeth could not get into the wv pool today, snow flurries on the ground.  Va did get E to vote later in the day when she found out E had not voted.  I had a burger at bgood and cookies at crust&crumb.  Gorgeous sunny day but cold and windy, dramatic, wonderful clouds and sky shadows.  

4 Nov   No winner yet.  Doug just brought in a bag of firewood.  Sunny and bright.  Refresh at noon.  The book you were able to generate some interest in yesterday this morning disinvites itself as frivolous and silly.  

Willow upset by news from Kenna yesterday.  Del too infirm (heart) to keep caring for her so she is now in a care place by herself and he’s in another.  Details needed.  Va said she told Eliz this yesterday morning and cried and cried.  Things we all worry about out of the corner of our eyes and hearts.  

Hi Bob,

The good news is that your disposal is fixed.  You knew an electrician and he came.  Every little glitch seems bigger because of the pandemic.

We are still in election denial.  Who are all these people who support Trump?  We did not stay up late but were disappointed with election results when we got up.  Maybe, just maybe, Trump will lose.

We are not enjoying the cold weather.  We skipped walking on Monday-it was just too cold and windy.  How will we ever make it till April?   I am putting pressure on Ken to go to Florida but probably to no avail.

I wish I could say see you soon or let’s get together at Six Burner, but I can’t so see you next summer.  Ha ha.

Carole

———

I fired off a morning rant early in the day to Phil only, thank goodness—

Yes we are the deplorables

and when we say no more bullshit on our Rump flag we mean stop calling us authentic.  We're racist which is code you asshole for class war. Our anger and rage at what has happened to our lives is what only a failure fake media faded star can epitomize.  we're the fuck you vote.  we 

went to college yeah and now we're recycling cardboard boxes for amazon or driving trucks for walmart.  we back him because he offers nothing and says you're on your own.  he's disgusting and honest about it like we wish we could be!  

grumpy bright morning here, one of my newish neighbors has his trimp flag flying. He's built a business of waste disposal (or at least trucking it off) in the area.  

the middle of the country vs the coastal elites  etc etc 

Phil replied— 

"We're the fuck you vote.....We back him because he offers nothing. " Couldn't agree more.   But in some respects I don't care as much as many people do.  Trump may be embarrassing and he is fucking up a lot of things but I've got enuff money that I  don't think I will be much affected.  I do care that the incompetent asshole is screwing up our government, and it bothers me that his damage may hurt a lot of people who don't have as much money as I do.  So, all in all, I hope Biden wins.    

Beautiful day here.  Cloudless blue sky, sunny.  70 degrees. 

Got my eyes examined about ten days ago and have now obtained three estimates for new glasses with progressive, glare resistant lenses.  Lenscrafter cost is too high _$473.  Costco amazingly cheap ($225) but I worry about quality.  Will probably go with my health plan: Kaiser Permanente with cost in between Lenscrafter and Costco.  $395.   Do those prices sound in line with what's available in NH?  I always suspect that DC is a high price area.  Then again, lotsa competition around here might drive prices down.

Davey texted few hours ago asking how we were holding up in the nail biter.  

He is going to Koenig to send out video conferences with his students.  Kids go to school in masks now.  

4 days ago

Last night, as I stared at the TV, my mind began to wander, and I got to wondering what each American adult would pay in Federal income taxes if we all paid equally because we, as individuals, share the benefits of American government about equally.  (For example, the defense department defends me the same as it defends you and also Bill Gates.  All of us might wish the defense department budget would be cut by 90%, but we're stuck with it.  Likewise, with Homeland Security and other departments, although most of those other budgets should be cut by only, say, 15% or so.)  

The 2019 (pre-pandemic) Federal government expenditures are listed as $4.448 trillion.  There are probably additional hidden expenditures (CIA black ops, etc.), but let's use this figure of $4.448 trillion.  

The Census Bureau lists the current overall population as 331 million people.  However, let's just consider American adults to be subject to income taxes.  I assumed kids would be about ten percent of the population, leaving 300 million adults but, no, there are more people under 21 than I thought.  In fact, according the the Census Bureau there are only 282,422,000 Americans over 21. (I'm rounding a little.)

Dividing $4.448 trillion by 282,422,000 adults  =  $15,756 per adult due in taxes.  

Of course, the Federal government collects more taxes than just income taxes, but I think income taxes provide the bulk of Federal revenues.  So let's just round off the necessary income taxes at $15,000 per American adult. I don't know about the rest of you, but I didn't pay that much in income taxes in 2019, so these days I'm skating a bit past my responsibility for paying for our government.  (Our sainted president paid only $750 in personal income taxes, but, via his companies, he may have paid more in corporate taxes and, therefore, maybe covered the $15,000 he owed. Maybe!)  Yet what I think this little back-of-the-envelope exercise shows is that most Americans should probably be paying more than we are.  The cost of government has gone waaay up over the past 50-75 years, and I don't think our taxes have kept pace.  Why?   Because we're so sure that we are paying "our fair share," and, of course, Congress doesn't want to antagonize voters.  Congress also knows that they can always borrow to cover the deficits - at least for a while.

Of course there are those who claim "da billionaire class" should pay for us all even if most economists acknowledge that we could confiscate everything "da billionaire class"" owns and, after about three years we would run out of all that money.  Then what would we do to fund this really huge government? 

These are the things that I think about during this pandemic.

Phil  

5 November Thursday     Nice long visit with Davey.  He’s finding it hard to wait out for election results.  Almost 9pm now and we are no closer.  Emma

and Eliot looking so fine, in pjs ready for dinner and bed.  Emma looking at her magazine.  They are now in semi-lockdown.  Kids go to school in masks.  

Dave does video conferences at Koenig all day.  Tiring.  

Finished Campbell’s novel about public schools.  Strange book.  Scanned some reviews on Goodreads to find backing for that reaction.  It seems

so British, and, now, as many notes, so period.  Published the year homosexuality was decriminalized in UK.  1967.  Campbell born in ’24, so exactly a whole genration before us.  So the book has lots of features of the former world, the older world, the earlier world.  Enough, however, more than enough, to remind me strongly of life at Ammendale and Elkins Park.  Just think of Brother Alphonse, the tailor at Ammendale.  So I knew enough brothers of Campbell’s generation to get a sense of how they saw things.  And Bros Jeremy and David Peter, they might have been fifteen years older, if Gerry M is a mere ten.  So in all Campbell captures it all, but the writing is so British and so idiosyncratic to almost seem a private shorthand.  At least one goodreader noted that, how it almost seems translated from another language.  

On to Modiano’s newest (in translation)—-and back to Neighbours.  How different Houghton is from Campbell, in clarity and interest alone.  

Nicholas tweeting about a novel by Milosz, Oskar.  Amorous Initiation.  

Bought it. !  asked him why he avoids Proust?  No reply yet.  

Biden takes it later today.  God willing!  10:34 am Nov 6  

Apple allowed me to purchase the pro-max!!!  

Reading (distant) cousins Milosz. Oskar's novel, 'Amorous Initiation' decadent prose from which glints spiritual mica and Czeslaw's poetry-prose jamming 'Unattainable Earth'. The human pitched, tossed between time and eternity, heaven and earth graced with momentary convergence.

No, that they were distant cousins! I was once entertained to coffee by Czeslaw Milosz in Krakow on the strengthen of the friendship with Kathleen Raine - a memorable occasion!

Wondering privately if Kathleen didn’t approve enough of Marcel?  Or that N senses that Marcel doesn’t look enough to the stars.  None of this in

Proust—-or Pessoa either, hmmm? 

"I want to believe that the forces above us.

Engaged in doings we cannot imitate.

Touch our cheeks and our hair sometimes

And feel in themselves this poor flesh and blood."

From 'Consciousness' by Czeslaw Milosz.

Biden’s got it, 5 pm.  But he’s wisely being cautious about celebrating too soon.  

Modiano’s Invisible Ink, published last year.  Narrator is barely twenty, working for Hutte detective agency, missing person in the 15th.  

We finished a strange recent movie by Atom Egoyan on Criterion.  Honoured Guest.  Peter Thewlis made it intriguing, but overall it was a strange clunker.  Could say that the loose unresolved nature of it is what he was after, Egoyan.  He must have his defenders and apologists.  But it felt unsatisfying, disappointing.  Even if Luke Wilson made a decent priest.  

Should I be embarassed about following too many, all, nearly, of Nicholas’s suggestions for books to read?  Not suggestions, merely posts he makes about what he’s reading.  I passed on the history of Tibet, but the novel by O V Milosz looks interesting.  

Warm.  Walked at Meredith nature path and Wally’s.  5k  

Lots of messages shouting hurrah!!  

googled Why the craze for Proust and look at what I found !!! 

Remembrance of Things Past

By Leon Botstein

Written for the concert After Carmina Burana: an Historical Perspective, performed on May 16, 2001 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. . . .Remembrance of Things Past

By Leon Botstein

Written for the concert After Carmina Burana: an Historical Perspective, performed on May 16, 2001 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

In his remarkable 1960 book on Gustav Mahler, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno observed that “music becomes a blotting paper, an everyday thing that becomes saturated with significance.” For Adorno, Mahler is the musical equivalent of Proust, for in Mahler’s music as in Proust’s narrative the ordinary and familiar are the substance of a massive structure, through which the listener can experience the magnitude, complexity, and depth that life over time contains.  . . .  In Number Seven The brilliance of Mahler is that no matter how personal his compositions may be, he transcends his own experience without losing detail or specificity. He reaches beyond himself and makes the deepest personal and also most general metaphysical speculations possible for the listener. In this symphony the familiar becomes as Adorno suggested the musical screen upon which each individual can project his or her entire life, to an extent well beyond the limits of the composer’s intentions.”

Germaine Greer eleven years ago in the Guardian:  If you haven't read Proust, don't worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek.

. . . 

Ulysses, too, is an editor's nightmare, and ALRDTP should not be damned solely on that account. But it is damnable in its fake heterosexual voyeurism, and its disparaging and dishonest account of homosexuality.

People who gush over Proust say peculiar things about him. The Observer's Robert McCrum thinks he "redefined the terms of fiction", whatever they may be. Proust would have been surprised to be told he had defined anything. In a momentary lapse into barbarism, Nabokov, himself a consummate stylist, described Proust's prose as "translucid". If Proust did not make such a snobbish to-do about diction, it might be easier to forgive him for his battering of the sentence to rubble and his apparent contempt for the paragraph.”

What would Aciman reply to Greer??  I’ve been too hard on André.  Who would not have taken the huge money for a fast and cheap sequel novel as flimsy pretext for movie money enough to pay you into retirement and death anywhere you want to go in the world?   Aciman twisted his arguments in favor of Proust for NYRB to death and protested the new translations mightily.  Greer would tell him he was wasting his breath.  

And look at me.  So sad.  One day into our new era and I am so unsettled I’m looking about for experts to tell me what I should think next and what I should read next.  Do I dare and do I dare?  I can roll my trousers, at least.  

Emily Temple has a 2018 piece in LitHub noting how and who agree Proust not worth it.  She lines up quotes from worthies: [easy internet assignment].  D H Lawrence has a fine attack:

“And M. Proust? Alas! You can hear the death-rattle in their throats. They can hear it themselves. They are listening to it with acute interest, trying to discover whether the intervals are minor thirds of major fourths. Which is rather infantile, really.So there you have the “serious” novel, dying in a very long-drawn-out fourteen-volume death-agony, and absorbedly, childishly interested in the phenomenon “Did I feel a twinge in my little toe, or didn’t I?” asks every character of Mr. Joyce or of Miss Richardson or M. Proust. Is my aura a blend of frankincense and orange pekoe and boot-blacking, or is it myrrh and bacon-fat and Shetland tweed? The audience round the death-bed gapes for the answer. And when, in a sepulchral tone, the answer comes and length, after hundreds of pages: “It is none of these, it is abysmal chloro-coryambasis,” the audience quivers all over, and murmurs: “That’s just how I feel myself.”Which is the dismal, long-drawn-out comedy of the death-bed of the serious novel. It is self-consciousness picked into such fine bits that the bits are most of them invisible, and you have to go by smell.”

Kazuo Ishiguro, in an interview on HuffPo few years ago—

To be absolutely honest, apart from the opening volume of Proust, I find him crushingly dull. The trouble with Proust is that sometimes you go through an absolutely wonderful passage, but then you have to go about 200 pages of intense French snobbery, high-society maneuverings and pure self-indulgence. It goes on and on and on and on. But every now and again, I suppose around memory, he can be beautiful.

And Evelyn Waugh didn’t like him either.  

——

in spite of all of this, now night, what has been on my back-of-mind all day is what to do, where to go, on Tuesday’s day off.  Fantasy about going over to Portland.  Weather super warm and nice.  But what, really, is in Portsmouth?  And since when have I been a coastal fan?  Ok, what about going up into the mountains somewhere?  ehh  Nashua? why?  where to go?  

9 November  Monday  Super warm again today.  Let-down Monday, the election over.  Holiday coming on Weds.  Everything quiet.  Biden in control, asking us to wear our masks.  Took a walk around the block and neglected to take my mask.  

No clear inspiration about where to go, what to do tomorrow.  Definitely not going to the coast.  North, South, East, West?  Perhaps my dreams tonight will direct me.  Reading Modiano again.  Same themes, same ideas, but familiar and satisfying for all of that.  

Owen Barfield’s birthday.  1898  wasn’t Burke 1897?  

Wandering day, 10th.  Highways super quiet.  Got to Amherst and headed back north to Concord.  Target stores.  Listened on way down to Mahler’s 7th and then the 9th.  Love the 9th!  Nice to listen to instead of FIP.  Change.  New era.  Biden period.  Relief.  Stores, roads, very quiet.  Rest stop also.  Looked for exercise bands for Willow.  Bought blue diamond skillet on promise it will not warp.  Hmmm.  

Message notification of new Parabola with article on Lax.  Couldn’t get my name and password to work.  

from st bonaventure’s lax archive page—-passages from the peacemaker’s handbook —-  ahh  cleverly set up so one cannot copy and paste from it !!

“16  if you can’t forgive yourself how forgive others ?  if you can’t forgive others, how forgive yourself? mercy for the merciful: be merciful even to the merciless  — “   

arranged vertically of course  —

if

you

can’t

for

give

etc   

http://web.sbu.edu/friedsam/laxweb/    pendo verlag 2001 Peacemaker’s Handbook 

“The usual way that Robert Lax wrote would be to keep a notebook handy (on his desktop, night stand, or back pocket) and fill the notebook from front to back on the facing pages, and then flip the notebook over fill it from back to front on the facing pages. When a notebook was completed he would normally go through what he had written and make a typescript copy, usually utilizing multiple carbons, and then mark the notebook with a cross to indicate it was finished. In later years the copying of the text was made onto a computer file. From the manuscript text to the copy there was little or no editing performed.

The majority of the manuscript notebooks in the Lax Archives at St. Bonaventure University are from the 1980’s on. But there are texts as early as the 1930’s and 1940’s, and many significant items from the 1960’s. The general arrangement of the notebooks is chronological, with items grouped that have specific dates, general or assumed dates, and no dates. In establishing the chronology great consideration was given to the brand and type of notebook, as Lax would usually purchase, or be given a quantity of notebooks of a certain style, and simply use all of these same notebooks one after another. In designating certain items as early (pre 1970’s or so) consideration was also given to handwriting, and sometimes even to the color of ink used.

There are over 900 notebooks. The listing of the individual items can be broken down into these general linked categories, according to the boxes in which they are kept:”  

I guess I’ve gotten my name in various places one at a time.  One entry on a Lax info page, one purchase of Aho, one (or two) entries about K Burke.  One of this, one of that, here and there.  Can’t list all of them.  One visit to Compton Wynyates, can’t forget that.  Etc.  Foraging, sampling, wandering.  

found a site for hermits, about hermits  hermitary.com  18 years old this year   Guess that is after all best explanation for Lax’s life and vision—-

a natural-born hermit.   

Loving Houghton’s Neighbours once more.  Want to write Like That! 

Someone in coming years, perhaps many people, will have to comb the Lax archives and pull together Lax’s Book of Disquiet, arrange any which way, but chronological would be easy enough apparently, all the jottings and notes and passages that do not feed into the Public Brand—-the vertical simplicities of the established poems.  These are, in a sense, Lax’s “heteronyms” except that he has established one voice for them, one formatted style, and the voice and persona is the only one we have—-the official voice, the public persona and voice.  What we hunger for and what no one really has given us, are the private voices of the thrown away jottings, the huge pile of dead ends or mere piling up and playing down of words, this way and that.  His public sphinx voice style—-the essence of simplicity as it is given to seem—-is fine and that’s who he presented himself to us and to himself perhaps as being, as seeking to be.  

But we know within the notebooks there are hundreds of passages that would not be destined to be pulled out as worthy of publication, for whatever reasons or judgments.  A variety of searchers and editors, then, each of them assembling and arranging the looked-over, the rejected, the forgotten about, meaningless word notes.  They add up to nothing.  Except they are the cracks and crevices in the official structure through which we will see the other hermits who hosted the official Lax.  

Live piano this morning sounds Wonderful!  Amazing treat once a week.  

Gorgeous sunset last evening as I came out of Hannafords.  New camera still doesn’t do it for these wonders.  

Movie starring Kelly Macdonald called Puzzle.  Seems like ur-source for recent hit The Queen’s Gambit. 

Saturday evening   New watches and  cell phones aligned and onlined.  

Just seeing the font in which Amorous Initiation is printed brings back memories of Temenos, the printed journal and books (Inner Traditions in VT did the Lindesfarne books too I think), the conference, and Nicholas.  

Milosz’s Nobel Traveller collection looks so familiar, the cover.  I wouldn’t be surprised if upstairs on the shelves there is a copy I purchased thirty years ago.  Good guess, thirty-two.  

Milosz’s style—-antithesis in extreme of Lax.  I imagine Lax heard his uncle speak about theosophy a good deal and his response was to head directly toward radical simplicity!   O V Milosz, distant cousin to the Nobel poet.  

What would the Milosz’s say about Professor Entwell’s adventure with the passion pump?!  Somehow I think this is an entry that will not make it into the official collection of tales, so I will have to report it later today to rescue it from the apochrypha!   

Sarah sounds a little miffed?  or does everyone seem tetchy these days?  

Good Evening Bob and Virginia:

        I was wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.  Richard is our bad news reporter with calls of NH’s daily cases.   Have you been talking with him?

        We surely do want to stay well and safe.  Thanks for speaking up.  We will take a plague check.   Phew!  Now, we don’t have to house.

        I will cancel the turkey dinner for four.   Everyone will be on their own.  That will be clean and easy.    

       

Best wishes,

Sarah + Don

We ventured into our first jacuzz experience this morning, first in a long time.  We both wore our safety watches.  All went well.  A bit out of practice and weaker (my back) but we’re vowing to practice more.  

The passion pump is the crowning jewel on our long list of purchases this plague season.  Will make a master list just to show the decadents how decadent we can be.  Does Milosz make me wonder if I want to read many more of the French decadents?  Have I read many of them, really?  Try Rilke’s book again?  Or will Milosz keep me busy for a while.  And then on to a three year Study of Eliot?  

When Cliff visited a week or so ago he talked about visiting Donald Hall’s house in Wilmont so he could read a poem in front of it for his youtube channel.  That got me into gossip about Hall and Kenyon and the poet friend who had a fling once years ago with Hall and told me he used a penis pump.  Willow caught that news and decided that one of those would be just the thing for us to perk up things, especially now with the new california split king she was worried about that darned split in the mattress spelling disaster of all sorts.  First and last time we ever slept on a “king” bed that was actually two twins pushed together was on our trip to Morocco when we splurged one night at a five star hotel.  Must have been in Tangier?  

Anyhoo, this morning we tried it out and found it didn’t replace aging and declining any better than the miracle pills of yore, viagra and the other one.  The body itself has to be ready to cooperate with such boosts.  Maybe it is just that November is always November and never April.  Ishmael did not set out to the South Pacific in April.  

review from Phil—-which I don’t know how to reply to!!  of interest but for me not that much—-sent it to Mertens to see if he will bite?  

In today's Wash Post, there is a good review of Jill Lepore's recent book, "If Then," about the Simulmatics Corporation, which was  founded in 1959, used computers to analyze voters and played a small role in the 1960 election, played a larger role in the Vietnam war before going out of business in 1970.  

I just finished that book last week and found a few bits of information that I never knew.  

Adlai Stevenson was adamantly opposed to introducing computers into politics.  He kept them out of the game in '52 and '56.   Politics is not detergent, he would say about computer analysis of markets and politics.

"In 1960, nine out of every ten articles in The New York Times were description; by 1976 more than half were interpretation." 

Lepore's cited cause of the change: television, which could report facts far more quickly to homes than newspapers.  TVs made the Times switch to offering "context,"  which is a slightly weasely way of saying "opinion" more than facts.  And that reminded me of a study done by a student from the midwest in my Journalism class in 1972, who did an analysis of a story as reported by the NY Times and the Wash Post.  Her conclusion was that the Times reported a range of opinions about the subject, but the Post only reported one view, what might be considered the unofficial Washington Post view.   Which reminded me of what  I felt when I first moved to Washington from New York City in 1971.   In New York one was aware of a range of views: The Times acknowledged divergent opinions,  the left also appeared in the old NY Post, the Village Voice, and other smaller papers while conservative views were presented to the huge readership of the Daily News plus the Wall Street Journal, and a few others.  (But no wacko far right wing stuff, as i recall.)  In Washington, it seemed that a kind of Wash Post slightly leftist view was overwhelmingly accepted as the only possible truth, although the old Washington Star did voice some mildly conservative views and there were a few alternative papers.  But in "serious" conversation only the Post view seemed acceptable in DC.  It made Washington seem much less interesting than New York. 

Lepore is really good writer.  I always try to read whatever she writes, but I felt she didn't adequately treat the RAND Corporation in this book.   I don't know about anyone else, but I never heard of Simulmatics until a few weeks ago.  But I remember hearing about the RAND Corporation constantly during the Vietnam war. I would have liked for Lepore to explain more about what RAND did with computer analysis and how it differed from Simulmatics.   In fact, I'm not convinced that Simulmatics deserves an entire book.  As Lepore makes clear, it did not have a large effect on policy.   RAND's role was perhaps much greater, although some of its computer driven conclusions about America's likely defeat were pointedly ignored by Johnson. 

Finally,  it's hard to say that anything about the Vietnam War was amusing, but Lepore reports that the Pentagon ran a huge computer in its basement in 1967 looking for an analysis of how the war would eventually come out.  This massive analysis concluded that the US won the war in 1965!

P.

PS.  In addition to "If Then" I have read about two-thirds of Jane Mayer's "Dark Money."  It's an eye-opener about the Kochs, DeVos, and other rich families' huge expenditures to influence American politics.  It also describes some of the people who took that money and organized the sleazeball tactics used.   However, what has bothered me is that, other than about two paragraphs that go into no detail, Mayer's book completely ignores how rich liberals were doing similar things.  It's likely that the Kochs et al were vastly outspending and out manipulating what the more liberal outfits were doing at both state and Federal levels, but it would have been nice to at least have had one full chapter about "the other side of the equation."  

——-

“I should prefer to keep silent about the exceptional emotional state into which I was cast by the prince’s importunate enthusiasm; for of all the despicable passions that burn in the hell of human blood, physical jealousy surely is the strangest and the most painful.” . . . I was consumed with both a cruel ardor whose object I did not know and a blind, ferocious jealousy whose cause I tried without success to understand.”  33 

Have to find into which context this book fits best.  Period, style, character.  

Good visit with the kids today.  Their semi-lockdown seems not too strict for now.  They were watching a movie about the origin of the earth!  

google and your prayers are answered!!  a nice NYRB article about Milosz in a 1994 issue—-by P N Furbank 

““Failed poet” is a harsh phrase, but one will have to use it, for it is to the point. Thus it is important to insist, before going further, that—unlike poor Soames—Milosz possessed an unmistakable, though minor, talent. It is impossible to resist the seductive, sepulchral harmonies of lines such as these from “Aux sons d’une musique…” in his Les Sept solitudes of 1906.

Aux sons de ta chanson de harpe rouillée,

Tiède fille qui luis comme une pomme mouillée,

—(Ma tête est si lourde d’éternité vide,

Les mouches d’or font un bruit doux et stupide

Qui prennent tes grands yeux de vache pour des fenêtres),

Aux sons de ta dormante et rousse voix d’été

Fais que je rêve à ce qui aurait pu être

Et n’a pas été…

Quels beaux yeux de n’importe quel animal tu as,

Blanche fille de juin, grande dormeuse!

Mon âme, mon âme est pluvieuse,

D’être et de n’être pas je suis tout las.

It is Baudelaire filtered through Verlaine or Ernest Dowson and quite untranslatable, so much of its charm being purely acoustic and residing in those richly deliquescent rhymes. His more Laforguian (and more translatable) “Symphonie de Novembre” was, however, turned by Ezra Pound into a magnificent English poem.”

E T A Hoffmann !  of course  —- “The opening pages, describing the Duke’s encounter with his listener, are, in a fantastic, Hoffmannesque, eighteenth-century pastiche way, exceedingly brilliant and promising. The intention evidently is that, by grotesquerie and protective ironic devices, the reader will be led on to participate in a profound chapter of human experience. But the truth is, this is doomed to failure, for the reason that nobody in the novel acquires any real existence save the Duke himself. “  

oh dear——not promising at all.  Should I tell Nicholas?  Wonder how much further he is going to go with Milosz?  And what of that book of samples called the Noble Traveller?  Ahh, well—-

“By an odd failure of construction, moreover, though it is made plain that the Danish nobleman has been another of Clarice’s victims, and this is why the Duke has maliciously chosen him as a listener, we learn nothing of the Dane’s reactions. Again, the basic conception of the Duke—too obviously Milosz’s swaggering Don Juanesque father joined to the timid daydreaming Oskar himself—simply makes no sense, the parts do not cohere. Thus, as the Duke’s bravura tirades begin to modulate into Milosz’s serious mystical theories, the reader, battered and bemused by so much exorbitant phrase-making, can no longer quite silence the whisper at the back of his mind, that what the book suffers from is silliness.

All praise is due to Inner Traditions for resurrecting this fascinating text, and to Belle N. Burke for her admirable translation; but it will not quite do to call it, as Czeslaw Milosz does, “one of the great love stories of French literature.”

Question also who is P N Furbank?  A name familiar from those days when I saw the NYRB often.  Pretty damning review article but convincing for seeming to be complete.   Obituary in the Guardian in july of 2014 pretty impressive.  Died at the age of 94.  Biography of Forster.  

and from thr Independent obit—-“This was far from being the case whenever Furbank spoke: a lifelong stutter inhibited him mercilessly, disallowing the venting of whatever pressing matter got stuck in his throat, and rendering him incapable of saying right out what came to him. The contrast with his writing could hardly have been greater. At the heart of this constriction lay deep-rooted inhibition probably concerning his homosexuality, in which he had two debilitating role models: Forster and Alan Turing.”

So, does he give Milosz fair treatment?  estimation?  he’s skeptical about mysticism in general, it seems.  And this sounds harsh—-“What becomes clear, though, in reading his verse of this time and later, is the extraordinarily limited nature of his inspiration: how much, that is to say, he was a poet of loneliness and sheer frustration. His languorous and defunctive reveries are all about nostalgia, not for some lost childhood Eden but rather a childhood in which nothing at all happened. Rather touchingly, his poems create a shadowy kindred for themselves by means of personification; as poetic tropes, “husbands” and “wives” abound, and Sorrow, Madness, and even Solitude become his “mother.” In “Symphonie de Septembre,” by a characteristic reversal or double-take, Solitude is yearning to return to the poet’s heart, where she was born and where she used to scribble her name on the walls. They are the poems, one perceives, of a man who could never actually imagine a human relationship.”

1910 is the year for V-I.  And Furbank situates it thus:  “In 1910, returning to Paris, he published the fantastic novel Amorous Initiation. It was the high season of Paul Claudel and Catholic revivalism, and the novel treats of sinning one’s way to God. The word “Initiation” reveals a significant development: Milosz has become a mystic. A letter of the same year to the sculptor Léon Vogt, though no doubt meant with a touch of irony, spells this out: “Priest-King I am, have been and shall be. My power even grows hourly greater; I am the Abode of Love and speak to God face to face.” During World War I he helped form an occult secret society, “Les Veilleurs,” and by the 1920s he had more or less given up poetry, or at least verse, in favor of esoteric philosophy, expounding his own Swedenborgian-alchemical-Rosicrucian Catholic system in two strange treatises, Ars Magna (1924) and Les Arcanes (1928).”    This would seem to describe any number of writers and thinkers of the period—-Valle-Inclán in Spain for one.  Perhaps against all of this would be Proust.  

Even as a minor talent and lonely soul, then, will it do to read Milosz?  What for?  Better to turn to Eliot after all?  Who else?  Furbank’s dismissal of mystics could apply to Lachman??  “The pattern is all too familiar. The next step will be that they lose faith in art. They decide that literature is not good enough for them, language being too clumsy a vehicle to convey the precious truths they now have access to, and that human beings are not good enough for them either. To put it brutally, they throw their weight about in the mystical sphere in compensation for their frustrations in the earthly one.”  For “poet” we could insert “lead guitarist for Blondie” ?  That might not be fair either.  

And could we say too that Lax is another one of those failed poets?  His mystical way is not to embrace and re-imagine that arcana of occultism etc etc but to winnow it all down into words themselves, words alone.  A kind of anti-mystical, anti-occult, (anti-Catholic even!?) word obsession.  

Maybe reading failed poets, failed mystics, failed novelists offers pleasures for the readers that those obsessed with the best and brightest miss.  Blinders everywhere, at all turns!  Beckett might agree here.  What did Furbank think of Beckett?  Betcha I could guess.  He did write a review of Beckett’s poems in English.  And another of Godot and Malone in 1964—

final paragraph of that—-oops can’t copy it out.  About Dante’s influence on Beckett.  

7 pm  House feeling really cold and outside really dark.  Some sort of rain earlier, hale?  hail?  

But look at all the time I wasted reading about Milosz and how to regard him when I could have enjoyed his work itself and decided whether I enjoyed his failures just for themselves? !  Who are all these judgers and evaluators, taste-makers and arbiters?  Pah 

I googled something else:  “The Blue diamond Pans are said to have diamond infused ceramic coating which makes them stronger than the other pans. But if you have been wondering whether these pans contain real diamonds, then you must know that the diamonds used are nothing but quartz crystals.

Are they real diamonds?

No, the blue diamond pans do not contain real diamonds. These use quartz crystals that are available in abundance on earth.”

So far the pan has not warped!!!  That’s the promise that sold me!!

Dear Barb,

Please give me the name of the neighborhood in Abq where you grew up.  Iwant to add it to my "Adventures of Rachel Beatrice" I just sent you.  Ialso sent you the Professor Entwell stories.  I would appreciate any comments on either collection.  

How are you, Ed and the animals doing? We are very sad to hear that NM is not doing well and that the Navajos are being badly hit again. Hopefully our new president and VP elect will be able to turn things around.  How are your kids?  Ours are under lock-down again.  Cécile still has to teach class; she has 6 yr olds this term. The kids all have to wear masks.

We miss you and hope you have as good a Thanksgiving as possible.  We have decided to pick up dinner and eat it here. 

 

love,

voo      

———

Instead of fitting Milosz into a pre-fab failed poet template, Furbank could have called him a noble traveller, a visionary seeker who began in symbolist-decadent coin and transmuted that into a global vision of loving service.  

Trying to like the new David E Kelly drama on hbo with Grant and Kidman.  Not as successful as I want it to be.  Maybe Kelly needs a longer series.  

After it later in the night, thinking of the secrets still held by each character, it became clear: man is the secret keeping animal.  Is that not the consummate function of all symbol-using!  to hold secrets within oneself. 

And here this morning Houghton agrees with me:  “And though even by this method the whole man is not revealed (since, in all of us, our secret is hidden in our silence), yet the reality of each phase of his development is preserved, and, above all, the spontaneity of its original expression is not lacking.”  79  

Aho and the gallery both say the painting will ship out soon.  Very happy that Paddie says I should go with my inclination and hang the piece without a frame.  Could always add one later.  Eric might make some suggestions but I’ll see what he says to my statement about my inclination.  

Boy scouts out of business and reporter says bigger than the church.  Some strange (defensive?) satisfaction that other establishment in addition to the church have gotten exposed.  And when you put both together you can see how systemic it all has been to . .  .  the history of humankind?  the West? the Industrial and post-Industrial ages?  as ancient as every other form of human behavior?  What tv show could interview an anthropologist about these things?  TV report says that for every person of the 95k who stepped forth to make a claim, statistics show there are another 100 or more, so we’re talking millions of kids.  Now what about the sports world?  etc etc

Nice wander day.  Weirs, Gilford, nothing special but did log 4 miles.  Willow got 2.5-3 in her walks.   Reading more of Houghton got me to see that Milosz is a bit like brandy or sherry—-I can take a sip of him maybe every month or so but I need not read him as though he’s the one.  Two

slim books, both with Garden in their titles, call now.  

Five or six passages in Houghton I would copy out.  what oft thought but not so well expressed.  

Haber’s piece about the unknown woman writer who made his work possible is delightful.  Haven’t read a decent parody for a while.  Oops, Phil just wrote back and will look for one of her books—-didn’t catch the parody.  

Aho calls his painting “a handsome piece.”  

It will come from the gallery. Uncertain of timeframe, but soon. 

It’s a handsome piece. And you are lucky that in NH there is no sales tax!

We are working on some ideas for framing if you’d like me to share with you. Let me know!

Must thank him for the small discount he gave me. Now to drop everything and read Haber’s book.  Forgot to send the essay to Nicholas.  

“A perfect life, he said, a life fulfilled, a life of radiant splendor, he added, was a life lived in constant melancholy, and here, he bristled, gesturing at the portly tourists, healthy and sick alike, were souls in constant retreat from melancholy . . . . “ 23 

Mark Haber in his LitHub piece on Krause—-

“I have an abiding faith in the serendipity of literature. I’ve always believed the books you’re meant to find, find you, the reader, or perhaps the reverse, that the reader finds the books they’re meant to read; whatever the case, serendipity plays a vital role in the books that speak to us and leave the most prized wounds, wounds that, if we’re lucky, turn into scars to be exalted and lionized like the inflictions obtained in glorious battle.”  Yes that title at the end there, noted.  But can’t tell you the author.  

great interview on Ploughshares—-love everything he says, esp about his distance from creative  writing programs and the American landscape—

“My strongest influences are probably very obvious, but Saul Bellow, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Clarice Lispector, Thomas Bernhard, Merce Rodoreda, Roberto Bolaño, Céline, Enrique Vila-Matas, [Vladimir] Nabokov, Cesar Aira, Donald Barthelme, Virginia Woolf, Horacio Castellanos Moya and a ton more, but those are the ones I really cherish. As “American” as Saul Bellow is, he has always struck me as a very foreign writer. Yiddish and Russian were spoken in his home growing up and although his concerns were largely American, his voice and style has always struck me as somewhat foreign.”   “Writing is its own country.”  

He’s my man!   from his Longreads interview—-I had just read [Laszlo] Krasznahorkai’s The Last Wolf and was mesmerized by the story, not only the story but the style. I admired the way he could go back and forth in time, between this man talking to a bartender in the present, to being in Spain, in the past. Also, I’ve always been an enormous fan of Bolaño’s By Night in Chile and love slim, dense books. So it’s all about aesthetics for me. The way the story is told. So I knew what I wanted the book to look like before I knew what it would be about. To me, many of my favorite books are [notable] not [for] what the book is about, but what the book manages to do, a feeling or a relationship to language. If that makes sense. I’m a big fan of not knowing, writing to find out what you know and don’t know.”

Love this paragraph too — “Me? I’m not sure if Jacov would. I’m guessing he has some high expectations for someone to be considered a ‘melancholic’! I am a melancholic though, as I think we all are to some degree. I consider myself good-natured and generally a happy person, but there’s always a tinge of sadness, always a sense of things, I don’t know, ending. Even in the best moments I have this voice that tells me, “This won’t last. As good as it is, everything ends.” I know, dark! But part of my sadness is how rich and short life is. It’s a cliche, but the older you get the faster time goes by and I see it going by. I feel it. And life can be horrible and sad, painful and unfair, all those terrible things, but it’s also so sweet and so short.”

Me too!!   he’s 48 years old !   wife and always has worked in retail or mostly 

“And hats off to Chris Fischbach and my editors at Coffee House for not wanting to break it into chapters or seperate anything. It never even came up. They saw what I was doing and absolutely respected it.”   a misspelling there on the Longreads site, or is it British ?  

He loves Bellow’s descriptions of characters and blend of high and low culture.  Has no traveled much, few trips to Mexico City.  Reading other books primary.  

“Also, it never occurred to me to have the book feel as if it were written in 1907. I always wanted it to have the outlook or dark humor of a contemporary sense of things. I wasn’t interested in the book feeling like it had come from that time, like a diary found in an attic or something. That would’ve felt forced to me. I’m absolutely happy if a reader reads the book knowing what they’re reading, in fact, is a book. Does that make sense? The artifice of a novel is better (to me, at least) if everyone sort of agrees, yes, this is made up. Because then you can actually, truly lose yourself. You’re not as concerned with: “did they wear those clothes or eat those foods?” Nothing is forced. We can all agree it’s make believe.”   Another typo!  

He love slim, dense books.  Vila-Matas!! 

Southwest Review Interview  October 2019  

2020 Lit Hub  Writing as way of asking questions 

love how he says he sees writing as being like painting —-  lithub interview is oral—-recording—or podcast—has never read Magic Mountain 

his voice—sounds a bit nerdy—surprise!  

Haber on sound recording sounds a wee bit like Brint !  “What comes first for me is language.”  “I fly by the seat of my pants . . . to make things work.”  Not plotting out first.  Next novel about art.  Saint Sebastian’s Abyss — Renaissance artist.  Two friends who had had a falling out.  

so is Haber a good writer?  perhaps he is just a good mimic, he’s read Bernhard and the others, absorbed them deeply within his inner musical ear, his inner absorptive soul, and can mimic them, he mimics Bernhard’s rhythms almost perfectly, he makes his prose sound like Bernhard’s and the others, so he seems like a good writer to those who catch the echoes . . . .

Thurs 19 Nov

we independently commented that linen sheets are great!  a much better night’s sleep last night than the night before (other reasons) and the sheets are now a few days on —-  

Here is Haber reviewing Aira—on Lit Hub—

Ema the Captive is not so much driven by plot as movement and the feeling that we’re witnessing life happen to Ema. The story navigates the ebbs and flows of Ema’s life and always in unexpected ways. The novel is an examination of what happens when humans and the natural world begin to divorce, when colonial morals are forced upon a continent and when the lust for money overtakes the love of authentic life. The story made me long for a world that probably never existed but I still felt homesick for. Ema the Captive is astonishing and wondrous, a book that has invention and history locked hand in hand, reminding us why reading brings such sensual and selfish joy. Aira’s novels are theaters of images married to hard-fought ideas and Ema the Captive (in essence a South American Western) is a carpet ride through history that manages to invoke ideas about gender, colonialism and nature. As such, it’s easily one of Aira’s strongest and most original novels, as well as one of the best novels of the year. “

Want so much to email with Haber but can’t find an address!  Could write him at the bookstore I guess.  Now he’s my writer hero and I need to know all about him.  But it occurs to me to say that Russian writers are for when you are an adolescent, young person, George Eliot, as Woolf said, is a writer for adults!!  I’ll bet Aciman would agree there about Proust at least.  

He grew up in Clearwater and Mark has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg. 

So if I could have been a writer I would like to have written like Mark Haber.  

Louella and Willow are now writing their memoirs.  Willow has her Entwell and Rachel Beatrice tales.  Will she add to those in a third voice?  Lou’s voice sounds direct and forthright, forceful, like her.  She did a short piece for a memoir writing class she took a few months ago.  So she has an opening motto:  “I believe everything we do in our lives has it’s origin not only in our circumstances but in our very natures. “Let’s go!” Is my favorite phrase in any language.—Myself. “  

Reading Haber again, I know he’s got a manic energy on paper at least that I could do for a while and yet I know too it would come to a halt and I would be lost.  And I think of Modiano.  His pace would be more like mine.  He lets his tale waver and wander but it does so in a way suited to the map of his wonderful city and the way he constantly cites the names of locations helps keep his wandering grounded.  

Carole replied (not many are catching the parodic quality of Haber’s piece on writer Krause, but her brother will when she sends it on to him)—-

Good Morning Bob,

And thank you for raising the profile of what is usually in my email box.  I read the article and said to Ken - my brother is the only one I know who would do the right thing and read these books.  Right now, we are between watching low brow tv and reading selected articles in the New York Times.  By any chance, do you and Virginia do Spelling Bee in the New York Times.  It is very addictive.  Hope all is well with both you and Virginia and that the new stair chair is making life a bit easier.  To put it simply, we are bored and trying not to antagonize each other.  The highlight of the day is dinner.  We are very worried about the virus and even I have come around to see that the decision to skip Florida was the right one.  While we extremely happy with Biden winning the election, we are furious about the Trump administration decision to skip the transition.

Keep in touch.  We miss you and Virginia.  Alas, maybe in the spring we will meet.

Carole

——

I replied—-

Dear Carole

Your summation of all of our lives will live among the classic texts of the age!  Well, maybe an internet micro-moment.

It is amazing how one simple event now fills the whole day, isn't it?  If Amazon says it will deliver a new pot holder

tomorrow, our hearts perk up, we enter the information on the paper calendar, and we try to breathe more slowly

and patiently as day wanes and the deepest blacks of night take over.  In the middle of the night, we wake and

say, oh, tomorrow a truck might pull into the drive and throw out a small cardboard box.  (Thank goodness we

are living in a Great Age of Corrugated Cardboard Revival!).  And after we have wiped the box down with three Lysol and two Clorox wipes, one of us can open it near the garage door, remove the contents and lo!  a holiday treat for us all, decorated and sequined, a pot holder for entertaining one of us in front of the other!!  Could Harold Pinter

or Samuel Beckett have come up with anything better???  [We're getting the small oil painting I bought delivered tomorrow from NYC.  Exciting beyond the usual measure.]  

Not antagonizing becomes the whole buddhist practice of each day.  Indeed.  And we think, look, people have lived in small cottages far from one another for centuries, surely we can do this!!!  

The red zones on the whole map look darker than ever and we have to hope the winter will be kind. 

You are the most devoted Anglophiles we know, so we think of you often when we use our Stannah stairlift

because it is British design and Technology.  It has two horns that sound different tones and timbres.  If

you like, we can send a short video of each sound, they seem so British to us, not at all any of the sounds

made by Asian technological gizmos or computers.  

Oh, and since we got a new bed (split Cal King, the split required weeks of marriage counseling), we/I

splurged ("who more deserving" to quote your motto, which we've adopted) and bought French/&Belgian

linen sheets for it.  Thought it would be, ok, ho hum.  But no!  Highly recommended!!!

On these notes, over and out for now.  Stay calm and count the days.  Or not.

——-

Greg called late afternoon.  Has called Jim a number of times but the phone’s mailbox is full.  I emailed Jim to see if he would reply that way.  Who else do we know who is wholly detached from the web as Greg is?  Dr Larson.  Greg has re-read some James novels.  

20 Nov 

email to Jim came back.  Nursing home might have its own rules.  

Eric’s painting arrives this morning.  Already a debate in-house on framing and placement.  Going to do my inclinations with it first.  

For caffeine addicts, the coffee oils that end up in French Press coffee make it taste better but these substances, known as diterpenes, cause the LDL cholesterol level to get higher, having damaging effects on the heart health.May 4, 2020

The first documented origins of the “most underrated method of brewing coffee”, as James Hoffmann called it in his book ‘The World Atlas of Coffee’, date back to 1852. It was Mayer and Delforge, two Frenchmen, who had their innovation—a simpler version of the later designs—patented then.

Doug just stopped in, walking Edmund but also asking if we had an extra walker.  Tried to ask him privately as he left, in the garage, what was going on and did he need help.  Not clear.  Said Patsy was having a severe ms episode.  Not sure what that means.  Implied part of it was being difficult.  We chuckled nervously about that but neither of us successful at saying what was on his mind.  Maybe he didn’t really know.  

Va at the piano and doing well with it.  Sounds good.  

Sunday   22 Nov  late afternoon  PT just called from her hospital bed.  Ray called two days ago, she fell off her bike and blacked out.  Maybe a minor stroke, neurologist sees her tomorrow.  They might implant a monitor.  

“Can't tell you how thrilled and delighted your book caught me. I've been reading those authors for years and you single handedly have brought into American Letters these S American and European voices and modes it has been desperately hungering for and not known how to find. And you've done it with such grace, humility, sensitivity, perfection, humor, warmth, even with "the callused knuckles of mania rapping" on your door! Cannot wait for your next.”   wrote this to Mark Haber—-he said hello and thank you via Instagram  —  

tweeted that line too —-  whole final few pages of the book are so wonderful—he just pulls it off with such brilliance —-   

“all of it a fable or a dream, for what is the past but a collective dream shared by the dream’s characters.”  

“the electromagnetic splendor of melancholy”  

Haber says :  Thank you for the kind words Bob. Admittedly, I'm pretty proud of Reinhardt's Garden and am especially happy you saw everything I was trying to do, from Latin American to European influences.  I'm beginning to edit my next book with the same publisher and, judging from your photos on Instagram, think you'll enjoy as it's about painting, a certain fictional Renaissance paining in particular!”   on Instagram  

Phil—-

Ah, it seems both Brixes are true Republicans.   The Plymouth Brix reminds me of John, an old Brown roommate.  He grew up in Connecticut, but not commuter Connecticut.  Instead, industrial Connecticut.   His family owned a small steel mill.  John got his degree in economics but had to stay an extra semester to get his grade average in his major up to C so he could graduate.  He then went to work for American Can Corporation in New Jersey for about ten years, then switched to "consulting."  In fact he became an ax man for Goldman Sachs.  GS would buy a company, then send in John to sell off "non-performing" divisions and personnel.   John is retired now and lives in Orange County, California,  next to a business-oriented college president and a lot of other solid Republicans.  He has a boat in the nearby harbor.  

Sorry to hear about yr sister-in-law's health problems.  I hope she just took a tumble and didn't incur anything serious.  Coincidentally John Miller says one of his sisters who lives in Cumberland fell and broke an arm recently, then, while in the hospital, caught Covid. She seems to be recovering, and I hope yr sister in law also recovers from her tumble and gets past cancer again.   Incidentally, Allegany County seems to be a Covid hot spot these days.  It also voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

When it comes to Covid, it's spreading so much these days that we're only going to Safeway, .  Even there, however, I worry.  I hope we can last until vaccines are proven and available.  However,  with Peg's suppressed immune system, we don't know if she can safely get a Covid vaccine.

Reading:   Although Peg and I only go to Safeway I recently visited my storage locker.  While there I spotted my old copy of Marx's "Das Kapital" and a book that Liveright Published when I started to work there in '72.  I paged through Kapital and couldn't make much sense of my comments in the margins.  And the book is 1200 pages of dense writing.  I never finished it, but did read about half, none of which I now remember. I read it in the early 1980s. which is when I was working for a company that had a contract with the Department of Energy.  It seems I was then in a skeptical mood vis-a-vis Karl's arguments about "surplus value."     

The Liveright book is "The Critic As Artist: Essays on Books 1920-1970," edited by Gilbert A. Harrison.  Gil, who owned The New Republic magazine, had just purchased Liveright, and had decided to use Liveright to publish about 50 old New Republic book reviews or essays about authors.     The reviews are listed alphabetically according to the reviewer's last name - from Conrad Aiken writing about "The Last of the Forsytes" - to C. Vann Woodward writing about "The Confessions of Nat Turner."    There is also a piece by H. L. Mencken - "The Critic's Motive" - used as an introduction.

It's interesting to read these reviews now and see how viewpoints change over 50 years.  Indeed, I think it would have been smarter to list the reviews chronologically, so one could clearly see how viewpoints changed over the years.  (One constant, however: Often a Jewish tone or slant to the reviews.  All the owners of the NR were Jewish, including Gil.)   Also I wonder if, in those pre-internet days, Gil had known that Oscar Wilde had written a book titled "The Critic as Artist."   I don't know if he did or didn't because I had just been hired in early '72 and didn't know much about the background of the book.  (In case you don't know, one cannot copyright the title of a work.)  I also question using a piece by Mencken as an overview of the book's concept.  True, Mencken really does directly address the subject  - both the critic as artist and the artist as critic - but he does it in a Mencken-esque way, which always seems far too flippant to me.   So I don't think that intro was a good way to introduce the book.  I was also taken back by the number of typos in the book.  Sometimes typos garbled a word in a review's lead sentence. Ouch! 

Still it is interesting to read through these reviews in which the reviewer frequently seems to be showing off by putting the book's author down or praising the author only faintly while showing off how cultured the reviewer is and how much he knows.  In more than a few reviews I felt I was in some grad school English class, listening to the students trying to impress the prof and  the other students.   One of the worst cases of that was Irving Howe reviewing Saul Bellow's Herzog.  To me, it came across as one Jew cutting down another Jew while trying to avoid being too harsh in front of a room full of goys.  

Like I said, an interesting read,  often for reasons that probably Gil didn't intend.  I couldn't find the book on Amazon. I think it may be out of print.

——

 Monday morning  23  

Petie called last night from her hospital, sounded like herself.  Relief.  Might be afib.  

Got obsessed with a passage in Haber last night.  Wished I had underlined it and did not.  Just bought the book on kindle to see if I could find it.  Nothing struck under “forward” or “future.”  So I must have imagined it.  

Mark here from Granite Glass putting new storm door on the front.  Must have been part of the final elations sweeping over me in the closing pages.  

Cousin Roy’s reply to Willow’s email to him —-

Try this address for David.

You can have no idea of our childhood, after you didn't win the Pet Parade.

We had the massive destructive fire and so we were desperately poor and stuck at home for all my childhood;

then by the time I went to college they had money and traveled all over Mexico.

Without question we were the poorest family ever with three National Merit scholars.

Now our home has real farmers to take care, finally, thanks to me.

I still want to go to Cornell next year, 50 years later, even though it was too late for me to be a professor.

—-

Now that the high buzz of Reinhardt’s Garden is over, who next, where next?   Do I want to look at Aira or the others I haven’t read for a while?

Still have Houghton and Modiano.  Oh, am going to call Metroframe for advice.  And measure what’s here.  

to Paddie

Yes, told him I had first seen his work at a show in the Hood.  (Looked later, it was 1994).  Also said I remember a small painting he had for sale in the Norwich Inn lobby, probably same time.  We loved it and

thought of buying it but at that time budgets were much tighter!  I think it was $800.  Va says $200.  Whatever.  Memory.  

Aho has this wonderful studio and I loved looking all around it and talking about it with him.  He was very generous.  We both said we were the first new person either of us had seen since March!  the studio is half of a building that had been a gym for a small private school in Saxtons River that closed maybe in thelate 50s or 60s.  So it has big high windows etc.  In the other part of the building there are hundreds of wooden boxes.  He says someone is rebuilding an 18th century organ in there.  Place was crammed withpaintings, some I recognized from the previous show about black cuts in the ice.  He said he works on one piece at a time, not a few at once.  Takes usually two to four or more hours, depending.  In March withCovid he began the series that just made up the show.  He would walk in the morning, go in and make a small sketch painting and then work on something larger.  So it became a sort of visual journal of the early covid months.  I loved finding out that he had seen the exhibit of the Danish painter Per Kirkeby that had been at Bowdoin in the summer about five years ago.  Also talked about Clifford Still and his museum in Denver.  He has one table piled with art books and we talked about how he would come to a pause in his work and go over and browse  in the books.  Lots on the Hudson river painters and many others. 

When it came time to leave, I wrote the check after he said drop the price from 5800 to 5500!  He had two bottles of spring water and some paper cups there ready but that didn’t happen or need to.  Enjoyed schmoozing so much.  At the very end I said quickly that I had painted for about fifteen years (or was it ten?), had a studio.  But he said nothing in reply.  Because

I had rushed that and was walking out and so didn’t allow for it to become

a topic.  He probably had gotten tired by then.  

Second long interview with a painter.  Had an evening talking with Juan Jose Cambre in Buenos Aires in 1998 on our trip there.  

Why don’t I do a Haberesque memoir of all my conversations with the great and famous???  I could embellish and steal and imagine and collate at will and at whim.   Title:  At Will and At Whim.   

Could even begin by stealing his essay on Mila Menendez-Krause.  Holy Cow how could it have taken me so long——Menendez!!!  we lived on Menendez-Pelayo.  Oh goodness how I am failing.  Even more to the point that my collected interviews must be gathered and enriched.  

Now we are with Houghton in Neighbours and his passage on moods ( 171) is super and could have been in Reinhardt’s book.  All books run together, at least when you select what you like to read and don’t realize you’ve refined your tastes and sensitivities so finely that you use your unknowing radar to find only those books that synchronize with each other before you open them to read.  

The work to install the storm door is amazing.  So long, 9 am to now 11:30 and not finished.  And custom fitted at every turn.  

Roadkill finished last night on PBS.  British sit com by the mold as we expected.  Hugh Laurie gets to be prime minister through no fault of his own, machinations all around him and he floats on through, a bit good, a bit bad, at fault and not at fault, middling, muddling.  

Big event at the other end of the street this morning.  Ten or twelve cars parked down there, one woman taking in a bouquet of sunflowers.  

“I walked up the stairs of Rue de l’Alboni toward the metro stop.  I had again been naïve to think Béavioure would tell me everything about Noëlle Lefebvre and help me understand why I’d been interested in her for so long.  And I ended up believing that I was seeking a missing link in my own life.

Instead of taking the metro, I turned into Passage des Eaux, a place that, in fact, reminded me of certain episodes in my life. “

can’t recall where I was trying to copy this from!  Modiano I guess —-  yes

Petie is back home.  Afib caused the fall but they’ve found seizure disorder and she’s now on med for that.  My private theory now is that brother Rick had seizure disorder all of his life, under the radar, never diagnosed.  All three siblings could have had it, both sisters discovered it late in life.  

25 Nov  

Video from the kids in Paris looking at decorations in a big store window across from C’s school (in the Marais, 6th I think).  Kids are so beautiful.  

11:18 waiting antsy for delivery of Va’s chair from Norway!!  Slated to be here before noon.  Storm door is an 800$ custom made item!  another part of the covid splurge.  Have made good uses of that 100k life insurance money, in my humble opinion.  Plus the markets at an all time high.  Death

count every hour.  Strangest times in our lives.  Talk now to people on my Dick Tracey wrist phone.  

Hi  Peg cooking?  We're going to get a take-out ensemble already cooked from a local restaurant for tomorrow.  Happy Thanksgiving to you both.

Such a relief to have Biden sort of controlling the news cycle at last.

The markets at an all time high.  Death

count every hour.  Strangest times in our lives.  I talk now to people on my Dick Tracey wrist phone.  apple watch.  

In grade school at least maybe in to high school, we heard a 

monthly? weekly?  death count for deaths on the nations' highways.

Was that part of info backing support for interstate building system

or/and just anguish over how many died in car crashes since cars

were faster and more powerful?  

pumpkin or apple?  miss good mince meat but only available (Bordens)

loaded with corn syrup so I pass on it.  

——-

26  Thurs   Thanksgiving  Rainy and gray.  Meal warming in the oven.  Short facetime with the kids, Dave cooking up a splendid meal for them.  Big turkey breast with a scrumptious coating, stuffing, green beans.  Kids like the pop-up card which arrived today.  

Haber put me on to a Norwegian writer reputed to be super great, before Knausgaard apparently, Jon Fosse, ordered the Septology from UK.  He 

also has books called Melancholy——did Haber learn from him?  Not sure.  

Meal from CMan for two is huge and we have four so plenty of food for two weeks on top of Marley.  Canceled upcoming week.  Did enjoy pork and sauerkraut yesterday.  Have to tell my family on the message chain.  

Seems no one else in the family does sauerkraut with turkey.  oh well.  

Pattie not Paddie 

“The letter wasn’t dated, and that is of no importance. I have never respected chronological order. It has never existed for me. Present and past blend together in a kind of transparency, and every instant I lived in my youth appears to me in an eternal present, set apart from everything.”

— Invisible Ink: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Patrick Modiano

“This investigation might give the impression that I’ve devoted considerable time to it—already more than a hundred pages—but that isn’t quite true. If one were to put end to end the moments I’ve haphazardly evoked so far, they would add up to barely a day. What is one day over a span of thirty years? And thirty years had elapsed between the spring when Hutte sent me to the General Delivery window and my conversation with Roger Béavioure, whose name was not spelled Behaviour. In short, thirty years during which Noëlle Lefebvre had not truly occupied my mind for more than one day. That thought needed visit me only for a few hours, or even a few minutes, for it to assume its importance. In the fairly rectilinear track of my life, she was a question that had remained unanswered. And if I continue to write this book, it’s only in the possibly vain hope of finding an answer. I wonder—must I really find an answer? I’m afraid that once you have all the answers, your life closes in on you like a trap, with the clank of keys in a prison cell. Wouldn’t it be better to leave empty lots around you, into which you can escape?”

— Invisible Ink: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Patrick Modiano

——

Haber’s interviews showed me I’ve missed a recent Javier Marías—-but three years ago or four, winter we were in B’s townhouse in Abq, I was really not happy with the novel I read then.  Where the narrator climbs

the tree to spy on someone, etc.  Ludicrous and slow as I recall.  Always slow but that time not fascinating enough.  

We watched more of the pbs Italian police drama, Thou Shallt Not Kill, and keep missing the subtle twists of tale.  

both Anne and Rich called last night to wish happy thanksgiving.  

Dismayed to find that Rich spouts republican denialist party lines about the prez——had to hold my tongue when he got on to it—-praise for taking hydroxychloroquine sulfate and for knowing how to involve big money pharma to get the vaccines so soon—-no layers of regulations or oversight—

he’s pissed that Biden is taking credit for T’s achievements—-seems to have

swallowed republican denialism full strength — blame it on North Carolina I guess.   article in todays NYT about why so many did vote for bump—

“Until the mind-bending spell of polarization breaks, everything that matters will be fiercely disputed and even the most egregious failures will continue to go unpunished.”   someone named Will Wilkinson  

platospodcasts (@Mark Vernon) Tweeted: "Flips can be understood as a lost side of reality reaching out to us once more. Discerning what that means should be at the heart of religious life." My review of #JeffreyKripal's book @ChurchTimes 

wonder if I should say some of my post-trip (Bali) experiences, sense of things, constitutes a sort of personal Flip?  should read Kripal’s book more carefully.  

Warm enough we walked at dox today.  Anne says Rich has long been fox news mode, either directly or indirectly.  

Never had though to look up his house on zillow.  5 bds 4ba $1,015,404.

Built in 1981.  What year did we visit it??  4000 sq ft  

Anne’s house I’ll  guess is about $600k.  Nope 3bds 2ba $380.  3161sqft

built 1960  

not impressed with Shuggie Bain yet.  second story.  

“The GOP’s brand, according to Patterson, is now “white grievance and anxiety,” and “racial antagonism” has become a “badge of pride” for Trump and his devotees. Trump, Patterson writes, “comprehends his audience all too well” — and that audience is an angry one.”

Richard North Patterson “Patterson, a former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, explains, “(Trump) inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive and disloyal. Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America’s president and his party’s base. Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic — by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future.”

LitHub is ruining today —-  “Neil Gaiman began work on his novel “Stardust,” he decided to try something different.

“I was trying to write a story that I wanted to have the rhythm of something that might have been written in the 1920s,” Gaiman said, “and I loved the idea of how writing by hand might affect the story being told.

“That’s when I got hooked on writing by hand. To me, typing is like work. Writing with a pen is like playing. And you can write on planes when they’re taking off and landing.”

Gaiman’s preferred tools are fountain pens, as he has mentioned several times on his long-running blog (in one entry, he refers to a particular model, the Lamy 2000, as a “novel-writing” pen).

When Gaiman set out on what he has said was his final book-signing tour, for his 2014 novel, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” he purchased a special pen for the purpose.  . . .“It was a Pilot Custom 823, which is a rather expensive pen,” he said. “It has this little screw thing at the end that keeps it from leaking on airplanes.”

Gaiman used the pen, filled with a dark red ink that had the color of blood, to sign some 5,000 sheets that were inserted into copies of “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”  

And ——  AYTEKIN TANK4 MINUTE READ

Word processors were met with mixed reactions when they debuted at the end of the ’60s. While they definitely made the task of writing faster, purists were as weary of this new technology as they were enamored of it. The writer John Updike, for instance, said word processing made producing text “almost too easy.” In             at The New Yorker, Updike wrote, “I’ve bought a word processor and we’re slowly coming to an understanding. It’s quick as the devil, but has very little imagination, and no small talk.”

Updike may have been among the first to have complicated feelings about typing his thoughts out, but he certainly wasn’t the last. Writers from Danielle Steele to Neil Gaiman have shunned computers in favor of composing their works by hand.

“To me, typing is like work, Gaiman explained in a            “Writing with a pen is like playing. And you can write on planes when they’re taking off and landing.”

The benefits of putting pen to paper aren’t just for famous authors. For those of us who spend most days in front of our computers, writing by hand has a number of psychological benefits, in addition to giving our eyes a needed rest from the glow of the screen.

IMPROVES MEMORY

A 2017        in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that regions of the brain associated with learning were more active when subjects completed a task by hand instead of on a keyboard. Not only that, but the study’s authors also found that writing by hand could promote “deep encoding” in a way that typing does not.

In fact, there have been many such studies to arrive at that conclusion. One notable example       compared students who took notes by hand with those who took notes on laptops. Researchers found that the students using laptops tended to write down what the professor said word for word, while those who took notes by hand were more likely to listen to what was being said, analyzing it for important content and “processing information and reframing it in their own words.” When asked conceptual questions about the lecture, students who had taken notes by hand were better able to answer than those who had typed their notes.

Daniel Oppenheimer, one of the study’s co-authors,     Medium’s Elemental that in order to analyze the lecture, “people had to think deeply about the material and actually understand the arguments. This helped them learn the material better.”

FORCES US TO SLOW DOWN

According to Oppenheimer, the most annoying thing about writing by hand is also what makes it so effective for learning. “The primary advantage of longhand notes was that it slowed people down,” he says.

When you write by hand, you write more thoughtfully. Such mindful writing rests the brain, unlocking potential creativity,   neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre. “Recent neuroscientific research has uncovered a distinct neural pathway that is only activated when we physically draw out our letters,” she writes. “And this pathway, etched deep with practice, is linked to our overall success in learning and memory.”

Virginia Berninger, a professor emerita of education at the University of Washington, says the same: “When we write a letter of the alphabet, we form it component stroke, by component stroke, and that process of production involves pathways in the brain that go near or through parts that manage emotion.”

Pressing a key doesn’t stimulate those pathways the same way. She says, “It’s possible that there’s not the same connection to the emotional part of the brain when people type, as opposed to writing in longhand.”

In the same vein, writing longhand also allows people to really figure out what they mean to say, Oppenheimer says, which may help self-expression. In some cases, putting pen to paper can even help build connections: “A doctor who takes notes on a patient’s symptoms by longhand may build more rapport with patients than doctors who are typing into a computer.”

WHEN HANDWRITTEN WORK IS BEST

The speed at which we type is a blessing and a curse. While there will always be things you want to write quickly, there are others that can benefit from the time it takes to write them out by hand.

For me,      are an indelible part of my daily routine, and one I practice first thing when I start my day running my business, JotForm. Writing out my thoughts helps empty my mind and gives me a truly fresh start to the day. I’m an advocate for morning pages and journaling regardless of whether it’s on paper or keyboard. But considering the average American spends                     glued to a screen, keeping a journal can provide a much-needed, low-stakes break from our devices.

Another great opportunity to write by hand is in a weekly planner. Sure, there are apps and plug-ins aplenty to help you stay organized. But wading through dozens, if not hundreds, of productivity apps can be counterproductive. In the end, pen an paper may serve you best.

Our keyboards are great for a lot of things. But sometimes, there’s no replacing the feeling of spreading out a clean sheet of paper, uncapping a beloved pen, and letting the ink flow.”

I used to believe in and practice Julia Cameron’s morning pages practice!!!

“This is an exercise from one of the best-selling books on creativity ever written, called The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.

The exercise emphasizes the importance of getting your creative juices flowing first thing in the morning. No editing. No critiquing yourself. Just 40 dedicated minutes of freewriting, preferably by hand, until you have three full pages of thought poured out in front of you.

At first, most people are skeptical when they hear about exercises like these. But there’s a reason The Artist’s Way has become a beacon of light for so many people: it’s a daily reminder that what tends to get in the way of our creativity the most is our own critical nature. Morning pages are less about writing and more about practicing letting go.”

It would be so interesting to revert!!  to go back to writing only by hand #1 and to doing these Morning pages #2.   

Would I be able to do it???  For a week, or even for one day at a time???  What would that do to these Covid days?  To this winter?  I spied a big notebook up on the shelf in the bedroom the other day and thought—-oh

there is one of those big notebooks waiting to be filled!!  

If I gave up this screen work for a week, or reduced it to a few minutes a day and not to my main writing time, what would happen?     The passages above about the connections between handwriting and emotion are the most provocative and telling.  

“Virginia Berninger, a professor emerita of education at the University of Washington, says the same: “When we write a letter of the alphabet, we form it component stroke, by component stroke, and that process of production involves pathways in the brain that go near or through parts that manage emotion.”

Pressing a key doesn’t stimulate those pathways the same way. She says, “It’s possible that there’s not the same connection to the emotional part of the brain when people type, as opposed to writing in longhand.”

wow 

Cameron has a website with questions—-“Q: I work better on a computer. Can I type my Morning Pages, instead of writing them out?

It's worth noting here that, for our purposes, velocity is the enemy. It takes longer to write by hand, and this slowness connects us to our emotional life.”

the screens have indeed turned me into a production manager.  Those vanity books I print up every year are not that great—-I get into a production mood too much and unconsciously have a drive to produce pages, copy pages, cut and paste pages, collect others’ emails, fill, fill, fill toward that end of year production deadline.  Will I have enough to make a decent sized volume?  Of what?  Why not Flip and permit instead publication of only thin volumes that might be worth something—-stories or thematic musings or even forget about printings altogether.  Morning pages and journals.  For emotional health.  Who cares about who will never read them?  I wrote them for years without a care for that.  Who cares if there are and will be boxes of unread notebooks?  Lax didn’t worry about that, did he?  What we’re after is not screen production but a way of life, a life.  

Why try to put emotional life first, these days?  Is there some imperative here?  Or memory of years ago how important all of this seemed then?  Has

there not been an evolution?  Are these screens not important after we’ve learned to live through them for so many years already?  But then we remember before they existed.  

Did three morning pages this evening!  Is it such a great idea?  Or is it teachery trick, a lucky charm bracelet gimmick someone gives to others to make themselves sound authoritative, worthy, insightful, a source.  

Did the pages this morning.  Back to looking at Toby Johnson’s book more carefully.  “It is, perhaps, less prowess and more the beauty itself that the gay man displays and longs for.”  “It is a classic of spiritual teaching for anyone everyone, as all spiritual classics are, in every tradition around the world.”

Packed up the two paintings.   Sandwich tomorrow.  

1 December  Tuesday  

Stories about the Days Off?  Or Disappearing Ink?   nice message from Michael this morning, esp network.  Michael McGregor also sent one about Lax.  Would have been 105 today.  

“It is the life-enhancing, mystical-consciousness-inspiring, all-loving spiritual core of the religious instinct that must be saved from religion.”

—-Toby Johnson 

to post or not to post on amazon book reviews?  sleep on it 

Fosse born in 1959  Knausgaard born in 1968 

so I’ve read three or four pages of Fosse’s Scenes from Childhood.  Ok, maybe I could do that, these bits and pieces gathered from various places 

morning pages, check  even posted tweet about handwriting

handwriting does indeed give me the slowing down necessary, hungered for, the space within which soul wanders and wonders 

just seeing my handwriting on three pages feels right, good, centering, yes, that is who I was for most of my years and why not be that person again?  

biography of Lispector?  maybe some of it.  of Sontag?  maybe that too?  

finished Modiano’s incre sympathique   very short and slight  perfect for

copying—-and had a brainstorm about that—-copy it and then copy it again

and work variations on it from there out—-or such?  

so slight perhaps I didn’t pay it attention?  

three pages ended wondering if confusion, disorientation, never seems to leave——

poem by Mary Oliver in email from poetry chaikana  ends this way—

“I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass

and weeds.”    

three pages this morning, check.  one went to  Paul Turner.  rain.  snow coming tonight.  our lives have shrunk this fall with covid and yet it now feels ok, even good.  part of winter hibernation.  

Skipping ahead, skipping the Shug parts of the book, to get into Shuggie’s adolescence.  It is the perfection of these books that weary after a while, the authority they presume to have over the reader.  In the future more and more works will be disquieted, piecemeal, fragmented, spliced and diced. Readers want more space to breathe, the older literary works pretend too much superiority.  

Rewriting Modiano another nightmare idea, project x will make the difference, or maybe project y or q or t or c or m.  

Liked this—writer who now lives in Mass somewhere? Amherst?  

The_Big_Quiet (@Steve Edwards) Tweeted: One reason to write it all down is to prove to yourself it happened. Another reason is to see how it changes over time. One more reason is to let it go. One more reason after that is to remind yourself it’s your story no matter what, & you can choose to do with it as you please.

Just read a piece via LitHub about interviewing Dickey and finding out he lied about his fighter jet and by doing so besmirched the author’s dad who also flew one of those jets.  The piece goes on too long, part of a book about his dad.  Name rang a bell and sure enough I had read his book twenty years ago called Seminary.  The one with that incredible report about the director having him jack off in front of him and then show that he could stop just before the finale to prove his commitment to chastity and his vows.  Oh dear god help us.  At least I really disliked this long-winded disquisition about Dickey and his lies and Hendrickson’s father.  

——

Now this is Monday morning platinum commentary at its best and I agree pretty much.  ActuallyI don't look for Biden's mini-era to do much at all.  Just muddle us forward somehow.  Forward the wrong word, onward.  Only counter-commentary I can ever come up with is "figure out howto factor in to all of that analysis "surprise."  We really don't know how it will play out even with our best hunches and tea leaf reading because we don't know just which surprises will upset everyone's apple cart next.  McConnell and Melania have a baby out of wedlock??  Ivanka runs off with Jon Ossoff?  etc etc etc    I guess hoping for surprise is as lame as crossing your fingersor offering a novena to the infant of Prague.  (Still regret we didn't see the real infant of Prague when we were there but we never even made it close to the cathedral.  Were taken to a village out of town, very picturesque, great meal at a wonderful '30s style modernist mansion, and amedieval statue over a well that people who survived the Black Death put up afterwards.  Thought of that today after hearing some more covid headlines.  

Nancy sent an article from Atlantic by Peter Wehner that ends—-

“But there is another side as well, which is that, in the words of John Keats, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The line’s meaning is elusive, but Keats seemed to be saying, at least according to some of his interpreters, that truth is not just a philosophical concept; it has an aesthetic quality as well. And beauty itself is tied to truth, to transcendence, to the way things really and truly are. To live one’s life aligned with truth—especially when standing for truth has a cost—is to live a life of integrity and honor. But is that something we even talk about these days?

Maybe the road out of the epistemic crisis that Barack Obama correctly identified runs not simply, or even primarily, through the realm of politics or social-media reforms, as important as they are. Perhaps the path requires us to order our lives well, remind ourselves and others to love what is worthy of our love, and affirm that “one word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.” We won’t get there tomorrow. But each of us can begin to take steps on the journey tomorrow, a journey out of mist and shadows toward the sunlit uplands.”  

wow  and I was worried about being too uplifting when I told Phil to bank more on surprises  ——   

unboxed the pens, looked up videos on how to fill  

Lamy 2000   serial X002E7EXOV  Matte Black Fine 

would swear I sent you a reply last night but no evidence on gmail so perhaps I dreamed it---

the torn out page I liked for the way it summed up a century of history in a paragraph or two---it is from a book by Oates called The Mountains of Paris---I liked the title so took a look atthe book hoping for some sort of travel essay---mostly wrong, more a memoir of growing upmidwest and gay and Baptist or some rigid church, I skimmed and skipped through most of it.  

I often wonder what I would have done had I not had the pressures of mother & church ---shewanted me to get a phd.  After we moved here I procrastinated writing the dissertation for years---I wondered what a dissertation was and how you were to write one.  And the more I read Burke(over and over) the more I wondered if he was even worth the study. He repeats himself a lotand yes enjoyed spinning complex verbiage, basically creating for himself his own mini-encyclopediaof philosophy. Typical for a self-educated person at that time?  As I read him I wondered (depressed at times) why keep on with this, why did I want a phd?  etc etc. By that time we were here and Ineeded the doc completed to get on any list for employment here. so it went.  What would havehappened had I gotten to Carnegie Mellon and started a program in architecture?  Would I havedrifted around the design arts worlds?  Ended up in an artsy or do-good foundation bureaucracy,staffer for a humanities council somewhere? Who knows?  Did I ever want to teach?  Did I everknow what teaching was about?  Was it worth any of the trouble involved?  Didn't I just performlike a sort of classroom clown for these phys ed bozos who were stuck getting a college degree they didn't want either??  

Does life make us all buddhas whether we like it or not?  buddhist monks, looking at the gravel raked into artful circles.  

Why did I just buy two expensive pens?  Oh, after 9/11 I bought an old 1960 portable typewriter.  

Just bought Willow a new laptop!  the year of big spending goes out with a bang.  

9 December  Wednesday  big day 

Willow on long zoom PEO meeting.  Hannaford to Go worked smoothly.  Bought a new mac for Willow.  Signed up for Apple Card.  Decided to go ahead with Nexium.  Filled the Pilot 823 and used it.  Ink all over my hands.  Found a text on GERD.  

“For example, the Mediterranean Diet, which includes high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and unsaturated fats, was recently studied in a large cohort of Albanian patients. When corrected for demographic and lifestyle factors including eating habits, those following a traditional Mediterranean diet had lower reported incidence of GERD symptoms ). A follow up retrospective study of patients receiving standard acid suppression therapy vs. those on a Mediterranean diet and other common lifestyle alterations found equal efficacy of the two approaches on the reflux symptom index, which is a common survey tool used to assess extra esophageal manifestations of GERD.”

10 Dec  

Phil —-  

Well, I can't answer your questions, but I can hazard a guess.

Like me, you were not absolutely absorbed by any subject or driven toward any profession.  You liked architecture, but I never felt that it was a burning desire in yr gut.  So I think you might have gone to architecture school and done fairly well.  But I think you wouldn't have had the overwhelming drive to become a big name in the field.  Instead, you would have hired on at a firm and been a fairly good architect who designed some nice houses and small buildings.  You probably would have also worked with others in the firm on a major project or two.   Would you ever have taught architecture?   I don't think so.   You shy away from giving opinions.  You prefer to cite an authority.  Which can form the basis of a course. But when one hands out grades that's your opinion, and you really don't like to do that.   So you might give talks about trends in architecture to some students or the public, but IMO you wouldn't teach the subject.   

I should add that writing a thesis involves giving an opinion.  I think that's a major reason why you put it off as long as possible.  But I also think you're a tad lazy, as am I.  But I'll also admit that, if I was faced with writing about Burke, I would have put it off, too.  Or chosen some other subject.

So, all in all, it's pretty obvious you don't like putting your opinions "out there" to be possibly criticized which is one major reason you don't like teaching.  But I'll admit that dealing with a bunch of almost brain-dead kids is also likely a huge factor.

So why didn't you go into architecture.  Well, you have already given the reason a while back.  You had no idea how to get into architecture school and knew no one who could help you figure it out.  And I have sympathy with that problem.  My parents encouraged me to attend "good schools," but since I didn't want to be a doctor, neither dad nor mom had any further advice.   My brother was an electrical engineer, but I couldn't understand anything he said about that subject and, therefore, had no desire to go into that field. So I really didn't do much beyond attend  "good schools" because, like you,  I had no burning desires and had no one who could help me figure out what to do.

I drifted into writing and editing because that's what some of the people I met in the Peace Corps intended to do.  When I graduated from Brown, I had no intention of going into writing or editing.  I had no idea what I wanted to do  other than avoid Vietnam.  In the early '80s I took a couple of courses about  computers because that was "the thing" in the early 80s, and I got a job as a technical writer and later a "service manager."  But I was never really intensely interested in the subject as others were.  

Finally I read about a young woman who got $100,000 for writing a murder mystery.  So I quite work at Boeing and tried to write a couple of mysteries.  I wrote 5 and think I make about $400 all told.

So you and I just kind of drifted through it all.  But we didn't do too badly in the end.  We're alive, have roofs over our heads, and some income.   In fact, in the month of November, I made almost $200,000 in the stock market.   Of course, I know that what the market can give you on Monday it can take away on Tuesday.  And since the economy isn't doing well, I don't think the market is going up for good reasons these days.  I think problems lie ahead.

Cheers anyway,  

——

Could note, on the theme of Inbetween, middleness, how I’ve got Phil commentator to the left and another to the right!!  

You're best line in there  "a tad lazy"!  I can see you water skiing at the lake.  I barely got up but you were practiced and good.   I think we both said around that time, hey, if life will be like water skiing, hit it!  

From water skiing to driftwood.  But congrats on the $200k.  Helps to feel secure on those issues.  Pluswe are both ending our days living out chivalric nobility.  Who could  ask for more!!

The 2000 K is a fluke that will soon disappear.   I suspect it occurred for two reasons, neither good.  (1)  I suspect that wealthy foreign folk are moving funds out of their countries which are foundering and those folk are stashing their (ill gotten?)  millions or billions in US selected stocks for safekeeping.  Thus, all that buying of  some US stocks and real estate this November  drove certain stocks and real estate prices significantly up in price. (2)  Because our government is sinking so far in debt I think the value of the dollar is dropping faster than our government is measuring.   Our commerce  department measures inflation in terms of the cost of food and other consumables.  It's missing the rise in costs of owning stocks and some real estate, believing that such increases won't hit "working people."  So things are going on that our gov't isn't monitoring.  

BTW.   I think you would be a much better architect than you believed.  You just wouldn't defend your work the way more ambitious architects would argue for their creations.  

Music, math, and science:  I listen to an "easy music" channel on our TV, and recently I've noticed that the bios of all the orchestra conductors - guys like Percy Faith -  say that they began playing the violin or piano at the age of 3 or 5.  So it wasn't just Mozart.   Likewise, most people in the sciences, especially math, got absorbed in the subject quite young.  You often read that they graduated from college at 15 or so.  So they inhabit another world from the water-skiing world you and I lived in. 

Finally I agree that who would have predicted that we would spend our last years caring for our somewhat crippled women.  Has that turned us into a couple of buddhas as you suggested?  I dunno.   I feel pretty skeptical about everything these days.  Was buddha a skeptic?

P

—-

I guess it was the defeat of Donald Trump, among other things, that caused the S&P to record its biggest one-month gain since 1928.   I don't know about the rest of you, but I made a boatload of money last month……P

Maybe it's your talk of money that brings this up.  Did you ever knowor know much about Elmer Rinehart on W Street?  Big gray house witha sort of tower.  Had a black driver-cook-butler.  Came into the store to buysteaks for dinner parties.  Much the southern gentleman.  I thought hehad moved to C from the Bay but after that I didn't know much.  VeryCatholic though.  When I was in Philly in the bros, he came to town andinvited me to have dinner with him at his hotel (club?) on RittenhouseSquare.  Very old Philadelphia feel to it all.  Probably where I got the notionyears later to claim that Phila is worlds away from NYC and is in factthe beginning of the South.  Phila and Balto in the same world---away from NYC. 

——

I like the idea that I would have been a good architect.  I’m going to go with it.  

Nicholas posted  "There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deep within ourselves that they rid us of our history". 'The Poetics of Reveries' by Gaston Bachelard.

why they rid us of our history is the koan here——archetypes, they be?  

“Erythritol is a sugar alcohol and natural sweetener that has no impact on blood sugar.”   Rebel Creamery Midway UT

Trafton Wilbur fixed the toilet seat.  My wonky screwing on of the valve was not bad enough to strip the threads.  He put some sort of plumbing tape on it and got it fitted snugly and now the whole thing works super well.  That was yesterday.  Today, overnight, a big snow, very fluffy.  Driveway filled.  Janice and Jeff out  almost all day getting their driveway cleared.  Jeff gave us a few swipes with his blower so at least we could get out if necessary, now that it is 4pm.  Ben must be waiting until the last flake falls or for tomorrow.  Last flake seems to be falling right now.  Beautiful of course. 

December 17 Thursday  

Va’s new computer working, some of the desktop seems to have migrated ok.  We canceled her blood draw for today, have it tomorrow.  

Here is an example of how his writing seems so insightful and unusual—-“that paradox of admiration, of loss of self, of dedication … call it what you will. Back in the sunshine—”

Dear Bob,

Walking up the hill from the accommodation block (now Schumacher College) to the Main Hall at Dartington after breakfast. We fell into step together. You must have spoken first as I never would have!

Harvey makes an appearance in one of Edward St Aybn's novels in his 'Californian guru mode'. He is not treated kindly by Teddy's hypercritical eye if I recall. I have not followed his subsequent career with any care though I did read his book on Jesus a while back and thought it good enough. He writes beautifully yet appears along the way to have lost the humor and playful skepticism that he had earlier - and it is a loss! But 'A Journey in Ladakh' well-deserves its classic status. I wonder what he thinks of it now?

Best wishes, Nicholas

Dear Nicholas

Now I fear I have asked you this before.  Well, I go round and round certain memory themes.  You comment about the push-pull of Harvey's journey, the embrace-flee and hide dynamic reminded me somehow of Dartington because for me the whole week felt like that.  

Would Harvey had known St Aybn or Alan Hollinghurst at Oxford?  I'm finishing The Swimming Pool Library.  Have you read it?  I thought I had not.  I knew I had read The Line of Beauty.  Library I got mid-way into and realized yes I had read it.  How long ago I couldn't decide.  I didn't recognize Harvey in St Aybn's work.  I imagine Hollinghurst must put in all sorts of references only certain people can see clearly.  

I remember reading Harvey's earlier book on Mother Meera and confusing it later with the journey to Ladakh.  On his own website he seems to have disowned or down played the earlier book.  His search seems to have gone from India to Ladakh.  When one book is so beautiful, we always wonder why all the other books cannot be as beautiful.  Settling in California feels disappointing----not fair at all to any party---we should bring out a reader of the saints of California.  Hmmm.   Actually, Kripal's book on Big Sur might be seen as an attempt of sorts.  Esalen.  It is Henry Miller with the Big Sur title. 

——-

since. Was it merely lust? Was it only baffled desire? I knew again, as I had known when a child myself, confronting a man for the first time, that paradox of admiration, of loss of self, of dedication … call it what you will. Back in the sunshine—fiercely hot now, so that I at once put on my topi, &”

“Slowly we are led, as the author is led, into the heart of the place and its culture, that of Tibetan Buddhism represented by one of its most remarkable adepts, Thuksey Rinpoche, a lama, originally from Tibet. The book evolves into a study of sainthood and its remarkable feature is that it allows Thuksey Rinpoche to emerge wholly real from this encounter with hagiography which is a testimony to Harvey's skill as an author and the openness and vulnerability he shows in approaching his subject. He captures beautifully the unnerving quality of the saint that you do not know when you encounter one, whether you simply want to fall into their welcoming arms, forgiven and awaiting transformation,  or run away and hide in fear feeling that every failing is now exposed to view, hanging out around you, seen by everyone.  

Usually, if you are fortunate, you manage to do both, and the latter - the fear - can be utilized to remind you of the actual need of the former - the compassionate, transforming care. 

But mainly I think because it is, I realize, extraordinarily uncompromising - saints have fierce aspects - and though here you only see Rinpoche's warmth and humor, his short 'sermon' on the essentials of Buddhism is magnificently and challengingly austere. The world is permeated by suffering, literally, in the words of the Buddha, 'on fire' and the only ladder out and through the fire is to learn to love wholly disinterestedly and only after that dedicate your life(s) to rescuing others. Nothing could be further from the contemporary landscape of 'mindfulness' and calming apps! Perhaps it is that uncompromising note, I needed to re-hear and wonder whether you move in towards it or go and hide! “

Great ride to Sandwich this morning, the sunlight bouncing all off the snow and trees.  Nice to see Will and pick up the paintings.  I love both of them.  Pattie let slip that she has reservations, not realizing these were the finished products, so will see if she dares to tell me.  No doubt K would have preferred a gold frame, maybe even on each.   Wonder if that is what Pattie has in mind.  No problem.  Love what Will did.  Beautiful dark wood with little worm holes in it, possibly African, but he doesn’t recall.   

from Nicholas—-

Dear Bob,

At least for Teddy, I think he would have been out of sync with Harvey - they may have overlapped but whilst Teddy would have been a dissolute undergraduate taking acid, Harvey would have been a distinguished Fellow of All Souls scribbling meaningful poetry. As to Hollinghurst, I have no sense of his age but I know he knows Teddy (but possibly subsequently - literary London is a small place from which fleeing to California might seem eminently sensible). I cannot remember in which book of Teddy's Harvey makes an appearance, not one of the Melrose books - a side foray that I cannot recall enjoying greatly, too knowing and cynical (even for him)! I have read one of Hollinghurst's books but cannot remember which one or anything about it and I saw a BBC adaptation of another that has proved equally forgettable! I tend to think contemporary English fiction is a wasteland occasionally I foray out in hope only to return in disappointment. It is as if all the most interesting writers have escaped to other genres and write engaging, novel books about history, nature or science.

Both Temenos Conferences remain exceptionally vivid in my mind - and seminal - rather more so than my time at university; and, I remain in love with the gardens at Dartington.

Now I am reading Boris Akunin - nothing like a dose of historical detective fiction before Christmas. I did not take to his Erast Fandorin (a police detective in St Petersburg in the late nineteenth century) though may give him another try at some point but am enjoying Sister Pelagia (his myopic, knitting nun detective) at the same period but in the Russian provinces. Akunin was a historian so the references are knowingly good and as a storyteller, he is as eccentric as his characters.  

Best wishes, Nicholas

—-

News today of Dot Diehl’s passing, Dec 17.  Today is the 23rd. Wednesday. 

Bright sun, beautiful cardinals at the feeder.  

Enjoyed hearing Nicholas tell me about reading a detective novelist!  Aho gave me a surprising salute to the photo of the framed painting——“Oooo la la! That is a very handsome presentation! I hope you’ll the painting for many many years!”  Pattie clarified “Aha, I surprised you, then!  No, no, to a gold traditional frame for that painting! “  says she thought a more contemporary frame would have been my choice.  Must hang the paintings today and bring out more Christmas decorations.  

Christmas Day  

Snow dusting in the morning in Chezet.  Lots of photos from the family.  

Phil will not be a candidate for the Chair of Religious Studies . . . anywhere—-

“At some point in the distant past, cultures around the world decided that there were highly judgmental gods in the heavens that had to be appeased now and then by human sacrifice.   The Aztecs ripped hearts out of sacrificial victims.  Romans buried them alive.  In the old testament Isaac feels he has to sacrifice his own son, and we can be sure Isaac wasn't the only ancient Jew to think Yahweh wanted human blood.  The Jews in the Bible said that the Philistines sacrificed people.   I also remember a photo of the mummified remains of a young Inca girl that had been discovered in the ice on a mountain top in the Andes.  The girl had been about 12 and was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees.  The back of her head had been bashed in.  The description said she had been sacrificed to some Inca god about six hundred years earlier.   It is astonishing to me, therefore, that Christians don't see that the central part of their beliefs - the crucifixion - is part of this grisly, blood-thirsty, primitive, barbaric tradition.  Joshua of Nazareth has to die for "our sins," and Christians even celebrate the birth of this sacrificial victim with hundreds of joyful hymns and calls to be happy.  Ugh! “ 

final passages from Library 

——

“My journal has always, since my childhood, been my close, silent and retentive friend, so close that when I lied to it I suffered inwardly from its mute reproach. Now, though, it seemed to hold out the invitation to something shameful—self-pity, and, worse, the exposure of my narrow, treadmill circuit of memories and longings.”

“I became somehow picturesque to myself, prone as ever to the aesthetic solution.”

“‘If you’ve looked at the diaries for when I first went out,’ he said, ‘then you’ll understand how young and aspiring we were. We were quite sophisticated in a way, but with that kind of sophistication which only throws into relief one’s childlike ignorance. It was a bizarre system, when you think about it. There was one of the vastest countries in the world, and they sent out to govern it a handful of boys each year who had never in their brief lives experienced anything even remotely comparable. It wasn’t like India, of course, there wasn’t the same element of domination—indeed, the whole enterprise was utterly different. Anyone could go to India, but for the Sudan there was this careful selection, screening don’t they call it nowadays. They got some worthy Leslie Harrap types of course, and plenty of sprinters and blues to keep things running on time, and they also got their share of cranks and unconventional fellows. There were possibly more of the latter. It was an absurd system and yet very, very subtle,”

“He sighed heavily at this. ‘I ought to have been able to make something of it myself; but it’s too late now. As you get near the end of your life you realise you’ve wasted nearly all of it.’”

“There is a book in my life, but it’s almost entirely to do with imagination and all that. The facts, my sweet William, are as nothing.’”

“‘Oh—yes, I did a little book in the war; part of a series that Duckworth brought out on various different countries, I can’t quite remember why. It wasn’t much good. Fortunately almost all the stock was destroyed when a bomb hit the warehouse. It’s probably worth a fortune now.’ He laughed hollowly; and then lapsed into a vacant half-smile.”

—-

“It was James’s theory that everyone had about them some wrinkle at least of lovability, some peculiar and attractive thing—-a theory which gained poignancy from the problems in applying it.”  

“that paradox of admiration, of loss of self, of dedication . . . call it what you will. “  

——

Heuser’s friend, David Dietz, died on Christmas day.  Dot Diehl on the 17th.

Charterhouse of Parma on now.  I think I watched some of it years ago.  Still have to dig into Septology.  

And the pens.  The pens are coming.  Last carpe diem splurge of the year.  

Good to hear from Jeff in Japan.  He sent four documents to look at.  

“and he’s dressed just like I’m dressed, black pants and pullover, and over the back of the chair just like the one I have . . .”  Fosse   echoes at once of Bernhard  

“The self re-created in a form of radical uncertainty is not merely the young woman from the northeast who is, ostensibly, the subject of the novel, but the narrator too is also a self re-created. He is capable of awkward asides, over-confidence in his own method, pure fear in the face of the power and powerlessness of words, and then sudden passages of soaring beauty and stark definition. He is capable of a paragraph such as: “Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much God. Why not a little for men.” or “Meanwhile—the silent constellations and the space which is time which has nothing to do with her and with us.””

Colm Toibin  intro to Hour of the Star  

“by Benjamin Moser in his brilliant biography Why This World. What Moser calls “her inflexible individuality” made Lispector a subject of fascination to those around her, and to readers, but there was always a sense that she was deeply mystified by the world, and uncomfortable with life itself, as indeed with narrative.”   

all set now to read Fosse as a legatee of Lispector, to read Toibin some more and Moser’s biography!!! busy new year ahead.  where is the time??

“self re-created in a form of radical uncertainty”   there we are here at the end of the year

Tim McFarlane posted a new beautiful piece on Instagram.  I wanted to buy it instantly.  Effect of the full moon afterglow?  29th was the full.  Did he post it yesterday or day before?  Definitely need to sleep on it a few days and not give in to  the rush of it.  

Snow this morning for the last day.  31st   Light dusting.  Looks lovely.  Quiet day beckons, medical check-up for Va yesterday.  She is writing to Jean Shaheen today about the vaccines.  Peg and Phil are getting jabs soon.