New Story

I wanted to mention that I have a new story in Sublunary Review.  It's the latest (and probably the last) of the "Zoë stories." Sublunary Review is a fabulous journal, and the editors do a beautiful job with the layout and illustrations for the work they publish.  I feel so honored—it's like my work is being presented in a palace or a splendid museum.  And this story allows me to pay tribute to Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday and Goethe’s Marchen, amid all sorts of fun and whimsy and playfulness, with a serious message underlying it all.

World Bee Day

(A larger screen version can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn8H-qelRqU)

St. Anselm and the Proslogion

Rise now, O frail person! Flee, for a little while, your occupations; hide yourself, for a time, from your unsettling thoughts. Cast aside, now, your heavy cares, and put away your toilsome business. Give room for a little while to God; and rest for a short time in him. Enter the inner chamber of your mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and those that can aid you in seeking him; close your door and seek him. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, “I seek your face; your face, Lord, will I seek” (Psalm 27.8). And come now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek you, where and how it may find you.

                                                                              --St. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion

  

I was thinking about St. Anselm and the Proslogion today. My father, who was a philosopher and a professor of philosophy, recommended it to me (among other books) when I was a teenager and became interested in philosophical questions. I didn’t really get the ever-controversial “ontological argument for God” at the time (and one could claim that there are actually two separate arguments), but I loved (and still love) the first and last chapters for their spiritual depth and authenticity. One can truly “hear” Anselm’s voice and personality in those chapters, despite the passing of almost a millennium since they were written. Anselm remains one of the most interesting figures of the eleventh century, and not only because of his philosophy and theology.  He was deeply involved in both the civil and religious controversies of his time, and this meant that his later life was deeply unsettled, which makes the depth and focus of his writings all the more remarkable. Those works were tremendously influential in the Middle Ages, and philosophers still quarrel over the “ontological arguments.” I haven't read any of his other works (except for a few short selections), but I never grow tired of the first and last chapters of the Proslogion.

Kumar Gandharva

 

Today is the birthday of Pandit Kumar Gandharva, the great Indian classical singer.  A musical prodigy from childhood, he refused to be bound by custom, and introduced many groundbreaking themes and styles into his singing, which made him controversial in the eyes of some conservatively-minded music enthusiasts.  He was stricken with tuberculosis as a young man and was told by doctors that he would never sing again.  After much suffering, he recovered with the help of antibiotics, but was left with only one functioning lung.  This didn’t stop him from eventually returning to singing.  He incorporated folk and devotional songs into his repertoire, including the songs of Kabir.  His interpretations of the songs of Kabir are renowned for their artistic beauty and singular spiritual intensity.  Here is a link to his performance of Kabir’s Nirbhay Nirgun Re Gaoonga:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tXJu-1O8U

Dog Paddling

 

Die meisten Menschen wollen nicht eher schwimmen, als bis sie es können.

Most people will not try to swim before they are able to.

This is probably the most famous line of Novalis, thanks to Harry Haller quoting it approvingly in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. The irony is that it is contradicted by the behavior of most would-be writers, who tend to write before they are actually able to do it properly. (Perhaps this is true with all the arts.) I know that, in my own case, I have written for years (grant proposals, articles, reports, newsletters, verse, and finally, after many years, fiction) without ever having the basics of English grammar fully in my grasp. I hated the subject of grammar in school (although I thought that the phrase “vowel diphthong” was funny, and I was glad that some verbs were finally getting the help they needed), but I do have to confess that in the end I found more useful writing tools in the study of linguistics (on my own) and music theory than anywhere else. I’ve picked up a few grammar tips here and there, though I can’t think of a more interesting use of words from a creative standpoint than the reversing of homophones in a sentence: “Nothing compliments a meal like a nice complement on the cooking.” “Of coarse, it’s important not to make it course.” Language play is so important to me! When I write, I find that allusiveness, polysemy, tropes, in-jokes, idioms, and innuendos—as well as the musicality of language—matter more to me than plot and characterization, although they are useful props to hang those other things on. To be honest, I do care about plot and characterization, although I tend to think of the whole more in terms of mood and message than anything else. And those things can best be expressed with the tools of metaphor, intimation, sound play, allegory, and the like. Sometimes, when I’m stuck, especially while editing, I go to composing software (like MuseScore 3) and use my minimal piano skills to compose a little something. It makes it so much easier to return to editing or writing—to find the right word or phrase. As James Joyce wrote in Finnegans Wake, “Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning, I just don’t care what my thwarters think.”

    I’ve always rebelled against certain orthographic conventions (mostly in the realm of punctuation). But as much as one might like to throw out all convention, there are rules that must be followed in order to be able to communicate with the reader. On the other hand, an author like Joyce continually overrode linguistic conventions and gave us something completely amazing and unique. It’s interesting to note, however, that the line from Finnegans Wake, “—Three quarks for Muster Mark!” uses traditional sentence structure, which helps us penetrate its opaqueness. Suppose it had been written as “—Muster three Mark quarks for!” Its meaning would be completely obscured. (Generative grammar theory attempts to give us some good explanations as to why this is the case.) But the truth is that a somewhat more unusual sentence structure could have been employed by Joyce that would still have given us a sense of its meaning, something like, “For Muster Mark—three quarks!” This is not to say that Joyce didn’t break down normal sentence structure in Finnegans Wake—but he did so at a cost to intelligibility, and very few authors can dance on the terrifying knife edge between incoherence and ambiguity as Joyce did. It is usually safer to stay with “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” though I personally prefer “For Muster Mark—three quarks!” because it adds a sense of immediacy to the words.

     Sometimes it’s better to jump right in rather than stand at the side of the pool—but one has to be ready for a little discomfort and a lot of dog paddling.

Words

Ich halte es mit Siddhartha, unsrem weisen Freund aus dem Osten, der einmal gesagt hat:

“Die Worte tun dem geheimen Sinn nicht gut, es wird immer alles gleich ein wenig anders, ein wenig verfälscht, ein wenig närrisch—ja, und auch das ist gut, auch damit bin ich einverstanden, daß das, was eines Menschen Schatz und Weisheit ist, dem ändern immer wie Narrheit klingt.”

                                                                         --Hermann Hesse, Die Morgenlandfahrt

  

I agree with Siddhartha, our wise friend from the East, who once said:

“Words are not good for revealing hidden meanings, everything is always a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish—yes, but it is also right and fitting, and I likewise agree, that a person's treasure and wisdom will always sound like folly to others."

A Journey to Peace

 

A way to peace: to be honest with ourselves about who we really are; to peel back the layers until we really see ourselves and what we need to do—to be decent, to be just, to be generous.  Leaving our petty grievances with others aside, we should always strive for sincerity about who we really are.  Not the image that we want others to have of us, the idealized image that we present to attain their approval, but our real selves, our true mean-spiritedness, dishonesty, and weakness.  How hard it is to be truthful with ourselves!  But how necessary.  To see the plank in our own eyes instead of the speck in others.  A way to peace—and a journey to peace.