Nox by Anne Carson

I bought Anne Carson's newest book the other day. She is one of two authors alive today whose works I will buy at the drop of a hat. (The other is Thomas Pynchon.) It's called Nox, and it is a beautiful piece of literature. Physically, it is a beautiful book.

It's more of a box than a book exactly. The box opens like a book, but the pages come out in accordion-like fashion as one long strip. It is one piece of long paper. At first, it's difficult to decide how to handle these odd pages. I assumed the thing was fastened into the bottom of the box-book somehow, so I carefully held it in my lap and gently turned the pieces over revealing one page at a time the words.

Then came a section that ran on for several folds in the manuscript and made me look at the thing in a whole new light. I could lift out the front part and stretch the words out over several pages and take in a larger section than is normally afforded to the reader with the average book.

Finally, came the realization that the back of the manuscript was free of the bottom of the box-book. I could lift it entirely from its case. So, I did. I spread it out before me on the bed where I sat reading and took in the beauty of the lovely words that lay before me.

Nox is the Latin word for night, and the manuscript is a long, loving translation of Catullus 101. The pages alternate between dissertive translations of the poem word by painstaking word and fragments of letters from Ms. Carson's deceased brother and her thoughts on their life and relationship. The manuscript is a facsimile of something she created for herself in memory of her brother.

There are old photographs and copies of handwritten letters. I should say that there are copies of torn pieces of letters from her brother. We are left wondering whether we have all to go by to decide what we should think.

But isn't that life? Aren't we in a constant state of wondering whether we have all the information we need to think?

The physical manuscript itself calls out to me and begs to be handled. It implores me to stretch it across the floor to try to piece it together.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Good Habits

To develop good habits you must nourish them with good action; and to do this it is necessary to seek good company. Environment (in particular, the company you keep) is very important, for it is stronger than will power.

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance

What a telling short two sentences written circa 1930 by one of the twentieth centuries greatest yogis. It goes right along with a saying that is popular among my friends: you can act your way into right thinking, but you cannot think your way into right action.

This collection of many sermons, speeches, and writings of Yogananda is ripe with gems like this one. If we take his words at face value, he would seem to be telling us that we are the company we keep. In other words, you are what you eat.

Surround yourself with good people, and you have a better chance of becoming one yourself. I don't think the yogi is imagining that it will happen by osmosis but that it will occur of its own accord. Like begets like. It's interesting the reliance he places on people. He alludes that it is through people we learn our most basic lessons of how to act.

We are not islands. We do not exist in isolation. From birth, we are surrounded by people. I quite agree with him that from the age we are capable of doing so, we must hunt out the best possible people to have in our lives. It's like picking the best possible fruit at the market. To enjoy good health, we must eat wholesome food, and to enjoy a wholesome life, we must seek out genuine people.

Three Little Monkeys

[The Blogger lives! After a long hiatus, I'm back.]

Nearly everone is familair with those three little monkey-figures that depict the maxim, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." I emphsize the positive approach: "See that which is good, hear that which is good, speak that which is good."

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance

What does it mean to switch from negative to positive statements? Can semantics alter the reality of what we see and feel? I think the answer is yes. In the first instance quoted above, we are admonished of what not to do, but the second gives us more room for movement.

When I concentrate my efforts on not doing something, I restrict myself. But the quest to seek out something, I am opened. I am given free rein to conduct myself in ways that are life-fulfilling and life-giving. What a joyful difference it is, too. I am emboldened to go out and find the good in all things.

Instead of concentrating on the bad, I have a reason to appreciate the good. In the end, I find beauty.

Caprice!

At the end of Act 1 in Amadeus, Saleiri flings these words at God:

"Now for the first time I feel my emptiness as Adam felt his nakedness ... You gave me the desire to serve You -- which most men do not have -- then saw to it that the service was shameful in the ears of the server. Grazie! You gave me the desire to praise You -- which most men do not feel -- then made me mute. Grazie tanti! You put into me perception of the Incomparaable -- which most men never know! -- then ensured that I would know myself forever mediocre."

And thus begins his duel with God. He goes on, "They say God is not mocked. I tell you, Man is not mocked!"

Just think about the hubris. It has to come from a human. God has no need for arrogance. Only a person capable of enough self-reflection can produce such a torrent. Not since Sophocles wrote his Theban Trilogy and forever set down the tale of Oedipus, have we seen such a whirlwind. Not since Shakespeare gave us Hamlet, have we heard the internal workings of such a tormented mind.

Oedipus was guilty of excessive pride among other things. His fight is with himself. In The King, we have a heroic undoing, and in At Colonus, we have a divine reconciliation when the gods themselves choose a tomb for the wandering, blind old man. We see the roots of the schism between the sacred and the profane in Oedipus's arrogant rants, but the wounds are healed. It is the man, standing before his tomb: "We see him bow and kiss the ground and stretch his arms to the skies, salute the gods of Olympus and the powers of the Earth in one great prayer, binding both together." Only a human being can accomplish that. Only a man.

We must look to Hamlet to again see the inner turmoil:

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wan'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?"

Hamlet's plight is with his uncle. It is an earthly duel like Oedipus's. In this text from the late sixteenth century, men bewail their fates and rant once again at the caprice of the heaven's. The fight is between humans at the behest of higher powers. The inner workings of Hamlet's mind are laid bare in a way never seen before, yet he does not fight with God.
 
What happened in the last 400 years that sets up Salieri's declaration: "From this time we are enemies, You and I"? What allows for this shift, this earthquake? I think the answer lies in revolutions in America but most especially in France and Russia and then in two great wars that engulfed the whole planet, which were revolutions of another type. Shaffer's Salieri is only possible in the light cast from the flames of these great wars that upended the very spheres of the heavens.
 
Salieri's fight is not with Mozart, as he asserts himself, but through the man to God. Could this battle take place before the twentieth century? Were the pieces in place previously? Salieri is certainly as arrogant as Oedipus, and his inner life is open for us to see in the text like Hamlet's. Still, the war is on a higher plane. It is with the divine. Shaffer, the playwright, mesmerizes us.
 
Are we, each one of us, at war with God?

A Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Never May the Fruit Be Plucked

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never never may the the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.

In this poem, four lines are almost repeated save one or two words. Importantly, those changes are verbs. There is something in the action that the poet wants us to look at closely. In the lines beginning "never, never...," plucked becomes gathered, and in the lines about the barrels, gathered becomes harvested. The ideas in the words rhyme. It's interesting that she chose only 3 verbs to play with. Plucked. Gathered. Harvested.

Plucked has joy in it. Spring laughs.

Gathered begs multiplicity. It is full.

Harvested is final. Ripening completes.

And in the end, in love's winter, nothing is stored but rots where it hangs or lays. The ripe, full joy comes to an inedible sour sweet stench.

Seeking God

I lived overseas for many years, mostly in Asia. Living overseas changes a person, and I have to say that I have some un-Orthodox ideas about spirituality, religion, and God. I believe fervently in a spiritual side of life, but I refuse to be drawn into defining it by standard means. I would go so far as to say that I doubt there's a single person on the face of the planet who really knows what the spiritual side of life is exactly like.

When I read Indian spiritualists and mystics, I find a great deal of truth, so it was with relish that I accepted a couple of books of poetry when a friend was moving. Imagine my surprise that the author, Adyashanti, was a Caucasian American, living in the Bay Area. I have found a great deal of truth in the poems and sayings in the book My Secret is Silence. One stanza I especially like ends a poem:

Has it ever occurred to you
that you are seeking God
with His eyes?

I fell asleep last night repeating that question to myself. I also asked myself whether I would act differently if I believed it. The answer is yes.

Don't get me wrong. "I" am not God. I do not believe that I am God. I don't really even know what God is.

Here's what is right. God is. I don't know where God's boundaries are, but I find it hard to fathom that God has them. That being the case. What is divine and what is profane?

In Oedipus at Colonus, the blind former king Oedipus goes out in search of his own tomb. Unguided, he leads those who follow him, and a messenger recounts, "But then after a moment, with no word spoken, we saw him salute the earth and the sky, home of the gods, at the same moment." In one motion, a man links all that is sacred with all that isn't. With a salute, all becomes one. It takes an action from a human to accomplish this.

There's something in the salute by a blind man that binds the sacred and the profane. There's something in the act. Human action has the capacity to bring God into the equation.

Reading Tarot

I read tarot cards as well as books, and sometimes I read books about tarot. I just finished one: Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot by Lon M. DuQuette. It's an exhaustive study of the most fascinating tarot deck yet drawn. The Thoth tarot contain astrology, Qabbala, ancient Egyptian references, and more. There's no end to the imagery and what can be elicited from them.

While astrology placed Earth at the center of the universe for millenia, Crowley boldly sweeps that away with his new deck. DuQuette writes, "The individual is now to be recognized as the primary and preeminent unit of society. It is now possible for humnaity to awaken to the liberating fact that each of us is a star, as unique and self-radiant as our celestial counterparts." A new age has begun, and with it, new cards for the new deck. Justice is replaced by Adjustment, Strength by Lust, and Temperance by Art. The crowning change is the elimination of the Judgement card with the advent of the Aeon card. All of these substitutions speak to the new dawn of human spirit glorifying the power of the individual.

I've read tarot for well over a decade, and when I first encountered these new cards, I honestly didn't know what to make of them. I doubt that many tarot readers do. Once it is understood that Crowley meant his deck to be the crowning symbol of a new age, they make more sense. Justice is an absolute, existing outside people and acting on them. Adjustment, on the other hand, is an individual act. The new card points to the person's responsibility to place himself in harmony with the universe. While Strength is measure all on its own needing no other reason to exist than itself, Lust calls to each of us and to the strength of our own passions.

I don't think it's strange at all that Crowley would rid his deck of the Temperance card, that chaste angel measuring the questioner's worth. In its place, he gives us Art. It is a halting picture of a single figure with a double face pouring both water and fire into the cauldron of creation. Isn't that what creating is? Aren't artists preeminent creators? This new card combines the masculine and feminine in a new form forged from the combination of opposites.

Judgement is replaced by the Aeon. The Judgement card in traditional decks gives us an angel sounding the horn calling for the dead to rise again. It's a chilling portrait with all those open graves, and always makes me wonder about the unopened ones. Crowley proclaims a new age has begun, a new Aeon. The card is decidedly Egyptian. The goddess Nut arches her star-studded body across the sky to cover the seated god Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The god Hoor-Pa-Kraat stands superimposed transparently before the others. From this, we are to gather that the era of fear-based existence is at an end. Indeed, our fear of the end or death is to end, and we are to understand our own immortality.

Reading tarot is fun for me. Reading the Thoth tarot is pure enjoyment. The colors are striking. The images pull ideas out of me. I have half a dozen different decks, but this one gives me the most to work with. The figures of the trumps exude mastery. The court cards clearly define different kinds of individuals. Finally, the numbered cards call out their meaning in ways that other decks do not. I am enamored with these cards.