The Kasîdah

-

With God's foreknowledge man's free will!
what monster-growth of human brain,
What pow'ers of light shall ever pierce
this puzzle dense with words inane?

Vainly the heart on Providence calls,
such aid to seek were hardly wise
For man must own the pitiless Law
that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.

"Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en,
come pay the priest that holds the key;"
So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak
the last to enter Heaven, - he.

Are these the words for men to hear?
yet such the Church's general tongue,
The horseleech-cry so strong and high
her heav'enward Psalms and Hymns among.

What? Faith a merit and a claim,
when with the brain 'tis born and bred?
Go, fool, thy foolish ways and dip
in holy water buried dead!

Yet follow not th' unwisdom-path,
cleave not to this and that disclaim;
Believe in all that man believes;
here all and naught are both the same.

But is it so? How may we know?
Haply this Fate, this Law may be
A word, a sound, a breath; at most
the Zâhid's moonstruck theory.

Yet Truth may be, but 'tis not Here;
mankind must seek and find it There,
But Where nor I nor you can tell,
nor aught earth-mother ever bare.

Enough to think that Truth can be:
come sit we where the roses glow,
Indeed he knows not how to know
who knows not also how to 'unknow.

-

From Chapter VI of The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton

The Hard Path (Road to Bethlehem) - Fritz von Uhde (1890)

Saw this at the Winter Märchen exhibit in Vienna, was one of my favorites. The fog, the depth, the way the fall blends into the hard ground of winter. The allegorical undertone lending a settling sense of harmony to the love in the foreground.

Between Two Laws

The pacifism of American "ladies" (of both sexes!) is truly the most disgusting "cant" that (in perfectly good faith) was ever pronounced and advocated from the lofty heights of a tea table - with the pharisaism of the parasite who pockets his war profits and looks own on the barbarians in the trenches. Even the antimilitaristic "neutrality" of the Swiss and their repudiation of the power-state occasionally contains more than a bit of the truly pharisaical lack of understanding for the tragic dilemma involved in the historical duties of a nation that finds itself in the position of a power-state. Yet, in spite of this, we remain objective enough to see that behind this attitude there lies a sincere conviction which unfortunately, because of our peculiar destiny, we Germans of the Empire cannot accept as our own.

But the Gospel one should leave out of this controversy - or one should fully accept it. If one does this, there can be only Tolstoy's conclusion, no other. Whoever receives a single penny of rent that others have to pay (directly or indirectly), whoever possesses or consumes anything tainted with the sweat of another man's toil - he feeds his life from the spoils derived from that loveless and pitiless economic struggle for existence which in bourgeois language is called a "peaceful effort in the service of civilization." It is just another form of the struggle of man against man in which, year after year, not millions but hundreds of millions are stunted in body and soul, are wiped out, or, at least, are condemned to lead an existence that, alas, is infinitely more deprived of any recognizable "meaning" than the defense of the honor (and that means nothing but the inescapable historical duties) of one's own nation by all - the women as well as the men, for they, too, are "soldiers" if they do their duty. The attitude of the Gospels in this connection is in the decisive points absolutely unambiguous: the Gospels are in opposition not just to war (they do not even especially mention it), but ultimately to all and any laws of the social world in so far as it wants to be a world of secular "civilization," i.e., a world of strictly human beauty, dignity, honor, and greatness. Those who do not draw these consequences - Tolstoy himself has done so only when he was about to die - should know that they are bound to the laws of the secular world which include, for all forseeable future, the possibility and inevitability of wars for power, and that only within the framework of these laws they can fulfill the "demand of the hour."

Max Weber responding to an article by a Swiss pacifist entitled "The Laws of the Gospel and the Laws of the Fatherland"in the periodical Die Frau in Feb 1916

Luke 6:24-25

even the last of the black eyed babies say
that every saint has a chair you can borrow in a church to sell
that the wind blows cold across the backs of the master and the kitchen help
there's a big pile of innocent bones still holding up the garden wall
and it was always the broken hand we learned to lean on after all

Once upon a time in Anatolia

How good is this film!! Bursting with inspiration right now, wish I could add to this but for now the trailer must suffice.

what the water wants is hurricanes
and sailboats to ride on its back

what the water wants is sun kiss
and land to run into and back

i have a fish stone burning my elbow
reminding me to know that i'm glad

i have a bottle filled with my own teeth
they fell out like a tear in the bag

i have a sister somewhere in Detroit
she has black hair and small hands

i have a kettle drum
i'll hit the earth with you
and i will crotchet you a hat

and i have a red kite
i'll put you right in it
i'll show you the sky

Home and social commentary

In this post, I want to step out from behind the things I really love, and the things that have been the reason for this collection of notes, to talk about something I've thought about in smatterings while in Vienna.

For the past few days I've been living off 20 euros, a result of not having access to my bank account. After class ends at 1 in the afternoon, I've been coming home to cook myself pasta and pesto for lunch and dinner. To avoid spending any money at all I've just stayed in my room. Yesterday I allowed myself the luxury of a beer bought from the grocery store while watching The Sound of Music for the nth time. There are only so many hours you can sit through Dostoevtsky and old letters and Rilke.

This is not a response to an article or anyone in particular. It's a reflection on my time at home. In that time, there were a few conversations that I remember. Mostly, they were with people who will be reading this. Every other conversation I had with the rest of my friends, peers, colleagues seem to be coagulating into a badly deformed mass resembling a person raising his fist at something. A few things we talked about were the scholarship system, the housing system, our government, China, God, finance, our schools, working in our country. The list could go on, but probably not for very long.

We extrapolate, as things go, I could be doing this and being this, in ten years. We hypothesize, he didn't do this because this happened. We sympathize, she should have known this was going to happen. We laugh when someone makes a quip about someone else running after a cashbox. We proselytize, do you really want to be that sort of human? We are pained, look at how hard they work us, and look at what they are doing to us. We appraise and assess, this is not the right time for us to expect to be who we want to be. We ruminate, this is my calculated sacrifice, this is my best shot at life. We denounce the world, there is nothing good in it. We celebrate the world, there is this much we want from it, I can tell you all about it. We dream and not dream at the same time.

I have an impression that when we make, or are recipient to incessant reflections on how things are done, how they should be done, we make ever more unshakable the sense of ourselves in our own society. We magnify ourselves above the people we're speaking for. We grovel ever closer to the soil of our very hearts, repeating the question 'Will I be happy?', and receive the ever more resounding answer, 'I must be, I have to be'.

Social commentary is not social action.

Cowardice is shown not only on the battlefield or when one is confronted with a knife pointed at one's entrails. There are people whose courage wobbles like jelly, but it's not their fault, that's how they were born.

José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Do you wonder where the self resides? Is it in your head or between your sides? And who would be the one to decide its true location?

-Andrew Bird, on Wittgenstein

I was sitting around today and felt the sudden release of being off the production line. I got the impression that maybe I've been waiting for precisely that all my life. There is so much I am thankful to this school for. It really is an embarrassment of riches.

At least for a while.

Sister, by Vetiver

Performed in 2009

Sister, come back home
Mom and Dad are mad at me,
and gone looking for you
Sister, what did you do?

Folks say you're at that age,
going through some kind of stage but
It's safe now, the coast is clear.
I'm the only one here.

Sister, I need to know
Why you're fighting this world so
Old enough to dare,
too young to be treated fairly,
too bold to be told, Sister

I heard voices high,
saw tears but did not ask why.
You fought back with pride, sister.
Some loves are bound to be
much more than the world believes.
You locked the door and you left the key behind.

I pray that you'll come to
your senses and when you do
hear my plaintive moan,
see how these strange minds grow
you'll feel it and know, sister.

i've lightning if the stars dry up to guide me
i've soft clay to knit my bones astride

what a miracle they say
dark clouds gather
velvet holes gaping wide

oh and they pour it down
and they sing to me of wonders unseen
like clouds that rise from the sea

oh and i'm sorry
i'm so sorry
that i missed the point of this pageantry

but i'm grateful
that you love me

Dust

Saw this film today at the Gene Siskel as part of the European Film Festival. It was heartrendingly beautiful, as much as it was devoid of feeling.



This makes it at least conceptually similar to another film I've seen in the past two days - Sucker Punch by Zack Snyder. I've seen more than a couple of reviews panning the film, with A.O. Scott of the NYTimes dismissing it as "almost entirely lacking in tension, grace or visual wit." And truly, too, the lengths that Sucker Punch goes to to be entirely unserious is actually mind-boggling. Of the three above criticisms though, two show how much said reviewer is missing the point and one is unfathomable. What kind of grace or tension was Scott expecting from Sucker Punch? This is a film that chooses to exclude completely the perfunctory elements of your everyday action flick - the romance, the sex scene, the character building, the plot?? - and pushes the actual action (in an action film) to its technological limit. And brings with it generous helpings of of cliché, nice-looking people and bravado. This film wants to makes you (specifically girls) feel good about being female simply because girls are beating guys up everywhere, and has absolutely nothing to say in reply to someone who alleges that au contraire, the girls in the film present a distorted account of female empowerment by exploiting the implements of female sexuality most in commercial demand.

Dust uses a completely different bag to tools to quite the same effect. There is grace in every point of interaction between the characters, even if there is nothing particularly interesting about the feelings involved. They are wet and seething with anger in the middle of a lush forest, or they are intently yet gingerly building a house of cards with only parts of their faces flickering in the candlelight. There is little dialogue to distract from attention focused on the beauty of the shot. As a result I came away with images in my mind that are strange in themselves, but are made all the more enigmatic by their detachment from larger ideas or a coherent setting.

Just a lot of beautiful things.

This university NEEDS to stop getting with it like this.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

NADYA: From the moment news of the revolution came, Ilyich burned with eagerness to go to Russia ... He did not sleep and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made.

(LENIN enters, wearing a clerical collar, but otherwise dressed in black from parson's hat to parson's leggings. He and NADYA look at each other and despair - Chasuble and Prism.)

But such things could only be thought of in the semi delirium of the night.

Travesties, Stoppard

Iron and Wine poetry

Just today, I tried to listen to Iron and Wine's newest offering, Kiss Each Other Clean, without success. Any close listening reminded me immediately of how inferior anything on the album was compared to what Mr Beam graced us with in his 2007 release. Before long, I was back looping those verses of Innocent Bones over and over again. The act itself was a repeat of what I did during a hot Taiwanese summer day 4 years ago now. Going back and forth, figuring out the words, and scribbling them on my palm. Back then, it was because I didn't want old sentimental nonsense framing my various army paraphernalia. It's not very seemly. Now, it's because I'm working on a problem set trying to prove that a bilinear form on Rn can always be represented by tensor products of the natural bases of R. Putting soft pen to mathematical paper, not exactly seemly either.

So etching those words into a place I can almost fold up and pack into my lonesome seems quite appropriate. So is watching them fade over the course of a day, as if they were seeping in slowly to color my own veins.

Cain heard a cat tumble limp off the rooftop
Abel heard his papa pray
And even the last of the black-eyed babies say
That every saint has a chair you can borrow in a church to sell
That the wind blows cold across the backs of a master and the kitchen help
There's a big pile of innocent bones still holding up the garden wall
And it was always the broken hand we learned to lean on after all

We were talking recently about how the ancients seemed to remember things so much better, so much more precisely than us today. We said that maybe it was a better ear they developed for rhyme and rhythm, the Homers and Chaucers of the day. I think that has to be at least partly right. It must have something to do with how a verse of music can equip a given set of moments with its own distance metric, analytically separate from that of time or Euclidean space. Here in my room in Chicago, those unending ridgelines of South Taiwan provide me closer shelter than do the buildings in this university. That misty summer morning is unquestionably exponentially closer to me now than it was yesterday. Order, order is preserved.

king's crossing

the king's crossing was the main attraction
dominoes falling in a chain reaction
the scraping subject rules by fear
he told me whiskey works better than beer

the judge is on vinyl
decisions are final
and nobody gets a reprieve
and every wave is tidal
if you hang around you're going to get wet
i can't prepare for death anymore than i already have

all you can do now is watch the shells
the game looks easy, that's why it sells

frustrated fireworks inside your head
are going to stand and deliver
talk instead

the method acting that pays my bills
keeps a fat man feeding in beverly hills

i got a heavy metal mouth
it hurls obscenity
and i get my check from the trash treasury
cuz i took my own insides out

it don't matter cuz i've no sex life
and all i wanna do now
is inject my ex wife

i've seen the movie and i know what happens

it's christmas time and the needles on the tree
a skinny santa's bringing something to me
the voice is overwhelming
his speech is slurred
and i only understand every other word

open your parachute and grab your gun
falling down like an omen
a setting sun

read the part and return at five
it's a hell of a role if you can keep it alive

but i don't care if i fuck up
i'm going on a date with a rich white lady
ain't life great

give me one good reason not to do it
BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU
so do it

this is the place where time reverses
dead men talk to all the pretty nurses
instruments shine on a silver tray
don't let me get carried away

I was asked recently why I wanted to spend a quarter abroad. The question was phrased in such a way as to inquire what I hoped to gain by living abroad. This is a strange question to me, since as an international student I already am living abroad, and have been doing so for the better part of the last two years. As such, I will reflect a little bit on being in Chicago as a foreigner. After 2 years in the military, I felt like I had to catch up on lost time to see the world. Chicago has been both stimulating and disappointing on that front. The University of Chicago is well-known internationally, but Chicago itself is known for more than that. It is known for its sports teams, blues music, its Really American food, and its skyline, among others. Yet, it has been disappointing how segregation of communities and functions, each of which strives constantly to be self-contained, has come to dominate life in the city. This applies not only to the University or Hyde Park - it applies to how the Loop feels unsettlingly empty after working hours, or how Chicago residents will commonly not have been to most parts of the city.

I suppose I have gotten used to only going to certain establishments that fulfill all my needs - CVS, the Ida Noyes Pub, Lockdown Grill, Chinatown. Both the city's overall tenor, amplified by the time commitments of a University of Chicago education, and the shortcomings of the CTA have persuaded me to trust in my own blinkers.

I would like to study abroad firstly to get away from Chicago's overwhelming sense of functional segregation. Being from Asia, and having lived in Europe, I am used to the notion that a city should be porous and imperfectly planned. I would like to have a plethora of options in terms of the places I go, to develop my preferences among restaurants that are not major chains, and bars that have a history. I would like to have the option of exploring a city on foot and on my own time, learning its different faces, whether they are agreeable or repulsive.

At the same time, I would also like the time to let Chicago settle and foment in my mind. I know I am bound to miss my favorite record stores and bookstores, and I know I am bound to miss the winter. I surprised myself recently; having not been Downtown since before winter break, I emerged from Jackson station on the CTA red line and found myself quite speechless at the sight of State Street stretching in front of me flanked on both sides by skyscrapers. In some ways, the city of Chicago has become a part of me, Chicago with all its detachment and quiet suffering. Chicago, whose people try from time to time to shout above the wind, but finding themselves worn down and hoarse, withdraw back to the vast expanse of the city's ground level sprawl, where there are too many empty corners to occupy.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants."

Chekhov, Act II, The Cherry Orchard