the good German Lutheran
Here's a joke:
One day the Pope is having a quiet conversation with a German theologian in one of the rooms of the Vatican. Suddenly two French archaeologists burst in, very agitated and nervous, and they tell the Holy Father they have just got back from Israel with some very good news and some rather bad news. The Pope beseeches them to come out with it, and not to leave him in suspense. Talking over each other, the Frenchmen say the good news is they have discovered the Holy Sepulchre. The Holy Sepulchre? says the Pope. The Holy Sepulchre. Not a shadow of a doubt. The Pope is moved to tears. What's the bad news? he asks, drying his eyes. Well, inside the Holy Sepulchre we found the body of Christ. The Pope passes out. The Frenchmen rush to his side and fan his face. The only one who is calm is the German theologian, and he says: Ah, so Jesus really existed? --Roberto BolanoI really love that joke, especially being a doubter of German descent myself. I remeber how overjoyed I was to read Nietzsche as a teenager: here was a Lutheran minister's son saying things I had felt but couldn't say. It felt so liberating.Now I'm wondering how liberating it actually was. Thinking about Nietzsche now, I am of the opinion that he never stopped reacting to Christianity. He still felt so strongly about it that one of the last books he wrote was a point by point refutation of Christianity, The Antichrist. Perhaps that he never freed himself is one of the reasons why he went mad. The other night I had a bitter quarrell with Tupa. In her anger, she pointed out that I was always into some religious idea or another. She deprecatingly called it my self-help. Once I was over being angry, it did seem to make sense. Growing up in an ultra-religious community, I was in a constant dialogue with religion, and I think I felt subconciously all these years that I couldn't be a good person without it. I've tried all kinds of different religions, although I still feel that buddhism suits me best. But have i ever tried seriously to do without religion? I have to admit that the answer is no. Now that I'm in England, I don't have to have a dialogue if I don't want to. I think maybe it's time to drop religion for a while. I have spent so much energy on it, and a good deal of it seems wasted. I have enough junk to sort in my mind; do I really need to tackle this huge question right now? The logical answer is no. So for now it is dropped, I'll let you know if anything emerges....
heaviness
Tupa and I have taken two long walks this weekend, and both of us are now the more tired for it. I think we've walked some 12-15 miles, taking in the reservoirs and pine forests surrounding them. We were very lucky to have nice weather although it was chilly at times as autumn seems finally to have arrived. Tupa has a sore back and my legs feel somewhat leaden. We'll begin short runs at the end of the week to move slowly towards longer runs.
I've decided (with Tupa's encouragement) to take two weeks off from working and educational concerns to relax and recharge my batteries. I started on Saturday and have to say that I enjoy it so far. I've been reading a funny book called
S. by John Updike that is about a woman who goes to live in a religious commune similar to the one Osho had in Oregon in the 80's. She manages to bring her old life with her, and the letters she writes home are full of how she is still attached to this home. It's a great satire about lego-religions, although I must admit I 'm yearning to read something that really is a kick in the balls.
I realise that the last entry was somewhat heavy and incomplete, and so I'd like to think a little more about the woman who got into the truck and the resonance that still has for me. I read this poem on Saturday morning, and think it may illuminate what I was trying to say last time.
'Autumn in Gaol'In autumn a friendsent in an apple.I made to eat itall at once.Red: too red.In my palm, heavy:Heavy as the world.--Tsuboi Shigeji'Heavy as the world' is what is most important as far as my own thinking is concerned. Last time I was thinking about drowning, and my mind immediately grasped at an intense sense-memory to reinforce the feeling of life. (The redness of the prisoner's apple, the scent of the woman.) Like the prisoner, I wanted to eat it all at once: I remember looking at her brown hair and soft brown skin and longing to touch it. Sense builds upon sense, and just adds to the feeling of longing. This longing has a heaviness of its own, and perhaps the heaviness of longing is parallel with the heaviness of mortality. Perhaps my memory of the perfumed japanese woman getting into the truck with me is just an escape of my contemplation of mortality (transference?). Perhaps there is no contrast at all, perhaps they are all part of the same web. What is life then? I'm not going to try to answer that question here, although I'll post something if I happen to have a sudden epiphany.....
Drowning
Sorry for the potential depressiveness of what's to follow. People who don't like thinking of their mortality shouldn't read on. I found this description of drowning while reading
The Perfect Storm. I had to read the book again after subjecting myself to the sappy movie twice recently. Here goes:
Until the break point, a drowning person is said to be undergoing 'voluntary apnea.' choosing not to breathe. Lack of oxygen to the brain causes a sensation of darkness closing in from all sides, as in a camera aperture stopping down. The panic of a drowning person is mixed with an odd incredulity that this is actually happening. Having never done it before, the body--and the mind-- do not know how to die gracefully. The process is filled with desperation and awkwardness. 'So this is drowning,' a drowning person might think. 'So this is how my life finally ends.'Along with the disbelief is an overwhelming sense of being wrenched from life at the most banal, inopportune moment imaginable. 'I can't die, I have tickets to next week's game,' is not an impossible thought to someone who is drowning. The drowning person may even feel embarrassed, as if he's squandered a great fortune. He has an image of people shaking their heads over his dying so senselessly. The drowning person may feel as if it's the last, greatest act of stupidity in his life.These thoughts shriek through the mind during the minute or so that it takes a panicked person to run out of air... At this point something makes people breathe involuntarily (which means water for 90% of us) and Junger describes what also happens to the the other 10% until returning...In the other ninety percent of people, water floods the lungs and ends any waning transfer of oxygen to the blood. The clock is running down now; half-conscious and enfeebled by oxygen depletion, the person is in no position to fight his way back up to the surface. The very process of drowning makes it harder and harder not to drown, an exponential disaster curve similar to that of a sinking boat.What strikes me about this is the feeling of banality felt during this death. My own two brushes with death were similarly banal; just me waking up and wondering why people were screaming at me or why I was in the ER. What's different here is that the drowner knows he's dying, he's not allowed to immediately fall asleep like I was. After the water, though, he is allowed to slowly fall asleep while he dies. Why do our bodies make death so easy? I'm not sure myself, but perhaps the point here is that death isn't some kind of liberating moment, perhaps the liberation is in living. Why are moments of living so intense to our senses? Think of a wonderful smelling woman or a deciduous forest in October. There is one woman I remember vividly only because of her scent when she got in a truck with me on a rainy March day. That imprint is there, and I probably won't ever forget it. If I was a buddhist I would say all senses are illusory. My wonder is how this can be when perceptions are stamped all over our consciousness. Compare the lovely scented woman in the truck with me to the fading consciousness of the drowning man. Which moment will ripple through life? Perhaps death is the peace of sleep, and our lives a phantasmagoria of sense perception. But what then?
Done?!
I turned in my dissertation on Friday and am no longer a student. I must admit that it's taken a few days for this to sink in. I thought a lot about the last year being a student at University of London and a weekend visitor to Tupa in Devon. The most obvious thing is that it has been hard, damn hard. I found a quote by Yeats last week that sums up how I felt throughout much of the last year. The aptness of this quote needs to be clarified first. The biggest thing I've learned this year is that I don't know much about this business of living, especially in my own pursuit of happiness. The second was that I really began to discover how much Illinois still had a grip on my life even though I was thousands of miles away. This led to much navel gazing concerning childhood, etc. Now for Yeats:
For some months now I have lived with my own youth and childhood, not always writing indeed but thinking of it almost every day, and I am sorrowful and disturbed. It is not that I have accomplished too few of my plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.I did often feel sorrowful and disturbed, and it was often because I had no idea how to apply what I had been hoarding in my mind. Not only that, but I was totally untrained in the methodology of academia. I did feel for a long time that nothing ever would happen, and like Yeats, felt tremendously guilty to those I had given just cause for anxiety and disappointment. Then something broke in me, and I began to look for ways (any way) to act. Once I began looking, answers came and for once I began to feel like I was in charge. This feeling sometimes fades but never totally leaves, and is the one thing that I can have whether I stick in academia or not. It only happened because I felt out of my depth and was in a position of no comfort.However, today I am not a student and not employed and am free to do as I chose. I have comfort, and also the feeling that the work I've done is of quality. I'm looking forward to going home and having my evening walk and enjoying the feeling of possibility....
Sept. 1st, 2005
Had a good day at work today and managed to rewrite a whole chapter, only keeping one paragraph out of five pages. Something tells me tomorrow might not be as productive, but giving myself nine hours in town every day makes sure that something gets done. It's hard to believe that in a week I'll be done.
Went for another walk tonight and it was as clear and crisp as the last entry. Well, there were some cumulus clouds this evening riding in on a southwesterly wind, and halfway through the sun began to set behind them and shaded them from blue to pink to the colour of soiled cotton wool. I've been walking mainly this week on the road which leads to the reservoirs from Bridford, and have only met one car in two nights. It was rainy last night and I was in low spirits, hence no walk.
On Sunday, Tupa and I took a nice four-hour walk to a cairn circle on the moor north of Bridford. You must walk north from the village and cross the Teign river valley, and then from there go west. You walk quite a ways up the hill, and suddenly the moor opens out before you with not a tree in sight. The cairn circle is unmarked on the trail, and with all the gourse you don't see it until you're right on top of it. Nevertheless, there's a circle of grass marked on its perimeter by stones about a meter high. I'm not sure what they were used for, but it leaves fertile ground for the imagination. Up above the circle there is another smaller cirlce of grass without rocks where there are remains of bonfires. I busied myself imagining modern day pagans coming there and doing all sorts of things, but once again I was letting my imagination go. Once I get done with my dissertation, I intend to find out what they're for or what they were. Perhaps I'll find out they're not ancient at all, but there are many of them on the Dartmoor map and they would have to be special in some way or another for them to be marked. Anyway, Tupa and I loved it, as it was sunny and warm and we had good conversation.
