i thought of home

i thought of home and remembered what had been lost, what had to be found. i thought of home and my mind was bright, clear, pure. there was a beginning from the start. there always will be. a garden, a path, flowers, a stone wall. nothing distracts me, my hands are grown simple. and today everything, each particular thing, shines, flashes, with a radiance that is the meeting of beauty with the idea. i closed my books. my heart was quiet. i thought of home, and remembered you.

the rain doesn't wipe away, the fire burns, but doesn't destroy. the reflections on cool windowpanes a precise calibration of what the soul has put forth. today, my heart is a garden in which a thousand flowers bloom. because it allowed in a stranger, when it thought of home.

Yassara means 'to smooth, level, pave, make easy'. Yusr from the same root, means 'easy, prosperity, abundance', Yasār means 'ease, luxury', as well as 'left hand'. In all cultures, during periods of great spirituality, the right hand symbolized positive action and the left hand negation. Man takes, gives and eats with the right hand. He discards and does away with superfluity with the left. He knows what is positive by negating the negative...

Wisdom is already there; all that must happen is for it to unfold. Unfolding is uncovering...

The path has been made quite easy. Allah says in the Qur`an that the path towards realization, towards inner knowledge, is easy. Why is it easy? The implication is that we must simply avoid what we have already experienced as being not conducive to our well-being. The Prophet said, 'The mu`min (the man who has faith, who trusts that he will reach his reality in its totality) will not fall into the same hole twice'.

---Shaykh Haeri.

Goodbye 1999

The future that never was. The imagery was haunting because there was so much darkness and silence 'out there' (maybe a reflection of the 'desert places' within). The centre barely held, an oasis of warmth and reassurance, like childhood; despite the slight vacancy in the eyes, the knowledge that one didn't truly belong, horizons were at a safe enough distance for us to know that innocence would never really fade, that we'd be okay no matter what.

Within these phantasmal boundaries each lord's hall is a place of refuge. Within: warmth and light; human solidarity and culture;rank and ceremony. a solidification of time. Outside: unredeemed time.

I remember saying to the dougal back in the..err...anyway, let's not talk about dates..just imagine, we'll be grown up in 1999. Well, we've crossed the line but I don't know about you, I still feel I haven't quite grown up (wheel in St. Paul here: "be ye not conformed...."). It's as if the future has come and gone! Or passed me by. Wheel in Homer Simpson here: damn you, time!

Another decade gone without any achievements (hey, what did you expect, this is the black sun, not California!). But no, without any desire to achieve anything! Long live the Kashmiri Revolution!


'Ten years on, you could be forgiven for believing this place has now come to pass in the TV schedules – those endless nostalgia evenings in which some stand-up comedian recalls his first Chopper bicycle and packet of Spangles, or the latest Andrew Davies attempt to sex up Victoriana – and in the bestseller lists.

English Heritage was the invention of the Thatcher government, high on bunting and patriotism and announced in the "Falklands election" of 1983. It replaced the old Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission with something a bit more puffed up and PR-friendly to the tourist industry. It sought to remind us of all we had achieved – the stately homes built with the wealth of the empire and the slave trade and so on – in the hope that the British might be inspired to revisit those imperial glories...

English Heritage was meant to represent a break with the 50s and 60s, when the drive had been to dismantle symbols of the establishment, put faith in the young; to demolish some of the old and to make the world new. After 1983, the here and now was to be viewed with suspicion'
---Tim Adams, from The Observer.

Here's Prince, in his Omar Khayyam mood.



Happy New Year, dear reader(s)!

difficult choices

[Still trying to work through this one so if anyone has any comments they're more than welcome]

There is a position up for grabs in your department. Two people apply. One, let's call him "A", has studied all his life in America and now teaches at a prestigious university there. The other, let's call her "M", has lived all of her life in England and now teaches at a good university there. You can only offer one of them the place. How do we go about this?

Starters: what's irrelevant: living in a particular place, gender, etc.

Secondly, who is the "we " that decides? Let's say that you're an outsider, someone who works in a different subject matter altogether, but that you've been asked by a committee to comment as a 'neutral'.

For this to even be a difficult choice let's assume that we don't have a trivial answer. So, the English university is good by any standards and may in fact be better in some respects than the American one.

What do you say? What do you do? What procedure do you follow? To make it more complicated-and realistic-let's say that you also have the option of saying"I don't know" (i.e you may not be able to express a preference, rank the two candidates-in which case only those who know the subject matter will decide).

Let's be clear here: you may in fact find some discomfort in having to make such a difficult decision, or you may be fearful of making a wrong decision and you wish to avoid that at all costs. If that is the case, opting for "I don't know" seems like a good response to those problems. But that doesn't capture what I'm trying to get at here.

Let's say that it is possible for you to genuinely believe that you cannot rank the two candidates and if that is the case it would be wrong to pass judgement (even if you have to make the choice or express a preference one way or the other, you might still plausibly say it's unfair). But no matter what, you'd still have to do some explaining. You cannot simply say something like, well, "that's my opinion" or "that's what I feel". The committee wants to hear your reasons.

Let's say that there's a thing like 'goodness' when it comes to a good candidate but that there are many reasons for someone being a good candidate. Amongst the plausible reasons could be: teaching experience (n.o. of years, dedication etc); number of publications; quality of research-as evinced by number of citations, originality, contribution to the field etc.; clarity of thinking; ability to bring in grants/research funds.

Already we're beset with problems. Some of these things are quantifiable, others call for subjective assessment. Secondly, the way the problem is set up neither candidate dominates in every 'dimension' of goodness, and it's not clear how one should-even assuming this was possible- give weights to the different dimensions/criteria...i.e how do you 'aggregate'? Do you, for example, say that something like originality trumps every other consideration? Thirdly, since you're a reasonable person, you understand that some of the quantitative indicators may not be that helpful (A has more citations because he works in a well-known field; M's work is in a new and exciting area, even though it may have less "relevance" than A's work)

This is what you say: well, it's not my subject, but if you ask me you should look at correlations. 'A' teaches at an American university and American universities produce far better academics on average. It's clear cut.

Is that reasonable? The committee is a bit troubled by the substance of the answer, but also by the lack of equivocation. Firstly, we're not talking about American universities in general ; secondly, even if A's university produces better academics in one particular subject (in general, or on average) compared to M's university, it doesn't necessarily follow that it does so for all subjects (and in particular, for the subject area in which both the prospective applicants work). Thirdly, even if A's university does produce better academics on average (and we're assuming two things by doing this: that we have this thing called 'goodness' whose various dimensions can be aggregated for any individual and, secondly, that goodness across individuals can be compared) we might still be scpetical about following such a rule.

The committee thinks to itself: wouldn't a rule such as: 'on average American universities (or A's university) produces better academics and therefore...' only be helpful if we didn't have any other particular information, or if we didn't have any expert opinions that could help evaluate the relative merits of both candidates?

Do you think the committee has a point? If so, wouldn't it have been better, more reasonable, for you to say: "I don't know".

north of the future

it would not be here
if you were here.
what is remembered
is love.
---Kenneth Irby.

the soul wreaks of rebellion, vows revenge, and so testifies to a desperate slavery. no thoughts of accommodation. you imagine the north, the tall cedar, the high dragon-clouds, the last day where you find your right name, catch your breath, where reddish ice tinged the reeds, and, at last, you can speak with your own true words to the dead, words of loss and home.

you, walking in the blue, out of the broken circle that is the world, stepping over and through the thicket, brushing past thorn. without belongings, or the crazed-eyes of the possessed and the insane. here time is open-eyed, wooden, and childish. no clocks toll for thee, and the stillness of the dark, the silence of the stars is peaceful. at the frontier you found a new kind of seriousness.

death, the engraver, the laugh of death is hacked in sandstone. how will the hands be strong, how will the heart endure? but prince, poet, philosopher and the pure mind have been cast to one side. and love's corpse stares with a blank-eyed devotion, a blind citation of the past.

at the crossing you were startled, your first movement to turn back, retrace your steps; flinching like an animal it took a while for you to recover your humanity, allow yourself to be riddled with second-thoughts.

yesterday's words ring like a bell in your head: "you're an escape artist", she said, telling it like it is, the platonic truth-teller. but today, in the early hours, the small hours, when your mind is fresh, awakened, clear, piercingly sober, you notice the light struggling to break free from the dust, dispelling the gloom, just as waves break up the murkiness of the sea. you dwell in a land where the unlooked for arises unbidden. you want to record everything you see, note every detail. everything is a witness to your absence and if no turn of phrase will bring you to my side still I, without rank or station, will with all of my black heart perceive you as the clearest of all creatures.

citations: Geoffrey Hill and Robert Lowell.

b-side, the purple revolution

all the smiles were from you, all the tears from us. why does the princess smile, why does the prince weep? on the day that you left, the grey inherited the purple. the scars no longer visible, blood blotted, congealed, the slow drift of the snow...but still I wait, in winter's decline, for you to write your name with fresh ink, and wound again.

lines that never touch sometimes meet. there's a place where it's true, if you can find it; a flip side to each reality, if you know how to turn. now we see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face. when the revolution comes there'll be no prince or princess, and i'll not be me, and you'll not be you.

i am not... i am not...this is very difficult to say in English,..no, it's impossible. i don't know how you can say this. okay, i'm giving it one more try...i am not..

human nature

The unexamined life, we are told, is not worth living. This question bites because , err, that's what you're supposed to be doing, isn't it? But you can't take academia too seriously, what with its narrow concerns, 'deconstructions', childish egotism and cleverness, one-sidedness, and tendency toward generalizations, abstractness, flatness, its overemphasis on "problems" and problem-solving.

Immediately you will say to yourself that in all honesty perhaps what was lacking was the quality of reflection in the first place-and this predisposes you to a certain answer; as if to say, your lack of ability or desire to think things through to the end, this instinctive Kashmiri laziness, inclines you to think that too much reflection is somehow suspect. But let us put this first thought to one side, since it's not clear that such observations will take us very far. And 'ideal' thought, rationality, not yours, b.

So, what's at stake here? Only life!...or a certain notion of life, a way of living. Self-reflectiveness, then, this monkish fleeing from the world, the second turning inwards (Hannah). If experience is a mode of consciousness ("it's all in the mind") then what value can be given to the life of the virtuous peasant? Is there not a degree of contempt here for ordinary pleasures, non-specialised languages and particular ways of living? And what to say, then, of musicians, sportsmen and women, artists, who undoubtedly possess a type of intelligence but do not "think" about their work in a self-conscious way?; isn't the work itself an expression of their intelligence?

In a similar vein, one is sceptical of a theory of ethics, the idea that through greater knowledge we will be better people. Really begs the question: is seeing, right-seeing, enough to be good? (aesthetics and ethics?) Are we magnetically drawn to it or do we often fall, stumble, 'make our way'? The background work that is required, the attention to details, that can go on silently, and the importance of being in touch with sources of value, refuges, points of contact, "bridges" (Simone) . The discipline to not let 'oneself go'...what the Red Man would call 'character'.

We enact morality.

What is inner here, what is outer?

Either I am the world, or the world is everything.

Haven't we moved on from here, though? The 'self' and identity, we are told, is really a fiction, something that is 'constructed' or dependent on public recognition. Human nature? What is that but a remnant of metaphysical thinking? What we 'are' is a chance agglomeration of points (matter -in-motion) or fleeting impressions. The existence, autonomy, and dignity of the 'I' has dissolved under the relentless pressure of history, science, sub-conscious forces. The isolated will in a blind world of mechanism, says the modern gnostic. But this removal of the ego, let us remember, was not a spiritual achievement.

Dogville

In the land of the faithful, looked for the faithful one and found you. One look at your hands,girl, told me you could never been true.



you know what i'm saying, yeah? there isn't time now, not for truth or metaphor, for faith or rhyme. just the blues for you, gentle one, the black for me. We met, each of us mirroring the other, but all that survived was the stark ground of this pain. We'll carry on living, I guess, without that sense of deepness in our lives, without the surety of those who walk in the sun, unaware of, and untouched by, the shadows.

from the land of the black sun

the art of reading

whats on
your mind
dark as it is
with the weight of
our lost future

the grammars of your soul accepted, learned off by heart. the exception to the rule leaves me speechless. i brooded on the third letter of your name, contemplated it from start to end. the fifth came to me in a vision, quickening my mind like streaming light, like silver strike

but all this was as nothing until i learnt to speak your name, to hear you say mine. so the stillness of life became a name within a name that stopped time. i let your image grow in my heart, freely, unbound. your name like a storm in my heart that leaves me weak. why then do you ask of your shade: why are you dark ?

...don't worry, my long-suffering readers, some poetry to follow...

The Feast

What do you bring to warm my body and soul in these bleak winter days? White, succulent, tender meat of fowl? Breast or thigh?

What strange hunger is this, that knows no end. Neither the ascetic nor the glutton has an insight into this matter.

The things that were brought before us, like so many gifts, each remembered with great affection, like the words of the beloved and...

Old age
singles them out as though by first-light
As though a still-life, preserving some
Portion of the soul's feast, went with me
Everywhere.

The King is not displeased, but, alas, the princess... Preparations have been made, hands busily employed since the early-morning; the fires have been stoked so that things will be perfected among fire; spices to make the blood quicken, crispy fat, salt to sting and oils to soothe, an abundance of wild fruit in baskets, the choicest selection of wines to further our intoxication, to help us fall; something savoury-the brevity of sensual pleasure; the warmth of cinnamon, the deep richness of a chocolate gateaux; the delectable, the refined, the coarse; curdled yoghurt and something simple side-by-side with the rare, the unique; the taste of the exotic to make the tongue tingle,vegetables brought to the boil immediately, fresh-bread from clay ovens, and meat slowly turned over a spit. Each dish on the table is brought to completion by giving it the right amount of time, care, and loving attention.

We ate, drank, unbuckled, slept.

Nothing is lost, there is no choice that cannot be undone. If there is infinite mercy then there is time again, and everything will be possible, come to fruition, find its true Form.The feast continues into the early hours, when I enter your tent, the guests at home and at ease, and only you and I are awake.

One cannot lose what one has not possessed.
I can lose what I want. I want you.

Why downcast, my soul? Raise thine eyes and look at the glittering feast that has been placed before us. Look, the stars move closer, the time is ripe, our season awaits us. Devour what is rightfully yours,partake in the festivity, for by doing so you make what is bitter taste sweet.

--citations, Geoffrey Hill

a kashmiri manifesto for our times

You think to yourself, especially on a Sunday: there are many things that are useless (thank heavens!). Useless knowledge, for example. Of course, one can call it 'useful' in another sense, to the extent that it is an end in itself or that it contributes to peace, beauty, human flourishing...

In a similar vein, there's also useless work (perhaps it should be called 'labour' to distinguish it from work that serves a purpose beyond our physical sustenance). Labour, here, being associated with pain and suffering and toil, with a process of the transformation of energy: energy expended, energy consumed. animal laborans.

Work, on the other hand, is fundamentally different because it opens the way for hope: hope for rest, hope for producing a world in which one can derive worthwhile pleasures; and hope in the joy involved in creative and free work-alone and with others-in itself. Work that not only engages the whole person-mind, body, and soul-but that also connects us with the experience of other people, both past and present, in the world.

Not, then, what is the point of working but, rather, what is one working towards? Work that sustains not only life, but a good life, a good life for all. What can be said for a system that is either based on exploitation or that leads to terrible inequalities and a soul-numbing culture? Work that would open us up to taking a pleasurable interest in all the details of life rather than fostering on us the idea that work is something one either has to be "compensated" for or fled from.

So, a rather basic question for my economist friends: what's the point of producing more and more rubbish? All of that Chinese gaudy, plastic crap floating around the seas to bring the middle classes some small addition in pleasure (quantity over quality, as always). Remember, the whole aim of production is profit and in that endeavour it doesn't matter what "type" of desires are stimulated..in fact, there is no question of type, of "higher" or "lower" pleasures.

We must begin to build up the ornamental part of life-its pleasures, bodily and mental, scientific and artistic, social and individual-on the basis of work undertaken willingly and cheerfully, with the consciousness of benefiting ourselves and our neighbours by it.

Such a notion of work is, it seems to me, inseparable from the task of thinking about education in a different way. Work, in that sense, has to be connected with intelligent interests, with pleasure, and with a heightened sense of place and attachment.

---bits from William Morris's wonderful 'useful work versus useless toil'.

Baron in the clouds

Our period demands a type of man who can restore the lost equilibrium between inner and outer reality. This equilibrium, never static but,like reality itself, involved in continuous change, is like that of a tightrope dancer who, by small adjustments, keeps a continuous balance between his being and empty space.
----Sigfried Giedion.


I'm the ferryboat;
you're the traveler

Your faces isn't the moon
but it crosses the mountains and waters to shine on me

I hold you and cross the water
I bear you across the deep, the shallow, the rapid.

If you don't come, I endure wind, snow, rain,
and wait for you from dusk till dawn..
sooner or later you'll come, I know
I wait for you and grow older, day by day

I'm the ferryboat;
you're the traveler.

I take a step and then another, one at a time. Walk into the unknown. I will leave this place. I will fly and not look back. Find that other time that legend speaks of. Beyond the grey clouds, aloof and tinged with sadness, the faded splendour of pinks and purples; past still lakes and enchanted palaces, domes built from silver and glass. Through the snow storm and blindness and the blackness of the sun. My mind as unified as stone, as sharp as the crow's. Beyond the blue horizon, the wild sky. and thorn and star, heat and cold. My mind, mirror of the universe, my soul all turmoil, all harmony. And there, there I shall fall to a beautiful death.

random words & thoughts

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from the perpetual flow of time an instant was arranged for you..and lovingly accepted. From a fast-flowing stream of light a hand plucked out a few flecks of dust and unfolded them into images. you, with your nets, like a fisherman who doesn't speak in the morning. lips that would speak, of half-forgotten things, and random words like tea and oranges and china.

the mirror, wintercold; your eyes silverdark with sorrow. the ancient affinity of sound for darkness, the inmost self made outcast. your words, held to the light, proved to be forged..but there were other words, words that like lost lovers briefly came together, circled one another, unraveled and fell. and they were a true witness, even though many did not understand.

the strange case of...

"I stimulated him... If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance"

I actually did have a friend called Watson..the dougal nearly ran him over and I think that was the end of our friendship..after that, there was the mongol, who really is Watson-down to the very last detail (military background, a good-natured, dependable, straightforward chap, a fine fellow indeed).

~~~

Cheltenham, 3:45 , what do you say, Watson old boy? And the rugger? What, what? Not scrumming today? (Watson always was partial to young boys)
[sorry Q, couldn't resist, but take it like a man]

~~~

At the hospital today. Oxygen mask. The doctor and nurse conspicuous by their absence. Then a sweeper, a charming old woman with red-dyed hair, thin face, and a small stud in her nose, said: "breathe in, it will clear your throat like a wonder". She continued sweeping the floor, the ward now eerily quiet. Then she added: "take deep breaths, like this...".

"Pray that everything is okay uma (mother)"

She put the palms of her hands together and raised them to the level of her mouth-like a Hindu, I guess. What a wonderful gesture. Inshallah, she said. No, the East- for all its terrible twistedness and cruelty- is still the East.

after sunrise

the drive in the early morning hours, when things and light are so close to one another..the light is dark, but people's faces are becoming more visible, more distinct. Empty roads, coldness on your cheeks, slightly cracked lips, your own body warmth enough for you. the beautiful green/blue of the traffic lights burns with a muted glory,almost holy; oil-black crows congregate under the tent, the light on their backs revealing rich purple; the tent a place of solace and shade, held up by taut ropes, pegged into the sodden earth at an angle, with sturdy hands. folded wooden tables arranged, embers on the ground spread in a magnetic pattern.

at the airport a man steps out, and with authority and assurance points to a man holding up a placard with his name and flight details. he stands there, a foot from the exit, takes out his Marlboros and lights up. waits for the other man to come around the barrier. shakes hands with him, but only fingertips touch. doesn't talk. looks at him wistfully, looks into the distance, easy silence. then, when they're nearly out of earshot asks: you're from Lahore, then?

after sunrise there's still fellowship, communion, the ties that bind one human being to another, each of us to the world. not to look within, or too deeply, but to let one's vision and hands fall, strangeness brush past you.

Any one of us, given a certain light,
shall make and be immortal.
---Geoffrey Hill.

the black and the white

if only you had been right...
we might enter: an unpeopled region
of ever new-fallen snow, a palace blazing
with perpetual silence as with torches.

Much to be said, much to be withstood. A few words allocated, parceled out, like worn-out rags. I guess that will do. The sound of bells that announce an arrival or a departure.Shadows hiding in the grass, carrion crows crying coldly in the wild empty sky. To find the end before the end of day. Light slipping off the rooftops, weakly glancing off the high windows, revealing nothing of what goes on inside. But it's obvious, black and white.

Between the stones and the void, barely present...and all the time the distant clouds, so serene and untroubled, gather darkness to themselves.

So little to say, now. Or can't remember.
The exact words
Are fed into my blank hunger for you
like the black entering the white

repetition (again!)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: is there anything to say that hasn't been said already?Is there anything new under the (black) sun?

Was thinking about this whilst watching the Superman t.v. series-the one that retraces his early life-at Nabil's (please note, Roxana, that there's still innocence in the world..hey, what would be new would be to bring some of the people who comment into the main blog space here,.. hint, hint).

Okay, okay, try and kill this post now by the usual methods: a few quotes, semi-academic jargon, faked profundity, etc., etc...

Repetition as a way of avoiding death or the fear of death has, of course, been done to death. And it doesn't work, anyway.

t.v. commercials:

Why is it that it's always the same old tried and tested formula? People in white coats suckering you into the notion that the product has been "scientifically tested", "clinically approved" or the "new and improved" detergent, soap, etc. Repetition of the banal. Recently, there was a programme that looked at the 100 best commercials. Nostalgia for the old days (and if old, then good).

Compensation:

One imagines that in times of stability "rupture", the novel, the startlingly, shockingly new attracts like nothing else, holds us spellbound. And in times of rapid change,flux, 'liquid modernity', one must be served up the 'comfort food' of the familiar, the Same. The instant, which is loved, precisely because it is recurrent.

Variations on a theme:

replicas, cliches, retakes, sagas, remakes, serials, soaps, spirals, whodunits, quotations, loops, flashbacks.

Superman, Star Wars, the story is done, the adventure is over, people age and there's a limit to saying 'to be continued'. What to do? Go back to the beginning...how did we get here? The first was not the first after all: the prequel. This is really interesting (a new trick?)...it's like you come across a blog, read up on what a person writes every day and then wonder: what was she doing before this? The everyday, trivial, things, the 'deep' things, the loves, the hates, the falls... that went up to make up this (virtual) person before you now. The allure of the weight of the past, the loop out of the present and future expectations back to what must have been...the past that doesn't reveal anything new but confirms what you already knew/loved.

Play it again Sam.

You can't talk about repetition without mentioning music, rhythm, innovation.

The series:

The same situation, the same personality quirks that you've come to love; the thrill of pretending you don't know (how infantile: fort-da!); the end that is not the end, but just an episode. The need to hear the story again and again.."In the beginning..."

The saga:

The same circle of events,struggles, illusions, delusions, disasters, personality traits, lives on in others, is passed on, and never breaks out into the new. question: can there be newness without background continuity?

Columbo: You knew this was coming, you expected it from the picture, no? Closure.

Why do you like Columbo so much, more than Morse even (but not more than Sherlock)? Nothing to add to this.

But the real reason I like Columbo is that Ubo would always call me-when I hadn't combed my hair or shaved (and that is always!) - Columbo!... and I like to recall such moments, again, and again, and again.

For the n th time

For the n th time
have I not spoken
that if the fire is lit, given form,
its heat takes root everywhere?

Speak, lazily, even if in a dream
step into my imaginary land, n+1,
Across the frontier of our dark selves
untie your hair, let your clothes fall to the ground.

The chase, irresistible as ever
Your hair wild, like the morning sun
Your heart clear and everything is linked by light.
Quietly, gently, the first snow covers our tracks.

things and people exist in the time and space that is given to them; this place, here and now and not otherwise. each reflects the light in their own unique way or refuses it; each comes to understand life-if at all- on their own terms, at their own pace, and each finds their distinct flair, their own 'song', as if there had been no songs before.

but is it not also the case that each person and thing lives with an ideal that reaches out into another dimension, an image into which they try to grow, deepening, darkening their faces?

We can be pulled there, must allow ourselves to be so..the pure land where inner demands are met with clarity of mind and heart. to find one's own centre means to be aware of that of others.

Your thoughts skip a beat when you hear people say-and one often hears this said: life is but a game, which is another way of saying: life is life, sovereign becoming. As if to say, all what we say and do now is an accident, of little import, does not reverberate into our future, or find an echo with kindred souls, does not take away the heaviness of our hands, does not reveal a glimpse of our 'thinner face' or bear witness to any truth.

It is said that Vincent Van Gogh could distinguish between nineteen different types of white. In his diary he wrote: "When a man expresses clearly what he wants to say, is that strictly speaking not enough?"

nostalgia

what is, is.
what is not, is not.

The dead wood of philosophy must be burned by love.

Let's be clearer here: when people say 'is' they're usually not thinking of the total realm of possibilities but, rather, existence as it is, contingent, accidental being. This is as good as it gets, then it's over. Raw flesh, a rag-bag bundle of sensations loosely held together or a few flashes of neurons. Dust to dust, after all. Poetry, art, all very charming, but ultimately an illusion, a refuge, a consolation, for neither can time be frozen or brought back, nor can we escape our finitude. Religion: not a vision of the good, but a mere matter of the will, dedication, fanatical adherence, horrendous dogmatism etc.,etc.,
...
The social history of nostalgia, the academic analysis of it, is not very interesting. Of course, the political dangers of the return home, the construction of it: tribal purity, the stifling conformity of "the family", the heritage industry with its sickly-sweet sentimentality and kitschy retro-mania. Even at the individual level there's a suspicion of unhealthiness. Endless longing, dreaming, the fantasy of lost time regained, distances overcome ("restorative nostalgia") or the heightened tension, the bitter-sweet feeling, of being an exile, of being homesick and sick of home (as in "reflective nostalgia).

The social history: why now? A balm to soothe the anxieties caused by the dislocations, displacements of globalisation, the loss of a sense of rootedness, 'place' and continuity? The irreversibility of, the linearity of time, when before meaning had been found in what we repeated, need one say it again. Randomness and the shock of the new, uncertainty and a 'risk society', go hand in hand, perhaps, with the deliberate development of, and emphasis on:conservationism, 'community' and nostalgia. It's later than you think.

True. But isn't there something universal about nostalgia? Aren't all versions ultimately reflections of 'the Garden': nostalgia for the absolute, for the time before time? Not as a point in time and therefore a place, but as a starting point, a world of open, unforeseen possibilities? When two cars or trains pull side by side and you see a beautiful girl heading in the opposite direction..she suddenly looks up from her busy world, you too, different paths intersect, she catches your thought, wonders about the life, the infinitely different life, you live.

Nostalgia, then, not as a longing for the absolute past, or the design of a future utopia, but a side-glance at the forgotten tracks, the futures that were not yours. We look, not just north of the future, not just at what 'is' but what could have been, what should have been. The mirages of what never is, the dead branches of the future that never was, cast their spell. The philosopher or scientist will talk of truth and falseness in such matters; the poet of the strength of one's desire, the fidelity to one's imagination.

This strange lump of clay, that sometimes burns and glows and hisses, also wonders and wonders much.Turns,and thinks, and remembers..can be broken, reflective, crossed,..large, open, hard or magnanimous,..can cheat, be true, and see.

News From a Distant Star

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This video was made by Roxana.

Occasionally a pigeon will fly too close to the earth and then the human being will take evasive action by instinctively raising his arm towards his head; some of them duck their heads, others hold their arms so that their forearms shield them, as if they were protecting themselves from an overbearing sun.

Sometimes when the human being is walking thoughtlessly and aimlessly he will cross the space of a pigeon unknowingly; in such cases the birds become startled and suddenly take flight. The human is amazed by this and very often laughs. More often than not he will hop about and enter a cosmic dance with the pigeon...this helps him rediscover his animal soul.

Children, on the other hand, have not forgotten the ancient rituals and stomp their feet on the ground when they approach the space of the pigeons-giving them ample warning.

A white bird floats effortlessly in open skies; both marvel at the generosity of the other. She follows love's trackless way, guided by her instincts, her upward movement like a solitary intuition in the mind of the universe. At a distance cloud and bird merge into one.

Crow was white. Once.

And...

Beauty of woman and of wise hearts, and gentle knights in armour; the song of birds and the discourse of love; bright ships moving swiftly on the sea; clear air when the dawn appears, and white snow falling without wind; stream of water and meadow with every flower; gold, silver, azure in ornaments.

Everything depends on our capacity for lightness, for the openness that is 'and'...as if our reality was the strength of our desire to join, to connect.

Each pigeon is unique-in colour, temperament, outlook, in tenor of voice and style of walking (unique within a range of given possibilities, that is). Their patterned being, flecked wings, emblems of their individual dream. But the ways of pigeons are all the same, whether here, or on a distant star; each coos for their lost love with the same, soft murmuring heart, the same gentle gurgling of her name.

miles

distance is not a matter of miles. and each moment can take you there, is an opening. Minute by minute, time within time. slow slippage, or the opening of a flower. Fading, soaring. Waqt. Haqq!

Reminds you of miles, contemplative miles, around a still centre. Neither beginning, nor ending.

~~~

affable affers, said he'd take me to hear Sain Zahoor. Can't wait. At the same time, in his religious turn, he complains about the shrine culture. J, on the other hand, tells me how when sain Z went to London with his group they kept on getting locked out of the hotel because they didn't know how to use those swipe cards. So, they just wedged it open with their slippers! Love it!

second sense

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; ...for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment,..

With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.

---Walter Pater, cited in Iris M.

In order to be free..you have to have your own hypothesis about what you are called to do, and follow it, not giving in to circumstances or complying with them. But that sort of freedom demands powerful inner resources, a high degree of self-awareness, a consciousness of your responsibility to yourself and therefore to other people.
---Tarkovsky.

Only a very small part of the art of being happy is an exact science.
---Stendhal, cited in Avner Offer.

Second takes, second spaces (Milosz, must I name you?). Not just the immediate sensation, 'experience', but sustained attention, the soft, slow-burning blue flame as well, habitual reflection (Adam Smith), disciplined freedom (Sen), the simple ordinary things,the background work that quietly goes on behind the scenes: goodness as a movement to the absolute, the sigh you don't hear.

The capacity, the fundamental human capacity, of revision, of second thoughts; the ability to distance oneself from one's immediate or urgent perceptions, to evaluate one's likes and dislikes. Or else, we'd just be happiness machines, swayed one way or the other by our 'interests' or pleasures. And could we, then, talk of qualitatively higher pleasures or would we be constrained to talk in terms of quantities (and who, then, would be doing the talking, one wonders)? Is experience, happiness, just mental satisfaction or does it open us out to a love of the world and other people?

I cannot imagine my life being so free that I could do what I wanted; I have to do what seems most important and necessary at any given stage.
---Tarkovsky.

But let's not talk of love and chains, and things we can't untie.

ways of approaching

A line from the film 'The Burmese Harp' reminded me that when the Americans have gone, when the maulvi has stopped spewing his hatred, the people of this land will still sing their songs, and music shall be a bridge.

For the mind
to raise itself
a minute...
sustaining song,
the changes constant...
and the songs we raise
are boundaries to what we own

the wine matures, the colour and the scent moves us to a new centre, the voices below and behind the words... the rest falls away, melts like snow in the presence of the red sun. patience, burning, sadness endured, ways of approaching. speaking the right words, in the right manner, your hands curving to mine. your garments loosened by the passage of time, revealing your true form. the clouds, high and clear, the sky-blue pattern of your dress, rain linking the elements. counterpoints of rigour, the clarity of the far white. the curvature of space, the curve of time that brings you back, again and again...blue flowers, yellow flowers, a garden, a dog, a stick, an open house, stone bridge, if God wills it so.

(words by John Riley)

the other side

Just wanted to post this because sometimes, you know, some people think that all we're about is violence and terrorism and you know...

If you see beauty, you'll see it everywhere.And if you know what love is, you'll forget your name.

too late

'I lose my self,

I lose my self-control'

Yeah, a bit naff, and a bit too white, but really was one of the songs of the eighties.

for all the beautiful people...

'In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot upon the ground'

But your life is totally out of proportions, has nothing of the settled quality to it, is out of sync with the times, with time itself. out of place, from time out of mind. to take a step in the other direction, sidestep the inevitable...the lost ones, of the weary generation, with their fading smiles, like the last light of the winter sun that barely holds its own, that is more warmth than light.

you hesitate, stumble...the stumbling opening up the possibility of grace. lateness-the absence of style, the scrambling to keep useless objects, to 'save' them. You learn how to unclench your fist. Pensive, like a rose with its inner thoughts, shut-off from the world. Petals fall. Touch earth.

This face, traits and quirks of fate passed through the generations, your inherited slowness handed to you like a gift. This proud jewish nose, that is the 'immortal in man' (Hardy, just in case...), that survives.Walk. In a different direction, at your own pace, light slanting at your feet, if truth be told. The opening of the soul in your presence. And absence. You walk, unbound, unloosened, into the warmer air.

What am I doing here

'That will not bring back the things we loved: the high, clear days and the blue icecaps on the mountains; the lines of white poplars fluttering in the wind, and the long white prayer flags; the fields of asphodels that followed the tulips; or the fat tailed sheep brindling the hills above Chagcharan, and the ram with a tail so big they had to tie it to a cart. We shall not lie on our backs on the Red Castle and watch the vultures wheeling over the valley where they killed the grandson of Genghiz. We shall not read Babur’s memoirs in his garden at Istalif and see the blind man smelling his way round the rose bushes. Or sit in the peace of Islam with the beggars of Gazar Gagh.

We will not stand on the Buddha’s head at Bamiyan, upright in his niche like a whale in a dry dock. We will not sleep in the nomad tent, or scale the Minaret of Jam. And we shall lose the tastes-the hot, coarse, bitter bread; the green tea flavoured with cardamoms; the grapes we cooled in the snow melt; and the nuts and dried mulberries we munched for altitude sickness. Nor shall we get back the smell of the beanfields; the sweet resinous smell of deodar wood burning, or a whiff of a snow leopard at 14,000 feet.’

---Chatwin.

This was from my favourite Chatwin book, though I'm drawn to 'Black Hill' for sentimental reasons (aye,the black sun has a heart). 'Heavenly Horses' and the chapter on the delightful Li Po are wonderful. Nice to trace how one reading led to another. Started with the dougal's copy of songlines...

Hard to know what fired Mr Chatwin. Probably not nostalgia, but an insatiable curiosity and restlessness instead. Who knows! Won't be turning to his biography anyway. Options:

Celan,
Tolstoy,
Keats,
Hardy, or
Hannah.

But yeah, "peace of Islam"..felt it at Imam Bukhari's maqbara.

Another blast. Sohaib, if you're reading this drop me a line to tell me you're okay.

Two tablighis on my back yesterday. Former students: hands over eyes now, please.

Bhen chord!!..why don't you leave me alone. One got refused a visa to Brazil. Man, the thought of preaching to those decadent women in Rio...err..ahem..it's enough to make one almost wish one was a god-damned tablighi, so much so that one could, like Chatwin, forget the '?' in 'what am i doing here'!

The Two Cultures

Why do geeks and nerds get such a bad press? And no, this isn't about political correctness. Is it because they're often social morons? Or is it because of the terrible snobbishness, ignorance, and withering disdain of people in the arts and humanities?

The depressing fact about this university is that it has been run, from the beginning, by bureaucrats, businessmen, and people with an engineering background. Unfortunately, that has translated into a shallow and myopic view of education in general, and of the humanities or social sciences in particular.

So, for example, what the philistines continue to harp on about is the "lack of rigour", the "fuzziness" and lack of precision of the humanities. Well, yes, but life isn't an equation and God is not a mathematician! What, ultimately, the gradgrinds appreciate or understand is number-crunching and quantification and this dovetails very neatly with the reductiveness of capitalist culture. One of the cleverest people you know here claims that accounting and finance is a "rigorous programme". Oh dear! Corruptio optimi pessima.

Intelligence is, then, identified with or equated with, grades and the ability to "solve problems"-and that alone. Is it too surprising, then, that some of these very same people end up spending a lot of time in isolated booths, the backroom, like clerks, for a multinational company? You can "empirically verify it"

And this hilarious piece from the New York Times was sent to us by the VC:

"Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand-and even cool.

I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians, said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. And I’m not kidding.

The rising stature of statisticians, who can earn $125,000 at top companies in their first year after getting a doctorate, is a byproduct of the recent explosion of digital data. In field after field, computing and the Web are creating new realms of data to explore-sensor signals, surveillance tapes, social network chatter, public records and more...

Yet data is merely the raw material of knowledge. We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured...But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data"

I kid thee not. You couldn't have made that up if you'd tried.

Rialto

And once you have understood it, you remain for ever under the spell of its beauty and of your initial rapture.

The point is that each of the characters in Carpaccio's crowded compositions is a centre. If you concentrate on any one figure you begin to see with unmistakable clarity that everything else is mere context, background, built up like a kind of pedestal for this 'incidental' character. The circle closes...

The circle closes around each one of us, and opens up on to another. This lack of space,(how unlike Poussin's abstract openness!) holds, gathers the light to itself, a darkening star, a dying sun.

You want to say it as it is, to see it as it is. Nothing more. No need for metaphor or poetry. It is still thisness, lovingly inscribed in the details, like the fine interweaving of delicate patterns, the threads of time; the fire of the world, transmuting lead into gold,the betrothal of the blue to the red, does not mean a forgetting, the loss of self, but a deepening of subjectivity. A fidelity to yourself, to the reality of the absolute, to perfection and to the 'bridges' -stone or floating-that were placed before us.