Platypus of Truth

 

Thus I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a little glass jar, and the boys asked her: "Sybil, what will you?". She responded "I want to die". -Petronius* "April is the cruelest month." -T.S. Eliot Eliot opens his modernist masterpiece, The Wasteland , with a quote from the Roman satirist Petronius. The Sybil was granted one wish by the gods. She asked for eternal life, a gift not meant for mortals. The gods gave her her wish -but without eternal youth or strength. As Pertonius imagines her, she has withered away to point where she can be kept in a small (glass?) jar as a curio. Her response to the boys, in proper Greek, is to wish that her wish be taken back. Like a mortal possessor of one of Tolkien's Great Rings, mere existence cannot confer happiness. It means "merely to go on until every moment is weariness". *a rather free translation by the author of this post and the quote with which Eliot opens The Wasteland

Some things stay with you. I'm planning on seeing two old friends this summer.  One of them I haven't seen in fifteen years (though we have spoken via email and post).  It's a sort of homecoming -or maybe just touching base.  The problem is there's a lot of dirt under my shoes.  I've been walking the world a bit since '99: L.A., Houston, Oxford, Ireland, Italy, Cameroon, Mexico.  I guess that may make it sound like more than it is, but I've been places and seen things.  They've been walking the world too, but always with that return to home plate in New England.  They're New Englanders.  But what am I?  Will I look like a Californian in my Hawaiian shirt?  How many Calafornianism have crept into my vocabulary?  Have I developed a noticeable twang?  Are the smatterings of Spanish, Pigeon, and English slang mere affectations?  My accent will come back.  It always does.  Maybe I'll hyper-correct and sound more l...

Where shall the word be found,  where will the word Resound?  Not here, there is not enough silence -T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday We are afraid of interior space.  Our lives are filled with movement and noise.  We hate them, we love them, and we cannot live without them.  Why?  Movement and noise fill.  Inner silence is empty.  Emptiness hurts.  The empty stomach pains us.  An empty life grieves and depresses us.  In a world of constant stimulus, quiet unnerves and threatens because it alerts us to our lack -and we're not used to that.  Late Modernity offers so many solutions, such possibility for satiety, that we have little experience of "going without" and when we do experience genuine lack we expect there to be an immediate "fix."  When there is none, we panic, we fell guilty, we become angry.  Yet the things that are truly worth having can't come to us until we are willing to live with the lack.  That mi...

I cannot trade, my hands are empty. All I have are these, Broken memories, Little fragments red and gold and the scent of maple smoke Rising from forgotten chimneys in the valley of the soul Who will take them? Who will take these wampum beads?    This blog is a house of memory.  Like the Sybil, I write down my thoughts on leaves and store them away for safe keeping.  As the Sybil found out, memories left unattended scatter, become disordered, and are lost.  This was Augustine's problem as he constructed his Confessions : how can a being distended in time hope to draw all his members together and make his confession before Almighty God?  The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci wrote a whole book on memory in order to convince the Confucian scholars that Western learning had something to offer them.  Things are always slipping away from us, both as individuals and as a community.  Humans die and forget, and thus the ability to remember is pr...

Have I always had an appreciation for civic space?  I don't know.  What I do know is that I've been thinking about it recently.  The sudden changes in Houston's weather have made it an ideal time for visiting the botanical gardens near my home.  Sudden hot spells bring out all the flowers in a riot of colors.  Sudden cold spells drive most of the people away so that the wife and I can enjoy a quiet and lingering stroll.  If I had my druthers, I'd spend a fair part of every week in the botanical gardens and the arboretum with quick jaunts over to the library and Starbucks.  Well, so much for my selfish little fantasies.... I grew up in a town where fifteen percent of the land was set aside as open space.  Much of the geographic center was taken up by ancestral farms.  In addition to all this wonderful, rural space, it was (and still is) common practice to let the forest grow up where it will.  There were also the wonderful cemeteries, t...

These fragments I have shored against my ruins. -T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland There was once a Tiffany Glass factory in the town where I grew up.  I didn't know that.  It's in ruins now, but apparently you can still pick up handfuls of brightly colored glass if you know where to look. Brightly colored glass. From pieces of brightly colored glass came all the amazing works of the Tiffany studio.  I've seen them in Boston, Ohio, and even Redlands California.  Wherever I have seen them, Tiffany windows are remarkable for their beauty -and my home town played a part in the making of that beauty.  Much of the downtown is in ruins now and those ruins are slowly being cleared away in a decades-long process of urban renewal.  Whatever once flanked the downtown has been covered by the woods and is now a state park.  I don't know what will happen to the old glass works.  Maybe they've already been cleared away.  What is certain is that those piece...

Who can catch a forest of falling leaves? I think every New Englander is born hearing the drumbeats of Armageddon.  Those drumbeats are always there with them: a sound in the back of their minds.  The sound rolls on, soft but steady, without a stop; always heard and so never heard.  Every New Englander is a Puritan in the end: Protestant, Catholic, Agnostic -even Atheist...  Sometimes those drumbeats rise to the fore, and then the quiet hills and meadows erupt.  Ask Sasacus, Philip, Gage, Lee... I think all of us have some intimation of the Eschaton.  It comes to us when we're not ready: the sudden crack of starry banners caught in a celestial wind.  Then we remember that we are in occupied territory; that we were meant to be more than what we are.  It comes most clearly in our dreams: the first time we fly among the clouds, the sword fight on the tips of the bamboo, the morning we drank from the Firefall and danced.  Look at our dreams, ...

Do you remember being a child?  Do you remember making some new discovery and rushing with it to the nearest adult you could find?  You tried to make them see how absolutely astounding it was but the words wouldn't come.  Maybe they smiled at you.  Maybe you got a pat on the head.  Maybe you were just ignored.  It happens again as you get older.  Think of your teenage self: a whirlwind of confusion.  Expectations are everywhere; desires, longings.  Once again, you try to tell someone but the words won't come.  You're laughed at -ignored.  The moment passes.  The thing slips away and is lost.  Perhaps you experienced this in college.  You had a better command of words now, it was just a matter of finding the right ones and putting them into the right form.  Words slipped, caught, and broke, falling through your fingers and with them the thought, the discovery.  Then career came with the whirl of adult respons...

The last few posts can be explained as the results of two weeks spent teaching T.S. Eliot.  I wanted to try and write my own five part Wasteland/Quartet for kicks and giggles (and apparently to inflict it on the rest of you).  As with "The Wasteland," there is a literary key to the work, John Demos' The Unredeemed Captive .  Individual incidents that inspired the work include: a trip to an exhibit of Eastern Orthodox icons, finding out that my favorite tea company had moved from Connecticut to New York, meditations on the California Freeways, The Oresteia , studying at Oxford as an undergraduate, and, of course, growing up in rural southern Connecticut (that pernicious habit).  So, until next time: Weiweilalala.

Latimer and Ridley Stand in stone pomposity More presumptuous Than anything a Jesuit Could create. Merciful necessity, the citizens agreed to wrap them In scaffold, planks, and signs clearly marked: Refurbishing. Burning, burning, burning. God help me, I cannot burn! The Falcon raised the stones of Salisbury by art magical and built the ship yards, and the castle. Men call him The Devil’s son. Now, for a few infested sheep, or a worm within the brain, the megaliths are ringed With hay and signs (strange designs), and certain warding Chemicals. Burning, burning, burning. God help me, I cannot burn! There is a fire in the eye That catches on the blade And peaked hats like Church steeples rise Amidst the iron glade. The daughters all lie bleeding, By the children that they loved And stopped the bullet with The breast As did those mothers Long ago Who fell amidst the fire light and snow. ...

Shall I tell you what these things mean? Kassandra, captive, stands beside the altar, in Argos, Kanawake, in Babylon or wherever you may please. Her wasted face, tear-marked cheek, shines Pre-Raphaelite, almost maudlin, but, but her eyes are shining star light in the summer of the soul. Traveler, will you stop to listen? Do so quickly, for her time is nearly out. There is a hope that sits upon your shoulder like a little bird, the pastor’s daughter. She’s singing (you can’t hear it), but she and I forgive you. I will go to die (for I must die) singing like that little bird because she and I know what you can’t believe, or don’t have strength to believe. What? Believe what? Courage, good master Ridley: All will be well, and all manner of things shall be well, And in the End, even the fall will be made Well. That is all she ever says, poor girl. If your travels lead you, stranger, by way of Holy Ida, th...

  I am a stranger here Here Where there is no water We have water. We hear the sound of it Night and day, night and day We hear I am a Pilgrim here In this waste Where there are no trees We have trees. We hear them rustling in the breezes Night and day, night and day We here And all the voices of the waste places cried: Too Whoow Who Too Whoow Who Dryness, dust and bones Dryness, dust and bones Praise to the Serpents of the Wilderness Glistening scales of concrete and steel Holocausts of victims Smoking in the sun Shining in the moon Drying to dust and bones Whoow Too Whoow Too Moloch and Hecate dance Master of finance and Mistress of Changes Praise and prosperity for A hundred Cuylers and A hundred wandering Phlebases Children of desolate lands Too Who Too Come and join us Come and join us Where the powers all are seated Mistress Cathy’s on the organ Brother John will pre...

Silent, stand the stones of Salisbury Watching upon the plain Joined by arteries and veins of stone That pass by hidden channels in the sea Down to Taconic and Washinee At the bottom of the cup the leaves lie Patterning things past and yet to be Black and white monotony There to scry I think I think I will go out today and stand upon the Rock With the Valley all below me: Burning leaves of red and yellow, purple maple smoke I will go and see Eternity The eschatological moment wrapped in a snow globe on the mantlepiece or a post card off the rack Little brother, little brother, When Hesiod the shepherd sang Then the nymphs of Helicon came and danced The rivers lapped their banks as that bard sang The Works and Days and ways of men Who know the time for planting and the way to make a wheel and how to sing a song for poor Athamas Dead and gone He is dead and gone, good lady, He is dead and gone, At his head a grass green turf And at his heels a stone W...

Son of Man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images -T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland Staring out of eyes Phoenician brown, old Phlebas looks At you, Speaking of the profit and the loss of Holy things Bequeathed and unbequeathed by patriarchs and kings. "Smell this one.  I will open the case for you.  You see?  The smell of myrrh and frankincense.  This one here is very special.  They were selling it for five rubles. I bought it for two-thousand dollars -now, it is priceless." Priceless pearls that were his eyes Priceless pearls that were his eyes These were "Now this one is of the Theotokos.  -an example of the Moscow school.  See how alive she looks, as if she is staring right into your soul.  Do you have any questions for me?  Ask a hard one." Boniface is that you? So soon So soon I cannot tell you; his face is too beneficent. I would not judge. Thank you for your time.  So generous, so...