The Great Derangement - Amitav Ghosh

This is the first time I’m reading him, and really loving his writing. Keen to read more from him. Erudite and literary, in a good way. Makes you slow down while reading the prose, and I am tempted to re-read certain sections, if not the whole book. The book is about Climate and the way perhaps future generations will call this age the greatly deranged age – these 300 years of industrialisation, exploitation of earth’s resources, and our persistent blind eye to what is happening to the world.

Personally, I don’t know how one breaks the tide of the way humanity has chosen progress and materialism and capitalism and the race to resources – without really building in the right price of things. Only the cost of extraction is referred to, and the cost of replacement is completely ignored. Earth regenerates, and both air and water can be regenerated if we would only help the process and actually allow the cost to be built in to the cost of things. The right price will perhaps slowly nudge us into the right habits.

Air and water being the most basic, and the only renewable resources we have - as to the rest of the extraction of earth, unless we change our value matrix, our way of living, or use our brains to develop the world on a more sustainable, long-term basis, ....what Gass says, about the human appetite, a universe is on fire...but because it is not felt acutely immediate, the brain relegates the fire as invisible...

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I have just about begun reading the book. Keen to read this one and more from him. And perhaps find a better way to talk about this book to more people. Some of these things are as much about real awareness, mindshare, thoughtshare of more and more people - both young and old. The world turns itself over fairly quickly in the timescale of history, but the impact of these few scores of generations of human beings will be felt for a while

One can only move forward from where one is, and the best way is to work with the value matrix I feel.

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Note to self - to read it well, and to write about the book.

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There are two things regarding the problem of cities close to water, the problem of climate change created by humanity, and all the related problems. Changes take generations. The first thing is about awareness, understanding and appreciation. The second thing is about using this as a checklist of problems with current world arrangements, and to fix what can be fixed or bolstered. For instance, he talks about Nuclear Power plants close to sea which are now prone to cyclones because of climate change. If efforts in science can be directed towards creating innovation and tech to deal with Nucelar Plants in case of power loss. ....What I mean is that this book is not just for awareness, but also as a reckoner of things to be fixed, the worst problems to be dealt with, the efforts to be directed...to maximise the saving of humanity, both from impact as well as cause... and saving of the environment.

One can hence also read this book as a sort of checklist. To consider all the issues he details, story by story, something as a task list.




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There are cycles in the world, of which the clock is a miniature way to look at, seconds, minutes, hours, each circling at a different pace. But in nature, umpteen cycles keep moving. Nothing is still, everything is slowly or rapidly churning. Some of these are discernible to us like seconds and minutes and some of these are in rhythm with our being like hours, days, months and years. But many of these, because they are beyond our easy discernment, sometimes are not really grasped, understood, or their magnitude and impact appreciated. One gets a feeling reading this book that so much of the world is beyond our time-sense-grasp, that where one should listen to or bow to the wisdom of ages, just because one cannot discern or see so far. So either the wisdom of the ages, or the general reverence of the ancient man to what he didn’t understand rather than the general unabashed-ness of the modern man in front of what he doesn’t understand, or a general obliviousness, ignorance, a complete disconnect or ignoring of what is not understood. The thing about unknown unknowns but there are known unknowns too. However, the pace of life, the practicality of living and at a level, it is some sort of FOMO that drives the human race so competitively, capitalistically forward.




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There's his approach to the issue, a question he wonders about why is climate change not much spoken about in fiction, and to answer that he delves into the form of narrative and novel which has evolved over time, and the seeming improbability of certain events make them difficult to approach in fiction which deals with 'life as usual', the modern day life. (Some excerpts below)

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Some excerpts:

The humans of the future will surely understand, knowing what they presumably will know about the history of their forebears on earth, that only in one, very brief era, lasting less than three centuries, did a significant number of their kind believe that planets and asteroids are inert.

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Recognition is famously a passage from ignorance to knowledge. To recognize, then, is not the same as an initial introduction. Nor does recognition require an exchange of words: more often than not we recognize mutely. And to recognize is by no means to understand that which meets the eye; comprehension need play no part in a moment of recognition. The most important element of the word recognition thus lies in its first syllable, which harks back to something prior, an already existing awareness that makes possible the passage from ignorance to knowledge: a moment of recognition occurs when a prior awareness flashes before us, effecting an instant change in our understanding of that which is beheld. Yet this flash cannot appear spontaneously; it cannot disclose itself except in the presence of its lost other. The knowledge that results from recognition, then, is not of the same kind as the discovery of something new: it arises rather from a renewed reckoning with a potentiality that lies within oneself.

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But, of course, air too can come to life with sudden and deadly violence.

But more often it does so with a quiet insistence—as the inhabitants of New Delhi and Beijing know all too well—when inflamed lungs and sinuses prove once again that there is no difference between the without and the within; between using and being used. These too are moments of recognition, in which it dawns on us that the energy that surrounds us, flowing under our feet and through wires in our walls, animating our vehicles and illuminating our rooms, is an all-encompassing presence that may have its own purposes about which we know nothing.

It was in this way that I too became aware of the urgent proximity of non-human presences, through instances of recognition that were forced upon me by my surroundings.

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But when it came to translating these perceptions into the medium of my imaginative life—into fiction, that is—I found myself confronting challenges of a wholly different order from those that I had dealt with in my earlier work. Back then, those challenges seemed to be particular to the book I was writing, The Hungry Tide; but now, many years later, at a moment when the accelerating impacts of global warming have begun to threaten the very existence of low-lying areas like the Sundarbans, it seems to me that those problems have far wider implications. I have come to recognize that the challenges that climate change poses for the contemporary writer, although specific in some respects, are also products of something broader and older;


that they derive ultimately from the grid of literary forms and conventions that came to shape the narrative imagination in precisely that period when the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere was rewriting the destiny of the earth.


That climate change casts a much smaller shadow within the landscape of literary fiction than it does even in the public arena is not hard to establish.

Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.

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But the truth, as is now widely acknowledged, is that we have entered a time when the wild has become the norm: if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these torrents, then they will have failed—and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis.

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Clearly the problem does not arise out of a lack of information: there are surely very few writers today who are oblivious to the current disturbances in climate systems the world over. Yet, it is a striking fact that when novelists do choose to write about climate change it is almost always outside of fiction.

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In his seminal essay ‘The Climate of History’, Dipesh Chakrabarty observes that historians will have to revise many of their fundamental assumptions and procedures in this era of human-induced climate change, in which ‘humans have become geological agents, changing the most basic physical processes of the earth’. I would go further and add that the Anthropocene presents a challenge not only to the arts and humanities, but also to our common-sense understandings and beyond that to contemporary culture in general.

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Culture generates desires—for vehicles and appliances, for certain kinds of gardens and dwellings—that are among the principal drivers of the carbon economy.

When we see an advertisement that links a picture of a tropical island to the word paradise, the longings that are kindled in us have a chain of transmission that stretches back to Daniel Defoe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the flight that will transport us to the island is merely an ember in that fire. When we see a green lawn that has been watered with desalinated water in Abu Dhabi or Southern California or some other environment where people had once been content to spend their water thriftily in nurturing a single vine or shrub, we are looking at an expression of a yearning that may have been midwifed by the novels of Jane Austen. The artefacts and commodities that are conjured up by these desires are, in a sense, at once expressions and concealments of the cultural matrix that brought them into being.

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This culture is, of course, intimately linked with the wider histories of imperialism and capitalism that have shaped the world. But to know this is still to know very little about the specific ways in which the matrix interacts with different modes of cultural activity: poetry, art, architecture, theatre, prose fiction, and so on. Throughout history these branches of culture have responded to war, ecological calamity and crises of many sorts: why, then, should climate change prove so peculiarly resistant to their practices?

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In a substantially altered world, when sea-level rise has swallowed the Sundarbans and made cities like Kolkata, New York and Bangkok uninhabitable, when readers and museumgoers turn to the art and literature of our time, will they not look, first, and most urgently, for traces and portents of the altered world of their inheritance? And when they fail to find them, what should they—what can they—do other than to conclude that ours was a time when most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognizing the realities of their plight? Quite possibly then, this era, which so congratulates itself on its self-awareness, will come to be known as the time of the Great Derangement.

All Excerpts From Ghosh, Amitav. “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.” 

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Later - This book is a long essay. Even as I read it, I go through earlier sections. Like a report or a text book, it needs more time than a fast read. And any time spent on it is enriching in terms of understanding, appreciation and a worldview or a way of seeing fiction and the world in light of our deranged age.

Thirteen Ways of Looking - Colum McCann

Not my usual fare. But a quick read of short stories/ novella. Oft spotted in a second-hand book sale, finally bought yesterday. A fast read. Sometimes, what you need.

Intrigued by the title which is borrowed from Wallace Stevens poem, Thirteen ways of looking at a backbird. Reads like a show at times. One can almost imagine a teleseries of the name. 

Another one that writes grippingly is Tobias Wolff, one of my other dips.

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Later - I finished the novella. But the rest of the stories, I just couldn't go through the final one. So this book doesn't make it to the annual list as finished.

Blogs on reading and writing

One of the most delightful things is to explore other people's thoughts on the books they like and on reading itself. And about writing and reading, and reading and writing. This has been one of the pleasures and one of the most awesome gifts of the internet. 

If I look back at myself, I, an early eighties kid, came across internet in my early teens. And from that time, when people used to create cyan-background websites, to this time, books and their blogs and their pages, and the general fan-stuff about reading has been one of the most most most amazing things about internet. Very few interests connect people this way across centuries, across time and space as shared ideas. 

Somehow thoughts about books elevate the discussion. It needs to be from somewhere deep in the person, but amazingly, it somehow is not personal that way. One of the most paradoxical things - a thought so innermost yet being able to be shared without the sticky personal aspects. And hence, one feels one knows people but one may not know the facts of their life. 

I come across many many book blogs and each one is a joy. I came across a blog a few years ago which was one of the most amazing finds on books. But it went missing...Anyhow, this note of thanks to the missing blog. Hope it exists in some form. And to many other blogs that I would have come across, saved, forgotten over time...and often pleasently returned to. 

As to my own blogs, these are mostly notes to self. I have been doing so in some form or fashion since early 2000s. I enjoy reading them after some time, and if they are about a book, they are a mirror of my thoughts at the period. This current blog is my latest on books. Here, I can be freer (and quicker) turning out random unedited notes. The important thing being noting down the joy - of all the books I am currently exploring and planning to read or reading. 

Readers/audience are appreciated :) Cheers to reading and book-blogging!

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

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There is a loneliness in being human. One is so much a social being, yet at the end of the day, one is very much alone in oneself. This loneliness also transcends to this cosmic loneliness, on this seeming scene of the universe and lone humanity. It is not about physical loneliness, it is the wavelength loneliness at times. You seem to traverse a wavelength and hope to find another soul on that wavelength. Sometimes one finds it in books, in authors, in long past writers. In that way, books are a beautiful tech to meet people on your own wavelength. 

This loneliness is not pressing. There's plenty of company and fellow feeling and shared joys and shared lives. It is about a deeper question to the universe, it is about the hungry wonder of being, the unknowables surrounding us, and in this macrocosm, a little microcosm of us, playing along, living our lives, living our days on this Earth. 

Perhaps it is a mood that envelops one. Perhaps it is the keenness to express something in words, perhaps it is about personal aspiration to be able to express well what is really on mind. 

The only solace is it all passes. The flow of life keeps moving forward. So sometimes even if you are stuck at some aspect of life, life kindly carries you forward. Between the self command of 'keep moving forward', and the nature of things that they pass, one keeps walking on virgin sands of time. New footsteps which soon get washed over. There's nothing to hold on to, nothing to show except in oneself, in one's becoming and being. And that too passes. It matters not at the end of the day however burning those questions and wonders may be. Time and life dull every sharp edge, everything gets blunted like smooth river stones in this churning river of time. 

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Little to do with the book. More to do with the idea of books and being able to sometimes either find other souls on the same wavelength as yours, or sometimes being gently led on the writer's prose to a completely new wavelength. 

There are certain writings that are meditative. One can unfold oneself on those sentences and glide along wherever the author takes you. Sometimes these might be about the most inconsequential of things, but a personal, perhaps an individual's personal and vulnerable take on things. Not seeming as such, but as such. I have been reading Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector. I got nudged along to Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. And I think of Pessoa. I think of Knausgaard. I think of meditative long sentences. Even Proust and to an extent Murnane on reading and writing. For that matter, unedited prose of many writers when they talk about reading and writing. There's a sort of quiet meditative movement to the prose, which calms you down, soothes you like a baby on bottle. Not the prettiest of analogies, but words folded in a particular way can have as calming a power - in the same instance folding you warmly in the general you and I, and in the same instance letting you stand alone as a very unique I, forgetting and not forgetting, murmuring sweet nothings, almost inconsequntial things, just some words, connecting you warmly to life. 

The simple idea is reading and writing and perhaps meditative prose. Soul Mountain (still very early pages) seems like one. Perhaps there are certain moods where the mind feeds on the description of simple everyday life but at a removed context so the everyday world is itself an enchanted world. For such moods. Or perhaps it is the tranquil world view of the writer that affects us. It must be something like that, where between the lines, something of the writer's spirit, his worldview, gets transmitted to the reader. And although what one reads about maybe relatively simple, the words have done their work as a net for the spirit, for the world-view of the writer to be transmitted to you. Perhaps it is that, that we enjoy in such meditative prose. 

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I have different reading moods. For all moods, secure, not so secure, Eastern wisdom. There's a stillness, enough-ness, a sort of simple joy in simple being without any major clamor or want or need or have not or some sort of perpetual competition that the Western world view has at times. I think of Soul Mountain. Clouds on the hill. Basho and his travels. I have read little that way, but I think Europe too finds its tranquility but mostly somehow there's melancholy and it leans towards the absurdity of life,a heaviness. But somehow when one regards life in the Eastern way which is generally about the whole, reading the Western works is like going down a level where one still grapples with parts. Just sometimes.

Even that understanding of the whole is lived, not expressed. One sees a glimmer of it in Eastern simplicity and thoughts, but like chimera it escapes in the Westernization of our lives. Still, there's hope. Hopefully at least to keep arriving at new meditative ways of understanding the world, and yet another way of seeing it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Far From the Madding Crowd

By Thomas Hardy

Apart from reading Mayor of Casterbridge in my teens, I somehow did not find my way to Thomas Hardy all these years. That book perhaps I half understood or probably very little. But on picking up Far from the Madding Crowd, I do wonder all the reading delights I have missed and perhaps can look forward to in his other books as well.

Still ongoing for me (two-thirds done), it is a joy and delight. I enjoy reading about both Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene. And although there's a lot of plot and happenings and a little drama and some sentiment, there's a lot of joy of life in the writing, and many passages need to be read again, my mental note being perhaps I need to read the book again. Gabriel Oak is an inspiration and his good sense a beacon. Bathsheba, her freedom of spirit and keenness of life, another inspiration. And Hardy's observations throughout the book, a pleasure to read and re-read. 

In a long while a book which I do not exit from or switch to other books. Only sometimes when I need breathing space. Perhaps it would have inspired a lot of drama, but I enjoy the language. Glad that I am reading it, and wondering how come haven’t heard people talk about it. But perhaps people have read all the classics long time ago. Sometimes, some passages I wish to reread the book. Like the stoicism of Gabriel Oak. Guess somewhere, there’s life advice there. All the high drama comes and goes, it passes, but his constancy, his stoicism, his cheerfulness, loyalty and sense of duty – simplicity. All that wins the day for me. Lots to absorb there. 

Somehow the books of yore have a peace and quiet in them which modern books leave one thirsty for. There's a lot of strife in modern life, and so much of it is self-made, a bit pointless seeming but perhaps never seeming pointless to the concerned parties. There's a sort of despair, dissatisfaction, incompleteness, a sense of loss, fragmentation in modern novels. But somehow the older books - may be the writers were wiser, maybe they created some wise characters, there's a sense of peace, a sense of fulness, and irrespective of the vicissitudes of life, a sense of joy in living.

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Some excerpts from the book:

"Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:" 

"another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise."

"Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain."

"He drew out his flute and began to play “Jockey to the Fair” in the style of a man who had never known moment’s sorrow. Oak could pipe with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers. He played on with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small fortune to a destitute man."

"He fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature. But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this."

"He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from Norcombe. The Young Man’s Best Companion, The Farrier’s Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash’s Dictionary, and Walkingame’s Arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves."

"This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen’s Then is the rustic’s Now. In London, twenty or thirty years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In these nooks the busy outsider’s ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity"

"Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was not over happy. He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough."

"What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave—that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be."

"In the worst attacks of trouble there appears to be always a superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged and open to the notice of trifles,"

All Excerpts From

Hardy, Thomas. “Far from the Madding Crowd.” 

Salka Valka - Halldor Laxness

By Halldor Laxness

A world unto itself.

"It was, therefore, not easy to guess instantly what kind of foul weather would be served up next; and it might happen that one evening there was frost and clear weather, stars in a blue sky and a moon, if it was the right time by the almanack. The Creator took thought. And next day a drift wind set in, and snow fell thickly all that day and the following day as well; and then came frost, and a storm followed which collected the snow in drifts; and existence, such as it was in the place, had thus got its teeth well set in its own tail. The Creator could go on like this quite indefinitely -- how could it amuse Him?

And life in this place was like a kind of accompaniment to this absurd weather; its inhabitants went round in circles, toiling and moiling through one cycle of bad weather after another, without its leading to anything at all. They seemed to be the victims of an enchantment; they had to go far out to the sea to catch the silly fish, whenever the weather made it at all possible, cut their heads off, split them, clean and salt them, and pile them in stacks till summer. But however hard they toiled in the unending race with the weather roundabout, the result was just as invisible; everything vanished again into the sea from which it was caught, whether the men fished in partnership or for fixed wages; the accounts at Johann Bogesen's swallowed everything up. No money was ever to be seen.

The dogma "account at Johann Bogesen's" was as essentially abstract as the belief in the Revelation of Our Lord and redemption through Jesus Christ, but nevertheless its results were real and visible enough, like, let us say, the Sacraments and the means of grace; it meant continuous credit in years when there was no fish, safety even if the fishing trade was depressed, tarboard, paint, currants, cardamoms and candied lemon-peel, as well as little painted tin pails for the children at Christmas. And last but not least, this unique religion provided a guarantee against anyone having to be buried at the expense of the parish, which was regarded locally as almost the greatest scandal and abomination that could happen to a human being -- while on the other hand, to leave enough to pay for one's own funeral was regarded as a sign of true greatness and unbelmished honour, in life and death.

As soon as  one of these ruthless mornings had opened its unpitying eyes upon the penniless life of the place, Salka Valka was sent out into the snow-slush to distribute the milk, wearing waterproof cowskin shoes with hay in the toes. She had the milk portioned out in five small cans which she carried over her shoulder, three behind and two in front, and delivered at five doors of poverty-stricken appearance. The milk was debited to the seller and credited to the buyer in the accounts at Johann Bogesene's, for this was the trading system of the place. Every transaction involving as much as the value of a needle has to make a detour via the ship, where sums of five ore were deducted from Peter's account and credited to Paul's. This divine book-keeping settled everything between men and women at Oseyri on the Axlarfjord. All deals were done in elusive numbers, but every real asset in the place lay firm and fast in Johann Bogesen's hands. "

Fires - Raymond Carver

By Raymond Carver (Essays, Poems, Stories)

I really enjoy the essays collected here. I have read and reread them over the years. There are just four of them. Rest of the book is poems and stories which I browse through. I somehow cannot read his stories because of the subject matter and generally I tend to stay away from modern lives while reading fiction. It puts me in a despairing state of mind. Somehow I need the space & distance between the lives we lead and the stories we read. But his language is so sharp, so crystal, so pointed, that the essays are always a delight to read. Short, crisp, and they read as if the writer were talking directly to you.

Following little excerpt from his preface to John Gardner's book 'On becoming a novelist'. Carver titles the essay, 'John Gardner: The Writer as a Teacher'. He studies creative writing under him, and following he recalls:

"For short story writers in his class, the requirement was one story, ten to fifteen pages in length. For people who wanted to write a novel -- I think there must have been one or two of these souls -- a chapter of around twenty pages, along with an outline of the rest. The kicker was that this one short story, or the chapter of the novel, might have to be revised ten times in the course of the semester for Gardner to be satisfied with it. It was a basic tenet of his that a writer found what he wanted to say in the ongoing process of seeing what he'd said. And this seeing, or seeing more clearly, came about through revision. He believed in revision, endless revision; it was something very close to his heart and something he felt was vital for writers, at whatever stage of their development. And he never seemed to lose patience rereading a student story, even though he might have seen it in five previous incarnations."

I'll get to the stories too, eventually. But the habit of bringing everything home can leave you heartbroken at times in his stories. The sadness can be piercing. I find myself then returning or retreating to Victorian fiction. Perhaps one day someone should talk about the courage of a reader.

Loren Eiseley

Just a reminder here to read him more often, here and there, interspersed in my days, some wonder and rumination.

I have often borrowed the Library of America edition of his collected essays, read a little at a time, but at times that is plenty to restore perspective on life, and everything about it. And I have often wondered why is he not talked about more, or why didn't I hear of him until I stumbled on this book. Anyhow, here are some snippets from here and there. For me, it is not as much about finishing this book, as about dipping in again and again to refresh, renew and somehow engage with a tranquil soul which passes on its wisdom and tranquility to you.

From The Lost Notebooks:

"Walked along the edge of the daisy field. Interesting to see nature going on here at the verge of the Penn Fruit Company. Abandoned cups, match cases, whiskey bottles slowly being covered and made "natural" by red clover and diasies. How fast life flows from one form to another. The illusion of things. To the generations of cabbage butterflies I must be as everlasting as the Sphinx. I turned round sharply to make sure the Wynnewood shopping center had not disappeared while I gazed. I half expected to see a little plaster and a few bricks disappearing into the insatiable maw of the clover. Matter disappears of modfieis its appearances so fast that everything takes on an aspect of illusion -- a momentary fizzing and boiling with smoke rings, like pouring dissident chemicals into a retort. To a time-foreshortened eye all form would become bubblings or momentary imaginative shapes such as one sees when dreaming before a winter fire. One thinks one sees a shape and it is gone. Perhaps it is so with God half-asleep over the dying embers of his universe, and dreaming the shapes that come and go through the coals. "

From The Hidden Teacher:

"And war it has been indeed -- the long war of life against its inhospitable environment, a war that has lasted for perhaps three billion years. It began with strange chemicals seething under a sky lacking in oxygen; it was waged through long ages until the first green plants learned to harness the light of the nearest star, our sun. The human brain, so frail, so perishable, so full of inexhaustible dreams and hungers, burns by the power of the leaf."

 

"The student of fossil life would be forced to tell us that if we take the past into consideration the vast majority of earth's creatures -- perhaps over ninety per cent -- have vanished. Forms that flourished for a far longer time than man has existed upon earth have become either extinct or so tranformed that their descendants are scarcely recognizable. The specialized perish with the environment that created them..."

 

"The spider was a symbol of man in miniature. The wheel of the web brought the analogy home clearly. Man, too, lies at the heart of a web, a web extending through the starry reaches of sidereal space, as well as backward into the dark realm of prehistory. His great eye upon Mount Palomar looks into a distance of millions of light-years, his radio ear hears the whisper of even more remote galaxies, he peers through the electron microscope upon the minute particles of his own being. It is a web no creature of earth has ever spun before. Like the orb spider, man lies at the heart of it, listening. Knowledge has given him the memory of earth’s history beyond the time of his emergence. Like the spider’s claw, a part of him touches a world he will never enter in the flesh. Even now, one can see him reaching forward into time with new machines, computing, analyzing, until elements of the shadowy future will also compose part of the invisible web he fingers.

    Yet still my spider lingers in memory against the sunset sky. Spider thoughts in a spider universe—sensitive to raindrop and moth flutter, nothing beyond, nothing allowed for the unexpected, the inserted pencil from the world outside.”

 

"Let man spin his web, I thought further; it is his nature. But I considered also the work of the phagocytes swarming in the rivers of my body, the unresting cells in their mortal universe. What is it we are a part of that we do not see, as the spider was not gifted to discern my face, or my little probe into her world?"

Resurrection - Leo Tolstoy

By Leo Tolstoy


There is a warmth of a good absorbing story or book whenever I read something by Tolstoy. Long comforting sentences, which wrap the story around you like a blanket. Perhaps such writings are best which communicate to you without you letting know consciously about anything. Just complete absorption with the narrative; the way life is. Just that a book lends a completely new world to you. Some of the golden moments of reading!

It begins so:

"Despite the best efforts of people congregating in hundreds of thousands on one small spot to disfigure the land they had squeezed on to, despite their clogging the land with stones to make sure nothing could grow, despite their elimination of every last grass shoot, despite the fumes from coal and oil, despite the lopping of trees and the driving out of animals and birds, spring was still spring, even in the city...."

...It happens to be spring-summer in my hemisphere.

**

Later: Still in Book 1. Some 180 pages in I come across a chapter which is not story but the writer's take on the world. And I disagree. So giving the book a pause. But apart from it, it is like other Tolstoy books, it carries you along on the reading journey until something jarring like this comes up.

Daughters of the Vicar by D.H. Lawrence

A short book, perhaps a novella, perhaps a long-short story. 

As I often feel when I read Lawrence, the thinking or the writing is at a different plane at times. The story proceeds like many other such novels, which are straightforward on surface, but the psychological aspects or aspects of the psyche of the characters explored here are quite different. They seem to be on a more nuanced plane. Still, in a coherent narrative whole, not in terms of character's self-chatter, just the reality of the situation explored at multiple planes by the author. 

"There was a doggedness in her voice. She went about very quietly. In her soul, she knew what was going to happen. She knew that Mr Massy was stronger than she, and that she must submit to what he was. Her physical self was prouder, stronger than he, her physical self disliked and despised him. But she was in the grip of his moral, mental being. And she felt the days allotted out to her. And her family watched."

Inspector Imanishi Investigates - Seicho Matsumoto

After a long time I am reading a page-turner of sorts. A detective novel. But because it is late 1950s or early 1960s Japan, because it is a different world from modern police drama, it is a read into Japan of those times as well. Quite happy reading it. And wish to read more from the author and in the genre. The joys of a completely absorbing read are quite something! 

Also, alternating it with a couple of other Japanese books referring to that period quite close in decades- Makioka sisters (late 1930s), A pale view of hills (late 40s? early 50s?), it makes the country come alive through different vantage points to the same few decades. 

When it becomes too much, I have Brothers K to return to - which I am glad to report, is past its mid point.

**

Later, finished this one. Last few chapters felt rushed. It could be the reading, it could be the writing. But as a window, the book is a very interesting vantage point in Japan of that time.

A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro

By Kazuo Ishiguro

His first book. It unfolds in Nagasaki, right after the war, where so many people are still living, or trying to live looking forward while deeply in the shadows of the past. Everyone has suffered in the war, inhumane sufferings which put a question on the forward in life too, yet life persists, and though the war has changed life, its meanings, its constituents, people's hopes and dreams, yet people pick up the pieces and move forward. 

Although the book doesn't talk about all this, the war and its effects, explicitly but you feel it in the shadows in people's lives. Perhaps that's what a good book does, by recreating the world for you, make you feel the things that are given in that world, and people would not go about talking too much about the given, but it is in the very fabric of their being. Perhaps why we read, and hope to read good books, to get a glimpse of different times and spaces, where the 'given' things in life are very different from the reader's world.

It is not a very long book. Still reading through. 

**

Later. Finished the book.

A few quotes from here and there:

"So many women get brainwashed. They think all there is to life is getting married and having a load of kids."

I continued to watch her. Then I said: "But in the end, Niki, there isn't very much else."

--

"The Americans, they never understood the way things were in Japan. Not for one moment have they understood. Their ways may be fine for Americans, but in Japan things are different, very different." Ogata-San sighed again. "Discipline, loyalty, such things held Japan together once. That may sound fanciful, but it's true. People were bound by a sense of duty. Towards one's family, towards superiors, towards the country. But now instea there's all this talk of democracy. You hear it whenever people want to be selfish, whenever they want to forget obligations."

--

"But it's so good to come out here. Today I've decided I'm going to be optimistic. I'm determined to have a happy future. Mrs Fujiwara always tells me how important it is to keep looking forward.

[...]

Whenever I see her, I think of myself I have to be like her, I should keep looking forward. Because in many ways, she lost more than I did...."

On reading older books

Somehow I feel books need time, like pickles. A little bit of sun of years, time and distance - either in space or of time. Space is becoming similar amongst the new writers across the world. Unless they herald from a very different life of a very different times than modern readers, the world unfolding in a novel is too close to the lived reality of a reader. And for me, somehow that doesn't work very well. I can read it, I can enjoy it too, but the satisfaction that sometimes comes on finishing a book from a different time and place - part of it is the difficult joys of literature, part of it is just displacement and the rich reward of a new world - is quite sublime. 

Distance provides the frame to hold more than proximity does. Makes the unfurling world rich in detail and narrative, and at times, wholeness, which because the current modern world is still too close, still resolving itself into patterns which can become clear only after an age has passed by, somehow miss out on the deep dark ripe fruits of time. In the reader's mind perhaps, because a writer is always the same, writing from a point in time, sometimes at a remove, sometimes from the thick midst of story. So it must be the reader that brings time to the table, time and distance, to stories of a time and place, a world apart from the one the reader lives in.

One learns new things about oneself as one grows. I sort of find this again and again about myself, at the closure of every book. The depth of joy is different with books of different time periods, and more so from a different life. Guess the joys of modern fiction will be preserved for future readers, for us, at least for me, the two millennia and more that have passed and have left their works like seashells on a seashore are joys plenty.

One Italian Summer - Pip Williams

By Pip Williams

I recently read her Dictionary of Lost Words, and The Bookbinder of Jericho (over the last 12 months), both of which I enjoyed, and was open to more from her voice and cadence. So when a friend found this book, which is a memoir, I was all up for reading it.

It is sunny book, recounting one summer that the author and her family spend in Italy working across farms for lodging and boarding. They travel with their two young sons. They wish to make a life on a farm of their own in Southern Australia, and for work experience, or rather a hands-on experience of managing a farm, they travel and work abroad. 

You almost see the future author's glimpse here. Who sees the dreams of the slow life, the good life as she calls it, but is perhaps not really finding it as the perfect outcome in just farming alone. She likes making and baking, and she likes the time that while the dough ferments and the bread bakes, she can quietly spend it with her ideas and notebook.

It is very interesting that so far (midway), apart from her recording the days and then spending time writing her thoughts, there's no reference that she wishes to be a fiction writer. It is interesting to see the cross-section of a life like this, the way it is being lived, the dreams recorded, the notes and their reference point before she became a popular author, and then perhaps a wonder about her life now. It somehow makes things accessible, just another person next door - her memoir is special because it is not about a famous person, but just everyday people trying to find a different life in the modern world.

Tum Ek Gorakh Dhandha Ho

 Tum Ek Gorakh Dhandha Ho

(You are an artful enigma!)

Tum Ek Gorakh Dhandha Ho - Detailed here. Following quotes from the post followed by English meanings.

“Tum Ik Gorakh Dhanda Ho” is a philosophically and spiritually rich poem that was written by Naz Khialvi (1947-2010), a Pakistani poet and radio broadcaster. It explores theological debates and paradoxes, such as the problem of evil, free will versus determinism, the validity of different religions, and selective divine intervention. Full of Islamic, biblical, historical, and literary references, “Tum Ik Gorakh Dhanda Ho” is a masterpiece of modern Urdu poetry.

Examining the abundant references in “Tum Ik Gorakh Dhanda Ho”, there are three main categories. The first group includes prophets and key religious figures: Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Husayn bin Ali are all mentioned. The poem alludes to miracles and incidents from their life stories. The second group consists of prominent Sufi mystics: Mansoor al-Hallaj, Shams Tabrezi, Sarmad Kashani, and Sultan Bahoo. According to tradition, the first three were executed for their heterodox beliefs. Third, the poem references the heroes and heroines of romantic folk tales from Arab, Sindhi, and Punjabi literature: Laila-Majnoon, Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnu, and Sohni-Mahiwal. All of these romances are tragedies, in which the titular couples meet their end in the pursuit of love, much like Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

 

At times I searched for You here, at times I traveled to find You there.

Just to catch a glimpse of Your sight, how far I have traveled!

Similar wanderers have been wiped away and ruined, but

None have found any trace of You to this day.
You are not, yet You are everywhere.
You are an artful enigma!

With much majesty, You manifest Yourself in each atom.

But my intellect is astonished by how you are, what you are!
You are an artful enigma!

I looked for You in the temple and mosque; You cannot be found there.
But I have seen You gracing my heart with Your presence!

You are an artful enigma!

I have not found You despite searching; without searching, You appear somewhere.

And then there is this spectacle that You are wherever I am!

You are an artful enigma!

When besides You, there is no second in existence,

Then I do not understand why You veil Yourself!

You are an artful enigma!

In the mosque and temple, Your clever manifestation is present.

Your one face serves as the light of both these two homes!

You are an artful enigma!

The individual who has lost himself in Your affection,

It is that lost person who has actually found something!

He found You in neither the idolhouse nor in the Kaaba.

Rather, he found You in his broken heart.

You have hidden in one place, taking the form of nothingness.

While in another place, You have come in the form of existence.

If You are not, then why deny it?

Even negation reveals Your existence.

That which I am calling my own existence –

If not You, then what else could it be?

If You did not enter into my thoughts,

Then how did I recognize You as God?

You are an artful enigma!

I am astonished by the thought of who You are, what You are.

If I can grasp You, are You an idol? But if not, then You are God?

You are an artful enigma!

How can one who is enclosed in our comprehension be boundless?

How can one we understand then be considered God?

You are an artful enigma!

The philosopher does not find God in his argumentation.

He is untangling the cord but cannot find its end!

You are an artful enigma!

You tell everyone that Your address is “nowhere”,

How surprising it is, though, that You live in a broken heart!

You are an artful enigma!

When there is none except You in existence,

Then what, O God, is all this commotion about?

You are an artful enigma!

You neither hide nor come forth!

Even when showing Yourself, You do not show Yourself!

You do not wipe out quarrels between the temple and mosque [i.e. different religions].

You do not tell us what the actual truth is.

I am surprised at how You have occupied my heart,

Though even the two worlds [i.e. heaven and earth] cannot accommodate You!

Why this shrine and mosque, this church and temple?

Whenever there is disloyalty, You do not tell us!

You are an artful enigma!

My astonishment has dyed my heart a wondrous color!

You have drawn up a confused picture;

I do not understand what this whole affair is!

What is this game You have fabricated since eternity?

Having made the soul a prisoner to the body,

You have then placed it in the custody of death!

Having given the bird of Your plan the opportunity to fly,

You have placed the trap of destiny for it on each side!

Having decorated the two worlds for eons,

You have also established a plan for their destruction!

Though in any case You claim to be without a home,

You have also given the message that “We are nearer…” [Qur’an 50:16]!

This badness, that goodness, this hell, that heaven –

Do explain to me, what is the point of this jumbled mess?

Adam sinned, yet his children were given the punishment!

What kind of standard of equity and justice have You kept?

By giving mankind Your viceregency on Earth,

You have made a mockery of the world!

You made everyone for the sake of recognizing You,

But You have hidden Yourself from everyone’s vision!

You are an artful enigma!

Continuously You make and erase new designs.

Who knows which crime of desire You punish us for!

At times, You turn pebbles into a mine of diamonds!

At times, You even blend diamonds back into the soil!

He [Jesus] who gave life to so many corpses –

Even that Messiah, You cause to adorn crucifixes!

When one [Moses] sits on Mount Sinai with the wish of seeing You,

You set Mount Sinai alight with a lightning bolt of splendor!

You Yourself get Your friend [Abraham] thrown into the fire of Nimrod,

But then You Yourself turn the fire into a bed of roses!

You throw the Moon of Canaan [Joseph] into a well of Canaan;

You extinguish the light from Jacob’s eyes [making him blind].

One time You sell Joseph in the bazaars of Egypt,

But ultimately You make him [like] the king of Egypt!

When one [Mansoor] reaches the height of divine attraction and intoxication,

Sitting in his heart, You give voice to the words “I am the Truth!”

Then You Yourself place charges of blasphemy on him;

You Yourself make Mansoor hang by the noose!

One day he too loses his life

Whomever You give the desire to witness Your sight!

If some Ranjha departs on a search for You,

You torment him in the forests of Jhang!

If some Qais embarks on a quest for You,

You turn him into a madman for some Laila!

If love for You awakens in Sassi’s heart,

You scorch her in the burning Thal Desert!

If Sohni pictures You as Mahiwal,

You drown her in turbulent waves!

But if You desire, You summon Your beloved [Muhammad] to the highest heavens,

And in just one night, You have him complete his ascension to heaven!

You are an artful enigma!

You are Your own veil!

You are an artful enigma!

I realize that what I say seems bad to You,

But still, I have a complaint to You in any case!

You remained quiet, looking from Your Sublime Throne at

Muhammad’s grandson [Husayn] in the heated battle at Karbala!

How he offered his blood as a drink of loyalty,

Even though he had been thirsty for three days!

His enemies were, after all, enemies – but how sad it is

That You did not provide him with even a little bit of water!

The bounty for every cruelty is the inheritance of the oppressor,

But the oppressed is granted neither consolation nor comfort!

As for the person whose head was adorned with a crown yesterday,

Today, I see a beggar’s bowl in the same person’s hands!

If I ask what all this is, You say in response:

“No one can be acquainted with this secret!”

You are an artful enigma!

You are a world of bewilderment!

You are an artful enigma!

You are in each and every place, but I do not know Your whereabouts.

I have heard Your name, but I do not see any trace of You.

You are an artful enigma!

If the heart’s wish gets fulfilled, it glows like a firefly.

But if it gathers in the eyes, it ends up as tears.

If an impure soul gets lost in Him and repeatedly chants His name,

He receives lordships and becomes like Sultan Bahoo!

Some receive not the slightest of injury under the knife,

While, at another time, an arrow pierces Asghar’s throat!

You are an artful enigma!

How carefree You are, too!

A lengthy saga You are, too!

You are an artful enigma!

On the path of inquiry, I see confusion at every footstep.

I see that discord between circumstances and ideas.

I become a picture of distress

Whenever I closely look into the world’s mirror.

On the same earth, there are so many conflicts of nature.

I see one courtyard divided into so many parts.

In one place, it is the season of the smoldering autumn of hardship.

In another place, I see the descending monsoons of mercy.

Somewhere hissing rivers, somewhere silent mountains.

Somewhere jungle, somewhere desert, somewhere rose gardens I see.

This state of division makes me weep tears of blood.

Here I see some rich, some poor.

In the day’s hands, there is only one smoldering sun.

But I see that the night’s maang is adorned with many stars!*

In one place are the withered flowers of truth.

In another place I see the thorns of deceit flourishing.

In one place, I see Shams’s skin being flayed off.

In another place, I see Sarmad’s head coming off.

What is this thing called night, what is dawn?

What is this light, what is this darkness?

After all, I am supposed to be Your deputy.

So then why do You say, “You have naught!”?

You are an artful enigma!

What could someone looking for You see?

You have veiled Yourself in every manner!

You are an artful enigma!

Mosques, temples, and these taverns:

Some people believe in this; some believe in that.

All of them are Your homes, Dear!

Some people believe in this; some believe in that.

One is persuaded of Your existence;

Another is inclined towards denial.

But You alone know the reality.

Some people believe in this; some believe in that.

One considers You part of creation;

Another says You are separate from the rest.

Both are Your intoxicated devotees!

Some people believe in this; some believe in that.

When all are lovers of Your name,

Why are there quarrels between Rahim and Ram [Muslims and Hindus]?

You are an artful enigma!

You are in the temple, the mosque, the heavens, and the earth.

However far one’s reach goes, You are there for him!

You are an artful enigma!

In every possible aspect, You are unique!

You are an artful enigma!

The center of our quest; the world of color and scent:

In every breath, You are manifest. You surround us on all four sides!

In God’s surroundings, there is nothing but Him.

You are very enchanting, You are very beautiful!

Glories of heaven; dignity of the earth:

You are the attainment of the desires of the two worlds.

My eyes have performed ablutions with tears.

Now at least grant me a small taste of Your sight!

Come out from Your veil, face-to-face with my eyes.

For a few moments of union, just two hours of discussion!

Naz would mutter in devotion, in every place and every alley,

“He is one, He is one, He has no partner!”

God is, God is, God is, God is!

*

Roman Stories - Jhumpa Lahiri

By Jhumpa Lahiri

Written in Italian by her, and translated by her and a translator in English. Liking it. Stories where permanence meets transience. A smorgasboard of Rome of current times, different lives, local, immigrant. A kalidescope running through the current times so local in our history of refuge and host nation. Only after these definitive boundaries, and the definite written, documented world is such a world and kalidescope possible.

Sometimes I wonder if written word, any form of permanence is very much against the grain of life itself. Life is so transient, so ephemeral, the fog of memory, the local now takes care of much. With written word, even time takes its sweet time to heal. There's no respite. As if the ephemera has been pinned down and made to ascribe to the gridded network of a written, definite, organised world.

Anyway, such history, such stories are possible only in such a world. And perhaps it is a little redundant to add that such a blog, a writer and a reader is possible only in such a world. Written word for the everyday man and woman. We are at a sliver of history of everbefore. Only a few hundred years in millenia of human existence that we have such extensive records of being, of knowing, of striving. We are still figuring it out what it does to us. Everything is neither good nor bad or is both good and bad, so value judgements matter little, it is just that it does something to us, as long as we can figure it out, and still work our way such that we flow with the grain of life, of ephemera, of transience, of fogs and memories blinking in and out of fog, rather than this gridded organised, permanent definitive world. Hope we can save our souls from this imposed permanence and find oasis of ephemera and transience in our days, in activities, in losing ourselves away from this carved out one world, which is supposed to be many, as many as we are. 

*

Later - finished early November. 

On reading the final story, I realise it is not my usual reading fare. And perhaps why I stayed away from some of her other novels. 

Sometimes you know what you like by encountering what you do not like. I think I am super glad when a book I’m reading turns out to be literature. Something that somehow even in the tragic affirms life, something that somehow makes life right because in the deep, somehow there is wholeness. While some other books they trample your shallow shores, you end up a little muddy, a little annoyed with yourself. But then again sometime some literature finds you and all wrongs are righted.

Just some thoughts on why to keep the quality of reading aspirational. I fill it up time and again with the available, and accessible. But to strive with aspirations, and to keep reading well. Because the other path is not lovely at all, just easy, say to mark a book closed. 

Like all these modern books, too much of current times, and then the issues of current times without the requisite distance. Reminds me of Knausgaard, why I am drawn to it, but immediately wish to stay away. A personal thing. On to aspirations now. 

Adonais - a poem by Shelley

 In an introduction to an essay by Eiseley (elsewhere), I came across these lines from Shelley:

        The splendours of the firmament of time
       May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not;
        Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
        And death is a low mist which cannot blot
        The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
        Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
        And love and life contend in it for what
        Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

Looking up the complete poem, it is Adonais, written by him on Keats' on his early passing away from this Earth. Across 55 passages, it is longer than the usual poems I end up reading, but the lines above got me in, and I did read through. And it is something one needs to read a few times to perhaps absorb well. I still imbibe Four Quartets though it has been years and years of reading it. Some poems or sometimes fragments do pass through into the present continuous of one's head and lifetime, and for that, one is glad.

A few more passages from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats

IX

        Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick Dreams,
        The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
        Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
        Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
        The love which was its music, wander not—
        Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
        But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
        Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

XXI

        Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be,
        But for our grief, as if it had not been,
        And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
        Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
        The actors or spectators? Great and mean
        Meet mass'd in death, who lends what life must borrow.
        As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
        Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

XXXII

       A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—

       A Love in desolation mask'd—a Power

       Girt round with weakness—it can scarce uplift

       The weight of the superincumbent hour;

       It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

       A breaking billow; even whilst we speak

       Is it not broken? On the withering flower

       The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIX

       Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,

       He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;

       'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

       With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

       And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife

       Invulnerable nothings. We decay

       Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

       Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

If anything, the poem has inspired me to read Keats again, his poems, and more than that, his letters - keen to get the feel of his voice and thoughts again.
Here Adonais
Here Keats

 

 

The Spare Room - Helen Garner

By Helen Garner

My first book by the author. Shadows of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Malte Briggs talking about the big death of the Count. As one grows older, perhaps preoccupations of the mind too change as a carer and one cared for. Life that comes to all of us in its changing form from birth till our last day on Earth. Some things we do, and some are done to us. 

The book is intensly written, felt, and perhaps read like a long short story. Spread over a few weeks, the stage being a friend who is dying, and a friend who is caretaker for a while, the agonies of human beings in such close shared contact, where the miseries of terminal illness spread its darkness on the mood. 

Yet life persists, people persist,  there is sunlight in lived and shared moments, and strange sequences non-linearly bind us together closer, as in sometimes, putting aside the masks of politeness work out better in the non-normal situation where one faces something life-defying. Yet life beams through us, its persistence guiding our beings, our actions, one feels that life affirms itself. This brief candle...is only there while we breathe, so by default or by tautology, life keeps insisting on life, till the last breath. Life and warmth.

*

I have with me her stories as well. Read about her recently in the book on reading. In my growing familiarity with Australian authors, she is the latest new one. I do not usually read more contemporary works. I got reminded of Julian Barnes and the Lemon Table, where again the dusk of life casts a different light on the lived life and the color of everyday. Style is such that normally a slow reader like me can pick up and read through in a few hours, dialogue, breathing space, and the intensity and crispness. 

The Last Gift of the Master Artists - Ben Okri

By Ben Okri.

The book was released as Starbook in 2007. And re-released, edited, updated as The Last Gift of the Master Artists in 2022. That is the form I first borrowed it a few months ago. But could not read it then. Then found Starbook at a second-hand book sale. And as I started reading it I realised it is the same book as Master Artists. Since Master Artists is the updated version by the author, I began the book again, and this time, finished reading it. 

It begins with a beautiful, gentle instruction of 'Read Slowly'. And it talks about the unspeakable miseries and yet the regeneration and healing. 

The rythms of storytelling is sometimes different in authors. Perhaps different countries and cultures tell stories in their own way. And that at times seeps into the way a novel or a story is written. 

Many, many sentences are inspiring. Some copying here for future-ref.

Destiny conceals strange illuminations in the suffering that life visits on us.

 

The young all have clear eyes, but hers had a touch of paradise.

 

He felt he carried within him the wisdom of multitudes, a thousand forms of dying, a million ways of living, an understanding of the simplicity of all things. He had the lucid feeling that the many ways led to the one. The many forms were one formless harmony. The thousand histories were all one moment, one breath. All suffering and living was just one astonishing tale of illusion.

 

The heron made the subtlest movement, enough for its magnificence to be revealed, and the prince saw it as a radiant thing in a dying world. Appearing to have no interest in anything at all, it struck the water swiftly, and casually swallowed down a fish. It did this with great economy.

As it flew it changed all things and restored a new attention to the world.

But love which is felt for apparently no reason, felt because of an ineffable affinity, because a people can’t do otherwise, is a love inspired by the gods.

The prince sat and waited patiently for time to turn him into nothing or into everything.

She learnt also from the mood he created around him.

My daughter, if God cracks the sacred vessel, God leaks into it. What God breaks, God fills. We break that we may be blessed. We have to make a choice about who we are going to be, but we have not made it. We suffer because we have not chosen. We could be powerful on this earth. Instead we scratch the soil, like animals.

At the shrines of creativity and truth, they were humble. To them the god of art ensured balance and harmony in the universe.

Maximum effect from minimum effort was the artistic principle on which war was conducted.

The tribe was therefore fundamentally serene about all things. They lived in the freedom of a knowledge that was more than knowledge.

The greatest masters say nothing about their work because there is nothing to say. There is nothing to say save that it was done. It was seen, rendered, and remembered. It was carried across, brought here, imperfectly.

She would sit quietly on the floor and watch him work, or pace, or stare at the wall. Then suddenly he would pounce on an unfinished work. With swift sure motions he would carve from the block of wood a living form that a moment ago didn’t want to live.

They ended a task with the same tranquillity with which they began it. They were never tired, never elated. They began and ended in the same mood, engaged in an infinite work in which beginnings and endings were merely illusions.

We seek the source. That’s why we are detached about what we create. It serves a higher purpose than we understand. The artist who creates is not important. Through our works must shine not the power of the person, but the power of the source.

The true quest is for peace and simplicity, an intuition in which all things are clear.

Understanding is a glass of pure water. All great truths have no taste.

He was an outsider who had thought more deeply about art and life than any of the age.

She saw the heart of things without trying. She knew that true mastery comes once or twice in a hundred years.

Masters are born only once or twice in the life of a people. The truly gifted are rare. There are at best very hard workers who have found a personal language with which to say nothing profound.

As her father had said for as long as she could remember, the deep can only come from the deep.

Many want to understand, but few have the character for it,’ she said, at last. ‘And it takes character to receive. It takes character to wait, to listen, to learn, to master, to keep on the right road, to make mistakes and to correct them before they have gone too far. It takes character to always remember, beyond wealth and success, what the most important things in life are.’

If the foundations are not strong, the house will fall, with or without the rats.

I must show her, without showing her, how to make time a friend, a guide, a magician, by using the art of delaying. It is something the new generation is forgetting.

A woman must learn the art of making time stand still. Of stretching time out. You must learn to make time live in your house, while history is being made. Keep it under your pillow, with your dreams. Make time a great friend. And how do you do this? This is something you must learn for yourself. It’s the only way you will learn it. But I will tell you why you must learn it. It’s because everything goes. Beauty, earthly power, fortune, wealth, happiness, clans, tribes, empires. Everything goes away. Disappears. But you can make them disappear more slowly. You can make them wait longer. You can charm them to stay for one more day. And if you do this, day after day, then you can manage a modest eternity. Only with love can you do this. But not an ordinary love. A love greater than life itself.’

Even things that go, you can charm them back, their fragrance, their spirit. If their spirit is here then they are here too, and soon their form will return in another way.

They saw better when they did not understand. For understanding stopped them looking. Consequently they liked to delay their understanding.

She was taught that wisdom is greater than force, grace more magical than power, love stronger than hate.

She was searching for something which could not be sought, but could only be received.

She asked no questions, sought no answers, forgot all techniques, discarded all craft, abandoned her heart, left behind her mind, ceased to be a woman, or even human, became blind, refused speech, and in complete emptiness, like one without beginning or end, she received what emerged from her dreaming in wood.

THROUGH ALL THIS her father was silent. He made his art with his usual serenity. He appeared not to register that anything unusual was going on. He didn’t seem to notice the fury directed at his family. He went about his business as though he lived in a separate realm. In that realm the significance of events was radically different from that of the real world. He was invincible. This strengthened his mystique, and magnified the power around him.

The moment people are unjust to you, they have lost the fight. The moment they attack you, they have lost the war. The moment they try to humiliate you, invalidate you, or destroy you, that moment they have lost the truth. Then they lose all spiritual protection. That moment they surrender power and authority to you, but they do not know it.’

Carry on your work. Be serene. Follow your conscience, and have no fear. The laws that operate in the world are invisible laws. But they are greater than the force of nations. You can depend on these laws.’

Like some flowers, some babies, she had an air of innocent invincibility, as if she knew that she could and could not be destroyed. As if she knew some simple secret of eternity. A new smile appeared on her face.

The masters sought therefore only to be open. They made themselves open to the work’s secrets, its language, its inspiration, its guidance.

It’s not being a prince or a king that is special, my son. It’s being alive to the mystery of life.’

When he wanted to express that which was beyond expression, he kept silent.

A season of humility will do you good. A season of humiliation would put power in your veins and some ripening rage in your heart.’ The king was no longer laughing. ‘To be all things is to be human. Exile, slavery, warfare, madness, folly, grandeur – these are the food of the brave. All will be tasted at the feast before you become king. But the greatest fruit of all, my son, is love. If through love you learn the art of being human, then you will be a great prince and a joy to the gods.’

This charged atmosphere, seeping into the statues and masks and carvings, was what created the highest mystery in the works. When finished, the works were not complete. They needed to absorb an atmosphere richly treated in enchantments and sorceries and dark beautiful suggestiveness. They needed to be treated in ancient moods.

This was the most important work that the spirits performed. They steeped the finished sculptures in enigmas.

It demanded utmost stillness and concentration. For the master, concentration was a form of humility. An acute receptivity.

Time seemed a river in which past, present, and future were all one. The artists bathed in that stream, drawing from it inspiration without end.

They were drawn to the beauty that a work creates in the mind. They were fascinated by the mental and spiritual beauty created by the work but not residing in it.

They were interested only in what exalted states the work of art could induce

Everything in the workshop was eager to teach him. Stones yielded the secret of structure, spiders the secret of making, walls the art of the vertical. The air taught invisibility, feathers taught flight, and the light that came in through chinks in the wall revealed to him the underlying secret of all things, in hints and fragments of illumination.

Everything was eager to teach him. He was eager to learn.

The master was pondering how high a thing can be before human beings begin to grasp it; he was thinking how invisible a thing must be before human beings can see it;

There are many other arts greater than the art of making art out of wood or stone.’ ‘Like what?’ ‘Like the art of making life out of death, wisdom out of suffering, good out of evil.’

‘He has no interest in creating art. He wants to become art. I don’t know what art he wants to become.

Tranquillity in a person is an achievement. It is the result of great insight.’

Intelligence can be a form of blindness; it can prevent people from seeing truth. People value their mental powers even as they increase their fundamental errors. Trust those who have simplicity of spirit, goodness of soul, and an inquiring mind.

People’s opinions don’t amount to much. Their plans work for a while then pass into nothing. Only convictions on the side of life really amount to anything. Do not fear sorcerers or those who conjure for the devil. As long as you do not believe in evil they cannot harm you. Fear is the most powerful form of belief. Do not fear anything. There is only one cure for fear, and that is wisdom.

All time is here. Don’t trouble yourself about passing sufferings, fashions, ideas, disasters, failures, successes, or triumphs. All are illusions. Maintain a sublime detachment from all things and the greatest love will shine through you. Be silent. Be still. Sometimes our minds are our worst enemies. Do not hold preferences too strongly. Be guided by that still small voice within. Learn to listen to it. Drink the cup of suffering life gives you when it does. Pass through the narrow space. Do not cling to any fixed ideas of who or what you are. You are more than whatever you think you are. Being a prince is nothing compared to a man or woman who has discovered that deep down in them there are gods. Humility makes you great.

In spirit and in deeds, be light.

All Excerpts From

Okri, Ben. “The Last Gift of the Master Artists.” 

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