Lyndon

Ao término de A VIOLÊNCIA E O SAGRADO, René Girard engancha suas idéias sobre sacrifício/crise sacrificial com os ritos de passagem. Para Girard, estes têm como modelo aqueles, os ritos de fixidez. Acredito que essas idéias se relacionam com alguns aspectos das idéias de David Foster Wallace; o DFW de INFINITE JEST, mas mormente com uma passagem de LYNDON, um conto de GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR.

Bateria pé num puro palpite que diz que DFW não é, não foi e não seria favorável à Guerra do Vietnã. O meu ponto independe disso: as observações que o "seu Lyndon Johnson" (nota aos que não leram LYNDON: LYNDON trata do ex-presidente americano mas é ficção) faz sobre a oposição à guerra se encaixam muito bem na relação que Don Gately e Hal Incandenza tem com seus vícios, desejos e personalidades.

A oposição sessentista e setentista à guerra fez com que, pela primeira vez, não só quase todos dos que não foram à guerra não queriam ir, como a maior parte dos que foram à guerra passaram a achar que não deveriam ter ido, e estes ainda agiram para garantir que aqueles que não queriam ir não fossem mesmo, ou para persuadir aqueles que queriam ir a que não desejassem mais. Uma passagem pelo Vietnam não era mais o caminho natural de uma geração; e assim uma nação militarista se imolava.

Em LYNDON, Lyndon observa da janela de sua sala na Casa Branca os manifestantes e conversa com seu assessor David Boyd (Boyd é um homossexual que, assim como o presidente, tem uma profunda noção de responsabilidade. A rara idéia de responsabilidade pessoal do someone needs to do it -p.89-, tão longe dos ambientes da burocracia, e partilhada por ambos, é o que os aproxima, chegando a levantar suspeitas sobre o grau de intimidade dos dois.):

"Take a look at them dancing across over there, boy, shouting fuck you like they invented both fucking and me [...] I see some animals that need to suffer...and if we don't give them some suffering, why, they'll just go and hunt up some for themselves." (GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR 106)

A observação de Lyndon Johnson é exemplar: os jovens não querem abrir mão do sacrifício, querem outro sacrifício. Estão dispostos ao combate franco (é a época das manifestações violentas nas universidades, é a época dos Panteras Negras) com o governo, tudo para que não entrem em combate com outro governo. Como comer torta de maçã, ir a uma guerra é a obrigação dos jovens americanos. É o que os pais deles fizeram; e é o que eles deveriam fazer; é o processo de sofrimento que uma geração atravessa para que esta tenha sempre a viva as idéias de responsabilidade e dever:

"To them, right and wrong is words, boy. Right and wrong ain't words", he said. "They're feelings. In your guts and intestines and such. Not words. Not songs with guitars. They're what make you feel like you do. They're inside you. Your heart and digestion. Like the folks you personally love." He felt at his forearm and clenched his fist. "Let them sad sorry boys out across there go be responsible for something for a second, boy. Let them go be responsible for some folks and then come back and tell their President, me, LBJ, about right and wrong and so forth." (GWCH 107)

It's tough kid, but it's life, que nada mais é do que outra forma de dizer Tough Shit But You Still Can't Drink (Group)

Go be responsible for something for a second. Um bando de jovens que desfrutam de uma liberdade imerecida: eis o que DFW comentou sobre o assunto, em entrevista à Salon, aludindo ao valores do AA inseridos no IJ: I got the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30's, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

É o que René Girard escreve sobre os ritos de passagem:

Os ritos de passagem dão aos neófitos uma amostra do que os espera se transgredirem as interdições, se negligenciarem os ritos e se afastarem do religioso. Graças ao ritual, as gerações sucessivas são impregnadas de respeito pelas obras terríveis do sagrado, participam fervorosamente da vida religiosa e consagram-se com todas as suas forças à consolidação da ordem cultural. A prova física tem um poder coercivo que nenhuma compreensão intelectual consegue igualar; é através dela que a ordem sociorreligiosa irá aparecer como um extraordinário benefício.

Os ritos de passagem têm uma eficácia real, pelo menos enquanto não perderem seu caráter de prova penosa, impressionante, por vezes quase insuportável. Como sempre, trata-se de "evitar" uma crise sacrificial, que a ignorância dos adolescentes e sua jovem impetuosidade poderiam facilmente desencadear. p.358, (A VIOLÊNCIA E O SAGRADO, René Girard.)¹

É-me dado o direito de esperar que aquele de alma mais pacifista, com nenhuma dificuldade, identifique o discurso de Lyndon Johnson em LYNDON como ‘crítico' ao processo: "É o texano ignorante falando dos jovens bacanas dos anos 60". E o típico leitor cool wannabe do DFW, claro, teria algo em mente que passaria muito próximo disso. Porém quando o mesmo tema aparece em INFINITE JEST, os gritos são de louvor e de lição de vida, especialmente no que diz respeito aos métodos do AA. A lição que todos louvam vem exatamente da capacidade de lidar com o sofrimento e da capacidade de não fugir do sofrimento,² e ainda da capacidade de aceitar, dividir e escolher entre sofrimentos purgativos e aniquiladores.

Don Gately exemplifica isso aqui:

They omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spit of it [...] There's serious pain in being sober [...] these Boston AAs start in on telling you you're right where you're supposed to be and telling you to remember the pointless pain of active addiction and telling you that at least this sober pain now has a purpose. At least this pain means you're going somewhere, they say, instead of the repetitive gerbil-wheel of addictive pain. (IJ 446)

Na religião primitiva, aqui ilustrada por Gately e os métodos do AA, e em LYNDON pelo ex-presidente americano, a função tanto do sacrifício quanto do ritual de passagem é a mesma. E é exatamente a sua perda que cria, e na comunidade alastra, a crise, mesmo na vida serumana, como diria Nunes:

A crise sacrificial, ou seja, a perda do sacrifício, é a perda da diferença entre a violência impura e a violência purificadora, escreve Girard. A violência impura (pointless pain of active addiction) é a que Gately e Hal (e mais uma caralhada de personagens) experimentam. Quando se perde essa diferença, não há mais purificação, não há mais purificação possível e a violência impura, contagiosa, ou seja, recíproca, alastra-se pela comunidade (V&S 67). Assim, Gately é ilustrativo antes-de-tudomente por perceber a diferença das violências. Já em LYNDON, ao negarem o caráter purificador do sacrifício, os opositores criam na sociedade um confronto direto, uma violência recíproca que deveria ser jogada para fora da comunidade.

A animosidade pró/contra Vietnã foi, até aqui, uma figuração. A diferença fundamental agora é o desaparecimento de Hal e o recognição de Gately. O pequeno Hal entende o processo comentado por Lyndon Johnson, uma vez que o explica aos garotos da E.T.A:

The end-of-the-day hatred of all the work is just part of the work. (IJ 109) The point is it's ritualistic [...] The suffering unites us. They want to let us sit around and bitch. Together. This is their gift to us. Their medicine". (IJ 111)

Hal é girardiano não só por tomar os treinamentos de Schtitt ritualisticamente, mas também por entender que o sofrimento nascido dele é um remédio, raciocínio que tem paralelo com Girard exatamente aqui:

Os gregos nomeavam Katharma o objeto maléfico rejeitado durante operações rituais [...] ora, a palavra katharma designa também e em primeiro lugar uma vítima sacrificial humana, uma variante de Pharmakós. [...] Um remédio catártico é uma droga poderosa que provoca a evacuação de humores ou de matérias cuja presença é considerada maléfica. Imagina-se freqüentemente que o remédio participa da mesma natureza que o mal, provocando, por esta razão, uma crise salutar, de onde emergirá a cura.

O deslizamento que conduz do katharma humano à katharsis médica é paralelo ao que conduz do pharmakós humano ao termo pharmakon, que significa ao mesmo tempo veneno e remédio. (V&S 360-1)

Ambos, Schtitt e o presidente americano, acreditam na necessidade de dar alguma coisa para os jovens odiarem (purificadora: pelear na Ásia/odiar os treinos), ou então eles procurarão outra coisa para odiar (aniquiladora: se engalfinhar no seio do país/odiar os próprios companheiros de academia):

‘You guys haven't notice yet the way Schtitt's whole staff gets progressively more foul-tempered and sadistic as an important competitive week comes up?'

‘They want us in absolute top shape'

‘Shit, Ingersoll, we're all in top shape already [...] the point is that it's not physical anymore, men. The physical stuff's just pro forma. It's the heads they're working on here, boys. They always give us something to hate [...]' (IJ 113)

É claro, a virilidade aflora e os meninos disputam no ambiente testosteronizado da academia de tênis a primazia; e a estabilidade é mantida como?; ora, dando aos meninos, obrigados contemporaneamente ao convívio e à competitividade, o sacrifício dos próprios professores, tal Hal explica: I may despise K. B. Freer, or Evan Ingersoll, or Jennie Bash. But we despise Schtitt's men, the double matches on top runs, the intensity to exams, the repetition, the stress. The loneliness. But we get together and bitch, all of a sudden we're giving something group expression. A community voice. They give themselves up to our dislike. (IJ 114)

Espero que a última frase não tenha passado sem um sorriso, pois é bem interessante, e um bom ensaísta até um bom texto faria, mas reparem: they give themselves up to our dislike. Os rituais de sacrifício e passagem são simultâneos. E como diria uma música que toca aí no rádio: Oh, alone we may fight, so just let us be three. (Não sei qual a versão certa: be free ou be three... Escolhi a que melhor se encaixa neste texto.) E agora, se o Stephen Burn, em seu READER'S GUIDE TO DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S INFINITE JEST, acha unlikely o livro ser religious, seguindo Girard, que afirma ser a neutralização da violência recíproca o único objetivo da religião primitiva (V&S 75), a tática Lyndon/Schtitt é religiosa, sim.

E o que Hal Incandenza comenta no início do livro será confirmado por Gately no final, como aquele seu they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. E para os leitores de IJ eu nem preciso comentar as alusões ao wraith hamletiano, claro, nem à relação na própria história entre o jovem Hal e Gately. E umas 800 páginas após Hal dar-se conta de todo o processo, ainda volta ao assunto com uma inocência imbecil: We are all dying to give our lives away to something. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. (IJ 900)

A gerbil-wheel pain da qual reclama Gately não é outra senão a crise sacrificial, quando a própria comunidade se imola - ou quando o indivíduo se imola: Hal -; e não sem razão outro da mesma raça, Wyatt Gwyon, perde até o nome em sua em busca dos modelos de cópia certos vivida em THE RECOGNITIONS, do William Gaddis.

Cópias

A memorável idéia do velho Gerhard Schtitt - is always something too [...] Adjust? Stay the same. Make this second world inside the world (IJ 458-9) - é a versão DFWallaciana do que Rilke trata na sétima elegia: Tempel kennt er nocht mehr. Diese, des Herzens, Verschwendung sparen wir heimlicher ein. E os templos que já não existem mais externamente, são nun innerlich: größer!, para guardar... (Bom, isso é complexo demais e tratarei disso no futuro, em um texto sobre THE TUNNEL, do William H. Gass, Rilke e muito mais.)

Este sentido interno, que Schtitt/Rilke apontam, é o caminho da recognição de Gately, pois há, em Infinite Jest, um momento de recognição verdadeiramente girardiana. Lá pelas tantas, Don Gately declarou, no púlpito do Braintree, durante uma reunião do TSBYSCD, que embora ele se ajoelhasse e pedisse ajuda de Deus (as you understand Him), ele não conseguia ter idéia alguma do tal ser, o que não era nada bom. Gately estava tão clueless and lost he's thinking he'd maybe rather have the White Flag Crocodiles just grab him by the lapels and just tell him what AA God to have and understanding of, and give him totally blunt and dogmatic orders about how to turn over his Diseased will to whatever this Higher Power is. (IJ 443)

E naquele momento houve uma evidente conversão - no sentido girardiano da coisa. Os crocodiles se levantaram aplaudindo, assoviando e tentando abraçá-lo. Girard, em Um Longo Argumento do Princípio ao Fim, comenta sobre o escape do desejo mimético e a conversão: Converter-se é descobrir que, sem saber, sempre estivemos imitando os modelos errados, modelos que nos levam ao círculo vicioso dos escândalos e da frustração perpétua - ao círculo mimético, pois. (ULADPAF 214) O desespero de Gately para que alguém lhe dissesse o que é Deus, mesmo que fosse da maneira mais dogmática possível, é um exemplo de desejo mimético.

A dificuldade de evitar modelos errados, e necessidade de perceber que os modelos certos, estão no centro de THE RECOGNITIONS, mesmo que o autor não tivesse esta idéia. Wyatt, o jovem e genial falsificador dos mestres da pintura, sempre demonstra irritação ao ver suas cópias tidas como cópias. Para ele, seus quadros são percepções de verdades imutáveis, formas eternas que habitam cada um de nós. Suas cópias não são jogos de composição; não são gratificações ao público fã deste ou daquele mestre da pintura; são originais, embora o autor não seja exatamente o autor: Do you think I do these the way all other forging has been done? Pulling the fragments of ten paintings together and making one...a Dürer and reversing the composition so that the man looks to the right instead of left, and recognize a Dürer? No, it's...the recognitions go much deeper, much further back (THE RECOGNITIONS 250) Wyatt sabe que as obras dos mestre são eternas porque não foram cópias de modelos passageiros, mas doutro modelo, o eterno: Most forgeries last only a few generations, because they're so carefully done in the taste of that period sees [...] That is the curse any genuine article must endure. (TR 230) E jovem Wyatt Gwyon vai longe em sua busca. Encarna o aquilo que Rilke fala - und selbst den eigenen Namen wegzulassen wie ein zerbrochenes Spielzeug. Seltsam, die Wüschen nicht weiterzuwünschen [...] Und das Totsein ist mühsam und voller Nachholn, daß man allmählich ein wenig Ewigkeit spürt - e perde o nome por um bom tempo.

INFINITE JEST e THE RECOGNITIONS são, portanto, obras essencialmente religiosas. E essencialmente cristãs. Mas do cristianismo difícil, que rejeita o modelo errado e busca, mesmo em crise, o único modelo. Sobre isso, sobre a dificuldade desta prática, já escreveu Kolakowsky: Christianity is about moral evil, malum culpae, and moral evil inheres only in individuals, because only the individual is responsible [...] It is this the difficulty of being a Christian consists [...] there are not many Christians and never have been many. That there are few of them, however, is not a symptom of any "crisis" of Christianity, but confirmation that it is difficult to measure up to its demands. If there's a crisis, it is a permanent one. (MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL 93-4)

Entre aquele que é profiled (IJ 680), Orin, e aquele que é a thing that basically hides (IJ 932), Gately e Hal, há um citizen of the human state (IJ 84). Melhor ainda: citizen of the christian state.

Hip ennui e o crente de meia-tigela

Embora o livro não seja bom, copio uma feliz definição dada por John McClure em PARTIAL FAITHS. McClure não trata de Gaddis ou Foster Wallace, mas antes de Pynchon, Delillo e outros menores, e alcunha um monte de coisas feitas por esses autores de ficção pós-secular: uma literatura que não é secular mas também não é dogmática. São composições com grande viés, vá lá, metafísico, só que de um jeito mais livre, leve e solto.

Como foi supradelineado, LYNDON, IJ e DFW são religiosos até suas respectivas raízes, mas não declaradamente. E por quê? Foster Wallace explica no próprio IJ: the arts here are produced [...] and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip [...] to be included and so Unalone. (IJ 694) O próprio autor sofre desse medo de fazer uma obra religiosa, embora acredite em alma.³ INFINITE JEST acaba sendo um trabalho sobre partial faiths, sujeitos que embora tenham vislumbres de que a vida é mais do que parece, não conseguem realizar que o nosso mundo se afastará cada vez mais da realidade quanto mais quiser precisar as coisas, quantificar a realidade, ao invés de ouvir essa voz profunda, que será sempre uma viagem do enigma ao mistério - uma travessia que parece não levar a lugar nenhum, mas na verdade está subindo, levando-nos cada vez mais à compreensão da realidade. (DICTA&CONTRADICTA 19)

Foster Wallace sabe disso, e sabe disso porque muito do que foi dito por Bruno Tolentino, poeta jamais lido por DFW (pior pra ele), também foi por Rilke. Em seu comentário sobre Kafka, onde ele comenta o quanto é difícil convencer seus alunos do inegável fato de que Kafka é engraçado, é argumentado por ele que muito da dificuldade se deve ao que ele chama de cultura adolescente atual (a mesma do clues on how to be cool, citada acima). E mais do que engraçado, ele chama Kafka não só de humorista, mas de humorista religioso; religioso à Rilke: the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. (CONSIDER THE LOBSTER 64) A idéia de DFW sobre Kafka é a idéia de Kolakowsky sobre o Cristianismo. E continua ao dizer que Kafka mostra que our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. (CTL 64-5). Aqui, além de refletir, talvez sem saber, Borges em sua famosa quem se demora longe de casa já voltou,⁴ ele reconhece indiretamente o anjo schrecklich, e o mistério tolentinesco.

David Foster Wallace é um dos menos partially faithful dos autores americanos. Por isso é bom. Ele não sabe disso, porque ao mesmo tempo em que percebe o quanto a cultura atual é adolescente e clues on how to be cool, ele não pode deixar de participar do circo. Infinite Jest é uma história sincera dentro de um calhamaço de boçalidade literária: se fosse menos boçal, provavelmente não teria feito a fama de Wallace; mas sua sinceridade é comovente, sim. Consegue, mais do que a maior parte da dos autores contemporâneos, embora seguidamente cometa este equívoco, realizar o que diz Prospero em THE SEA AND THE MIRROR, de W.H. Auden: Can I learn to suffer without saying something ironic of funny on suffering?, mesmo que aos trancos e barrancos de muita metasilliness (IJ 704). Sim, porque nos personagens de Wallace, e em sua literatura, a verdade está sempre próxima, mas todos são tapados demais para vê-la. Bom lembrar seria, talvez, uma passagem de um autor daqui, Daniel Pellizzari, que em DEDO NEGRO COM UNHA, põe dois a dizer: "Só espero que você não esteja pensando em acreditar em Deus"; "Não me acovardo perante essa possibilidade." (DNCU 54)

Talvez DFW ou seus personagens se acovardem, quem sabe? Mas certamente o autor sofre  do defeito de excesso de metasilliness que Hal identifica nos filmes de seu pai, bem como as razões pela qual ele fazia aquilo: to have nothing really felt going on. Em CONSIDER THE LOBSTER, Wallace resenha Updike de uma forma muito perspicaz. Ben Turnbull, o egocêntrico, falocrata e misógino narrador não consegue entender o porquê de sua infelicidade. Wallace hints: Ben Turnbull's unhappiness is obvious right from the novel's first page. It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he's so unhappy is that he's an asshole. (CTL 59) Se daqui a pouco eu mudar de idéia eu aviso, mas até lá eu acho que Wallace (e vários outros que esboçam idéias de religiosidade, mas que na hora do vem cá meu nego) é um baita de um bunda mole.

=========

1. Não é muito diferente do que disse Olavo de Carvalho aqui: Vejam essa meninada da USP, gente de classe média e alta, depredando uma universidade gratuita, e compreenderão do que estou falando: o que esses garotos precisam não é de mais benefícios; é de uma cobrança moral que restaure a sua sanidade.

2. É verdade batida sobre nosso tempo, e aqui reproduzo só para dizer que não estou só: The cheap ironic pose of much contemporary art and entertainment teaches us to be cynical when we're confronted with pure emotion, and the cheap sentimentality of much of what we see debases our responses, so we find it easier to cry at a phony melodrama like Million Dollar Baby than at a Greek tragedy or the moment in The Tempest when the fairy sprite Ariel teaches the mortal Prospero how to be human.

3. Em um artigo sobre Kafka, de 1999, DFW declara que unconscious is just a fancy word for soul.

4. Digo talvez porque a passagem é tão próxima da de Borges, e o poema de Borges do qual a passagem se comenta é tão similar em tema à fábula que DFW comenta para ilustra o homor religioso de Kafka, que eu até me permito - te permite? Ah, me permito! - imaginar que DFW plagiou o argentino. Vamos lá:

Pequena fábula, comentada por Wallace, é esta, na tradução de Modesto Carone:

"Ah", disse o rato, "o mundo torna-se a cada dia mais estreito. A principio era tão vasto que me dava medo, eu continuava correndo e me sentia feliz com o fato de que finalmente via à distância, à direita e à esquerda, as paredes, mas essas longas paredes convergem tão depressa uma para a outra, que já estou no último quarto e lá no canto fica a ratoeira para qual eu corro." - "Você só precisa mudar de direção", disse o gato e devorou-o.

E o poema de Borges, Para um versão do I Ching, é este:

Nosso futuro é tão irrevogável

Quanto o rígido ontem. Não há nada

Que não seja uma letra calada

Da eterna escritura indecifrável

Cujo livro é o tempo. Quem se demora

Longe de casa já voltou. A vida

É a senda futura e percorrida.

Nada nos diz adeus. Nada vai embora.

Não te rendas. A masmorra é escura,

A firme trama é de incessante ferro,

Porém em algum canto de teu encerro

Pode haver um descuido, a rachadura.

O caminho é fatal como a seta,

Mas Deus está à espreita entre a greta.

]]> http://suyak.wordpress.com/?p=105 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:42:33 +0000 suyak http://suyak.wordpress.com/?p=105 Das ist mein Anfangssatz. Nicht preiswürdig. Anders Günter Grass im Roman Der Butt: „Ilsebill salzte nach“. Würzig. Und im letzten Jahr zum schönsten Einstieg in einem deutschen Roman gekürt. Auf Platz zwei wurde Franz Kafkas Anfangssatz aus Die Verwandlung gewählt: „Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt“. Weltliteratur. Wie auch immer. Am Anfang steht ein Buchstabe. Ich habe in meinen Büchern gekramt und Anfangssätze daraus zu einer neuen Geschichte aneinandergereiht:

(1) Ja, äh. (2) In Front des schon seit Kurfürst Georg Wilhelm von der Familie von Briest bewohnten Herrenhauses zu Hohen-Cremmen fiel heller Sonnenschein auf die mittagsstille Dorfstraße, während nach der Park- und Gartenseite hin ein rechtwinklig angebauter Seitenflügel einen breiten Schatten erst auf einen weiß und grün quadrierten Fliesengang und dann über diesen hinaus auf ein großes, in seiner Mitte mit einer Sonnenuhr und an seinem Rande mit Canna indica und Rhabarberstauden besetztes Rondell warf. (3) Ein Künstler ist Schöpfer schöner Dinge. (4) Hier fängt die Geschichte an. (5) Wir waren um den ganzen See herumgefahren. (6) Werners Haus lag in einer ruhigen Villengegend. (7) Robert Lieblings Sinn stand nach einer Straße mit Kopfsteinpflaster.

(8) Es ist noch nicht so lange her, zu einer Zeit, als die meisten Leute noch Gaslicht benutzten und Pferd und Wagen den motorisierten Gefährten vorzogen, da lebte in einem grün-weißen Haus an einer hübschen Straße ein kleiner Cocker-Spaniel. (9) An einem Spätherbstnachmittage ging ein alter, wohlgekleideter Mann langsam die Straße hinab. (10) Wir gingen zusammen durch die Heide, abends im Wind. (11) Die Tage waren damals länger, in jenem längst vergangenen Sommer an der See, und die Luft war milder und das Sonnenlicht goldener, das sich flimmernd und flirrend auf einem blauen Meer brach. (12) Klein Erna ischa’n büschen schwach auf die Brust, und da kommt sie denn von die Kasse ’n büschen an die Nordsee von wegen die Luftveränderung. (13) Die zierliche, schmale Frau mit den roten Apfelbäckchen, dem ergrauenden Haar und den klugen, beinah frechen kleinen Augen saß da und drückte die Nase ans Kabinenfenster der Viscount-Maschine, die früh morgens von London nach Paris flog.

(14) Mir raucht der Kopf. (15) Die automatische Weckvorrichtung der Stimmungsorgel neben seinem Bett weckte Rick Deckard mit einem fröhlichen kleinen Stromstoß. (16) „Ich werde die Raucher dieser Welt heilen“. (17) „Was kann man nun von einem Menschen...erwarten?“ (18) Männer und Frauen haben nichts gemeinsam. (19) Laurie Saunders saß im Redaktionsbüro der Schülerzeitung der Gordon High School und kaute an ihrem Kugelschreiber. (20) Der Tod ist der große Herr auf dieser Welt, und unter uns Menschen hat er viele Gehilfen. (21) Riff Lorton blickte auf die Armbanduhr, die er vor einer Woche einem Betrunkenen abgenommen hatte. (22) Ach, was muss man oft von bösen Kindern hören oder lesen!! (23) Als Mary Lennox in das Herrenhaus Misselthwaite geschickt wurde, um dort bei ihrem Onkel zu leben, sagten alle Leute, einem so unangenehm aussehenden Kind seien sie noch nie begegnet. (24) „Ich sag dir eins, Patricia Anne, ich hab’ es satt, ständig die Sexsklavin für irgendeinen Mann zu spielen“.

Lösungen

1. Loriot’s Heile Welt (Loriot)

2. Effi Briest (Theodor Fontane)

3. Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

4. Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (Walter Moers)

5. Der Himmel hat viele Farben (Lale Andersen)

6. Ich heirate eine Familie (Curth Flatow)

7. Liebling Kreuzberg (Alexander Rentsch)

8. Susi und Strolch (Ward Greene)

9. Immensee (Theodor Storm)

10. Worpswede (Rainer Maria Rilke)

11. Miss Lizzie (Walter Satterthwait)

12. Klein Erna

13. Ein Kleid von Dior (Paul Gallico)

14. Der Geschichtenverkäufer (Jostein Gaarder)

15. Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick)

16. Endlich Nichtraucher (Allen Carr)

17. Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein (Paul Watzlawick)

18. Ein Pyjama für Zwei (Marvin H. Albert)

19. Die Welle (Morton Rhue)

20. Das war mein Leben (Ferdinand Sauerbruch)

21. West Side Story (Irving Shulman)

22. Max und Moritz (Wilhelm Busch)

23. Der geheime Garten (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

24. O du Mörderische (Anne George)

“So far so good”? So you are “enjoying” your inner work? You are just taking a stroll through some sort of psychological Ikea & Hallmark store, doing a little window-shopping, trying on the latest fashions, accessorizing your psyche with a few new tricks and pleasant fictions, buying a few new blankets for your ego? Eleven years ago, when I was actually first starting to grow in earnest as a person, at this point I was getting my butt kicked, I was seeing all sorts of ugliness and uncomfortable and unpleasant things in myself and others. I was having truth crammed down my throat, I was having my nose shoved in shit, I was having my eyes taped open and head held in place and having to watch all sorts of brutal images play out on a screen in front of me—images of our inhumanity to one another. So “so far so good” would have been the last thing I would have uttered. I would have said something more along the lines of, “Help! Make it stop!” or “I give. Let me up; let me out of this. I don’t want to now what I didn’t know then, not to mention just 5 minutes ago.” Not some namby-pamby “so far so good” after a week or two. At this point eleven years ago my psyche was splayed open. So just what effing books are you reading and what precious moment Ikea thoughts are running through that lovely low tolerance-for-tension-and-discomfort brain of yours?

By the way, your warmth and care are always so lovely to be on the receiving end of. I am well, thanks for asking, which of course you didn’t, my lovely little Ice Maiden, o you who at one time were so important to me and who would have likely even been more important to me by now but who instead got skittish and flighty and now is just a rose without a rose, but still full of thorns, and exists amid a field of undifferentiated weeds and roses all equally unimportant and insignificant to me, and all who have nothing to say to me. (& that is reality, Tiff; no softeners.)

And I may be sarcastic and caustic, but it’s only because I still at least give a damn about you as a person, the person who was supposed to be my friend and who was apparently going to try to tame me but then started making me her whipping boy and jerking me around. Way to go! Yes, Tiff-Tiff, you are responsible, forever, for what you tame. But you are also just as responsible, forever, for what you mis-tame and what you tame badly. That is also your responsibility and part of the legacy you leave behind on this earth. You behaved yourself into this version of me, Sweets. So here’s a personal growth-oriented idea for you: try stepping up and acting courageously and beautifully for once in your life and behaving yourself out of what you behaved yourself, into instead of hiding out from life again. Wow, what a novel concept!?

“One only understands the things that one tames. But people have no time to understand things anymore. Instead, they buy things readymade at Ikea, soulless, mass-produced, stock things. But there is no Ikea where one can buy friendship. Not to mention wisdom or personal or spiritual growth. So people have no friends, no wisdom, so soul, no real growth, and no real relationships any more. Everything is comfortable and readymade and unchallenging. People have no need of each other any more. Everyone is disposable and replaceable and expendable. No one is unique to anyone else any more. No one can just sit still and sit quietly with another any more.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the Personality Ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently.

If we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms. Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are. We can’t go very far to change our seeing without simultaneously changing our being, and vice versa. Even in instantaneous paradigm shifts, a change of vision is a function—and thereby limited by—the basic character of a person. We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.

(Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)

* * *

One must learn to see. Learning to see—accustoming the eye to calmness, to patience, to letting things come up to it, taming our vision, postponing judgment, learning to go around and grasp each individual case from all sides. That is the first preliminary schooling for spirituality: not to react at once to a stimulus, but to gain control of all the inhibiting, excluding instincts (the instincts of self-preservation and “taste”). Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what, unphilosophically speaking, is called a strong will: the essential feature is precisely not to “will”—to be able to suspend decision. All unspirituality, all vulgar commonness, depends on the inability to resist a stimulus: the person must react, is a reflex of the world, and follows every impulse. In many cases, such a compulsion is already pathology, decline, a symptom of exhaustion. Almost everything that unphilosophic crudity designates with the word “vice” is merely this physiological inability not to react. A practical application of having learned to see: as a learner, one will let strange, new things of every kind come up to oneself, inspecting them with hostile calm and withdrawing one’s hand.
(Nietzsche, from Twilight of the Idols)

Yes, my mind is on fire. Inspiration is everywhere. Everything is grist for the mill. Everything is relevant. Nothing is being excluded. My heart isn’t broken; not in the least. My heart has been opened, broadly re-opened. The scales have been removed from my eyes; everything is more alive, more vibrant, more wondrous, even you and your darkness and iciness.

In fact I wonder if life would have such beauty and urgency again if it were not for your strong opposition, apathy and hostility toward me, your treating me as insignificant and disposable and expendable and as if nothing that we did or said meant anything to you or mattered or touched you and instead sling-shotting me out of your universe and out into my little Ort cloud.

Ask yourself, why you will not be writing at length to me? (I doubt you even read anything I wrote or write, including this) You put in more time and effort on me when we were naked than you have here. “Love is a decision that we can make any time under any circumstance or condition. But first we must know that it is a decision, a choice. Opening our awareness even in a situation that doesn’t seem loving, can change everything.” (—Samahria Lyte Kaufman)

* * *

“It is our true nature to have an open heart. Sometimes this is called our divine nature or our Buddha nature. But whatever we call it, know that each heart has an enormous capacity to hold the world. Sometimes, however, we become afraid. We don’t recognize that the heart has the capacity to be open in the midst of all things. The power of the heart is enormous and transformative. Through our inner courage, we awaken to the greatest capacity of human life, the one true human freedom: to love in the midst of all things. Each of us has our own gifts that come from the flowering of our heart. For some the journey to the heart’s generosity is long and hard; but even those who are abused as children can, out of those difficult circumstances, grow to be beautiful adults in our community. I have seen it in my work again and again. And always those wounded adults remember one person—a teacher, a grandparent, a friend—who saw them or touched them or loved them, and it is on this love that they base their healing.”
(—Jack Kornfield)

* * *

“Living in fear is like being frozen. The Buddha taught love—particularly metta, loving-kindness—as the antidote to fear. The Buddha said, “Develop a mind so filled with love that it resembles open space”; meaning, develop a mind such that if someone where standing in room throwing paint around in the air, it couldn’t land anywhere: there’s nowhere in space for paint to land. We can develop a heart or a mind so that it's like space—boundless, open, vast, unpartitioned, free. Any amount of paint, any irritant, any inner or outer trouble, won’t land. Metta is not a fabricated decision like, “Now I am a very spiritual person and therefore I will love all beings”; nor does it mean that if we’re really seething with rage or filled with fear, we’re somehow going to overlay a nice little veneer and pretend and be smiling all the time. Metta is the moment when the sense of “us and them” crumbles. It is born of an understanding that we might soon be dead, so why bother upholding all those boundaries and barriers? With the collapse of those boundaries, the effortless, natural love for all beings wells up. In Lovingkindness, I tell the story about my friend Sylvia Boorstein being on a plane that developed a problem with its hydraulic system. The pilot got on the PA system and said, “We have five minutes before we land.” Sylvia realized she had five minutes before she might be dead. She found that there was no way in the world that she could limit herself to opening her heart to just her immediate family. The only thing she could do at that moment, when she might have only five minutes left to live, was to open her heart to all beings everywhere. This was without any contrivance or force or pretentiousness. This is what the Buddha meant by metta."
(—Sharon Salzberg)

What the heck else do you think personal growth is about, if not being able to be more courageous, more open, more in touch with reality, to see more and more others as REAL, to live with less fear and more love and openness? Where do you think growing as person is going to lead you to other than a being a person who can better deal with emotionally with stress and difficulty and tension and challenging situations without having to pull back self-protectively or behave skittishly and erratically? (Are you listening to this yourself as you write this, John??) What do you think this is all going to be about if not making you more differentiated in a legitimate way?

So, Tiff, your intuition says this feels right—holing up and ignoring me? Well, fuck your intuition; it’s the worst part of you, Tiff. Every time it’s had a spasm in this relationship and you’ve listened to it, I end up getting the shaft and pushed away by you for no good reason. And I did nothing to deserve this from you. Got it? Your intuition needs some serious help; it needs to get into therapy pronto, it needs to be filleted and rewired and reworked big time. Too direct for you to hear? Too effing bad: deal with it. I’m tired of your coldness and apathy and indifference.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of the desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if I had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

A little poem for you, my lovely little Ice Maiden, by way of Robert Frost.

All your intuition is now is a little self-protective jerk or reflex that gets the better of you. But, hey, that’s what life is like when you’re not very differentiated. You exist as a reflex of the world, a plaything of circumstance, a namby-pamby who bases her life on feelings and reflexes, and not on anything that is more elevated and differentiated and wiser and more proactive and centered and more complex and multi-faceted and soulful and challenging and courageous.

See, you don’t have the integrity or honesty to ask yourself this one simple question: what if your intuition is wrong? I mean, how often in your past has your intuition failed you? (Your marriage; Hans—although you may be taking back up again with him by now and running back to something familiar after having been exposed to something so far out of your comfort zone; who knows.) Your intuition needs personal growth as well. And a lot of it. It needs a lot of refining. I mean, where did you get the idea that it can or ought even be trusted as it is, as undefined and undifferentiated and default as it is? Where did your intuition get its wisdom and certainty from? Are you content to base the significant decisions and moments in your life on the instincts and reverberations and echoes from thousands and thousands of years ago, from thousands and thousands years of chance and evolution? Is that what you call living in the now or living in the moment? Clearly you’re not yet shipwrecked; you’re not yet at ground zero. You never read those words of Ortega y Gasset that I sent you (on more than one occasion) about the ideas of the shipwrecked. And clearly you’ve never read letter 8 in Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” where he writes of a person who has suddenly been yanked from his familiar surroundings and placed on the heights of a great mountain range and what a colossal lie he would have to invent in order to explain the situation of his senses and soothe his insecurity and lostness. Delusion is not caused by objectivity; it’s caused by subjectivity.

Clearly none of this makes much of an impression on you. It reminds me of that line from Se7en, which is basically an updating of what Kafka wrote about real reading—the type of reading and encounter with a book (or even another person) that actually leads to genuine personal growth … “A book or a letter must wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t startle us and grab our attention like a blow to the head, then why bother reading it? So it can make us happy, more comfortable, more our smaller selves? For God’s sake, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all! Books that make us happy or more tranquilized we could, in a pinch, write for ourselves. What we need are books that make us feel like we’ve been banished into a forest far from everyone, books that hit us like the suicide of someone near to us. What we need are books that affect us like a disaster, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like the death of a child, like the death of our only child. A book must be an ax for the frozen sea within us.” (Kafka, my paraphrasing, which I actually thinks works better) … and from Se7en, paraphrasing from memory—“Wanting people to listen you can’t just go up and tap them on the shoulder any more. You have to hit them over the head with a hammer, and then you’ll find that you have their strictest attention.”

That’s the stepping off point for real reading and real growth; that level of seriousness and attention. Ships cannot remain where the water is too shallow. To test real gold, you must see it through fire. A good horse runs at the shadow of a whip. Words cannot open another’s mind. If useless things do not hang in your mind, any season, and any situation, is a good for you.

* * *

One day a leader of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu, “Master, will you write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?” Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.” “Is that all?’ asked the leader; ‘Will you not add something more?” Ikkyu then wrote twice “Attention, Attention.” “Well,” remarked the leader rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you’ve just written. Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times, “Attention, Attention, Attention.” Half-angered, the leader demanded, “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean anyway?” And Ikkyu answered calmly, “ ‘Attention’ means attention.”

* * *

Whenever Master Gutei was asked about Zen, he simply held up a finger. He had a young attendant who was asked by a visitor, “What kind of teaching does your master give?” The boy raised up a finger. Gutei heard about this and cut off the boy’s finger with a knife. As the boy ran off screaming in pain, Gutei called to him. When he turned his head, Gutei held up his own finger again. The boy was suddenly enlightened.
(from The Gateless Gate, case number 3)

* * *

“It is obvious that you will listen but will go on in your way, because that is the most convenient, irrational, thoughtless way. And if that is comforting, then it indicates that you really don’t care what happens in the world, that you really don’t have any affection, any love for mankind. And that all you are concerned with is your own little comfort, right?” (—Krishnamurti, in “On Relationship”)

* * *

It can happen to you. In a flashing moment something opens. You are new all the way through. You see the same world un-same and with fresh eyes. Whatever you do or wherever you are makes much less difference now. It doesn’t make sense. But it does make you. Zen aims to make manifest what Buddha himself realized: the emancipation of one’s mind from fear and ego and clinging. The whole intent of Zen stories and koans is to help the pupil break the shell of his limited mind and attain a second eternal birth—satori, enlightenment, a metanoia, a shift in perspective, a turning, a figure-ground reversal.

Gee, maybe a little principled and not simplistic, non-feeling and non-intuition alone thinking might be helpful here, Tiff. Ya think? Maybe your thinking ought not be the servant of your intuition and fears and always just do their bidding and be put to use rationalizing and justifying and carrying out their wishes. Maybe for a change you ought to take a more difficult and courageous and beautiful path! Wow, what a concept. Clearly this spring does not belong to the ordinary person and the ordinary mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part onto the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining.

These things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity, pettiness and weakness. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Makrokosmos convoque les sens en plusieurs temps. Le rythme se propage à l'intérieur du corps, diffusion du toucher, le son, ample et dispersé, investit l'ouïe mais, prioritairement, c'est la vue que l'œuvre privilégie.

On voit ce que l'on écoute. Les sons peuvent se détacher les uns des autres et s'ordonner dans l'espace ; ils composent une image rythmée par les formes et les couleurs, équivalent musical des résonances de Kandinsky. En exergue, des citations littéraires renforcent la suggestion picturale : Dans la nuit / La terre lourde / Des étoiles s'écroule / Dans la solitude / Avec elle nous tombons / Un Etre pourtant / Eternellement retient / Dans ses mains légères / Notre chute (Rilke). La représentation du cosmos reste abstraite tout en devenant sensible. Aussi, d'une étrange manière, cette musique est-elle profondément bouleversante, révèlant un champ d'expressions où les disciplines se confondent, glissent discrètement de l'une à l'autre. S'il s'agissait d'une oeuvre purement contemplative, elle devrait en assumer le poids, et s'exposer au danger d'un certain statisme. Or, c'est tout le contraire. Fluide, légère, elle retranscrit le mouvement circulatoire du cosmos, dont elle donne une vive impression physique : regroupements de notes, accélération soudaine, zones de flottement, circulations internes, balancements, oscillations, ascensions et chutes.

Petite digression : Crumb joue parfois sur le graphisme des partitions. L'augenmusik, la musique pour les yeux, est l'équivalent musical des calligrammes. Rien ne transparaît à l'écoute, mais l'acte n'en est pas moins signifiant, puisqu'il réaffirme la prévalence du regard.Autonome, cette musique s'inscrit néanmoins dans une tradition. Crumb reconnaît s'être inspiré de Bartók (Mikrokosmos, 1926) et de Debussy, compositeur particulièrement visuel. On décèle dans le troisième mouvement, L'Avènement (Le silence infini des espaces m'effraie) des réminiscences de La Cathédrale Engloutie, tant au niveau sonore que dans la montée impressionnante du piano. A cela s'ajoute l'ambition de réaliser une véritable œuvre technique globale, à la manière de Bach, Chopin, Liszt. Mais l'approche diffère forcément. C'est une recherche de texture, une caractérisation du piano par une confrontation avec les percussions. Lesquelles, démultipliées, sont à tour de rôle convoquées pour leur timbre davantage que pour leur fonction rythmique. Leur diversité n'est ni décorative ni aléatoire (vibraphone, xylophone, cloches, tam-tam, cymbales, crécelle, maracas, glockenspiel, claves...) : la sonorité propre à chaque instrument entre en résonance avec une couleur spécifique du piano. Interviennent aussi les performances physiques du pianiste : chant, psalmodies, sifflements et grognements, qui appuient sporadiquement les pianos amplifiés. En prolongement, les morceaux de Gervasoni et de Georg Haas s'invitent comme échos de Makrokosmos. Les activités imaginaires et intellectuelles sont ici confondues. L'instabilité des composants peut éveiller un certain malaise chez l'auditeur, et simultanément lui communiquer une force bizarre, comme si le vacillement permanent des sons engendrait une chorégraphie complexe d'où naîtrait, finalement, un nouvel équilibre.

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

it always catches me off guard how people come in and out of our lives. how there is no stopping it. does it happen for a reason? do we just absorb all that we can from people before letting them go...or before they walk away? or is it all just random coincidences...random people running into other random people. that it just so happens that their paths crossed. and as time goes on those paths for no reason randomly divert or  for no reason at all stay forever glued together?

i'm not going to play fair. i think its both.  somehow, beyond my imaginiation/intelligence...i think it randomly happens...for a reason.

“Se o coditiano lhe parece pobre, não o acuse: acuse-se a si próprio de não ser muito poeta para extrair as suas riquezas. Para o criador nada é pobre, não há lugares mesquinhos e indiferentes. Mesmo num cárcere cujas paredes abafassem todos os ruídos do universo, não lhe ficaria sempre a sua infância, essa preciosa, essa esplêndida riqueza, esse tesouro de recordações? Volte, para essa direção, o seu espírito. Procure fazer regressar à superfície as impressões submersas desse longínquo passado. A sua personalidade fortificar-se-á, a sua solidão povoar-se-á, tornando-se, nas horas incertas do dia, uma espécie de moradia fechada aos sons exteriores. E se lhe vierem versos deste regresso a si próprio, deste mergulho no seu cosmo, não pensará em indagar se são bons ou não, não tentarás conseguir que periódicos se interessem pelos seus trabalhos, porque desfrutará deles como de uma posse natural, como de uma de suas formas de vida e expressão.”

“ ‘Viver e escrever em cio’. Com efeito, a vida criadora está tão próxima da vida sexual, dos seus sofrimentos e das suas delícias, que é preciso ver nelas duas formas de uma única necessidade, de um único prazer.”

“Se se prender à natureza, ao que nela existe de simples e de pequeno, àquilo que quase ninguém observa e que, de repente, se metamorfoseia no infinitamente grande, no incomensurável, - se estender o seu amor à tudo o que vive – se humildemente tentar ganhar a confiança do que lhe parece mesquinho – então tudo lhe será mais fácil, tudo lhe parecerá mais harmonioso e, por assim dizer, mais repousante.”

"É certo que as veredas da carne são difíceis, mas só o difícil nos interessa. Quase tudo o que é grave é difícil; e tudo é grave.”

“A volúpia da carne é uma coisa da vida dos sentidos, como o olhar puro, como o puro gosto de um lindo fruto sobre a água. É uma experiência ilimitada que nos é fornecida, um conhecimento de todo o universo, o próprio conhecimento na sua plenitude e no seu esplendor."

You know you needed someone growth-oriented.

Intelligent? Yes, you need someone who will captivate your intellect. Wicked smart? Fo’ shure.

But even more, you need someone growth-oriented, a spiritual warrior-princess, a woman who is courageous—courageously self-aware, who thinks about herself and her life courageously and honestly and realistically, and not defensively or immaturely. A woman who doesn’t use a lot of psychological softeners, a woman who is not overly-sensitive, who has been pampered too much emotionally, an emotional hothouse flower, someone who floods easily emotionally.

You don’t want someone with an avoidant personality, someone who emotionally spooks easily, who is skittish and flighty. You want someone who embraces challenges, difficulties, who is a lover of truth, reality, growth, not someone who automatically, reflexively, reactively opts for comfort, low stress, low tension, the path of least resistance, and sells out on herself (or sells out others) and makes fragile truces, auctioning off parts of herself, in order to try and stick to what is easiest and least tense and least difficult.

You know this. You knew this. You just forgot it. You just forgot to apply it. You were out of practice. Or you just took it for granted that that she wasn’t weak and avoidant and namby-pamby. I mean, after all, she was into you, and there’s nothing about you that comes across as easy or unchallenging or un-intense. And everything else was so good, fit so well, so why question it? Why not go with it?

Well, because of what’s happened; that’s why.

It’s clear now that she got in over her head with you; you were too much for her; being with you was too intense, too overwhelming. She couldn’t keep up with you, she couldn’t play her side of the relationship cleanly with you on the other side of the net. The pressure, the moment kept getting to her, getting the best of her, and she kept caving—on herself and on you, yo-yoing you around, crashing into you and then sling-shotting you away.

You have to more carefully vet your matches. You have to see how they will hold up under pressure, how they deal with difficulty, tension, intense situations. You need a spiritual warrior-princess who embraces challenge, difficulty, intimacy, self-awareness, self-examination, who’s not afraid of living the difficult questions. And who has already read some decent books, not just some pop-psych or Oprah book club blather.

And remember: you will always see more into others than they will see into you. That’s just the way it is. So if another isn’t willing to penetrate you, or penetrate your writing (she said my writing was too intense for her to fully penetrate; so it was water down the drain, or it was written over her head emotionally, it was more than she could comprehend and bear emotionally at her present level of differentiation and emotional self-development [which may well be fairly low; she may be like most of the rest, a Lilliputian]), if another isn’t able to make you REAL to herself, then forget getting into a relationship with her. Move on. Or Californicate with her a few times, take what meager scrap life is offering you, and then move on.

Yes, you could make it work with a weak-willed and uncourageous woman for a while. You know how to handle and charm and woo such people—your past has been filled with such people. But why do it? Because you think that’s all there is that’s out there? That you are alone and that there are no spiritual warrior-princesses out there to meet you where you are and that you can play well with? You need and deserve someone whole. Don’t settle. Anything less will only disappoint you. Anyone less will eventually break and sell you or herself or both of you out.

The fact that you cut through Tiff-Tiff’s bs so quickly and got to the heart of the matter so efficiently is a tribute to you and how fully real you were when you showed up to the relationship.

How could things ever play out well and meaningfully with someone who is such an emotional milquetoast, someone so skittish and uncourageous? How could things play out well with someone with so little tolerance for challenge, difficulty, tension, reality, discomfort, dissonance, truth, real growth? There’s no real growth possible—NONE—on the path of least resistance, the path of avoidance, the path of petty self-protectiveness.

She said she needed to go it alone (solitude) in order to get her bearings, do some inner work, and become more so that she could meet you where you are and where you deserve. All of which sounds nice and plausible (if not a little more than a very flattering version of the “it’s not you, it’s me” approach to breaking up). But it’s a cop-out. The two options—getting to know you better, and getting to know herself better and doing her inner work—aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, they would have probably worked very well together and dove-tailed rather nicely, even synergistically.

But her thinking isn’t that courageous and honest, though it is that developed. She doesn’t apply her top-notch thinking across the board with integrity, honestly and rigorously. Instead she thinks well at work, but sloppily in her relationships and when she gets under interpersonal pressure.

The prognosis for her in terms of her genuinely growing is likely not good. If she can’t handle you, what makes her think that she can handle the books that you read and that have resonated deeply with you? It makes no sense … she is going to close herself off to you, a living breathing book, full of life, a book that she can interact with her and that can respond to her, and instead she is going to try to read many of the same books you read ten years ago, books that honestly everyone should read in their 20’s and early 30’s—books by Peck, Fromm, Rilke, Schnarch, Krishnamurti, Williamson, et cetera—books that you read when you transformed your psyche (or when your psyche was transformed for you) —?? Except she will read these books without any real give and take. Yes, you had no one around when you read them, but the difference is you wanted to meet someone who had read the same books, you were open, welcomed the challenge and the feedback. But she isn’t. So she is closing herself off to you and instead opting for books that she will more or less misunderstand, water-down, butcher, bastardize, intellectually warp and corrupt, books with whom she will not have the intense and honest and rigorous inner conversations that would naturally accompany a true reading of the books … the trying on for size of what the author has written about … “do I do that?” … “am I guilty of that also?” … “is that true of me?” … she will evade the guilt and shame and embarrassment of seeing herself and her little psychological ploys and immaturities in print staring her back in her face. She will play her little games with these books, just like she played her little games of self-protection and avoiding intimacy and avoiding reality with you.

Why?

Because there will be no intellectual accountability in her reading and her thinking and her inner work. There’s no intellectual accountability in her Buddhist dabblings and her meditation. Reality is whatever her perception is and whatever is comforting to her and "feels" right. She doesn't understand that reality and truth are uncomfortable, and that comfort isn't an adequate measure of anything relevant; if anything, the intensity and level of discomfort would be a better gauge of actual growth. Right now, she's in an intellectual free-for-all of bad faith. Weapons being lent to a thief. And as for her Buddhist friend & sagely mentor? Likely just throwing her soft-pitches. Just giving more blankies to her ego. I mean if Tiff-Tiff is the way she is now under the sagely guidance of this so-called wise and enlightened friend of hers, and the idea of embracing difficulty is still such a novel idea to her and still so foreign to her, then she’s being pampered and soft-pitched and treated with kid gloves in that relationship.

Ditto for her relationship with the therapist she saw on the downside of her marriage and that she continues to see on occasion ... another comfortable and unchallenging relationship.

Altogether, I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t startle us and grab our attention like a blow to the head, then why bother reading it? So it can make us happy? For God’s sake, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all! Books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write for ourselves. What we need are books that affect us like a disaster, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves. We need books that make us feel like we’ve been banished into a forest far from everyone, books that hit us like the suicide of someone near to us. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. —Kafka

Fortunately, the books she’s reading (if she’s even reading them! —which I doubt she is) are not safe books. They are some of the most dangerous books. So there is always an outside chance, a very anomalous and remote and razor slim chance, that something might awaken or deeply change within her, that she might actually become more courageous. I mean, how will she be able to warp Krishnamurti and twist his words into something comforting and unchallenging? Maybe she thinks she's safer with those books because they can’t answer her back and or won’t be as direct with her as I am. Good luck with that, Tiff…. The only safe way to read those books is to not read them in the first place, or to read the with incredible intellectual dishonesty.

Bottom line: probably no less than about 90% of personal growth involves making oneself more courageous and open. And, John, you have to be with someone who is firmly on that path as well, who is fiercely committed to becoming more courageous, and who lives that, and whose life demonstrates that, especially in her inner world, her relationships, and her self-knowledge. You have to be with someone who is fiercely committed to always being her best with you at any given moment, to playing her side of the relationship with beauty and courage, and if she falters or loses her focus or starts making unforced errors, then she owns up to it, and corrects it, and doesn't run away like an emotional child in an adult body and hide out behind simplistic, avoidant, either/or thinking.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Most people turn their solutions to what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us.

—Rilke

~~~~~~~~~~~

Not to see many thing, not to hear many things, not to permit many things to come close—the usual word for this instinct of self-defense is “taste.” It commands us to say No not only when Yes would be more selfless, but also to say No as rarely as possible—that is, to separate oneself from anything that would make it necessary to keep saying No. In all of these matters—in the choice of nutrition, of home, of climate, of recreation, of relationship—an instinct of self-preservation issues its commandments. When defensive expenditures, be they ever so small, become the rule and the habit, they entail an extraordinary and entirely superfluous and unnecessary impoverishment. Warding off, not letting things come close, involves an expenditure—let nobody deceive himself about this—energy wasted on negative ends. Having quills is a waste, when one can choose not to have quills but open hands.

—Nietzsche

~~~~~~~~~~~

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?

—Rilke

~~~~~~~~~~~

View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Adversity introduces a man to himself. —unknown

~~~~~~~~~~~

Adversity doesn’t just reveal character, it shapes it. —unknown

~~~~~~~~~~~

If only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become that which we most trust and find most dependable.

—Rilke

~~~~~~~~~~~

Those who lack courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

—Albert Camus

POETA

Já te despedes de mim, Hora.

Teu golpe de asa é meu açoite.

Só: da boca o que faço agora?

Que faço do dia, da noite?

Sem paz, sem amor, sem teto,

caminho pela vida afora.

Tudo aquilo em que ponho afeto

Fica mais rico e me devora.

(R. M. RILKE  - tradução: Augusto de Campos)

(- e não é à toa que Heidegger o leu tanto!)

***

OUTONO

 As folhas caem como se do alto

caíssem, murchas, dos jardins do céu;

caem com gestos de quem renuncia.

E a Terra, só, na noite de cobalto,

cai de entre os astros na amplidão vazia.

Caímos todos nós. Cai esta mão.

Olha em redor: cair é a lei geral.

E a terna mão de Alguém colhe, afinal,

todas as coisas que caindo vão.

(Rainer Maria Rilke) 

***

Thank you again for the kind words of yesterday. I trust you are well this day.

Reading Rilke is always such a revelation for me. I re-read many of his letters in “Letters to a Young Poet” (but especially letters 7 and 8), and I also re-read my copy of “Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties” and I was humbled and overwhelmed and leveled by the thought that maybe you were healthy one in this and that maybe you were healthier than I was in approaching this. Maybe you had a better intuitive sense of things than I did. Maybe you were indeed in jeopardy of losing yourself and getting swept away by what you were feeling—though you never would have lost yourself with me; I wouldn’t have allowed it. And you know from being with me that my boundaries, where I have them, are good and solid.

But the reality is that my boundaries aren’t your boundaries. They can’t count as your boundaries. This is something that you have to do for yourself; this is something that no one can do for you. You have to create and establish and maintain your own boundaries, make your own decisions, apart from whatever I had in place, whether I like your boundaries and decisions or not, whether I agree with them or not. You have to try your own hand at drawing your own lines in the sand for yourself alone and no one else. No one can do that for you. And you have to try out different lines and live with the consequences of having drawn your lines and drawn your self in a particular way.

And of course the drawing itself is an art. Much of it has to be done by feel, intuition, chance, luck. But one’s luck can always be improved by one’s preparation. The lines are less arbitrary if there is the beginning of something articulated, something reasoned and principled, intentional and aware, behind them. The lines are less arbitrary if they have been informed by reading what Fromm calls “the Masters of Living” (of which Fromm himself is one, as is Peck, Krishnamurti, Rilke, Schnarch, Bowen. Even Marianne Williamson has her moments—but you can also see intuitively how strange it is to include her name in that list). Study, practice, contemplation, intention, awareness, self-examination, self-confronting, reading, reflection, thinking, intuition, heart, these are all things that will likely improve one’s boundaries. As will a lot of experience, likely of the painful kind.

Again, to read Rilke is always a revelation. And to read Rilke again and to try to do so from your perspective was even more of a revelation ...

"Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?). Rather it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in him- or herself, to become world, to become world in him- or herself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on a person, something that chooses him or her, something that chooses him or her and calls him to vast distances and immense solitudes. Only in this sense, as a task of working on themselves ('to harken and hammer day and night'), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves).

"It is true that many young people who love immaturely, simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude, may feel oppressed by their failure and want to make their situation livable and fruitful in their own personal way. For their nature rightly tells them that the questions of love are deeply important questions, intimate questions, which require a new, special, and wholly personal answer. . . . —But how can they who have already flung themselves together and can no longer tell whose lines are whose, who no longer mark off and distinguish themselves from each other, who therefore no longer possess anything of their own selves, how will they be able to find a way out of themselves if their solitude has already been shattered or if it never really existed in the first place?"

Maybe what you were doing was an act of self-protective integrity, an act of self-preservation or self-creation of the utmost and highest caliber and integrity. Maybe that's what you are doing intuitively....

But my point always was to encourage you to see the situation or the terrain and paths in front of you in a non- either/or way, to not opt for simplification and selecting the best bad choice available, but embracing the complexity of the situation. My point was that there was (and is) always another option available to you: fusion and merging with integrity. A synthesis of the two. A relationship where there is both merging and solitude, where there is both a togetherness that is elevating and an intensification of both, and that still allows for much solitude. (It reminds me of what Thoreau wrote in Walden in his section on "Solitude" —

"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.

“We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory,—never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. . . . God is alone,—but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion."

But again, that would be my insight, my brainwork, the fruit of my own thinking and my own living and experience. And would that have made you a parasite, a shoddy secondhand entity, if you were to have deeply listened to what I suggested, thought it over for yourself, and given it a go? I don’t know. That’s a question only you can answer for yourself, and it’s a matter of your own integrity.

Like I said, this has all caught me off guard in so many ways—first, just meeting you, just the fact that I met someone like you. Then there was the intensity of being with you and connecting with you (at least that was clearly my perception, that we were connecting; you did say several times that I got you deeply. I assumed that meant we were connecting. Physically, emotionally it felt like we were connecting, that you were totally into me and that there wasn’t a place on this earth that you’d rather be than getting to know me and getting more and more into me. But in hindsight it is clear that it was never mutual, that you never penetrated or got me. How could you comprehend or grasp me? What in your life and past and experience could have prepared you for me?). But I was also caught off guard by how you pulled back, that you said that I make you feel undone and less than equal, that you feel undefined and like Jell-O. I didn’t see any of that coming.

But anyways, back to the labyrinth that we’re lost in. Rilke's point is good and right. If our current level of thinking and perceiving and feeling is what has gotten us into a certain situation, a very conventional situation, then how will it be able to steer us out of it, how will it do any better at directing us out of what it has led us into? The way that our conventional mind will devise will itself be conventional; it will not be not complex, not systems, not integrative ...

"... even if with the best of intentions they try to escape convention, they will just fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For everything around them is—convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused and turbid communion, every act is conventional. Why even separating here would be a conventional step, an impersonal, reactive, chance decision without strength and without fruit.

"Perhaps everything that frightens us or undoes us is, in its essence, something helpless that wants our love. "

Maybe I am a dragon in your life? Maybe that is my place and my role in your life, for now, whether I want it or not. Maybe that is my work, to just be me, and in just being me that will unsettle and undo you in a way that maybe you need to be unsettled and undone. I don’t know.

Warmest regards as always,

Your John-John

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Thank you as always for the kindness of sharing your thoughts.

You wrote that we were not perfect together. But we were perfect together. Make no mistake about that: when you pursued me & in person those four times together, the ratio was something like 100:0. 100 positive exchanges and no withdrawals or negative exchanges. I don’t ever remember a withdraw occurring in person (until last Tuesday of course). The first four times we were together, there were only deposit after deposit being made.

And that is what left me so shaken. How can two people be together so well, play so well together, make so many little investments in each other, and then one pulls back and makes the other feel like there wasn’t much significance to it, that it was take it or leave it, and rather easy to do so? Even all of my systems thinking and moccasin-walking and trying to look at it from a myriad of perspectives couldn’t crack it or make sense of it. It eluded me and still does. Thus why I continue to write to you. (We are now at that scene in Good Will Hunting or Good Tiff-Tiff Hunting where you are to tell me that you never really cared about me or that you were never really that interested in me—it’s chapter 15, minute 123 in the movie. Skylar steps up the intimacy and Will pulls back out of fear. She is loving and open and amazing (that would be me, thank you), a blessing to him, loyal and devoted, but she dares to challenge him on something and to challenge his perception, and he rips her heart out because he can’t step up and tolerate a truly intimate and loving relationship and deep honest discussion. He gets skittish and freak out and pulls back self-protectively.)

Anyways, continuing, clearly we are not perfect together when we’re miles apart. Sometimes the conversations were sweet. But oftentimes there was a lot of fear and distance and a lot what I have come to know as your ego present (your ego in the sense that Marianne Williamson will use the term . . . the part of you that is afraid of something real. btw, I know you are conflict-avoidant, that was one of things that it said in our "how we match stuff" on Chem. It also recommended that I shouldn't be too direct with you [whoops] and that you are likely to shy away from intense situations [whoops again]), it felt like you could take or leave what we had experienced in person (and this is coming form a guy who isn't insecure, except apparently when he has the ground beneath yanked out from under him a few times. then that 4:1 ratio becomes a little more daunting and difficult to maintain).

I wasn't asking for your permission or blessing to pursue other women. This thing is about as dead as can be, with the slim hope of it resurrecting should you genuinely grow as a person and become the woman again you first showed yourself to be (look out world!). I am who I am and I have been the same way throughout this, There have been no 180’s or misleadings from me. What you see is what you get. And if you beat this dog three times, and eff with the ground beneath him and shake him, then you will get someone who is a bit rattled and erratic. But you behaved yourself in to this version of me. I’m still the same sweet guy underneath it all and rooting for the woman I met who I know is still in you somewhere (she’s just been squelched down through fear and some interesting decision-making and non-systems thinking); I’m just rooting for and waiting for her to put on the four-five like Jordan and make a comeback.

Anyways, I was simply sharing what I wrote to someone else about you (and yes, Lara wrote me back). Endearing or not to another, it's direct and real and it's truth. And it will weed out weaker less evolved minds who can’t handle reality or real intimacy. So, yes, I have a plan. I always do. (Speaking of having a plan, you might want to check out the review of “The Dark Knight” in Time Magazine. There’s something in there for you to maybe consider if you are considering taking your 9-yr old son to it; the reviewer actually says something about taking 9-year olds to that movie, cautioning against it. Just fyi.) This has made it all the more clear how much I need someone who is also a truth-lover and reality-lover.

“We must always hold truth, as we best can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for the truth.”
—M. Scott Peck, from The Road Less Traveled

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.

Obviously I need and want someone for whom these statements are rooted in their core and are in their blood and sinews and their life’s melody.

And, regarding your not wanting to correct my perception or my take on things. Yes, my perception is my reality, but my perception is also only as accurate and true as the information I have to work on and construct it with. If I misread you and what you were experiencing, then my map of the situation will be deeply flawed and I'll be getting snagged on things that I should revise or discard.

Speaking of my perception, I recently re-read what I wrote in my Chem profile: I think it captures me and where I am and who I'm looking for perfectly. I don't think there's anything misleading in it. Is there?

Seeks someone smart, stable, and sexy

Me: I'm smart, intelligent, self-aware, reasonable, curious, fit, athletic, fairly well-read, semi-adventurous, open-minded, growth-oriented.

Some of my hobbies and interests and tendencies: (in no particular order) guitar, chess, bridge, soccer, tennis, photography, spoiling my niece and nephews, Cirque du Soliel, reading (phl, psychology, spirituality, some poetry; Nietzsche, Emerson, Bowen, Schnarch, Krishnamurti, Gibran, Thoreau, Montaigne, Merton, Kierkegaard, Peck, Rilke, Buber, Lewis; that sort of stuff, those sorts of writers), writing, being very self-aware, analyzing everything, laughing, smiling, being very happy, being very grateful.

And thanks for the book you gave me (Roger Martin, “The Opposable Mind”). Though, really there’s nothing in it that I didn't already know though. The stuff is embarrassingly easy for me and really just the way my mind already works, perhaps this situation aside ;)

I read one part in particular and thought of you and wondered how things would have played out differently though if you had approached things more from a systems perspective. Specifically, the chapter on “Dancing Through Complexity” (& complexity is exactly what life handed you when it brought us together, something that would challenge your emotional mettle and be a stretch for you and outside of your comfort zone). All of the avoidance, and whenever we talked and things got tense and your head began to swim or hurt and the tension was getting too much, that was about the 80-20 rule . . .

“[S]implification is . . . a coping mechanism. We settle for 80 percent to avoid being overwhelmed by complexity and losing the ability to function at all. When [someone] admonishes us to ‘quit complicating the issue,’ it’s not just an impatient reminder . . . it’s a plea to keep the complexity at a tolerable level.

"That’s more complexity than most minds care to handle, and simplification . . . can quickly come to look like the only refuge from chaos. But experienced integrative thinkers learn to draw a distinction between chaos and complexity. . . . Complexity doesn’t have to be overwhelming, if (1) we can master our initial panic reactions and (2) look for patterns, connections, and casual relationships. Our capacity to handle complexity is greater than we give ourselves credit for."

Too true. So instead of thinking systems, you seem to have made the best bad choice available.

And, btw, here's the quote from H. L. Mencken I alluded to a couple of weeks ago ....

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, plausible, neat, and wrong." it’s similar to the one by Fitzgerald at the start of the book you gave me ... "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." What's best in us doesn't shy away from challenge, it doesn't self-protect easily (Peck, Krishnamurti, Schnarch, Rilke, Williamson, even the Buddha, and perhaps even, make that probably even, your Buddhist friend whose name I couldn't spell if I tried, all speak of great openness, broadening, courage, embracing difficulty and challenge). Someday I hope you'll understand that I was always on your side, on the side of this beautiful larger person that you might become, that I hope you will become, and that in the past played so beautifully with me. Someday I hope you will be able to look past my clumsiness and all of the many withdraws I made from you emotionally, and that you will restructure your emotional banking (this was the worst part of Covey's “7 Habits...” book. Because a huge part of growing as a person entails restructuring how we bank emotionally, getting over our reactive and dependent and childish ways of tabulating what constitutes a withdraw and what constitutes a credit. for a mature-minded individual, a 4:1 ratio is something that he or she can do without in challenging and difficult times, in fact, has to do with out. In fact it's part of the challenge—to be able to bracket our own emotional banking and see the bigger picture, the process, the longer view of things, the length of the road ahead, to go on in spite of not getting the love, approval, validation, and emotional fueling we think we need.

I do wish you well in your wrestling with angels and devils. (Think of Rilke's "The Man Watching")

Be well, take courage, stick to the difficult, love it, embrace the challenge, live from what’s best in you, think of me kindly on occasion, forgive my clumsiness,

Yours always, in whatever way you eventually if ever want me,

John-john

I'm quite pleased with my results. I had to tweak the conjugation of the original poem by Rainer Maria Rilke for my words to fit but besides that I changed nothing from my first attempt. Seeing how it turned out the only thing i would change is "dancing" to "screaming" to continue the opposites or balanced theme from the previous lines.

Pretty cool... thanks Little Miss French Horn.

I am circling around Love,

around Heaven,

and I have been circling for ages,

and I still don’t know

if I am a lion or the lamb,

or ominous or calm,

or singing or dancing.

stock photos by Dreamstime.com photographers Lullabi and Mikeexpert respectively

Regisseur: Norbert Mang
Schauspieler: Julia Wohranek und Norbert Mang
Samstag, 21.8.2004 20.30 Uhr
Volksheim Grafenbach

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