RE: Sur un air de Charleston

[Here’s a stack of paper napkins that have musical notation printed on them, wrapped in plastic that has additional info printed on it.]

Dear diary,

I’m fascinated by the concept of translation. To move a creation from one medium to another. Can a picture be rendered in a thousand words? Might God sculpt a self-portrait in the form of an animated clay statue? (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above . . .” Exodus 20:4)

Jean Renoir directed a silent film in 1927 called Sur un air de Charleston. It’s only about twenty minutes long. Here is what he wrote about it, in his memoir MY LIFE AND MY FILMS:

Catherine and I went out with Jacques Becker nearly every evening. [Catherine Hessling was Renoir’s first wife; and Becker was, at that time, one of Renoir’s crewmembers.] He introduced us to Johnny Higgins, a black dancer from New York. Johnny had come to Paris with a touring company and had decided not to go back to the States. Paris in those days was the Mecca of black people.

This was after the failure of Nana (1926) [Renoir’s second feature-length film]. In a gesture of farewell to the cinema I indulged myself in the luxury of using up the considerable unused footage from that film to make a ‘short’ in which there would be no concessions. The story was set in the future and afforded a pretext for a dance by Catherine and Higgins. The idea was one of the utmost simplicity. A black scientist from another planet pays a visit to the earth, where all civilization has been destroyed by an inter-planetary war. He lands near a Morris pillar, all that is left standing in the desert, and is found by a savage woman who, not knowing his language, can only communicate with him by dancing. When the dance is over the visitor returns to his own planet, taking her with him.

Once I saw it, I was so struck by this picture that my instinct was to jot down notes describing all its visuals, while faithfully copying the text of its title cards (which had been rendered in English on the version I screened), so as to preserve some sort of a record:

Sur un air de Charleston

[INTERTITLE:]

The year 2028, a few years after the war . . . An aircraft is getting ready to leave Central Africa . . .

A silver sphere emerges from a large half-tube in the ground near some bell-roofed houses.

[INTERTITLE:]

On the aircraft, an explorer . . .

The spherical craft is in the sky. Within the ship, an explorer is turning a scroll of Africa on a screen.

[INTERTITLE:]

Destination Europa Deserta, an unknown land . . .

In a cinematograph of inversed monochrome, a landscape passes by. The explorer turns an arrow on a dial like a clock hand. The silver spherical ship continues to float through the atmosphere. The explorer pulls a lever.

Now a woman is shown sitting on the curb of a street and yanking a rope. An ape is dragged onscreen, tied to the rope’s end. The woman unties the rope from the ape’s waist and yawns. The ape jumps in place and scratches itself, then picks nits out of the woman’s hair and eats them.

Suddenly, both the woman and the ape look up into the sky and see the silver sphere hovering. The ape dances. The woman opens a door on the cylindrical pillar behind her and enters it.

The explorer is shown pulling the lever again and turning the scroll to reveal a map that is labeled “Unknown Land.” The explorer moves the clockface arrow again, and the spherical craft descends and hovers near the surface of the earth, through woods and past buildings of apartments. The sphere finally lands on top of the pillar that the woman recently entered. A circular cap opens at the top of the sphere, and the explorer climbs out.

The woman inside the pillar listens intently and looks upward. The Eiffel Tower is shown to be broken: its upper half is tilted at a severe angle, more than 45 degrees from its base. The woman shouts from within the pillar. The ape is shown climbing on a railing.

The explorer extends a rope ladder from his ship and climbs down the pillar. Upon reaching the ground, the explorer’s legs get entangled in the ladder and he struggles free. The woman listens from within her pillar. The explorer looks around curiously and notices, near the door of the pillar, a sign that says “NO ENTRY.” The explorer approaches this sign, removes his hat, shakes his head, and tosses his lapel flower onto the ground.

The woman cautiously exits the door of the pillar; she pushes aside the rope ladder that is hanging before her, looks to her left and spots the explorer. She gets the explorer’s attention by shouting and leaping and falling on her rump. She gyrates her hips and chases after the explorer. The ape is shown on the railing.

The explorer proceeds on foot down the ruined street; with the woman chasing, gyrating, and pawing rather aggressively, striving to allure the explorer. The ape moves to climb down from the railing but aborts his attempt.

The woman follows the explorer around, gyrating intermittently and then falling on her rump again. The explorer tries to protect himself with his arms yet cautiously stops to watch the woman. The woman performs a simple leaping dance in slow motion. The explorer opens his mouth in reaction.

The woman wraps a vine around the belly of the explorer, thus tying him to a structure that looks like a streetlamp. The woman then capers out in front of the explorer and continues to strut and perform various dance moves. The explorer reacts as if the sight gives him jolts of pain, yet he remains curious and keeps studying the moves of this woman. The woman performs a variety of dances: first, in very fast motion; then, in very slow motion. The explorer voices an exclamation and laughs. The woman kicks and draws near and frolics before the explorer: He smiles, takes her arm, and kisses her hand.

[INTERTITLE:]

Bravo! Show me more of that wonderful dancing! Then you can kill and eat me!

The explorer then pantomimes biting his own wrist. The woman points at him and then points at herself.

[INTERTITLE:]

Me, eat you? I don’t think so! I can’t digest dark meat!

The woman pantomimes heartburn and belching. The explorer then pantomimes using a telephone. The woman cups her ear to show that she understands his gesture: she then runs over to her pillar and enters. Now, standing before the interior of the pillar, the woman raises her hand, and a small white piece of chalk appears between her fingers. She uses this chalk to draw a picture of a telephone on the pillar’s interior; then an actual telephone manifests in place of the drawing. The woman sets the chalk on top of the phone and picks up the receiver.

A new shot reveals who or what is on the other side of the line: Outside, in the sky, an angelically winged face that is otherwise bodiless appears wearing headphones. The face moves its lips.

The woman inside the pillar now speaks into the receiver.

[INTERTITLE:]

Hello? I can’t hear you . . . Who is it?

The woman in the pillar speaks into the phone further.

[INTERTITLE:]

You wish to talk to him? Just a minute . . .

The winged face in the sky moves its lips again. Then the woman on the earth voices a response into the receiver and moves to exit the pillar.

Six more angelically winged faces gradually become visible in the sky. The woman on earth approaches the explorer and hands him the telephone; he speaks into the receiver.

[INTERTITLE:]

Hello? I’m listening . . .

The explorer shakes the receiver and looks at it, tries to adjust its speaker, and shakes it some more, as the woman tiptoes offscreen. The explorer speaks into the receiver again.

[INTERTITLE:]

I can’t hear a thing!

The woman returns onscreen behind the explorer. The explorer smiles and speaks into the receiver.

[INTERTITLE:]

I’ve discovered the Charleston, that traditional White dance . . .

The woman unwraps the vine that is tying the explorer to the pole, while the explorer nods and continues to speak into the telephone receiver.

[INTERTITLE:]

. . . and I’ve decided to learn it!

As the explorer continues to speak into the receiver, the woman cups her ear and listens in. The explorer laughs and says a few more words on the phone. The woman then gestures to the explorer to follow her out into the street for some dancing.

The woman enters the street and cavorts a little, then claps her hands and gestures for the explorer to follow suit. The explorer seems bashful and remains where he is. The woman dances a little more; then beckons him to follow, and she leaves. The explorer now steps into the street and follows the woman offscreen.

The woman stands in front of her pillar and performs dance moves; then she gestures for the explorer to copy her. The explorer shakes his head. The angelically winged faces are shown in the sky. The woman continues dancing and gesturing for the explorer to join. Little by little, the explorer makes his first attempts, and then begins to dance in earnest. The two dance simultaneously. From the railing, the ape claps his hands and taps his foot and dances and gyrates.

The woman executes a full 360-degree turn as part of her dance, and the explorer watches and mimics the turn. The winged faces in the sky are shown again. The woman and the explorer alternately perform varieties of other dance moves. The ape on the railing claps its hands over its head and gyrates.

The woman and the explorer are shown dancing more elaborately, back and forth, first in normal speed and then in extreme slow motion. Each of the dancers ends by executing their own version of the 360 turn.

[INTERTITLE:]

The explorer turns out to be quite gifted and his teacher indefatigable . . .

The woman is shown from a closer view, continuing to dance manically.

[INTERTITLE:]

But soon, overcome by dizziness . . .

The explorer and the woman are shown alternately continuing to caper, but the explorer looks wobbly and exhausted. The explorer eventually stumble-dances over, falls toward the pillar and clutches the rope ladder for support. The woman stops rollicking and gestures to the explorer, shaking her head and pointing as if to say “do not go alone but instead take me with you.” The explorer scratches his sides as if to answer. The woman smiles and scratches her sides. The winged faces are shown in the sky.

The woman walks over to the rope ladder and joins the explorer; she begins to ascend, but then she stops and comes back down and motions for the explorer to climb. The explorer now ascends the rope ladder, and the woman turns around and looks down the street and calls her coat. The woman’s coat now slides down the street and jumps up and clothes the woman; then an umbrella slithers out of a sewer-like opening in the curb and slides down the street and leaps into the woman’s hand. The ape on the railing wipes its brow; then produces a kerchief from its mouth and offers it to the woman. The woman blows a kiss. The ape blows its nose into the kerchief and then pats its forehead. The woman now follows the explorer up the rope ladder as the shot fades to black.

[INTERTITLE:]

And that is how a new fashion came to Africa: the culture of the aboriginal Whites.

The ape looks up as the silver sphere-ship flies through the sky. The ape waves with its kerchief.

[INTERTITLE:]

THE END

Thots on various religio-philosophical issues

Dear diary,

When talking with my sister, she asked what I thought about karma. I repeated my boilerplate opinion: The idea, I said, is pleasing from a certain perspective, but it also worries me, because I fear that certain types of people will think “I need not try to harmonize with others, for if I hurt them, it’s only the cosmic justice working through me.” – I prefer the emphasis to be on forgiveness: if someone offends you, forget about it; get over it; move on. So I have a love-hate relationship with karma. I love the idea of reversing harm (if that’s what’s happening), but I hate that one’s personality is lost by the time one receives one’s just deserts. Since death cancels memory, and memory is identity, the recipient of the reward or punishment is never the culprit. That seems even less fair than plain old reality.

Then my sister told me how she’s been learning from “this online guru who teaches about Buddhism,” so her views on karma have changed from what they once were. “I used to think of karma,” she said, “sort of the way that mom thinks of Judgment Day – like: Karma is always watching and listening, ready to hand out consequences if you do something wrong or bad.”

This made me laugh. I remarked that it sounds like a government surveillance program – or Santa Claus:

He knows when you’ve been sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake.

The more I read about karma, the less I know about it. It’s like the term “God” – people use it according to their own personal understanding and just assume that everyone else is on the same page. The last thing I learned about it was that the Sanskrit word means “work” or “deed.” This makes me think that the confusion over karma is related to the Christian argument over “Faith versus Works,” in the New Testament epistles, where the Apostle Paul takes the side of “Faith Alone,” and James the brother of Jesus takes the side of “Good Deeds” or “Works” (charitable action). – If karma is seen as a spiritual bank account, then having a positive balance is “good karma” and a negative balance is “bad karma.” So karma is like soul-money. (Note that the religious concepts of “faith” and “sin” have roots in “credit” and “debt.”) The Christians on Paul’s side of the “Faith vs. Good Deeds” argument say that Christ is so rich, he can pay off your debt, so you don’t need any karma-cash of your own – in his letter to the Romans (ch. 3 & 4), Paul argues:

All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. . . . For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

You don’t need to do good works to acquire good karma to put funds in your spiritual account to pay off what bad-karma balance you owe, Paul claims: Just believe in Christ and he’ll use his infinite credit to spot you, so you don’t end up in debtor’s prison (Hell). – But the Christians on James’ side disagree with Paul. In his own epistle (2:14-20) James says:

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?

(These questions are asked rhetorically, sarcastically. Also consider, when reading these passages, whether that term “works” might be replaced with the phrase “good karma.” James continues . . . )

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled”; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, “Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

It seems to me that James is saying that one cannot achieve good karma without earning it through hard labor. Whereas Paul is like someone who has a wealthy relative who will bail him out of trouble.

I’m also now reminded of that bumper sticker that I once saw: “My karma ran over your dogma.”

No matter how ill-defined these concepts are, they seem to be hovering over the same territory. The questions are: How should we act in this life? How should we think in this life? Are there sure consequences for helping or harming others? Can any trace, memory, consequence of life’s actions get past the full-stop of death?

Think of the difference between, on one hand, saying that there is no life after death, and, on the other hand, saying that there is life after death albeit with no memory of prior existence. Since memory IS identity, the only way that reincarnation can have meaning for us is if memory is made death-proof.

One person says “I remember my past lives.” Another person says “I imagine my past lives.” Think how hard it would be to show the difference between the truth value of these two statements.

[At an event celebrating the release of his latest book, LANCASTER DODD, the founder and leader of a metaphysical movement, is approached by one of his followers, HELEN SULLIVAN.]

SULLIVAN: I’ve been reading the new book.

DODD: What do you think?

SULLIVAN: I think it’s wonderful.

DODD: Wait till you get to the good parts.

SULLIVAN: Oh, yes. Well, as I’ve begun, I did notice, on page thirteen, there’s a change. You’ve changed the processing-platform question. Now it says, “Can you imagine—?”

DODD: Yes. . . . Yes.

SULLIVAN: If our previous method was to induce memory by asking, “Can you recall,” doesn’t it then change everything if now we say, “Can you imagine?”

DODD: We are invoking a new, wider range to account for the new data. “Can you imagine” allows for a more creative pathway to the mind. More open.

SULLIVAN: But if the new—

DODD: What do you want!? Helen. This is the new work.

[from The Master, a 2012 film 
by Paul Thomas Anderson]

Identity is all we really own in this world; it’s all we are; and since it seems utterly vulnerable to death, I place a high value on the elements that support and augment identity: memory and imagination. That’s why the differences (or lack thereof) between what we call memory and imagination enchant me. They seem to be related to objectivity and subjectivity; and I’m not even sure whether they’re two things or one. I tend to think of memory as involuntary whereas imagination is informed by one’s will or fancy. However, memory is not rigidly limited or unable to be manipulated by one’s volition; and imagination is dependent on real-world experiences and stimuli – it can merge, revise, invert, flipflop, or blot one’s perceptions, but it cannot create them from whole cloth.

Now here’s one last karma-quotation that, I think, shares and backs up my position – it’s from that book I mentioned in my previous entry, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty:

The problem of memory, linked to the problem of personal identity, is one that has plagued the karma theory from its inception and is particularly a thorn in the side of the Buddhists. Even for the Hindus, there always remains a certain amount of psychological uncertainty and cognitive uncertainty about one’s previous karma. One cannot know why one has the karmic destiny that one has; moreover, if one cannot feel responsibility for what one has done in a previous life because one cannot remember that life (and therefore, it could be argued, one is not the same person), one cannot feel the justice in being punished for a crime that someone else did (the other, previous self, lost to one’s present memory). One can be told about it and believe it, but that is something else; that is sharing the dream only on the weakest level.

§

My sister also mentioned Zen Buddhism – I’ve heard people speak about that school or philosophy all my life, and I’ve never quite known what it was. The abovementioned dream book referred to Zen Buddhism as being difficult for Westerners to comprehend. I suppose you could say that about anything, tho – even regular Western concepts!

I should read more about these Eastern religions and systems. I only tend to hover around the Western ones because there are clear translations and excellent scholarly studies available, and they are all so easy to obtain thru the library. Plus I always remember a little anecdote that a traveler relayed—he said:

I left the West to visit the Monks in Tibet, because I was yearning to know about Buddhism. Then, when I finally met them, all the Monks were obsessed with the West and yearning to know about Surrealism!

The grass is always greener on the neighbor’s estate. Romanticism is the desire to be elsewhere.

§

In reading news, I also just finished, for the first time, The Nature of the Gods by Cicero. I really liked it. There are interesting points put very clearly. In his time, the major players in the grand religious kerfuffle were the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academy. Cicero sides mostly with the latter but also a little with the Stoics. I happen to love the Epicureans (De Rerum Natura by Lucretius is a sacred book, to me), but I cheerfully embrace Cicero the same way that, as the Antichrist, I embrace Saint Augustine.

If the gods had the good of the human race at heart, then they ought to have made all men good. If that were too much to ask, then they should at least do their best for those who are good. . . . Yet time would fail me if I tried to list all the good men for whom things have turned out badly. So it would if I tried to mention all the wicked who have prospered.

Those are the words of Cotta, one of the participants in Cicero’s discourse.

Reporting my ideas and readings here causes me to realize how silly the pursuit of religion is. Why should anyone think, talk, argue about divinity? Why should I care what some man from long ago, halfway across the globe, said or did!

Personally, I’m just fascinated with the possibilities of thought. We all have a mind: what do we do with it? We all have the faculty of imagination: how do we employ it? When we read religious scriptures from ancient days, we’re becoming privy to the imaginations of actual people. I still don’t see how this is any different from reading a poem or novel written by someone today. In either case, we’re peeking into the contents of someone’s mind.

A churchgoing believer might say: “Well the Bible is special, different from a modern poem or novel, because God wrote it and handed it to humankind.” This statement itself contains imaginative material that I love to ponder; but if we test it to see how much it connects to our shared reality, we find it lacking. The Bible, like all other scriptures, was written the same way that any modern poem is composed. But now I imagine someone saying to me: “How do you know that God did not literally interact with the writers of scripture?” And the truth is that I do not know. So, what do I do, now that I’ve admitted my ignorance? Do I believe everyone who tells me that their scripture had a divine origin? Yes; I believe it all. But does that solve the problem? In a manner of speaking. As Duchamp always sez: There is no solution because there is no problem.

§

Do not read; look at the designs created by the white spaces between the words . . .

—from The Immaculate Conception 
by André Breton & Paul Eluard

My brother-in-law informed me that he is reading a wordless comic-book version of the Mahabharata. I replied that although I’ve read thru William Buck’s retelling of that scripture, I still feel as unknowledgeable about it as I did before I opened its cover. And I felt the same way when my sister brought up her newfound interest in Buddhism. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about these foreign ideas, religions or philosophies, but all the concepts just glitter around in my head like a kaleidoscope. I don’t know what to make of any of it. The Indian pantheon perplexes me. Whatever intelligence I have acquired from studying any of these Eastern systems is hopelessly fragmented; I cherish this or that episode from a given scripture, but I have no idea how it connects to the entirety – or if there even is an entirety. I’m now remembering a passage I admired; I’ll try to paraphrase it:

There’s this sacred altar in a field, and people come and place offerings before the altar, and anoint it with oil, and yet their prayers remain unanswered . . . but then a monkey comes along and kicks the altar, at which point the God appears and announces that He is pleased with this monkey for worshipping Him correctly.

Isn’t that a nice little scene? I doubt that my recollection of it is accurate. . . .

Just now I stopped and paged thru my copy of the Mahabharata, trying to locate the story amid the scriptural chaos, and of course I can’t find it. But now that I’ve invested a few moments of time, I want to share at least something from the text as a keepsake, just for fun; so, instead, here’s a clipping so thin that it could fit in a fortune cookie:

The Death Lord reached into Satyavan’s breast, on the left side, somewhere near the heart, and drew forth his soul . . .

I simply grabbed that quote at random – however, now I recall that, in the final episode of the second season of Twin Peaks, this very same incident occurs and is visually depicted onscreen (which is one of the reasons why the series’ creator David Lynch is my favorite director) – since I always keep the script by my side, it’s easy to share the moment:

[AGENT COOPER’S sweetheart ANNIE BLACKBURN is kidnapped and dragged into the supernatural Black Lodge by his former FBI partner WINDOM EARLE. . . . COOPER follows EARLE into the Lodge.]

EARLE: If you give me your soul, I’ll let Annie live.

COOPER: I will.

[WINDOM EARLE reaches into AGENT COOPER’S chest, on the left side, somewhere near the heart, and yanks out his soul. But this act is at once halted and reversed: The demonic spirit KILLER BOB now appears clutching EARLE like a puppet; EARLE is screaming.]

BOB: [to Earle] Be quiet! Be quiet! [to COOPER] You go. He is wrong. He can’t ask for your soul. I will take his.

[After a burst of flame, EARLE falls silent and still.]

If you’ve never seen this scene, I’m sure that its audiovisual audacity remains lost in the textual translation; but, once you have viewed it, it becomes fixed in your imagination as a touchstone of the cinematic sublime. I don’t know how anyone could remain unimpressed with the fact that a director actually filmed the theft of a soul. It’s hard to believe that this was broadcast on regular television.

§

My sister told me that her yoga teachers announced that they’re planning a group trip to Japan next spring, “to visit the beautiful temples there, and to explore Zen Buddhism.” She also mentioned that “There is a Japanese city called Nara, where deer hang out in the parks and streets. I find this fascinating – the pictures and videos look very cool . . .”

I almost replied that we here in Hastings, just this morning, saw five deer crossing the road (at the crosswalk!) and trotting into the park at Vermillion River – and I began to think that maybe our city could compete with Nara for tourists . . . But then I looked online and saw that “Deer in Nara” is actually a subsection of the place’s Wikipedia article, which has a photo showing whole herds of the creatures browsing around the public square, right alongside the humans. Now I can’t resist quoting a few things from the article:

Snack vendors sell sika senbei (deer crackers) to visitors so they can feed the deer. Some deer have learned to bow, so as to receive senbei from people.
      . . . Additionally, the deer have become aggressive towards humans in their solicitation of food (which leads to people getting injured by deer) . . . and have lost their fear of predators in general.

Just imagine being attacked by a murderous deer! A few months ago, I read through Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals (she’s the sister of the inventor of modern poetry, William Wordsworth), in which she often mentioned walking in the countryside and being afraid of the cows – apparently they were mean-spirited and prone to assault passersby.

§

Between typing paragraphs here I did a little more reading about Zen: I like to know the etymology. The term is said to be derived from the Japanese pronunciation of a Middle Chinese word, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit for “contemplation.” So, Zen Buddhism signifies Mentally Focused Buddhism. At least that’s how I’ll think of it. If this is right, I desire everything to be Zen X, because I’m all for mental focus, contemplation, meditation; thinking deeply about what you’re doing; listening with care. Undivided attention. Zen music, Zen conversation . . .

Zen Christianity is an oxymoron, however, because the Apostle Paul devised Christianity to negate the teachings of Jesus; and Jesus himself was a believer in Zen Yahwism.

Some thots, quotes, reactions, and opinions

Dear diary,

Merry Christmas 2024. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. May God fill your life with joy & gladness this holiday season. Signed: President & Mrs. Tad Smattering, Saul Christ College.

I copied the above message verbatim from the card that I received in the mail today from my alma mater.

A while ago, I told you about my phone falling ill and going into shock and blacking out when people call it. I now report that this problem has been solved. The battery was failing; so I purchased an extra-long power-cord: Now I just keep the device plugged in, and it functions properly.

Hey, I overheard you listing several book titles that you hope to read, and then you said, “But I fear that I will not have time to get through all of these.” – I just want to say that I relate to this: it’s how I almost always feel; I’m normally pressed for time; but this year I took a break from all debauchery, which has freed me up to do much more reading than I’m used to. For the record, I think it’s more important to re-read deeply the books that mean the most to yourself, as opposed to rapidly inhaling zillions of new texts that will ultimately be forgetten.

I prefer to read books slowly and incrementally. Blake, Franz Kafka, the Bible: most of my best-loved books I treat this way. And poetry in general – it exists to be contemplated; I feel that I have not even given an initial reading to a poem until I’ve read it over and over. It might be best to say that a poem has not been truly read until one knows it by heart. Here is the understatement of understatements: Deep, slow, intensive reading is superior to skimming.

§

Regarding The Godfather (1972), it’s easy for us United Statesians to relate to, because, for decades (centuries?), we have been governed by mobsters.

§

Movies are obviously a team effort; so, when we speak of any film’s “author,” we’re basically making an assumption and engaging in guesswork about causation. The question is: Whose efforts bequeathed the project its defining qualities, essence or personality? But how can anyone determine which member of a congregation was responsible for any mass-task, let alone one so subjective as the identity of an artwork! And who’s to say that only a single individual is the culprit, in any case? The field is messy. Yet that’s what I like about it. My understanding is that some French critics from around the late 1950s to the late 1960s trumpeted an edict proclaiming the director to be the auteur of a film. Their idea makes sense to me, because the director is theoretically the only member of the crew who has power to veto any other member’s decisions. Of course, there are exceptions to it; but this is a helpful rule of thumb. What matters to me is being able to find the best movies fast; and that’s why I pay attention to the name of the director, and I follow the work of directors’ careers. So far, for me, this has passed the pragmatic test of improving my life; for I am constantly screening the finest films, night after night; watching sublime gems, poetic masterpieces, wild & daring works of genius; I’m in cineaste bliss – whereas all my friends and family, who follow actors instead of directors, are constantly frowning through tedious movies that stink.

Now you’re curious, so you ask: “Are there any actors who can get you to watch a film just because they’re in it?” – The only one I can think of is W. C. Fields.

But anytime I watch ongoing shows like ___________ (I honestly can’t think of any examples), I’m following a circus of performers rather than a single artist, because the director of each individual episode isn’t always even specified. As our dying culture’s art deteriorates into group-made miniseries overseen by financial executives, it will be increasingly difficult to locate the mind who’s most responsible for the SOUL of any given project.

§

You think that you’ve noticed surrealism becoming more popular? That might be the case – either way, it’s fine with me. When something becomes popular, it doesn’t make it better or worse. The crowd follows fads, and sometimes a multitude of people will embrace a work of art that I too admire; but more often than not, I’ll find myself most enthusiastic about things for which there’s only a small audience: the happy few. It’s a good feeling to be in agreement with the rest of the population – I wish that the things I create and love were equally admired by the masses. When the majority is with me, they are a blessed congregation; when they’re against me, they’re just the herd. I don’t try to seek out that which is unpopular, and I place no value on being arcane or unknown; but if something strikes me as holy, while nobody else has the sense to perceive its magnificence, I will never let this lack of support infect my intuition.

The Lord said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.’ Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” [Isaiah 6:8-10]

§

ALERT: just this instant, David Lynch released all the videos from his old website’s 2009 series called Interview Project: they’re now on YouTube in a playlist. David Lynch Dot Com was a pay site, and I never subscribed (not because of money: it was rather that my Internet connection was too slow, back in those days), so I never saw any of the parts of the Project when they originally were made. But now my sweetheart & I just finished watching them all – it took a few nights because there are more than a hundred total, with each episode on average being about 4 minutes long. I hold this as one of Lynch’s masterpieces: it’s among his very best works.

Interview Project is a 20,000-mile road trip where 121 people were found at random and interviewed. Those interviews were edited into short films and showcased on David Lynch’s website. When David took his site down, the Interview Project material was also taken down. To commemorate the 15-year anniversary of the original launch of the series, the Interview Project Team has decided to re-release all 121 of the original episodes in hi-definition.

That’s the description from the official page – the account’s name is DAVID LYNCH THEATER.

Now that we’ve finished our cinematic vacation, we’re resettling into our usual routine of following thru select directors’ filmographies. Next up are John Huston and Ingmar Bergman. Huston’s debut feature was The Maltese Falcon (1941); he also made Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen (1951). And Bergman directed countless favorites, including The Seventh Seal (1957) and Persona (1966). Each man’s career is immense, and, until now, although I’ve seen many pictures from each, I’ve never bothered to search out and screen all their works.

Since I just finished transcribing some dialogue from the last Bergman film we watched, I’ll share this little exchange from what was originally released in the U.S. as Frustration (1947):

[Johannes and Sally are standing on the shoreline.]

JOHANNES: Look! [points to a ship in the distance] Africa, America, India. . . . You don’t know what Africa looks like, coming in at night, slowly, after spending months at sea; coming in at night to a harbor full of light. . . . The water dark and calm. And the air smells differently from here – it has a wild smell. It makes you wild.

SALLY: How do you know about all this?

JOHANNES: I’ve read about it in books. . . . And the negroes stare at you with their white eyes. You hear languages you don’t understand. People are black instead of white. Everything is new and different.

§

You say that you’ve been thinking about maybe reading some of the Wizard of Oz books. – I was thinking the same thing, myself, until I read a group of critical essays by various writers, all appraising the work of author L. Frank Baum; now I’m convinced that the great worth resides exclusively in the MGM film from 1939. That movie is magic – I sometimes think it’s the best ever made. Whereas the consensus among readers is that Baum’s books are OK but uneven. I’ll share the gist of a piece I found helpful – the following is from the chapter “L. Frank Baum and Oz” in the book Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E. B. White by Roger Sale . . .

Baum wrote quickly and never seems to have worried if he could sustain his interest for the length of a whole book. He seems to have known when he began a book how he wanted it to start, and perhaps where he wanted it to end, but he left the middle to be contrived as he went along. Rereading The Wizard, for instance, is always a strange experience for anyone who has come to know Victor Fleming’s movie. Book and movie each begin wonderfully and in different ways; the movie has its spectacular cyclone and shift from brown-and-white to color, and Baum’s matter-of-factness about Kansas, cyclones, and the Munchkins is winning. From then on, though, the advantages seem to belong to the movie. Baum’s admirers may complain about having the whole thing be a dream, but the movie makes the dream create its own kind of sense, by emphasizing two characters, the Wizard and the Wicked Witch of the West, whom Baum uses only as part of his zoo.

As you know, my sweetheart & I read aloud together daily from a handful of books. We’ve been enjoying a lot of so-called young-adult literature lately, because of our siblings’ children: There’s a selection of the Arabian Nights waiting for us, after we finish our tome of Hans Christian Anderson stories (we’re on page 977 out of 1,068; yes I regret the overkill), and then the tales of the Brothers Grimm. We also recently read A. A. Milne’s two books of Winnie-the-Pooh (which we deeply loved); Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (which we also loved – it’s surprisingly baroque); and Robert Louis Stevenson’s tenderly beautiful volume A Child’s Garden of Verses. Plus, on my own, just to compare it to Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, I reread Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. For many reasons, I prefer Just So Stories – THEY’RE the best.

P.S.

At the bottom of the back of the second page of your last e-prayer, you mention a variety of crimes that you think you’ve committed (“extremely poor penmanship”; “I’m more than two payments behind on my tithing”; etc.), for which you mock-apologize. But I say: Do not even mock-worry about any of these offenses. Remember, the Lord Christ died for everyone, and ALL is forgiven. Even those who hate God and reject His salvation will be saved.

Yet more recent readings

[Here’s a picture of what some company plans to do to this area – it’s from a local publication where such proposals are discussed.]

Knowing other people is intelligence, 
knowing yourself is wisdom. 
Overcoming others takes strength, 
overcoming yourself takes greatness. 
Contentment is wealth.

—from the TAO TE CHING (#33)
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

Dear diary,

I can’t think of anything else to say, so I guess I’ll just tell you more about what I’ve been reading.

For novels, I just finished Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and loved it. This was my first time thru it. I’ve loved all of Hardy’s novels that I’ve sought out – I think you’d love them too.

And I read The Adventures of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I loved it less than Tess, but I still worship Dickens; everything he writes is delightful, central, universal.

I jump at any reason, however small or casual, to return to Shakespeare; so recently my sweetheart & I read thru Macbeth together; because we tried to watch a movie version, which was so bad that we turned it off partway thru.

Then I read Antony and Cleopatra, because I happened to get a copy of Harold Bloom’s brief book about Cleopatra whose subtitle is I Am Fire and Air. Bloom never fails to amaze me – what he says is lucid and helpful, yet somehow it also feels thrillingly heterodox; like one is being made privy to secret knowledge that proves truer than the timeworn traditions. Among the most genuine Shakesperean scholars, Bloom is one who seems to have lived the advice that Emerson articulates in his early journals:

Let no man flatter himself with the hope of true good or solid enjoyment from the study of Shakspeare or Scott. Enjoy them as recreation. You cannot please yourself by going to stare at the moon; ’tis beautiful when in your course it comes.

Bloom notes how Cleopatra identifies with Isis, seeing herself as that goddess’s incarnation; and he highlights how, to gain advantages, she is always staging events and instinctively yet consciously acting her part in them. For her, real life is a series of roles to play. Let me share a couple quotes – here’s Bloom on the titular couple:

One way to begin apprehending Cleopatra and Antony is to appreciate that they are the first celebrities in our debased sense. Charismatics, the lovers confer shreds of their glory on both their followers and their enemies. Their bounty is boundless. Antony is generous, Cleopatra something else. Hers is a giving that famishes the taker. She beguiles and she devastates.

& here’s one more passage from Bloom’s same book, concerning an audience’s perspectives on the play in general:

In Antony and Cleopatra how you see is who you are. If you think Antony a ruffian in decline and Cleopatra an aging whore, then you know better how you feel but the greatness has evaded you. Should you find Antony the Herculean hero, still glorious as he wanes, and Cleopatra the sublime of erotic womanhood, burning to a final kindling, you are far closer to joining in the sad yet wonderfully comic celebration.

I also recently finished Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and was won over by it while also wanting to fight it. It’s the kind of book that goads you to write a counter-book. Every question about dreams that Freud claims to answer only causes more questions to arise in its wake. But it’s good to be provoked like this – it inflames the imagination.

Why do dreams need to be interpreted, anyway? Why not just let them be? Or, at least, if one must give dreams a meaning, then why must it be so staid and tame? Are there no meanings that possess a hearty spirit? Why is poetic abundance treated as if it requires amendment? I like William Blake’s Proverb of Hell: “Exuberance is Beauty.” Also Walt Whitman’s lines from “Song of Myself”:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; / How could I answer the child? . . . . I do not know what it is any more than he.

Freud’s charm and his obnoxiousness both stem from the fact that he will never admit that he does not know. Yet it’s a compliment to Freud that I must call on the best of the poets to strike back – Whitman says later:

What is known I strip away . . . . I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown.

Freud labors to make known secret meanings. But I prefer Walt to strip away the interpretation and let the dream flourish. Moses says, “would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets”! [Numbers 11:29] – I say: Let us dream richer dreams. Or if we must refine and align our visions with something, let it be the heart of humankind; let it be harmoniousness with all life: Bring science into alignment with these things, rather than dreams into alignment with science.

Anyway, now that I’ve finished Freud’s Interpretation, I plan on continuing to read through his other works; but, first, I decided to check out a work by Alexander Welsh called Freud’s Wishful Dream Book. That’s what I’m reading right now. It’s short – I’ll finish it today – and it’s refreshing. It’s like attending a conversation whose participants are thankfully not fanatical adherents to psychoanalysis but rather unprejudiced newcomers who have all just completed a first reading of Freud’s masterpiece. Hearing the opinions of others pleases and stirs me, which is why I seek out literary criticism; it also fortifies me, which in this case is more than usually appreciated, since Freud is such a slippery salesman.

§

I’ll end with this footnote taken at random from Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, who cites as her source Milton Rokeach’s The Three Christs of Ypsilanti:

Rokeach tells of a schizophrenic who claimed to be both the governor of Illinois and our world’s Creator; he justified the former role by pointing out, “I have to earn my living, you know,” and the latter by walking into a Public Services office and announcing, “I am God. I would like to apply for Social Security.”

Morningthots about difficulties in worldfixing

(Salutation.)

What is writing? What is reading? I want to say that writing is like thinking, but it is not: because my thinking always zeroes itself and flips beyond recognition when I begin writing. And reading is like allowing an alien force to take over your mind for a spell.

Do you disagree with this assessment, O hostile reader? Then I bow to your veto. You’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be the soul of the reading outfit.

But wouldn’t it be neat if you and I broke through the sacred dividing-panel that separates you readers from us writers? We could face each other, then. I wonder who would surivive.

You would win. I would let you win. (“I have won,” you agree.)

§

Did you ever think about what happens after the Day of Judgment? Currently, everything’s wrong: all the brute people are in charge, and the compassionate people are impoverished and held down. Kind souls always are born into lives that are awful from the get-go and only get worse. Is this world a punishment for some crime that those meek and gentle souls committed in past lives? No, there is no justification for the wrongness that dominates reality: that’s just the way things are. But, like I was saying, there will come a Day of Judgment, on which all the friendly souls will finally get petted by their Maker; and this same Maker will round up the harmful people and cast them into a fire pit and burn them up. The bad people will get annihilated: they will vanish completely, and the world will be perfect from that point forward.

Yet, what happens after that? Once the world is perfect, what will those who survived the Judgment do? You might answer that they will live happily ever after, meaning that they will then all appear handsome, and they will have enough food to eat, and beautiful clothing to wear, and they will each go wandering and meet their true love and get married; and nobody will abuse anyone in any way; all prices will be fair – or, rather, there will no longer be a charge for anything, because everything is free (since money itself got totally obliterated) – and the vehicles that people drive will never need a tune-up, for they will be pulled by supernatural beasts who all love their employment.

And yet there remains the question of memory. For, although the entire population of bad people will have disappeared, there will still exist a recollection of all the bad things that once occurred. And how can one enjoy perfection in Paradise if one has witnessed, for instance, the sight of an innocent man being crucified? You might argue that the memory of this event will eventually fade, but . . .

After pondering it for a moment, I admit that your point about remembrances evanescing does indeed satisfy my curiosity. For if time can cause unwanted memories to dissipate here and now, before the world has been perfected and while we all are still mortal and the barbarians rule, then I must consider how easy it will be for memory to become amended in the perfect, eternal Paradise.

Now I only wonder whether our mnemonic contents’ penchant to disintegrate is something that also must undergo perfection. In other words: Might not memory’s tendency to abandon its belongings be considered a flaw: a malfunction that the Judgment shall make functional? In that case, a perfected memory would never forget. And then we’re right back where we started.

However, the Judge could “reset” all memories from the moment when the world is made ideal. Then everyone could go on forever remembering everything that happens in eternity without ever having to suffer an ugly perception.

But since memory is identity, this would be the equivalent of disposing ALL souls, whether they are bad or not, and manufacturing a whole new populace.

Does the idea of a fresh start strike you as undesirable? It sounds fine, to me. I’m always trying to improve myself, anyway: to get my soul-train back on the track. This just sounds like a faster way to reach my destination.

But if individual personalities are so unimportant that we can toss them all into the wastebin unconcernedly . . .

I’m tired of considering this dilemma. Do what you will: Either save or blot all identity, or make it so that the building blocks of reality continue rearranging into novel forms and systems. Blur or sharpen the outlines of every ego. Save these changes or allow them to mutate. Set bounds for pleasure and unpleasure, if you like; I suggest that you give the first a vastly expanding domain, and strictly limit that of the last.

P.S.

From Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Witch of Atlas,” XXVII:

Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—
      Each flame of it is as a precious stone
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
      Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.

From St. Augustine’s THE CITY OF GOD, Book XII, Ch. 4:

. . . the nature of eternal fire is without doubt a subject for praise, although to the wicked after their condemnation it will be the fire of punishment. For what is more beautiful than a fire, with all the vigour of its flames and the splendours of its light? And what more useful, with its heat, its comfort, and its help in cooking? And yet nothing can cause more distress than the burns inflicted by fire. Thus a thing which is dangerous and destructive in some situations proves to be of the greatest utility when properly employed.

Four quotes from four sources

(Here’s a picture of gift-wrapping paper.)

To whom it may concern,

At long last, I found a translation of the TAO TE CHING that I actually enjoy – it was done by a fantasy writer whom I love and respect: Ursula K. Le Guin. (This is one of those bits of news that I feel I must have already told you.) TAO: “the WAY” – just think about how many of these spiritual teachers referred to their philosophy with that same idea. Buddha was about the middle WAY; Jesus taught his WAY (as you know, his followers were originally just known as “people of the WAY” – they were only labeled “Christians” or “little Christ-folk” later, derisively) . . . and when you investigate the ancient Hebrew prophets, you find that many (all?) spoke of some sort of WAY.

One of the sutras or chapters in the TAO that haunts me is number 57 from Book 2 – I’ll copy the middle stanza below. I’m frightened by this, because it captures our modern moment, despite being written so many thousands of years ago. It makes me fear that no progress can be made; that humankind is doomed to repeat the same awful loop; because, no matter how much we strive to move from discord to harmony, we find ourselves right back in this bad spot:

The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world,
the poorer people get.
The more experts the country has
the more of a mess it’s in.
The more ingenious the skillful are,
the more monstrous their inventions.
The louder the call for law and order,
the more the thieves and con men multiply.

Thankfully, in the final stanza, the poet gives the antidote to all this: “I practice inaction.” (I also love the piece’s title: “Being simple.”)

(2)

Yesterday, my sweetheart was small-talking with an old colleague of hers, Ms. X, who asked about our daily reading. My sweetheart listed a few titles and authors, and, since one of them was the biblical Psalms (I should mention that Ms. X is a staunch Christian), Ms. X lit up and said: “O, that’s great! I myself have been working on memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism; right now I’m starting on the first question.” – This made me curious, so I did a quick Internet-search to refresh my memory about what exactly the Heidelberg Catechism is (I’m only vaguely aware of it) . . . I’ll just copy a couple sentences from the results:

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) is a Reformed catechism taking the form of a series of questions and answers, for use in teaching Reformed Christian doctrine.

By the way, a catechism is defined as “a summary or exposition of doctrine which serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in Christian religious teaching of children and adult converts.” And “Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Western Church.”

Can you believe that people care enough to commit to heart these types of church instructions? – I’ll move on from this, because “to each his own”; but, before letting it go, allow me just to copy the thing’s first “Q&A” (it’s composed in the form of a long list of questions and answers), since this is what Ms. X said she’s intending to memorize:

What is thine only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, and that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.

Whew! Now let me share just two more things, and then I’ll end this. . . .

(3)

First, here’s a quotation of a Persian scholar from the 12th century, whose name is Najmoddin Kobra – it’s from a book that I’ve been wanting to get my hands on, a copy of which I finally purchased and read, titled THE MAN OF LIGHT IN IRANIAN SUFISM by Henry Corbin. Corbin calls Kobra “the first of the Sufi masters to focus his attention on the phenomena of colors, the colored photisms that the mystic can perceive in the course of his spiritual states,” and he explains that he “took great pains to describe these colored lights and to interpret them as signs revealing the mystic’s state and degree of spiritual progress. . . .” Now here are the words of Kobra himself – the passage isn’t overtly about color; I just want to share it because I like it:

Do not believe that the Heaven you contemplate in the suprasensory is the visible outer Sky. No, in the suprasensory (i.e., in the spiritual world) there are other Skies, more subtle, bluer, purer, brighter, innumerable and limitless. The purer you become within, the purer and more beautiful is the Sky that appears to you, until finally you are walking in divine purity. But divine purity is also limitless. So never believe that beyond what you have reached there is nothing more, nothing higher still.

I think that this is a beautiful idea, which even the One True God (if such an entity were to exist) might find uplifting. For, upon obtaining the top position among creatures in the world, would it not be sad to find a ceiling to one’s ascent? I believe God would welcome the news that heaven has a heaven, and so does that heaven, and so on . . .

(4)

Now, lastly, here’s a quotation from a movie by Federico Fellini. We just finished screening his filmography, and even tho I was very familiar with his work (he’s always been among my absolute favorites), I was more impressed and more frequently surprised by the poetic exuberance of his films than I have been by the work of any other director. But what I want to share is not from his best picture; it’s not even a film that most people like very much (tho I myself love it); it’s a fake documentary about clowns, called simply THE CLOWNS (1970). The ending is so good, I have to steal it – the movie concludes with a big funeral, and this is the solemn speech that is delivered:

Ladies and gentlemen, sad news fills the air today. Mister Augusto, A.K.A. “The Clown,” passed on, has departed, has deceased – is dead. His few friends and his many creditors bewail his untimely passing at the age of 200. We couldn’t say he was handsome or intelligent; we couldn’t say anything about him; because, to the smallest remark, he’d only answer by squirting water in our face. On this sad occasion, to deliver a eulogy, so that there would be some kind words praising the memory of the deceased, is a desperate challenge, my dear friends: How can I say good things about him? It’s just impossible to find a single episode in his wrecked existence that would make you say: “He was a nice guy, after all.” He’s always been untalented, a lazy-ass, a drunk, a trouble-maker, a good-for-nothing. He cheated at games, he was unfaithful to his friends, a pain in the neck for his landlord and for the electric company. We all weep at the sad news that he died now instead of when the nurse said “It’s a boy.” In his long, dishonest life, he was dedicated to throwing buckets of water in people’s faces, breaking eggs on heads, spreading soap in mouths. He played the trombone with his feet and danced the tango on his ears. He made kids laugh, and his own children cry. As the “White Clown” and as his brotherly enemy, I tried as well as I could to teach him some manners by hitting him on the head, stepping on his feet, and slapping his face. The clown Augusto, resistant to all guidance, never deviated from his grotesque, drunken career. He continued to cavort under a shower of rotten fruit and dirty water, until he was suffocated by an ostrich egg! It entered his nose and blocked his major arteries. His lungs failed, and his soul flew out of his right ear. He lives no longer. Luckily, I still do! Weep, my brothers, if you wish. As for me, I’ve cried more than enough when I had to put up with him on stage at the circus. Amen.

I love this speech so much that I undertook to transcribe it by constantly pausing and re-pausing the film. So, please, bring it with you, and use it, wherever you go, to evangelize the multitudes.

Why I Am Not a Christian (3 Reasons)

1.

Christianity equates Jesus with the tree of life, which offers immortality in paradise; but the LORD God states clearly that the reason he banished humankind from paradise is “lest they eat of the tree of life and live for ever” (Genesis 3:22).

2.

Prophecy is defined by the LORD God (in Deuteronomy 18:18-22) as having a scope limited by the prophet’s own lifetime. God says, in essence: “If a prophecy comes true, then I the LORD spoke it; if not, then you must slay the prophet for speaking falsely.”

But the prophecy of the advent of Christ is said to have come true after the death of the prophet who spoke it. The same goes for the prophecy of the “Second Coming.” Both of these foundational bases of Christianity violate God’s own parameters of prophecy.

3.

The biblical books concerning Moses say that God established the Law “for ever.” Yet, some years later, when Jesus was assassinated, his followers claimed that his death “fulfilled” this Law and thereby superseded its statutes; in addition, the Christian Testament says that Christ will return “soon.”

I cannot believe that our world’s Creator would use the concept of “forever” to denote a span of just 1,500 years (the time that passed from Moses to Jesus) and then use the word “soon” to denote a span of more than 2,000 years. In other words, God would not say that SOON is longer than FOREVER.

Recent screenings and readings (John Ford, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sigmund Freud)

Dear diary,

I hope this entry finds you living the Good Life. I wish I could say that I’m writing to you from Asia, but I’m writing from Eagan. We touched on a lot of topics over our past few postings; now the question is: Can I avoid repeating myself? And the answer is: No. But I will feign as tho any duplication is intentional.

I think I mentioned that my sweetheart and I have been watching John Ford movies. His filmography is so vast that we’re STILL screening thru it. We are only now nearing the end. We have two films left. Even after skipping several that were too hard to find, we ended up watching probably 75 features altogether. There’s no way I could remember all the best titles – just now I looked over a list, with the aim of highlighting a few of my favorites, but, instead of doing so, I give up: I’d only repeat the same names that are currently circulated (even so, those popular titles deserve their fame). On the other hand, I might point out the weird projects that Ford haphazardly produces, which pop up here and there as one follows his career, for they were the works that made our journey most rewarding. But there are too many to relay, in either case. Yet there was something loveable about every one. Among the better-known titles, I really liked The Grapes of Wrath (1940) – and that’s despite my prejudice against the adaptation of classic books (films should instead adapt bad books to make them better): in fact, I say Ford’s picture is superior to Steinbeck’s novel. And, among the lesser-known films, I admired Wagon Master (1950), which is about some Mormon pioneers crossing the desert.

Before moving on to other thrilling news, I must share this anecdote from Peter Bogdanovich’s 1978 book on Ford:

‘We were making a picture,’ says cameraman Joseph LaShelle, ‘and the head of the studio sent his assistant down to the set to tell Ford he was a day behind schedule. “Oh,” said Ford, very polite, “well, how many pages would you figure we shoot a day?” “About eight, I guess,” the guy said. “Would you hand me the script,” Ford said, and the guy handed it to him. He counted out eight pages that hadn’t been shot yet, ripped them out, and handed them to the guy. “You can tell your boss we’re back on schedule now,” he said. And he never did shoot those eight pages.’

§

Out of the blue, I’ve been re-reading Saint Augustine. I began with his Confessions. What a surprise: I used to hate him, but now I’ve fallen in love. The serpent beguiled me. This time around, I was impressed with his clear prayer-style; and I love what he says about reading in general, and how he presents his speculations about time and birth. Let me share a passage. This is from Book 1, section 6, in the translation of R.S. Pine-Coffin:

. . . all I want to tell you, Lord, is that I do not know where I came from when I was born into this life which leads to death – or should I say, this death which leads to life? This much is hidden from me. But, although I do not remember it all myself, I know that when I came into the world all the comforts which your mercy provides were there ready for me. This I was told by my parents, the father who begat me and the mother who conceived me, the two from whose bodies you formed me in the limits of time. [. . .] in those days all I knew was how to suck, and how to lie still when my body sensed comfort or cry when it felt pain. [. . .] Little by little I began to realize where I was and to want to make my wishes known to others, who might satisfy them. But this I could not do, because my wishes were inside me, while other people were outside, and they had no faculty which could penetrate my mind. So I would toss my arms and legs about and make noises, hoping that such few signs as I could make would show my meaning, though they were quite unlike what they were meant to mime.

I like Augustine’s way of describing this early experience. It makes me feel less alone – for I’ve never gotten beyond the state of yearning to make my wishes known to “the people outside of me,” and I’m still clueless how to do much more than flail.

I’ll copy a little more from the same passage, because I love this next part . . . Augustine demands of God, saying:

Answer my prayer and tell me whether my infancy followed upon some other stage of life that died before it. Was it the stage of life that I spent in my mother’s womb? For I have learnt a little about that too [. . .] But what came before that, O God my Delight? Was I anywhere? Was I anybody? These are questions I must put to you, for I have no one else to answer them.

This pondering of pre-life interests me even more than talk of the afterlife. I wonder why.

Then, after finishing Augustine’s Confessions, I read thru his City of God. That’s a huge tome – more than a thousand pages. I never attempted it before; but not only did I get thru, I actually found its style alluring. (What’s wrong with me!?) Considering that its stance, aim, and subject matter are all against my spirit, it felt somehow satisfying.

Then I read the biography Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown, which was extremely good; and so was Augustine the Reader by Brian Stock.

My goal with all this was, once and for all, to tackle the question: Why is this man such a giant, here in the West?

And I’m also taking another look at the works of Sigmund Freud. So I picked up his Psychopathology of Everyday Life and finished it fast. And now I’m almost done with his dream book. All my friends hate Freud, but I’ve always esteemed him. I see him as an interesting essayist, whose worth is wholly literary & not scientific. Part of what attracts me to him, to tell the truth, is how angry he makes certain people. Anyone capable of inflaming his readership’s ire so deeply and thoroughly, by way of words alone, is worth my attention.

Regarding Psychopathology, I was shocked anew at how adamant Freud is in denying randomness any role in the workings of the mind. He seems to say that every error is, on some level, intentional. We humans are like computers: programmed in full shortly after being born. (Therefore apparently I’m mistaken in assuming that, when composing text for the sake of self-amusement, I gather my zany imaginations out of thin air: for one cannot even blurt out a multi-digit number without its components being strictly predetermined.) Here’s the man himself:

I do not believe that an occurrence in which my mental life takes no part can teach me anything hidden concerning the future shaping of reality; but I do believe that an unintentional manifestation of my own mental activity surely contains something concealed which belongs only to my mental life—that is, I believe in outer (real) chance, but not in inner (psychic) accidents. With the superstitious person, the case is reversed: he knows nothing of the motive of his chance and faulty actions; he believes in the existence of psychic contingencies; he is therefore inclined to attribute meaning to external chance, which manifests itself in something hidden outside of him. There are two differences between me and the superstitious person: first, he projects the motive to the outside, while I look for it in myself; second, he explains the accident by an event which I trace to a thought.

That’s from the chapter “Determinism—Chance—Beliefs,” in A. A. Brill’s translation. As I said, I’m taken aback by his thoughts on motive and “chance and faulty actions.” But Freud’s statements about superstition do ring true, at least for me, when I think about myth and holy scripture; I’ve often thought that myself: these things follow the logic of dreams.

So my reading-life has been dominated by the Doctor and the Saint. I usually just follow my whim when choosing what authors to absorb; but, in the case of these two, I reinforced my resolve by reading some essays about each. To my knowledge, the duo is not normally mentioned together; yet here’s something that Harold Bloom writes near the end of his book Where Shall Wisdom Be Found:

Augustine and Freud are totally antithetical to each other, except in one trait: they are the most tendentious writers I have ever read. Each has a palpable design on the reader, and knows precisely where he desires to take you.

Bloom also articulates what I now think is the most important element about the Bishop of Hippo:

Aside from his vast contributions to theology, Augustine invented reading as we have known it for sixteen centuries. [. . .] It is from Augustine that we learn to read, since he first established the relationship between reading and memory [. . .] Shakespeare, in my judgment, invented the inner self, but only because Augustine had made it possible, by creating autobiographical memory, in which one’s own life becomes the text. [. . .] But always we remain the progeny of Augustine, who first told us that the book alone could nourish thought, memory, and their intricate interplay in the life of the mind.

Also, elsewhere (in Genius), Bloom says:

If the age of the book now wanes (only for a time, I would hope), it is vital to recall that Augustine had much to do with making the book the basis for thought. [. . .] Any lifelong reader of the best books one can read is a disciple of Augustine . . .

I give all these excerpts in hopes that they will help to explain my obsession.

Curtailed by unseriousness and religiosity

From the Church of Bryan
to the Church of the Gentle Reader:

I begin this entry like so, in attempted imitation of the Apostle Paul – that’s how I remember him starting out his letters . . .

However, after one instant of research, I see that my memory was wrong – now that I’ve checked his actual writings, I realize that he doesn’t say “From the Church of Paul” but rather “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ . . . to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints . . .” – that’s how he begins his Epistle to the Romans. Or, to take another example (because I like copying this stuff), both of his letters to Thessalonica start this way: “Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians . . .” – that’s probably what I was thinking of.

Whoa! right here at the beginning, I was interrupted by my phone beeping loudly . . . so I checked its screen, and it shows a warning message about bad weather concerning the place where I live: “Severe thunderstorm watch: Tennis ball-sized hail possible in the Twin Cities.” – I assume that this relates to my mentioning of Paul. Bad things always happen when I mention Paul.

Anyway, I’ll write until the brimstone flattens my house . . .

Then the LORD rained brimstone and hail out of heaven upon the Twin Cities . . . [Genesis 19:24]

(Note: Sodom and Gomorrah are the cities of the plain, NOT the “Twin Cities” – that phrase refers to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the two largest cities in my state. I explain this in case it’s not common knowledge outside of Minnesota.)

Now, what has happened since last I wrote? Well, the usual: mostly just fear and sadness about the state of the world. A billion individual wishes that we regular people could stop the horrors of warfare, and each wish dissolves with the apprehension of our powerlessness (the 99%—the MAJORITY!—are devoid of power); then I return to whatever book I have been reading.

You mention being “not very fond of religious thinking” – I am decidedly the same way. Or rather I have a love-hate relationship with religious thinking: I love the aspect of it that is “thinking,” and I hate the aspect of it that is “religious.” But I admit that my hatred depends heavily on how that word is defined. “Religion” too often entails the enforced adherence to a particular interpretation of a work of poetry. I would subscribe to any cult that would allow me to read its poem (its “holy scripture”) as mere literature, without committing to any fixed opinion; but my experience has shown me that the INTERPRETATION of a text is always the most important element to religious groups. This is doubly sad, because I love the idea of interpreting: I think interpretation is, in fact, in and of itself, an avenue of poetry. It’s only the enforcement of, and adherence to, a particular interpretation, that ruins the fun.

The dreamers and prophets and artists who create the visions, prophecies, and poetic tales that eventually become the religions of the world are truly against (or antithetical to) the priests and theologians (or “saints” and “apostles”) who front these religions.

On this topic, I am reminded of what James the Just, brother of Jesus, writes in the letter attributed to him in the Christian Bible:

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Those are the last lines of his letter’s first chapter. At least I can say that I like James better than Paul.

I should now cite passages from Paul which demonstrate why he is deserving of our disapproval, but that idea bores me. Instead, here is a personalized rendition of an episode from the biblical Book of Numbers (16:28-33) – I gave myself the role of Moses; I hope you don’t mind:

Big Bad Bryan said, “Hereby ye shall know that the LORD hath sent me to contradict these priests and pastors; for I have not spoken from mine own mind. If these churchmen die the common death of all men – that is, if they pass away after the same fashion as we freethinkers are accustomed to passing – then the LORD hath not sent me. But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the LORD.”

And it came to pass, when Big Bad Bryan had finished speaking, that the ground clave asunder that was underneath the clerics: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto the Church, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.