tang dynasty times

The Dashing Mahbub Ali

My traveling companion, many of You may recall, had been itching to get out of Dodge.

He had grown increasingly more anxious as our prospects for getting to Leh in time for the famous Hemis Festival began to look slimmer and slimmer. Air India was booked solid till the end of the month and the Srinigar-Leh Highway had still not announced its open date for the season. And so he had grown more and more discouraged. "We just have to get there somehow," he said, planning to walk over the passes if he had to. (See my post Kashmir)

As so often happens in life, the answer miraculously presented itself. We met a man who was planning to bribe his way on to the road before it officially opened. He had a contract with a German tour group, and said he was going "no matter what."

And so we headed off-- riding in a jeep at the head of a convoy of a dozen taxis full of German tourists.

The Srinagar-Leh Highway, built in the early 1960s, is probably typical of high altitude roads in that part of the world. A surprisingly smooth asphalt-paved "interstate," the road clings perilously to the side of the mountains. Rising up over dazzlingly high mountain passes, then descending into apricot-tree filled valleys along the Indus, it connects two very different worlds. (In the Himalaya, cultures are dispersed not be geogaphy but rather by altitude--so that similar culture zones don't necessarily exist side-by-side but rather at the same altitude on a mountain or valley somewhere else. This is something you really notice as these high-altitude roads rise and fall over and over again).  

The most impressive transition ocurred at the very first pass-- the famous Zoji La. Rising up around 3500 feet, the pass is also known as the Gateway to Ladakh. It is the most beautiful mountain pass--you can see from the picture above that as you rise up, the green and very alpine valley of Kashmir spreads below like a beautiful dreamscape. Passing through the very narrow "gateway," however, you leave this alpine world behind, and --moving through the pass itself, which feels very much like Kawabata's tunnel in Snow Country-- you emerge into what is described as the moonscape of Ladakh. Utterly treeless and very, very rocky and desolate, I think it is too high up to get any rain. Surrounded in every direction with towering mountains, the landscape is very stark. Completely Surreal. A Moonscape. 

The highest pass along the road is Fotu-la (4108 meters). Further on, however, on the road connecting Leh to Manali, there is an even higher pass which once had a sign reading: 

Beacon Highway: Highest Road in the World.
You Can Have a Dialogue with God

You get the picture. From Fotu-la, the road makes a series of hair-pin turns to descend into Lamayuru-- one of the most remote and important Tibetan monesteries in Ladakh.

What I want to write about, though, happened well before Lamayuru. In fact, it happened a full day before we even went over the Pass at Fotu-la-- not far from the first pass at Zoji-La.

 

It was there, just outside of Srinigar that a million goats seemed to appear out of nowehere. 

People don't walk in LA. I don't drive and always feel lonely being the only one out walking along the roads. In contrast, in the Himalaya--in what seemed at first to be such an incredibly remote and really desolate landscape-- I was constantly surprised to see people here and there walking. "Where in the world were they headed?" I thought, and yet, there they were. And like that, seemingly out of nowhere, our convoy of Kashimiri taxis was surrounded by a million goats.

And so we stopped. And watched as an ocean of goats filled every inch of empy space on the road around us. It was like the tide coming in. And, in the midst of this ocean of goats-- a man. And, I could not take my eyes off him. I think I actually gasped because he was so unexpected. Unexpected and yet familar. It was love at first sight (or Shazaam as the Shiek says).

Pure magnetism and when our eyes locked on each other through the car window, it was all I could do to stop myself from jumping out. I mean, thinking back now, I am sure it was only my intense dislike of goats that stopped me. I have an incredibly impetuous nature... but it is also entirely possibly that I am allergic to goats.

Nearly two decades have gone by, but believe me when I tell you, that he is as vivid to me now as if I had seen him yesterday.

But then again, maybe not. In fact, somehow over the years, I think he has blended in my heart with the figure of the incredibly dashing Mahbub Ali, from Rudyard Kipling's Kim. You remember in the book where we get that first glimpse of Mahbub Ali in the Kashmir Serai in Lahore, that "huge open space square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return from Central Asia."

Just like Mahbub Ali, my man on the road to Leh was a tall Pashtun with a "scarlet-dyed beard." And to say that he had an air of mystery about him would only be an understatement.

And, at last Dear Readers, I get to my point.

I have been reading back and forth between two books this week. Gavin Young's In Search of Conrad and Peter Hopkirk's Quest for Kim. Both are absolutely fantastic, and I would only recommend one over the other depending on whether one was a Kipling fan or a Conrad fan. The project of both authors is precisely identical: to go and undercover the places and characters of the books that so profoundly affected the authors' lives. And, indeed, both authors are very, very clear about the way these books shaped their lives. For Hopkirk, it was an early reading of Kim that would set him on his life's journey to study, read and write about the Great Game. He says:

To a highly impressionable, romantically minded schoolboy of thirteen-- the same age as Kim himself--the mysterious, if murky activities of Mahbub Ali and Lurgan Sahib were heady stuff indeed... so spellbound was I by this glmpse into the workings of the Indian secret service that I carried a copy of Kim everywhere...

I felt the same about the novel and agree with Hopkirk that it perhaps does emit "an intense luminiscence." For this reason, too, I am friendly to Hopkirk's suggestion that a reading of Kim could cure a "nasty bout of depression." Indeed.

Young is no less devoted to Conrad as Hopkirk is to Kipling. For Gavin Young it was a schoolboy reading of Joseph Conrad's story Youth which was to so dramatically affect his life. He writes on page 1:

My obsession with Joseph Conrad got into its stride after my headmaster read a passage from the story Youth-- a story that said in so many words, "Catch life on the wing--but hurry!"-A message I took at full length.

And so I email a book-loving Pasha across the ocean. I complain to him about the way it feels that books no longer seem to have that same magical power to affect the way we live; the way we fall in love; the way we make choices and see things. I mean, would that breathtaking man on the road to Leh have had quite the same impact on me if I hadn't already been in love with the Kipling's story? Real life is filtered through imagination like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Magical realism and Abracadabra. "The novel is dying," for they say nowadays people don't have the patience for stories; preferring more useful information-gathering instead. But if imagination and storytelling are de-prioritized, or viewed as a tool "ready at hand" to be used as a form of amusement or entertainment, would this not impoverish the possibilities of imagination to create real meaning in our lives? hmmm.. 

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Aliza Salario had a wonderful post on Elif Batuman's "how to make our lives more like the books we cherish" and why literature matters here. And the the glorious mural express (臥遊) here.

 

a vase filled with perfumes (proust & the king of bhutan)

  'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes--Proust

How Proust Can Change Your Life. Proust's brother was a successful businessman. He was also a respected family man, an athlete and a leader in his community. In a nutshell, he was everything Proust was not. For Proust could hardly get out of bed. Unable to hold down a job, he had chronic poor health and most probably never had a successful love affair in his entire life. De Botton, however, in his book is very persuasive when he tells us not to be too quick to think it was Proust's handsome and wealthy brother who had the better lot. For de Botton suggests that despite all his brother's worldly, social and romantic successes, Proust had something far more closely linked to human happiness: Proust really looked at things.

In an unforgettable scene in the book, De Botton describes the way Proust could be utterly captivated by the vision of pollen scattering in the wind, as seen from an open window. Or how returning from a journey to Marseille, he was unable to climb the stairs to his room-- so afflicted was he by altitude sickness --from what could only have been about a 400 feet difference in elevation! And De Botton asks, what is better? To go through life a huge success in practical issues but be totally unable to notice the beauty of pollen scattering outside your window or to rarely get out of bed but feel every inch in elevation when you do?

Make no mistake about it. De Botton believes we have much to learn from Proust in how to live our lives (as lives lived). For Proust knew how to stop and smell the roses. Proust's brother, Robert, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who could be run over by a ton of coal and hardly even notice, and de Botton suggests that "Robert could have traveled from Everest to Jericho and taken little note of an altitude change." De Botton's argument I suppose is based on the hypothesis that being able to be moved by things is somehow connected to human happiness. Those times when we stop and are moved by something are certainly the things we remember, at least.

**

Have you heard of the King of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness project? It started as an offhand comment but was based on the idea that government can --and should-- do something that will serve to back up values that contribute to human happiness. And that this should be the ultimate indication of governmental achievement. Grounded in Buddhism, the King's gross national happiness initiatve seeks to cultivate values thought to contribute to happiness or spiritual/psychological well being, cultural preservation and ecological sustainability as an indicator of a country's success.

A recent TED talk saw statistician Nic Marks taking up this idea to put together his own Happy Nation Index. No one will be surprised, given the high priority environmental impact is given, to see that the US has the lowest happiness rating of all developed countries by far. And interestingly, Costa Rica comes out to be the happiest place on earth.

Nic Marks: The Happy Planet Index

No matter what you think of the ratings, there is something interesting that Marks has to say. He believes that there are 5 things that statistically are shown to increase a person's happiness. Here they are as quoted in My Heart's in Accra:

What are the five things you should do every day to be happier? Marks and his colleagues did a study for the UK government to try to determine this. The first “secret to happiness” is connection to other people. Second, be active – go for a walk or turn on the radio and dance. Third, take notice of what’s around you – the seasons changing, the world around you. Fourth, keep learning – lifetime learning has a strong link to health in the elderly. This doesn’t need to be formal learning – it can be cooking a new dish or playing an instrument. Finally, give – we feel good when we give. Give two groups $100 – the people who spend money on others, rather than on themselves, feel much better at the end of the day.

It's all basic stuff, but it bears repeating since I truly believe that these five things are just about the best practical advice a person could take to becoming happier.

And notice number three.

Many of you will remember our conversations here concerning Confucian Virture as "Really Looking." 徳→　"straight" （直）＋　heart/mind"（心）　＋　"go"（行）
Perhaps you will recall that I tried to argue that, virtue--rather than being some kind of internal inward-looking (where outer actions are aimed to be harmonious with internalized moral convictions) that in fact, virtue should always be based firmly on-- indeed, it demands-- a kind of "other-focused" aesthetic seeing. And, that the biggest danger we have in our ethical lives is a lack of vision.

Heidegger too warns us against this kind of banality (or habitus)- at the same time as a friend emails to remind me that it is the lack of vision that is our undoing (ie "dasein only understands itself in the LIGHT of possibility").

Engaged, embodied seeing...Interestingly, it is something shared by both Heidegger's existentialist concept of "care" (maybe gotten from Kierkegaard's "truth which cannot be objectified but only experienced in relationshp") and Confucian ethics (authentic being found in our everyday relationships).

Re-reading Dante's Divine Comedy, it is astounding the number of references to seeing that occur: 

Splendour of God, whereby these eyes beheld Thy true realm's triumph, grant me power to say How that exalted ... "And as these eyelids drank unto the brim" ...

"I gaze," "my eyes beheld," "these eyes drink," "my eyes," "eyelids drink," "my vision fails," "my visions" "to behold"-- the references could go on and on, for Dante, to see is to hear and to see is to drink; to be nourished and to know. Reading Dante, I feel that his epistemology is not unlike that of Master Wang, whereby knowing is looking:

This is a rejection of knowledge ex nihilo with a strong emphasis on inter-relational and intersubjective knowing. Knowing as doing. Doing as being. Yes, the view out our window as we are in the act of looking

In a world where eyes drink and hearts breath, Proust did indeed have some important things to say about living life, I think. For he was right to see the challenge as being bound up in Time. And Proust concluded that, an hour is not merely an hour but rather is "a vase filled with perfumes, sounds, places and climates! . . . So we hold within us a treasure of impressions, clustered in small knots, each with a flavor of its own, formed from our own experiences, that become certain moments of our past." 

BBC's Start of the Week did an unforgettable show last spring with David Eagleman on his book Sum: 40 Tales of Afterlives, and of the many wondrous scenerios of possible afterlives, one in particualr caught my attention. It was of an afterlife whereby a person was made to dwell for eternity in their favorite memory. This is so very Proustian, don't you think? What are the memories that illuminate a person? How we occupy actual time is what gives meaning to our lives via our memories and so this idea of having a heart's occupation comes to hold center stage in this world where time, meaning and vision come together. (Proust was vehemently opposted to idleness, Philistinism and amusement, or anything leading to numbness or the killing time).

Right now,I am reading Pamuk's Museum of Innocence. And, the book starts out describing the happiest moment in the narrator's life-- the moment he and his beloved first made love in the Merhamet Apartment. It was-- the narrator says-- the most perfect and joyeous moment of his life. David Eagleman, however, on BBC suggested that most people would not choose a love affair as their one eternal moment for most people would prefer to dwell in something less intense and more pleasantly banal--like sitting on a bench with their best friend in a garden.

I wonder....

I know, for myself, if I had to choose a moment to dwell in for the rest of my life, it would be a very vividly happy and unforgettable memory of mine of being on a boat going from Lantau to Hong Kong with my son. He was just one years old and everything delighted him--nothing more than that boat trip. And each time we did it, at that precise moment the boat would swing into Victoria Harbour and all of Hong Kong island would unfold before his eyes, Adonis would clasp his hands and point and say "pretty!" And it was, indeed, all very pretty.

To me, this will perhaps always be my perfect moment. The moment that I would gladly spend an eternity living over and over again. The view out the window.

  

 

A Dream Within a Dream (Adonis Conducts Bruckner)

It came to him in a dream one late summer night in 1881. The master dreamt that a friend paid him a visit and whistling a tune told him, "This music will bring you great success."

Waking, he immediately wrote down what he had heard in his dream-- the opening musical theme of what was to become the his greatest popular success, Symphony No 7. 

A dream within a dream. One of my facebook associates says he loves the way the 1st movement of the Bruckner's symphony unfolds right from the beginning. But, he says, the conductor has to handle it right to get the maximum effect.

**

Only a few days before the performance, we had managed to get our favorite seats in the Disney Concert Hall (which remains my favorite piece of architecture in the entire city). And, just like last time, as soon as Adonis saw our seats up in the nose-bleed section, on the side directly facing the conductor and first violin, he smiled happily. And stripping down to his tank top, he demanded his conductor's baton. Before the Bruckner symphony, the Philharmonic played Mozart Symphony No 34. With the notable exception of Eine Kleine, the Kid is just not a Mozart man. He, therefore, not surprisingly, sat through it like me in Church-- inevitably underwhelmed.

After the intermission, we returned to our seats. He didn't immediately demand his baton, so I suppose he was still annoyed about Mozart (this being, no doubt, another bad habit he has picked up from his father).

By this time the stage was jam-packed with musicians. Bruckner's symphony No 7 is HUGE on so many levels, not least the sheer number of musicians.

Pointing to the the cymbal and triangle, I told Adonis: "Just one note, that's all they play"

He looked over at the two musicians seated in chairs in front of their instruments in disbelief and said, "What if they fall asleep and miss their only notes?"  

It is such a long piece of music, and I was worried about how he would do. But, in fact, the music completely held his interest and attention. Adonis conducted in his seat from start to finish. As my dear associate said, so much depends on the conductor. And Escehnbach is a master. Watching Adonis watch Eschenbach, I was deeply impressed by the precision of the conducting-- the way Eschenbach so precisely managed the orchestra so as to draw out just the right sound-- the sound HE imagined-- like he was bringing to life his own personal dream of the music.

Large-scale, unending repetitions of a myriad variations of that first opening theme, the length and power is not unlike Beethoven; and yet Brucker's symphony unfolds so much less urgently, doesn't it? Indeed, parts of it evoke a feeling of timelessness almost reminsicent of a long performance of gamelan. And, yet, this is no eternal recurrance of the same-same, is it? As the music does categorically move teleologically forward through time, triumphantly, like Beethoven.

**

And speaking of Beethoven, I am reading a very interesting article right now by Stanford Professor of Musicology, Stephen Hinton about Beethoven's Ode to Joy (pdf here).

O Freunde, nicht diese Toene!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freundenvollere!

O friends! Not these sounds!
But let us strike up more pleasant sounds and more joyful!

Debated and re-interpreted for generations, Stephen Hinton takes up the question as to what sounds Beethoven is referring. O friends! Not these sounds! Hinton asks, What sounds? Wagner opinion, I guess is the one most popularly-held; that Beethoven is negating the immediately proceeding crashing opening-- the infamous  "horror fanfan"-- in order to make way for the pure beauty of the human voice of the choral part that follows. 

Nietzsche, of course, saw things differently.

Hinton, however, steps back and asks this question: at that point in history-- that is to a late 18th century philosopher or aesthetician-- what was the opposite of being "pleasant"?  Was the opposite of pleasant "unpleasant"?

We will never know what Beethoven wanted to say by "more pleasant sounds" and "more joy," but Hinton in his discussion brings out a very interesting hypothesis that during the late 18th century (for Kant, for example),  the opposite of pleasant, rather than being unpleasant was the distinctly German concept of kultur. Hinton calls this "cultured," but what was even meant by that, I wonder. I will have to email our man in Vaud to see what he thinks, but for now, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the German concept kultur does not necessarily map on to the English word culture, but rather it is a closer match for being civilized or even a stand-in word for civilization itself; that is, the highest intellectual and artistic achievements of a particular culture or civilization. 

This is probably something that is in the process of breaking down in our own time where cultural pursuits are becoming more and more like another form of amusement (see this on philistinism)-- but yes, it is fascinating that Beethoven would couch in the most elaborate and elegant "flower of civilization:" German Enlightenemnet music, this call to return to a more "pleasant" sound.

Hence, it is both a philosophical and religious vision that above and beyond the particular achievements of particular civilizations is the unadorned joy of universal brotherhood.

Joy, beautiful spark of gods
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, your sanctuary!
Your magic binds again
What custom strictly divided.
All men become brothers,
Where your gentle wing rests

By this time, of course, in the music we have ascended into the starry sky above and are somewhere on the outskirts of Heaven.

Leonard Bernstein's dream of the Ode to Joy has-- for whatever-- reason always been one of my favorites. And, he once remarked that the music of the Ode to Joy is perhaps the closest that music has ever come to true universality. I guess it is easy to see why the EU would have chosen it as the European Anthem. To stress common humanity as above and beyond the achievements of particular cultures in a way that does not seek to undermine or homogenize would, I think, sum up the EU project. **

Anyway, I think the Readers of these Pages will be relieved to hear that our musicians did not miss their climactic notes. Really, in what is one of the world's great, loooong symphonies, the two musicians (cymbalist and triangle) sat there waiting and waiting and waiting.

Very still, with perfectly straight posture, I thought they were not unlike the way people sit in Tea Ceremony. And watching them I found them to be as arrestingly beautiful as the music. Indeed, I envied them their disciplined and focused, very calm way of attentatively waiting. 

 Waiting for the Moment

**

Leonard Berstein below, but first: two more tea ceremony videos, one by candlelight (something I never had the chance to participate in) and Sazae-san: Tarachan learns tea ceremony

 

A thousand years imagining paradise

I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise-- Ezra Pound

The winds of paradise-- surely they are musical, floral, and exqusitely fragrant. 

They say, Cleopatra herself lived in a cloud of incense and in a dream of purple.  Perfumed in Frankiscence, myrrh, lotus, sandalwood, and rose water... she traveled the Nile on a boat with purple sails so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them …

Surely the winds of paradise are like that--perfumed and love-sick. And closing my eyes and taking a deep breath of the fragrance. I am immediately transported.

Paradiso.

I've long wondered, why it is that everyone prefers Dante's Purgatorio to his Paradiso?

Am I the only one who-- while utterly unable to imagine hell-- often finds myself lost in dreams of paradise?

Like a Persian garden, I imagine the fragrance of roses, jasmine and gardenias intoxicates. There is music, gently perfumed breezes and unending picnics. My Adonis flies a kite as philosophers wander nearby discussing Aristotle with my friend Señor Borges. As they talk, they are looking for the name of God in the pattern of the rose petals. They are just close enough to hear-- just close enough to be able to join in in the conversation too. The great Sam Hamill is there reciting poems from Almost Paradise as Tullio draws maps of imaginary worlds in black ink.

Averroes and Avicenna are there. Izumi Shikibu and Lady Rokujo are also there debating with each other in the most charming way-- as are all Genji's lovers. But so too is Beatrice and Hannah Arendt (Heidegger, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear, didn't make it this far). My lover the Emperor sits not too faraway (while the object of my affection sits closer still). The philosophers speak in all the great languages that could once be heard in the teeming markets of Chang'an. 

And, of course, Anna Karenina and her Beloved the Count sit cuddling under a great Chinar tree. 

Picnics that never end include Persian yogurts and every type of biryani; the finest oolong tea, like champagne, from the misty mountains of Formosa, or green tea served in heirloom teabowls by Tea Masters with long lineages. The tea is served with beautiful sweets from my favorite shop in the Province of the Clouds faraway-- everything the verdant color of new grass. There is Japanese chocolate and dimsum from Hongkong so delicious I brush away tears of delight. The 豆腐花 so divine-- well, I know that I must be in Paradise....And pizza, in a garden with a view.

In the distance, a great ziggurat rises toward the shimmering blue sky. Containing every book ever written, it stands as a place of great possibility.Beijing is there with Borges writing his books. I rarely  go there. For I prefer my unending picnicking under the Chinar trees listening to the sound of flowing water. A book of poems, by Conrad Roth, lies there on the blanket-- just within reach. Icarus he writes,

the wind sang in his wings,
and his wings wandered
and wended their wanton way to the sun—

It's not just Icarus either, for everyone is wearing wings--rainbow wings.

There are long tunnels covered in wisteria-- white, yellow and purple... They remind me of the covered walkways at the Summer Palace outside Beijing that I have read about. Long covered walkways which the Dowager Empress in Qing China would walk for her exercise-- sometimes reading a book as she walked along. Long, shady flower tunnels-- all leading toward ancient wisteria trees, which one could circumnambulate like Mount Kailash, before choosing one of five other flower tunnels each leading in a different direction to travel down. 

I am, however, still lazily sitting on a large quilt with a friend who has a giant pink peony tucked behind his ear. He is urging me to try another sweet as music from a harpsichord draws my attention toward the towering mountains in the distance. There, I see the two little children in their kimono with the wings as they alight from a colorful dragon boat on the river with the 10,000 curves. They begin slowly walking toward me.

Watching them, I recall that Makiko-- 10,000 miles away in Turfan-- is probably seeing paintings depicting the same birds of paradise on the walls of the Buddhist temple caves there.

The Buddhist bird of paradise is known in Sanskrit as Kavalinka (迦陵頻伽). It is the bird whose singing begins before it even hatches from its egg. Little voices of paradise, their song was thought to be so beautiful, they were likened to angels.

Angels, arias and manicured gardens being common to most people's ideas of paradise....

On the other side of the river of lights is the Double Greeting Wanton Shop with its $10 prostitutes and BBQ pork. You can take a number at the counter and have your fortune told in the back. The Ambassador is there, sitting with Professor Wang. Splitting a piece of Hungarian cheesecake, they are waiting their turn, happy.

In Dante's Paradise--there is no concept of enlightenment. The soul is not a resource and people do not aim for detachment or perfection of any kind. All that is required is love and hope. That's it. Faith and Fidelity are just other names for it.

And in this place of perfect paradise where poetry has been resurrected, being beautific is an intellectual occupation.

Kant would be displeased, not doubt, but in the realm of souls, reality is nothing but thought and spirit. And this, then, becomes the definition of inner freedom. For the burning hot Medieval heart; true love, true play, and any true heart's occupation (whether according to Kierkegaard or Proust or even Plato) will --no matter what-- be an end in and of itself. Souls being guided by their metaphysical pursuit of the Good/God ---generate a reality that necessarily determines itself (rather than being externally or causally generated). Along with kant, Hume too doesn't have a keg to stand on.  

So, then, in addition to unending picnics, I imagine there is also an exquisite calendar of ceremonies, where just like in the world of Genji, sutras are read, incense is burned and dances performed by little children in wings-- not because anything will come of it, but merely because it is beautiful and therefore Good.

Paradise like a perfect picture-- just as Lady Murasaki described. A vase filled with perfumes

   

In Praise of Heroes not Saying Stupid Things

-- In Carthage (from the Peony Archives)

Standing beside the large window that overlooked the harbor, they stood silently watching the sea. She stood just behind her lover, trying to gaze out in the same direction in which he was silently staring. His gaze, sang the poet, so faraway that, 

his lips were immobile
like a seashell where the roar is hidden, and the horizon
in his goblet was still.

It was warm and she could feel the sunlight streaming in from the window. Flinging off her shawl, she stood dressed from head to toe in the luxurious purple robes that had made her ancestors so rich that they could send their daughters out across the sea to establish Kingdoms of their own.

A Queen, she stood in a cloud of perfume. Jasmine and sandalwood, frankincense and lemons-- she walked in bare feet over carpets covered in rose petals. Yet, it was the smell of the sea which lingered so undeniably.

Trying to follow his eyes out toward the horizon where he was looking, no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn't see past the intense glare of the sun shining off the water.

The Poet sang of what happened next-- of the Queen, whose

love
was just a fish—perhaps which might
plunge into the sea in the pursuit of the ship,
and knifing the waves with the supple body,
perhaps yet overtake him—but he,
he in this thoughts already strode upon the land.
And the sea became a sea of tears.
But, as one knows, precisely at the moment
of despair, the auspicious wind begins to blow.

And the great man left Carthage.  

And thereafter history has questioned whether he really was all that.

Cut him some slack

my friend, Conrad-- an expert in these matters--once remarked,

is it that we have become so Greek that we are no longer able to understand the Romans?

I mean, I guess you could say, he really had to do his duty, right? Pious Aeneus.

Or, is it that we are no longer able to really daydream? For the Queen, walking in a cloud of fragrant dreams was not really thinking clearly, was she? As Conrad teases:

While Dido in a Bed of Fire,
A new-found way to cool desire,
Lay wrapt in smoke, half Cole, half Dido,
Too late repenting Crime Libido

In complete disgust, Conrad's friend the Count had called him "a sod and a wet blanket," suggesting that, "Dido must have really killed herself because she wouldn't believe that she fell for that???"

Indeed, in her distress

She stood before the bonfire, which her soldiers
had kindled by the city walls,
and she envisioned between the flame and smoke of the fire
how Carthage silently crumbled
ages before Cato’s prophecy

Dreyfus seems to think likewise, complaining that the real nail in the coffin was not only did he say, "Honey, I've got bigger fish to fry," but that he had to gone on and add "but even if I didn't have to obey Zeus and leave, I still wouldn't stay with you as in truth I would probably choose to go back to Troy if I could...." Couldn't he have let her down a little more gently, really?

This is what just baffled Dreyfus, who suggests that, it's hard not to dislike him really.

The Count was similarly annoyed with the invocation of Zeus... for as he remarked :

 Zeus has nothing to do with it. This is the sod part.(And it can be admirable: look at Odysseus, who is always, always, in every instance, the better man. Baby, he says to Calypso, you are everything a man would ever wish, but I love another. Calypso hates it, and can’t come to terms with it for seven long years. But in the end she does. And she does because at least she knows she is not being lied to, made a fool of, cheated. Usually — sometimes — even a woman spurned can admire character in a man).

I tend to agree. Character is everything-- and Aeneas was no Odysseus, that's for sure. Really, is it any wonder that Dido lamented? But as I suggested to Caesar this morning, as the philosophers suggest, fate is probably nothing more than a person's character and their chosen path. Yet, "chosen" is probably itself ambiguous as it doesn't necessarily mean "to choose" does it? As in fact, in the end what is a person's fate but one's charater plus the world one is thrown in? Look at Aeneas. Did he choose what he wanted to do or did he merely do what was felt necessary given the man he was and the world he was embedded? 

Amor Fati, whispered Nietzsche.

A man with a mission, and yet, I just cannot help-- in praise of daydreaming; in praise of desire; in praise of heroes not saying stupid things-- to side with the Queen.

**

Below Joseph Brodsky's Dido and Aeneas is the from BBC's Vanity Fair. Rebecca Sharp's dazzling rendition of Dido's Lament:

DIDO AND AENEAS, by Joseph Brodsky

The great man stared through the window
but her entire world ended with the border
of his broad Greek tunic, whose abundant folds
resembled the sea on hold.
And he still stared out through the window, and his gaze
was so far away from here, that his lips were immobile
like a seashell where the roar is hidden, and the horizon
in his goblet was still.

But her love
was just a fish—perhaps which might
plunge into the sea in the pursuit of the ship,
and knifing the waves with the supple body,
perhaps yet overtake him—but he,
he in this thoughts already strode upon the land.
And the sea became a sea of tears.
But, as one knows, precisely at the moment
of despair, the auspicious wind begins to blow.
And the great man left Carthage.
She stood before the bonfire, which her soldiers
had kindled by the city walls,
and she envisioned between the flame and smoke of the fire
how Carthage silently crumbled
ages before Cato’s prophecy.

 

 

 

under a flame tree (with you & confucius)

 

The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own --Goethe

Many of the Readers of these Pages will remember how I love to be surprised by mountains. It is probably mainly because I am from the desert-- and in the dry desert air of Los Angeles, the mountains never move. They are ever present-- standing in allurement. Similarly up in the very high plateau of the Himalaya, where the air is crystal clear and it’s quite simply too high up to rain or snow, so too are the mountains always visible, beckening.

In contrast-- here in Japan, where they are often hidden behind clouds, mist and haze, you could forget the mountains are even there for a great part of the year. On particularly clear days however-- like yesterday--- suddenly you are taken completely aback. Wow! Was that mountain always there?

Well, I love that. I love being surprised by mountains. Or being rained on by flowers-- flame trees and sakura. Happy spring.

*

I have been re-reading Mark Lilla's superb article--written in 1999 for the NYRB-- on the publication of the collected letters between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt (thanks Carl). Their correspondance is incomplete with over 3/4 of the letters written by Heidegger, still- as Lilla expertly points out--there is so much of interest in them. Probably more than anything in his article, I appreciated what was a very illuminating discussion of the concept of passionate thinking (where knowing is being or thinking as an end in itself?). It was this commitment to the life of the spirit, says Lilla, that served as the foundation for Heidegger and Arendt's unique and long-lasting friendship.

She called Heidegger a "hidden King"-- and without a doubt, it was his philosophy which drew her to him and it was also that which would create such strong ties as to be almost hard to really understand-- given the circumstances.

Lilla asks, "What does philosophy have to do with love?" and without skipping a beat answers:

"If Plato is to be believed, everything. While not all lovers are philosophers, all philosophers are, for him, lover-- indeed they are the only true lovers because they alone understand what lovers blindly seek."

I agree. And I also like to think of this spiritual place in which love and passionate thinking come together to create bonds between people. This "intellectual passion" perhaps is more than anything pure Hannah Arendt:

"What was experienced was that thinking as pure activity-- and this means impelled neither by the thirst for knowledge nor the drive for cognition-- can become a passion which not so much rules and oppresses all other capacities and gifts, as it orders them and prevails through them. We are so accustomed to the old opposition of reason versus passion, spirit versus life, that the idea of passionate thinking, in which thinking and aliveness become one, takes us somewhat aback."

"Thinking" as an end in itself; "thinking" as passion and life-invigorating-- that this could form the most extraordinary kinds of bonds between people should come as no surprise. And yet, in today's world, maybe it does come as a surprise (so accustomed are we for searching out emotional intimacy based on emotional intimacy...?) What do you think?

Still, no matter how much one may understand the basis of their friendship, that it survived the realities of Heidegger's turn to Nazism is not as easy to grasp, it it? For it has become clear that he was in fact an active participant (and not just swept along with the tide of the times in Germany). Jaspers cut off ties for years with "the King," but Arendt-- for whatever reason-- remained loyal to him in many ways right till the very end of her life.

Heidegger was not the only Nazi with a Jewish lover.

In January, I received a comment from Ken Thomas to my old Hannah Arendt post which included the detail that the infamous Nazi "architect" Eichmann also had a Jewish lover. It is something that has stuck in my mind for months. How do such moral blindspots come about? (Namit emails me this morning to say, "people compartmentalize.")

Many of you will remember our conversations here and here concerning Confucian Virture as "Really Looking." Perhaps you will recall that I tried to argue that, rather than being some kind of internal inward-looking (where outer actions are aimed to be harmonious with internalized moral convictions) that in fact, virtue should always be based firmly on-- indeed, it demands-- a kind of "other-focused" aesthetic seeing. I quote from Ken Thomas' comment here: 

What Arendt claimed-- which she underlines with the fact that Eichmann had a Jewish lover-- was that Eichman was incapable of "seeing things from the other person's point of view"-- of imagining what it was like-- of putting himself into another's mind or experience-- a capacity necessary for political action and the existence of the political realm itself. He-- his flaw, perhaps a modern flaw, or the consequence of totalarianism, or (this is not Arendt:) just a vicissitude of history-- was the banality of his lack of vision, his self-ishness, the cognitive flaw that meant he could not think in a particular way--

The banality of his lack of vision.

Interestingly, Heidegger too warns us against this kind of banality (or habitus). A friend reminds me hat it is the lack of vision that is our undoing (ie "dasein only understands itself in the LIGHT of possibility").

For whatever reason, it seems to me that human ethics require this kind of Other-oriented vision or Other-looking. Heidegger-- ironically-- called for the same thing when he posited that ethical action needs to be based on embodied temporality-- otherwise the dangers of "selective seeing"  (totalitarianism or blindspots in our vision) would be inevitable.

Engaged, embodied seeing...Interestingly, it is something shared by both Heidegger's existentialist concept of "care" (maybe gotten from Kierkegaard's "truth which cannot be objectified but only experienced in relationshp") and Confucian ethics (authentic being found in our everyday relationships).

**

At this point, I turned to the great Gialbo for help. And, he sent along a very interesting paper written by Chenyang Li in which Li argues that the foundation of Confucian normative action as jen 仁 is nothing but a commitment to "caring" 愛 for Other. And, just like with Heidegger, "other" is not just any other (or a universal other); nor is it an other with whom one enters a kind of contract (of mutual benefit, etc.) but rather it is a commitment to caring for those other people who come into our lives. Parents and children, neighbors, friends-- basically all the people who crash into us. (And, I would like to posit that if there is emotion, then this can be a "virtual embodiment" as well). 

In Confucian normative ethics, then, this concept of "care" is mapped on to  jen 仁, however, this is unfortunate as  jen 仁 is signifying more the person who has achieved "care," whereby care is  愛 (love, affection→ care) for Significant Other-- and again, I cannot stress enough, from Heidegger to the Feminist philosophers who made the ethics of care famous to the Confucian philosophers, this Other was not those people we pick and choose but rather treating with care those people who are part of our world. (and it is "the world that decides," he says).

The ethics of care, then, stands in very direct contrast to Kantian and utilitarian ethics. As Li points out, while the Confucians saw this in filial piety, the feminists saw this in a mother's love for a child:

"Relations between mothers and children should be thought of as primary, and the sort of human relation all other human relations should resemble or reflect." --Virginia Held

And with this idea, I enter a beautiful garden.

I have been reading-- and have been overwhelmed by-- Robert Harrison's book, Gardens and the Human Condition. The book significantly (to me) starts off with a chapter titled, "The Vocation of Care." 

If the perfection of human happiness is glimpsed in the vision of an exquisite garden-- if paradise is a garden, which of course I am sure it is-- then what is required of us more than care? Care as feeling (significance) and care as embodied cultivation. I had never thought about this before reading his book, but Harrison's words in fact echoed deeply within my heart: for no matter what kind of garden-- no matter how fertile the soil may be-- in the end, the cultivation of a garden requires one to be committed to giving more than they receive. Indeed, most successful endeavors in life-- even things like writing a book, or a love affair, marriage; true friendship, or philosophy; all kinds of passionate thinking-- I think (actually, I am sure) that all these things have a similar commitment of giving more than you expect to receive. The cultivation is an end in itself-- the flowers being perhaps just a reward....That is to say, I realized "last night as I was sleeping" that it is Ithaka itself which is the garden.

 

Top painting "Going Home" by Le Thanh Son and one of my favorite images of paradise-- again-- below.

persian picnics and other elegant pastimes (春山淡治而如笑)

 -the vernal equinox 春分

Some say Nowruz, or Persian New Year, is a holiday that goes back 2,500 years. Seems impossible, but everyone agrees it is one of the world's oldest celebrations-- a celebration which continues to be one of the most looked-forward to events in the Persian calendar. 

Part of the festivities include a picnic-- hopefully with a fire. Persians love their picnics-- as this devotion to picnics can be seen across the vast expanse of what was once the Great Persian Empire. From Turkey, Afghanistan, Central Asia to Kashmir-- even in Tehrangeles, in the more elegant part of LA-- people picnic around the vernal equinox. 

It is a civilized pastime, very much like cherry-blossom viewing-- a day to relax and dream of paradise-- enjoying both the company and  spring itself-- the birds, the clouds, the sunshine, and more than anything the flowers.

And, why is it that everything tastes better outdoors?

I was indoctrinated into picnics long before I came to Japan (by a Persian best friend back home). It is a custom which I have carried with me to Japan-- where, of course, it fits like a glove.

So, every year we celebrate the vernal equinox by picnicking. And, in my heart, this will always be the real New Year.

Like clockwork, the ducks and egrets return to the Uzumagawa River and specks of green start sprouting in the lawn-- yes, the return of life and the start of a new year. I cannot help but start imagining all the picnics and flower-viewing-- and somehow everything seems so filled with possibility.

 

The Kid and I usually start taking to the mountains just before the equinox to go "baby fern hunting."  Called "zenmai" 薇 you know how they are like little coiled springs waiting till it gets to be just the right time to unfurl?

They are so cute and adorable. I read once that ferns used to cover prehistoric forests... so maybe they're very old like dinosaurs? Can you imagine wandering in never-ending forests of ferns as huge, prehistoric dinosaur birds soared in the skies above?

There is an expression used in haiku poetry composition around this time of year: "Mountains smiling in early spring" Borrowed like so many other things from China, the painter who coined this phrase, the Northern Song painter and Literati great, Guo Xi, is most famous for his work titled Early Spring. His poem about mountains smiling appeared in an poetry anthology in Japanese known as  漢詩集 「臥遊録」 (yes, that's right, the Han Anthology Dream Journey Jottings)

春山淡治而如笑
夏山蒼翠而如滴
秋山明浄而如粧
冬山惨淡而如眠　

Mountains smiling in early spring was a theme much appreciated at court-- even during my beloved's times-- which came about 100 years after the painter wrote his legendary poem. Imagine after what must have felt like an almost unendingly long period of cold and depressing "mountains sleeping," the mountains in March would seem to almost "spring" to life again.

First, came the slow but sure return of green. Followed by a splash of color here and there: plum, robai, and finally sakura. And, so people would take to the hills....

This was also after all the best season for a love affair (for of course, we all know everything is always dashed to hell by mid-Fall so it's better to get started early, right? )

In China, people travel back to their hometowns around this time of year for qing ming to sweep the tombs of their ancestors and celebrate the return of spring-- very much like Japanese O-bon. There is also a custom of eating outdoors to celebrate spring.Some scholars see the Japanese cherry blossom-viewing custom having its roots in qing ming --as a day of family communion (between the living and the dead), picnics (celebrating spring) and purification. Ideally, one picnics on top of a hill and purified oneself in a river (to wash away in bad deeds or bad luck). There are probably poems about friends climbing hilltops （踏青）or maybe about picking mountain herbs　(山菜摘み）...

It was this idea, of "stepping on blue" （踏青→ getting out and walking in nature）, along with the Japanese idea of the gods of the fields returning from their long slumber around this time of year that are most deeply connected to Japanese sensibilities surrounding cherry blossom viewing.

And, it's almost that time again.

**

 Shalimar Garden; one of Srinagar's three famous "gardens of love," one the most memorable picnic I ever had in my life took place in the shade of one the garden's many chinar trees. Beautiful tulips were planted alongside the many fountains, and families sat in the pavilions as what seemed like an army of newleyweds strolled across the grass....Sultan's wife had prepared a true Persian picnic of pollo rice and yogurt, kebabs and tea served in glasses. Although nearly 20 years have passed since then, I will never forget it. She had brought the most beautiful tomatoes I have ever seen and we laughed and talked about the flowers and all the future children we would have.

To sit in the warm sunshine in a cool garden surrounded by the sounds of flowing water and laughing children truly is the perfect pastime for a spring day. I only wish I could go back in time and somehow insert my son right smack in the middle of the memory. Of course, he doesn't like kebabs, hates tomatoes and would have been really leery of the rice with nuts and fruit in it....Still, I think he could have really had fun in those fountains.

Persian New Year article in National Geographic: Persian New Year Transcends Religions, Regimes

 

in the mood (online)

Always in the mood (see part 1), I like to imagine the way that Nietzsche stepped out into the dark velvety Venice night. Surrounded by the sound and smell of water, a mood overcomes him like a song:

My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness. 

And he asks, Did anyone listen to it? In this way the philosopher is asking, is not anyone else "tuned in" to this mood of Venice?

I think it is obvious to most people that cities or places have moods. And that arriving in a new city, the mood of the place will be felt to us if we are attuned to it. Venice-- like water and velvet; Vietnam like the sound of a flower blossoming-- we can feel the underlying values of being, time, and place in part through mood. Indeed, this is how Heidegger said we experience our being in the world as existing in place and in time (da sein= being there; being in).

What happens, then, to our ability to be attuned to mood when we go online? (An important question as more and more us are inevitably interacting with the world via our software.)

**

As I have mentioned here again and again, he is a man who lectures on Heidegger like he is composing Persian love poetry. And, it is to this man's work that I have remained devoted to for some 20 years.

Almost everything Dreyfus says somehow rings true to me. Yet, reading and thinking about his take on this question about meaning in the age of the internet, I think I perhaps dis-agree with him. It must be a first. In fact, though, I felt a mild intuitive doubt reading his earlier essay, Kierkegaard on the Internet, but it was with his more recent article Faking it, that I finally figured out what was bothering me.

In the article, Dreyfus starts off with Pascal's famous expression of existentialist anxiety:

The drawbacks of our own world are obvious. We are bounded by fallible individual and group perspectives, experience physical and mental suffering, and sense the vulnerability of all we care about. We can try heroically to confront the world we are thrown into, face up to our situation, and struggle to live in a way that accepts and incorporates our vulnerability without despair. But as the 17th-century existential philosopher Blaise Pascal pointed out: "Men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, [so] they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all." Pascal calls this escapist approach "diversion" and gives as examples of diversions billiards, tennis, gambling, and hunting.

According to Dreyfus-- and I agree-- rather than face the risks and anxiety head on, in general people prefer to divert their attention. That is, they placate themselves with what German philosopher Wolfang Welsch calls our contemporary endless parade of amusements.

Fundamentally concerned about living a real and meaningful life-- and as my friend Paul insists, the two are connected-- Dreyfus is uncomfortable with a virtual 2nd life because it is at base a pleasurable diversion; that is, it lacks any real risk or deep commitment. In the essay about Kierkegaard, he is even more persuasive when he discusses the way that online, people are much more apt to cut and run when things take on risk. Or when in the cost benefit analysis, things seem inefficient. Online interactions,therefore, almost by definition lack the commitment of real life one's. And that is why they can be said to lack reality and meaning.

His second issue is concerning the issue of collectively felt moods-- again, see part 1. Here is Dreyfus:

Heidegger would point out that a minimally meaningful life requires sensitivity to the power of shared moods that give mattering to our world and unity and meaning to events. Indeed, focal occasions require a shared mood, as well as the sense of all who are present that they are sharing and contributing to that mood. This sharing creates a sense of a self-contained world.

The thing is, while I wholeheartedly agree with Dreyfus' worries, I am just not sure that mood depends as much on embodied know-how as Dreyfus believes. The Readers of These Pages will not be surprised to learn that I feel that mood (both personal and collective) is experienced fundamentally on the level of imagination. 

As Robert Harrison suggested:

"mood is a form of attunement between nature and spirit; between habitat and inhabitant" 

In this way, borrowing Nietzsche's image, if mood reverberates within us, like sound reverberating within the interior of a violin after it is bowed, it becomes embodied-- for as Sepp Gumbrecht suggests, in the same way that a violin will internally reverberate when bowed, mood is internalized in the sense that it becomes almost impossible to really differentiate between outer environment and inner self. Indeed, the two are inter-dependent.

For example, I have talked at great length in these pages about the way the mood of place can have such a tremendously deep and indelible impression on a person. But for me, so tied is this feeling of being moved by place to the workings of my inner world that some of these imaginable landscapes I have never  actually traveled to; they are, nonetheless, no less significant to me.  That is to say, some of the places that have most moved me are places I have never been to-- some are places I have only dreamt of. I mean, just thinking of Venice, the mood I feel about the place probably has more to do with Mann's Death in Venice then it does to my actual embodied experience there. Reading, for example, can serve in this way to light up our focal practices-- so why not dreaming or virtual experiencing?

Another way to approach this is to ask, when people change languages or cultural context, does their online behavior change? That is, to what extent do we bring our understanding of being with us online?

Is it that virtual interactions, because they inherently lack commitment or risk, that they fail or is it rather that due to the technology that those who already exist in an ontology where people are thought of as resources or that amusement is given a central place in life, that this will only be intensified? In other words, would the people spending time amusing themeselves on 2nd life otherwise be living deep and committed lives? Or would those who are seeking amusement, seek amusement online or off; and those who seek a risk-free environment be prone to that offline as well?

Just speaking from my own online experience--which is long and very extensive (since I work online as well as spend so much time interacting online) as well as is bilingual, I think I have found-- at least in my own case that ontological moods and approaches are carried straight along online so that:

For example, those who live in a technological understanding of beingwhere everything is viewed in terms of cost/benefit and efficiency, will manifest this even more intensely online. To say this another way, those who will not commit or cut ties online, in all probablty are just those kinds of people, I think, given their worldview and the technology and anonymity-- rather than causing this, only accentuates it.

Also, for example, in my very long and extensive Japanese online experience, I have never felt this same will to delete in Japanese. I am not on Jpse facebook, however, so I cannot say whether those in a Japanese envrionment would be quite so apt to say, "just un-friend him." But my Japanese virtual experience is very much characterized by trust and commitment; as well as sensibility or high responsiveness to mood. Hierarchical language too is carried over online so that if the commitment to formal hierarchical forms is avoided in real life, this is carried online and vice versa for those who use these forms, they continue to use them online.

It is not as if the technology someone frees us from moods that surround us.

Every online group or association has a kind of culture and mood, and that a mood can be experienced collectively online is very much in the realm of possibility-- because of course we are using language or images-- all things which have long transmitted human experience.

The boundless human proclivity and capacity to imagine-- I know, Our Man in Beijing and Our Man in Stanford would neither one of them approve to life online (in fact, I think persuading Dreyfus would be far easier). And yet, there you have it, because I do believe (based on my embodied and imagined experience) that true committed friendship, romance and meaning can and is found online as well as off.

Namit, I know what you're thinking!!!!!!! 

**

Stay tuned for Part 3 on mood and the rain

Artwork at the top by MW Nolden-- isn't it incredible?

L'Age d'Or, 1985
SX-70

view from a minaret

 

It was the view like from the top of a minaret. Like in my dream--  he had captured an angel's eye view, very much like that of a Persian miniature. Pure geometry drawn from the timeless perspective of God; the colors were like that: richly detailed and incredibly vibrant-- the shimmering and rich colors of Herat and Tabriz. Of Delhi seen from the top of a minaret.

Maya said, "symmetry and harmony are inseparable."

But I had just put flowers in a bizen vase and so had pleasing imperfections on my mind. My tea teacher had always urged for balance and harmony in assymetry (Wabi-sabi, etc). 

There are so many ways to see beauty.

And, so an artist attaches a camera to a kite. He tells me, it is a Japanese kite. Up, up and away... he gazes upon the world as beauty unfolds in front of his eyes like an illuminated manuscript

...of angels, parosols, tigers, tents, dragons and meloncholy princes, and in the process what he hinted at was this: There was a time when Allah looked upon the world in all its uniqueness, and believing in the beauty of what he saw; bequethed his creation to us, his servants. The duty of illustrators and of those who, loving art, gaze upon the world, is to remember the magnificence of what Allah beheld and left to us...

You recall Master Effendi in My Name is Red.

The Sultan's ambassador, Enishte Effendi finds himself in Venice. A renown miniaturist in the service of the Ottoman Court, he is utterly speechless when he sees his first Venetian-style Renaissance paintings. That is to say, the paintings completely boggle his mind.

What could they possibly mean, he wonders?

One painting in particular has him so disturbed he is unable to sleep. It is a portrait- done in the Renaissance style. It is not meant to present a timeless realm, or represent any deeper truths. It does not seek to embellish a tale or illuminate the perspective of God, but rather, he realizes, it is something which stands all on its own.

I learned from the Venetian gentleman who was giving me a tour through the palazzo that the portrait was of a friend, a nobleman like himself. He had included whatever was significant in his life in his portrait: In the background landscape visible from the open window there was a farm, a village and a blending of color which made a realistic-looking forest. Resting on the table before the nobleman were a clock, books, Time, Evil,  Life, a calligraphy pen, a map, a compass, boxes containing gold coins, bric-a-brac, odds and ends, inscrutable yet indistinguishable things that were probably included in many pictures, shadows of jinns and the Devil and also a picture of the man's stunningly beautiful daughter as she stood beside her father.

"What was the narrative that this representation was meant to embellish and complete? As I regarded the work, I slowly sensed that the underlying tale was the picture itself. The painting wasn't the extension of a story at all, it was something in its own right.

First, he was absolutely horrified-- just like Su Shi, he must have thought that

while even a child could produce a work of realistic likeness, that only a true scholar and a gentleman was able to create art of moral value; so that-- again-- even from within the confines of the city the viewer could be utterly transported.

To be utterly transported.

When Westerners first came into contact with Chinese painting, they--ironically-- found it childlike for it's lack of a fixed perspective. They actually considered these paintings to be technically lacking!

What they didn't understand was that not all art aimed at realistic likeness; indeed, there are many artistic projects which are aiming at something altogether different.

That was Enishte Effendi first reaction as well. And yet-- and yet!-- he found himself increasingly intrigued by the idea of representing individual people or horses or landscapes. Unable to get the idea out of his head, he thought, "I, too, wanted to be portrayed in this manner."

Telling his idea to Black, Black becomes intrigued as well. For you see, Black is himself deeply in love. And who wants a bird's eye view when you are in love?

Had I taken Shekure's portrait with me, rendered in the style of the Venetian masters, I wouldn't have felt such loss during my long travels when I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I'd left somewhere behind me. For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

**

Yesterday, looking at Nicolas Chorier's beautiful photographs-- windmills and Ottoman miniatures on my mind-- I remembered the ending of My Name is Red; written from the perspective of the hero's beloved, Shekure.

It seems all her life, she too had dreamt of having two paintings made. Like Master Effendi, she longed to have her portrait made in the style of the Europeans. Something in time. She did not seek to be painted as a Chinese beauty. No, she wanted a youthful portrait of herself --a painting of what she really looked like.

And the other painting?

Well, of course, she wanted a painting of perfect bliss. A painting of a mother with her son. She says: " I'd want the bird in the sky to be depicted as if flying, and at the same time, happily and eternally suspended there, in the style of the old masters of Herat who were able to stop time."

"I know it's not easy," she says to her son Orhan-- Orhan Pamuk, who then goes on to write the novel.

**

Photographs by Nicolas Chorier-- be sure to see his Uzbekistan gallery on his site. Also (BBC): India-- a Kite's Eye View

  

in the mood with heidegger

 

--from the peony archives

 Gondolas, lights, and music-- he insinuated that I was moody; telling me I do "a good imitation of a nut."  (Can you believe it?)

"That's good," I thought, recalling a poem about Venice written by Nietzsche. Robert Harrison, talking about the Philosophy of Moods, describes how Nietzsche-- a man of many moods-- once sang the poem in the middle of the night on a train from Turin back to Germany in a state of madness:

At the bridge of late
I stood in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music--
drunken it swam out into the twilight.

My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
--Did anyone listen to it?

Nietzsche in the mood.

Talking last time about the imagination, Bezdomny had remarked that, 

Trouble is we still live in an age of bread and circuses. Any real enchantment or imagination any of us may have will immediately be shot down as the ravings of a nutjob

The ravings of a nutjob-- don't you love it? But, nut-imitation skills-- or any imitation skills really!-- are not a bad thing to have, if you think about it. Remember how much pleasure Masetto had in Book Three of the Decameron? (Well, at least at first!) 

You remember,

 as the dawn was already changing from vermilion to orange, as the sun hasted to the horizon, the queen rose and roused all the company.

And carrying out her duty, she appointed Filostrato to be storyteller of the day. In those days, storytelling was important business and Filostrato took his job seriously-- telling the group about the young man, Masetto da Lamporecchio, who so pines for the lovely ladies of a nearby nunnery that he "feigns to be dumb" in order to obtain a gardener's position at the covent, whose women,

with one accord make haste to lie with him.

Listening to the story, who among the assembled ladies and gentlemen were not moved?

Why tell stories if no one is any longer capable of being moved by them, right? I have been spending a lot of time talking about imagination and storytelling, but, in the end perhaps what I am really trying to get at is this capacity to be engaged with life. That is, one's capacity of being moved by mood.

Being in the mood.

As I said here,

I know some of you may blame Peerless Helen. I mean, of course, all those dead Trojan soldiers for one thing. Virgil, too, I think came down hard on her. But, it's interesting to note that the ancients themselves had a more ambiguous understanding of Helen, whom they called, Peerless Among Women. For the ancients lived in great awe of the moods-- and so in one sense that great Mood that overcame Helen inspiring her--overcoming her--to run away with Paris, well by acting on it, was she not going with the Flow (it is hard in a sense to judge now because we cannot but help see it through Christian or even Roman terms, can we?) The above is pure Dreyfus-- but I like it.

And so, when my man Caesar called me moody, I asked him whether he thought that someone not prone to moods would be able to truly be moved by things? That is the question, is it not? If the strings are not pulled pretty tautly on the stringed instrument of our souls, nothing will revereberate within us. So, no, I don't think the opposite of "high strung" is laid back. I think the opposite is 鈍感= dull, insensitive, obtuse, flat.

This is much on my mind since I've been thinking of Heidegger and his concept of mood. For Heidegger, moods are very different from how we ordinarily think of them today. As Dreyfus explains

Until recently, if philosophers thought about moods or feelings at all, they thought of them as inner mental states. On this view, often called "Cartesian" after the French philosopher René Descartes, people are not really in a mood but moods are in people. A person's private feelings are expressed (made outer) by bodily movements, which can then be observed, interpreted, and responded to by another person through his or her movements.

For Heidegger, then, moods are not something inside a person but rather are something that a person can be in. That is, moods come over us; overcoming us. The German word famously reflects this, as  philosophers like to remind us that die Stimmung [stimmungen?] means mood in terms of atmosphere ("ambiance"). Often likened to music or to weather, Heideggerean mood wraps itself around our bodies. It is something that we unconsciously attune ourselves too. Indeed, it is one way we have to grasp the way the world discloses itself to us.

Robert Harrison explains it thus:

"mood is a form of attunement between nature and spirit; between habitat and inhabitant"

People are wrapped in mood. This is different from emotion, like anger or sadness, which has a cause. Mood is something more general that comes without cause from outside us-- like a song, calling. Hence, moodiness could be seen as a kind of sensitive attunement.

Nietzsche steps out into the dark Venice night. Surrounded by the sound and smell of water, a mood overcomes him like a song-- quivering across the surface of the water.

Gondolas, lights, and music--
drunken it swam out into the twilight.

And he asks, Did anyone listen?

It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or mood. Like the sound of jade reverberating off the walls of the great hall, the Confucian scholar just feels it-- this thing called virtue or proper conduct is something to which he attunes himself as embodied know-how guided by mood. And as Robert Harrison's guest, Sepp Gumbrecht suggests, in the same way that a violin will internally reverberate when bowed, this mood is internalized in the sense that it becomes almost impossible to really differentiate between outer environment and inner self as they are indeed inter-dependent.

Mood is how we situate ourselves in our circumstances sensitively. That different cultures across geography and time have emphasized or have sought to cultivate this sensibility to a greater or lesser degree is commonsensical. Sepp Gumbrecht holds up the ancient Greeks as one culture that placed great emphasis on cultivated sensibility (think of Helen of Troy). But we can also think of this in terms of cultivation in Confucian traditions. Confucian sensibility. 

And so as a Medieval lady in Japan is overcome by longing during the time of long June rains, far away in in Florence, a group of ladies and gentlemen gather around the fountain in the garden to tell tales. As Filostrato tells of the wondrous adventures of the young man Masetto in the convent of young ladies, those listens were envloped in a wondrous and intoxicating mood. And who among those present was not moved? 

And I leave you with Saburo Teshigawara's dance piece exploring stillness (danced to music by Gurdjieff).