Jim Willis

date unknown but probably pre 2001

I’ve just finished reading The Archivist by Martha Cooley and I think I liked it. Whether or not I really understood everything that was going on is an entirely different question. The novel deals with some pretty heavy duty issues and does so in a creative, artful way by framing all these disturbing stories in a story that was interesting enough to make you want to keep on plowing through.

By disturbing issues I mean: the holocaust, mental illness, involuntary commitment in institutions and the idea of faith and trust as it applies to Catholicism and Judaism. All this, wrapped up in a story line that revolves around TS Eliot, his wife, his mistress and a modern day poet who is interested in all of the above.

If you don’t already know you’ll find out early enough in the book that Eliot had his wife committed and totally abandoned her (some would say, for his newly (re)discovered Christianity). There is a movie about this called Tom and Viv. I saw it but don’t really remember it too much though I am sure that it helped me understand some of the novel’s more obtuse references to their married life.

There are a lot of characters in this book running around and finding out they came from Jewish families who renounced their faith and became Christians in order to escape the Holocaust. Thus, the multiple plots are sort of tied together with the question: how can an individual turn their back on so much pain and suffering and manage to go on living without being crippled by guilt? (Eliot turns back on wife, Christians and Jews turn their backs on Jews during WWII, and a few other examples played out in the novel that I don’t want to give away.)

It’s difficult for me to understand some of the issues raised in the novel because I was not around during WWII and I don’t really know what the general attitude was of Americans during that period. Was the mass extermination of Jews something that everyone knew about but nobody spoke of? That is the general impression I get from the book. It’s tough for me to comment on that without feeling a bit of guilt myself.

For example, I think of all the people suffering around the world wondering whether or not anything can be done to alleviate any or all of that suffering. Then, on top of that, instead of being grateful that I am not among the suffering, I have the audacity to get fed up while standing in a slow checkout line at the grocery store. Confusion abounds as usual.

But then you think of cases like the Eliots’ where he has his wife locked up and abandons her in part because she offends his faith or some bullshit like that and for a moment you think it’s a black and white issue: Eliot is clearly a self centered turd for doing such a thing. But maybe it did hurt him as much as it hurt Vivienne. Who knows?

While I hate to end on a gloomy note here (though the book is hardly an uplifting, feel-good page turner), I’ll sort of try to tie in the vibe that I got from the book with something I’ve been thinking about lately. I write in a journal pretty much every day and I occasionally find myself commenting on both the weather and my mood. Pretty banal crap for a diary as far as the pursuit of truth goes, but anyway. I think that trying to come to terms with guilt and faith and trust and religion is definitely an important goal but sometimes it seems a lot like the weather or my mood: It changes everyday but it’s always the same.

Haiku, by R.H. Blyth is a four-volume collection published in 1949. I don’t know all that much about Haiku and I know nothing at all about the author of this book other than that he (presumably he, though not necessarily) does a fantastic job explaining the nebulous network of traditions that gave rise to what can be called Haiku. 

To be fair, honest and etc., my original interest in the subject comes from Salinger. Apparently Seymour did these spectacular translations of haiku. There are probably better or more interesting reasons for being drawn to a subject area than by a fictitious, suicidal mystic. I just don’t have one. 

Anyway what interests me most as I work my way through this 422 page collection of Haiku and Haiku history and tradition are the connections between the spirit of Zen and the moment of enlightenment or satori that makes it possible for the poet to create haiku. I am uncertain if create is actually even the right word. It seems more like the haiku is always there but some moment of enlightenment some spark must occur which allows the poet to see the haiku and bring it into the world using words. 

While I’m not about to define the goal of poetry in general, it does seem that haiku permits us to understand at a very different level of understanding the meaning of something previously unexplained or ignored because it seemed too trivial for our attention. Blyth says: Haiku is the apprehension of a thing by a realization of our own original and essential unity with it, the word ‘realization’ having the literal meaning here of ‘making real’ in ourselves. The one thing haiku is not, though, is didactic. 

Some excerpts:

5 The great problem of practical everyday life is thus to see things properly, not to evaluate them in some hard and fast moral scale of virtue and vice, use and uselessness, but to take them without sentimental or intellectual prejudice.

Unfortunately, Blyth doesn’t cite where he gets the following verses from. He uses these to point to the grounding of Haiku in the Zen spirit. Any ideas from where these come?

If you do not get it from yourself,

Where will you go for it?

Many words injure virtue,

Wordlessness is essentially effective.

There is no place to seek the mind,

It is like the footprints of the birds in the sky.

Blyth also traces the influence of other traditions such as Taoism and Confucianism on Haiku. As I was reading I felt that he made it perfectly clear where Taoism differs from Buddhism on certain issues. Though, now of course I can’t find the highlighted passages. He does say however: The relation of Taoism to Zen is far from easy to make out. They may have originated together in the Chinese mind; Zen may be the practical application of the Taoist ideals, grafted on the Buddhist tree of religion. 

From Confucianism (Analects, Confucius)

Arise with poetry;

Stand with propriety;

Grow with music.

Standing by a stream Confucius said: It ceases not day or night; flowing on like this.

There is an interesting section on something called The Saikontan, literally vegetable root discourses. Blyth points out that this book, written by Kojisei in 1624 represents a synthesis of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism which occurred over the period of 3,000 years and resulted in a fourth tradition: Zen. What follows are excerpts from The Saikontan:

If the mind is clear, a dark room has its blue sky; if the mind is somber, broad daylight gives birth to demons and evil spirits.

The true Buddha is in the home, the real Way is everyday life. A man who has sincerity, who is a peace-maker, cheerful in looks and gentle in his words, harmonious in mind and body towards his parents and brethren, such a man is vastly superior to one who practices breathing control and introspection.

Water not disturbed by waves settles down of itself. A mirror not covered by dust is clear and bright. The mind should be like this. When what beclouds it passes away, its brightness appears. Happiness must not be sought for; when what disturbs passes away, happiness comes of itself.

I just rushed through this book. All the time I was reading it I thought to myself that I would be doing both myself and Chucky B a tremendous disservice if I didn’t go back and re-read it a second time and take some notes. I heard this line the other day,I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

That’s sort of the way I feel about taking notes on books nowadays. I read and I forget. I underline and I remember, I comment and note and I understand. So with the goal in mind of understanding perhaps a little bit better, I’m walking, not running, through the Intimate Journals a second time. The first thing that hit me about the journals was the introduction by WH Auden. He talks about Baudelaire’s attempt to reconcile the two types of individuality present in each of us; the individuality that is inherent in our human nature and the individuality aspired to by our human spirit. Meaning this: that each of us, by basis of our human nature, is an individual. We need do nothing to obtain this individuality, we are born with it and need only to live to hold onto it. But w/r/t the individuality that is the aspiration of our human spirit, Auden says that individual means to become what one wills, to have a self-determined history.

Perhaps we are born with this inclination, but we struggle our entire lives to manifest this type of individuality. Auden goes onto say that because each of us possess (or perhaps is possessed by both human nature and spirit), our lives are spent determining the relative importance of each and how to reconcile them. Baudelaire separates the hero ( the dandy, to use B’s anachronism) and the anti-hero as such

There appears at first to be a slew of contradictions. I thought there was until I read the journals and found that what attracts me to Baudelaire is that he is chock full of contradictions. For example, he was religious as all hell, but was also a fountain of such blasphemies as calling God the ultimate prostitute. But in a way his logic always works out at a level where you can see where he’s coming from. Auden concludes that Baudelaire’s idea of the hero is such that the hero must first have certain gifts of fortune (money, free-time, leisure) and must have the will to become what he aspires toward. The hero is neither a man of action nor a seeker of wisdom, wishes neither to be admired by man or to know God, but simple wishes to become subjectively conscious of being uniquely himself, and unlike anyone else. There is a lot of Baudelaire that I don’t agree with, a lot that must be swallowed with a grain of salt about the size of a Volkswagon– a lot that requires quite a bit of forgiveness and understanding on the part of the modern reader (though one gets the feeling that B would want nothing of the modern reader’s forgiveness or understanding). But what he’s ultimately saying is that the crowds, the masses, the general publics are all full of shit and amidst those crowds and masses the artist, the poet or the hero must constantly ask themselves:

What do I wish to become and how do I set about doing it?

What I think makes me feel particularly close to Baudelaire are his comments on acedia and the regret and despair he feels at his lack of motivation. One one day’s entry he makes promises to himself that he surely (as I do) plans on keeping, but then (like I do) writes the following day how he was incapable of keeping up with even the most basic discipline. This, coupled with the syphilis and the opium, is probably what leads him to madness. He writes on January 23, 1862:

I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror and today I have received a singular warning. I have felt the wind of the wind of madness pass over me.

He was a great admirer of E. A. Poe. I think he translated a bunch of Poe’s stuff into French. Regardless, the wind of the wing of madness must feel like Poe breathing down the back of his neck. Nonetheless, despite B’s inability to follow through on his observations and aspirations he remarks a lot about discipline that is worth noting:  

The more one desires, the stronger one’s will. The more one works, the better one works and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fecund one becomes. How many have been the presentiments and signs sent me already by God that it is high time to act, to consider the present moment as the most important of all moments and take for my everlasting delight my accustomed torment, that is to say, my work! We are weight down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: Pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. The more we employ one of these means, the more the other will inspire us with repugnance. No task seems long but that which one dares not begin. It becomes a nightmare. He’s also making these lists throughout the journal. I think that one’s to-do lists tell a lot more about someone than photographs or biographies and the such. The following comes from one day’s list:  

Do, every day, what duty and prudence dictate.

If you worked every day your life would be more supportable.

Work six days without relaxing.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

First make a start, then apply logic and analysis.

Every hypothesis demands a conclusion. To achieve a daily madness.

Here are some more remarks from his journals:  

The habit of doing one’s duty drives out fear.

One must desire to dream and know how to dream,.

Immediate work, even when it is bad, is better than day-dreaming.

A succession of small acts of will achieves a large result.

The Walking Tour

Kathryn Davis

Monday, January 15, 2001 

The cover blurb for The Walking Tour leads you to believe that it is a story about two couples that go to Wales on a walking tour of the countryside. During that tour, so says the blurb, a fatal accident occurs. ItÕs not like the blurb lies about whatÕs between the two covers, but rather, it oversimplifies it to the point of absurdity.

The two couples consist of Bobby Rose, a hardcore business-type; his wife, Carole Ridingham, an artist of certain fame; BobbyÕs business partner, Coleman Snow; and his wife, a would-be-writer, Ruth Farr. The tension between these four characters is enough to drive the suspense along. The story is narrated by CaroleÕs daughter, Susan. My best guess is that the events in the story happened maybe 50 years prior to the narration. And since the events in the story being narrated assume a fairly technologically evolved America (about present-day), my guess is that the story is being narrated about 50 years in the future.

There are two things that cause a certain amount of confusion in my reading of the book. The first is the quality of the language. Sentences are constructed so musically that the melody distracts from their intended meaning. This is not a shortcoming of the author, but rather my own fault for getting so wrapped up in the language. The other element that really confuses is the aggressively playful foreshadowing that goes on throughout the book. You know from the onset that some sort of tragedy is going to occur, but you donÕt know when and you donÕt know who suffers the Òfatal accident.Ó Throughout the book though the author uses countless techniques to provide the reader with hints and ominous clues, clear enough to make putting down the book next to impossible, but with enough opacity so that you are never really certain when itÕs going to happen or to whom.

There are two reoccurring ideas in the book that they lead me to believe that they offer some clue as to what the book is about:

The first idea manifests itself in painting. ItÕs something called repentance. As defined by the author: repentance occurs when the last application of paintÑwhich usually happens to be thick and opaque and is, consequently, the one used for the face of things such as people or watchesÑbeings to turn transparent, and ghosts begin leaking through.

The other is the business that Bobby and Coleman are involved in. Namely; a method that allows readers to interact with immediacy to whatever they are reading, to edit it, change it and reconstruct it as their interpretation seems fit.

What both of these things have in common is the illusion that there is any permanent surface to reality. With Bobby and ColemanÕs invention, any authorÕs original intent breaks down, with repentance, the painterÕs intended final picture changes over time to reveal the underlying action that led to that final intent, blurring the process and the outcome into some simultaneously arising series of events seen all at once–cause and effect are the same gesture. What adds to the confusion of digesting the plot of this novel is that the reader is expected to be able to view the simultaneous arising of cause and effect (though interesting that the author makes several opaque references to Buddhism in the book). Not something all that easily achieved, though the author does an incredible job at trying to make it feasible for the reader.

When cause and effect are witnessed in a single gesture, what does this say about morality? Can Susan, who is effected by some action of her motherÕs, ever accurately judge her without being able to see the entirety of her actions? I think the book is dealing with the question of morality and how it is largely impossible for us to judge anyoneÕs actions without seeing the entirety of the cause and effect. 

Throughout the book details of a court hearing are mentioned. The court case regards the notion of whether or not the fatal outcome of the walking tour was a ÒforeseeableÓ outcome. The book argues that nothing is really foreseeable unless we are able to completely grasp all the causes that led to the tragic effect, which may or may not be possible. As every life is somehow intertwined with all causes and effects, there is no way to point an accusing finger at someone else without pointing at everyone, yourself included.

Another thing that comes to mind here is the state of world in which the narrator lives. She lives in New England (Maine?) and makes several references to the environment and everyday life that seem to indicate that the future is not the most wonderful place to live. There seem to be odd storms that blow in and dogs all have legs that are too short and it causes health problems and the authorÕs description of shopping for groceries at the IGA is reminiscent of soviet breadlines. There is also the reference to a strange class or group of people called Strags, that seem to be something of a homeless population gone berserk. But the narrator doesnÕt complain about these things as much as she simply describes them, as if this is simply how things are and nothing can be done about it. ItÕs not her fault that the quality of the world has somehow declined. Rather it is the fault of everyone who has ever lived before her and failed to act without trying to simultaneously witness the cause and effects of their actions.

I think the point of all this musical language though, is to point us to the problems of seeing the world as if it is a place where anything occurs with certainty. It raises the question: What can we be sure of? And answers: nothing. ItÕs not really as dark as I make it sound though. ItÕs sort of playful in its approach to the question of impermanence and illusion.

early 2000s? Not sure when i read/wrote this but definitely before 2002

I could be cynical as hell and say Hey, Annie! Ain’t this book already been written once by Hank Thoreau? But there’s little point in cynicism since it’s only really appropriate when the speaker has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about but is just dying to appear as an expert. But anyway.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not fiction. It’s a sort of journal. A really, really good journal kept by someone who can write like a banshee. Dillard lives in the woods for a few seasons and documents the changes and minutia of a creek that passes through her woods. She is there to be astounded and shares her various astonishments in this sorta-journal.

So right now, you’re probably thinking, So what the hell would I want to read some granola freak’s journal fer anyway? 

Well, for one thing, she’s got some very cool things to say, I quote:I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.

AndNo, I’ve gone through this a million times, beauty is not a hoax—how many days have I leaned not to stare at the back of my hand when I could look out at the creek? Come on, I say to the creek, surprise me; and it does, with each new drop. Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it.

In about a zillion different ways and using a zillion different scenarios Dillard tells the reader: pay attention! I’d tend to agree with her but the problem for me is in deciding what to pay attention to. Dillard (I think) addresses this issue with a quote from Thomas Merton: There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues. She describes how easy it is to “diddle around in life making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end.” I think the trap she warns against is not so much paying attention to the wrong things, but rather paying attention in the wrong way. I think there are perhaps two ways of paying attention: In one way you watch each moment unfold, commenting, critiquing and cataloging so that you can later remember it. In the other mode of attention, you simply watch the moment unfold—no narration. The first method leads to itsy-bitsy statues; the later to a life that is bright and extravagant and dangerous.

Dillard says:The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? The world is real and beautiful. We see this all the time when we pay attention. The problem is that we forget more often than not to pay attention.

Notes on Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

The story of Mrs. Dalloway unfolds against the metronome of Big Ben striking out time. Individual moments are made static against a fluid background of ever advancing time. And how does one reconcile the dissonance between memories of static moments against a reality that is always flowing in one direction. The man made world, Big Ben, the shops and sights of London seem to indicate that time only moves in one direction but our inner world is always moving in multiple directions simultaneously. There is dissonance between the outer world and the inner world especially with regard to the perception of how time proceeds. The characters live in a world in which time appears to move only in one direction but a deeper seeing, memories and awareness of individual moments don’t seem to validate or support that time is only moving in one direction.

The difficulty of deciding what is important is increased because of this dissonance. If outwardly we perceive time to be always rushing forward, we too must rush with it, anticipating the next moment, always waiting for something. But if our inner world tells us time is much more fluid than this, where then do we focus out attention. The rush of the outer world tells us we are mistaken, irresponsible even, to focus on the present moment. As such, the characters, each in their own way are asking: “What is enough?”

What is meant by proportion? Odd that while it seems to stem from propriety, the root is different. Is the meaning still implied though?

Septimus: most interesting character for me next to Mrs. D. Does he parallel Sally, Peter’s and Clarissa’s failed attempts at life lived outside of proportion?

Saturday, May 6, 2000

Padget Powell, Edisto

This is my third read of Powell’s Edisto and my first time really even coming close to understanding what is going on in the book. The difficulty, I see now in hindsight, is that the book covers so many different subject areas that it took me several readings to pick up on each level to see what was going on. The pages of Edisto address (and these are ranked in my order of perceived importance): the nature of learning and the development of self, race relations, class relations, marriage and parenting. 

On the novel as a whole, I am reminded of both Hardy’s ability to paint a vivid locale as well as his ability to really define characters, even the minor/secondary ones.

With regard to the books addressing the nature of learning and the development of self:

(from page 84 where Simons reflects on his time with Taurus)That’s the thing I learned from him during those days: you can wait to know something like waiting for a dream to surface in the morning, which if you jump up and wonder hard you will never remember, but if you just lie there and listen to the suck-pump chop of the surf ad the peppering and the palm thrashing and feel the rising glare of the Atlantic heat, you can remember all the things of the night. But if you go around beating the world with questions like a reporter or federal oral history junior sociologist number two pencil electronic keyout asshole, all the answers will go back into mystery like fiddlers into pluff mud.

Taurus’ sit back and watch without judgement way of the world becomes something that Simons seeks to emulate and it serves as a good form of protection for when, at the close of the novel, surrounded by the pompous clods who populate the 19^th hole. Instead of judging them, he turns their arrogance into a path of learning

(page 182-183)you never see these guys fold their arms and smoke and look for hours at a wall, knowing they don’t know the whole alphabet of success, have all the piece. They know the whole alphabet of worldly maneuver.And how, I have to find out, did they ever come to think they know that?

Another example of the book’s take on the development of self comes when Simons realizes the difference between himself, Taurus and the men who hang out at the Baby Grand: (Page 176)I had one of those white hearts that lub-dub this way: then—next ; and Taurus had one of these that go now—next; and the guys at the Grand when now—now. And you can’t change that with decisions to be cool. You can’t get to that now—now without a congenital blessing or disease, whichever applies.

Which takes us into a deeper look at the role that race relations play in the book. I don’t think that Powell is making any assertions about blacks in general here. I do think that the now—now lubdub that he refers to is more contingent upon where, when and how someone is raised than the color of their skin. But still, it raises some interesting issues. Especially when taken together with the sit back and watch without judgement perspective manifest in Taurus. 

Meaning, Taurus sees the world without prejudice. It’s not that he is incapable of discerning the differences between individuals, but rather he waits for those differences to be raised by the situation instead of applying them without evidence. And in this sense, I think the book paints an incredible positive picture of what the world could be like if it were populated with Taurus’ instead of people who went into situations with their own preconceived notions of how other people will act.