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Posts:
2008:
#51-60
(7/13)
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(5/27)
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2007:
#21-30 (10/3)
#11-20 (6/28)
#1-10 (3/31)
On St. Augustine (2/3)
On St. John Climacus (1/26)
2006:
12/25
9/24
9/5
8/23
6/1
An Introduction (5/10)
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12.25.06
It seems to make
sense: the less you see, the more what you see will mean to you; the
less you speak, the more weight what you say will have (a reason I was
hesitant to have a blog at all!); the less you hear, the more you can
really focus on what you do hear; the less you do, the deeper what you
engage in will actually be; & even the less you know, the more important
will be the things you do know, or seek to know. Silence & focus are of
unquestionable value, & the permanence of the things they yield are too.
In reading about religion I’ve always taken a step back when they
advocate hate—hatred of evil, for instance. If the best we can do is to
love, how can we have any room for hate? But reading about the Desert
Fathers of early Christianity, I think I understand now. They hated the
world, & I think to a large extent I do too, & at the very least have no
faith in it, or in the large run of people, who seem motivated only be
self-promotion, who are obsessed with silly notions of “self-esteem” &
“self-worth” that only make them selfish & sure either that they are the
greatest thing in the world, or the worst victim of vast forces, & in
any case hardship or suffering should be avoided at all costs, & that
whatever wrongs we do commit in this life should either be forgotten &
forgiven by an easy God, or justified & committed over & over again
(since, after all, there is no meaning anyhow).
The story of the Garden of Eden can be read a few ways—literally, it’s
about how the world was once Perfect, but then how human beings screwed
it up. Another way also says it was written to explain why the world is
so screwed up, but that there was no Perfection that preceded it; it was
written with a backward look when in the midst of our mess, trying to
explain why the world is the way it is, full of weak people—myself one
of them—largely consumed with distracting themselves from things that
might last longer than a commercial or three-minute song or even a good
meal; filled nowadays with an internet stuffed with all things sublime &
ridiculous, a mess of information that can be gathered & received &
consumed with whatever immediacy it takes to gather & receive & consume
the next bits of information; where the ability to see so many things on
YouTube or to personalize everything—where all this & more,
where the most base ability to simply do things simply because they
can be done is seen as inherently valuable—is there a reason not to
hate the world, to shun it, to want very little to do with it?
I emailed something like this to a friend of mine awhile back, but
mostly as an explanation of why I don’t consider myself a writer like I
used to—a “novelist” or “poet” or anything else, & he wrote back
consoling me almost, as if I was depressed. Thing is, I’ve never been
happier, but the quiet world my fiancée & I have been able to carve out
for ourselves is constantly at odds with the loud & largely meaningless
world outside our apartment, outside our relationship, & outside of the
things we hold dear. So that yes—the way people drive in Southern
California, the way people treat each other (as little more than
business transactions), the way people speak, even (in a kind of
business-ese where every word sounds like a seminar cliché)—it’s hard
not to be angry, or to simply avert my eyes from all the things that
would like to grab my attention & take it away from things that really
matter.
So now I understand what monks mean when they are praying not to be
tempted. Theirs again was mostly to do with their bodies—with lust,
say—but for me it’s everything else—not to click a link & surf aimlessly
so often; not to change channels on the radio so that I end up listening
to three seconds of a dozen things & settle on something I don’t want to
hear anyway; not to eat simply because I’m driving by a place that sells
food—the list is endless, & is all a great battle for virtues that seem
both impossible & unattractive today: focus & permanence, & to really
believe that focus (whether the monogamy of a relationship & marriage,
or a course of study) is valuable & that there are solid & dependable &
lasting things that can support life, enrich it, & add to our happiness.
Because to say that I’m being attacked by the World As It Is—I don’t
think this is such an exaggeration: after all, every sign for every
business, every actual building where stores or restaurants are, all the
clothes everyone wears, all the music they listen to that must be
blasted out their car window, & every car & truck that is so monstrously
personalized with decals & stickers & brand-names (even Jesus is just a
decal, along with the strippers on the mudflaps)—all of these things are
thought up, designed, manufactured, & put in place for the precise
purpose of getting my attention.
I don’t mean to suggest that any of this is new; just recently I read
the sixth-century monk John Climacus say, “This present generation is
wretchedly corrupt. It is full of pride and hypocrisy…. And yet there
has be no era so much in need of spiritual gifts as today.” & before
this are a few thousand years of writers dissatisfied with the world who
look for something better. But the degree to which our attention is
bombarded nowadays certainly has to be unequalled in history, & the
choices we have to lose our focus & wander off has never been more
immense, & the ability of those who want to take our attention has never
been greater, or more keen. Part of this is sheer profit, capitalism, of
making money the most efficient way possible (such as the personalized
ads generated next to my Gmail messages); but what about the person who
must let everyone know what music he’s listening to as he drives, or the
girl wearing next to nothing who is terribly worried lest she not get as
much attention as she deserves, or the self-promoting frenzy even
writers get into, though most of them are unlikely to ever make a living
from their work? Lacking any inner stability or peace, human beings are
attention whores, & our saturation in media only enhances this, since
it’s seen as a virtue to simply to be seen driving that truck
or walking with that person or listening to that music or wearing those
clothes; it’s seen as a virtue simple to be famous—no matter
what for, just to be famous; it’s seen as a virtue to appear
on television—or now, on the internet; somehow the
simple fact that hundreds or thousands or millions of strangers might
have seen your face or heard your voice—this in itself, in & of
itself, & for no reason, is something to be sought. For myself, my
own awareness of my inward self is shoddy at best, & hopefully
improving, but even the most rudimentary & small glance inside show the
attention of the world is a sliver compared to the peace of a grounded
spirit.
So there is also our obsession with identity. For a long time I loved
the idea that I was a poet, & an underground poet at that. This while
other people base themselves entirely on what color their skin is, what
they believe politically, who they have sex with, which God they
worship, what clothes they wear, what bands they listen to, what car
they drive, what job they have, what decorations or augmentations they
apply to their bodies, or what disabilities (which cannot be called
disabilities anymore, since—only one example—there is a Deaf Culture)
they have. All of this is some kind of shield against the world or badge
for everyone else to see that shows they indeed are human, & should not
go unnoticed or dismissed. But in the past year nearly all of it has
struck me as almost entirely empty precisely because it is all based on
arranging your life around the judgments & opinions of others—these
others who can give you attention, maybe a job, or money, or support,
but rarely for the ultimately more quiet goal of being happier & better
people, only of being noticed & desperately asserting your worth to
people who are desperately asserting their worth to you.
So that, just as so much of our commerce is created & driven only with
the thought of getting the attention of others & not necessarily with
quality, people are the same, people are equally uninterested in
actually being happy, or being at peace, or living a good life, but only
in grabbing as much as possible while they can. What reason is there not
to hate the world, not to shun it, not to refuse to take anyone’s
opinion seriously when it comes from a place like this? Is there a good
reason this bizarre existence of perpetual media & its own fostering on
us of impatient attention spans shouldn’t be ignored?
Since we’re obsessed with ourselves & getting noticed in the time we’re
alive on the earth, this rush for attention also has something to do
with notions about immortality. Since we only see value in the most
passing & immediate things, we can’t help but be obsessed with
worshipping the present-moment & standing in the glare of its awful
light; this while I take great comfort in the immortality of the quiet
possibility that in ten or twenty or two-hundred years someone might
read a word I’ve written, & feel the same connection I do when reading
something today. But for most people today (& most writers!) this idea
is too vague & unsatisfying, & too quiet when placed next to whatever
magazine you’d like to mention, or newspaper, or website about some
person’s immediate reaction to an event that doesn’t deserve historical
awareness, let alone immediate reaction right now.
As an example—I left a comment like this on a blog one time. The author
mentioned previously he’d had some kind of change in his life & was
beginning to write new things, but when I went back to the blog later I
saw the same old stuff, the usual cynicism & irony people start writing
in their teens, & sometimes never stop writing—the kind of stuff that,
no matter how well-written, is taken to be “real” & “genuine” (& is
lauded) simply because it wallows & admires itself for stating aloud
that the world is an unredeemable shithole, & that’s that, & there’s no
changing it & there’s certainly nothing—let alone the opiate of
religion—that can give the world meaning, & we might as well just sleep
around & do drugs & blame rich people for our problems. So I left a
comment wondering why he didn’t just give up writing stuff like that
since all he was doing was whining & complaining in ways every writer
does (he’d written a parody of a rejection letter); then I said he’d
save time if he stopped considering himself “underground” or anything
else & just focused on writing rather than tagging himself with some
label, of dispensing with all the junk of marketing. & the strangest
thing happened—someone else left a comment & I was accused of being an
internet “troll” (something I had to look up since I’d never heard of
it!), & my simple ideas of not putting your faith or happiness in the
prospect of an acceptance letter; of not caring if you got rejected—or,
if caring, getting over it before you felt the need to parody your Anger
at the World; of also not putting the prospect of your happiness in a
marketing label like “underground” or whatever; & further that one is
much better off not putting their happy or unhappy mood in the hands of
anyone not worthy of it, let alone an editor—these things were
so unbelievable they were taken to be a prank, or something
intentionally divisive.
Is there any reason, then, I shouldn’t hate the world at large, & the
people in it, even the literate ones who like Dostoevsky but still can’t
get past the fact that the world is unjust & unfair, who still rebel
like children against whatever notions of religion or God they first
formulated when they were twelve & still can’t get beyond? What else can
there be but hate & anger, & a glad retreat, from people who end up
doing horrible things with their lives & either run away & join a
religion that assures them God has forgiven them for everything &
forgotten everything, or they justify what they’ve done so they don’t
have to think about it & only end up doing it over & over again? Is
there anything other than hate & anger & the sensation of utter
bafflement & pity & sadness I feel amidst a world where people cannot
deal with ambiguity of any kind, cannot look at the hurt they’ve caused
other people or themselves, & accept it, & realize it wasn’t a good
thing, & move on with their lives? Why must the only two alternatives to
this be a jump into the mindlessness of sudden conversion or the
mindlessness of utter hedonism? Neither leave any room for an entirely
ambiguous spirit or God—beyond the easy bumper-sticker or slogan for or
against religion—that must be wrestled with perpetually, that gives some
credence to humanity’s ability to cherish things, not to sentimentalize
or commercialize or tear down real feelings or real meaning. The great
thing about the journals of the American Trappist Monk Thomas Merton is
that when he leaves the world & enters the monastery, the doubts & inner
turmoil he felt when living in New York or England didn’t stop; they
were different concerns & different doubts, sure, but the real change
was he now had a foundation he could never fall through again—his faith
in God—& that within the small room of his faith he could have whatever
battles inside or out he wanted, but he would never fall into the same
despair of his secular years. (This, it seems, is a mature experience of
God or faith, the constant battle, not the sudden conversion where the
rest of your life is thought out for you already, & all your doubts
answered before you have them.)
Part of the problem, of course, is that the world isn’t made for
ambiguity or shades of grey or for introspection—that is, after all, why
it’s called an escape from the world. As I drive around during the week
I often wonder if it isn’t that the people here are inherently with how
they act on the road, they aren’t inherently rude & selfish & even
dangerous with how they drive—what if it’s also that the system of
driving itself is flawed? Certain streets have stop-signs while others
have stop-lights; some cars have to turn into traffic with a bush or
tree or building blocking their view, so they inevitably cut someone
off; the world is so mechanized & obsessed with punctual time—yet just
as obsessed with stuffing that bloated time with as much activity as
possible—that it’s inevitable thousands of people every morning will be
rushed & rushed & rushed to do a million things.
I think the world as a whole is the same way—it’s not meant to help us
perfect our lives, only to distract us when we’re waiting for those
moments of real meaning to come along. The world isn’t meant to be the
sole activity of our lives, only the backdrop to those things that make
life worth living. This notion struck me deeply this year, as I ended up
writing a third of my House in about eight months. It struck me
that in between chapters I was occupying myself with a dozen other
writing projects—this blog, essays, taking-notes from other books, etc.
& it struck me that the writing of my poem has brought me to tears, but
that—no matter how well I think this blog or any essay has gotten off—no
other bit of writing has this effect, except maybe letters to or from my
fiancée. So that even my writing life is spent waiting—waiting to write
something real rather than something that only fills the time &
exercises my use with words; even my reading-life is spent waiting,
waiting to read that book or author or single line or sentence that will
stay with me forever; even my life with music or movies is one of
waiting, waiting to hear that sound or see that movie that will change &
support my life from then on. Life is only in waiting for these
moments—waiting, & realizing it when they come, & basking in it.
I’ve learned a lot from T. S. Eliot about these moments, from his
Four Quartets, where he says, first of all, that in the end “The
poetry does not matter.” He also says a lot about how we are all
obsessed, in a way, with finding the narratives to our lives, of
creating coherent narratives that explain the story of our lives—of
making our lives, really, into something like a two-hour movie—but
concludes that the belief in this narrative is a lie & an illusion, &
that the best we can say of life is that they are dotted & studded &
suddenly adorned—whether unexpectedly or not—with these sudden moments
that from then on will reverberate & inform every corner of our
existence.
Many years ago I thought of something similar though I didn’t realize
it—having just broken up with a long-time girlfriend I realized I had
the choice either of remaining single until someone tremendous &
meaningful came along, or I could find out what my peers knew already, &
just sleep around in the interim. With a few wrong turns I chose the
former, & by and large have always thought it best to fill my life with
as many of these meaningful moments as possible. But, as it isn’t
possible most of the time to foresee or engineer them into existence, I
thought I could at least fill my life, then, with as little of the
temporary stuff as possible, the in-between moments, where a commercial
on the radio is the best we can concentrate on.
& this is probably what I mean most with this long ramble of a blog
entry—first, not only that meaning & focus & permanence exist, but that
their existence is made plain every now & again in those memorable
moments (whether of intimacy with another or personal epiphany or
whathaveyou); & also that a good majority of our lives are spent
in-between these moments, moments where even I can’t help but open up
the newest issue of People magazine. What I think I’ve been
getting at is that by & large the world today either doesn’t believe the
meaningful moments exist, or it believes in them but never thinks to
grasp or seek them, but in any case what fills the billions of lives in
the world, almost to overflowing, are those moments in-between, with the
People magazine, or the gossip—& this largely because the world
as it is organized is flawed & suggests there is nothing else, or no
time for anything else. The world, indeed, seems now engineered to fill
our lives with nothing but a perpetual stream of these in-between
moments that are nothing but distraction.
So, is it too much to declare something like my hate for those things
that want to distract me away from those moments where I realize there
aren’t only passing & superficial things? Like a friend of mine whose ex
tried to lure him away from his marriage, & for some reason was angry.
If that happened to me I would react the same way, with a kind of
baffled anger & surprise at the presumption of someone who steps in &
thinks it would be so easy to take me away from the most meaningful
thing in my life, & the largest clue to every other meaningful thing in
the world. Is there a reason that anything in this world that
is only created to get us from one moment to the next—not to support us
now, & to support us in twenty or forty or sixty years—shouldn’t be
turned from & rejected? & is there any reason something like love, or
God, shouldn’t be turned towards wholeheartedly—since by their nature
they are meant to be turned towards now, & tomorrow, & next week &
in fifty years, & to still be giving & giving?
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