reading wallace stevens in the new year

I.
I don't understand poetry. I can see beautiful things in poetry--in small and in large. And there are things I do and can understand sometimes and in some poetry. Reading, say, Wallace Stevens lately, I have the sense of something beautiful down deep where I can't see/fathom/conceive. There is something there inaccessible to me and I don't know what to do about or with it.

The only activity I know to take with writing, with words, with the letters is to take the words and phrases and lines apart. To try to break the thing into constitutive pieces. But the poem, it seems, is not made of bricks. I can't undo the edifice to reveal the building plans. It is not, say, a chicken, and I cannot, like a master butcher, carve it up, moving my knife into the spaces between the bones to divide it effortlessly into essential pieces. The poem, it seems, is more like a painting and my approach to the poem is rather like trying to understand a painting by removing each layer of paint. The poem is like a large piece of pottery--a sealed urn--and inside that urn there is something. The urn gives me that sense somehow.

Whatever there may be inside that urn, however, requires the protection of the pottery for its existence. I don't know how it is I know this, but I seem to know it. So how may I understand it? How can I understand the urn if I don't understand what it protects? How can I know the secrets of the urn unless I open it somehow?

I try to take apart the words and lines of the poem in order to understand it. Even while I do this, I see that I may as well smash the urn and, with violence, force the secret from it. What do I find?  Aha! There is... ! Liquid gushes and spills everywhere good for nothing and no one and ruins my shoes. Or a peculiar smell--and nothing else--escapes the shattered vase and is lost in the ether. No, a tiny thing like a homunculus--hairless and fragile--scrambles among the sharp pottery and bleeds to death trying to hide his nakedness.

How can I learn to understand poetry and not destroy it?

II.
Perhaps poetry is particularly tough (or so it seems) because its medium is the same as that of strongly analytic scientific work. Like a painting done in equation-paint or a sculpture done in moving gears. How, now, can I tell the difference between the factory and the gallery? Between the library and the laboratory?

I tend to focus on the stuff of it, the material, on the sense of the building blocks and/because I cannot apprehend the poem as/for/in itself. Words mean things. But what/how does that mean in /for poetry?

There will be enough

Since the advent of the new budget, I have had to learn to use things up, make do with things I have, and do without things I otherwise might have bought. Not a bad lesson to learn, certainly. I have been learning that I resist using things or using them up because I worry that there will not be enough—that I will be caught unprepared. 

I have been learning to tell myself that there will be enough. It is okay to use the last box of broth because there can be more (whether I make or buy it). It is okay to open the last bag of pasta because I can get more. I don't need to buy a new bar of shampoo until this one is mostly gone; there will be more. 

And sometimes things work out in spite of my planning or lack thereof. A friend sent lovely handmade soaps and now I have enough. The sub shop down the street unexpectedly brought a box full of mini subs for the office and now I have lunch. 

I tend to worry more than I ought. Reminding myself that there will be enough and finding that it is indeed the case that there will be enough might become a strong antidote to fear and worry and rumination.

showing kindness to myself

Every morning, as soon as I (finally) climb out of my warm bed, I head to the kitchen and put water on to boil. There isn't much to do while the water is boiling, so I put on my rubber gloves and do all the dishes left in the sink from the night before. This may be the best idea I have ever had. I do the dishes every morning while still half asleep. By the time I start feeling alert, the dishes are nearly clean and my water is about to boil and it feels almost like someone else has done the dishes for me: later on, after I've returned from the office, I come home to a clean kitchen and very little memory of having cleaned it. It feels like a favor I do for myself almost every day. 

Lately I've taken a similar approach to cooking. On an ideal Sunday, I get enough groceries for the week and make one big meal--usually some kind of stew. This will be my lunches for the week (works better for me than sandwiches do) and, if I am very good, my dinners, too. I enjoy my lunches, but my gratitude for dinner is even greater. This evening, for example, I heated up a hearty portion of a Moroccan-spiced chicken and chickpea stew and poured myself a (small) glass of wine and a (large) glass of water. My dinner was tasty, emotionally satisfying, and I have the entire evening ahead of me to write (ahem). It feels almost like someone else cooked for me (and cleaned up) and all I have to do is pour a little more wine, write, and enjoy these homey comforts.

conjunction of the mind and opposition of the stars

The philosophotarian has a lovely new coat. The wool is very soft and the collar slopes and drapes. The cut is asymmetrical and the coat falls in flattering folds.
 

My coat is a cheery red armor against dark winter and despair. Passers by treat you differently when you wear a red coat. They talk to you in tones reserved for friendship. They offer you cookies from a freshly opened box and commiserate with you over the difficulty of writing.

It is difficult to feel perfectly despondent when one dresses well. In tailored skirts and cashmere, new boots and a daring red coat, I am well contained. No external threads are loose. No stains show. Nothing visible torn or ripped. 

When wearing bright colors, one can protest, disagree, insist one is not hiding. Hiding? In brilliant red? Hardly. Of course I am making an effort. Of course I am putting myself out there. I am hardly invisible. In a sea of bare heads and fedoras, I stand out in my buckled cloche. So distinctive it could be a costume. 

True, even a red coat--and such a red coat!--will not, cannot call back an absent or an unwilling lover. Cannot make him want to tell you about his day. Did he arrive safely? Did he? Coats are not prophets, either. 

And neither tailored clothes nor strange, invisible perfumes can guard against loneliness or heartsickness. The stepsisters were beautifully turned out and Cinderella was already worthy.

excuses

Basically, I have been avoiding my blog because I am not sure I like my therapist. If I start writing here or in my journal I'll have to think about it (the therapist; why I don't think I like her; my life in general; the crazy awesome momentum I seem to have right now that I don't want to think about because I am afraid I will jinx it; evil; money; family thanksgiving; peoples' lives being really, really hard; etc), and that is too exhausting. So I'm writing my dissertation instead. Back soon though. I won't hide forever. 

love, 

the philosophotarian

Courage and Silence

I have a new reason for avoiding my dissertation and it is one I am loathe to confess. A few years ago I was delighted by the silence constructed and maintained by the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse. I marveled then at their proficiency in circumlocution. I still see the love there and I am not entirely disenchanted. Or, if I am disenchanted, then it is in the best of possible ways: I see how Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are not magical; they are, insofar as fictional characters can be, terribly, wonderfully human and they fail and succeed as other humans do.

When I last read the pre-prandial conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, I found myself wishing they’d said more, that they’d challenged themselves and each other more. Specifically, I wish Mr. Ramsay had said to her—

Then, he wanted to tell her that when he was wakling on the terrace just now—here he became uncomfortable, as if he wer breaking into that solitude, that aloofness, that remoteness of hers. . . . But she pressed him. What had he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was about going to the Lighthouse; that he was sorry that he had said “Damn you.” But no. He did not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering, she protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy tales to James, she said. No, they could not share that; they could not say that.

I see now, as I did not see before, that this is a failure in the silent communication between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Intimacy requires a willingness to brave discomfort for the other. The other things Mr.and Mrs. Ramsay resist mentioning—the bill for the greenhouse roof, the possibility that Mr. Ramsay would have written better books had he not married, and the things they do discuss instead—Andrew’s future, Prue’s beauty, the flowers—are part of a shared conversation they’ve built over time. The bit quoted above shows a spot of tenderness, something that resists even a careful eye or a gentle finger. They have no conversation to cover over this tender spot, this bruise in their union. Now, a few years after my first readings of To the Lighthouse, I find I wish Mr. Ramsay had been brave and forged ahead, had told Mrs. Ramsay how he felt about her solitude, about that fundamental remoteness from which he could never protect her; I find I wish Mrs. Ramsay had been strong and acknowledged her thoughts; had told her husband that she thought, first, that “there was no treachery too base for the world to commit, that “no happiness lasted.” That she  thought, shortly thereafter, watching the light, that “she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness,” and ended in an ecstasy of “It is enough! It is enough!”

Had she known how it pained him to feel their fundamental separateness, would she have seen his concern differntly? Had he known that in her separateness she was capable of holding nadirs and zeniths, would he have seen her protectiveness differently?

I am being made to see that I needed the Ramsays’ silences to justify my own. Moreover, now that I am finding that explicit speech is sometimes required, I am newly critical of the Ramsays. I had not realized that my dissertation was an attempt to affirm my own proclivities, and now I see that, at least in part, it has been so. This makes me more than a little uncomfortable and I am uncertain how to move forward.

A Mind of One's Own

Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to writing a dissertation, particularly a dissertation in the humanities (or so it feels to the one writing such a dissertation), is the absolute triviality of it all. No life will be saved if I complete my dissertation. No cancer cured nor heartbreak mended. The world will continue spinning and the universe will continue expanding whether or not I finish and no word I write will make the world spin any faster or the universe achieve its doom any sooner.

My life, generally speaking, is much the same. Some people feel stress because they are pulled in too many directions and bear too many responsibilities. Others feel stress because they are pulled only ever inwardly and bear no responsibilities to others. No more that is, than the very thin responsibility to not be an asshole, or the the very vague responsibility to commit to justice and things for everyone. No one depends upon me for anything. If I do not earn a living, no stomach will suffer but my own. If I do not make something of myself, no person's pride will suffer but my own. If I decide to hide myself in the deepest solitude, no one will be affected. If I ruin myself with hard living, no one stands to be disappointed. In this way I am very, very free. I am entirely free to mean and be nothing. This is, I find, a very burdensome freedom.

My response to such freedom has been indulgent self-pity--yes, I am free to wallow, as well. Instead, I might take a cue from artists, as described by Virginia Woolf.

Further, accentuating all these difficulties [those that attend the creation of a work of genius] and making them harder to bear is the world's notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want.

 But I care that Flaubert has found his word, my mind cried out. The world is a poorer, dimmer place if he has not! And that is precisely why and how I and my dissertation can matter. Not in a splashy and important way. We are not, after all, relativity, or a categorical imperative, or the enthymeme. But in a very small way (because I am, myself, very small) I can matter in ways parallel to those in which Flaubert's word matters. No belly goes empty whether Flaubert finds or does not find his word. No cancer cured. I am free to live a life of genius, a life full of moral beauty. No one's needs stand in my way and others can only help, not hinder, my project. The world is indifferent, yes. The world will not pay for the life I want to create. I need to remember that I don't need it to do so. The world will not pay for a line of Flaubert, either, but I wouldn't want to live in a world made up only of things that achieved value in this way.

There is another world. A secret world. An invisible world filled to bursting with invisible value. In this world, empires topple when the right word is not found. There are cancers of the soul for which only the only cure is some expression of aesthetic genius. I am wretchedly free in this art-indifferent world and must learn to bear my responsibilities elsewhere.