Tag: wisdom

An Opinionated Review

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Uncategorized6 Comments

Eat.  Pray.  Love.

 

On a wonderful jaunt to our public library yesterday, my wife spotted a movie based on a mega-bestselling memoir that she’d been curious to see since its release a couple of years ago.  We checked it out and viewed it last night in hopes of a light, relaxing fare to happy us toward slumber.

It was excruciating.  My first reaction was – can a person’s biography truly resemble such a cliché’d American self-realization mythology?  Basically a woman goes on a journey away from her responsibilities to others to “find” or “heal” herself, in the process (and apparently justifiably since it delivers her to a goal of peace, happiness, pleasure and love with a seasoning of spirituality) wrecking others’ lives and forgiving herself for it, ending in the arms of a handsome foreigner on a tropical island with some standard religious “truths” in tow.

Here are things I realized about myself:

I am suspicious of personal pleasure that causes others pain.

I am oh-so-glad and grateful that I grew up in a reserved Western culture with Continental philosophy and theologies at its roots.  I much prefer battling to wisdom and calm through the frenetic and anxiety-ridden vertigo of a convoluted mind ferociously doubting and investigating than through some “be here now” philosophies of higher unities and cosmic accord.  Rather interrogate now than “let go” and “let be.”  I am attached to the workings of our brains and our languages, pestering perception and scrutinizing sense experience with imaginative and skeptical rationales.

I radically doubt “gurus,” “prayer,” “saviors,” and other spiritual or “wholistic” practices of “balance” that accomplish “goals.”  Outcome-based anything feels totalitarian and programmatic and therefore facile to me, as if there were a form or behavior we might fit ourselves to that would lessen the struggle or suffering of “to be.”

The film’s story took a year’s time, replete with life-changing habits of mind and body and some claimed resultant growth.  As if wisdom came from Apple or McDonald’s.  The past was hardly processed, responsibilities released like thoughts during Zen, and no effort to apologize or repair any damage or hurts the main character had caused those close to her along the way (thank goodness no children were involved!).

It was the time-tested failure of the American Dream: do what you want to get yourself comfortable in your own skin (whatever beliefs, illusions and experiences that might seem to require) and everything will be alright in your world.

I simply don’t buy it.  And I won’t.  If we are socially constructed realities (and my point-of-view on the cosmos supports this) then final import is not in a self, but in a system.  Not toward results but a how of processing.  Not a personal calm or pleasantness but a social accord.

The film made me terrifically thankful for scrutiny and doubt, fervent self-questioning in light of surroundings, and the “wisdom of no escape.”  It just goes on.

For what it’s worth,

here lies a steaming pile of my opinions.

N Filbert 2012

A Parable

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing2 Comments

A Parable

Perhaps one day you will ask for something that you want but do not need, or even need but don’t quite understand.  On a lark, let’s say, out of a “why not?” not exactly exasperation nor as fueled as curiosity, almost a simple value, who knows, but perhaps you do.

How will they respond to your free request (a spontaneity without expectation) now having burdened them with options?  You had thought it a gift, an eruption, a “no harm done,” “nothing to lose,” but of course, in the world, there is more.

So your request floats out, on the air, like a streamer, swaying and curving, rippling past the subjects to which it’s addressed.  For some it’s a slap, for others a trial, still others just dodge it and head for silent hills.

You had thought it a good, an offering of joy, a connection and possibility, not something to wind or to bind.  Never something so knotty.  A kind of safe enclosure that’s open, a meadow of sorts, where gentle counterparts might convene when they wanted or needed and whomever appeared could relate.

But in order to appear each required a turn, of attention, of glance, of an ear – to surmise and to meet, to attend.  Bodies incapable of severance.  Could they send an arm, an eye, a knee or other organ, they happily would, provided it would not be missed any elsewhere (their “here”) – and this proved impossible.

One respondent, upon lending a hand, was not able to help his young son tie his shoes.  Another offered her hair only to find herself fired from her workplace.  Each was affected by your generous request while you were left with dismembered parts in your park.

Unintentional, no doubt, you found as well that it was not spare fragments you were needing for your want.  The severed hand grew stiff and cold under your knees; the hair like strands of sand in the night on your chest.  The smells were changing.  The eyes you’d assembled were distracted, neither here nor there the parts were failing.

In an awkward flashing of a dream a teacher’s voice arrived with cliché: “be careful what you wish for.”  You’ve been waking to that for awhile.

In Praise of Darkness

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Poetry, Traces, Writing1 Comment

“And those of us, never angels, who are verbal, who ‘on this low, relative ground’ write, those of us who lowly imagine that ascending into print is the maximum reality of experiences?  May resignation – the virtue to which we must resign ourselves – be with us.  It will be our destiny to mold ourselves to syntax, to its treacherous chain of events, to the imprecision, the maybes, the too many emphases, the buts, the hemisphere of lies and of darkness in our speech.”

-Jorge Luis Borges-

This is Water

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Philosophy, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

I found myself in a fairly uncommon (for me) setting this morning, my son was performing a Double Concerto of Bach‘s at a Methodist Church.  I happened to be there (reading Larry Levis) on “graduation Sunday,” so the message/sermon/interpretation of texts was geared toward the cultivation of wisdom.  As I listened to the suggestions/advice of a “spiritual authority” figure, to our young/privileged/promising…I was struck again by my personal favorite commencement address I’ve ever come across/heard/read and thought given the Spring of things perhaps it was time to push it out toward eyes and ears wherever I could, again.

Here it is…by a personal hero David Foster Wallace… (and therefore in his honor as well)

THIS IS WATER

Some Stellar Instigations

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Journallings, Writing3 Comments

“Multiple incompatible hypotheses are needed to provide an adequate account of any phenomenon – aesthetic, material or psychological… which of course means no explanation at all”

–Charles Bernstein–

“All literature, highbrow or low, from (at least) the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction…All novels are sequels; influence is bliss”

–Michael Chabon–

“You must talk with two tongues, if you do not wish to cause confusion”

–Wyndham Lewis–

“Unknowing does not come before knowing but very long after”
-Edmond Jabes-

“Human speech is made of words that have been created a long time ago; those words are preserved in dictionaries, but poets and writers change”

-Viktor Shklovsky-

“I wanted to read.  Instead of filling in the blanks, I wanted to be a blank and be filled in.”

-Alan Jacobs-

The following stories…

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

Lifewordthread

“Life evolves in a thread of knots that get more and more tangled.

The narrative segments are intentionally dislocated and rearranged,

so the knots become the characters, as it were.”

-Viktor Shklovsky-

            The impression like a manual typewriter’s arm – thunk! – left in either hemisphere… (they say)

begins knotting and tangling

as additional – thwap! – embossings are left.

“Obsessed, bewildered

By the shipwreck

Of the singular

We have chosen the meaning

Of being numerous”

-George Oppen-

 

The following story.

 

Not that the answers were handled judiciously (judgmentally?) or even weighed or considered.

No answers given to evaluate or direct…

The question(s) already condemned.

Thwak!

“Shouldn’t be –“  “Too young – “ “Can’t handle – “

“STOP ASKING!!”

-(Pastor. Parent. Teacher. Friend.)-

But not books, not texts, not words…

…these welcomed them…

…welcomed me…

Words seem to love being dislocated and rearranged and then marked into question.

In fact, for the reader, each word of a sentence or phrase, exposed on a page, seems to wonder itself!

As if language were a query.  Inquiry.

Something to begin with.

 

The following story.

Aged 12.

“Your reasoning’s wrong” (some voice, any voice, whap!, it stuck)

Awry.  Twisted.  Disfigured.  Maimed.

“That’s not the right question…ought not be questioned at all…!”

“Thus saith the Lord (a.k.a. the “Word”)

(to which I added my mark – “?” :

– is it the Word?  What Word? and Whose? let alone How?

and ever the too many “Whys?”

(those have quieted now)

But I devoted myself to fashioning questions,

so that even descriptions or

statements of fact…question themselves

as if essential, inherent to this medium,

of its nature

Smack! –

?

“Some Blind Alleys: A Letter”

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Philosophy, Poetry, Writing6 Comments

Should you have the time…and it requires a bit…I would love to hear responses to the following essay by E.M. Cioran from all you interesting minds I observe!  Thanks –

“Some Blind Alleys: A Letter”

-E.M. Cioran-

The Temptation to Exist

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, WritingLeave a comment

“’I am both wound and knife’ – that is our absolute, our eternity”

“the idolatry of becoming”

“blasted joys and jubilant despair”

E.M. Cioran

The Temptation to Exi(s)t

 

We’ve got our words all backwards.  Ever trapped in what we deny.  Our escape = net.

Space.  Time.

If we say it is all relative, yet act.  “Choose.”  Freedom is nothing.  The words, then, are all backwards, you see, we “mean” our opposites.

Desire.

Could cumulate as the evil.  But still – you see?  Hope for understanding, for wisdom, knowledge, some trivial insight.  Log of shipwreck: cling.

Desire.

Another enemy: “intensity.”  Synonym “passion,” carpe diem.  Opposite: freedom.

In-tense-ity.  State of inhabiting tension, clinging to stress, to invite suffering (“jubilant despair”).  Opposite: being. freedom.

A blasted joy.  (Suffering).  Opposite of freedom: want.  Making antonyms by definition: “to be.”

If we seize, choose, behave, acquire, reach, speak, move…”the idolatry of becoming” – antonym? = freedom.

Kingdom equals freedom.  Queendom.  Selfdom.  “To be”-dom.  Backwards words.  Backwords.

Opposite of intense: rest, quietude : thought and action one : in-sane.  Opposite of want, greed : poverty : possession-less, without, without within : beggar.

Freedom : opposite : control.  Self-, other-, environmental-, habitation-, security-.

Be/have : to exist is to grab, to steal, to do violence.  Being + having : system : be/have.  Opposite: freedom.

Say it backwards.  We say it backwards.

I shout “freedom” driving the blade into my throat, bloody want.  Cannot “have.”  Are (are NOT = desire to become – false worship – be/having).

Religion : human organization to be/have.  Become.  To be.  Religion as an argument for (against) existence.

Already ARE.  Before “being,” prior to “having.”  No need : freedom.  “Meaning” the opposite of what we say.

We’ve got our words backwords.

Backwards: have-been.  There it is clear.

The temptation of the system, the race or kind, was “to be” as something to have, to get, to come into, be-come…that existence was a goal, something to arrive at, achieve, seizing the days, the moments,

Synonyms: act, will, intent, purpose, do.make.say.think. to mean

Synonym: be/having

Opposite: freedom.

Existence having been from the first.

Having been = at the last.

Synonym : freedom : nothing.

 

Being Ourselves – an active ontology

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Philosophy, Writing4 Comments

BEING OURSELVES

an active ontology

 

            To be, so they tell me, at least mostly fluid.  How to be that, too, in the other kind of way?  Beyond “fact”?

Water (or blood), being good for that, because it can be inside and outside at once, leaving and filling a vessel.  That is, it can be spilling out while going in.

As if ‘the other kind of way’ were metaphor.  But it’s unlike.  In fact, for us, it’s exactly the same, just different.

Therefore, rigid as I might “seem,” this is not actual-factual, I am mostly liminal.

Which could (factually) explain the constancy of change, or, how we identify effects of wind, e.g. fluctuation; i.e. the rippling of emotions or mood.

My faith in these “facts” alters, like my beliefs about most everything else, including my self.

That would be “natural” then, if by “natural” we meant “according to widely accepted notions of facts.”  (For example.)

Be that as it may, I’ve heard talk about a collusion between professed “facts” and perpetually mystifying “reality” as some instance of joinder (called, perhaps “knowledge”? or “wisdom”? – an alignment of facts with reality – a “truth”?).  What some might describe “accord” or “harmony”?  A sort of “peace.”  Akin to the “angle of repose”?

Would that be being in multiple ways?  At once, of course.

 

To synthesize:  the purveyors of fact inform me that I am mostly fluid (even as my knee pops when I rise, and I’ve a hard time rotating my neck).  If, in fact, I am fluid (mostly) I am asking how it is that I am being fluid in another way (from another perspective, i.e. do humans multiply being?).

 

A viscous question.

 

“And how is the riddle of thinking to be solved? – Like that of flame?”

-Ludwig Wittgenstein-

            In other words.

 

Find a liquid view.  For instance – rolling in a bathtub or sharktank in heavy rain.  Feel water, see through watery eyes, taste saliva, breathe liquid in (mostly).  What else do you think you are?  Grab a bone, a lock of hair and some of your own flesh.  Hold.  If you’ve a mind or soul, thoughts or theories – liquefy them, put them through a juicer until they’re at least 70% fluid – pour them in.

 

What does he mean “the mind is the great slayer of the real” (Benjamin Lee Whorf)?

Or the poet – “there is nothing in life except what one thinks of it”… and “I am what is around me” (Wallace Stevens)?

 

So, mostly fluid, with watery eyes, drenched or submerged – logically, like a porpoise or whale – we would be bringing “fact” and our “reality” to a closer accord in the “actual.”  60-80% fluid inside, 60-80% immersed outside, working our imaginations and thoughts, self-perceptions and beliefs toward a more indivisible, continuous flow…

What sorts of things do we wring from such “harmony”?  “That reality is continuous, not separable, and unable to be objectified.  We cannot stand aside to see it” (Robert Creeley).  We cannot be submerged in water and watching ourselves swim at the same time, we would (presumably) have to exit the flow and look at a still or moving picture of ourselves (doubling time?) while “reality” and “facts” kept flowing, moving, going on (including the “unreal” activity of watching ourselves swim).

The trees blur into the sky as if they share a surface, as road to carlights, to earthen shoulder, grass, flower, again to tree: “reality is something transitory, it is flow, an eternal continuation without beginning or end; it is denied authentic conclusiveness and consequently lacks an essence as well…it is not evaluable” (Mikhail Bakhtin).  Abstracting and division put us in the realm of the unreal, while the activity (of abstracting and perceiving difference) is, in fact, really occurring.

Submerged, blurry, inseparable and flowing…constantly and continuously…

to be and not to Be…

Dive.

Leap.

Swim.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Drift.

Flow…

 

and finally…to drown…dissolve…

 

N Filbert 2012