Episteme

Neruda's Canto General to me is like another creation story, almost a religious document. It outlines the creation of the world, humanity, then on through the indigenous civilizations of Latin America, up to the exploitation of these people by the Europeans and later, by the United States. It begins with creation and expands to encompass the world, but ends, significantly, with the self, with an autobiographical poem called "Yo Soy." This is worth linking with the Popol Vuh Creation story and thus with Genesis, and not at all in a sacreligious way. It's humanity's interpretaion of why we are here, what it all means. And if you notice, it all starts with water, the essence of life.

I'm going to start at the beginning of the song...

Antes de la peluca y la casaca
fueron los rios, rios arteriales:
fueron las cordilleras, en cuya onda raida
el condor o la nieve parecian inmovilas:
fue la humedad y la espesura, el trueno
sin nombre todavia, las pampas planetarias.

[Before the wig and the coat
were rivers, arterial rivers:
there were mountain ranges, en whose worn ripple
the condor or the snow appeared immobile:
there was humidity and thickness, the thunder
still with no name, the planetary pampas.]

El hombre tierra fue, vasija, parpado
del barro tremulo, forma de la arcilla,
fue cantaro caribe, piedra chibcha,
copa imperial o silice araucana...

[Man was earth, a vessel, an eyelid
of trembling mud, a form of clay... (to be continued)]

The main thing we can see with the beginning of Neruda's great work is his respect for nature. Human come out of it before they can cultivate it, life is based in water and earth.
But the first thing of all is the water, the arterial rivers - they are like the veins of a body. There must have been earth to contain the form of the rivers, but the water was the life blood, the thing that really mattered.

Think back to the third paragraph of the first chapter of the Popol Vuh -- "No se manifestaba la faz de la tierra. Solo estaban el mar en calma y el cielo en toda su extension." Here there was no earth, only the sky and the ocean. Both start with the basic elements - earth and water, water and sky.

Neruda's land seems to be vibrating with the possibility of life, as if it were a latent human form - the curves of the mountains, the "planetary plains." As in other creation stories, like the Bible, man came from simple mud, "From dust we came, and to dust we will return."

Posted by Kim at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having spent the weekend in L.A., I spent much of the weekend in my car. I don't like driving, I don't like being in a car as a driver, but there's something about driving in L.A. that doesn't make me mind so much. But in the course my drive, I thought about what Ed Ruscha told The Believer in the March issue: "I do drive a lot in L.A., and it really gives me all of my impressions of the city. They come right from driving. Sometimes I get into a groove where I'm listening to the radio - there is one particular number you can punch on the dial and it will give you two or three radion stations at once. It's so comforting to listen to these overlapping effects. You might be hearing country-western music, stock reports, and a sporting event. Two or three programs overlapping each other can be used as a soundtrack for driving around L.A."

Posted by Dawn at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What are you allowed to know (a function of education and, to some degree, persistence and personal curiosity) is very much a part of the political environment and whether the political leadership and institutions support such thinking is also critical. Maybe that's the burden of democracy, you as a participant in this experiment are required to work diligently to be informed and rational about the information choices before you. Those aren't ingredients for a tedious life but then again exhaustion inevitably leads to defeat and when information is fractured and facts called into question, all information seems like misinformation. Is the "system" like this deliberately or does the proliferation of 24 hour cable news, endless partisan talk shows, customized news aggregates and customized everything, stem from a need in our society to reinforce what we already know regardless of context, historical or present? Hell, The New York Times thinks 24 hours news killed the CIA.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad, in his recent 18-page letter, wrote this to Bush, "Mr. President: Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems. Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things."

In no small measure, I'm sure President Bush holds a strong belief that ultimate power and justice of God will prevail over, but whether that assures the failure of democracy, I don't know. I don't believe so but what else do you know when this is the official line of those in power? How can it infect your life?

"In the West," Francis Fukuyama writes, "consumerism induces people to make moral compromises with themselves daily, and they lie to themselves not in the name of socialism but of ideas like 'self-realization' or 'personal growth.'" Communism, he continues, does much the same thing but "in making this bargain, the victims of the system became its perpetuators, while the system itself took on a life of its own independently of anyone's desires to participate in it."

In a recent New Yorker article about Libya (and the idea of whether such places, including Iran, can ever achieve democracy) the author writes, Qaddafi "recent announced, not for the first time, that Western democracy was 'farcical' and 'fake.' 'There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet,' he declared."

All this makes me wonder about the wisdom of America in exporting its notions of democracy when it's very clear there is no consensus on what democracy is or how it should function. Isn't democracy truest when it springs from the people, not thrust upon them by some external, paternal force? And to be schooled by two dictators on democratic principles? Do they prove that not every country will be able to achieve democracy or does their existence bolster the importance of democracy? If in the democratic West we are trapped by consumerism and in countries with oppressive leadership people are trapped by the government's paranoia and self-preservation, then what? There is a French philosopher, whose name I can't remember, who's written about book about the illusion of freedom in consumer societies.

But that aside, when it comes down the individual living in either system the desire to know the world isn't tempered by these restraints. People do get out and see the world but it must come down a system of belief. Can you alter your system of belief to reconcile differences with wider society, especially when there is so much about you inherently disagree with? Yes, of course, you can. That's free thinking, regardless of the regime in charge. Whether it's consumerism or communism, both are set up to stifle that free thinking.

Going back to The New York Times and CIA, "The big picture has been bumped by spot news. Strategic intelligence is the power to know your enemies' intentions. Spot news is what happened last night in Waziristan. Drowned by demands from the White House and the Pentagon for instant information, 'intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington,' John McLaughlin, the deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said in an interview."

The need to hear what we already believe and reaffirmed instantly by broader social network not only touches the individual's life but the thinking the people in positions to make the best informed decisions.

Posted by Dawn at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matamos lo que amamos.

We kill what we love. What the hell does that mean? Have you ever hurt someone you love? Have you ever done something because you know it's right, even though it makes you feel like you are the most selfish person who ever walked the planet? Have you ever bitten the bullet and decided that your highest responsibility is to yourself?

... Lo demas
no ha estado vivo nunca.
Ninguno es tan cerca. A ningun otro hiere
un olvido, una ausencia, a veces menos.
Matamos lo que amamos. Que cese ya esta esfixia
de respirar con un pulmon ajeno!
El aire no es bastante
para los dos. Y no basta la tierra
para los cuerpos juntos
y la racion de la esperanza es poca
y el dolor no se puede compartir.

//...The rest
was never alive.
Nothing is so close. A lost memory,
an absence never hurt another, sometimes less.
Let us kill what we love. That it will cease, this asphyxiation
of breathing with a stranger's lung!
The air is not enough
for both of them. And the earth is not enough
for the joined bodies
and the ration of hope is little
and pain cannot be shared.//

El hombre es animal de soledades,
ciervo con una flecha en el ijar
que huye y se desangra.

//Man is an animal of loneliness,
a deer with an arrow in its flank
that flees and bleeds.//

Ah, pero el odio, su fijeza insomne
de pupilas de vidrio; su actitud
que es a la vez reposo y amenaza.
El ciervo va a beber y en el agua aparece
el reflejo de un tigre.

//Ah, but hate, its fixed insomnia
with pupils of glass; its attitude
at once relaxed and threatening.
The deer goes to drink and in the water appears
the reflection of a tiger.//

El ciervo bebe el agua y la imagen. Se vuelve
- antes que lo devoren- (complice, fascinado)
igual a su enemigo.
Damos la vida solo a lo que odiamos.

//The deer drink the water and the image. It becomes
- before it is devoured- (accomplice, enamored)
equal to its enemy.
Let us give life only to what we hate.//

This poem is by rosario Castellanos (1925-1974).
She was the Mexican ambassador to Israel from 1971 to 1974.

Both love and hate are harmful in this poem, but Castellanos seems to prefer the hidden, murderous coldness of hate, the tiger sneaking up on the deer, more than the flagrant bloodiness of the arrow in the deer's flank. Hate is the moment before death; it's the the treachery that makes the deer drink of its own killer in the water that it needs to survive.

This doesn't bode well for love in the real world, the non-poetic universe. How can we reconcile our own needs with the relationships we form with others? How can we resist the attraction and the need that leads us to our own demise?

Posted by Kim at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So as I'm plodding through day-to-day existence my mind is weighed down: should sheets match the comforter? did I just hit that person with my car? sugar or splenda? But today I made room in my tin-trap brain for something else, a small space, but something else: "Only man is capable of engaging in a bloody battle for the sole purpose of demonstrating that he has contempt for his own life, that he is something more than a complicated machine or a 'slave to his passion,' in short, that he has a specifically human dignity because he is free."

How I can get my work done when this is what I think about? (This definitely helps....)

This passage is from Fukuyama's End of History. I know for this blog, for Kim and me, the idea of individual freedom is a theme for us. And it's a battle being an individual and being ignorant, having so much of the universe to contemplate and understanding so little of it. It's not like being fish in a bowl with three-second memories. Hegel's idea, in the book, extends to the notion of recognition, that humans want to be recognized as being human and being more than human but their peers. Our freedom comes from renouncing our physical self (sounds Buddhist) and this also fits into some ideas of psychoanalysis, like Ernest Becker said that we all want to be transcendent recognition to help us cope with our fear of death.

Filed Under Politics, Philosophy

Posted by Dawn at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times Magazine from last week did something I just love: look at historical precedent to explain a contemporary predicament. Today's troubles have their roots in the past, though to hear our politicians speak about it, these are unprecedented problems which require radical, sometimes unlawful, actions at the expense of everything else.

The article postulates that liberals (Democrats) need to look to their 20th century history to see how they can create a compelling, coherent foreign policy to rival the conservatives in this election year and beyond. Undoubtedly, the Democrats are impotent because they are beset by extraordinary problems and have a diverse (ideological, economic) base to appeal to. The legacy Democrats should turn to? That of Reinhold Niebuhr. I made some mention of his ideas before because I too see them as a way of understanding the predicament American now finds itself, one that is hubristic and radical.

Niebuhr said the atrocities of early 20th century in terms of humanity's move away from a doctrine of fallibility to one of extreme idolization of the individual. In the United States’ policies during the cold war he, along with George Kennan, cautioned that Americans cannot lose sight of their own wickedness and injustice and regard themselves as “morally pure” in contrast to their communist enemies. Even democracies are capable of bring great tyranny on their people and others.

Peter Beinhart, author of the Times pieces concurs: "in the first years of the cold war, Niebuhr's emphasis on moral fallibility underlay America's remarkable willingness to restrain its power." The danger, Beinhart writes, of these current times, is America's movement away from this restraint but calling itself a "benign empire" and having grand ambitions of "exporting" democracy to everyone, whether they want it or not. "In other words," Beinhart writes, "the United States would rid itself of external impediments but nonetheless act in the global good, uncorrupted by the temptations of unrestrained power."

Beinhart continues with what I think is a good encapsulation of the problem: "On global warming, an American liberated from international restraint has acted irresponsibly; in our antiterrorist prisons, we have acted inhumanely." Liberals, it seems, have not been able to come up with viable solutions because they have been able to explain this hubris in a way that provides any glimmer of hope for change or convinces people that they would do any different if they were in power. They haven't been able to explain, to a national audience, how the current conservative administration has focused on foreign affairs at the expense of domestic ones. Beinhart provides a good example: "That is the hidden backdrop to the great popular revolt against the Dubai ports deal earlier this year - an isolationist, nationalist spasm by a public that feels the government is more concerned with the interests of foreigners that with its own."

So what is to be done? Liberals have to embrace promoting democracy abroad but like how it was done after WWII: by providing economic opportunity with it as well and accepting that democracy in this country is an experiments and its health is dependent on our belief in the system. They can also talk about bringing the focus back to domestic front because, as Beinhart points out, "America is not a fixed model for a benighted world. It is the democratic struggle here at home, against evil in our society, that offers a beacon to people in other national struggling against the evil in theirs."

Filed under Current Events, History, Politics

Posted by Dawn at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Popol Vuh, also known as the Book of Advice, is a fundamental part of Maya literature and starts with a chapter that looks a whole lot like Genesis 1 and 2. It's one of those Joseph Campell, parallel-development-of-myth type of things that makes you think about what we are as people. How we think we're very different but it all boils down to the same struggle to find out who we are and what the heck we are doing on this spinning ball of earth. And one way of dealing with the absurdity of it all is to make up a really cool story about the formation of the ground and the sky and and humans and all the other beings with whom we share the planet.

When the Spanish arrived, the Maya were living in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador. Their civilization peaked in about 625 CE and their achievements include sculpture, heiroglyphics, arithmetic and astronomy. Some of the books that have survived are the Libros de Chilam Balam, the Popol Vuh/Libro de Consejo, and the Rabinal-Achi.

Check out part of chapter 1 of the Popol-Vuh and think about how the God of Genesis took the void and made the earth and the firmament:

Esta es la relacion de como todo estaba en suspenso, todo en calma, en silencio; todo inmovil, callado, y vacia la extension del cielo.
Esta es la primera relacion, el primer discurso. No habia todavia un hombre, ni un animal, pajaros, peces, cangrejos, arboles, piedras, cuevas, barrancas, hierbas ni bosques: solo el cielo existia.
No se manifestaba la faz de la tierra. Solo estaban el mar en calma y el cielo en toda su extension.
No habia nada junto, que hiciera ruido, ni cosa alguna que se moviera, ni se agitara, ni hiciera ruido en el cielo.
No habia nada que estuviera en pie; solo el agua en reposo, el mar apacible, solo y tranquilo. No habia nada dotado de existencia.
Solamente habia inmovilidad y silencio en la obscuridad, en la noche. Solo el Creador, el Formador, Tepeu, Gucumatz, los Progenitores, estaban en el agua rodeados de claridad. Estaban ocultos bajo plumas verdes y azules, por eso se les llama Gucumatz. De grandes sabios, de grandes pensadores es su naturaleza. De esta manera existia el cielo y tambien el Corazon del Cielo, que este es el nombre de Dios y asi es como se llama.
Llego aqui entonces la palabra ...

[From Literatura Mexicana, by Maria del Carmen Millan.]

This is the story of how all was in suspension, all was calm, in silence; al immobile, quiet, and empty was the extension of the sky.
This is the first story, the first discussion. There were not yet any man, nor animal, birds, fish, crabs, trees, rocks, caves, cliffs, grass or forests: only the sky existed.
The face of the earth was not yet manifest. There was only the calm sea and the sky in its vast extension.
Nothing came together to make noise, nor was anything moving, nor was anything agitated, nor was there any noise in the sky.
Nothing was standing, there was only the reclining sea, the peaceful sea, alone and tranquil.
Nothing had been gifted with existence.
There was only immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night. Only the Creator, the Former, Tepeu, Gucumatz, the Progenitor, were in the water surrounded by clarity. They were covered by green and blue feathers, this is why they are called Gucumatz. From great wise ones, great thinkers is their nature.
This is how the sky and the Heart of the Sky came to be, this is his name and how he is called.
Then the word arrived...

There's more, when language arrives, but you can see here that first there were the sky and water, before the land and the animals and humans. Like in Genesis water is the primal substance, and here it's neat because God is actually hiding in the water. Just as with the Nahuatl literature entry, for me this was ineresting mostly because of how familiar it seemed.

Posted by Kim at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe this is upside down, I don't know, but this is Gerhard Richter, who oscillates between photo realism and abstract, but regardless, is always precise. When I took this picture, I didn't write any information down about it, its title, the date, but no matter. I wanted to take this picture because the texture and colors and composition make my eyes vibrate. I don't think I need a better reason, do I? Someone once wrote, "Art is useless", but, reader, I politely disagree. Nothing that makes your eyes vibrate is without meaning.

Filed under Art

Posted by Dawn at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This story in the March issue of The Believer (yes, I'm about a month behind in everything, thank you), reveals to me much of the intent of this blog. It isn't always clear to me because knowledge is hard thing to quantify, and a bit of a process at that, but this manifesto, the "Reality Hunger: A Manifesto" by David Shields, quantifies succinctly all these works of literature that fall under different ways of thinking. What's most impressive is what this guy has actually read: a lot of long, complicated books, but good ones at that, few of which I've managed to eyeball.

Shields starts simply enough -- what's the tradition, where did this start, the world and the need to recreate it? -- "Michel de Montaigne famously asked, 'What do I know?'—thereby forming and backforming a tradition. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. St. Augustine, Confessions. Pascal, Pensées. Rousseau, Confessions. Rochefoucauld, Maxims" and ends thus: Camus, Marguerite Duras, Barry Hannah.

Now, what I find appealing about this is how Shields is writing ostensibly about the virtues of non-fiction (lyric essays, he calls it) versus fiction, but ends up cataloging his mental library and how each work advances, progresses, the art and how each works strikes at a pivotal moment: "I'm not interested, though, in self per se; I'm interested in self as theme-carrier, as host. What I want is the sound of a person sitting alone in the dark, thinking about life -- e.g., Hawthorne, "The Custom-House"; Borges, Other Inquisitions; Stendhal, On Love; Baldwin, the early essays. The sound of one hand clapping."

There's a catalogue of mental library, the intellectual detritus we carry with us each day that informs our view of the world. How works do I reference through my day? What titles do I see when I flip through the card catalogue of my mind to explain or make sense of a situation? Usually something like The Joy of Cooking, but that has to count for something, right?

Filed Under Essays, Errata

Posted by Dawn at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Sunday I went to this huge international exhibition of modern art in Mexico City called Expo Reforma. A lot of the artists were Latin American, but many of them were from the US, Europe or Asia. I thought this installation by Carol Bove was really funny because it questions the idea of literature.

By showing a book with the word Poem written in type so big that two words fill the page puts into question the existence of poetry, because if that's a poem then anything can be a poem. A lot of Latin American poets have experimented with this type of thing. Like for example the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra took Neruda's desire to write poetry that "smelled like urine" to a whole new level with his Antipoesia.

He drew little comics on postcards and made art objects that were poems too. He wrote poems that were ugly and unpoetic in the sense that we think we should be entertained by poetry in a positive way. Parra and Neruda were similar in the sense that they wanted to bring poetry down to the level of the people, but I think Parra thought that Neruda hadn't really done it and wanted to push the whole thing further.

This is my friend Fernando in front of a photo-esque painting of a girl with the words Mira/Think/Dimentica on it. Mira means Look, and Dimentica, well, you can guess that one I'm sure. The girl is so young an beautiful but she looks like one of those troubled adolescents. It's the change, the lack of direction, the disillusionment with what life is giving you, especially if you have a less than perfect family, that gets girls at that age. So that's what it made me think of. I like the picture with Fernando in there because he's thinking but he's in a good mood so it breaks the edge of this hard subject matter. Fernando has a solo band called Moodeifer and he's also a painter, and all this creativity makes him an excellent gallery companion.

Posted by Kim at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)