One of you, however, had the presence of mind to simply do my job for me.
And so, I express my humblest gratitude to our friend, who wishes only to be known as The Obstinate Badger--and so he shall--for this poem: "Unmediated Mystical Meditation #3."
(And did a voice on the wind just suggest it may become a series?)
Unmediated Mystical Meditation #3
By The Obstinate Badger
I pine just like the Fathers for theosis,
To bridge the barren barge between our closeness
(But preferably to bypass all the requisite kenosis).
If Jerusalem has much to do with Athens,
Then I’ll need concepts for the interactions
(But as it stands, I’m weak in Greek philosophy and classics).
Should I partake more oft in anamnesis,
Or forfeit fervent prayer for poesis?
(Will life afford me time enough to process every thesis?)
I’ve strived to strip myself of ill intention
For purity of heart and strict attention
(But it seems I’ve lost my ladder built for spiritual ascension).
Was I the only one who had to look up what "anamnesis" and "kenosis" meant?
ReplyDeleteTumbleweeds.
Alright. It's good to learn new words. And I like the use of parentheses at the end, for what I consider the most direct (and therefore beautiful) part of this musing/poem. The rhythm and rhyme is a refreshing break from all the post-post modern crap being flung about the monkey bars these days, and I like that 'purity of heart' and 'strict attention' are things that the author relates. And again, I think the image of a ladder for spiritual ascension is beautiful and profound. Doesn't matter that Jacob already had one. It can be used again. In fact, I think that could be an interesting direction - instead of abstract, esoteric musing, why not expand on the images that everyone understands? A well-crafted simile can have deep theological value.
But ultimately, I'm a stranger in a strange land here. I don't know what it's like to struggle with my faith, because I never had faith to begin with. And that's what this is about, right? I also have a streak of philistine rage that makes me angry when I have to look up words that I'm not convinced are necessary to communicate the essence of the poem. What it boils down to is this: I'm an aesthete and a fast-walking, straight-talking hedon. I can only come at this piece from that perspective. That being said, I think the author could cut out a lot of unnecessary language. Again, maybe it was his or her intent to be exceedingly lofty. Thing is, it's not lofty enough (and has just the right amount of earnestness) to fall short of self-deprecation and/or irony.
But now I'm going to go out drinking and use "anamnesis" and "kenosis" in as many sentences as I can, goddamnit.
--
Syd, in the Badger's play of these fancy words (of which I am, I confess, rather fuzzy on the precise meanings) I sense a sort of coping process. I imagine this poor quadrupedal mammal is earnestly seeking the now overgrown bootleg trails of the church 'Fathers' with literature full of "ye's" and "yon's" and "hither's" and "yore's," scrawled with instructions such as:
ReplyDelete"travel four miles down poesis, turn left at kinosis (to avoid the araeopagus, obviously). walk backwards four paces and do a somersault down the rabbit hole of [some 12th century mystic nun]. when you've arrived, you'll know. or you'll be dead. or both. etc."
Amid that frustration, and amid the disorienting vertigo of comprehending precise, one-off (as in you'll never EVER use them elsewhere) terms like these that religion prof's throw around with infernal levity, perhaps we can consider this poem a half heartfelt, half tongue-in-cheek response to a hypothetical "use this word in a sentence" or, more horrifying still, "use EVERY ONE of these words in a sentence."
While initially a mundane vocabulary assignment, maybe our furry omnivore seized the opportunity to let off some existential steam. And maybe, just maybe, in actually USING them fancy words, in typing the letters out, in breathing the syllables, he has taken a step toward their mastery.
The tacit thought in this poem is that the ownership of these terms is (at least part of) the stuff of following the Fathers in their wild and enigmatic transcendences. The lightness of the rhythm, and overall brevity says to me that our hero is willing play with explosives (explosives terms, that is) to roar aloud his sincerity in his spirit quest to God; the Fathers; himself; the void et alia.
It is a thumb-on-nose, fingers outstretched to the universe. It is a hand-on-heart pledge. It is a fists-on-chest protean yawp. It is a tongue-firmly-in-cheek stroke of the beard.
I like it.
wups. i mean KENOSIS. derp.
ReplyDeletepreface: I'm not much of a poet, literary critic, or writer, so forgive my response.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'd have to agree that the use of such "alienating" words is not only for their meaning (of course, you could limit yourself to single-syllables and still get there), but he's making a point in avoiding the easy interpretation.
Again, I still struggle to actually fully understand this, but I at least grasp that he's getting to the end of his theorizing/philosophy-ing and ability to discern a true sense of "god". These words then serve to tell us that it's BEEN a journey and he has learned. Still, his time is short (or he understands the brevity of life) and he's "lost his ladder".
I also think that while this may obviously be particular to the "Christian" God or at least the God of the Jews, it's applicable at least in some sense to anyone with faith, meaning everyone. Maybe I miss the point, but being "faithless" is as much an act of faith as to be "faithful". To that end, come at it from any perspective you like, but I'd argue it's not intended to alienate, but to be more a comment on how we all deal with this world and what is or isn't outside of it.
hmmm. I guess that's what I think.
After reading two Walker Percy novels I have this strange feeling inside of me. It is a sense that there is some sort of primeval humanity that has been whisked away. I felt more of the primeval side of it after reading Lancelot. It is as Percy insisted, that no matter if we sin or not, we need to do something. Being a people of action is a conduit to meaning. I always try not to slip into dualism, therefore I will not say that being a people of inaction is a conduit to meaninglessness. Instead, being a people of inaction does not merely make us bereft of meaning, but it also makes us bereft of having an understanding of meaning.
ReplyDeleteAfter Lancelot I read The Second Coming. This book was less harsh in the sense that it gave more definition as to what kind of action should be taken to instill meaning. Lancelot bursted forth with calls from one mountain range to the other, living in the trees, letting others know we are here and we will still be here. It included murder and savagery. It also led me to believe that the actions of murder and savagery could be more defined problems than problems of being nice. I read The Second Coming while working night shift, nine to nine in the dark except for those few wiry hours of bleak light in the morning. It was an odd job to say the least but for brevity’s sake I will keep the description brief. I read this book with a tired heart. There are so many structures of understanding that I cannot grasp. What is worse, there are so many ways of explaining wisdom that I cannot grasp. To be able to learn what one is learning in a way that they could teach it back to others is a skill that haunts me like a ghost. Walker Percy reminded me (or taught me, since I might have been mired in the category of meaningless inaction) that it does not matter what the hell you do, as long as you do something. I want so badly to tie this in with the Badger poem but cannot. Days go by racking my brain for a studious cultured response but in all honesty, I think the badger poem is bullshit, if you read into it too much. We all feel like the badger in one degree or another, its just complicated language that makes the difference of connection and clarity. Right now I come dangerously close to believing that I can get by without musings such as the badger, as long as I am in continual realization of the world around me. Annie Dillard let go of her self-consciousness long ago, I am trying to do the same.
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ReplyDeletePreliminary Note: Lev Shestov might offer wisdom
ReplyDeleteFirst, a critical comment on Mason's "I think the badger poem is bullshit:" This comment made me laugh out loud, a completely visceral response. That is an extremely funny thing to say. Despite the fact that a charitable appropriation of writing in the midst of the difficulty of an inhuman medium is almost always a prudent prescription, it is nevertheless not diction or metaphysical subtlety that drives me to write about the badger, nor his late (but still living I sure hope) commentator, but the certain fact that such a response in me is a result of Mason's comment overcoming the mediation of technology and separation, by being able to overcome the medium of instantaneous, written discourse, and to know and experience inwardly, "Mason, that hilarious creature. God bless'im wherever he is." This response in me is perhaps symptomatic of the nature of the discourse, which is perhaps already embedded within a framework of dialogue that is simultaneously conscious of the provisional nature of anything written on a blog, and the Badger’s seeming conclusion that can be easily confused as following the internal logic of a post-Kafka-like humor which eviscerates the line between humor and the tragic in irony.
Perhaps a fitting and appropriate posture for the mediation of the poem through the derelict process of its absorption into a sea of absolutely democratizing and equalizing information, circulated consistently by the technological apparatus in front of us, of which we all remain in an a-temporal, imaginary relationship to one another, is a distanced separation from self-belief regarding interpretative relevance between commentary and original text. This is the price of being unable to truly know denotation or connotation within the text itself, and the price of avoiding both fundamentalism and all-inclusive pluralism and absolute ideology. It is important to always remain conscious of the penetration of ideology (in its classical form of unconscious mythology, very much like knee-jerk bad habits) and fundamentalism in areas where we little suspect, most especially in our readings through a computer. Perhaps it is in the scanning and clicking process of reading where the mythology of a self-disclosing text and the ability to know by sight and immediate appropriation remains ever in concert with the cognitive, temporal re-structuring and re-orientation that occurs when bodies are mediated my machines (Adorno in Minima Moralia stresses the violence that results from this). Do we believe that writing on a keyboard rather than writing by hand provides a basis for approaching something with manner and ritual, as is necessary for mediating between ourselves and a particular thing which we cannot approach with authority? Bad manners are usually associated with getting what you want or being too hasty in your desire. Fundamentalism and nihilism are in fact two sides of the same coin, as fundamentalism tries to protect itself from non-being, and nihilism is often the son that comes after--responding to the father's necessary ontological foothold---fundamentalism is a diseased desire for security at the peril of thwarting the necessarily ambiguous and human, and nihilism, as it laughs at all claims of value and meaning, is most certainly as certain as can be.
Anyhow, the poem deserves, as does any effort of genuine self-reflection, serious regard and consideration. I can only offer this: the Rule of St Benedict is “a little rule written for beginners.” Constancy and perseverance, openness to repetitions and seeming banalities and sufferings, in the midst of a single day is a sheer, incomparable miracle. There are many eighty-year-old monks who are children just like us, starting every day as beginners. The ladder that leads to heaven leads to washing dishes and trying to not curse existence, as your body seems to betray you. It leads to practicing death in life: as Eagleton writes, we will not be able to accept death if we are unable to practice self-abandonment in life. There is something that seems intolerably grim about this comment, and perhaps it rings of masochism if read by a masochist like myself and many of us. Yet, I think that, just as a good librarian at Eastern University once welcomed my pile of stolen, returned books with a smile, we find that absolute love and gentleness is there to meet us as we once again stumble back from returning to our vomit. We condemn ourselves, but the terrorism of the love of God that burns up all as a fire will eventually overtake us, whether we like it or not. This is the ultimate expression of irony, and it is not good news to the smug.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the ladder is more like an escalator moving in the opposite direction, that we try to ascend in the weakness of our desire to escape finitude.
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ReplyDeleteMason,
ReplyDeleteI just realized how much of a dick I probably sounded like---forgive me---all of what I say about smugness and fundamentalism and ideology could be just as easily applied to everything I wrote, and getting stuck in existential quandaries without acting is, I am realizing, a much more sound declaration than "let's analyze this beyond relevance or importance to the matter at hand." This is what I get from a history of negational thinking: absolute douchebaggery and something that appears to be a diatribe against visceral honesty in the name of order or the reservations of reflection. How slippery writing is, and even more slippery, self-deception. Again, I realize I know nothing. Sheesh. You owe me a punch in the stomach.