Mission statement and a response to "Life is Elsewhere" by Milan Kundera and other literature...
This is the ideal moment. I am going through a lull at the moment wherein I am not reading newspaper commentaries, out of the garden, inside because of the rain... it is ideal.
When I was in university I was struck by the lack of direction of many of the people around me. The early years were nebulous and ideas occurred to me like paint splattered upon a wall by a frustrated would-be artist with a severe emotional block. The ideas were recorded and lost through the years, and things I have written in the past no longer exist, or at least exist in a whole new form in this current time. Every piece of writing, every piece that made me feel inordinately wealthy and insightful I cast off and did not regret the loss of. It was a difficult time because I failed so miserably as a university student. Without emotional attachment, what is learning, what is the path worth which we travel upon? Perhaps that's why I have taken so long to gather up my sense of direction; if it wasn't mine and merely prescribed I would have no interest, none at all.
After reading lately a short novel called "Life is Elsewhere" by the wonderful Czech writer Milan Kundera I was struck with the difficulty in a more coherent form, though the central character could not be more different from myself. Artistic expression and education are not trophies or means to an end; they ought to be ends in themselves, or instructive in the development and nurturing of society and the world about it. The sentiment that life is elsewhere is perhaps what many students or young people believe to be true; the world they have grown up in is emasculated and the truth is not inherent anywhere, but this is also false. The conceitedness and isolation of young people is never met full on, and even upon reaching university life or maturity, real life may not quite be met. So it is possible that a journey that ought to be affirming and allow for the young man or woman to understand not just what to do with themselves, but also what to do for their time, and for the people about them- well, that journey is never experienced.
I understand that generalizations are a wicked and untrustworthy thing to rely upon, so I will admit that there are variations of this and I am only concerned with the worst possible outcome; what is a man worth is he does not break out of that stage of chrysalis, if he is simply pushed forward and accepted though he remains conceited and insular. It must not be about the self; it must be about the world around the self and living in it all at the same moment. Life, indeed, could never be elsewhere. As Proust declares in the final chapter of his volume Time Regained, we are living within this time, breathing in it- all of us, all the time. Time sweeps space forwards and if Albert Einstein's philosophizing is true, it simply cannot be bent by us, cannot be shied from. In a minute there is time, says T.S. Eliot...
"For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse..."
"The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock": the first and foremost of literature which woke me to it; time is lived within. Time is all encompassing and people cannot refute it. There is no future, and no history, because yesterday was today and tomorrow will also be today; I do not mean to sound obtuse, but this is my view of life. Like Prufrock, it was once impossible to say what I meant, but we live in interesting times. We live in times where there already surrounds us so much understanding and the collected wisdom of generations that there is a strand of potential come loose from that once nicely woven social fabric, that tapestry of prudence and hesitation that colors our society at this very moment.
It is a strand that appears very, very unreal to me. This great effort to control and sustain development but mostly regardless of social welfare has continued since the construction of Rome. We go through dramatic phases of reality shocking us into a better consciousness of what is happening but we tend to slip back into a sullen unawareness of our life, believing it might become more tenable in the future but not doing enough to bring that future to the present.
It is possible to say what I mean. I will now elaborate upon the moment that T.S. Eliot is referenced in Joseph Heller's Catch- 22; it is a stunning subtlety which I have noticed Catch- 22 is strewn with:
"Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
"Who was it?" asked General Peckem.
"I don't know," Colonel Cargill replied.
"What did he want?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what did he say?"
"'T.S. Eliot,'" Colonel Cargill informed him.
"What's that?"
"'T.S. Eliot'" Colonel Cargill repeated…
"I wonder what it means," General Peckem reflected…"
This is a fine fascination for myself; why would T.S. Eliot be referenced at this particular moment? Is it, perhaps, for the understandable reason that T.S. Eliot was acclaimed so widely for the most humane poem ever written, The Wasteland? I would suppose so. If the reader now follows, I will take this to its limit: we are faced time and time again by writers to offer us enormous warnings against fatal decisions to be made in the future. T.S. Eliot poured out compassion to everyone in the Wasteland ("I will show you fear in a handful of dust...") and J. Heller continued the tradition with Catch- 22, subtly remarking upon T.S. Eliot's failure to captivate on a long-term basis early on in his novel. Joseph Heller warns against the lack of regulation in world trade and market control, demonstrates how a distance from markets cause atrocities to happen, like the bombing of ones own country with weapons it manufactured. This is a psychological oversight, a pathological lack of comprehension- and this is an ideal moment for me to write.
Consider my perspective on money, which is the healthiest perspective: it is an institution which must be dismantled. Value creation has been institutionalized on a mass market level for more than one hundred years now, and it is no surprise that in that period of time the destruction of species and land on this earth has been ongoing. It also comes as no surprise that extreme areas of poverty have developed. If my sense of time is correct, then it is not historically our fault, but it is our fault at this very moment and a grass roots expansion of conscience, local cultural development, and responsibility for one's and one's community's actions must be immediately sought. This is my interest, and perhaps my only interest in life. Pleasure and rapture I find in seeing things grow and perhaps being involved in the process. If anything I intend to work within this towards a more harmonious end. As I already mentioned I feel an affinity with Henry David Thoreau. I will close with a quote from Civil Disobedience:
"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resists before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better that it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?"
- p265, Civil Disobedience in "The American Transcendentalists"
This is what my journal is for- all of the above. I have said it once before, perhaps several months ago; our need for community is stronger than it has been, and we have the opportunity to be perhaps materially less well off but living together with harmony beyond imagination, and creative in respects we had never seen before.
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