What would happen to the world if we were human?
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Boy, did FP ask the key question there. Our inhumanity to the rest of humanity is obvious, noted, and questioned, in one form or another, in every religion, although those same religions are used to justify the most egregious acts of cruelty to our fellow humans.
Time continues to fly along - and, no, I'm not prepared for school starting on Monday. Today is one month since the wedding, which doesn't seem possible (both because it was clearly yesterday and also clearly five years ago). It's also difficult to wrap my head around the thought that five weeks ago we were ending our three week stay in a 13th century cottage, next to a 13th century castle, in the distant mountains of northern Portugal. Sometimes I think I actually do live as strange a life as my friends think I do.
There are people who truly suffer because they weren't able, in real life, to live with Mr. Pickwick or to shake Mr. Wardle's hand. I'm one of those people. I've wept genuine tears over that novel, for not having lived in that time and with those people, real people.
The disasters of novels are always beautiful, because the blood in them isn't real blood and those who die in them don't rot, nor is rottenness rotten in novels.
When Mr. Pickwick is ridiculous he's not ridiculous, for it all happens in a novel. Perhaps the novel is a more perfect life and reality, which God creates through us. Perhaps we live only to create it. It seems that civilizations exist only to produce art and literature; words are what speak for them and remain. How do we know that these extra-human figures aren't truly real? It tortures my mind to think this might be the case . . .
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Ch. 195
OK, I told you I was hooked on The Book of Disquiet, so expect many more passages to find their way into this blog. I was trying to explain to Janet the other day that one of the most amazing and beautiful things about the book is that there are worlds within worlds, and just about the time you figure out the protagonist (one of Pessoa's famous heteronyms) you are led somewhere else unexpected. One would not have expected this elegiac paean to a Dickens novel - and, more generally, to all literature and culture - from the seemingly cynical Bernardo Soares. That said, Soares (again, a Pessoa heteronym) is a dreamer, and the path to doing anything is to do nothing, and instead dream. Of course, this passage jumps out at me because I essentially agree with it. It's doubtless why I used to view my history classes through the lenses of art and literature, and why I torture my students now with Crime and Punishment or the Shahnameh or Journey to the West or Winesburg, Ohio or Kafka on the Shore - or, soon, The Book of Disquiet.
Oh, and I'm definitely tackling The Pickwick Papers next, a novel which, criminally, I've only read portions.
I have so many pictures from the Portugal adventure to post, but the general chaos of life keeps blocking my efforts. It will come out in drips and drops. Here's a lovely shot of the sky above our cottage in Lindoso.
OK, it wasn't actually much of a storm, but there was definitely a sense of quiet and calm and contentment after the wedding guests left. It's hard to believe that tomorrow it will be a month since that lovely day.
We never know self-realization. We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Ch. 11
I made the point recently that I finished Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, and that it's one of the most amazing books I've ever read. In fact, it's so extraordinary that I doing something I've only done a couple of times previously in my decades of reading: I started it over again. I also bought Zenith's thousand-page biography of Pessoa, so, clearly, I'm hooked. Part of it is my fascination with All Things Portuguese, but it's also a book that you know, as you read it, that it will take you - and continue to take you - to unexplored parts of your mind.
Yes, of course, I'm paraphrasing one of my favorite lines from Marcus Aurelius. After spending three weeks in Portugal this summer it's not particularly surprising that it sneaks into my thoughts almost daily. Here's one of the images that never seems to go very far away: the field above our cottage, next to the castle and the mysterious and creepy graineries. I would walk up there every night as the sun was going down. On this particular night the light was very gentle the wind was gently moving the heather (or at least what I thought was heather) around.
A branch severed from an adjoining branch necessarily becomes severed from the whole tree. A man, likewise, who has been divided from any of his fellows has thereby fallen away from the whole community. But whereas the branch is lopped by some other hand, the man, by his feelings of hatred or aversion, brings about his own estrangement from his neighbour, and does not see that at the same time has has cut himself off from the whole framework of society. Nevertheless it is in our power, by grace of Zeus the author of all fellowship, to grow back and become one with our neighbour again, so playing our part once more in the integration of the whole. Yet if such acts of secession are repeated frequently, they make it difficult for the recusant to achieve this reunion and restitution. A branch which has been partner of the tree's growth since the beginning, and has never ceased to share its life, is a different thing from one that has been grafted in again after a severance. As the gardeners say, it is of the same tree, but not of the same mind.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eleven
Once more Marcus Aurelius reflecting upon the human condition and the need to remember and focus upon the oneness of the human condition - and once again using nature as the fitting metaphor. I guess I'm thinking about this admonition this morning for a couple reasons. One of them I suppose is purely personal. I was strolling through the great idiotic wasteland of Facebook this morning and came across some shared post (those ones which are either generated by a company to get business or as a scam to steal your personal information; in regards to the latter, I'm always amazed by the posts that ask questions like, "What was your first car?" or "What was your favorite pet's name?", when they should just go ahead and ask for your passwords . . . but I digress) which caught my eye. This one asked your favorite memory from high school. I started to type, "When I walked across the stage at graduation and never looked back," which is true but also more than a bit of a self-serving snarky statement, so I didn't write anything. In this way I intentionally cut myself away from the tree, although, geez, it's Indiana, so it's no great loss. Still, it speaks to MA's observation. Of course, if I hadn't made a very deliberate effort to leave I'd potentially be watching FoxNews, voting GOP, and actively supporting the establishment of a racist and theocratic state. Sometimes you did need to cut the branch because the tree is rotten, and hope for a successful graft somewhere else. All of this then brought me back to Facebook and social media where it had begun, and where I actually came back into contact with many of the folks I went to high school with (at least the ones I didn't unfriend because of their very thinly veiled racist or homophobic or Islamophobic statements). The great myth of social media, much like the internet that generated it, was that it would be the instrument that brought us all together or back together. Actually, it does exactly the opposite. The illusion of connection and the reality of isolation and, at times, anonymity, actually pushes us apart and facilitates that separation.
Naturally enough there was a 13th century castle behind our 13th century cottage in Lindoso. It was left open so you could walk in there any time you wanted, which is what I did every night (right before my routine walk amongst the graineries - more on that soon). Here's a picture I snapped one night after a wild storm (it was hailing sideways).
Here's a picture of my dear friend Cyndi, who brought the Wedding Key Lime Pie. I have a very long history of showing up at her house (and, well, many other houses) with key lime pies from Klinger's, so this seemed like a natural fit. We just treated it like a normal Wedding Cake and used it for the ceremonial cutting.
Here's a view from the side porch of the 13th century cottage that we rented for our three weeks in Portugal. It's hard to believe that we woke up to this view every morning.
I guess it's not particularly surprising that the blog future will be dominated by pictures from the wedding and the Portugal trip. Here's one of Janet and my son. She broke the cardinal rule of briding by heading out before the ceremony because she wanted to talk to my son. As a father - and soon-to-be husband - it was difficult to complain about that breach of etiquette.
