Just another photo from the tile museum in Lisbon. I remember when I made my students track down their favorite tiles when I led a student trip to Portugal (and Spain). Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, they had a ball doing it. One of the lessons I learned about Champlain students is they love games and challenges, which I quickly brought into my class assignments.
I've already spent more time blogging today than I actually have to spare, but I did get all of my grading down yesterday so I guess I've earned a little reprieve. Still, this is just an introduction to a later richer post on a visit from my summer trip to Portugal. While there I finally made my way to the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, the tile museum, in the outskirts of Lisbon. I was hoping to bring my students there on a proposed March trip, but my undependable health led, sadly, to the cancelling of that course. It is a lovely museum, and I'll share some more pictures on a later date.
The generation I belong to was born into a world where those with a brain as well as a heart couldn't find any support. The destructive work of previous generations left us a world that offered no security in the religious sphere, no guidance in the moral sphere, and no tranquillity in the political sphere. We were born into the midst of metaphysical anguish, moral anxiety and political disquiet.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 175
In a time of extreme disquiet, I suppose it's not surprising Pessoa continues to resonate so profoundly. When I watch the talking heads dissect this distressing election (and I've made an effort to watch as little as possible) it's obvious that they don't have the power to do so, mainly because they are viewing the issue on the micro level (i.e. mistakes in the Democratic platform or in a particular speech - or Trump's decision to double-down on racism and grievance) and not even trying to grapple with the problems revealed on the macro level (the religious, moral, and political spheres that Pessoa referenced above). And it's not simply the generation voting now which so alarmingly displays any sort of depth of thought or humanity (or even common sense) that I find so troubling. After the election I wrote to several of my friends who had daughters and told them that, as bad as I feel at this moment, I feel much worse for them. Think of the lives that those young women will be forced to lead - and think of the non-lives of the children they won't have, and not because of abortion, but because of their decision to not have children, because, well, why would they? What dream for the future is inspired by this electoral abortion?
In times like these - when I could readily understand ascetics and recluses, were I able to understand how anyone can make an effort on behalf of absolute ends or subscribe to a creed that might produce an effort - I would create, if I could, a full-fledged aesthetics of despair, an inner rhythm like a crib's rocking, filtered by the night's caresses in other, far-flung homelands.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 207
In the cold, cruel days after this last election, I guess it would be far too easy to give up to "a full-fledged aesthetics of despair." Obviously, it's not normally how I roll. My classic response to bad moments like this, and I've had more than my share, is to give myself over to a short period of despair, allowing myself to wonder why I even bother and considering the beautiful option of surrendering, but then I quickly turn things around and plot how to overwhelm those foolish enough to pick a fight. However, this may be different. I was making this point with a couple folks the other day: there's something about 51% of Americans voting for this cruel, incompetent, orange con artist that is difficult to get past. There are so many people who voted for him, and who don't really have a safety net and can thus ill-afford the disaster that awaits, who will suffer because of a vote inspired by greed or racism or misogyny or xenophobia or Islamophobia or, well, simple cruelty. I choose the last word carefully and intentionally. We've reached the late Roman stage where the powers that be view a large part of their job, and their hold on power, in producing a blood sport to amuse/distract the masses, hungry for the suffering of others. In my Nature of Evil class we read a much too short piece from Emanuel Levinas's "Useless Suffering," where he made the point about how so much of the suffering of the 20th century was based on a fascination with our own suffering, often over-blown if not entirely self-generated, while ignoring the suffering of others - when our greatest emphasis should be on the suffering of others. So, it should not be "America First," but rather "Humanity First." Instead, we've taken a very dark turn, and one of my goals is to not let my despair give way to a schadenfreude at the inevitable suffering of people who threw their support behind one of the largest cults in world history, and clearly the largest in American history. So many of these people have truly suffered through the ravages of late stage Capitalism, and whose suffering was all too often ignored by the elites in the Democratic party and manipulated by elites in the Republican party. I would be taking away the entirely incorrect message from Levinas if I celebrated a decision on their part which is only going to make their lives worse. That said, it doesn't mean that I have to hang around watch it happen. I've been thinking about relocating overseas, to "far-flung homelands," for some time, and I think we've reached that tipping point. It's not simply that I don't want to live among the ruins, but rather that I want to live a saner, more moderate life, one of balance and relative peace and quiet, not a plaything of the greedy rich and heartless corporations.
One of the soul's great tragedies is to execute a work and then realize, once it's finished that it's not any good. The tragedy is especially great when one realizes that the work is the best he could have done. But to write a work, knowing beforehand that it's bound to be flawed and imperfect; to see while writing it that it's flawed and imperfect - this is the height of spiritual torture and humiliation.
Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet, document 231
This probably popped into my head because I've managed to get in no meaningful writing lately. I wrote so much over the summer, and maybe that's why I had that totally unrealistic goal of finishing the epics book before the summer ended - that is, once the school year began I knew that my time would shrink to nothing and my meaningful output would be even less. Of course, what Pessoa is getting out is something even more profound: why do I bother when I know it won't be any good anyway? He answers the question in the next paragraph: "So why do I keep writing? Because I still haven't learned to practice completely the renunciation that I preach." He reflects that the first poems he wrote as a child were perfect, or at least they seemed perfect to him at the time. Pessoa laments that, "I'll never again be able to have the illusory pleasure of producing perfect work." How delicious and necessary is that "illusory pleasure." He reflects, "I weep over those first dreadful poems as over a dead child, a dead son, a last hope that has vanished." I don't think I've even earned that "illusory pleasure," because what have I ever created that amounted to anything? I can't even pretend that it amounted to perfection, because, like Oakland, there's no there, there.
"What I am essentially - behind the involuntary masks of poet, logical reasoner and so forth - is a dramatist. My spontaneous tendency to depersonalization, which I mentioned in my last letter to explain the existence of my heteronyms, naturally leads to this definition. And so I do not evolve, I simply EVOLVE. (. . .) I continuously change personality, I keep enlarging (and here there is a kind of evolution) my capacity to create new characters, new forms of pretending that I understand the world or, more accurately, that the world can be understood."
(From a letter of Fernando Pessoa, 20 January 1935), A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, p. 273
Since this upcoming semester may actually be my last one (doubtful, but who knows) I decided to keep a promise to myself and focus a class on Fernando Pessoa. I'm adapting my COR 204 Marxism & the Movies class and, while maintaining, largely, a film structure, I'm going to examine issues of self and identity, which I guess will make this a class on Self, Identity, & Film. I'm going to have the students read Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and also the poetry collection, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. This will allow me to bring in films such as Bergman's Persona and Kurosawa's Ikiru and Kieslowski's Blue and Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 and Ford's The Searchers. I'll probably bring in some choice selections from Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, because, well, why not? I think I'm going to, shadowing Pessoa, have the students write a factless autobiography. Somehow, this will all make sense.
The last few months have been, obviously, more than a bit chaotic, which means that certain things ended up being pushed, unintentionally, to the back burner. One of them was a CFL trip. As is well-documented on this blog I've attended a lot of CFL games over the years (and dragged along family and friends, often kicking and screaming). I'm always happy to spend money on the CFL, in a way that I'm no longer interested in spending money on the NFL or even MLB. Usually, in the course of a season I'll attend two or three CFL games, however, I don't normally attend three in one week. I had proposed a Montreal and Ottawa doubleheader (as we've discussed, one of the beauties of the CFL is that although they only play four games a week they are sometimes spread over three or four days, which opens up the potential for bunching games). We couldn't make the schedule work, but happily our excellent friend Andy got into the CFL schedule and figured out a Hamilton and Toronto doubleheader. Happily, our friend Kevin (who clearly likes the CFL more than he will admit) could make it work. They were great travelling companions, and, despite buying the tickets, they took care of all of the other logistics. We found an AirBnb in between Hamilton and Toronto, and off we went, catching a Calgary Stampeders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats game on Friday night, and following it up with an Ottawa REDBLACKS and Toronto Argonauts game last Saturday afternoon. However, why would you stop at two CFL games when you can go to three? I dragooned Gary and his wife Ali, and yesterday we went up to catch a Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Montreal Alouettes game. The two teams met in last year's Grey Cup and are once again the two best teams in the league, which made the game a probable preview of this year's Grey Cup. It was a great game, and all the starters played the entire game, even though neither team had anything to play for (yet another reason why the CFL is better than the NFL, where most of the skill players would have taken the day off). The Blue Bombers won on the last play of the game, after a devil's wind, clearly blowing in from Winnipeg, knocked down an Alouettes punt and gave the visitors one last chance. Now, should I just go ahead and buy tickets for the Alouettes playoff game in two weeks?
