Without Knowing Why

 I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it - without knowing why. And since the human spirit naturally tends to make judgements based on feeling instead of reason, most of these young people chose Humanity to replace God. I, however, am the sort of person who is always on the fringe of what he belongs to , seeing not only the multitude he's a part of but also the wide-open space around it. That's why I didn't give up God as completely as they did, and I never accepted Humanity. I reasoned that God, while improbable, might exist, in which case he should be worshipped, whereas Humanity, being a mere biological idea and signifying nothing more than the animal species we belong to, was no more deserving of worship than any other animal species. The cult of Humanity, with its cries of Freedom and Equality, always struck me as a revival of those ancient cults in which gods were like animals or had animal heads.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 1

And so, The Book of Disquiet begins. A couple of days ago, on Monday, I introduced my reworked COR 204 students to Fernando Pessoa. It's early days yet, but the response was what I expected, a pretty dramatic split. One of the students got up early and walked out, I assumed for a bathroom break but he never returned. On the other hand, a few of the brighter kids were clearly blown away. One of the students, clearly one of the brighter more perceptive ones, was amazed that he had never heard of Fernando Pessoa before. I told him not to fret about it since I had never read any Pessoa until I was in my 60s. I told them that there was often a work that dominated my intellectual life by decade: discovering Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio when I was fourteen or making my way through Proust's Remembrance of Things Past in my fifties, and that Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet was the literary work of my sixties (which is, alarmingly, a decade half over already). As I've gotten older I've come to believe that my job is mainly to make my students think, and that I often need to shock their sensibilities to make that happen. As Pessoa, opening this work, proposes, "I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in Gd, for the same reason their elders had had it - without knowing why." 

Proprieta Provita

 If Janet and I ever lived in Venice it would clearly be here, mainly because we would both like a private bridge. Venice is one of those towns which feels like the film Inception, wherein you're walking around and suddenly the entire city moves itself and reconstitutes in an odd fashion.

I snapped this on one of my morning walks when Janet was starting her day in her more evolutionary fashion. It was a beautiful, quiet little square, which really deserves its own post so I need to unload some more pictures from my camera.

Venetian Fog

 For some reason I thought that our trip to Venice in November would be mysterious and fog-shrouded. Doubtless, some of this was related to the time of year and actual typical weather reports of the season, but it may also be the mythology of the city itself. Actually, we had as many foggy days as we did funny days: one apiece. It was overcast most of the time, which made it a nice environment for taking pictures. However, I was hoping for a couple days where the city was blanketed by a dense fog that would provide even greater opportunities for ethereal shots.

Here's a shot from the Metropole's private dock, looking out towards the Lagoon.

 

CFL Diva

 I suppose all of us have peculiarities that we throw money at, but how many of us can say that it's the CFL? Even my exes who ended up hating me said that at the very least I was very easy to shop for because I had so many things that I was passionate about. With that in mind, maybe the CFL is just the latest in a long line of odd fascinations on my part. That said, I've never really been interested in spending money on them. I've always been happy to spend money on the folks in my life, but more than hesitant to spend money on myself. Maybe I'm just getting old and hence more willing to give into my desires (the less happiness we have on a daily basis may make us more willing to madly chase short term adventures - and I guess I owe the blog a post on my recent trip to the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia).Having said all that, it's hard to not love the CFL. They're the absolute underdog on the North American football landscape, and I'd simply quite happy to throw money their way as compared to those assholes in the NFL. Plus, unlike the Minnesota Vikings, no CFL team has ever broken my heart.

My Christmas present from Janet. Inshallah, after visiting all of the Eastern Division teams (three of the four more than once) I'm hoping to head the the Western Division this summer. The goal is a Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders doubleheader. I'm just waiting for the CFL schedule to drop so that I can begin planning.

According to the esteem Mike Kelly, this is the sweetest jersey so far. Sadly, I suspect that my friends' love for the CFL and for me will not extend beyond the Eastern Division and that I'll be making these future trips on my own.

Nothing More Simultaneously False and Telling

 To understand, I destroyed myself. To understand is to forget about loving. I know nothing more simultaneously false and telling the statement by Leonardo da Vinci that we cannot love or hate something until we've understood it.

Solitude devastates me; company oppresses me. The presence of another person details my thoughts; I dream of the other's presence with a strange absent-mindedness that no amount of my analytical scrutiny can define.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 48

I've always proposed that I'm an introvert, while others firmly believe that I'm an extrovert. Maybe the best way to think about it is that I get filled up with others very quickly. Every one of my friends has a story about me simply disappearing. I never meant to be rude, but I simply couldn't take being around them anymore. In the end it means that I've chosen the appropriate profession: I can throw everything but the kitchen sink at my students for a couple hours, but then I need to go into my office and close the door for a couple hours. But does this strange balancing act between introvert and extrovert translate as well in regards to the success of relationships?  I think that I do not have a long, or even short-term, history of success with the relationships I've had with the loves of my life, and maybe this is because I need to be with them but I also can't stand to be with them. Paraphrasing da Vinci, I suppose I had to understand them, but then after understanding them I grew to hate them, or at least hated to be with them (I'm not a person who hates much of anything, mainly because I'm very aware of my own failings, which are legendary; in class the other day one of my students asked if I round up grades, and I said that I routinely do just because I recognize my own limitations). I think one of the strengths of my relationship with Janet is our being willing and happy to both be together and apart all day long. Since she works from home and I only go up to BTV to teach a couple days a week it would be very easy for us to a feel claustrophobic, but she has her corner of the cabin and I have mine, and so we can pretty effortlessly pass like contented ghosts back and forth during the course of a day. 

Some 2024 Readings

 Every year about this time I get an email from Audible giving me a summary of my previous year's listening. I don't know if it's completely correct - for instance, how did I listen to 50 titles when I only have around 100 total in my Audible library (maybe I just started a book I'd already read for a few minutes to check on something?) - but I suspect it's fairly close. Here are some of the stats:

Total hours: 503

Titles: 50

Longest streak: 23 days

Literature & Fiction: 341 hours

Religion & Spirituality: 107 hours and 26 minutes

Politics & Social Sciences: 40 hours and 38 minutes

Most active month: August (72 hours), followed by December (71) and May (45)

Breakdown by author: Marcel Proust (128 hours), Charles Dickens (46), Thomas Wolfe (26)

Mainly I just fine this interesting, and it relates to this year's decision to record the number of books I've read this year. I suppose 503 hours seems like an ungodly amount, but I do have an hour commute each way to work - and I made two drives to Indiana - and I listen to Audible when I'm working out at the gym - so I guess it adds up. Of course, this list doesn't include all the books that I actually read old school, that is, in actual physical form (which is still the form that makes me the happiest).

Like a Caress

 Where is God, even if he doesn't exist? I want to pray and to weep, to repent of crimes I didn't commit, to enjoy the feeling of forgiveness like a caress that's more than maternal.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 88

In my imagined book "Ramadan in Winter" I hope to include a chapter that's speculatively entitled "The Wrong Metaphor." The notion being all religions are products of metaphor, because how could they not be? How can we be told that God, no matter how you perceive her/him/it/they are beyond our understanding, but then insist that you know exactly what that God wants, especially when it comes to  imposing penalties on the disenfranchised in society (and thus giving lie to the words and desires of the founders of religions, most of whom were revolutionaries concerned with the suffering of the underclasses and the helpless). Not only do we forget that we've made use of metaphor, but we also don't think of the fact that the metaphor that we, at least with monotheistic religions, settled on - the angry king - is a terrible metaphor. Maybe if we went back to our earliest days and returned to the female divine, we might actually be a lot better behaved, more tolerant and kind and compassionate, and less intent on taking the cruelty that we learned from the angry male god and imposing it on others. This reminds me of Thycydides's Melian Dialogue from his Peloponnesian War. The Melians try and reason with the invading Athenians but to no avail. The Athenians make one of the great might makes right arguments in history. When the Melians propose that the gods might be angry about the Athenians using their power to punish the weak simply because they are powerful, the Athenians simply respond that it's from the gods that they learned that power itself justifies its application. Sadly, maybe we are all Melians.