The Cross is Bending

 I was at the gym yesterday, working out and looking at the lineup of monitors, all celebrating the country's 250th anniversary with the traditional orgy of militarism, consumerism, and mindless surface-level patriotism, and I was reminded of Eugene V. Debs's statement in court in response to being convicted of violating the Sedition Act for giving speeches against America's participation in World War I. It made me think of my long-standing belief that Debs is the greatest Hoosier (by far), and that in saying that I have never gone far enough: in fact, Debs may have been the last great American.

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look up the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions . . .

You Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change - but if possible by peaceable and orderly means . . .

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad.. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison . . .

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

In this country - the most favored beneath the bending skies - we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and  child - and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the vault of the Almighty; it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that  ought to be abolish not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity . . . 

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned - that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all . . .

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for on e man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to mass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives barely secure enough for a wretched existence.

This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth. 

There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents in this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. They feel - they know, indeed - that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greatest social and economic change in history. 

In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth - the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth . . .

Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice. 

I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.

When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time up-on the dial of the universe, and through no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning."

Eugene V. Debs (18 September, 1918)

Why Indeed

 The other night in my Images of Fascism class we watched excerpts from Frank Capra's Prelude to War, the first installment in his Why We Fight US government propaganda series from World War II, and Claude Lanzmann's brilliant documentary about the holocaust, Shoah. They're both essential in different ways, but they also provided the challenge of how much to show so that the students could get the sense of the lesson but also leave enough time to let the students organically sort through the material (such is the life of a teacher). We ended up only watching around eleven minutes of Prelude to War (from around 6:42 to about 18:00, just about when there's around five minutes of marching), and I told the students that they should probably think of that eleven minute stretch as another text for the class.  In that section, Capra, and the US for that matter (it was a government sponsored film produced in the middle of the darkest chapter in American history), defined Fascism and what Fascists do to claim power. The students found it very sobering to watch the US government, in maybe its most assured dedication to the tenets of democracy, essentially defining the actions of our present US government as Fascist. Then we watched around an hour and a half out of Lanzmann's nine and a half hour documentary (that was a real challenge). However, we pulled out some powerful moments, including a Treblinka guard remembering the Jews being told that their skills would be valued at the camp, but first they had to take a quick delousing shower, before being led right into the gas chambers - and a death camp guard boisterously singing the Treblinka song they made all the Jewish workers sing (I swear I can still remember that scene, and I saw it once on public television in the 1980s). After the film, one of my female students, who had clearly been profoundly moved by Shoah, sadly commented, "I just don't know why we have to do all this again." Her statement alone might be the greatest teaching moment of the entire semester. Paraphrasing my daughter-in-law Ali, I guess this is why we have to do the work.

Complicated

 A recent ex proposed, in exasperation, why all the men in her life were/are crazy (clearly I was in the frame). I responded, perilously, "What's the common denominator?" I've thought about that conversation more than a few times, including the danger inherent in the question. However, it also makes me think about my relationship with my parents. The other day, 12 November, was my mom's birthday, and I posted this picture on Facebook. If someone were to ask me to define my relationship with my mother I would have said it was complicated. When I spoke at her funeral I, gently, described her as a complicated woman. If you were going to ask me to describe my current relationship with my father I'd doubtless say, complicated. It's not that I didn't/don't love them both - and I know they loved/love me - but the relationships were never as close or full as they should have been. And this brings me back to the anecdote that began this narrative. What's the common denominator? Obviously, it's me. Marcus Aurelius always reminds us that, before we turn our analytical lens on someone else, we need to start with ourselves. I don't know if I have a good answer, although I suspect that answer probably helps explain why I'm sixty-one and living alone in a one bedroom apartment. In my imagined universe I'm the one who gives more, who tries more, who forgives more, loves more, but maybe it's exactly the opposite. 

It's a picture I snapped from another picture, so it's more than a tad blurry, but the mood comes through. This was one Christmas in Atlanta, in the first house that Brenda and I owned out northeast of Atlanta. This picture is the rarity of all rarities: my mother and I are both smiling.

Shots

As the great Canadian philosopher wrote, "I keep hearing shots."  Recently I went to a local high school for some kid event and came across this work of art in the lobby. I found it brilliant and humbling, and also worthy of celebrating, even if only to the few people who read my blog.  The students who created it are: Robert Kemkowski, Lena Ashooh, Nate Fillion, Audrey Olson and Suzy Zimmerman.  The students of today just get it in a way that older generations don't, especially those who sell their soul to the NRA. I recently discussed the Drive-By Truckers sobering Guns of Umpqua on one of our Discography discussions, and the song was playing through my mind as I looked at this work.

Belief and Righteous Deeds

Not too long ago I wrote a deeply personal post on what I thought Islam was about, which I entitled What It Means, appropriately enough, and with the requisite nod to the Drive-By Truckers album. I will not include another lengthy exegesis (I've included a link instead).  Essentially, my point was that as I work my way through the Quran, which I read throughout the year but obviously much more intensely and holistically during Ramadan, it seems to me that what really matters is faith (and not blind submission; but instead based on thoughtful reflection) and righteous deeds (which is mainly just giving back more, time after time, than you received).  So, I culled out all the times (or at least most - I'm sure that I missed some, in which case I'll go back and amend later) that the two concepts are paired in the Quran, which is, obviously, a lot. It's not as if everything else isn't important, but to me, in its most simple form, what we're talking about is what we can control and what we can't control.  Or, what we can know and what we can't know.

"And give glad tidings to those who believe and perform righteous deeds that theirs are Gardens with rivers running below." 2:24

"Truly those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabeans - whosoever believes in God and the Last Day and works righteousness shall have their reward with their Lord. No fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve." 2:62

"And those who believe and perform righteous deeds, it is they who are the inhabitants of the Garden, therein to abide." 2:82

"Truly those who believe, perform righteous deeds, maintain the prayer, and give the alms shall have their reward with their Lord.  No fear shall come upon the, nor shall they grieve." 2:277

"'And as for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, He shall pay them their rewards in full. And God loves not the wrongdoers.'" 3:57

"They believe in God and the Last Day, enjoin right and forbid wrong, and hasten unto good deeds.  And they are among the righteous." 3:114

"But for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, We shall cause them to enter Gardens with rivers running below, abiding therein forever.  They they shall have spouses made pure, and We shall cause them to enter plenteous shade." 4:57

"But for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, We shall cause them to enter Gardens with rivers running below, abiding therein forever. God's Promise is true, and who is truer in speech than God?" 4:122

"And whosoever performs righteous deeds, whether male or female, and is a believer, such shall enter the Garden, and they shall not be wronged so much as the speck on a date stone." 4:124

"As for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, He shall pay them their rewards in full, and will increase them from His Bounty." 4:173

"To those who believe and perform righteous deeds, God has promised forgiveness and a great reward." 5:9

"Truly those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Sabeans, and the Christians - whosoever believes in God and the Last Day and works righteousness, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve." 5:69

"There is no blame upon those who believe and perform righteous deeds for that which they have eaten, so long they are reverent, and believe, and perform righteous deeds, then are reverent and believe, and then are reverent and virtuous.  And God loves the virtuous." 5:93

"Those who believe and who do not obscure their belief through wrongdoing, it is they who have security, and they are rightly guided." 6:82

"As for those who believe and perform righteous deeds - We task no soul beyond its capacity - it is they who are the inhabitants of the Garden; they shall abide therein." 7:42

"But the believing men and believing women are protectors of one another, enjoining right and forbidding wrong, performing the prayers, giving the alms, and obeying God and His messenger. They are those upon whom God will have Mercy. Truly God is Mighty. Wise." 9:71

"Unto Him is your return all together; God's Promise is true.  Verily He originates creation, then He brings it back, that He may recompense with justice those who believe and perform righteous deeds." 10:4

"Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds, their Lord guides them by their Faith. They shall have rivers running below them in Gardens of bliss." 10:9

"Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds and are humble before their Lord, it is they who are the inhabitants of the Garden; they shall abide therein." 11:23

"Those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs in blessedness and a beautiful return." 13:29

"Those who believe and perform righteous deeds shall be made to enter Gardens with rivers running below, abiding therein by the leave of their Lord.  Their greeting therein shall be, 'Peace!'" 14:23

"Whosoever works righteousness, whether male or female, and is a believer, We shall give them new life, a good life, and We shall surely render unto them their reward in accordance with the best of that which they used to do." 16:97

"Truly this Quran guides toward that which is most upright, and gives glad tidings to the believers who perform righteous deeds that theirs shall be a great reward." 17:9

"Praise be to God, Who sent down the Book unto His servant, and placed no crookedness therein, upright that He may warn of a great might coming from His Presence and give glad tidings unto the believers who perform righteous deeds that theirs shall be a beautiful reward . . ." 18:1-2

"As for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, surely We neglect not the reward of one who is virtuous in deed." 18:30

"But as for the one who believes and works righteousness, he shall have a reward, that which is most beautiful, and we shall speak unto him that which is easy from our command." 18:88

"Those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs shall be the Gardens of Paradise as a welcome." 18:107

"Then they were succeeded by a generation who neglected prayer and followed their desires. So they shall meet [the reward of] error, save for those who repent and believe and work righteousness.  It is they who shall enter the Garden, and they shall not be wronged in the least." 19:59-60

"Surely those who  believe and perform righteous deeds, for them shall the Compassionate ordain love." 19:96

"But whosoever comes unto Him as a believer, having performed righteous deeds, theirs shall be the highest ranks - Gardens of Eden with rivers running below, abiding therein.  That is the recompense of one who purifies himself." 20:75-76

"And surely I am most forgiving toward the one who repents and believes and works righteousness, and thereafter is rightly guided." 20:82

"But whosoever performs righteous deeds and it a believer, he shall fear neither wrong nor deprivation." 20:112

"And whosoever performs righteous deeds and is a believer, there shall be no ingratitude for his endeavor, and surely We shall write [it] down for him." 21:94

"Truly God will cause those who believe and perform righteous deeds to enter Gardens with rivers running below." 22:14

"Truly God will cause those who believe and perform righteous deeds to enter Gardens with rivers running below, adorned therein with bracelets of gold and pearl, and therein their clothes will be of silk. And they shall be guided unto that which is good in speech, and be guided unto the path of the Praised." 22:23

"And as for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs shall be forgiveness and a generous provision." 22:50

"Sovereignty that Day shall be God's.  He will judge between them, and those who believe and perform righteous deeds shall be in a Garden of bliss." 22:56

"God has promised those among you who believe and perform righteous deeds that He will surely make them viceregents upon the earth, as He caused those before them to be viceregents, and that He will establish for them their religion, which He has approved for them, and that He will surely change them from a state of fear to [one of] security." 24:55

"He shall abide therein, humiliated, save for those who repent and believe and perform righteous deeds. For them, God will replace their evil deeds with good deeds, and God is Forgiving, Merciful. And whosoever has repented and works righteousness does indeed repent to God with true repentance." 25:69-71

"And as for the poets, the errant follow them. Hast thou not considered that they wander in every valley, and that they say what they do not do? Not so those who believe and perform righteous deeds, and remember God much, and help one another after having been wronged." 26:224-227

"As for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs shall be Gardens of refuge, as a welcome for that which they used to do." 32:19

"Those who disbelieve say, 'The Hour will never come upon us.' Say, 'Nay! By my Lord, by the Knower of the Unseen, it will surely come unto you.' Not a mote's weight evades Him in the heavens or on the earth, nor smaller than that, nor larger, but that it is in a clear Book, that He may recompense those who believe and perform righteous deeds; theirs shall be forgiveness and a generous provision." 34:3-4

"He said, 'He has indeed wronged you in asking that your ewe be added to his ewes. Truly many associates transgress against one another, save those who believe and perform righteous deeds. Yet how few are they!' And David understood that We had tried him; so he sought forgiveness from his Lord, fell down kneeling, and repented." 38:24

"And We did not create Heaven and earth and whatsoever is between them in vain; that is the conjecture of those who disbelieve.  So woe before the Fire unto those who disbelieve! Or shall We make those who believe and perform righteous deeds like those who work corruption upon the earth? Or shall We make the reverent like the profligate?" 38:27-28

"And the blind and the seer are not equal; nor are those who believe and perform righteous deeds and the evildoer. Little do you reflect!" 40:58

"Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs shall be a reward unceasing." 41:8

"And who is more beautiful in speech than one who calls unto God, works righteousness, and says, 'Truly I am among those who submit'? The good deed and the evil deed are not equal.  Repel by that which is better; then behold the one between whom and thee there is enmity shall be as if he were a loyal, protecting friend." 41:33-34

"Thou seest the wrongdoers wary of that which they have earned; for it will fall upon them. And those who believe and perform righteous deeds shall be in flowering meadows of the Gardens.  With their Lord they shall have whatsoever they will. That is a great bounty." 42:22

"He responds to those who believe and perform righteous deeds, and will increase from His Bounty. Yet as for the disbelievers, theirs shall be a severe punishment." 42:26

"As for those who believed and performed righteous deeds, their Lord causes them to enter into His Mercy. That is the manifest triumph." 45: 30

"And those who believe and perform righteous deeds, and believe in what has been sent down unto Muhammad - and it is the truth from their Lord - He has absolved them of their evil deeds and set their state aright." 47:2

"Truly God causes those who believe and perform righteous deeds to enter Gardens with rivers running below, while those who disbelieve enjoy themselves and eat as cattle eat; and the Fire shall be an abode for them." 47:12

"Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who are with him are harsh against the disbelievers, merciful to one another. You see them bowing, prostrating, seeking bounty from God and contentment; their mark upon their faces is from the effect of prostration. That is their likeness in the Torah. And their likeness in the Gospel is a sapling that puts forth its shoot and strengthens it, such that it grows stout and rises firmly upon its stalk, impressing the sowers, that through them He may enrage the disbelievers. God has promised forgiveness and a great reward to those among them who believe and perform righteous deeds." 48:29

"The day that He gathers you for the Day of Gathering, that is the Day of Mutual Dispossession.  And whosoever believes in God and works righteousness, He will absolve him of his evil deeds and cause him to enter Gardens with rivers running below, to abide therein forever.  That is the great triumph." 64:9

"And whosoever believes in God and works righteousness, He causes him to enter Gardens with rivers running below, to abide therein forever.  God has indeed prepared for him a beautiful provision." 65:11

"But God knows best what they conceal. So give them glad tidings of a painful punishment, save those who believe and perform righteous deeds; theirs shall be a reward unceasing." 84:23-25

"Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs shall be Gardens with rivers running below: that is the supreme triumph." 85:11

"By the dig and the olive, by Mount Sinai, and by this land made safe, truly We created man in the most beautiful stature, when We cast him to the lowest of the low, save those who believe and perform righteous deeds; for theirs shall be a reward unceasing. What then will make you deny religion? Is not God the most just of judges?" 95:1-8

"Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds, it is they who are the best of creation." 98:7

"By the declining day, truly mankind is in loss, save those who believe, perform righteous deeds, exhort one another to truth, and exhort one another to patience." 103:1-3

What It Means

Considering how much music has dominated the last year of this blog (it's not just about Proust) it seems like this should be a post about the wonderful Driver-By Truckers album American Band.  We're taking a brief break from our Discography discussion so that everyone can recharge their batteries and listen to new music before kicking off again in September.  Instead, I want to take a few moments to talk about something that's increasingly important to me, although also something that I don't talk about very much: faith.  This is not an attempt to tell people what to believe, because if I know anything at all it's that I don't know much of anything at all.  Faith is obviously a deeply personal experience, and I can assure you that I don't know anything more than anyone else about this particular subject.  Rather, I want to record some of my thoughts for later reflection (see, Proust has impacted me).

I'm in the middle of my second Ramadan.  In the popular imagination Ramadan is mainly a time of fasting and feasting. In regards to the latter, my feasting mainly consists of heating up in the microwave what everybody else here at Bleak House ate three hours earlier.  The fasting is easier than I thought it would be, and some of that relates to the fact that I did it last year and simply knowing that I was able to do it made it immeasurably easier this year. Truthfully, I could also be more diligent in my fasting.  I fast every day, but technically I'm supposed to start before morning prayers, which in this yankee hellhole is around 3:30 a.m.  Instead I usually start my fast by 5:30 a.m. and then break it at 8:30 p.m., which is still a long slog, although, again, not quite as long as it is supposed to be. Essentially, I'm supposed to be fasting around seventeen hours a day and instead I fast for fifteen hours.  Anyone who knows me can tell you with complete certainty that I don't like rules, and maybe this plays a role in my decision to not start fasting at 3:30.  I mean, it would be difficult, but fasting from 5:30 on is already a challenge and I'm sure I could make 3:30 work.  No matter my faith, I'd be that guy in the back of the church/mosque/synagogue/temple turning to the poor soul next to him and saying, "You know that's just a metaphor, right?"  This doesn't mean that I'm not serious and sincere in my faith because I am, and I battle with my own skepticism and inherent rebellious nature all the time.  One of the things that I'm always cognizant of is the great temptation to exist only on the surface level, which happens way too often in religion.  Sure, you're supposed to fast during Ramadan, but you're also supposed to spend hours every day praying, meditating and reading the Quran, and, to me anyway, that is far more important than the fasting.  Still, I do both, and the hours that I spend every day working through Nasr's Study Quran is probably what inspired this post.

This last semester one of my friends who knew about my faith, and, again, I don't share things like this very easily, asked me to come talk to her class.  I grudgingly agreed, mainly due to the fact that it was a request from a close friend.  One of the first things we discussed was why Islam?  You could certainly ask that question about any faith, obviously, but in today's world, and especially in today's U.S., it may seem like an odd (and not particularly well-considered) choice.  Well, first off, it wasn't about any great concern about the next world.  Truthfully, I never worry about things like that, and not because I'm oblivious, but rather because I think that if you lead a good life in this world then things will take care of themselves in the next.  And with that in mind, what led me in my mid-50s to make this decision was the sincere desire to be a better man.  I felt that I needed to be a better father and boyfriend and titular step-father and friend and son and brother and uncle and nephew (I'm sure I'm forgetting a category, and a category at which I routinely failed).  OK, so why Islam?  Part of it was doubtless all the time I've spent in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world.  Simply put, it's been my experience that Muslims much more routinely walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  Having said that, I think there are a thousand paths of God (no matter how you define God, he/she/it/they).  There are certain specific aspects of the faith I can identify that drew me to it.  For example, I've always identified with the Islamic view of Jesus, who is a remarkably well-respected and beloved prophet (arguably the second most important prophet in the faith) but who is not considered the son of God, not because there's something wrong with him but rather because Muslims don't believe that anyone is the son of God.  There also is much less hierarchy in Islam and a much less powerful and intrusive priesthood; mainly it's just you and God, and a structure wherein you stop and pray five times a day, meditating upon the transcendent.  There are other aspects of the faith that I can't really quantify as easily.  In my trips around the world I've spent time in churches and synagogues and Hindu temples and Buddhist temples and Jain temples, and it's only in mosques that I've felt a true sense of serenity.  Why?  Who knows?  Nevertheless I've always felt that.  So, for reasons both specific and more ethereal I was drawn to Islam.

Finally (I need to get back to my other more official writing), what do I think the faith means? If I spend hours every day during Ramadan praying and meditating and reading the Quran, what have I learned?  As I said earlier, one of the reasons why I wanted to include this post is to create a time capsule that I can revisit in the future as my faith continues to evolve.  It's not as if I haven't read the Quran before, because I have several times, but I also think that with every reading my views crystallize.  My views will doubtless be different next year, and maybe someday I'll figure this all out, although I suspect no one ever truly figures out the answer when you're talking about faith.  If you think you've figured it all out then it means you've probably failed at your quest.  As I've been re-reading the Quran it really struck me how many times, when discussing those who are going to Paradise, they are described as those "who believe and perform righteous deeds."  I've even started counting them, and I'll have a final, although probably incorrect, number soon; at this point suffice it to say that it is repeated dozens of times.  For example, when I spoke in my friend Kelly's class one of the question was would I be willing to share a specific surah from the Quran, and I identified surah 103, sometimes called "The Declining Day." As the Quran progresses the surahs (chapters) get shorter and shorter, and surah 103 in its entirety is: "By the declining day, truly mankind is in loss, save those who believe, perform righteous deeds, exhort one another to truth, and exhort one another to patience."  I like this surah because when I think about living my life I can definitely focus on those four aspects. Although the specific language varies, it comes back again and again to the notion of faith and righteous deeds.  The other days I was swapping emails with my friend Kathy and she she pointed out, "yeah, but the problem is what constitutes a righteous deed, and everyone has a different answer."  Which, of course, is the key point, and I told her (and you indirectly) that I can only give my own personal answer.  I think righteous deeds happen a hundred times a day, or at least the opportunity for a righteous deed presents itself a hundred times a day.  In Islam we're taught that good deeds are weightier, more powerful, more substantive than evil deeds; essentially, they're not equal.  Good is more powerful than evil, which is why good deeds are worth more, attain more merit, than evil deeds.  In surah 41 it says, "The good deed and the evil deed are not equal.  Repel by that which is better; then behold, the one between whom and thee there is enmity shall be as if he were a loyal, protecting friend." Or, in surah 23, "Repel evil by that which is better."  Muslims, although we are enjoined to stand up for what is right and to fight oppression, do not believe in an eye for an eye.  So, this is how I think about it: a hundred times a day you come into contact with someone, a loved one or a friend or some anonymous character.  How do you interact with them?  Do you "repel by that which is better"?  Do you treat them better than they treated you, even by a small amount?  Do you try and be of service?  Do you try and make their lives better, even for that one second that you're in contact?  Islam is a complex and fascinating religion, and you only need to read Nasr provide two pages of small print commentary on one sentence to understand that, but I think how we interact with each other is a much simpler matter.  When push comes to shove (and hopefully there won't be a push or a shove) I would argue that all religions have a similar message - and, for that matter, this brings me back to certain aspects of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - and if we all could just master this one simple principle life would be a lot easier. This is where I am right now, and I'm sure I'll have a more sophisticated answer next year, although maybe not a truer one.

OK, now back to pontificating on music or Proust or foreign travel.

My Year With Proust - Day 332

"Ah, I'm glad you reminded me of him," exclaimed M. de Guermantes, "I was forgetting that he had asked me to dine with him on Monday.  But whether he's a Dreyfusard or not is entirely immaterial to me, since he's a foreigner.  I don't give two straws for his opinion.  With a Frenchman it's another matter.  It's true that Swann is a Jew.  But, until to-day - forgive me, Froberville - I have always been foolish enough to believe that a Jew can be a Frenchman, I mean an honourable Jew, a man of the world.  Now, Swann was that in every sense of the word.  Well, now he forces me to admit that I was mistaken, since he has taken the side of this Dreyfus (who, guilty or not, never moved in his world, whom he wouldn't ever have met) against a society that had adopted him, had treated him as one of his own.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 703

As we start a new year I wish this were a passage from Proust that seemed terribly old-fashioned, one which could not possibly teach us anything about the world today.  Sadly, the sentiment seems terribly present as we rush headlong into the uncertainty of the racist and misogynist Trump era.  M. de Guermantes draws a clear distinction between a Jew and a Frenchman.  Half a century later one of the accusations thrown around when Kennedy ran for president was the the question of whether he, as a Catholic, could run the country without being under the thumb of the Pope.  And now a half-century later we have the alt-right, and sadly a broader base than simply the alt-right, suggesting that Muslims can not be true Americans.  At the mosque we received this letter recently, which, underneath an American flag, lays out this claim.  In previous posts I've described this period as the high point, but also the last rant of the angry white man.  This election didn't change the "browning of America," as it is sometimes called, and our students today are more tolerant and worldly than the previous generations, but it's obviously more complicated.  Does any nation have a more complicated and shameful history in regards to race - and a wider divergence between its aspirational goals and its convenient reality - than the US?  Having grown up in southern Indiana I've known enough racists to last a lifetime, and judging from so many of their posts on Facebook they haven't changed much.  America will be "great" again not by building walls and blaming others, but by being that nation which, even when it failed, strove for equality and inclusion and respect for diversity.

Happily this hateful message inspired over five hundred letters of support from other around Vermont, representing a myriad of different faiths.  While I often, and appropriately mock this silly state, I do love Vermont; it's one of the bastions of tolerant thought left in this increasingly angry, intolerant country.

Despite all the uncertainty and the dark cloud hanging over us, let's hope for a Happy New Year, and let's all make a concerted effort to treat each other better this year.

My Year With Proust - Day 328

Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 674

Yes, I'm featuring the seemingly impossible: a sentence from Proust that isn't three pages long.  However, I'm championing it, not because of its brevity, but because of its brilliance.  I may now have to start out every class with this line, right before I write Observe/Analyze/Argue on the board for the first of thirty times.  This line may also perfectly sum up the idiocy of the recent election.

Tour Guide, theoretically

As I've often stated, I'm a big believer in recreating yourself every five years or so, otherwise we have a tendency to get bored with ourselves; and we me it usually just means bad behavior.  It seems that this five year window has become Gary Scudder, Tour Guide, in that I'm leading a lot of student trips.  Two springs ago it was Cyndi Brandenburg and I leading nine students to Jordan, which we threw together on the fly and with absolutely no promotion. Last spring Steve Wehmeyer and I took nineteen students to Zanzibar.  A month ago Mike Kelly, Kelly Thomas and I led twenty students to Spain and Portugal.  This coming March Cyndi and I are leading eighteen students to India and Sri Lanka.  I've recently put in proposals for two trips for next year: a return to Zanzibar with Steve in the form of a December trip that combines my Aesthetic Expression in the fall with his Sacred & Secular in the spring; and then Cyndi and I are leading a return trip to Jordan for March 2018.  Currently I'm also working on proposals for two trips for the following year: another linked December trip, once again with my main travelling companion Cyndi, to India and the Maldives (linking her Ethics and the Environment and my Heroines & Heroes); and then a March 2019 trip to Namibia, with, potentially, Cyndi, but I've started a competition with my friends wherein if they are waiting for me when I get off the plane in Windhoek in May then they get to accompany me on the Namibia trip (could be Cyndi or Steve or Kathy Seiler or Mike Kelly or even Mike Lange, who doesn't want to lead a student trip but has threatened to meet me at the airport just to throw a monkey wrench into the system).  That brings me up to the fall of 2019, which will either be another Thanksgiving trip, maybe back to Jordan (I can see the poster now: Thanksgiving in the Wadi Rum) again or a return trip to Spain and Portugal - or another linked December trip, maybe back to Zanzibar, or Samarkand, or, if it ever settled down, Yemen, but who knows?  And then, I'm done, at least that is my intention.  In January 2020 I turn sixty, and I've set that as the line in the sand when I stop leading student trips.  That would mean that I would have led nine different student trips, each to a different country or with a different theme, which is somewhere between cool and amazing and idiotic.  Now, why do I not want to lead trips after I turn sixty?  Part of it relates to the fact that at a certain point the students will, quite rightly, stop wanting to spend time with me, especially on a foreign trip.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll want to stop spending time with them.  It may also be that at that point I'll be more interested in just travelling on my own, and I'll really pick some challenging locations.  Having said all that, none of my friends are buying the January 2020 deadline anyway.  As we know, I will not age gracefully, so either the deadline will hold because in my mind I need something more, or it won't hold because someone will have made a comment that I'm too old to attract students on a trip or, for that matter, to lead a trip, and my ego will kick in and I'll be leading trips until I'm seventy (but not past January 2030, and I mean it!).

Morgan, one of the students on the Spain/Portugal trip, decided to act as if her were my arranged chauffeur. I guess it's still better than the guy who met me in Zagreb, Croatia (I think) with the sign that said "Straebag".

My Year With Proust - Day 289

   "Very well, give me in one word the reason why you can't come to Italy," the Duchess put it to Swann as she rose to say good-bye to us.

   "But, my dear lady, it's because I shall then have been dead for several months.  According to the doctors I've consulted, by the end of the year the thing I've got - which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment - won't in any case leave me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate," replied Swann with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out.

   "What's that you say?" cried the Duchess, stopping for a moment on her way to the carriage and raising her beautiful, melancholy blue eyes, now clouded by uncertainty.  Place for the first time in her life between two duties as incompatible as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing compassion for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the right line to follow; not knowing which to choose, she felt obliged to pretend not to believe that the latter alternative need be seriously considered, in order to comply with the first, which at the moment demanded less effort, and thought that the best way of settling the conflict would be to deny that any existed.  "You're joking," she said to Swann.

   "It would be a joke in charming taste," he replied ironically.  "I don't know why I'm telling you this.  I've never said a word to you about my illness before.  But since you asked me, and since now I may die at any moment . . . But whatever I do I mustn't make you late; you're dining out, remember," he added, because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took precedence over the death of a friend, and he put himself in their place thanks to his instinctive politeness. . .

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 617-618

And we now find out just how sick Swann is, as he admits to the Duchess that he can't possibly come to Italy because "I shall then have been dead for several months."  the Duchess, a product of the social niceties of high society, is struck between the need to get to dinner and the lingering sense that maybe she should spend time with a dying friend; of course, in the end, the demands of society win out.  I guess I'm viewing everything in the light of Donald Trump's unexpected (well, sort of unexpected) win last night.  Why do we keep electing the super rich and then sit stunned when we discover that they simply don't give a fuck about us?  I have this theory that the brains of the super rich are actually different than the brains of everyone else, and not in a good way.  We want to think that they are such selfish pricks because they were raised a certain way, and doubtless there is truth to that.  But, as we know, environmental factors can also influence the composition of the brain, and somehow I have this lingering feeling that the part of the brain which deals with cause and effect, which doesn't normally mature until the early twenties, never actually matures at all in the brain of the super rich because cause and effect has never meant anything.  Nothing bad has ever happened since they are born with dozens of golden parachutes, and so they can't fail.  We saw this with George W. Bush, who, I think in the big picture, probably was a good man, but one who wasn't that bright and didn't really have the mental processing ability to understand that something like invading Iraq on a whim could end badly - and for which we'll still paying today.  Trump is more dangerous because he's also not very bright and he's never had to deal with negative consequences - and he's also a mean-spirited, ego-maniacal, misogynistic racist. We should ask someone to pray for us, but we did it to ourselves and we probably deserve everything we get.  I saw today that Trump won the election by gathering a grand total of 25.5% of the total US electorate (whereas Clinton picked up 25.6% of the vote, but lost big through the miracle of the Electoral College).  Pathetic.

My Year With Proust - Day 286

   I looked at M. de Charlus.  Undoubtedly his magnificent head, though repellent, yet far surpassed that of any of his relatives; he was like an ageing Apollo; but an olive-hued, bilious juice seemed ready to start from the corners of his malevolent mouth; as for intellect, one could not deny that his, over a vast compass, had a grasp of many things which would always remain unknown to his brother Guermantes.  But whatever the fine words with which he embellished all his hatreds, one felt that , whether he was moved by offended pride or disappointed love, whether his motivating force was rancour, sadism, teasing or obsession, this man was capable of committing murder, and of proving by dint of logic that he had been right in doing it and was still head and shoulders above his brother, his sister-in-law, or any of the rest.

   "As, in Velazquez's Surrender of Breda," he went on, "the victor advances towards him who is humbler in rank, and as is the duty of every noble nature, since I was everything and you were nothing, it was I who took the first steps towards you.  You have made an imbecilic reply to what it is not for me to describe as an act of grandeur.  But I did  not allow myself to be discouraged.  Our religion enjoins patience.  The patience I have shown towards you will be counted, I hope, ot my credit, and also my having only smiled at what might be denounced as impertinence, were it within your power to be impertinent to one who is so infinity your superior.  However, all this is now neither here nor there.  I have subjected you to the test which the one eminent man of our world was ingeniously named the test of untoward kindness, and which he rightly declares to be the most terrible of all, the only one that can separate the wheat from the chaff.  I can scarcely reproach you for having undergone it without success, for those who emerge from it triumphant are very few.  But at least, and this is the conclusion which I am entitled to draw from the last words that we shall exchange on this earth, at least I intend to protect myself against your calumnious fabrications."

   So far, I had never dreamed that M. de Charlus's rage could have been caused by an unflattering remark which had been repeated to him; I searched my memory; I had not spoken about him to anyone.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 576-577

M. de Charlus continues to rage, and Marcel, sort of, figures out why.  Proust certainly paints an unflattering picture of him, and reveals him to be one of the great ass clowns of literature (although, as we'll see, there's more to M. de Charlus than means the eye).  As a person with an unpleasant temper I usually feel more disgust with angry characters than sympathy, mainly because it hits too close to home.  I'm paraphrasing fairly wildly, but in one of my favorite Hadiths a man asked the Prophet what he could do to be a better man.  Muhammad answered, "Three things.  First off, control your anger." And the man replied, "Yes, OK, and?"  And the Prophet continued, "Secondly, control your anger."  At this point the man can see where this is going, but still asked him to identify the third bit of advice, and the Prophet responded, "Control your anger."  I suspect that every religion has, or should have anyway, a similar canonical passage or anecdote.  Few things destroy the world - or the soul - more quickly or totally than rage.  I suspect it is because, beyond that fact that anger is distracting, it is also a reflection of the excesses of the ego, and every religion agrees that the ego, the inflated self, is the biggest obstacle to enlightenment.

Having said all that, I am intrigued by M. de Charlus's statement that, "I have subjected you to the test which the one eminent man of our world was ingeniously named the test of untoward kindness, and which he rightly declares to be the most terrible of all, the only one that can separate the wheat from the chaff."  While I don't agree that M. de Charlus ever showed much sincere kindness - or might even be capable of any sort of altruistic act - I wonder if there are many things more disarming than true kindness?  Again, drawing from the Hadiths, the Prophet proposed that "every act of kindness is charity," and charity is one of the five pillars of the faith.  So, why would M. de Charlus consider it to be the most "terrible of all" tests?

Velazquez's Surrender of Breda, because it is mentioned in this passage and because I, like all right-thinking individuals, loves Velazquez.

My Year With Proust - Day 284

And so I had been wrong in confining myself, hitherto, to the later volumes of Hugo.  Of the earlier ones, it was only with a fractional part that Mme de Guermantes embellished her conversations.  But it is precisely by thus quoting an isolated line that one multiplies its power of attraction tenfold.  The lines that had entered or returned to my mind during this dinner magnetised in turn, summoned to themselves with such force, the poems within which they were normally embedded, that my electrified hands could not hold out for longer than forty-eight hours against the force that drew them towards the volume in which were bound up the Orientales and the Chants du Crepuscule.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 570-571

First off, I guess I need to apologize for dropping the ball lately.  I'm several days behind, which I have to blame on trying to balance four trips at once (actually, seven, but that's another story) and also for appearing in the school play (more on that shortly).

Proust is reflecting upon Mme de Guermantes quoting Hugo, and also on the power of Hugo.  I'm often horrified at the severe limits of my so-called education, and I'm afraid that way too much of Hugo falls beyond the boundary line of my knowledge.  How have I reached fifty-six years old and have read so little of Hugo?  Another project for next year, clearly.

I'm interested by Proust's notion of how by "quoting an isolated line that one multiplies its power of attraction tenfold."  I was just talking about the power of quotes the other day, while trying to get my students away from just looking for quotes to justify their arguments (and instead actually grappling with the deeper conceptual tools that the quotes express) while also admitting that I'm very much a quote whore (as I'm a film whore and a Twitter whore and a literature whore - you get the point).  Any book that I've owned for some time is both dog-eared and also thoroughly scribbled over, including my attempts to cull out meaningful passages. I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those posts that I'll revisit time and again, in this case maybe as a repository for my favorite quotes.

I find that many of them are from Proust himself, including one of my favorites, which may have found its way onto my tombstone: "It was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns."  I was just quoting that to my friend Sanford in a letter the other day (my birthday gift to him this year was a promise to write him an actual physical letter once a month.).

"The mind becomes dyed by the color of its thoughts." Marcus Aurelius

"Everyone sees the Unseen in proportion to the clarity of their heart." Rumi

Now, what do these three quotes have in common?  Beyond the facts that I love all three of them - and will repeat them at any given opportunity - they are in some ways taken out of context.  I've been repeating the Marcus Aurelius quote for decades, and I do love the Meditations, but in other ways I suspect I would have found Marcus to be pretty severe, and, as much as I romanticize Stoicism, I don't think I'd be a very good Stoic.  I'm probably about as good a Stoic as I am a Muslim, at least in regards to carefully following all the rules.  In regards to Rumi, I'm very guilty of short-changing the quote (and concept).  I believe the rest of the line is (I'm paraphrasing), is "this relates to the time devoted to polishing the heart" - which actually related to a Hadith from the Prophet wherein he said that there is a polish for everything, and that the best polish for the heart is the remembrance of God.  So, the best way to God is to remember God, but I think I use it in a truncated form (because, well, it's less to remember - and we know from my time in the play that I can't remember lines) but also because I think it hints at something more universal in regards to the Unseen.  Even the Proust quote in some ways is taken out of context, because I tend to use it to mean that you can't reject the allure of beauty, but it can also mean that beauty is unattainable.  So, the power of these quotes relates to the fact that by taking them out of context you over simplify them, and thus, oddly, increase their power by playing down the nuances.

My Year With Proust - Day 283

   An exhilaration relapsing into melancholy, because it was artificial, was what I also quite differently from Mme de Guermantes, felt once I had finally left her house, in the carriage that was to take me to that of M. de Charlus.  We can as we choose abandon ourselves to one or other of two forces, of which one rises in ourselves, emanates from our deepest impressions, while the other comes to us from without.  The first brings with it naturally a joy, the joy that springs from the life of those who create.  The other current, that which endeavours to introduce into us the impulses by which persons external to ourselves are stirred, is not accomplished by pleasure; but we can add a pleasure to it, by a sort of recoil, in an intoxication so artificial that it turns swiftly into boredom, into melancholy - whence the gloomy faces of so many men of the world, and all those nervous conditions which even lead to suicide.  Now, in the carriage which was taking me to M. de Charlus, I was a prey to this second sort of exaltation, very different from that which is given us by a personal impression, such as I had received in other carriages, once at Combray, in Dr Percepied's gig, from which I had seen the spires of Martinville against the setting sun, another day at Balbec, in Mme de Villeparisis's barouche, when I strove to identify the reminiscence that was suggested to me by an avenue of trees.  But in this third carriage, what I had before my mind's eye were those conversations that had seemed to me so tedious at Mme de Guermantes's dinner-table, for example Prince Von's stories about the German Emperor, German Botha and the British army.  I had just slid them into the internal stereoscope through the lenses of which, as soon as we are no longer ourselves, as soon as, endowed with a worldly spirit, we wish to receive our life only from other people, we give depth and relief to what they had said and done.  Like a tipsy man filled with tender feeling for the waiter who has been serving him, I marvelled at my good fortune, a good fortune not recognised by me, it is true, at the actual moment, in having dined with a person who knew Wilhelm II so well and had told stories about him that were - upon my word - extremely witty.  And, as I repeated to myself, with the Prince's German accent, the story of General Botha, I laughed out loud, with this laugh, like certain kinds of applause which increase one's inward admiration, were necessary to the magnifying lenses, even those of Mme de Guermantes's pronouncements which had struck me as being stupid (as for example the one about the Hals pictures which one ought to see from the top of a tram-car) took on an extraordinary life and depth.  And I must say that, even if this exaltation was quick to subside, it was not altogether unreasonable.  Just as there may always come a day when we are glad to know the person whom we despise more than anyone in the world because he happens to be connected with a girl with whom we are in love, to whom he can introduce us, and thus offers us both utility and agreeableness, attributes in which we should have supposed him to be permanently lacking, so there is no conversation, any more than there are personal relations, from which we can be certain that we shall not one day derive some benefit.  What Mme de Guermantes had said to me about the pictures which it would be interesting to see, even from a tram-car, was untrue, but it contained a germ of truth which was of value to me later on.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 569-570

Truthfully, I initially chose this passage mainly because I was struggling with its meaning, and tagging it and then brooding over it and then commending would, hopefully, give me a chance to sort it out; sort of like when you're in the midst of a fight with your wife and you both agree to revisit the conversation when you've calmed down, but what you're really saying is that you're talk again when you, hopefully, figure out what the hell the other person is saying.  In this instance Marcel is leaving the seemingly endless soiree and on the way home in the carriage he reflects, in a classically Proustian way, on the events of the party and in a more general sense on life.  Proust writes, "We can as we choose abandon ourselves to one or other of two forces, of which one rises in ourselves, emanates from our deepest impressions, while the other comes to us from without."  Not surprisingly, Proust suggests that the former "brings with it naturally a joy, the joy that springs from the life of those who create."  Naturally, because it is internal we control it, as Marcus Aurelius reminds us, "Dig within.  Within is the wellspring of Good, and it is always ready to bubble up if you just dig."  However, Proust also talks about the virtues of the latter, the more external force, which is more dependent upon your perception, and not just your action.  One of the things I'm trying to focus in on - as discussed indirectly in the previous post - is living more in the moment, and making a more deliberate effort to connect with those around me.  While the internal force is more dependable and more profound, the external force, the external world, provides so much if we'll only open ourselves to it.  That said, so much of it is maddening and vacuous (like the idiotic conversations that Marcel had to wade through to find something meaningful) and it takes greater patience and attention and subtlety to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Now, do the two forces, the internal and the external, ever merge?  I would think yes, by definition.  Rumi one time said, "Everyone sees the Unseen in proportion to the clarity of their heart."  In this case he was talking about God, but I think it is true in a more general sense to everything around us.

My Year With Proust - Day 278

   "I fancy Mme de Villeparisis is not absolutely . . . moral," said the Princesse de Parme, who knew that the best people did not visit the Duchess's aunt, and, from what the Duchess herself had just been saying, that one might speak freely about her.  But, Mme de Guermantes not seeming to approve of this criticism, she hastened to add: "Though, of course, intelligence carried to that degree excuses everything."

   "You take the same view of my aunt as everyone else," replied the Duchess, "which is, on the whole, quite mistaken.  It's just what Meme was saying to me only yesterday." (She blushed, her eyes clouding with a memory unknown to me.  I conjectured that M. de Charlus had asked her to cancel my invitation, as he had sent Robert to ask me not to go to her house.  I had the impression that the blush - equally incomprehensible to me - which had tinged the Duke's cheeks when he made some reference to his brother could not be attributed to the same cause.) "My poor aunt - she will always have the reputation of being a lady of the old school, of sparkling wit and uncontrolled passions.  And really there's no more middle-class, solemn, drab, commonplace mind in Paris.  She will go down as a patron of the arts, which means to say that she was once the mistress of a great painter, though he was never able to make her understand what a picture was; and as for her private life, so far from being a depraved woman, she was so much made for marriage, so conjugal from her cradle that, not having succeeded in keeping a husband, who incidentally was a scoundrel, she has never had a love affair which she hasn't taken just as seriously ass if it were holy matrimony, with the same irritations, the same quarrels, the same fidelity.  Mind you, those relationships are often the most sincere; on the whole there are more inconsolable lovers than husbands."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 525-526

Proust records the Duchess discussing her scandalous aunt, who wasn't really that scandalous at all.  I've written before that while all of us occasionally feel misunderstood there is almost a religious faith, complete with saints, a functioning curate, and a central theology, based on a misrepresentation of who I am and what I believe.  To be fair, it's not as if I haven't played a role in its construction.
When I was a senior in college there was a very popular rumor that a very lovely young woman was carrying my child and that I was using heroin, although I don't remember if the two legends were somehow related in the retelling.  What made it especially odd was that the young woman and I had never had sex, and had never even come within walking distance of having sex.  Few people are as generally hopeless with the opposite sex as I am.  In regards to my heroin addiction, once again, total baloney.  Few people are as passionately anti-drug as I am, and since I've never even smoked pot the chance of me mainlining heroin are pretty slim.  So why did people believe these foolish tales?  Beyond the obvious advantages in using character assassination to make yourself seem like a better person - or just general boredom - who knows, although in this case I suppose the tale is useful as a mechanism for self-reflection.  And by this I don't think that you should ever take to heart the hurtful and idiotic things that other people say.  You don't encourage or validate or empower slut shaming (no matter how one defines slut).  Rather, in this case, as a means of dissecting my own actions by reconsidering past actions - or, as the kids would say, dealing with my own shit - I'm interested in the role that I played in the formation of this story.  Then, as now, I've never been a person who told sexual tales out of school, and I've certainly never claimed to have slept with someone I didn't.  Part of my reason for this year (soon to be years) long reading and commentary on Proust has been to provide a structured environment to reflect upon my own memory, my own search for lost time.  And in doing so I'm always amazed at the limits of my own poor memory.  To be fair, I've never stopped pushing myself and growing.  As we discussed a couple weeks ago, I think I've lived a lifetime and a half since I turned fifty.  Because of this I'm constantly making new fresh memories - and not re-enforcing old ones.  My first year students, both in Linden's The Accidental Mind and Hock's Forty Studies That Changed Psychology, learn that when we recall a memory you're not downloading the original memory, but rather the last time you thought of it; and since memory storage is very flexible it's not the pristine original memory at all, but rather an edited file.  All of this is by way of saying that my theory would be that since I'm always actively making new memories - and not simply reflecting upon the past - I'm never re-enforcing old memories, which is why it seems like I have a bad memory.  Of course, I guess, that would also mean that when I do remember something from the distant past it's probably closer to the original memory because I've never accessed it before and thus potentially altered it by the emotional world that I lived in when I recalled the memory; essentially, that my memory of 1982 wouldn't have been altered previously by being running through the medium of 1995.  If I'm recalling a memory from 1982 for the first time in 2016 would it be closer to the truth?  That also implies that I've never actually recalled that memory before, when the reality is that I probably have thought of that memory before but simply forgotten it, but that wouldn't have kept me from altering it previously.  As Linden reminds us throughout his book, perception and memory are stupid (not exactly his words).  In regards to the drug rumor, I've always been pretty passionately anti-drug, although not necessarily in a judgmental fashion.  What people do is what they do, but I've always drawn that line very clearly in my own life.  I did have long hair and was usually unshaven (not that meant much for me when I was twenty-two) and unkempt (although clean) and thus maybe I looked like someone who would be using heroin, at least to the fellow white bourgeois Hoosier youths of Franklin College circa 1982.  In regards to the young woman, god, who knows?  I don't remember her name, and only vaguely remember her appearance - and I sort of remember having a mild crush on someone my senior year, but I may be weaving that false memory as I'm writing these words.  Anyway, I guess this is a way of saying that I have some sympathy for the Duchess's aunt.  I consider myself the most boring, dependable person in the world, but others have seldom thought so.

My Year With Proust - Day 277

   "But do let's change the subject," Mme de Guermantes added, "because she's dreadfully susceptible . . . You must think me very old-fashioned," she went on, turning to me, "I know that nowadays it's considered a weakness to care for ideas in poetry, poetry with some thought in it."

   "Old-fashioned?" asked the Princesse de Parme, quivering with the slight shock produced by this new wave which she had not expected, although she knew that the Duchess's conversation always held in store for her those continuous and delightful thrills, that breath-catching panic, that wholesome exhaustion after which her thoughts instinctively turned to the necessity of taking a footbath in a dressing cabin and a brisk walk to "restore her circulation."

   "For my part, no, Oriane," said Mme de Brissac, "I don't in the least object to Victor Hugo's having ideas, quite the contrary, but I do object to his seeking them in everything that's monstrous.  It was he who accustomed us to ugliness in literature.  There's quite enough ugliness in life already.  Why can't we be allowed at least to forget it while we're reading?  A distressing spectacle from which we should turn away in real life, that's what attracts Victor Hugo."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 515-516

I find this section interesting because it brings me back to a topic that I find myself thinking about frequently, and which seeps into class discussion occasionally.  Proust reports that several people are discussing art and the role of art, especially in regards to Victor Hugo.  As Mme de Brissac opines, "I don't in the least object to Victor Hugo's having ideas, quite the contrary, but I do object to his seeking them in everything that's monstrous.  It was he who accustomed us to ugliness in literature.  There's quite enough ugliness in life already.  Why can't we be allowed at least to forget it while we're reading?"  Essentially, she's asking the question: Isn't the point of art to provide beauty to our lives and not to shine a light on the ugliness that surrounds us?  We are mired in the ugliness, can't art lift us, even temporarily, to more rarefied and beautiful surroundings?  Early in my Aesthetic Expressions class I have my students rank ten disparate works of art, from best to worst - or, to think of it another way, from most beautiful to least beautiful.  Now, obviously, it's difficult assignment - and one would argue, impossible and inappropriate - but I do it to help the students understand that they walked into the class with aesthetic criteria that they didn't know they possessed.  One of the works of art that I show them is Banksy's Let Them Eat Crack graffiti piece.  It plays off of the famous/infamous statement from Marie Antoinette to "let them eat cake," when told that the peasants were rioting because they had no bread.  Beyond the fact that she probably never actually said it, the point is not that she didn't care, but instead that she was such a caricature of privilege that she just assumed that if you didn't have bread you would just choose cake.  Banksy plays off this by implying that the wealthy business class isn't does know of doesn't care about the plight of the inner city.  The students always rank it very highly, and one of the reasons is because it has a deeper meaning.  Banksy is saying something, and what he's saying is beautiful because he is revealing ugliness.  The Proust passage above reminded me of this dichotomy.  Art is often at it's best when it is pushing the boundaries and making us think - and showing us the ugliness that scars so much of our world - but yet we also want it to be beautiful and to take us away from the horrible, mundane world.  In his massive tome The Story of Art, Gombrich points out that the whole point of western art was to provide more and more accurate reflections of reality, and while he was discussing it in regards to the image itself, shouldn't it also be true of the deeper meaning?  Think of the work of Jean-Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet, who shared a world that few (but a growing number) middle and upper class people knew existed.  Courbet famously said, "Show me an angel and I will paint it."  However, circling back to our original point, is the process of showing us reality, and ugliness, aren't we ignoring one of the most wonderful attributes of art; aren't there times when we need to see those angels; that we need to experience the transcendent.  Sometimes I will place the centerpiece of the Sistine Chapel next to Courbet's The Origins of the World, and ask if they're not actually the same painting?  They both represent, to very different artists in very different religious and intellectual ages, the origins of the world.  It's usually here that the students realize that they're truly in college, or at least that they're not in Kansas anymore.  It brings up the entire question of beauty, but also begs the question about rather or not in our rush to capture the real we have lost sacrificed a more transcent beauty, the angels that Courbet dismissed.

The students love this piece of art, although it is hardly beautiful in any traditional sense of the word; rather, it's beauty lies in its deeper meaning.

Jean-Francois Millet's The Gleaners.

Gustave Courbet's The Stone Breakers.

Michelangelo's the Sistine Chapel.

Gustave Courbet's The Origins of the World. 

My Year With Proust - Day 258

   And then, the last carriage having rolled by, when one feels with a throb of pain that she will not now come, one goes to dine on the island; above the quivering poplars which endlessly recall the mysteries of evening more than they respond to them, a pink cloud puts a last touch of living colour into the tranquil sky.  A few drops of rain fall soundlessly on the ancient water which, in its divine infancy, remains always the colour of the weather and continually forgets the reflexions of clouds and flowers.  And after the geraniums have vainly striven, by intensifying the brilliance of their scarlet, to resist the gathering twilight, a mist rises to envelop the now slumbering island; one walks in the moist darkness along the water's edge, where at the most the silent passage of a swan startles one like the momentarily wide-open eyes and the swift smile of a child in bed at night whom one did not suppose to be awake.  Then one longs all the more to have a lover by one's side because one feels alone and can believe oneself to be far away from the world.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 400

There are a number of reasons why I cull out specific passages from Remembrance of Things Past for my own clumsy reflection.  Certainly I'm trying to make sense of the novel and so sometimes I out paragraphs because they introduce a new character or more fully flesh out a character.  Or a particular scene seems to be an important plot point and thus I should tag it, if for no other reason than I can come back and take a look at it as the story plays itself out.  However, sometimes I pull out a passage simply because it is beautiful, because, come on, we don't just read for the story or for attaining knowledge, we, maybe most of all, read for beauty.  I find this brief sliver to be mysterious and elegiac.  Proust is describing the island in the Bois de Boulogne where he is hoping to spirit away Mme de Stermaria for their assignation; and as we discussed earlier, he chose the place and then the woman to fit the fantasy.  Naturally the beauty will take you to more profound places because beauty, true beauty, never exists at the surface level anyway, and thus you are already swimming beneath the surface.  The language is lush and evocative, and who but Proust "walks in the moist darkness" or notices that "the geraniums have vainly striven, by intensifying the brilliance of their scarlet, to resist the gathering twilight"?  And after Proust has lulled you into this "slumbering island," he concludes with this line:  "Then one longs all the more to have a lover by one's side because one feels alone and can believe oneself to be far away from the world."  Often I find myself posing questions because I'm just not ready to answer them, and this has raised another one: When have I felt most alone, and wanted someone by my side?  When have I felt myself to be most far away from the world?  From the beginning I envisioned this process as one of scaffolding: reading and taking notes, and then coming back weeks later to reconsider the marked passages, and then sometimes typing them into the blog as rough drafts and reconsidering them again after a few more days, and then finally writing up my reflections - and then down the road re-reading my entire blog posts on Proust and editing them once again.  This is definitely one that I will revisit time and again.  This one paragraph, as much as any other, offers us even more proof of the brilliance of Proust and, I would argue, for the essential role that literature plays in our lives.

My Year With Proust - Day 250

. . . My surplus of knowledge of life (life as being less uniform, less simple than I had at first supposed it to be) inclined me provisionally towards agnosticism.  What can one positively affirm, when the thing that one thought probable at first has then shown itself to be false and in the third instance turns out true?  (And alas, I was not yet at the end of my discoveries with regard to Albertine).

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 375

Although I often find a tremendous sense of affinity with Marcel, I don't normally put myself in his place.  So, when he's philosophizing about the folly of lingering before the hawthorns I completely understand it - at least the quest, if not the answer.  If Proust is struggling with essential questions of beauty then by definition I'm doomed.  I don't often see myself in his (or Swann's) hopeless moping around over various and sundry women.  Rather, like all people who self-delusional souls who ignore the log in their own eyes while commenting on the specks in others, I pity my friends for somehow finding their way into Remembrance of Things Past.  However, in this case I'm clearly Marcel because I had/have my own perplexing long-term relationship, which was probable and then false and then true and will in the end doubtless stall out at probable.  I find it interesting that he said that the experience inclined him "provisionally towards agnosticism."  It led me to ask myself when I first realized that life was not certain or guaranteed?  And when I therefore became an emotional/intellectual atheist (believing that there was no meaning or purpose to love) - and when did I become certain that it is true (or will I ever realize it)?  I don't have the answer to these questions yet, but I am officially on the clock.

My Year With Proust - Day 249

   When Francoise had left the room and Albertine was seated once again on my bed:

   "Do you know what I'm afraid of?"  I asked her.  "It is that if we go on like this I may not be able to resist the temptation to kiss you."

   "That would be a happy misfortune."

   I did not respond at once to this invitation.  Another man might even have found it superfluous, for Albertine's way of pronouncing her words was so carnal, so seductive that merely in speaking to you she seemed to be caressing you.  A word from her was a favour, and her conversation covered you with kisses.  And yet it was highly gratifying to me, this invitation.  If would have been ok, indeed, coming from any pretty girl of Albertine's age; but that Albertine should be now so accessible to me gave me more than pleasure, brought before my eyes a series of images fraught with beauty.  I remembered Albertine first of all on the beach, almost painted upon a background of sea, having for me no more real an existence than those theatrical tableaux in which one does not know whether one is looking at the actress herself who is supposed to appear, at an understudy who for the moment is taking her principal's part, or simply a projection.  Then the real woman had detached herself from the beam of light and had come towards me, but only for me to perceive that in the real world she had none of the amorous facility with which one had credited her in the magic tableau.  I had learned that it was not possible to touch her, to kiss her, that one might only talk to her, that for me she was no more a woman than jade grapes, an inedible decoration at one time in fashion on dinner tables, are really fruit.  And now she was appearing to me on a third plane, real as in the second experience that I had had of her but available as in the first; available, and all the more delicious so in that I had long imagined that she was not.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 374-375

Marcel proposes, ". . . if we go on like this I may not be able to resist the temptation to kiss you."  Albertine respondes, "That would be a happy misfortune."  As my excellent friend Mike Kelly would opine, shit is getting real. Or maybe it's not.  It seems like they are still lightly flirting, but there is an earthiness, barely constrained, that is slipping through, although, again, we're still witnessing a lot of posturing.

Proust reflects upon the power of Albertine's words.  "Another man might even have found it superfluous, for Albertine's way of pronouncing her words was so carnal, so seductive that merely in speaking to you she seemed to be caressing you.  A word from her was a favour, and her conversation covered you with kisses."  It's difficult for me to read this passage and not play Lucinda Williams' Something About What Happens When We Talk from her wonderful Sweet Old World album in the background.  The big difference is that Lucinda brings an authenticity based on experience that Albertine clearly hasn't earned.  That said, some women can make the most casual statement into a more erotically charged statement than reams of inauthentic naughtiness from other women.  Clearly, Albertine has "it", not matter how you define "it."

But why?  Doubtless part of this relates, as always seems to be the case in Remembrance of Things Past, of perception and memory.  "If would have been ok, indeed, coming from any pretty girl of Albertine's age; but that Albertine should be now so accessible to me gave me more than pleasure, brought before my eyes a series of images fraught with beauty.  I remembered Albertine first of all on the beach, almost painted upon a background of sea, having for me no more real an existence than those theatrical tableaux in which one does not know whether one is looking at the actress herself who is supposed to appear, at an understudy who for the moment is taking her principal's part, or simply a projection"  Albertine, "almost painted," still exists on that beach in Marcel's mind.

My Year With Proust - Day 248

   Not only did I no longer feel any love for her, but I no longer had to consider, as I might have at Balbec, the risk of shattering in her an affection for myself, since it no longer existed.  There could be no doubt that she had long since become quite indifferent to me.  I was well aware that to her I was no longer in any sense a member of the "little band" into which I had at one time so anxiously sought and had then been so happy to have secured admission.  Besides, since she no longer even had, as in the Balbec days, an air of frank good nature, I felt no serious scruples.  However, I think what finally decided me was another philological discovery.  As, continuing to add fresh links to the external chain of talk behind which I had my inner desire, I spoke (having Albertine secure now on the corner of my bed) of one of the girls of the little band who was less striking than the rest but whom nevertheless I had thought quite pretty.  "Yes," answered Albertine, "she reminds me of a little mousme." Clearly, when I first knew Albertine the word was unknown to her.  It was probable that, had things followed their normal course, she would never have learned it, and for my part I should have seen no cause for regret in that, for there is no more repulsive word in the language.  There mere sound of it sets one's teeth on edge as when one has put too large a spoonful of ice in one's mouth.  But coming from Albertine, pretty as she was, not even "mousme" could strike me as unpleasing.  On the contrary, I felt it to be a revelation, if not of an external initiation, at any rate of an internal evolution.  Unfortunately it was now time for me to bid her good-bye if I wished her to reach home in time for her dinner, and myself to be out of bed and dressed in time for my own.  It was Francoise who was preparing it; she did not like it to be delayed, and must already have found it an infringement of one of the articles of her code that Albertine, in the absence of my parents, should be paying ma so prolonged a visit, and one which was going to make everything late.  but before "mouseme" all these arguments fell to the ground and I hasted to say:

   "You know, I'm not in the least ticklish.  You could go on tickling me for a whole hour and I wouldn't feel it."

   "Really?"

   "I assure you."

   She understood, doubtless, that this was the awkward expression of a desire on my part, for, like a person who offers to give you an introduction for which you have not ventured to ask, though what you have said has shown him that it would be of great service to you:

   "Would you like me to try?" she inquired with womanly meekness.

  "Just as you like, but you would be more comfortable if you lay down properly on the bed."

   "Like that?"

   "No, further in."

   "You're sure I'm not too heavy?"

   As she uttered these words the door opened and Francoise walked in carrying a lamp.  Albertine just had time to scramble back on to her chair. . . ."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 370-371

An odd, almost childish scene, but what that is steeped in the gender and social rules of the age.  It reads like the attempt of a sophomore boy to get a girl to "touch it" rather than the actions of a sophisticated Frenchman.  Although, that comment speaks to my own sense of a French cultural/social identity, by which I mean that I naturally assume that the French are having a lot of sex all the time and thus wouldn't be so utterly clumsy.  Having said that, maybe the very clumsiness of the scene gives us an insight in how Marcel actually feels about Albertine.  Proust writes, "Not only did I no longer feel any love for her, but I no longer had to consider, as I might have at Balbec, the risk of shattering in her an affection for myself, since it no longer existed," implying that not only does he not love her, but she clearly does not love him anymore either.  Consequently, he assures us, "I felt no serious scruples."  Marcel is certainly portraying himself as an experienced lover, and as everyone knows one of the greatest advantages of growing older is getting past the stage where you are involved in the pantomime where you're "tricking" the other person into having sex with you.  Both of you know exactly why you showed up, but by engaging in this shared performance piece that allows you both, especially her, plausible deniability.  When you're older you're comfortable enough to say to her, "meet me in the back stairwell at 9:30 and where this (some scandalous bit of naughty clothing)" and she's also older and comfortable enough to respond, "no, idiot, I'll meet you in the back stairwell at 10:30 and you wear it."  Now, Marcel by this time is supposed to be experienced and is in the process of trying to set up an assignation with an experienced society lady/courtesan, which I'm assuming will not include a challenge that he can't be tickled.  So, is he playing this game to "protect" her innocence if he claims to not love her anymore - or is he protecting the purity of the innocence of his memory of their love?  It could also be something as simple as the fact that he's still in love with her, and thus the rules of exchange are different than with he's truly just meeting for sex.