Here in the Eastern Time Zone, it's three hours before midnight, and I'm counting the minutes until the end of 2009 and this entire decade (yes, I know; technically the decade doesn't end until next New Year's Day, but why fight the almost unanimous delusion?). The last ten years have been simply calamitous both on a personal and on a global level, and I for one am eager to bid this span of years adieu. As a sort of New Year's Eve catharsis, then, I am going to rehearse the reasons, both personal and general, that I am glad to see the end of the "Noughties" and 2009. Then I'm going to turn my face forward and move into the next ten years of my life and dwell on the past no longer.
First, why the US and the world would like to forget the first ten years of the young millenium:
9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the great earthquakes in Pakistan, Gujarat (India), and Bam (Iran), the Burmese cyclone, the Tonga/Samoa tsunami, countless earthquakes and other seismic events in Indonesia, the Iraq War, the Afghan War, mega-terrorist attacks in Bali, Madrid, London, Beslan, and Mumbai, the anthrax attacks, swine flu hysteria, the Patriot Act, the end of the dot-com bubble, the end of the housing bubble, the financial panic of fall 2008, the Great Recession, the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush and Obama bailouts of mega-corporations, double-digit unemployment, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Amish schoolgirl massacre, so-called "health care reform," Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, and the inexplicable popularity of torture movies like Saw.
Second, why I would like to rewind to January 2000 and have another go at things: All of the above, plus a failed marriage that died a long, slow death, a lawsuit and calumnies from an individual (and fellow church member) I had once counted as a friend, a career that wasn't, years of unending penury, the death of my one remaining (and favorite) grandparent (my "Pop-pop"), my father's spinal tumors, the unexpected death of my favorite student last spring, and my struggle, over the last couple of trying years, to perceive a clear sense of purpose in my life.
All these things (and many others besides) I hereby leave in the past.
There have been positives, however. I finished my PhD in 2004, and my blessed daughter arrived the following year. I spent part of 2000 and 2001 in Sri Lanka, and had a magical time. Ditto for last summer's three-week India junket. I also did a 5 week summer road trip to Alaska back in 2007 with my brother, and have been to Mexico and Honduras besides.
The other evening, I switched on NPR on the way back from Altoona, and Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony was playing. It reminded me of a time, before this decade was ever born, when I was a rank sentimentalist and an incurable romantic. Events of recent years and months have, alas, all but extinguished those traits, but, come New Year's Eve, I hum a few bars of Auld Lang Syne, and both sentiments come rushing back. As the hours roll inexorably toward midnight, I can summon a parade of faces of friends and loved ones past who are gone, remember the bright hopes and optimism of my gaudy youth, and wonder anew at the capacity of this vale of tears to temper our rash designs and desires, to quench youthful enthusiasm, and to burst the illusions of the naive. So it often seems.
Yet I look forward now, not backward. In the coming year I see my little daughter continuing to grow and mature, the pain of her parents' divorce ever diminishing. I see continued progress in the one project (aside from my daughter) that seems destined to give me some kind of legacy, my slow but steady progress toward decipherment of the Indus Valley script. I look forward to a May trip to Costa Rica with my best friend, whom I have not seen in several years. I see continued inprovement in my aikido and jujitsu and in my physical conditioning. I see the possibility of beginning to actually save money once again, once the voracious taxman has had his claim. I see a life consecrated to academic pursuits, since another romantic relationship does not appear to be in the cards. I see making time to get back in the woods now and again. I see progress in spirituality, personal organization, and productivity.
I hope that, in 365 days, I will be able to reread this post and see that it has been fulfilled every whit. Happy New Year 2010!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Per Speculum in Aenigmate
Another year is winding to a close, provoking the usual musings on The Meaning of It All. From my current vantage point atop the 2009 holiday season, it is hard to discern a purposeful trajectory in my life. I have had an academically very successful year, yet my prospects for promotion seem distant as ever. I have worked hard to extricate myself from debt incurred by unavoidable circumstances, all the while paying my tithing faithfully, yet my circumstances are straitened as ever.
With this in mind, I commented at fast and testimony meeting this month that my testimony (an LDS term for a heartfelt witness or spiritual knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel) depends as much on what I do not know as on what I do know. For the uninitiated, we LDS hold special meetings on the first Sunday of almost every month, in which we stand and bear testimony, generally of things we "know" to be true, like the veracity of Joseph Smith's visions of God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and of the book of scripture that gives our religion its nickname -- the Book of Mormon. We typically assert that we "know" God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the living president of our church -- Thomas S. Monson as I write these words -- is his prophet.
But how can we "know" any of these things? If, as Paul asserted, we see "through a glass darkly," is it not the height of impudence to claim knowledge of things that are perforce the domain of belief and faith?
Knowledge, of course, was one of the inducements of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden; we might suppose that a presumption of knowledge of things spiritual is contrary to God's requirement that we walk by faith.
There is no bright-line distinction between knowledge and belief, at least as we experience them in mortality. Faith is defined as the "substance (or assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But sight alone is not a requisite for knowledge; many things (of a secular nature) we profess to know, without having seen them, or even an image of them.
Knowledge itself is of a mediate, and not immediate character, as C. S. Peirce demonstrated long ago. That is to say, all cognition is mediate, or apprehended through signs, which are always prior cognitions. As Peirce pointed out in his "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," there is no evidence that such things as pure intuitions (that is, cognitions not determined by previous cognitions or signs) exist at all, and every reason to suppose, at least as far as this mortal coil is concerned, that they do not. We do not seem to be intuitively self aware, for instance; little children are capable of cognition long before they ever frame a hypothesis of self (and they do become self-aware because of the need to posit a self in which inhere reactions to sensory stimuli originating with the Other). It is likewise wrong to suppose that we have any (intuitive) power of introspection; Our knowledge of the external world, says Peirce, "is derived from the observation of external facts." Finally, we cannot think without signs. All of these axioms and several others besides, are proved in Peirce's so-called "Cognition Series" of three essays, which I recommend to anyone interested in the nature of thought and consciousness.
All of which is to say that we live in a universe, both internal and external, of signs. We perceive nothing except through the mediation of signs. This, I suppose (though this is of course my own opinion), is as true of modes of cognition associated with what we Latter-Day Saints call "personal revelation" as it is with all other perception -- except that the semiosis of revelation is much more vivid than, say, mere contemplation. In fact, for Latter-Day Saints, revelation may be said to be the goal of all cognition, a sort of crowning sign -- reinforced, perhaps, by the light of true inspiration -- to which any enlightened series of cognitions ultimately tends.
For every thought is a symbol (actually, a composite symbol, the makeup of which is beyond the scope of this posting to go into), and the nature of all symbols is to grow, to evolve. Hence one thought/cognition/mental symbol gives rise to another (or, we may say, is predicated on another) ad infinitum. The goal is "pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile" -- knowledge of godliness which is ultimately available only through the Holy Priesthood (LDS readers -- recall that the higher priesthood holds the keys both of the mysteries of God and of the knowledge of God).
The knowledge of godliness, which is not possible without what we now call the Melchizedek Priesthood, but was formerly styled the "Holy Priesthood after the order of the Son of God," is the ultimate desideratum. We receive such sacred knowledge in direct proportion to righteous conduct, for it is only thus that our bodies can become filled with light and comprehend all things, as Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains so perfectly.
This is why we say we "know" that such and such is true; it is, whether we care to think about it or not, a testimony to the operation of priesthood power upon our understanding. And all knowledge is ultimately semiotic in character.
But what of those things we do not know? In my case, I struggle to understand the terrible trials I have been called upon to endure in recent years. I cannot perceive with any clarity the Lord's plan for me, though I have been reading my patriarchal blessing (a sort of personal LDS revelatory lodestar) daily for months. I grope in the darkness, but instead of finding a door handle, encounter only bare and unyielding walls of stone, or so it seems.
The times that try men's souls are times not of knowledge but of faith, where action in the absence of understanding is required. And they are necessary because not only right knowledge, but also right conduct, are necessary for eternal progression. The pangs I haved endured have often reduced me to tears, but in my extremity, as happened just the other day, I still must confess to myself that the Gospel I embraced thirty years ago is the true and right path. And I know this as much for the fact that, despite a train of disapointments and disillusionments and severe trials with no perceptible purpose, I still cling to the iron rod and enjoy "the peace that surpasseth all understanding," as for the additive reinforcements to my testimony that I have been vouchsafed.
All this said, I still wish for greater clarity, that the symbols that are working themselves out in my own particular mortal path would become a little clearer!
With this in mind, I commented at fast and testimony meeting this month that my testimony (an LDS term for a heartfelt witness or spiritual knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel) depends as much on what I do not know as on what I do know. For the uninitiated, we LDS hold special meetings on the first Sunday of almost every month, in which we stand and bear testimony, generally of things we "know" to be true, like the veracity of Joseph Smith's visions of God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and of the book of scripture that gives our religion its nickname -- the Book of Mormon. We typically assert that we "know" God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the living president of our church -- Thomas S. Monson as I write these words -- is his prophet.
But how can we "know" any of these things? If, as Paul asserted, we see "through a glass darkly," is it not the height of impudence to claim knowledge of things that are perforce the domain of belief and faith?
Knowledge, of course, was one of the inducements of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden; we might suppose that a presumption of knowledge of things spiritual is contrary to God's requirement that we walk by faith.
There is no bright-line distinction between knowledge and belief, at least as we experience them in mortality. Faith is defined as the "substance (or assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But sight alone is not a requisite for knowledge; many things (of a secular nature) we profess to know, without having seen them, or even an image of them.
Knowledge itself is of a mediate, and not immediate character, as C. S. Peirce demonstrated long ago. That is to say, all cognition is mediate, or apprehended through signs, which are always prior cognitions. As Peirce pointed out in his "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," there is no evidence that such things as pure intuitions (that is, cognitions not determined by previous cognitions or signs) exist at all, and every reason to suppose, at least as far as this mortal coil is concerned, that they do not. We do not seem to be intuitively self aware, for instance; little children are capable of cognition long before they ever frame a hypothesis of self (and they do become self-aware because of the need to posit a self in which inhere reactions to sensory stimuli originating with the Other). It is likewise wrong to suppose that we have any (intuitive) power of introspection; Our knowledge of the external world, says Peirce, "is derived from the observation of external facts." Finally, we cannot think without signs. All of these axioms and several others besides, are proved in Peirce's so-called "Cognition Series" of three essays, which I recommend to anyone interested in the nature of thought and consciousness.
All of which is to say that we live in a universe, both internal and external, of signs. We perceive nothing except through the mediation of signs. This, I suppose (though this is of course my own opinion), is as true of modes of cognition associated with what we Latter-Day Saints call "personal revelation" as it is with all other perception -- except that the semiosis of revelation is much more vivid than, say, mere contemplation. In fact, for Latter-Day Saints, revelation may be said to be the goal of all cognition, a sort of crowning sign -- reinforced, perhaps, by the light of true inspiration -- to which any enlightened series of cognitions ultimately tends.
For every thought is a symbol (actually, a composite symbol, the makeup of which is beyond the scope of this posting to go into), and the nature of all symbols is to grow, to evolve. Hence one thought/cognition/mental symbol gives rise to another (or, we may say, is predicated on another) ad infinitum. The goal is "pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile" -- knowledge of godliness which is ultimately available only through the Holy Priesthood (LDS readers -- recall that the higher priesthood holds the keys both of the mysteries of God and of the knowledge of God).
The knowledge of godliness, which is not possible without what we now call the Melchizedek Priesthood, but was formerly styled the "Holy Priesthood after the order of the Son of God," is the ultimate desideratum. We receive such sacred knowledge in direct proportion to righteous conduct, for it is only thus that our bodies can become filled with light and comprehend all things, as Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains so perfectly.
This is why we say we "know" that such and such is true; it is, whether we care to think about it or not, a testimony to the operation of priesthood power upon our understanding. And all knowledge is ultimately semiotic in character.
But what of those things we do not know? In my case, I struggle to understand the terrible trials I have been called upon to endure in recent years. I cannot perceive with any clarity the Lord's plan for me, though I have been reading my patriarchal blessing (a sort of personal LDS revelatory lodestar) daily for months. I grope in the darkness, but instead of finding a door handle, encounter only bare and unyielding walls of stone, or so it seems.
The times that try men's souls are times not of knowledge but of faith, where action in the absence of understanding is required. And they are necessary because not only right knowledge, but also right conduct, are necessary for eternal progression. The pangs I haved endured have often reduced me to tears, but in my extremity, as happened just the other day, I still must confess to myself that the Gospel I embraced thirty years ago is the true and right path. And I know this as much for the fact that, despite a train of disapointments and disillusionments and severe trials with no perceptible purpose, I still cling to the iron rod and enjoy "the peace that surpasseth all understanding," as for the additive reinforcements to my testimony that I have been vouchsafed.
All this said, I still wish for greater clarity, that the symbols that are working themselves out in my own particular mortal path would become a little clearer!
Monday, October 5, 2009
Gracias a la Vida
I note with sadness the passing, on October 4th, of someone most of my countrymen have never heard of, but who, during her 74 years, was extremely influential south of the border, especially in her native Argentina: singer and political gadfly Mercedes Sosa. When I lived in Argentina at the end of the '70s -- a year that was to prove the most pivotal of my entire life, for it was there, in a remote town in the pampas, that I became acquainted with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and with the message of the restored fulness of the Gospel -- both Mercedes Sosa and the military dictatorship that then held sway in the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires were at the peak of their influence and popularity. Jorge Videla, leader of the Argentine junta at the time, and Sosa were mortal foes, with the latter courageously defying the dictator in her songs and public appearances. She was once arrested and hauled offstage during a concert in BA, and finally had to flee the country, returning only when the junta collapsed in the aftermath of the Falklands War. Sosa was, of course, a leftist; almost all musicians and artists who immerse themselves in politics are. But she was sincere in opposing the many injustices perpetrated against the world's poor, especially in her beloved homeland.
Argentina's was a dictatorship with a smile; its public face was the myriad courteous, submachinegun-toting gendarmes manning roadblocks and checkpoints along the Ruta 2 to the capital, and the pleasant, self-serving patriotic infomercials on TV that I remember well, because I learned lots of Spanish from watching them. But behind the scenes, as the world now knows, and Sosa was aware even back then, the government was quietly liquidating undesirables -- left-leaning journalists, lawyers, and their ilk -- by immuring them in secret interrogation centers, torturing them, and finally drugging them and throwing them out of airplanes over the South Atlantic. That Sosa managed to avoid such a fate is testament to good luck and perhaps to her mass appeal; that she was willing to risk it at all is evidence of her considerable courage.
Moreover, Sosa was no svelte, willowy pop diva; she was short and stout even in her younger years, and became morbidly obese past fifty. Yet despite her lack of sex appeal, she was an international singing sensation, and her best song (actually written and first performed by the Chilean singer/songwriter Violeta Parra), "Gracias a la Vida" ("A Thank-you to Life") is a paean of optimism and gratitude that ought to be far better-known and appreciated than it is. Following is a partial translation:
Gracias a la Vida, que me ha dado tanto;
me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro,
perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco,
y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo.
A thank-you to Life, which has given me so much,
it gave me two shining stars, by which, when I open them,
I can distinguish perfectly between black and white,
And in the high heaven, its starry depth,
And amid the crowds, the man I love.
Gracias a la Vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados
con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos,
playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos
y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.
A thank-you to Life which has given me so much
It's given me the stride of my tired feet;
With them I walked through cities and puddles,
Beaches and deserts, mountains and plains,
And in your house, your street, and your patio.
Gracias a la Vida que me ha dado tanto
me dio el corazón que agita su marco
cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano,
cuando miro el bueno tan lejos del malo,
cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros.
A thank-you to Life which has given me so much;
It gave me a heart which quickens its beat
When I see the fruits of the human mind,
When I see the good so far from the evil,
When I look in the depths of your clear eyes.
And so forth. Verse of this sort doesn't translate well, but the sentiment is clear enough. Also, it's a fair reflection of what I'm feeling these days, in spite of the challenges I face every day. I have debts, but they are few, and shrinking constantly. I have sorrows, but they are diminishing. I have fears -- of the future as well as the present -- but they are being put to rest. I too, in the long run, am thankful to and for life, and (which the song, secular as it is, does not mention) to the God of life as well. But then, again, perhaps that was what Senora Sosa intended by la Vida, with a capital V. Either way, now seems as good a time as any to be thankful. Mercedes Sosa, RIP.
Argentina's was a dictatorship with a smile; its public face was the myriad courteous, submachinegun-toting gendarmes manning roadblocks and checkpoints along the Ruta 2 to the capital, and the pleasant, self-serving patriotic infomercials on TV that I remember well, because I learned lots of Spanish from watching them. But behind the scenes, as the world now knows, and Sosa was aware even back then, the government was quietly liquidating undesirables -- left-leaning journalists, lawyers, and their ilk -- by immuring them in secret interrogation centers, torturing them, and finally drugging them and throwing them out of airplanes over the South Atlantic. That Sosa managed to avoid such a fate is testament to good luck and perhaps to her mass appeal; that she was willing to risk it at all is evidence of her considerable courage.
Moreover, Sosa was no svelte, willowy pop diva; she was short and stout even in her younger years, and became morbidly obese past fifty. Yet despite her lack of sex appeal, she was an international singing sensation, and her best song (actually written and first performed by the Chilean singer/songwriter Violeta Parra), "Gracias a la Vida" ("A Thank-you to Life") is a paean of optimism and gratitude that ought to be far better-known and appreciated than it is. Following is a partial translation:
Gracias a la Vida, que me ha dado tanto;
me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro,
perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco,
y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo.
A thank-you to Life, which has given me so much,
it gave me two shining stars, by which, when I open them,
I can distinguish perfectly between black and white,
And in the high heaven, its starry depth,
And amid the crowds, the man I love.
Gracias a la Vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados
con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos,
playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos
y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.
A thank-you to Life which has given me so much
It's given me the stride of my tired feet;
With them I walked through cities and puddles,
Beaches and deserts, mountains and plains,
And in your house, your street, and your patio.
Gracias a la Vida que me ha dado tanto
me dio el corazón que agita su marco
cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano,
cuando miro el bueno tan lejos del malo,
cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros.
A thank-you to Life which has given me so much;
It gave me a heart which quickens its beat
When I see the fruits of the human mind,
When I see the good so far from the evil,
When I look in the depths of your clear eyes.
And so forth. Verse of this sort doesn't translate well, but the sentiment is clear enough. Also, it's a fair reflection of what I'm feeling these days, in spite of the challenges I face every day. I have debts, but they are few, and shrinking constantly. I have sorrows, but they are diminishing. I have fears -- of the future as well as the present -- but they are being put to rest. I too, in the long run, am thankful to and for life, and (which the song, secular as it is, does not mention) to the God of life as well. But then, again, perhaps that was what Senora Sosa intended by la Vida, with a capital V. Either way, now seems as good a time as any to be thankful. Mercedes Sosa, RIP.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Music at World's End
In the classical age, southern India and Ceylon were the end of the world, the eastern edge of of the great web of seaborne trade that linked East and West. It was here in Madras, according to tradition, that Thomas the doubting Apostle repaired for his last mission, and here also that he was martyred. Scarcely a mile from where I sit is Santhome Beach ("San Thome"), named in his honor.
This being my last night in India, I participated in a jam with a bunch of people from the Institute as well as my colleague B., who is an outstanding guitarist. I am a banjo and guitar player of very ordinary abilities whose fingers always seem to seize up when I play in front of others. R., a brilliant young physicist from West Bengal, brought his sarod, a wire-strung lute-like instrument. Others brought guitars, a harmonica, and even a harmonium. R. played several haunting ragas, and I accompanied him somewhat haltingly. Another young man played several Bengali folk songs on his ragged harmonium, and several other Bengalis joined in on the vocals. In a typically Indian touch, a large rat scurried up the wall at one point and kept peeking out at us through a hole in the ceiling. Every time he showed his head, I would glare at him, and he would retire in haste!
It was a lovely evening, where East met West on neutral musical ground. I doubt whether ever in all of human history such a peculiar ensemble of instruments has ever played together. Yet banjo and sarod, guitar and harmonium, managed to make a fair go of it. At this time tomorrow, I shall be on my way home, but I am grateful for such a sendoff.
This being my last night in India, I participated in a jam with a bunch of people from the Institute as well as my colleague B., who is an outstanding guitarist. I am a banjo and guitar player of very ordinary abilities whose fingers always seem to seize up when I play in front of others. R., a brilliant young physicist from West Bengal, brought his sarod, a wire-strung lute-like instrument. Others brought guitars, a harmonica, and even a harmonium. R. played several haunting ragas, and I accompanied him somewhat haltingly. Another young man played several Bengali folk songs on his ragged harmonium, and several other Bengalis joined in on the vocals. In a typically Indian touch, a large rat scurried up the wall at one point and kept peeking out at us through a hole in the ceiling. Every time he showed his head, I would glare at him, and he would retire in haste!
It was a lovely evening, where East met West on neutral musical ground. I doubt whether ever in all of human history such a peculiar ensemble of instruments has ever played together. Yet banjo and sarod, guitar and harmonium, managed to make a fair go of it. At this time tomorrow, I shall be on my way home, but I am grateful for such a sendoff.
Jambudvipa
This blog has lain dormant for several months because I've been unable to muster any creative drive. Nor has there been much worthy of comment, it has seemed to me. This past spring was a convergence of catastrophes great and small that reached an absolute nadir in the month of March, an dreary expanse of weeks that saw my divorce finalized, one of the worst bouts of the flu I've ever experienced, the coming to grips with an unexpectedly heavy burden of taxes (thanks to an unusually successful amount of free-lance writing last year), and a little daughter thoroughly unsettled by unhappy events she cannot comprehend.
But now, things are looking up, as Fred Astaire used to put it, although life is not exactly full of four leaf clovers, at least not yet. Shortly after my monthlong Time of Troubles expired, I received an unexpected invitation to go to India (return, in point of fact, since I spent some time here in the last decade) to deliver a series of lectures on a topic I've been researching since my days as an MA candidate at BYU, the undeciphered script of the Indus Valley civilization. What was to be a summer of leisurely recuperation both emotional and spiritual turned into a whirlwind of preparation for the trip itself, a three week interlude that may well prove to be a turning point in my life.
I use the present tense because I am still in India (in Madras, now more correctly but less-familiarly known as Chennai, its Tamil name), readying for the long trip home tomorrow. In just three weeks, I have given six or seven lectures (I've lost count), met a boatload of new friends, established a welter of new research contacts, traveled to Bombay and Pune, and even appeared on national TV along with two of my colleagues. I've also tussled with a rat in my bathroom, witnessed part of my apartment wall collapse from the inside, enjoyed various harrowing rides in the tiny motorized three-wheelers that are India's preferred means of urban transport, and savored countless heavenly Indian meals. Despite its many hazards and frustrations ("Indian moments," I call them), I love India.
And India has been kind to me. My Tamil, fragmentary from long neglect, came flooding back, and with it my knowledge of Indian customs. Don't speak in the loud, brash voice so typical of Westerners that Indians discreetly ridicule. Keep facial expressions neutral, or nearly so. Don't say "thank you" except for exceptional and unlooked-for benevolent acts. Don't waste too much time bargaining with stoned rickshaw drivers. Remember that Indians shake their heads, rather than nod, to indicate agreement. Accept setbacks like power outages with equanimity. And so forth.
My academic work has been received here with great enthusiasm, exceeding my wildest expectations. Fifteen years ago, I suggested in my Master's Thesis that certain of the Indus Valley signs were indicative of weights and measures, a conclusion that seems rather obvious in hindsight, but which several generations of epigraphers -- hampered, perhaps, by a desire to read something less mundane in the inscriptions -- had overlooked. Several authorities in the field in the U.S. reacted derisively to my thesis, however, and that was that, or so I thought. The downside of American academic publishing is that the gatekeepers -- the peer reviewers -- have the final say. I assumed that my homely MA thesis would languish in obscurity.
But such has proven not to be the case, and this summer's trip has been vindicatory. A longtime colleague of mine who did his PhD at Harvard a few years back wound up with a research fellowship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Madras, and managed to persuade the folks here to bring me for a visit. The Institute, be it noted, is primarily a facility for theoretical physicists and mathematicians, a sort of Indian Cal Tech. However, several of their people have been working on computer models of the Indus writing system; hence the allegiance between hard science and linguistic epigraphy. My colleague from Harvard, moreover, has no linguistic expertise, and has always valued the linguistic judgments I'm able to bring to bear on the problem.
The atmosphere at the Institute is heady and invigorating, to say the least. Here are assembled many of the best minds in India, the elite of physics and mathematics in a nation that has produced some of the most extraordinary mathematicians (Ramanujan) and physicists (Bose and Chandrasekhar) of the last century. By Western standards, it looks nothing like what an institute for heady theoretical sciences should be. Instead of carefully manicured, septic grounds with all the trappings of high-tech insularity, the campus is disheveled as most things in India tend to be -- mold stains on every building exterior, bamboo scaffolding clinging to various half-constructed elevator shafts and ells, and riotous tropical vegetation forever threatening to encroach on cracked walkways and a neglected tennis court. Geckos, mynahs, and jungle crows are everywhere, along with a species of large reddish millipede that comes out after it rains.
Yet here are men (and women) who discuss quantum gravity and Riemann manifolds over coffee as casually as the rest of us bandy politics or sports preferences. Several of them have become my friends. One of them, a young Bengali physicist with a mind as nimble as any I've ever encountered, plays the sarod, a beautiful lute-like instrument with wire strings. He and I plan to get together tonight -- my last in India, at least for now -- to jam (I brought my banjo along).
In Bombay, my Harvard colleague and I met with more of the same -- Indian scientists with a yen to aid in the decipherment of the language of India's primordial urban civilization. One of them, I assume, was responsible for contacting the Bombay TV station Times Now that put us on the Indian equivalent of the CBS Evening News shortly after we returned to Madras.
Then there was the lovely Deccan city of Pune, mercifully elevated above the sweltering desperation of Bombay on the high interior plateau east of the Western Ghats. That side junket was the nearest thing on this visit that I got to the great Indian outdoors, which on previous trips I've explored on various treks and birding excursions. In Pune we met with a gentlemanly Indian archaeologist who has been excavating a smallish Indus Valley (or "Harappan") site up Haryana way. I got to actually hold in my hands for the first time several of the tiny inscribed seals whose writing caught my fancy so many years ago. I also got to visit the famous Sanskrit Dictionary project at Deccan College where, since 1949, a team of lexicographers have been painstakingly creating the greatest dictionary every assembled, of any language. To give some idea of the scale of the project, consider that what was originally envisioned to be a thirty-volume work has mushroomed into an enterprise that will consume several Hindu kalpas to complete. Eight volumes have so far been published, and the compilers are not even halfway through the very first Sanskrit letter, a! Even the anonymous authors of the sprawling Vedas and Puranas would stand admiringly by.
For India, known to three of its great originary religions as Jambudvipa, the Island of Rose-Apples, is a place in love with complexity and disorder like no other. Visitors from the well-ordered West or the fanatically regimented Far East typically stand aghast at the frenetic confusion and impossible diversity of Indian society. John Kenneth Galbraith, President Kennedy's ambassador to India, famously characterized the Indian social model as "functional chaos" and, his considerable deficiencies as an economist notwithstanding, he was spot on. Indians seem to have little taste for regimentation or order along Western (or Eastern) lines. Traffic is an every-man-for-himself free-for-all in which only the cows wandering the streets are deferred to. Garbage is tossed on festering piles in every ditch and canal -- not because Indians are incapable of cleaning it up, but because they see no reason to. Pharmaceuticals available only by prescription in the West are sold over the counter at rock-bottom prices. People dress modestly, but do not scruple to relieve themselves in public, even along the busiest city streets. Hindu festivals, famous for their color, are also the most disorderly public events this side of a British soccer riot. City buses lurch along leaning at drunken angles from the excess of humanity clinging precariously to open doors. And so on.
India is a linguist's, anthropologist's or sociologist's dream, with literally thousands of languages spoken, hundreds of thousands of gods worshipped, and numberless castes, subcastes, and sodalities all vying for attention and prestige in every city and village from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin.
How India came to be this way is anybody's guess, given the absence of reliable historiography beyond a few centuries ago. My best hypothesis is that it is a consequence of India's unique physical geography. India is not an island but is attached to Asia where the Middle East and Far East come together, allowing an influx of diverse cultures and languages across the centuries. The northeast of the country -- Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and other remote states -- are eastward in orientation, speaking languages proper to southeast Asia (except for Assamese) and whose people physically resemble the Burmese and Chinese. From the north the Tibetans encroach, spilling over the Himalayas in areas like Buddhist Ladakh. From the West have come the Arabs and the Mughals as well as (presumably) at a much greater time depth, the Indo-Aryans, who brought Sanskrit and the religion of the Vedas.
At the same time that India's contiguity to the great cultures of Asia has encouraged cultural diversity, natural barriers -- desert and mountain -- have also protected it against regular invasion. The occasional foreign occupier -- Mughal or British -- has left his stamp only briefly as against long centuries free from the brutal conquests and slaughter so typical of the rest of Asia and Europe. Even Alexander the Great foundered in the deserts of the Sindh, and the hordes of Genghis Khan preferred the easy pickings of the open steppes and accessible Middle Eastern fleshpots.
Thus India, in stark contrast to other Eurasian regions, has never been very steeped in militarism and the political regimentation that inevitably accompanies it. India has nukes now, to be sure, but their military is a far cry from the well-honed vehicles for combat and conquest typical of Western nations. We in the West take our fixation for regimentation, with its police and security forces, its military-industrial complex, its emphasis on the rule of law and the ascendancy of orderliness, for granted. But these cultural traits did not come about in a vacuum. They are, as Runciman once observed, the fruits of millenia of conflict, from Roman imperialism, through the Germanic invasions, down to the present day.
India, by contrast, has seen nothing like the upheavals that extinguished Rome, the Crusades, or the colonial conflicts that birthed the world-encircling empires of the French and British. At Plassey, the Indian response was perplexity. They failed to grasp the relevance of such a tiny engagement with upstart outsiders, and soon returned to their looms and rice paddies. The British, however, turned the episode into a platform for further expansion.
Even in the modern age, India has been blessed to be on the sidelines (relatively) of world-convulsing conflicts like the Second World War. The Japanese never made it past Burma, and the German war machine foundered on the Russian steppes.
As a consequence, as we warlike Westerners have busied ourselves discovering more and more ways to align our societies with martial values, India has continued much as it ever has been. The simmering conflict with Pakistan and even last year's terror attacks in Bombay have failed to provoke "a new reality." That, at least, is this observer's impression.
For all its cognitive dissonance, this time in India has been a healing balm for me in more ways than one. In a rash moment, I uploaded a picture and some biographical info to an LDS social website (okay, let's be more frank: a matchmaking website), and quickly made several online friends. My opinion of the fairer sex has taken quite a beating over the last few years, and I am happy to discover that there are obviously many lovely and intelligent LDS women out there after all. I deliberately made my profile as academic-sounding and severe as I could, figuring that no one would be interested in such an obvious misfit, an underpaid academic with deplorable real-world skills (I was once called "trash brain" by a vapid young thing out in Provo, who said she'd never met anyone encumbered with so much useless, impractical knowledge). I figured wrong, as it turns out.
However, having missed the entire online social networking revolution thanks to a terminally-ill marriage and complete disinterest in Facebook, I feel a bit like a fish out of water -- rather like a newcomer on the mean streets of India, in point of fact -- in this new medium of anonymous texting, flirting, and jactatory self-profiling. Emailing I'm used to, but text-messaging with a faceless, voiceless counterpart somewhere on the globe seems at once powerful and fraught with hazards. The souls on the other end are understandably cautious: Are you really divorced? Are you a member of the church? Probing questions like these are meant to draw out interlopers who insinuate themselves even onto LDS websites.
I for my part am determined to be measured and responsible, and not to repeat the deplorable mistakes of youth: Don't lead anyone on. Don't be too personal, too soon. Be completely honest. Don't dwell on yourself (that's what blogs are for!). Without face to face interaction or even voice communication, I fear that a medium like instant messenging is a recipe for misunderstanding, unless kept under very strict restraints.
So what is the unifying thread of this tedious blog entry? I suppose it would be the metaphor of Jambudvipa, which doubled in Hindu cosmology as the literal Subcontinent and as the realm where mortal beings lived, a place at once beautiful and chaotic, perilous but rewarding.
The Web as a social medium, it seems to me, is a sort of virtual Jambudvipa, a place where all souls potentially converge and struggle to work through mortal inadequacies. So much for a contrived metaphor.
As for the living, breathing Jambudvipa outside these walls, I need to go get a hearty Indian lunch and then see to my packing.
But now, things are looking up, as Fred Astaire used to put it, although life is not exactly full of four leaf clovers, at least not yet. Shortly after my monthlong Time of Troubles expired, I received an unexpected invitation to go to India (return, in point of fact, since I spent some time here in the last decade) to deliver a series of lectures on a topic I've been researching since my days as an MA candidate at BYU, the undeciphered script of the Indus Valley civilization. What was to be a summer of leisurely recuperation both emotional and spiritual turned into a whirlwind of preparation for the trip itself, a three week interlude that may well prove to be a turning point in my life.
I use the present tense because I am still in India (in Madras, now more correctly but less-familiarly known as Chennai, its Tamil name), readying for the long trip home tomorrow. In just three weeks, I have given six or seven lectures (I've lost count), met a boatload of new friends, established a welter of new research contacts, traveled to Bombay and Pune, and even appeared on national TV along with two of my colleagues. I've also tussled with a rat in my bathroom, witnessed part of my apartment wall collapse from the inside, enjoyed various harrowing rides in the tiny motorized three-wheelers that are India's preferred means of urban transport, and savored countless heavenly Indian meals. Despite its many hazards and frustrations ("Indian moments," I call them), I love India.
And India has been kind to me. My Tamil, fragmentary from long neglect, came flooding back, and with it my knowledge of Indian customs. Don't speak in the loud, brash voice so typical of Westerners that Indians discreetly ridicule. Keep facial expressions neutral, or nearly so. Don't say "thank you" except for exceptional and unlooked-for benevolent acts. Don't waste too much time bargaining with stoned rickshaw drivers. Remember that Indians shake their heads, rather than nod, to indicate agreement. Accept setbacks like power outages with equanimity. And so forth.
My academic work has been received here with great enthusiasm, exceeding my wildest expectations. Fifteen years ago, I suggested in my Master's Thesis that certain of the Indus Valley signs were indicative of weights and measures, a conclusion that seems rather obvious in hindsight, but which several generations of epigraphers -- hampered, perhaps, by a desire to read something less mundane in the inscriptions -- had overlooked. Several authorities in the field in the U.S. reacted derisively to my thesis, however, and that was that, or so I thought. The downside of American academic publishing is that the gatekeepers -- the peer reviewers -- have the final say. I assumed that my homely MA thesis would languish in obscurity.
But such has proven not to be the case, and this summer's trip has been vindicatory. A longtime colleague of mine who did his PhD at Harvard a few years back wound up with a research fellowship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Madras, and managed to persuade the folks here to bring me for a visit. The Institute, be it noted, is primarily a facility for theoretical physicists and mathematicians, a sort of Indian Cal Tech. However, several of their people have been working on computer models of the Indus writing system; hence the allegiance between hard science and linguistic epigraphy. My colleague from Harvard, moreover, has no linguistic expertise, and has always valued the linguistic judgments I'm able to bring to bear on the problem.
The atmosphere at the Institute is heady and invigorating, to say the least. Here are assembled many of the best minds in India, the elite of physics and mathematics in a nation that has produced some of the most extraordinary mathematicians (Ramanujan) and physicists (Bose and Chandrasekhar) of the last century. By Western standards, it looks nothing like what an institute for heady theoretical sciences should be. Instead of carefully manicured, septic grounds with all the trappings of high-tech insularity, the campus is disheveled as most things in India tend to be -- mold stains on every building exterior, bamboo scaffolding clinging to various half-constructed elevator shafts and ells, and riotous tropical vegetation forever threatening to encroach on cracked walkways and a neglected tennis court. Geckos, mynahs, and jungle crows are everywhere, along with a species of large reddish millipede that comes out after it rains.
Yet here are men (and women) who discuss quantum gravity and Riemann manifolds over coffee as casually as the rest of us bandy politics or sports preferences. Several of them have become my friends. One of them, a young Bengali physicist with a mind as nimble as any I've ever encountered, plays the sarod, a beautiful lute-like instrument with wire strings. He and I plan to get together tonight -- my last in India, at least for now -- to jam (I brought my banjo along).
In Bombay, my Harvard colleague and I met with more of the same -- Indian scientists with a yen to aid in the decipherment of the language of India's primordial urban civilization. One of them, I assume, was responsible for contacting the Bombay TV station Times Now that put us on the Indian equivalent of the CBS Evening News shortly after we returned to Madras.
Then there was the lovely Deccan city of Pune, mercifully elevated above the sweltering desperation of Bombay on the high interior plateau east of the Western Ghats. That side junket was the nearest thing on this visit that I got to the great Indian outdoors, which on previous trips I've explored on various treks and birding excursions. In Pune we met with a gentlemanly Indian archaeologist who has been excavating a smallish Indus Valley (or "Harappan") site up Haryana way. I got to actually hold in my hands for the first time several of the tiny inscribed seals whose writing caught my fancy so many years ago. I also got to visit the famous Sanskrit Dictionary project at Deccan College where, since 1949, a team of lexicographers have been painstakingly creating the greatest dictionary every assembled, of any language. To give some idea of the scale of the project, consider that what was originally envisioned to be a thirty-volume work has mushroomed into an enterprise that will consume several Hindu kalpas to complete. Eight volumes have so far been published, and the compilers are not even halfway through the very first Sanskrit letter, a! Even the anonymous authors of the sprawling Vedas and Puranas would stand admiringly by.
For India, known to three of its great originary religions as Jambudvipa, the Island of Rose-Apples, is a place in love with complexity and disorder like no other. Visitors from the well-ordered West or the fanatically regimented Far East typically stand aghast at the frenetic confusion and impossible diversity of Indian society. John Kenneth Galbraith, President Kennedy's ambassador to India, famously characterized the Indian social model as "functional chaos" and, his considerable deficiencies as an economist notwithstanding, he was spot on. Indians seem to have little taste for regimentation or order along Western (or Eastern) lines. Traffic is an every-man-for-himself free-for-all in which only the cows wandering the streets are deferred to. Garbage is tossed on festering piles in every ditch and canal -- not because Indians are incapable of cleaning it up, but because they see no reason to. Pharmaceuticals available only by prescription in the West are sold over the counter at rock-bottom prices. People dress modestly, but do not scruple to relieve themselves in public, even along the busiest city streets. Hindu festivals, famous for their color, are also the most disorderly public events this side of a British soccer riot. City buses lurch along leaning at drunken angles from the excess of humanity clinging precariously to open doors. And so on.
India is a linguist's, anthropologist's or sociologist's dream, with literally thousands of languages spoken, hundreds of thousands of gods worshipped, and numberless castes, subcastes, and sodalities all vying for attention and prestige in every city and village from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin.
How India came to be this way is anybody's guess, given the absence of reliable historiography beyond a few centuries ago. My best hypothesis is that it is a consequence of India's unique physical geography. India is not an island but is attached to Asia where the Middle East and Far East come together, allowing an influx of diverse cultures and languages across the centuries. The northeast of the country -- Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and other remote states -- are eastward in orientation, speaking languages proper to southeast Asia (except for Assamese) and whose people physically resemble the Burmese and Chinese. From the north the Tibetans encroach, spilling over the Himalayas in areas like Buddhist Ladakh. From the West have come the Arabs and the Mughals as well as (presumably) at a much greater time depth, the Indo-Aryans, who brought Sanskrit and the religion of the Vedas.
At the same time that India's contiguity to the great cultures of Asia has encouraged cultural diversity, natural barriers -- desert and mountain -- have also protected it against regular invasion. The occasional foreign occupier -- Mughal or British -- has left his stamp only briefly as against long centuries free from the brutal conquests and slaughter so typical of the rest of Asia and Europe. Even Alexander the Great foundered in the deserts of the Sindh, and the hordes of Genghis Khan preferred the easy pickings of the open steppes and accessible Middle Eastern fleshpots.
Thus India, in stark contrast to other Eurasian regions, has never been very steeped in militarism and the political regimentation that inevitably accompanies it. India has nukes now, to be sure, but their military is a far cry from the well-honed vehicles for combat and conquest typical of Western nations. We in the West take our fixation for regimentation, with its police and security forces, its military-industrial complex, its emphasis on the rule of law and the ascendancy of orderliness, for granted. But these cultural traits did not come about in a vacuum. They are, as Runciman once observed, the fruits of millenia of conflict, from Roman imperialism, through the Germanic invasions, down to the present day.
India, by contrast, has seen nothing like the upheavals that extinguished Rome, the Crusades, or the colonial conflicts that birthed the world-encircling empires of the French and British. At Plassey, the Indian response was perplexity. They failed to grasp the relevance of such a tiny engagement with upstart outsiders, and soon returned to their looms and rice paddies. The British, however, turned the episode into a platform for further expansion.
Even in the modern age, India has been blessed to be on the sidelines (relatively) of world-convulsing conflicts like the Second World War. The Japanese never made it past Burma, and the German war machine foundered on the Russian steppes.
As a consequence, as we warlike Westerners have busied ourselves discovering more and more ways to align our societies with martial values, India has continued much as it ever has been. The simmering conflict with Pakistan and even last year's terror attacks in Bombay have failed to provoke "a new reality." That, at least, is this observer's impression.
For all its cognitive dissonance, this time in India has been a healing balm for me in more ways than one. In a rash moment, I uploaded a picture and some biographical info to an LDS social website (okay, let's be more frank: a matchmaking website), and quickly made several online friends. My opinion of the fairer sex has taken quite a beating over the last few years, and I am happy to discover that there are obviously many lovely and intelligent LDS women out there after all. I deliberately made my profile as academic-sounding and severe as I could, figuring that no one would be interested in such an obvious misfit, an underpaid academic with deplorable real-world skills (I was once called "trash brain" by a vapid young thing out in Provo, who said she'd never met anyone encumbered with so much useless, impractical knowledge). I figured wrong, as it turns out.
However, having missed the entire online social networking revolution thanks to a terminally-ill marriage and complete disinterest in Facebook, I feel a bit like a fish out of water -- rather like a newcomer on the mean streets of India, in point of fact -- in this new medium of anonymous texting, flirting, and jactatory self-profiling. Emailing I'm used to, but text-messaging with a faceless, voiceless counterpart somewhere on the globe seems at once powerful and fraught with hazards. The souls on the other end are understandably cautious: Are you really divorced? Are you a member of the church? Probing questions like these are meant to draw out interlopers who insinuate themselves even onto LDS websites.
I for my part am determined to be measured and responsible, and not to repeat the deplorable mistakes of youth: Don't lead anyone on. Don't be too personal, too soon. Be completely honest. Don't dwell on yourself (that's what blogs are for!). Without face to face interaction or even voice communication, I fear that a medium like instant messenging is a recipe for misunderstanding, unless kept under very strict restraints.
So what is the unifying thread of this tedious blog entry? I suppose it would be the metaphor of Jambudvipa, which doubled in Hindu cosmology as the literal Subcontinent and as the realm where mortal beings lived, a place at once beautiful and chaotic, perilous but rewarding.
The Web as a social medium, it seems to me, is a sort of virtual Jambudvipa, a place where all souls potentially converge and struggle to work through mortal inadequacies. So much for a contrived metaphor.
As for the living, breathing Jambudvipa outside these walls, I need to go get a hearty Indian lunch and then see to my packing.
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Widening Gyre (and other musings)
"The Second Coming," arguably W. B. Yeats' most celebrated piece of work, has lately become something of an LDS pulpit cliche, thanks in large measure to the late Elder Maxwell. He it was that first recited the lines, "things fall apart, the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" in General Conference. I'm not sure that Yeats intended the poem, composed in the political and financial chaos following World War I, to be interpreted so literally as we LDS have done. Nevertheless, as with everything C.S. Lewis ever wrote, Pope's observations on vice in his Essay on Man, and some fragments of Wordsworth that hint of his then-heretical suspicions of a pre-mortal life, we Latter-Day Saints have taken Yeats' words to our collective bosom -- canonization by popular acclaim, as it were.
At this very moment, Yeats' words ring true for me, both at an impersonal and a personal level. The unsteady foundations of our financial system -- a house built on the most fickle of sands since our unwise abandonment of the gold standard several generations ago -- are in danger of utter collapse. More accurately put, they are in danger of imminent collapse; the fact that they will collapse ultimately is not a hazard but a certainty. Foolish were our leaders of the mid-twentieth century, who listened to the siren song of that economic Pied Piper Keynes, and cast off the restraints of gold and silver in favor of dollars that could be manufactured out of thin air (or even worse, out of debt) at the whim of politicians and their kept central bankers. Not suprisingly, these men, who have pleaded for decades on behalf of the superiority of a "flexible" monetary system, have taken advantage of it to print money in support of burgeoning debts and crippling deficits. All that worked well enough in the short run, at least for those positioned to take advantage of the fantastic and unnatural runups in asset values that printing money always creates. Now, it seems, the long-delayed crackup seen by the prescient few is upon us; the emperor's nakedness is visible to all except his courtiers, and utter dissolution is a real possibility.
These are not matters to be taken lightly. The deliberate debasement of money by venal rulers has undermined civilization from the time of Diocletian to present-day Zimbabwe. It destroyed the currency and all savings in post-WWI Germany and Austria. Germany, like America, was saddled with unpayable debts and resorted to the printing press in a last-ditch effort to stave off national bankruptcy.
And the solution our enlightened leadership has set forth? More debts, more deficits, and vastly more government. Foolish people, who have allowed yourselves to be seduced by the enemies of liberty! The free market (i.e., freedom) does not work, we are now being told incessantly. We must therefore purchase the chains of security with our own (and our granchildren's) money.
On a personal level, the falcon has veered away from the falconer, but I'm expecting him to return someday. My divorce was final two weeks ago, and I am left with lawyer fees and heavy taxes on the horizon. I've always striven to live frugally and avoid debt but now, for the next few months at least, debt will be my attendant. At least in the summer my gas bill will be almost nil. I unfortunately inhabit the very middle of the middle class, income -wise, and so take it on the chin more than any other tax-paying group. Earn ten or fifteen thousand less, and taxes become nugatory. Earn fifteen or twenty thousand more, and tithes and offerings become deductible. But at my income level, the thousands I paid last year in tithes and offerings are not deductible; they are subsumed by the standard deduction.
As you can imagine, such musings have sometimes tempted me to something close to despair over the past few weeks, but there is nothing to do but go forward. Elaine needs me now more than ever, and I must not fail her. So I put my trust that, at some future time, the Lord will again magnify me somehow; but for now, mine is the lot of metaphorical sackcloth and ashes.
Last week I made my monthly temple visit. It's a different experience without my ex-wife, who never manifested much enthusiasm for the temple. On the rare occasions when she accompanied me, she often seemed disoriented. But we did share some things in the celestial room, and she wept often. Now, I am alone with my thoughts and, perhaps, the most diffuse of spiritual promptings, in the celestial room. Sometimes too I weep, in church and at home, but not for joy.
To end on a purely positive note: today was the first calendar day of spring. This does not mean much in the tropical or even subtropical climes, where winter is barely remarked, or in the far north, where snow melts are still many weeks off. But here in this blessed, temperate latitude, the late days of March often confer a jewel of a spring day, when the unexpected can and does happen. Today, a wintry relapse, was not such a day, but Wednesday was. I took Elaine up to Pocky and Nanna's mountaintop farm to enjoy the 70 degree sunny weather on Wednesday afternoon, and signs of spring were everywhere. Along the road below the house the first few yellow coltsfoots -- the first wildflower to bloom in northern Appalachia -- were out, and flies and bees zipped about, obviously elated to have survived the winter cold. By the ruined stone well I found a prenuptial tangle of garter snakes, which Elaine enjoyed spooking, and in the tiny pothole-pond in the lower field a few wood frogs were croaking. Turkey vultures, which do not overwinter in these parts, were bouncing on the updrafts above the ridgeline, and the first phoebe was hawking flies off the white barn wall.
Interesting, I thought, how my own moods have so closely mimicked the turn of the seasons lately. On such a day as this, it was impossible to be overburdened by life's many cares and sorrows. May there come a springtime into every heart.
At this very moment, Yeats' words ring true for me, both at an impersonal and a personal level. The unsteady foundations of our financial system -- a house built on the most fickle of sands since our unwise abandonment of the gold standard several generations ago -- are in danger of utter collapse. More accurately put, they are in danger of imminent collapse; the fact that they will collapse ultimately is not a hazard but a certainty. Foolish were our leaders of the mid-twentieth century, who listened to the siren song of that economic Pied Piper Keynes, and cast off the restraints of gold and silver in favor of dollars that could be manufactured out of thin air (or even worse, out of debt) at the whim of politicians and their kept central bankers. Not suprisingly, these men, who have pleaded for decades on behalf of the superiority of a "flexible" monetary system, have taken advantage of it to print money in support of burgeoning debts and crippling deficits. All that worked well enough in the short run, at least for those positioned to take advantage of the fantastic and unnatural runups in asset values that printing money always creates. Now, it seems, the long-delayed crackup seen by the prescient few is upon us; the emperor's nakedness is visible to all except his courtiers, and utter dissolution is a real possibility.
These are not matters to be taken lightly. The deliberate debasement of money by venal rulers has undermined civilization from the time of Diocletian to present-day Zimbabwe. It destroyed the currency and all savings in post-WWI Germany and Austria. Germany, like America, was saddled with unpayable debts and resorted to the printing press in a last-ditch effort to stave off national bankruptcy.
And the solution our enlightened leadership has set forth? More debts, more deficits, and vastly more government. Foolish people, who have allowed yourselves to be seduced by the enemies of liberty! The free market (i.e., freedom) does not work, we are now being told incessantly. We must therefore purchase the chains of security with our own (and our granchildren's) money.
On a personal level, the falcon has veered away from the falconer, but I'm expecting him to return someday. My divorce was final two weeks ago, and I am left with lawyer fees and heavy taxes on the horizon. I've always striven to live frugally and avoid debt but now, for the next few months at least, debt will be my attendant. At least in the summer my gas bill will be almost nil. I unfortunately inhabit the very middle of the middle class, income -wise, and so take it on the chin more than any other tax-paying group. Earn ten or fifteen thousand less, and taxes become nugatory. Earn fifteen or twenty thousand more, and tithes and offerings become deductible. But at my income level, the thousands I paid last year in tithes and offerings are not deductible; they are subsumed by the standard deduction.
As you can imagine, such musings have sometimes tempted me to something close to despair over the past few weeks, but there is nothing to do but go forward. Elaine needs me now more than ever, and I must not fail her. So I put my trust that, at some future time, the Lord will again magnify me somehow; but for now, mine is the lot of metaphorical sackcloth and ashes.
Last week I made my monthly temple visit. It's a different experience without my ex-wife, who never manifested much enthusiasm for the temple. On the rare occasions when she accompanied me, she often seemed disoriented. But we did share some things in the celestial room, and she wept often. Now, I am alone with my thoughts and, perhaps, the most diffuse of spiritual promptings, in the celestial room. Sometimes too I weep, in church and at home, but not for joy.
To end on a purely positive note: today was the first calendar day of spring. This does not mean much in the tropical or even subtropical climes, where winter is barely remarked, or in the far north, where snow melts are still many weeks off. But here in this blessed, temperate latitude, the late days of March often confer a jewel of a spring day, when the unexpected can and does happen. Today, a wintry relapse, was not such a day, but Wednesday was. I took Elaine up to Pocky and Nanna's mountaintop farm to enjoy the 70 degree sunny weather on Wednesday afternoon, and signs of spring were everywhere. Along the road below the house the first few yellow coltsfoots -- the first wildflower to bloom in northern Appalachia -- were out, and flies and bees zipped about, obviously elated to have survived the winter cold. By the ruined stone well I found a prenuptial tangle of garter snakes, which Elaine enjoyed spooking, and in the tiny pothole-pond in the lower field a few wood frogs were croaking. Turkey vultures, which do not overwinter in these parts, were bouncing on the updrafts above the ridgeline, and the first phoebe was hawking flies off the white barn wall.
Interesting, I thought, how my own moods have so closely mimicked the turn of the seasons lately. On such a day as this, it was impossible to be overburdened by life's many cares and sorrows. May there come a springtime into every heart.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A Perfect Day
There was a delightful song that was popular once upon a time -- a hymn, if I remember aright -- called "A Perfect Day." Eons ago, a young Sterling Holloway (he who later became the iconic voice for Disney's Winnie the Pooh) sang it for Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Remember the Night. That movie was typical of its age (1940) -- optimistic and innocent, in spite of the fact that the Great Depression was still in force and a world war was raging. The song, and others like it, captured the spirit of an era that has passed into vague cultural memory, an era that was fundamentally optimistic, even idealistic, about human potential. It was a time when people could sing about perfect days with a straight face because, by and large, they still believed in them.
In my experience, a truly perfect day is a rare event. The last one I can recall was years ago on the Texas Gulf Coast, when I spent a glorious day wandering lonely beaches observing fabulous birds, and ended with a sumptuous seafood dinner in a wharfside restaurant in Galveston. It was one of those rare occasions when the cares of the world sloughed away like a shed skin, and for a few glorious, solitary hours, life was completely good.
The years since then have been less kind, but today was the nearest thing to a perfect day that I've seen in a long, long time. Today is my daughter's fourth birthday, and it coincided with a rarely beautiful late winter day masquerading as spring. The sun came out and the temperature soared to sixty degrees. Honeybees and small beetles were flying around for the first time in months, and the birds were active.
There were a few glitches, to be sure. After finishing my classes, I headed for the car, only to discover that my car key had disappeared. It wasn't in the car, in my office, in my classrooms, in the locker room where I had changed before swimming my laps, or anywhere in my personal effects. Nor was I sure I could find a replacement. I had just finished talking to my father, who had dug up a spare key and was preparing to drive the 18 miles to campus to give it to me, when -- mirabile dictu! -- someone suggested I check a lost and found that I didn't know existed. Just minutes before, someone had found my key lying on the ground and turned it in.
I rushed home, wrapped my daughter' presents, and drove the harrowing, still-icy lane up to my parents' farm, where Elaine was playing happily with her grandparents. The sun was shining fiercely and the surrounding woods rang with exuberant woodpeckers drumming and the distant caroling of a Carolina wren who managed to survive last month's cold snap. I had little difficulty persuading Elaine to come outside to play, and she was soon wading through rivulets in her Hello Kitty rubber boots, getting herself gloriously wet and muddy. I showed her how to make a cattail seed head explode, and she showed me how to jump off a bank of melting snow plowed up along the edge of the barnyard. Not until the sun sank below the ridgeline did we go back indoors.
There followed dinner, cake, and presents, leaving Elaine exhausted with joy and sensory overload. At length we rounded up all of Elaine's new possessions, loaded them and a very sleepy but still wound-up little girl into the car, said goodbye to "Pocky and Nanna," and drove home. Elaine was sleeping soundly when we got there, and barely stirred when I carried her upstairs and put her to bed.
The house is strewn with three days' worth of playthings, but I decided to procrastinate cleaning until tomorrow, when I have no classes to teach. I pulled out my banjo for the first time in several days and practiced for an hour and a half.
Yet it was not quite a perfect day. Sometime around 11 PM, Elaine woke up crying from some bad dream and complaining of aches (she's getting over a cold of some kind). I suspect that she was a bit upset that her mother, who is out in the Midwest for her mother's wedding this coming weekend, failed to telephone as she had promised. She did call later that evening, and sheepishly admitted she'd forgotten to call. She'll call tomorrow, she assured me.
In any event, Elaine required considerable consolation. I unfurled her new Dora the Explorer sleeping bag and draped it over her, which seemed to mollify her. Finally, she fell asleep again, and my house is at peace for a brief, precious interval. Tomorrow, the cares of the world will loom large once again -- Will my wife return next week, as she promised, so that our divorce can be finalized the following week? Will the economy continue its death spiral, beset as it is by so many wrong-headed attempts by our government to "fix" problems that the government created in the first place? Will I have time to pay the bills, clean the house, and take care of other necesaries while giving Elaine the attention she needs?
But for now, I can luxuriate in the lingering warmth of a near-perfect day. Someday, perhaps, I will see its like again.
In my experience, a truly perfect day is a rare event. The last one I can recall was years ago on the Texas Gulf Coast, when I spent a glorious day wandering lonely beaches observing fabulous birds, and ended with a sumptuous seafood dinner in a wharfside restaurant in Galveston. It was one of those rare occasions when the cares of the world sloughed away like a shed skin, and for a few glorious, solitary hours, life was completely good.
The years since then have been less kind, but today was the nearest thing to a perfect day that I've seen in a long, long time. Today is my daughter's fourth birthday, and it coincided with a rarely beautiful late winter day masquerading as spring. The sun came out and the temperature soared to sixty degrees. Honeybees and small beetles were flying around for the first time in months, and the birds were active.
There were a few glitches, to be sure. After finishing my classes, I headed for the car, only to discover that my car key had disappeared. It wasn't in the car, in my office, in my classrooms, in the locker room where I had changed before swimming my laps, or anywhere in my personal effects. Nor was I sure I could find a replacement. I had just finished talking to my father, who had dug up a spare key and was preparing to drive the 18 miles to campus to give it to me, when -- mirabile dictu! -- someone suggested I check a lost and found that I didn't know existed. Just minutes before, someone had found my key lying on the ground and turned it in.
I rushed home, wrapped my daughter' presents, and drove the harrowing, still-icy lane up to my parents' farm, where Elaine was playing happily with her grandparents. The sun was shining fiercely and the surrounding woods rang with exuberant woodpeckers drumming and the distant caroling of a Carolina wren who managed to survive last month's cold snap. I had little difficulty persuading Elaine to come outside to play, and she was soon wading through rivulets in her Hello Kitty rubber boots, getting herself gloriously wet and muddy. I showed her how to make a cattail seed head explode, and she showed me how to jump off a bank of melting snow plowed up along the edge of the barnyard. Not until the sun sank below the ridgeline did we go back indoors.
There followed dinner, cake, and presents, leaving Elaine exhausted with joy and sensory overload. At length we rounded up all of Elaine's new possessions, loaded them and a very sleepy but still wound-up little girl into the car, said goodbye to "Pocky and Nanna," and drove home. Elaine was sleeping soundly when we got there, and barely stirred when I carried her upstairs and put her to bed.
The house is strewn with three days' worth of playthings, but I decided to procrastinate cleaning until tomorrow, when I have no classes to teach. I pulled out my banjo for the first time in several days and practiced for an hour and a half.
Yet it was not quite a perfect day. Sometime around 11 PM, Elaine woke up crying from some bad dream and complaining of aches (she's getting over a cold of some kind). I suspect that she was a bit upset that her mother, who is out in the Midwest for her mother's wedding this coming weekend, failed to telephone as she had promised. She did call later that evening, and sheepishly admitted she'd forgotten to call. She'll call tomorrow, she assured me.
In any event, Elaine required considerable consolation. I unfurled her new Dora the Explorer sleeping bag and draped it over her, which seemed to mollify her. Finally, she fell asleep again, and my house is at peace for a brief, precious interval. Tomorrow, the cares of the world will loom large once again -- Will my wife return next week, as she promised, so that our divorce can be finalized the following week? Will the economy continue its death spiral, beset as it is by so many wrong-headed attempts by our government to "fix" problems that the government created in the first place? Will I have time to pay the bills, clean the house, and take care of other necesaries while giving Elaine the attention she needs?
But for now, I can luxuriate in the lingering warmth of a near-perfect day. Someday, perhaps, I will see its like again.
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