Enigmas

One of my favorite poems. Ironic that I like it, in spite of being naive enough to try to make sense of things, and intervene to change them, to take them closer to ever changing normative visions. To have a vision, we first need to have a perspective. Must focus more on building the perspective. The vision, if at all, will emerge and evolve, like life.

Enigmas – Pablo Neruda

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,

and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,

which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture of the sea anemone,

and you'll deal that to me now?

You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?

The hook of the angler fish,

the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Why write?

I think writing is not an act that can be performed satisfactorily without some motivation. For me, then, the lack of motivation is a greater problem than the lack of skill. There may not be any basic skill of a writer as testified by the fact that there are all kinds of writers who have impressed and affected me, from Coetzee’s austere prose to the flowery narratives of Marquez. Even the diary of a young girl like Anne Frank left an imprint, because it had a sense of genuineness about its description of human tragedy in face of evil embodied in another human. So, I should need some inspiration to stay true to the writing. Right now I am writing because I don’t feel like doing anything else to fill the void within. This has made me sit and do what I am doing right now. So, what I usually write here or elsewhere has no particular, narrow theme, and sometimes even appears schizophrenic to me. What does tie it all together is a general motivation to stay interested in simple things in life while trying to address some basic issues is life, mostly to deal with an existential emptiness, which I want to face squarely, instead of looking instead for escapes in pseudo-religion, shallow acquaintanceship, mediocre art, inconsistent ideologies, and of course, consumerism. When this existential angst is not suppressed it turns into breeding grounds for this feeling to address it. I want to face it, and through it, accept and deal with my freedom as a human, by bringing myself to express myself to myself in a way that makes me stronger and vulnerable at the same time.

Writing without persisting inspiration is like trying to fly without proper wings; one can stay in the air for a while, but then bound to come down and feel miserable. Still, once we get into the process, it’s amazing how one starts feeling when one lets oneself truly feel and express, without trying to suppress the emotions that surge within, even if it is for a short spell of time. Perhaps these emotional upheavals oblige us to understand and to tame them, and written words could assist us in this seemingly arduous task. But, why write? Why not just think? The written word has a certain peculiar permanence about it, which in some ways is there with the spoken word, because it stays in the mind of others, but this permanence is not quite there with the thought word. Though our thoughts build on each other, there is a great deal of attrition in the process, some due to the natural limitations of memory, and others, and these are the crucial ones, due to the brutal excerption by the assumptions that may have taken strong roots in our mind. Some thoughts, due to their old, deep roots, take superiority over others, which is almost arbitrary, unless this superiority is due to a reasoned choice, but even then they need to be revisited. In any case, this kind of attrition and entropy separate the thought word from the written or the spoken word. Writing also helps one realize the flawed logic that may be implicit in some thought. These advantages are crucial when one is basically aiming to understand the true nature of things.

So, is writing an escape, or an easier alternative to the more difficult enterprise of bringing the same rigor to thought, by dealing with games that the mind plays, by actually trying to face reality as it is, in its rawness, without the pollution of mind or language? And what about language? Doesn’t that constrain things further? Certain things cannot be written within the constraints of language, while the boundaries of thoughts are wider. Even though they are also restricted by language, I think the language of thoughts has a wider scope than that of the written word. The written word begets a certain structure, which is not necessary for the thought, which requires a different kind of structure. So, which way is better? Or are there other ways? I am not sure, and I don’t think I can be sure of such things in the foreseeable future. But, I can keep looking for answers. In the meanwhile, I just make do, using a solution that I think is the best and the most useful, knowing very well that there is a possibility that this so-called solution may be destroying something important in my life. That's why life appears to be a long series of efforts to find heuristic solutions to ill-structured problems. I see writing of this type as one such heuristic solution.

Since the written word has a sense of permanence about it, writing is a bold act, and therefore the act of writing is also an expression of faith in the possibility of the risk, if any, being worthwhile, because of a hope of succeeding in making oneself understand what is behind the words, the hope of discovering oneself in the process of turning the feelings (and the analysis that gets inextricably linked to them in a mind condemned to be a slave of reason) into bare words. This sense of permanence is not just related to other people reading these words. Even if no one else were to ever see the words written, the sense of permanence plays itself out during the act of writing. One is conscious of the words being written, continuously considering and reconsidering. I wonder if pure spontaneity is possible, except of course in poetry, especially the Haiku-type poetry.

In writing, I do try to stay true to myself because most of all I want to make sense of things, ease my suffering, embrace my existence, and survive as an individual.

Some thoughts on moral entrepreneurship

Whenever one sees what one thinks is decadence, ignorance or injustice, there is likely to be a conflict within. There is a temptation to become a moral entrepreneur, wear a Socratic hat and subject the ‘guilty’ to an interrogation, a public or private questioning/challenge of the acts and their repercussions. This presumes a certain contextual superiority, which is a discomforting assumption because we are also flawed individuals, and we have to know that quite, as goes the delphic suggestion (know thyself). The other alternative, which in some ways is an easy one when one is not being personally hurt, is to ignore the problem. This is an important choice because both options have their implications for inner peace. One can allow the choice to be affected by one's ‘power’ in a given situation. So, if I hold some influence over the person or group in question, it seems easier to get Socratic, while if the influence is ambiguous, absent or opposite, it poses difficulties.

Considering the choice in its totality, one has to consider one's role and power in the situation, constructed subjectively but informed by signals from others. If one sees a situation wherein is clear the responsibility to effect change or stem a decline and one has some power, direct influence or even the sheer hope of triggering the process of change, one could decide to intervene. This may be an easy choice, but most real life situations are not that clear; there is significant ambiguity about power and responsibility. So, how do we proceed? I think the only clear thing is that as such there can be no clear and final ‘rules of conduct’, because situations are unique and we need to keep updating our ‘actuality’ in a situation, in terms of our understanding of: the truth in the situation, our accepted and acknowledged obligation to the improvement being imagined, and our power in the situation. We may not actually ‘know’ if something is truly decadent or wrong, we may be exaggerating our obligations under the circumstances, or we may be utterly powerless in the situation. Since an attempt to subject others to a Socratic interrogation or to put a fight for change can have significant implications for us, in both personal and professional contexts, it makes sense to try to be somewhat clear about the truth of the need for change, to be convinced about our self-imposed and acknowledged obligation towards change, and to have a realistic sense of the possibilities of our power in the situation.

It is also important for us to do a bit of a self-interrogation to understand and face the ‘real’ motivations behind the discomfort with a situation and the resulting will to change things. Sometimes, what I see wrong with the world is but a reflection of my own flaws. All the perspectives of the world aside, it is the ‘I’ that may turn out to be actually quite mysterious and perhaps mischievous. I may not be seeing things as they are; I may be seeing them as I am. Self-knowledge is crucial for a ‘real’ understanding of the world; otherwise the mind plays its games, and of course there is language which in the garb of providing one with thoughts and means for communication, carries countless biases and intentions. Thus, a renewed attempt for self-knowledge should accompany, preferably precede, an effort to understand the situation with an intention of choosing between action and inaction. Better to make change wait, than take an action that makes things worse. But, it is also important to act before it is too late. The balance has to be maintained.