Displacement

This is the new address of my blog.

The loss of humor

The distinguishing mark of senility in a thinker is the eagerness with which he is ready to embrace a religious or a moral or an altruistic way of life or thinking mostly as an antidote to his own growing disgruntlement, assuming he has not already announced himself to be a god. This happens to even the mightiest of thinkers. In his youthful days, however, he had not adopted significantly different philosophies or ways of lives. Even then he had acted as a god, an atheist, a savior and a destroyer. But he assumed these roles very flexibly. He got in and out of them very easily. He could do so because he is still able to laugh at the fact that he does not have to, or he cannot even if he wanted to, define himself, or 'be' anything, that his life lacks a unitary meaning. He is cheerful about the abyss. The senile thinker has lost this sense of humor.

Life and Expression

His life has a deep internal logic -- a consequence of him having surveyed and soared over the entirety of being. And the profundity of this experience is buried inside him, although alive, bringing him to the verge of a threshold. All he needs, he deems, is an expression of this experience, whether as a deed or a journey, a piece of writing or a touchdown. This expression would then complete and round up what has already achieved an internal completion, by externalizing this experience, and thus bringing the external world up to speed. He adds up his life and the expression to envision a totality. And so as he expresses himself, he proclaims that the threshold has been crossed over. The temperature increases, there is a 'quickening of the faculties', a gasping of breath, as if life itself is nearing its end -- expression as eschathology!
But then when the summit has been reached, and he screams out in jubilation, all he hears is his own hollow echo. What has happened? What has gone wrong? He looks around and about, and he denies the echo. Has the world not reached a conclusion? Is his logic faulty? But then he learns that he has to go on. Life has not ended. Maybe it has given birth to something through him, but it lives on. He sees this when he recognizes that not all of the experiences that constitutes his inner being were ready for expression. Sure, they know the lines but they are still unwilling to come onto the stage. So the expression cannot be just added to the entirety of his being, as the last unit of the latter, but rather it is the other side of his internal experience, which is invoked only when its time arrives and not before that. The division of the internal and the external world is illusory at best. And so he marches on with life, recognizing that by expressing himself he has gained life, and not exhausted it. The totality needs to be repeated on a different sphere now.

Reason in madness

Even the artist drives those objects away from his immediate world, whose greatness he can recognize only from a distance, be it spatial or temporal. He retains only those select few objects around him, which he can consecrate and still not lose his breath or sanity.
The artist does not only utilize his tools for the purpose of creation, but also for his preservation. But through the objects he creates, he intends to confront what he had previously driven away into oblivion. That is, his creations come from a distance, they are precisely the conveyors of distance, and in that sense not his objects at all.

Die Erinnerung

Last week, I read a letter from a poet who was lamenting to his friend about how nobody understands him. The letter ended with him lamenting about this very lamenting, about him confessing to his friend about his weakness. I recreated the suffering of the poet in me as I read the letter and for a brief moment relived that pain.
Yesterday, somebody told me about a French philosopher who killed herself on the birth anniversary of her master, who was her favorite philosopher. I tried to freeze that perspective of hers within me that drove her to suicide. I upheld this perspective for a short while to indicate to her that her life was not in vain, that I see what she did, and that, in one sense, this whole world ceased to exist after she died.
And this morning, as I woke up, I imagined a picture of a still unborn child smiling. I understood that innocence, and the untainted purity with which the child saw the whole world. I smiled with the child.
I wondered if the poet, the philosopher and the child were looking at me from somewhere as I was doing all of these things. And the sight of the moon indeed reminded me of the night when the four of us had a great feast together.

Sobriety

Drunk are the waves of the ocean that topple and fall on each other in revelry
Drunk is the wind as it blows its howling secrets on to the trees
Drunk is also the comet that traverses headlong through time periods unawares
And drunk is the shame that hides itself in new attires everyday

Drunk is the statue that strikes your head when you kneel before it
Drunk is your heritage that seeks its origin in an unknown destiny
Drunk is also your solitude that never parts your company
And drunk are all your truths that dress themselves up as lies

Are you not too drunk to even recognize your drunken brethren?

On our Zeitgeist

1. Any existence that does not come to terms with the spirit of its times - however monstrously chaotic this task might be with respect to our times - is nothing but idealism, however 'profound' it may otherwise think it is. It would be pure escapism -- 'all thought, no action'.

2. The peculiarity of our Zeitgeist is its unprecedented greed, its fleeting memory: it devours unabashedly anything that touches its base and strikes its chord, unless it does not confound that thing to hide in the pretext of its own shadows. So who is capable of satisfying this monster of greed? -- Only someone who refreshes every moment with cheerfulness by receiving his energy from an unknown future, and in doing so, submits to the hungry present. He interprets the lack of memory of the Zeitgeist as the eternal youth of the future.

Recipe for the re-born II

Autumn approaches when visions, sounds, language, human beings and culture itself lose their symbolic, metaphorical character and tends towards the literal. Although this is an asymptotic tending, never entirely synchronizing with itself, thus never accomplishing death. But can there be a re-birth, if death itself has not been fully achieved? Whence comes this "re-"? How can one will oneself to life, if there is no blindness? How can the will be blind?
Symbolism is the work of the culture in which one finds oneself. One takes and gives without worrying about the rules of economical exchange. Truth plays with blindness here. Frivolity and squandering are not forbidden.
But the asymptote can be diverted to carve out a new ascending path, by borrowing energy, in trickling units, from the depths of its past higher moments, which are now in a state of limbo, not lively but not dead either, and by refracting this energy into new shades and shadows. This is an economic exchange with strict rules of transaction, involving tabulation, interest and surveillance: the most difficult task for a human being! One has to drag one's broken legs across the desert to learn the art of forgetting! Nuances and subtlety are now in the greatest demand. But as the journey wears on one builds one's credit more and more, and there is a gradual loosening of the economical grip. Perhaps spring is on the horizon? Perhaps a new language, a new "sine", new symbols, new culture? And no one has to know about this secret path. The same settings that confronts one now in the boredom of one's limbo will be re-born later into a revitalized life, as if there were no previous descent. This "as if" of the new blindness!

This is the experiment

I have often observed, to my wonder and delight, that my handwriting changes in very subtle ways depending on the kind of pen I am using: Whether it is an inkpen or a ball point, or again whether it is a gel pen or a pencil even. Even within a certain class, say gel pens, my handwriting takes to some kinds and not so much to others. The r's and s's and f's get their own flair and pointed intentions with the right kind of pen.
So too with us. What we are is intricately bound up with whom we are around, where we are, what we give and what we receive. There, some style of ours is taken up and immortalized by someone, here an intention that we made is covered over and reinvoked at a different time, thereby lending this intention a new, hitherto unanticipated meaning, and some times a proposal of ours is rejected initally but sharpened into a more disciplined, self-conscious command by the other, and at other times what we offer is completely overlooked or rejected by the world. What we end up inscribing on the tablet of life seems to depend entirely on the surface of the tablet itself! This dark uncertainty that belongs inescapably to our lot seems to be a sort of weakness. Nietzsche implies so much when he writes of the German that he "cannot be judged by his actions and [that] as an individual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted." Our actions do not reveal who we are for these actions only manage us to recast us into a new light, which we ourselves were not privy to before. Like a fallen leaf we get whisked away, trampled over, flown across lands at the mercy of uncertain forces and winds, or we remain in some corner withering away and forgotten.
But this injustice that we suffer at the hands of life is also our path to glory and redemption. To be sure, one must limit oneself and possess oneself in a self-contained way. But this self-enclosure is only possible by an occasional will to stupidity, as Nietzsche might say. In the end, by wrapping ourselves with our own skin we deny ourselves the possibility of a new meaning, a re-birth, a future, however dangerous a game one is now playing in choosing to remain in this open uncertainty. It is in this future that our greatness and glory lie. Life's theatre of cruelty is not revealed in that one is fluttering at the mercy of natural forces one cannot gain control over, but in the challenge to repeatedly submit oneself to this flight and fluttering all the while preserving oneself in the act without losing balance. To speak through Nietzsche again: "How much truth can one endure? how much truth can one dare? This is the real measure of value. This is the test. This is the experiment."

The joyful signs!

After the victory is won, one always feels one has expended more energy than was actually required for the task. But strangely, this insight is unavailable when one is actually going through the process, as one always feels pressured to spend as much effort and energy as one did. (The growth of the child or any process of self-overcoming has this peculiar structure of strife and pain).
However, the seemingly excess energy that appears at the end of the process will not have gone to waste. It shows up as the profound joy and power of the conquerer!

Tip of the tongue

It does not have to be this way, but language in many cases emerges as a back-up for instincts that have corrupted. The sure sign of corrupted instincts is that one does not trustfully believe in these instincts anymore. Believing is no mean task; we are all bad believers insofar as we cannot tiptoe on a tightrope without being sucked in by the vertigo of the abysses. To save oneself from the fear of perishing one seeks a cushion, a back-up. Language then emerges as this emergency solution. It acts as the depository reserve, the "savings account," in which one hopes to translate the sublime and fluid language of instincts for the sake of assurance and guarantee.
Writing (book-keeping, journals, etc.) and technological innovations (day-planners, computers) have this interpretation of language guiding their development. Nay, the whole of Western-dialectics develops out of this feeling of vertigo. The root of American capitalism is to be found in words that have rigidified themselves into fixed meanings: a clear sign of disintegrated instincts. No wonder Americans are inclined to "talk about" anything and everything that appears to them as a problem as way of solving these problems. America: the most scholarly culture that has ever been.

Misunderstandings

1. The quality of consistency may be taken to be a symptom of boredom and repetition. Alternatively it may indicate, in some very exceptional cases, the sign of bright awareness and openness to the world. It would be a great injustice to confuse the latter for the former. Who would call the patterns of sun, the sea, the birds and the trees boring?

2. I once said this. But also: to think that thought which is unthinkable, unaccessible to others -- it is the secret strength of the one who marches on without forerunners!

Limits of logic

The world has the character of .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... with the future terms in the chain expressing the reality that takes shape and is created only at that moment (this reality being born out of an indeterminable array of factors). What comes to be, therefore, is the greatest testament to its itself, to reality. It sustains itself in absolute freedom, and is answerable only to itself.
Even the logician has no say in what comes to be, but on the contrary, he adjusts his theory of contradiction depending on what peculiar form reality dishes out. It would be ridiculous for him to say, "reality cannot be that way because my theory forbids it!" since his theory is parasitic on reality and not viceversa. (All the shocks of quantum physics and old age must bear this in mind for insulation). Hence, the best the logician or the phenomenologician can do is to faithfully describe, not predict, reality. But what else is this best description, besides that which repeats or mirrors the sequence of terms? : .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... Granted that this rote repetition can be therepeutic at times (for example, by clearing up one's own confusions about reality (Wittgenstein), or by acting as the seat for the confessions of one's sins), it is still always uninterestingly modest, self-preserving and meek.
If on the other hand, one confused the nature of logic and professed to predict reality, all one would have done is glibly short-circuited reality or generalized it. One's immodest theory then turns to be hopelessly abstract that seeks to grasp the skeleton of reality with pincers after it has sucked up its blood. A great way to counter this abstraction is to use logic against itself: to wit, show that the real terms contradict each other (say, by juxtaposing b and -b) when they are taken out of context (an operation that is needed for all generalizations), in order to, of course, not show the deficiency of reality, but rather that of logic. (It is by this method that Nietzsche effects a releasement of logic into life).
But releasing contradictions into the flow of life: by this are we not taking the basic steps of the creative life itself?

"I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal" --Nietzsche

Thought of the last few days..

We do not really know who we are or who we could be; 'self-determination' is but a false slogan; all we can do is create relatively stable selves for ourselves. And even that too depends on the people we are around, the climate we are in, how we are dependent on others, how we let others see us and determine us, what we would like to project upon others, and what we take to be our joys and sorrows.
We are unknown to ourselves; we cannot fathom our own depths -- and who knows whether there is really anything to fathom at all...

Conversation with the ladder

'My lows are lower than you, but my highs are higher than your highs...whence comes your peculiar midwifery?'
'What? Are you implying I am not higher than myself?'
'Is that not clear?'
'So be it then.. I hold the right to speak as long as you are below me. For this is my secret desire: that you can bring me to silence!'
'You speak the truth... the contradictions of your being are but beyond you.'

Ode to solitude

How much adjustment and good will is required before one can see one's own reflection in the mirror! One must drop what one is doing, walk up to the mirror, open one's eyes and look at the mirror for the mirror to look back at one.
How one may choose not to do some or all of these things! How much the mirror is not helpful in this regard -- a testament to the profound solitude of one's individual existence! Moreover: how superficial is the image when the mirror does reflect;for one sees what one wants see, what one has given oneself to see. How much is left unsaid! Isn't all showing a deceiving?
But if the mirror is the best we can hope for, then who wants the mirror? Bury youself under the skin! For the treasures of your being lie there uninstantiated as the great germs of the your solitude!

Buzz word

'It ain't true until you do it; make it explicit!' This is how the fly reasons and continues to buzz around you, knowing perfectly well that it is not supposed to do so, and that it could get killed for its incredulity. But this is the covert, shameless hope of the annoying creature: that you may feel too lofty to be a swatter of flies, too pure to soil your hands, even if that means you suffer the vexing sting of the parasitic fly. And in this way it takes advantage of your magnanimity and lives on for another day!

Life's plenum

The world is not my image of it, and yet the world is alive only through the images I create.

3 levels of absurdities in Nietzsche

I.
1) The objectivity of truth or that of health is vehemently denied. The truths of each body - whether a culture, an individual or a genre - is localized and given a legitimate sphere, where the tyranny of their specific perspective has the sole right.
2) It is still maintained, in apparent contradiction to the above, that there some healthier, more truthful bodies in comparison to others. The passions, the sufferings, the desires, the needs, the joy and happiness of these nobler entities must be preferred - since they have a greater purpose to them - to that of the lower beings.
3) However, an unequivocal rule is denied, which gives one access to a method by which one can discern which body is healthier or stronger than some other bodies. The knowledge of the criterion of what counts as healthy is known only by those who possess this health! It is not accessible to everyone. This is the tragedy of the healthy ones!

II. This movement from 1) to 3) is that of the 'objectivity' to 'subjectivity'. But not in the Hegelian sense, where the movement gains momentum in this very movement. It is rather the movement from 'will to truth' to 'will to power.'

III. But at the same time, this movement is perhaps the closest one gets to having a genuine sense of objectivity. Or the closest approximation that the motion of becoming can have to that of being, as Nietzsche puts it somewhere. For, even the noblest one's claim to his health, in the end, might be another form of delusion and dogmatism. A cave which hides another cave within its abyss. The spectre of Hegel in Nietzsche.