Everything

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else. – Buddha
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it – Confucious
One must love everything– Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Lately, I have been contemplating the word 'Everything'. Over the years as 'belongings' have diminished to only so much and nothing else, everything has become a well-worn word. Everything is disposable. We don't need everything. Everything isn't important. Everything must go.

3 suitcases, 2 checked in bags. 20 cartons of books and household goods. That is all. But is all everything? Einstein said, 'Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted'. Now you see what I mean? How do we make sense of everything?

The shape, the size, the feel of everything, as certain as the seasons, shifts and changes. And often slides into nothing. Yesterday what was everything, today it's nothing. Nothing. Always following everything. Like the shadow following the form. Till the inevitable moment in time when they merge to the point that it becomes almost redundant to separate nothing from everything. If you have nothing, you have everything.

I

Cleaning an Attic
By Brent Pallas

The day had finally come   

when everything there   

seemed misplaced or out of place   

as an ex's box of things. The unused   

beside the irreplaceable, the easy-   

to-assemble uncomplicated now   

by disuse. Some hand   

of randomness leaving behind   

its lampshades stained   

like ancient maps, its ladders   

still climbing upward, and enough   

old tools to restart a world.   

Every drawer filled   

with the other half of things.   

Everything care embraced,   

and held once as new,   

left too ragged for another winter   

to wear. Its ring of keys   

dangling by a nail   

for rooms left long ago. And whatever   

I said I'd never forget   

found, just as it seemed   

completely forgot—all its letters   

beginning with Dear....

II

Everything
By Fanny Howe

Infinite nesting

pushes all matter

towards emptiness:

child-nodes,

tree-droppings

with a root element of null.

None is always included

in every cluster

of children.

Nothing in nothing

prepares us.

Yet a fresh light was shed

on immortality

for me climbing the stairs

firm foot first.

Everything was in the banister:

crows on branches, crickets,

architects, handsaws and democrats.

Red moon at 3 am.

III

Hold Everything Dear

by Gareth Evans, from 'Hold Everything Dear' by John Berger

As the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thin birches whisper their stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

the day thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a sparrow in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

The Fool

The Fool's number is 0, no number, but for me 0 is a number. The fool in the tarot deck is as strong as all the cards put together. Why? Because he represents man on his spiritual quest. Not knowing where he is going, the fool is ready to discover. He is the hero of the fairy tales who appears dim-witted but is able to find the "treasure" where others have failed. The fool has few possessions. He travels light.*

The fool with his childlike sense of wonder dances through life looking at things for what they are and not what they are supposed to mean or what they are supposed to symbolize. He lacks knowledge, wealth and success in the conventional sense. So it is no surprise that often the terms 'merry' and 'happy' are associated with him.

That's why, perhaps, we have a day dedicated to celebrate the fool in all of us. As we become a sum total of our consumptions, our worth measured in terms of possessions and happiness becomes a pursuit of a 'like' here and a 'share' there. As we surrender our sense of wonder at the alter of  'gaining' knowledge and 'attaining' a 'respectable' position in the world, maybe it is necessary to sometimes be shown for the fool that we actually are. To remind us, as we sit smug and comfortable in our grand palace of knowledge and wealth, impervious to the chains rattling at our ankle, that somewhere out in the world there is a fool not knowing where he is going, but ready to discover. He is carefree. He is merry. And he travels light.

*Niki de Saint Phalle Tarot Cards. To take a tour of Niki de Saint Phalle's magical Il Giardino dei Tarocchi or The Garden of Tarot click here.

Today I Am Wise

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. 
– Rumi

(Click on the picture to enlarge and read.)

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This post is a culmination of ruminations that can be found here and here.

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As it happens often when you open a random page of a well loved and much read book it pithily lays bare the path out of the labyrinth that you had been spending months (if not years) trying to decipher.

In another life I worked in the development sector. It is no secret. Nor is it a matter of pride– or embarrassment.  Like so many other things in the world it just is. Leonard Cohen, in a brilliant interview in The Guardian said, “All I have to put in my song is my experience.” Similarly when I say, I left the development sector and found the path to true virtue (I make no claim to be virtuous though I hope to get there), it is based purely upon my experience.

In an attempt to reach the kernel of ‘why’ I felt discomforted in the ‘company’ of ‘organized do gooders’ I may have written what could amount to a decent sized thesis. Though I could summarize it in these few word– Doing good* for the sake of feeling good about you. Intentional acts of kindness performed in the belief that by being charitable one is not just good but somehow better than other living beings that inhabit this planet. That was something I couldn’t abide with. Because Intentional Virtue is not Virtue.

The picture above is from The Tao Speaks: Lao Tzu's Whispers of Wisdom, adapted and illustrated by Tsai Chih Chung, translated by Brian Bruya.

*The good is italicized because like all value judgments what is good is not only comparative but also established by people living in a particular time and age. That is why morality is a double bind and also one of the fiercest and most destructive constrains devised by man.

New Learnings: Round 2

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Some bits of advice picked up from here and there in the past year or so.

1

If you are serious about being a writer DON’T blog.*

Though this seems to go against the grain of what goes around as conventional wisdom these days– no truer words have been spoken. Pause for a moment and consider how many writers (meaning people who write books– fiction and non-fiction) have a blog. And by blog I don’t mean a website that has excerpts of their novels, links to their interviews or lists their scheduled public appearances, where they may sometimes write a paragraph or more on things of interest or some other mundane matters. But has anyone heard of a writer writing a blog to showcase, well, writing? Yes, writers do write for blogs of literary journals and magazines. But they are often published and well established writers, they get paid (that's why they do it to begin with) and not related to the issue under consideration here.

But one realizes the real wisdom behind these words when one considers what blogging does to writing. By that I mean the craft that goes into constructing a sentence.

As we are all strangers here we can be honest and acknowledge the undeniable truth: Blogging makes one get into the habit of, for want of better word, “lazy writing”. It makes writing seem way too easy because one is bolstered by the all too empowering belief that this is my blog and I can write whatever I want to, howsoever I want to. It is not hard to see what this leads to. The subject is “me” and the audience (sorry to burst the bubble) is also “me”. And the quality of the writing meh.

Then once the blog starts generating a certain number of hits one gets addicted, just like the seduction of  “likes” on facebook status updates, the craving for hits leads to the inevitable– trying to replicate the success of the one post that became "popular'" or what is more fastidiously referred to as playing to the galleries. And we all know how that story ends.

Yes, there are blogs that have transitioned into books, mostly because they had ‘x’ number of hits per day. A majority of the resulting books are found in the bargain section (the one that is way back in some dark corner) at the local bookstore just months after their release. However, there are exceptions to every rule, but in this case very few and very hard to find.

* A distillation of all that I have read in the past year or so. Online and in books.

2

Take care of your little notebook.*

Because your daughter may grow up to become Diane Keaton, who on reading the 85 journals mom wrote will write a heart-felt and moving memoir. 

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That isn't reason enough?

Then I present *Charles Simic's essay in NY review of books: “If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsome notebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing…”

I only refer to what the reviews says of Diane Keaton’s memoir ‘Then Again’. I have only read a few pages while browsing away the afternoon at the neighbourhood bookstore, as the building was conducting its annual fire-safety drill. It fell into my hands because after 3 hours of picking up a book at random and reading a random page I was not focusing; I didn’t even know where I was, let alone what I was doing.

3

Not focusing can free the imagination.

But To Do lists, especially if they belong to Leonardo da Vinci, are worth more than their weight in gold.

It is useful," Leonardo wrote, to "constantly observe, note, and consider."*

He filled over 13,000 pages with his observations and drawings that range from grocery lists and household expenses to compositions of paintings to detailed anatomical drawing and engineering inventions. He seamlessly glided from one topic to another often within a single page

It seems he could not focus on a single thread of thought. By not giving his complete undivided attention to one thing he was able to pursue everything, so to speak. Or conversely, he could focus on one thing so completely and so exclusively to all the rest that he could carry more than one thought in his head. His knowledge was not limited by fields or boundaries. That made him a genius.

*Robert Krulwich, in this piece, asks us to join him in slipping into Leonardo’s mind for a moment. How will we do that? All credit to learning number 2: Leonardo’s well taken care of notebooks.

4

Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barthes.*

Curiosity. Across disciplines. About many things. About any and everything. That my friends, is not just the code that opens the gates to the world inhabited by Leonardo da Vinci, or the world of creativity in general but also the code that opens the secret pathway to a life well lived.

* Charles H. Traub, The Education of a Photographer

5

The future is not uniformly distributed.*

Thanksgiving weekend brought up a host of images of deprivation from around the world with the tagline­, “Consider how blessed you are. Be grateful. Walk a mile in their shoes” or something to the effect. My first thought: People who can barely walk tall in their own shoes should not even consider trying to walk in other people's shoes. Especially, if they have no idea to whom the shoes in the photograph belong.

It also reminded me of Good Will Hunting (again). The scene in which Sean MacGuire (Robin Williams) says to Will (Matt Damon),

You're an orphan, right? Do you think I'd know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?

Books too aren’t of much help beyond a point. No, you can’t understand anyone unless you begin with trying to make sense of yourself.

In any case, you can spend an entire life without having a clue about yourself or the world in general. It is not just plausible, but possible. And as far as I can tell what many believe the short cut to a life well lived.

But there are always those who want to know.

Kurt Vonnegut said: Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. So that gives us someplace to begin this journey of trying to discover ourselves.

But if you are able to make sense of what you are and who you want to be and you realize that it is something that no one else ever was or wants to be. Take heart. For the future is not uniformly distributed. There is space for multiple stories, each with their own specific plot lines and unique endings.

What an uplifting and liberating thought! The future is not uniformly distributed. Everything is possible. All at the same time.

* From an interview with Tom Waits in The Guardian. Oh! Yes, I do consider him a sort of modern day prophet.

New Learnings round one can be found here.

The Reading List

A book is opened that hadn’t been touched for some years and out falls an old reading list. Here is a select sample, in no particular order,

1. Levi-Strauss, C. 1986. The Raw and the Cooked
2. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice
3. Trautman, T.R. 1981. Dravidian Kinship
4. Taussig, M. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
5. Saussure, F.D. 1966. Course in General Linguistics
6. Focault, M. 1971. The Archaeology of Knowledge
7. Barthes. 1967. Elements of Semiology
8. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer Religion
9. Beteille, A. 1977. Inequality among Men
10. Braithwaite, R. B. 1953. Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Functions of Theory, Probability   and Law in Science

The first thought that crosses ones mind is: wow! Did one really read all these books? Then comes the second even more amazing thought: All in the span of 7 days!  The third is a quiet little thought that sneaks in and out of ones head even before one can fully get hold of it. The fourth is almost redundant and not worth pointing out. The fifth is what one might address here.

Carefully considering all the evidence and taking into account the present state of affairs one is almost certain that these books were read. Quite simply because they had to be read. It was mandatory. No
matter what Prof. Uberoi said during the only lecture one remembers from that point in time, despite being volunteers, by virtue of choosing to join the course and then further on choosing to attend the
lectures, when it came to the reading list one had to complete it before the next tutorial; that dreaded event when a handful of us, like the proverbial three blind mice, ran after the farmer’s wife, so
to speak. What followed was in accordance with the theory, probability and law of science or mythology or proverb. The only difference being that we didn’t get to run around much and the farmer’s wife, though her knife was quite sharp, didn’t manage to cut off our tails. Everything about that exercise seems to be so dispassionate and far removed that one can safely declare one has no memories about it. But that wouldn’t be quite truthful, would it?

How did one do it? One may have been a volunteer but that was simply a manner of speaking. The reading list wasn’t voluntary. One had no right over choosing what to read and when to read it. The books were prescribed and were to be read within a certain (insanely inadequate) time limit. Sometimes it felt that even the sentences, the words that people walking up and down the corridors uttered, were also prescribed. There was a formula and the one who followed the prescription was sure to master it.

So, how did one do it? Nothing is impossible, in the world of speed reading at least. Anne Jones took 47 minutes 1 second to read 759 pages of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. No mention is made of whether her pleasure of being the first to finish the book equaled the pleasure (she had 47 minutes before) of having another Harry Potter book to read. Well, speed-reading can be put to other mundane uses too. But the sixth and final question still remains: did one enjoy reading these books?

New Learnings

When misanthropes become social media addicts, and no one notices the irony, you know it’s the worst of the times. And the best of the times. A time when every day brings new “learnings”.

Here’s what I learnt in the past one week.

1. Missing classes meant copying notes and catching up with what had been taught during our absence. Lessons weren’t repeated for our benefit. If we had doubts we could discuss them after class. Unsurprisingly, the world too operates on this principle. You missed what’s going on; it’s your prerogative to catch up.

Even to become a contrarian you need to understand conventions first.

However, if you are under 40 and don’t know what ‘tactical media’ is, despite being active on facebook and twitter. Despite doing PhDs from Oxford or Harvard. Despite working for a media outlet. In that case, it is simply time to re-evaluate your ‘education’.

2. People tweeting from their blackberries shouldn’t accuse those tweeting from their iPhones of being Luddites. Please get a dictionary. Or open a new tab and type ‘meaning Luddite’. Same rule applies for comments on facebook.

3. If someone claims to be an atheist and a meat eater chances are very high that they are most obsessed with religion and vegetarianism. That’s the curse of assuming ideas based on negation. The anti-ideology.

4. No matter what meat eaters, who may or may not be atheists, choose to believe - yes, being an atheist also requires following a system of beliefs, there’s a reason why most men and women capable of reasoning are calling for people to consume less or no meat at all.

If you don’t understand the problem with factory farming, over fishing, or how eating a solely meat based diet is resulting in wastage of resources and is unsustainable, don’t make facile arguments about plants being helpless (plants aren’t helpless they have been on this planet since before humans evolved).

That is unless you haven’t ever laid eyes upon any biology text. In that case read more.

5. Everybody has to live with his or her own peculiar contradictions. No matter how ridiculous.
Richard Dawkins on Vegetarianism: “What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.“

6. Everything is connected. Often there is less than six degrees of separation. E.g. your desire for sushi for dinner once a week - extinction of blue fin tuna.

7. In the US, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, people think house sparrows grow up to become pigeons. This gives a clear idea of how much thought people put in before arriving at a conclusion. We see how deep the abyss is. We realize how much patience is needed to fill the gap with.

Postscript: Yesterday I realized bandhs are good for the country. Smashing public and private property, coercing people to stay at home through threat of violence, putting the country under an emergency like situation is the only way to get “people like us” to talk to the "poor" (okay just the taxi driver) and realize that inflation and price rise are badly affecting them. Shouldn’t we be calling for more bandhs?