February 4, 2007
Remebrance of Things Past
The other day I ran across the following, from Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being:
A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular heartbeats in his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, and marvelled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.
Today, of course, the body is no longer unfamiliar; we know that the beating in our chest is the heart and that the nose is the nozzle of a hose sticking out of the body to take oxygen into the lungs. The face is nothing but an instrument panel registering all the body mechanisms: digestion, sight, hearing, respiration, thought.
Ever since man has learned to give each part of the body a name, the body has given him less trouble. He has also learned that the soul is nothing more than the grey matter of the brain in action. The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.
But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.
What power that quote had to take me back to the time and place in my life where I'd read that novel. I marvelled, and perhaps mourned a bit, when I thought of how different I had been. I still believed in the power of things that now seem futile to me.
Posted by dag at 3:26 PM
January 19, 2007
The Meditations
Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented?
With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.
- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.
- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.
- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgment in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.
This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two.
One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.
The other is that all these things, which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed.
The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
-Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, Book Four
Posted by dag at 7:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
The Lives of Turtles
Yesterday's Times has a fascinating article about the inner world of turtles. When you think about how long they can live, the number of turtle-years lost to automobiles each year comes into really stark relief.
Maybe some people are like the turtle, and that's the secret to their longevity.
Posted by dag at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2006
My Eternal Parking Spot
Recently I read an interesting editorial by Christopher Kimball in Cook's Illustrated.
Having said that, let me now break this thought to explain why, apropos the Good Rabbi's discussion of certifying gayness in the wake of my bath salts post, reading Cook's Illustrated does not increase my gayness coefficient:
First, I claim Cook's Illustrated under the food exemption.
Second, I claim Cook's Illustrated under the Emeril Lagasse/Mario Batali clause: anything they do is recognized under established Man Law as not gay.
My overall gayness position is thus unchanged by my admission of reading Cook's Illustrated.
Anyway, where the hell was I? There simply must have been some point to this post, right? Have we in this blog lost all ability to communicate except in that most crude, meandering and primitive fashion characteristic of the Oakland Raiders fan-Oh right! We were talking about Christopher Kimball's editorial.
Kimball talked about his decision to stake out the place where he will be buried and buy a headstone. At first this struck me as the most gruesome kind of exercise. But his whole point (see, Kimball can keep his eye on the ball; no doubt about that) was that organizing your position for the sweet hereafter is a good way of forcing a kind of rough thinking about how you will spend the rest of the time that you do have. If you define the end point, I suppose the idea goes, it brings into high relief any fuzzy thinking about what lies between.
I'm thinking about adding this to my emotional and intellectual toolkit for navigating the rest of my course through this cruel and crazy world. (That makes three tools in my box.*) I am going to put some serious thought into my eventual eternal parking spot. Being what I am, much of my thinking will be guided by considerations of terroir. It would somehow represent a fitting completion of the circle of life if my corpse one day fertilized some pinot noir vines somewhere. (I can't imagine what Robert Parker would have to say about the result, but it might run something like this: "Hints of sandalwood, cognac...no, no, armagnac and poire William, a notion of Cuban cigar tobacco, Old Spice and foie gras... with lingering notes of simmering insanity on the back end. Rating: 42").
I need to determine my endpoint. This year shattered any residual illusions of youth that there isn't going to be one. So now I'll find my spot, plot my course and buckle up for what will undoubtedly be a twisted ride in between. Any ideas for my final parking spot?
*One of the other tools is My Dinner with Andre, which helps to reassure me that, whatever it is that is wrong with me, it is at least not completely unprecedented. The final tool comes from Hirokazu Kore-Eda's After Life. This brilliant film was rooted in a simple premise: that your death is followed by a brief interlude where you select the one memory of your life on earth that you will take with you to the hereafter. I do believe that giving some serious thought to this question while you are still on this earth will help you gain some real field position in your drive to figure out who you are. Which is important: if you don't know who you are you can't really know where you want to go.
Posted by dag at 7:38 PM | Comments (1)
October 25, 2006
Housekeeping
I have made a few changes to Aging Disgracefully, mostly in the categories department. First, I have renamed the category "Food" to be "Bread". Why, you might ask? Because it occurred to me that it might be a nice juxtaposition with "Circuses: The Holy Game", another new category. "Circuses: The Holy Game" has been created to cover the all-important upcoming NCAA basketball season.
"Immortal Beloved" will serve as a tag for all posts related to my wife. I chose this in honor of my favorite composer and because it occurred to me that the wife might interpret "The Relentlessly Nagging Shrew" as negative in tone.
"Plinian Eruptions" is a special category reserved for outbursts. I had planned on two categories here: "Plinian Eruptions: Time Warner Cable" and "Plinian Eruptions: Everything Else", but it occurred to me that that might make that area of the site seem too crowded.
"The Bittersweet Symphony" is for music. "The Epicurians" is for every form of indulgence not covered by another specific category.
"The Meditations" is where I'll go on endless and tedious philosphical digressions, each and every turn of which I am sure you, dear readers, will follow with breathless anticipation and excitement.
"I, Claudius" is where I will follow politics in the next few years. It would seem that we may be in for quite a ride in this regard. It is also where I will address all matters related to the Empire, whether of Claudius's time or ours (cleaving to the matter at hand, Cartman had the essential handle then and now: "They Don't Respect Our Authoritaaaay").
Finally, I announce this in "L'Etat", my new category related to the management of Aging Disgracefully.
Update: I have created yet another category, "Dismal Science", to house all of my ramblings on Res Economia.
Posted by dag at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)