December Songs

"As the days dwindle down to a precious few..."

Category: Past-Into-Present

Where am I?

March 17, 2022 /

Where am I? To be lost, disoriented, confused about where we are situated in the world can evoke a profound sense of unmooring. We rarely experience this in the extreme; usually we are lost in a building, a mall, on a highway or, perhaps, hiking. These situations are relatively inconsequential because we are oriented within a much larger matrix of place. We possess background knowledge that serves as a “North Star” to keep us oriented.  Although the surroundings may be unfamiliar and even, perhaps, alien and strange, we still are able to place ourselves, know where we are and not be completely lost.

Place Names

What are the coordinates of place that we typically rely on to anchor ourselves? Names. Place names. For example, I grew up on Amsterdam Road in the city of Rochester, in the state of New York, in the country of the United States of America. Place names, all imaginary constructions of collective agreement—a virtual reality—blanketing the entire landscape that provides a sense of stability and “home.” Failure to be reflexively situated within this “home” is to be disoriented and adrift.

Where do these signposts come from? History and power reside in the names. The names are tracings of the past, a residue given official designation by those with the authority to name. Look at a map—it is a crazy quilt of names. Each name possesses a history, not only of what is designated by the name, but, less visibly, who designated it. Let’s take a little road trip and pause to consider some of the road signs.

Countries and Continents

Most countries are named after one of four things:

Tribal names, which include Thailand (Thais), France (Franks), Russia (Russ), Italy (Vitali), Germany (Germanic tribes), England (Angles), Switzerland (Schwyz).

Land features, for countries like Iceland, Greenland, Haiti (“mountainous”), Costa Rica (“rich coast”), Honduras (“deep water”) and Peru (“land of the river”).

Directional placement, which include Australia (“unknown southern land”), Norway (“northern way”), Japan (“Nippon, land of the rising sun”, i.e., east of China), Ecuador (“equator”) and Chile (“where the land ends”).

Important figures (almost always men), which identifies America (Amerigo Vespucci), Colombia (Columbus), Bolivia (Simon Bolivar), Philippines (King Philip II), El Salvador (“The Savior”), Seychelles (Jean Moreau de Seychelles) among others. 

Who names  the names? World history is imprinted on the map. The “New World” was new to European explorers (but not to the indigenous peoples) who were the colonialist scouts for European conquest. The continents, North, South as well as Central America are named after an Italian adventurer who was the first to appreciate that these new lands are separate continents from Asia. The names of the countries, and the languages now spoken there, tell all: English speaking, in the North, with a French outpost in Quebec; Spanish speaking in the Central and South, with a Portuguese outpost in Brazil.

Two other continents, Australia and Africa, also bear the imprint of colonizing Europe. Australia, of course, named by the British, and speaking English. Many African countries names are the residue of colonization, and often the spoken languages are a mix of indigenous peoples and colonizers. Prior to colonization, the native peoples did not have maps and charts demarcating sharp (and sharp angled) tribal boundaries. These came later, organized in the Berlin Conference of 1884 that drew territorial boundaries that were distributed among seven European countries in their “Scramble for Africa”.

Asia, with its long history of high civilization and bustling, populous cities carries its own history in the country names and languages. The influence of European colonization, while late arriving, is folded within the history of many of these countries; witness, for example, the histories of India and Pakistan, where English is widely spoken and the borders defined by an unprecedented “redistricting”.

United States of America

Continuing our road trip closer to home, the map of the United States is a map of colonial exploration, claimed—and often fought over— ownership, and established settlements. New England is, of course, new England, and the thirteen Colonies are Britain transplanted: New York. New Jersey. New Hampshire. Delaware (after Lord De La Warr). Georgia (King George II). North and South Carolina (King Charles II) and so forth. Many cities and towns of this region also mirror the “Mother Country”. This includes my home town, Rochester, in the state of New York, and my home on Amsterdam Road echo’s the earlier Dutch colonists that preceded the English.

The French plied their trade along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and French names signpost this trail. Louisiana (King Louis XIV) and the French trading posts of New Orleans, St. Louis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie are among the more notable. The Southwest and Florida carry the imprint of the Spanish: California (named after a queen in a popular 16th century Spanish novel). New Mexico. Colorado (color red, for color of the Colorado River). Florida (“full of flowers”). Traveling through the Southwest, the names encountered at every turn could easily cause a naive traveler to think they were in Mexico…or Spain.

This naïve traveler touring the length and breadth of our country could also easily think they are visiting territory settled by tribal peoples. Half of the states names derived from Native American languages: Alabama. Alaska. Arizona. Arkansas. Hawaii. Illinois. Iowa. Kansas. Kentucky. Massachusetts. Michigan. Minnesota. Mississippi. Missouri. Nebraska. New Mexico. North and South Dakota. Ohio. Oklahoma. Tennessee. Texas. Utah. Wisconsin. Wyoming. Not to be left out are the names of the Great lakes: Ontario. Erie. Michigan. Huron. These names are gravestones; markers of peoples and cultures, mostly gone, except for a few small, flickering outposts in the most remote and forbidden corners of this land.

Crazy Places

All the states have towns with bizarre, humorous, crazy names that make you wonder, “Wherever did this name come from?!” We have spent some time in Arizona and visited several towns I find amusing: Why  (“Why?”, I ask). Tombstone (obvious). Show Low (a card game hand that won ownership of the town). Arizona towns we have missed include: Nothing (a good name for a ghost town), Three Way (use your imagination), and Skull Valley (yup, skulls found in a valley).  

Head-scratch-and-chuckle names abound across our country’s broad landscape. Here are a few of my favorites: Knockemstiff, OH; Hell for Certain, KY; Satan’s Kingdom, MA; Cut and Shoot, TX; North Carolina’s answer to Why AZ— Whynot. There are also several surprising “sister cities”: Cannon Beach, OR and Cannon Ball, ND; Gunbarrel, CO and Gun Barrel City, TX; Rifle ,CO and Point Blank, TX; Boogertown, NC and Booger Hole, WV; No Name, CO and Nameless, TX. Of course, I must also mention Truth or Consequences, NM, named after a radio game show. Only in America. Indeed, these and many other crazy, colorful, irreverent names reflect our crazy, colorful, irreverent history.

Where am I?

So, “Where am I?” Surprisingly, I find myself in the land of the dead. As I speak the language of the conquerors and am oriented by historical markers and gravestones, I am oblivious that the past is my North Star that fixes me in place as surely as geographic coordinates, themselves but imaginary lines etched by history. The past surrounds me, speaks through me as I navigate the present and motor into the future. My journey leaves its own faint trail on the human landscape that, I hope, may help orient a few travelers who pass by this way after me.    

The Consolations of History

June 26, 2020 /

History is a waste of time. Why bother with the past? What is the point of remembering dates, names, and events of the past? What relevance can occurrences in the long distant past possible have for my life? I was determined, in my youth, not to waste my life on such irrelevancies. My dream, my obsession, from my earliest years of memory was to go to college, to become and engineer, and to traffic in the factual, concrete, immediate, and productive. No liberal arts dilettante was I to be.

Tommie Smith & John Carlos
1968 Olympics

I did achieve my dream. I did receive my engineering degree. But my career ended before I left the school door. I was swept into the whirlwind of war, political protests, civil rights marches and murders, the women’s movement and new morals, social unrest and burning cities, and assassinations of prominent leaders and activists that rocked the country in the mid and late 60’s. The comforting stability of my childhood and teens was shattered. I became aware of the importance of more than numbers and facts. Aware of life, its depth, its complexities, and its confusions that cannot be captured in numbers and facts; indeed, it is eviscerated by the clean certainties of engineering. Why are we in Viet Nam? Why are my age-mates being drafted and killed? Why must I be drafted and killed? What does it mean to be a man? A woman? To be White? Straight? An American?

All these assumptions, previously so transparently obvious, now so unclear and troubling. The transparent and the obvious was bequeathed by history. History was now powerfully, personally, present in my life, as I lived in a history-changing time of turbulence, upheaval, and change. The boundary between history, that dusty attic of the past, and my life, in all its concrete particulars, now erased. “What is a man?” It is a historical question. It is a cultural question. It is a personal question. It is something felt in the deepest regions of my being, in my blood and guts. So, too, the other questions of race, war, citizenship, and sexual orientation.

Now, many years later, in my retirement, I am free to read anything I desire and what I desire, almost to obsession, is historical fiction. The experiences of individuals long removed from my time and place, fictional to be sure, but if well written, quite real in their own sense, leap across the chasm of time and context, joining me to them, personally. We share a common humanity of hopes, fears, suffering, and joy. Their plight I understand. What we don’t share is the historical and personal context: living as a scholar in 18th century China,1 a courtesan in Renaissance Italy,2 or a Black cop in the post WWII American South,3 for example. The jarring differences disorient and sensitize me to the specific uniqueness of my historical and personal context.

I realize that I am being transported by authors’ imaginative catapults into the past that undoubtedly carry the baggage and biases of our own contemporary context. No worries. The past is a foreign country, largely inaccessible, and these leaps highlight the benefits of historical understanding, however imperfect, of our plight. The benefits are many:

Compassion. Compassion for all those whose suffering has been so great, whose lives have been so tragic, so brief, so impoverished. Compassion for those who have endured injustice of a most brutal kind: slavery, torture, murder, rape. For those who have endured illness and disease, poverty, privation, and war. For those whose lives have been marked by tragedy, loss, misery, and madness. The daily tidal wave of human suffering and misery brings me to silence and sorrow.

Horror. Horror at the capacity for cruelty and murderous brutality in the human heart. At the unending atrocities that litter every corner of human life and time. Horror at the callous disregard of suffering—indeed, the delight in watching and inflicting it. Horror at the consuming destruction wrought by greed, avarice, pride, and jealousy. At the indifference to all this.

Surprise. Surprise at the irrepressible humor, the joy, the playfulness that endures in every circumstance no matter how difficult or dire. Surprise at the resiliency of the human spirit that rises from the ashes of war, famine, pestilence, plague, and gross injustice.

Humbled. Humbled by the courage, strength, and fortitude of so many in times of unimaginable hardship. Humbled by their audacity, their sacrifices so others may live, thrive, and profit. By the generosity of those who had so little who gave so much. Humbled by those who have given their lives for the safety and health of others; given their lives for justice and for peace. By those who have loved in the midst of sorrow, loss, hunger, and privation. Humbled by the concern, compassion, and love shown by so many who have extended their hand, often at their own risk, to help others.

Gratitude. Gratitude for my privileged life. Gratitude to those who have gone before me, whose bounty I have been given, underserved, at my birth: democracy, modern medicine and clean running water; a cornucopia of foods, goods, and services within easy reach; metals, glass, plastics, indoor heating, cooling, and plumbing; etc., etc. I am now sensitized to these, aware of their presence when I take a shower (a shower inside my house? Really?!) and go about my daily life.

Solidarity. Solidarity in belonging to the vast numbers of humans who have walked, crawled, skipped, jumped, and hobbled on this planet. Solidarity in the shared journey, from life to death.

Understanding. Understanding that our present moment of protest, racism, and injustice is a continuation of the “arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice.”4 Understanding that I live in a history-changing time of turbulence, upheaval, and change that calls me to be responsible for the future, to be held accountable, to contribute to that long moral arc.

Astonishment. Each book situates my experience within the broader circumference human of life, deepens my appreciation of who I am in all its random contingency, and astonishes me to find myself, here, now, at this point in time and place for my brief moment.

Acceptance. Acceptance that I will soon join the past, fade from view, but happy to have been present and a part of the grand flux of it all.

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Church and State

October 15, 2019 /

Agrarian Legacy

Church and state—inseparable since the beginning of civilization, when Homo Sapiens first developed agriculture, exchanging hunter-gathering for a settled life in large communities. All of the early, great civilizations, from China to Egypt, Inca to Sumer, as well most others, were characterized by a typical organization structure. Peasants, who cultivate the crops, tended the livestock, provide the food for survival and the labor for buildings and projects. Soldiers, who collect taxes and tributes, enforce order, and protect the community from outside attack. Priests and spiritual leaders, who serve as emissaries to the sacred realm of gods and spirits, seeking their favor, divining their intentions, offering sacrifices to appease and please, and performing religious rites and ceremonies. And royalty, who rule with the authority to orchestrate, organize, and command, providing the leadership that enables a large community to cohesively function. Peasant, soldier, priest, and royalty — interlocking pieces, held together by their scared beliefs, rituals, and practices.

Agrarian cultures, because they are dependent on the food provided in large, cultivated crops, and dwell in large settlements with people living in close proximity to each other and their domesticated animals, are especially vulnerable to droughts, fires, floods, earthquakes, storms, plagues, crop failure, illness, and disease, as well as attack by nomadic and warring neighbors, any of which can bring dire consequences. This chaotic, turbulent, calamitous cosmos is under the sway of the Gods and spirits. The priestly class, imbued with powers that partake of the divine, are especially important for the survival of the community. Royalty, too, are divinely touched, conferring special powers, potency, and force. Priests and royalty—united by their shared privilege of being agents and messengers of the divine.1

Religious practices and cultural beliefs, everyday life and legal order, church and state, are of a single piece, woven seamlessly into a cultural tapestry. The hierarchical social order—that some humans have higher value, possess special powers and attributes, and should be conferred special positions and privileges as their birthright—is assumed; an obvious consequence of a divinely-given hierarchical cosmic order.

Self-Evident Truths

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. This famous line in the Declaration of Independence is NOT self-evident, especially at the time of it being penned. Indeed, it is a manifesto of revolution and rebellion, announcing its radical intent for a new order. And in this new order, each individual, not just special privileged classes, is divinely consecrated. Hierarchy and the privilege of rank are tossed overboard, replaced by equality and unalienable individual rights.2

The rending of Church from State was an especially important outcome of the Revolution in a new country composed of immigrants of various religious sects, many fleeing persecution for their beliefs. This separation is historic, and essential to establishing a new order based on secular, civil authority and laws.

Profits and Rebellion

In 1776, the same moment as the Declaration of Independence, a revolutionary book was published: The Wealth of Nations. This is no coincidence. The Industrial Revolution was creating upheavals in every corner of British culture. The Wealth of Nations, the first systematic treatise addressing economic philosophy and practices in a market economy, provided guidance to prosperity in this bewildering time. It is still oft cited, chapter and verse, as if Biblical scripture, to justify and support contemporary economic policies.

America, and its Revolution, is a child from the loins of this new economic order; money, business, and profit shape our origins, our Revolution, our laws, our culture, our selves. The founding of New York City, the heart of the American colonies, and a place of primary influence to this day, bespeaks this history. Originally settled as New Amsterdam by the Dutch, it was not founded by the Dutch government, but by the Dutch East India Company.3 New Amsterdam was a corporate trading outpost.  And a very profitable one that passed into the hands of the enterprising British, for whom the entire New World, including the New York, became an engine of imperial wealth.

The American colonists became very British, who, in very British fashion, protested when Parliament pinched their pocketbooks. The American Revolution was ignited by taxes; by injustices perceived by the merchant class, whose income was threatened by the tax levies. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were prominent, wealthy merchants and businessmen, and the Revolution was fueled by Britain’s violation of the rights of the enterprising class to earn the profit they thought their due.4

Entanglements

Church and state were separated after the Revolution. A new entanglement, however, perhaps as invisible to us as the Church-State entanglement was to earlier civilizations, has emerged. Money, business, and profit, the DNA of this new order, accelerated post-Revolution. Individual rights, a foundational belief for our democracy, was extended to African Americans by the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, it was extended to…corporations!

What kind of twisted logic could render an Amendment for enfranchising former slaves to include conferring rights to a fiction that derives its existence from a legal contract? Answer: A logic that is “reasonable” within the cultural DNA of money, business, and profit. It is an analogous “logic” to that which gave coherence to early civilizations, whose foundations were tethered to the divine. The absurdity of our logic is less visible to us because we are less aware of our foundations.

The consequences of our cultural DNA, and its resulting “logic,” are far reaching, pervasive, and profound.  Corporations possess freedom of speech and religion, and have the right to refuse goods or services on religious grounds. When they break the law, nobody goes to jail—because there is no body.

Unlimited “dark money” campaign funding by corporate-backed groups now fuel a politics that is unconstrained by libel, lies or scruples. Lobbyists swarm legislators, plying them with milk and honey in exchange for legislative favors; there are 23 lobbyists for every member of congress, spending over $3 billion. Lobbyists are routinely appointed to government posts that oversee the industries they lobbied for (the current administration has appointed 187 former lobbyist to government positions). And, lobbying is the single most popular post-retirement career choice by Congress members. The revolving door spins, and the line between public and private interests fades.

Is bribery a crime if it is called lobbying?
Is extortion criminal if it is called “soliciting campaign contributions”?
Is a government auctioned to the highest bidder corrupt if it is called a democracy?

How easy the transformation from criminal to legal when meanings are reconfigured to align with axiomatic cultural logic. Church and State has been replaced by a new, double helix entanglement: Corp. and State.

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Bridges and Tide Pools

June 28, 2019 /

Movement

Movement. New York City is MOVEMENT. Swarms of people animated by the most primal forces of modern life: Money. Capital. Goods. Information. Indeed, New York is emblematic of modernity, birthed and fostered in the New World at the dawn the modern world by the two nations at the vanguard of this new world order.1 Founded as New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company, one of the first modern corporations, it was the port of entry to the vast, uncharted territory possessing untold potential for trade, profit, and wealth. A blank slate, free of the historical and cultural encumbrances of a past, New Amsterdam was created and built for the sole purpose of commerce; an outpost of an emergent mercantilism and a founding site of nascent capitalism.2 New York remains true to this founding mission.

A trading port, New York shares the characteristics of all great trading centers; a cross-road of cultures, customs, peoples, all seeking goods and profit, requiring collaboration for barter and exchange. Traditional norms, social mores, and moral strictures are swept aside by the onrushing flood of commerce. Unburdened by a settled past, New York, in a New World, made for an especially dynamic, unfettered hive of activity; a New World Sodom and Gomorrah, where capitalism, and unconventionality, glow white hot, side-by-side.  

The movement that is New York may not appear obvious to those unfamiliar with the city. The towering forest of skyscrapers give the appearance of landed stability and permanence, but this is an illusion. Mostly consisting of banks and structures dedicated to commerce, they are, actually, relay stations; nodal points in a dynamic system that appraise, assess, and transfer. And they all are located on an island. Indeed, New York is actually an archipelago scattered across river and ocean. Four of the five boroughs—Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens—are located on islands, and the fifth, the Bronx, is separated from most of the rest of the mainland by a mighty river, the Hudson.3

The Bridge

Throgs Neck Bridge
Connecting the Bronx and Queens

Water is the life-blood of the city—the origin source and a propulsive force of New York’s movement; arteries of trade and transportation, which also constrict landed trade through a capillary network of bridges and tunnels. Anyone traveling by wheels in to, out of, or within the city is acutely aware of these chokepoint on movement that are a source of raised ire—and blood pressure. Over thirty-three bridges and tunnels connect the New York City area; none more iconic than the one to Brooklyn.

Everyone loves the Brooklyn Bridge. Everybody. I, of course, knew of the Bridge long before I ever visited it, but its appeal puzzled me. I love bridges, especially modern ones, whose clean, spare geometric lines compose stirring visual harmonies; soaring expressions of the mathematics of gravity-defying suspension. But the Bridge is old. Old bridges are, perhaps, worthy of historic notice, but they often are chunky, Lego-blocks of inelegant functionality, frequently serving railroad transport. The Brooklyn Bridge was completed almost 150 years ago, in 1883, after 14 years of arduous, dangerous labor.4 It was the first steel suspension bridge and also, at its time, the longest. It welded the bustling metropolis of Manhattan with the growing suburb of Brooklyn, leading to their political union 12 years later.

Brooklyn Bridge

My puzzlement disappeared with my first strides onto the Bridge, when I discovered that it not only spans a river, it unites medieval and modern architectural beauty. Its massive stone pillars echo the cathedrals of 12th and 13th century Europe, and include huge, arched stain glass windows—without the glass!— that confer a soaring grandeur to these bulwarks of stone. The curved shapes of these “windows” also echo the skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Oz, in all its muscular, angular, glass-shimmering beauty, beckons through the stone portals of the Bridge. Attached to the medieval buttresses are the cables, wires and structural webbing of modern bridges. These impose a grid on the skyline that echo’s the geometric shapes of the buildings on the shore, and the cables that swoop to the top of the pillars reinforce the urgency, and the promise, of journeying to Oz. Augmenting this beauty is the rumble and hum of cars, trucks and busses that run on the deck below, reminding that New York City, from its inception, is a hub of commerce. The Bridge has been the object of obsession for many artists and now is also for me. My favorite image is one by Joseph Stella (one of many by him).

Joseph Stella
Brooklyn Bridge

Subterranean Carnival

Coursing unseen, underground, is another river of movement. The New York subways are noisy, crowded, grimy, and disorienting, reflecting the city itself—gritty, bold, and ebullient. It is a world unto its own, a subterranean conduit channeling the bustle and surprises of the city that delight, disorient, disconcert, and captivate; all available for a mere several dollars entrance fee.

Be prepared for anything: buskers of great talent and virtuosity, drummers, singers, dancers, upright pianos, brass bands, acrobats and gymnasts cavorting through car isles, hawkers of everything imaginable (and some beyond imagination), preachers, prophets, doomsayers, beggars, desperately needy sprawled next to pinstriped Wall Streeters, mutterers, drunks, school children, concert goers, construction workers, the mad and crazy ranting while librarians read, and the speech, dress, and skin tones of every country in the world. And much more. This may seem a dangerous place, but it is remarkably safe, as is much of New York.5

A Tide Pool

Traveling in a subway car evokes the experience of tide pooling, where the receding tide leaves vivid micro-cultures of arresting creatures who have been trapped in the residual pools of water. As the tide cycles, the inhabitants are washed out to sea, replaced by a new constellation of life.

Similarly, each car is a human tide pool. At each subway stop, some arresting life forms are carried away in the outgoing tide of riders, and a new micro-culture is created by the incoming surge.

Subway Reflections6

The subway is also a fun house. I like to sit at the end of a car and look back at the windows where multiple reflections make it difficult to discern whether going forward or backward, whether the images are from this car or another car, from the left or to the right. Changing speeds, and trains running parallel or in the opposite direction, furthers the experience of vertigo and a thrilling disorientation of movement and images.

This embodies the spirit and experience of New York City: The thrilling disorientation of movement.

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December 7…

December 7, 2018 /
December 7, 2014
A Day that Will Live…

She, downstairs, unable to sleep.  I, upstairs, awake, with an injured knee. We meet, with surprise, on the stairway, stumbling in our own world’s worry. A 3 AM reunion of the elderly. We feel the end in our bodies, in our bones, as we embrace, grateful that we are here, now, together in the darkness.

winter night
moonlight
shadows

 

December 7, 1941
…In Infamy

The searing memories of  December 7, 1941 fade into the black-and-white of history, as most of those who lived it are gone from us. But the aftershocks still pulse. My father was drafted into the army after December 7, 1941, and my mother moved to Washington DC to work in the war effort, where she met my father.  Seventy-three years later, Sharon and I, serendipitous progeny of that fateful day, embrace in the darkness…

precious life
heft measured
in grief

 

 

Soul to Self 2: Cosmic Facts & Personal Authority

September 14, 2018 /

Galileo. Descartes. These names almost everybody knows. Galileo for his trial by the Church; Descartes for his famous dictum: “I think therefore I am”. While the contours of their contributions are widely known, what is little appreciated is the revolution they helped initiate in the way we experience ourselves; the supplanting of soul with self.

Cosmos Disenchanted

Our inner life is not independent from how we position ourselves in the cosmos. When our cosmology dramatically changes, so too does our experience of ourselves. The two are tethered. Galileo, peering through his telescope, brought a new vision of the planets, moon and sun that also transformed our vision of ourselves within this new cosmic order.

The trial of Galileo, one of the most celebrated cases in Western history, marks a pivot-point when scientific fact eclipsed religious dogma, a material world supplants an inspirited cosmos, and reasoning about the path of an earthly self begins to overshadow concern about the fate a transcendental soul. The trial turned on the nature of the cosmos. Church dogma posited that God, in His omniscience, created a perfect cosmos. This cosmos must be unchanging, for change implies either corruption or an improvement, both of which would slander God’s infallibility. Humans, who are made in the image of God, must reside at the center, and heavenly bodies, while possessing unique personal characteristics discernible from their behavior and appearance, also must exhibit perfection in movement (circular), shape (unblemished sphere) and number (seven).

Galileo not only challenged Church dogma about geocentric cosmology but, telescope in hand, discovered craters on the moon, spots on the sun, and multiple moons orbiting Jupiter. The cosmos became unhinged from theology; pockmarked and blemished, suffering from inexplicable numerical irregularity, and no longer anthropocentric.  While this planetary dispute is widely known and easily grasped, the reworking of our psyche, presaged by this trial, is more difficult to discern.  The reply of an opponent to Galileo instructs:

There are seven windows given to animals in the domicile of the head, through which the air is admitted to the tabernacle of the body…two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth.  So in the heavens, as in a macrocosmus, there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury undecided and indifferent.  From this and many other similarities in nature, such as the seven metals, etc., we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven.  Moreover, these satellites of Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can exercise no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist…Now, if we increase the number of the planets, this whole and beautiful system falls to the ground.1

This response, like the trial of the Autun rats2, appears befuddling, if not ridiculous to us. But closer scrutiny exposes the anatomy of medieval thought and belief. First, the reasoning is deductive. Truth, and the conclusions, are presumed, given by scripture and dogma, and evidence reveals itself to support the obvious, God-given reality: “The number of planets is necessarily seven.” Second, the argument proceeds by analogy, so that a pattern in one domain, the microcosm of the body, is repeated in another, the macrocosm of the stars. Thus, a dense web of signs weave “the heavens and earth and all that dwells within” into a grand, harmonious design attesting to God’s perfection. Third, only evidence that supports this grand, sacred design is recognized; all else is useless. This rebuttal makes sense only if these assumptions about the world are shared.

Galileo’s methods, evidence, reasoning and conclusions, so obvious to us denizens of the modern scientific-technological world, were as alien to his critics as their rebuttals are to us. Galileo not only challenged planetary explanations, he undercut what constitutes a fact, how facts are legitimized, what beliefs are fundamental, indeed the entire assumptive background that organizes how we position ourselves in the cosmos. He smashed our cherished interior gyroscope, cut loose the universe to float free of our certainties, and enshrined critical doubt, empirical observation and analytic reasoning as the pathway to truth. Perhaps worst of all, he situates us in a morally indifferent universe. This is a fate worse than Hell; a limbo without the vitalizing drama of salvation, without the thrill of being at the vortex of cosmic creation, and without the confident certainty that affords righteous action. It is a profoundly groundless moment, historically, evidenced by the plaintive, desperate lament that “this whole and beautiful system falls to the ground.” And, indeed, it did. And this collapse introduced new ways of thinking that we applied to ourselves.

I Think!!….??

Rene Descartes, a young contemporary of Galileo, carried the implications of the new science into the realm of the psyche. His famous dictum, “I think therefore I am”, ushers in modern philosophy. What makes this modern? He was born over four centuries ago and died over a century before the American Revolution; hardly “modern” to our digital-age selves. Galileo challenged planetary facts and scholastic reasoning, and Descartes posited a modern philosophy— one steeped in the new science that applied analytic reasoning to immediate experience to achieve certainty; certainty unfettered by the corrupting influence of theology.

Each word in Descartes famous line is freighted with revolutionary significance:

“I think…”: The locus of authority is not priests, not biblical text, not Church dogma, not external authority to which “I” takes commands. Rather, it is I, the self-reflective, subjective, independent self that provides the ground for truth-making.

“I think…”: The source of truth is my cogitations; the experience and activity of my inner, subjective self.

“I think therefore…”: Reason is what provides the link between the experience of the ‘I’ and the conclusions about truth. This is unlike prior reasoning, which sought harmony with the sacred logos of the cosmos.  This reasoning is, instead, procedural, analytic and detached.

“I think therefore I am.” The most basic given, that I am, that I exist, has become problematic and in need of proof. Proofs of God’s existence are supplanted by proofs of our own, and the center of gravity shifts from soul to self. No more profound statement of a new, existential groundlessness could be made than this befuddling, self-contradictory equation, where “I am” is both the ultimate source of truth and also most in doubt.

Descartes’ solitary, subjective “I” is the inward consequence of the new Galilean-influenced science of the external world. The only vestige of the lost spirit-world is our own internal mental experience, whose origins in a materially caused world are now the ultimate mystery. This is the mind-body problem that begins modern philosophy. This quandary breeds another equally troubling befuddlement: How we can know anything with certainty? Through reason? Experience? Feelings? The isolated, subjective “I” peers onto an alien landscape and asks: “What is the relation between my rich inner experience and the indifferent material world where I find myself? How can I, from the shadows of my private experience, know truth, when meaning is not given, when logos is not divinely imposed?” Descartes answers: “I can have no knowledge of what is outside me except by means of the ideas I have within me”.3  I, we, our inner selves bring forth knowledge, truth, meaning. The power formally held by God as bringer of truth befalls to us. We bear this weight, not by God’s power and grace, but through our own bolstering of ourselves.4

Descartes did not single-handedly initiate a revolution of the self. The 17th century witnessed a raft of developments that highlighted the “I,” the self. The etymology of the word, self, predates the 10th century and its origins recede into the mists of the past. Its use as a prefix, however, appears in the middle of the 16th century. “The number of self compounds was greatly augmented toward the middle of the 17th century, when many new words appeared in theological and philosophical writing…a large proportion became established and have a continuous history down to the present time”.5 These words include self-contradiction, self-elation, self-inspection, self-neglect, self-perception, self-vindication, self-prizing, self-consuming, self-punishing, self-blinded, self-corrupted, self-invented, self-improvable, self-affected, self-endeared, self-cruelty, self-holiness, self-strength, self-worthiness and self-admiration. Descartes was the most noteworthy and influential voice among many who came to view the self as an object of scrutiny, praise, blame and concern.

Our experience of ourselves has undergone startling and profound transformations. Augustine’s injunction, “Try to build yourself up, and you build ruin.”6 is inverted; self-esteem, self-reliance and self-confidence are now essential to the new, modern, “self-made man” (and woman).Terror about the everlasting fate of our soul is eclipsed by existential dread about our uncertain place in the cosmos.The authority of church sanctioned leaders, who minister to the soul, is superseded by accredited scientists of the self, who instruct on the management of the psyche. These changes, of course, took centuries. Galileo and Descartes, ushering in modern science and philosophy, provided germinating seeds that helped midwife the modern self.

Soul to Self: Trial of Rats

August 3, 2018 /

A Historical Divide

We live on the other side of a historic divide. This divide is most obvious when we, of the privileged industrialized world, consider the physical, material conditions of our lives: indoor plumbing, central heating and cooling, refrigeration, cars-trains-airplanes, medical wonders, foods from faraway places at our fingertips. The list is endless and startling when viewed from the conditions that have marked human life for most of our history. These changes, so visible and profound, are tangible and easily apprehended. No one needs convincing that we live on the other side of a great material divide. But these changes are tethered to other, less visible, cultural, societal, and social changes: in the forms of government; the organizing laws that provide structure to human exchange; the growth and modes of ordering of urban life; education, literacy and schooling; business, markets and economics. These changes pervade every corner of human action and exchange.

Another, even less visible, but no less profound transformation is how we inhabit ourselves. The most concrete expression of this change is the emergence and influence of the discipline of psychology; discipline here meaning scientific discipline. It is a watershed moment when the analytical, skeptical, empirical gaze of science is turned from the material world of galaxies and stars to the subjective experience of our own psyche. This turn was long in coming and not easily achieved, requiring that we wrench ourselves free from the moorings that provided stability for many centuries. Thus, the inwardness of the soul, embedded and buttressed by a world whose social, public, and institutional axes were theologically organized, is supplanted by the self, which emerges within  secular, material, scientific coordinates. 1

The failure to grasp the historical basis of the modern self can result in the assumption that the basic features of the self are independent, timeless and “placeless” components of a universal human psyche.  But time and place, history and context, matter.  Indeed, they are formative. This history, then, is not simply useful as background information, but is evidence that how we organize and experience our inner world is intimately connected to how our sociocultural lives are organized; that the context-free psyche often presumed by psychological science is, itself, context dependent.

I will offer several posts that explore  this transformation of inwardness from soul and self. This  does not imply that the historical movement occurred through the simple substitution of self for soul, nor does it presume a dichotomous conflict between religion and science. Human history does not yield to such simplicities.  Nor does it presuppose that many today do not deeply, devotionally give ultimate significance to the soul. Indeed, many do. But they do so in a world inverted: heresy is not a heinous crime punishable by public, state sanctioned torture and execution. Rather, the soul is nurtured in the privacy and shadows of one’s personal life. These posts exploring the journey from soul to self, then, are meant to illuminate the dramatically altered state of our consciousness.

We can never, fully, bring to life the ruins and runes left to us by the past. The past is always read through the lens of the present, and this is especially difficult when the focus is the experience of our inner life. Our contemporary psychological self is so naively a part of ourselves, so given and transparent, that it is difficult to conceive otherwise. The past is a foreign country. Overcoming the barriers and biases to gain entry is not easy, or completely possible. The trial of rats, however, offers a unique vantage point for appreciating the seamless union of  the soul, the society, and the cosmos in the time before the onset of the age of the self.

    Trial of Rats

   

GUILTY!

The year is 1522, in Autun, France. Survival is precarious, crops and weather are unpredictable, and pestilence and starvation a pressing reality. Amidst this uncertainty, the town is visited by a plaque of rats. The threat to the community is so severe that the municipal authorities seek to prosecute the rats, issuing a summons that the rats appear in court. They do not. The rats are represented by official legal counsel, who argues that most of the defendants live in the countryside and, thus, likely unaware of the summons. The court, in response, issues a second summons which is read aloud in the churches in the surrounding countryside. Again, the rats fail to appear. Their attorney contends that the public reading also alerted their mortal enemy, the cats, making the journey to court too dangerous. And so it went…for eight years. Eventually, the rats were convicted, condemned, and excommunicated.2

This trial, and the many others like it, may appear confusing, shocking, even humorous to us moderns, but it obviously was a serious undertaking. The full weight and formal rituals of communal justice was brought to bear on a vital issue threatening their community. We cannot patronize our forbearers by simply dismissing this trial as a product of simplemindedness. They were not idiots. This example jars our sensibilities and thereby beckons us, offering a portal into the foreign country of the past. Two words help us gain a foothold in this alien terrain:

  1. Enchanted. The medieval world has been described by many as enchanted; a world infused with magical and supernatural powers.  The root of the word is “to chant,” or sing, and harkens to the capacity for music and song to enthrall, to captivate our spirit, to charm, spellbind, and bewitch.
  2. Inspirited. The world is alive, possessing, at its core, animating spirits that give movement, meaning, purpose and character not just to humans, animals and plants, but to all things in the cosmos.  Indeed, one of the principle aims of alchemy, the material “science” of this era, was to extract from matter the anima mundi; the primal spirit or soul of the cosmos.

This enchanted, inspirited cosmos, pervaded by magic and supernatural powers and populated with hosts of strange, dangerous, threatening, helpful and inexplicable spirits, is a deeply unsettling place. One the one hand, it shares basic properties of intentionality, purpose, will, and desire that we are familiar with in ourselves. On the other hand, it is a dangerous, capricious, unfathomably powerful, personally directed, oppressively present reality that can crush us at any moment. The sense of vulnerability is further heightened by abject poverty, the constant threat of starvation, illness, injury, disease and death, and the tipping point for survival rests on the caprice of weather, plague, fertility, and livestock. Constant vigilance is thus required.  And vigilance there was: Magic rituals were necessary before planting, plowing and harvesting; houses required the foundation to be consecrated by clergy and protected by magical charms; weather rituals helped ensure crop production; animals and livestock were subjected to blessings and curses; fertility rites and practices were required to ensure healthy offspring. Communal celebratory rituals, feasts, and pageants were held during the cycle of the seasons to ensure healthy crops and good harvests; childbirth, marriage, and death each had their ceremonies to consecrate and protect against malevolent forces that threaten mental and spiritual well-being.

No important aspect of life was without its magical means of influence and control. In this inspirited world, nothing happens randomly or fortuitously—everything has a reason. Those reasons can,  potentially, be divined, and the future and our fate can, possibly, be influenced.3 The causal nexus of this cosmos is most certainly not an impersonal, blind and indifferent, billiard-ball material causality.  Rather, the world innately possesses meaning; all things, all thoughts, all actions are entangled in a web of meaningful influence. The cosmos offers up portents, omens, and signs whose meanings hold great significance for our personal and collective fate. This inspirited world, in turn, participates and responds to enchantments, to incantations, rituals and rites. Consider the power of words: A specific utterance by the right person in power at the right place and time can send an army on the march, to great destructive consequence. The entire cosmos is so ordered.

Individuals do not seek meaning in an indifferent universe; meaning is, rather, imposed. Personal thoughts and private experiences are coupled with the happenings in the greater world.  Omens, amulets, holy water, sacred relics—the entire inspirited world radiates influence, and unbeknownst to us, can overtake us, seize our wishes and will.  The boundary between ourselves and the cosmos is porous.  Possession by alien spirits is a legitimate fear and we must take caution, heed what we say, do, and think, lest we become prey to the intrusive influence of unseen, yet overwhelming powerful forces.  We are never alone, even in our thoughts, in this spirit-pervaded, enchanted world.

This cosmos is also fundamentally moral. Satanic forces of destruction are aligned against God’s benevolence and the focal point of this titanic struggle is the eternal fate of our soul. Demonic allure, temptation, and assault threaten at every turn.  The single biggest mistake, which will damn us to everlasting Hell, is to presume that, in the face of such powerful, supernatural malevolence, we can make our own way in the world, can rely on our own will and wile, be self-reliant. Augustine, who shaped medieval Christian theology and practice, offers this advice: “Try to build yourself up, and you build ruin”. 4 Only God’s grace can save us, and the hard route to that grace must pass through humility, surrender, and acknowledgement of our unworthiness.

While our soul’s fate is profoundly personal, our plight is not solitary. The Church stands between us and God, sanctified to draw down heavenly powers, channeled through ritual, incantation and relics, to combat the forces of darkness and evil; to provide opportunities for grace and forgiveness; and to offer sacraments for personal salvation. The Church is the hub of spiritual power that extends to all official, organizing structures of society, from legal courts to royal crown, and together they stand as a bulwark against the flood-tide of evil that threatens not only individuals, but the entire community.

The maladies of human life were understood as a complex relation between body and spirit. “Routine” illnesses were often treated as an affliction of the body, caused by an imbalance of humours, an ill wind bringing dirt and disease, the foul airs of urban life, or an unfortunate conjunction of moon and stars. Treatments were usually provided by local healers who offered folk remedies of potions, ointments, and elixirs with an admixture of rituals, incantations, and appeals to supernatural powers. Failure of treatment, or strange and disturbing symptoms, suggested affliction of the spirit requiring treatment in kind: prayers, confession, penitence, petition of saints, and also, simple resignation to one’s fate, as illness is God’s punishment for one’s sins. More diabolical illness, including madness, required more extreme measures, such as exorcism, and plagues and pestilence were viewed as afflictions visited on the entire community requiring Church sanctioned, communal responses.5

Let us now return to the trial of the Autun rats. The community was confronted with an infestation that threatened their crops, their health, their survival.  Evil forces were clearly at work—for what other explanation could there be?  One need look no further than the Bible, the word of God, to see examples of demonic spirits inhabiting snakes, pigs and other animals, not to mention people.  This affliction of rats was, obviously, evil let loose against the community, requiring a communal response of the highest order. The decree of the court, which was closely aligned and working in concert with the Church, was a sanctified writ that spoke most directly to any spirits who might hear it and especially those to whom it was directed. Failure to respond is not evidence that it is fundamentally impossible for the spirit-possessed rats to comprehend, but is a failure to either not to have heard it, or a willful refusal to comply. Following official court protocol is necessary, for only then can the official powers of the court be legitimately enacted. And the most damning injunction that can be invoked is spiritual; condemnation and excommunication.

The trial of animals is an understandable response to a haunted world of spirits and demons, where our earthly existence is tenuous and our eternal fate is precarious, huddled as we are with other lost souls who are tossed in a violent struggle of cosmic scope and supernatural power. Demons that stalk our inner life and plague the outer world are adjudicated and combatted through the divinely sanctioned power of the Church-government.The trial is a feeble effort to exert a measure of control in an inexplicable and overwhelming cosmos.

Past-in-the-Present

July 13, 2018 /

Genealogy

Genealogy has been a mystery to me. Why do so many obsess over their genealogical tree, trying to get the most complete and extensive record going as far back as possible? To claim being a 4th cousin to a distant relative who sailed on the Mayflower? To be dubbed a “Daughter of the Revolution’? A relative sent me a compendium of my ancestors, pages long, of the names of strangers in a geometric regress into the long ago past. It was as impersonal as the list in a telephone book. I am reminded of the boxes of old photos my parents kept of their relatives who were never spoken of, of whom I have no inkling. After my parents’ death, I did feel a pang of regret when disposing the photos, as if I was consigning them to oblivion, but had no desire to keep them. My genealogy consists of a generation or two, ending where the reach of memory fails.

Our Collective  Fate

Or so I once thought. An awakening occurred when I realized that many have the same view of history as I of genealogy. After being forcibly subjected to an avalanche of names, dates, battles and long-ago events, and required to memorize them, many ask: “Why should I care? How are these relevant to my daily life, my interests, cares, loves and labors?” History is but another genealogy, writ large, of a culture or a collective entity several orders removed from life’s immediate, pressing concerns.

My previous posts, Cockfosters and EMPIRE and Home in the Strange, offer a partial reply to the dismissal of history as a pile of facts that have little consequence for our immediate concerns. The past has a living presence in London and Amsterdam. But we need not travel to far lands or look to a city’s architecture. We live in and through history in everything we do, say, and think. Take, for example, this very moment when I am composing this blog. I do so using paper and pen at my desk. Paper. What a remarkable invention—fashioning tree pulp into fine sheets that preserve the present for the future. Originating in China about 2 millenniums ago, paper slowly made its way along the silk road, not arriving in Europe for over 1000 years. The more immediate history of this piece of paper includes a scar in the earth where trees were efficiently hacked down, and the subsequent processing, packaging, marketing, and sales. All of these, of course, with their own long historical tail. And this is only one item in of many involved in this simple act: Writing. Writing instruments. Desk. Lighting. Chair. I lift my eyes to the window in my second story air conditioned study. My entire surroundings, everything that I see, touch and use have their own deep history, which is braided into the composite present that I inhabit, reflexively, without awareness.

The genealogy of my ancestors is a faint trace of the braided lives, loves and fates that have sired me; the miracle of “Why Me?!” . And the canals of a historically distant Home in the Strange are scribed into my character. Ancestral and historical genealogies are not background to our lives, they are constitutive. We are embodied genealogy. How ignorant, then, for me to unmindfully shout: Me! Now! Here!

History, collective or personal, engenders a reverence, indebtedness and union with those who have proceeded us. We die alone. The full weight of the singularity of our existence is experienced in the hammer-blow of our death. Genealogies help assuage our existential isolation, assuring us that we are part of a larger community, composed of the past and the yet-to-come—that our lives matter beyond the tight circumference of our time and place.

 ghost-haunted body
I open my mouth
my father speaks1

Home in the Strange

June 29, 2018 /

Amsterdam

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London, Rome, (Paris) and New York are empire capitals, which I mentioned in the Cockfosters and EMPIRE post, that we enjoy visiting. I failed to appreciate that Amsterdam should be on the list. The Dutch empire is less obvious than the others and Amsterdam lacks the typical vertical architecture of power: palaces of monarchs, destination churches, towers of glass skyscrapers. Amsterdam does, however, possess an architecture of power of a different sort: canals. This horizontal architectural structure is evidence of a trading, commercial power and the city is ribbed with a multitude that is the defining feature of the city. They were the avenues that brought overland goods into this port city, to be exchanged and dispatched to the far reaches of the globe. Now they are charming waterways of houseboats, flower markets and tour boats.

Holland was one of the earliest republics in Europe, having fought an 80-year war of independence from Spain in the 16th  into the 17th century. What sparked the rebellion was taxes; money. While religion also played a role, it is noteworthy that it is a secular, mercantile empire that emerged, not a theocratic state. Amsterdam became the capitol of modern day capitalism, as the first stock market was established here, along with an accompanying civil, secular government based on contracts and led by influential burgermeisters. No monarchy, divine sovereignty or hereditary privilege here. Indeed, these were violently opposed. The religion, Calvinism, venerated hard work and worldly success as a pathway to eternal redemption, thereby harmonizing spiritual and economic aspirations, and Amsterdam became a beacon for religious refugees, free thinkers, and republicans from countries across Europe. Fifty percent of Amsterdam’s population in the 16th-17th centuries were immigrants; something that continues to this day.

Aristocracy in medieval countries derived its wealth, privilege, and power from land ownership; tangible, concrete and essential to securing the basics required for sustaining life. This is a culture of stasis. Holland is small— it would be ranked 42nd  in area as a state in the US, above Maryland and below West Virginia. Yet it was, and continues to be, one of the world’s great economic powers. It derives most of its wealth from trade and commerce. Most of what comes into the country goes out. Holland signaled a shift from medieval to modern nation state, where wealth and power are based, not on landed stasis, but on the dynamics of capital ex-change.

This dramatic emergence of a new form of culture, government, and economic life is reflected in the art. The Dutch Golden Age of art dates from this period. The “Persons of Quality” that were the objects (and financiers) of art are not popes, kings, bishops, nobles; they are wealthy merchants and traders. And the themes are not religious or biblical dramas but still lifes, portraits, and landscapes. The topics and approach are thoroughly modern. I cannot muster much enthusiasm for art prior to the 16th century, but the Dutch masters, especially Vermeer and Rembrandt, speak directly to me. They are personal and psychological; they convey the “epiphany of ordinary life”. This is why we went to Amsterdam and The Hague—to see Vermeer, Rembrandt, and the newly renovated Rijksmuseum.

We were not disappointed. The Rijksmuseum was built and recently renovated to showcase Dutch art and, in particular, Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”.  Arriving at the second floor, we turned into the “Hall of Honor” and were immediately drawn into a telescoping architecture that focused all attention to the end of the hall, on the golden spot at the center of the “Night Watch”. It must have been 50 yards away, but it halted our steps. Oh my! Oh my! (See pic; I am in the foreground, unsuccessfully trying to take this picture).

We slowly worked our way toward it, viewing the art in the side chapels. As we turned into one of the last of these chapels, there, before us: 3 Vermeer’s. Sharon broke into tears. I was overcome. In contrast to Rembrandt’s golden glow, here is a luminous light. And in contrast to Rembrandt’s high drama, here is a hold-your-breath immediacy of an “ordinary” moment, transformed. The Milkmaid is, for me, the pinnacle of Vermeer’s work. The personal intimacy of a prosaic moment, several centuries past, set before us, now; timeless infinity, grasped. Yet all is dust; painter, milkmaid, pitcher. All that remains is the painting and, thus, it also intimates finitude and mortality. This whipsaw of immortality and death renders his work breath-stopping. The tiny spec of paint on the corner of the mouth of the “Girl with the Pearl Earring”; the thread of milk from the Milkmaid’s jug that becomes more translucent and immaterial the closer you inspect, are instances of the masterly details, almost invisible, that create this temporal magic.  (Pic offers only a weak similitude).

To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour.

–William Blake

Holland’s early history as a center of trade and commerce, free thinkers and religious tolerance, proved to be a magnet for publishing scientific work that was considered dangerous, blasphemous, and subject to religious Inquisition and persecution. Galileo, while under house arrest, had the manuscript for his most important work, “Two New Sciences”, smuggled to Holland to be published. It proved foundational for the emergence of dynamics, a branch of classical mechanics that addresses the physics of moving bodies. Descartes, another 17th century pioneer, spent 22 years of his adult life (he died at 54) in Holland, where he published his philosophical masterpiece, “Discourse on Method” (e.g., “I think therefore I am”).   It is considered the seminal work that ushers in Modern Philosophy, where philosophical bedrock is secured in perception, reason and mathematics, not Church doctrine, Biblical text, and scriptural exegesis. The Calvinist religious tradition emphasizes the importance of each person reading the Bible, which fostered literacy among the entire population, including women, as early as the late 16th century. In the 17th century, ½ of all books published in the world were published in Holland, and 30% were published in Amsterdam. Today, this commitment to science and literacy has very visible consequences. This scientific legacy continues, as almost all of the most important contemporary scientific journals are published in Holland. And despite its size, Holland is the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural goods, after the US. It has transformed its landscape into a veritable hothouse of high-tech farming.

Holland felt like home to me in a strange way. It is certainly foreign, but the cultural practices and personal interactions are familiar. My family name is Dutch. I was raised at 55 Amsterdam Rd, and attended a Dutch Orthodox Presbyterian church (NOT Dutch Reformed—they were too liberal), composed of extended, interlocking families of Dutch origin. When I viewed a gaggle of school children at the Rijksmuseum, they looked like a collection of my cousins and me in our old family photographs.

This commonality is evidenced not only in physical appearance. Conversations with Dutch colleagues, Dutch residents, and reading convince me that I, and my family, share core character traits with the Dutch, despite a remove of over three generations and the Atlantic Ocean. (I know it is politically incorrect to ascribe national character types, as it ignores diversity and individual differences found in any national grouping. However, I would argue that national character types exist and are the product of a shared cultural heritage. Crossing from France into Germany, or from the US into Mexico, is a convincing demonstration of this—at least to me). These traits are, in my mind, intimately connected with Dutch history and cultural heritage; the interpersonal and psychological concomitants of the horizontal power of a trading, mercantile nation that spent nearly a century at war freeing itself of monarchy, the Church, and hierarchical power. Here are some traits:

Distrust of/opposition to authority (vs. deference)
Direct and plain spoken (blunt) (vs. mannered & elaborate social protocol)
Informal (vs. formal)
Frugal (cheap) (vs. extravagant)
Pragmatic and functional (vs. poetic and ornamental)
Display of personal accomplishments and position shunned (vs. self-promotion)
Stoic (vs. emotive)
Serious and industrious (driven) (vs. fun loving and relaxed)

The canals that define the landscape, history, and power of Holland have complementary channels of habits, values, and character etched into the lives of its descendants, centuries later, in a far-away New World. I have journeyed into strangeness and discovered home.

Cockfosters and EMPIRE

June 15, 2018 /

London Postcard

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Before we left for London, my hair stylist asked me what my highlight of the trip would be. I was a bit taken back, as we hadn’t yet gone so it would be hard for me answer. However, as I now consider the question, I realized that what is most memorable, and what is most striking, is that we are HERE; the sheer thrill of walking down the street and seeing double-decker busses; Black London cabs; drivers on the wrong side of the street; beautiful, novel and historic architecture; upholstered seats in the Tube; the quite politeness of the people (in contrast to the bold, brassy look-at-me Americans); the daffy and striking names and use of language (the destination of the northern direction of the Piccadilly tube line (that name is, itself, a tickler): “Cockfosters”—really!? What about the children??; and most enchanting of all, hearing the lilting sing-song of British English being spoken in nearly every encounter.

Do you think it possible that a successful restaurant chain in the US would choose the name for their establishments, “Slug and Lettuce?” Of course not. What would possess someone to do this? Equally surprising, it works—at least here. And I love these: The first, a moving truck (or whatever a “Master Remover” is…) with the company slogan in the side—it is an aphorism of humorous wisdom, not compelling sales hype, at least it would not be in the US.

“Tell the Truth and Run”

The second, another large truck with an admirable, if puzzling, mission for a vehicle this size.

We have chosen to return to London rather than go to somewhere new and I now know why. Our favorite places, which we love, and are drawn to, are New York, London and Rome (and Paris). The reason is that they are the capitals of empires that have shaped Western history: Rome from 1st century BCE to the 16th century (via the Church); London from the 17th to the 20th century; (France in the 18-19 centuries); and the US in the 20th century. They are bursting with the art and architecture of empire; both what was plundered and what was created, housed in the great museums, and with deep historical markings woven into the fabric of everyday life. What I particularly enjoy, especially in London and Rome (because of the reach of their past), is walking down the street and encountering historical “mashups”. Here are several pics of what I mean:

A view from inside the British Museum of the column of Ramses II, 13th century BCE (Egypt being part of the British empire and the column taken from Napoleon), looking through a glass roof constructed at the beginning of the 21st century, looking through and out onto a 18th century building constructed in the model of ancient Greece and Rome to confer the imprimatur of EMPIRE.

A traffic stop in the London financial district with “Greek/Roman” buildings from the 18th century, stoplight/double-decker modern foreground, and striking 21st century glass buildings in the looming background (the “Shard” and the “Gherkin”), with cranes promising more.

Greenwich, a lovely town outside (but a part of) London, is the location of the Royal Observatory, a naval museum, and Greenwich Mean Time. This spot, longitudinal ground zero, marks where the shipwrecking navigational uncertainty of east-west seafaring was solved using astronomy and time keeping. It is also the resting place of the Cutty Sark, the last, greatest, and fastest clipper ship (see pic; it is moored on a pedestal).

It is sleek, elegant and shark-like, built in 1869—the culmination of human history of sailing, soon to be replaced by smoke, fire and iron. We saw the Turner painting,  “The Fighting Temeraire” at the National  Gallery that captures the moment of steel replacing sail; very evocative, and it will be on the British 20 Pound note in several years.

And finally, the visible effects of empire are to be encountered in the people: many dark-skinned people from the far reaches of the empire; the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, many speaking the Queens English. And many not. The first language of over half of Londoners is not English. The mashup is in the streets—in both the architecture and in those walking the streets.

The London skyline is a cultural Grand Canyon, where the strata of history is visible in the architectural layers; from the Tower of London to St. Paul’s to the Shard. The strata of the Empire is also visible in the people; from the Anglo-Saxons to the accented speech of the Scots and Irish (that hint at centuries of enmity, conflict and compromise); from to the brown faces of colonialism to the newly arrived EU members speaking many languages, seeking work (who, ironically, are the byproduct of Hitler’s failed attempt for racial purity).  Unlike the architecture, however, the people are the living, breathing, dynamic presence of history that walk the streets, make love between the sheets, and shape what is said, sold, eaten, discussed, disputed, legislated.

“The past is not dead. In fact, it is not even past”—Faulkner.

Indeed.

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