Here I am
It took a while to find a spot on a nearby hill
for a photo showing where I live and what my
house looks like. Above the broad roof at the bottom,
you’ll see the backs of some houses
painted white, joined together in a row.
Mine is similar, a few doors down in the same row.
Click to view the entire photo.
How shall I describe the footpaths and streets of my route to the supermarket and the half-mile radius of my home neighbourhood? It has special significance, for until the last ten years, I never really lived somewhere before. I was a sojourner. Going through two of my mother’s address books, I count 14 addresses across a 20-year period. And then I end up here, a town once famous for its furniture factories, the nearest of which still stands across the road from my house. It’s a district with its own character, the cheapest part of town.
How did I, how do I, feel perfection’s touch upon my body and soul? It isn’t just in the blue sky dotted with fleecy clouds, nor in the delicate warmth imparted from the sun when it deigns to appear and dispel the chill, brightening the façades of dwellings & workshops, giving promise of cheer to all us locals scurrying hither and thither or stopping to chat. Is it something to do with awareness freely given to the scene, the sense that this, for all it lacks of beauty, is home, and good enough? I embrace it—this moment, this place—with no regret and no reservations. I am stripped of superfluous agenda. In the words of the hymnist,
“The daily round, the common taskOnce again, these are words that can only have meaning if they resonate in the soul. Everything I need is in the ordinary: to be here, now and my own true self. This neighbourhood, which in ways is so alien, could make me feel exiled, but from what? There is only one kind of perfection. It’s perceived through complete acceptance that I am exactly where I need to be, where nothing needs to be changed. In the other case, when I see that I am not where I need to be, I need to take action, to restore that perfect state. My action may be mistaken, and then I will have to try again. Much of my life has been an exploration of failure. Meanwhile the perspective changes all the time, as it does when you go out walking and gaze at the landscape. I’ve been doing this to try and find an illustration of this neighbourhood, to display beside the text.
Will furnish all we need to ask”
What is this being called me? At the moment of my conception, my DNA took form, as a unique path through the history of the universe. So I was not born as a tabula rasa or blank. I was a potential person, to be further shaped and brought to maturity by circumstance, each moment succeeding the one before and influenced by everything encountered within and without. The process goes on its hazardous way till journey’s end, when the visible components disintegrate naturally. Nature reclaims them, for we were designed biodegradable. As to the invisible components—awareness, soul, memory, love, desire—I have no idea whether or not they are separable from body, in life or in death. I suppose them to be recycled in the same manner, fecundating the Earth through the generations.
This mysterious thing called “ego” is the anomaly. Its sole function is to keep the Self distinct from Other; to generate the illusion that I am separate from the sky, the landscape, my neighbours, other creatures. This illusion is mostly necessary, and is one of the important differences between us and the other creatures, animate or not. The newborn doesn’t have it, can’t tell its own toes from its mother’s fingers. Ego grows as a vital part of healthy child development; while as George Bataille points out, “every [other] animal is in the world like water in water.”
I still ask, what is this quality which for want of a better word I call “perfection”? What is its relation to beauty? To ego? Stendhal, in his book De L’Amour, says “La beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur”—beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness. But it’s more than this too: a symbol of perfection.
Home is a word like beauty, a symbol or promise of good fortune, well-being and bonheur. Home exists in the heart more than the bricks and mortar. Stendhal has something to say about this too, not about home per se but about love. See this article for his concept of crystallization, “in which unattractive characteristics of a new love are transformed into perceptual diamonds of shimmering beauty”.
Why does beauty attract us? What does it mean to us? It acts as a symbol of perfection, where “perfection” doesn’t mean a sterile flawlessness but a feeling of the heart, that the present moment is just right. It doesn’t matter that when Stendhal writes about love in De L’Amour, he is thinking of his love for women, or one in particular. Wikipedia calls him “an inveterate womaniser who was obsessed with his sexual conquests” and questions whether he actually died of syphilis or the medications then available to treat it. That was part of his unique path, & doesn’t detract from his renown as a philosopher of love.
To ask myself these questions, and try and answer them, needs language. In fact, written language. The process of reflection requires writing, reading and re-reading, consistently over a period of time. To be consistent requires a discipline, which in turn requires an incentive. This may be the best reason I’ve yet offered for this blog, which has just entered its tenth year of exploring questions and answers together with readers, for fun and sometimes edification.
Ten years ago I moved here, to this valley. In June 2005 I was liberated in a single moment: not from ego, it doesn’t work like that. There was an instantaneous realization, in dialogue with a doctor called Alastair, that for most of my life, especially the previous thirty years, I had not been where I needed to be. It was a satori moment. The only thing I could grasp straight away was that my chronic illness had left me. I knew it directly, before the evidence of the next hours, days, weeks and years confirmed it. The illness was merely a symptom of something deeper, which I’ve been unravelling ever since, getting to understand the gift, which is, I’m certain, one available universally, here among these old factories too, in this place of few pretensions, where the very air teaches me to be real. I was liberated from fear. I found myself ready to relinquish all kinds of belief, whilst retaining a basic framework of common sense and rediscovering the best of my upbringing. Thus unfettered, I’ve been able to follow an inner guidance which Alastair called body-wisdom. I’m grateful to him, to this neighbourhood but mostly to the good fortune of finally meeting my life-companion, and sharing our lives together.
And now, when I walk out on a Sunday morning, or on any occasion where I feel this tangible perfection in the air, I know I’m closer to the original homo sapiens who lived as a hunter-gatherer in that first Eden, before Gilgamesh, before Genesis, before the Fall, which some think reflects the beginning of agriculture in Mesopotamia; before the Greeks, before philosophy.
Here, now, me, where “me” signifies knowing oneself, living inside oneself, in one’s body and one’s true nature; this is where I can dwell, embracing this world and embraced by it; being exactly where I belong.
And so, René Descartes, old buddy, you can keep your “Cogito ergo sum”. All I have to say is what a newborn would say, if it could speak: “Here I am!”
16 Comments:
This is what your post brought to my mind:
"I dreamt that I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down on myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter, and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again, and time went faster still, and it was rushing by a such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life."
J.B.PRIESTLY, Man and Time:
I wonder if it is possible that the ego was an evolutionary development, built to deal with the most important data for physical survival. That might have been deemed necessary as an adjunct to the massive developments taking place in other parts of the brain, with all its capacity for data retrieval.
I'm not too sure that I believe that beauty is the promise of happiness. It seems to me that beauty is much closer to the actual experience of happiness. There is surely a sense of simultaneity about these experiences. And perhaps beauty does not attract us. Maybe that to which we are attracted we deem as beautiful.
Sorry, I seem to be nit-picking. That was not my intent. Actually, I was so moved by this post and its sense of peaceful acceptance and awareness, that I felt I had to respond in some way. To try and answer your post "requires language. In fact written language." The incentive was there, but not the words.
I have an indirect personal connection with Priestley. We lived on the Isle of Wight at the same time and though I never met him, he was close friends with the Rev. & Mrs Bowyer. The Rev Bowyer was my English teacher and Mrs Bowyer directed me in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (excerpts), in which I played Bottom the Weaver. I’ve not read Priestley till lately after acquiring a first edition of his Midnight on the Desert: being an excursion into autobiography duing a winter in America 1935-1936, which is frequently reflective, in the style of your quote. The then Mrs Priestley, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, is a favourite author of mine for her sweet luminous prose (A Land, Early Britain).
Priestley has an enviable skill to say whatever he wants to say, in seductive and instantly accessible language. I’d like to think that authors such as he, still renowned yet hardly fashionable today, can impart some of their eloquence to the reader. As for the insight revealed in his dream, can that rub off too, through reading? Or does it have to be learned by man over time, as suggested in his title?
Apologies, Tom. I responded then felt my comments were nit-picking yours in a completely redundant fashion, when all I need to say is thank you, and that we think alike on this matter!
Vincent, this is such a wonderful post (and terrific photo) that it demands more than just these few words of praise. But I need to mull it over before responding and maybe I'll respond via email, and/or blog-post.
But what you've written here doesn't really need discussion, elaboration or explanation. It is self-sufficient, an eye-witness account of the lived experience of awareness...that's a gift!
Thank you, Natalie. Your comment is encouraging in itself, and helps set me off on a sequel, but your anticipated response (as distinct from the above) is eagerly anticipated. And yet I tend to feel a pang of guilt at holding you to promises made.
I'm so pleased that my quote from J B Priestly led to an 'excursion into autobiography' - yours not his.
I relate this to the process of blogging: Northrop Frye says, "Narrative is normally the first thing we look for in a long poem, but Blake's poems are presented as a series of engraved plates, and the mental process of following a narrative sequence is, especially in the later poems, subordinated to a process of comprehending an inter-related pattern of images and ideas. The plate in Blake's epics...brings the narrative to a full stop and forces the reader to try to build up from the narrative his own reconstruction of the author's meaning."
I often feel when reading your posts that there is another step you could take; that you could claim some truth that you had discerned. But you leave it up to us to speed up the tape, to broaden the perspective, to perceive the pattern, and to seek a conclusion.
In contrast Isaiah (and Blake) didn't hesitate to become the messenger who would deliver the truth to those who could not hear or see.
Isaiah 6
[6] Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar.
[7] And he touched my mouth, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven."
[8] And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me."
Yes, Ellie, I do want to leave things to the reader, and am reluctant to point out "the moral of the story" as in Victorian fables of my childhood. (I'm not old enough of course to have had literally a Victorian childhood, but my first reading-matter came from grandparents.)
As a life-long "seeker of truth" till recently, I've gone through so many philosophies, explanations & beliefs, usually misleading, that I want if possible to do nothing more than describe direct experience, without linking it to anyone else's except insofar as our common language makes it inevitable.
But there are limitations to this approach. The personal is also the universal, and I deem it time to hold posthumous dialogue with selected authors, in order to "claim" or "deliver" truth as you say, in what I hope will be the simplest and most helpful manner. Only by such means will I be able to understand how I got here, what hazards had to be traversed on the way, and what gift has been received.
Say, Ian, that factory building across the street from you, how did it turn out? We saw it being selectively demolished and reconstructed. Is it still in the process of enjoying a new life? Is the salvaging of the decaying hulk bringing a promise of hope for the birth of a new day? Are there internal changes to what goes on the building which couldn't have taken place until it was rebuilt? Is the process continuing?
um, am not here to specif ally - seriously quibble, Vincent ...
Collected quote - On Sunday morning I walked to a local supermarket for fresh milk and bread.- end quote.
Does, actually, among all your perambulations - make me wonder - whether you or; indeed, your philosophically inclined readers - actually know; have experience;
with wandering out on a Sunday morning at 4am and -really and truly - milking a cow?
Not not day. Every day. Just so that your "supermarkets" can supply you, townies, - with CHEAP milk!!!!
When was the last time you - or your partner, "baked" fresh bread?
It's not that difficult. Basically - flour and yeast (sourdough is interesting) - an oven of some sort - not necessarily electric.
???
I've taken a photo of the factory as it stands today. The walls, roofs and most of the windows have been installed. Much work done on the interiors but I don't know how complete. The two-storey hole is to have plate glass throughout as a kind of reception/ communal area. The courtyard has to be paved with two himalayan birches planted and some benches.
The last time I saw the boss, who's owner and builder combined, & asked him when it would be ready for the students, he said Spring. But there has been no progress for weeks. He has other business interests - I think he owns a vehicle hire firm as he drives its vans in in all shapes and sizes - and hires the various skilled workers as and when needed. When they are there, they work very co-operatively and merrily.
So I guess now we won't see any students till September.
As for the "decaying hulk", it was never that. These old factories are so solidly built they have to be vacant for many years before they start to decay. This one was a busy factory for most of the time we've lived here, and only stood empty for 6 months before the work started.
The promise of hope is all around, & many houses on the street are being refurbished.
Valid points, Davoh. K being Jamaican we eat many staples apart from bread, including breadfruit, green bananas, sweet potato and yam. We eat half-size loaves otherwise they start to get mould before we can finish them. We cook entirely from scratch, so making bread as well would be merely a chore.
Neither of us have milked a cow, but I just asked K and she used to have her own goat and milk it, and also had a chicken to look after. It was part of growing up in rural Jamaica, where she was brought up by her great-grandmother.
Me, I'm happy to be a philosophically-inclined townie.
Now it's your turn, Davoh & others.When did you last milk a cow or make bread?
And by the way, the milk we buy costs twice as much as the cheapest, because it is organic. But it tastes twice as good.
Ellie, I forgot the link to the photo of the factory. Here it is http://quotidianstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-sundial-factory-2nd-may-2015.html
Thanks for the update. I look forward to hearing about the new occupants.
The link above won't work any more. I expanded the thing with comparative photos etc.
Here is the new link: http://quotidianstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/update-on-sun-dial-factory.html
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