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Wislawa Szymborska

In(ter)dependence

Lots of thoughts about dependency lately. Triggered by general sorrow about the ongoing wars, or specific preoccupation with weather-related problems, never mind an aging body necessitating caution. We are so intensely dependent on the actions and solidarity of others, their help and support, their wisdom, skills, presence and availability in our lives. “Nothing wrong with solidarity, support, wisdom, presence,” you say? I agree – but to depend on it also means to suffer if it isn’t available, and I experience a degree of helplessness just thinking about that scenario which bugs the hell out of me.

Antony Gormley – Horizon Field Hamburg, 2012, steel, wood, 25 m x 50 m, 60t (thereof 40t steel), 7.40m above hall floor, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 2012

Autonomy is shrinking in a world that closes in around you, with threats to your physical safety, most pronounced in war zones, but similarly present with a climate that wrecks havoc on your immediate surround, or age that insists on limitations. I find it most upsetting in regards to freedom of movement – or absence thereof – again in the life and death scenario of incoming bombs preventing relocation, or floods and fires forcing relocation, or a simple ice storm keeping you stuck inside without your daily refueling in nature because you can’t afford to break a bone or two.

Probably not a coincidence that I was drawn back to a poem by one of my favorite poets of all times, a poem that celebrates the independence of the soul (relative even to us, its bodily container), and also of quotidian objects like mirrors that exist and work regardless of anyone’s attention. It drives home several points: independence is desirable and we simply have to accept that we can’t always call the shots – even our own soul might or might not attend to us, depending on its own whims and wishes. But the poem also comforts with the suggestion that there are nonetheless states where gifts – and closeness – are still available. Its speculation of likely interdependence, made in the last lines, somehow softens the burden of dependence.

My favorite stanza, though, is this:

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Since this is my perpetual state, frankly, I cling to Szymborska’s suggestion that soul will be regularly on hand.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

by Wislawa Szymborska

­ —Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak

If the soul is an independent agent leaving us soulless for years at a time, it is interesting that we are nonetheless so committed to pave the way for its escape – think of the customs so prevalent in many cultures to shroud mirrors in the house after a death occurred, for fear the soul might be trapped in one. Souls and mirrors have a long history of connection in mythology and literature (as does death and mirrors, come to think of it. Break a mirror: 7 years of misfortune, likely leading to death! Make a mirror: death guaranteed at a young age, as it turns out. Fabrication of this luxury item involved the use of noxious substances, quicksilver included, until very recently, establishing an average life expectancy of but 30 years for the members of the guilds in Italy and France that produced mirrors as well as glass ware.)

The largest mirror I ever saw was an installation in a huge former market hall in my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, as part of the Documenta in 2012. Called Horizon Field, it was one of sculptor Antony Gormley‘s ongoing explorations of the interdependence of humans and their environments, both regarding their spontaneous interactions, or their effects on each other.

Imagine 3800 square meters of empty hall with a platform suspended from the ceiling, about 25 feet above you in the air. Made of 40 tons of steel, it took a full month to install.

The whole thing was 82 feet wide and 164 feet long, dark as night from below, and coated with a silver mirror on top, reflecting the flood of light coming in from the arched glass windows. A single person walking across it (you had to stash your shoes at the bottom of the stair case, guards making sure of it) could make the thing vibrate.

It was fascinating to watch how visitors were preoccupied with their own mirror images laid out underneath them, rather than exploring the strange doubling of architectural features of an industrial building that had played historically a huge role in the enrichment of the Hanseatic economy. Built between 1911 and 1914, the hall is one of the few surviving examples of industrial architecture from the transitional period between Art Nouveau and 20th century design.

It was also a perplexing sight to see a large proportion of the visitors now in their socks, slipping and sliding with child-like amusement, centered on their proprioceptive senses once done with visual self-admiration. It was somewhat challenging to photograph it all given the swinging of the platform, and a slight queasiness induced by the oscillations. But staying underneath, in relative darkness, was not the best option either, wondering, with the mind of a skeptic, if and when that thing would come crashing down. Too many associations with the impending doom signaled by breaking mirrors….

Well, I was free to move, then, and walked off to wander the streets still familiar to me. No bombs or ice storms keeping me from it – unclear, however, if in company of soul.

Music today is by Arvo Pärt, his 1977 Tabula Rasa (and not Spiegel im Spiegel as one might have predicted.) I just love those meditations, and they fit the travels of the soul as well.

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This Sleepy Backwater

Housekeeping first: I am taking part of next week off from the blog, need to spend some time photographing, something that has gotten short shrift over all the writing.

***

I had to laugh at this headline found yesterday in an article in VOX:

“Especially the “if true” part” – UFOs, dead alien pilots, reverse engineering, secret government programs… the rumor mill is at it again, this time through a whistle blower, a former government official named David Grusch, who has worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, who gave public testimony before a House of Representatives committee Wednesday.

No evidence provided, just more talk of hear-say. But what I find interesting is this eternal preoccupation with a world “out there,” instead of saving the one we’re currently wrecking, or at least loving it for what it is. I have written about the psychological function of alien narratives previously. Today I will just turn to the tried and true, a poet with whose views I agree more often than not, and whose remarkable ways of getting a point across with seeming ease belying masterful construction always puts me in awe.

She is content enough with our sleepy backwater…

The Ball

As long as nothing can be known for sure
(no signals have been picked up yet),
as long as Earth is still unlike
the nearer and more distant planets,

as long as there’s neither hide nor hair
of other grasses graced by other winds,
of other treetops bearing other crowns,
other animals as well-grounded as our own,

as long as only the local echo
has been known to speak in syllables,

as long as we still haven’t heard word
of better or worse mozarts,
platos, edisons somewhere,

as long as our inhuman crimes
are still committed only between humans,

as long as our kindness
is still incomparable,
peerless even in its imperfection,

as long as our heads packed with illusions
still pass for the only heads so packed,

as long as the roofs of our mouths alone
still raise voices to high heavens —

let’s act like very special guests of honor
at the district-firemen’s ball
dance to the beat of the local oompah band,
and pretend that it’s the ball
to end all balls.

I can’t speak for others —
for me this is
misery and happiness enough:

just this sleepy backwater
where even the stars have time to burn
while winking at us
unintentionally.

by Wislawa Szymborska

translated by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh

from View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, by Wislawa Szymborska

Photographs today are of some of the more alien looking flora I’ve come across this year in this sleepy backwater. Wish it would stay sleepy and not burn up….

Here is a track – Of Beauty – from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (THE SONG OF THE EARTH). Beautiful music about a beautiful world.


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What are the Chances?

“What are the chances…” was the beginning of a sentence that cropped up with astonishing frequency this week.

“What are the chances, seriously, that more people voted for Walker than the Rev. Warnock?” was me fretting half-way through the evening when election statistics had the former ahead of the latter for a short amount of time. Still in disbelief after all these years in this country that it could even come close. The good guy won, eventually, but the margins were too close for comfort.

***

“What are the chances that Sinema leaves the Democratic Party before Manchin?” High, it turns out. Her voting behavior cost us higher minimum wage, extended child tax credits, and voting rights protections. Seems there is little variability in her moral compass – it’s stuck on amoral.

***

“What are the chances, that I would find myself in any way connected to one of the right wing extremists arrested in Germany during a nationwide raid this week?” Low, really an outlier. 25 people (with more assumed to be associated) are accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the state with armed attacks, former members of congress and military and ex-military para-trooper members among them. Many are now in pre-trial detention, suspected of forming a terrorist organization. The defendants are closely linked with the Reichsbürger movement, who believe that the 1871 borders of the German empire are still in effect, tend to be far-right extremist, do not accept the legality of the Federal Republic of Germany, and, according to the prosecutor, “followed a conglomerate of conspiracy myths consisting of narratives of the so-called ‘Reichsbürger’ as well as QAnon ideology.”

New “head of state” was supposed to be Heinrich VIII Prince Reuss, a 71 year-old of aristocratic lineage, and one of the purported ring leaders. Here’s where six degrees of separation makes an appearance, however: as an 18-year old I was invited to visit a branch of the Reuss family for Easter. For the life of me, I can’t remember why I scored the invitation or why I accepted it (certainly no romantic involvement) from Heinrich IX Prince Reuss (must have been a cousin), they all get the same name, just numbered in succession…

We drove south in a car from Hamburg to his parents’ castle (literally) near Frankfurt. Arriving too late for dinner, we were led to our rooms. I appeared, starving, the next morning, Good Friday, in the breakfast hall. The horror! I was not dressed head-to-toe in black, mourning garb required for this Holy Day, apparently, in arch-conservative households. Back to your room, have the maid rummage for a fitting outfit! Well, it was off to a train station for me.

***

“What are the chances“, I thought, when following the complicated Supreme Court hearings about the Independent State Legislative (ISL) theory on Wednesday, “that I’ll be able to write about that in ways that get the legal details and importance of the Moore vs Harper case across?” Slim, as it turns out, even with the example of an iceberg….

In a nutshell, the case is about extreme gerrymandering, the possibilities (or not) of stopping excesses, and, more generally, the power of state courts and/or legislative bodies to shape aspects of federal elections. SCOTUS heard plaintiffs’ arguments that under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures retain exclusive power over federal redistricting and election rules, while state constitutions, state courts, governors, or voter-approved ballot measures have no power to check, balance or even review those laws. Yup. -. It is, as legal observer and author Elie Mystal pointed out, all about trying to take power away from non-partisan state actors and putting it solely into the hands of partisan state actors.

That’s as far as I can go – the rest of the arguments, delivered in detail, clarity and with focus on the implications to what remains of our democracy, can be found in VOX, the Atlantic, Mother Jones, the NYT, and the National Review. Take your pick – any one but the last helped my understanding of the matter.

And since we’ve landed on the topic of relative probabilities, we might as well end the week with my favorite poem about Statistics. Chances are, you’ll like it, on average.

A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise: four — well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy: eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something: seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight: not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand: three.

Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred — a figure that has never varied yet.

BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA  from Miracle Fair. Translated by Joanna Trzeciak.

***

Photos today from Frankfurt and environs, in honor of another weird episode in the life of Heuer, filed under Frequency Distribution.

Statistics? No Problem. (Sorry for the annoying ads interrupting today’s music, could not find an alternative.)

Chances that this photograph relates to today’s text? Nil. I just love it, the matching colors, the symmetry and patterns of vertical lines, the contrast of work boots and fur jacket, this stranger’s strutting towards the center of the gate posts in completely empty space. It happened to be shot near Frankfurt.

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Discovery

Discovery

I believe in the great discovery.
I believe in the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in the fear of the man who will make the
…. discovery.

I believe in his face going white,
his queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.

I believe in the burning of his notes,
burning them into ashes,
burning them to the last scrap.

I believe in the scattering of numbers,
scattering them without regret.

I believe in the man’s haste,
in the precision of his movements,
in his free will.

I believe in the shattering of tablets,
the pouring out of liquids,
the extinguishing of rays.

I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,
that it will take place without witnesses.

I’m sure no one will find out what happened,
not the wife, not the wall,
not even the bird that might squeal in its song.

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.

by Wistlawa Szymborska
from View With a Grain of Sand
Harcourt Brace 1993
translation: Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

I wonder if this poem seeded the idea of a book, a remarkable book that looks at the consequences – intended and unintended- of scientific discoveries. Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand The World is a small volume describing mathematical and scientific research, ruminating about the psychological states of those engaged in the work, and weaving fact and fiction in ways that meander between horror story and lyric poetry.

The last time I felt like this when reading a novel grounded in history, was decades ago when I couldn’t put Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy down, never mind babies screaming for attention, house wanting to be cleaned, lectures needing to be written and exams to be graded. Both authors share the skill of sending readers on two parallel paths, leaving it to us to drop and pick up the strands where truth ends and imagination begins, where facts are overshadowed by psychological analysis or feelings discarded in the light of facts. Both also excel in alternations of intensity and subtlety, in itself a weird combination.

Barker succeeds in sustaining our attention to history, social structures, identity (before that became a political concept) across three complex volumes, never letting up tangential brilliant confabulation,. She thinly veils her portraits of historical people behind pseudonyms and graphically imparting on us the horrors of World War I and what they did to the soul of artists.

Labatut, in contrast, keeps it short – perhaps aware of contemporary attention spans. His subjects are famous scientists, although the pages are sprinkled with some names less familiar, and some characters are completely made up. He has a knack to impart scientific facts in ways that do not frighten even the math- or physics-phobic reader, partly because the narrative swings endlessly back to the human interest story at the heart of the tales – how do you accept the fact that your discovery brings suffering and ruin to the world? Do you continue to proceed?

Both authors do not shy away from delving into details of horrors, yet the texts themselves have a certain serenity as if we are watching our own history unfold from the safe location of a distant star. That in itself is, of course, a trick, since it indirectly suggests that our own responsibilities need not be considered when focused on those who wreaked the actual havoc, or do they? The wishful thinking of Szymborska’s lines (admitted to be without justification in fact,) should it not be headed by us, in the ways we should be willing to obstruct, to risk, to endanger our standing by unpopular but necessary actions?

Szymborska’s “I believe in the refusal to take part” is less wish than command. One that is faintly echoed in the last chapter of Labatut’s work which introduces us to a night gardener, a former mathematician who has given up on the world, too clear-eyed about the catastrophes awaiting us, in a society that uses the principles of quantum mechanics without ever truly understanding them. The very last parable of the book describes the final demise of lemon trees cut down by their own excess riches. It somehow all came together, and I felt humbled by it.

Szymborska, again, sarcastically:

“I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,”

How many more reminders do we need by brilliant writers that clinging to this belief simply won’t do?

On a more upbeat note, here is a fun compilation of unintended, positive consequences of scientific discoveries.

Music today by Bartok who was enchanted with mathematical principles and symmetry, particularly the Golden Mean. The ratio appears in this piece. Give it a chance, it grows on you.

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Hunger

When I was young and impressionable I had to read a book titled Hunger by Knut Hamsun. Why they would serve us literary fare by a Norwegian Nazi remains a mystery. Maybe my German high school teacher was as enamored by the Nobel Prize author as were many others, more famous people: Maxim Gorky, Thomas Mann, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. The book explores the psychological decline of a pretty asocial character who is driven almost mad by hunger, but as a consequence of refusing available food, fully in line with Hamsun’s celebration of individualism and freedom to choose. In the end the protagonist escapes his woes by hiring on to a ship and sail the seas, being fed, presumably, three meals a day. It felt odd, even to a 15-year old, that hunger was not presented as an inescapable scourge for the many who lack access to food, but as a choice. Some of my thoughts on the issue of food insecurity you’ve read in earlier blogs.

Decades later, I came across this:

Hunger Camp at Jaslo

by Wislawa Szymborska

Write it. Write. In ordinary ink 
on ordinary paper: they were given no food, 
they all died of hunger. “All. How many? 
It’s a big meadow. How much grass 
for each one?” Write: I don’t know. 
History counts its skeletons in round numbers. 
A thousand and one remains a thousand, 
as though the one had never existed: 
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, 
an ABC never read, 
air that laughs, cries, grows, 
emptiness running down steps toward the garden, 
nobody’s place in the line. 

We stand in the meadow where it became flesh, 
and the meadow is silent as a false witness. 
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest 
with wood for chewing and water under the bark- 
every day a full ration of the view 
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird- 
the shadow of its life-giving wings 
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened. 
Teeth clacked against teeth. 
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky 
and reaped wheat for their bread. 
Hands came floating from blackened icons, 
empty cups in their fingers. 
On a spit of barbed wire, 
a man was turning. 
They sang with their mouths full of earth. 
“A lovely song of how war strikes straight 
at the heart.” Write: how silent. 
“Yes.” 

Translated by Grazyna Drabik and Austin Flint 

I know, it’s the week of Christmas. Visions of food associated with the occasion, pungent smells permeating houses, meals shared with loved ones, unusual things like goose or carp (if you are German,) gingerbread and Stollen (a baked Marzipani concoction of about a million calories per slice,) all mouthwatering and sweet. Now why do I have to ruin that by reminding us of hunger as a weapon, an instrument of torture, a tool of extermination? Yes, a whole region of Jews were killed by being driven into a corral near the town of Jaslo and refused food and water. Can’t we let the past rest, at least during this week of celebration?

I would, if it were only the past. Just as Szymborska exhorts us to keep the memory alive – Write it. Write. – I cannot but say it, say: we are faced with hunger by design, here and now, in our American Prison system. There a few who bear witness. Last week this singular report was published by the ACLU of Southern California in cooperation with various other organizations. It “combines testimonies from people who were incarcerated in the Orange County jails during the pandemic with public records. Nutrition facts, menu items, and budget information gathered from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department through Public Records Act request.”

For almost two years now the thousands of inmates in this system have not had a hot meal. The three meals they get are mostly inedible sack lunches that contain moldy bread, spoiled slices of meat, and an occasional apple or orange. It is not enough food, particularly if you cannot eat it if it’s rotting, and it is so unhealthy that food-related illnesses have skyrocketed. Food poisoning from the spoiled food is one thing; the high sodium and carbohydrate contents have increased heart disease, diabetes-related problems, and circulatory system illness.

The situation has gotten so bad, that even the Board of State and Community Corrections asked the jails to add hot meals after their inspection revealed the horror of the situation. What happened? Hot cereal was added to breakfast, but soon after refused again. Soup was added to dinner (high-sodium broth with floating onion and tomatoes to be found with a magnifying glass.) However, the soup was put on the floor in front of the cells, often only accessible after an hour when it had become cold and by now detected by bugs that live in the shadows of the prison hallways, equally desperate to improve their food intake.

Kitchen closures where justified with Covid-19. The closures saved a good amount of money to the prison system, none of which has been re-invested into better nutrition for the inmates. In addition, the system has made a significant amount of revenue on items that incarcerated people can purchase through commissary (some $10.000.000 a year.) That kind of food might be more edible than bug-infested soup, but it is also not healthy, like most items that come out of dispenser. Medical and religious diets have been denied due to Covid restrictions, or so it is claimed.

“If a budget recipient spends less than its predicted budget, the surplus rolls over or goes towards other department expenses. That means that when OCSD receives a budget for food services and ultimately spends less than was budgeted, the remainder rolls over and can be used for other expenses like staff salaries. That is what happened when OCSD shut down the hot kitchens.”

These are the numbers that show the development during the Covid years, all on the backs of the inmates.

I”n 2018, OCSD rolled over just $72,000 from the food budget to use on other OCSD expenses; in 2019, OCSD rolled over $90,000. In 2020, after OCSD stopped serving hot food, they rolled over $963,013. In 2021, OCSD is on track to rollover $656,472.”

You can find all the details and art work and experiential testimony by the inmates in the report. Images today were created by the prisoners.

I do not know if the situation is any different in Oregon. But I do feel that we are ignorant of all of it unless we happen to have our noses pushed into it. Without knowing, of course, there will be no memory, no transmission of the horrors of one’s times to future generations as a warning. And poets will have to dig up a past that we failed to change in our present. Spread the word, if you can. The link to the report, again, is here.

Music by Bob Marley.

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Unseen.

“I want things to unfold slowly, often my things are quiet and simple enough that it takes time—a kind of slow overlapping—before people feel it.” – Anna Valentina Murch

Unfold slowly it did. It took me a full decade not jut to feel the art but to actually see it.

I’ve walked by that elevator shaft on the waterfront for years without ever noticing that the windows contained images of water, different configurations of waves illuminated by differences in light depending on cloud formation or time of day.

Created in 2011 by Anna Valentina Murch (lovingly remembered (and quoted) after her untimely death in 2014 by a friend here,) the unassuming public art is called River Wrap. It consists of 40 photographic images on glass that frame the corners of the ten story elevator tower that connects the Darlene Hooley bridge to the Moody plaza below. The photographs are of reflections of light moving across the surface of water echoing the bordering landscape, the Willamette river.

The idea of water seemingly filling a tower might have had different connotations in 2011 compared to 2021. Then it represented beauty, perhaps intended to be soothing, a reminder of waves lapping gently. Now I can but think of the hurricane-induced flooding of buildings, or memorials to rivers run dry, if not the drowned – art does change when historic context changes.

The elevator is currently closed, so I had no chance to explore what they would look like when you travel up and down at slow speed, or if they can be seen from within at all.

Murch was a British installation artist based in San Francisco. Solo works or those together with her husband Doug Hollis often focussed on ways to make people spend time and look: accentuating reflections, sparkle, glow and change in color of light on various surfaces, often water. A more familiar work here in Portland is the light art attached to the Tillicum Crossing Bridge. It uses 178 LED modules to illuminate the cables, towers, and underside of the deck. The base color is determined by the water’s temperature. The timing and intensity of the base color’s changes, moving the light across the bridge, are determined by the river’s speed. A secondary color pattern is determined by the river’s depth, that changes on the two towers and the suspension cable.

Other notable art installations by her can be found here.

So why did I notice River Wrap now and not before? A possible proximal cause: the light hit it just right to sparkle. But it was a gray, diffuse afternoon.

A two part answer could be:

(1) Distraction.

The elevator tower is across the street from the aerial tram station, where comings and goings of those futuristic looking passenger capsules draw your attention. There is also a never-ending stream of people entering or exiting the OHSU medical building, bound to draw your gaze. There is the new(ish) bridge glimpsed in the background at the river, usually the destination for my walks, beckoning the camera. So I never attended to the west side of the Moody Plaza before.

(2) Increased Attention.

Due to restricted movement, my radius of exploration has so incredibly shrunk. No more travel, no more visits to indoor spaces including exhibitions in galleries and museums, alike. No more walking or photographing where crowds of people congregate, all due to the pandemic. Those spaces, then, that are still open to me therefore are looked at in search of anything that is new, or worthwhile thinking through, or good for surprises while I walk there over and over and over again…

After all, the poem below does not apply to me (although I love it, like so much of her work.) I do behave in the cosmos as advised. At least I try to think so of myself…

Distraction

I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday.
I lived around the clock without questions,
without surprise.

I performed daily tasks
as if only that were required.

Inhale, exhale, right foot, left, obligations,
not a thought beyond
getting there and getting back.

The world might have been taken for bedlam,
but I took it just for daily use.

No whats — no what fors —
and why on earth it is —
and how come it needs so many moving parts.

I was like a nail stuck only halfway in the wall
or
(comparison I couldn’t find).

One change happened after another
even in a twinkling’s narrow span.

Yesterday’s bread was sliced otherwise
by a hand a day younger at a younger table.

Clouds like never before and rain like never,
since it fell after all in different drops.

The world rotated on its axis,
but in a space abandoned forever.

This took a good 24 hours.
1,440 minutes of opportunity.
86,400 seconds for inspection.

The cosmic savoir vivre
may keep silent on our subject,
still it makes a few demands:
occasional attention, one or two of Pascal’s thoughts,
and amazed participation in a game
with rules unknown.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012): Distraction, from Colon (2005), translated by Clare Cavanagh in MAP: Collected and Last Poems, 2015

One thing is clear, though. So much public art is so in your eye, so prominently placed or gaudily executed that it is almost impossible not to be aware oft it. The quieter kind, like today’s example, then packs the punch of discovery, unbidden, serendipitously,creating a louder and longer lasting emotional echo, at least in my case. A gift.

Water-related music today by Sibelius.

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Dreams (1)

Admittedly it’s not a random sample, but many of those who I talk to or correspond with these days relate how much they are inundated with bad dreams. Personally, I’ve had dates with full-blown nightmares way too often in the last year, but that could be explained by illness. The general increase in harsh nocturnal screenplays is surely related to the state of the world, the state of our lives in these strange times.

The poem I am introducing below struck me as all the more remarkable when read against this backdrop.

In Praise of Dreams

In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not only with the living.

I drive a car
which obeys me.

I am talented,
I write long, great poems.

I hear voices
no less than the major saints.

You would be amazed
at my virtuosity on the piano.

I float through the air as is proper,
that is, all by myself.

Falling from the roof
I can softly land on green grass.

I don’t find it hard
to breathe under water.

I can’t complain:
I’ve succeeded in discovering Atlantis.

I’m delighted that just before dying
I always manage to wake.

Right after the outbreak of war
I turn over on my favorite side.

I am but I need not
be a child of my time.

A few years ago
I saw two suns.

And the day before yesterday a penguin.
With the utmost clarity.

– Wislawa Szymborska

So is this poem from View with a Grain of Sand (1996) a description of a person who comes into her own in her nightly dreams? More than that, really – is it a boast that she excels, displays mastery, is in full control over life and death and obviously dreams, can decide when and where to focus attention, to partake, to belong?

But for a few stanzas, everything starts with “I” – the narcissistic focus of an imagined parallel life? Or the determination to have some agency in dreams, when deprived of it in real life? Is it an invitation to focus on the positive, as exaggerated as can be, to set lofty goals instead of enduring what’s on offer here and now?

The poet is a real magician in how she draws us in – starting with a painter’s name that triggers something visual, just like in a dream, perhaps a painting that most people have a vague memory of – didn’t the girl with the pearl earring or something related pop up just now? Progressing to some auditory bits (speaking Greek, hearing Saints,) with a side dish of time travel, just like in dreams that move so fluently between the past and present, the worldly and the otherworldly realms. She’s in control – of cars, of flying, of outcomes – no broken bones from falls, no drowning episodes, no futile pursuits – hey, there’s Atlantis after all! She’s no less than a master in everything she touches, from visual art, to music, to writing, and you would be amazed – calling in the recognition that’s deserved by addressing us directly. The prevalence of falling in dreams is acknowledged, a stanza that does not begin with “I”, though it, as well, ends up with dreamt invincibility.

So what happens in the end? A clear memory of a real dream which contains nothing of the professed wizardry, but instead simply two suns. A double dose of light to illuminate the futility of wishful thinking? A symbol for another universe, one where the gap between reality and wishful thinking can be bridged?

A penguin dream, the other day. Getting cold feet, waddling on thin ice? Or the ability to perceive possibilities, strange creatures, with clarity, even if they exist as far removed from us as they currently do? Your guess is as good as mine.

The whole thing requires some serious thinking. Turns out that’s just the thing that will defeat bad dreams.

I am not just saying that. Scientific data are truly reassuring: we can influence our dreams with thinking, even post-traumatic nightmares. Here is a good, easily read introduction to the findings and methods.) Go ahead, practice!

Sweet dreams.

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Of Apologies and Good Intentions

Many people who celebrate Christmas have a decorated Christmas tree (if they are lucky: tree shortages are reported.) The custom actually predates Christianity by centuries. Ancient Romans decorated trees with small pieces of metal during Saturnalia, their winter festival in honor of Saturnus, the god of agriculture. Modern Christmas trees appeared in the middle 1500’s.

It is customary to put a star on top which symbolizes the Star of Bethlehem, purported to have guided adoring folks to the manger where the Messiah was born. Angels can be found up there (the manger and the tree) as well, the latter ever after Queen Victoria introduced them in her Windsor Castle decorations. Unlikely that they look like the angels from today’s photographs, though. (Here is a lovely history of the Christmas tree customs.)

My thoughts today, however, were prompted by a different star, one used with customary slight of pen by one of my favorite poets to point to the vastness of the universe where even the sun is small, and to our corresponding speck-ness. Yes, I know, not a word, but an image that, you will hopefully agree, captures our limitations.

Under a Certain Little Star

Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I’m mistaken.
May happiness not be angry if I take it for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory’s but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the multiplicity of the world overlooked
  each second.
My apologies to an old love for treating the new one as the first.
Forgive me far-off wars for taking my flowers home.
Forgive me open wounds for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the 
  abyss.
My apologies to those in railway stations for sleeping comfortably 
  at five in the morning.
Pardon me hounded hope for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me deserts for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
forever still and staring at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happened to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous to me.
Endure, O mystery of being that I might pull threads from your
  veil.

Soul, don’t blame me that I’ve got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and
  woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
because I myself am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

(For language lovers, here is a serious treat – 4 different translations of this poem side by side.)

The poem holds for me a complicated emotional tension, one that has been particularly true in this year, a year that held personal tragedy for our family and shared tragedy for mankind, from the persistence of hatred between those not like each other, the victory laps of greed and power, the premature death of so many to, finally, the unmitigated slide towards climate disaster.

The poem’s endless run of apologies had its echoes in my own head – the sense of unearned privilege against the suffering of the many, the sense of inadequacy in fulfilling public moral obligations or my own demands of a private ethical self. Thinking of yourself as inconsiderate, forgetful, unjustly privileged, over-consuming or all around your own obstacle is, on the one hand, a good thing. Insight could lead to change.

On the other hand, it is also a preoccupation with self, with our own role and importance, with individual choice that might or might not make a difference. I do not read the poem as solely a call to go gently on yourself, allow yourself pleasure, acknowledge that you can’t fix everything, an encouragement to just lead your life, because no-one is perfect. I do not believe that self, alone, is to be the ultimate obstacle, the challenge to what is happening under a certain little star.

The title of the poem that puts the individual under a planetary body really points to the fact, in my reading, that it is not just about me, that infinitesimal small speck in the universe. It is about us, all of us, that live and love, act and die under this sun. It is as a collective, on a shared planet, that we have to change ways, or can change ways, with the individual improvement being a necessary but not sufficient step. The focus on untamed individualism, for good or bad, blinds us to the dire need for concerted action as community. We need to plan, agree upon, and carry out changes with shared intent, because the cause is bigger than just individual remedies of personal imperfections.

I, too, across the years, have labored to make words light in this blog, but these I mean in all their weight.

I will take a little break and resume writing in January. Happy Holidays!

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The Urge to Display

Yesterday was an emotional day. We attended my son’s dissertation defense via Zoom, sad that we could not be there in person for his graduation. I was also bursting with pride, of course, and simultaneously raging that the current circumstances prevent travel so I could not hold my son in my arms. I was frustrated that I did not understand a word of what he talked about in his presentation, just as I never did when I had occasion to hear my father giving a talk – both passionate chemists. It was bittersweet to think that his grandson chose the same path, never to be seen by him, or his other grandfather, unless there are little viewing slots between this dimension and the one for the departed. Shutters that open for special occasion….

Shutters made me think of windows, windows made me think of how people decorate them, or simply use them to display, well, almost anything, from signs to art to whole collections of stuff. So much stuff. Spilling out.

I have attached a small sample of what caught my attention over the last decade, most of it from Europe, but a couple of them from the U.S.

*

For me it was simply curiosity, while more professional photographers approach window displays with strategy. To lovely results in the case below, I might add. Larger images can be found on the links.)

Jean-Luc Feixa has a new book out that really captures much what is familiar to me from Northern Europe (in his case he photographed in Belgium.) Although I am keen to introduce mostly young women photographers, given the gender imbalance regarding recognition in this as in so many fields, I really liked Feixa’s work when I first saw his landscapes some years ago. They were photographed at the Franco-Spanish border with its contradictory landscape of misty mountains and barren desert. And how can you not covet an artist statement like this:

False American decor – perfect! Now what do we call all that decor in the windows? Open to suggestions!

And here is poetic wisdom that points to the trouble with clinging to the past, the urge to display, and holding on to things…..

The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

And here is César Franck‘s quintet, wistful (in honor of the Belgian windows,) and intricately constructed (in honor of my son’s synthetic molecule.) Mazel Tov, Solomon!

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