Seventh-century Chinese Chan Bhuddist master Hongren advised: “Work, work!…Work! Don’t waste a moment…Calm yourself, quiet yourself, master your senses. Work, work! Just dress in old clothes, eat simple food…feign ignorance, appear inarticulate. This is most economical with energy, yet effective.”
“All that is really worthwhile is action,” Teilhard wrote. “Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought.”
1 comment July 30th, 2007
The writer studies literature, not the world. He lives in the world; he cannot miss it. If he has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, he spares his readers a report of his experience. He is careful what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.
The writer knows his field––what has been done, what could be done, the limits––the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, he, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. He hits it up the line. In writing, he can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now, courageously and carefully can he enlarge it, can he nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?
Add comment July 25th, 2007
The island where I live is peopled with cranks like myself. In a cedar-shake shack on a cliff - but we all live like this - is a man in his thirties who lives alone with a stone he is trying to teach to talk.
Wisecracks on this topic abound, as you might expect, but they are made as it were perfunctorily, and mostly by the young. For in fact, almost everyone here respects what Larry is doing, as do I, which is why I am protecting his (or her) privacy, and confusing for you the details. It could be, for instance, a pinch of sand he is teaching to talk, or a prolonged northerly, or any one of a number of waves. But it is, in fact, I assure you, a stone. It is - for I have seen it - a palm-sized oval beach cobble whose dark gray is cut by a band of white which runs around and, presumably, through it; such stones we call “wishing stones,†for reasons obscure but not, I think, unimaginable.
He keeps it on a shelf, Usually the stone lies protected by a square of untanned leather, like a canary asleep under its cloth. Larry removes the cover for the stone’s lessons, or more accurately, I should say, for the ritual or rituals which they perform together several times a day.
No one knows what goes on at these sessions, least of all myself, for I know Larry but slightly, and that owing only to a mix-up in our mail. I assume that like any other meaningful effort, the ritual involves sacrifice, the suppression of self-consciousness, and a certain precise tilt of the will, so that the will becomes transparent and hollow, a channel for the work. I wish him well. It is a noble work, and beats, from any angle, selling shoes.
Reports differ on precisely what he expects or wants the stone to say. I do not think he expects the stone to speak as we do, and describe for us its long life and many, or few, sensations. I think instead that he is trying to teach it to say a single word, such as “cup,†or “uncle.†For this purpose he has not, as some have seriously suggested, carved the stone a little mouth, or furnished it in any way with a pocket of air which it might then expel. Rather - and I think he is wise in this - he plans to initiate his son, who is now an infant living with Larry’s estranged wife, into the work, so that it may continue and bear fruit after his death.
Add comment July 7th, 2007