acacia excerpts

Guide to Dying

2011-03-16T22:56:00.001-07:00

[Excerpt from The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide]

There was no way to describe the waiting for death. Pre-mortal? 'Dying' was not good enough. It was both too broad and too precise. For a start we are all dying, all our lives, from the moment of birth. And we were dying most specifically when we were laid on our beds entubed, respirated, catheterised, in the final days or weeks when the body began to shut down for good and the relatives gathered around. But what about now? What word would describe my exact condition, active and alert, feeling well for the most part, yet facing the unambiguous end of life within months?

The irony of this gripped me tightly, though yet again 'irony' was such a feeble, inadequate, contemptible word. There had to be something else, but my great collection of dictionaries and thesauruses, my passionate regard for words in any context, or none at all, my logophilia, my love of neologisms, of cryptic crosswords and arcane word books, failed me on this one. Me, of all people....

If it existed, I couldn't find the word to capture the process when dying actually felt like living, when decay, corruption and disease focused one so smartly and keenly it was as if you were living every day left to you balanced on the blade of a carving knife.

After Our Wedding

2011-01-16T23:17:00.000-08:00

After Our Wedding by Yehoshua Nobember courtesy of YMB

When you forgot the address of our hotel
in your suitcase,
the driver had to pull over
in front of the restaurant.

Men and women dining beneath the August sun
looked up from their salads
to clap for you,
a young, slender woman
in a wedding dress and tiara,
retrieving a slip of paper
from the trunk of a cab
in the middle of the street.

And since that day,
many of the guests at our wedding have divorced
or are gone,
and the restaurant has closed
to become a tattoo parlor.
And we have misplaced and found
many more papers,
but no one was clapping.

And the motion of the lives around us
has been like a great bus
slowly turning onto a crowded street.
And some of the passengers
have fallen asleep in their seats,

while others anxiously search
their jacket pockets
for the notes that might wed
their ordinary lives
to something lofty and astonishing.

The Gourmet

2011-01-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] from ‘The Gourmet’ by Muriel Barbery 2009

‘I have always attributed the success and magic of my grandmother’s good-natured, tasty cooking to her easy temperament and southern sensuality. I even thought at times that it was her stupidity and lack of education and culture that had made her an accomplished cook, and that all the energy which did not nourish her mind was free to nourish her fare.’

‘No,’ I say after a moment’s reflection, ‘what went into our grandmothers’ art was neither their personality nor their gift for life, any more than it was the simplicity of their spirit, their love of a job well done, or their austerity. I think they were aware, without even telling themselves as much, that they were accomplishing a noble task, one at which they could excel and that was subordinate, material or basely utilitarian in appearance only. they knew well enough that, beyond all the humiliations they had suffered not in their own name but by virtue of their condition as women, that when their men came home and sat down at the table, their own reign, as women, would begin. And it wasn’t some sort of stranglehold they had over their ‘home economy’, where they would, as sovereigns in their own right, take revenge on the power that the men had ‘abroad’. it was a great deal more than that; they knew that their immense skill spoke directly to the hearts and the bodies of their men, and that in the eyes of those men this conferred upon the women a power greater than that which the women themselves attributed to male intrigues of power and money or all the compelling arguments of society. they held their men not by the ties of domestic administration, or of children or respectability or even those of the bedroom, but by their taste buds, and this was as sure a thing as if they had put them into a cage into which the men had rushed of their own volition.’

The others remain silent, I continue. ‘What did they feel, those men - so full of themselves, those ‘heads’ of the family, trained from the dawn of time, in a patriarchal society, to become the masters – when they took their first bite of those simple yet extraordinary dishes that their wives had prepared in their private laboratories? Quite simply, those men experienced paradise, and even if they could not admit it to themselves, they knew very well that they were incapable of offering it to their wives in return, because for all their empires and arrogance, they could never make their women swoon the way those women made them swoon – with an orgasmic experience of the taste buds.’

We live in deeds, not years

2010-05-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths by Philip James Bailey

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest:
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life's but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things—God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.

Alarming Ignorance

2010-03-05T23:22:00.000-08:00

“Nine people out of ten in this country are ignorant heathens. I do not so much mind the heathendom, but the ignorance is really alarming.”

Dorothy Sayers, widely known for her detective fiction… was asked in the 1940s to write a letter to ‘average people’about Christianity…

“The only letter I ever want to address to average people is one that says: Why don’t you take the trouble to find out what is Christianity and what isn’t? Why, when you can better yourself to learn technical terms about electricity, won’t you do as much for theology before you begin to argue?

Why do you never read either the ancient or the modern authorities in the subject, but take your information for the most part from biologists and physicists who have picked it up as inaccurately as yourselves?

Why do you complain that the proposition that God is three-in-one is obscure and mystical and yet acquiesce meekly in the physicist’s fundamental formula, “2P-PQ equals IH over 2 Pi where I equals the square root of minus 1,” when you know quite well that the square root of minus 1 is paradoxical and Pi is incalculable?

What makes you suppose that the expression “God ordains” is narrow and bigoted whereas the expressions “nature provides” or “science demands” are objective statements of fact?

You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you do about beliefs. I admit that you can practice Christianity without knowing much about theology, just as you can drive a car without understanding internal combustion. But if something breaks down in the car, you humbly go to the man who understands the works, whereas if something goes wrong with religion you merely throw the creed away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check up on it and find out whether I am giving you a personal opinion or the Church’s doctrine. Go away and do some work.

Yours very sincerely,
Dorothy L. Sayers

Any Grand Poets Left?

2010-03-04T06:05:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from ‘Nadezhda Mandelstam: A visit’ by Bruce Chatwin 1989

… when I pulled out three jars of my mother’s Seville orange marmalade, she stubbed out the cigarette and smiled.

‘Thank you, my dear. Marmalade, it is my childhood.’

‘Tell me, my dear…’ She waved me to a chair and, as she waved, one of her breasts tumbled out of her nightie. ‘Tell me,’ she shoved I back, ‘are there any grand poets left in your country? I mean grand poets… of the stature of Joyce or Eliot?’

Auden was alive, in Oxford. Weakly, I suggested Auden.

‘Auden is not what I would call a grand poet!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Most of the voices are silent.’

‘And in prose?’

‘Not much.’

‘And in America? Are there poets?’

‘Some.’

‘Tell me, was Hemingway a grand novelist?’

‘Not always,’ I said. ‘Not towards the end. But he’s under-rated now. The early short-stories were wonderful.’

‘But a wonderful American novelist is Faulkner. I am helping a young friend translate Faulkner into Russian. I must tell you, we are having difficulties.’

‘And in Russia,’ she growled, ‘we have no grand writers left. Here also the voices are silent. We have Solzhenitsyn and even that is not so good. The trouble with Solzhenitisyn is this. When he think he is telling the truth, he tells the most terrible falsehoods. But when he thinks he is making a story from his imagination, then, sometimes, he catches the truth.’

‘What about that story…?’ I faltered. ‘I forget its name… the one where the old woman gets run over by the train?’

‘You mean Matryona’s House?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Does that catch the truth?’

‘It could never have happened in Russia!’

On the wall across from the bed there was a white canvas, hung askew. The painting was all white, white on white, a few white bottles on a blank white ground. I knew the work of the artist: a Ukranian Jew, like herself.

‘I see you’ve got a painting by Weissberg,’ I said.

‘Yes. And I wonder if you’d mind straightening it for me? I threw a book and hit it by mistake. A disgusting book by an Australian woman!’

I straightened the picture.

‘Weissberg,’ she said. ‘He is our best painter. Perhaps that is all one can do today in Russia? Paint whiteness!’

Ruthless Trust

2010-03-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Excerpts collated from Mere Christianity by C S Lewis and Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning.

All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned in suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and preciousness of it.

People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

It is of immense importance to understand that every word spoken and written about God is delivered in the language of analogy. In any divine analogy, there is a similarity between the human words used about God and the reality of God himself; there is also, however, a radical dissimilarity. What is affirmed in one breath must be denied in the next.

For example, we liken divine love to human love. The similarity induces us to think that we are getting a grip on God’s love. And yet, though human love is the best image we have, it is utterly inadequate to express the love of the Infinite…

The more we let go of our concepts and images, which always limit God, the bigger God grows and the more we approach the mystery of his in-definability.

Mystery is an embarrassment to the modern mind. All that is elusive, enigmatic, hard to grasp will eventually yield to our intellectual investigation, then to our conclusive categorization – or so we would like to think.

When we are brought not only in thought but in the totality of our being before the great mystery which touches the taproot of our existence… immediately our credentials of independence vanish, and we cease to carry ourselves with the swagger of the executive who knows what’s up and has all under control.

The human tendency toward projection – ascribing to God our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about ourselves and others – is unmasked in all its absurdity. Distorted images and caricatures of God as vengeful, whimsical, fickle, and punitive are exposed for what they are – puny and pathetic human constructs.

The same judgement is passed on the illusion of control.

Someone Who Eats Heart

2009-12-03T04:16:00.000-08:00

Never Offer Your Heart to Someone Who Eats Heart by Alice Walker

Never offer your heart
to someone who eats hearts
who finds heart meat
delicious
but not rare
who sucks the juices
drop by drop
and bloody-chinned
grins
like a God.

Never Offer your heart
to a heart gravy lover.
Your stewed, overseasoned
heart consumed
he will sop up your grief
with bread
and send it shuttling
from side to side
in his mouth like bubble gum.

If you find yourself
in love
with a person
who eats hearts
these things
you must do:
Freeze your heart
immediately.
Let him-next time
he examines your chest—
find your heart cold
flinty and unappetizing.
Refrain from kissing lest he in revenge
dampen the spark
in your soul.

Now,
sail away to Africa
where old women
await you
on the shore-
long having practiced the art
of replacing hearts
with God and Song.

Guns, Germs and Steel

2009-11-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by Jared Diamond courtesy of CC

Don't words such as 'civilization' and phrases such as 'rise of civilization' convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal hunter-gatherers are miserable, and history for the past 13,000 years has involved progress toward greater human happiness? In fact, I do not assume that industrialized states are 'better' than hunter-gatherer tribes, or that the abandonment of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for iron-based statehood represents 'progress' or that it has led to an increase in human happiness.

My own impression, from having divided my life between United States and New Guinea villages, is that the so-called blessings of civilization are mixed. For example, compared with hunter-gatherers, citizens of modern industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower risk of death by homicide, and a longer life span, but receive much less social support from friendships and extended families.

the murders

2009-11-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] from The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe courtesy of Yiwonda Banda

'The mental features discoursed of as analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment.

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.'

'Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To look at a star by glances -- to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly -- is to have the best appreciation of its lustre -- a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter case, but in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.'

stories of eva luna

2009-11-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] from Prologue by Rolf Carle in 'The Stories of Eva Luna' by Isabel Allende

You think in words; for you, language is an inexhaustible thread you weave as if life were created as you tell it.

I think in the frozen images of a photograph. Not an image on a plate, but one traced by a fine pen, a small and perfect memory with the soft volumes and warm colours of a Renaissance paainting, like an intention capturesd on grainypaper or cloth.
It is a prophetic meomnt; it is our entire existence, all we have lived and have yet to lifve, all times in one time, without beginning or end. From an indefinite distance UU am looking at theat picture, which includes me. I am spectator and protagonist.

champagne

2009-11-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by Andrea Vorlaufer, in 'My Other Life' by Paul Theroux

'Lovely,' she said, seeing that I had filled the glasses. 'I won't say no. Is it champers? Crikey!'

Every word of hers was her own and I saw that there was no one like her in the world, and that we had a special language of precious cliches, like trusty artifacts and baggage, a whole culture of two people, with its own rituals and humor and habits, that had taken a whole long marriage to make. Happy people were able to talk this way, in their own private expressions and words, which had a meaning for them alone, and were untranslatable.

great expectations

2009-11-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by Charles Dickens (courtesy of Yiwonda Banda)

Pip: 'You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets.
You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!

still i rise

2009-09-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

african on thursday

2009-07-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from 'Elizabeth Costello' by J.M Coetzee (courtesy of Yiwonda Banda) and discussion...

"When we Africans visit great European cities like Paris and London, we notice how people on trains take books out of their bags or their pockets and retreat into solitary worlds. Each time the book comes out it is like a sign held up. Leave me alone, I am reading says the sign. What I am reading is more interesting than you could possibly be.

Well, we are not like that in Africa. We do not like to cut ourselves off from other people and retreat into private worlds. Nor are we used to our neighbours retreating into private worlds. Africa is a continent where people share. Reading a book by yourself is not sharing. It is like eating alone or talking alone. It is not our way. We find it a bit crazy."

We we we, she thinks. We Africans. It is not our way. She has never like we in its exclusive form. Emmanuel may have grown older, he may have acquired the blessing of American Papers, but he has not changed. Africaness: a special identity, a special fate.

She has visited Africa: the highlands of Kenya, Zimbabwe, the Okavango Swamps. She has seen Africans reading novels, admittedly, they were reading newspapers. But is a newspaper not as much as avenue to a private world as a novel?

"In the third place," continues Egudu "in the great, beneficent global system under which we live today, it has been allotted to Africa to be the home of poverty. Africans have no money for luxuries. In Africa, a book must offer you a return for the money you spend on it. What do I stand to learn from reading this story the African will ask... We may deplore the attitude of the African ladies and gentlemen but we cannot dismiss it. We must take it seriously and try to understand it.

"I spoke about my essence and being true to my essence... you must be asking yourselves, how in these anti-essential days, these days of fleeting identities that we pick up and wear and discard like clothing, can I justify speaking of my essence as an African writer?

Around essence and essentialism, I should remind you there is a long history of turmoil in African thought. You may have heard of the negritude movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Negritude according to the originators of the movement is the essential substratum that binds all Africans together and makes them uniquely African - not only the Africans of Africa but the Africans of the great African diaspora in the New World and now in Europe.... Cheikh Hamidou was being questioned by an interviewer, a European. I am puzzled, said the interviewer, by your praise for certain writers for being truly African. In view of the fact that the writers in question write in a foreign language (French) and are published and are read in a foreign country, can they truly be called African writers. Is language not a more important matrix than birth?

The following is Hamidou’s reply; 'The writers I Speak of are truly African because they are born in Africa, they live in Africa their sensibility is African ... what distinguishes them lies in life experience, in sensitivities, in rhythm, in style. A French or English writer has thousands of years of written tradition behind him... We on the other hand are heirs to an oral tradition.'

There is nothing racist in Hamidou’s response he merely gives proper weight to those intangibles of culture which because they cannot be easily put down in words are often passed over. The way people move their bodies. The way they move their hands. The way they walk. The way they smile or frown. The lilt of their speech. The way they sing. The timbre of their voices. The way they dance. The way they touch each other; how the hand lingers; the feel of the fingers. The way they make love. The way they lie after they make love. The way they think. The way they sleep.'

from J.M Coetzee, 'Elizabeth Costello'
Facebook: Yiwonda Banda's Notes, Tues 14 July at 10:21

Z. Allan Ntata at 20:23 on 15 July
In an increasingly global world, doesn't clinging to these continental identities and sensibilities simply perpetuate our differences rather than embrace our similarities as people and human beings? Shouldn't we rather be talking about things that make us the same rather than things that make us different? Is there really more to be benefited by the human race by underlining differences between peoples, rather than celebrating the race's oneness?

Jessica Acacia at 08:27 on 16 July
hmm they say the difference between nationalism and patriotism is that....
the former is a definition of self through opposition to others
and the latter a celebration of strengths.
or something like that.
with ref to allan's valid point, does Emmanuel's perspective lend itself to the former or the latter?

Yiwonda Banda at 08:53 on 16 July
Allan - are you disputing that we are different or are you saying that we should not emphasize/highlight the differences in the hope that they will allow us to be partners in the modern era? the 'oneness' of the human race will only matter during WW3, in the meantime there is nothing wrong with being 'different' and embracing that difference as ... a backdrop to social interactions; surely as opposed to creating rifts that would strengthen bonds and create mutual respect...
Jess - I think Emmanuels position is necessarily transcends that distinction between nationalismm and patriotism to create the 'essence' of which he speaks - 'Africaness' - there is a sense of Magic realism about it; a vibe, a feeling, a special identity, a special fate....

Jessica Acacia at 09:37 on 16 July
wow yiwonda are you are claiming an essential difference... apparently proven by the intangibles of culture??
I don't think thats what Emmanuel or Hamidou are saying.
are the aryans superior?
cultural differences do not prove an essential difference.
very dangerous ground.
i'm interested and open minded to hear how the negritude movement and its 'essential substratum' has affected you.

Yiwonda Banda at 10:11 on 16 July
Essence difference in this context =community based ties, hierarchies, kneeling,
Essential difference does not presuppose superiority, though it is often interpreted as such; its merely a statement of claim; i do not like beetroot, therefore i am different to you who does like it - that doesn't make me superior- it makes me different. It is the Subtle yet seemingly obvious substrata that i think causes to miss the mark; discourse has been cushioned and sheltered for dare we not be politically correct! therefore we fear calling a black person 'black' and a white person 'white'.

I am black and i am African and i feel a sense of Africaness that is reflected and felt when i meet other Africans and this passage has come closest to depicting that feeling in words. This is not to say the extent of my reaction when i meet/interact with non Africans differs in terms of degree, it just means it is different and when one is comfortable in their own skin there is nothing wrong with that.
Do you wear chitenje's at funerals?

Does it make me superior that i do and i WANT to? No ... does it make me different even though we live similar lifestyles? i leave that to u to answer...

Jessica Acacia at 10:27 on 16 July
obviously there is no hierarchy. the aryan comment was an example of a physical / cultural difference being misinterpreted to mean something more.

labels and their implications stop us seeing what is true. instead they lead to emotional interpretations and illogical illusions.

it is one thing to appreciate and enjoy different ways of doing things... beetroot, funerals. it is a whole other thing to identify with them. which approach are you advocating?

how do you feel when you see african buildings? african grass? african sunset? there is no such thing. there are just buildings, grass and sun. now take that to people...

Yiwonda Banda at 10:51 on 16 July
these 'illogical illusions' you speak of are the very intangibles that Emmanuel is referring to..
What is true is individual, we are talking about an entire continent here; i inherited chitenje's...
There is a common thread which binds Africans - THAT is what i am saying.
I personally don't feel superior because of it - similarly I don't apply any emotional interpretation to the non African - only to myself because i feel it - I cannot explain why the aryan feels superior- i can only make personal judgements on that position, Hence, are you disputing my Africaness, or are you judging it?

Tanya Leslie at 10:52 on 16 July
define 'african'?

Yiwonda Banda at 11:28 on 16 July
'That of the African continent'

Jessica Acacia at 12:41 on 16 July
so you are saying we should take behaviour and identify with it. i do this therefore i am 'african'.
or maybe you saying that these 'cultural intangibles' make you FEEL 'african'. i feel this therefore i am 'african'.
so you are african. i get it, its an intangible indescribable feeling... which obviously you are fully entitled to.

do you feel a similar solidarity with people who eat beetroot? do you identify with women who drive rav-4s? people who dance to reggae? do those count as common threads? where does it stop - what label are you going to give that feeling?

I think you enjoy sharing opinions with people who think the same, sharing behaviour with people who do the same. It gives you a feeling of solidarity...
But you think that you ARE the same as that other person in the chitenje (common thread etc.).
Either you enjoy your culture, or you ARE your culture. If you think you ARE your African culture, then it follows that you ARE different to people of other cultures.

I'm questioning the premise of your feeling of africanness, which - you agree - is an emotional interpretation of a feeling or behaviour. any judgment of self, is synonymous with a judgment on other. you have divided your world into people who meet your criteria - us and people who don’t - them.
How can you not apply an emotional interpretation to a 'non-african' ?? you already have!
Whether 'them' is considered inferior, superior, or equal, they are always considered different. This is my problem.
In objective reality, 'they' are not actually different.
Which is why i prefer not to define myself through labels, differences or similarities.

Yiwonda Banda at 14:58 on 16 July
My premise is subjective, i'm sure there are many people who walk the way I walk or talk the way I talk, or chew their food the way i chew my food who are not African. But where does it come from? that is what I am saying; its intangible, I don't know... in this passage its explained as an 'essence'.. others may not think it significant at all...

Interesting that this book is written by a white South African -perhaps through this point (without realizing it) i have just supported your argument..

Jessica Acacia at 15:19 on 16 July
damnit was hoping you'd show me the meaning in your african identity, and thereby prove me wrong.

Yiwonda Banda at 15:26 on 16 July
you'd need to be African to understand it ;)

'Whether 'them' is considered inferior, superior, or equal, they are always considered different. This is my problem.' I concede that this is a problem...

Tanya Leslie at 16:18 on 16 July
damn... too late! will respond to all this in due course...! i foresee a new blogspot...... watch this space.......

Jessica Acacia at 17:15 on 16 July
hehe so do you feel a binding common thread with a white south african?
it appears that you have categorised me as non-african. interesting.

if you are suggesting that by my very definition as 'non-african', it follows i have no capacity to understand the criteria used to qualify for this label... that is also interesting... you don't get it because you're not one of us? the premise on which colonialism and other repressive ideologies were built.

do you feel a binding common thread with obama?
Obama, Ghana, 11 July: Now, we all have many identities -- of tribe and ethnicity; of religion and nationality. But defining oneself in opposition to someone who belongs to a different tribe, or who worships a different prophet, has no place in the 21st century. (Applause.) We are all God's children. We all share common aspirations -- to live in peace and security; to access education and opportunity; to love our families and our communities and our faith. That is our common humanity.

so, after all this, tell me, has your appreciation of our
essential-yet-intangible difference strengthened bonds and created mutual respect? as you claimed it would?

back to the text... 'There is nothing racist in Hamidou's response he merely gives proper weight to those intangibles of culture.' Yes give it proper weight, appreciate and enjoy differences. But it would be inaccurate to identify with them.

Rafiq Hajat at 23:40 on 16 July
Let me try to jump into the deep end here...is Hamidou alluding to ethnicity, tribe, or race? After all cultures, mannerisms etc vary widely across our continent and it appears to me, mildly patronising (to say the least) to bundle that rich diversity into one homogenous, generic template. Vive la difference!!

mediations

2009-07-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

by R.S. Thomas

And to one God says: Come
to me by numbers and
figures; see my beauty
in the angles between
stars, in the equations
of my kingdom. Bring
your lenses to the worship
of my dimensions: far
out and far in, there
is always more of me
in proportion. And to another:
I am the bush burning
at the centre of
your existence; you must put
your knowledge off and come
to me with your mind
bare. And to this one
he says: Because of
your high stomach, the bleakness
of your emotions, I
will come to you in the simplest
things, in the body
of a man hung on a tall
tree you have converted to
timber and you shall not know me.

living with chickens

2009-06-29T04:54:00.000-07:00

by Anthony De Mello

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled.
And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

touched by an angel

2009-06-10T05:01:00.000-07:00

by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

'bad people'

2009-05-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

by Martin Luther 1483 - 1546

The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies.

And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the 'bad people' but the devout people.

O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing, who would ever have been spared?

life together

2009-05-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

Excerpt by Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1954

Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.

Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving.

Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false, for the sake of a genuine fellowship.

Human love is by its very nature desire – desire for human community. So long as it can satisfy this desire in some way, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine love for others. But where it can no longer expect its desire (for community) to be fulfilled, there it stops short – namely in the face of an enemy. There it turns into hatred, contempt and calumny.

Right here is the point where spiritual love begins.

Human love makes itself an end in itself, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself, and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus, it serves him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons.

Jesus stands between the lover and the others he loves. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires – all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Jesus. What love is, only Jesus tells in his Word. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus will tell me what love toward the brethren really is.

Spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus. Where Jesus bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. Human love can never understand spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is something completely strange, new and incomprehensible to all earthly love.

I must release the other persons from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Jesus became man, died, and rose again. Because Jesus has long since acted decisively for my brother, I must leave him his freedom to be Jesus’; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Jesus’ eyes.

Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other persons which he has received from Jesus; the image that Jesus himself embodied.

Spiritual love will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another. It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and us by Jesus, and it will find full fellowship with him in the Jesus who alone binds us together. Thus this spiritual love knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Jesus and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Jesus. It is out of this love that John the disciple speaks ‘I have not greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.’

Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by truth. Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the word. Human love breeds hot-house flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.

The existence of any Christian life together depends on whether it succeeds at the right time in bringing out the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God’s reality, between spiritual and human community.

the forger

2009-04-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

[Excerpt] by Paul Watkins

‘Heres the thing, about Valya and me,’ he said. ‘You know how it is when there are beautiful people all around, but their beauty does nothing to you.’

‘I guess,’ I said awkwardly.

‘You recognize that they are beautiful,’ continued Fleury, ‘and charming and intelligent, men and women both, but when you look at them you feel a certain emptiness. It doesn’t occur to you that you may never see them again, and if it did, you wouldn’t care. It’s as if we each have some kind of coding device inside us. Sometimes our codes partly match with the codes of other people. Mostly they don’t match at all.

‘But’ – he pinched the air – ‘in the rarest moments, the codes will match completely. There is even a feeling of a lock clicking shut. It isn’t love or lust. It’s something entirely different. It’s some unnamed recognition that makes you want to be near them, no matter what the circumstances. It makes you want to tell them secrets. You don’t care what kind of fool you make of yourself. The idea that you might not see this person again sends panic clattering through your head. That’s the way I am about Valya. And I tell you, there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it.’

‘Poor you,’ I said.

‘Poor me is right.’ His face took on a mixture of deviousness and hope. ‘But perhaps not as poor as all that.’ His eyes narrowed as the possibilities took shape in his head.

I felt even more sorry for him than before.

eden close

2009-04-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

[Excerpt] by Anita Shrieve

your hands erase the memory of others.
a part of you is inside me, and I will always have that.
you have made me give up all the secrets, and I am lighter now.
you talk of days stretching after days, and you believe in them.
I do not believe in them, but I believe in this day.

i believe in frogs

2009-04-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

I see them, watching from the sidelines, spectators! Tolerant of all views. Interested in all faiths. Open to new suggestions, they earnestly explore all ideas, fairly, without bias; but somehow their research never arrives at a conclusion.
Reluctant to ‘limit’ themselves to one worldview. They never stick their neck out, never nail their colours to the mast, never put their stake in the ground, and never say I believe THIS.

Guilty as charged, I’ve noticed hints of this perspective in my own efforts at writing. Acacia the distant onlooker, making few judgements, appreciating all angles.

‘Unbelief – entertaining all possibilities, floating between opposites – is the mark of a leisurely existence,’ when we believe in everything we believe in nothing. What does believing in nothing do to us?

I was reading this book and the last chapter punched me in the stomach. Winded, I typed it up to get your opinion. Take five (fifteen?) minutes to explore whether you believe in frogs. Hit me with some comments - from the safety of the sidelines!!

It is a Hot Afternoon [Excerpt] from ‘Elizabeth Costello’ by J.M. Coetzee

It is a hot afternoon. The square is packed with visitors. Few spare a glance for the white-haired woman who, suitcase in hand, descends from the bus. She wears a blue cotton frock; her neck, in the sun, is burned red and beaded with sweat.
Past the pavement tables, past the young folk, the wheels of the suitcase rattling over the cobbles, she makes her way to the gate where a uniformed man stands drowsily on guard, propped on the rifle he holds butt down before him.
‘Is this the gate?’ she asks.
Beneath the peaked cap he blinks once in confirmation.
‘Can I pass through?’
With a movement of the eyes he indicates the lodge to one side.

The lodge, put together of prefabricated wooden panels, is stiflingly hot. Inside, behind a small trestle table, sits a man in shirtsleeves, writing. A tiny electric fan blows a stream of air into his face
‘Excuse me,’ she says. He pays her no attention. ‘Excuse me. Can someone open the gate for me?’
He is filling in some kind of form. Without ceasing to write, he speaks 'first you must make a statement.'
‘Make a statement? To whom? To you?’
With his left hand he pushes a sheet of paper across to her. She lets of the suitcase and picks up the paper. It is blank.
‘Before I can pass through I must make a statement,’ she repeats. ‘A statement of what?’
‘Belief. What you believe.’
‘Belief. Is that all? Not a statement of faith? What if I do not believe? What if I am not a believer?’
The man shrugs. For the first time he looks directly at her. ‘We all believe. We are not cattle. For each of us there is something we believe. Write it down, what you believe. Put it in the statement.’

First Statement

There is no more doubt in her mind about where she is, who she is. She is a petitioner before the gate. Some act is required of her, some prescribed yet undefined affirmation, before she will be found good and can pass through. But is this the one who will judge her, this ruddy heavy-set man on whose rather sketchy uniform (military? civil guard?) She can detect no mark of rank but on whom the fan, swinging neither left nor right, pours a coolness that she wishes were being poured on her?

‘I am a writer,’ she says. ‘You have probably not heard of me here, but I write, or have written, under the name Elizabeth Costello. It is not my profession to believe, just to write. Not my business. I do imitations, as Aristotle would have said.’
She pauses, then brings out the next sentence, the sentence that will determine whether this is her judge, the right one to judge her, or, on the contrary, merely the first in a long line leading to who knows what featureless functionary I what chancellery in what castle. ‘I can do an imitation of belief, if you like. Will that be enough for your purposes?’
His response has an air of impatience about it, as though this is an offer he has had many times before. “Write the statement as required,” he says. “Bring it back when it is completed”
‘Very well, I will do so. Is there a time when you go off duty?”
'I am always here,” he replies. From which she understands that this town where she finds herself, where the guardian of the gate never sleeps and the people in the cafés seem to have nowhere to go, no obligation other than to fill the air with their chatter, is no more real than she: no more but perhaps no less.

Seated at one of the pavement tables she briskly composes what is to be her statement… ‘I am a writer, a trader in fictions,’ it says. ‘I maintain beliefs only provisionally: fixed beliefs would stand in my way. I change beliefs as I change my habitation or my clothes, according to my needs. On these grounds – professional, vocational – I request exemption from a rule of which I now hear for the first time, namely that every petitioner at the gate should hold to one or more beliefs.’
She takes her statement back to the guardhouse. As she half expected, it is rejected. The man at the desk does not refer it to a higher authority, apparently it does not deserve that, merely shakes his head and lets the page fall to the floor and pushes a fresh sheet of paper towards her. ‘What you believe,’ he says.
She returns to her chair on the pavement.

‘Can I just glance through?” she says on her second attempt. “Take a glance at what lies on the other side? Just to see if it is worth all this trouble.”
Ponderously the man rises from his desk. He is not as old as she, but he is not young either. He is wearing riding boots; his blue serge trousers have a red stripe up the sides. How hot he must be, she thinks! And in winter, how cold, not a cushy job, being guardian of the gate.
Past the soldier leaning on his rifle he takes her, till they stand before the gate itself, massive enough to hold back an army. From a pouch at his belt he takes a key nearly as long as his forearm. Will this be the point where he tells her the gate is meant for her and her alone and moreover that she is destined never to pass through? Should she remind him, let him know she knows the score?
The keys turn twice in the lock. “There satisfy yourself”, says the man.
She puts an eye to the crack. A millimetre, two millimetres he draws open the door then closes it again.
“You have seen,” he says. “The record will show that”.

What has she seen? Despite her unbelief, she had expected that what lay beyond this old fashioned of teak and brass but also no doubt of the tissue of allegory would be unimaginable: a light so blinding the early senses would be stunned by it. But the light is not unimaginable at all. It is merely brilliant, more brilliant perhaps than the varieties of light she has known hitherto, but not of another order, not more brilliant than, say, a magnesium flash sustained endlessly.

The man pats her on the arm. it is a surprising gesture, coming from him, surprisingly personal like on eof those torturers she reflect, who claim to wish you no hard, merely to be doing their sad duty “now that you have seen,” he says. “Now you will try harder”.
At the café she orders a drink.

First Hearing

Even in this town time passes. The day arrives, her day. She finds herself before a high bench, in an empty room. On the bench are nine microphones in a row. on the wall behind it, an emblem in plaster relief: two shields, two crossed spears, and what looks like an emu but is probably meant to be a nobler bird, bearing a laurel wreath in its beak. A man she thinks of as a bailiff brings her a chair and indicates she may sit. She sits down, waits. The windows are all closed, the room is stuffy. She gestures to the bailiff, makes a motion of drinking. He pretends not to notice.

A door opens, and in file the judges, her judges, judges of her. Under the black robes she half expects them to be creatures out of Grandville: crocodile, ass, raven, deathwatch beetle. But now, they are of her kind, her phylum. Even their faces are human. Male, all of them; male and elderly.

She does not need the bailiff’s prompting (he has come put behind her now) to stand. a performance will be required of her: she hopes she can pick up the cues.
The judge in the middle gives her a little nod; she nods back.
‘You are….?’ he says.
‘Elizabeth Costello.’
‘Yes. The applicant.’
‘Or the supplicant, if that improves my chances.’
‘And this is your first hearing?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you want - ?’
‘I want to pass the gate. To pass through. To get on with what comes next.’
‘Yes. As you must have learned by now, there is the question of belief. You have a statement to make to us? Will you read out your statement, please?’
She reads.
‘I am a writer. I am a writer, and what I write is what I hear. I am a secretary of the invisible, one of many secretaries over the ages. That is my calling: dictations secretary. It is not for me to interrogate, to judge what is given me. I merely write down he words and then test them, test their soundness, to make sure I have heard right.
‘Secretary of the invisible: not my own phrase, I hasten to say. I borrow it from a secretary of a higher order, Czeslaw Milsz, a poet, perhaps known to you, to whom it was dictated years ago.
She pauses. This is where she expects them to interrupt. Dictated by whom? She expects them to ask. And she has her answer ready: by powers beyond us. But there is no interruption, no question. Instead their spokesman wags his pencil at her. ‘Go on.’

‘Before I can pass on I am required to state my beliefs,’ she reads. ‘I reply: a good secretary should have no beliefs. It is inappropriate to the function. A secretary should merely be in readiness, waiting for the call.’
Again she expects an interruption: whose call? But there are going to be no questions, it would seem.
‘In my work a belief is a resistance, an obstacle. I try to empty myself of resistances.’

‘Without beliefs we are not human.’ the voice comes from the left most of them, the one she has privately labelled Grimalkin, a wizened little fellow so short that his chin barely clears the bench. In fact, about each of them there is some troublingly comic feature. Excessively literary, she thinks. A caricaturist’s idea of a bench of judges.
‘Without beliefs we are not human,’ he repeats. ‘What do you say to that, Elizabeth Costello?’

She sighs. ‘Of course, gentlemen, I do not claim to be bereft of all belief. I have what I think of as opinions and prejudices, no different in kind from what are commonly called beliefs. When I claim to be a secretary clean of belief I refer to my ideal self, a self capable of holding opinions and prejudices at bay while the word which it is her function to conduct passes through her.
‘To put it in another way, I have beliefs but I do not believe in them. They are not important enough to believe in. My heart is not in them. My heart and my sense of duty.’

The little man purses his lips. His neighbour turns and gives him a glance (she can swear she hears the rustle of feathers). ‘And what effect do you think it has, this lack of belief, on your humanity?’ the little man asks.
‘On my own humanity? Is that of consequence? What I offer to those who read me, what I contribute to their humanity outweighs, I would hope, my own emptiness in that respect.’
‘You are not an unbeliever then,’ says the man in the middle
‘No unbelief is a belief. A disbeliever, if you will accept the distinction, though sometimes I feel disbelief becomes a credo too.’
There is a silence. ‘Go on,’ says the man. ‘Proceed with your statement.’
‘That is the end of it. There is nothing that not been covered. I rest my case.’

First Response

‘Your case is that you are a secretary. Of the invisible.’
‘And that I cannot afford to believe.’
‘For professional reasons.’
‘For professional reasons.’
‘And what if the invisible does not regard you as a secretary? What if your appointment was long ago discontinued and the letter did not reach you? What if you were never even appointed? Have you considered that possibility?’
‘I consider it every day. I am forced to consider it. If I am not what I say I am, then I am a sham. If that is your considered verdict, that I am a sham secretary, then I can only bow my head and accept it. I presume you have taken into account my record, a lifetime’s record. In fairness to me you cannot ignore that record.’

‘What about children?’
The voice is cracked and wheezy. At first she cannot make out from which of them it comes. Is it number eight, the one with the pudgy jowls and the high colour?
‘Children? I don’t understand.’
‘And what of the Tasmanians?’ he continues. ‘What of the fate of the Tasmanians?’
The Tasmanians? Has something been going on in Tasmania, in the interim that she has not heard about?
‘I have no special opinions about Tasmanians,’ she replies cautiously. ‘I have always found them perfectly decent people.’
He waves impatiently. ‘I mean the old Tasmanians, the ones who were exterminated. Do you have special opinions about them?’
Her thoughts on Tasmania? If she is puzzled, the rest of the panel is puzzled too, for the questioner has to turn to them to explain. ‘Atrocities take place,’ he says. ‘Violations of innocent children. The extermination of whole peoples. What does she think about such matters? Does she have no beliefs to guide her?’
The extermination of the old Tasmanians by her countrymen, her ancestors. Is that, finally, what lies behind this hearing, this trail: the question of a historical guilt?

She takes a breath. ‘there are matters about which one talks and matters about which it is appropriate to keep one’s peace, even before a tribunal, even before the ultimate tribunal, if that is what you are. I know what you are referring to, and I reply only that if from what I have said before you today you conclude that I am oblivious of such matters, you are mistaken, utterly mistaken. Let me add, for your edification: beliefs are not the only ethical supports we have. We can rely on our hearts as well. That is all. I have nothing more to say.’
Contempt of court. She is running close to contempt of court. It is something about herself she has never liked, this tendency to flare up.

‘But as a writer? you present yourself today not in your own person but as a special case, a special destiny, a writer who has written not just entertainments but books exploring the complexities of human conduct. In those books you make one judgement upon another, It must be so. What guides you in these judgements? Do you persist in saying it is all just a matter of heart? Have you no beliefs as a writer? If a writer is just a human being with a human heart, what is special about your case?’
Not a fool. Not a pig in satins robes, porcus magistralis, out of Grandville. Not the mad hatter’s tea party. For the first time this day she feels tested. Very well: let her see what she can come up with.

‘The aboriginal people of Tasmania are today counted among the invisible, the invisible whose secretary I am, one of many such. When the old Tasmanians summon me, if they choose to summon me, I will be ready and I will write, to the best of my ability.
‘Similarly with children, since you mention violated children. I have yet to be summoned by a child, but again I am ready. A word of caution to you, however. I am open to all voices, not just the voices of the murdered and violated. If it is the murderers and violators who choose to summon me instead, to use me and speak through me, I will not close my ears to them, I will not judge them.’
‘You will speak for murderers?’
‘I will.’
‘You do not judge between the murderer and the victim? Is that what it is to be a secretary: to write down whatever you are told? To be bankrupt of conscience?’
She is cornered she knows. ‘Do you think the guilty do not suffer too? What kind of conscience is it that will disregard a cry of such moral agony?’

‘And these voices that summon you,’ says the pudgy man: ‘you do not ask where they come from?’
‘No. not as long as they speak the truth.’
‘Do you believe the voices come from God? Do you believe in God?’
Does she believe in God? A question she prefers to keep a wary distance from. why, even assuming that God exists – whatever exists means – should His massive, monarchical slumber be disturbed from below by a clamour of believes and don’t believes, like a plebiscite?
‘That is way too intimate,’ she says. ‘I have nothing to say.’
‘There are only ourselves here. You are free to speak your heart.’
‘You misunderstand. I mean, I suspect that God would not look kindly on such presumption – presumption to intimacy. I prefer to let God be. As I hope He will let me be.’
There is a silence. She has a headache. Too many heady abstractions, she thinks to herself: a warning fro nature.
The chairman glances around. ’further questions?’ he asks.
There is none.
He turns to her. ‘You will hear from us. In due course. Through established channels.’

Second Statement

It is morning. She is at her table on the pavement, working on her statement, trying out a new approach. Since she boasts that she is a secretary of the invisible, let her concentrate her attention, turn it inward. What voice does she hear from the invisible today? For the moment, all she hears is the slow thud of the blood in her ears, just as all she feels is the soft touch of the sun on her skin. That at least she does not have to invent: this dumb, faithful body that has accompanied her every step of the way, this gentle lumbering monster that has been given to her to look after, this shadow turned to flesh that stands on two feet like a bear and laves itself continually from the inside with blood. Not only is she in this body, this thing which not in a thousand years should she have dreamed up, so far beyond her powers would it be, she somehow is this body and all around her on the square, on this beautiful morning, these people, somehow, are their bodies too.

Somehow; but how? How on earth can bodies not only keep themselves clean using blood (blood!), but cogitate upon the mystery of their existence and make utterances about it and now and again even have little ecstasies? Does it count as a belief, whatever property she has that allows her to continue to be this body when she has not the faintest idea how the trick is done? Would they, the bench of judges, the panel of examiners, the tribunal that demands she bare her beliefs – would they be satisfied with this: I believe that I am? I believe that what stands before you today is I? Or that be too much like philosophy, too much like the seminar room?

Someone sits down opposite her. Preoccupied she does not look up.
‘Are you working on your confession?’
It is the cleaning woman, the one with the Polishy accent. This morning she is wearing a cotton dress, flowery, lemon-green, somewhat old-fashioned, with a white belt. It suits her, suits her strong blonde hair and sunburnt skin and broad frame. She looks like a peasant at harvest time, sturdy capable.
‘No not a confession, a statement of belief. That is what I have been asked for.’
‘We call them confessions here.’
‘Really. I would not call it that. Not in English. Perhaps in Latin, perhaps in Italian.’
The couple sitting at the next table have their little fingers hooked together. Laughingly they tug at each other; they bump foreheads, whisper. They do not seem to have confessions to write.
‘What are you saying in your confession?’
‘What I said before: that I cannot afford to believe. That in my line of work one has to suspend belief. That belief is an indulgence, a luxury. That it gets in the way.’
‘Really. Some of us would say the luxury we cannot afford is unbelief.’
She waits for more.
‘Unbelief – entertaining all possibilities, floating between opposites – is the mark of a leisurely existence, a leisured existence,’ the woman goes on. ‘Most of us have to choose. Only the light soul hangs in the air.’

‘Tell me, how many of us get through, pass the test, pass through the gate?’
The woman laughs, a low laugh strangely attractive. Where has she seen her before? ‘Through which gate?’ says the woman? ‘You believe there is only one gate?’ a new laugh passes through her, a long, luxurious shudder of the body that makes her heavy breasts quake. ‘Do you smoke?’ she says. ‘No? Do you mind?’
From a gold cigarette case she takes a cigarette, strikes a match, puffs. Her hand is stubby, broad, a peasant’s hand. Yet the fingernails are clean and neatly buffed. Who is she? Only the light soul hangs in the air. It sounds like a quotation.
‘Who knows what we truly believe,’ says the woman. ‘It is here, buried in our heart.’ lightly she smites her bosom. ‘Buried even from ourselves. It is not belief that the judges are after. The effect is enough, the effect of belief. Show them you feel and they will be satisfied.’

The phrase comes back to her again at dusk, as she is taking a stroll along the town wall, watching the swallows swoop and dive above the square. A light soul. Is she a light soul? What is a light soul? She thinks of soap bubbles floating up among the swallows, rising even higher into the blue empyrean. Is that how the woman sees her? Certainly her life has not been a hard one, by most standards, but nor has it been easy. Quiet perhaps, protected perhaps: an antipodean life, removed from the worst of history; but driven too, the word is not too strong. Should she seek out the woman and set her right? Would the woman understand?
She signs, walks on. How beautiful it is, this world, even if it is only a simulacrum! At least there is that to fall back on.

Second Hearing

It is the same courtroom, with the same bailiff, but the panel of judges (the board, as she must now learn to call it) is new. There are seven of them, not nine, one of them a woman; she recognises none of the faces. And the public benches are no longer empty. She has a spectator, a supporter: the cleaning woman, sitting by herself with a string bag on her lap.
‘Elizabeth Costello, applicant, hearing number two,’ intones the spokesman of today’s board (the chief judge? the judge-in-chief?).
‘You have a revised statement, we understand. Please proceed with it.’

She steps forward. ‘What I believe,’ she reads in a firm voice, like a child doing a recitation. ‘I was born in the city of Melbourne, but spent part of my childhood in rural Victoria, in a region of climatic extremes: of scorching droughts followed by torrential rains that swelled the rivers with the carcases of drowned animals. That, anyhow, is how I remember it.
‘When the waters subsided – I am speaking of the waters of one river in particular now, the Dulgannon – acres of mud were left behind. At night you would hear the belling of tens of thousands of little frogs rejoicing in the largesse of the heavens. The air would be as dense with their calls as it was at noon with the rasping of cicadas.
‘Where did they suddenly arrive from, these thousands of frogs? The answer is, they are always there. In the dry season they go underground, burrowing further and further from the heat of the sun until each has created a little tomb for itself. And in those tombs they die, so to speak. Their heartbeat slows, their breathing stops, they turn the colour of mud. Once again the nights are silent.
‘Silent until the next rains come, rapping, as it were, on thousands of tiny coffin lids. In those coffins hearts begin to beat, limbs begin to twitch that for months have been lifeless. The dead wake. As the caked mud softens, the frogs begin to dig their way out, and soon their voices resound again in joyous exultation beneath the vault of the heavens.
‘Excuse my language. I am or have been a professional writer. Usually I take care to conceal the extravagances of the imagination. But today, for this occasion, I thought I would conceal nothing, bare all. the vivifying flood, the chorus of joyous belling, followed by the subsiding of the waters and the retreat to the grave, then drought seemingly without end, then fresh rains and the resurrection of the dead – it is a story I present transparently, without disguise.
‘Why? because today I am before you not as a writer but as an old woman who was once a child, telling you what I remember of the Dulgannon mudflats of the childhood and of the frogs who live there, some as small as the tip of my little finger, creatures so insignificant and so remote from your loftier concerns that you would not hear of them otherwise. In my account, for whose many failings I beg your pardon, the life cycle of the frog may sound allegorical, but to the frogs themselves it is not allegory, it is the thing itself, the only thing.

‘What do I believe? I believe in those little frogs. Where I find myself today, in my old age and perhaps my older age, I am not sure. But the Australian continent, where I was born into the world, kicking and squalling, is real (if far away), the Dulgannon and its mudflats are real, the frogs are real. they exist whether or not I tell you about them, whether or not I believe in them.
‘It is because of the indifference of those little frogs to my belief (all they want from life is a chance to gobble down mosquitoes and sing; and the males among them, the ones who do most of the singing, sing not to fill the night air with melody but as a form of courtship, for which they hope to be rewarded with orgasm, the frog variety of orgasm, again and again and again) – it is because of their indifference to me that I believe in them. And that is why, this afternoon, in this lamentably rushed and lamentably literary presentation for which I again apologise, but I thought I would offer myself to you without forethought, ‘toute nue’ so to speak, and almost, as you can see for yourselves, without notes – that is why I speak to you of frogs. Of frogs and of my belief or beliefs and of the relation between the former and the latter. Because they exist.’

She comes to a stop. From behind her, the sound of gentle handclapping, from a single pair of hands, the cleaning woman’s the clapping dwindles, ceases. It was she, the cleaning woman, who put her up to it – well, let us see what kind of response this flood of words, this gabble this confusion, this passion. passion gets.
One of the judges, the man on the extreme right, leans forward.
‘Dulgannon,’ he says. ‘That is a river?’
‘Yes, a river. It exists. It is not negligible. You will find it on most maps.’
‘And you spent your childhood there, on the Dulgannon?’
She is silent.
‘Because it says nothing here, in your docket, about a childhood on the Dulgannon.’
She is silent.
‘Is childhood on the Dulgannon another of your stories, Mrs. Costello? Along with frogs and the rain from heaven?’
‘The river exists. The frogs exist. I exist. What more do you want?’

The woman among them, slim, with neat silver hair and silver–rimmed glasses, speaks. ‘You believe in life?’
‘I believe in what does not bother to believe in me.’
The judge makes a little gesture of impatience. ‘A stone does not believe in you. A bush. But you choose to tell us not about stones or brushes but about frogs, to which you attribute a life story that is, as you concede, highly allegorical. These Australian frogs of yours embody the spirit of life, which is what you as a storyteller believe in.’
It is not a question; it is, in effect, a judgement. Should she accept it? She believed in life: will she take that as the last word on her, her epitaph? Her whole inclination is to protest: vapid! She wants to cry. I am worth better than that! But she reins herself in. She is not here to win an argument; she is here to win a pass, a passage. Once she has passed, once she has said goodbye to this place, what she leaves behind of herself, even if it is to be an epitaph, will be of the utmost inconsequence.
‘If you like,’ she says guardedly.

The judge, her judge, looks away, purses her lips. A long silence falls. She listens for the buzzing of the fly that once is supposed to hear on such occasions, but there does not appear to be a fly in the courtroom.
The mud frogs of the Dulgannon are a new departure for her. Give them time: they might yet be made to ring true.

Second Response

‘I refer to your first appearance before this court, when you gave as your occupation ‘secretary to the invisible’ and made the following statement: “a good secretary should not have beliefs. It is inappropriate to the function”; and, a little later, “I have beliefs but I do not believe in them.”

‘At that hearing you appeared to disparage belief, calling it an impediment to your calling. At today’s hearing, however, you testify to a belief in frogs, or more accurately in the allegorical meaning of a frog’s life, if I understand your drift. My question is: have you changed the basis of your plea from the first hearing to the present one? Are you giving up the secretary story and presenting a new one, based on the firmness of your belief in the creation?’
Has she changed her story? It is a weighty question, no doubt about that, yet she has to struggle to fix her attention on it. The courtroom is hot, she feels drugged, and she is not sure how much more of this hearing she can take. What she would like most is to lay her head on a pillow and have a snooze, even if it has to be the filthy pillow in the bunkhouse.
‘It depends,’ she says, playing for time, trying to think (come on, come on! she tells herself: your life depends on this!). ‘You ask if I have changed my plea. But who am I, who is this I this you? We change from day to day, and we also stay the same. No I, no you is more fundamental than any other. You might as well ask which is the true Elizabeth Costello: the one who made the first statement or the one who made the second. My answer is both are true. Both. And neither. You have the wrong person before you. If you think you have the right person you have the wrong person. The wrong Elizabeth Costello.’

Is this true? It may not be true but it is certainly not false. She has never felt more like the wrong person in her life.
Her interrogator waves impatiently. ‘I am not asking to see you passport. Passports have no force here, as I am sure you are aware. The question I ask is: you, by whom I mean this person before our eyes, this person petitioning for passage, this person here, and nowhere else – do you speak for yourself?
‘Yes. No, emphatically no. yes and no. both.’
Her judge glances left and right at his colleagues. Is she imagining it, or does the flicker of a smile pass among them, and a whispered word? What is the word? ‘confused’?
He turns back to her. ‘Thank you. That is all. You will hear from us in due course.’
‘That is all?’
‘That is all, for today.’
‘I am not confused.’
‘Yes, you are not confused. But who is it who is not confused?’
They cannot contain themselves, her panel of judges, and her board. First they titter like children; they abandon all dignity and howl with laughter.

She Wanders Across the Square.

It is, she would guess, early afternoon. There is less bustle than usual. The locals must be at their siesta. The young in one another’s arms. If I had my life again, she tells herself, not without bitterness, I would spend it otherwise. Have more fun. What good has it done me, this life of writing, now that it comes to the final proving?
The sun is fierce. She ought to be wearing a hat. The courthouse scene has not left her, the ignominy of it, the shame. Yet beneath it she remains, strangely under the spell of the frogs. Today it would appear, she is disposed to believe in frogs. What will it be tomorrow? Midges? Grasshoppers?

Astonishing that a court which sets itself up as an interrogatory of belief should refuse to pass her. They must have heard other writers before, other disbelieving believers, or believing disbelievers. Writers are not lawyers, surely they must allow for that, allow for eccentricities of presentation. But of course this is not a court of law. Not even a court of logic. Her first impression was right: a court out of Alice in Wonderland, a court of paradox. The first shall be last and the last first. Or contrariwise. if it were guaranteed in advance that one could breeze through one’s hearing with anecdotes from one’s childhood, skipping with laden head from one belief to another, from frogs to stones to flying machines, as often as a woman changes her hat (now where does that line come from?), then every petitioner would take up autobiography, and the court stenographer would be washed away in streams of free association.

She is before the gate again, before what is evidently her gate and hers alone, though it must be visible to anyone who cares to give her a glance. It is, as ever, closed, but the door to the lodge is open, and inside she can see the gatekeeper, the custodian, busy as usual with his papers, which ripple lightly in the air from the fan.
‘Another hot day,’ she remarks.
‘Mm,’ he mumbles, not interrupting his work.
‘It did not go well, I’m afraid, today.’
‘Mm.’
‘I know you are not a judge,’ she says. ‘Nevertheless, in your judgement, do I stand any chance of passing through? And if I do not pass through, if I am deemed not good enough to pass, will I stop here for ever, in this place?’
He shrugs. ‘We all stand a chance.’ he has not looked up, not once. Does that mean something? Does it mean he has not the courage to look her in the eye?
‘Do you see many people like me, people in my situation?’ she continues urgently, out of control now, hearing herself out of control, disliking herself for it. “In my situation”: what does that mean? What is her situation? The situation of someone who does not know her own mind?
The man behind the desk has evidently had enough of questions. He lays down his pen, folds his hands, regards her levelly. ‘All the time,’ he says. ‘We see people like you all the time.’

eat, pray, love

2009-03-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

[Excerpt] by Elizabeth Gilbert

“… I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over him is because I seriously believed George was my soul mate.”

“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so that you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is you just can’t let this one go. It over, sugar. George’s purpose was to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you HAD to transform your life. That was his job, and he did great, but now its over. Problem is, you can’t accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just lickin’ at an empty tin can trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.”

“But I love him.”

“So love him.”

“But I miss him.”

“So miss him. You’re just afraid to let go of the last bits of George because then you’ll really be alone, and you’re scared to death of what will happen if you’re really alone.”

“But I just wish me and George could –“

He cuts me off. “See, now that’s your problem. You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”

This line gives me the first laugh of the day.

i arise today

2009-03-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

by Saint Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the three-ness,
Through the confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the Judgment Day.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

the sacred journey

2009-01-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by Frederick Buechner 1982

memory is more than a looking back to a time that is not longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still.
the people we loved. the people who loved us. the people who, for good or ill, taught us things.

dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us – and through them we come to understand ourselves – in new ways too.

who knows what ‘the communion of saints’ means, but surely it means more than just that we are all of us haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew, not just echoes of voices that have years since ceased to speak, but said in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us.

they have their own business to get on with now, I assume – ‘increasing in knowledge and love of thee’ says the book of common prayer, and moving ‘from strength to strength,’ which sounds like business enough for anybody – and one imagines all of us on this shore fading for them as they journey ahead towards whatever new shore may await them; but it is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours.

that is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. if they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, nor are they by any means always things we expect or the same things.

each in his own tongue

2009-01-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by William Herbert Carruth

A fire-mist and a planet,--
A crystal and a cell,--
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod,--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite, tender sky,
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high,--
And all over the upland and lowland
The charm of the goldenrod,--
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in,--
Come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod,--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,--
A mother starved for her brood,--
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathways plod,--
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.

spaces in togetherness

2008-12-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

by Khalil Gibran

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

by Henry Nouwen

… we are encouraged to explore our communicative capacities and experiment with many forms of physical, mental and emotional contact, we are sometimes tempted to believe that our feelings of loneliness and sadness are only a sign of lack of mutual openness.

Sometimes this is true and many sensitivity centers make invaluable contributions to the broadening of the range of human interactions. But real openness to each other also means a real closeness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge.

When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community. It is this inner mystery that attracts us to each other and allows us to establish friendship and develop lasting relationships of love.

An intimate relationship between people not only asks for mutual openness, but also for mutual respectful protection of each other’s uniqueness.

i know you love me

2008-12-07T07:07:00.000-08:00

by Henry Nouwen

What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is to allow the other person not to be God. Forgiveness says, "I know you love me, but you don't have to love me unconditionally, because no human being can do that."

We all have wounds. We all are in so much pain. It's precisely this feeling of loneliness that lurks behind all our successes,
that feeling of uselessness that hides under all the praise, that feeling of meaninglessness even when people say we are fantastic—that is what makes us sometimes grab onto people and expect from them an affection and love they cannot give.

If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, "Love me!" and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one another—not once in a while, but every moment of life. Before you have had your breakfast, you have already had at least three opportunities to forgive people, because your mind is already wondering, What will they think about me? What will he or she do? How will they use me?

To forgive other people for being able to give you only a little love—that's a hard discipline. To keep asking others for forgiveness because you can give only a little love—that's a hard discipline, too. It hurts to say to your children, to your wife or your husband, to your friends, that you cannot give them all that you would like to give. Still, that is where community starts to be created, when we come together in a forgiving and undemanding way.

captain corelli's mandolin

2008-11-30T07:02:00.000-08:00

[Excerpt] by Louis de Berniers

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

(Your mother and I) had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

a woebegone weakling

2008-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in prison)

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I?
This or the Other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

the hound of heaven

2008-08-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

[Excerpt] By Francis Thompson 1859–1907

Now of that long pursuit 155
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
‘And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! 160
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),
‘And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited— 165
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me? 170
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: 175
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 180
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

some country

2008-03-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

by michael phoya...

my Malawi is some country. strange it has taken me all these years to figure that out. and I want it. I want it all. just to feel it. to feel the simplicity and originality of the life. the timelessness feeling. the lack of hastiness. the hunger. the poverty. the dry seasons. the wet seasons.
the pain. the diseases. the genuine laughter. the cultural practices. the stupidity of the people. the lakes, especially lake Malawi. the rivers, especially the shire. the good roads. the bad roads. the November rains when the country plants its maize and the month of April when it harvests. the maize meals. the cassava meals. the stupid politicians. Blantyre. Lilongwe. the lakeshore road. the pompous Indians. the football matches. the moonlight dances. the wedding parades. the festivities. the 6th of July. the 3rd of march. the local music. the monkeys. the elephants. the national parks. the churches. the preachers. the traditional medicine. the upper class homes. the mosquito infested ponds near some homes. the clear leisure parks. I need mother Malawi. all of it. give me the so-called trash and I’ll gladly receive it.

big ben announces 12 noon and I don’t have anything to eat. two people sitting on top of the lion statue are sharing a sandwich. how do you sit on top of a lion? the truth is most things in this country feel fake to me. the people, the buildings, the life, the weather. especially the weather. I don’t want to die in this weather. I don’t want to be buried in this weather. will they even bury me? give me Malawi. give me the tropical weather and I’ll gladly sweat. give me the weather so hot and let me sweat even in my death. give me Malawi.

excerpt from 'nostalgia' in 'how you touched me, you'll never know' by michael phoya, 2008

2007-03-17T16:55:00.000-07:00