The Morning After– Chapin
Is there anything worse than a really bad hangover? Not like the noticeable but easily negotiated headache and sore eyes when you first wake up, you know, the hangover that can be washed away with a warm shower and some coffee. No, I am talking about the hangover that loiters and lingers; the one that sneers at all of your feeble attempts to remedy, absorbing and growing stronger with each attempt. The one that continues day, after day, weighing you down like a taut fanny pack of potatoes. Yeah, I am talking about THAT hangover…
Of course there are ‘worse’ things, I was speaking metaphorically, or perhaps it was rhetorically…? in any case, I am sure you catch my drift. This is how I have felt over the last week, hung over, rereading my post again and again, like an itch I can’t quite scratch, sifting through it like a bloodhound for any missed vowel or comma, a clunky phrase or tendentious declaration; really anything that could thrown back in my face. “AH HA! We got ya you little something or another!”
Do you want to know what I found? Layers and layers of ice, bricks and stones; reinforced steel and codified bones. It was lifeless... dead on arrival. It had no guts, no flesh, and no breath. Just posturing and shadows. Just posturing and shadows.
Now, to be sure, I think the substance of it remains defensible, but it was dressed in insecurity and fear, over sharing and pompousness. “Let me see how many names I can throw at you!” You know how many I had in there before I trimmed the fat? Six. SIX! Talk about posturing, sheesh. And could I have picked any more obscure and odd characters to mention? Maybe if I really tried, but I do I tell you them now? That’s just more names and jargon. Maybe I wanted to let you know that I knew who those kinds of eccentric figures are, and happened to know a little something something about what they were up to as well. Not too much, though, don't ask me to cite chapter and verse; all you will get is more posturing, more shadows. More names, more jargon.
“Well, you have read some of the stuff, but you honestly had not idea what the hell was going on, so you found someone else to dumb it down for us.” It sure sounded good though, man oh man. Wait, did it though? At least I managed to refrain from saying anything that was a blatant lie, perhaps only fudging a few of the details. So yay me, I guess? Who knows. I don't know.
Perhaps the idea was that if I could convince you that I was smart, I might actually feel it myself. But then again, I have tricked others and felt no different. My entire experience in higher education is riddled with futile attempts to reach brilliance, manifest beauty, and suffuse my life with meaning and purpose in a world that seems so indifferent to my desires. Absurdity abounds, to my left and my right, and no amount of posturing, no amount of turning and contorting can overcome such an affliction. “Maybe you aren’t working hard enough. Maybe you just aren’t smart enough. You should have studied criminal justice or became a lawyer like Dad and Grandpa.”
It’s a façade, one carefully manicured and sculpted to present a very specific picture, “I am not who I think I am, I am not who you think I am; I am who I think you think I am.” But it feels weird, like a solid rubber ball in the pit of my stomach. It's red, hot and has really sharp teeth. It just sits there. It doesn't move. It’s just there. (Even now I am manicuring, clipping and trimming, curating; posturing.) I have been shouting in the dark for so long, trying to give myself some kind of confidence that I have forgotten the sound of silence and the rhythm of stillness.
I can be argumentative, polemical and pretentious. I am positive that if someone else were to have written the same post verbatim, I might have laughed out loud, exclaiming, “okay Mr. big shot, good for you!” It’s all just posturing and shadows. But what was I supposed to do? I don't know what the heck poetry is, or what it means to interpret something poetically… I mean yeah, okay, I somewhat understand it intellectually, but I get the impression that isn’t the same thing as ‘getting poetry’, you know? I know philosophy though, at least some of its flash points and resting spots, so I write about that. It makes some sense, after all, I have been trained in this domain: “be more concise Tof, be more clear, Tof, say what you mean, Tof. Make sure you define this, distinguish that, connect this and show why that is different. Say this differently, don’t use I, be more formal, Tof….” On and on and on.
I feel like a middle manager at a corporation sometimes, or maybe a switchboard operator. The messages and meanings are coming in from all sides, but my only job is to connect this here, disconnect that over there, and do a little explaining and clarifying along the way. By my own estimation, I am not half bad at this kind of work. You throw out a concept like reason, I will tell you some of the historical ways it has been treated by Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes. More and more names; more and more posturing and shadows.
But if you ask me to create something of my own, say, write a poem, my face becomes pale, my stomach tightens, my breathing moves from my belly to my chest, and I begin to sweat. “Create something of my own?! You must be out of your mind.” Maybe my sense of, and aptitude for, creativity is limited; maybe it has been sealed and cauterized through all the criticisms of my philosophical work, through all my one on one meetings with professors telling me to cite my work, “where did you get this, who are you thinking of there”, so on and so on. “Do the work of a scholar, Tof, make this obvious and precise! You have to situate yourself in the conversation, otherwise no one is going to want to read your work; they wouldn't know what to do with it.” My voice, my experiences, my heartache and suffering have no place in my philosophical work. If they show up there, I am revealing just how much I have to learn. "Be dispassionate, be cold and calculated." I am not a philosopher; I don't want to be a philosopher....
I have been reading more poetry and listening to poets speak about poetry, though. I still don't really understand, but again, maybe understanding is the wrong way to approach it. If I try to understand it, I am going to fall back on my training: making distinctions, asking for clarification, checking for coherence. But then again I can’t help but think that poetry does not lack reason or logic, so it is not entirely futile to try and understand it intellectually. Indeed, one may turn to poetry for a very specific reason, following some kind of logical line for doing so, and justify its deployment as opposed to philosophy for some definitive reason, following some kind of logic. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that where I often see myself as a middle manager, a facilitator of connections, taking what is outside and connecting with something else external, poetry comes from within oneself. It is, from start to finish, evocative and visceral. The motivation to write, the sheer necessity to actualize some feeling or affect, more or less speaking it into existence: “I am hurting. I am insecure. I am confused, afraid and lonely. I am happy! I like that, that sucked, and that was rough.” It takes courage and guts to speak about yourself as you are, not some fictionalized version of who you want people to think you are. It takes a genuine human heart to refrain from posturing; to refuse to paint a pretty picture and narrate an honest lie. (Even now I am regretting writing this as I continue to curate, to posture. I don't know how this is going to come off. This sucks. Does it matter? I don't know.)
“Wait just a minute, though, are we talking about some kind of vulnerability? Drawing back the curtains and showing everyone how weak, feeble and insignificant you are? How human you are? Why in the hell would you do something like that, MAN!? If people know about all that shit, they will only use it to hurt you, or worse, ignore you all together, MAN. Moreover, then we lose the illusion that those things are ‘all in my head’, they aren’t ‘really real’, MAN. It is just your head playing tricks on you. If you say it out loud, if you breath life into it, you might actually make it ‘really real’. Bury that shit you coward, deal with it like a MAN. Perhaps just posture some more and cast a few more shadows, that's safe, pretentious but safe. Or better yet, just smile and wave… smile and wave.”
I don't know what is going on, so I posture and cast shadows so as to give the appearance that I do. Why? I don't know, I suppose it's easier than admitting that I am lost most of the time. I guess it is what I have seen from other colleagues over the years, until I got to St. John's. Plato would be disappointed. Something about images; something about authenticity or truth. I don't know what this piece of writing is, it scares me, but I was compelled to write (and have been compelled to curate, to posture some more), so much so that I didn't feel like there was a choice. It had to come out. It required breath. Ms. Diaz’s openness, and Ms. Hennegen’s response pierced through all of my posturing and shadows, reminding me how cold and lifeless my perceptions and writing have been. Stiff and inelastic: dead. I don't want to put a suit of armor on any more; I don't want to have to reach for my axe or dagger before class. I don't want to fight, but I also don't want to roll over and die. I don't know if I can stop. It is immediate and spontaneous. Quite the ego trip indeed, or is it the superego? I don't know, Freud kind of confuses me. More names, more posturing.
I also don't want to lose the philosophical insights; indeed, I stand behind them (or they stand behind me), for it has brought me so much joy and delight, it brought me to all of you, but it has also brought me so much pain and despair. How can I leap outside of such thinking while at the same time remain tethered to it, even if only loosely? There is a balance somewhere lurking, between the ineffable and beside the enunciated, where one knows when to speak and when to shut up. But where is this line? When do I analyze and when do I feel? Do I analyze in order to know when to analyze and when to feel, or do I feel when to analyze and when to feel? My head is starting to hurt, and my heart is starting to pound. The mere thought of sharing this is terrifying (still is (still is)). But at least I am not posturing and creating shadows.. Wait, no, that is exactly what I am doing, just in a different way… I can’t seem to stop. oh well, maybe it is unavoidable. After all, to live requires that one is oriented in some way, taking up some kind of posture (maybe not all orientations are postures), and our very existence brings about shadows on all sides.
Maybe I will just go sit for awhile, but then again my anxious mind keeps goading me on. “Psh, you are going to sit? Okay, bud, I’m going to go to the bathroom, I will be right back.”
But wait, what about Dōgen?
What about Dōgen indeed.
If I thought the last hangover was bad, I had better buckle in, because this is going to get weird. Even now I am hesitating to push that little orange button, "publish", anticipating the hangover to follow. Should I push it, or should I
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ReplyDeleteCorrected my misspelling of Ms. Hennegen's name.
DeleteOddly, there's no shame hereabouts on earth in not being wise. Public, social, searing shame is reserved for not knowing. Ignorance is mocked. Kindness is ignored. (That distinguishes knowledge from wisdom. Knowledge is to be stored; wisdom is to be shed. Knowledge is held onto for dear life and later use. Wisdom is blithely abandoned to make room for more wisdom.)
ReplyDeleteFrom year to year, I subscribe to the New York Review of Books. I'm most amazed by the articles about 14th century Italian art. Interest in the non-famous artists, the less-than-Banksy types, of seven centuries ago is the perfection of intellectualism: hoping to be prized for knowing more than anyone else about a subject. That's knowledge in a nutshell. (Not Shakespeare's, who said, "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space.")
Ms. Hennegen's lately posted poem quotes her friend saying, "All bad poetry is sincere."
Sincerity muffles shame, doesn't it? Once public approbation is removed, I can move on to wisdom, my somewhat careless inside-out exploration.
The mind of wisdom might be located in the belly more than in the cranium. The cranium brain is still necessary for picking out the views to be developed into a wise idea. But the work of developing, fixing, and printing the finished, wise picture is all done in the belly. It's a creative dynamo. My mind finds the food. My belly digests it. Poetry with its mundane imagery reminds me that I'm always just eating, and after my belly's empty I'll need to eat again later. A consequence of digesting food or wisdom is making room for more.
Neal, as always this is great stuff. Just a few thoughts, or rather questions… There are a lot, so feel free to pick and choose, if you are inclined to respond.
DeleteI think the first thing you mentioned is an astute observation. I suppose I had never realized (or did but didn't give it much thought) that people are not chastised or denigrated for not being wise. Although I have to admit that I am not entirely sure what wisdom means without some degree of knowledge. Indeed, if wisdom is devoid or empty of knowledge, or at least the paradigmatic characteristics of knowledge, I am not sure what it means, as it would seem to mark a drastic departure from more conventional understandings of wisdom in the West. Obviously we are not talking about the West here, so maybe that is okay, but I still have to wonder what wisdom is; is it simply the ability to let go, whereas knowledge is the urge to hold on? Is knowledge synonymous with information gathering? Does all knowledge always come with the desire to have more than someone else, that is, is it always a competitive endeavor, or is this maybe an effect of the infusion of a capitalist ideology into our intellectual discourses? Moreover, is wisdom devoid of the same feature of wanting to be wiser than someone else? If so, how? I can well imagine the same competitive mindset just in the opposite direction, where we race to see who can forget more.
I am certainly in the same boat with regard to 14th century Italian art. I don't find it particularly stimulating, but I am sure there are people who do. Or is your thought that their only interest in it is the pretense to knowledge, the desire to know more than anyone else? Can't someone be genuinely interested in those kinds of things, and acquire a good deal of information about it, without the additional desire to know more than anyone else? In my experience, knowledge is incredibly useful for a nice evening with friends and a bottle or two of wine, where you kick around ideas for hours. This is actually one of my favorite things to do, just sit and talk about ideas, and I always find that the more knowledge I have, the more interesting the conversations are. To be sure, there are times where it seems like some people (including myself) are competing (mostly when I am at academic conferences), but the very best conversations are when this does not happen, and it is just a free exchange of ideas without any competition for who knows more.
I also wonder what you think about knowledge in the practical or political domain? Is wisdom useful in these domains? Are we supposed to shuck all knowledge in those domains? What kind of political situation are we dealing with in the absence of knowledge? Maybe I am misunderstanding you as to how far we are supposed to go with ridding ourselves of knowledge, but I cannot help but think that knowledge is incredibly important in a political and practical domain, especially given the political situation we are in right now. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that we need more wisdom and less knowledge in the political nexus, but I would be curious to know how you think that would play out. How are we supposed to combat misinformation, conspiracy theories and flat out lies and falsity with wisdom? In other words, is wisdom a private or a public endeavor?
Having worked for St. John's switchboard for two years, I found myself smiling at the analogy you draw between the work of the operator and the current mode of philosophising in academia -- very apt.
ReplyDeleteAfter four years in Beijing, realizing something significant was missing from my education, I came to SJC in 2016 for a second B.A. The few philosophy courses I took in my previous education introduced me, in very broad strokes, to some important names and their "theories". And then of course in my freshman seminar I brought up Kant and Kierkegaard when we were discussing freedom and reason. One of my seminar tutors commented in my first don rag "sometimes she doesn't seem to know how our seminars work!"
Thinking back on it, I did that partly because those names were important frames of reference for my thinking, partly because I imagined I partook their glory by standing behind them. The latter, I guess it is a perfect example of "attachment" we are discussing in other threads, seemed to have turned personal, real, intimate, and meaningful encounters with ideas into bricks of books I carry along on my back which I could hurl at others ：）I need to watch vigilantly to this day whether I am carrying book bags.
I hope your hangover has relented at last. Perhaps you will like this -- here is an interview about poetry that has touched me dearly:
https://soundcloud.com/user-742772050-264517564/episode-11-experimentalism-in-poetry-maggie-mcguinness
Ms. Yang, this is great, really great. Thanks so much for your comments. I have just a few thoughts that were prompted by your post.
DeleteI want to take this opportunity to think with you a bit about the idea that we should not bring in outside thinkers or ideas to our conversations. I suppose I simply do not understand this sentiment. I can see how it makes sense in a freshman seminar, but in a graduate one, where many of the students have, presumably, read a great deal of philosophy, literature, poetry etc., it makes less sense to me. Indeed, I cannot help but bring other thinkers and ideas to the table, so is the idea that I am just supposed to not say that I am thinking about, say, Aristotle’s conception of poetry, or is the idea that I am not even supposed to consider his or any other person’s conception of whatever topic we are discussing? If so, I honestly do not see how that is possible. It seems as if I am being asked to forget all of the tools and methods I have learned, and approach a text with a blank mind. In other words, it seems like I am being asked to have original ideas or thoughts about a certain idea or topic without relying on anyone or anything else. If this is the case, I see no way of affirming this as an actual possibility. I cannot tell where my thoughts begin and someone else’s end. Even if I were under the impression that I was approaching it with a ‘fresh mind’, I cannot help but think that I would nevertheless bring my ‘baggage’ with me. Moreover, there have been may times in my life where someone mentions another thinker or idea that is not part of what is being currently discussed that seemed to make a big difference in my understanding, and prompted me to go and read that person’s work for myself. In any case, I suppose I am just confused by this idea and wonder if you have any insights on it, because for the last however many months, this has stumped me…
I love the imagery of bags of books as bricks that we throw at people. Admittedly I am guilty of this, but I wonder if it always has to be this way. Do my bags of books always have to manifest as bricks, or could they rather be flowers that I sincerely extend to others? There may actually be times, though, where I prefer a brick to a flower, but as a general rule this might not work so well. Furthermore, I have not found a good way in which I can leave my bags of books behind. In a certain sense, they have become so embodied that to leave them behind would be to leave myself behind, which might actually be a favorable idea. But for us, in a seminar setting, where we are discussing books, I see no advantage to leaving my books at the door; indeed, I need them to help me think through what we are reading. There is no mindset or perspective that I can take that is impartial, that is without my books, when we are discussing books. Perhaps as you suggest, we simply have to be really careful that when we reach into our book bags, we are grabbing flowers and not bricks.
Okay, so the link you sent was AMAZING. Honestly, it was probably one of the most insightful things I have encountered in awhile. St. John’s is lucky to have her around. So thank you so much for sharing it. She explained poetry in a way that was easily understandable for me, but her take seems… potentially controversial? I think she even admits as much, where many people think that poetry is primarily if not exclusively some kind of self-expression. Instead, her outline of ‘experimentalism’ is an incredibly interesting one to consider, especially when we are thinking about Dōgen, as it seems that poetry as self-expression is, at least on a conventional understanding of self-expression, out of the question for him. Instead, what I took her to mean was that the kind of poetry she was interested in was in line with a kind of poiesis, or the process whereby something is newly created or brought into being, even if the parts with which the creation happens are old. This way of thinking about poetry, as a method by which we strain our terms and concepts to the point where they have no choice but to collapse or dramatically reconfigure themselves is, to my mind, a very promising path forward, and again, one that seems to work really well when thinking about Dōgen. However, one of my lingering questions is whether this kind of process is confined only to poetry, or whether there are other methods by which this can occur too, and I am specifically thinking about philosophy. If it is confined only to poetry, I would love to know why, and if not, in what way poetry might succeed in ways that other avenues fail, and vice versa. In any case, this was really REALLY helpful.
DeleteTof! I'm only now getting to read your blog post. You have "dared greatly" my friend (to use Brene Brown's phrase) and it was an incredibly refreshing post to read. There is so much "knowledge", "wisdom", "interpretation", "repetition" in the world and so little reality, it feels to me. You gave a glimpse into reality through your post. To me, reality is who we are, what keeps us up at night, what drives us, what knocks us on our ass, where did we win?...lose?...whatever. It's the substance at the bottom of the pot that you have to reach the ladle down to stir up and mix with the rest of the soup. It seems to be made of an ever growing list of ingredients: information we've gathered from others whether through reading, conversation, or what our own parents told us growing up, the experiences we've had all through life and how we reacted or felt about the things that have been done to us and the things we've done, and the ways we may have modified any one of those things along the way. We are constantly picking up new bits of information and adding them to our tool chest, sometimes just stacking them on top the other bits or replacing the old bit with the new. Either way, we are just soup. I can read Aristotle or Plato, or Kierkegaard and Kant, but I will never know them. Not like I have the opportunity to know you. I can memorize and regurgitate their carefully thought out and edited words, but what about the things they didn't talk about? The stuff that made them soup. What I, personally, cherish most about our little Dogen group is that each one of us is our own ingredient and we've come together to create a new tasting dish that we all get to swim around in and discover newness in each other, in ourselves, and in our unique conglomerate. But it requires that we bring ourselves, all of ourselves. When one person does not add their ingredient to the soup, it lacks. Sometimes, we need help discovering our own flavor and that's what I love about the EC in particular. I'm using the ideas I find here as guides to discover more of my own flavor and how can I offer that to the world. As I discover new flavors within myself, I toss some into the soup and see what happens. Sometimes it tastes good, sometimes not. Either way...its cool. I've grown. I've inspired (hopefully) someone else to offer their ingredient, and I've lived. It's scary. Sometimes I chicken out and hold back. But the greatest reward I've ever experienced has been when I've encountered something new in myself, bravely offered it, and realized it was fruitful. Your blog post is that of legends....stay legendary!
ReplyDeleteFor anyone interested in a great TedTalk on the power of vulnerability from a scientific perspective and the way humans actually think about someone who is "daring greatly."
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/iCvmsMzlF7o
After going back and watching the TedTalk on vulnerability, I remember that her follow up on Shame was the one that impacted me even more than the first. The Vulnerability talk is a great intro, and the talk on Shame was where she talked about "daring greatly" so a bit more practical. Here it is:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/psN1DORYYV0
Fantastic post, and great discussion. Is this not a beautiful example of the self "being turned by things"? -- or realizing that "something is missing" when filled by dharma? In "The Time-Being" there is this formulation: "Just actualize all time as all being; there is nothing extra. A so-called"extra being" is thoroughly an extra being. Thus, the time-being half-actualized is half of the time-being completely actualized, and a moment that seems to be missed is also completely being. In the same way, even the moment before or after the moment that appears to be missed is also complete-in-itself the time-being. Vigorously abiding in each moment is the time-being. Do not mistakenly confuse it as nonbeing. Do not forcefully assert it as being." I understand this as saying something like: Even a discovery of half-realization is a full discovery of half-realization. One's feelings of inadequacy or dissatisfaction, if written up by a Proust or a Joyce, become adequate inadequacies and satisfying dissatisfactions. Wherever we are, we are wholly there and nowhere else.
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