On Humility

You can only do what you can do, at any given time. To take the blame is actually a form of spiritual pride. What you can do will often lead to trouble: to suffering, as Buddhists say. All actions have causes and conditions attending them. But the past is becoming more populated, taking energy from the future, apparent only in silhouette.

Politics, which is the matter of the city —more lately the nation, or latterly the world — is crossed by ancient hierarchies curated by modern fears. Is innocence the same as ignorance? Is ignorance the same as guilt? When you’re innocent you’re harmless, but ignorance is typically harmful. And the foolish are lost with the wise. When the matter of the world is harmful, is anyone innocent? Lack of knowledge isn’t lack of harm: quite the contrary. The Biblical nations were empires and cultures of dominance led by Victory, goddess of triumph and glory. She is, however, accompanied by slavery and desolation; it all depends on who you’re talking to. You can only do what you can do, and do it without motivation. Justice is the virtue that gives back to everything that which belongs to it. 

On Looking Again

 

What are you doing, and why are you doing it? Where have you been, and where are you going? You sure you want to go there? Who were you with, and what were they after? Look again.

Looking at this dinner, which seems so small: if you had anorexia, it would look huge. Could you see differently? It might be just the right size. You could apply this to other sizes, too. Too is in fact the problem. Too short, too tall, too round or straight. Too old, or too little. For what cause? I was asked by a poll what kind of life I’d want. Their choice. Adventurous, exciting; secure, taken care of; well-rewarded, important; family first; prosperous, having everything. I said I want an interesting life, but that wasn’t on their list. You couldn’t choose compassion, art, friendship, or contemplation. Look again.

It’s a mystical work to look from differing perspectives. Turn a person or event around like a sculpture in your mind. Turn whole years around. Turn around what you’re doing, how and why. Look at back and front, left and right, above, below. Find a strange point of view. Then do something new.

On Sweeping Away

 

Walking my dog on a street I see once a month I find demolition. Here was a fairy dell, a green deeply shaded path now levelled to a house-block. Machines at work scissoring the ground, where the hard-hats scurry to make a living. Something sold to destruction. Coasting through the city, towering walls of offices, cranes atop, whole streets grind out continuous transformation. Ghosts of sites removed with hardly power to haunt.

Are we the same? How vintage will we become? We might be classic cars, taken for a spin on Sundays. A little shredded, sleeves unthreaded, lacking gloss and shine and shiver. The ghost of past life acts powerfully from its resting-place.

 Can we forgive our gods their weaknesses? Cycling and recycling station and vocation, we scarce catch up with our coattails, sweeping away with leaves on the porch, revolving through sects and checks and balances, of histories as well as books. Vanity is all, saith the preacher.

Yet vintages grow in the vineyards, daily bread is broken, birds nest in the mustard tree. The man who’s painting my house waits for his wife to give birth. I’m serious: the house needs a coat of paint.

On Decisiveness

 

The great choreographer George Balanchine, teaching his company class, would often say, “Do it NOW.” Execute the step now, improve now, don’t stand around waiting to get better: do it now. This method produced dancers reflexively fast, responding in decisive movement. The kiss of the moment is embodied in the words “do it now”.

Decisiveness implies frugality of action. How many things that are mutually exclusive do you try to do at one time? Decide on only one. Reduce choice, until you arrive at the truly necessary. Then abandon regret. Martha had decided feeding her honoured guests was most important; for Mary it was listening to Christ, who commended her. Was Martha’s choice wrong? No, but she cannot then complain about it. Christ was also her guest. She puts the dinner on the table: do it now.

We regret many things that however are passed. You’re not going to get over it. You won’t move on. You can’t leave it behind you. Mistakes are a companion of every life. Go to the cemetery; bring an armload of silk flowers to the dead. See how the choices you make today will mark your memory. Decide. Do it now.

On Present Comfort

A time of solitary reflection meets with recollection. An opaque future can lead to an illuminated past. I want to go beyond my substantial collection of regrets, because I have the gift of regretting almost everything I’ve done from the age of three. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time; being the wrong person; saying the wrong thing. Everlasting responsibility.

 Some things from the past, though, may be for present comfort. I dig them out. Who was I, before all this happened? I find my paper dolls, so pretty and talented. (And hand-coloured, my earliest artistic effects). My comics, buried at the bottom of the cupboard: I read them again. My books: The Princess and the Goblin, with her marvellous ancient grandmother (a good reason not to fear old age); Alice, who always asks the next logical question (“Who in the world am I?”); the Tailor of Gloucester, with No More Twist. Peanut butter cookies, chocolate pudding, and my cousins’ cardamom bread. Skipping rope; trying to fly (broken arm: don’t try this again). There’s a world there, with you still in it. The Kingdom of God is like a little child. What do you still have at home? 

On Space Abounding

 

There are spaces I no longer enter, or if I do, I’m a different person than before. Maybe nobody goes there, as public space contracts. Or does the space expand when there’s nobody in it? So many places are quickly and quietly slipping from our grasp.

Locked down, locked in, locked up. All locks presuppose a key, and most locks take a preposition. Lockout, of course. Locked under, or over. Lockable, or unlockable: allocating and demarcating space.

The key to eternal space is within, but can be found. This space is summoned by music, spacious embracing sound; or by a picture, gracious space you enter at will; or precious stories you follow to miraculous destinations.

 There are people of ill will who question every space-regarding step. Maybe you need your outer space restricted to save your life. Walking abroad in places of danger, times of danger too, reflects on engagement of space with time. Time temporal; time spiritual; time tending and extending. A time to embrace space.

What is loving towards us; why are we loving? When are we surrounded with space full of grace? Who is ever giving fair emptiness? Where is most noble space abounding?

On Half Measures.

I’m half the size I ought to be, although my shape is twice the size; not like the dog who’s half the size she thinks she is, and twice the fight. Since half presupposes the whole, what happens to the missing half? Under stress, we might cut everything in half. It can work, but only in some ways.

This leads to decisions. How do you go about reducing decisions to half? We could have half the number of problems. Take in half as much ambient knowledge. Expect half as much. Be only half as competitive, maybe half contemplative for a change. Half and half.

 Just as every word in the dictionary can hurt someone, nearly every word can be made to profit someone. This is how words lose half their value. The rest is in someone’s pocket.

Failure is simply your discovery of another way to not do things, and hence is morally neutral. Any connection between your goodness and success in your enterprises is fiction. Half as many failures won’t create double the results.

In plague times, you need all the halves to restore health: half measures won’t do. And justice, by its nature, can only be whole.