The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou Shalt Not writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black growns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

-William Blake, Songs of Experience

Currently Listening Queen - Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 &2 By Queen see related

I like to think my mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I understand now more than ever the terrible addictive agitation Sherlock Holmes experienced between cases. Though I am not likely to resort to a seven percent solution to my inoccupation, I understand the desperate need to escape, to throw myself into some kind of enigma, some engaging problem. To mentally stagnate is like death to me.  

I am updating quickly, because I need to get back into the habit of writing to work myself back into a routine of which will keep my brain working. The following is a list of goals for this summer which I hope will not be lost in the atrophy and apathy which has descended upon me from the dark long hours I spend working in the service industry:

1. Submit my article “The Child and the King: Solomon and Ernesto in Duras’ Summer Rain” for publication
2. Study for the GREs
3. Teach myself more Greek
4. Listen to audio courses on
1. Theory of Mind
2. Systems of Argumentation
5. Earn enough money to return to university
6. Write more on Xanga
7. Visit as many cemeteries as possible
8. Write something creative
9. Research schools in South Africa for next Spring term
10. Read some Levinas
11. Get a bloody date (finally)
    

If I achieve any 5 of these this summer, I will almost certainly have elevated myself from these intellectual doldrums. But I anticipate an excellent term this fall. My courses are: 

1. The Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Text Seminar
2. Historical Fictions, Fictional Histories: Honors Projects Class
3. Dante’s Inferno
4. Human Rights
5. Culture and Method: Theory and Interpretation

And to satiate my compulsive desire to list things, the contents of my satchel are the following:

1. A crumpled copy of last Thursday’s newspaper
2. A packet of pens (I am terrified of opening them. I lose pens and these pens are far too good for anything I am likely to write—it would be like using a Rolls Royce to run to the town dump.)
3. A distressed paperback copy of C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed
4. A copy of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart with 100-odd post it notes scrawled with inane comments in my handwriting
5. At least six dollars worth of sticky nickels and pennies
6. My student ID
7. More post its with notes from Human, All Too Human
8. A mechanical pencil with no lead
9. A tea bag
10. A ticket stub from Indiana Jones
11. A thumb tack (ouch)
12. Oh yes. And The Best of Queen

Better writing always lies on my horizon. I will post again before long, though heaven forbid it be more lists.

Yours,
Rebekah

______________________________________

* Not being prone to depression, I often do not recognize it. One sure sign, however, is a predilection for purchasing Queen CDs. Which is strange, since I cannot bear to listen to Queen when I am depressed, but I never buy them when I am cheerful. An odd cycle.

A RANT: Why is everything so damn interconnected?!

Currently Reading Being and Time By Martin Heidegger see related

The Words of the Dark Angel: A Poem and Meditations

“There is nothing to know above the pillars of the earth
Where the airy spirits stagnate:
No holy wind kisses their blind brows;
They neither come nor go,
And with insensible eyes
They watch the same skies,
Unseeing, still, in a holy embryo.
Only fallen angels have wings.”

A truth haunts the fundamental ontology of Being and Time, a truth perhaps even deeper for Dasein, the human being, than any of the structures which Heidegger gives a concrete presence in his book. The shadow of this truth is revealed when he discusses equipment. We take a tool (or a piece of equipment) and measure its weight, fancying that weight is the objective aspect of the hammer while its use to us is somehow a tertiary, incidental and projected reality. 

Weight itself is projected—even subjective, in a sense. Heidegger shatters our precious dreams of objectivity, teaches us that science only reveals the world around us in light of the kinds of beings that we are. Every human activity, even the “objective” sciences, paints an unrecognized and uncanny self-portrait of humanity. The sciences are a mirror in which we fancy we behold nature as it simply exists, when what it reveals are those parts of nature which concern us, those entities which appear in light of our projects. We only know a hammer as “weight” because a hammer can be too heavy or too light for us. All weight, in fact, is only known because we are frail and fragile beings, struggling in a world that resists us: a world in which thorns choke out our crops, a world in which we are vulnerable to harm, a world in which other human beings can deny us.

Our tender vulnerability and impotent mortality may seem tragedy enough, but this is but the satellite of a stronger, greater truth, a truth rooted in the brute fact of being what we are: Dasein, or Being-there. Only because of the possibility of no longer being there do we understand ourselves—only in the “possibility of the impossibility of our being,” which ordinary mortal terror has named, simply, “death,” is knowledge of ourselves even possible. 
 

Human knowledge is built upon this morbid foundation; this is our paradox and our tragedy. When knowledge is granted, human beings realize of the futility of all their endeavors, including the pursuit of knowledge itself. Knowledge, like a human embryo, contains the secret not only its own flourishing but also of its own death. This is the truth of Solomon, who became so wise there has never been anyone else like him. What glory did his knowledge bring him? Did not the eyes of the queen of Sheba or the adulation of the ancient world bring Solomon joy in his wisdom? No, he became the tormented teacher of Ecclesiastes, and cries, “In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”* Solomon was brought not into wholeness but into fissure, into destruction—the path of human knowledge. The original break in the human wholeness, the first temptation, was to knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. 

       Only without knowledge is innocence possible.

“Those who have never known holiness, will never know sin;
Only those who have fallen
Have perfect knowledge:
Knowledge of good and evil,
Knowledge of the god.”

The serpent in Eden did not lie—Eve’s eyes were indeed opened, and she saw herself for the first time through the possibility of no longer being, of her “ownmost possibility,” her death. Her immortality was consumed, and from its ashes arose corrupted knowledge, mortal potentiality—a shattered kind of freedom. In truth, we have more in common with the fallen than with angels or with gods. This is the truth Crazy Jane twisted to the Bishop when she raved, “Love has pitched his mansion in the seat of excrement 
. . . /Nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent.”** She echoes and distorts this truth: “Nothing can be known as whole/That you have not already rent.” 

The prosaic cliché, “You don’t know what you have until its gone,” contains the DNA of the entire human tragedy. Consult your own heart to see if it be true: only in parting do you truly know what a person means to you; only when you are broken do you realize what it is to be whole; only in abandonment do you realize your own dependence. All these are tributary, ontical facts that lead back to the spring of original, ontological truth: only because you can conceive of your death, that greatest breakdown of the human world, can you think of being who and what you are. Everything we human beings know appears in the light of a dying sun, a flame that consumes what it reveals. 

We hold our courts in temples of shattered glass, and our crowns are won at the expense of paradise.

 “Those who never knew sanctity, cannot guess at desecration,
Only a worm cannot fall,”
The dark angel said with an ancient smile
An apple resting in
The palm of his hand.

* Ecclesiastes 1:18, KJV
** “Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop,” by William Butler Yeats. 

Endnotes:
-The lines in italics are my own.
-This essay is a short version of a lengthier piece. It is my attempt to encapsulate in brief, lyrical writing thoughts which have been plaguing me in my studies this term. The longer version contains more Heidegger, a riff about language and the mystical, and references to Moby Dick. Feedback is, as always, cherished. Oh, and I apologize for the Heidegger; I tried to make the essay not presuppose any prior knowledge of this particularly difficult philosopher.
-I would like thoughts on my use of images. They were a last-minute addition, and I am generally ambivalent about merging image and text without careful thought. Do they add to the entry or are they distracting? Do they telegraph my meaning or do they have a meaningful relationship with the text?
-You may notice a motif of the Garden of Eden running through my blog for awhile. Blame my re-reading Good Omens, my fixation on German philosophy and my general addiction to biblical cadence, if you must.                          

Doctors of Philosophy say the Darnest Things . . .