Protected: FOR THOSE LIKE GALILEO
February 6, 2020 at 1:31 pm ("Directive", Alexander the Great, Archimandrite Seraphim Bit Haribi, Aristotle, Breugel, Buddhism, Canal de Bourgogne, Chogyam Trungpa, Copernicus, Dawn potter, Edna St Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, G.F.Handel, Galileo Galilei, Galileo's Secret, Gary B. Fitzgerald, God Particle, Higgs' Boson, House Arrest, Icarus, Il Gioiello, Immanuel Kant, J.S.Bach, Jay Parini, La Gioiella, Leo Tolstoy, Mike Shanahan, Musee des Beaux Art, Othello, peniche, Primo Levi, Renascence, Robert Frost, Ross Gay, Shakespeare, Sonya Tolstoy, Stanley Kunitz, Strangler Fig, The Bo Tree, The Creation of Eve, The Fall of Icarus, The Last Station, The Wizard of Oz, W.F.Kammann, W.H.Auden, William Blake)
Protected: IN PRAISE OF THE STILL UNWEIGHED: Off the Record at Eighty.
November 25, 2019 at 2:10 pm ("Directive", Albert Einstein, Alexandra Henneberry, Ashdown Forest Hotel, Australian Aborigines, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bicycle Rebellion, Bill Monroe, Blog:Harriet, Botero, C.S.Lewis, Catherine Jean, Central Park, Cern, Chogyam Trungpa, Christopher Woodman, Cosmology, Dante, Dawn potter, Delia Woodman, Denise Levertov, Elinor White, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, F.R.Leavis, Foetry, Galileo Galilei, Galileo's Secret, Gary B. Fitzgerald, George Steiner, George Yeats, God Particle, Guns Germs and Steel, Heisenberg, Heloise, Higgs' Boson, Hilary Mantel, Homprang Chaleekanha, House Arrest, I.A. Richards, Il Gioiello, Innishmore, James C. Scott, James Laughlin, Jane Eyre, Jared Diamond, Jay Parini, Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Rhys, Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Cornell, Joseph Parisi, Julija Lebedeva, Kenyon Review, La Croix Ma Fille, Lee Sharkey, Leo Tolstoy, Leonard Cohen, Lou Andres-Salome, Marilyn Hacker, Nan Shepherd, Nils Bohr, Peter Abelard, Philip Larkin, Plato, Prophet Samson, Pushcart Prize, Pw.org, Ranier Maria Rilke, Relics, Robert Bly, Robert Frost, Samson, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Sir Stanley Spencer, Sophia Woodman, Stephen Daedalus, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George, T.E.Lawrence, The Big Bang, W.F.Kammann, W.H.Auden, Werner Heisenberg, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Winslow Homer)
LA-CROIX-MA-FILLE!
March 21, 2018 at 1:02 pm (Christopher Woodman, Dawn potter, Delivery, Julija Lebedeva, La Croix Ma Fille, Le Croisic, Prophet Samson, Relics)
[You can click your way right onto Julija’s desk in Baan Uii Dee.]
It’s three months later and Julija is back, and I’m writing what follows as much for her as for you and me. Because we’re all working on this project together, though Julija’s Latvian, of course — Russian is her first language, Latvian her second, lives in Norway and was brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church, all powerful influences on her work. Today Julija’s desk is no longer under the volcano on Bali as it was before but up here on the porch of one of our old wooden farmhouses in Chiang Mai where she’s working on the first draft of a cover for La-Croix-Ma-Fille. If you click on the sketch you can see in detail what’s emerging, an illuminated vision every bit as fey yet as final as the book’s last words:
……………………………………..grâce à la croix,
……………………………………..grâce à la fille,
……………………………………..fleurs de sel,
……………………………………..delivery.
…………….
PERSONAL NOTE: Please, please don’t worry about the French — indeed, if you don’t speak French the lines may well say more to you than if you do. Because French phrases and place-names have come to have an almost sacred quality in the anglophone imagination, like “je t’aime” and “Côte d’Azur” for example — or for gourmands at least, “sauté,” “vinaigrette” and, most beautifully and appropriately of all, “fleurs de sel.” In my experience, poetic phrases based on subliminal, polyglot fantasies come more out of the shadows of the heart than the light of the head, indeed, they resonate magically like Shanti Shanti Shanti and Amen — in silence, or in tongues, or under the bed.
And be honest with yourselves. Which word in the above lines do you really not understand? Is it by any chance “Delivery?” . Well, me neither — which is why the whole book not only got written but still matters!
C.
…………………………..
SOME NOTES FOR JULIJA
“La-Croix-Ma-Fille!” is the local nick-name for a 170 year old stone memorial just outside the Breton fishing village of Le Croisic. The cross stands alone on the cliffs of the Côte Sauvage high above one of the most dangerous lee-shores on the whole north-west coast of France — which is why the title is in French as well as why the love story that runs through it is set there.
But what makes these rocks particularly menacing is that they are right beside the entrance to Le Traict du Croisic ( = “the tract, area, sand flats of Le Croisic”), one of the safest havens for storm-tossed mariners on the whole of the Brittany coast but extremely difficult to get into in heavy weather. And that’s the terrible irony, because as the mariner-poet runs for the perfect shelter behind the breakwater he takes the risk of being dashed on the rocks just on the other side of his salvation, and many widows have been made in one last desperate effort to avert that all too familiar disaster. Like the tides of life, half a dozen of one equals six of the other — and of course that applies to any dangerous crossing what is more love story like this one.
The stone cross in question was erected as a memorial to a much loved daughter who died on the rocks below on August 7th, 1845 — its inscription reads simply, À MA FILLE/ 7 AOUT/ 1845. Over time the local people have realized that this solitary, wind-swept cross has come to have a life of its own, and that it’s power resides in the mysterious phrase, “la-croix-ma-fille.” Indeed, this tragic stone cross has become a sort of magical ‘hex’ or ‘totem’ for the Le Croisic community, a ‘spirit house’ one might even call it (‘hôtel’ in French also means ‘altar’ in English). Whatever, the local people know that what they now call La-Croix-Ma-Fille can reach out to their storm-bound loved ones as they struggle to stay off the terrible rocks below, that in the darkest moments its power guides and protects them like a lighthouse or an angel, and brings them safely home to the hearth in one piece.
“Fille,” of course, can mean either ‘daughter’ or ‘girl’ in French, just as “my girl” in English can mean ‘my daughter’ or ‘my girlfriend.’ So the expression, “la-croix-ma-fille,” just says “the cross my girl,” which is what it says in the title of the book as well as in Samson’s haiku at the beginning and in the long love-poem, “Fleurs de Sel,” right at the very end. And it’s that mystery which is at the heart of what Julija is trying to illustrate too (I like this attempt in particular — and this one because it’s by Samson which means it’s even closer to home…).
Perhaps it’s clearest of all at the very end of the poem called “La-Croix-Ma-Fille” — it’s Part IX of “Fleurs de Sel” which terminates the book. I’ve never put up this poem before, and have a feeling I’ll eventually chicken out and take it back home and look after it in silence for the rest of my life.
But in case I don’t, I just want to say that there’s a boat beached on the sand flats of the “Traict du Croisic” at low tide with four heavy anchors set out fore and aft, two off the ‘samson-post’ on the foredeck and two more off the post on the stern, the rush of the last outgoing tide having been as ferocious as that which will surge back from the opposite direction in just an hour or two more.
…..
……………………………..LA-CROIX-MA-FILLE!
………………………………….Relict fast on an alien strand
………………………………….flaked out like an idle rope—
…..
………………………………….the plaits loose in their tress,
………………………………….the cradled belly soft and toes
………………………………….uncleated, the cross of the limbs
………………………………….a hammock loosely swung between
………………………………….four great anchor posts dry but deep
………………………………….in the leavening sand where the gulls
………………………………….wait the turn like soft marbles
………………………………….disposed on a board of white leather
………………………………….worked to a maiden smoothness
………………………………….fresh, unstained, released from all
………………………………….the muscle loads and lust
………………………………….of the great beast that once in-
………………………………….habited that hide, the tongue
………………………………….cupped in the silent cavity
………………………………….of words all said and signed
………………………………….and thoughts a mirror sunk
………………………………….like the sea when it lies down
………………………………….in the sand to sleep, its blind might
………………………………….cupped in the great callused hands
………………………………….that lie half-closed, half-open—
………………………………….infant hands that once
………………………………….and once only water held
………………………………….and wash and wash
………………………………….like off-shore bells—
………………………………….grâce à la croix,
………………………………….grâce à la fille,
………………………………….fleurs de sel,
………………………………….delivery.
…………
I thank you for still being there, and ask that you continue to be gentle too,
Christopher
Protected: HOW BAD IS THE DEVIL?
December 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm (Albrecht Durer, Alexander the Great, Amira Willighagen, Arabella Wain, Aristotle, Artur Rimbaud, Australian Aborigines, C.S.Lewis, Carl Sagan, Carvaggio, Charlotte Bronte, Christopher Woodman, Cosmology, Courbet, D.H.Lawrence, Dante, Dawn potter, Dod Procter, Edna St Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, F.R.Leavis, Foetry, Galileo Galilei, God Particle, Goethe, Hawthorne, Heloise, Jay Parini, Jean Valentine, Karen Hollingsworth, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Caroll, Lillie Rose, Lucas Cranach, Mantegna, Pablo Neruda, Paul Gauguin, Peter Abelard, Petrarch, Philip Larkin, Piero de la Francesca, Raewyn Alexander, Rene Magriitte, Schopenhauer, Simone Weil, Sir Stanley Spenser, Stanley Kunitz, Susan Gilbert, T.S.Eliot, The Big Bang, The Last Station, W.F.Kammann, William Blake, William Butler Yeats)
ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR JOY
April 7, 2014 at 1:20 pm ("Directive", "Make it new", Alexander Pogosyan, Camille Claudel, Christopher Woodman, Cowpattyhammer, Daedalus, Dawn potter, Emily Dickinson, Félix Vallotton, Fenwick Lawson, Galileo, Gennadi Aygi, Isla Oronsay, Jeanne Hébuterne, Jonathan Sansom, Kate Leiper, magpies, Modigliani, Nellie Nutting Stanley, Paul Gauguin, Piero della Francesca, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, POETRY, post hoc, Robert Frost, St Columba, Suzanne Valadon, T.E.Lawrence, The Venerable Bede, W.F.Kammann, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats)
..Piero della Francesca, Nativity (1475) (you can click on it to see the birds better)
…..
……………………..POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC
………………………..“Two magpies,” she wrote him
………………………………….on shore again in February.
………………………..He propped them up above
………………………………….the herb jars in the galley
………………………..all that winter while she
………………………………….traveled overland in Africa—
………………………..others hung there too, almost
………………………………….a dozen as the days lengthened
………………………..and the bright green shoots
………………………………….shone like spring in porthole pots.
………………………..He lay more naked in his letters then
………………………………….but the light-sick moths powdered
……………………….his thighs, made his eyes
………………………………….dapple and water as if he missed her.
………………………..Then she wrote again about
………………………………….small birds that migrate pole to pole
………………………..and told him he really ought
………………………………….to have more Arctic dreams.
………………………..It was then he began to notice
…………………………………the way the sheets twisted oh so
………………………..tight like water-wings about him.
………………………………….He wrote her twice to Porto Ferraio
………………………..but the letters came back
………………………………….to an empty berth and bits
………………………..of white silk on the bulwarks
………………………………….as if he’d undressed or cracked
………………………..in the terrible rush of the hatch—
………………………………….the brightness of a sheltered reach
………………………..perhaps, the ease with which
………………………………….mayflies rise on the silvery stream.
…………………………………………………..~
I was encouraged to find this list of popular references to my Latin title, which I feel sure will cause difficulties sooner or later — and now I know there are even children out there who can stand up for me. So I’m not so hard after all.
The second episode of The West Wing, titled “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc”, makes use of the phrase.
In the first episode of the third season of The Big Bang Theory, “The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation”, Sheldon Cooper states to his mother that she is committing this logical fallacy.
In the Dinosaur Comics comic titled Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, T-Rex points out this logical fallacy committed by Utahraptor.
Tim Minchin explains this phrasing in his 2010 comedy special “Ready For This.”
The thirteenth episode from the sixth and final season of “Crossing Jordan” uses “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc” as the title of the episode.
In ‘Fortune,’ a season 10 episode of Smallville, Dr. Emil Hamilton, while being tortured by Amos Fortune for information, quotes the phrase and then explains its meaning.
…….
But will these viewers ask themselves “post hoc, ergo propter hoc?” when they re-evaluate their own lives as this poem re-evaluates my own? And will they suspect it’s in fact a love poem, or will they just know it’s a nativity at sea or at least somewhere on or near the surface of water?
And what about the magpies in both? One is all very well, like in the painting, but the “dozen” in the poem? Will they worry about that, because it’s my fondest hope they will?
…………………………………………………..~
This is a very small poem in a very small style, indeed as bare and simple as a Piero della Francesca painting, and as dependent on faith. That means your faith, the faith you have in yourself, the viewer, not in Jesus or Mary or anything like that but just in how much faith you are able to bring to whatever you see without rhyme or reason, like that tiny little bird on the left, or the big one on the stable roof for that matter, which is unmistakably a magpie. How still can you rest as you view two birds like that, for example, how long can you hold your gaze without blinking, without starting all over again to define what you see in relation to who you are, where you stand, what you expect, and what you know about me? Can you do that? Can you rest in uncertainties when you don’t even know who a poem is by or what it’s getting at? Can you trust yourself, in other words, and not just rush in to either explain it away, or appropriately file it ditto?
Like the poem of Gennadiy Aygi I quoted a few weeks ago and nobody seems to have noticed? Or Pierre Puvis de Chavannes?
Can you be as quiet and uncritical as that? Even if, as in my case, I’m the poet and I’m not Russian or French?
Or what if a friend sent you this poem because he or she wanted you to have it. Would you hold back the joy or the sorrow?
Christopher Woodman
………THE COMMENTS THAT FOLLOW DEVELOP THE THREAD
TEA BREAK BY THE FORGE
March 11, 2014 at 3:21 pm ("Directive", "Works & Days", Beloit Poetry Journal, Christopher Woodman, Christos Acheiropoietos, Dawn potter, Edna St Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Galileo, Normunds Braslins, Renascence, Stephen Hawking, W.F.Kammann, Winslow Homer)
The forge is a hot and noisy place—but it has it’s quiet moments too, and even that blast of red hot flame pumped up by the bellows can quiet down and brew a nice pot of tea.
The events leading up to Galileo’s house arrest were full of such hot air too as the modern world was in the forge, so to speak, and the hammer blows were hard.
But now we can stop and use another sort of hammer, like delicate compost that flakes in your hands like spring snow to lift up your plants and make them flower. Think about that — let those hammer blows flower like that kettle on the fire.
………………………………………
There was a huge amount of hot air generated in the Vatican in the decade leading up to Galileo’s censure in 1615. But it’s very important to remember how complex the riddle was. Galileo understood very well the Curia’s position, as the records show, and tried his best to explain why placing the sun at the center of a Copernican “solar system” could be reconciled with a theocentric, Ptolemaic interpretation of the same phenomena. And I think almost certainly the Church leaders understood both sides of the argument as well, though its pastoral obligations led the Curia to assert that it was a simple either/or issue which had to be decided on the basis of Authority, not Science. For that was the primary function of the Church, and still is — to serve the struggling Faithful by defending their Faith with Theology.
The paradoxes of life are unthinkable to the majority of people who are, like me, better at imagining perfection than at observing facts. On the other hand, gifted souls have always understood that as human beings we have intellectual as well as sense-based faculties, and I feel sure that primitive people had a much deeper understanding of the human condition than we give them credit for. I mean, do you think the naked little Good-fella didn’t understand and use the power of the intellect to thrive with so little for 30,000 years in the harsh Australian desert, or the Bushman in the equally harsh Kalahari? Or the Inuit in the ice? Or the Navajo? Do you think they weren’t intelligent or inspired enough to understand who they were and how to look after themselves for such a long time and in such a positive way?
I have none of those gifts myself — my eyes are blind to what I feel sure they saw, and some still see, indeed my intellectual powers are dwarfed by comparison with theirs. That’s why I turn to them, for a deeper understanding of my own isolation and poverty. And of course I turn to anyone whose words I can read too, or whose paintings I can look at, or costumes, or drama, or dreams even — for a glimpse that would make me, like Wordsworth, less forlorn. And of course I turn to great misunderstood scientists too to understand my own misunderstanding, and wasn’t Galileo Galilei the greatest and the most gratuitously misunderstood of them all?
When at last the Church rehabilitated Galileo over 300 years later, Pope John Paul II called it “a tragic mutual incomprehension,” which indeed it was — the pie has two halves but at the time everybody ended up with just half, and that’s all most of us are left with too, needless to say. On the other hand, I feel sure there have always been human beings who were able to reconcile the mind-boggling contradictions of the whole pie of life, like the fact that, despite all appearances and ‘proofs’ to the contrary, the soul exists in many places at once, in the theocentric mind for a start, then in the heliocentric body, and then everywhere, and of course, most certainly and most mysteriously of all, nowhere. Even more importantly, such human beings have always understood that such realms were a.) not separate and b.) non-existent in the sense that we experience the soul nowhere but in our own largely wishful, self-centered thinking. And I feel our understanding of all that is dwindling, that our modern minds are ever more conditioned by the demands of our well-serviced, well-exercised and well-medicated bodies. Indeed, we’ve got to the point now where we can only think like our bodies work, i.e. with minds fastened like railway bogies to our underbodies, strictly in one mode and strictly zapping down hi-speed rails. And as a poet I would say that the alternative to that way of thinking isn’t old-fashioned Mysticism or Theosophy either, what is more New Age fantasies about Purity, Spiritual Energy and Past Lives, etc. — which are all self-serving and equally materialistic. As a poet I’d say that wherever the soul is has got to be nowhere like that, indeed I’d say it’s got to be much closer to that no place where God lies stone dead.
Which is precisely how the language I’m looking for does it, and why such words are more important today than they have been ever before. It’s all we’ve got left yet we’ve only just started using the word in our times as a tool like a hex, jinx or spell.
One other inkling. In my experience, what might be called wise people have never been much interested in the idea of an individual soul what is more eternal life or personal salvation. It would be so selfish for one thing, to be alone with oneself like that for so long. And who would deserve it for another? Even a saint would surely have doubts about that, indeed, above all a saint.
By definition, Wisdom is associated with coming to terms with the paradox of birth as a brief prelude to death on the one hand, and life as the sole immortality on the other. Wisdom knows there is nothing in religious dogma but approximations and carrots, that in reality everything’s just nothing, and that nevertheless that nothing’s love. Yes, love, an embarrassing little Hallmark platitude of a word like that, yet still it creeps in if you’re Wise. On the other hand, to say it better or more truthfully requires that hardest of all things to be, a fool.
Like Emily Dickinson on the subject, and who could ever say it better than this?
……
…………….The Soul selects her own Society–
…………….Then–shuts the Door–
…………….To her divine Majority–
…………….Present no more–…………….Unmoved–she notes the Chariots–pausing–
…………….At her low Gate–
…………….Unmoved–an Emperor be kneeling
…………….Upon her mat–…………….I’ve known her–from an ample nation–
…………….Choose One–
…………….Then–close the Valves of her attention–
…………….Like Stone–
……………………………………………………..Emily Dickinson (1862)……
And does she mean Samuel Bowles? Does she mean sex?
Yes, I think so. That too. Because I think she knew herself both as a woman and as this painting by the Latvian painter, Normunds Braslins, in gold leaf and egg tempera:
……
………………………………….Normunds Braslins, Riga, Latvia (1962- )
……
So that’s it, everybody. Of course this thread was from the start exploratory and still isn’t sure what it’s trying to say, though it might have this morning, Monday, March 17th, 2014.
That’s because much to my amazement I found myself yesterday face to face with a prostrate figure on top of a mountain, and if any Sunday moment wants to capture the whereabouts of the soul I think it’s going to have to be shaped, contoured and colored something like that.
…………………………..I’ve known her–from an ample nation–
…………………………..Choose One–
…………………………..Then–close the Valves of her attention–
…………………………..Like Stone–
I’ll try to get to that again when I can, but it’s not easy.
Christopher Woodman
………THE COMMENTS THAT FOLLOW DEVELOP THE THREAD
BORDANDO el MANTO TERRESTRE by Remedios Varo
February 10, 2014 at 3:01 pm ("Directive", "Works & Days", "Make it new", Bordando el Manto Terrestre, Carl Phillips, Carl Sagan, Cern, Chogyam Trungpa, Christopher Woodman, Cosmology, Cowpattyhammer, Dawn potter, Emily Dickinson, Foetry, Galileo, God Particle, Konstantin Kavev, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Omino23, Padmasambhava, Remedios Varo, Salvador Dali, Stanley Kunitz, Surrealism, T.S.Eliot, The Red Wheelbarrow, W.F.Kammann, William Carlos Williams)
“Bordando el Manto Terrestre” [ Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle ] (1961) by Remedios Varo.
The Cowpattyhammer management apologizes for having closed “Make It New!” so abruptly.
One of the casualties was that we never got a chance to look at this painting by the Spanish-Mexican painter and anarchist, Remedios Varo. The title means “Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle,” and the imagery is probably the closest we got to the “secret” that was such an important part of the discussion. My own feeling is that with the exception of the sculpture of the tall Aborigine woman and her daughter that introduced the previous thread, this extraordinary painting was probably the most relevant.
You can click here to look at the painting in more detail. Once you have moved in, the definition of the graphic is quite high so you can zoom in as much as you like. Indeed, I’d be very interested to hear what you see.
In addition, if there are any matters arising from the previous thread do feel free to comment below — the management is very grateful to the increasing numbers of people who visited the site in the last weeks of the discussion, and would be very pleased to have more feedback.
………………
NOTICE March 11th, 2014:
Thread Closed for Comments.
This thread is now closed for comments — 1 less than 80 is a lot, and I hope very much that those of you who have not had the opportunity to dip into it further will take the chance to do so.
The thread was designed to deal with some of the issues that were left hanging at the end of the previous thread, “Make It New,” which ended upside down in the grass. Those issues are stalled for the moment, needless to say, but I think the final discussion of Emily Dickinson’s “haunted house” imagery probably took us as far as we could go anyway, under the circumstances.
Christopher Woodman
………THE COMMENTS THAT FOLLOW DEVELOP THE THREAD
MAKE IT NEW!
December 7, 2013 at 12:02 pm ("Directive", "Make it new", Albert Einstein, Artur Rimbaud, Australian Aborigines, Buddhism, Carl Phillips, Cern, Christopher Woodman, Dawn potter, Dreaming, Eternity, Ezra Pound, George Tooker, God Particle, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, Omino23, Robert Frost, Songlines, Spirit Houses, Sri Aurobindo, Stephen Hawking, Theodore Roethke, Time, Uncategorized, W.F.Kammann, Walkabout)
People have always felt the world was going down the tubes — from “hey, look at her!” to “ubi sunt,” indeed long before anybody ever thought to make it new!
One of the cultures I most admire is that of the indigenous people of Australia. What culture has ever produced greater artists, richer myths, or more healing images? Yet when they lost their past, all 30,000 years of it, it took just a few decades to bankrupt them entirely, economically, culturally, emotionally and spiritually. On the other hand, the tragedy was caused as much by our culture’s inability to cope with change as it was with theirs. They couldn’t deal with us any more than we could deal with them, a heart-breaking impasse for everybody involved right to the end, and still with us.
Two observations on “Make It New” with regard to the gifts of these extraordinary people.
The Australian aborigines were always in a sense “contemporary” — they were “cartoon” artists, after all, and every image and artifact they made was “pop” in the sense that everybody was a fan, everybody loved it, read it and danced to it. Secondly, their culture didn’t change — for whatever reason they were locked in a time-warp, as we might say looking out into space, and as a result nothing ever became “dated” what is more “old fashioned” for them. “Make it new?” Why everything was new already!
I make these observations very much without blame — Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel combined with James C. Scott’s The Art of NOT Being Governed confirmed what I had always suspected, that the Australian aborigines’ lack of ‘development’ had nothing whatever to do with inferior genes, hands or minds. On the other hand, they didn’t “change” at all in our sense — but that’s not quite the same as I have come to understand the word in Buddhist terms. The Buddha insisted over and over again that denying change was as self-destructive as any form of greed, control or domination. Anicca, or “impermanence” as it’s usually translated when the sutras are rendered into English, is the only certainty in life, says the Buddha, and holding on to things as if they weren’t going to change is the root of all suffering. That’s the fundamental Buddhist teaching, in fact, that Change and the inevitable Suffering that arises out of it are the fundamental truths of all being.
What’s really different about our times, it seems to me, is what is happening to time itself — the speed of change, as if we were already strapped in the rocket that will deliver us from our dwindling planet into the arms of space.
Try this to put our own sense of time into perspective:
I never even heard of television until I was 8 and didn’t live with a set until I was 42! Even more astonishing, I learned all my maths and physics without a calculator, sailed all over the world without a GPS or other electronic aid, and didn’t touch a computer keyboard until I was 52, the same age at which I published my first poem. And if that last one doesn’t put the word “dated” into perspective for a poet in America, what does?
But we’ll come back to that.
I just want to add that I’m not a Buddhist, whatever that might mean, and feel very strongly that in the light of Eternity there are other “universal truths” beside CHANGE and SUFFERING. Indeed, one of the reasons the aborigines are so important to me is that they tell me more than any other people I have ever encountered about who I really am — particularly as I look in the mirror on my birthday, not a pretty sight at all at 74. But then the old wizened aborigine that looks back at me over my shoulder tells me that nothing that really matters is ever outdated. Change is nothing in the light of eternity, he tells me — and I don’t mean by that Heaven or Eternal Life, God forbid, or indeed anything my new-age friends in white call ‘Spiritual.’ I mean eternity in the sense that I believe Einstein imagined it, or Stephen Hawking in his space-age body, our own little naked good-fella in Cambridge, who grappled with the dreaming that is Cern. Or what surely must have occupied the mind of Galileo Galilei during those 8 years under house arrest in Florence or me here at my tiny speck of a desk in Chiang Mai.
Do you think when the first white man arrived in Australia an aboriginal would have had a problem showing him a God-particle? Had the white man been able to ask, that is? Had he had the intelligence or expertise to navigate that sort of thinking?
And of course, had the good-fella been willing to betray such truths by sharing them with such a big, crude, ignorant stranger?
Christopher Woodman
………THE COMMENTS THAT FOLLOW DEVELOP THE THREAD
Cowpattyhammer 
