Source: http://www.phillwebb.net/History/TwentiethCentury/continental/Marxism/Fromm/Fromm2.jpg

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self.

Man always dies before he is fully born.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.” (Albert Einstein)

 

 

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (Albert Einstein)

 

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” (Jean Dubuffet)

 

 

“In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.”  (Georges Clemenceau)

 

 

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they’re ok, then it’s you.”  (Rita Mae Brown)

 

 

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”  (Friedrich Nietzsche)

 

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”  (Friedrich Nietzsche)

 

 

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”  (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

 

 

“Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.”  (Vladimir Nabokov)

 

 

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”  (Toni Morrison “Beloved”)

 

A poem about Winter Landscape.

Surprisingly enough, I was thinking what I could write about Winter Landscape.  That was my homework for January.  Yes, that one from the calendar.

And that is what I found.

A Russian romance “In the Moonlight the snow is sparkling”.

Because it is Russian Romance, it is in the Russian language.  Obviously, but that is not the point.  I had to look up the word romance because I was not sure if I used it correctly.  Apparently, I was right and one of the meanings of “romance” is “a short, lyrical composition.”

But then I looked at the origin of the word and that where I lost my conscience. (A joke!)  The word “romance” stems from the word Roma = Rome.  If I take things literally and I do it quite often, just for fun, then a Russian Romance is a contradiction of terms.

So, all these meanings: a love story, a literary genre, the aura of excitement and more simply come back to Rome.  Literally, all roads lead to Rome.  Or rather all ROMANCES originate in Rome.  Or?  Maybe that is the reason why my Italian friend is so amorous all the time.

Coming back to “In the moonlight the snow is sparkling”.  This romance is neither about winter, nor about landscape, it is about Love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFfX-UK9PI&feature=related

В лунном сиянье

слова и музыка Е. Юрьева

Полный текст песни

слова и музыка Е. Юрьева

В лунном сиянье снег серебрится,

Вдоль по дороге троечка мчится.

Динь-динь-динь, динь-динь-динь —

Колокольчик звенит,

Этот звон, этот звон

О любви говорит.

В лунном сиянье ранней весною

Помнятся встречи, друг мой, с тобою.

Динь-динь-динь, динь-динь-динь —

Колокольчик звенел,

Этот звон, этот звон

О любви сладко пел.

Помнятся гости шумной толпою,

Личико милой с белой фатою.

Динь-динь-динь, динь-динь-динь —

Звон бокалов шумит,

С молодою женой

Мой соперник стоит.

В лунном сиянье снег серебрится,

Вдоль по дороге троечка мчится.

Динь-динь-динь, динь-динь-динь —

Колокольчик звенит,

Этот звон, этот звон

О любви говорит.

“And Your Point being?” versus “Do you have a sense of humour?”

“Mein Lieber A.” (a friend of mine) and I had a few conversations and most of them ended up by him asking the question “And your point being?” and me asking “Do you have a sense of humour?”

I know he does.  But sometimes it becomes a bit frustrating when my jokes totally miss the target.  Wait, do jokes have targets?  Like cannons?  They do and they don’t.

I looked up the word “humour”.  Apparently I did not know all of its meanings.

“A state of mind; mood; disposition” – does not seem to be far out.

“A fancy; whim”

“Any of various body fluids formerly supposed to determine a person’s health and disposition.  They were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile).”

Surprise, surprise!

If you have to think of it, it might seem funny – that our sense of humour is derived from bodily fluids.  The word “humour” itself means in its origin fluid.

Maybe because humour is fluid and elusive.  I doubt it, though.

Well, anyways, the most common meaning of “Sense of Humour” now is “the ability to see or show the funny or amusing side of things.”

Some quotes on the subject.

Humor is the harmony of the heart. (Douglas William Jerrold)

 

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight. (Leo Rosten)

 

What an ornament and safeguard is humor!

Far better than wit for a poet and writer.

It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.  (Sir Walter Scott)

What is humour for me?  Everything.  Salvation. Absolution.  State of mind (absolutely!).  My style of communication.  And without a sense of humour there is no mutual understanding.  Humour is my life.  My anchor. Or my wings? Oh, well, maybe a painkiller once in a while.  Whatever it is, of whatever quality (right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, light, dark), it is mine and mine only, it can never be taken from me.  Well, unless I lose my mind.

And what is my mind?

What I mean is

It is very much a rough draft, but there won’t be a final version.  This is my diary, my writing space, and my attempt to get to the Point Of Things.  For that, I have to get out of the mess, I had got myself into.

So free writing in a free style.  Flying Free…………

I have been told and admired and complimented on the clearness of my thinking and the ability to express myself.  But sometimes when I get to be too clear, people get offended, so I have to learn how to use the words to do the opposite.  Cloud and disguise the meaning or just say something and mean nothing.  The best thing is, of course, to remain silent, but it is not always possible and that, too, might be regarded offensive.  Moreover, I have to work on my ability to resist temptation to react to whatever is around me.  Maybe just hold it for a while and take it to a different place and then go ahead with self-expression.  The best place is where nobody is around!

And then SCREAM: “What the F-CK!”  or “What a F-cking Day!”

I wish I had a screaming place, but I don’t.  Well, moving on.

Apparently, we miscommunicate quite often.  If not always.  We misunderstand.  Each other, ourselves.  We don’t bother to check once in a while if we use words in its proper meaning.  What are the dictionaries for?  Who cares?  I do.

Sometimes, I ask people to define or explain.  Not for fun, but to get to the core of things.  So we get closer to mutual understanding.  My words are balance and harmony, not f-words (like Frustration).  But mutual understanding more often than not turns out to be “mission impossible”.  “Definition Game” can be funny, ridiculous, or downright depressing.  People are offended when they realize that they cannot define even the most common words on the spot.  I know it is not such an easy task, to begin with, but it should make us think, find out, analyze, do some cleaning in our minds.  Clean our language.  Believe it or not, it is doable.

Cleaning

Let me call it Spring Cleaning.  But it is January, I have been told.  So?  Do you have a sense of humour?  What is sense of humour?  Whose?  Mine, yours.  Or mine is definitely or definitively of a wrong type.  That I’ve been told, too.  What is right? What is wrong?  Do you have an idea of conversations I sometimes get myself into?  But I am clearly out of my mind.  So is everybody else, by the way.  Out of my mind, that is.  Do I have a point?  There you go.  So, we have something in common, collectively being out of my mind.

You can relax, I am just playing with words.  The point is…  The point is Point Zero. 

That was one of my posts in the very beginning.

http://www.altrealm.com/english/conversations/2008-08-30/what-is-your-point/

What I mean is…  Isn’t it the hardest things to explain, what the hell we mean, when we ourselves have no idea.  Well, most of the time.

So, I am doing some cleaning in my room, in my life and at the same time, I just keep notes.

Let’s play a definition game.

Let’s define a…  Wait, what is a definition?  Why don’t I start with the definition of a definition?

I will make it short.

A definition is an essence an explanation.

Definitive is conclusive, final. Or.  Limiting, defining, distinguishing.

So, every definition is limiting by its nature.

Going back to the root of the word:  definire <de – from + finis – boundary>

Problem solved.  Define means to set or settle limits.

And there is example from the dictionary.

Perseverance usually defines success.

Reframing è Perseverance usually limits success.

I will not be defining now “perseverance”, “usually”, or especially “success”.  What an thankless task!  I am not quite sure if I made things clearer, or messed them slightly up, but at least I can laugh at it.  That is one of the ways I can entertain myself with.

Once a friend of mine, Oleg, told a joke and nobody was laughing, but him.  Being young and not always considerate, I asked him quite bluntly, why do you laugh alone?  Is it not a sign of stupidity?  He simply said, “so what, if nobody laughs, why should I refrain myself?”  Not only have I remembered this story for so long, but now I can see his point.  If nobody entertains me, I can do it myself.  And I had become an expert in it by now.

So, was it my perseverance that defined (limited) my success?

But what is success?  Especially mine?

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘I’m so happy for you, darling!’ I said.

Not many were-creatures know what it is t feel happy for someone else.  And tailless monkeys know even less about it, all they know how to do is smile broadly in order to boost their social adaptability and increase the volume of sales.  While imitating the feeling of happiness for someone else, the tailless monkey actually experiences envy or, in the best case, remains indifferent.  But I really did experience that feeling, as pure and transparent as the water in a mountain stream.

‘You can’t imagine how happy I am for you,’ I repeated and kissed him again.

This time he didn’t move away.

‘Really?’ he asked.  ‘But why?’

‘Because after all this time you’re in a good mood.  You’re feeling better.  And I love you.’

His face darkened a little.

‘I love you too.  But I keep thinking that you’re going to leave me.  You’d probably be better off if you did.  But I won’t feel any happiness for you.’

‘In the first place, I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ I said.  ‘And in the second place, the feeling you speak of isn’t love, it’s a symptom of egoism.  To the male chauvinist in you, I’m merely a toy, a piece of property and a trophy status symbol.  And you’re afraid of losing me in the same way a property owner is afraid of being parted from some expensive item.  You can never feel happy for someone else that way.’

‘So how do you feel happy for someone else?’

‘For that you have to want nothing for yourself.’

‘You’re telling me you don’t want anything for yourself?’ he asked suspiciously.

I shook my head.

‘But why?’

‘I told you that once already.  When you look inside yourself for a long time, you realize that there’s nothing there.  How can you want something for that nothing?’

‘But if there’s nothing inside you, there’s nothing inside anyone else either.’

‘If you think about it properly, there’s nothing real anywhere,’ I said.  ‘There’s only the choice with which you fill emptiness.  And when you feel happy for someone else, you fill emptiness with love.’

‘Whose love? If there isn’t anybody anywhere, then whose love it?’

‘That does not matter to emptiness.  And don’t you get hot and bothered about it either.  But if you want a meaning for life, you’ll never find a better one.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘The real super-werewolf is a heavenly being.  A heavenly being never loses her connection with the heavens.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In this world there is nothing but dust.  But when a heavenly being sees the dust, she remembers the light that makes the dust visible.  While a tailless monkey only sees the dust on which the light falls.  That’s why when a heavenly being dies, she becomes light.  But when a tailless monkey dies, he becomes dust.’

‘Light, dust,’ he said, ‘so there is something there after all!  There is some kind of individual personality.  You’ve definitely got one, Ginger.  I’ve felt that pretty strongly just recently.  Or will you tell me I’m wrong?’

‘This personality, with all its quirks and stupidities simply dances like a doll in the clear light of my mind.  And the more stupid this doll’s quirks, the clearer the light that I recognize over and over again.’

‘Now you’re saying “my mind”.  But you only just said it’s not yours.’

“That’s the way language works.  It’s the root from which infinite human stupidity grows.  And we were-creatures suffer from it too, because we’re always talking.  It’s not possible to open your mouth without being wrong.  So you shouldn’t haggle over words.’

‘All right.  But the personality that dances like a doll – that’s you, isn’t it?’

‘No.  I don’t think of this personality as me, because I’m very far from being a doll.  I am the light that makes it visible.  But the light and the doll are only metaphors, and you shouldn’t clutch at them.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘… Did Mikhalich give you the flower?’

‘Yes,’ I answered.  ‘And he told me I should think about the meaning of the message.  But I haven’t come up with anything.  Maybe you can tell me yourself?’

He scratched his head.  He seemed disconcerted by my question.

‘Do you know the folktale about the little scarlet flower?’

‘Which one exactly?’ I asked.

‘I think there is only one.’

He nodded towards a desk with a computer and a silver figurine standing on it.  There was a book lying beside the figurine, with bookmarks in several pages.  The half-effaced red letters of the title on its cover read: Russian Fairy Tales.

‘The story was written down by Sergei Aksakov,’ he said.  ‘His housekeeper Pelagia told him it.’

‘And what about it?’

‘About a beautiful girl and a beast.’

‘And what’s the little flower got to do with it?’

‘It was the reason everything began.  Do you really not know this fairy tale?’

‘No.’

‘It’s long, but the gist is this: a beautiful girl asked her father to bring her a scarlet flower.  The father found one in a magical garden a long way away and picked it.  But the garden was guarded by a terrible monster.  He caught the beautiful girl’s father, and she had to become the monster’s prisoner so that he would release her father.  The monster was ugly, but kind.  She fell in love with him, first for his kindness, and then simply in love.  And when they kissed, the spell was broken and the monster turned into a prince.’

‘Aha,’ I said.  ‘Do you have any idea what it’s about?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes? What is it about?’

‘About love conquering all.’

I laughed.  He really was quite amusing.  He’d probably bumped off a few heavy hoods and ordered a hit on some banker, so now, with typical human presumption, he thought he was a monster.  And he also thought that love would save him.

He took me by the arm and led me across to a futuristic divan standing between two groves of dwarf bonsais with miniature arbours, bridges and even waterfalls.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I can explain,’ I said, sitting down on the divan and pulling my legs up under me.

‘Okay, explain.’

He sat at the other end of the divan and crossed his legs.  I noticed the edge of a holster peeping out from under his uniform jacket.

‘It’s one of those folktales that express the horror and pain of a woman’s first sexual experience,’ I said.  ‘There are lots of stories like that, and the one you just told me is a classic example.  It’s a metaphor of how a woman discovers the essentially bestial nature of man and becomes aware of her own power over that beast.  And the little scarlet flower that her father picks is such a literal symbol of defloration, amplified by the theme of incest, that I find it hard to believe the story was told by a housekeeper.  It was probably composed by some twentieth-century Viennese postgraduate to illustrate his thesis.  He invented the story, and the housekeeper Pelagia, and the writer Aksakov.’

While I was talking, his expression turned noticeably gloomier.

‘Where did you pick this stuff?’

‘It’s all truisms.  Everybody knows it.’

‘And you believe it?’

‘What?’

‘That this fairy tale is not about how love conquers everything on earth, but how defecation realizes its power over incest?’

‘Defloration,’ I corrected him.

‘It does not matter.  Is that what you really think?’

I thought about it.

‘I…. I don’t think anything.  That’s simply the contemporary discourse of folktales.’

‘So you’re saying that because of this discourse, when someone gives you a scarlet flower you think it’s a symbol of defecation and incest?’

‘No, don’t be like that,’ I replied, a little embarrassed.  ‘When someone gives me a scarlet flower I….I’m simply pleased.’

‘Thank God,’ he said.  ‘And as for contemporary discourse, it’s high time to take an aspen stake and stuff it back up the cocaine-and-amphetamine polluted backside that produced it.’

I hadn’t expected such a sweeping generalization.

‘Why?’

‘So it won’t defile out little scarlet flower.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I understand about the cocaine.  You mean Dr Freud.  He did have that little peccadillo.  But what have amphetamines got to do with it?’

‘I can explain,’ he said.  And tucked his legs up underneath himself in a parody of my pose.

‘Okay, explain.’

‘All those French parrots who invented discourse were high on amphetamines all the time.  In the evening they take barbiturates to get to sleep, and they start off the morning with amphetamines so they can generate as much discourse as possible before they start taking barbiturates to get back to sleep again.  That’s all there is to discourse.  Didn’t you know that?’

‘Where did you get information like that?’

‘There was a course at the FSB Academy about modern psychedelic culture.  Counter-brainwashing.  Oh yes, I forgot to say – they’re all queers too.  In case you were going to ask what the backside had to do with anything.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Love and tragedy go hand in hand.  Homer and Euripides wrote about that, so did Stendhal and Oscar Wilde.  And now it’s my turn.

Until I learned from my own experience what love is, I thought of it as a specific kind of pleasure that tailless monkeys can derive from being together, in addition to sex.

I formed this impression from the numerous descriptions I had come across in poems and books.  How was I to know that the writers were not describing love as it actually is at all, but constructing the verbal imitations that would look best on paper.  I thought of myself as a professional of love, since I had been inducing the experience in others for so many centuries.  But it’s one thing to pilot the B-29 towards Hiroshima, and quite another to watch it from the central square of the city.

Love turned out to be nothing like what they write about it.  It was ludicrous, rather than serious – but that didn’t mean it could be dismissed out of hand.  It was not like being drunk (the most popular comparison in literature) – but it was even less like being sober.  My perception of the world didn’t change: I didn’t think Alexander was anything like a fairy-tale prince in his Maibach.  I could see all the sinister sides of his character but, strangely enough, those things only added to his charm in my eyes.  My reason even came to terms with his barbarous political views and began to discover a certain harsh northern originality in them.

Love was absolutely devoid of any meaning.  But it gave meaning to everything else.  It made my heart as light and empty as a balloon.  I didn’t understand what was happening to me.  But not because I had become more stupid – there simply was nothing to understand in what was happening.  They may say that love like that doesn’t run deep.  But I think that anything that is deep isn’t love, it’s deliberate calculation or schizophrenia.

I myself wouldn’t even attempt to say what love is – probably both love and God can only be defined by apophasis, through those things that they are not.  But apophasis would be wrong, too, because they are everything.  Writers who write about love are swindlers, and the worst of them is Leo Tolstoy, clutching his programmatic bludgeon “The Kreutzer Sonata”.  Although I have a lot respect for Tolstoy.

by Donald Hall (1928 – )

What’s Good, What’s Bad

The claims I make for fiction are large: that it alerts and enlarges our minds, our connections with each other past and present, our understanding of our feelings.  These claims apply to excellent literature only.  This suggests that some fiction is better than other fiction, and that some narratives are not literature at all.  Even if judgments are always subject to reversal, even if there is no way we can be certain of being correct, evaluation lives at the center of literary study.

When I was nineteen, I liked to read everything: science fiction, Russian novels, mystery stories, great poems, adventure magazines.  Then for six months after an accident, sentenced to a hospital bed and a body cast, I set myself a reading list, all serious books I had been thinking about getting to.  Of course there was a background to this choice: I had been taught by a good teacher who had directed and encouraged and stimulated my reading.  I read through Shakespeare, the Bible in the King James version, novels by Henry James and Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Toward the end of six months, taking physical therapy, I hurried to finish the books I had assigned myself; I looked forward to taking a vacation among private detectives and adventurers of the twenty-fourth century.  I thought I would take a holiday of light reading.

When I tried to read the light things, I experienced one of those “turning points in life” we are asked to describe in freshman composition.  I remember the dismay, the abject melancholy that crept over me as I realized – restless, turning from book to book in search of entertainment – that these books bored me; that I was ruined for life, that I would never again lose myself to stick-figure characters and artificial suspense.  Literature ruined me for light reading…

I don’t mean to say that I was able to give reasons why Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel about a murder was better than Agatha Christie’s or why Aldous Huxley’s view of the future, thought less exciting, was more satisfying than Astounding Science Fiction’s.  But I began a lifetime of trying to figure out why.  What is it that makes Chekhov so valuable to us?  The struggle to name reasons for value – to evaluate works of art – is lifelong, and although we may never arrive at satisfactory explanations, the struggle makes the mind more sensitive, more receptive to the next work of literature it encounters.  And the mind becomes more sensitive and receptive to literature, it may become more receptive to all sorts of things.