Daily Dose

From You Will Not Have My Hate, by Antoine Leiris, translated by Sam Taylor

SOMETIMES

"Sometimes the barriers fall. Quietly."

From The Master of Time

Daily Dose

From Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

LONDON

“One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.”

From Part One

Daily Dose

From The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman, edited by Francis Murphy

O STAR OF FRANCE

O STAR of France!
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale--a mastless hulk;
And 'mid its teeming, madden'd, half-drown'd crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman.


Dim, smitten star!
Orb not of France alone--pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,
The struggle and the daring--rage divine for liberty,
Of aspirations toward the far ideal--enthusiast's dreams of
brotherhood, 10
Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.


Star crucified! by traitors sold!
Star panting o'er a land of death--heroic land!
Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.

Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke
thee;
Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all,
And left thee sacred.

In that amid thy many faults, thou ever aimedest highly,
In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself, however great the
price,
In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, 20
In that alone, among thy sisters, thou, Giantess, didst rend the ones
that shamed thee,
In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains,
This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,
The spear thrust in thy side.


O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!
Bear up, O smitten orb! O ship, continue on!

Sure, as the ship of all, the Earth itself,
Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,
Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,
Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, 30
Onward, beneath the sun, following its course,
So thee, O ship of France!

Finish'd the days, the clouds dispell'd,
The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication,
When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world,
(In gladness, answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting
ours, Columbia,)
Again thy star, O France--fair, lustrous star,
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,
Shall beam immortal.

Daily Dose

From The Poems of Richard Lovelace

TO HIS DEARE BROTHER COLONEL F. L. IMMODERATELY MOURNING MY BROTHER'S UNTIMELY DEATH AT CARMATHEN

I.
If teares could wash the ill away,
A pearle for each wet bead I'd pay;
But as dew'd corne the fuller growes,
So water'd eyes but swell our woes.

II.
One drop another cals, which still
(Griefe adding fuell) doth distill;
Too fruitfull of her selfe is anguish,
We need no cherishing to languish.

III.
Coward fate degen'rate man
Like little children uses, when
He whips us first, untill we weepe,
Then, 'cause we still a weeping keepe.

IV.
Then from thy firme selfe never swerve;
Teares fat the griefe that they should sterve;
Iron decrees of destinie
Are ner'e wipe't out with a wet eye.

V.
But this way you may gaine the field,
Oppose but sorrow, and 'twill yield;
One gallant thorough-made resolve
Doth starry influence dissolve.

Daily Dose

From Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Alistair Hannay

LEARNED

"No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest."

From Problema II, Is there an absolute duty to God?

Daily Dose

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, edited by Daniel Jones

 NO!

"Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion."

From And Death Shall Have No Dominion

Paris

I am listening to Handel.  Specifically, I am listening to "Eternal Source of Light Divine," from his Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, Choir of King's College Cambridge.  An odd choice, perhaps, given the events of the last few hours in Paris; a German composer, an English choir.  Odd besides I suppose for being what an atheist would want to hear at such a moment, but here we are.  Handel's Ode was written in celebration of not only the Queen's birthday, but also to mark the conclusion, in 1713 of the  the Treaty of Utrecht and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. As the reader of history will know, Marlborough's triumph was not a happy outcome for France.  In my defence, I would only say that Handel's music transcends the history that occasioned it's composition and that what I needed most tonight was to hear voices raised in something other than either anger or grief.  


I'd already listened to the crowd from the soccer stadium singing La Marseillaise as they left the interrupted game.  And of course, I'd spent the evening listening to the news reports, watching the live coverage from the streets of Paris, heard that first, chilling volley from inside the Bataclan concert hall.  I do not doubt that was the weekend goes on, this horror will become as familiar as the last, and yet I will feel compelled to watch it all again, to read the newspapers and the magazines, to argue with the analysis, to wonder at the the resilience of the survivors and to curse the fanaticism of the murderers.

But just now, I need beauty, balance, grace.  I need the solemnity of Handel and the purity of an English choir.

Meanwhile, and in better keeping with events I took up a French author to read something, anything to remind me of Paris.  The book, much read, fell open to a passage from Book Six, Chapter 1.  It begins:

"Twenty years ago there was still to be seen, in the south-east corner of the Place de la Bastille, near the canal-port dug out of the former moat of the prison-fortress, a weird monument which has vanished from the memory of present day Parisians but which deserves to have left some trace of itself, for it sprang from the mind of a member of the Institute, none other than the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Egypt."

And so I spent an hour with Hugo.  I clambered with Gavroche and the little ones, up the ladder and into the belly of the Elephant of the Bastille; that "crumbling, scabby monster."  I wanted reminding of the passage of history, the value of even a brief life, of life, and joy, and suffering, and of art.  I wanted the light of another Paris, which has of course survived worse and will endure so long as art and life endure.  I wanted a reminder too that Paris is more than light, and history more than a record of wars and the hubris of violent men.  As Hugo says a moment later, "A touch of roughness is salutary to weak nerves."

I read on and on, the story familiar even to the feel on the pages between my fingers.  

It was important, somehow, to be in the company of  great souls tonight, and to be not just with France -- if only in my study, Les Miserables in my lap -- but with humanity.

This Is the Face of a Terrorist

Why I Am Charlie

"I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity." -- Salman Rushdie

I am Charlie.

I am Charlie because on January 7th, 2015 two masked gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and murdered twelve people, including three police officers, and injured eleven others.  I am Charlie because the targets of this attack included the editor of the magazine, Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier and his fellow cartoonists Jean Cabut, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Verlhac, and Philippe Honore.  Also murdered that day were columnists Bernard Maris and Elsa Cayat, copy-editor Mustapha Ourrad, caretaker Frederic Boisseau, and Michel Renaud, who was there visiting a friend.  The police officers murdered that day were Brigadier Franck Brinsolaro, policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe, and Ahmed Merabet, whose murder inspired  Je Suis Ahmed.  So, yes, I am Ahmed.

Ahmed Merabet died on January 7th not because he was a Muslim but because he and his fellow officers were there to protect their fellow citizens, the editor and employees of Charlie Hebdo, from the violent, religious fanaticism, as it turned out, of a two, three, four or more of their fellow citizens of the French Republic.  I am not French, but an American. I am not Muslim.  I am an atheist. I am not, nor do I know personally any serving police officers.  Yet, I am Ahmed.

And I am Charlie.  I am Charlie because, again as the novelist Salman Rushdie once said, “From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” I am Charlie because I sincerely believe that there is no justification for the unjustifiable: no God, no Prophet, no policy, foreign or domestic, no text that can justify murdering people for drawing cartoons.  I do not accept that anyone has the right to kill another human being for "blasphemy."  I do not believe in blasphemy.  I reject both the premise and the presupposition of God.  You may believe whatever you like, and I will defend your right to do so, but your faith can not and will not change my disbelief.  More importantly in a larger sense, your faith may not dictate the limits of my expression of that disbelief.

Because I draw, I am Charlie.  Because I think, I am Charlie.  Because I have every right to be, I am Charlie.

I have friends who have in the past few days questioned the both utility and the motivations of the Je Suis Charlie signs and marches, friends who have, quite rightly pointed out the bitter irony of despots and dictators marching at the recent rally in Paris.  Some have also drawn attention to the deaths of innocent civilians in the American campaign using drones to assassinate our enemies in Yemen.  I have read more than one person I respect suggesting that the work of the murdered cartoonists was both racist and hateful.  Then there is the overwhelming horror of the massacre by Boko Haram of hundreds, if not thousands this week, and the question of why we are not marching in the streets to protest those murders as well.

It is not in spite of but because of these outrages and their resulting moral and ethical complications that I say, I am Charlie.  It is because France -- the cradle of the Enlightenment -- much like my own country, has had to struggle, and will continue to struggle with her own history, her own culpability in the perpetuation of racism, intolerance and violence, that I say, I am Charlie.    Those struggles are inherent to not only our system of government, but to the founding missions of both our revolutions.  It is for Voltaire and Honoré Daumier, for Clarence Darrow, for H. L. Mencken and the American cartoonists Paul Conrad, and Herblock, that I am Charlie.  It is because we not only may, but must challenge long-held assumptions and the smug assurance of our own superiority that I am Charlie.  It is because I may be uncomfortable with some of the content of Charlie Hebro that I am Charlie.  It is because I am revolted by the slaughter of innocents that I am Charlie.

I do not say any of this because I see myself as in anyway representative.  I add my own voice to the chorus, that is all.  I am just a bookseller.  I am Charlie because we must all be, one way or another, heard, if we are not all, by either violence, indifference or timidity, to be silenced.  I speak for no one but myself.  I speak because I still can.  I speak, as I write, and draw and do the little that I can, because to not do so is to concede to the fanatics my silence in the face of this latest outrage.  I will not be silent, even if I can do nothing else, even if I address only my friends.

Humbly then, defiantly and if to no other purpose than to remember and honor those who were murdered on January 7th by the enemies of secularism, freedom of speech and the right to laugh at and in the face of religious fanaticism and hatred, I will say it again,

"JE SUIS CHARLIE!"

The Power Is In Our Hands

Daily Dose

From Selected Poems, by T. S. Eliot

IN THIS

"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech..."

From The Hollow Men, IV

Charb

Je suis CHARLIE

Letting in a Little Light

An awful day.  No way to make it otherwise.  Once again, the irrational violence of some self-righteous villain has marred an otherwise lovely Spring afternoon, a harmless and happy celebration ruined, innocent people wrecked and maimed and killed, presumably in retaliation for other people, innocent and otherwise but elsewhere wrecked and maimed and killed.  Whatever and whoever's and wherever, violence begetting violence, war, cultural or real, and religious and or political fanaticism, I do not not for a moment doubt, justifying the horror to someone, somewhere.

I can not think but that the urge to such resort bespeaks neither conviction nor desperation so much as a deliberate evil; not just to take the lives of strangers but to deny life itself, not just to disorder or undo or shock, not even just to be somehow revenged, but to negate the very light of such a day, to blot out the sky, sew the air with metal and scatter the ground with blood.  Whatever this is, this is not war, but deliberate murder.  No one in Boston was standing by a murderer when this happened, except those who might unknowingly have stood next to the man or men who did this.  No one was there to celebrate any victory but the personal, or to support any effort but that of the runners, or to prove anything but to themselves.  No one responsible will apologize for the violence done today.  There was no miscalculation, no mistake.  There is no policy in this act to be criticized, no evident agenda but terror.  No one can justify it, at least to me, with any history, statistic or statement of faith.  If and when we ever know who did this or why, let them say whatever they like and be damned.  Let better people than me forgive them.  Let anyone who already thinks to excuse or explain the perpetrator's or perpetrators' actions do so to someone else.  I'll have none of it. I don't believe in gods or monsters and neither did this today.  Someone did this horrible thing, some one man or men did this outrageous, senseless violence today, and what he or they did was evil, inexcusable, stupid.  Damn it.

It is too horrible.  I've nothing to say in the face of it but to mourn with the victims, wish the survivors a quick recovery, support those who would fight against such barbarities, and wish those who even now are mobilizing to understand and apprehend the person or persons responsible, good speed.

 All I can do otherwise is keep as close as I can tonight to the light, concentrate for my own sanity on just that small measure of joy that I hope, with the help of my friends to add tomorrow to glorious conflagration of the season's renewal; so let us have flowers from the gardens of our friends!  Let us go on and read poetry aloud as we planned, sing songs and tell jokes, drink wine and yes, laugh.  No disrespect to the tragedy today, quite the opposite, I feel.  Today was taken from all of us by some enemy or enemies of joy, of drunkenness and guitars, food, conviviality, wit and pleasure.  Someone, alone or in conspiracy darkened today for all of us.  So tomorrow, in our admittedly insignificant way, we still plan to let in a little more light.  If that's all we can manage, so be it.  A little light is better than none.

The darkness be damned.