.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Lady Bellaston. Jones having given away a sum he had just borrowed to a family in need. Jones having given away a sum he had just been lent by a woman who’d wished to lay claim to his affection. The couple Jones had helped being a couple who had married for love, who were now in poverty. The husband of the couple he had helped turning out to be the “highwayman” he had previously helped.

Desenganarse(maybe) “don’t fool yourself.” The feeling of having one’s book, paper and pen around one, amphitheater of book-paper-pen around one; and of having one’s reading from the book and of having one’s taking up of the pen and of having one’s writing with the pen and having one’s writing with one’s pen on the paper (the “seismograph” creeping up); and of one’s having it probably in mind what to write again even, yet of not doing it or not quite doing so —

Feeling of one not quite or of not quite entirely feeling one is “studying”, for instance, to call it that “studying” (though we ought to check the etymology there). And it is not “studying” that is felt to be important or the feeling of it that is important or that the feeling of doing it is, though it may be all or one of those things that is important, but that actually doing what one is doing is important, is an idea that will recur to one; that what they call concentration is an idea that is said to be important, will recur to one also; and as dubious as the benefits of concentration will seem the demerits of distraction are really quite vivid to one, one thinks, (distraction seems closer to gambling than concentration, and only via this Gambling of Distraction might there arise some truly unprecedented “good luck” to reward ones attention, each glance away from ones book like a lottery ticket purchase of a sort, is an idea that recurs, –that must be the logic behind distraction, the idea that one might get lucky, the idea one might have “good instincts.”)

yet one is not quite doing it, one has not yet quite even engaged with the fact that one is not yet even remotely aware of not doing it, but is only about to be about to realize this; one is only on the verge of realizing that one will never get farther than the verge of realizing that one is incapable of concentrating, maybe now, maybe ever, and yet still one has to sit with one’s pen and one’s paper and book — one still has to be watched by the amphitheater. (The audience awaits but what is the action, there is none.)

Piketty. global population growth has spiked, global per capital output has spiked — these are not necessarily related, but it essentially seems as though we can expect a return to the historical norm of slow growth… Inflation largely a post WWI phenomenon.

Actors that seem to be Christians (that is, actors who are in fact portraying Christians) walking out to what we imagine are lions (we hear from the location they walk toward the recorded roar of lions, a sound that has even more of a “recorded feeling” attached to it than do the pictorial elements of the film, as if they had played a recording on the set rather than overdubbing it, in effect doubling the “recorded feeling”) in the Roman Coliseum in the movie Sign of The Cross: the first thing that occurs to me is that Christ would have avoided that situation (imagining the situation as real), I suppose meaning by this that Christ himself was not a “martyr”; the second thing that occurs to me is that Christ had in fact directed himself into the heart of exactly such a situation, I suppose meaning by this execution; the third thing that occurs to me is that, “forget walking to one’s death, one can’t even expose oneself emotionally”: Not walking to ones death, but walking to ones ego’s death, is what one can’t do. “In which coliseum does ones ego get fed to the lions?” is thought and “one is afraid of those lions” is thought.

“Could one get beyond the ego’s death one could probably get beyond or face the real and total kind (of death),” is thought, which is “the idea of having two bodies.” Afraid for the death of the exterior body. Instead of soul and body, body and body; or body and anti-body; or body and self-delusion, is thought. (Or adult body with a childish self-regard.) Maybe there’s a soul, too, but I can’t even think of that, or even of my body, because I’m thinking of this second one, this body which on the one hand is a sort of exo-shell and is, on the other hand, pretty much all that I think, and yet not essentially, maybe not remotely, what I “really am” — an enveloping delusion — as if my skin tried to think of my brain. “Can’t think of three if I can’t think of two or two if I can’t think of one,” thinks ones ego which is the first in thought but the last in essence or importance. Ego: the first in mind and last in thought which weeps not at feeling pain but that someone might afflict it with pain, weeps at thought and intention. (An adverse intention is cause for weeping, and maybe even he would not weep at actual pain, since the next layer down can be surprisingly tough and unfeeling.) “The ego is so divorced from the body it doesn’t even know there’s actual suffering, there is only the psychological kind,” is thought. (“So aware of shame it is unaware of life,” might be added.)

Walking meditation. To adopt the practices of the Far East but not as an American would, but as an African would. “To adopt the practices of the Far East as an African would adopt them, should be the goal.” Africa a filtration device, a cultural purifier, it is conceived, through which cultures get rid of just enough of themselves to see other cultures. Africa, the purifying lens. Africa, the technology of minds. Inner cities may also be such a device, perhaps even stronger, but looking at something else. What would we find if we looked closer and closer at the inner cities? Who would we find? India, Bangladesh… (Can’t properly perform the walking mediation til you learn what Africa and the inner cities have to teach… “All the sorts of people there are are the stages one must pass through to ‘achieve oneself’,” it is conceived.)

A sort of plan takes hold: first become African, then become Afro-Asian, then become Asian American, then become oneself. A sort of idea, which is unrelated, comes forth: that History is a line upon a sphere. The line is trying to get to the center of the sphere (which may also be the center of the earth, which may also be the center of ourselves, or of Time) but cannot ever penetrate it, even a little. And yet, in the effort to penetrate it, as the felt-tip marker of ourselves, so to speak, is pressed down on the sphere, the sphere slips — slips beneath the ever frustrated force of the felt-tip marker of history — and thus is caused its various squiggles, regressive, progressive and looping.

“Just as my steps,” I think, “exist beneath these thoughts, so does the core of history exist beneath its globular surface. My thoughts will never reach my feet.” (Thinking, though, that maybe my breath at least can reach my feet, as in a way it does without me trying, so I try and focus on my breathing. “Maybe if I know I have lungs I will know I also have feet.”) maybe I will make my feet and my mind reach through knowing them both. Maybe that will be the end of history.

*

Penultimate Idea — Evolution of intelligence has been uneven, and the smartest cave creature was cleverer than myself, as the clever of today are beyond myself.

Final idea: walking across this quite normal two lane bridge over the eight or ten lane interstate and realizing one is unqualified to make any part of this bridge, to assume any role in its construction; and one could perhaps never, despite all ones efforts, attain to any such qualification.

People do these things and are expert at such things, one realizes, while you — what do you know? (nothing) What useful thing like building a bridge or a part of it do you know how to do? (nothing) You are not even a very good unskilled worker (perhaps we should pay people not to work? pay them to get out of the way of the work?) And so the overpass seems quite the monument, quite the Pyramid of Cheops, this night.

And down below, the white pickup with the flashing and rotating orange lights inspecting an element of the new lane they’re fashioning: whoever is in that truck is a lot more than you, you realize; that person has an actual role in this world and is part of it. That person knows something, and is doing something, he is doing it correctly, this night.

not quite sure what makes me say this but wonder if Ives’s life might provide some unique insight into that question, eternal for me, of why modernist works are so difficult.

One factor Swafford brings up — the arts are viewed as unmasculine so making them difficult makes them seem tough.