NON-JUDGMENT DAY: AGAINST PUNISHMENT

WILD IRIS

Here’s what slipped into my heart:
that crested yellow tongue

down the runway of parched truth:
and those petals’ pulsing blue,

the excitable color of now:
like coming on a meadow of wild iris.

Long ago in dank woods,
I blundered on a dell

of lilies-of-the valley:
white lovers palm to palm

between leaves. That’s why God
must be forgiven, and why Dante puts

those who weep when they should
rejoice in a muddy pocket of hell

near the wood of suicides. After youth’s
‘love is pain’, that blue-purple flight.

On Non-Judgment Day, in the Valley
of Saved Moments,

I will bloom, the wildest iris.

~ Oriana, © 2015

One flower redeems the world — yes, I believe this. Against all suffering, the beauty of one iris. Because pain passes, but beauty remains.

To me beauty is the kind of consolation that religion never was. Religion was about being manipulated by the carrot and stick: the pie in the sky (pardon the mixed metaphor) versus eternal torture in hell. Beauty made no demands. I didn’t have to go down on my knees and beat my breast: my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault. Beauty has been an unconditional gift.

“After youth’s ‘love is pain’, that blue-purple flight.” I wouldn’t be able to find that meadow again, especially with the drought. But it is enough to have seen it once.

Still, the most important phrase in the poem is “Non-Judgment Day.” This signals perhaps the most important shift in the history of humanity. As I explain later: “Arguably the most important revolution in modernity has been away from seeing people as evil sinners who need punishment rather than as wounded human beings who need healing.”

Do we have the right to punish people? Billions would reply “Yes” without hesitation. Parents certainly think they have the right to punish children. “Justice” is just a nicer word for revenge. Of course it sounds better to say, “We want justice” than “We want revenge. We want the “bad guy” to suffer enormously. Yes, even forever. Payback!!

And yet I think that at least in terms of the “creeping enlightenment” I’ve observed over the decades, there has been a movement away from cruelty. It is not as legitimate as it used to be. We seem to have finally understood: THE WISH TO PUNISH STEMS FROM THE DESIRE FOR REVENGE.

A strange thing, our punishment! It does not cleanse the criminal, it is no atonement; on the contrary, it pollutes worse than the crime does. ~ Nietzsche, The Dawn
 
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It’s not just corporal punishment that’s increasingly in disfavor. Flogging was once a standard practice; now it appalls. Bullying and emotional and sexual harassment are behaviors we struggle to eliminate, not accept as part of life. Rather than yell at a child and hit him, a parent is more likely to try to explain that certain behaviors harm others — and thus, ultimately, ourselves —  and invoke the Golden Rule. Respect for children is one of the frontiers in the battle against the “might makes right” mentality. It’s been said that we are entering the “dignitarian era” marked by respect for the humanity of another rather than desire for revenge.

Note the word “entering.” We are mere beginners when it comes to addressing problems in non-punitive ways. B.F. Skinner, an atheist psychologist appalled by the concept of hell, was one of the under-recognized founding fathers of the anti-punishment movement. He was a strong advocates of using rewards instead. Animal training changed radically due to Skinner’s influence. Eventually children benefited as well, though his name is rarely mentioned in connection with more humane child-rearing practices. Of course many other psychologists also emphasized the importance of affection and the harm caused by the punitive approach. 

B.F. Skinner in pale color. Why only B.F.? Because his Calvinist parents called him Burrhus Frederic -- another example of parents putting some "ideology" -- perhaps wanting to honor an ancestor named Burrhus -- ahead of the child's welfare.
 
Religion and punishment were closely related in my mind as I was growing up. The deity presented to us was the god of punishment, his power resting on the threat of eternal torture in a demon-filled hell. (Actually, that’s what the power of the church rested on, but I was too young to differentiate.) I came to see myself as a hopeless sinner and lived in the dread of hell.

At 14 I had the insight that changed my life: “It’s just another mythology.” But for quite a while I still admitted the possibility, small but terrifying real, of being wrong. I decided that if I was wrong and the Judeo-Christian deity existed, filling hell with billions of "wrong-believers," then I was ready for my fate rather than worship a monster much worse than Hitler.

Of course the odds that such a cosmic being exists are essentially zero, and it helps to re-read the excellent chapter in Dawkins “Why God Almost Certainly Doesn’t Exist” should the "hell trauma" revive even for seconds (at some point I did reach certainty that the monster did not exist). The teachings about hell are not only child abuse, they are emotional abuse across the board, including adults. And those who have been abused tend to become abusers or perpetual victims — unless they are healed and transformed, inclined to show affection rather than to punish (verbal abuse counts as abuse). Arguably the most important revolution in modernity has been away from seeing people as evil sinners who need punishment rather than as wounded human beings who need healing.

A car with bad brakes is not “punished” for being an evil, sinful, fallen (LOL!) car. It’s taken in for repairs. It’s only common sense.

The whole notion of punishment still needs a lot of review. Modern psychology sees people as basically good, but likely to have been damaged by negative experiences -- fundamentalist parenting included (funny, I never clearly put Catholicism in the fundamentalist camp, but Catholicism is fundamentalist in its essence; it couldn't be called "liberal Christianity"). A damaged person does not need punishment; s/he needs healing. The only god I could accept would understand this 100% and deliver healing. Not even Hitler (most likely he was mentally ill) would be punished.

It would be a turning point for humanity if someone radically re-wrote the story of Abraham and Isaac. First Abraham should try to negotiate — he showed himself to be good at that. If Yahweh still insists, then Abraham should say, “Fuck you, Yahweh. I'm not going to murder my son to please you or prove anything. My boy's life is more important than you are, you swinish monster. No Führer or Supreme Leader comes first, no ideology, no tribal religion of exceptionalism, no Great Cause, no country. Human life is more important than any of these. I'm not going to worship you, you impostor with no empathy and no ethics. No father worthy of the name would sacrifice his child, so fuck you, god.”

Apologies for the language — it’s needed for impact. A god who tells you to kill your child, or harm any living thing, is not worthy of respect, much less worship. 

The bloodthirsty archaic cruelty must vanish from human mentality.

Getting rid of the violent, vengeful god means seeing the bible as the work of men livingwithin the confines of their Ancient Near East culture. As one former priest put it:

“Belief in infallible bible leaves us stuck with a violent God, which can instill fear that’s carried through life like a mild depression, only to become worse when facing death and the thought of appearing before this vengeful God. However, this can be avoided when we understand the bible to be inspired but not infallible, written by humans from a different culture who had an agenda.”

http://www.leavingthepriesthood.com/August_2013_Violent_God.pdf

 
Rembrandt, Abraham and Isaac, 1634
 
That the concept of hell even exists in the 21st century is disquieting. I predict that it will be more and more confined to the lunatic fringe. That's why I also occasionally post on Facebook about those semi-insiders, like ex-priests, who are trying to drop the concept of vengeance and punishment, and instead conceptualize an all-loving Christ (I prefer to use "Christ" in this instance because of greater distance from all the Jesus baggage, especially the Second Coming and Last Judgment that will finally, for all times, divide the small in-crowd of the Elect from the multitudes of those supposedly in the clutches of Satan).

The “sanitized Christ” is just as imaginary as any other deity, but for those who have a great emotional need to worship someone invisible who's totally idealized, a figure of non-judging, non-punishing gentleness is much better than the vengeful god of punishment.

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What about those who are a danger to society? Just as we wouldn’t allow someone to drive a car with faulty brakes, we need to protect society from those would would indeed be a danger. Even under the best conditions, we’ll probably need some form of incarceration. But instead of thinking in terms of punishment, we can shift the focus to protection (and that would mean safely isolating the offenders) and efforts to rehabilitate those who harm others (often because of having been abused — “we are the victims of victims.”

*

WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO FEEL NO NEED FOR GOD?

For me, the beauty of the world — of the universe — is enough.

Recently I re-discovered this ancient poem of mine:

B FLAT

A black hole hums as it spins,
astrophysicists announced. It sings
one melancholy note, B flat —
many octaves too low

for the human ear, tuned in
to mother’s voice,
birds predicting the weather,
a creak of a branch.

Perhaps the low B flat
is a greeting to other black holes,
singing to each other
across the black void.

*

That’s before the yet undetected
birth song of new stars being born
in the nest of the black hole,
not just the mournful anthem

of everything leaving everything —
galaxies rushing off
to more important places;
a lover quickly walking away.

~ Oriana, © 2015

~ You can tell this poem was written during the phase of my life when love was still mostly pain — before the discovery of love as a pact of nonaggression and non-abandonment. There are circumstances under which it might be best to leave a lover — but it can be done in the spirit of nonaggression, respect and gratitude.

The positive message of the poem is that new stars are being born: our consolation is beauty and creativity.

 

“NOTHING TO FIGHT FOR, NOTHING TO DIE FOR” — BUT PLENTY TO LIVE FOR

John Lennon’s “Imagine” is still totally radical. Not even in the West have we admitted that human beings come ahead of not only an imaginary god, but ahead of loyalty to various “great causes.” No cause is great enough to justify the slaughter of war (unless self-defense in the case of invasion; some would argue that some ideologies are just too vicious and must be exterminated, but this is a very difficult separate topic).

There remain many things to live for. For me, it’s simply poetry and beauty. For a scientist, it’s the pursuit of knowledge. For a physician, it’s healing — and so on. In addition, there are people and animals we love. Whatever it is, we must cultivate our garden.

And — have you noticed? — life is basically unfinished. We rarely run out of things to do, things to live for. Here is another early poem — I yield to this kind of temptation perhaps too easily. Reader, be warned: I hate the very concept of punishment, but I do love poetry. 

UNFINISHED HOUSE

I walk through a skeleton forest,
the ribs of studs and crossbeams.
I pass through doorless doors,
lean from the empty bay window,
climb the unrolled staircase.

There’s a smell of wounded wood,
sawdust and nails on the floor.
I think of men balancing on planks,
laying pipes and cables.
Soon this will be an ordinary house.

Unfinished, it could still be a castle.

*

For years I’ve had a dream
of wandering through a house,
discovering new rooms,
walking through unfinished
solitudes.

These are not guilty
labyrinths, but sanctuaries.
I want to find
not the way out,
but the way deeper in.

The cabinets are empty,
a state of grace.
My study has no furniture.
I stretch my arms
and lean against the light.

I walk on, the house multiplies:
walls divide, corridors
lead to doors. At last I
understood: I build these rooms
just by entering them.

*

A copy store clerk who secretly
read my work once asked,
“Are you a poet,
or are you only learning?”

~ Oriana © 2015

Not ‘only learning’, but ‘always learning’. And mostly just by entering. 

I have gotten away from the theme of punishment, but I like this shift from the theme of aggression and punishment to learning by entering. After all, life is not about reward and punishment. Mainly, it’s about learning. And learning should be an unpredictable adventure, and a  joy. 

“HEAVEN IS A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE IS KIND”

Michael:

In 1989 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and opened it to signatories. The CRC requires member states to “act in the best interests of the child.” The world seems to agree we’ve evolved to a better understanding of how to do this—well, most of the world—190 countries have ratified the CRC, and it is binding under international law. Significantly and admirably, Sierra Leone was the seventh country to sign. As of 2009, only three member states have not signed: Somalia, South Sudan, and—embarrassingly and shamefully—the United States. This is ironic because the US was a participant in drafting the CRC. Such is politics.

The religious right and home-school lobbies have had the power to stop the US from signing. Ironic, isn’t it, that Christians, fearing the loss of their god-given right to beat their own children (Spare the rod, spoil the child…), indirectly increase the suffering of all children. There is a bumper snicker that reads, Jesus is coming, and boy is he pissed. Add this to the reasons why.

In the US, parents, before physically punishing a child, would often say, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” As children, we thought this stupid and wrong. But there is some truth to it. Those violating another human being violate themselves. When we move beyond physical punishment, everyone wins.

Oriana:

When I was around twenty, I had a sudden insight: We have no right to punish anyone. It was more  an intuitive feeling rather than a reasoned argument, and it seemed esthetic more than ethical: it was so ugly to leash out at another with deliberate malice. It hurt to watch. It isn’t only the victim who suffers. The violation goes both ways, and includes passive witnesses as well. Thank you, Michael, for pointing it out.

Now I know some supportive arguments, based mainly on the view that we are not evil sinners by nature. Studies of infants showed that we are essentially good, wired for empathy and cooperation, and have an innate sense of fairness (this is typical of social species, and we are the most social among such species). Alas, we are vulnerable to damage from negative experiences, especially if we don’t get empathy after the traumatic event. “We are the victims of victims” and it’s not easy to break the generational cycle of passing on emotional damage that results from child abuse. Cruelty breeds cruelty — until a mother or a father discovers the joy of kindness and breaks the chain — or a child manages to enter an environment where kindness is the rule. As I've already mentioned, at first my insight that we have no right to punish anyone seemed esthetic rather than ethical. I instantly understood what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, “I know why America is such a violent country. It’s because your wallpaper is so ugly.” A household that cultivates beauty will not be a brutal one. 

A washing machine helps. Carpets and vacuum cleaners are allies of less-punitive culture. Even soft toilet tissue helps. Kindness includes kindness to oneself. 

A harsh environment — "hard times" — poverty, warfare, crime, threats of any sort — increase stress. More stress results in more cruelty — simply because parents are more likely to have "melt-downs" and scream and hit whoever is too weak to hit back. The abused children then become parents themselves. 

But wait — it's not entirely hopeless and automatic. Less stress helps. More pleasure helps. Awareness helps. It can take centuries, but then it can take only one generation to produce a huge cultural change. Make people's lives easier, decrease stress, and children will get more love and less punishment. Organized religion, as always, will try to oppose progress, but eventually old clergy are replaced and religion becomes "softer." The god of punishment is gradually pushed off his throne that's rooted in hell.




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It is a horror, that “god-given right to beat one’s child.” As Sam Harris observed, religious moderation is the result of taking the “holy” scriptures less and less seriously. He asks,”So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?” The men who wrote the bible lived in a world permeated with cruelty. Harsh punishment even for minor crimes only added to the burden of cruelty. The horrible treatment of those at the bottom of the hierarchy perpetuated the “nasty, brutish, and short” condition of their lives.

Thinking about it, I sometimes wonder how we in the West made it to modern consciousness after all. I used to be puzzled: no more floggings — when did we decide it was barbarian? And effective law enforcement to stop and prevent most violence — when did it dawn on us that a safer world is worth the tax money it takes to pay the police? Not that things are perfect; nevertheless, we are enjoying the most secure period in Western history. With less hardship and less menace in the environment, we can focus on the beauty of life and enjoy gentle child rearing and gentleness in human relations in general. 

Again, things are not perfect — a snarly medical receptionist does not promote a kinder world — but in general, yes. There is more respect for the rights of others than a century ago — not to mention the horror of two or three centuries ago where roving gangs of thugs made city streets too dangerous for walking.

It takes many factors, such as a healthy economy and a social safety net, AND a conscious collective effort to create the kind of culture where people are mostly kind to one another. I wish I remembered who said it: “Heaven is a place where everyone is kind.” 

Michael:

I hope one day a politician will have the courage to take on prison reform — one of the next frontiers for reform of misplaced/unjust punishment.
Oriana:

I am not holding my breath. But maybe half a century from now . . .  It will be revolutionary to get away from the concept of punishment. But note that the mentally ill used to be treated with utmost cruelty. Treatment still falls short, but progress in the field of mental health gives me hope that prisons will be next.

Charles:

This is the most powerful and shocking blog yet. Shocking because of "F U God.”
At the same time there is so much truth and wisdom.
In Rembrandt’s Abraham and Isaac, notice how feminine Isaac.
Most of ll I love your segueway from punishment to beauty.
Oriana:

Vulgarity was the strongest way I could state it, and it needed to be stated with utmost clarity. We have to stop making excuses for the archaic god. Granted that any deity is a human concept, a concept of a cruel god must be condemned as completely out of keeping with modern ethics. Nightmare stories of obeying a voice telling you to kill your son keeps reinforcing the idea that obedience to god comes ahead of everything, even the parent’s duty to protect the child. This translates into obedience to the clergy, prophets, and cult leaders. No way!

The story can still be told as part of a mythology — with the explanation of how it reflects the culture of the Ancient Near East (deities were routinely appeased with sacrifice; altars flowed with blood; animal sacrifice at the Jerusalem Temple continued until the Romans destroyed the Temple), and how the myth was created and eventually written down by fallible men.

I suppose that Rembrandt wanted to emphasize Isaac’s tender youth and beauty.

And speaking of beauty, I am so glad that the rather wild transition worked for you. For me, there is a connection between being able to appreciate beauty and kindness. Beauty and ugliness are involved in how others are treated.
 

DANTE: “THE WOUND OF FORTUNE FOR WHICH THE WOUNDED ONE IS OFTEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE”

DANTE IN NORTH PARK

In rain and fog I drove past a sign:
DANTE’S CAFÉ.
SAME-DAY SERVICE.
I blinked: no, it said
Dante’s Laundry.

I imagine the bard of the Inferno —
the ambitious jutting chin,
laurel wreath upon his brow —stooped over the long counter, 
folding socks and underwear.

Oh vengeful Alighieri,
in which circle of hell
do you find yourself?
Do you believe your torment
was ordained by the infinite love

that moves the Sun
and the other stars?
Or have you become so numb
from folding and picking up,
that you no longer think at all?

Oh, you were subtle as the serpent,
but never harmless as the dove.
Beyond the stench of brimstone,
the garish glow of the flames,
you created perfect, geometric pain.

Now in this laundry you know:
hell is the death of the soul.
The dryers churn concentric
circles of towels, panties, shirts,
bras flayed with static,

smelling of mortality and detergent —
while you stand and fold
other people’s bottomless laundry.
And will do so until
you remember mercy.

~ Oriana © 2015

I wrote this rather judgmental poem on Dante’s judgmentalism and sadistic vengefulness without asking myself what shapes people this way — long before I understood the consequences of a wound that never heals.

The recent article by Robert Harrison — “Dante on Trial,” in the New York Review of Books — made me all the more acutely aware that the growing lack of compassion for the sinners that Dante the Pilgrim shows in his journey through hell — his hardening of the heart being supposedly the mark of his spiritual growth — stemmed both from the cruel temper of his times and from Dante’s great personal wound. Though he saw that it was circumstances that doomed him to the infamy of exile, he never appears to understand the role of circumstances in the life the sinners. If they acted out of their unhealed wounds, that’s too bad — off with them into this or that circle of hell.

For Dante the injury of exile went deeper than the hardships of poverty, homelessness, and loss of social status, about which he complained bitterly in his letters and the works he wrote after being exiled. It also went deeper than the loss of citizenship, which he cherished more than any other earthly blessing (see Paradiso 8: 115–117).

What hurt Dante the most was the “infamy” of his conviction, based as it was on hearsay evidence that resulted in a permanent defamation of his character. Alluding to the way many Florentines simply assumed he was guilty as charged and unleashed a public outcry against him, Dante would later write about wandering all around Italy “displaying against my will the wound of fortune for which the wounded one is often unjustly accustomed to be held accountable.”

The shame and indignation Dante felt at being chased from his nest by his fellow citizens never diminished with time. At the end of his life the wound remained as raw in his psyche as when disaster first struck in 1301. The Divine Comedy was conceived and completed within the dark, lacerated depths of a pain that Dante transmuted into a poetic rage against the machine—the defective machine of earthly justice that had unjustly condemned him and that he believed stood in desperate need of rescue, the way his pilgrim needed rescue in the dark wood of Inferno 1. (Dante soon became convinced that only a sovereign emperor who was above partisan politics and did not share temporal power with the church could administer justice properly throughout Europe).

I like some of the sinners better than some of the Elect. In particular, I like the sweet-spoken Francesca da Rimini better than Beatrice, a dominatrix who excels at verbal humiliation. Here is the ending of the article:

“[Beatrice] foretells the damnation of Pope Clement V, who “shall make him of Alagna go deeper still.” The reference is to the mode of punishment reserved for corrupt popes in Inferno 19. In a parody of apostolic succession, they are planted upside down with burning soles in a hole in the rock of the eighth circle of Hell. Each new arrival pushes his predecessor farther down into the hole. Thus when he dies, Clement will thrust Dante’s arch-enemy Pope Boniface VIII — “him of Alagna” — deeper into the rock.


No matter how often one reads or teaches the Paradiso, these words of Beatrice — her very last words — never cease to shock. They are wholly incongruent with the poem’s ecstatic vision of the Empyrean. As the great Dante scholar Charles Singleton wrote in his commentary, with obvious exasperation: “Has the wayfarer learned no lesson of Christian charity in the long journey to God, and does he, being now so near to God, not love his fellowman, not forgive?” The answer is no.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/19/dante-trial/

And Beatrice is the female savior of the Commedia. Not Christ, but Beatrice. That’s Dante’s great heresy, and I bless him for that. An idealized love object can have an uplifting effect. But aside from beauty, and her willingness to save Dante’s soul, is Beatrice the kind of person anyone would want to have a lunch with? She might be the perfect date for those who want to lose weight, since being scolded for your sins would probably take away appetite.

But again we must remember that Dante lived in cruel times and most likely had a harsh childhood — that was simply normal. A childhood filled with punishment provides a rich material for imagining many kinds of infernal punishments.

Even more important, we must understand that until fairly there was little understanding of psychology. You were a sinner, not a product of genes interacting with circumstances. Notions like social conditioning didn’t exist. One feature of the Middle Ages (and several centuries beyond, alas) was the belief in free will in its worst form — you are responsible for all evil that befalls you — it’s divine punishment.

But theology is indeed subtle as the serpent. If no sin could be proved, then the misfortune was actually divine grace: “God sends suffering to those he loves.” Such suffering is then a kind of purgatory here on earth, making you more fit for heaven. This attitude survives even today, among those who claim that suffering ennobles a person.

What a gift suffering is! Indeed, given that he regarded himself as innocent, it’s somewhat strange that Dante did not express gratitude for his exile. Right there Catholic theologians could accuse him of spiritual immaturity.

As we descend deeper into Hell, the torments become greater and our modern sensibility finds it difficult not to take offense at them. The heart-breaking “forest of suicides” canto doesn’t have a single line of compassion in it, even when it mentions the circumstances that drove the damned to such a desperate deed.


And then there is this strange encounter in the Seventh Circle of the burning sand and rain of fire which punishes the “sodomites” (Canto XV).

EXPECT NO PARDON

Brunetto’s face is burned — Dante calls it
cotto, cooked; he strains to recognize
the one who stretches to him
his scorched, smoking arms.

My son, may it not displease you
if Brunetto Latino walks with you a while.
 
Dante begs him to sit down —
If any of us takes a moment’s rest,


he has to lie still for a hundred years, 
unable to brush off the flakes of flame.
On a high ridge, Dante walks above
the plain of burning sand,


conversing with the spirit who taught
how men might become eternal —
who from that starless pit cries,
Follow your star, and you will arrive

at a glorious port. And Dante
puts him in hell. In unending
torment. The beseeching flowers
of the Tesoretto win no mercy,

nor the scholarship of scholars. 
Expect no pardon for your pretty songs,
Dante warns, stumbling, spiraling down
the dim paths of hell. Not unless the Love 

that moves the sun and the other stars
is a greater poet than even
Dante — and we are the poems,
to be revised until we are music.

~ Oriana © 2015

Brunetto Latini was Dante’s beloved teacher and mentor, his guardian after the death of Dante’s father. He was also married and a father of several children (though only a daughter survived to adulthood). Scholars continue to be puzzled by the lack of any evidence that he was a homosexual. Not even rumors can be traced. He was a statesman as well as a writer, and his tomb can be found near the high altar in Santa Maria Maggiore in Florence.

But suppose Dante did know something that remained hidden from the scholars. He still had the option of placing Brunetto in Purgatory rather than Hell. The cordiality of the meeting and Brunetto’s best wishes for Dante’s glory also don’t seem to fit. No other soul is Hell is honored the way Brunetto is. Dante calls him “a radiance among men,” and recalls “that sweet image, gentle and paternal, / you were to me in the world when hour by hour / you taught me how man makes himself eternal.”

In desperation, scholars have suggested that Dante is trying to say that even quite wonderful men, kind and accomplished, can be guilty of private sins such as being gay. Yet even after acknowledging that Dante was a man of his times and regarded homosexuality as a mortal sin, we can’t explain why he didn’t place Latini in the Purgatorio. I suspect the reason was esthetic: Dante needed an interesting and eminent soul to converse with in the Seventh Circle, a pattern we see throughout the Inferno.

As for causing emotional distress to Latini’s family (and Dante did assume the Commedia would be famous and widely read), well, art comes first.
 
COMPASSION IS A MODERN VIRTUE

We tend to forget that compassion is a recent virtue. We assume that it was born with Christianity. The innumerable examples of the cruelties committed by Christians are dismissed as  “imperfect practice.”

But the problem may be deeper. My eyes were opened when I read an article, “Christianity is not about being a good person.” After all one can be a good person without being a Christian, the minister explained (this is extremely progressive thinking, as ministers go). Instead, the minister continued, Christianity is about sin and salvation. Christianity is not about being a good person; it's about seeing yourself as a bad person deserving eternal damnation, but saved from that by the "bloody ransom" paid by Jesus.

The clarity of this stunned me. All those years I've been unable to define Christianity in any concise way, to answer the question, What is the most important thing about Christianity? (my try was "forgiveness"). But there it was, using the simplest words, none of theological abstract mumbo-jumbo like kenosis. Forget kenosis! Christianity is about sin and hell and salvation. The “god of punishment” (don’t be taken in by false praises of his mercy) has to be appeased by the “bloody ransom.” A god of mercy would not need to be appeased by anyone’s suffering, much less his own son’s death under torture.

But isn’t Christian ethics about being a good person? That’s a misconception, the minister argued with impeccable logic. A Christian’s first duty is to god, not to fellow men. End of argument.

I remember the unencumbered time before my first religion lesson. Not idyllic happiness, not paradise; I think the best word is indeed “unencumbered.” I knew I wasn’t a perfect little girl, but I didn’t think of myself as a bad little girl either. Then came the story of Adam and Eve, and the phrase “the original sin” — of which we too were guilty, by virtue of being human. We were born in sin, in the clutches of Satan. The concept was elaborated in subsequent lessons until I did come to see myself as a bad little girl. I would probably end up in hell. The anguish began. 

A deep, real anguish caused by something entirely imaginary. Years after leaving the church, it's difficult to comprehend that I could have ever believed such pernicious mythology. But I was a sensitive, people-pleasing child, and such children are easily intimidated. I have to forgive myself, and forgive those who saw children and others as punishment objects. 

But I digress. My only excuse is to be able to quote Nietzsche again: “Religions are, at bottom, systems of cruelty.” No childhood trauma or other extenuating circumstances are admitted: humans are simply evil and deserve to be punished with utmost severity.

In earlier times, the sadism of Christianity was more open. Thus, Tertullian (c.160 - c.225) wrote that Christians should not attend gladiatorial fights in the Circus, but not to worry: they will have much better entertainment in heaven, watching the torments of those in hell.

But again I digress. Don’t waste your time on Tertullian. Read Dante, who really was a great poet, even if his moral understanding does not meet our standards. 
 

Boticelli: Dante and Beatrice Meet in Paradise

THE MOSES DILEMMA

GROWING OLD IS BEING LIKE MOSES

You’ve crossed to the other
side of despair, drunk the last drops
of stale, bitter water;
you’ve parted the Red Sea.

Now you stand on top of a mountain.
God points, casually
leaning on the air: “Those
vineyards and olive orchards,

that sun-dazzled river —
that’s the Promised Land.
Look long and deep because
you are not going there.”

A classic Kafka scenario:
God who wastes no words.
Who is the kiss and the knife.
Whose other name is Life.
~ Oriana © 2015

**

His destiny was not a triumphal entry, but an exile’s death in Moab, his body buried in an unmarked grave (let’s put aside the issue of whether Moses actually ever lived).

Kafka says about Moses:

He is on the track of Canaan all his life; it’s incredible that he should see the land only when on the verge of death. The dying vision of it can only be intended to illustrate how incomplete a moment is human life, incomplete because a life like this could last forever and still be nothing but a moment. Moses fails to enter Canaan not because his life is too short but because it is human life. ~ Franz Kafka, quoted by Harold Bloom in “Ruin the Sacred Truths.”

Who is the kiss and the knife.
 Whose other name is Life
 
~ that we must give thanks to and adore, for we shall have no other gods.

*
It happens more often than it is politically correct to admit: for many, and perhaps for most, their great dream does not come true.
 
Those who love to look at the bright side could say, “From this we learn the lesson that it’s not about arriving, it’s about the journey.” I wonder if Moses would have been consoled by that New Age motto — which I admit IS consoling, but perhaps only to those who have learned to “savor the moment.”

In any case, Yahweh isn’t interested in consoling Moses or anyone, and doesn’t say that it's about the journey. In his eyes all those born in Egypt are impure and thus unfit for the new life in the Promised Land. Individual merit doesn’t matter. In the Ancient Near East, religion was collective and based on observance, not on being a good person. 
 
(A shameless digression — yes, so soon — was the Promised Land more affluent and beautiful than Egypt, the most impressive place in the Near East? I have my doubts.)

(An even more shameless digression: Is Christianity about being a good person? I invite the reader to google this; it can be quite eye-opening.)

In any case, Moses was hardly a good person (for the moment, let’s suspend judgment as to whether Moses actually existed or was strictly mythical, though here is a fascinating article on this matter: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/30/moses-man-versus-myth-ridley-scott).

But let us take the myth on face value. Even if he was a nasty, genocidal old man who came up with religious excuses for his dictatorial powers and his cruelty, his final fate can still strike a chord with us. Imagine: all your adult life you worked hard toward a goal. No, for Moses it was not about the journey. That’s not why he put up with the grumblings of the Hebrews rather than giving them the finger and taking off by himself and the chosen few in a spiffy chariot. If he’d done it, I don’t think he’d head for Canaan; he’d probably once more try his luck in Egypt, where the action was.

Moses had a vision even more glowing than the Burning Bush: he planned to rule Canaan as a religious prophet. Theocracy does not thrive under nomadic conditions; it needs real estate.

But as soon as he climbed Mt. Pisgah, certainly an effort for someone his age, as he stood there panting, he received the bad news. A glimpse of the land was all he was to get. He would not be permitted to enter. Raised as an Egyptian prince? Sorry, that’s not kosher. Like all the older grumblers he dragged along, not worthy of the Promised Land.

All the waiting, all the ordeals, all the wandering for decades? All the dedication, all the sacrifices?

That’s just too bad. 

And those allowed to enter not half as deserving as he? Just because they were not born in Egypt?

Life is not fair. Get over it.

Mount Pisgah (also called “Nebo”)  is somewhere there.

*

And Moses, stiff-lipped through so many ordeals, couldn’t bear it anymore. He fell to the ground, shaking with violent sobs.

God quickly walked away, not even mentioning to Moses that this was another opportunity to admire the divine backside. God wasn’t about to console anyone, even if he knew how.

When Moses at last lifted his head off the ground, it was sunset. It was gold, then red, but something was missing. Moses suddenly remembered the sunsets on the Nile, the immense river turning to gold, then fire. In his mind he saw again the beauty of it, the beauty he squandered and abandoned. He would never again sit in a royal canoe in the middle of this liquid fire, hushed with wonder, the boat swaying like a caress. How could he have thought that paradise was somewhere else? The “Promised Land,” how ludicrous! Now he saw his error, the mother of all errors. 

 
*

The “Mt. Pisgah moment” resonates with me at the deepest level. Once I too was on my way to the Promised Land. I too saw myself barred from it. And I thought about Moses, how shattering it must have felt.

More shattering for him than it could possibly be for me. And there was some consolation in that — and, later, in seeing how common the crisis is, how human, how nearly universal. The final victory is laughter: “If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.” But it wasn’t funny back then. “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

I was still at midlife — I could even say “in my prime,” though I saw that only after I closed the door on depression. I managed to invent a “posthumous” life for myself (“posthumous” refers to the death of ambition in the sense of trying to get recognition). Moses, though, was too old to start another career. Besides, he couldn't really switch from being a prophet to taking up pottery “just for the fun of it.” Though he knew Aron was kind to suggest a second career in drought-resistant gardening, and Miriam meant well when she said tambourine lessons would cheer him up, that was useless advice. After a lifetime dedicated to achieving a great goal, nothing could cheer him up.

Today we could easily diagnose the problem: Moses did not “live in the now.” He lived for the future. He lived dreaming of reaching Canaan, and settling there, presumably as the head of state and high priest in one. He fantasized of building a palace surrounded by wonderful lush gardens. Everything he did was a stepping stone toward that future.

Now there would be no future. Nothing would be a stepping stone to anything else.

And the former “stepping stones”? They were just hot, barren rocks eroding in the ruthless sun and wind.

Moses didn’t understand the joy of being posthumous. He didn’t realize that being posthumous was the greatest gift life could offer: the years when there’s nothing to achieve, nothing to prove, and no hurry since you’re not going anywhere. That’s why older people are happier than the young. The young have great expectations leading mostly to great disappointments. People who manage to live long enough to lose the future are finally capable of living in the now.

They wait for nothing. Expect nothing. They think small and do less (a guaranteed way to success, but that’s a different post). They gaze at the world as if for the first time, amazed by the beauty of the most ordinary things. The gleam of water, the way the moon seems to walk with us — things we found beautiful in childhood, but later forgot to pay attention to. That speckled pebble, that bird-like cloud — that is paradise, that is eternity.

And their failed ambitions? They are not important any more. They may not have accomplished what they set out to accomplish, but they did do accomplish something. Others will finish the task. After all, we are a part of a larger story.

*

“To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.” ~ Hunter Thompson

It is this loyalty to ourselves that can guide us in what life remains.

Another secret of joyful older age is to ditch any kind of THINK BIG philosophy. As I’ve already mentioned, the secret of success is to think small. Instead of great ambition, cultivate micro-ambitions.

Micro-ambitions suit me well: the smaller I think, the more I actually accomplish. Imagine a self-help book by Oriana, called Think Small. I’m not kidding — if I felt some need of “last words,” of making a contribution that could possibly touch thousands, I’d write a self-help book about the most important thing I learned in life, which is to think small and take baby steps.

(A totally shameless digression: my newest plant, a Calandrinia spectabilis just put into the ground, has just come into bloom: it now has two beautiful poppy-like purple flowers. More will be coming.)


 
*

It’s been at least ten years since I wrote the Moses poem and meditated on how devastated he must have felt. But I see now that I underestimated his resilience and the human ability to recover from almost anything.

Yes, I can still imagine Moses casting himself on the ground and crying — howling — in the pain of defeat. The disappointment, the humiliation.

It’s true that he may have felt unable to re-invent himself. It felt like the future got stolen from him. There is no denying the initial despair.

But then, sunset or no sunset, a thought like a small cloud rose in Moses’s mind: “At least I got them this far.”

And Moses laughed.


 
THE MANY MOUNT PISGAHS WE CLIMB
 
Michael:

For several years I've thought about writing a book titled Hymns Foreplay--this to mock and enjoy the naivete of the hymn writers (So heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good), and the evolution of meaning in language (e.g. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing; Fill Me Now...), and to provide some raucous hilarity in the bedroom. (Let's leave aside the obvious fact that this is the project of a demented, juvenile mind). As an atheist and secular humanist, I have (had) little respect for Christianity (in recent years) or anything connected to it and I looked forward to the work. Two weeks ago I started reviewing hymns and found myself, surprisingly, transported to a time when my conscience was tender and my religious sensibilities eager and willing. I felt again a soft touch, the brush of angel's wings, and heard divine whispers--and I had to stop. There will be no Hymns Foreplay. I cannot mock that which used to hold so much meaning.

It was in this context I cringed from time-to-time at your irreverent but funny reductions of the Moses story (and necessary and just). Still, I cringed. True story or not, in it is writ the desires of the human heart.

The OT and NT are full of mountaintop stories and to me, from a meta-perspective, they are touching: the bumbling, Magoo-like human climbing as high as possible to contact the god who is so high, yet, it is hoped, not actually so far away. And occasionally, the god deigns to lower himself and in some small way--with a view of his backside, a booming voice, or a whisper in the wind--communicates with those importunate and pathetic humans. The quest and desire are real and, for most of us, the climb continues incognito.  

You have prosed (It's a bit ugly to verb that noun, isn't it?) the record well. As a child, I took the story on differently. Moses loved his people (even once offering to exchange his life for theirs) and his loss wasn't entry into the promised land but not entering with his people. He was 120 years old. Eye sight undimmed, physical fervor undiminished. And humble. The humblest then and since. In the end he got the better deal--resurrection. Emissary to Christ. Buddies with Elijah. Hobnobbing with god. Or so the story goes.

Still, it was a Pisgah moment. I think the mantra about journeys and destinations is wrong. There are no destinations. There is only journey. I think of the many promised lands I've tried to enter, some of them successfully. Once arrived I found myself thinking, Now what?

I could only journey on.

My greatest Pisgah was the climb and the discovery there is no god and I stumbled down that mountain with no sense that paradise lay in any direction. What others hear as voice I know is only wind. Rocks tumbling. Psychic machinations. There is no promised land.

(I've been wondering what the psychic impact will be when we discover life on another planet. How will our paradisaical aspirations change? What new Pisgahs will we climb?)

Are we left with only laughter? That's as good an answer as any. Why not? I want to laugh off my seriousness. I've done what I've done. I am where I am. There's not much else for it. I'm all for laughing with Moses. At least I got myself this far. And maybe I should thank the Universe for Pisgahs. Nothing like a long hike and empty mountaintop to set the mind straight.  
 
NOTHING LIKE AN EMPTY MOUNTAIN TOP

Oriana:

Thank you, Michael, for this deep and thoughtful response.

The discovery that there is no god wasn’t quite a Pisgah for me — it was a liberation from a torturous death march. But there is a way in which the metaphor does hold: I had to somehow get on the heights of broader knowledge — in my case, learning about other mythologies — to gain an overview of this one mythology that was poisoning my life. How interesting that the serpent was a positive symbol in other mythologies — that of wisdom, healing, and immortality (because it shed its old skin and seemed rejuvenated; have you ever found a shed snake skin while hiking? It’s so interesting. But I digress.)

Since I left the church at 14, not much supportive and comforting text has registered on me. I know that such text could be found, but for me it was overwhelmed by the toxic threats. I couldn’t love a god whose power rested on the kingdom of hell. And even Jesus was supposed to return as a JUDGE, in spite of his own preaching about not judging.

So leaving the church was liberation. The monstrous judge did not exist. And Jesus is never, never, never coming back. He is not going to throw me and my parents and other loved ones into hell. And I don’t have to crawl on my knees (a very catholic practice) and beg to be spared. RELIEF!

But thinking about the Mt. Pisgah moments in the metaphoric sense, I’ve certainly had those. Isn’t disappointment a rich and fascinating psychological experience, once we are over the shock and pain? As long as we don’t commit suicide, we generally manage to move on.

America was the new Promised Land. In Polish literature there is a novel called The Promised Land — about going to America, the myth, the hope. It was never “the United States” — it was America the All-Accepting Mother Goddess waiting for the huddled masses etc.

I wasn’t the first one to discover that the relationship between the United States and America is a difficult one.

But I came to love California and that ultimately helped save me from living in bitterness and regret.

Marriage can be a climb up another Mt. Pisgah, but it’s possible to find a “peaceful solution” so that respect and gratitude prevail. (Or even a “two-state solution,” LOL.) Likewise with romance and heartbreak. Talk about really strenuous trails . . .

The hard one, the one that almost killed me, was of course poetry. That was the steepest climb of all, and part of it was sheer euphoria, the drunkenness of high altitudes. Alas, a vision of fame and a different life it was supposed to bring managed to poison everything. It took years and a whole succession of insights before I was finally at peace and even happily harvesting. There can be a delight in failure — talk about joyful surprises!

And yes, laughter helps. “Laughing with Moses” — a new hymn could be written with that refrain. 

And sitting on empty mountain tops — quite mind-clearing, yes.

I also thank you for quoting “So heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good” — that is a gem.

I am of course aware that there is also the tradition of Catholic mysticism where the soul is the Beloved and not a worthless sinner. I discovered it later, but it was too late — too much religious mumbo-jumbo in the way. And “Beloved” was for the elite, not for the dumb sheep that ordinary church goers allegedly were. In any case, the great adventure is loving a real person, with all their flaws and neuroses and contradictions, and not an imaginary ideal. 

**

PS. Here is a wonderful video. I know you don’t need convincing that hell doesn’t except (except here on earth, as does heaven). It’s the part about god enhancing our humanity rather than rescuing us from it, god as something unfolding in us, that I find quite congenial. Not that we need the god label, but for those who have positive memories rather than god-the-monster, I think that might be a way to eat your god and have him/it too (I know . . . just couldn’t resist it . . . too many communion wafers).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc

and here is another treat: Johnny Cash singing "You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyStrEnDIbw

RILKE: A BREATH AROUND NOTHING

A god can do it. But tell me, how
can a man follow through the narrow lyre?
His mind is divided. At the crossing of two
heartways stands no temple for Apollo.

Song is not desire, not wooing
any favor that can still be attained;
song is existence. Easy for the god.
But when do we exist? When does he pour

the earth and the stars into us? Young man,
it’s not about love, when your voice
forces open your mouth — learn to forget

your sudden outburst. That will run out.
True singing is a different breath. A breath
around nothing. A breeze in the god. A wind.

~ Rilke, Sonnet to Orpheus 3, 1

“Gesang ist Dasein.” There is no capturing the music of this assonance and consonance, those wonderful vowels that are lost in “existence,” nor at their best in “being.” But even if the music is lost, the poetry that remains (by one definition, poetry is what remains after translation) is sufficient to stun us into silence.

"To sing is to be." But sing about what? The first difficulty is that we are rarely completely confident about anything. Our mind is divided into fifty shades of “yes, but.” And poetry (usually identified with singing) works best when we make simple declarative statements: “What will remain of us is love” (Larkin, “The Arundel Tomb”). We have to take out all species of “almost,” “perhaps,” or “sometimes.” Prose is more permissive and subtle that way, closer to reality. But poetry, when it works, has more emotional power.

Second, Rilke dismisses a cherished belief about poetry: that it comes from being in love. That inspiration and that material will run out. And if real singing is a breath around nothing, then it’s hard for the immortal young to grasp that core meaning. A breath around nothing is a breath around the nothing to come after someone else closes our eyelids. We sing about and against our personal knowledge of mortality.

(It could be argued that a poet like Donne, or Dickinson on those days when she at least tried to believe that “this world is not conclusion,” could also produce real singing in the expectation of living forever, disembodied at first, but eventually rising in flesh — apparently true paradise depends on having a body after all. But Rilke, who knew that all religions are human inventions, at best tried to imagine a non-Christian kind of afterlife, where the dead have their special tasks.)

There is Donne, but Donne is small next to Shakespeare, who is not a religious poet. And that is almost an omen of secularism: real singing will be around nothing, i.e. poetry will embrace this mortal life. In any case, the process of creating a poem is not between the poet and god, but between the poet and the language. I suspect it was that way even for religious poets: they would rather go into erotic mysticism than stick to dogma and spoil the melody and/or image.

Besides, like all writing, poetry requires dramatic tension. No surprise for the poet, no surprise for the reader. If all the answers have already been provided by religion or an ideology (Adrienne Rich’s poetry deteriorated when she became a vociferous feminist), the poem is too predictable. A poet needs to remain in the “cloud of unknowing.”
Photo: Trey Ratcliff

This is not to say that poetry is without its gods. Beauty and art are among the gods of poetry, but so is melancholy — a kind of beautiful sorrow, a twilight. Now and then, a true night of despair. After all, without darkness, there would be little need for poetry. In modernity, unadorned observation of life has become the most common mode, without necessarily — or at any rate not obviously — seeking to provide an uplift. But beauty itself is always a triumph of the human sprit.

And poets must hurry into the narrow lyre because tomorrow may be too late. “Sing now while you have a voice.”

Still, poetry has to delight in order to be poetry. “It must give pleasure,” as Wallace Stevens said. For me this is the first commandment of poetry. And even in translation, I think this particular sonnet to Orpheus does give that deep pleasure by which we know art. The poem stuns us with its depth, its originality, its courage (it does take courage to say that “true singing is a breath around nothing”), its excellence, and its beauty.

Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus rapidly, in the white heat of inspiration. Poems that come in this manner are often the best. But even if it took only minutes to write down the first draft, we must remember that it also took a lifetime of incredible dedication. To Rilke, nothing came ahead of poetry. Nothing was more important, not even his daughter’s wedding (I knew a woman who refused to read Rilke because she couldn't forgive him for that — he said he didn’t want to lose the creative momentum).

The Sonnets, I feel, became Rilke’s last will and testament. We are all the rich heirs. 

**
In summary: This particular sonnet is about poetry. And it’s quite a feat, since most poems about poetry aren’t that engaging, not even to poets. Rilke asks: how can we write poems? How is that possible at all? “A god can do it” — but a human being, that mess of contradictions? To a god, everything is a simple yes or no, but our mind is divided: we see how almost any statement is both true and false.

And there is a second major point. True poetry, Rilke says, does not stem from falling in love; it comes from confronting our mortality and still being awed by the earth and the stars. It’s when we see the magnificence that of the world that we truly exist and can celebrate the strange, improbable glory of being alive, of being able to feel joy though we hold the knowledge of mortality like an apple in our mouth. To Rilke, just to exist is transcendent.

Chateau de Muzot, where Rilke completed the Duino Elegies and wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus.

Hyacinth:

My favorite sonnet  of Rilke . . . I never get tired of hearing or reading or discussing it . . . thank you.
Oriana:

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, with such wealth. The second one, “A girl almost,” was the first sonnet I fell in love with. And of course I love the unicorn sonnet, and the one about mirrors, with Narcissus in the last line.

Speaking of lines, sometimes it’s not the whole poem but a line or two: Be ahead of all parting; if drinking’s bitter, turn into wine; money lives in a pampering bank; does it ever uncurl (a beggar’s hand); does it really exist, time the destroyer — the list goes on. The more I re-read the Sonnets, the more certain lines become part of my psyche.

Charles:

It’s so true that beauty is the god of the art world.
Oriana:

Or it used to be. I hope, naively perhaps, that it will be restored, just as architecture is no longer an imitation of factories.

Michael:

I admit to hiding behind "yes, but" as an excuse for my limited intellect or heart intelligence. I've never been able to make much of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and a well-placed Yes, but has come in quite handy from time to time — it allows for masking my not having a clue. Talk about never being sure. That's it. Most often I don't have a clue what he's talking about and that's the kind of poetry that leaves me deflated and self-flagellating.

And then enters a commentator, like yourself, unraveling the mystery. And I'm grateful but mostly awed and left scratching my head. I scrolled to the top a number of times to read the bit again. Is that what he meant? Really? How did she dig that out of that?

Perhaps poetry has more than a time and a place. Maybe it picks its people as well.

For me it truly is a breath around nothing — meaning the dusty recesses of my mind.
Oriana:

Michael, relax and trust yourself. The meaning of a poem is not what the poet put in it like a thing that never alters (a kind of altar??) A poem, once out in the world, belongs to the reader. Even if the poet comments on a particular poem, explaining the intended meaning, that commentary can be discarded and your own response given priority.

Just think of a myriad ways a bible verse can be interpreted. A historian will see it differently than a psychologist, a mother who’s lost a child differently than a young man who sees himself as one of the “masters of the universe.” The reader needs to find a personal interpretation, or else the text is dead to him or her, and often repugnant since the morality of an ancient deity is inferior to our modern ethical sensibility. 

A work of literature belongs to the culture — and culture changes: we read Homer differently than Plato did. Human nature may stay relatively the same, but our values differ quite significantly from the value of antiquity. Each reader has a different perspective: life experience is especially important here. “Trust the poem, not the poet.”

This particular sonnet is about poetry. And it’s quite a feat, since most poems about poetry aren’t that engaging, not even to poets. Rilke asks: how can we write poems? How is that possible at all? “A god can do it” — but a human being, that mess of contradictions? To a god, everything is a simple yes or no, but our mind is divided: we see how almost any statement is both true and false.

And there is a second major point. True poetry, Rilke says, does not stem from falling in love; it comes from confronting our mortality and still being awed by the earth and the stars. It’s when we see the magnificence that of the world that we truly exist and can celebrate the strange, improbable glory of being alive, of being able to feel joy though we hold the knowledge of mortality like an apple in our mouth. To Rilke, just to exist is transcendent.

(Looking at the last two paragraphs here made me think that my “explication” wasn’t clear enough. I need a kind of “in summary” — so I'm going to add these paragraphs to the main body of the post.)

The next post will be about Moses on Mt. Pisgah, and you’ll feel more at home. I don’t mean that you’ll enjoy thinking of those mountain top altars where bulls and rams were sacrificed, but I think you’ll bask in the relative clarity of the psychological meaning.

 

UPHOLSTERED RUT: THE GLORY OF DECLINE

Franz Marc: Blue Horses
 
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut
                           ~ James Broughton

SPIRIT HORSES
August, in Vermont,
I saw mist swiftly rise,
white horses from a black
forest pond —

Rearing in a rush of breath,
they rose straight up,
then veered
toward an unseen shore.

From stillness to stillness
they sped, spirit horses
free from all weight,
a star-braided mare

calling to them
from the other side.
In the mirror of the night I saw
I too was a ghost, although

still flesh, leaf-deep in the now.
But the horses, as they
disappeared,
in silence called.

And I knew that soon
I’d lay my head along
my spirit horse’s fluent neck,
hold on to the imagined mane —

Still I wavered: drop my
rags, my chores? I said,
I’m growing old. Then her
voice, star-deep in the night: 

But without wanting
the highest, is it really life?

~ Oriana © 2015

I'm collecting poems for another possible chapbook or manuscript. Only one of the poems will be new. Yes, last year I wrote one memorable poem — and maybe one or two that I don’t even remember. I also wrote tons of prose, but prose doesn’t keep; a poem, if it has enough magic (or call it “poetry”), lives on. I wrote one real poem. It was a surprise. An astonishment. “You are an astonishment,” I said to my unconscious from where it welled up the best way: on automatic, without effort. 

But I also know that as a rule it doesn’t happen anymore. As a poet, I am posthumous. I seem to have lost the kind of brain function that it takes to write poetry — more demanding by far than prose, even vivid, artistic prose shimmering with images and metaphors. Prose is a playpen. Poetry is being hit with a lightning.

Because I'm posthumous myself, I immediately understood why Donald Hall announced that he was done with poetry: “Not enough testosterone.” This translates into not enough dopamine and other neurotransmitters, except for serotonin.

The levels of dopamine drop steeply with aging, while serotonin holds out a lot better. Hence the well-known “mellowing” with age. Serotonin keeps us contented. I am certainly not leaping over any abyss in the hope of glory. In fact the word “glory” seems utterly pretentious and ridiculous. In truth, last year I spent a lot of time upholstering my rut, and loving it. The house and the yard are my blissful burdens.

Friends keep telling me that I'm not done with poetry — that I only need to try harder. But poetry doesn’t come from trying harder. A poem is a gift. It’s found and polished, but the finding is primary. This happens, prolifically at first, and then, for most of us, less and less often until it stops happening. Oh, there are poets who keep on writing, and succeed mainly in repeating themselves, in a less imaginative way than at their peak, with none of the freshness and boldness.

When I saw that I was repeating myself, grinding through the old nostalgias, I mourned. Then I realized that at least I have had the privilege of writing strong poems that some found beautiful and magical.

Once I lived as the gods,
more is not needed.
     ~ Hölderlin, “To the Fates”

To the objection that all poets repeat themselves, circling around their main themes, I reply that one runs out even of repetition.

Kasimir Malevich, The Knife Grinder, or the Principle of Glittering

Besides, prose called. I wanted to do what is forbidden in poetry: to communicate. To speak clearly and directly on any subject. Poetry is a very restricted, minimalist medium. Prose is infinite.

True, one can express the infinite in a poem, but of the “infinity in a grain of sand” variety. Prose is an endless walk on the beach.

For the sake of emotional stability, I needed something that would be there for me every day, independent of the whims of inspiration. Even with prose, there are still surprises, and I still feel that I don’t really choose what to write about — the adventure remains. But it’s more mellow: a gentle drizzle, not a storm.

A SPECTER IS HAUNTING US
 
That dreaded word, decline. Now that we have the privilege of living longer than ever, a specter is haunting us, the specter of decline. There is certainly physiological decline as measured by markers such as arterial stiffness, lower metabolic rate which translates into less energy, diminished dopamine which means less drive to do anything, much less create, reduced muscle mass, and on and on — no need to produce the whole long and depressing list. 

But is it all strictly decline, or the kind of change that we don’t necessarily equate with things getting worse? Can older mean better, or at least more content? For instance, I have found it 100% true that men don’t want to regain youthful intensity of libido. The fear of “that nightmare” (as more than one man described to me) is what keeps many from testosterone replacement (don’t worry: the dose will maintain a middle-aged sort of libido while doing wonders for muscles and mood).

Nor do women want to feel obsessed with romance the way they used to be. They don’t even want to those embarrassing memories: how they’d risk messing up their life in pursuit of someone who now seems so mediocre and uninspiring they can’t understand what was so exciting about him. I remember thinking in disgust, even when I was still at the mercy of hormones, “If X happened to be a woman, we wouldn’t even be friends.” Now, blissed out on peace of mind, a woman can turn to more interesting pursuits.

Those don’t usually involve glory. The dream of fame (if it ever existed) is no more — how exhausting that would be, constantly traveling to give readings, attending those boring award banquets! The dream of riches — is there really any need to take that "luxury cruise"? But a flowerbed does not seem trivial anymore. If we must have a rut, let’s make it a joy to look at, and luxuriously comfortable.

But these are easy consolations. It’s the mental decline that hits us hardest, much as we try to turn memory lapses into unfunny jokes. There is plenty to be said for dying before the worst of aging hits. Consider this well-argued article: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel (not a pen name!) explains why living too long is a loss — some might say a catastrophe:

“It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

“But I know X who is 86 and is perfectly sharp and still goes running every day,” begins the standard objection. There are indeed exceptional individuals who are still productive into their nineties. The trouble is we all assume we will be just like that outlier — the exception and not the rule. 

Meanwhile personal experience of decline can’t be denied — even if can still do push-ups or write a coherent essay, maybe even a competent poem with traces of former wild leaps. If we could no longer remember how to write a check, then we may agree it’s wise to no longer take up room, we think. And we think that’s a long time off, if ever. 

I'm not sure that Buddha said any such thing, but he might have. Life was shorter then, and certainly didn’t begin at forty. Old age began at forty. But even assuming that now old age begins at sixty-five — or seventy — or even later . . . (the definition changes according to our nearest birthday), there is still no denying that there are only so many good years left — a finite number. 

Let’s set our standard low and and define “good” as absence of dementia, and let’s assume that mental function holds out until about 85, when the risk of Alzheimer’s (by no means the only cause of dementia) rises to 50%. Usually aging accelerates in the late seventies, but let’s be generous and assume 85. Even so, the limit looms.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know what will follow: my personal discovery of that limit has been one of the best things that ever happened to me. I realized it was too late for depression, so it had to stop immediately — and it did. There was simply no time to waste on brooding, bitterness, and crying fits. If I still wanted to make even a slight contribution and to enjoy the (probable) good years, I’d have to set about it immediately. And I did.

MY POSTHUMOUS CONSOLATION

As I compile poems for what will be another try for a chapbook, I ponder how blessed I am. There is no anxiety to it now. I’ve won three chapbook contests, and that is enough — even though many lovely potential manuscripts could be created.

I am considering this poem:

LAST NIGHT OF THE LEONIDS

No moon. The pines like black wind
brushed the tips of stars.
Horses stood in their corral,
carved as if outside of time.

You said, “They are sleeping.”
But suddenly one horse
at full gallop  
ran toward us, a rift in the dark.

The other horses never stirred.
They slept, eternal statues. Only he
shot through heavens
like a marble flame.

We almost
stopped breathing, struck
with pure rhythm,
muscle and mind —

that shining horse waking up —
then standing still,
the frost of stars
braiding his tall outline —

And we too stood still,
in the shivering starlight.

~ Oriana, © 2015

I will never again write another poem like that one. The horse happened only once, and I happened to be in top form. The following year, C and I walked by the same corral, and — nothing.  The horse had lost his spirit. You could say he was in decline.

When Galway Kinnell told me, in private, “A poet knows when his best poems are behind him,” I didn’t want to believe him. But he was right. He still wrote some fairly good, competent poems, but never again anything as powerful as his Book of Nightmares. 

And yet after Galway uttered those dreaded words to me, he smiled a happy smile. Only now I understand that smile: he knew he’d been given a rare privilege of having written wonderful poems — and that was enough.

Of course he also won fame. I don’t mean to put myself anywhere near his rank. I have to content myself remember the times when, at a poetry reading, someone would lean to me and say, “Your poems are so beautiful.” And that is glory enough for me.

The official label for this contentment in later years is “diminished expectations.” It may not sound good, but it is. It implies less ambition, if any. And, in this case, that’s good. It’s an end to torment.

Is it an end to achievement? To a certain kind of achievement, probably so. But there may be another kind. I remain an agnostic on that question. We know that the completely unexpected may happen.

The completely unexpected has happened: thanks to decline, I have gained happiness.


 Michael:

I am painfully aware when a communicator is working at their craft. I feel the effort, the force, the heavy hand, the intensity, the word that's just a bit off, the halting rhythm, or failed cadence. But when there is flow, like a river, where the overflow spills down into vessel after vessel, I am happy. I forget I am listening or reading. I hear music.

Rilke expressed it like this:

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
the deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea."

And that, I believe, is the mark of a good communicator — when no effort is apparent. It's what I felt in your prose (Upholstered Rut: The Glory of Decline) and two poems. Gentle and flowing.

Nothing-more-to-prove seems to open the way to unfolding. One of the fruits of decline, I think. Last Night of the Leonids and Spirit Horses have moved to the top of my favorites of Oriana poetry. Nice notes to end on (But who's to say they will be your last?).

During harvest I notice the fruit growers in the valley don't plow or prune or fertilize. They just pick.

I think it was Cicero who, when asked about the advantages of growing old, listed as one of many "freedom from the tyranny of passion." I asked an 80 year old man, hours away from getting married, if he had experienced this kind of freedom. He assured me he was experiencing no such thing. But I get Cicero's point. The passion of youth was tyrannous and bloody exhausting. Much better is the love that comes with--I was going to say middle age, but that's not it. Love that comes after miles traveled, aborted journeys, break-downs, rest stops, grand vistas, and the memorable good traveling companion. My only fear is that Cicero's tyranny may yet again rear its head. Perhaps the downhill journey to the doors of the tomb is traveled in fits and starts, not so different from the uphill part of the journey.
 
Oriana:

Thank you, Michael. The concern with decline that you mentioned in your comment on the previous post, “The Homelessness of Wallace Stevens,” was a vital part of my inspiration for the current post.

Prose is “always there for me” because it’s a craft rather than art. It can rise to the level of art, but it doesn’t need to. Prose can give pleasure just by trotting along. Poetry that doesn’t rise to the level of art is not worth reading. In fact it’s not even poetry.

Creating true poetry is not controllable, which is both the glory and the agony. “I haven’t written a poem in months!” is the familiar lament of a poet who’s frightened that it’s all over now. For me to each new poem seemed like the last one, and yet a week later . . .  but that was then.

Both “Spirit Horses” and “Last Night of the Leonids” were written many years ago. You will see many more of my classics, my “golden oldies,” my “magicals,” on this blog. From the start, I’ve been using poems that I’ve already written. Sometimes I touch up a word here, a line there. Yes, it does feel like harvesting. That’s why I am not devastated by the departure of poetic inspiration. Rather, I feel grateful for such a rich harvest.

And it’s likely that you’ll see the same poem twice or three times. One of the pleasures of poetry is that a good poem gains with each re-reading. As with music, familiarity breeds affection.

Can I really be sure it’s over? Falling in love produces a dopamine tornado, and I know from experience that writing would result — either poems, or more artistic prose. But falling in love is unlikely. I love the peacefulness of my well-upholstered rut.

It’s more difficult for men because it doesn’t take much testosterone to maintain libido — less than it takes to maintain muscles and bones. And the male brain has a much larger area devoted to sex. This happens already in the womb: sex, aggression, and spatial ability are the gifts of testosterone, with fewer neural regions available for social skills and nurturing. Still, the libido at eighty is not what it is at eighteen.

But at some level both men and women keep waiting for the “magical other.” While it’s always women who are mocked for waiting for the Prince, studies show that men are more emotionally dependent on women than women on men; both sexes are emotionally dependent on nurturing women. Of course individual cases can differ. My life has been mainly about vocation, vocation, vocation. Becoming a writer was the first stage of liberation. But simply having serious interests of any sort has a profound effect on one’s priorities. There is an old joke: “An intellectual is simply someone who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

After the great discovery of vocation, and the better-late-than-never decision against depression, I keep on making little discoveries. Reading books, for instance, makes me peaceful, while reading online is pro-inflammatory. Deep focus heals the brain, while surfing Facebook gives me a rash (a symbolic image of hellfire, I'm sure). And writing arising from serenity is different than writing arising from passion.

That downhill journey to the tomb that you mention — as long as health holds out, that can be the best part of the journey. Autumns and sunsets have a beauty vastly beyond high noon. As always, “individual results may differ.”

Speaking of autumns and sunsets:

LATE VENUS

“Great mothers, which way?”
I ask red desert rocks.
The mothers do not reply,
their faces always serene,
their breasts a stone lullaby.

“Where to?” I ask the ocean.
“Where are you leading me, my life?”
Only the glassy breaking of the waves;
only rustle of pebbles rushed 
toward and away from the shore.

“Where am I going?” I ask
the wind harp of trees,
hillside grasses hurrying into green
before smoke, before straw.
I know what the earth will reply.

I watch the stained glass of autumn,
the wine-dark river of sunset.
Late Venus shines
purest light. Then the diamond
winter of the stars.

~ Oriana © 2015

A friend looks at me sadly and says, “I don't have any strong desires anymore.”
“How about the weak ones?” I ask him.
“Weak ones — yes,” he says, after a pause. “But they're so weak, most of the time I'm not even quite sure I do have them.”

~ Mikhail Iossel


*

Less dopamine. Bring back the dopamine, and you can have strong desires again. But do we really want that?

I still have the desire to “harvest” my best poems — not because they will be immortal, but because simply the act of collecting them and sharing them in a modest way gives me a lot of pleasure. That's one way I practice unbridled hedonism.

And I still have the desire to read good books and learn interesting new things. And to keep enjoying beauty. If the worst comes to the worst, if I can still watch the sunset, it’s a sufficient reason to live.