If there be sorrow

by Mari Evans

If there be sorrow

let it be

for things undone . . .

undreamed

     unrealized

          unattained

to these add one;

Love withheld . . . 

. . . restrained

Si hay tristeza

deja que sea

para las cosas no cometidas. . .

no soñadas

      no realizadas

           no alcanzadas

a estas añade una más;

El amor retenido. . .

. . . refrenado

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mari-evans

5 libros

                Cuadros de Charlotte Salomon de su obra, "Vida o Teatro?"

Llevo tiempo leyendo un género de literatura que explora la frontera entre la ficción y no ficción, para acercarnos a la realidad.

El Impostor

Javier Cercas describe como una novela de no ficción su libro sobre Enric Marco, el anciano barcelonés que se hizo pasar por superviviente de los campos nazis. Efectivamente, el autor combina crónica, biografía, autobiografía, y ensayo para transformarlo en una especie de thriller!

Las Siete Cajas

Es otro thriller de no ficción, escrita por una mujer catalana, Dory Sontheimer, quien tras la muerte de su madre en 2005 encontró 7 cajas llenas de recortes, documentos oficiales, fotos, pasaportes, cartas que revelan un pasado secreto: sus padres fueron judíos salvados del Holocausto, enviados por separado a Barcelona a finales de los años 30. Dory entreteje la historia de sus padres, abuelos y otros parientes- algunos que sobrevivieron y los que no lo hicieron. El libro está organizado en 7 capítulos, uno para cada caja y para cada vela en la menorá.

Tela de sevoya

En una entrada anterior ya comenté este libro singular de Myriam Moscona, una especia de novela abierta contada por un coro de voces, una melancólica búsqueda de sus raíces evocando una lengua que languidece, el ladino; y una cultura que desvanece, la sefardita.

Paisajes de la metrópolis de la muerte

De Otto Dov Kulka, es otro libro asombroso de forma abierta. El autor, un eminente profesor de historia, escribe su "mitología privada... de la Metrópolis de la Muerte" partiendo de unas grabaciones que hizo ya de viejo rememorando su paso por Auschwitz a sus 11 años de edad. Esta narrativa personal concierta sus vivencias y sueños con una investigación rigurosa, documentos, fotos, y poemas rescatados del infierno para librar la memoria de los fantasmas. Un libro desafiante, fina mixtura de arte e historia, belleza y terror.

Charlotte

La nueva novela de David Foenkinos no es una novela al uso. Está escrita mediante frases cortas, como un canto. Y el autor se implica de manera muy personal en la narración de la estremecedora vida de Charlotte Salomon, una pintora alemana de origen judío, que de joven abandona su Berlín natal y pone rumbo a Francia huyendo de los nazis. En el sur de Francia comienza a componer su obra única: “Vida o teatro”. Antes de ser gaseada en Auchswitz a los veintiséis años, estando embarazada, deja una obra maestra, una joya del vanguardismo del siglo XX.

Todas estas historias mueven dentro de una forma abierta a través de la cual llegan a verdades a las que no se pueden acceder de ninguna otra manera.

Colaboración Generativa

“Hoy en día uno de los mayores desafíos que tenemos por delante es el de ser capaces de crear comunidades donde los miembros contribuyen y se benefician de éstas de manera significativa. Durante el proceso de colaboración generativa tanto la conciencia individual como la inteligencia “de campo” colectiva van de la mano y cuando estos dos polos potencialmente creativos empiezan a tocar música juntos los resultados son espectaculares.”

Robert Dilts

Notas del Carnaval

Hace un par de meses en la noche del Carnaval, al regresar de Barcelona en el último tren, un grupo de 7 u 8 chavales brasileños, armados sólo con una pequeña timba y un tamborín, irrumpió bailando en nuestro vagón. Con su percusión, pies ágiles y voces veraces todos ellos estaban vibrando con su chispeante cultura popular. Su batucada evocaba el mundo al revés. Pero los demás pasajeros seguían conectados a sus Smartphone o miraban por otro lado con caras largas. Nadie se meneó; todo el mundo intentó ignorar esa embarazosa (e incluso amenazante) exhibición de alegría. Excepto yo; no pude quedarme sentado o dejar de sonreír. Su jaleo me desataba el duende. 

Pero me inquietó la apatía que se vislumbró en aquel vagón. Detrás de la máscara gris se discernía un sufrimiento mental, psíquico y emocional de los pasajeros. Simpatía quiere decir el sentir compartido, la percepción de la continuidad sensible del propio cuerpo en el cuerpo del otro. ¿Estamos perdiendo nuestra capacidad de vida sensual debido a la adicción a lo digital? ¿Ha sido colonizado nuestro campo imaginario e incluso erótico por las corporaciones de lo virtual?

MLK

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, in 1968. I rembember it as if were yesterday. I was in my last year of high school and had only two classes left, American History and Social Studies, taught by a gifted radical educator, part Sioux, one of the few authoritive voices near me opposed to the Vietnam War then raging in SE Asia. In the afternoons I worked downtown in the basement repair shop of a Singer sewing machine outlet, fixing machines and occasionally delivering new ones around the San Joaquin Valley to suburban housewives and sometimes to Mexican women who lived in the farmworker camps. When the news of King’s tragic death came over the radio, my boss, a sullen Okie from Muskogee, suddenly gloated, glad “that nigger finally got what’s comin’ to him”. I had to make a delivery some 20 miles away in Crows Landing. I got in the van, tears welling, and drove that country road like a maniac, full of rage. The temperature gauge shot to red and I ended up cracking the block. A big cloud of black smoke shot out the exhaust. Simultaneously the whole land blew a head gasket, with riots breaking out all over the country… and black neighborhoods going up in smoke…

In a speech he gave a year before he was killed called “A Sweeter Music” King makes use of his skill for encoding message in metaphor. He talks about the need to work actively for peace. Nonviolence is not passive, he stresses. He draws on Greek mythology to recall the story of Ulysses and the Sirens.

“The Sirens had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could not resist steering toward their island. Many ships were lured upon the rocks, and men… flung themselves into the sea to be embraced by arms that drew them down to death. Ulysses, determined not to succumb to the Sirens, first decided to tie himself tightly to the mast of his boat, and his crew stuffed their ears with wax. But finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves: They took on board the beautiful singer Orpheus, whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the Sirens… So those of us who work for peace must learn to sing with a sweeter voice, a cosmic melody far superior to the discords of war…”

Hoy es el aniversario del asesinato de Martin Luther King, en 1968. Lo recuerdo como si fuera ayer. Estaba en mi último año de bachillerato y tenía sólo dos asignaturas a completar, Historia EEUU y Sociales, a cargo de un educador radical, muy dotado y medio Sioux, una de las pocas voces cercanas a mí opuestas a la guerra de Vietnam, que entonces azotaba en el sureste de Asia. Por las tardes yo trabajaba en el sótano de una tienda de máquinas de coser Singer en el taller de reparación, arreglando máquinas viejas y haciendo la entrega de las nuevas, por todo el Valle de San Joaquín, a las amas de casa y algunas veces a las campesinas mexicanas que vivían en barracas.

Cuando la noticia de la trágica muerte de King llegó por la radio, mi jefe, un tipo hosco de Oklahoma, de repente se regodeó, contento de que "ese negro de mierda finalmente recibió su merecido". En ese momento me tocó hacer una entrega a unos 30 kilómetros de distancia a Crows Landing. Con lágrimas y lleno de rabia me metí en la furgoneta y conduje de manera alocada por una carretera secundaria. El indicador de temperatura disparó a rojo y terminé por destrozar el motor. Una gran nube de humo negro salió disparada del tubo de escape. Al mismo tiempo toda la nación explotó en alborotos, con grandes disturbios por todo el país... y barrios negros enteros se convirtieron en humo...

En un discurso que dio un año antes de ser asesinado llamado "Una música más dulce" Martin Luther King esgrime su habilidad para codificar el mensaje en la metáfora. Primero, habla de la necesidad de trabajar activamente por la paz. La no-violencia no es pasiva, subraya. Después, se basa en la mitología griega para recordar la historia de Ulises y las Sirenas:

"Las Sirenas tenían la habilidad de cantar tan dulcemente que los marineros no pudieron resistir la tentación de navegar hacia su isla. Muchos barcos se rompieron sobre las rocas, y los hombres se lanzaron al mar para ser abrazados por mujeres que les atrajo abajo hasta la muerte. Ulises, decidido a no ser seducido por las Sirenas, primero decidió atarse firmemente al mástil de su barco mientras los miembros de su tripulación taparon los oídos con cera. Pero finalmente él aprendió una mejor manera de salvarse: se llevó a bordo el poeta Orfeo, cuyas melodías eran más dulces que la música de las Sirenas ... Así que nosotros, que trabajamos por la paz, debemos aprender a cantar con una voz más dulce, una melodía cósmica superior a las discordias de la guerra ..."

Trickster

I was fortunate once to sit at the feet of a great master, J. Krishnamurti. He gave a talk in a park in Bangalore, India in the fall of 1970 and I was among the two or three hundred people gathered there on a warm sunny day to listen to him. My main reminiscence is of his apparent transparency. He seemed wholly congruent: his words, tone of voice, pitch, breathing, gestures, demeanor, intention and mood all harmonious with his message:

I do not demand your faith; I am not setting myself up as an authority. I have nothing to teach you- no new philosophy, no new system, no new path to reality, there is no path to reality any more than to truth. All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding is a most destructive thing. Leaders destroy their followers and followers destroy their leaders. Be your own teacher and your own disciple. Question everything… (Freedom from the Known)

Similar to what the Buddha offered to the Kalama clan when they asked for his guidance: “Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought…” He proposed a constant questioning and wisdom grounded in practice.

Allan Watts observed long ago in his famous essay The Trickster Guru that [unfortunately] “millions of people are searching desperately for a true father-Magician, especially at a time when the clergy and the psychiatrists are making rather a poor show, and do not seem to have the courage of their convictions or of their fantasies.”

Here are some of his DIY recommendations for setting yourself up as a spurious spiritual leader:

• “Be quite well-read in mystical and occult literature…
• Frequent those circles where gurus are especially sought, such as the various cult groups which pursue oriental religions or peculiar forms of psychotherapy
• Because people love to be types, sort them into groups according to their astrological sun signs or according to your own private classifications...
• Work out different stages of progress…
• A judicious use of hypnosis – to produce pleasant changes of feeling and the impression of attaining higher states of consciousness…
• Let on that you are in some way connected with an extremely select in-group…
• As soon as you can afford to wangle it, get hold of a country house as an ashram or spiritual retreat…
• Allow it more and more to be understood that you are in constant touch with other centers of work…
• Disappear from time to time by taking trips abroad, and come back looking more mysterious than ever…
• Eventually come to believe in your own hoax… This can be done through religionizing total skepticism to the point of basic incredulity about everything…”

Watts’ lampoon brings us full circle. Questioning everything leads to questioning even that, and then maybe sustaining a state of mind, a fleeting silence, in which there are no beliefs at all, but only what is- what actually is. 

A Complete Guide to The Soul

A Complete Guide to The Soul is a far-reaching account of our shifting perceptions and attitudes towards the soul throughout history. Patrick Harpur paints a stunning portrait drawing from Plato, comparative religion, alchemy, the Renaissance magi, the Romantic poets, shamanism, folklore and the anthropology of myth…

The descriptions of the human experience of the soul and spirit can only be approximations or metaphorical, since “to have” such an experience the self implicitly disappears or merges with something beyond the realm of the senses. The Romantic poets and the world’s mystical traditions provide the best examples.

Here are a few modern descriptions of the experience of spirit:

Thomas Merton (Zen and the Birds of Appetite) speaks of the ground of being: "The spark which is my true self is the flash of the Absolute recognizing itself in me. This realization at the apex is a coincidence of all opposites... a fusion of freedom and unfreedom, being and unbeing, life and death, self and non-self, man and God. The spark is not so much an entity which one finds but an event, an explosion which happens as all opposites clash within oneself. Then it is seen that the ego is not. It vanishes in its non-seeing when the flash of the spark alone is....The purpose of all learning is to dispose us for this kind of event. The purpose of various disciplines is to provide ways or paths which lead to this capacity for ignition."

Ken Wilber (One Taste):

“In the heart of Emptiness there is a mysterious impulse, mysterious because there is actually nothing in the heart of Emptiness (for there is nothing in Emptiness, period). Yet there it is, this mysterious impulse, the impulse to…create. To sing, to shine, to radiate; to send forth, reach out and celebrate; to sing and shout and walk about; to effervesce and bubble over, this mysterious exuberance in the heart of Emptiness.”

David Richo (Shadow Dance) has another vision: “The True Self is the farthest reach of our potential, i.e., God, the complete articulation of the best of our humanity, the actualization of every potential for human love, wisdom, and healing. This is not a person above us as traditional theism teaches. God is the climax of human powers that made an appearance in Christ and keeps appearing in many other saints. It makes an appearance in us every time we love. God’s presence is that moment of love made human in any here and now.”

In A Complete Guide to The Soul Harpur suggests a threefold division of ‘body, soul & spirit’.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with him:

“Soul in relation to body likes to personify itself as Jung’s anima, or as the personal daimon whom Plato describes in his myth of Er who returns from the dead at the end of The Republic. It’s different from soul in relation to spirit, which is where I prefer to use the word as the Neoplatonists used it. For them, soul was a whole realm intermediate between the spiritual or intelligible world (nous) and our own familiar sensory, material world. It was Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, wherein dwell the daimons who link us, as Socrates remarked, to the gods.

…But, in another sense, soul and spirit can be thought of as symbols of the two main perspectives through which we view the world—the two perspectives which create the world we see. We experience them as a tension within ourselves between the spiritual longing for Oneness, unity, purity, light, transcendence etc. and the imaginative need to recognize Manyness, multiplicity, labyrinthine entanglement, darkness, immanence etc. …The great ascents of the spirit into rarified mountain realms where the One dwells in blinding light can be read as a disastrous neglect, even repression, of … the underworld journey of the soul whose course is tortuous and mazy, moving towards darkness and death…. the painful initiatory dismembering of the shaman, to the rather unsexed and anodyne rebirth system of ‘spiritual’ paths.

I prefer, as Jung says, wholeness to perfection.”

For the full interview check out:

http://dreamflesh.com/interviews/patrick-harpur/