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[leapintothevoid]

This Pale Blue Speck

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,   Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe Such boastings as the Gentiles use,   Or lesser breeds without the Law— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Recessional RUDYARD KIPLING, 1897

There is no end of evidence to back up Aristotle’s claim that man is a social animal. The very essence of the human is sociality. We learn from each other, depend on each other, love each other, loathe each other. We emulate, kill one another, enslave one another, engross ourselves in one another. We are so damn social that we scarcely pay attention to anything that falls outside the sphere of human interaction. We’re far more interested in our neighbor than we are in the origins of the universe, or the astonishing life of plants, or the planetary migrations of birds. What matters to us is the human story. Anything else is hard to get worked up about. Even Nature, it seems, only matters in as much as it has become a picturesque backdrop for our social media feeds. Witness the explosion of popularity of undeveloped spaces ever since hashtag culture became a thing.

The French philosopher Jean-Clause Guise once famously quipped to a friend entreating him to enjoy the natural scenery on their drive off the Aegean coast of Turkey, “la nature n’est que le decor de notre tragedie”, “Nature is but the setting of our tragedy.”

Those of you who’ve ever seen an ancient Greek amphitheater know that this was literally the case for Greek tragedies. These open-air amphitheaters were built in the most spectacular natural settings, usually in full view of the sea and the surrounding mountains. The fact that nature remained an impassive backdrop to the human sufferings enacted on stage, no doubt added to the tragic effect of the performances. 

By the same token, this would have been part of the consolation, too. Knowing that the decor was permanent. That it has been there before you, and would be there after you, more or less unchanged. In those days, people used to believe that the setting had little, if anything, to do with the pity and terrors of our dramas. 

Many people still believe this. But it’s unclear how much longer we can go on deluding ourselves. It’s becoming obvious that our human tragedies are no longer confined to the stage of history. They’ve begun to convulse the decor itself. In fact, now that we’re approaching the denouement, it turns out that the setting was what the story was all about in the first place. Who would have ever thought so. 

In his poetics Aristotle speaks of the moment of anagnorisis, of recognition, as the climactic turning point of classical tragedy. There is every reason to believe that in the history of our relations to the Earth, we are at such a turning point. The symptoms of our ecological ills are evident to everyone: infernal wildfires devouring huge swathes of wild lands, floods of biblical scale, acid rain, smog, mountains of garbage, beaches awash in sewage, mass extinctions, ozone depletion, toxic substances in our drinking water, virtually continuous famine along the southern fringe of the African Sahara.

Scientists have for decades been warning the world at large of a global scale biological event on the scale of COVID. Now they caution us of the almost certitude that another pandemic will happen-within our lifetimes. COVID was merely the first convulsive spasm of a dying biosphere in the form of the pandemic that shocked and, at least for a moment, crippled the human world. Humanity stood in awe as that briefest of respite afforded incredible scenes of wild animals so used to being fugitive breathing freely at last and being able to move about without the constant terror of man looming. 

But the temptation to go “back to normal” is so great, so seemingly innocent that the very forces that have brought the natural world to such a precipitous state of decline are likely to try to spin back up and lure us back into catatonic complacency. At least until the next inevitable crisis hits.

Lost among the endless drone about global warming and climate change is the destabilizing of the delicately balanced, and rather exceptional, set of conditions that make human life -as well as other life as we know it-possible. We pay a lot of attention to the symptoms, but we don't pay enough attention to the underlying disease. The climate has always changed, and the earth has always adapted. But the post-industrial systems of capitalist exploitation and extraction that now stretch their arms around every corner of the globe -from the tropical forests of Borneo and Java to the tundras of the Yukon to the deserts of Mongolia-have led to a steady deterioration of the life support systems of the planet, resulting in a constant lowering of the Earth’s carrying capacity. The Earth has become sick. Most of us have seen firsthand the stark lessons of the pandemic: that those with underlying conditions are the most susceptible to extraneous shocks. This may well be the first time the Earth has had to deal with a change of climate under such compromised, degraded health.

As long as humanity, and in particular, I’m referring to the first world, especially America, continues on its trajectory of mass consumption, resource depletion, and habitat destruction, there is little to suggest that we aren’t simply risking the lives of our children and future generations in order to continue living the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. The ethics of this seem dubious at best, and scandalous at worst.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his “Critique of Pure Reason” introduces the idea of the categorical imperative as a criterion for judging your moral actions. Basically, what would happen if what I’m about to do, everyone were to do that thing? 

If we materialize the idea that if all 8 billion of us enjoyed the average American lifestyle: in other words, if all 8 billion of us owned a car, had a fridge, heating, air conditioning, traveled in airplanes, received piles of junk mail, took vacations in desirable locations, ate hamburgers made of beef grown on pastures irrigated by rapidly depleting aquifers of groundwater, and shopped in sprawling shopping malls, or otherwise one-click delivered by an overworked, underpaid, disposable wage-laborer in a fossil fuel-burning, congestion-increasing vehicle from a network of vast, mega-warehouses that have popped up over the the husk of Middle America like mushrooms from a decaying deadfall.

In other words, even the things that we take for granted as not very excessive or extreme, we cannot universalize this standard of consumption around the planet. And therefore we have to also turn a little bit of light on ourselves, and ask ourselves whether what we take as almost a God-given right to a certain standard of life actually belongs to a kind of aristocratic first world class of people that can’t actually be opened up to the rest of the world, or even our own grandchildren.

We’ve come to a point that even the term “natural disaster” is a misnomer, because in many cases it's a social disaster which creates the conditions for a natural disaster. Nature has been drawn into the vortex of human action, and all of a sudden there comes this terrifying revelation: that its downfall is a distinct possibility. All of a sudden the storyline has shifted. And we’re in an altogether different drama now. One where the setting threatens to collapse and bury the stage in a pile of rubble. Le decor de notre tragedie is turning into la tragedie de notre decor.

[leapintothevoid]

Ode to Italy

Italy, my beautiful Italy! To see you on your knees, in the merciless throes of this indiscriminate killer! To behold you being ravaged by this frightening pandemic! To witness the eternal city empty of admirers. To hear the haunting midday silence at the Piazza Navona, or the colonnades of the Vatican vacant of devotees come to St. Peters. To see the noble Duomo de Firenze, Bruneleschi’s leap into eternity, without the avid throngs lusting for their moment amidst her ochre domes and marble spires. Venetian tables devoid at San Marco. Your ornate churches, abodes built by mortals but fit for gods, bereft of all worshippers - whether of God or of Form, (which is after all that Subtle Artist’s hallmark). To gather daily through the wire news of your mounting troubles. To know you in this diminished state, bent over under the yoke of this awful, invisible enemy, is like helplessly seeing one’s beloved reeling from a lethal affliction. Like watching a friend slowly slacken their grip on life and unbidden fade into oblivion. Such are the pangs i suffer at your misery

But two thousand years have failed to produce a calamity that you couldn’t wither. What Achilles but couldn’t snuff your nascent flame. What Hannibal the great or what Attila the Hun could plug the springs that send forth into the world your immortal greats? Neither did the plagues and pestilences, numerous and ruthless though they were, killing untold millions, many in hideous last moments, break your spirit and weaken your inner health. Nor could century after century of petty, protracted wars, or the last century of the too-great wars blunt your Mediterranean ardor and solar optimism. In fact, it was calamity itself that gave you birth. From the desolate shores of devastated Troy, sailed forth your patriarch to give you your beginning. You have always risen, like the Phoenix, from the ashes. Resurget Cineribum. 

No. The final home of battle-scarred Aeneas, the birthright of Virgil, the land of Romulus and Remus, of Caesar and Antony, Dante and Michelangelo, Petrarch and Galileo, Leonardo and Columbus. The home of Volta and Marconi, and of Pirelli and Versace, Ferrari and Zegna. A land and people as strong, proud, ageless and alive as you will not be cowed by COVID. This eternally fertile garden of genius, beauty, and the very spirit of la dolce vita, will rebound and persist, emerging from the darkness blemished but even more brilliant; aged, but even more timeless; bruised but even more beautiful. Italia, mia bella Italia, siamo con te!

[leapintothevoid]

I held her hand like a key

as birds danced along the invisible thread of her thoughts, her mind steered away from mine, leaving behind a glowing wake of unspoken words and unfelt emotions in the space between our beings.

I may never find the bottom of this wind, which seeps through shrouds of dead leaves as if trying to wake them up.

Blades of grass reflect her steps, but not mine: a sure sign that I was not meant to follow her.

She nods below clouds on fire to the pulsing husk of the skies, each eye a galaxy of little suns. And no silence is the same anymore.

[leapintothevoid]

50 Words on Art

Indifferent, pitiless Capital subjugating Man, Nature, Earth, Commodifying everything.

Science, Technology promising immortality, Utopias, but only burying the soul deeper beneath debris of Postmodern, posthuman surge of so-called Progress.

Art alone resists assaults of a globalized world bent on flattening all texture, homogenizing all nuance. Art alone reveals departed gods.

[leapintothevoid]

Nonetheless

Rusty leaves afloat, suspended in mid-air, drifting Lazily to the Autumn ground. October winds threshing memories from a heart Heavy with love lost and hope abandoned. It’s the Season for clearing out, of skies, of boughs, Of skeletons in our inner closets. But amidst this Great Lightening of Loads, Your leaf refuses to fall, Clings to the branches of my soul and, Though dead, refuses to die It stirs into life flashbacks of days long past. The warm brush of your arm, The lilac perfume of your skin, The pearl glow of your eyes.

But also the agitated retorts, And the vexed expectations, And the raising of our voices, And of those words I can never take back. All of these refuse to leave, and Flicker on in the great constellation, where Although we flashed like shooting stars in each others skies, Your star still burns. I see it on moonless evenings still.

[leapintothevoid]

RCM

Far from any other good riding, and too small (at least on paper) to be a destination ride on its own, RCM is right next to a major interstate highway, a McDonalds, a gas station, and pretentious suburban tract housing. But hidden among these emblems of all that is ugly and wrong, there lies a little slice of the Divine: 8.5 miles of Pure Cycling Heaven: Pound for pound (inch for inch?) the greatest road I’ve ever ridden. I keep coming back to it, and it just keeps amazing me.

On the map the road doesn’t look like it has many features. But once you ride it you realize it’s almost as if the actual road was drawn by a nervous trembling hand, which was smoothed out on the map to hide the embarrassing imperfections. In reality, the road is a narrow strip of tarmac with stupendous contour laid out along a playfully serpentine path amidst picture perfect scenery. 

What’s more, I’ve never seen more than 2 cars, or more than 3 cyclists, on the whole ride. In fact, so light is the traffic that on weekends you might actually see people hiking the road, although they’ve always been watchful of cyclists. 

It’s an out and back ride that climbs 1400ft over 4.3 miles, most of it in the 2nd half. So you will definitely work, and despite its modest length, this is not a ride I recommend to beginners, as the descent takes some skill. 

But still, every time I do this ride, I feel compelled to thank Providence for the very existence of such a phenomenon. Because within its 4 miles RCM contains everything, and in the right proportions, that is great and transcendent about cycling. There isn’t a single inch of this ride that is not utterly delicious. It truly is just perfect.

It starts out in the midst of uninspired suburban mini-mansions, a straight and steep slog for the first tenth of a mile or so, and all you can see is a grassy wall ahead of you. Then it turns sharply right, flattens out, and leaves all the ugliness behind. You see a steep canyon opening up to your 10 o'clock, and the road begins to wiggle as you ride past a handful of driveways fringed with tall hedges. Then after the 4th or 5th driveway you roll over a bump and descend left, and the real fun starts. You’ve left behind all traces of civilization, and are now in a narrow creek canyon surrounded by giant oaks spreading their branches above you in languid poses. The road bends left, right, up and down, over lovely little humps that demand work, yet propel you once you crest, so you can carry some momentum on to the next one. It is truly a dance between road and rider. You give, and you receive, and so it goes as you continue to climb imperceptibly under glorious woods, some of the best I’ve seen in the region.

Before you know it, the roadway courses right and emerging out of the woods you’re now riding with a grassy canyon wall on one side and the creek, now lined with willows, continuing on your right. The playful contour continues though, as hump after short hump keeps teasing you to attack. Almost without your noticing it the woods close up above you once more, until you see a quaint old farmhouse and you are finally presented with the first noticeable ramp of this ride, and while you could power through it, it’s best to measure your effort, because the climbing will get tougher. 

Shortly past the house you dip sharply to the right and the canyon continues to narrow, and the road tilts up. Once again you’re completely in the shade of thick, beautiful woods, as you begin the steepest sustained part of the climb. The next half mile averages 10% or so, but the road pitch is never the same for too long, and the contour is still wiggly as it has been. Atop the ramp you break out of the woods for a few moments, and begin to approach a cattle gate, (where you might see some hikers jostling with each other on their way to an over-crowded local peak made tragically famous to the point of ruin by the insanity of social media).

But before you get to the gate the road makes a sharp left turn and you enter thick woods once more. These are not the mighty oaks you saw near the bottom of the road, but they’re beautiful nonetheless in their resplendent and profuse branching that envelopes you as you continue to climb, now at a slightly lesser grade, with frequent, punchy bumps that beg you to stand up and just crest. As ever, each sharp upturn is followed by a flattening, so you’re never let down if you do decide to dance the dance, as it were. After a mile or so of this, you break out into the open, the grade eases and you now have tremendous, sweeping views. You sense the end is near, but as the grade continues to ease, you re-enter the woods one last time for a series of S-turns that finally deliver you to the gate at the end of the road.

On the way down, RCM is a white-knuckled thrill ride that will test your confidence and skill (or lacking these, your brakes). The frequent bends and twists make it tempting to brake, but the less-than-ideal surface makes it hard to do so. The camber encourages you to take aggressive lines, but survival instinct urges you the other way. During the first part of the descent you’re basically carving a helix through tunnels of thick vegetation. Because the road is so narrow, and because so much is blurring around you, it all feels very, very fast.

If it’s your first time, you won’t enjoy the first half of the descent. Until you get to the farmhouse, that is. Because after that the surface improves, the grade flattens, and there’s no more sharp turns, but still plenty of contour to keep things thrilling. You simply pedal effortlessly, going up and down those same humps that you played with on your way up. Except now you’re going twice the speed. Weaving, bobbing, tilting, gliding, punching, until the very last hard left that takes you back to the houses and flings you down to the road’s end at a busy 4-lane thoroughfare.

Take a moment to thank whatever deity you believe in, (and if you didn’t, you will now!) because phenomena like this ride cannot go without eliciting some surge of gratitude and appreciation, of which this humble post is a meager expression.

[leapintothevoid]

Beautiful and Absurd

“First there was only darkness, (or only light, which is the same thing.) Then emerged beauty, and at last, absurdity.“

The earliest representation in western culture of the intrinsic lack of meaning in life is the Ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, who is condemned to push a boulder up a mountain until it gets to the summit, but where, upon reaching the summit, the boulder rolls down the other side, all the way to the bottom. Sisyphus then has to push the boulder back up, and repeat the cycle, ad infinitum. The absurdity is revealed in Sisyphus’s knowing that the boulder he’s grunting and sweating to push uphill will fall back down. Yet being mortal, he is condemned to forever perpetuate that futile cycle.

The main idea of the absurdity of the human condition is that there is  little to no hope of a sensible reconciliation with man’s desire for significance and meaning in a cold, indifferent, dark universe. All that we know, have witnessed, all that we can ever hope, and love and desire, is all contained in a tiny disappearingly small speck in a remote corner of an endlessly vast universe. A universe whose 99% is invisible, nay, incomprehensible to us – dark matter, dark energy (who really knows what that is?), where of the remaining 1 percent that is observable, we are one tiny planet, in one ordinary solar system in one middling galaxy among hundreds of billions. What is the point of the sheer excess of the universe if our lives have any meaning or significance.

And on this tiny, disappearingly small planet, the life of one being counts for how impossibly little? How many people have lived and died before us. How many continue to breathe, dream, hope, despair without the knowing of anyone other than maybe a handful? How many hopes and fears and dreams and dreads rise and fall each moment around the world. And for each those feelings are the very center of the universe, yet how can all of those be simultaneously true? The absurdity lies in the fact that for me, my suffering and happiness are paramount. Yet I know these are evanescent and that beyond me there is no case for their cardinality.

Take the example of my cousins who, according to custom, were prematurely married off to strangers. Many of them held great promise and shone with brilliance when I knew them as my sisters. Yet all but one of those marriages ended up in spectacular disasters, with neither husband nor wife happy. And what of their children, who were then deprived of a happy upbringing conducive to the cultivation of a fully human existence. What fault is it of theirs that they were brought up in such dysfunctional homes. Are they not forever handicapped by the thoughtlessness of previous generations?

Not that those children’s grandparents had nefarious intentions. Far from it. But in the words of Hannah Arendt, these evils were engendered purely from sheer thoughtlessness. What she refers to as the “banality of evil” is manifest day in and day out in the countless tragedies that unfold all around us. From the lament of a mother mourning the betrayal of her newly married son who now has an allegiance to his wife, to the wails of a Honduran or Syrian refugee who has had to witness his parents and siblings murdered by rebels, and has to undertake a treacherous journey across harsh and hostile lands and seas in the faint hope of something  better. Or the tears of one of our animal brethren as they witness the daily holocausts of their kind, all in order to meet the endless appetite of their dominator, gluttonous man. The appalling amount of suffering in the world suggests either the utter lack of order in the universe, or else an order that is hostile to those who can feel or think. How does that make any sense?

We human beings, who in our ability to abstract and imagine have been able to unveil countless secrets of the cosmos, certainly can presume to intuit what is rational and sensible. So it cannot be the case that the universe makes sense and it is only our perception that fails to see it. Rather it is in fact our very perception, which enables us to perceive beauty and order and make sense of things, that illuminates the cruel and ultimately absurd condition of being human.

Hegel’s belief that history made sense was, Camus argues, refuted by the history of the 20th century, with its holocausts and untold millions lost to utter insanity. The last century exposed the bankruptcy of the notions of social utopias, whether it was Nazism – the natural evolution of a master race that would lord over all mankind and establish a perfect and just society; or fascism – that a powerful state organized along nationalist motives could create the ideal conditions for individuals and organizations to thrive; or communism- that the abolition of private property and the creation of an undifferentiated collective, a society of ants, as it were. The history of the 20the century exposed the utter and calamitous failures of all these fantasies, despite our utmost belief in them at the time. Today we have a similar faith in the attainment of a technological utopia, where artificial intelligence and big data and machine learning and algorithms will solve the human riddle and deliver us from the torments of history. I believe that just like the last century exposed the bankruptcy of social utopias, this century will expose the utter bankruptcy of these imagined technological utopias.

Meanwhile we continue as a species to insanely drive towards a mutual annihilation of our own life worlds and all that is beautiful around us. We exalt our own resourcefulness, and turn a dangerously blind eye to history by believing that we- this generation- will be the exception. We will defy history and be the heirs to that technological utopia, where all our stupid whims can be satisfied indefinitely, and none of the incredibly fragile and complex networks of dependencies that support us will degrade or diminish. That we can go on plundering, polluting, and pillaging the earth for our insane reasons, and “everything is gonna be okay”  This is the absurdity. We know what we need to do, yet seem powerless to do it in the face of the forces our thoughtlessness have already set in motion.

Albert Camus’ famous Le Mythe de Sisyphe is a meditation on this very canonical myth, where he concludes that affirming the absurdity of life, defiantly finding meaning in our personal experiences, and countering the absurd with the beautiful is the only philosophically honest answer to the irrefutable absurdity of life.

I for one, subscribe to Camus on this. As you know I am passionate about beauty in all its various forms, whether it’s a beautiful song, a majestic oak tree, a pastel sunset, a glorious Federer backhand, or an intelligent conversation between two friends. These are the things which in my view shine like candles in the cold, dark, universe. And as the old adage goes, ‘tis better to light just one little candle than to stumble in the dark.”

[leapintothevoid]

Doctors in the Indian state of West Bengal are now in day 5 of what has grown to be a nationwide strike, protesting “poor security in hospitals”. Doctors are fed up because they are routinely harassed, threatened, intimidated, and even assaulted by patients who have complaints about the treatment they received. Think about that. Doctors are getting bullied, beaten up, even lynched by pissed-off patients. That's insane! What kind of society is it where disagreements about medical treatment are resolved via violence against doctors?

And this isn’t a one-off. The president of India’s Resident Doctors Association, Harjit Singh Bhatti, went on the record to say that retributive violence against doctors is rampant in India, happening daily, all over the country. The situation is so extreme that doctors routinely commit suicide out of helplessness, fear, anxiety, and depression. It’s not for no reason that doctors across India are rallying for the attention of the national government demanding both acknowledgement of wrongs done and promise to take concrete steps to prevent future harm.

How can things get so bad that, so completely broken as to precipitate into mob violence against medical doctors. Can you imagine if this happened in the U.S? Or France or Australia or Mexico or Germany? It’s hard to imagine this happening anywhere that isn’t completely corrupt and broken. There had been a lot of talk lately coloring India’s recently concluded general elections as “the greatest democratic exercise in the world.” But while it’s true that a staggering number of people voted in the Indian general elections (won by a right wing extremist in a landslide), what kind of democracy can one have at best when doctors have to hold protests out of fear for their security and lives from pissed off patients. Is this the actual ugly face of Indian society behind the self-congratulatory billboards of a (numerically) great democracy?

Or is it possible that for a nation to be a democracy while at the same time also being a barbaric society?

[leapintothevoid]

Without the Beholding Eye

Without the beholding eye, there is no color.

Without color, what life can there be? Should all flowers shed their proud hues And subdue their forms to black and stolid grey? Butterflies renounce their privilege among forms? And ask for no higher perch than gravel, sawdust, bitumen? Should corals surrender their splendor? Should rainbows excuse their existence? Should all us heady feeders on indulgence abstain And accept the lie that there is only the cold, indifferent Truth? And all passion, color, fire, love is merely illusion? The algorithms insist, and the Brave New World demands it.

But, thank God for artists, (And thank artists for God,) Our case remains undecided yet.

[leapintothevoid]

The news today had in it a story of a 21-year old college student falling off a coastal cliff to her death while taking a picture. While the immediate impulse upon hearing such news as this is to scoff at and even ridicule the victim, a little reflection suggests a tragic and insatiable  need among our generation to be recognized, valued, affirmed. There is no saying to what ends people will go in order to try to satisfy this chronically frustrated desire and achieve a little adulation, no matter how fleeting and ersatz it inevitably will be.

What drives ordinary people to such tragic extremes? What human needs are no longer being met by traditional institutions? Or perhaps the vortex of postmodern capitalist consumerism, which has laid waste to traditional institutions -family, community, nation, religion- that once served those very human needs for belonging, communion, and identity, leaves in its wake an existential void that beckons human beings towards increasingly desperate measures?

One look at the exhibitionist culture underpinning social media reveals a profoundly narcissistic and solipsistic ethos. In an ironic perversion of its purported raison d’être, social media is not so much about connecting with others as it is about acquiring and expanding one’s circle of validators, and supposed admirers. Likes and matches serve really to temporarily boost the poster’s sense of worth and provide a fleeting relief from the intrinsic nothingness of their being. Like counting and recounting grains of sand on an existential desert.

[leapintothevoid]

Winter’s Last Goodbye

There was something so dramatic and beautiful about the temperamental, atavistic mood in the skies yesterday. Intense bursts of rain alternating with whipping gales and blindingly bright sunshine, and even the awesome force of thunder and lightning - how special, how rare, how magnificent and exciting. As if all the drama and power of winter came together for a swan song, a final flourish -astonishing in its plenitude and ultimate mystery- a fittingly grand finale for what has been a winter to remember.

Flowers emanating fragrances once more; leaves of all sizes, hues, and shapes bejeweled with diamond raindrops; the manzanita trunks lacquered anew; skies garlanded with rainbows, electric air rumbling with thunder, reminder for us mortals what it sounds like when gods make love. And then at last, the yellow-tinged moon, prodigious in its bigness, sunlike in its brilliance, unveiling itself from behind backlit, spent clouds, blanketing velvet hills with silver light. Like a fireworks show that intensifies before it ends, so too did this magical winter put on a show.

Just when it seemed like the rains had forsaken us, leaving behind the desiccating wake that might just turn to fire. Just as we thought they had gone for the year, or maybe for good -who knows when and by what force of nature they might return- they turn around and literally shower us one last time with their life-giving waters, and soul-soothing beauty. Like two lovers meeting for the last time in intimacy, two kindred souls enjoying their last night and last morning together before their last goodbye, the winter gods, too, gave us one last weekend to remember them by.

[leapintothevoid]

The Last Dance

Beneath those heady desires, hotly spoken words and tender moments, Behind tabletop conversations over banquets indulgent with delight, Between those cold, vacant mornings and warm, brimming nights, Resplendent in the fullness of an impossible love, Silently we knew there lay in our midst an infinite chasm With no way for us to cross.

The star that had our name on it, That burnt brilliantly, even violently at times, That fiery star is now gone, and the night moved on From this, our little corner of the universe. But like a celestial red giant, in its final flourish of brilliance, Our star took on a luster only dreamed of, never seen.

Never did I feel so close to you as on our last goodbye- That wine-sweet, diamond-bright finale to the romance that was us. The conversation, the confession, the clinking of our cups Over breakfast made together. The smell of your hair in the morning, My longing gaze into your enigmatic eyes, Your caressing hands on my face, The taste of your lips at dawn: Every aspect of my dreams come true.

To have glimpsed heaven if only for a few precious moments To have lived a lifetime in those few hours. How luxuriant your aftertaste, The lingering sweetness of your lips on mine, As if all the tumult and melancholy in my heart Dissolved into the Spring air Where our shared laughter still rings.

[leapintothevoid]

Dinner for Two

He had waited all week for her presence to illuminate his house. Now, the moment had come. She has said yes. Yes, she had said!

The table was set for two. The bamboo mats placed opposite each other, and on each a plate of steaming biryani, and beside it a tall wineglass half-filled with Malbec. At the center of the table a candle flickered, casting trembling shadows on his face, which while still youthful, in this light can no longer conceal some signs of the years, the heartbreaks, the catalogue of jilted evenings to which this too will soon be added.

She was supposed to be here by now, for she lives only a few blocks away. But she doesn’t appear. No call. No show.

The warmth and fragrance from the plates has now dissipated into the air, just like his hopes and expectations. He will not be eating tonight. As the French say, plus importante que ca qu’on diner, est lui avec quelle on diner - it’s more important to have someone to eat with than to have something to eat. His pours himself another glass of bourbon, on the rocks. The sunset-colored spirit will be his only company. His pride will not let him text her to ask where she is, and why isn’t she there. No. it’s her duty to inform him. He will not give himself away and establish himself as the lower hand in this interaction. She must want him as well. She knows the number; she knows the bounds and calls of decency. If in her eyes his worth is so little that she will simply flake, having only just promised to have dinner at his place-dinner that he lovingly arranged, then she is not worth his dignity. The half-filled wineglasses, though untouched, perhaps because left untouched, now seem half-empty.

After an hour riddled with doubt, anxiety, questions without answers, he picks up the two plates, and covering them with film, puts them back in the fridge. He flushes the wine down the sink and rearranges the table, erasing all signs of the dinner that never happened. Tossing his head back to take in the last drops of the now-diluted bourbon, he flicks off the kitchen lights, and goes back into the dining room.

He gazes the face in the mirror. Yes, still handsome. What he didn’t see in that light was the slight deepening of the creases in his brow. Every blow to the heart leaves its mark on one’s face. But his callused heart has seen this before, and probably see it again, and that’s alright. He gives himself a wink and a wry smile before blowing out the candle.

[leapintothevoid]

On Re-Listening

“Without music, life would be a mistake” -Nietzsche

Each piece of music, each series of notes, melodies, and rhythms corresponds to a specific state of the soul. So, rediscovering a piece of music once loved but since forgotten has the calming, re-grounding effect of, say, going back to a favorite place from one’s childhood, which, resisting the forces of Time and Change, has remained the same in all its manifold intricacies. Because it reacquaints one with a unique, joyful place in the soul, Music has a power to transport unlike any other earthly or heavenly phenomenon.

Thus hearing for the first time in a while a Luke Fair set whose very existence had since faded from my mind -a set for whose live enactment, I along with Shabieh, was present in Toronto back in Autumn of 2013- unearthed within me so many euphoric moments, so many anticipated surprises, which, like Dionysus, transported me to a prior life free from the burdens, worries, and anxieties of today; a simpler life before all the scars, wounds, and disappointments that I’ve endured since.

With all the drastic and simultaneous changes that have taken place recently, and the corresponding cloud of unsettling uncertainty that has loomed large over me, it didn’t occur to me that at this moment, new music can only offer me delight, but not relief. And so despite all the great songs I have made my staple over the last few weeks, I still didn’t find the solace that I finally found today. Musica letitiae comes medicina dolorum. A companion for joy, a cure for sorrow. Today, I truly felt medicina dolorum.

https://soundcloud.com/bringthebeats/luke-fair-intimate-and-underground-v24-october-19-2013

[leapintothevoid]

Did the evening, smeared violet against the pale sky,  whisper mutely to your soul, urging your upward glance  toward that recess above the horizon, where only  a few heartbeats ago the sun had just gone into hiding?

Did you startle with your glare the limpid moon  hung languidly over the backlit western ranges? For just when it was about to go off into the night,  the silver crescent started blushing pink.

Bashful, reddened, the crescent slid  behind the black opaque mountain silhouettes. But it left behind countless glints (like you once did)  swaying in line over the wine-dark sea. A rosy strip of light that stretches  from the edge of the water all the way to me.

[leapintothevoid]

“...as i emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed.” JOSEF CONRAD, The Shadow Line

The morning trains, by the time I board them -and certainly by the Fruitvale station 2 stops down- are crammed to their limits, and often, it seems, even beyond them. How from the platform some expectant, seasoned commuter sees a just-arrived train, its doors sliding open to reveal a crush of passengers so tightly stuffed together that the cars themselves seem to burgeon with their containing heft, and decides without hesitation to nonetheless step in, I cannot yet grasp. And yet, there is inevitably always room for one more. Intimidating and forbidding as it may appear at first glance, the truth can always accommodate the willing.

By almost an act of magic the trains cross that span of water, where snow from the mountains meet the brine from the seas, that chasm which puts the Bay in the Bay Area, every 7 minutes. Before I know it, it’s over. The doors slide open and at least a full quarter of the train spills out onto the platform at San Francisco’s first stop. The attendant scene is a heady thrill of order emerging from chaos. The first thing almost everyone does is look to both to his or her left and right, and decide which ramp will best carry them up to their destination. I’m beginning to gain some sense of orientation and am now almost at a point where i can choose based on my preference of route - Spear or Beale. Still, it is sometimes fun to just follow others blindly and be taken by surprise at where i arrive.

Perhaps it is just the novelty of the whole affair that fuels my enthusiasm as every morning I opt for the stairs, and the invigorating lift I get from climbing them, past the others who stand idly on escalators, conceding their legs and saving their fitness perhaps for the gym later. Or perhaps, having caught this whole stage act by surprise, I see in it the manifold blessings that it offers to the youthful heart and the daring mind, and this realization puts that spring in my heels. Audere est facere - to dare is to do, and I have dared.

Every time I finally climb from the subterranean depths of the Embarcadero station up to ground level, I feel a rush of excitement at having somehow made it to the biggest stage of my life - of having crossed the shadow line into a place where my destiny awaits me. Each morning I emerge onto the main artery in downtown, Market street, amidst the din and throng of innumerable, well-dressed, trim, and young -yes, they’re mostly young: no country for old men this- analysts, managers, directors, developers, and executives, with coffee in hand, hurrying past the filigree facades with their mullioned windows, the gated ramps descending to underground parking garages, the red-bricked arcades with their sapling centerpieces that reveal the infancy and utter novelty of these small plazas, the secret hanging limestone walkways lined with bamboos that are reflected in rectangular tiled troughs, past receding storefronts that seem to always be shrinking in number and splendor.

And so begins the next chapter in my life. Having built my nest, by a fortunate series of convergent coincidences that all led to my meriting of the precarious title, heavy with expectation, of home owner in the Bay Area, working in SoMa, in what is still one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

[leapintothevoid]

Les Paradises Indecibles

When for a brief moment you attain the power to get in touch with the Divine, before being sent down to the darker angels.

Your innate love of shape and color find an immense pasture in the developments of your intoxication. Colors will take on an unaccustomed vigor, and enter your brain with an all-conquering intensity. The paintings on the ceiling will be endowed with a startling vivacity, the coarsest wallpaper on the walls of inns will gain in depth, producing splendid dioramas.

Nymphs with dazzling flesh gaze at you with wide eyes, deeper and more limpid than the sky and the water. Characters from antiquity, attired in their priestly or military costumes, exchange solemn confidences with you at a mere glance The sinuous curving of outline is a language now finally made clear, in which you can read the agitations and desires of people’s souls.

Fourier and Swedenborg, the one with his analogy, the other with his correspondences, become embodied in the vegetable, or animal forms that your gaze alights on, and instead of divulging their teachings in words, they indoctrinate you with shape and color. The totality of beings in the universe rises before you with an unsuspected glory.

Grammar, arid grammar itself becomes something like an evocative sorcery. Words rise from the grave , clothed in flesh and bones, the substantive in its substantial majesty, the adjective a transparent garment that clothes and colors it like a gaze, and the verb, the angel of movement, which sets the sentence in motion.

Music speaks to you of yourself, and narrates the poem of your life. It becomes of one body with you, and you melt into it. It expresses your passion, not in a vague and indefinite ways, as it does on those evenings you spend lolling at the opera, but in a detailed, positive way -every moment indicating a movement familiar to your soul, every note transforming itself into a word, and the whole poem entering your brain, like a dictionary endowed with Life.