Black Sun

Me. You.

------The world's shortest poem, Muhamad Ali.


Company is indispensable for the thinker.

-----Reflexionen zur Anthropolgie, Kant.

One is dismayed to hear an American say: this person's net worth is such and such. I think this goes hand in hand with an utter contempt for idleness-one that no doubt derives from a tortured Protestant ethic (E.P.Thompson). Scroungers and "losers"..why can't they simply stop moping around and pull themselves together. Man, they're nearly as lazy as them darned Redskins. Why should my tax dollars be wasted on something from which I derive little or no benefit. (In a similar vein, Goodhart writes about how it's possible the welfare state will come under increasing strain as people are less and less willing to contribute to it when the major beneficiaries are not like them (which is shorthand for: black, Muslim, or simply non-white). The fragility of the idea of human rights (as opposed to the rights of the citizen) is exposed here. But it was exploded much earlier on...one must truly ask if it is possible to talk of humanity and responsibility after Auschwitz.

The underlying idea of what man is in today's world is, quite simply, that of a knave. Rational, autonomous, self-interested individuals who apparently mature into thinking beings without any help from society or her norms, without a shared language or culture. Descartes as the exemplar: the isolated thinker. Market society as its embodiment at the macro level: the needs of strangers. The Russians would say, on the other hand: we are, therefore I can think.

The question of responsibility becomes a meaningless one. Am I my Brother's Keeper? Depends on what I get out of it. Always and invariably the same response: Me, myself and I. And so, it is little surprise that there is so much confusion when it comes to Iraq. It is desperately sad to hear people talk about bringing our troops back, about the cost in human lives to our boys, to our reputation. Perish the thought that we should be responsible for the carnage. Nope, must be those Sunni triangles and Shia crescents!

He who plays the angel ends up playing the Beast.

Truth-that of nature or the divine-always works in circles, but human truth is a broken circle. Often rounded, always open. At the level of the individual this implies an aspiration not to close the circle, for to do so would be the closing of the heart. Can there be a deepening without being "broken"? At the political level this is an image of what pluralism is like, with contesting and competing opinions and viewpoints. Like Matisse: to see the same thing from different angles. To hear more than one voice requires an attentiveness that transcends the monologue of the individual. The truth, or a politics based on it, faces the danger of descending into totalitarianism, whereas a liberal politics must always allow for the possibility of the unforeseen, for the very space of the possible and new beginnings. Here the 'I' is not really itself without the appearance of the world, without the presence of the other. In another sense, one might say that the self is not a self without the gaze of the beloved.

A consumers' society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearance, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches.

The more I talk to ordinary people here the more I think this place is going to go up in flames. Well, let's see. At the moment I remain convinced that there's more to be said for actually living a life than pursuing the theoretical one I've become immersed in once again (of course, both are infinitely preferable to the vacuousness of the bourgeoisie).

Last week I went to someone's house and met one of the typical Lahori "aunties"; when asked if she made all the food herself she said, "Well, yes, to the extent that I was in the kitchen" (ordering the cooks, no doubt!)

Talked to the driver. Wanted to know what life was like back in the villages. Awful, he said. There's no life there. All life is in the city.

"But what's the difference ?"

"Over there one person works and ten live off him. Over here ten work and one lives off him."

"What else?"

"Here people need money to survive. There, we all survive because we have are own wheat. Without money people here are nothing". (I thought of Marx: Time is everything, Man is nothing)

"Will you ever go back?"

No, the city stinks and the more you have the more worried you become but, but.."

"But what?"

"But I'm a human being " (with those words he grinned and held his hands out so that the palms were faced upwards..as if the very word 'insaan' (human ) necessitated an opening up). "Who doesn't want things". But then he laughs, everyone here is a crook..who is to say that if I have things I won't become like them".

Now he was warming to this theme of city/village.

"Yes, and another difference, I nearly forgot. If city people have a lot of money they feel restless in their soul and want to go somewhere or do things they haven't before. But we, we villagers, if we have lots of money we want to do nothing but sit at home. Yes, that is all we dream of doing."

"Why?"

"So we can sit with our parents."

"What about your friends?"

"What friends can poor people have? Whoever is with you for the moment is your friend. Today it is someone , tomorrow it is someone else. We are like birds, free."

The sound of a light bulb's heart breaking: ping

'Profiting from the reciprocal distance which prevents coasts from linking up with each other except via the sea or by torturous twists and turns, the sea allows every shore to believe that it is heading towards it in particular. In reality, the sea is courteous with all of them, actually more than courteous: it can show maximum enthusiasm and successive passions for each shore, keeping in its basin an infinite store of currents. It only ever marginally exceeds its own limits, it imposes its own restraint on its waves, and like the jelly-fish it leaves for fishermen as a miniature image or sample of itself, it does nothing but ecstatically prostrate itself before all its shores.'

On trees:

They have no gestures: they simply multiply their arms, hands, fingers-like a Buddha. And in this way, doing nothing, they get to the bottom of their thoughts. They hide nothing from themselves, they cannot harbour a secret idea, they open out entirely, honestly, and without any restrictions. Doing nothing else, they spend all their time complicating their own shape, perfecting their own bodies towards greater complexity for analysis...Animate beings express themselves orally, or with mimetic gestures, which however instantly disappear. But the vegetable world expresses itself in a written form that is indelible. It has no way of going back, it is impossible have a change of mind: in order to correct something, the only thing it can do is to add . Like taking a text that has been written and already published and correcting it through a series of appendices, and so on. But one has to say that plants do not ramify ad infinitum . Each one of them has a limit.

Calvino:

'But what counts more is ..the proportion between the shell and its mollusc inhabitant, as opposed to the disproportion of man's monuments and palaces. This is the example the snail sets us by producing its own shell' : What their work consists of does not involve anything that is extraneous to them , to their necessities or their needs. Nothing that is disproportionate to their physical being. Nothing that is not essential and necessary for them. Saintly in their precise obedience to their own nature. Know yourself, then, first of all. And accept yourself as you are. Along with your flaws. In proportion with your own measure.'

---citations from Francis Ponge in Italo Calvino's 'Why Read the Classics'

'Kings do not touch doors.They do not know that happiness: to push before them with kindness or rudeness one of these great familiar panels, to turn around towards it to put it back in place - to hold it in one's arms.... The happiness of grabbing by the porcelain knot of its belly one of these huge single obstacles; this quick grappling by which, for a moment, progress is hindered, as the eye opens and the entire body fits into its new environment.With a friendly hand he holds it a while longer before pushing it back decidedly thus shutting himself in - of which, he, by the click of the powerful and well-oiled spring, is pleasantly assured.'

----courtesy of C.

Here, too, there are tears for misfortune and mortal sorrows touch the heart.

---Virgil.

Time is the great healer.
What if time is the wound?

----Wings of Desire.

Met my old aunt over the weekend, the last living link, perhaps, to a bygone age. Fiercely intelligent and wonderfully, deeply sceptical of the mullahs. At 92 she tells it like it is-but I suspect she's always been like this. She's been old for as long as I've known her.

I remember someone saying to her (in the usual false-piety-sense) that in heaven wives would be reunited forever with their husbands. She put her hands to her ears and stuck out her tongue slightly: May God forgive you for uttering such words! No, son, don't say such things. And when I asked her what she thought of the maulvis a few years back she formed her arms to the shape of a machine gun and said this is what I would do: and she let them have it! In those days I would have said that this itself was an expression of an intensely religious sentiment..but now I don't even think that that matters. The human voice, human gestures, trumps all.
[Incidentally, Faisal asked me what the definition of a modern muslim was and I said: an atheist!].

She tells me the story of her own father, my grandfather, who was always mistaken for a Jew because he was so well dressed. Strangely, it's something that I warm to myself when some of my friends call me this. Apparently, he came up with some secret recipe that would help rectify poor vision. By morning there were huge lines outside his house as word spread of this miraculous potion. He gratefully accepted the 5 and 10 Rs notes since times were hard and business was down. He held the notes to the light. "What are you doing? she asked.

"Forthe life of me, I can't tell if these are five or ten Rs notes". His own eyesight was rapidly failing.

And then there were the stories of how his wife would badger him all day. The onslaught was relentless. But then, suddenly, something strange would happen, and there'd be silence throughout the house.
"What happened?" , she asked. " "Had she grown tender towards him at last?"

"No", he replied. It was only time for prayer. After that normal service was resumed!

She lives alone, her two sons abroad, sorely missed. But even here her pragmatism shines through: they had to go and have better lives all the more for doing so. Even if regret is transcended, it isn't abolished. Would we be truly human if it could be? Only fanatics and engineers think that it is both possible and desirable. One day she had a turn for the worse: she thinks to herself: now my time has come. She struggles to her feet and opens all the doors in the house (at least if I pass away someone will find my body). And then she lies down on her bed, waiting, waiting for the inevitable. An hour passes. And nothing. Then she laughs to herself, I'm so old not even death comes for me.

I imagine her saying -and here I use the Dougal's words, whom she most resembles in spirit-sod this for a lark.

The only real people I've met since coming back have been the rickshaw drivers and a cook at the cafeteria. I'm living here in a green zone, a bubble of artificiality -and I can hear my own voice becoming even more false than before. Of course, I don't have much time for criticizing the superficiality of the world (that is always with us, and always will be) but it must be said that it is slightly disconcerting when one doesn't recognize oneself. One also has to be on one's guard against a ridiculous romanticization of "the poor" , as one should be against a dreamy -eyed view of "tradition" or religion. In this regard the great Catholic writer, Gustauve Thibon, was right: villagers and peasants are as mean as anyone else.

Javi tells me a story of life in the rural areas. At first I think this a metaphor for all life there but he stresses that this is what he actually saw. He gave a quarter of his roti to a measly dog. The dog quickly snatched at it and turned his back on him. He then ran off to the stream and buried it close by. The dog then returned for more. I felt like saying, for fuck's sake, that dog's got more sense than most humans, but there is tremendous onus on not saying what one instinctively feels. Part of the old world sensibilities that dictates that one should know when and in what tone to speak. Such an approach to life is often quite charming but mostly I find it infuriating and tiresome. Old debate: must I say what I mean?

One of the drivers had painted his finger nail a deep red; half of his large toenail was also painted the same colour but the paint had faded somewhat (this is actually quite a common phenomenon). What I liked about him was that when I asked him about the ouster of Nawaz Shariff he said, what difference would that sister-fucker make to the poor people ('swearing' in the Punjab isn't really swearing). Now, he could have said , what difference would he make to 'us poor people' (which would be picturing himself too much as a victim) or he could have said, what difference would he make to "the poor" (as if they were some sort of abstract entity..incidentally, this is why communists could never do well here: talking about ridiculous "concepts" like 'the bourgeoisie' or the 'capitalist class'). But instead he decided to say, the poor people (and that meant him, not me). The problem with "People" for western political theory is that it has at once been "the poor" and a universal construct, "the people" (as in: every person or citizen..whether one can be a person without being a citizen is something that is also not clear: as Gitmo quite clearly indicates.

In any case, the simple phrase, "the poor people" means much more to me than theory.

On the way back another driver, a much simpler fellow, dropped me and the Dougal on the wrong side of a busy road so that we would have to make a dash for it, risking life and limb, in crossing it. Sensing this, the Dougal said, "okay, but if we die then you're responsible" Now, that would barely pass as a reasonable quip in most places, something that might bring half a smile to a taxi driver's face. But our driver was taken aback. To talk so freely about death just isn't on. He looked at us quizzically, "But why should you say such a thing" and then, becoming quite emotional, he said: "death to your enemies, they are the people who should die". Which was really quite a wonderful thing to say when you think about it (or, rather, the emotion behind the statement was)

At night there is a wild darkness and shimmering lights stretch out into the distant horizon; I'm all at sea here. But when I wake up the whole landscape is transformed-as if I were living in two different worlds. A slow and heavy mist hangs around the trees-ankle length-and the fields lie sodden, like a medieval battleground before a battle. Large pools of water congeal, always at the same place. From a distance they look like mirrors, reflecting the splendour of the morning light. A few birds dart upwards and out of sight, others lazily make their way to a quieter part of the field. Everything at this holy hour is trying to write its name.

At 4 0'clock, the suicide hour, the shadows start to lengthen, scarring everything they touch. There's a terrible fatality about the place then. There's nothing more tragic than this fading sun. It wants to break. Crows start to congregate near mounds of grey sand, settling for death...

'Birds are following a set behaviour of pattern that has persisted for 10,000 years, ever since the last Ice Age. In fact, it seems likely that, before that time, for millions of years of their entire 150 million-year span on Earth, birds exploited seasonal abundances in this manner. With each fresh interglacial period, when the northern lands warmed sufficiently to host breeding birds, they reacquired the art and science of migration like some cosmic weaver on the great loom of time, picking a stitch and reworking it at 10,000 year intervals...


Corvids (include the Northern Raven) are the most intelligent, the first because they are the last. Magpie, Rook, Carrion-Crow and Northern Raven, Fire Crow ( Pyrrhocorax genus).

Rook's iridescence: 'The bird appears clothed in shining light-it is as if the feathers were polished like a mirror.'

16 th century, Ed Topsell: the white crow a kind of prodigy, an omen....'Yet as they spiralled overhead, it turned entirely at one with its neighbours, a freak bound into the wider mystery of their night-time evolutions, until the gloom enfolded them all...A carrion crow has a binding social attachment only to its mirror image, its partner..a fierce territoriality. Rooks, by contrast, live, feed, sleep, fly, display, roost, recreate, fall sick and die in the presence of their own kind. Their whole lives are enfolded in the flock, a collective pattern of their own image-a self -perpetuating inner universe of rook sounds and rook gestures that the birds carry with them..a continuous shared experience.'

'Store surplus as an insurance against hard times (eg. Eurasian Jay)Our Mesolithic ancestors were accustomed to place deceased relatives on the special excarnation platforms. Original home probably on the open plains of Eurasia.

'They open those dark eloquent wings like a great story book, conjuring the steppe landscapes and their numberless human hordes trekking forever westward-the Cimmerians?, the Scythians, Alans, Huns, Magyars, Bulgars and Mongols. Mingled with the rolling craa notes is the sound