'We know we dream, we dream we know'

 Year's end, and I'm still coughing and still prostrated by this wretched 'cold' or whatever it is.
I thought I might post a poem – last year it was Richard Wilbur's wonderful Year's End – but this year it's going to be, of all the unlikely candidates, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whose poem 'The Year' seems to me blessedly free of the moralising good cheer we'd expect from this hugely popular (in her day) versifier. In fact, this one seems notably clear-eyed and unsentimental – and rather a good poem...

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.

Feline Philosophy

 I don't like to repeat myself too often, but I see that on this day five years ago I was writing about John Gray's rather wonderful Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. I'm looking after (i.e. feeding) the Lichfield family's cat while they're away for a few days down South, so there's my excuse.
'Be More Cat' was the title of this one...

'Lately I've been reading too many books at once, with the result that (slow reader as I am) I haven't finished one in a while. However, I have now read all 111 pages of John Gray's commendably short and typically brilliant Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. Like all his work, it makes for a bracing, eye-opening read, and its pages, however few, are, as Dr Johnson would say, 'full of matter'. Never wasting a word, Gray surveys a wide horizon, touching on several religions and the thoughts of various philosophers (beginning with the cat-loving Montaigne). As ever, he coolly undermines all our illusions about ourselves and puts us in our place – our place being in the animal kingdom, from the other inhabitants of which we are distinguished chiefly by a morbid self-consciousness that leads us to fear death, to see our lives as meaningful narratives, and to devote ourselves to such dubious causes as the pursuit of happiness.
  Cats, needless to say, are unaffected by any such concerns and simply get on with living their lives, fulfilling their conatus. In this they are like all other non-human beings, but undeniably cats are a special case: they are the only undomesticated animals with whom we share our lives (or rather the only undomesticated animals who deign to share their lives, in part, with us). Cats were never domesticated; they are using us at least as much as we are using them for our human needs (vermin control, companionship, relaxation, something to care for, a show of affection). Unlike dogs, they never become ingratiating quasi-humans but remain absolutely themselves: even in terms of morphology and genetics, it is difficult to tell wild or 'feral' cats from 'domesticated' ones.
  What can we learn from them? Nothing by precept, of course, but everything by example: they have much to teach us, Gray argues, about how to live, and indeed how to die. As long as they are fed and their equilibrium is not seriously disturbed, cats live fearlessly, contentedly, without anxiety and without ambition. When their time has come, they die quietly, and when they have nothing particular to do, they sleep. One of the 'Ten Feline Hints on How to Live Well' that are listed at the end of the book is 'Sleep for the joy of sleeping – Sleeping so that you can work harder when you wake up is a miserable way to live. Sleep for pleasure, not profit.' Indeed.
  The first of the 'hints' is 'Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable', and a later one is the almost folksy 'Forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it'. But these are indeed only 'hints', and the last of them is 'If you cannot learn to live a little more like a cat, return without regret to the human world of diversion'. Which is what most readers will probably do, but, after reading this remarkable book, they will return chastened, stimulated, and even a little wiser. 

Still Wonderful

 Last night I watched It's A Wonderful Life again. I see that I last watched it at the start of this year, and wrote about it here, under the title 'It's a Wonderful Film'...

'This wretched flu continues to toy with me mercilessly, one day giving every indication that it's coming to an end, the next surging back with renewed vigour, draining me of all energy. It's been quite a ride. And somewhere along the way, in keeping with Christmas tradition (one not observed for several years), the decision was taken to watch It's a Wonderful Life. This was not wise: I had overlooked the state of emotional frailty the flu had plunged me into. The result was that the titles were barely over before liquefaction set in, and by the end I was a wrung-out emotional wreck of a man, beyond help. The film is notoriously one that can wring tears from the stoniest heart, so a man in my condition was asking for trouble...
  What is it about It's a Wonderful Life? Like A Christmas Carol – with which it has clear parallels, not least in the Scrooge-like character of Mr Potter and in its time-shifting vision of what might have been – it has the power of fable, and it has a Dickensian simplicity. Essentially both A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life dramatise the same conflict, between a view of the world (Potter/Scrooge's) in which the 'bottom line' is everything and human beings merely interchangeable economic units, and one in which bonds of social and familial affection, custom and ceremony count for more than profit-and-loss and create something of infinitely greater value. George Bailey is a man at the point of breaking under the relentless pressure to surrender to the grinding logic of Potter's ruthless accounting and betray the community that he has done so much to build. Of course we know how it will end, but Frank Capra's storytelling and (in particular ) Jimmy Stewart's performance are so compelling that the film gains power as it goes along, building such a head of emotional steam that by the end... well, there won't be a dry eye or an unwrung heart. Okay, it's sentimental, it's hokey and all the rest, but It's a Wonderful Life is also a cinematic masterpiece of rare potency. 
  By the way, when George Bailey is granted a vision of how 'Potterville' (the former Bedford Falls) would have ended up but for him, the pleasure-crazed asocial dystopia – all cocktail bars and gambling dens and low dives – seemed, mutatis mutandis, sadly reminiscent of the centres of some of our depressed English towns today. This represents, I suppose, the triumph of 'limbic capitalism' – capitalism relentlessly titillating the pleasure centres to keep us coming back for more of what does us no good at all.'  

I had forgotten that I had a festive flu at New Year, and had forgotten also the useful phrase 'limbic capitalism', which I shall recommit to memory. All I have to add is that It's a Wonderful Life gets better – richer and deeper – with every viewing, and that it seems to me now that Potter's brand of capitalism could also be characterised as 'crony capitalism' – he has everyone in his pocket, up to and including at least one Congressman (who is told to wait outside while Potter holds a meeting) – and as 'machine capitalism', in which the mechanical engine of market forces careers blindly on, regardless of social context, regardless of human costs. Both of these dehumanising forms of capitalism, I need hardly add, are characteristic of our time – more so, in fact, than of the times portrayed in the film, where in the end the benign, humane form of capitalism represented by Bailey, a form based on mutuality and affective social bonds, does in the end prevail. Never mind – now we have limbic capitalism to keep us happily sedated while the machine rolls on. 

But enough of these mournful numbers. Today is also the 160th birthday of that wonderful painter and printmaker Felix Vallotton (and tomorrow will be the centenary of his death). Here is a summery still life featuring an appetising melon and a beautiful little bunch of nasturtiums –

Boxing Day

 

Well, my festive 'cold' reached something of a peak (or trough) yesterday, and I had to absent myself from the festivities for a chunk of the afternoon and lie down in a darkened room. It was just like the old days, i.e. the days of my working life, when every Christmas (or so it seemed) I would be struck down by ever more prostrating versions of flu. Yesterday, I rallied after a restorative glass of champagne heavily laced with the wonderfully medicinal Fernet-Branca. Helped by more champagne, a good white burgundy and a couple of glasses of Cynar, I made it through the rest of the day, and even slept well. Today I have a rather alarming cough, but I enjoyed a brisk walk in frosty sunshine – clear Christmas weather for once, instead of the usual miserable rain. I've also been enjoying my musical Christmas present – Music For A While, L'Arpeggiata's album of improvisations on Purcell. Here, from that album, is the gorgeous voice of countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, singing the beautiful 'Evening Hymn' (words by William Fuller, who was Dean of St Patrick's before Swift)...

Christmas Eve!

 Here, by way of food for Christmas thought, are two Nativity poems by the great R.S. Thomas.
First –

'Christmas Eve! Five
hundred poets waited, pen
poised above paper,
for the poem to arrive,
bells ringing. It was because
the chimney was too small,
because they had ceased
to believe, the poem passed them
by on its way out
into oblivion, leaving
the doorstep bare
of all but the sky-rhyming
child to whom later
on they would teach prose.'


   And then –

'The moon is born and a child is born, lying among white clothes as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.'

   The painting is Lorenzo Lotto's Adoration of the Shepherds. 

And I wish all who browse here a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Cold and Smith

Apologies for the hiatus. I was away at the weekend and, since coming back, have been afflicted with a stinking 'cold' – yes, just in time for the festivities, though I'm hoping it might be a short-lived one. Anyway, I see that today is the 220th birthday of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism and, ultimately, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. As it happens, I bumped into two missionaries for this Church in Lichfield the other day. Both young men were, as you'd expect, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and squeaky-clean (I read somewhere that the CIA recruits heavily from among the Mormons, as they are about the only candidates who can never be compromised). They made the mistake of asking me what I believed, and it was a pleasure to see the regret spreading over their faces. When I told them I had to be on my way, they were probably relieved.
  The young missionaries, unsurprisingly, assured me that those mysterious golden plates discovered by Joseph Smith were genuine, inscribed with a genuine archaic language, and entirely reliable in their account of the indigenous American tribe of Israel. Well, each to his own. Having had a look online, I now know that Smith, having run into all kinds of trouble from his opponents, was finally killed by an angry mob, and that his death made him the first American presidential candidate to be assassinated. You live and learn. 

Swearing

 As someone who swears rather a lot (never in print, of course), I was pleased to come across this excellent research-based report on 'Why swearing makes you stronger'. Not only is swearing, as we all know, big, and clever, and enjoyable; it can also boost your performance, at least when it comes to holding your hand in ice water or doing chair push-ups (whatever they are). I'm sure I also heard recently of research showing that swearing can relieve acute pain, and that one word in particular – that old favourite, the f-word – was by far the most effective, offering the optimal combination of fricative, short vowel and plosive. 
 At school we were told that using swear words was the sign of a limited vocabulary, despite the evident fact that profane language greatly extended our vocabulary, creating a kind of auxiliary lexicon, capable of conveying quite subtle shades of meaning (well, sometimes). The richness of profane language, and its capacity for creating neologisms, is attested by the number of dictionaries devoted to it, from Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue to Eric Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy, Green's Dictionary of Slang, and (on a somewhat less scholarly level) Roger's Profanisaurus. The Australian branch of the English language has been especially productive of picturesque profanities, and the late Barry Humphries – particularly in his Les Paterson persona – was a virtuoso of vulgarity, creating a fine array of new terms the world never thought it had need of (see his extremely filthy book The Traveller's Tool and its invaluable glossary, also the adventures of Barry Mackenzie). But enough of this filth.