Goines On: Birthday books

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Goines was at first bewildered by the heft of The New Yale Book of Quotations that his son gave him for his 80^th birthday, along with a paperback volume of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell, who his son knew was Goines’ favorite.
    Upon extracting the Yale book from its thick fabric bag (which Goines assumed the publisher had clothed it in), Goines said he thought it must weigh two to three pounds. “Five,” said his son.

Moristotle 80th Birthday Interview

Interviewed by Geoffrey Dean

I posed a number of probing questions to Moristotle recently. His answers give us new insights into his mind and heart, while on a lighter note, they also helped me figure out what to give him for his 80^th birthday tomorrow!

     Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for taking the photos above.

What three (or more) words would you use to describe yourself?

Skeptical, optimistic, helpful. I’m surprised how easily those three words came, and how confident I am of them….No, those came too fast; they need qualification, elaboration.

Boldt Word & Images: I Am Transfixed

By Bob Boldt

I Am Transfixed by a Giant Water Lilies Triptych

by Claude Monet 1995 Chicago.

(after James Wright¹ and Rainer Maria Rilke²)

Four feet in front of me looms a waterscape.

Claude Monet painted scenes of empty air

where even a Rouen Cathedral might float

Thor's Day: Of a mystical bent

Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875-1926)

By Morris Dean

[Originally published on January 22, 2012.]

About three years ago, I included myself among “others of a mystical bent,” and I even quoted Rilke. Admitting to a mystical bent surprised me as much as quoting Rilke; I hadn’t meant to get into anything like that.

Modern face of a katydid

A caryatid (Greek: Καρυάτις)
was a sculpted female figure
used in architecture;
a katydid is a cricket 

When I was pointed out^* to the new white lady
by the old, a Judas look passed between them
that I didn't register then. I was distracted—maybe

I could come to think her comely, she was tall and slim,

the bridge of her nose had something in it Greek,
and her buggy eyes—didn't Socrates also stare?
But soon I came to see that no lamplight peeked

from inside out, nothing gleamed, no brilliance flared,

no love radiated from her unsmiling mouth;
no light, no nurture, no glistening from that face.
An agenda had been given her, her project set.

Rilke himself could not have seen a glow within
her eyes—so dull and blank. There was no place
that really saw me. My choice to retire was a given.
_______________
* January 17, 2012, in the Board Room
[Follow-up]

Mystical bent?

William James (1842-1910)

Yesterday, I referred to myself as "of a mystical bent." Admitting this surprised me as much as quoting Rilke; I hadn't meant to get into anything like that.
    Maybe I'm ready to try to say what spirituality (or being spiritual) means for me?
    Phrases like reverence for life [Albert Schweitzer], benevolence toward the humblest living creature [Charles Darwin], practice compassion [Dalai Lama], and The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth [Chief Seattle] come to mind.
    What can I say? Dwelling on such concepts in the awareness of nature and of our life on Earth casts a sort of numinous spell over me, a feeling that resonates with William James's characterization of mystical experience as "a deepened sense of significance." And, even when I'm not "having the experience," I try to maintain an abiding sense of the deep significance of things, the deep significance of choices and actions.
    James even excuses my inability to say much about this deep sense: "There is ineffability: the subject of a mystical experience cannot find words to describe it."
    Rainer Maria Rilke came close, very close indeed, in his Duino Elegies and other writings:

Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your senses in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
                [–Sonnets to Orpheus, XXIX, Stephen Mitchell's translation]

Humanitarian inclusion

On my residential community's website the other day, someone asked whether anyone else had heard early-morning gunshots nearby. Someone else wondered whether local people were taking shots at the coyotes, which she had several times seen early in the morning as she headed out to work.
    A gun enthusiast in our community commented approvingly:

There is no closed season for coyotes, so as long as it is daylight, then you can hunt them. This area is also outside the city limits, so there are no limitations on discharging firearms. I am a hunter/shooter and I say more power to these folks if they are hunting coyotes. Coyote packs are a danger to small pets in the neighborhood and perhaps even to calves and small livestock in the pastures down the road.

    While predators of course need to be dealt with for such reasons as he gives (I do not condemn the killing of a home-invader, for example, if that's the only way to protect oneself or one's family), I asked this hunter/shooter to suggest humane ways to reduce the local coyote population. I pointed out that shooting them might not result in a clean kill, but only wound the animals and result in their prolonged suffering. I told him that I was opposed to hunting on philosophical grounds (and I cited my statement on sentients rights).
    This morning, I was thinking about the grounds of my opposition, but in doing so I misremembered characterizing the grounds as humanitarian rather than "philosophical." Humanitarian, of course, seems perfectly congruent with my asking the hunter about humane ways to deal with the coyotes.
    But opposition on humanitarian grounds doesn't seem quite right. Humanitarian is usually used in the context of the mistreatment of humans (human animals), even if humane has a wider berth—the humane treatment of animals is a common phrase, focusing on the idea that compassionate human beings would not treat animals badly.
    It didn't take me long to identify a nearly perfect synonym for humanitarian to include the mistreatment of other animals as well as human ones: sentientarian, derived easily from my statement of sentients rights.

I say nearly perfect. In fact, plants, too, are sentients, as my wife correctly observed (in attempting to demolish the moral foundation of my opposition to eating animals, but not to eating plants). "Plants can react to their environment. That's practically the definition of life."
    Which brings me back to a sentence from Wikipedia's entry on sentience, which I omitted in my statement on sentients rights:

For Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things [emphasis mine] that requires respect and care.

(I myself avoid phrases like "metaphysical quality," however much they impressed me when I was in school.)
    Respect for life should of course take in respect for plants, but also for our environment, for our planet—the laboratory of our natural creation and evolution fueled by solar energy.

Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875-1926)

    And Rainer Maria Rilke (and others of a mystical bent, myself included) would count manufactured things as well. From the eighth of his Duino Elegies:

...Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window—
at most: column, tower......but for saying, realise,
oh, for a saying such as the things themselves would never
have profoundly said. Is not the secret intent
of this discreet Earth to draw lovers on,
so that each and every thing is delight within their feeling?

I didn't see it coming, that I would end up quoting Rilke this morning. But it is most agreeable to be reminded of the many transfixed hours I have spent reading his Duino Elegies, his Sonnets to Orpheus, and many others of his poems....

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
                [– Archaic Torso of Apollo, Stephen Mitchell's translation]