Pursuit of Meaning in Life

Partly in response to Judah Leon Abravanel (c. 1465 – c. 1523) and his work Dialogues of Love (Dialoghi d'amore), Daniel Boyarin writes: 

“Rabbinic Judaism invested significance in the body which in the other formations [Christian and Jewish] was invested in the soul. That is, for rabbinic Jews, the human being was defined as a body – animated, to be sure, by a soul – while for Hellenistic Jews (such as Philo) and (at least many Greek-speaking) Christians (such as Paul) these essence of human being is a soul housed in a body” (Boyarin, 1993, 5).  

This difference, to me, is the essence of how we look at existence as a whole, and what kind of world view we shape and shapes us. Sadly, I don't think that we even have a "world view" (Weltanschaung) today. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and other social media, life has devolved into a hodge podge of catch phrases that oscillate from one extreme to the other. 

Thanks to the fact that we have politicized everything relating to human existence, we have lost the sights and sounds of the metaphysics.  How can we expect to enter into a deeper meaning of life, if we are constantly living according to what Twitter feed feeds us?  It may be feeding us but it's certainly not nourishing us.

To be sure, social media has its place.  It can be used for sharing information, sometimes even knowledge, and you may even have occasionally a good conversation with others.  But to expect an existential answer is to expect an improbability. 

Some don't even have enough awareness to know that they are living half-lives, zombies going from one click to the next.  For those, I don't know what to say: maybe you're just a zombie troll and there is no hope for you.  An optimist in me tends to refuse that option.

Writers, pundits, critics - all say that to speak like this is to be nostalgic about the past because we are idealizing it.  Not at all.  I am merely looking at the facts.  Statistically, and how people choose to reveal themselves on the social media, tells us that they do not know the difference between sacred and profane, soul and body, body and mind.  I would even settle for some mind/body dualism in a conversation if people knew that such question even exists.

Digitization and politicization of everything, which should not be digitized and politicized, has made this world into a place that lacks joy and wonder.  Lacking such vision means that we are incapable of seeing the other person face to face, and that incapability leads to a lack of insight.  If there is no insight, there is no discernment, and if there is no discernment, then there is no action.

That is why, despite the illusion that everything is moving so fast, it's not moving at all.  We are just holograms of our potential selves, displaying the stilted animation of our bodies without minds, and certainly without souls. 

This is why, as a society, we have such strange view of sex as well.  It has nothing to do with eros.  It is, I would posit, even worse than anything Victorians imagined because sexual experience (whether excessive, hedonistic, or loving) is found in a non-erotic static.  Today's sex is a white padded cell - a sterile room of one's own in which the other is not recognized at all.  

We are left with loud voices that are not connected to bodies, with meaningless chatter masquerading as profound expressions, with crassness masquerading as intellectual prowess.  It takes courage to be still and to embrace the silence.  

If being free means anything to us, then we will make the first step on the path to the Unknown because the Unknown is more known to us than we might assume.  But we have to be prepared to let go of any expectations and attachments that have politicized and digitized our existence.  Otherwise, we will remain in an illusion, a pretense of real life, and not only will we not know the deeper meaning of our existence but also we will have no idea what politics really is or how digital world can truly be used.   
 

Distractions Breed Bad Vibrations

A few days ago, I went to a concert of Brian Wilson - the main founder of The Beach Boys.  Wilson was joined by another band member, Al Jardine, as well as Blondie Chaplin (who toured with The Beach Boys on their album Holland), and the current band/orchestra that accompanies Wilson.  This was the 50th anniversary of the album Pet Sounds tour.

The concert was a mixture of emotions.  This wasn't the first time I saw Brian Wilson in concert, and so I had an idea of what to expect.  The band is tight, but Wilson disengaged, whether from the audience, his band, or even himself.  This time, the experience was even worse.  Wilson brought "bad vibrations" indeed with snarkiness, sarcasm, impatience, and childish introductions to the songs of Pet Sounds - what I consider to be one of the best albums ever composed and produced. He was like an impish child who is forced to eat his "Vege-tables" (read: to tour), referring to the concert as the "fundraiser," and telling the audience that he just wants to "get the hell outta here." 

It was, needless to say, disappointing.  Obviously, Wilson is in a bad place in his life, and most likely suffers from clinical depression.  My theory is that he never truly addressed his past (particularly the strange "therapy" of Eugene Landy), and we will really never know what happened after the incomplete production of SMiLE. 

Strangely enough, Wilson did not have any respect or reverence for the music he wrote.  Pet Sounds is a deeply spiritual album, what you might call an American musica sacra, and it will be forever part of the Great American Songbook.

As if taking cue from Wilson, the audience too failed to see the beauty of the notes.  I was distracted from the left, right, front, and behind with glowing orbs of distraction, i.e., smart phones.  People were either recording (the concert or themselves), taking flash pictures, texting, updating their Facebook statuses as well as obsessively hitting the "Like" button on pictures of someone's graduation or grandchildren at play.  But here is the most egregious act of them all: looking up the information on Pet Sounds album on Wikipedia!!!

As I looked around, I realized that most of these people are not living in the present moment whatsoever.  They have a patience of a two year old child, who needs to be constantly gratified, pacified, given attention.  We can forgive the child but an adult?  Hardly.

There is no doubt that is a collectively existential problem.  But why are people not seeing it as a problem?  If an unexamined life is not worth living, then all I see are a lot of worthless, meaningless lives.

It would appear that we have to break up this problem into small bi(y)tes.  Cut up those vegetables and meat for the impish children!  Before addressing the philosophical aspect of distraction (lack of spiritual and ethical discipline), we have to focus on the act itself.

If you are scrolling through the Facebook feed during the experience of concert,  you have to ask yourself why.  Are you afraid that you might miss something?  Are you afraid that someone might forget you unless you post a status update?  Why are you afraid that you might be forgotten?  Now, we're getting somewhere!  We have to tease out the perennial questions out of contemporary absurdities.

If you're looking up the information on Pet Sounds (on Wikipedia no less!) during the concert that is playing the album in its entirety, then you must ask yourself why are you at the concert to begin with?  Could it be that you are just not enjoying yourself at all, and you are only familiar with Good Vibrations, and that maybe your partner (who seem to be enjoying himself a lot!) dragged you to the concert, at which point, you may have a bigger problem than not knowing the music of The Beach Boys?

Thomas Merton, 1915-1968

Thomas Merton wrote, "Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted?  Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?"  
To be honest with you, I am not even sure whether we are ready for a question like this.  In order to ask it, we must first begin to question the meaninglessness and absurdity of our daily acts, and recognize that there is something "off" in the whole set up of our day.  (And if you do not experience this, then great!  Hopefully you won't be offended by my spiritual musings and you won't see it as a "micro-aggression").

We really have to ask why are we doing what we are doing.  Why do we have the need to pick up that phone (or as my husband calls it, the "porta-puter/pewter") when we are alone, or even in the company of others?  Of course, we are distracting ourselves.  But from what?  Only each individual can answer that for him or herself. 

Bosnian Melancholy {Bosanska melankolija}

What is easier to speak: Bosnian or English?  First you have to define the word "easier."  English is good at defining and somehow making everything logical.  Bosnian is poetic and mysterious.  And so you are stopped immediately.  Stuck between philosophy and art. 

Is delving into the metaphysics of language easier than defining the language?  If you delve into the metaphysics of Bosnian language, you're not only entering into the maze of words, but of history and memory, both collective and individual.

And what happens when it's easier to speak English because the words in Bosnian have been lost, or what's more likely, they are laying dormant somewhere, in some old house, in some village, in some room, in some cellar, but the path toward it is so vague that you have no idea how to get to it?  Has the landscape changed?  Has the war ruined the mountains?  No, it has not.  But it has made ruins but even ruins have voices.  Particularly. 

Maybe if I go back to a time before the war, it'll be easier.  But it's not, you know it's not, you just pretend that it is.  Because there is always an anticipation of war. 

"Hey, look at me!" you exclaim.  There's me, that me that was very young and very childish, and I had to leave the childish things, and I am angry that they made me leave my childish things.  Who are you, you cowards, sitting on top of the hills, aiming your cowardly snipers at me?  Do you even care?  Do I care?  Is my anger so big that I will never forgive?

"Hey, look at me!" you exclaim.  So worn out, not a child anymore, but a being aware of evil. 

Yes, it's easier to speak English because you can't bleed all the time.  But what if I lived in Bosnia, I would have no choice but to speak and think in Bosnian.  So, there must be a way to speak Bosnian without bleeding, right? 

So, I ask you: what's easier? 

{Šta je lakše? Možda život nije lak ili lagan ili se ne može živjeti lako ili lahko. Živjeti izmedju jezika je živjeti izmedju različitih geografija, i pošto su geografije takodje metafizičke, onda naravno slijedi da je tvoje biće velika mapa različitih geografija. Pa se onda pitaš ko si i šta si. Zar ne bi bilo lakše da sam jedno i da nema nikakvih komplikacija i da biće, koje sam ja ne pita pitanja?

Ne, ustvari ne bi bilo lakše, jer ovo dijete je vidjelo zlo. A kada se vidi zlo, onda se moraju pitati pitanja o ljudskoj dobroti. Ne bi bilo lakše, jer to bi onda značilo da ovo dijete i ova žena i ovo biće je budala. A budala ne pita, ne razmišlja, ne uživa, nego samo ide u krug a misli da je krug put.}

“Translation”:

What is easier? Maybe life is not easier or easier or you can't live it easier or easier. To live in between two languages is to live in between different geographies, and since geographies are also metaphysical, of course it follows that your being is a big map of different geographies. And then you ask who am I and what am I? Wouldn't it be easier if I were only one thing and that there are no complications and that the being which I am asks no questions?

No, actually, it would not be easier, because this child has seen evil. And when you see evil, then you have to ask questions about the good. It wouldn't be easier, because that would mean that this child and this woman and this being is a fool. And she's not a fool, because a fool doesn't ask, doesn't think, doesn't enjoy. A fool runs in a circle thinking that a circle is a path.

Sensational Spirituality of Awareness

Lately, I've been reading a book called Awareness by a Jesuit priest, Anthony De Mello (1931-1987).  It is a collection of different facets of spiritual life.  De Mello was known for his view that we are asleep and that we need to awake in order to live a fulfilling life. 

Since he was from India, he had a habit of using both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions in order to illuminate his points.  He was considered "controversial" precisely because of the blending of different traditions.  But frankly, I don't give a damn.  Life's far too beautiful and important to limit my learning because of one thinker's controversy. 

If there is something to be learned from De Mello, then I will gladly accept it with an open mind and an open heart, and with the freedom that - guess what?! - I actually don't have to agree with him on everything.  And I think given his approach, he would totally welcome that.

De Mello's controversy and whether he was a "good" or "bad" Jesuit is not of my interest here.  I do not intend to argue theological points.  And I have some trepidations about a total detachment or the loss of self. However, I'd like to look at one aspect of his spirituality, namely this whole idea of being asleep, waking up, and how does all of that relate to our bodies.

Anthony De Mello, S.J. (1931-1987)

We rarely think about our bodies when we think about the word "spirituality."  Being in touch with that aspect of ourselves was very important to De Mello.  I agree with that: we ought to be aware that there are sensations that are both ours and others'.  This focus most definitely stems from Eastern spirituality, and I think it contributes greatly to the development of the whole spiritual person.

When we are incapable of making any metaphysical growths, the best place to begin with is our bodies.  What do we feel?  What are we touching?  What do we smell?  This is also a big part of an Ignatian spirituality in which one pictures oneself in a Gospel scene and explores one's relationship with God.

As De Mello repeatedly said, there is no formula or programming for spiritual life.  We do have to find our own paths to God and to ourselves.  However, there are guides out there that can be helpful in times of despair, despondency, lack of energy, or lack of love of life.

Each human being is unique, and each will react differently and have a different experience in an act of spiritual exploration.  But, I think, there is one commonality - we would like to be happy.  Let's look at this word "be."  Can we really "be" happy?  What does that mean anyway?  Perhaps we are merely experiencing happiness for the brief moment.  The trouble lies in the fact that we get attached to that experience and then when it's gone, we lament its loss, we grieve.  But what have we really lost?  If I do not attach my being to either being depressed or happy, then the loss or gain of one or the other won't affect me.

Of course, De Mello is not advocating being in some unreal space.  If anything, he is saying that you have to wake up and truly see reality.  To be aware is to be aware of everything: that the world is a joyous and a beautiful place, and that it is also a vale of tears.  Look, we are imperfect.  An imperfect being will have shortcomings and flaws, but we needn't wallow in them.  Accept them and move on.  Live a life that allows you to always have an opportunity to be a good human being who does not depend on others for happiness or does not pile up grievances and wastes time on making a list of who wronged you.  Guess what?  You're not that important!  I'm not that important. 

And yet I will also not allow myself to disappear into the absurdities of society, living a life of quiet desperation, resentment, and self-imposed voicelessness.  I may not be important, but what is important is what I do, how I relate, how aware I am.

Marriage and the Mystery of Eros

Alain de Botton's recent article, "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person," (The New York Times, May 28, 2016) is very very confused, to say the least.  In it, de Botton claims that pretty much everyone will and does marry the wrong person.  He lists various reasons for this:

"For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text." 

And here:

"We make mistakes, too, because we are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal frame of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate."

And here:

"Finally, we marry to make a nice feeling permanent. We imagine that marriage will help us to bottle the joy we felt when the thought of proposing first came to us: Perhaps we were in Venice, on the lagoon, in a motorboat, with the evening sun throwing glitter across the sea, chatting about aspects of our souls no one ever seemed to have grasped before, with the prospect of dinner in a risotto place a little later. We married to make such sensations permanent but failed to see that there was no solid connection between these feelings and the institution of marriage."

Actually, none of this is untrue.  There is no doubt that there are many marriages based on such internal and external circumstances.  People, at times, tend to see the marriage through the lens of two philosophies: Romanticism or Utilitarianism.  Sometimes, these two outlooks are meshed with one another and people find a way to make the practical infinitely romantic.

After presenting this problem, de Botton proceeds to offer a "solution" out of this bizarre and inevitable marital quagmire:

"This philosophy of pessimism offers a solution to a lot of distress and agitation around marriage. It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage." 

And again:

"The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition."

This is where the confusion ensues.  De Botton tries to deal with the spiritual matters in a non-spiritual way.  He wants pessimism (read: atheism) to be the salvation of the marriage, frankly a kind of "lowered expectations" way of life.  To tolerate something is to truly dislike it.  I can tolerate the neighbor's constant lawnmowing.  To tolerate is to be so utterly annoyed, and ultimately bitter.

De Botton is a strange moralist.  Stick it out, he says, but you're stuck forever.  What he does is essentially present a psychoanalytical picture of marriage.  Psychoanalysts are famous for reducing people to a bunch of "issues," "signs", and "signifiers."  Certainly, there is no such thing as love, and we are kidding ourselves if we think so.  And if there is no love, then one's partner is replaceable, and one certainly married him/her because of "mommy" or "daddy" issues.  Definitely a possibility, but the problem here is that de Botton sees this as the reality.  

Psychoanalysts (and perhaps a little bit here too, de Botton) take great pleasure at dismantling the sacred bond of marriage and engaging in all kinds of shock created statements.  It is a form of perverse sadistic moralism, which is meant to put the person who disagrees with this philosophy on the defensive. 

The problem here is that de Botton (and psychoanalysts) sees the pessimism as the beginning, middle, and end.  There is nothing beyond, say, loneliness because there is no such thing as the interiority of spiritual life.  If indeed this is your outlook, then you are asleep.  You have not seen the human being that is in front of you clearly, and what's more, you have not seen your own self clearly either. 

This is, I must admit, a strange article coming from de Botton.  I have read a few of his books, and I liked them.  But, granted, they did not focus on reality of intimacy and relation between people. 

Intellectuals tend to take the mystery out of eros.  Psychoanalysis tends to do this the most.  Incapable of love, they exhibit bitterness disguised as superior intellectual theory.  Refusing to grow, they wish to keep others in the perpetual state of perverse infancy.  Unable to be free and happy, they want to lure others into the abyss where we can all be miserable together. 

No, thanks.  You may remain in the cave, staring at the wall, without any awareness of the possibility of being.

Facing Listlessness

For today's blog post, I was inspired by a friend's simple comment of experience of listlessness.  This is a difficult position to be in, and if you are aware of your spiritual life even slightly, it will affect you greatly.  It's a weird sort of boredom and aimlessness.  It borders on despair.  In the early Christianity, it gained a name: acedia (sometimes spelled akkedia).  The word itself has roots in ancient Greek, and it usually translates as negligence or without care.

Early Christian monastic writings are filled with descriptions of this strange condition, and no monk was immune to it.  Desert Fathers, such as Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian isolated the condition and, in their spiritual instructions, provided ways of dealing with it.  They are worth reading!  But in this instance, let me focus on one of the Desert Mothers - Blessed Syncletica.

There is a lot of mystery that surrounds Syncletica: for a long time, there was a suspicion whether she even existed, which by now (given historical evidence) has gone.  We do know that she lived in the 4th century, and the story goes that she was wealthy, and gave it all up for poverty.  Apparently, she was beautiful as well.

In the only work we have of her, most likely compiled by Pseudo-Athanasius, titled The Life of Blessed Syncletica, we see a mind concerned with a spiritual purgation of the soul.  She wants us cleanse ourselves in every possible way.
She also mentions akedia which attacks the soul and causes incredible sadness within the deep, deep paths of the soul.  She writes:

"There is sadness that is helpful and a sadness that is destructive.  It is a function of the useful sorrow, then, to lament about one's own sins as well as the ignorance of one's neighbors, but also to avoid falling away from one's purpose and to achieve the goal of goodness.  These concerns therefore, are the signs of a sorrow that is legitimate and good.  There is also another kind of sorrow, prompted by the Enemy, which knows how to merge with the first kind.  For he himself imposes a sorrow, completely irrational, which has also been called by some akedia.  This spirit, therefore, must be driven off especially by prayer and psalmody."  (Life of Blessed Synclectica, #40).

It's important that she distinguishes between two forms of sadness.  Sometimes, goodness will arise from something, which either appears or indeed is evil.  This other form of sadness, this aimlessness, and lack of one's mission is what is worrisome.  You may believe that there is some outside evil force, which attacks.  This is most certainly a Christian spiritual perspective.  Whatever the belief and understand of this strange, alienating condition may be, one thing we can say for sure: it exists.  But it exists in its vacuousness and emptiness.  This is the paradox of acedia: it "attaches" itself to the soul and, like a parasite, slowly eats away, like a mouse chewing on a piece of string.

And so, what do you do?  Everyone has to find that answer for him or herself.  Everything depends upon person's circumstances of either his or her daily life (taking care of the family, jobs, etc.) or a larger view of one's future.  But remember: it is never only about one's own future.  Everything is interrelated, everything depends upon an encounter, and whatever future we are creating for ourselves, that very same future impacts others.  Therefore, while spiritually cleansing ourselves from this "noonday demon" (as acedia was called, because it seemed to "attack" monks around that time of the day), it is important to remember that we are part of the community and that community is part of us.

And so, you must make that effort every day, or rather, every hour to move your body, to move your soul towards goodness and virtue, and away from anything else, which distracts from your purpose.  And there is no formula, despite the fact how much we want it sometimes.  Mindfulness, something Syncletica knew a lot about, is not a floating feeling or some overly metaphysical soup. Rather, it comes through act: through  an individual relating to the community and all of creation.


No, we don't live in the 4th century, but I do think that the reason we keep failing in our spiritual progress is because we are looking for quick fixes.  Life is much more complex and far more beautiful and richer than that.  I simply have to make an effort to move my body and mind and soul from the path of bad habits into the path of good habits. If good habits increase by time, so will the possibility of becoming a virtuous person.  Of course, we are always in the process of becoming.  The process is perpetually dynamic, or at least it should be.

Here is voice of Syncletica, again:

"Consequently, the mind must become painstakingly diligent with respect its thoughts.  For when the Enemy wants to destroy the soul as he would building, he engineers its collapse from the foundations, or begins from the roof and topples the whole structure; or, he goes in through the windows, ties up the master of the house first and thus wins control of everything.  'Foundation', then signifies good works, 'roof' faith, and 'windows' senses.  And through all of them the Enemy wages war.  And so the person wishing to be saved must be very watchful."  (The Life of Blessed Syncletica, #46)

So, we see a three-fold structure of personhood and individual personality in Syncletica's advice: good works are our ethics in action, our relationality to the other, and what we do day to day for ourselves and others.  Faith is our obedience to our Creator.  And senses are our bodily structure, a way of relating to the world in our embodiment, which also imply a sense of gaining knowledge and experiencing a possibility of change. But of course, epistemological reflections are not on top of the hierarchy. Rather, it is our foundation (which is both top and bottom in many ways): the way of relating to one another and the human, deeply individual works.

Singular Moments

Finding God in all things. Is it possible?

For those of us who are fortunate to live in a world where daily life can become tedious, there should be a large importance placed on one's spiritual life. I have to find a way to incorporate spiritual balance into the unfortunate and inevitable dreariness of daily life.

There will always be something pulling at me, which depletes my being and passion. And so, instead of constant complaining and blaming the rest of the world for my problems (which by the way, totally fatigues me!), it is up to me to get disciplined and do some actual work in the realm of the spirit.

What does this mean? Philosophically, it means to not look at chores as chores but rather as tasks that might provide an opening to a better self-understanding through self-examination. In this case, Ignatian spiritual maxim - “Finding God in all things” - is absolutely true.

Easier said than done. Please don't tell me that I am going to find God in vacuuming! Well, no, not unless God for you is some form of ectoplasm that might escape the vacuum once you collect it.

“Finding God in all things” is not a cute and overly emotional phrase. It is not a “happy place.” It requires focus and undivided attention to the task at hand, which means that I have to be aware of the present moment.

This Igantian phrase also does not signify that suddenly I will be some ethereal, floating, and sagacious spirit. On the contrary, to be in the present moment in doing whatever task that I am engaging in, implies a concrete sense of my embodiment. Because I deeply engage (whether it's in contemplation or action), I affirm the relationship of mind-body-soul and I am less fragmented. Less fragmentation leads to less scattering of thought, and less scattering of mind leads to less scattering of task execution.

I have difficulties facing the hours because, for the most part, they are filled with anxiety that always somehow leads to acedia. But I do find, from my limited experience, that once I resolve to become more disciplined in my actions and once I question each motive of my action (not neurotically, mind you!), the task which I am engaging has a better chance to become an opening for my imagination, and not an imprisonment of my own neurosis.

Of course, I still have to find some semblance of balance in my mind so that tasks do not become empty routine, and render me a simple automaton that never examines her life. If each day ought to be different, then each task (even if it involves the same action, such as doing laundry) will be different.

For example, praying five times a day or praying in the Church, I may be uttering the same prayer every time. But those same words will have a different meaning each moment because each breath and each hour will ideally bring renewal to me.

There are times when forces outside of my control conspire and I have a really, and I mean, really bad day. This is normal. And let's face it, people can be real jerks. As Seinfeld said, “People! They're the worst!” Or when Charles Schulz said: "I like mankind.  It's the people I can't stand." But when it comes to the development of my spiritual life (which is inextricably linked to my moral life), it is up to me to let go, have faith, and cultivate discipline every day.

I will admit that I fail. But I usually try again. And again. And again. And the moments are singular.

Rooms of Christina's Heart

Sometimes, I like to sit on the floor of my living room with art books spread all over the carpet.  The carpet is black and white - an exercise in sharpness of modernism.  I still don't know whether art has a calming effect on me, or whether it lights more fires in my mind, or perhaps, whether it is a combination of both states of being.

There is a small book of Andrew Wyeth's paintings, among El Greco, and a book of Medieval manuscripts.  I know of Wyeth's painting, Christina's World (1948), and so I look for it.  I slow down on purpose, touching the pages, sensing them.  "Go slowly," I tell myself.  "There is no reason to rush."  "What kind of life is lived when we rush?"

Ah, there it is!  Christina is seductive.  I always thought of her that way.  Christina's thinness is frightening and grotesque and ideal.  What about her face?  What is she trying to do?  There is no object to seduce.  A house?  A meadow?  Hardly.  The earth does not care about our attempts at seduction.

Sometimes, it's not a bad idea to read the back story of great paintings.  Her full name is Anna Christina Olson.  She was born in 1893 and she died in 1968.  Wyeth had a house which he spent summers in and the Olson family were his neighbors.  He befriended them and was intrigued by Christina.  She had a muscular disease, most likely polio, and one half of her body was paralyzed.  

One day, Wyeth looked outside of his window and saw her crawling toward the house.  Her world was slow, her body did not allow for swiftness, and it was a struggle to get from one place to the next.  Her world was limited by her suffering body.  Her world was limitless by her suffering body.  Like the landscape, the boundlessness and the uncertainty of human body and heart interrupts our thoughts and restlessness. 

Christina, in fact, was not trying to seduce us, or anyone else for that matter.  She was not indifferent to us either.  It was us, who looked first into our own interiority and found insecurities and rejections.  "Turn around!"  "Let me see your face!"  But more importantly, "Look at me!"  But there is something else hiding behind the insecurities, which are just illusions anyway.   There is a need to be seen, to be recognized.  By desiring to be recognized by Christina, we find  something wholly outside of ourselves - her being is an imposition, a call, which must be answered.  Or are we going to turn around and go into another direction toward another vastness of the landscape, where there is another desolate house, whose interior is unknown to us?  But the house is inanimate, isn't it?  The space of the house can be controlled, maintained - the imposition comes from us.  Christina's interior and the rooms of her soul are unknown too but the uncertainty is coupled with a constant possibility of surprise.  The rooms may be locked, may be open, some might even miss a door, some might have creaky doors. Who knows what the vastness of human heart will bring?  

The Displaced Person: thoughts on war, exile, and life in America, part 2

When you first come to America, as an immigrant, you don't really think about your interior self.  You are governed by the external realities that begin to dictate your daily life.  The emergent routine is hardly ever disrupted and you welcome it.  The ruptures you've experienced unwillingly have descended upon you and they became the unbearable heaviness of being.  The question of how to be, or better yet, how to move beyond being hovers around you always.  It is a shadow, which follows and confuses you because sometimes it resembles you and sometimes it does not appear to be you at all.

Then years begin to pass.  You begin to get older.  What happened twenty years ago oscillates between two times: past and present.  Maybe it happened yesterday, you think.  Maybe it happened twenty years ago.  Or maybe this is all a dream and none of it ever happened.

As you get older, you realize that the world is full of constructs or forms, which are already set in place by those who came before us.  And we, who came after, are to fit into those forms.  But what if, you wonder, one does not fit into these forms most perfectly?  Inevitably, the question of belonging comes up, as it would for any immigrant.

You are not certain of anything it seems, but you do know that you have lived and breathed in many places on the map.  Wherever you've gone, you became the soil which you've touched.  And you have never lost your essence.

The real spiritual work begins with this pressure, this rupture.  Everything becomes part of your spiritual life, and yet, by lifting one veil, you realize that there are indeed things which are peripheral and those which are central.  Although both are dealing with the matters of the soul, they are a glimpse into differing levels of soul progress.

You do not deny the concrete experiences of the painful past and the incredible necessity of justice.  At the same time, you acknowledge that you are on the way, on the path which encompasses both the elusive interiority of humanity, and the concrete, unresolved, tense, and irritating exteriority of humanity.

The path does not completely dictate where you go.  Nor do you disregard the stones of the path that have been placed, one by one, by those who came before.  You cannot violate and bully the soul into submissive slavery.  The path is an opening - an invitation to the first step which you make both willingly and with surrender. 

The Displaced Person: thoughts on war, exile, and life in America

         In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi wrote this: “Almost all the survivors, orally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to.  In the most typical (and cruelest) form, the interlocutor turned and left in silence.” 

          Every morning I wake up with the same anxiety and desire: to write.  For the most part, during the day, I don’t write.  Why is it so difficult to take one’s life seriously and to take a responsibility to say something about a past, which is not just mine but others’ too? 

          We have an obligation, I think, to leave a mark on the world, during our life time.  This mark should be that of the good – simply put, to make the world a better place.  Sounds trite and it is a phrase overused but isn’t it true? 

         

          This fear, which was so perfectly articulated by Primo Levi, is a fear that has become part of my being.  Why is it there?  It’s vulnerability.  Any human being is afraid of being vulnerable, whether you have survived a war or not.  I feel alienated as it is, and so opening those wounds again, makes you feel alone even more.  But does one have to bleed every time one speaks of war?  I don’t think so.  This is where prudence and wisdom come into it, and more than anything, discipline.

          I wonder about my fellow Bosnian-Americans.  Do they go about their lives, working and playing, being more American than Bosnian?  And what does that distinction even mean?  Do they ever stop and examine what they have gone through, does it hurt, where and when does it hurt, do they cry and when and where do they cry, are they angry, or do they forget?  Or do they not know how to express the past screams of war or are they just so sick and bored of it that it is easier to “be” an American?  And what is wrong with living an American life? 

          I don’t know who I am anymore.  I have lived in this country since 1996.  America does not have the same feeling of “otherness” that it used to have, which in many ways, is a good thing – a settled way of life despite the uneasy peace.  I realized this about a year ago when I was grocery shopping.  I began to look at the signs indicating which produce you can buy, whether it’s organic or not, variety of cheeses, and the aisles and aisles of different foods and items you can buy.  Shopping at Wegmans is quite an experience!  And the people working there are pleasant and nice, and they say “hello” and “how are you today” and “this cash register is open.”  Americans are friendly people.  They may not want to know exactly how you are but they smile and they create a general atmosphere of pleasantness and fluid movement of society.  I like this about America.

          Sometimes, though, you begin to lose yourself in this pleasantness.  And you do this through not rolling the rrrrs and you start to use your jaw more to say the word “sure,” and you start to sound like an American and you end up sounding like some New Yorker with a British and Slavic accent – God, who am I in all of this linguistic set up?  And people ask you: “are you from Paris?” or they say: “Ah, you must be from Westchester County.” 

          Neither.  Not Paris, not New York.  I am from a place, for which my soul aches.  I am from a place that is complex and yet perfectly straightforward; I am from the place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live together, where bells of the church and call to prayer from the mosque sometimes sound out at the same time and yet you can hear the singularity of both; I am from the place that is the cross roads of many people and cultures; I am from the place that has endured a war and genocide and yet people are trying to move forward.  This place is a mixture of good and evil, of imperfection and beauty, of tension and peace.  It is, in many ways, a place of temporary in-between-ness, of veiled and unveiled existence, of barriers and open doors, of commonality and alterity. 

          I want answers as to why people died.  But there are no answers.  The silence of which Primo Levi speaks is also my own fear.  But, on second thought, it is not the silence I am afraid of.  It is the agitation at the thought that not one human being can give me an answer as to why chaos occurred. 

          I rest myself in God.  It seems to be the only thing I can do.  I rest in his peace and compassion even in the midst of extreme tension and dread. I repeat the prayers I was taught by my great grandmother and grandmother and mother when I was a child.  Consolation and desolation – both are part of our lives.  We are capable of good and evil, we are capable of mass murder and ethnic cleansing but I have to keep reminding myself that we are most definitely capable of beauty and love.