Bedtime stories

Bedtime stories

              Experts say that any narrative should follow a regularity tested over time, i.e. if you are telling a story you should begin it invariably with something like "once upon a time" and it should follow a predictable line until the villain gets crushed by the mighty arms of nemesis and the hero and preferably his family or lover living happily thereafter till the end of times. Similarly a narrative should have an "intro", a "body" and a "conclusion." Perhaps! There can be other ways too.  What can be applied to a systematic analysis cannot be often applied to an experiential one. Consciousness is not often a laminar flow; it has its perturbations too. Neruda says that he has not the penchant of a romantic poet when there is enough blood on the streets yelling at him: "Come and see the blood in the streets "(cf.I Explain a Few Things-Pablo Neruda.) 'Wedding in Galilee' is an interesting movie from Palestine. Once upon a time in Galilee an Arab wanted to conduct his son's marriage in a grandiose scale and so had to get the curfew lifted. This could only be achieved by him inviting the Israeli military governor and his men as guests of honour leaving his family chagrined. The plot thickens but what resounds is the fact that the whole development and all this "honour" stuff drive the bridegroom to despair and he vents his ire at the father. The distraught father ruffling the hairs of his younger son on his lap starts telling him a bedtime story and the child sleeps too early to hear that. The father then resigns with these words: "Every time I tell you a story, I find you sleeping in my lap. My stories are not yours…"

              David Hume defying all traces of causality comments that there is nothing in the sight of a loaf of bread to tell us that it is food. He presupposes that food is something which is nutritious and he is true by that light of his. When your stomach is full, nutrition can be the next immediate concern, but when hunger gapes at you and you have no way to quell it in the "orthodox" way then you may deem even a lump of mud food inasmuch as it can stuff the guts. So is a bedtime story. It is a very typical view, nevertheless having immense wisdom embedded in it. The question is whether these bedtime stories warp one's dreams which would have otherwise have been original. Lullabies are bedtime communication done to a baby. A simple analysis would reveal that the verbal expressions involved are not much meant for the baby as much as it is a self-communing of the singer. The baby is not yet grown to discern the import of what is spoken to him. That the tonal qualities of a lullaby can have soothing effects on the baby is a different question. The point is that lullaby or any bedtime stories for that sake are not quite accommodative of the reality in all its phases. There are such "bedtime stories" grown into grand narratives that steer one's life. By "bedtime story" is meant any construct that generate unwarranted orthodoxy, something which is smuggled into our consciousness and which is pre-reflectively stamped in us. When there are many strange tongues abounding around us in the land which we thought to be our proprietary pride, we grow intensely xenophobic because we are facing a cosmopolitan system dictated by economic machinery and not a poetic situation where the frontiers fade and there is just one world and one song. The very integrity of such grand narratives as culture and racial qualities are put under scanner.  Where we fear to tread others rush in and we are no angels and they are no fools.

              As English has grown into a language that has many variants and representations across the world it is getting proved as a non-absolute language. Language in a sense mirrors our understanding of reality. There are Janus words in English which harbours opposite meanings in them. Literalness of the language is decreasing and context-content is increasing. A quick google of antagonyms or contronyms is recommended for further reading, but then a word about Google or for that sake any web content- they are highly customized so much so that critics say that there is no such thing as a standard Google. Algorithms are the watchdogs of the present world and they will spot you as if you are the only one in the world. They believe that your stories are not mine.

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity. Thank you, S.Pater Augustinus for that piece of advice. Now let us see whether our small narratives live up to it.

ephraem maria gilbert

14.06.12

thumpoly capuchin ashram

facecook

                According to the standards of the current times, a smile has become the most deceptive technique. We are cooking up faces- faces that may smile and smile and still be villainous. Compéres come to us as embodiments of perpetual composure. Their ravishing smiles are a matter of professional prowess. They keep smiling and laughing and keep the counters ticking. The most convenient thing about a smile is that it never betrays your real feelings.

            Humour has many variants. "Funny ha-ha" and "Funny Peculiar" seem to have become vague demarcations. Since nowadays we invent reasons to smile, the first step towards it can be to create a target audience and contrast it with a subgroup that can furnish the laughing stocks. Run-of-the-mill movies have bored us enough with slapstick comedies and of late we have started enjoying subtle humour. Slapstick comedies create a fictitious situation with an avalanche of follies and a fistful of funny characters. Allusive humour often breaches the banks to become a counterfactual political weapon.

            Shutterbugs know how easy it is to craft a smiling bunch in a good shot by asking them to pronounce "cheese", the more pious even going for "jesus." There can be formalizations of laughter. Every expression of joy warrants histrionic aspects (absence of which can question the very existence of joy), whereas a bout of rage would require biochemical triggering which is largely involuntary. A bit of wit from a boss, though stale and watery, can command a gamut of laughter (everybody can recall at least an instance of being uneasy about the laugh-worthiness of a humour underway and being forced to keep a laughter standby lest one offends the wit-cracker; this is not bothersome if the speaker is far down the rungs, you can always obfuscate him.) As a rule of thumb, the more important the person, the more vociferous should one laugh at his wit. Franciscan joy is far from such formalizations; it was rather a joy shared among a lot bound by Sacred Poverty and love. There was no hierarchy of humour involved. In "Of gods and of men" Brother Christian speaks how poverty helps us to enter into relationships other than those based on power. Things have changed a lot now. You get as many "likes" (à la facebook™) as your following and people have their own reasons to follow. No wonder, you become an instant hit!

            Judith Butler reflects on the theme of grievability. The movie "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is a vivid portrayal along these lines. Which losses are grievable and which are not?  It depends on the associated ideological prowess. In the Indian mythology an incarnation of a god can stamp down a just king, albeit a demon, to the netherworld and exegesis vindicates the former and the Keralites get their fair share of celebration as the nemesis wanes each year. Even your goodness shall not exceed your station, so the myth says. To the Nazarene who thought even the fall of a sparrow grievable, one knows not how to explain one's weird standards and yardsticks.

            After a spell of cancer from which she recovered, Susan Sontag notes how a scheme of victimization underlies even our understanding of pathologies. A century before, tuberculosis was considered a wretched disease and one afflicted with it as desperately unfortunate. Decades before it was cancer that was thought to be scourge. Now as lifestyle associated cancers are on the rise we tend to vilify the patients only about those cases of cancer which are linked to an abusive lifestyle by terming them as just deserts. Everything else is a "strange twist of fate." These days we can speak of AIDS as a condition which springs out of "sheer irresponsibility." Even in such vulnerable and terminal situations of life, does man maintain a hierarchy and find laughing stocks to stoke his complacency.

                Perhaps we should hark back to a pre-rational sensitivity to the life of others as profoundly explained by Levinas, Marcel et.al, to reclaim the times which the sciences of our times robbed us of. Who knows who shall have the last laugh?

ephraem maria gilbert

Thumpoly capuchin ashram

May 26, 2012

string of thoughts

"death-gaze"
watching dead leaves fall
from the cell through a window,
time seems frozen still.


"universality"
when you stand on heights
and rain wets you,see it
falling on vales too.

"windows"
two windows set near
one lit yet other not- as
opaque septum parts them.

"puddle"
sips by beak off puddle
crow slakes but aS man im forced
'drink safe lest guts crash

"candy"
never candy melts
but chewed down unrelished- my
mouth chews by instinct


"love lost"
our love cedes, meeting
flesh of flayed realities
so we wed new lies

"oratio"
prose to set a fire
lovely hymns to quench- so my
prayer cycle recurs.

"rules to climb"
when you hear a gurgle
know your foot's on splay- climb up
or roll down, no stay.

"doze-off"
sweet note,loved, treasured
crumbles in hand as i slumber
lethal lethargy!

"irony"
id crush boulders, eat them
digest,filled, live by it, yet
tip over a pip-sized rise.

"spectres on ice"
icebed arctic melts,
a mammoth calf unveiled
haunts me back here home.

"drip drying"
clothes to dry, sun slips
wind blows, lost sun bemoaned
forgets- wind dries too.

"outspoken"
'john's dead'-said in jest
the words flew, all johns fell dead
that's the thrust words wield.

haiku

cobwebs from corners
through treasured icons reaches
for my dusty soul

"benign mother" excerpts

fiendish gloom robs heart of its warmth;
thoughts have turned pale and cold
sole query does my mind raise
"Has the spring lomg way to come"
robed in anguish, wake i, all days
sighing over duties undone, prayers unsaid.
sins make a grim dance on my eyes,
wonder how large a troupe they are.
i don a cloak of ritual penance
still withholding my goodness,
makes unfeeling vows before Lord
knowing each word waits to be broken

ad libs

the old organ reworked
had sung with the cantor,
an incognito i've never seen,
before the sexton dumped it.
now pedals fitted, bellows mend
keys reset, lid hinged, polished over
it finds a place of rest
by the wall of the prayer room.
uncle's boy wss playing tenor
with bass accompaniments after
his lessons was a rare sight
even more as he left the place.
when i sit working the pedals
groping keys with a single hand
it's nothing but a puerile vigour
or unquenched curiosity, not more.

the statuette of sancta dymphna

I found her in a trashcan
nose, chin, pedestal chipped off
the sword still thrust down, in hand,
showing what she is composed of.
there was not she used to be
she was in a nook in the niche,
overhearing the pious pleas we
at the Lord and His Mother unleash.
when i retieved , she was decapitated
thought i'd fix it with a dab of glue.
her ancient broadsword incapacitated
we have to forge one new in lieu
to connive this inadvertent iconoclasm,
to fracture these embodiments in plaster
that sooner we may gaze at chasms,
our ways to the heights hamper.