thoseawake

Emerson, to Harvard College students

on their first day at school in 1837:

"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,--let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead..."

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From W. Berry's "The Long-Legged House"

"I don't think I could have survived that struggle intact if I hadn't had a history that taught me that there was dignity of another kind, and more desirable. I had known from the beginning a few men who accepted and required of themselves as men with a great simplicity of pride, who could be lonely in their virtues and excellences if they had to be, and who could move in their lives without either crawling or marching––and the thought of those men was before me." (125)

our own horizons

I'm reading up on literary theory for a class this semester...

And I'm thinking back to some of the closest critical reading I've done in my past; most of that has been of the Bible. That is the text I've spent the most time doing a "close reading" of over my life, and in community no less! How great. I'm happy to have been doing any close reading of any kind, really. I enjoy it.

Thoreau's Walden would come in second on the list, but the Bible has it beat by hours and hours, and I've also read Walden mostly on my own, applying my own critical ideas and drawing from a few (at the time) hard-to-read scholars. 

Here are some thoughts on current reading: If criticism is doing a "close reading," then "theory" is the framework from which you're doing this kind of reading; it's metalanguage.  On this level, theory admits that there are assumptions in language and in the practice of reading, and theory thinks that these assumptions should be made explicit. 

Patricia Waugh comments, "theory will always try to speak within the terms of its own horizon, its own context of historical practice."

And I'm into comments like that. I find energy there. 

And I also find a quick, sharp, personal critique of the reading I've done for most of my life. When I have read the Bible throughout my youth, even in community, I can barely recall someone offering an explanation of the specific "horizon" in which we were doing our close reading of Paul's letters (for example). The only horizon I can think we talked about (or were told) was something like, "Read this. Read it line by line. Let's memorize as much as we can. It's good for you, tells you how to live, and it's true."

Plainly, I believe the horizon was offered as a universal; there wasn't talk of a frame to the understanding or of a very clear admission of assumptions. It was "truth" for "all."

Yet, the energy I find within theory is beauty and clarity in its intention to localize, to mark the horizon with something that creates a space to play, maybe even to "know."

I wholeheartedly believe this can be done with all texts, including our various scriptures. And, it must be done, right? 

Our practices, our critical reading and other disciplines, are deeply important. But, like in sport, shouldn't we know what game it is we're playing? Which version of the game, (football or fútbol) and from which time? What does this week's referee really judge harshly on? And, what color are the jerseys?

We should try to speak within the terms of our own horizons, both to play responsibly and well, and also to have the most legitimate fun possible.

once

once, when i was a cloud,

flying over a clearing near lake tahoe

there was a man, hiking alone, with what looked like a school backpack on his back

he was tired, but had just barely begun his hike

 

people passed him, they went down the mountain as he went up

and he tried to find excuses to stop ascending while they passed,

concerned to control his heavy breathing

 

i soared higher, over all of emerald bay and the ponderosa pines

whilst the man finally arrived at a very small lake

he walked around it and found a rock in the bright sun where

he set down his school-like back pack, pulled out two books, a notebook, a banana, 

a granola bar, a water bottle, a pipe, 

tobacco, and a camera

 

as I soared higher, making my way across mountain tops, 

where expert climbers bound the hills easily 

full of great joy in their strength and the ease of their climb,

the man at the lake captured his scene with his camera

 

he quietly exclaimed how wonderful it was 

to be up there, up here, alone, 

with the wind blowing the waves against his rock, smoking a pipe 

and reading Matthiessen’s “the snow leopard” from the start

 

the man was happy to be alone 

but he was not, alone, and I told him as much

with wisps of white, shapes like snow-covered dragon tales, I called, 

I’m up here! I see you! I too feel the wind; I smell your pipe. 

Love is full of Here.

 

and I don’t know if he heard me

he was writing something down just then, and I thought it to be 

an inspired moment, though I couldn’t make out the words and

 

the wind pushed me north, 

dagger-peaks obstructing my view of the man 

on the rocky ledge

at the edge of everything,

our lonely, life-filled lake. 

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