the russian doll

I finished Notes from the Underground, by old Fyodor a couple of weeks ago. I think I will need at least a year to absorb it (and even then, not completely), but so much of it resonated with so much of me (who I am and who I have been) that I don’t think it’s too early for reflections – even if they are no more than reflections upon myself.

“I am a sick man… I am a wicked man.”

I was sitting in a very very American coffee shop in the Middle East called Starbucks, perhapsyou’veheardthename? It is a strange thing when one, standing in a desert in North Africa, climbs a staircase planted in the middle of a sea of asphalt, and when his last foot finds that last step he is lifted high off the ground and set down only a few hours later on a different continent, wearing different clothes, reading different books, drinking different coffee. It is just curious enough to inspire the word “surreal”, even though the religion of being rational is a bit too dogmatic to allow such superstitions to linger too long upon the mind’s stage or the lips, even.

But, if just for a moment I could blaspheme, then I would tell you that the whole thing was surreality within surreality, nested to so many iterations that even now the rediscovery of every layer evokes amusement in me, like a child’s first encounter with Madame Matryoshka and the company she keeps.

For the man of the undergound was all at once himself, an earnest but bitter slave of intellect, and then also (one layer out) he is a satire of something earnest and bitter, and in both of these ways he was myself also, and he was sitting in Starbucks. Or else he was sleeping through days in his college dorm room for hours upon hours. And in the understanding of all of this – while I was both the bitter man and also the satirist – between them, I was also the young man who woke up 30 minutes earlier on Sunday mornings in order to walk across a sleepy college town to get to church, knowing that he needed all of that time in order lose all his sanity and gain it again before he took his place in that “dark winter pew” that was so infinite.

It is a comfort that when you see yourself at your worst, all typed-out and printed up, justified from left-to-right on the page; that when you are looking at yourself like that, that you are not only that person, but you are also another [if only ever so-slightly] better person who can hold a book and see it all.

I do not know where I am going with all this, except to say that if I ever was the man in the underground – this anti-hero and mouse – then I still am, somehow. But if I was ever more than this, then that I also am, too. And it is this latter one in which I rest. It is this latter one which will rise one day from the underground, incorruptible, Lord have mercy.

Captain

P.S. Based on a lot of reviews and also a good bit of reading about their translation technique and philosophy, I’ve come to view the translations of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky as probably the best choices out there for Russian literature (trans. into English) – or at least a good place to start. So, that’s my recommendation on which translation to read, which is a pretty important decision. If you happen to know more about Russian-English translations than I do (which can be easily accomplished) feel free to offer your own insights.

consciousness, gaining

the greatest argument for the pure arbitrariness of our division of time is surely found in those fleeting moments of waking whose perceived length i can never seem to reconcile with the measurements of any clock. our comprehension of the word moment is a strange thing anyway, i suppose. it is nothing short of baffling that we are perfectly comfortable with the idea that what we experience in a moment is infinite – infinitesimal, precisely – but can hardly fathom the idea that a single moment should span some finite range of minutes, seconds, partics, fermonds [i am just making up words now, but notice how little difference it makes to the meaning of the sentence]. hardly fathomable that perhaps the thing which spans a time, times, and half a time is an unvaryingly composed instance of time as homogeneous as processed cheese.

{
you know, you’d write better if you weren’t so pretentious.
[but i thought the line about the cheese broke the pretense?]
i’m not sure that it did; you laid it on pretty thick just now.
}

i wake up the precise moment that i hear my alarm this morning – a piece of processed cheese which most clocks in this time zone would label as the period of time between 6:30 and 6:44. if math is the universal language, then i minored in language in college. given the fact, however, that i am not even fluent in english for the first 20 minutes I’m awake, upon my rising i am able only to deduce (by the subtraction property of equality) that i have slept either 3, 4, or zero hours. (it was 3, i would later learn.)

oil. i believe the chemical definition of an oil is “a hydrophobic, often viscous liquid which will find its way from your hair and skin into your eyes in the morning, causing you incredible discomfort.” i plod towards the shower, my soles assiduous in acquiring a gritty coating from the fine layer of dust covering the cheap ceramic tile. i plod back to my room to retrieve my towel which i left behind. i plod back to the shower, with a bit more plod in my step this time. i lift the shower lever, and a tiny stream of water trickles out of the pores of the nozzle, arches its back for a moment in an attempt to free itself from the surface, and then wearily abandons the effort and slides down the side of the spout. i lower the shower lever. i am still not yet fluent in english, so i am content to merely curse the showerhead with a stare before staggering out of the bathroom, out of my apartment, out of my building and to the motorized water pump which i switch on and off and jiggle a few times with a sense of purpose, and then walk back into my building, my apartment, my bathroom.

somewhere in the mysteriously purposeful jiggling i must have re-routed a pipe because the water which now comes flowing abundantly from my shower seems to have glacial origins. upon stepping into its stream i have a mystical experience which might possibly be described as the opposite of a moment: it is an infinitely long period of time, mystifyingly contained within the finite period of time which most clocks in this time zone would label as the span of minutes between 6:53 and 7:01. epochs pass before my eyes. i watch milliseconds being born like children, watch children become men, watch men grow old, watch old men wither and pass away, and in all of this i age very little since my body is preserved in perfect cryogenic hibernation by the indescribable coldness that i am using to rinse the soap off my body.

when the final sud is banished, i reach for the lever and turn off the water [my hand seems to move through the air for eras, ages, hadrochs, megazons], the enchantment is lifted, and without the sound of running water i notice that the noise of my own breathing has become comically loud, as if my body had been trying to get my attention the entire duration of the shower by constricting my vocal chords into a wheeze of despair. but as i say, it is comical – it is the first thing which seems to be so this morning. i scuttle into my room after drying off. [note that i have a variety of ways of moving back and forth between my room and the bathroom, scuttling and plodding being but two. because of my disproportionately small bladder, this almost hourly pilgrimidge is a sacred rite which i have perfected.]

i pick out a sampling of clothes which i think will make my dashing 23-year old frame look the most like an elderly gentleman’s and settle into my chair in the corner. today it is luke 10. i remain mostly unmoved until the story of martha and mary, during which a surrender takes place, and i must re-read until i am mary and i am sitting at the Lord’s feet and longing because i am martha also. contemplation. and i light a candle and then more contemplation and something about time that is simpler than words can express and greater than the infinites which have visited my consciousness thus far. and now is when i pray for brothers and sisters and the world. and myself. and now “Our Father… for Thine,” i look up into the face which is a moment (or the opposite of it), and He is robed in blue, and in his hand he holds a Book encrusted with jewels which seem to jump off the paper with the flicker of the candle,

“is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever. Amen“

captains will be captains

 

“i can live with that.”
i can’t escape these words;
i don’t really want to.

 

their meaning is [like all meanings?] found within the whole of the system which contains them rather than in the words themselves. (they need a context[, he translates, roughly].)

in the last 15 minutes of one of my favorite films, these words are the great sigh which prepares our [anti]hero for climactic breathlessness. he has seen himself as the mess that he is and others have seen him likewise; it is his first honest moment.

 

it is the stillness

which finally apprehends

the delicate line

between striving to change -

to become different,

and living dishonestly -

as if you already are what you hope to become.

 

[he is ready to become because he has begun, in earnest, to be.]

 

if i have over-analyzed, may i appeal to postmodernity: i was not watching the film, but watching myself. and i was not writing about a film, perhaps, but… well, the same.

 

a Family of immigrants

i saw so many wonderful friends this weekend in dallas. i miss all of you already, and i hope to see you sometime this fall. (Joshie, i’ve still got a phonograph record of Russian men reciting poems for you!!!)

i’m awake watching 24, even though I need to wake up in 5 hours because my “bedroom” at the Mablevale house (the living room) is being used as an all-night Jack-Bauer-fest theater. i think i could take him in a fight.

my driver-side window is embodying the “not-yet” reality of the redemption of creation, making paying tolls, purchasing fast food, and withdrawing funds frustratingly difficult. at times my frustration makes it difficult to embody the “already” part. especially when i really need a cheeseburger.

a dear friend of mine, reflecting today upon his recent changes in residence, observed that moving from place to place has proven to him that nowhere on this planet is truly home. i have much less experience in the matter of moving, but i too am convinced that my home is not in this world, as it stands now. today i got a job in litle rock (at the new starbucks at university and markham), so i will continue my period of exile in this little capital city, to the glory of God.

blogging here makes me feel young again!

Lovingly,
the Captain