I can remember few details--we are talking reading it maybe 55 years ago. But it lingers as an example of how reality shifts, as I mention in my own comment here.
I REALLY like the image of the cage in your version. It makes clear that it isn't the City per se that prevents one from moving on, it is the City inside yourself, the physical space that has been actually altered--for you--by your experiences inside it. Those experiences don't go away when you change scene--they still alter your perception of the "new" place.
I've been fascinated for a long time with how experience affects our subjective reality--for longer by far than our current exemplar, the world of Alternative Facts. There is actual neurological evidence that what we "see" is affected by what we "expect." Because what we "see" is electrical impulses (and everything else) and our brain has to interpret those. I'm not pulling a Bishop Berkeley here. There is a world out there (where else do the impulses COME from?) But WHAT it is has a huge element of being a social construct: what everyone agrees is out there. (In this it ties with your last post about what exactly a "dollar" is.)
I used to ask my Science Fiction classes to discuss how 1 + 1 can = 3. It requires a shift in perspective, in definitions. 1 man +1 woman can = 1 man, 1 woman+ 1 child. With that shift 1 + 1 can also = 4, 5, nowadays up to 10. (The context was The Left Hand of Darkness, which plays havoc with reality from the point of view of an "Ai." )
Thanks...the cage is Durrell's invention...I don't think it's in the Cavafy.
From what I understand, MP3 and other compressed audio and video files have spaces that trick your brain into seeing what isn't actually there...to fill in the blanks. To your point about expectation. Was in Samuel Johnson who made his "I disprove Berkeley" joke by closing his eyes and kicking over a chair?
So much to discuss in Left Hand. Such a great book.
Missed it in the Durrell. Johnson kicked over what we all agree is a chair. For all we REALLY know he kicked over an amorphous blob of jello that simply seems to us to be hard and sittable upon. Just like we don’t REALLY know whether a galaxy 2500 light years away is still actually there. As I said, I’m not being a Berkeley. SOMETHING send impulses to both Berkeley and Johnson.
An example of the “expectation” idea lies in most optical illusions. Is it a crone or a girl? Is it a vase or two faces? Our brains can’t tell, so things keep switching.
Two books on the “expectation” theory are Anil Seth, Being You. and Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality . I can’t judge entirely because I’m not a neurobiologist so I can’t evaluate the MECHANISM they have found. But it makes a lot of sense in that it hangs together the phenomena it describes.
"The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold - the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there awaits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfill it in its true potential - the imagination." (Justine, Durrell)
OMG! I bought Empress in hard back, but I couldn't finish it. The sex scenes were so graphic and it just felt icky at my age after a hysterectomy due to cancer. Catch my drift? That whole world seems so alien to me now.
"...running away from it won’t change what’s already been done. Implicit in this is the command to stay put and deal with whatever troubles arise..." A breathtaking command at this point in history. Running away is not even an option for most...children, the old, the sick. I despair, but I stay put.
Thank you Greg for the grand jetté to the 20th century….well, metaphorically. Here we are. Caged perhaps, but maybe not! It’s through wounds that the light gets through. The mal admin would like us to shrivel like a straws’ stripped off in paper covering. Just add water 💦 and voila, it Opens up!
As someone in recovery, the poem feels like a variation on the old saw "wherever you go, there you are" i.e. you can't run from your problems, what they call in the rooms "pulling a geographic." Even still, "there is no ship for you, there is no road" floored me.
Sunday Pages has become an important part of my life. I look forward to being enlightened, always about something new to me, yet put into the context of today's existence.
Today was especially poignant. Mrs Old Man and I are very much working to escape the "City". We are advanced into escaping to London, our home for some 25 years, about one third of all the breathes we have taken. The poem gives me pause, are we kidding ourselves by saying we are running to our only daughter who grew up and made her life there? Or, rather are we running away from the black mess, orange hitler? One of my favorite expressions has been time will tell. Running to or away from, as I ponder this, one truth remains, time will tell. Time and actions we take. By saying so I believe there is hope we are doing the right thing, whatever right may mean. If there is one thing we cannot countenance, it is inaction.
For what it's worth, your version of "The City" was the best. If despair was an emotion being solicited by the authors, your version wins, hands down. As you say, hopelessness is not elicited by the poem, your version did not blot this out. But it certainly did evoke despair. I am very clumsy with poetry, therefore anything I say must be taken with a grain of salt. Please do so especially if I missed the bulls eye.
Thanks again for filling part of my Sunday with a pleasant diversion, albeit one that gave me significant pause for thought.
I'm too "fractionated," as my husband used to say, to focus on this lovely offering of yours today, Greg, but I did want to say that all 3 versions have their merits. Truly. This line from Durrell's sticks out and maybe sticks in my craw a little bit (in a good way?): "no ship exists / To take you from yourself..." Thanks for leading us down such intriguing roads and byways on a Sunday.
Not to be too topical, but my first thought is "shipped off to a foreign gulag, never to be heard from again..." All those books I read in in high school and college are coming in very handy these days, I'm sad to say.
Per The Eagles’ Already Gone, “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” But we don’t free ourselves by finding another city. “Wherever you go there you are.” You don’t resolve a bad marriage by looking for a better lover, or cure an addiction by replacing it with another. Freedom requires inner work—soul searching—healing the victimhood. Same goes for healing our democracy. As you say, we can’t move to Canada. We have to change our thinking.
If there is one reality, it is there is no escaping who I am. The best I can do is to be the best version of me. Where I live, there will always be me.
I will add that the universe and this nation and many of those within it are predatory. And wherever there are predators, there are victims. Democracy was created in the face of such predatory actions, then and now. We're always fighting those SOBs, large and small. Occasionally, we get moments of peace. Right now, those moments are scarce.
I read the whole Alexandria Quartet (it was de rigueur in those days), and don't remember a word. How the ef do you do it?
I can remember few details--we are talking reading it maybe 55 years ago. But it lingers as an example of how reality shifts, as I mention in my own comment here.
It takes a long time to get through, and it's not linear, so it almost doesn't matter if I read start to finish or if I finish at all...
I REALLY like the image of the cage in your version. It makes clear that it isn't the City per se that prevents one from moving on, it is the City inside yourself, the physical space that has been actually altered--for you--by your experiences inside it. Those experiences don't go away when you change scene--they still alter your perception of the "new" place.
I've been fascinated for a long time with how experience affects our subjective reality--for longer by far than our current exemplar, the world of Alternative Facts. There is actual neurological evidence that what we "see" is affected by what we "expect." Because what we "see" is electrical impulses (and everything else) and our brain has to interpret those. I'm not pulling a Bishop Berkeley here. There is a world out there (where else do the impulses COME from?) But WHAT it is has a huge element of being a social construct: what everyone agrees is out there. (In this it ties with your last post about what exactly a "dollar" is.)
I used to ask my Science Fiction classes to discuss how 1 + 1 can = 3. It requires a shift in perspective, in definitions. 1 man +1 woman can = 1 man, 1 woman+ 1 child. With that shift 1 + 1 can also = 4, 5, nowadays up to 10. (The context was The Left Hand of Darkness, which plays havoc with reality from the point of view of an "Ai." )
Einstein said, "All is energy and energy cannot be destroyed. "
And "our reality is an illusion. "
He knew a thing or two!
"...the physical space that has been actually altered--for you--by your experiences inside it."
I pronounce this genius! So let it be written.
Thanks...the cage is Durrell's invention...I don't think it's in the Cavafy.
From what I understand, MP3 and other compressed audio and video files have spaces that trick your brain into seeing what isn't actually there...to fill in the blanks. To your point about expectation. Was in Samuel Johnson who made his "I disprove Berkeley" joke by closing his eyes and kicking over a chair?
So much to discuss in Left Hand. Such a great book.
Missed it in the Durrell. Johnson kicked over what we all agree is a chair. For all we REALLY know he kicked over an amorphous blob of jello that simply seems to us to be hard and sittable upon. Just like we don’t REALLY know whether a galaxy 2500 light years away is still actually there. As I said, I’m not being a Berkeley. SOMETHING send impulses to both Berkeley and Johnson.
An example of the “expectation” idea lies in most optical illusions. Is it a crone or a girl? Is it a vase or two faces? Our brains can’t tell, so things keep switching.
Two books on the “expectation” theory are Anil Seth, Being You. and Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality . I can’t judge entirely because I’m not a neurobiologist so I can’t evaluate the MECHANISM they have found. But it makes a lot of sense in that it hangs together the phenomena it describes.
"The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold - the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there awaits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfill it in its true potential - the imagination." (Justine, Durrell)
Such a great line! There are so many great passages.
Thanks for sharing, and thanks for subscribing!
OMG! I bought Empress in hard back, but I couldn't finish it. The sex scenes were so graphic and it just felt icky at my age after a hysterectomy due to cancer. Catch my drift? That whole world seems so alien to me now.
"...running away from it won’t change what’s already been done. Implicit in this is the command to stay put and deal with whatever troubles arise..." A breathtaking command at this point in history. Running away is not even an option for most...children, the old, the sick. I despair, but I stay put.
True, very true. Which is more reason to stay and fight.
Thank you Greg for the grand jetté to the 20th century….well, metaphorically. Here we are. Caged perhaps, but maybe not! It’s through wounds that the light gets through. The mal admin would like us to shrivel like a straws’ stripped off in paper covering. Just add water 💦 and voila, it Opens up!
We're caged by our living bodies, by life itself.
What does Milchick say in Severance? "You must cut to heal."
"...but at the same time the city, the “beloved Alexandria” as Durrell puts it, is not a place from which we should ever truly want to escape."
I would argue that "the city" is life.
CITY: Nine tales by Clifford Simak
One of my all-time favorites! billserle.com
Yes, that's a good read on it.
As someone in recovery, the poem feels like a variation on the old saw "wherever you go, there you are" i.e. you can't run from your problems, what they call in the rooms "pulling a geographic." Even still, "there is no ship for you, there is no road" floored me.
Thanks, Jim. Yes, I agree about those lines.
"The advent of agriculture was the beginning of the decline of man."
Jared Diamond.
Cities are a mistake.
Infrastructure maintenance always declines. You live where you shit.
Traveling villages from Oasis to Oasis seems okay. But then I recall in a previous life of my dog and I wandering the Serengity.
This time When I returned in 1940 there were about 2 billion humans here. Now there are nearly 8 billion and counting. What could go wrong?
Humans will continue their forever wars until wars, disease, pestilence and starvation take them and the oceans swallow the remains.
Cal
Great grandchild of Ika and Noah.
But I like cities!
That's why you left the swamp and married Rae Dawn Chong in her village.
A hunter/gatherer you are not.
Cernonnus.
Sharon, not necessarily.
It certainly feels that way, doesn’t it? But I have had experiences that contradict that belief.
Nothing beats your edition of "The City" and imo yours beats the others. Thanks for giving it to us.
I agree.
Thanks, Richard!
All this rings my bells. I’ve lived here and there! Always wake up the same flawed Superman. (Can’t really fly) Thanks Greg. billserle.com
I believed I could fly well into my childhood.
Then I spent the next part of my childhood wondering if reality was a dream.
IOW, I was effed up and still am.
Can't you, though?
Ha! Well put, Bill.
This is the Algonquin Round Table...Greg Olear version.
Sunday Pages has become an important part of my life. I look forward to being enlightened, always about something new to me, yet put into the context of today's existence.
Today was especially poignant. Mrs Old Man and I are very much working to escape the "City". We are advanced into escaping to London, our home for some 25 years, about one third of all the breathes we have taken. The poem gives me pause, are we kidding ourselves by saying we are running to our only daughter who grew up and made her life there? Or, rather are we running away from the black mess, orange hitler? One of my favorite expressions has been time will tell. Running to or away from, as I ponder this, one truth remains, time will tell. Time and actions we take. By saying so I believe there is hope we are doing the right thing, whatever right may mean. If there is one thing we cannot countenance, it is inaction.
For what it's worth, your version of "The City" was the best. If despair was an emotion being solicited by the authors, your version wins, hands down. As you say, hopelessness is not elicited by the poem, your version did not blot this out. But it certainly did evoke despair. I am very clumsy with poetry, therefore anything I say must be taken with a grain of salt. Please do so especially if I missed the bulls eye.
Thanks again for filling part of my Sunday with a pleasant diversion, albeit one that gave me significant pause for thought.
Have a great Sunday.
Thanks, Old Man. I appreciate that.
Yes, time will tell. As they say in sports: "Father Time is undefeated."
I'm too "fractionated," as my husband used to say, to focus on this lovely offering of yours today, Greg, but I did want to say that all 3 versions have their merits. Truly. This line from Durrell's sticks out and maybe sticks in my craw a little bit (in a good way?): "no ship exists / To take you from yourself..." Thanks for leading us down such intriguing roads and byways on a Sunday.
Thanks, Leah. I really like the word "ship" there. It implies a more arduous journey than walking or flying, somehow.
Not to be too topical, but my first thought is "shipped off to a foreign gulag, never to be heard from again..." All those books I read in in high school and college are coming in very handy these days, I'm sad to say.
Per The Eagles’ Already Gone, “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” But we don’t free ourselves by finding another city. “Wherever you go there you are.” You don’t resolve a bad marriage by looking for a better lover, or cure an addiction by replacing it with another. Freedom requires inner work—soul searching—healing the victimhood. Same goes for healing our democracy. As you say, we can’t move to Canada. We have to change our thinking.
If there is one reality, it is there is no escaping who I am. The best I can do is to be the best version of me. Where I live, there will always be me.
I will add that the universe and this nation and many of those within it are predatory. And wherever there are predators, there are victims. Democracy was created in the face of such predatory actions, then and now. We're always fighting those SOBs, large and small. Occasionally, we get moments of peace. Right now, those moments are scarce.
They are dumb predators. Dumb, cruel, and petty.
That's what makes them really dangerous, especially to the unwary.
I always liked that one and felt it was underrated. Thanks, Earl!