The
blessing of a bad back – a day off
(Friday, April 3, 2009)
Emile Cioran
writes, “I am neither unhappy enough to be a poet nor as indifferent as a
philosopher” (Tears & Saints, 104).
But are all poets unhappy? Are all philosophers indifferent? Philosophers are always arguing a
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| Emile Cioran |
case; they become philosophers because they
are not indifferent. And poets may
write of unhappiness, but they can be happy doing so.
The blessed
bad back means above all that there is no need to be doing something every
minute. I've left John Calvin at work, where he likes to sit on my shoulder like
a giant parrot, talons digging into flesh to maintain his balance, squawking loudly: “Don’t let
me fall. Don’t let me fall.” How could he sit on my shoulder anyway, if I am lying down?
The blessed bad back means I can lie here and just listen
to the day tapping at the window, the the weather blowing in and out; I can
hear the dark pushed apart, the ping of a slant of sunshine.
“Come out. Play. The air is lighter now.” Here is why Cioran spent his days in
the bowels of the library. He didn’t want to hear the sun’s invitation. But I like the sun. And if I cannot go
out today, I can follow it hobbling from room to room with the dog.
I like
the sun. I’m not looking for a dark, tragic vision. I know, Emile, that life
will end in death and after that there will be either nothing or judgment.
I’m not looking for a comic vision
either, because it, too, depends on an after. I’m not looking for a
vision at all, but for a ph&ra, if I can mean by that a bag
of tricks as well as sustenance.[1] Here are not only lentils and figs, a spoon
and a cup for water. Here is the trick for enjoying a sunny day; here is the
trick for soaking in the rain. Here is a reverie to calm the day; here is
revelry to pass the evening; here is a dream to while away the night.
I’m not looking for a philosophy. I lack
anyway the philosopher’s “indifference”; and I’m not interested in finding it. I’m
not looking for a psychology – for psychology is either philosophy (as in Freud)
or a science; I’m no good at science even of the softest, smooshiest kind. And
religion? No, I’m not looking for religion either: nothing so high and mighty,
so serious; nothing with theologians and lawyers and priests.
If not a ph&ra, since I’m not much
of a traveler, I may look for a bar, where hypocrisy is acknowledged because
some drunken night or another it will
out. But then, it will, after it’s been the joke for several days – it will fade, not forgotten
but not never used as a weapon.
Peace!
I
think on the bar, there will be a copy of the Greek Anthology. Here’s a
drinking song certainly in the mode of and possibly inspired by the Anthology.
[1] The Cynic’s knapsack. Here is
John Desmond’s definition: “traveler’s bag of sack. Part of the Cynic’s typical
garb and the name that Crates gives his utopia, because it contains no coins
but only simple, natural things such as figs and thyme” (Cynics, 243).
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