After hitting the sauce pretty hard last night (Saturday night) I was worse for wear today, but after two large cups (bowls?) of tea, I started to feel more or less human again. In my shuffled and disjointed dreams I caught a glimpse of someone I know owning and operating her own law firm. When I mentioned this, the lady in question (a graduate in law that works for the Department of Justice in the U.S.) happened to mention that she had a dream some time ago in which she dreamt that I got her a teaching job in England. I suspect there is nothing to this, that they are not in any way foresighted (perhaps) but more realistically just wish fulfillment dreams. In any case, that is by the by.
On a whim I reached out to my daughter again today. It is a week since we last were in touch. She could not talk (I assume she may have been with my ex, and I am not entirely sure whether she has even told her that she is in touch with me - one assumes she may not have been). She could have been anywhere, at her boyfriend's, her best friend's (who's male: she is a typical woman) or elsewhere. Anyway, as I wrote her an emotional message, expressing my remorse, feelings of shame and regret at not being there for her, even if I was homeless or poor. I was shuddering, trembling and in tears as I wrote it. I am not some tough guy or heartless macho man, but a sensitive soul, a poet, a musician.
Anyhow, on my way to and wait for work I brought a book in for a person I often see on the same bus ride, Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. Despite some rather tenuous connections between that and Christianity (for example an incorrect reading of in principio erat verbum etc.) it is, for the most part, a truly sublime and insightful work. I actually prefer it to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I am not so concerned with the Jungian psychological interpretation, but more interested in the texts themselves. There are also some interesting parallels with Plotinus, which are fascinating. This is really only one source among very many, and merely reading it in translation is only barely scratching the surface. The doctrine is really quite interesting. I had brought another book with me (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Mary Innes' prosaic but utterly faithful and most precise translation) for inspiration for putting the finishing touches to my play (Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni). However, having only skim-read the introduction when I first read this work (jumping into the text itself) re-reading it at a leisurely pace is absolutely fascinating. To be sure, I am no Buddhist, at all, for I am a devout Anglican, but even so, I am curious about any and all religions of the world (all of them). One thing which struck me while reading this work are certain parallels with the philosophical hermetica - works which I am not unacquainted with, having translated them and made a close reading of parts of them for my final dissertation on the master's degree. Not that these are the days of Cosimo de' Medici, when scholarship, learning, erudition and translation actually counted for something...
Anyway, besides subsisting in virtual slavery on the eve of what might be World War Three, and a complete waste of a dozen years studying Latin hard to no avail, ultimately (this is not, after all, Elizabethan England or 15th century Florence: it's Dark Age Briatin, where such efforts are meaningless), I have been thinking about what to do about it all. Not for myself (for I have taken care of that already: the hard work is already put in, so it's only a matter of time before I reap the harvest of hard work's fruits), but more, for my daughter. She loves to write. She reads a lot. She has studied. She works. She plays Mozart on the piano. Therefore, I will do everything in my power to ensure that she gets some books up there (Amazon, etc.) for sale, well formatted, and well marketed, so she doesn't have to subsist in virtual slavery. It would be nice if we were both elevated out of poverty, through hard work. It doesn't actually matter what she writes - poetry or prose. It will be of excellent quality, because the apple does not fall far from the tree. She is my daughter, therefore she is an excellent writer and musician. Like Didier said, "Great artists do not simply fall from the sky. Mozart's father was every bit a great composer as his son."
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment