Negative Capability

I’ve been escaping to Blackheath on week-ends for a little peace and solitude from the city, with its vicissitudes of cultural monopoly… more about that some other fine day. Here is the view from the cabin where I stay. Time slows down here; when it rains there are colourful finches and parrots splashing  about through the trees, on hot days blow flies risk my impatience and orange banded butterflies tango, and tease the eye.

I’ve been reading a marvellous book by Tabish Khair, The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness, Ghosts from Elsewhere which provides new readings of how the colonial/racial Other is negotiated through Gothic tropes in the work of Conrad, Kipling, Melville, the Brontes, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys and others. But the book also re-examines the theories of subjectivity and difference, emotion and identity with an erudition that never falls short of clarity.

I had to temporarily leave my part-time abode for the launch of Anna Kerdijk Nicholson’s Possession, which lyrically reimagines the colonial perspectives of James Cook’s great southern encounter.  It’s an ambitious, daring, nuanced, at times tense collection of poems. Each title, taking its inspiration from the poetries of Michael Ondaatje, Peter Boyle, James McAuley, Charles Wright and others, bears a tenderness that measures the tandem journey of the poet-explorer. I’m not sure as yet how this book might speak to the Indigenous reader, the non-European, the postcolonial subject, but I find it metaphorically impassioned and strikingly detailed.  It captures the current mood of our colonial archival psyche, with all her vested and competing canons.

Here is an aspect of the view, at twilight … and some music by the Alister Spence trio, who played for my wedding reception.  I particularly love the first track “Caught In Light”

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/musicdeli/stories/2010/2809109.htm

Trahison

Ce coeur obsédant, qui ne correspond
Pas à mon langage ou à mes costumes
Et sur lequel mordent, comme un crampon,
Des sentiments d’emprunt et des coutumes
D’Europe, sentez-vous cette souffrance
Et ce désespoir à nul autre égal
D’apprivoiser, avec des mots de France,
Ce coeur qui m’est venu du Sénégal?
 

Betrayal

This implacable heart, which matches

neither my tongue or my clothes,

after which bites, like the hinges of a trap

the borrowed sentiments and customs

of Europe—do you sense this suffering,

this despair, which is like nothing else,

breaking in with words from France

this heart, of mine, come from Senegal?

—-by Léon Laleau, translation Michelle Cahill

Léon Laleau was a Haitian politician, writer, diplomat. Born in Port- au-Prince he studied science and law, serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs. He signed the 1934 accord which, at that time, ceased the United States’ occupation of Haiti.

Today, I woke up and read a passage from my copy of Bodhinyana, a collection of dhamma talks by  the Venerable Ajahn Chah, whose ascetic forest monastery I visited when I stayed at Wat Pah Nanachat.

The book is tattered, its cover torn, its pages separated as the binder’s glue long ago had come undone. Perhaps it’s worn from being carried on my travels through many seasons and countries. Before it came into my possession, it had belonged to the monastery at Wat Suan Mohk, in Surat Thani, so its pages have been turned by other hands. It was gifted to me, by one of the monks on the day of my departure. We were all waiting in the main sala, where we took our meals, our silence, at last, broken. When I mentioned how much I loved that book, the monk, limping from the pain of meditation, brought me his copy. The taxi had arrived by now. In moments I would be leaving the lush coconut grove, its wild and common creatures, the sear, burning light, the river, the salas, the sound of bells, the shock of hibiscus.

Not that it was easy to stay there. I have tried and failed, I think, at writing these things as poems. One cannot write or read the dhamma; one has to experience, suffer, and abandon. That is all. Poems, too, are such phenomena. Poems make a space for thoughts and feelings, for images, which are, in their essence, the heart’s nature, and for which language might otherwise fail. Perhaps, among other purposes, they are a mirror for the heart’s cage. This might be knowledge, or it might be ignorance.

The practise of meditation is the training of the heart, and the emphasis of the Buddha’s teaching. Ajahn Chah writes about this in Bodhinyana:

“All conditions that are born in our heart, all conditions of our mind, all conditions of our body, are always in a state of change. The Buddha taught us not to cling to any of them. He taught his disciples to practise in order to detach from all conditions and not to practise in order to attain to any more.”  (66)

Jai Prakash at the Delhi Observatory

Recently, whilst in India, I visited Janta Manta, a collection of architectural astronomical and astrological instruments built from stone, marble and bronze tablets by Maharajah Jai Sing II between 1727 and 1724. In all he established five observatories, including the ones in Jaipur and Delhi. The concept was partly inspired by the Mughal emperor, Muhammed Shah, who lived in Fatephur, Agra, a city constructed by the emperor Akbar.

The purpose of the Janta Manta scapes was to revise the calendar and astronomical tables, to predict the times and movements of the sun, the moon and the distant planets. An astrological, and spiritual significance is inherent in these structures, the ancient Indian astronomers, being Jyotisa masters. Jyotisa astrology differed from its Hellenistic counterpart, deriving from the Vedas its central theme of the bandhus, or bonds between the inner and outer world; between microcosm and macrocosm. In Jyotisa astrology there are lunar mansions, nakshatras, among the twenty seven divisons of the sky. According to Jyotisa, the 360 bones of the fetus are derived from 360 days, fusing into 206 adult ossicles. Embryological evidence doesn’t confirm this numerically, but the principle of fetal to adult bony fusion is correct.

Among the structures in Janta Manta Hindu chhatris, or cupolas, reach skyward, positioned as platforms for announcing  the eclipses, and the monsoons.

Jai Prakash: New Delhi observatory

Samrat Yantra, the giant sundial, Delhi Observatory

Samrat Yantra means “Supreme instrument”, a giant triangle, or sundial , it has a 128 foot long hypotenuese which is parallel to the earth’s axis and points to the northern pole. It’s the world’s largest sundial; its shadows move at 1 mm per second, which over the course of a minute, is a visually arresting experience, for the observer.

Subsidence of the structures, and the variable width of the sun’s penumbra limit the accuracy of these incredibly beautiful ancient instruments, although the Samrat Yantra can be used to tell local Jaipur time, to an accuracy of a few seconds. From Janta Mantar, the ancients tracked the stars, and calculated the eclipses, altitudes and collisions of the celestial bodies, as a way of understanding natural events, history and the conditions of their lives.