AncienTrails

“No one burns the Quran,” read the headline in Tuesday’s L’Osservatore Romano.

Lughnasa                                     New (Back to School) Moon

OK.  Here’s a head scratcher.  Some punk in Fla., probably a self-proclaimed minister, decides on National Burn a Quran day*.  Turns out this makes Muslims mad.  Well. It’s apparently not safe to just be a nut job anymore.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was a cri de coeur  against the burning of all books.  The bonfire of the vanities, a second rate movie and good, not great novel by Thomas Wolfe, got its name from a practice made famous by the Florentine Savonarola who, in 1498, called on Florence to “burn all its books, paintings, sculptures, luxuries and fineries — everything, in a word, that drove men away from higher spirituality.”  Book burning is a time-tested way of expressing disgust, displeasure, fear, dictatorial authority and a deep-seated anti-intellectual fervor.  This latter, especially, often brings just folks into the event and makes them feel comfortable with their often incoherent distrust of, as Spiro Agnew said, “the nattering nabobs of negativism.”

I wonder if protected speech extends to protecting speech, which would include, at least in my mind, books.  Burning flags, bibles, qurans, Harry Potter novels, Renaissance paintings and books seems to lend an air of finality to the event.  The cremation sought is the extinction not of the physical article but of the spiritual peril it represents.  Here’s the big news to all you potential book burners.  They are not the problem.  The problem lies with authors, writers and artists of all kinds.  They insist on an unfettered search for various kinds of truth and fiction.  Burning a book has the same impact on authorship as burning a computer does on the internet, it confuses the vessel with the message.

Can it infuriate people?  Inflame them?  Create an emotional conflagration?  Could it spark a real political firestorm?  Yes, as can all acts of ignorance.  If we allow it to do so, however, we only prove the truth of Saul Alinsky, the great organizer in Chicago, when he said:  “The action is in the reaction.”  This pistol toting pentecostal preacher will not be the problem if he goes ahead, and if you read the article like I do, I bet he will.  No, the problem will be in the Muslim reaction, in the liberal reaction.  Is what he is doing despicable?  Yes, because it represents a small victory of dogma over good will, of narrow doctrine over larger virtues.  Is what he doing important? No.  Not at all.

Imagine if the quran burning had already occurred and we had not afforded him a national and an international stage.  Would anyone care outside the members of this congregation and their tiny number of followers?  No.  If you had not heard of it, it would not matter.  Does that make it all right?  Of course not, it merely points out that small minds and head-in-the-sand thinking exist in our century as it has in all centuries.  Should we oppose it?  I suppose so, but I think it comes down hard beside the point, just as book-burning itself does.  Now, if they start coming for authors, artists, movie actors, poets and dancers we had better re-read the 2nd amendment and form up an aesthetic and intellectual militia. We could have a poetry slam, a book fair, a movie festival, a display of great American painters, a contemporary dance event right alongside.  Wouldn’t that get’em?

*”GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A Christian minister vowed Tuesday to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that doing so would endanger American troops overseas.

Jones, who runs the small, evangelical Christian church with an anti-Islam philosophy, says he has received more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip.

The threats started not long after the 58-year-old minister proclaimed in July that he would stage “International Burn a Quran Day.” Supporters have been mailing copies of the Islamic holy text to his Dove World Outreach Center to be incinerated in a bonfire that evening.

Violence

Lughnasa                             Waxing Artemis Moon

The Woolly discussion topic tonight is violence.  I have tried to write out where I stand in what follows.  It is an unsatisfying position, full of weasel words and difficult choices, but I can see no other that makes sense in this, not at all one of the best possible, worlds.

Violence.  It seems to be everywhere.  Wars.  Homes.  Schools.  McDonald’s. On TV.  In video games.  In books we read.  Graphic novels.  Movies.  In the past, check any history book.  In the future.  Read any Rand report.  And that’s just the most common, banal kind, trauma inflicted by another through physical force.

In seminary, in a course called Constructive Theology, a more subtle analysis of violence got introduced.  In a society of plenty, when millions go hungry or without housing or medical care or decent education, that, too, is an act of violence.  In a world of plenty, when billions go hungry or without housing or medical care or decent education, well, you get the point.  Certain kinds of psychological behavior, whether between spouses or parents and children, violently disrupts the human developmental process or can crush another.

There is, too, the often blatant, but sometimes subtle violence of racism, sexism, any situation in which people in power judge another person or a whole group of people on the basis of secondary characteristics like skin color, gender, sexual preference.

The most extreme examples of violence that occurred in Stalin’s USSR, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hitler’s German, Rwanda, Bosnia/Serbia and Armenia are, sad to say, only this last century’s examples of a pervasive human tendency to eliminate the other, the one who makes us uncomfortable, the one who reminds us too much of the dark side of ourselves.

Violence then, is not an aberration, it is a common human response, a way of expressing power or dominance, of enforcing prejudice, of maintaining political rule, of holding on to hordes of cash or weapons or countries.  It is also a tool to defeat oppressors, to defend family and property and to maintain the safety of a town, city, state or nation.

In my case I’ve come up against violence:  in the struggle for civil rights, in the war against the Vietnam War, in a world before a woman’s right to choose how to handle her own body, like many Americans post 9/11.  When I was younger, I would say, “Join the Army.  Visit foreign lands.  Meet exotic people and kill them.” or “They don’t call it murder if you kill by the thousands and the sounds of trumpets with banners flying.”

Even back then, though, I was against the Vietnam War, not war.  It was the wrong war, against the wrong people, for the wrong reason, at the wrong time.  I could point however to WWII as a war whose rationale seemed justified, a just war.  I was not then, nor am I now, a pacifist.  Knowing what I know now would I have fought in WWII. Yes.  Knowing what I know now would have fought in Vietnam or Iraq?  No.  Afghanistan?  Yes.  At least at first.  The current situation has more complex dynamics.

When Joseph joined the Air Force, I struggled with it as a generally peace oriented person, but when he told me he wanted to defend the country that had given him so much, I understood.  I agree that a principle role of government is to protect our nation against its enemies foreign and domestic.  An Air Force, a Navy, an Army, a military in other words, is necessary to that mission. It would be hypocritical for me to pretend my own son could not participate.  Would I prefer he had chosen something else?  Yes, for my own purposes.  But, for his, which is, in the final analysis, what counts, he made the right choice and I agree with it.

What I’m trying to say here is that violence has its place in our world. It may be, most often is, a place we deplore, but it would be naive to ignore state-sponsored violence or the violence of organized terrorist organizations and just hope they will go away.

So, our approach to violence as an issue must be nuanced.  Though the NRA seem like loose cannons (pardon the metaphor), I do agree with one aspect of their rationale.  We must be prepared to defend our freedom and, as Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, it is possible the enemy of our freedom might be the state.  Even the US Government.

It happens.  Witness the colonies and England.  Witness India and England.  Witness the satellite states of the USSR.  Witness the Albanians in the Bosnia/Serbia conflict.  Witness Israel.  Witness Bolivar in South America.  Witness the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  Witness China against Japan in era of the Nanjing massacre.  The Irish against the English.  The Native peoples of this and many other lands against those who came to visit and decided to stay.  Witness the Kurds inside Iraq.  This is not an isolated story and the only answer for those of us who would not live under someone else’s heel is to pay the price: vigilance and willingness to fight.

Should violence be our first resort?  No.  No.  No.  Preemptive war, as the Bush administration not only supported but engaged in Iraq, is the path to tyranny, if it is not in fact tyranny ipso facto.  Should violence be our second resort?  No.  No.  Violence should only be part of our political or personal agenda when diplomacy has failed or real peril confronts us.

As to interpersonal violence, it seems in all but the most unusual cases, that talk is not only preferable but necessary.

I would characterize my position as one which holds out for the full range of responses to threatening behavior, but intends to use only the least harmful method possible in each particular instance.  This recognizes that in some situations the least harmful method may be to deploy violent acts against another intending the same.  Not desirable, no, but then neither is subjugation or death at the hands of another.

Emperor of Ten-Thousand Calendars

Lughnasa                                     Waxing Artemis Moon

Two very different tours today:  Peace Games with small children in globs of 15 or so for 15 minutes and a Matteo Ricci tour for Chinese folks.  The first one is about fun, questions, seeking treasure and oh by the way this is art.   In the first room I have, a collection of modern Japanese ceramics, not very promising for  young kids, I’m going to have them look for something that looks like it came off an airplane and some flowers.  Then, if they seem interested, we’ll put together a group story.  In the next room there is a very cool piece in which an artist who is under pressure from the law is defended by characters from his prints.  I’ll tell the story there.  In the ukiyo-e gallery, we’ll be looking at netsuke.  The kids will decide which one is most like someone in their life.  In the next to last gallery I’ll tell the story of the Minamoto battles on the big screen, we’ll look at the samurai armor and swords.  If there’s time, we’ll hunt for animals in the last gallery.

The Matteo Ricci is something completely different.  This is an exhibit honoring a Westerner, Ricci, who visited China as a Jesuit, landing in Macao in 1583 and dying in Peking in 1610 while serving as court mathematician to the WanLi emperor.  While in Peking, he created a huge map in six large panels, a map of the world, the first to use Western and Chinese cartography.  Though Ricci had hundreds of these maps printed only 5 survived to the present day.  At least that was what was originally thought.  A London rare maps dealer found this map, the one on display at the MIA, in the collection of a private party in Japan.  It’s discovery caused one map scholar to name it “the impossible black tulip.”  The James Ford Bell Library at the university of Minnesota purchased it for $1,000,000.  It will complement their collection which “documents the history and impact of international trade prior to ca. 1800 C.E.”

It represents an interesting historical nexus, reformation and enlightenment era Europe visiting China in the final years of the Ming Dynasty, at a point when the Chinese had turned away from sailing in the age of sail and had begun to deemphasize foreign contacts just as European traders from the Dutch and Britain began to show up alongside the earlier and better established Portuguese and Spanish.  They were not alone.  It was in the early 1600’s that Japan closed the country to foreign trade and foreign visitors.

The Wanli Emperor, the Emperor of Ten Thousand Calendars, was in the last years of his reign when Ricci finally made it to Peking becoming the first Westerner in the northern capital established by the Yongle Emperor in the 15th century.  The Wanli emperor had started his reign well, executing military matters and administrative concerns with some skill.  He became disenchanted, however, with the infighting and moral attacks back and forth among Neo-Confucian scholar officials.  In response he essentially gave up the running of the country, leaving China with a faction fractured central government compounded by his imperial inaction.  The effect was to remove China from the world scene just as European exploration, commercial avarice and technological advancements grafted itself onto Europe’s own imperial ambitions.  The result of these two forces moving in opposite directions would change the course of world history, a change only now beginning to right itself from a Chinese perspective.

It was into this volatile mixture that Ricci brought European science, mathematics, art and, of course, religion.  Ricci became a literati, a member of the scholar-official class, mastering Chinese and the mores of the governing class.  His acceptance in those circles propelled him close to the Imperial court and found him buried in Peking after his death in 1610, an honor accorded to few Westerners.  He did not, however, convince many Chinese to become Roman Catholics.

Still Reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Summer                                              Waning Strawberry Moon

“if your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.”- Chinese Proverb

Ever have days that just happen, disappear with little trace?  The last couple have been like that for me.  The ear, the fuzz from the infection and a slow take on things.  That’s the extent of it.

I’m now in the last quarter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  I’ve been at it since sometime early June, late May.  Now, I’ve been a little slow, I admit, but it is 2,340 pages long in print.  I’m reading it on the Kindle.  It carries a slow, but steady course in Chinese logic, especially as related to war and politics, Confucian and Taoist influences on Chinese culture in general and the courts and military in particular and a careful rendering of the demise of one of Empire, the Han.  The Han Empire, the Tang, the Song and the Ming have pride of place as golden ages of the Chinese people.

(this is the entry way to the tomb of Cao Cao, the arch villain of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Chinese archaeologists discovered it last year and opened it on Chinese television last month.  this stuff is still very relevant.)

It’s interesting to consider that the Chinese have not one golden age, but four when culture flourished and the nation was at peace.  I don’t know the whole well enough to say for sure, but one of the long lasting appeals of this 14th century (Song dynasty) novel may be the dissolution of the first of those.

My interest in China will never be more than that of a journeyman’s, perhaps no more than an  apprentice, but it fascinates me.  Part of that fascination is imagining what it would be like to live in a culture with that much depth, where a person in Shanghai today could read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and recognize not only names, but the culture of this ancient past.

In one view those of in the United States can look only as far back as 1776, in another 1602.  If we stretch our gaze back further, we can cross into European history and follow it back into the world of ancient Rome and further back yet, ancient Greece, but there, for the most part, it stops.  Yes, you can argue the history of the Jews and the Egyptians are also our history and they are in terms of influences intellectual and artistic, but I don’t have a personal bond even with the ancient Greeks.

The closest I can get in experience to that of the contemporary Chinese is to follow my Celtic line back into the mists of Celtic myth and legend.

Anyhow, it’s been an interesting read and I’ll be sorry when I’m finished.  Not sorry enough, however, to pick up another Chinese classic for a few months.

A Way of Keeping Aging in Perspective

Summer                                      Waning Strawberry Moon

A week ago last Thursday I got my ticket in Roseville.  I want to pay it, but the damn thing still hasn’t shown up on line.   This is past ten days (usual maximum time for a ticket to get into the system).  Is this another revenue builder?  I get frustrated, forget about it and get picked up later for a bigger buck item?  I’m tempted to say yes, but that accords a degree of intentionality to our courts system that I doubt exists.  So I’ll wait.

“We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.”- Will Durant

Though I can’t say why I have had an abiding interest since junior high–yes, that’s what we called it back then–in the ancient past.  Anthropology/archaeology scratched that itch in college and even much of the work I did in seminary had ancient history as a living part of the discipline:  biblical studies, greek, hebrew, (full disclaimer:  I had the short course in both), early church history, even some of constructive theology.

Art history allows occasional forays into the arts of the ancients.  The bronze collection of the Shang and Zhou dynasties at the Institute is wonderful as is our small collection of Greek, Roman, Cycladian, Near Eastern and even Paleolithic art.  I’ve read with great interest many classics, in part because they give a picture of ancient cultures that it’s not possible to get any other way.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in spite of its provenance in the late 14th century, is about the much earlier Han dynasty and its demise around 220 a.d.  Celtic early history is seen through either the eyes of the Romans, the Catholic Church or the British, so it has filters put on by its detractors, yet the ancient Celts shine through anyhow.  Of course there’s the Odyssey, the Iliad and for me, as you know by now, Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

I loved the history of Egypt lectures from the teaching company as I did the history of China and the history of Rome.  You’d think with all this that I’d have some idea of what went on, but I don’t have much of a gestalt yet, not even after all this time.  My gestalt about the West has better form than mine of, say, China or India or Japan, but still, it’s pretty weak.

Still Reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Summer                                   Waxing Strawberry Moon

Hot today.  At least by our standards.  85.  Plus a dewpoint of 70.  Not outside weather for this gardener.  I did work outside this morning, weeding in the orchard and checking the trees.  I’m going to need a consultation with Ecological Gardens because some of the stuff they planted, I don’t recognize and I don’t want to remove friendlies out of ignorance.

Kate’s off getting a pre-op physical, having dental work done and nails and hair.  A sort of clean up, paint up, fix up day for her.  Her surgery is a week from tomorrow and can’t come a day too soon for her.  The pain in her hip gives her fits during the day when she walks and at night when she sleeps.  She looks forward to having more than two sleeping positions.  So would I.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has held me for several weeks now, though I’m not reading in large chunks.  It’s a three-volume work about the end of the Han Dynasty and the emergence of the three kingdoms of Wu, Wei and Shu.  This period only last for about 45 years, but it holds a position of particular importance in Chinese culture, with many of its figures like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang and the three brothers:  Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei attaining iconic and archetypal significance.

(Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu)

It’s not an exact analogy at all, but it resembles the mythos of the American West, a time when men were men and some men were very good and others were very bad.

If you enjoy political and military tales or have an interest in the logic of other cultures, then the Three Kingdoms may enthrall you as it has me.  If you’re not sure, I recommend seeing the Red Cliffs, the two disc version.  The movie showcases all the main characters and records a pivotal battle, one that has ongoing importance in Chinese culture.  Not to mention that it’s great fun.  Again, if political and military intrigue fascinate you.

Cry the Beloved Country

Spring                                                      Waxing Flower Moon

The crescent flower moon slung itself just beneath the tree to the west, over Round Lake.  A thin cloud passed across it, perhaps a cloud like the one Muhammad rode through on his way to Jerusalem and the Holy Mount.  These crescent moons have South Carolina and the Arab world in their wake, calling to mind on the one hand a new meaning to hiking the Appalachian trail and on the other lakes and rivers of sand, desert nights with stars so numerous no Caliph could count them all and tents raised near a palm filled caravan serai.

Kate and I watched Cry, the Beloved Country, only about 15 years after it made it to the screen.  I’ve never read this book though it’s one I’ve had on my list a long time.   Richard Harris and James Earl Jones are titans as far as I’m concerned, able to bring gravitas, authenticity and depth to movies in which they appear.  In one of the more memorable scenes in the movies, James Earl Jones and Richard Harris, the father of a murderer and the father of the victim, unknown to each other, yet coming from home ground close to each other, speak about the murder.  If you can watch this scene unmoved, you’ve lost touch with something important.  Four stars.

On a less elevated note I’ve begun watching Spartacus:  Blood and Sand.  It’s on the instant play feature Netflix has available through the wii.  It’s compelling tv, not as good as Cry, the Beloved Country but as a sand and sandal adventure yarn, it’s pretty damn good.

Night Casts Round A Cloak of Quiet

Spring                                                  Awakening Moon

Night has fallen, the temperature, too and quiet dominates.  It is, as I have written here before, a meditative time, a free time, a time when the world is little with us and the mind can roam free over its own landscapes. The spinning of the planet then creates a certain amount of time in every 24, almost everywhere (with the polar exceptions), when we can all become hermits.  Yes, it’s harder in, say Manhattan or downtown Las Vegas, but even in these places where the bright lights and nocturnal activity pulse away, even there, the night is still a time of refuge for the soul, at least if we choose to take it.

I’ve begun watching another John Woo film, Red Cliff, which recounts the fall of the Han Dynasty in the early 3rd century A.C.E.  Red Cliff is a battle site, so recognized that it might be named Gettysburg or Bunker Hill or Pearl Harbor were it an American battle of equal renown.  Gradually Chinese film makers have begun to explore the long, long history of Chinese civilization and create films at least representative of key times in that history.

The Han Dynasty covers the same time period, roughly, as Rome immediately after Caesar, the time of the Emperors.  I find it interesting to keep these cross cultural time lines in mind, to know that as the battle of Red Cliff rages in China, the Emperor Diocletian has decided to sever the Roman Empire into its Eastern and Western halves.

Vita brevis, ars longa

Imbolc                                       Waning Wild Moon

Sheepshead tonight.  We seem to pass around the points, playing as if each person should get a turn at the head of the list and everyone a turn in the barrel.  Always a good time.

Tomorrow a public tour.  Stuff I enjoy.  Historical.  Highlights.  I’m still seeking a way to understand this world into which I emerged, a swimmer on the path to become a walker.  Objects, material objects, created by people with skilled hands, wild hearts and a need to create tell a part of the story.  They tell it from the inside out, the human experience filleted and boned, served up for others.  As I learn more, the ancientrail of the creator lays itself more and more open to me, oracle bones crackling in the fire, fish hooks made from bone, statues of bronze and brass, people molded from clay, ornaments from gold.  How do we wrap ourselves in the terrible passage of time, time that has seen the creators dead, dead long ago, gone, often, usually, nameless, yet the stuff they shaped continues on their journey, small capsules from the ancient past.

We see it and walk past it, looking for the next best thing, passing by the cycladic figures, the woman of LaMouthe, the Greek vases, the section of wall from Ashur-bur-nipals splendid palace, walking on past them to see the show, the Louvre show or the modern galleries, some of the objects in those places made by people still alive, still breathing, their hands still working while the sculptor who shaped the rock into the plump representation of a woman does not.

Museums are strange, often scary places if we look for the ghost, the hand behind the object, the living person with five fingers and a mother, creating with no thought that 15,000 years later–yes, 15,000 years later–we would pass by, maybe glance down, maybe not.  And what of 15,000 years from now?  17, 010 a.c.e.  Will someone walk past, glance down, wonder about who cared for this object, these objects, all those many years ago?

Latin and Asia

Imbolc                                   Waxing Wild Moon

Kate and I reviewed our work on chapter 5 in Wheelock this morning.  Then 2,000 words on the novel after the nap.  Workout.  Sierra Club legcom conference call.

I’ve been reading my fourth Qiu Xiaolong mystery, The Red Mandarin Dress.  These are Chief Inspector Chen novels, set in today’s Shanghai.  They are interesting mysteries, but even more, they are a window into the struggle between the Maoist era and the contemporary one, a period when revolution ruled the land transformed into one in which to get rich is glorious.  These are not easy transitions and they have happened in the blink of an eye in the long history of China.

Asian art and asian culture, especially Chinese history, philosophy and literature have, for a long time, had my attention.  In my volunteer work at the MIA I have been allowed to indulge my interest in Chinese, Japanese and South Asian art.  This has led to more and more time with asian history, especially Chinese and Chinese poetry.  A casual tinkerer in these vast domains, I have only skimmed the top of a way of life radically different from our own, Western culture, yet, even with its differentness, still more like us than not, the human experience inflected, not the human experience transformed.

As I’ve watched the Winter Olympics, it doesn’t take a scholar to notice that its largely a northern hemisphere event.  Yes, there are the odd Australians, New Zealanders, but for the the most part it’s North America, Europe and the Asian countries.  Just another way in which we are more like than unlike.