He who belies his talent, the born painter who sells stockings instead, the intelligent man who lives a stupid life, the man who sees the truth and keeps his mouth shut, the coward who gives up his manliness, all these people perceive in a deep way that they have done wrong to themselves and despise themselves for it. Out of this self-punishment may come only neurosis, but there may equally well come renewed courage, righteous indignation, increased self-respect, because of thereafter doing the right thing; in a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

—Abraham Maslow (Toward a Psychology of Being, pp. 8f.)

It is curious that so few of these psychology books consider the born stocking-seller who paints pictures instead, or the stupid man who tries to live an intelligent life. Do not such people also feel that they are doing themselves a deep personal wrong in their efforts to be what they feel society values? In a word, or in several words, there is not enough sympathy in the literature for life’s mediocrities and perhaps too much contempt for the lukewarm. 1

1. Well, even so, one can cling to commonplace advice: μηδὲν ἄγαν. The snake is included here not for any deeper symbolic meaning but because I was charmed by its colors and expression.

‘History since the French Revolution has changed its role. Once it was the guardian of the past: now it has become the midwife of the future’ —John Berger (And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 21%)

‘The higher consciousness advances in the process of evolution, the more it moves out of succession. To be fully conscious is to escape from time, from expansion, from separateness, from contradictories. Growth, movement, and change dissolve in permanence, stillness, and completeness’ —F.C. Happold (Mysticism, p. 120)

‘Machines are already becoming better at communicating with each other than human beings are with human beings. This situation is ironical. More and more concern about communication, less and less to communicate’ —R.D. Laing (The Politics of Experience, p. 34)

‘Contemporary events are not what we fear—it’s the unending reverberations we’ll have to endure that scare us. We dread any incident that confirms our worst fears about ourselves’ —Richard C. Schwartz (Introduction to Internal Family Systems, 26%)

‘…in practice, the reservation was a place of crisis, not civilization, education, or improvement. […] Indian culture was to an extent preserved, but it was placed in a museum, where it could no longer meet the problems of the moment or evolve to meet those of the future’ —Mahmood Mamdani (Neither Settler nor Native, p. 65)

‘Clothe thyself with the garment of nothingness and drink the cup of annihilation. Cover thy breast with a nothingness, and draw over thy head the robe of non-existence. Set they foot in the stirrup of complete renunciation and, looking straight before thee, ride the steed of non-being to the place where nothing is’ —Farid al-din ‘Attar (Conference of the Birds, trans. Margaret Smith, quoted in F.C. Happold (Mysticism, p. 258)

‘To the underprivileged, home is represented, not by a house, but by a practice or set of practices. Everyone has his own. These practices, chosen and not imposed, offer in their repetition, transient as they may be in themselves, more permanence, more shelter than any lodging. Home is no longer a dwelling but the untold story of a life being lived. At its most brutal, home is no more than one’s name—whilst to most people one is nameless’ —John Berger (And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 65%)

‘Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that. Love is the path through permissiveness to discipline: and through discipline, only too often, to the betrayal of self’ —R.D. Laing (The Politics of Experience, p. 60)

‘Autocracy is a delicate balancing act, requiring the support of other power centers, which themselves seek power and may have incommensurable agendas’ —Mahmood Mamdani (Neither Settler nor Native, p. 221f.)

‘…for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls ona. ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one placed and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of thick clothing slowly grows around the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk’ —Richard Jeffries (The Story of My Heart, quoted in F.C. Happold (Mysticism, p. 385)

‘It was there too that I discovered that I wanted as little as possible to do in this world with those who wield power. This has turned out to be a lifelong aversion’ —John Berger (And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 79%)

A few notes on current reading:

• Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unsconscious. Assertions sparsely supported by evidence; or, wishful thinking. Allusive, sometimes unconvincing, but an enjoyable romp through the murk of someone’s unconscious, even if it isn’t necessary ‘collective’.
• Richard Butterwick’s Lithuania: A History. Chatty history, with more minute parenthetical digressions than even I care for, and also more references to video games than I expected (for a chapter on medieval/early modern history).
• Christmas Humphreys’s Buddhism. In addition to a name that is always surprising to see, Humphreys has a peculiar tone to his writings that combines sparks of keen insight with a wide-ranging, self-contented blindness.
• Dorothy Sayers’s translation of the Song of Roland. I don’t think the Song of Roland is very good; in this it is much like Beowulf. Roland also appears to have deserved the whupping he got.
• Eileen Chang’s Time Tunnel. Acute images interlarded with tedium. I cannot tell, writing that, if I mean the stories as experienced by the characters or the reader.
• D.C. Lau’s translation of The Analects. I think I still prefer the Daodeching, as what the Master says usually seems to be a bit tiresome and irritable, as though interrupting a secretary, currently on the phone with some remote VIP, with a banal question about the napkins for a small party to bid farewell to the latest batch of unpaid interns. But you know the secretary would be mad if you got the wrong ones, even though it isn’t at all important.
• A short biography of Michelangelo, with some of his poems and letters. The politics of education has not, apparently, changed all that much in spirit.
• Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King. The closest comparison I can think of is Wendy Walker’s The Secret Service, and I mean that as a high compliment, even though the books are not at all alike in their details.

The changing of the seasons is making itself felt. There is some relief, because the air is getting colder and smells of future rain rather than wildfire smoke – and the rain is desperately needed. A sense of uncertainty still keeps watch over passing moments, though – waiting, patient. What is awaited is itself uncertain. So one is tempted to linger, wrapped up in thought, in the pause before the day begins, until it’s time to sweep through to the next thing.

‘Eating too much cabbage may be a form of gluttony, but it doesn’t carry much moral opprobrium or significance beyond that’ —Paul Freedman (Out of the East, p. 159)

‘It isn’t necessarily the great and famous beauty spots that we fall in love with. As with people, so with places: love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious’ —Muriel Spark (‘Tuscany by Chance’, in The Informed Air, p. 63)

It is not easy to put the right interpretation on Spinoza’s desire for independence. He wished to think and to live nothing other than the truth […] He was not concerned with his own person. This man, who was so entirely himself, was without self-seeking. He was free from pride and violence and seemed never to think of himself. He wished his Ethics to appear only after his death and without his name. For the truth is impersonal. It does not matter who first formulated its propositions. He did not claim to possess the truth (it is a very different matter with scientists and mathematicians who justifiably claim priority for their achievements as mere achievements).

—Karl Jaspers (Spinoza, trans. Ralph Manheim, p. 6)

André Fraigneau. — Parmi ces objets il y en a bien certains auxquels vous tenez particulièrement? Si par exemple, je ne sais pas, enfin, s’il y avait le feu chez vous, quel est l’objet que vous préféreriez et que vous emporteriez ?

Jean Cocteau. — S’il y avait le feu chez moi ?

AF. — Oui.

JC. — Je crois que j’emporterais le feu. 1

1. Relatively well known bit from the end of the seventh interview in a collection of interviews.