Tikkun At Home

An altered version of this article originally appeared on EdenKeeper.

For a little while now I've been living, along with my girlfriend Marie, in the house in which I grew up. We've been cleaning it up, sorting through its contents, and trying to make it into an enjoyable habitat at the same time. In the almost 200 years of its existence, the house has accumulated quite a number of items, despite a much larger number that have been discarded. While rummaging through the current contents, we've found a number of curious objects, everything from Tempscribes to speakeasy doors serving as walls. These things appear – depending on who looks at them – as historical, as sentimental, or as junk.

In between treasure hunts, I happened to come across, on the Wikipedia entry for Walter Benjamin, Margaret Cohen's definition of the concept of tikkun:

“According to the Kabbalah, God's attributes were once held in vessels whose glass was contaminated by the presence of evil and these vessels had consequently shattered, disseminating their contents to the four corners of the earth. Tikkun was the process of collecting the scattered fragments in the hopes of once more piecing them together.”

Having only ever heard the term in reference to the radical French journal Tiqqun, this idea of “collecting the scattered fragments in the hopes of once more piecing them together” resonated with me, especially in the work we've been doing in the house.

Cohen applies this description to Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, a short but dense essay written before his attempted escape from French collaborationists who likely would've handed him over to the Nazi Gestapo. After reading Cohen's conception of tikkun, I decided to reread Benjamin's essay, one that I had read straight through (or did I even finish it?) and barely comprehended the first time.

Rereading it, On the Concept of History (as it's also known) retained its difficult blend of mysticism and theory. I had a slightly better grasp on it this time... but not by much. However, one section stood out strongly for me. Benjamin begins paragraph XI (the essay consists of 20 numbered paragraphs) by criticizing the social democracy movement for putting all its faith in labor, progress, technology, and the intersection of all three. As a capstone to this belief, Benjamin cites one of the movement's most influential philosophers, Joseph Dietzgen: “Labor is the savior of modern times… In the… improvement… of labor… consists the wealth, which can now finally fulfill what no redeemer could hitherto achieve.” Benjamin, continuing in the same paragraph, counters as follows:

“This vulgar-Marxist concept of what labor is, does not bother to ask the question of how its products affect workers, so long as these are no longer at their disposal. It wishes to perceive only the progression of the exploitation of nature, not the regression of society. It already bears the technocratic traces which would later be found in Fascism. Among these is a concept of nature which diverges in a worrisome manner from those in the socialist utopias of the Vormaerz period [pre-1848]. Labor, as it is henceforth conceived, is tantamount to the exploitation of nature, which is contrasted to the exploitation of the proletariat with naïve self-satisfaction.”

(He closes out the paragraph with an appreciated tribute to Fourier, who believed a fair division in labor would lead to three more moons in the sky and the oceans turning into lemonade. Benjamin sees Fourier's vision as “a labor which, far from exploiting nature, is instead capable of delivering creations whose possibility slumbers in her womb.”)

While Margaret Cohen's tikkun pleases me in an affirmative and romantic way (“Let's go look for the fragments of God's vessels in Grandpa's chest in the basement!”), Benjamin's critique shows me exactly what my romantic tikkun opposes: a blind faith in progress through technology and labor, at the expense of nature. Against the mass production of new junk for the forward-trudge of capitalism, I'll return to the basement looking for some old gold to piece together and share.

Faced with a nearly empty living room upon arrival, we would have had to drive 186 miles to get to the closest IKEA, but the trip would have been pointless (and wasteful). We've since found a comfortable chair from the corner of my childhood bedroom, an old rocking chair from the attic, a '70s-era green chair from the family cottage, and a wooden barrel, re-purposed as a drink-stand, from the garage. Rather than supporting the labor and destruction of natural resources necessary for new furniture, we've put together a pleasantly livable, albeit mismatched, living room set from found resources. We're not exactly piecing together God's attributes from the four corners of the earth, but as much as we can, we collect bits of history – from the far corners of the house – and try to put them to good use.

Opiums of the People

This article originally appeared on EdenKeeper as "Embracing the Opium of the People."

Friday evening, before the sun went down, we took a walk down a path through the marsh. The sun shined radiantly to the left, and to the right, water seemed to slope gradually upwards toward the sandbars. We saw some egrets too.

I thought about an apparently literal translation of that famous Rubaiyat, that I had recently read… a little different from Fitzgerald’s version:

“If hand should give of the pith of the wheat a loaf,
and of wine a two-maunder jug, of sheep a thigh,
with a little sweetheart seated in a desolation,
a pleasure it is that is not the attainment of any sultan.”

The bugs had come out by the time we turned around. That was unfortunate, but the vegetation emitted a newly inspired fragrance as the sun went further down. I thought about Fourier and his “paean to the neglected implications of smell and taste,” as described by Hakim Bey.

That night we went to a bar called The Whaler, a real dive, in the most excellent sense of the term. We drank $1.75 Bud drafts, hung out with the six other locals in the bar, looked at wood panels and black velvet paintings of ships, and listened to the band. Listened, that is, first to the guitarist chatting me up at the bar, then to the band playing up on stage. Another guy at the bar, when asked if he wanted a ride home, said this: “I don’t wanna go home. Ever. I want this moment to last forever.” Wiser words…. 

The next afternoon, another bar, getting ready to watch Uruguay take on Ecuador. It was a hot Saturday afternoon. We drank two transcendental Vermont beers and one pretty decent New York one with Vermont hops. We felt good.

Our ride picked us up to go home, but we stopped on the way, at a Russian Orthodox church, for the Saturday service. The heat, the stickiness, the incense rhythmically shaken around the room, the beer, the late afternoon sun through stain glass windows, the communal bread sprinkled with wine… they conspired to bring about feelings similar to those of the previous night, in the marsh. I thought of a passage from a Hemingway short story, “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio,” based on Marx’s “opium of the people.” Hemingway:

“Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn’t thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people, along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet.”

Hemingway’s character goes on to suggest that the real opium of the people is something else, but I would like to forgo that momentarily, to make my own suggestion, that there is not one “real” opium of the people. There are many, as indicated above. And they can all be good….
 
Saturday night, we came back to the garden, after a couple of days away. Things looked fine, growing well. Sunday, we went over to a friend’s house to watch more soccer, and eat. From their garden, we picked arugula, basil, lettuce, and spinach, and made a salad. The basil went on pizza.

The pizza was great, and it gets me back to Hemingway’s character, who had in fact said that bread is the opium of the people. That’s fine, I can buy that. Add bread to the list – I like opium in all its forms.
 
It may seem counterintuitive, but each of the experiences I had had over the weekend took on a form of opium. And I say this not to get away from Marx’s opium, only to modify his conception of it. Marx didn’t want opium to mask (or attempt to mask) the “real suffering” caused by the organization of society. I agree, and feel furthermore that opium need not distract us from changing that organization; rather, “opium” — whether it appears as a descending sun, beer and bar music, soccer, ritual and celebration, gardening, or pizza — along with critique and organization, can actually bring us closer to happiness.

Talk may be cheap, but some people pay dearly for it

I was taking a bus out to Arlington. Past jogging baby boomers - fully decked-out in pro gear - and African instrument shops. Two guys got on the bus and saw a woman one of them knew. In a raspy and too-sassy voice, he quipped, "Taking luxury transportation, huh?" Polite laugh from her. He also introduced his friend (Nicholas). The two guys continued to talk about Prohibition as a precedent for the legalization of pot, and other banal topics, peppered with anecdotes from the Qing Dynasty and other shit like that. When all three of them got off at their mutual apartment, the woman looked eager to head in the opposite direction, no matter where it led her.

These guys were all talk. I don't think I need to know much more about them to intuit that. Cozy jobs, dinner parties with good wine, and lots and lots of talk. Sure, I'm being judgmental here... but my judgment of them is irrelevant; it's the result itself that matters, and insofar as it should serve as a warning: not to let one's life be run by talk. Talk can be a good technique to facilitate, reinforce, and energize other aspects of life, but in and of itself... not enough. By itself, talk only serves the most inauthentic aspects of existence... and what I want most right now is to live. 

...

I had some of these thoughts in mind when I set out the following Friday evening. Took the T out to Green Street in J.P., for an opening at the Cyberarts Gallery, based partly on Juliet Schor's The Overworked American (one of the most sobering analyses of the state of capitalism as it now stands; recommended). The pieces were cool and fun - nothing too subversive or incendiary, but enjoyable within the schema. I had a glass of Cabernet and some nut mix. Went to the Purple Cactus for an awesome wrap - portabello mushrooms, baby spinach, brown rice, goat cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette - and then over to Blanchard's for a bottle of Cab to go.

Met Marie at Green Street and we went to Spectacle, an art loft nearby, for a visual slideshow. I love that place - there are lamps everywhere... lots of cool rugs too. It was packed, and we missed the music, but the slideshow played on a loop, and the images looked really cool. We mostly hung out with one of the artists, a guy named Justin. Drank wine and ate nut mix.

I had had a really hard time earlier that evening deciding between going to Spectacle and going to Radio in Union Square to see the Blue Bloods, one of my favorite local bands. At a certain point - on the corner of a big chair in Spectacle at about 10:30pm - Marie and I thought we might be able to do both. We hoofed it to Sullivan Square to wait for a bus to Union. Had a half an hour to kill, so we drank wine at the bus stop, surprisingly desserted. Still desserted a half hour later, in fact, when I finally noticed the sign that said the bus picked up on the upper level that time of night. We dashed on up and jumped on it. 

Got to Radio after midnight, just after the Blue Bloods started, and just late enough that the nice doorman waived the cover charge(!). The show was actually downstairs, which is known as Moe's, which looks just like the basement of an Elk's Lodge, wood panels and all. We drank tallboys and the band played an awesome set. (We conveniently walked in during "Losing Streak," which had been in my head for days prior.) Pesky, Jamie, and Matt were there, and we were all happy to see one another. Not coincidentally, Marie and I left late to catch the T. Took the long way too, accidentally. When we got to Central Square, a guy walked out of the station informing us that we'd just missed the last one. 

Without thinking too much, we went down the street to the Middle East Corner, where there happened to be a great band playing old soul songs. It was almost too loud to talk, but there wasn't much to say anyway... just dancing and living it, ya know?    

Living in Textiles, Hate Siberia

Chekhov's "In Exile" illustrates well a philosophical dilemma I often experience. In the story, three main characters have been exiled to Siberia. (Incidentally, it's quite possible that none of them are actually guilty.)

Vassily Sergeich comes from a wealthy background, but ends up in Siberia anyway. His wife finally visits him, bringing him great happiness, but eventually she leaves, due in part to the harsh circumstances of their living conditions in exile. Vassily Sergeich despairs, until learning to focus his love and optimism on his blossoming daughter. She eventually becomes sick and succumbs to consumption, also a victim of circumstance, leaving Vassily Sergeich little to hope for beyond the search for new and better doctors.

The character known as the Tartar is both poor and an outsider, an exile among exiles. He would gladly be tortured, if it meant a one-day visit from his wife: "Better a single day of happiness than nothing at all." Instead, due to circumstances, he is constantly hungry, cold, and miserable. The other workers refuse to share their tip money with him, and only laugh at him as he sleeps outside in the cold.

The third character, old Semyon ("nicknamed Smarty"), expects very little of his time on earth. He spends his days on and by the water, and his nights drinking vodka, and that's simply all there is. He lives in passive contentment because he accepts the nature of his existence - his life in Siberia.

To my mind, none of these characters has it totally right... or totally wrong. Two of them truly believe in love, and care about living passionately and authentically, but become overwhelmed by the system, unable to fight it. One is rich, and the other poor, but the same chains bind them. The third is like a Buddhist: he lives in the moment, but desires little; he is content because he wants nothing more.

There is no simple way to define the ideal equilibrium of traits and circumstances between these three characters. It's complicated, as it is in life. But there is a certain abstract quality that arises from the sum of their experiences. Perhaps we can take the best elements from the shared experience of Vassily Sergeich, the Tartar, and Semyon. Put it all together, extract what's needed, and reform the equation. "The desire for another life is that life already."

We want it all. And we want to be happy while seeking "it" out.

Occupy Boston

HAVE YOU EVER FELT LIKE HAVING AN UNEMPLOYMENT FESTIVAL? Did you ever suppress the urge to commit violent acts against the institutions that exploit you? Have you ever wanted to celebrate in the “lonely financial zone”... just to see what if feels like?

There are quite a few things going on here, and perhaps they can be captured, at least in part, by the old Wobbly adage of “the seed of the new society taking shape within the shell of the old.”

I participated in the first two general assemblies preceding the forthcoming Occupy Boston movement. It seems that folks are angry – at corporate greed, at corruption, at bank bailouts, at being pawns in a game played by the richest 1% of the population, at not having access to food, shelter, health care.... None of this anger is unfounded. “We are the 99%.” And we have many reasons to be pissed off.

We also have reasons to celebrate.

Or do you not think so? Then let us make reasons to celebrate. There is a theory, and it has many variations, but I will state it this way: that what exists is only what one perceives at a given moment of space-time. What one experiences at that moment – that's all there "is." However much stock one takes in that theory, I propose we adopt it for our purposes. Let's make our perception beautiful, and let's celebrate that beauty, for as long as possible, in the gaunt, bony face of those in power – the dead eye socket at the top of the pyramid.

Dewey Square. Beginning Friday, September 30, at 6pm.

A fictional character once paraphrased a man wiser than himself in saying one should end with a quote. I make no distinction between fiction and non-fiction, wise and unwise; so here is Debord via Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life:

“Subjective imagination is not purely mental: it is always seeking its practical realization. There can be no doubt that the artistic spectacle – and above all its narrative forms – plays on subjectivity's quest for self-realization, but solely by captivating it, by making it function in terms of passive identification. Debord's propaganda film Critique de la separation stresses the point: 'As a rule the things that happen to us in our individual lives as organized at present, the things which really succeed in catching our attention and soliciting our involvement, are the very things that ought to leave us cold and distant spectators. By contrast many a situation glimpsed through the lens of any old piece of artistic transposition is the very one that should attract us, and engage our participation. This paradox must be turned upside down – put back on its feet.'”

And Hakim Bey, laying out the preconditions for the tactic of “The Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ), which Occupy Boston could theoretically become:

“Psychological liberation. That is, we must realize (make real) the moments and spaces in which freedom is not only possible but actual. We must know in what ways we are genuinely oppressed, and also in what ways we are self-repressed or ensnared in a fantasy in which ideas oppress us. WORK, for example, is a far more actual source of misery for most of us than legislative politics. Alienation is far more dangerous for us than toothless outdated dying ideologies Mental addiction to 'ideals' – which in fact turn out to be mere projections of our resentment and sensations of victimization – will never further our project. The TAZ is not a harbinger of some pie-in-the-sky Social Utopia to which we must sacrifice our lives that our children's children may breathe a bit of free air. The TAZ must be the scene of our present autonomy, but it can only exist on the condition that we already know ourselves as free beings.”

Simpin'

"What are my true desires?" I asked myself this question, about a month ago, while looking into a mirror, per the poetic suggestion of Peter Lamborn Wilson. Here is a summary of the answer I came up with then: to be happy, ecstatic, or imbued with pleasure, as much as possible, through as many different means as possible.

Pretty straightforward, isn't it? And yet, it feels accurate.

Lately I've also been thinking about how good I feel when everything is going smoothly and in organized fashion... banal things, I mean. Like, I can pick chives from the yard while my bagel toasts and the coffee roasts, then take care of my videos*, and write a few emails before leaving for class... boom. Pretty vanilla, huh? It feels good though, and I've come to realize that it's a momentary feeling. That's not a bad thing. It's great to have very short time periods when everything just seems ideal.

On the other hand, there are times when every part of ordinary life goes badly - missing buses, no time to eat, forgetting things at home, etc. This is no fun, but the same sort of "positive logic" applies: things are going badly at this moment, but it's only a moment. Of course I prefer the former feeling, and I strive for it most of the time, but it's not always there. And for me, the simplest and best way to handle it all is to embrace those great moments and let go of (deal with) the bad ones. Simple.

...

I saw a little kid on the T the other day, coming home from Fenway Park with his dad, wearing a Red Sox cap, and playing with a toy baseball bat or something like that (I wasn't paying too close attention, I guess). Different kind of "simple" - the pleasant nostalgia of having no responsibilities in the world except to play.

Seeing the people pouring into Lafayette Park after the announcement of Bin Laden's death, I thought of the presumably comfortable apartments they were leaving that night - well-lit, with carpets, and open windows.... Also a different kind of "simple" - simple material comfort, I suppose.

Then there is the simplicity of Debord and Bernstein's cold-water dwelling in Paris in the early 1950s - simply uncomfortable, physically, but with a simple focus on stimulation of the mind... perhaps? I'll leave off with a description of their abode - simple, to be sure, yet terribly romantic, I think - as found in Andy Merrifield's Guy Debord:

"Henri Lefebvre, who didn't live far away from Debord and Michele Bernstein, remembered their inhabiting 'a kind of studio on rue Saint Martin, in a dark room, no lights at all'. It was 'a miserable place, but at the same time a place where there was a great deal of strength and radiance in the thinking and the research'. Nobody knew how Debord got by. He had no job, didn't want a job, opting instead to reside in a rich and happy poverty, a privilege long gone for most big city dwellers."


* Curating YouTube videos for several Redux channels is a new part-time/freelance gig I've acquired - here's my page.

Like a Flashlight in a Tanning Salon

Preface: It's remarkable how the walk home from Quincy Center, especially after a long day and/or night, can literally exhaust the thoughts out of my head. Having said that....

Freedom. It's easy to define... with words. In theory and in practice, the concept becomes more muddled. We went out for drinks tonight after Film Club, and after talking to Alisha, I quite admire the fact that she's going back to work - at a neighborhood flower shop - at 1 in the morning. Because she wants to, and because she can. Through subconscious association, I connect this action to the second semester of my sophomore year in college - doing actual work (even if that often meant reading, watching, writing about, and making films), but also freely wandering the city of Boston (downtown, the Common, Beacon Hill, Cambridge, Somerville, etc.) - at all hours of the night. Wandering, and going places, in the middle of the night. A wonderful feeling to have so many goals and options, at such witching hours. Sure, I feel a bit more chained living in the 'burbs, when the yellow house on Common Street is my destination most nights after 10, and almost all nights after 1. But I had a limited range even in Austin, even in Somerville. I had wonderful experiences within those ranges, but it was always in one direction. Before, when I lived at 6 Arlington Street, overlooking the Garden... it was like living at an oyster bar.

I wrote the above passage about a month ago. Revisiting it today, it's easy to see that I was mistaken. Or rather, I was limited perceptively. The possibilities for enriching and pleasureful experiences exist everywhere in this world... I merely found it easier to create them while living in the middle of a fairly large city - in the middle of the night, anyway.

That's the other thing: I jumped off from the perspective of a night owl, which I am - not only do I seem to come alive at night, but I feed keenly on my surroundings, in the moonlight, when everything takes on a peculiarly indescribable nocturnal quality - but that, in itself, is a philosophical limitation; it's only one side of the coin. I feed on my surroundings in daylight too, just in a different manner. But to ignore that for the sake of a philosophical treatise on adventure... that's just silly.

Then again... I did ignore it! There must be something to the whimsy of the mind, the pen, and the keyboard. I guess the only thing to take from this - before I pull another about-face - is to open the mind as much as possible while simultaneously thinking critically about the information that said open mind yields.

I will say this: I did not expect to find myself in the middle of this particular mental dialogue when I began typing a short while ago. But in such a situation, I feel a strong urge to simply throw this one to the gods of cyberspace, and click on that button that says "Publish Post--"