Mi Bombon


9 - 10 July, Ian

The second time that I disturbed Paula last night was when, sliding just past the curtain between waking and sleep, I muttered the word "dasein"; the first time was when I pointed out the Northern Lights, which I noticed flashing at the window at about 2 a.m. I got up and went out to look at them properly. Outside rain was falling softly on the trees around the cabin. The trees only branch out and leaf high up the trunks, raising the level at which the rain patters on the canopy of foliage, and making it sound even softer. I walked to the edge of the lake to get a clearer view of the sky. The lake was beautiful at night - all of the colour was washed out and I believe that you get a subtly different quality of vision at night, possibly because sight is generated by rods firing rather than cones. The boat that I photographed in my last blog was moored in the same place, remaining there from earlier but seeming revenant, and now grey. Three or four lights were strung out across the far shore of the lake. In some of the darker unlit areas the lake seemed black, smudging into the lighter patches like a charcoal drawing. The skyline was further softened by remnants of mist that clung unevenly at the tree line. The Northern Lights twitched on and off like a muffled form of sheet lightning, lighting the whole sky but never having the wattage with which lightning can momentarily illuminate the land. Similarly, a few fireflies glowed brightly in the bushes seeming intensely bright but revealing only themselves and not the branches or ground around them.

I returned to bed and watched the lights out of the window as I drifted around the margin of sleep for the next couple of hours; then it started to get light and they gave out. We had expected to see the Northern Lights in Alaska but not here. It's as if we are acclimating for a further push northwards, in the same way that people move gradually to high altitude and (or so it seemed last night) with the same precarious sense of pushing into a place of uncertainty and potential hazard.

Here, we're actually within striking distance of the Canadian border: the crossing, if we drove, would be at a place called Calais, which I read is pronounced Callas (or maybe Callous); on a catamaran we could be in Nova Scotia in a couple of hours or so. By coincidence, the girls were talking the other day about a couple of large toy crocodiles that I bought for them several years ago - when I was last in eastern Canada, in Montreal. Being here now and thinking of being there then framed the time in between, which has included the very best of times for me, as well as, more recently, some professional experiences that I shall move forward from differently when I return.

I'm sceptical of the notion that we can "put the past behind us". Two of the more conspicuous pop philosophies of north America are, of course, evangelical Christianity (there seem to be around 100 churches here for every book store) and therapy (I'm thinking of psychoanalysis but you can get the full menu here - for example, opposite The Blue Moose you can be treated with reiki). If Christianity teaches that we can renounce our past (or separate the sinner we love from the sin we hate) and psychoanalysis teaches that we have to embrace our complete past, then I'm on the side of the shrinks. It's good to reflect deeply on the things we have done, and why we did them, and extend our view of ourselves to make space for it all. And I also agree with the shrinks that dreams, including daydreams, are a language with which we speak to ourselves, creeping around the more deliberate formulations with which we clumsily try to define who we are. Since I've been away it has been great to reflect more, and my dream life seems to be richer too.

But last night I couldn't regain a deep sleep - I kept looking to the window to see the next flash of the Northern Lights - and I thought of something else that I miss: my books. I wanted to read an essay by Martin Heidegger that I read many years ago called The Thing. He kicks off by claiming that technology - such as air travel - has shrunk our experience of the world. I know what he means but I'm finding the opposite to be true now: I'm getting to see different people and different ways of living in a way that would have been impossible for most people at the time Heidegger was writing (50 years or so ago). The article gets into gear when he draws a distinction between "things" and "objects". Objects (derived from ob+jetter, the French for to throw) appear as images cast on the perceptual screen. Things (das ding in German, whose etymology is meatier and more ancient) are the things in their full phenomenological interplay with us. He takes the example of a jug, whose provenance is in the same soil as ourselves, sharing base materiality, but it is also shaped by purpose, design and intention, and participates when human experience touches on the sacred (such as pouring a libation - I prefer to think of pouring out a round of wine). I haven't read the essay for a very long time and wanted to last night. (If you're after it it's in his collection, Poetry, Language, Thought.) Really I was thinking more of the way in which Heidegger describes the past as being an aspect of our immediate human consciousness, a layer in the fabric of existence. But he writes about this in Being and Time, and I knew that I wouldn't be picking that up for a light re-read: The Thing is a more approachable proxy.

I should say that although I know that "das ding" is German for "the thing" I don't speak any German at all. I know a few words from philosophy and psychoanalysis - for example, I know the German words for time and for denial and for the compulsion to repeat - but these are like a few haphazard caged animals in a very meagre zoo, and not creatures appreciated in their natural habitat. But often these words have a terrific resonance (for example, I don't know a word in English for the compulsion to repeat and yets it's one of the core concepts for explaining experience - according to Lacan, one of only four such in psychoanalysis). Similarly with Heidegger's word for (human) existence, which he takes most of Being and Time to articulate: it's Dasein.

I know even less Spanish than German, which could be a problem in a couple of months time. After speaking to the Iraqi-loving old lady on Friday evening I tuned the car radio to a station she recommended, which was excellent. On the way home they played music from Bend it Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding. Yesterday when we got into the car they were playing Mi Bombon, which is a bubbly Brazilian pop song that I love; I've never heard it on radio before. Like dreams, music is a language in which we speak to ourselves; the cliche that music is the key to the soul can be true.

Today the rain has stopped and the cloud has lifted. I expect that blogs in sunny weather will be sunnier. I'm going to wander down and have a look on the lake to see if I can spot a loon: if I do I'll try to take a photograph, and if it's at all recognisable I'll paste it in here.

(Maybe next time.)

Posted: Sun - July 10, 2005 at 08:25 PM              

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