The Rilke Effect: Nothing Dilutes Quality Faster than Quantity.

There are some people I will never read in anything but the language they wrote in. You don't not read Dante in Italian. I'm not a fan of double negatives but this one is somehow apropos. Plus, Italian allows for it. Nor do you mess with Goethe in something other than German. "To be or not to be..." Say it in anything other than Shakespearean and you'll fail. Incidentally, the only time when I felt a mild form of repulsion while having German words in my mouth was when I tried to crack a joke in a German conversation and I randomly translated a bunch of Shakespeare one-liners into German. "Sein oder nicht sein, das ist ja die Frage." Rght. Blerg!

Rilke.

Lyrical poetry can never be done in a language other than the one in which it was originally conceived. My colleague boyfriend would write poems. At the time, I found the habit difficult to support. I couldn't help it. I had been trained to be critical of language. So, the first time I received the first lyrical poem, I said, "what's with the rhymes? Hmm, gauche." The reason why I remember these words is because they were repeated to me, perhaps rightly so, for four entire years. The thing is, and maybe it's innate elitism speaking here, one shouldn't mess with lyrical language unless one can. The Goethes and the Rilkes of the world are few and far between.

Instead of being imitative of them, why not just focus on them?

Lavish only the few with attention.

Nothing dilutes quality faster than quantity.

I found studying philosophy and literature easy to do. It was easy to study others' words. I knew when I was a child that I wasn't cut out for fiction. I tried. And then I wrote my first full pager. I misused one word. I wrote, "Today I woke up feeling melanchony.' I had my sister read it. She said, "Melanchony? In order to write, you need to know words." Even though I was only 10, she had a point.

What I remember from that experience, however, was that I felt better afterwards. Just like I felt better after I drew badly for hours. Or after I played dodgeball outside, or after I swam till my bottom lip was black. Somehow, I felt lighter after purging the words even though the syntax lacked in elaboration and the vocabulary needed constant depositing.

I've thought a lot about Rilke recently. Mostly, when the occasion did not call for it. Often while discussing some very-now topic and other non-literary things. One of the memories that comes to me with the most frequency is agreeing to hold a lecture outside, on the lawn, on a Spring day. I taught a Rilke seminar. Rilke is not for the fickle. Or the lazy. Rilke is for the studious and the strong. And those who open themselves to authentic human experiences and honest introspection.

The book I chose for the syllabus was the oh-so-light The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The whole seminar revolved around the heaviness of Brigge's experience. The way I would try to interject some levity to the subject matter was by saying that Brigge was a 'fun version' of Sartre's Nausea. Both works are about heroes who are clearly aware of their daily decay. Yes, a bona fide stand-up show.

But, there is another dimension to Rilke. Few people lead one to introspection more adequately than Rilke. And a brilliant work to lead one to introspection is: Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters.

The work details the relationship between a 21-year-old Rilke and the 36-year-old and married Salomé, When the two were first each other's close friend, they started an epistolary relationship which continued till Rilke's death. The relationship saw them morph into lovers, colleagues, protegge-philosopher, and friends again. In a letter right before they first became lovers, Rilke wrote:

"I always feel: when one person is indebted to another for something very special, that indebtedness should remain a secret between just the two of them."

A few days after their explorations of love, he writes: "Songs of longing! And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometimes loudly and sometimes secretly so that you alone can hear them… But they will also be different — different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand."

So, during this upcoming Summer season, grab a copy. Read it. It will nourish you.

Assorted Links

1) Anatomy of genius:

2) New music I'm putting on repeat. Whether I'm driving or writing, this song has been on repeat for a couple of days. The video evokes some apocalyptic themes and the sound is reminiscent of 80's synth pop.

The Pursuing of Happiness

The substantive: 'pursuit' gets used with a lot of frequency in tandem with the other substantive: 'happiness.' To a linguist, 'pursuit' entails sort of a fait accompli and that doesn't quite make much sense to me.

I think a gerundial makes more sense here. 'Pursuing' happines. Or a gerundial noun: the 'pursuing' of happiness as it suggests on ongoing activity, that which informs quotidianity.

I revisited an existential discussion of happiness with a good friend of mine whom I met while at Ohio State. I thought a lot about my days at Ohio State this past long weekend as I was taking in some fresh air while snowboarding.

I met this particular friend on my first week at Ohio State. I was the youngest professor, by a good bundle of years, and I'd go to my lecture halls skipping through the fall-colored Buckeye campus and while listening to some indie rock. I was pursuing my happiness.

Once I'd enter the building, I'd look at myself on the reflection of my face on the iPhone, clean my glasses, apply some lipstick, and take a sip out of my venti Macchiato. As a matter of fact,  I rarely, if ever, went to my lectures without one. Routine mattered to me. It released my flow of thoughts, I supposed. And then I'd enter the realm of the Middle Ages or Gender Theory or Existential Cinema, whatever the lecture was that I was giving, and get lost in a sea of words that, for some reason, always came too easily and far too naturally to me.

After my lectures, I'd go to my big office, grab my uber-light Ventura bike where I would lean it against my book shelves, and go to Starbucks for a quick writing session away from the incessant knocking on my door. One day, while on the way to Starbucks, a guy said 'hi' to me at the light and asked me how I liked living at Olentangy Village. I must have given him one of my doubt-informed looks that said, "Hmm. How do you know where I live?!" because immediately he said, "oh, I live there too. I've seen you at the Cup o' Joe's across the street. You're always in a hurry, though. You move really fast. And you're really fast on that bike, too."

I remember thinking that the red light took much too long to turn green as a perfect stranger was sharing a bit too much and I had no idea who he was. "So", he continued, "what program are you in?" "What do you mean, 'program'? I asked. "You're a grad student here, right?" he carried on.
"What? No. I've got my PhD already. I haven't been a grad student in quite some time. I'm a prof who likes her bike a whole lot, you know? Anyway, yeah, nice meeting you."

And we became friends. He still is a good friend and after speaking to him this past weekend, I thought even more specifically about the pursuing of happiness.

Many people ask me questions I often find vexing like, "but why did you leave academia to go into the private sector? Isn't it better to be a professor?" Now, I know that people ask questions that reflect who they are not who they think I am. Don't we after all ask questions that reveal mostly things about us than the interlocutor?

We all have a limited amount of time on the planet. The pursuing of happiness has always been my driving force. Not the accumulation of accolades or man-made trophies.

I have always felt the least happy when I felt dependent on someone. And I never feel dependent on someone longer than a short spell. I think self-sufficiency is the true currency of happiness. Knowing that you can truly rely on yourself for your general well-being. Self-reliance is key to the pursuing of happiness. You cannot schlep a lot of baggage when pursuing happiness.

When in my yoga classes now, I often think of those 4pm gym session while at Ohio State. The days when I'd hop on my Ventura bike, go to the gym, swim and think of my strategy to exit academia and start a life in the private sector.

And as I tell my many staff now, "if you want something for yourself, you have to take it. It will, most likely, not just be given to you. You need to take it." And I think it's the same advice I gave myself when I was thinking of moving to the Northwest, live in beautiful nature, and work in the private sector while still very much intertwined with the channels of academia.

The pursuing of happiness does not need an audience. It's born on the inside. We birth it. It's in us. Those who need an audience to proclaim how happy they are are, most likely are anything but. The pursuing of happiness lacks form and definition. You can't frame it and then package it with a pretty pink bow. It morphs into all sorts of shapes and acquires all sorts of content depending on the daily goings-on. And that's what makes it so exiting. The pursuing of happiness is being open to life experiences, and people, and work, and activities that open up your mind to better ways of becoming. The pursuing of happiness requires not being hung up on who you thought you were but rather who you wish to become and why. The pursuing of happiness cannot rest on laurels. Because those who do, generally resign themselves to using the more petrified past participial form of the noun: 'pursuit', where little movement happens.

I choose to be in movement. I choose the 'pursuing' instead. it's, after all, in my DNA. It always has been. And there cannot be much pursuing of happiness without being true to one's nature.

But instead of doing laps in a pool, like I used to do 3 years ago prior to my moving to the Northwest, I now choose to swim in the Pacific. Well, not 'now' now. Now, I snowboard. And in a few months, I'll be hitting the ocean again like last year. Because that's what I want to do. And I took it.

Assorted Links

1) Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness:

     Spiteful, antisocial behavior may undermine the moral and institutional fabric of society, producing disorder, fear, and mistrust. Previous research demonstrates the willingness of individuals to harm others, but little is understood about how far people are willing to go in being spiteful (relative to how far they could have gone) or their consistency in spitefulness across repeated trials. Our experiment is the first to provide individuals with repeated opportunities to spitefully harm anonymous others when the decision entails zero cost to the spiter and cannot be observed as such by the object of spite. This method reveals that the majority of individuals exhibit consistent (non-)spitefulness over time and that the distribution of spitefulness is bipolar: when choosing whether to be spiteful, most individuals either avoid spite altogether or impose the maximum possible harm on their unwitting victims.



Read more here.


2) Mustache markets in everything


  …not all mustaches are created equal, and in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.
Turkish plastic surgeon Selahattin Tulunay says the number of mustache implants he performs has boomed in the last few years. He now performs 50-60 of the procedures a month, on patients who hail mostly from the Middle East and travel to Turkey as medical tourists.
He said his patients generally want thick mustaches as they felt they would make them look mature and dignified.
“For some men who look young and junior, they think (a mustache) is a must to look senior … more professional and wise,” he said. “They think it is prestigious.”

More here

3) Camille Paglia on women she does and does not like:
  
 Whatever sex represents to this generation of affluent white girls, it doesn’t mean rebellion or leaving the protective umbrella of hovering parents. The messy party scenes where everyone boastingly goes crazy don’t have the debasement and ostracism of true decadence once projected by such avant-garde groups as The Velvet Underground and The Doors. No alienation here! On the contrary, the young revelers just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go home zonked to doting Mom and Dad. Partying till you drop has gotten as harmless as a Rotary Club meeting.

More here.