by Peter Dimock
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Oh, that’d be perfect.
“There is another achievement of theirs about which we should hear. Even in the refectory they did not cease from mental prayer [noera ergasia: a concentrated state of recollection in the depths of the heart. Elsewhere John Climacus says, “if you are careful to train your mind never to wander, it will stay by you even at mealtimes”] and by secret signs and gestures these holy men reminded each other of it. And they did this not only in the refectory, but everywhere they met or assembled.
“If one of them committed a fault, many of the brothers would seek his permission to take the matter to the shepherd and to accept both the responsibility and the punishment. When the great man found out that his disciples did this, he inflicted easier punishments, in the knowledge that the one punished was actually innocent. And he made no effort to discover the real culprit.” (John Climacus)
“Morality will oppose politics in history and will have gone beyond the functions of prudence or the canons of the beautiful to proclaim itself unconditional and universal when the eschatology of messianic peace will have come to superpose itself upon the ontology of war….”
(Emmanuel Levinas)
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF TALLIS MARTINSON
November 3, 2010
—These figures in a landscape, moving into view through the sounds of a voice, resolve themselves into an idea of absolute violence. Its acceptance establishes “an order from which no one can keep their distance. Nothing is henceforth exterior.” We identify ourselves with the victims and are moved by this as if by entertainment—a catharsis of self-pity and fear. These are our new territories of ecstasy. “The eschatological vision breaks with the totality of wars and empires in which one does not speak. It does not envisage the end of history within being understood as a totality but institutes a relation with the infinity of being which exceeds the totality. The first vision of eschatology (hereby distinguished from the revealed opinions of positive religions) reveals the very possibility of eschatology, that is, the breach of the totality, the possibility of a signification without a context.” (Emmanuel Levinas) [I.4; II.4; III.2a–2b; IV.2; V.2]
I.4; Epigraph 4: 709. Hard winter; Duke Gottfried died. / 710. Hard year; crops failed. / 711. [blank spaces] / 712. Flood everywhere / 718. Charles devastated the Saxons with great destruction. (Annals of St. Gall)
II.4; Chapter 4: “The Invasion of Cambodia on Crane’s Beach, May 1, 1970”
III.2a–2b; Argument by antinomy: 2a. Order is derived from public assemblies of armed men. 2b. Every culture has an origin story that includes the end of the world. No one is ever found to be missing from a single one of these stories.
IV.1; A trajectory of Western civilization’s founding texts: 1. Psalm 51: Miserere mei, Deus: Deliver me from bloodguiltiness … and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
V.3; The immediacy of Anagoge: 3. The Painted Word. This happiness in the immediacy of the world’s end: there can be no end to the delight felt by every creature when the word and the thought become one.
CHAPTER 5
The Immediacy of Anagoge; Three Scenes from Sheep Meadow: 1. St. Michael in Trees; 2. St. Anthony’s Gaze; 3. St. John on Patmos or, The Painted Word
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF TALLIS MARTINSON
June 22, 2013
—A duration of reciprocity in which to think my own thoughts and be truthful in my relation to others—a commonness of reference flung against the sky like birds. What would the true peace of equal justice feel like? Surely, in the coming century of drone strikes, I will be among the happy dead who will rejoice to be taught to speak again. [I.6; II.5; III.3a–3b; IV.2; V.1]
I.6; Epigraph 6: Daughter, From far away he visits you / like the true believer you have come to love / out of the river of yourself, not the Yalu / or the Mississippi. / Here his different eye—presence is the knowledge / that when you renew the world / all worlds will be renewed— / white water.
II.5; Chapter 5: “The Immediacy of Anagoge; Three Scenes from Sheep Meadow: 1. St. Michael in Trees; 2. St. Anthony’s Gaze; 3. St. John on Patmos or, The Painted Word”
III.3a–3b; Argument by antinomy: 3a. The history we are living is being narrated to us as a military emergency in which the principle of order is itself at stake. Under such conditions, the technical violence of official power becomes unanswerable. Real violence becomes the incontrovertible self-evidence of the justice of power’s argument. This is the romance of all authoritarianism. 3b. Fundamental change occurs when poets turn themselves into instruments for the metamorphosis—the withholding and unfolding—of literary time the rest of us have ceased to hear. “Poetry establishes itself with astonishing independence in a new extra-spatial field of action, not so much narrating as acting out in nature by means of its arsenal of devices, commonly known as tropes. The breach in the Papacy as a historical structure is envisaged in the Commedia and acted out insofar as the infinite raw material of poetic sound—which is inappropriately offered to culture as proper, which is ever distrustful and offensive to culture because of its suspiciousness, and which spits culture out like water used for gargling—is revealed and brought to light. There exists an intermediary activity between the act of listening and the act of speech delivery. This activity comes closest of all to performance and constitutes its heart, as it were. The unfilled interval between the act of listening and the act of speech delivery is absurd to its very core.” (Osip Mandelstam)
IV.2; A trajectory of founding texts of Western Civilization: “Sonnet 77”
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know
Time’s thievish progress to eternity.
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.
V.2; The immediacy of Anagoge: 2. St. Anthony’s Gaze: The harlot’s beauty beyond temptation: all the practicalities of lust painted into the scene without diminishing desire’s limitlessness by the breadth of a sparrow’s wing. The sacking of the city in the background (the ordinary sounds of this carry this far) is a commonplace event and makes no difference to the soul’s salvation or the saint’s fierce joy. The angel of the Lord speaks to him: “I was here the whole time; I wanted to see you fight the demons in every place you watched and waited for me when you thought you were by yourself.” In Sheep Meadow that afternoon I saw St. Michael going into battle at the head of his three armies, all his orders carried to every soldier’s ear perfectly by the cries of children borne by the rushing winds bending the tops of the trees.
•
EDITOR’S NOTE (CRM) From my recent practice of my brother’s method (October 2018)
Every citizen owes the state a life, our father, Justin Martinson (his father’s abandoned son), announced to us, his sons, in 1968. On December 1, 1969, we as twins received in the nation’s birthday draft lottery a number so low that we were sure to be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. I now am able to agree with my father’s harsh sentencing. But only if the American state pursues justice as its end, as its founding declaration promises—only if its everyday durations are justly ordered to secure the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of every human being understood as equal and infinitely valuable. Only if the following act of mutuality is made true by the ordinary performance and renewal of its words: “And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes,
and our sacred Honor.” “Everyone in the room heard,” Tallis told me in 2015, “what Sari’s father said that night.” Now I want to say to Tallis, in the midst of his silence: “In your notebooks you give access to another history—to the sound of reciprocity beneath the rhythms of our exterminatory complicity. Join yourself now to the living and detach yourself from the dead.
“What durations, within the family and within the state, will undo our deferential cowardice? Was our mother trying at the end to make it possible to register Sari’s infinite value and therefore her own despite everyone’s failure to reach out to Sari during all those years? ‘Submitting history as a whole to judgment, exterior to the very wars that mark its end, the eschatological vision restores to each instant its full signification in that very instant: all the causes are ready to be heard.’” (Emmanuel Levinas)
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF TALLIS MARTINSON
June 22, 2013 (cont.)
(In Tallis’s handwriting, as if transcribed from memory)
“Testimony of Angelina Grimké Weld:
“Mrs. Weld is the youngest daughter of the late Judge Grimké, of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and a sister of the late Hon. Thomas S. Grimké, of Charleston.
“FORT LEE, Bergen Co., New Jersey, Fourth month 6th, 1839.
“I sit down to comply with thy request, preferred in the name of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The responsibility laid upon me by such a request, leaves me no option. While I live, and slavery lives, I must testify against it. If I should hold my peace, ‘the stone would cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber would answer it.’ But though I feel a necessity upon me, and ‘a woe unto me,’ if I withhold my testimony, I give it with a heavy heart. My flesh crieth out, ‘if it be possible, let this cup pass from me’; but, ‘Father, thy will be done,’ is, I trust, the breathing of my spirit. Oh, the slain of the daughter of my people! they lie in all the ways; their tears fall as the rain, and are their meat day and night; their blood runneth down like water; their plundered hearths are desolate; they weep for their husbands and children, because they are not; and the proud waves do continually go over them, while no eye pitieth, and no man careth for their souls.”
02:41
SENSOR OPERATOR: Well, sir, would you mind if I took a bathroom break real quick?
PILOT: No, not at all, dude.
…
03:17
UNKNOWN: What’s the master plan, fellas?
PILOT: I don’t know, hope we get to shoot the truck with all the dudes in it.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Yeah.
[The Predator drone has only one missile on board—not enough to target three vehicles—so two Kiowa helicopters, known as “Bam Bam 41,” are ordered to take up an attacking position. A plan is agreed: the helicopters will fire first, then the drone will finish the job by firing its Hellfire missile at the survivors.]
“In this monastery to which I have been referring, there was a man named Isidore, from Alexandria, who having belonged to the ruling class had become a monk. I met him there. The most holy shepherd, after having let him join, discovered that he was a troublemaker, cruel, sly, and haughty, but he shrewdly managed to outwit the cunning of the devils in him. ‘If you have decided to accept the yoke of Christ,’ he told Isidore, ‘I want you first of all to learn obedience.’
‘Most holy Father, I submit to you like iron to the blacksmith,’ Isidore replied.
“The superior, availing of this metaphor, immediately gave exercise to the iron Isidore and said to him: ‘Brother, this is what I want you to do. You are to stand at the gate of the monastery, and before everyone passing in or out you are to bend the knee and say, “Pray for me, Father, because I am an epileptic.”’ And Isidore obeyed, like an angel obeying the Lord.
“He spent seven years at the gate, and achieved deep humility and compunction.
“After the statutory* seven years [Note: It may be that the superior treated Isidore’s haughtiness as fornication for which a seven years’ penance was required by the Apostolic Canons] and after the wonderful steadfastness of the man, the superior deemed him fully worthy to be admitted to the ranks of the brethren and wanted to ordain him. Through others and also through my feeble intercession, Isidore begged the superior many times to let him finish his course. He hinted that his death, his call, was near, which in fact proved to be so. The superior allowed him to stay at his place, and ten days later, humbly, gloriously, he passed on to the Lord. A week after his death the porter of the monastery was also taken, for the blessed Isidore had said to him, ‘If I have found favor in the sight of the Lord, you too will be inseparably joined to me within a short time.’ That is exactly what happened, in testimony to his unashamed obedience and his marvelous humility.
“While he was still alive, I asked this great Isidore how he had occupied his mind while he was at the gate, and this memorable man did not conceal anything from me, for he wished to be of help. ‘At first I judged that I have been sold into slavery for my sins,’ he said. ‘So I did penance with bitterness, great effort, and blood. After a year my heart was no longer full of grief, and I began to see how unworthy I was to live in a monastery, to encounter the fathers, to share in the divine Mysteries. I lost the courage to look anyone in the face, but lowering my eyes and lowering my thoughts even further, I asked with true sincerity for the prayers of those going in and out.’”
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF TALLIS MARTINSON
November 16, 2010
—In the actual event, other watchers of birds sat near me. Listening to the sparrow in the peopled quiet I heard voices.
In 1819, Audubon sold nine of his slaves. Among them may have been the “servant” who had once saved his life. Audubon never wrote of any of this in his journals. He called his desire to paint birds “almost a mania.” Since early childhood, he wanted to possess them “with a frenzy beyond reason.” “During my deepest troubles I frequently would wrench myself from the persons around me, and retire to some secluded part of our noble forests…. This never failed to bring me the most valuable of thoughts and always comfort, and, strange as it may seem … it was often necessary for me to exert my will, and compel myself to return to my fellow beings.” He spoke of taking dictation directly from nature; he experienced transcendence in a wood thrush’s call.
From Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings I try to extract a vision of an actual bird (a dark-eyed junco or house sparrow for instance), his direct reports of Apocalypse notwithstanding. The young scribe’s face is illuminated by happiness—his fluent pen flies. [I.1; II.5; III.3a–3b; IV.3; V.3]
I.1; Epigraph 1: As soon as thought dries up …
II. 5; Chapter 5: “The Immediacy of Anagoge; Three Scenes from Sheep Meadow: 1. St. Michael in Trees; 2. St. Anthony’s Gaze; 3. St. John on Patmos or, The Painted Word”
III. 3a–3b; Argument by antinomy: 3a. The history we are living in the present is narrated to us as a military emergency … 3b. Historical change is produced by poets when they turn themselves into instruments of the metamorphosis—the withholding and unfolding—of literary time the rest of us have ceased to hear.
IV. 3; A trajectory of founding texts of Western civilization: “The piles of heads disappear in the distance. I am diminished there …” (Osip Mandelstam)
V. 3; The immediacy of Anagoge: 3. St. John on Patmos or, The Painted Word. This joy of the news John on Patmos brings from the angel directly to the page.
CHAPTER 6
You Must Not Blame Yourself
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF TALLIS MARTINSON April 3, 2015
—Western literacy’s fixed narrative point of view forces the deferment of justice until the end of history—this last moment. Until then, we victors—we beneficiaries—are off the hook—accidental enablers of a future perfection behind the back of our own actions in collusion with the state. Our innocence is criminal. In an age of finance, until historical justice is funded, we cannot pretend to be committed to democracy. We arr
ive at the limits of our historical self-knowledge without the immediacy of the presence of each other. The Spanish visitor will buy the triptych for his private chapel—these unmoored reveries from Sheep Meadow have lost touch with any original promise of a restored democratic commons of plenty derived from a costly victory over dearth. Will our senses be able to perform the work of a messianic eschatology just before the missiles strike? St. Michael at the head of God’s three armies: in the far distance the tiny merchant ship burns on the water, providing unintentionally the illumination of an actual event. This sound of wind in the trees as accompaniment for my burning mind. [I.5; II.4; III.1a–1b; IV.3; V.2]
I.5; Epigraph 5: I am sorry that it has come to this…. You must not blame yourself. The simple truth is this: during my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. (Last Letter of Daniel Somers, dated June 10, 2013)
II.4; Chapter 4: “The Invasion of Cambodia on Crane’s Beach, May 1, 1970”
III.1a–1b; Argument by antinomy: 1a. We are social all the way down. 1b. By far the greatest use of language is for thought and not communication, despite virtual dogma to the contrary.
IV.3; A trajectory of founding texts of Western civilization: 3. “I am sorry that it has come to this…. Then, I pursued replacing destruction with creation. For a time, this provided a distraction, but it could not last. The fact is that any kind of ordinary life is an insult to those who died at my hand.” (From the last letter of Daniel Somers dated June 10, 2013)
V.2; The immediacy of Anagoge: 2. St. Anthony’s Gaze: Everything is here; all gestures are meaningful. Every detail marks the unfolding of an unlimited number of stories. Demons of the mind are active. Nothing written will save you. Demons in the trees are singing beautifully. Nothing will be lost.
In my practice I have found it useful to apply the third set of my terza rima of thought to this entry:
