"I have waited with a glacier's patience."
Neko Case, poet and priestess
I was listening to the above chanteuse yesterday, as I'm prone to do at regular intervals, and the following song came on:
As always, the lyric about the glacier's patience jumped out at me, but this time it echoed the underlying tones of a conversation earlier in the morning with my half-Canadian friend. He, you see, is a True Believer; while I, on the other hand, am what one might call a True Skeptic. This makes for some interesting philosophical diversions.
I typically wear the student hat in our relationship, which is a nice fit for a True Skeptic. I like to think of mine as a fedora like the one my great-grandfather Paw-Paw used to wear. He would walk into my grandmother's kitchen every day to pick up the newspaper and sit at the dining table, rapping his knuckles on the hard oak while my grandmother poured his coffee. That hat never came off of his head.
As a True Believer, my half-Canadian friend is perfectly suited for the role he plays as well. In this way he provides a nice balance, helping me to see things in a way different way. As Blake Schwarzenbach once sang,
Our eyes are still our own, however, and the interesting thing about being a True Skeptic is that growth, wisdom and revelation almost always happen in contradictory ways. This is the advantage of being a True Skeptic; I can observe the qualities of True Believer (i.e. certainty, bombast, and universality) and respond with complementary virtues like nuance, gradation, subtlety and doubt.
During our conversation, though, I understood a little deeper the implications of the differences between these two temperaments. Taken to their ill-logical extremes, Skepticism gives way to nihilism and Belief can lead one to follow paths better left untaken. I told my half-Canadian friend that our respective lives testified to this.
I don't know if this silence was a moment when we swapped hats, or dismissive, or simply a lull in conversation. But I do remember a night in December of 2006 when Brahmacharini Sumati Chaitanya gave a satsang on the fourteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. She confirmed my suspicion:
Experience is silence, and as I journaled yesterday afternoon, this is what came out of my pen:
The trouble with a True Believer is that its inherent imprecision (i.e. belief in something someone does not know) can lead to little more than abstraction and confusion. Being too concrete, on the other hand, can lead to literalization and the loss of esoteric meaning (the "Virgin" Mary, for instance). This allegiance to fact over truth is the pitfall awaiting the True Skeptic.
That's why poetry and songs and music are so important – they provide a balance between the concrete and the abstract. What does it mean to wait with a glacier's patience? It is simultaneously familiar and incomprehensible. Furthermore, if you scaled the size of human to the size of a glacier, it would be the equivalent of trying to moving a few inches over the course of an entire year.
If we cannot truly understand this experience, which anyone can with a stopwatch and ruler can watch and see and measure, then how can we claim knowledge of the vision Arjuna begged Krishna to take away?
That's why Neko Case, like Sumataji, is both priestess and Priestess.
I was listening to the above chanteuse yesterday, as I'm prone to do at regular intervals, and the following song came on:
As always, the lyric about the glacier's patience jumped out at me, but this time it echoed the underlying tones of a conversation earlier in the morning with my half-Canadian friend. He, you see, is a True Believer; while I, on the other hand, am what one might call a True Skeptic. This makes for some interesting philosophical diversions.
This is usually beside the point.
But not this time.I typically wear the student hat in our relationship, which is a nice fit for a True Skeptic. I like to think of mine as a fedora like the one my great-grandfather Paw-Paw used to wear. He would walk into my grandmother's kitchen every day to pick up the newspaper and sit at the dining table, rapping his knuckles on the hard oak while my grandmother poured his coffee. That hat never came off of his head.
As a True Believer, my half-Canadian friend is perfectly suited for the role he plays as well. In this way he provides a nice balance, helping me to see things in a way different way. As Blake Schwarzenbach once sang,
"I'm trying on your eyes."
poet and oracle, he translates Rousseau in his spare time
Our eyes are still our own, however, and the interesting thing about being a True Skeptic is that growth, wisdom and revelation almost always happen in contradictory ways. This is the advantage of being a True Skeptic; I can observe the qualities of True Believer (i.e. certainty, bombast, and universality) and respond with complementary virtues like nuance, gradation, subtlety and doubt.
During our conversation, though, I understood a little deeper the implications of the differences between these two temperaments. Taken to their ill-logical extremes, Skepticism gives way to nihilism and Belief can lead one to follow paths better left untaken. I told my half-Canadian friend that our respective lives testified to this.
He said nothing.
I don't know if this silence was a moment when we swapped hats, or dismissive, or simply a lull in conversation. But I do remember a night in December of 2006 when Brahmacharini Sumati Chaitanya gave a satsang on the fourteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. She confirmed my suspicion:
"Silence is the only teacher."
priestess and Priestess
Experience is silence, and as I journaled yesterday afternoon, this is what came out of my pen:
The trouble with a True Believer is that its inherent imprecision (i.e. belief in something someone does not know) can lead to little more than abstraction and confusion. Being too concrete, on the other hand, can lead to literalization and the loss of esoteric meaning (the "Virgin" Mary, for instance). This allegiance to fact over truth is the pitfall awaiting the True Skeptic.
That's why poetry and songs and music are so important – they provide a balance between the concrete and the abstract. What does it mean to wait with a glacier's patience? It is simultaneously familiar and incomprehensible. Furthermore, if you scaled the size of human to the size of a glacier, it would be the equivalent of trying to moving a few inches over the course of an entire year.
Can any of us really fathom what it would mean to move that slowly?
If we cannot truly understand this experience, which anyone can with a stopwatch and ruler can watch and see and measure, then how can we claim knowledge of the vision Arjuna begged Krishna to take away?
the Greek word 'hubris' comes to mind
That's why Neko Case, like Sumataji, is both priestess and Priestess.
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