Motus Mentis

I have always, since the earliest days of boyhood, been a nocturnal sort. If I were free to set my own schedule (which I hope, inshallah, someday to be), I would retire sometime between two and three in the morning, and rise at about eleven — or, if it’s been a busy day, perhaps noon.

That a person should have such innate preferences would be, I should think, not in any sense a measure of character or moral rectitude, but this seems not to be the case. Throughout my life I have been confronted with pious normative platitudes about the virtues of early rising, the benefits ascribed to which are said to include health, wealth and wisdom, as well as a good supply of worms. To snooze, we are told, is to lose. To be up after God-fearing citizens are snug in their beds is to up to no good, and if the phone rings at ten a.m. on one of the rare occasions when I can actually catch up on some sleep, the caller, upon hearing my mumbled greeting, invariably asks “Oh – were you asleep?” in the sort of tone in which one might inquire as to whether I had just been beating the children, or smoking crack.

The late-night hours are a splendid time for reading, writing, and quiet reflection; a time of stillness and calm, when one can think long, slow thoughts without interruption. The night-time air is cool and pleasant, and I prefer a starry sky to the sun’s glare. Yet people who collapse into bed as soon as the bustle begins to subside, apparently uninterested in remaining conscious in the absence of a steady buzz of external stimulus, seem to take a smug satisfaction in their hours, and miss no opportunity to remind others. They are the “go-getters”, the “morning people”, and are confident that they hold the high moral ground.

Well, one aspect of moral judgment is the notion of responsibility; we blame others for perceived moral shortcomings only to the extent that they are seen as free choices. (Much ink has been spilled, for example, over the question of whether homosexuality is genetically determined, or is simply a “lifestyle choice”.) We “night owls” may take some comfort, then, in reports, such as this, of confirmation by empirical research of what we have known all along: we are what we are.

As I had hoped, things have finally settled down, and the lovely Nina and I have withdrawn to the Outer Cape for a brief but restorative interval of dietary indiscretion (on my own part at least), healthful physical activity, and diminished reponsibility.

As always, there is much of interest going on in the world beyond Wellfleet’s shores, but with the mind deliberately unfocused for the next day or two I am likely to offer little more than froth and marginalia. For example:

Read More »

It is morning again, and I am back at my desk (technically speaking, it was also morning when I left).

Although it has been heavy slogging these past six weeks or so, with many long nights of darkness both inner and outer, today there grows within me a slender reed of hope, a delicate wisp of a thing that is nevertheless almost eschatological in its import, that by Friday there may be deliverance. Outwardly I am silent, laboring in my little cell and gazing fixedly at the screen as always, but with my inner eye I now can see the far bank of the mighty river, and my mind sways to the slow and patient rhythm of old Negro spirituals.

There is, as usual, no time for writing, but I must make note of two recent deaths. The first is the artist Pina Bausch, whose haunting and iconoclastic dance-theater extravaganzas the lovely Nina and I had attended at every opportunity in recent decades, and who died, suddenly, of cancer on Tuesday at 68. Her obituary, with links to other remembrances, is here.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum was the impressionist Fred Travalena, a genial extrovert whom those of you of “a certain age” may remember from his heyday in the 1970’s, when he was a fixture on the comedy circuit, and on the chat and variety shows. An obituary is here, and if your memory still needs a little jogging, you might have a look here.

There was of course that other fellow who died, but that would take several paragraphs, and for now I have a barge to tote, and bales to lift. Perhaps this weekend.

In a brief item posted today, Bill Vallicella wonders:

Does it matter whether life has an ultimate meaning or not? Someone might be satisfied if he has a good chance of attaining middle-sized happiness: peaceful days, restful nights, an adequate supply of health and wealth, satisfying employment, a loving spouse, friends, progeny, long life, and the like. Why not rest our hopes in what is known to be possible rather than in what is not known to be possible, such as immortality, the resurrection of the body, the visio beata, entry into Nirvana? Why hanker for what is beyond our mortal scale? Why not accept the finite? Are we not just a particularly clever species of land mammal?

Indeed, we are finite, and we are mortal, as are all living creatures. The problem is that we, and we alone, are in the poignantly unfortunate position of knowing it. The unique gift that evolution has bestowed upon us allows us — nay, forces us — always to imagine the future, and we do it very well: so well, in fact, that we see very clearly that soon we will not be a part of it. Is it any wonder that, clever mammals that we are, we have found so many imaginative ways to make that gift shut the hell up, and will pay dearly for them?

Bill continues:

Death, as signalling radical and irreversible change, is the muse of philosophy. What Jack London in John Barleycorn called “The Noseless One” refutes myopic worldliness.

To one on his deathbed, this fleeting life, about to vanish, must appear empty and worthless, much ado about nothing, a vain struggling and jockeying for position in a parade going nowhere. But the possiblity of death is here right now for all of us, and this metaphysical insecurity demonstrates the impossibility of myopic world-immersion for one who sees clearly. One cannot be satisfied by a merely mundane meaning. Whether or not life has an ultimate meaning, one cannot live meaningfully except in quest of it.

Indeed, once the message becomes clear, it is difficult to sit comfortably, even if it appears we may fidget in vain. As the late John Updike’s Henry Bech reminds us: man is “a fleck of dust condemned to know it is a fleck of dust.”

We’re on vacation through Monday, and will likely not be writing much (though you never know). Please feel free to browse our extensive archives, or try the “View a Random Post” link at right.