A Minute Meditation

VII.22

"Plans made swiftly and intuitively are likely to have flaws.  Plans made carefully and  comprehensively are sure to."
-- Robert Grudin --
Time and the Art of Living

This seems to contradict conventional wisdom or common sense, no?

Robert Grudin: on watch shapes

Robert Grudin
Time and the Art of Living
 



VII.26

For a while now I have kept, along with our more traditional timepieces, a digital watch which shows hours, minutes and seconds in illuminated Arabic numerals.  Such watches, my wife remarks, give their wearers a wholly different idea of time.  Looking at them we see a particular time, divorced from its context in the broader picture of the day.  The round faces of the older watches and clocks speak to us not only of the present but also of the past and the future--when we woke, when we will work or play or rest, where we have been, where we wish to be or must be.  Intricately and persistently they remind us of our existence in a continuum, which includes not only the social and natural world but also our own extending identity in time.  The new watches, like many other modern and businesslike thins, ignore such frivolities, demarcating only that particular island of time on which we happen to be stranded.

-- Robert Grudin --
Time and the Art of Living


What sayest thou?   Has his wife a valid point?

Do the  round faces of the older watches and clocks speak to us not only of the present but also of the past and the future?

Do they remind us of our existence in a continuum, which includes not only the social and natural world but also our own extending identity in time?

Does the sweep of the "seconds" hand convey a different picture of time passing than does the sight of numbers increasing one-by-one on a digital watch?.
  

Robert Grudin: Weighed down by the future

No. III.22

The birth of our second child is one, maybe two weeks away.  The coming event looms over us, the way a big wave looms over a little boat; and our days are dimmed by its shadow.   The future can exert this force upon us, can totally suck the juice out of the present, turning it into something tense, dry, useless to memory.  How can we enjoy or profit from such a transitional state?  The practical answer is "Don't sit and wait; prepare."  The subtler answer is that no period in life is more or less transitional than any other, had we only the power to understand each.  

Robert Grudin
Time and the Art of Living 


I have experienced those times when some future event caused me considerable distress which distracted me and resulted in a blank period in which nothing seemed to happen until that event occurred and I was then able to take action.  

However, I have to disagree with him on one  point.  There are periods in which significant changes occur, and there are those periods that are quiet and life will go on as usual.  This isn't to say that  there are the unexpected occurrences that can happen during periods of change or during  relatively static periods which can bring about changes in a person's life.    

His statement regarding the "subtle answer" suggests that he is able to detect influences or trends which the rest of us are too dense to notice. 
 

Robert Grudin: Time and the Art of Living

III.8

"One need only to try to remember the dishes one ate for dinner on each night of the week past to realize that the things we desire as future and enjoy as present are not necessarily the things we value for all time.  In this sense memory sits like an incorruptible judge, oblivious to the minor pains and pleasures of the past even as we unreasonably overvalue identical pains and pleasures in the present and future."

Remember dinners for the past week?  I have problems remembering one dinner from the past week, or even a few days ago.  It is sobering, though, when I think of the times I have gone out, looking forward to a special meal at a restaurant, and now look back and try to remember when I went to that restaurant and what I had there.


Grudin also calls memory "an incorruptible judge" and seems to imply that it judges what's really important and what isn't.  That would mean that I remember only those things that are important and forget only those that aren't.  Yet when I do remember something that I haven't thought of in years, I am frequently perplexed as to why that has remained in my memory as it seems so inconsequential, so unimportant.  

I think it was Pascal who said "  "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."   Well, maybe memory has its reasons also. 

The things you remember--are they always the important things?

Robert Grudin: Which is most important: History or Interpretations of history?

III.4

From his exile at San Casciano, Machiavelli wrote a friend that he spent much time reading the works of ancient writers, adding curiously that he asked them questions which they "answered."  What he probably meant was that, like Machiavelli himself, the ancients wrote subtly, that they raised questions in the reader's mind and encouraged him to seek out the answers to these questions between the lines, in the stylistic and structural implications of their work.  Good historians treat the past in general this way, asking it questions rather than contenting themselves with its overt and specific messages.  And intelligent individuals treat their memories in the same way, realizing that their past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it. 

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living

What's most important about history is not the events nor even the overt or specific lessons learned from it.  Apparently one should go further than merely look at surface events and look into the questions raised by these surface phenomena.  This certainly argues against a literal interpretation of texts and suggests that the important issues are those questions raised by those phenomena. 

And, this last sentence seems perplexing to me, for it includes memories as well as history and could one argue that memories can be seen as one's private history?

And intelligent individuals treat their memories in the same way, realizing that their past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it. 


What does Grudin mean when he says that the past is no more finished or dead than their ability to understand it? Longfellow in his "A Psalm of Life" would certainly disagree here for he insisted that we should "Let the dead Past bury its dead!"

Is Grudin arguing that our past is only as dead as our ability to understand it, or even more curiously is no more finished than (our) ability to understand it?"  Does our past change as our ability to understand it changes?

If so, then what is the relationship between our past and our memories of the past? 

Robert Grudin: the mind's blind spot

III.3

In the same way that our eyes have blind spots in space, our minds have blind spots in time;  areas of time which we habitually or congenitally ignore.  My own blind spot is the recent past, the events of yesterday or last week.  I experience things quite fully in the present; but then they submerge, not to reappear until they are images on the flat wall of the past.  Why is this so?  Is there something uncomfortable, raw, undigested, embarrassing about the jumble of experience just behind me?  Is it ignored simply because it is too chaotic to make sense?  Look at the past day, the past hour:  their interruptions, frivolities, compromises, false starts.  We may well have good reason to overlook the immediate past, for the immediate past holds the uncensored truth of the present.

I have trouble remembering in the evening what I did that morning or afternoon.  This is why I write things down that I want to remember in a small notebook that I carry with me, wherever I go.  I call it my non-volatile memory.  Even this isn't 100% perfect for sometimes I write so hastily that I can't read my writing (too many years in school taking notes).

At other times I don't put enough information down, so when I do finally stumble across the note, I wonder what it means and why I wrote it.  For example, I will come across a note--find and email the name of the author of such-and-such book.  Unfortunately I didn't write down the name of the person I was doing the research for.

I suspect we forget a lot that happens recently because we consider it trivial and don't really focus on it long enough to be retained in memory.   Something happens and then something else happens that pushes it out of our mind, and so it goes, until a significant event occurs, which remains with us long enough to be retained. 

Any thoughts?

Do you have any mental blind spots? 

Robert Grudin: the loss of the past

III.2

"One of the most mysterious operations of time is the way in which things silently divorce themselves from us and slip into the past.   We are like people climbing out of an immensely deep valley on a trail which only occasionally allows us glimpses of the geography below or the heights above.  We turn to see, distant and small beneath us, places which only recently have constituted our total environments; we glance far down at our own beginnings as things dear but inexorably removed from us.  Other people walk with us, so close and for so long that they form a part of our identity.  When they leave us at last, we see them for the first time as separate beings, suddenly clear and whole, yet hopelessly distinct and diminishing.  Only those of us who habitually and affectionately consult the past, who see the present as the birth of the past and appreciate it as the freshness of a new vintage, can hope to mitigate the appalling sadness of these views."

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living



First known when lost
 
I never had noticed it until
'Twas gone, --the narrow copse
Where now the woodman lops
The last of the willows with his bill.

-- Edward Thomas --


The above is the first stanza of "First known when lost," a poem by Edward Thomas.  The complete poem was posted on June 8, 2014.  It came to mind when reading Grudin's short meditation.   It is sad to think that we really don't know something until it's gone, and then only briefly for it quickly fades from memory as time passes.  And as we've been told by poet and novelist and philosopher, we can never go back, for it is gone forever.  

Robert Grudin: what we best understand

II.24    If the words "to have" and "to know" are taken in their deepest sense, then there is nothing in the world that we may truly have or know.  In most of our experiences--personal, professional, political, esthetic--we stand at the periphery, conversant with detail but unsure about structure, basis, context; unsure even about the nature of the emotions that the experience evokes in us.  What we understand best, we understand by renewal--by looking at the same thing again and again in different ways, looking at it internally and externally, walking around it, turning it in our hands, participating in it until some strange abstract spirit of its being rises from the complexity of effort and detail.  And what we have best, we have by renewal--by chronic challenges never refused,  by danger of loss, by repeated cherishings, and by love remembered.

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living


I don't know--does this sound bleak to you?--that "there is nothing in the world that we may truly have or know"-- that in most of our experiences we are at the edge of things.  Grudin seems to deny the possibility of an immediate intuitive grasp of things, and that it is only through repeated exposure over a long period that we best understand things, and I suspect this would include people also.   In a sense, I think he insists that only through immersion in whatever it is that we can develop any in-depth understanding of the event or object or person, but we still will never truly know or have anything.

I think that what he says about repeated exposure and renewal is true most of the time.  It does take time and repeated encounters to understand the other, whether it may be an event or an object or a person.  However, there are occasions when there seems to be an instant grasp of the other, being it favorable or unfavorable, that repeated exposure only confirms the first impression.  They are rare, but they do exist.       

Robert Grudin: the perfect comeback--hours later

III.5

"The French use the term 'esprit de l'escalier'  ('wit of the stairway') to describe the brilliant comments that occur to us just after we have left the party or meeting where they would have been appropriate.  The killing response to an unprovoked insult, the quietus for an aggressive bore, the naughty paradox that would have made you shine, are as useless now as tickets to last night's show.  So much is wit the child of time.  Still, it is not just our own slowness that makes us think of things too late.  Something in the social experience itself, some fear of self-expression or some awareness of wit's proximity to the utterly absurd, deadens our minds and stops our tongues.  Besides, the witty remark, whether it denudes hypocrisy or subverts language, is always a miniature revolution, a gesture of reform.    The witticism makes its creator, at least momentarily, an enemy of established society; and thus wit is as much a child of courage and as it is of time."

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living

The first part, the delayed witticism, is a too common experience for all of us, including me.  Sometimes the brilliant, killing response comes when I'm walking out the door or driving home or even, occasionally, waking up in the middle of the night (the three o'clock comeback).  It is frustrating, but unfortunately a very mundane experience, one that I really don't spend much time thinking about.

Where I part from Grudin is the second part where he states that the delayed comeback is much more than just slowness of thought, that it's "a miniature revolution" or "a gesture of reform."  I think that's pushing it a bit far.    Does the occasional witticism really make one "at least momentarily, an enemy of established society"?

I don't' know about others, but the few times I've been on time with a comment I never considered or thought out what I was going to say--it just popped out, and I was as surprised as anyone else.  The idea that saying that made me "an enemy of established society" never occurred to me, either before, during, or after the incident.

Why does this happen to me?  I'm not the fastest thinker around; it takes me time to think about the situation, the book, or the film, and it's only after some time has passed that I am able to grasp the relevant ideas or themes or nuances in question.  Generally, I'm just a slow thinker, and if an "unprovoked insult" is the issue, then shock comes into play.

Shock, be it physical or mental, paralyzes one momentarily, both physically and mentally.  There's always that moment of paralysis before one takes action.  If it's a physical threat, then the responses are usually limited to flight or fight.  If it's a mental threat, then the possible responses are multiplied: say something or leave or stay there and bear it, and to say something appropriate is the most complex of possible responses.  

I think Grudin is over-intellectualizing here.

Robert Grudin: boredom's fast time and slow time

II.23

"Our sense of the slowness or speediness of time often depends on the size of the time-frame we happen to be considering.   It is possible, for example, for us to be simultaneously amazed at the slowness of minutes and the speediness of years.  Oddly enough, this pathetic double amazement bespeaks a single cause: our inability to make proper use of the present.  For although minutes spend in boredom or anxiety pass slowly, they nonetheless add up to years which are void of memory."

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living

That's  why I usually carry a book with me whenever I'm out and around.  It's amazing how quickly time passes when I pick up a book and read while having to wait in line or for someone to appear.  Moreover, I also find I'm in a much better humor if I spent the time reading rather than fuming over having to wait.  Time always seems to pass quickly when I'm doing something, yet, when I look back, I find those days seem "longer" than those in which I did little or nothing.

Tiz a puzzlement.

Robert Grudin: space-time perception

II.21

"We cannot project space-time into psychological experience without profound changes in perception and comprehension.  By fiat of four-dimensionality, "what" becomes "what/when,"  "who" becomes "who/when,"  "you" and "I" and everything undergo similar transformations.  A challenging idea, implying that identities and relationships are always in motion; that attempts to codify them in static, absolute terms are at very best relative and approximate.  To some observers this might suggest absolute relativism, loss of identity, chaos.  But this extreme hypothesis seems to be true neither in science nor in human affairs.  Things may change;  but they change at characteristic rates and in characteristic ways, recognizable and natural.  We search for character, value, truth, not so much like pilgrims seeking a marble shrine, as like listeners perceiving, in different musical instruments at different times, recurring themes and rhythms.  Thus a kind of stability-- perhaps the only real stability--exists in space-time, and our ability to recognize this mobile truth bears the same proportion to normal common sense as physics bears to solid geometry."  

 -- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living


An interesting concept.  When I think of a person or object, I shouldn't see this person or object as static and concrete, but I should perceive them as being in motion and liable to change.  My perception of them would then include the notion of change, of some sort of flux.  How would this change my relationship to them?   What would be the effect on me of actually seeing them this way?

Robert Grudin: An image of change

I've read a number of attempts to describe the way change happens or at least the way we perceive it, and I think Robert Grudin's is one of the best.

I.12

"In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed out to see the famous Venetian flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward he Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many minutes passed before I turned to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement had all but disappeared under calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza had become a lake. That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally , the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defenses, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that it has occurred within us."

-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living



My experience has always been that the changes I talk about are always the ones that have already occurred. Perhaps others are more perceptive than I am. Unfortunately I've never met them.

Something to think about:

1.3

Like students of art who walk around a great statue, seeing parts and aspects of it from each position, but never the whole work, we must walk mentally around time, using a variety of approaches, a pandemonium of metaphor. No insight or association, however outlandish or contradictory, should be forbidden us; the only thing forbidden should be to stand still and say, "This is it."

-- Charles Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living


Sometimes I understand Grudin and sometimes I don't. This is one of those "don't" times.

I know what a statue is, and I know what the students are walking around, but what do students of time "walk mentally around"?

Robert Grudin and Yasunari Kawabata

I find that while reading I frequently am reminded of something similar, sometimes from another book or sometimes from a film. In this case, I was reading from Robert Grudin's book of aphorisms, Time and the Art of Living, and it brought up something from a novel by Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country.


"1.1 In a railroad car at nightfall, when the natural light outside has diminished until it is even with the artificial light inside, the passenger facing forward sees in his window two images at once: the dim landscape rushing toward him out of a pit of darkness, and the interior of the car, reflected with its more or less motionless occupants. At this hour most passengers unconsciously give allegiance to one of these two polarities of vision; and the individual momentarily aware of both may be struck by the profound, almost tragic duality between outer and inner worlds, between the rush of experience and the immobility of awareness. The uneasy contrast implied by this image is to my mind one of the special marks of our condition, one of the tragic divorces between our lonely humanity and the pulse of nature."

Robert Grudin
from Time and the Art of Living



It is night, and Shimamura is on the train, headed for the hot springs and a rendezvous. His window has become a mirror in which he can see the reflections of the other passengers in the car superimposed upon the darkened scenery outside.

"In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one of the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted together into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it."

Yasunari Kawabata
from Snow Country


I find it interesting to see the way Grudin, a philosopher, and Kawabata, a novelist, make use of the same phenomenon. While both see this as a separation of the inner and the outer worlds, Kawabata also goes one step further and blends the two "into a sort of symbolic world not of this world," while Grudin sees it as a symbol "of the tragic divorces between our lonely humanity and the pulse of nature."

Are we "divorced" from nature? Is there no possibility of a reconciliation? Henry, in the last post about Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore seems to be connected to nature. Is this what Tom Barnard meant when he said that life was better now, after the war? Does it take a war and a return to a pre-industrial state to reconnect?

One last question: Is this reconnection or reconciliation a good thing?

Something to think about

VI.10
People who make moral compromises in order to achieve good ends find that their compromises irrevocably alter the ends achieved. Thus they learn that, in a world of process, it is method rather than goal which carries the burden of moral value; that in the final analysis nothing should be mistaken either for a means or for an end. Other people, who adhere to righteous action with no regard for the consequences, are equally off the mark; these people mistake method itself for an end and act as though in a vacuum of time.

Robert Grudin
Time and the Art of Living