Harold Bloom, Emerson, me, and Whitman.

Something that cannot be denied about Bloom – he is enthusiastic in his intellectual convictions.

Of course Emerson was of the opinion that ““Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Which enthusiastically leads me to my favorite Whitman excerpt from Songs of Myself:

“Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of
every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me,
shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.”

Tryin' to feel the transcendence

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Cornel West talks about the crisis of meaning in the post-modernity age:

“The capitalist market is just so powerful that people are looking for forms of transcendence that have to do with something far removed from time and space.”

My humble reply to Professor West is that people will that transcendence when they are far removed from their self.

I guess the Buddhists would say that I’m co-opting their ideas but whatever, I believe we find transcendence through humility.

To be humble means striving to appreciate the context of nature.

To be humble is to know temperance, to shed desires, and to view your will power as a gift of honor to yourself.

To be humble is to listen.

To be humble means having the courage to be vulnerable - the capacity to be loved will by your reward.

Ohhh, the transcendent gift of love! Who better to describe it then ol’ Ralph in his essay “Love.”

“a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period, and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives permanence to human society.”

Emerson writing about love reminded me that I recently read the lyrics to all the songs on Bob Dylan’s latest album (put out last year), “Modern Times.” I was amazed that almost all of the songs dealt with romantic love. All along the way, Dylan has explored the human condition, and after everything, he chooses to wrestle with Eros. Bob Dylan makes a final push for transcendence - in love.

“We learn to live and then we forgive

O’r the road we’re bound to go

More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours

That keep us so tightly bound

You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies

And I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.”

I'm American, right?

A post I wrote on a Open Source thread about Ha Jin's new novel.

Even the most stalwart patriotic American will be quick to talk up their heritage at a dinner party. Even big bad Bill O’Reilly brags about his Irish roots at every turn.

Yes, a Chinese immigrant knows only a Chinese experience and the same goes for a Brazilian immigrant; their culture is ingrained – and that’s beautiful, and vital.

American culture is bland. But maybe it needs to be. It functions well as a mediator in our hodgepodge of tastes. It provides the grease, the fast food (and we all need to eat food fast sometimes) until we have time to eat the delectable cuisine of our choosing.

America is an idea. The American experience is about joining hands – strange hands - with that idea in mind.

To mine the ultimate American metaphor, baseball: On the World Champion Boston Red Sox, Dice K was a vital player. He is a Japanese immigrant (lacking even the English language) who joined hands (and exchanged bows) with Dominican Immigrants and Southern transplants, and they thrived.

Watching scenes from the locker room celebration after they accomplished their common goal, one never saw such merriment. There was no limiting dialogue to be had, only laughing, and hugging, and crying, and wide limitless smiles - smiles born from an American experience.