The Lucky One

Thomas asked me today what had I earned and I answered, “Nothing, everything I got I got by luck.”

“That’s a fancy, muchacho,” he said, “you’re not that lucky.”

Then I remembered this:

‘Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.’

“I guess I earned at least one pleasure,” I said.

“That’s the one I was thinking about,” he said.

Kierkegaard and The Present Age

An excerpt from Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age and of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962)

If a precious jewel, which all desired, lay out on a frozen lake, where the ice was perilously thin, where death threatened one who went out too far while the ice near the shore was safe, in a passionate age the crowds would cheer the courage of the man who went out on the ice; they would fear for him and with him in his resolute action; they would sorrow over him if he went under; they would consider him divine if he returned with the jewel. In this passionless, reflective age, things would be different. People would think themselves very intelligent in figuring out the foolishness and worthlessness of going out on the ice, indeed, that it would be incomprehensible and laughable; and thereby they would transform passionate daring into a display of skill…The people would go and watch from safety and the connoisseurs with their discerning tastes would carefully judge the skilled skater, who would go almost to the edge (that is, as far as the ice was safe, and would not go beyond this point) and then swing back. The most skilled skaters would go out the furthest and venture most dangerously, in order to make the crowds gasp and say: "Gods! He is insane, he will kill himself!" But you will see that his skill is so perfected that he will at the right moment swing around while the ice is still safe and his life is not endangered…

Men, then, only desire money, and money is an abstraction, a form of reflection…Men do not envy the gifts of others, their skill, or the love of their women; they only envy each others' money…These men would die with nothing to repent of, believing that if only they had the money, they might have truly lived and truly achieved something.

The established order continues, but our reflection and passionlessness finds its satisfaction in ambiguity. No person wishes to destroy the power of the king, but if little by little it can be reduced to nothing but a fiction, then everyone would cheer the king. No person wishes to pull down the pre-eminent, but if at the same time pre-eminence could be demonstrated to be a fiction, then everyone would be happy. No person wishes to abandon Christian terminology, but they can secretly change it so that it doesn't require decision or action. And so they are unrepentant, since they have not pulled down anything. People do not desire any more to have a strong king than they do a hero-liberator than they do religious authority, for they innocently wish the established order to continue, but in a reflective way they more or less know that the established order no longer continues…

The reflective tension this creates constitutes itself into a new principle, and just as in an age of passion enthusiasm is the unifying principle, so in a passionless age of reflection envy is the negative-unifying principle. This must not be understood as a moral term, but rather, the idea of reflection, as it were, is envy, and envy is therefore twofold: it is selfish in the individual and in the society around him. The envy of reflection in the individual hinders any passionate decision he might make; and if he wishes to free himself from reflection, the reflection of society around him re-captures him…

Envy constitutes the principle of characterlessness, which from its misery sneaks up until it arrives at some position, and it protects itself with the concession that it is nothing. The envy of characterlessness never understands that distinction is really a distinction, nor does it understand itself in recognizing distinction negatively, but rather reduces it so that it is no longer distinction; and envy defends itself not only from distinction, but against that distinction which is to come.

A Witty Age

The moralists are running to the microphones, their chest inflamed with indignation. They make an example of Eliot Spitzer and their theatrics remind me of that other Eliot, who thought the world would end with a whimper rather than a bang. If only some would avoid speech, as in that other line of “The Hollow Men.”

“What an age,” Thomas Hoveling once said and then, when I didn’t say anything, he added, “Wit. Don’t forget the wit.”

Here is a little fantasy:

I settle for smelling the orange blossoms as the powdered wigs walk by. Everyone looks so good under the glass tears of the chandeliers. Everyone but me, I say to Thomas, and with a finger smeared in saliva, I remove the dirt from my shoes. I sit in a corner trying to fit in. Experts in irony, the moralists, with their flaring cuffs, hold the little hands of the academics as they glide on the dance floor. The entertainers and the financiers talk about their retirement accounts while the rebels listen in.

I do fit in. And where are the arts?

They waive at me from the other side of the room where a small auction is being held. All of them, even the critics, are wearing Hirst’s Manolo Blahniks. On the men, the Manolos seem a bit puffy.