BURNING

For Sadiya Hassan Jimale

I walk the streets of Nazareth. Not in Israel, but Ethiopia. It’s the smell walk. Every house burns. It burns frankincense. The fumes surround my white face and make it yellow. The men of Nazareth walk in hosgunti and are good at addressing you literally. “You,” they say all the time. All narratives are told here in the second person. Now I’m convinced that George Perec was here too. “You,” the woman also says, “lift your garment, smell your own body first, and, then, step into the smoke.” Autumn is the color of amber, lacrima heliandum is the color of my naked body, but the white incense is the best. “We do what we can,” the Somali woman tells me. “Smell is distinctive in itself, but here, away from home, we make no distinctions.” “Inshallah,” I say, and the wise woman replies in Italian, “In bocca al lupo”. “You smell, now” she says, but the levonah, the white incense, makes me think of Ketav Levonah, the White Torah. Shmuel ben Aharon-Wahli tells us that the white text is the literal text of the Torah. “The White Text is a reading of the scrolls according to the perfect image of which it writes – that being the image of Mashiyach, the complete measurement of Man.” I burn with the desire to smell, so I stop listening to his going over the Black Text. The text of sin. The black woman instructs me now, and I take her teachings to my heart. I start speaking in Latin, though. My own burning bush addresses nature with beatific boldness: “Tu, Boswellia Sacra, a posse ad esse”. My humble self says, “Mahadsanid.”

IMPOTENCE

For Jessye Norman

Every Sunday I’m impotent. Like God. But I don’t like to say that I’m resting my old bones when my flesh is open and sensitive, and feels the pain of what a good fantasy can provide. I can’t tell you what to do. But I can tell you to stop listening to bad advice. God is also resting. He doesn’t feel like being authentic, and genuine, and sincere on Sundays. Find a church and get yourself blown away by the organ. At least you’ll feel something. I can’t invent a new narrative. Not on Sundays. But I can say that the ones we usually serve each other are usually equally nonsensical. I can’t tell you how we know what we know. But I can tell you that if something ends, it’s not love that ends, but knowledge. I can’t tell you what to read. Not on Sundays. But I can tell you that we keep busy with deliberating between questions: “to be or not to be, to have or not to have?” You say this and I say that. “This” is superior to “that.” It’s closer to thought. But equally not useful. “That” is something else. Its use value is not worth the thought, if what wraps around “that” is not “this.” Gifts are important on Sundays. On Sunday you show me your gift, but I can’t tell you what I think of it. On Sundays I’m silent. And demand the same. I can’t listen to you. But I can tell you that I can listen to myself. On Sundays I can only love myself, however inauthentically, irreverentially, irremediably. Tomorrow it’s Monday. I’ll go to the opera. The drama of "naught" is never over until the fat lady sings.

DIPLOMATS

Yesterday afternoon. Swishing my Erich Fend long black coat I hurry to get into a cab. I’m heading to the Romanian Embassy where I’m invited at a tea event. The specialists from Tante T tea shop downtown Copenhagen are invited to introduce a limited number of guests to various green teas. I look forward to the whole thing, as I’m a green tea drinker heavy style.

While the cab swiftly passes other cars, I fall into a reverie. The images of traffic lights blend with my imagination of Dean Hayduk’s psychoanalytic practice right there in the middle of Strandvejen, surrounded by posh villas owned by the rich. I try to imagine Hayduk at work. The reason why I think of this is because ‘hayduk’ in Romanian means highway robber. I’m trying to imagine Dean’s sense of humor and try to contrast it with that of his clients. I almost laugh, when the sheepishly looking cab driver stops the car by the side of the road near Hayduk’s office. I’m about to tell him, “this is not the ambassador’s residence,” when it flashes through my head that I must have mistakenly given him the wrong address – thus having suffered from a regular Freudian slip of the tongue. But no, the cab driver simply can’t find the destination. I point to his GPS on his board and ask him to put it on. “Ah well,” he says, and then he invents something that clearly is not going to help us. He wants to know whether I myself can’t give him more precise information on how to get to there.

At this point I’m experiencing a dejà-vu. I had just read about a similar situation in the latest issue of In magazine when the editor, Camilla Lindemann, in her lead article expressed major frustration with cab drivers that can’t put you where you want to be put without fussing. At this point I’m exasperated. I stick my hand in my purse with a fury, get out my own GPS gadget, put it on, and we’re back on the road again. I feel robbed, however. As the cabdriver keeps asking: “what’s it saying now?”, pointing to my GPS, and I go, “left”, I’m thinking that he’s has just managed to steal an interesting thought from me. I was in the middle of developing a theory that links the grammar of the unconscious with the urge to articulate ourselves in clichés whenever we dislike the fact that we like somebody.

I hit the embassy without a finished theory. I make a flamboyant entrance. Just as well, given my obscenely late arrival, which is also enhanced by my conscious act of heightening the effect of my impressive, almost baroque looking, and lavishly cut Erich Fend garment. I give the ambassador an affectionate kiss, great diplomatic French style, and take a seat next to the Czech ambassador. And then what do I do? An hour into the exquisite tea tasting – I’m of course high from having had my nose in various greens – I manage to offend the editor of the Danish publishing house Vandkunsten by suggesting that the Danish cartoon crisis was more about the Danes standing to lose a lot of money, rather than freedom of speech – I also say to him, “you know what, follow the money not the morals, if you want to know more.”

When one of my compatriots, a Romanian physicist at Risø suggests that the Danes are very open and direct people, I blurt at him and tell him to get real: “the Danes are as direct as my dead mother,” and continue by telling him that if he pays attention he will quickly discover that the Danes, in fact, take offense like the rest of the world, and sometimes even much faster than the rest of the world. To this, the scientist, who before coming to Denmark worked in Japan for 10 years, makes this remark: “you know, you’re right, the Danes are not as good psychoanalysts as the Japanese. They are not so good at reading signs.” That was a priceless addition. It should have slowed me down. I didn’t.

Next, I go over to the ambassador, and start conversing about academic life and how I loathe certain aspects of it. All this happens in the presence of a très élègant Monsieur le Général. I turn to him and tell him that the ambassador is a reactionary. As the ambassador accuses me of being a dogmatic Marxist in turn, a baffled general hesitantly asks: but you like each other, n’est pas? Mais oui, I quickly reply, before the ambassador has a chance to say anything. I say, “we like each other because he is an open-minded reactionary and I’m an open-minded Marxist.” Whatever Monsieur le Général thought, he thought. When we parted, however, he gave me a marvelously courteous hand kiss, while bowing grand cavalier style with these words: “ahhh, Madame la professeur.” We were evidently both enchanted.

But before the final departure, there was cognac. Romanian style. While sipping the liquor I turn to the Czech ambassador, and deliver a stereotype. As I hand him my card, I tell him that the only reason why I carry such things with me is because I want to get invited to private events that involve string quartets, and as I know that the Czechs are particularly good at that, I expect him to do me the favor. He hurries to promise me that he will, and I believe him. Then we have some very good laughs on account of languages. He’s a polyglot. When the Romanian ambassador approaches us, he tells me: “you know, this guy also thinks that I’m a reactionary.” I turn to the Czech and commit the intentional fallacy: “so you must be a Marxist.” To this, he replies, “my dear, I prefer to think that I’m a human being.” “Oh, there goes a German idealist,” I think to myself, and I instantly get Schleiermacher’s picture in my head.

At the end of the day, I wonder, whether I managed to be diplomatic – read that as nice – to anybody at all. I was. The financial half of the owners of Tante T asked interesting questions and I replied politely – but not before I said to him, after he had disclosed that he was a politician, that if he was a liberalist, I would have nothing to say to him. He wasn’t.

Overall, I wonder what Freud would have made of so much good humored laughter. Meanwhile, thanks are in order: His Excellency, Mr. ambassador Paleologu, thanks for a great evening – as ever.

ALTERNATIVE ALTER(N)ATIONS

This week several of my friends have asked me why I seriously don’t consider changing lanes. All of these friends, who posed this question – and incidentally almost simultaneously – have benefited from some of my special skills, such as performing old fashioned Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis on them or teaching them Iyengar yoga. My best friend can testify. He’s been through the whole machinery and on both accounts came out the other side successfully.

It occurred to me, however, that I’m not sure he has ever understood any of it. But the good news is that he knows that understanding as such is one of my least priorities. Where these matters are concerned I prefer the process of getting there – or pretending to get there – to arriving at some ‘concrete’ self-knowledge. In fact, I’m more interested in observing how knowledge, more often than not, eludes us. On the other hand, I don’t worry too much. Since I don’t have the papers to prove that I’m a bona fide practitioner of either psychoanalysis (for some 10 years) or yoga (for some 20 years), I like to reserve myself the right to justify through that why I failed, should I fail. So, why not changing lanes in spite of missing diplomas, or perhaps because of everything else? While pondering this question, I’ve decided to ask my friends why they trust me to take them places they’ve never experienced before. Here’s what they said, almost in unison, about what they found fascinating and worth the while in my ‘teachings’.

Relating to psychoanalysis:

1. The fact that I rarely fall for bullshit.
2. The fact that I always allow the other to know where I’m at.
3. The fact that I always allow the other to know where he or she is at in relation to statement 2.
4. The fact that I always know why people articulate stupidities even when they are not stupid.
5. The fact that I always see a projection even when it’s not transparent – this is often related to statement 4.
6. The fact that, relating to 4 & 5, I always say, “cut the crap”. The result is remarkably efficient, every time.
7. The fact that I can always identify the situation when the statement, “if it’s not about your mother, then it’s certainly not about me, but yourself” is true.
8. The fact that I always play free agent, even when I’m not – having or not having diplomas or being in some other such constraints doesn't bother me.

Relating to yoga:

1. The fact that I only need to say it once in order for it to work: “stretch it mentally – the physics of it comes later.”

Lists. Yes, they always have the potential to turn into mission statements. Thus I say this to you – special friends – you know who you are – that if I go professional, next time I ask you: “the couch or the mat?”, I’ll follow with this: “we can talk about the price later”.

CONSTELLATION-TESSELLATION

Last night I’ve been accused of math fetishism. I had a four hour reading stretch – without interruption – about what in math is called group theory. After a short stint around different people’s different explanations of how to better understand or prove Cantor’s theorem, on occasion I heard myself saying: Cantor’s diagonal argument is so beautiful, and group theory is just awesome! Of course I know nothing about math, but I don’t let my lack of knowledge stop me – especially not when – and let’s establish this once and for all – knowledge itself has never been, nor will it ever be science. So, call me a romantic, as I like the idea of approaching something we know nothing about, not because that activity might confer on us a sense of getting scientifically illuminated, but because it has the potential to disturb the silence within us: for example, Cantor has this effect on me: he makes me want to shut the fuck up, while saying it out loud. However, as my reading took place against the background of another kind of noise – Roskilde University, which is my new neighbor, celebrated its annual fest (with the polyester suits in the morning saying farewell to our principal who got a better job in Dublin and is now off to greener administrations, and the masquerading costumes embodying restless students in the evening) – I could see that my own silent evening activity could be interpreted as a sign of mild madness.

But as a thought came to my mind, around 11 pm, I decided to go out on the balcony. While looking at a magical moon, yellow like a pumpkin and having the shape of a UFO ready to descend upon the campus and abduct some inebriated subjects, I was reminded of the fact that with the rise of the scientific discourse, some time around Newton’s time, silence was instituted in the institutions that were producing knowledge with view to astonish. This is not a bad thing in itself, if only people would not have forgotten to communicate their astonishment in turn. Those familiar with the renaissance and pre-renaissance discourses will know that everything that surrounded celestial and earthly phenomena was explained then by learned men in terms of these phenomena’s relation to sound. Actually this interest in the relation of objects to scholars’ formulation of a science which constructs them went through an evaluation of sound, and it goes, at least, all the way back to Solomon and David (who after having grown impotent and thus unable to explore the feminine power and voice wrote psalms and songs that celebrated a whole lot of noise in heaven). In an interesting paper, Newton was called one of “the last astrologists” by Lord Keynes, who pointed out that Newton’s diligent reading of the bible grounded his formulation of his theory of gravity in his interpretation of signs according to their ability to sing the praise of singularity. And so it goes.

Why am I writing this? No particular reason. I am inconsistent with myself. But here's a thought nonetheless. While I may not have participated last night in the carnival that gathered groups of people together next door, I think that my reading about group theory’s arranging itself around closure, identity, inversion, and association, gave me more than plenty to think about, if nothing else, then, at least, the moon’s transformation from a bulb of fire into a cloud, falling into my own permutation group. Here, I want to reserve myself the right to permute consistency, or the urge to follow this or that convention, and thus destabilize the gravity of the gregarian spirit. As my good old friend Oscar Wilde used to say: “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

WELT IM BLAUEN

For Anonymous

Upon seeing Per Kirkeby’s series of five paintings at Louisiana, Wald-variation, the one in the middle recalls for me a Shakespearian setting. Thinking of architecture, I turn to my husband and tell him: "there’s Romeo and Juliet’s Verona." While admiring what in my head are three arcades, I continue saying that I can almost hear Juliet’s dress swishing on the traversing balcony. Although Kirkeby’s main color is green, I see Juliet’s dress as blue as the blue Tiziano used in his depiction of Ariosto. “Arcades?”, my husband goes. “Forget setting. What you see is Romeo, Juliet, and Anonymous." “Woa, some revelation,” I think to myself. The setting falls into the background. Sex and sensuality emerge from the image. I see myself at home. “Which of the two,” I ask? “We’ll have both,” he says. Sometimes husbands have all the correct answers. First Juliet died. Then Romeo died. Juliet did it again, shortly after her resurrection. We don’t know what happened to Anonymous. This uncertainty builds on architectonic knowledge. The window of opportunity is open towards the world of potential not the world of principle. Was it this that made Orlando Furioso?

RES IPSA LOQUITUR - IN REVERSE

On the question of symmetry’s own relation to both thought and desire, the conclusion is this: it all revolves around potential not principle. It may be that when considering desire we may say that all things revolve around drives (some would call this biology; the sophisticated ones will bring in Lacan), but in considering thinking, questions arise: what if there’s more? (some would call this metaphysics; the sophisticated ones will bring in geometry, and then call it chaos theory).

The nonsense perpetrated for ages, which dictates that one cannot, at the same time, be both a mathematician (able to calculate desire) and a poet (able to imagine the effects of desire), has been surpassed by all those whose prime characteristic actions are these: 1) not to hesitate, and 2) not to anticipate what is not in one’s power to anticipate. A mathematician and a poet will thus take potential over principle any time, all the time. On a deeper level, the implication of claiming the position of being both/and is that the mathematician/poet will always be able to make the ultimate gesture: to offer trust in another's actions even when these actions are identified as being the effect of self-delusion, such as we find them in this situation: act 1) we go with principles, but, act 2) we don't believe in them. Where symmetry is concerned there is always, already only one bottom line, if one cares to take the time to recognize it. And when perfect symmetry occurs, it occurs in and of itself beyond and above drive and drone. What kind of magic is there in it, for us?

I’ll pose this question to Anthony Johnson, specialist in Renaissance literature, the only alchemist professor I know who is both a mathematician and a poet, who knows perfect symmetry, and doesn’t mind telling me about it. What say you, my friend? I’ve been reading the other Jonson’s marvelous text, Masque of Beautie, and was reminded of your essay on collaborative form. “Dost thou not know me? I, too well, know thee…” Fling the symmetry, Anthony!

HAIR PHILOSOPHY

My hair-dresser, a gay Australian, wants to know what I think of after a day's work. I tell him that I think of thinking. Then he asks: "of the Danes?" "Why would I do that?", I ask in return? "Because they are so strange," he says.

This statement comes from the mouth of someone who speaks perfect Danish, no accent, and who has been living here the past 12 years. I ask him if he wants me to generalize. He says, "no, I want the special story." So I tell him the special story, that I love all the Danes I know, because not only are they the most decent people I've encountered on the planet, but also because their intelligence is quite astonishing. I also tell him that I also love some Danes that I don't really know, but whom I am certain that I know that I know. At this moment, I experience a deja-vù. I'm sure that I feel like Donald Rumsfeld - he also had a famous 'knowing' moment, when he once declared that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. "Well, yes," my hair-dresser continues. "Everybody knows this" - that we know people that we don't know. "This is logik for perlehøns," he furthermore says. Right I think.

Then he wants to know, "now what?" I tell him that I want to go home, have a nice Pinot Noir and listen to Kathleen Ferrier. "Why Ferrier?", he asks. "Because it sounds like hair," I tell him. "Like hair and fair, and Guy Davenport's short story "Boys Smell like Oranges" from his collection The Cardiff Team, where he merges sensuality with bookishness in order to achieve a kind of intellectual eroticism that makes Kafka feel good in his pants." If it's not logik for perlehøns, then it's certainly, some knowledge that affords us the possibility to unknow the ones that we don't know we know, so that we can just say that we know them, no matter what. That knowing in itself creats enough mental scenarios to keep us entertained. My hair-dresser goes: "that's right." I have to admit that, once at home, such knowledge made me feel good in my hair.