Choices, so many choices. Which horrible could it be? Annus horribilis libris? Annus horribilis serpens?
This year, beginning in February with the Mongolian new year, is a black snake year. It means you would best not be an astrological snake, but also it’s a good year to stay home. In the beginning of the lunar new year, several senior Buddhist chaps basically said they were staying home, staying in, giving no empowerments, see you in the year of the horse. Right, then. Also, don’t break ground to build a house.
Two weeks ago, inspired by artist Navine G. Dossos’ year of not buying clothing, I put some thought to what I buy and what I need. I decided to do a double year: no new textiles (because beyond clothing, I have a thing for bedding), and no books. No books, yes, that is what I said. The day after I proposed this to Wayne, we went to a diner for breakfast which happens to be next to my favorite bookstore in Austin, Alienated Majesty. He bought three books, I bought none. (I took a picture of a cover. I wonder if in a years time my phone photos will be full of book covers?)
There are 37 book cases in our house, and also there are stacks of books because we have run out of shelf space. For me, about 40% of those are mine. Of my books, I would estimate I have 150 or so that I have not read. In the past few anni horribili of the PhD, I buy more than I read, and not just academic books. I’ve pluralized the latin as though it is Italian, could not help myself. I can’t make the case (collapses laughing at the geekiness) for any other path. I am pluralizing in the future, the future of the language, give it a millenium to evolve and I can pluralize at will. Also, 60% of those shelves are not full of my books and there is probably only about a 50% overlap in our book ownership. So, I shall not suffer in some bookless world. I shall still read. Also, I have a library card (or five).
I posted a story on instagram of some of my shelves and about my year without buying books, and I got laugh emojis in response. Apparently my closest people do not believe I can do this. To be fair, I cannot think of a single year long period that I have gone without buying books since I left college, possibly before. I used to save my money in SF when I was in my early 20s, skipping meals if need be, to be able to buy a few books per month. I can’t remember before that, but my childhood home was full of books and I am certain my mother, to this day, could not make it a week, let alone a year, without buying a book.
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In Susan Hiller’s The Provisional Texture of Reality (a title I wish I had to use), she begins the first essay on Tarkovsky with, “The late anthropologist Alfred Gell said about nature: ‘anybody’s idea of nature is likely to be heavily theory-impregnated'”. She then goes on to consider Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and the sentient planet with visitors and the horror of the unreal and the inability to comprehend what reality could be, on this planet. Solaris, the Stanislaw Lem book, is one I have turned back to several times in the past year. As Hiller notes, “The encounter with the unknown in Solaris is a problem of non-communication. Humans cannot make contact with the ocean that is Solaris, because they try to deal with it in instrumental ways rather than by intuitive or imaginary means.”
What, you may wonder, is horrid about this? Well nothing precisely, but something, imprecisely. In that my PhD thesis is about encounters with ‘the sub-surface’ but in most instances the beings that I encounter in the subsurface are a problem of communication, but not a concern that feels imaginary or instrumental, but embodied and intuitive. If by intuitive I mean: have I got a clue about what just happened and was that real? Which inevitably leads to a question about what is real, and how I would know, and then I’ve fallen off the edge of geography and into philosophy, the forbidden land.
I picked up Hiller this morning, a book I’ve had, along with many of her others, for far longer than this crackpot idea of getting a PhD has been an actuality in my life. As I was saying, I picked up this one in particular as I was curious about some of the more anthropological structurings of her thoughts, and I’ve been struggling with some writing. It wasn’t particularly helpful but the serif font was so pleasing I changed the font of the draft I am working on today, and it seemed to help…something.
In the context of my PhD I’ve had to study some Buddhist philosophy and been involved in Vajrayana Buddhist things to provide deeper contextual understanding to all things Mongolian that I research. Prior to this, my meditation practices were aligned to Hindu(ish) philosophies.
It is not lost on me that in the latter ‘one’ exists in ever unchanging form, and in the former, ‘one’ does not exist. Which is to say, in the former reality is an illusion due to one’s own misperception, and the latter, reality is an independent flow of things that one perceives but is not true. Is it real because I experience it as real, or is it real despite what I perceive? Two sides of a coin. Two truths at once opposite and true. Whether or not I exist, whether or not my research subjects exist, and whether or not the research data exists, I am still in writing up year. All of it does exist, of course, but does it?
I am reminded of one of my thesis advisor noting that a thesis must be ‘internally consistent’ and thus I shall choose a reality and write from there. Dear examiners, please accept that here we must run as fas as we can, just to stay in place. And while the Red Queen thought it was twice as fast we must run to go anywhere, perhaps running half as fast will also get us there.