Jamais Vu

[Image: “Ocean,” by Pawel Kuczynski. I could have selected any of his images to illustrate this post,
but this one called to me more insistently than the others.]

From whiskey river:

Imaginary Paintings

1. HOW I WOULD PAINT THE FUTURE

A strip of horizon and a figure,
seen from the back, forever approaching.

2. HOW I WOULD PAINT HAPPINESS

Something sudden, a windfall,
a meteor shower. No—
a flowering tree releasing
all its blossoms at once,
and the one standing beneath it
unexpectedly robed in bloom,
transformed into a stranger
to beautiful to touch.

3. HOW I WOULD PAINT DEATH

White on white or black on black.
No ground, no figure. An immense canvas,
which I will never finish.

4. HOW I WOULD PAINT LOVE

I would not paint love.

5. HOW I WOULD PAINT THE LEAP OF FAITH

A black cat jumping up three feet
to reach a three-inch shelf.

6. HOW I WOULD PAINT THE BIG LIE

Smooth, and deceptively small
so that it can be swallowed
like something we take for a cold.
An elongated capsule,
an elegant cylinder,
sweet and glossy,
that pleases the tongue
and goes down easy,
never mind
the poison inside.

7. HOW I WOULD PAINT NOSTALGIA

An old-fashioned painting, a genre piece.
People in bright and dark clothing.
A radiant bride in white
standing above a waterfall,
watching the water rush
away, away, away.

(Lisel Mueller [source])

…and:

…there are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof. We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of “right” and “wrong”. We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all. For these questions, we can gather evidence and debate, but in the end we cannot arrive at any system of analysis akin to the way in which a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a one-foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing. The previous questions are questions of aesthetics, morality, philosophy. These are questions for the arts and the humanities. These are also questions aligned with some of the intangible concerns of traditional religion…

Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world.

(Alan Lightman [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Vernal Sentiment

Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places,
The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green,
And boys moon at girls with last year’s fatuous faces,
I never am bored, however familiar the scene.

When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter,—
Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between,—
Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter:
I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.

(Theodore Roethke [source])

…and:

Mrs. Donnelly played Miss McCloud’s Reel for the children and Joe made Maria take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry again and Mrs. Donnelly said Maria would enter a convent before the year was out… Maria had never seen Joe so nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and reminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.

At last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would she not sing some little song before she went, one of the old songs. Mrs. Donnelly said “Do, please, Maria!” and so Maria had to get up and stand beside the piano. Mrs. Donnelly bade the children be quiet and listen to Maria’s song. Then she played the prelude and said “Now, Maria!” and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny quavering voice. She sang I Dreamt that I Dwelt, and when she came to the second verse she sang again:

I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride.

I had riches too great to count; could boast
Of a high ancestral name,
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same.

But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her song Joe was very much moved. He said that there was no time like the long ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other people might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his wife to tell him where the corkscrew was.

(James Joyce [source])

…and (the speakers are an anonymous colonel acting as a judge at a military trial, and Clevinger — on trial, more or less, for insisting on common sense and decency):

“…Cadet Clevinger, will you please repeat what the hell it was you did or didn’t whisper to Yossarian late last night in the latrine?”

“Yes, sir. I said that you couldn’t find me guilty—”

“We’ll take it from there. Precisely what did you mean, Cadet Clevinger, when you said we couldn’t find you guilty?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t find me guilty, sir.”

“When?”

“When what, sir?”

“Goddammit. Are you going to start pumping me again?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Then answer the question. When didn’t you say we couldn’t find you guilty?”

“Late last night in the latrine, sir.”

“Is that the only time you didn’t say it?”

“No, sir. I always didn’t say you couldn’t find me guilty, sir. What I did say to Yossarian was—”

“Nobody asked you what you did say to Yossarian. We asked you what you didn’t say to him. We’re not at all interested in what you did say to Yossarian. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we’ll go on. What did you say to Yossarian?”

“I said to him, sir, that you couldn’t find me guilty of the offense with which I am charged and still be faithful to the cause of…”

“Of what? You’re mumbling.”
[…] “Yes, sir,” mumbled Clevinger. “Of justice, sir. That you couldn’t find—”

“Justice?” The colonel was astounded. “What is justice?”

“Justice, sir—”

“That’s not what justice is,” the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand. “That’s what Karl Marx is. I’ll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That’s what justice is when we’ve all got to be tough enough and rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip. Get it?”

…Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so.

(Joseph Heller [source])

_______________________________

About Billy Petrolle: a professional lightweight boxer in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Petrolle competed for but did not win the world lightweight championship. The colonel’s just saying: You’ve gotta be tough enough in life to fight at least a middlingly successful pro boxer.