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These days, it has become clear that the only furniture that counts is that of the innermost dwelling. Therefore, “home” must be no more than the clearing in the forest described by Spanish philosopher María Zambrano:

"The forest clearing is a center into which it is not always possible to enter; from the edge, you look at it and the appearance of some animal tracks does not help to take that step. It is another domain that a soul inhabits and guards. Some bird warns and calls us to go wherever it goes by marking a trail with its voice. And it is obeyed; then nothing is found, nothing that is not an intact place that seems to have opened in that single moment and that will never happen like that again.
And the fear of ecstasy makes its visitor flee from the living translucency of the forest clearing, thus becoming an intruder. And if he enters as an intruder, he hears the bird’s voice as a reproach and as mockery: “you were looking for me and now, when I am finally propitious to you, you return to that place where you cannot breathe.”
In Zambrano, we hear the echo of Isaac Luria. The bird’s voice slashes passages in the air, it opens space. That forest clearing, bounded by the twilight of our own umbrage, is the walled garden of paradise for whose memory we feel a deep nostalgia. This is not a place but an instant to which we return, or we try to return, continuously, and just when we remember the path, it is precisely memory that takes us away from it. Memory is a vector that derails experience and then throws us out of that moment empty of mirrors. This is how we know that this moment is not accessed through liturgy, that is, through the language of the other."

It is important to make the distinction between the languages ​​of contemplation and those of action. The language of the birds is a contemplative language. It delivers its messages directly, the meaning of which disappears; it ceases to be understood as soon the stimulus ends, that is, once the bird is silent. Contemplative languages ​​are languages ​​of direct experience, languages ​​of “what is.” The occurrence of such language is equivalent to that of dreams in the sense that it paralyzes the physical body while agitating the subtle core. For contemplative languages ​​to have a foothold in the world, we must translate them into languages ​​of action. Any mother tongue is precisely a language of action, the lingo through which we operate our reality. A contemplative language establishes the field where we avail ourselves of our own language of action.

The clearing is a glint, that moment between the language of contemplation and the language of action. The essence of being human is our ability to trip ourselves up.

“The other” is not only the predecessor that imposes a ceremony on us but ourselves a minute ago, the one that, holding on to self-awareness, cannot breathe in the space that the bird opens with its song. The paradox is in returning to a place of which we have no memory and for which we nevertheless long. That would perhaps be the definition of the future, but only if the future is the spot where things are named for the first time, and this name is imposed with enough gentleness that it does not completely trample what is named. Because to name is to breathe life into things—this would be a place that only exists for an instant and on whose endurance we depend, as in a heartbeat, as in breathing.

If by following the bird’s voice we return to paradise, then we will say that the bird’s voice is paradise, another garment for the laughter of the madman, a garden from which we are expelled as soon as we realize that we are in it. That is the true state of grace, the fall that pledges a return. The only way to avoid this exile would be to prevent words from sprouting in us. That is, to stop being human. To name the garden is to be cast out of it. We dare this orphanhood because of the imperative to tell others about its reality and because, from that momentary loss, we understand that this state we long for is our true home.

All my best, Ee.

Comment se servir d'un kindle comme terminal

Rubik’s Cube

1. Socrates

They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. They also say that a line is a series of points. Here we will claim that life is a line of moments, and among these there is always one that opens the door to posterity: one must simply know how to find it, by lining up the right place and the right time. If we also manage to adorn the moment with an inspired turn of phrase, we will probably pave the path to glory (and the clever utterance will then become the shortest distance between fame and oblivion). But if we miss the mark, we will most certainly be condemned to be forgotten forever. This inflexion point between fame and oblivion is what Axel Browling aptly calls “the biographer’s tidbit.”[1]

But Socrates has not read Browling when, one hung-over morning in the year 435 BC, he wakes up with a dry mouth. If he had read him, he might be more cautious today. However, they say that Socrates, in addition to being ugly, is also reckless. There is a short epigraph carved into his headboard, quoting one of the adages inscribed atop the Oracle of Delphi: ˝γνῶθι σεαυτόν.”[2] He has spent several weeks reflecting on this curious maxim, and last night, surrounded by jugs of wine and drunken acolytes, he had a sort of revelation. And they say that Socrates can drink more than anybody without losing an atom of his wits. So he was not surprised when, just as a slug of wine was leaving the safety of the palate to plunge into the arcane abyss of the esophagus, a clever phrase appeared in his mind. A clever phrase that was surely destined to cause a sensation among his circle of interlocutors, and no shortage of conundrums for contemporary exegetes and future biographers. Before the wine reached his stomach, Socrates opened his mouth; however, observing the alcohol-soaked circumstances, he closed it again. “No sense squandering clever phrases,” he must have thought. “I’ll save it for the right time and place.”

Thus, not having read Browling, Socrates calmly stands up, his mouth slightly dry. He prepares an infusion of chamomile, gargles to clear his voice, and strides off toward the agora with an air of self-satisfaction. Last night he spread the word that today he would reveal something important, and the marketplace is bustling with anticipation. Socrates arrives at the square. Socrates steps up to the dais. Socrates clears his throat. And, expecting thunderous applause, Socrates says: “Je pense, donc je suis.”[3]

2. Descartes

They say that, when an obstacle arises, the shortest distance between two points is a curved line. They also say that there are two kinds of artists: those who ask questions and those who provide answers. Faced with an obstacle, those who ask questions stop and open investigations; those who provide answers prefer the risk of an unknown curve. The problem is that the artists who give answers tend to die misunderstood, because sometimes they answer questions that have not yet been asked. The answer is then obligated to wait in the bottom of a box until humanity manages to pose the right question. This is what Axel Browling scientifically defines as “chronological discrepancy by anticipation.”[4]

But Descartes had not read Browling when, one chilly night in 1637, he heard a knock at his door. He had just finished drafting the clean copy of the final page of his new philosophical treatise. They say that he had actually written it four years beforehand, but that shortly after signing a contract with his bookseller, he received the horrible news of one of the greatest aberrations in history: Galileo Galilei was to be burned at the stake if he would not renounce his attempt to turn the Earth into a spinning top. “E pur si muove,”[5] the Italian is rumored to have hissed sotto voce, finding himself transformed into one of the greatest heretics of all time. But at the moment Descartes was in no mood for metaphysical temper tantrums, so he waited a while, aware of the scorching consequences his work was likely to incur upon publication. And so, Descartes spent those four years growing tulips and translating his magnum opus, initially written in Latin, into French (taking advantage of the opportunity to leave a few orthodoxically inappropriate phrases foundering in the inkwell). He most certainly did not neglect to save the best for last: the last sentence of the treatise not only would “revolutionize the history of Western philosophy” (in Descartes’ own words), but was also a synthesis of and key to the whole work. Finally, after four years, at the urging of his friends, his ego, and above all an ultimatum from his publisher, he decided to publish the treatise—unsigned and in French.[6]

So it was that, one chilly night in 1637, as Descartes, not having read Browling, was fastidiously transcribing the final paragraphs of his ambitious work, he heard a knock at his door. It was his bookseller. “Have a seat, I’m almost finished,” Descartes invited him, eager once and for all to turn his grey matter into printer’s ink. Descartes sat down. Descartes finished the treatise. Descartes stood up. And, with a smile on his lips, Descartes handed over the manuscript, not realizing that the last thing he had written was something along the lines of “e = mc2”.

3. Einstein

They say that if we could fold a rolling paper in half forty-nine times, the thickness would be equal to the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Nine more folds and we could reach the Sun. And with twenty more folds we’d be at Alpha Centauri. Surely, with a few more folds, we would reach God, and barge in on him playing with the universe like a person fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube. Indeed, Alex Browling used the metaphor of the Rubik’s Cube to explain his so-called “Browling’s conjecture,” according to which time and space are two concentric spheres which, in extraordinary situations, can fall out of alignment. This is what he defined, somewhat apocalyptically, as a “Rubik’s crack.”[7]

But Browling’s theories will be of no use to Einstein when, one peaceful morning in 1905, he picks up a piece of chalk before the attentive gaze of one hundred eyes. At this time, we shall spare the details of the event and skip without further ado to the end of the story, which any attentive reader familiar with modern prose will already have guessed.[8] We will only say that Einstein was getting ready at that very moment to write on the chalkboard the mathematical formula that would forever refute the majority of physical theories theretofore considered valid. Einstein will pick up the chalk. Einstein lifted his hand. And, ineluctably, Einstein writes: “I only know that I know nothing.”[9]

Epilogue

Someone once said that to be a genius is to designate oneself as a genius and to be correct. Socrates, Descartes, and Einstein had a chance to achieve posterity, but they designated themselves as geniuses and failed in the attempt. Whether Browling’s conjecture and Rubik’s crack are related to this failure is something we shall leave up to the reader’s interpretation. In any case, here we have sought to shed light on the frustrated existence of three figures who could have been famous and were not; perhaps rescuing them now from oblivion is a fair homage to their hard work and dedication. Socrates was condemned to drink hemlock, accused of corrupting the youth (certainly, the strange and sensual sonority of the French language did not help in his defense). Descartes was burned at the stake because his inexplicable formula e = mc2 was interpreted by some as “enfer = moi et le double de Christ” (and the double of Christ is none other than the Antichrist); or as “enfer = magie carrément cartesienne.” Finally, Einstein was deemed mad and committed to an insane asylum. To all of them, in memoriam, we offer our deepest respect and admiration.

[1] Browling, Axel. The Sky: An Epistemology of Fame. New York: Starworks, 1995, pp. 44-45.

[2] “Know thyself”

[3] “I think, therefore I am,” in impeccable seventeenth-century French

[4] Browling, op. cit., pp. 174-179.

[5] “And yet it moves.”

[6] It should be noted that, at that time, publishing a philosophical or scientific text in French was at best unconventional.

[7] Browling, op. cit., pp. 201-218.

[8] For more information on Einstein’s conference and what occurred there, see Pablo Martín Sánchez, Estudios cronotópicos, Ediciones del Bombín, Barcelona, 1998, vol. 2, ch. VIII.

[9] In ancient Greek, to confuse matters more: ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα.