An Ode to Xmas Present

An  Ode  to  Xmas  Present   David  W.  Jardine,  University  of  Calgary     Please  don't  let  me  fear  anything  I  cannot  explain.   I  can't  believe   I'll  never  believe   In  anything  again.       from  Elvis  Costello,  "Couldn't  Call  it  Unexpected  No.  4"  (1991)        

                    (Pope,  2015)       It  is  always  rather  disturbing  to  discover  that  something  that  I  have  felt  or   believed  or  been  resigned  to  or  took  to  be  true  is  a  fabrication  that  has  no  necessity   to  it  at  all.  There  is  a  terrible  vertigo  that  comes  in  finding  that  believing  it  to  be   permanent  or  beyond  question  or  fixed  is  just  the  outcome  of  causes  and  conditions   that  have  fallen  from  memory  and  view.  Such  occluding  amnesia  is,  it  seems,  a   perennial  part  of  the  human  condition.  It  makes  my  intimate  and  heartfelt   experiences  seem  immediate  and  obvious  and  "simply  the  way  things  are."  A  life  of   semblance  has  its  own  comforts,  of  course.  Such  "moon-­‐sickness"  (p.  25)  makes  it   hard  to  see  straight  after  recent  events,  and  not  let  the  inherited-­‐and-­‐forgotten   immediacies  of  media  flurries  turn  to  white  outs  and  skidding  off  the  road.  Nice   Canadian  metaphors,  eh?  There  is  nothing  necessary  about  freedom  of  speech  just   as  there  is  nothing  necessary  about  real  or  feigned  religious  affrontery.  Such  things   only  persist  in  the  persistence  of  one  or  another  kind  of  "attention  and  devotion"   (Berry  1986,  p.  33).  Even  studious  claims  of  "false  flag  operations"  (Barrett  2015)  

 

are  fabrications  of  fabrications.  I  mention  this  last  thread  following  on  conversations   with  a  friend  where  we  spoke  of  what  happens  when  every  single  event  in  the  world   becomes  full  of  a  monotonously  same  hiddenness.  When  I  got  to  this  point  in   writing,  I  knew  that  if  I  looked,  there  would  be  false  flag  commentaries.  Of  course.   It's  simply  the  way  things  are.  It's  like  Santa  Claus,  who  is  always  just  out  of  view   and  because  you've  never  seen  him,  that  provides  that  he  exists.  The  CIA  as  the  new   monotheism  behind  every  event,  and  all-­‐new  arguments  from  design  take  center   stage  in  off  stage  suspicions.       Yet  please,  I  plead,  don't  get  me  wrong.  It  is  my  lovely  friend  lying  there  in   that  cartoon,  and  our  love  itself  lying  bled  out  with  glasses  bent  and  askew.     When  vertigo  strikes,  possibilities  become  endless  and  the  bleeding  cannot   be  stopped.     Hans-­‐Georg  Gadamer  (1989,  p.  xxii)  nailed  something  of  this  phenomenon   with  great  precision  and  a  wicked  sting:  "the  naive  self-­‐esteem  of  the  present   moment."  To  find  that  the  world  is  nothing  but  Santa  Clauses  all  the  way  down,  and   to  feel  again  and  again  that  terrible  ear  popping  of  growing  up  that  came  with   finding  out  the  truths  about  this  taken-­‐to-­‐be-­‐saint,  and  the  whole  worlds  of   experience  that  had  to  be  left  behind  in  such  finding-­‐-­‐such  is  the  lot  of   interpretation.  Once  glimpsed,  nothing  can  stop  this  cascading  collapse,  not  even  the   ground  on  which  that  body  slumps.     But  it  is  essential  that  this  be  properly  counterbalanced,  because  the  naive   self-­‐esteem  of  the  present  moment  is  only  initially  replaced  with  a  vague  humiliation   at  having  been  so  sleepy  and  at  the  hot  bile  that  comes  up  the  esophagus.  This  pivot   point  is  profoundly  important,  because  if  one  gets  stuck  there,  what  can  follow  is  a   life  of  cynicism,  paranoia,  and  complaint  and  the  life  goal  of  breaking  everyone  else's   bubble  in  an  act  of  skillful  woe.  There  is,  right  at  this  pivot,  a  "hitherto  concealed   experience"  (Gadamer  1989,  p.  100)  -­‐-­‐a  way  of  engaging  this  vertigo  world  of   dependent  arising  -­‐-­‐  whose  bristling  radiance  far  outshines  what  was  lost  in  the   shifting.  In  fact,  I'd  venture  that  what  is  gained  is  an  understanding  that  there  is,  in   fact,  something  "true"  of  the  thunder  and  lightning  of  reindeer,  and  the  saintliness  of   the  gift,  and  the  Northern  Hemispheric  brainstem  draw  of  passing  the  stopping  of   the  sun's  sinking  and  feeling  its  tropos,  its  "turning,"  that  goes  far  beyond  the  surface   story.  There  is  something  true  in  the  arrival  of  the  child  that  outruns  every  attempt   to  give  it  a  proper  name.  Even  your  eye's  ability  to  dance  over  these  words  belies   fundamentalism  of  any  sort,  whether  Christian,  Islamic  or  hidden  or  overt  American   ops  in  the  name  of  freedom  and  terror.  Fuck  that.  And  this  isn't  either  for  or  against   Christianity,  Islam  or  America.  It  is  against  false  and  delusional  believing  that  turns   the  agony  of  our  living  into  something  we  don't  have  to  face,  over  and  over  again.     Robert  Bly  said  it  somewhere:  if  you  want  to  survive  this  world,  study.  But   not  the  bland  study  of  piling  one  piece  after  another  of  "amassed  verified   knowledge"  (Gadamer  1989,  p.  xxi)  on  top  of  a  pile  whose  weight  simply  weighs  us   down  and  confirms  our  cynicism  and  gives  us  grey  gravity.  No.  The  studying  that   provides  some  relief  to  the  weight  of  the  world  is  studying  one's  living  itself,   studying  that  very  movement  of  vertigo  that  comes  in  the  collapsing  of  the  world   and  the  arrival  of  the  child.  We  build  it  up  to  let  it  go.  The  goal  is  not  gravity  but   lightness,  even  in  the  face  of  a  fellow  writer  killed  for  writing,  killed  for  the  very  

giggled  child-­‐heralding  that  is  writing's  goal,  pushed  up  against  the  senilities,   seriousness,  and  naive  self-­‐esteem  of  the  present  circumstances.  Trickster  poof  and   prod  and  dance,  pivoting  on  that  sidewalk  even  in  the  moment  of  being  shot,  of   falling.     Like  this:  to  herald  that  a  child  is  born  is  something  that  will  take  a  lifetime   and  more  to  fully  understand.  Because  that  child  will  awaken  in  our  loving  arms  and   see  Ferguson,  Missouri,  hear  of  Michael  Brown,  see  cartoonists  being  offensive  and   being  shot  for  it,  see  claims  of  hidden  hands  at  work  in  the  world,  and  evidence  upon   evidence  of  muttered  common  breaths  co-­‐inspiring  ("Hush,  a  child  is  born,  I  hear"),   and  look  us  in  the  eye  and  say  "what?"  What  is  this?  What  the  hell  is  going  on?  That,   I'm  afraid  to  say  (because  saying  so  lays  out  a  "terrible  trial"  [Berry  &  Moyers,  2013]   of  being  patient  in  an  erupting  emergency  that  follows  in  the  wake  of  such  giving),  is   the  magi's  gift  no  matter  how  or  whether  we  answer  these  questions.       And  I  get  it,  this  contradiction  between  the  eruption  of  the  child  and  the  call   to  grow  up  and  give  up  the  naivety  of  believing.       Freedom  of  speech  is  a  fabrication  the  protection  of  which  is  a  decision,  not  a   God-­‐given  or  God-­‐forbidden  right.  Decide.     Guess  what  God,  the  CIA,  the  faculty  I'm  leaving,  the  flags,  false  or  otherwise,   the  scurrying,  the  distraction,  the  fear  mongered  and  felt?  Guess  what,  Xmas?  Guess   what,  Gadamer?  I  don't  believe  in  any  of  you.       Instead,  I  write.  That  is  how  I  love  you  all.     Je  suis  Charlie,  but  guess  what?  I  don't  believe  that  either.     Happy  Xmas,  then.     References   Barrett,  K.  (2015).  Planted  ID  card  exposes  Paris  false  flag.  PressTV.  January  10,   2015.  On-­‐line:  http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/01/10/392426/Planted-­‐ID-­‐ card-­‐exposes-­‐Paris-­‐false-­‐flag   Berry,  W.  (1986).  The  unsettling  of  America:  Essays  in  culture  and  agriculture.  San   Francisco:  Sierra  Club  Books.   Berry,  W.  &  Moyers,  B.  (2013)  Writer  and  farmer  Wendell  Berry  on  hope,  direct   action,  and  the  "resettling"  of  the  American  countryside.  Yes  Magazine,  posted   online  October  11,  2013  at:  http://www.yesmagazine.org.     Costello,  E.  (1991).  Couldn't  call  it  unexpected  No.  4.  From  E.  Costello  Mighty  Like  a   Rose.  First  issue  on  Warner  Brothers  Records,  #26575     Pope,  D.  (2015).  "Can't  sleep  tonight  .  .  .".  Posted  on  twitter,  January  7,2015.  On-­‐line:   https://twitter.com/davpope/status/552844593046097920/photo/1.