"This Be The Verse", by Philip Larkin

Here's an easy-reading poem that caught my attention. It may come across as stark and pessimistic to some, but its a worthwhile read nonetheless. There's much truth in what he's saying, and he says it well.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can.
And don't have any kids yourself.

- Philip Larkin (1974)

I suggest, read it again, its somehow more fun the second time.

Okay, so I may not go as far as to say don't have any kids yourself (well, if you adopt instead, then, much much respect) but the poem makes me wonder, will I hand over misery or be a blessing to my kids? If I want to have kids, do I intend to be the kind of character I myself would like for a dad/mom? Am I gonna make the same mistakes my parents made, or will there be progress? Would it be better for my kids to not be born at all, or would they be glad to have known and experienced me? I realized, if I don't have positive answers to these questions, it'd probably be better I not escort another soul, without his/her permission, into a world such as this. Way too many kids are had so casually, as if having a kid is just as much a no-brainer as buying groceries is. Its so easy to sigh about "kids these days", which is exactly what I heard the pretentious fellow on the bus the other day go on and on about, to his friend (possibly a stranger he met on the bus). His "friend", betraying a look of disinterest that seemed to mock, didn't say anything on the issue, almost as if he didn't have the heart to say, "dude, look at you."

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What was it about her faith that had such tenacity?

Here's an excerpt I felt like sharing, from the book I'm currently reading, Manil Suri's critically acclaimed debut "The Death of Vishnu".

She had displayed a particular softness for religion, so he had tried to introduce her to the ideas, sometimes foreign, sometimes contradictory, that formed the essence of other faiths, to show her that these were all man-made inventions, and one could not be preferred over the other. He had especially tried to impress upon her the story of his favorite Mughal emperor, Akbar, who had come to power in India after a long history of Muslim invaders, but followed a completely different course--not only encouraging other religions, but even marrying Hindu princesses, inviting Christian missionaries to educate his son, and eventually renouncing so much in the pursuit of his own Din Ilahi religion that people said he was no longer a Muslim.

"Think of it, Arifa. An emperor who gave up Islam to unify the subjects in his land, a ruler who said all men were equal, no matter to which religion they were born."

His wife chose not to think about it. "Isn't it enough to lecture me from morning to night about every topic under the sun? What need is there to push this further rubbish down my throat?"

Arifa's resistance only made his resolve grow stronger. He would not rest until he had forced her to confront the irrationality of her beliefs. The harder he labored, though, the more stubbornly she resisted. Eventually, it was she who won--a victory that appalled him, since it represented the defeat of everything he championed--rationality and reason--to so primitive a force as faith.

That was when the absurdity of his situation struck Mr. Jalal. He had knowingly pursued and tied himself to a woman with whom he had little in common. Now she turned out to not even be the blank slate he had expected to fill. Instead, she came programmed with ideas of her own, convictions he had not been able to dislodge, beliefs he might never exorcise.

What was it about Arifa's faith that had such tenacity in the face of his efforts? How could he have underestimated it so disastrously? He had always been proud of his conversance with not only Islam, but all the major religions of the world. He could explain how different beliefs arose and melded with their parent philosophies, detail obscure rituals from Africa to the Amazon practiced in the name of worship. Why, then, did he not understand the mechanism of faith? What did religion do to people, to provoke such obstinancy, such hysteria--how did it push people to the stage of torturing themselves and killing each other?

He had always assumed it was a flaw in people, a human failing, that created this need to believe in something beyond the ordinary. Religion existed to control society, to monitor those without the capacity to think things through for themselves, to provide promises and shimmering images in the sky, so that the urges of the masses could be calmed and regulated. What, after all, did the word 'faith' connote, except a willing blindness to the lack of actual proof? It was only natural that Arifa, with her untended intellect, had to lean on the crutch of faith to negotiate the inscrutability of life. Whereas he did not, in fact could not, have any use for the same.

But then an unexpected doubt arose in Mr. Jalal's mind. What if he was being too arrogant? What if there was another dimension to faith, another way of understanding it, of experiencing it, of which he was simply not capable? What if the shortcoming lay not with Arifa's outlook, but his own--if it was he who was limited, close-minded? After all, wasn't he constantly amazed at the number of very smart people who were believers--hadn't even Einstein professed the existence of God?

The question began to gnaw at Mr. Jalal. The possibility that it was his intellect that might be wanting jabbed at his ego. He brooded for weeks on end about being less complete than Arifa, about being somehow inferior to the hordes of people thronging through the mosques and temples and churches of the city. Every time he saw a sadhu or a mullah, or even a group of worshipers with red temple marks on their foreheads, Mr. Jalal was confronted with the question: was it they who were flawed, or was it he?

Gradually it dawned on him that there was only one way to find out. He would have to try and personally experience this thing they called faith...

I recommend this novel for an in-depth, comic, poetic look at east Indian culture and spirituality.

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What does Switchfoot's "Oh! Gravity." mean?

[Someone on the Switchfoot boards asked what their new single "Oh! Gravity." meant, more specifically what the terms "color bar", "thin man", "red bite" etc. meant. Posted below are the lyrics, followed by my response:]

There’s a fracture in the color bar
In the backseat of a parked car
By the liquor store where the streetlight
Keep you company ‘til the next night

In the same town, there’s the same scar
In the same glow of the liquor store
By the freeway, where the headlight
Keep her company ‘til the next night

Oh! Gravity.
Why can’t we seem to keep it together?
Sons of my enemies,
Why can’t we seem to keep it together?

In the back room of the Pentagon
There’s a thin man with a line drawn
With a red jaw and a red bite
Watch the headline on the next night

Why this tragedy?
Why can’t we seem to keep it together?

In the fallout, the fallout
We found out the hype won’t get you through
We’re connected, connected
I meant it, the hype won’t get you through

Its poetry, you can't expect to nail everything down, unless you ask the poet himself why exactly he wrote things the way he wrote them (sometimes even the poet doesn't know, as in the case of the song "Fatal Wound", which, according to Jon, was a free-association type of thing.) Often, poetry works as a set of images (there are plenty in this song) that make you feel a certain way about something. Sorta like a movie, you "see" what you hear, and it psychologically puts you in a particular mood that the artist wants you to be in when he delivers his punch line (in this case, "why can't we seem to keep it together?")

That said, "Oh! Gravity.", according to switchfoot.com, is a "generational appeal for peace, love and understanding". "Color bar" is the idea of racial segregation. According to Princeton's "lexical database for the English Language", color bar is a "barrier preventing blacks from participating in various activities with whites". So, going by that, Jon is saying that there's a fracture in our society's way of segregating people based on their race. (Here's an article based on the term, it should give you a better idea.)

Note that there's also a fracture "in the backseat of a parked car". This probably ties in with one of the album's themes - our misguided notions of love, of how we're "amateur lovers" and "amateur friends". The backseat of cars is a place that "amateur" lovers frequent - and Jon seems to see a fracture in this image, too.

"In the same glow of the liquor store
By the freeway, where the headlight
Keep her company ‘til the next night"
These lines, to me, reflect the alienation and loneliness in modern society - amidst all the fighting. She's lonely, she has only the headlight to keep her company till the next night. (Interesting to note, there's a liquor store in the background - think of how many people drink their sorrows away... drinking all by themselves. no fun.) Jon's very wisely careful here, he's not making a direct connection between loneliness and liquor, or being anti-drinking for that matter (which I'm sure he's not), but he just cleverly inserts the image of a liquor store in the background. Its a bleak picture he's painting, of this lonely and probably drunk girl by the freeway (she's seems homeless too, 'cause she's gonna be by these headlights "'til the next night"). Jon uses a wonderful poetic tool here - he doesn't pluralize "headlight" (if you're sitting by the freeway you're gonna have many headlights keeping you company, not just one) nor does he pluralize any word in any line of the song except for "Sons of my enemies". This has a noticeable effect - it creates a feel of images in isolation, making them seem even more random. I mean, the gramatically correct way to say it would be "the headlights keep her company" or at least "the headlight keeps her company", but Jon doesn't suffix either word with an 's' at the end, making it sound more lonely. Smart.

"In the back room of the Pentagon
There’s a thin man with a line drawn
With a red jaw and a red bite
Watch the headline on the next night"
These lines seem to raise an image of a terrorist - someone with a "red jaw" and a "red bite". Red is a colour that reflects a vengeful anger and rage, often because of past wounds. This is a "thin man" (maybe implying he's from a poverty-ridden country) who's plotting ("line drawn") trouble against America for his forefathers' or his community's sake. He has a score to settle. Maybe, as has been pointed out in Osama's case, its America's fault for "inventing its own enemies" [a phrase from the song "Dirty Second Hands"]. Either way, this thin man is red with rage, and he's probably gonna do something that'll be splashed across the next day's newspaper headlines.

So Jon asks, with this thin man in mind, "sons of my enemies, why can't we seem to keep it together? ...we're connected."

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