It was not too long ago that I quoted Pico Iyer on my site, mentioning how he’s written so beautifully about the connection he felt with Japan even before he visited the place, which in turn triggered a thought process in my head about how I felt a strong connection with this other place that I intend to visit and hopefully live in, in due time.
The Lady and the Monk contains stellar writing, and here is another exemplary instance of the same, and in my mind’s eye, I can imagine it being read out while a bittersweet symphony is being played in the background for maximum effect.
————
Increasingly, then, as I went on reading (Isaac Bashevis) Singer, I began to see that the great project of this closet pantheist was, quite literally, to build a rainbow bridge between heaven and earth. Again and again, his robust tales turned around men who wished to renounce the world in favour of some unearthly, abstract love – a devotion to scholarship, or even God – and then, of a sudden, found themselves confronted with the presence of something less lofty that seemed to betray a higher source; again and again, his people were divided, their eyes on the heavens and their hands on earth.And inevitably, Singer resolved the issue by showing that earthly love could be just the manifestation of heavenly love; that it revealed to us a radiance and a beauty that were otherwise concealed; that this was all we could know of heaven here on earth, and all we would need to know. “The more we know of particular things,” Spinoza had written, “the more we know of God”.
————
Fortunate are those who can relate to these beautiful words, even if for the shortest period of time.
Regular programming with random insane shit will resume shortly.
