Newsletter  901 :  August 2009 : “Happy Birthday How to Live; Happy Birthday Goethe”

Dear Walkers,

 I think we walkers – though our opinions diverge frequently – can all come together in agreement on one thing: the unabated growth of my already quite hearty sexual appetite. Walkers beware: you are entering my sexual prime! No, but seriously: thank you all so very much for attending my 260th birthday party this 28th August.

It has been quite a year, and I was pleased to celebrate too the first birthday of this so-called “How to Live” project. Well done Nemonie and Shahidha, who have now entered into what I permit myself (with some justification, I think!) to name a Faustian pact with the glorious Jon Elek. I hope that Jon will protect this pair from any repetitions of the fisticuffs witnessed at Hilary Lawson’s joyous “How the Light Gets In” festival at Hay-on-Wye earlier this summer. Although I must admit that I did enjoy the sight of Nemonie standing astride the pews that day, before launching a physical and verbal assault on the Red Tory, Phillip “Red Light District Tory” Blond.

 Before sharing some of my Elective Affinities in felicitation of this anniversary, and the forthcoming tour of Kew in my honour to be led by one of our patrons, Emma Townshend (watch this space, readers!), I would like to share the observations of the visiting Count in that same story (if I may):

“We do so like to think that earthly things will last, and especially marriages, and concerning these we are beguiled by what we see again and again in the theatre into notions which do not accord with the way of the world. In comedy marriage is depicted as the final goal of desires whose fulfilment is postponed and hindered for the duration of several acts, and the instant it is achieved the curtain falls and that moment of satisfaction reverberates in us. In the real world, things are different. The play continues behind the curtain, and if the curtain rises again we do not like to watch or listen any further.”

Or, as a dear friend once responded to the computer-generated question, “So when do you plan on getting married?”:

“Erm, never, given that it’s an ideologically abhorrent hetero-patriarchal institution!”

But, then again: I offer the words of my mason in Elective Affinities, laying his cornerstone, from which a building must derive strength; and I think of Shahidha, beautifully articulating the need to find a new foundation for justice: a foundation without foundation.

Happy Birthday “How to Live” - or whatever your name is!

 “This foundation-stone, whose corner will mark the right-hand corner of this building, whose squareness will signify its regularity, and whose horizontal and vertical setting will ensure the plumb and level trueness of all the outside and inside walls, might now be laid in place without more ado, for it would surely rest on its own weight. But there shall be lime here too, in a mortar, to bind; for just as people who are naturally inclined to one another hold together better still when cemented by the Law, so likewise stones, suited in shape, are joined even better by these powers that bind; and since it is not proper that you should be idle while others are active, you will, I am sure, be willing to take a part in the work. [...]

          We lay down this stone for ever, to secure the longest enjoyment of the house by its present and future owners. However, whilst here, as it were, burying a treasure we are mindful also, in this most fundamental of all matters, of the fleetingness of human things. We entertain the possibility that the lid here so securely sealed might one day be raised again, which could only happen if all that we have not yet even built were then to be destroyed.”

 Trans. by David Constantine

Ever,

J to the W von G