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"Anyhow, I found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering." pg. 194 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

So I am reading along in this book, a big book with a full complement of adventures and I am considering how the main character, Augie March, experiences his life one step at a time and instead takes it as it comes. Thie isn't to say he forgets about his ailing mother or that he neglects his friends or family, but perhaps the opposite - all of these people are constants. Even the character Grandma Lausch, who lived with Augie, his brothers and mother during his childhood as a matriarch and renter, even after her death she lives in in his brother. As his brother Simon dawns the mask of the up-and-coming businessman and future husband to a millionare's daughter his social interaction mimic the patterns of Grandma Lausch. Even if Simon wanted to be rid of Grandma Lausch he could not. His history is unshakeable. Something about the dead lives on.

It is not binding inheritance of earthly power that lives on. In fact, I would venture to say that Simon was bound to shake the poverty he was born into by one means or another. Perhaps this was due to Simon's disposition to be a good student and Grandma Lausch's determiniation to "make something" of these boys. Really it would be hard to say what the cause of a particilar fate, even in a novel, might be. Much is mysterious to the reader if he/she wants to begin this kind of archeology, after all, the novel is self-contained and holds all of the keys inside. Some doors are kept locked.

If I am to take it that the boredom or some other kind of suffering is the manifestation of an unknown craving or love with Augie March because of the key given to the reader by the narrator (which I believe is an older Augie) I'll be wise to attend to the boredoms and pains of the characters in the book. But that's not what really intrigues me about this quote.

Communicating

After writing my last entry which I had hoped would posit the question, "to what extent do I understand the foundational ideas of the things that are important to me?" I realized that despite my intention, the power of the idea depends on language. In this case, a failure to construct clear and graceful language made the writing confusing.

I wonder, have I plunged into the trap of jargon? Have I let predetermined phrases occupy my imagination? After all, a piece of writing that is to be shared has limited value if it is unintelligible. And I am delusional if I think that my audience is better equipped to understand my writing if my own mother, who has nourished me my whole life, who embodies one of my foundational ideas herself, cannot follow the writing.

So, if what I am talking about is truly important (and I believe that it is) it must be communicated in a common language, a "language of care."

Ideas and Empires

"... and loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away." -Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This sentence has been troubling me. If I accept it, it pushes me to a conscious understanding of the ideas my loves are founded upon. Considering the notion of an empire fading away because the idea it was founded on has crumbled, I wonder what the founding idea of my empire has been (and if that idea still exists). In both a love between two people or a society between many it seems as though an understanding of the "idea" has to be shared among the participants. 

I suppose that Kundera's formulation doesn't call for this kind of understanding among all the subjects in the empire. His idea is that when the "idea crumbles" the empire fill follow suit. But how does an idea crumble? Ideas are things that people have, and in a relationship between people it is the shared idea that is the foundation for all else. So it seems as though in an empire like ours (ostensibly a democracy), a great majority of the people are called on to understand the foundational idea or ideas and go forth in the society operating in accordance with the implications of the idea. 

I wonder how many people in the United States share this kind of foundational idea. Or, more importantly, how many people demand this level of clarity and genuine interaction in their lives with immediate others (the ones they love)?