Copenhagen Journal #13: Darkness and Light

For a while now, it's been getting dark early. If I haven't started my bike ride home from work by 3:30 pm, I'm riding in the dark. It's also been getting colder, and I wonder how much longer I'll be able to keep up the bike commute. My PhD student was here for two weeks and just left yesterday. It was great having him here. We submitted a paper and he got some traction on his next (and final) research project for his dissertation. On Friday, we had a belated Thanksgiving dinner.

Things have been lightening for me personally. I struggle with how to write this without being too confessional, so I'll use The Brother Karamazov, which I am still reading, to get my point across. The two brothers Ivan and Alyosha are relevant here. Ivan is a cold rationalist and avowed atheist. Some of the most famous passages of the book are his interactions with Alyosha, who embodies the ideal of Christian love, in which he levels devastating attacks on religion and God. Alyosha can't respond to Ivan's attacks intellectually, but his life is his answer. He loves all without condition or judgement and is loved by all in return. Ivan's philosophy, on the other hand, leads him to increasing isolation and desolation of spirit. Thinking of Ivan and Alyosha as ideals of the cold rationalist and warm lover, over time, I think I've come to embody too much Ivan and not enough Alyosha. And as I give more love, things keep getting better, so I think this is assessment is right for me.       

Copenhagen Journal #12: In Is The Only Way Out

The hanging ball moves around the room hitting the singing bowls along the way.

On Saturday, Jen and I went to an old water reservoir in Copenhagen called the Cisterns. It was built in the 1800s, and served as Copenhagen's water supply until the 1980s. Now it's empty, but they let people go down into the man made cave that remains for a fee. I think there is always an art installation there, which is what we went to see. It was a cool exhibit, by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, called In is the Only Way Out. Personal transformation was the theme, and particularly that you have to "confront the darkness in order to see the light." This is apropos for Jen and I, as we continue working on our marriage. Transformation sounds great, but it's hard work and doesn't always feel like progress, though I have faith that we're heading in the right direction.

On Friday night, we saw some art of a different kind. My host here in Denmark is a big fan of Jazz music and wanted to see a concert by the Danish Radio Big Band. We had him over for dinner and then joined him for the concert. It was a great evening.

Copenhagen Journal #11: Speaking Truth

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I am currently reading the Brothers Karamazov. The above quote is by Father Zosima, an elder monk and the spiritual mentor to Alyosha Karamazov, the book's hero. Elsewhere in the book, Dmitri Karamazov (Alyosha's sensualist, scoundrel brother) speaks about the difficulty of truth telling, and how even if small errors are made in execution, it goes wrong. His answer to this conundrum is to always be deceitful, but to be  honest about it. He's an appealing, but dangerous, character.

I've been striving to speak my truth of late and can attest to its difficulty. On the surface, it's about speaking words or ideas that you think/feel are true, but truth is many layered. For example, if you speak true words with contempt, I've learned from experience that this negates the truthfulness of the words. So, truthful speech contains within it right action, and it's turtles all the way down.

In the above quote, Father Zosima intimates that we each have a truth sensor within us, but if we lie to ourselves over and over again, we will damage it. I heard a quote from Carl Jung, that the goal of life should be to unite your reason with your inner truth sensor.  This is hard work. As Dmitri says, when we fall short, things go wrong. Well, I fall short all of the time, but I believe that if I keep trying, the process will make me sharper, and over time I will be more and more able to speak my truth.

Father John Misty on Saturday. Great show!!

Copenhagen Journal #10: Shedding Your Skin

One of the goals of my sabbatical is to do 'inner-work' and get to the bottom of what it is about the way I've been living that has felt off, but that I've not been able to put my finger on. Life in Missoula is so full, and largely of good things, but filling your life with good things makes it easy to overlook the areas of your life that need work. Could this be a shadow side of living in our great town - that it's so easy to escape from what needs attention, into the mountains, into friendships with cool people, into University politics, into a local brewery? Anyway, I intuited that some things in my life needed work, but I didn't know what they were, precisely. I feel like I'm getting a handle on that and am now moving in the right direction. It's not been easy, but it's been a gift to get away, reconnect with Jen, and retool for whatever is coming next.

The photos from a trip to Arken (a modern art museum south of Copenhagen) last weekend, and the video is from a Punch Brothers show that we went to this week.