Not just another ending
At Lear's end, Edgar stands in the midst of death and, ashamed, tries as best he can to muddle through. After all, "the weight of this sad time we must obey / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." Thankfully, I am not Edgar and, despite my sadness, am not ambivalent about this death. Greg Hornecker is an admirable man and not Lear, despite the size of his spirit, probity, and love of the law. What I feel and might ought to say are identical. I asked his advice on many things and he responded thoughtfully and with respect despite my inexperience. He never pressed, except for the opportunity to offer a gift or kindness. He loved children: his, theirs, and the community's. He found a way, when my son died, to let me know that, in his kingdom, all my feelings were honest and would have time and space for expression. He also communicated without words that the future does not die with the dead and that the time to allow the sun to rise again may come as unexpectedly as did the dark.
Ok. Fine. He might suggest, now that he is the beloved dead: I'll miss you too. Move on.
So. I'll honor Greg not by doing what he told me to do, because he never told me what to do. Instead, I'll do as he did. I'll do what I admire in him. When someone is in need I'll do my best to help them take care of themselves. When they do me a disservice I'll do my best to let it become a part of a past we can both laugh about. When someone shows me kindness I'll return it many times over. And when I die, maybe somebody else will say something they thought about for a while, feel the loss of me, and move on into tomorrow with the desire to love his people a little more.
Ok. Fine. He might suggest, now that he is the beloved dead: I'll miss you too. Move on.
So. I'll honor Greg not by doing what he told me to do, because he never told me what to do. Instead, I'll do as he did. I'll do what I admire in him. When someone is in need I'll do my best to help them take care of themselves. When they do me a disservice I'll do my best to let it become a part of a past we can both laugh about. When someone shows me kindness I'll return it many times over. And when I die, maybe somebody else will say something they thought about for a while, feel the loss of me, and move on into tomorrow with the desire to love his people a little more.
Aidan and Grandpa Greg
Labels: Aidan, death, image, kin
| posted by Brandon @ 3/12/2009 09:21:00 PM
No steady half-time job yet, though I'm grateful to Huston Smith and Kayla Feder for their recommendations. I'm also grateful to Iris McGinnis for In-Home Support work, Jim Shultz for informal pick-up work improving his properties, and Richard Page for conference recording work. We were just in D.C. recording the hugely important information being lectured on at International Forum on Globalization where I learned from Ann Leonard about her new 20 minute film that is the best quick and clear outline of the Triple Crisis (Climate change, peak oil, global resource depletion & extinction) I've ever seen. It will be streamed in about a month and I'll send out a link when I have one. I got around six hours of time-zone crunched sleep a night and, upon returning, was stupid enough to not only work every day but stay up nights to try to get the new apartment ready for my birthday gathering. For me no sleep = sick.
Friday I had finished helping Huston and Kendra Smith for the day, then gave more computer help and had lunch and process time with Leon Regelson. Continuing to feel profoundly under the weather, I returned home and parked just around the corner from our apartment before calling Kayla Sensei at Aikido of Berkeley and asking for someone else to teach my Saturday morning class, as I would be in bed all day.
After being in bed most of yesterday I discovered a huge bank disaster. I decided a bit of a walk might help and stumbled out of the door with the dog to find that Serenity, our van and walkabout home, had been stolen off the street. Our neighbor heard it start up and watched it drive away a couple of hours after I parked it. It took Officer Golden of the Berkeley P.D. longer to show up to take the report because of two homicides.
There appears to be a chance the vehicle might be recovered. It might even have some or all of the stuff in it we had loaded to go to storage: the photos from our wedding and of our family, the silver heirloom pitcher given to Lisa as a wedding gift by my grandmother Martha Craig just before she died, the hakama given me as a present by the dojo, and so much more.
Today would have been Aidan's 2nd birthday.
I have spent it mostly as planned: alone, either enraged or watering the Wasteland or both, working on Aidan related recordings, photos, and videos I have been avoiding. I'll try to post some of it online soon, in case you are interested.
Being one of The Good Guys doesn't mean you win.
Sorry to ruin the suspense, if there still was any.
It just means that you don't have to avoid mirrors.
Not asking for anything - just needing to write.
Really tired of writing stuff like this.
Even more tired of living it.
Friday I had finished helping Huston and Kendra Smith for the day, then gave more computer help and had lunch and process time with Leon Regelson. Continuing to feel profoundly under the weather, I returned home and parked just around the corner from our apartment before calling Kayla Sensei at Aikido of Berkeley and asking for someone else to teach my Saturday morning class, as I would be in bed all day.
After being in bed most of yesterday I discovered a huge bank disaster. I decided a bit of a walk might help and stumbled out of the door with the dog to find that Serenity, our van and walkabout home, had been stolen off the street. Our neighbor heard it start up and watched it drive away a couple of hours after I parked it. It took Officer Golden of the Berkeley P.D. longer to show up to take the report because of two homicides.
There appears to be a chance the vehicle might be recovered. It might even have some or all of the stuff in it we had loaded to go to storage: the photos from our wedding and of our family, the silver heirloom pitcher given to Lisa as a wedding gift by my grandmother Martha Craig just before she died, the hakama given me as a present by the dojo, and so much more.
Today would have been Aidan's 2nd birthday.
I have spent it mostly as planned: alone, either enraged or watering the Wasteland or both, working on Aidan related recordings, photos, and videos I have been avoiding. I'll try to post some of it online soon, in case you are interested.
Being one of The Good Guys doesn't mean you win.
Sorry to ruin the suspense, if there still was any.
It just means that you don't have to avoid mirrors.
Not asking for anything - just needing to write.
Really tired of writing stuff like this.
Even more tired of living it.
Labels: Aidan, daily, death, grief, money, sick, theft
| posted by Brandon @ 9/23/2007 10:11:00 PM
Lotta Flux
Aeon's sister? Topless Philosophy Professor?
We watched The Interpreter last night in the van, on the asphalt previously known as our parking spot, outside the apartment previously known as our home. You may have noticed how, during extreme circumstances, the world seems more full of portentous synchronicities and similar. I was tempted to begin this post with an exchange between the characters played by Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman and call it dead = gone =? dead.
Tobin Keller: How do you feel about him?
Silvia Broome: I don't care for him.
Tobin Keller: Wouldn't mind if he were dead?
Silvia Broome: I wouldn't mind if he were gone.
Tobin Keller: Same thing.
Silvia Broome: No it isn't.
In a way dead and gone go together and gone feels parallel to dead such that having no home brings up all kinds of uncomfortable associations and fear.
We are in flux. Previous infrastructure is gone and new ways of being are required to stay sane and functional and take advantage of the freedom now possible.
Later, of course, after we do all the things for which we are responsible.
Hee hee heee, haaahh, ho, hooh hoooooo....
Ahh, crap.
Hmmm.
Labels: daily, death, walkabout, WilliamsCraig
| posted by Brandon @ 5/07/2007 11:00:00 AM
Earlier today my sister, Meghan, called from Santa Fe to check-in. She and her husband, Isaiah, and my nephew, Val, are there from Burlington VT to attend Isaiah's uncle's wedding.
Once again I tried to get into words one fraction of a corner of what is going on and going wrong round these parts of the sunny East Bay. Not only are the bizarre, Gordian circumlocutions reaching the point of inexpressibility, but the effort of keeping it all in consciousness in order to shuffle in a timely fashion between emergencies reduces the capacity for response. If you are feeling overwhelmed and having a hard time dealing with daily life, this may be the time to stop reading. I am about to attempt to give voice to the feelings beneath the layers of interlocked intractability stacked atop my spirit at the moment.
Aidan's death gave me my first window into really understanding (in the context of my historical difficulty with playing believable suicides on stage) how a person can awake to the reality that the voice of Life can not only be temporarily muted but unalterably silenced such that there is no real hope of hearing it again. Watching the arms wide, face open, beaming Hope lie down and Never again rise up creates an irreversible closure. It is possible to react and respond but not to prevent or change. The tomb with its rock rolled away may be visited but He is not there and won't be again. The possible responses to ending run the gamut from y to z in ways I imagine to be like the installation of a cochlear implant. It is possible to respond to deafness by drilling through the skull, and inserting cold metal and plastic leads between the skin and bone, and bombarding nerves with impulses. This cyborg wonder can lead to satisfactory functioning where there was none. Hallelujah! The true hearing of the Magic Flute will never happen again, even after the mind relearns how to process these entirely different spectra of inputs, because the variegated organic system developed during the body's sensitive period for absorbing all the nuance of sound is dead.
Easter People: A Message! He is not Risen! The idea of and stories about him go on in a beautiful and problematic way as do all Big Stories. But He will not be available for embracing, no matter how many other people, large or small, you embrace as his image and in his name. What is undying (athanatos, the Greek term for god) and incarnational is the presence of the Spirit which enters the valley of Soul-making, not the flesh and smell and taste and warmth of the treasured person. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
So never mind.
All those preparations for later are laughable. The occasional emergencies you used to handle with grace, because "this too will pass"/change or "knowing nothing need be done - you begin", have only one time frame for response. Now. While you are still breathing and before it gets worse.
And culture helps. The contemporary pool of the collective psyche frames cosmos in these same terms:
So, D for Death.
And Dissertation:
When the year I lost to Pacifica not hiring enough staff was finally returned to me in the form of a no-fee extension (until Dec 31, 2007), enough time had passed that the Federal Loan people had moved me into repayment, as though my work were over. Not a problem, you might say, just reestablish your eligibility. Great, but after all the paperwork B.S. is finished to do just that we discover that, because all higher ed loans for our family are consolidated (as instructed - to avoid the Congress approved rate hike) Lisa must also be in school and earning nothing to get my in-school deferment in place. This wasn't required before but it is now, apparently. So we now have another round of paperwork to prove that Lisa will have no work or income as of her last day at Mercy, etc. before there is hope of stemming the tide of late fees and oppressive emails.
And did I mention that there is hope of getting help finishing the first two chapters - my Proposal after which I will be classified as making "acceptable progress" so my loan money will begin again?
Not a problem. There is a professional who comes highly recommended who guarantees our intensive process together over two days will result in those two chapters at 40 pages each. She charges $1000/day. I'll ask her to charge less but she, of course, doesn't have to. I get so beyond tired asking for help to try to get my head above water and then having to explain all this.
And Dollars:
So its time to choose between finishing my $70,000 degree and having money to make the driveabout possible, for which I have taken on recording three additional national conferences (Portland, Tulsa, and San Diego) between now and the time we leave. Everything we want to do takes money which we have less of every moment we move further from usual employment and closer to being away. Paying for Diss help, van changes and repairs, gas, storage, tech costs and Internet access, etc. while preparing to pay for Lisa's teacher training, rent, health insurance, etc. in the Fall. Lisa's last day as an Admin. Ass was today, though she'll go back a few more times to help out.
And Departure:
From our home of eight years by the end of this month. Selling/passing on furniture and clothes and taking pictures for Craig's List and sorting old papers and carrying things next door to the room given us for storage by our godssent neighbors John and Ingrid and searching for lost items that were there when I put them down for a moment yesterday and washing the dishes and taking out the extra trash and all the usual things times six but not the usual patterns because we're leaving so food in the fridge but not too much and somebody to sublet our sublet of a friend's place until we can get back to Berkeley in the Fall and going over there to measure and take pictures and plan where things will go and
And the Driveabout:
Ever spend almost three months packing, repacking, and living in a van with one other person and at least two different ideas of how to grieve and spend time off or with family and writing every day or getting away or together or apart? Would you want to be in there with me after reading this?
And Demonstration:
In order to be promoted to Yondan (4th degree black belt) I am obligated and privileged give a demonstration at the annual CAA Division One Gasshuku at Sunset Cliffs Aikido in San Diego on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. In order to do this it has been my pleasure to plan it, coordinate rehearsals with the dojo's and every one's schedule, rewrite it, lose the folder with my most recent notes in the confusion of everything else, and in my spare time do the soul searching required whenever Aikido needs demonstrating in a personal and specific way in front of people. What is a fourth degree black belt in Aikido exactly? How is that different from other levels of experience? Am I that?
And Development:
Huston Smith invited me last month to begin having tea with him every week and discuss ideas. There's no way in the world I'd turn that down. He nominated me to be a part of the Pacific Coast Theological Society which meets today and tomorrow. I pick him up at 3:15. The prep for that involves reading the papers that will be presented and manging to look presentable in order to be introduced around. Overwhelm is not reducible to a series of attacks by the cosmos. Especially in the U.S. we suffer too from an overabundance of blessings.
When Lisa and I return I'll be the primary bread winner while Lisa is in Montessori Teacher Training. This means a reliable income of at least $40-50k, largely set-up now and while traveling in other parts. In order to study, write, build the Process Arts, and create community on purpose I make $16k a year right now. Any suggestions? Must write resumes, update the website content / email addresses / I.T.infrastructure on which I depend for information support and professional credibility.
And Domains:
So that makes this the perfect time for our long abusive registrar of domain names, Registerfly, to finally collapse and get defrocked, sued, and investigated, thereby trapping our primary domain name Abcglobal.net where it cannot be transferred and cannot serve to forward any emails using that domain and makes certain that nobody can find our website after we returned from making a big splash at a major industry event, gave everyone our email and website addresses, and sent out a report and appeal for support letter directing everyone to that same website.
So, I reel. When I was younger I began talking, in response to the official diagnostic voice known by the title "ADHD", about my consciousness regularly being flipped off and on again - the slate of my mental chalkboard being suddenly erased. Slate wiping during these weeks is worse than it has been since puberty. I forget things constantly and trying to remember why I am in this room with this particular aardvark in my arms. Hamlet, speaking of aardvarks, seems more comprehensible, unfortunately, and I wander in my memory of questionable versions of his soliloquies I've offered as audition pieces over the years.
I am amazed at how much energy goes into making the outer world resemble the inner world (I suffer therefore you will suffer) and then goes into trying to change the outer world (fascism) so that it does not resemble the inner world (chaos and no control over death). I hurt, says the Ego. Therefore the world is a place of hurt, otherwise I wouldn't be hurting. Therefore it's OK to spread that hurt around. After all, the Truth is that the world is a place with hurt in. This isn't Fair so I'd best get what I can of whatever is left to suck on while I wait. Yike. "As above, so below; as within, so without." No wonder we hurt each other out there in the "Real World."
My Lent covered only a week or two, since I'm avoiding the ritual of the 40 days in favor of actually living in Death itself for however long this is going to take. A week ago, Saturday, was a day that effectively ended a week of dwelling in fear, often nameless, that had a voice similar to the question my sister asked today: "What happens when you can't actually do more?"
What if the Distress I feel drowning me, being insufficient over the years to actually change my behavior, leads to the Deconstruction of me? What if the distress of consuming our planet / home / body, being insufficient to get us to actually consume less, is leading to the demise of what we might define as humanity? The Modern MonoGod's Ohm (power - syllable) circumscribes contemporary consciousness within the spectrum stretching between Overwhelm and Opacity. Everything, whether "good" or "bad" arrives at so many levels and paces that it is not possible to integrate deeply in response to anything in particular. When some filtering or change is required the system / cosmos / principle is unresponsive.
The Sunday that followed was a day of fools and palms and children and tears. My little boy was there last year and was promised to the future now going on before me without him. I wish I were crazy enough to act out the play of it, rushing about crying "have you seen my son? He was just here a minute ago?" Still, that day walked in beauty. Then Monday was a return to fear and desperation.
What is there to...
How can I...
What is left to me...?
Alexander cuts the Gordian Knot Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743 - 1811): Alexander durchschlägt den gordischen Knoten, Öl auf Leinwand, 113 x 145 cm, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts. Source: http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/lect/helden/12.htm
| posted by Brandon @ 4/13/2007 02:34:00 PM
Once again I tried to get into words one fraction of a corner of what is going on and going wrong round these parts of the sunny East Bay. Not only are the bizarre, Gordian circumlocutions reaching the point of inexpressibility, but the effort of keeping it all in consciousness in order to shuffle in a timely fashion between emergencies reduces the capacity for response. If you are feeling overwhelmed and having a hard time dealing with daily life, this may be the time to stop reading. I am about to attempt to give voice to the feelings beneath the layers of interlocked intractability stacked atop my spirit at the moment.
Aidan's death gave me my first window into really understanding (in the context of my historical difficulty with playing believable suicides on stage) how a person can awake to the reality that the voice of Life can not only be temporarily muted but unalterably silenced such that there is no real hope of hearing it again. Watching the arms wide, face open, beaming Hope lie down and Never again rise up creates an irreversible closure. It is possible to react and respond but not to prevent or change. The tomb with its rock rolled away may be visited but He is not there and won't be again. The possible responses to ending run the gamut from y to z in ways I imagine to be like the installation of a cochlear implant. It is possible to respond to deafness by drilling through the skull, and inserting cold metal and plastic leads between the skin and bone, and bombarding nerves with impulses. This cyborg wonder can lead to satisfactory functioning where there was none. Hallelujah! The true hearing of the Magic Flute will never happen again, even after the mind relearns how to process these entirely different spectra of inputs, because the variegated organic system developed during the body's sensitive period for absorbing all the nuance of sound is dead.
Easter People: A Message! He is not Risen! The idea of and stories about him go on in a beautiful and problematic way as do all Big Stories. But He will not be available for embracing, no matter how many other people, large or small, you embrace as his image and in his name. What is undying (athanatos, the Greek term for god) and incarnational is the presence of the Spirit which enters the valley of Soul-making, not the flesh and smell and taste and warmth of the treasured person. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
So never mind.
All those preparations for later are laughable. The occasional emergencies you used to handle with grace, because "this too will pass"/change or "knowing nothing need be done - you begin", have only one time frame for response. Now. While you are still breathing and before it gets worse.
And culture helps. The contemporary pool of the collective psyche frames cosmos in these same terms:
- opacity (unresponsive to your preparations and thirst for fullness of Life) and
- overwhelm (fires to put out all the time with a dearth of moisture and a level of complexity so intense that finding any root conflagration on which to focus becomes impossible.
So, D for Death.
And Dissertation:
When the year I lost to Pacifica not hiring enough staff was finally returned to me in the form of a no-fee extension (until Dec 31, 2007), enough time had passed that the Federal Loan people had moved me into repayment, as though my work were over. Not a problem, you might say, just reestablish your eligibility. Great, but after all the paperwork B.S. is finished to do just that we discover that, because all higher ed loans for our family are consolidated (as instructed - to avoid the Congress approved rate hike) Lisa must also be in school and earning nothing to get my in-school deferment in place. This wasn't required before but it is now, apparently. So we now have another round of paperwork to prove that Lisa will have no work or income as of her last day at Mercy, etc. before there is hope of stemming the tide of late fees and oppressive emails.
And did I mention that there is hope of getting help finishing the first two chapters - my Proposal after which I will be classified as making "acceptable progress" so my loan money will begin again?
Not a problem. There is a professional who comes highly recommended who guarantees our intensive process together over two days will result in those two chapters at 40 pages each. She charges $1000/day. I'll ask her to charge less but she, of course, doesn't have to. I get so beyond tired asking for help to try to get my head above water and then having to explain all this.
And Dollars:
So its time to choose between finishing my $70,000 degree and having money to make the driveabout possible, for which I have taken on recording three additional national conferences (Portland, Tulsa, and San Diego) between now and the time we leave. Everything we want to do takes money which we have less of every moment we move further from usual employment and closer to being away. Paying for Diss help, van changes and repairs, gas, storage, tech costs and Internet access, etc. while preparing to pay for Lisa's teacher training, rent, health insurance, etc. in the Fall. Lisa's last day as an Admin. Ass was today, though she'll go back a few more times to help out.
And Departure:
From our home of eight years by the end of this month. Selling/passing on furniture and clothes and taking pictures for Craig's List and sorting old papers and carrying things next door to the room given us for storage by our godssent neighbors John and Ingrid and searching for lost items that were there when I put them down for a moment yesterday and washing the dishes and taking out the extra trash and all the usual things times six but not the usual patterns because we're leaving so food in the fridge but not too much and somebody to sublet our sublet of a friend's place until we can get back to Berkeley in the Fall and going over there to measure and take pictures and plan where things will go and
And the Driveabout:
Ever spend almost three months packing, repacking, and living in a van with one other person and at least two different ideas of how to grieve and spend time off or with family and writing every day or getting away or together or apart? Would you want to be in there with me after reading this?
And Demonstration:
In order to be promoted to Yondan (4th degree black belt) I am obligated and privileged give a demonstration at the annual CAA Division One Gasshuku at Sunset Cliffs Aikido in San Diego on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. In order to do this it has been my pleasure to plan it, coordinate rehearsals with the dojo's and every one's schedule, rewrite it, lose the folder with my most recent notes in the confusion of everything else, and in my spare time do the soul searching required whenever Aikido needs demonstrating in a personal and specific way in front of people. What is a fourth degree black belt in Aikido exactly? How is that different from other levels of experience? Am I that?
And Development:
Huston Smith invited me last month to begin having tea with him every week and discuss ideas. There's no way in the world I'd turn that down. He nominated me to be a part of the Pacific Coast Theological Society which meets today and tomorrow. I pick him up at 3:15. The prep for that involves reading the papers that will be presented and manging to look presentable in order to be introduced around. Overwhelm is not reducible to a series of attacks by the cosmos. Especially in the U.S. we suffer too from an overabundance of blessings.
When Lisa and I return I'll be the primary bread winner while Lisa is in Montessori Teacher Training. This means a reliable income of at least $40-50k, largely set-up now and while traveling in other parts. In order to study, write, build the Process Arts, and create community on purpose I make $16k a year right now. Any suggestions? Must write resumes, update the website content / email addresses / I.T.infrastructure on which I depend for information support and professional credibility.
And Domains:
So that makes this the perfect time for our long abusive registrar of domain names, Registerfly, to finally collapse and get defrocked, sued, and investigated, thereby trapping our primary domain name Abcglobal.net where it cannot be transferred and cannot serve to forward any emails using that domain and makes certain that nobody can find our website after we returned from making a big splash at a major industry event, gave everyone our email and website addresses, and sent out a report and appeal for support letter directing everyone to that same website.
So, I reel. When I was younger I began talking, in response to the official diagnostic voice known by the title "ADHD", about my consciousness regularly being flipped off and on again - the slate of my mental chalkboard being suddenly erased. Slate wiping during these weeks is worse than it has been since puberty. I forget things constantly and trying to remember why I am in this room with this particular aardvark in my arms. Hamlet, speaking of aardvarks, seems more comprehensible, unfortunately, and I wander in my memory of questionable versions of his soliloquies I've offered as audition pieces over the years.
I am amazed at how much energy goes into making the outer world resemble the inner world (I suffer therefore you will suffer) and then goes into trying to change the outer world (fascism) so that it does not resemble the inner world (chaos and no control over death). I hurt, says the Ego. Therefore the world is a place of hurt, otherwise I wouldn't be hurting. Therefore it's OK to spread that hurt around. After all, the Truth is that the world is a place with hurt in. This isn't Fair so I'd best get what I can of whatever is left to suck on while I wait. Yike. "As above, so below; as within, so without." No wonder we hurt each other out there in the "Real World."
My Lent covered only a week or two, since I'm avoiding the ritual of the 40 days in favor of actually living in Death itself for however long this is going to take. A week ago, Saturday, was a day that effectively ended a week of dwelling in fear, often nameless, that had a voice similar to the question my sister asked today: "What happens when you can't actually do more?"
What if the Distress I feel drowning me, being insufficient over the years to actually change my behavior, leads to the Deconstruction of me? What if the distress of consuming our planet / home / body, being insufficient to get us to actually consume less, is leading to the demise of what we might define as humanity? The Modern MonoGod's Ohm (power - syllable) circumscribes contemporary consciousness within the spectrum stretching between Overwhelm and Opacity. Everything, whether "good" or "bad" arrives at so many levels and paces that it is not possible to integrate deeply in response to anything in particular. When some filtering or change is required the system / cosmos / principle is unresponsive.
The Sunday that followed was a day of fools and palms and children and tears. My little boy was there last year and was promised to the future now going on before me without him. I wish I were crazy enough to act out the play of it, rushing about crying "have you seen my son? He was just here a minute ago?" Still, that day walked in beauty. Then Monday was a return to fear and desperation.
What is there to...
How can I...
What is left to me...?
the undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Alexander cuts the Gordian Knot Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743 - 1811): Alexander durchschlägt den gordischen Knoten, Öl auf Leinwand, 113 x 145 cm, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts. Source: http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/lect/helden/12.htm
On 12/30/06, Iris McGinnis wrote (most eloquently):
didn't feel right to responding to this on the blog comments
there is no consolation for losing a beloved.
every day i ask myself why was it him and not me.
i am not any ones light.
i am not any ones future.
why is life so cruel?
I,
If you are in a space in which your questions are rhetorical then PLEASE disregard my responses.
There are few things more unwelcome than Philosophy tromping through the midst of the body's grief.
At the moment these questions are not rhetorical for me. Thus, the following responses.
Maybe we hold a bit of each others' light and future? Certainly, you hold a bit of mine.
My dreams will not come anywhere near true without the people I love because they are at least in part defined by them. I dream of family, community, and guardianship of peace. Each of these will be real at the point that other people in my sphere of influence are participating and profoundly getting what they need. Then we may point and say that we have achieved some measure of success. When I notice that I am holding some "light" (with so many meanings) for someone (including myself) I certainly feel called to take the parts of others' light I hold more seriously.
As for the future, if all we can imagine as important can end without further comment at any time then the choices we make are probably irrelevant and essential at the same time. Irrelevance allows a certain freedom of movement. The samurai keeps his own death ever before him in order to be able to move freely into and out of battle - neither of which Matters. Both are simply necessary and can reveal beauty and give weight and context to life. This is the essential part. My life needs context and depth (or meaning, if you prefer). This is unlikely to have consequences for or in relation to Life but is damned important to me.
If I'm serious about withdrawing my projections of Justice (and all other Big Ideas) as divine or universal but simply native to the human scope, then who am I to imagine that Life is cruel? Cruelty requires disposition, attention toward suffering inflicted by something a human could recognize as consciousness. Also it requires a governing standard against which behavior may be compared and found wanting. If there is any consciousness (as we understand the term) attached to our abstractions, gods like God and Life, then to imagine that Life would intend anything toward me is outright hubris. People write plays, or used to (unless you are Sondheim or Mamet), about such things.
In short, His Eye is not on the sparrow. My eye is on the sparrow. And the sparrow may end up as a very minor part of my lunch, or as a reminder of the beauty and brevity of existence, or as anything else my ravenously transformative metaphor-making consciousness needs at the moment. This may seem cruel to me but there is no court of Cosmic standards to which I may make an appeal, compare myself to the sparrow, and reach a desirable resolution of Brandon v Life.
If working conclusions are required:
- All the more reason to work toward compassion here so justice becomes more frequent and basic and peace becomes more likely and widespread.
- specifically not because a God would have it so, but because I want it and you want it, and because God may be declared dead when life appears cruel and all bets are suddenly off.
- You and I are much harder to get rid of.
- Or not.
- Depending on how you look at it.
Labels: budo, cruelty, death, God, gods, life, philosophy
| posted by Brandon @ 12/30/2006 02:17:00 PM
