While Ye May

I've had mortality in the forefront of my mind recently. I try to keep it in front of me as much as I can in life. I think it's healthy for people to have it in front of them all the time and not off on the periphery so that when it jumps out at times it shakes you to your core. I think it's good to remember every day that you are one day closer. It keeps one focused in the right ways. I don't know if it's because it is Autumn and all the natural glories that are the wilds of Northern California are turning to the red/brown/yellow of sleep/death/stasis. Or maybe it's because our cat just died. Or maybe it's still rattling around from a few months ago when I visited my mother in the hospital right after the doctor told her to say her goodbyes, unable to imagine that she would make it through that part of her illness. Or because Radio Lab just did an episode on the After Life.

I was reading an essay by Sigmund Freud, of all people, about transience. It was the simple story of Freud taking a walk with a poet who was unable to enjoy the beauties of nature around them because all of it was transient, temporary, fleeting. Freud argued that this is all the more reason why it should be enjoyed, why it is important and precious. "A flower that blossoms only for a single night does not seem to us on that account less lovely." In the grand scheme of Time, eternity stretches in both directions and our time in temporal consciousness is but a blip, a blink. Then he went on to describe the process of mourning in early psychological terms, how one replaces the libido in lesser objects, but in the case of greater love one mourns until one is finished mourning. It's not much for a child to switch from the old blanket to the new teddy bear. It's quite a different matter when one loses the person they've shared every aspect of their life with for the past 45 years. He then mentioned the Great War which followed the year after that walk with the poet and how the global consciousness went there to that place of struggling with the apparent meaninglessness of existence.

Laurie and I were talking about Percy Bysshe Shelley's line about the vastness of space pointing to there being no God (which I think got him kicked out of Oxford if I remember correctly.) Of course, he also wrote "I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect ... are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity." Shelley was a bit tempestuous by most accounts. He was also one of the greatest poets in the English language. But Laurie and I were specifically focused on how the vastness of Universe can point to the lack of a God for some, while for us it serves to color our understanding of God. One interprets the data as one will. It also put me in mind of John Calvin's assertion that there are two kinds of knowledge: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of ourselves.
I'm not claiming a proof one way or the other. In my experience, and in biblical doctrine, there are those who are going to believe and those who are not. I have the experience of having been the latter and reaching a point in life where I became a believer, but I cannot save anyone personally. Mine is only to spread the word. I cannot make it stick. For those of us who are theists, we know that God is the purpose; the glorification of God is the meaning of our lives. Ecclesiastes says:

"Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity."

I'm only 32 and I've known people from every age group from babies to extremely elderly and everywhere in between who have died. The very nature of our existence tends to keep me in check most of the time. I try not to leave fights unresolved. I try to forgive quickly, to let things go, amend where I can and where I cannot, put it in the past. My gosh, the fact that we wake up each morning is an undeserved gift and it should make us all love one another. I don't know. I seem to be in one of those weird "walking through the woods with Simon and Garfunkel playing in the background" moods.
Maybe it's time I had some ice cream.

a vote for anonymous

Last night Laurie, Gina and I went to Tony's graduation from Chico High's WEST program. For those of you unfamiliar with the WEST program, we find ourselves in similar boats. I failed to procure an explanation of the program. As far as I can tell the program is a smaller group of students who spend the bulk of their high school career in WEST classes so they are mainly the same group in their classes for 4 years. They create strong bonds and interact with students they wouldn't normally give the time of day to. They learn largely through projects. On occasion they do things like climbing Mt. Lassen or creating a silkscreen shop to make t-shirts to benefit clean Ecuadorian water supplies or raising one million pennies for a cause that the teacher forget to tell us.
I liked the idea of WEST as I understood it. We are all very proud of Tony.

There was a portion at the end of the ceremony where they allowed the students to get up and say whatever they wanted to say to the group or about the group. The teacher encouraged them (which I appreciated) to make sure they aren't going to wake up tomorrow "shoulding all over themselves" as in "I should have said..." I thought that was one of the more valuable life lessons of the evening which I hope was not lost on anyone in the room regardless of age.
I was amazed by how easy it was to read the kids when they got up to speak. Their mannerisms, their vocal patterns. You could tell right away what they were like, what they fear, desire, seek, miss. You could also tell, barring the few inevitable and seemingly random crushing experiences that change lives (tragic accidents, fires, winning the lottery, ect.), exactly the kind of person each of them would be in 10 or 20 years. It was heartbreaking and encouraging at the same time. In the old, rickety public school room with so much pent up anxiety and knowledge of importance of the event while not knowing what that importance might be in those students and, to some extent, in all of the adults. Everyone's life ahead of them like a canyon full of clouds. The students are the only ones who aren't used to that yet.
So it was a weird mix for me of pride for Tony, nostalgia for my own graduation 13 years ago, and comparing what was being presented with reality. I wonder if the teachers really ought to build up expectations that the students are a great hope, destined to be giants in their generation, heroic and unstoppable. I wonder if the teachers might do well to encourage, but to let the kids know that if they find themselves repairing shoes or laying bricks for a living, those are very important things as well and that they can be fabulous in whatever corner of life God ordains for them (yeah, I know. Public school. As a free agent, I can use whatever terms I want.)

It struck me deeply that several of the students kept yelling out when someone would choke up words to the effect of "It's not over" or "this isn't the end." That broke my heart. They really have no idea. None of us do I guess. As I spent the last 48 hours cleaning office and as I've friended many dozen old high school and college friends in divers and sundry online social media I am struck with how very over it is. If I were giving a commencement address, I would probably at one point tell them "Keep what's important. Wisdom is learning what is important. Wisdom is learning that most of it isn't. And that's a good thing."

I think that my wife Laurie, and even maybe my step-children Tony and Gina, would never think of me as a man in a rut. I do follow some similar patterns in my daily life, especially as I am in-between employment (get up at normal hours with coffee, job search mingled with incessant twitters, in the evening popcorn and a movie most nights.) When I was working, I loved it, I loved the dailiness of it, the patterns with slight variations like a Philip Glass piece, there were some great rewards to that job not just in a monetary sense, but also in a zen sense. I honestly could have seen myself doing that job for many more years especially the delivery routes and especially my beloved and much mourned Downieville route. Everyone around me knows that while I am fully ready to move on to the next job, I do miss that job and wish that I had not been included in the lay off. But so it goes.

I also keep it flowing, keep things joyful, keep it mutating, try new things. We go exploring the area in our free time. I make new foods. One night we'll watch an opera DVD, the next a zombie movie. Currently I am thinking about where to get starch to make paper mache sculptures. But this is not to shock the brain awake in the mind numbing monotony of daily life. It is a joie de vivre born from the abundance of our hearts. We find vitality in the constant, just as much as in the spontaneous. Such is the balanced life. But we don't expect to be famous. We seek where we can do good in this world and eschew recognition. We wish to be fabulous. We do not seek money or fame.

There is a very popular book out which I have not read (and don't expect to) called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I've heard the author interviewed on NPR and the book seems to always be in the "to shelve" rack when I go to the library, which means it is checked out often. It is a best seller.

The book seems to be about a young lady who is pregnant and married, decides she doesn't want to be either anymore, divorces (and I'm guessing disposes of the child in one manner or another) and goes to Italy to glut, India to co-opt their religious practices and exploit them for her book (oops. I promised myself I wouldn't do a book review for a book that I have not read. Well, judge me for judging if you must) and then to Bali to engage in sexual intercourse... I guess the author wasn't told that that is also done elsewhere. One need not save up for a ticket to Bali for that.
I won't talk about how narcissistic and entitled all of this strikes me. Okay, okay, you're right. I've talked very clearly about how this strikes me ever since I've brought it up and I have condemned it. I've done nothing but talk about how narcissistic and entitled the book strikes me pretty much since mentioning the title. You got me. You may also notice that I have not gone back to edit out my opinions before further discussing it.
Thrift, my friend. I really don't need to go on to map out any further how alienating your loved ones and destroying a life you've built doesn't make you complete. It just makes you a self-absorbed twit in another country. Being spontaneous doesn't make you great and doesn't mean you are sucking the marrow out of life. Sometimes people you see trying to suck the marrow out of life are just leeches.

I don't believe ruts are indicated by a person's consistency.
I should start saying that at job interviews. That's a good line.
Again, I am coming out in support of contentment. Not that one ought not aspire or do wonderful things. But I really feel that one ought to be capable of sleeping soundly after making an amazing work of art, a masterpiece, without signing one's name on it. That is all.

Maybe I'll write a commencement address to no one in the next few days.

Stay tuned for that.