Salvete, qui legant -
How many of us recall being in water up to our necks and trying to find toe-purchase atop slimy, mossy lake stones? That seems an apt metaphor for my mental and moral state just now. Trying to get a grip, as it were.
My life is not that of a gung-ho hot-shot nor even that of a giddy, myopic gas-bag. My firmament in life is a slippery rock of absurdity - being myself too-much-that and not-enough-this, and so on. The world of youthful competition and 24/7 performance-merit passed me by long ago, and it is one part of human nature with which I've never identified, except in fantasy. I've worked in my life - mostly for attorneys and their ilk, piddly stuff, but for people who DO live in the 24/7 giddiness - and seen them from a distance, occasionally felt the breeze of accomplishment myself.
But it's not me; that stuff is not forthcoming. I remain out-of-it, strange, aside, "oddly conventional", and so on. I balance atop the rock, liquid mossy, but that's as much as I can manage, it seems.
So it is from this perpetual perspective of anomy that I face society's daily push-and-shove, and in particular these days the lightning and thunder spectacle of a Presidential election. A decade ago I stopped asking "Why?" and accepted that people have their bestial norms and must act according to them: a need to find enemies, a need to blame others, an inability to understand strangers, and (for oh-so-many) those very plain internal maps to winning, exploitation, and abuse of the "other". This is nature; this is sadness for me, gaiety for them.
There are a few lights in the dreariness: the Symbolic Sun (Invictus so far, if not truly immortal), friends, material fortune (to have a job, income, a home), and especially the boon of simple love, of wife and kids at home.
So I'm still here. Still trying to breathe and balance near the banks of Chaos River.
Valete.
P.S. Yeah, post-commute-blues, feeling sorry for myself. But this did help re-center me, and - as Jackie Gleason used to say - "Awaaay we go!"
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Monday, March 9, 2015
Contrary Old Nature Consuming Me
Salvete, quicumque legātis -
The one thing we know the Universe likes is friction. Collisions, mutations, heat, stress, movement of life, consumption of life by life - it seems to me the broad essential link is movement and conflict, whether it's at the sub-microscopic levels of nuclear particles, or among the rude little multicellular animals in a scummy pool, or between technologically endowed nations or movements throwing terror at each other, or in the collisions of asteroids, or in the super-nuclear super-heating of ineffably massive stars. Even light, as a body, collides and warms.
Speaking of mutation: According to my doctors, I've been visited by a nasty variety of it - squamous cell cancer. I have just turned 60 and now - bang - Nature plays the cancer card. More to come in terms of medical imaging and medical guesswork and treatment. The timing, of course, is less than ideal. A very bad way to begin Lunar New Year.
Once again - just as when I went to pieces in 2006, and then when someone near and dear to us ruined our finances that same year - events are crowding us out. My kids are still trying to find their niches in the new Republican slave economy, trying to become self-sufficient! I'm not expecting, at this point, that I will ever see my grandchildren. My 85-year-old mother (God keep her!) will quite possibly outlast me!
Still, what can you do? Death will come; it will take each down to dissolution. I have no particular fear of death, but I do have a lurking horror of the pain and suffering that may precede it. The final suffering will most likely be horribly intense and lonely, but I shan't dwell on that. That's all in the future, and beyond my control. (After all, I can hardly conjure up my death throes and tell them, "No; not that way! I won't have it!")
What is, after all, our one sure goal in life? Not conscious, not chosen, but entirely assured? Our death. Each man's arc of life ends up there, sooner or later, but assuredly. It's as natural as our facility of movement, our impulses, as universal as germination and birth.
The one thing we know the Universe likes is friction. Collisions, mutations, heat, stress, movement of life, consumption of life by life - it seems to me the broad essential link is movement and conflict, whether it's at the sub-microscopic levels of nuclear particles, or among the rude little multicellular animals in a scummy pool, or between technologically endowed nations or movements throwing terror at each other, or in the collisions of asteroids, or in the super-nuclear super-heating of ineffably massive stars. Even light, as a body, collides and warms.
Speaking of mutation: According to my doctors, I've been visited by a nasty variety of it - squamous cell cancer. I have just turned 60 and now - bang - Nature plays the cancer card. More to come in terms of medical imaging and medical guesswork and treatment. The timing, of course, is less than ideal. A very bad way to begin Lunar New Year.
Once again - just as when I went to pieces in 2006, and then when someone near and dear to us ruined our finances that same year - events are crowding us out. My kids are still trying to find their niches in the new Republican slave economy, trying to become self-sufficient! I'm not expecting, at this point, that I will ever see my grandchildren. My 85-year-old mother (God keep her!) will quite possibly outlast me!
Still, what can you do? Death will come; it will take each down to dissolution. I have no particular fear of death, but I do have a lurking horror of the pain and suffering that may precede it. The final suffering will most likely be horribly intense and lonely, but I shan't dwell on that. That's all in the future, and beyond my control. (After all, I can hardly conjure up my death throes and tell them, "No; not that way! I won't have it!")
What is, after all, our one sure goal in life? Not conscious, not chosen, but entirely assured? Our death. Each man's arc of life ends up there, sooner or later, but assuredly. It's as natural as our facility of movement, our impulses, as universal as germination and birth.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Couple of Quotes
A couple of quotes from browsing today:
This quote is one that we should all bear in mind - especially 'believers' who have not yet gone hardcore. This is what we're seeing (along with a bloody sort of political theatre) with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq:
"... religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims."
(from 'The First Victims of the First Crusade', Feb 13, 2015 - by Susan Jacoby (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html
On other topics, from Orson Welles:
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
And another:
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
Valete.
This quote is one that we should all bear in mind - especially 'believers' who have not yet gone hardcore. This is what we're seeing (along with a bloody sort of political theatre) with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq:
"... religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims."
(from 'The First Victims of the First Crusade', Feb 13, 2015 - by Susan Jacoby (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html
On other topics, from Orson Welles:
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
And another:
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
Valete.
Friday, March 21, 2014
HOWARD AGAIN
Found an inexpensive copy of Conquering Sword of Conan - third book of the tales, as published by Ballantine/Del Rey.
Took it up at bed last night, chose to re-read "Black Stranger".
I feel a little clunkiness in the writing, but only a little. In general once again, Howard evokes, engages, focuses, realizes his characters so very well. And all the way through I mused on my youthful fascination with these manifestos of the manly, the muscular, the violent - these testosterone-driven ideals.
"Ideals" is the wrong word; "Mores Maiorum" would be better, or perhaps "Struggles". It's the whole idea of struggle against death, against murderers, against the deceivers and manipulators. But no, "ideals" IS the right word - Conan's selfish life is a fantasy of a powerful, healthy, independent, endangered, irresistably strong being. It is the Fascist/Nietschean fantasy of The Will, which inevitably appeals to young men - at least, young men like me. The more so since I'm none of that. If Plato had been right, I'd be built on a Type like that.
But, back to the book tonight - we've got Picts to worry about....
Took it up at bed last night, chose to re-read "Black Stranger".
I feel a little clunkiness in the writing, but only a little. In general once again, Howard evokes, engages, focuses, realizes his characters so very well. And all the way through I mused on my youthful fascination with these manifestos of the manly, the muscular, the violent - these testosterone-driven ideals.
"Ideals" is the wrong word; "Mores Maiorum" would be better, or perhaps "Struggles". It's the whole idea of struggle against death, against murderers, against the deceivers and manipulators. But no, "ideals" IS the right word - Conan's selfish life is a fantasy of a powerful, healthy, independent, endangered, irresistably strong being. It is the Fascist/Nietschean fantasy of The Will, which inevitably appeals to young men - at least, young men like me. The more so since I'm none of that. If Plato had been right, I'd be built on a Type like that.
But, back to the book tonight - we've got Picts to worry about....
OUTBURST
I know, I know. I'm relatively feeble; I'm too sensitive, and not too sharp.
AND - worst of all! - I'm spoiled; I've "had it too easy". That is all I ever hear from Right-wingers, Left-wingers, hot-shots, malcontents, as well as my OWN conscience.
"You're not extreme! You're not courageous!"
But I am near 60 years old and NOT likely to improve a whole lot in this area.
Besides, I'm one hundred percent MORE courageous and able to get by than I was at age 16 or 20. That counts, even if it doesn't make me into a war hero or a brilliant, hard-nosed academic.
Just needed to say that.
And also: Down with Hitler, up with Léon Blum! Atque etiam Carthago retinenda est....
AND - worst of all! - I'm spoiled; I've "had it too easy". That is all I ever hear from Right-wingers, Left-wingers, hot-shots, malcontents, as well as my OWN conscience.
"You're not extreme! You're not courageous!"
But I am near 60 years old and NOT likely to improve a whole lot in this area.
Besides, I'm one hundred percent MORE courageous and able to get by than I was at age 16 or 20. That counts, even if it doesn't make me into a war hero or a brilliant, hard-nosed academic.
Just needed to say that.
And also: Down with Hitler, up with Léon Blum! Atque etiam Carthago retinenda est....
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Old Age, Fatigue
Iis qui legant - Salvete.
My theory is that when old age starts to shut us down, our simple, common human facets are worn away first, and what's left of our selves clings to our obsessions and fetishes. Smiles fade, patience fades, but the desire to control remains, and in proportion to our loss of strength, perception, ability, we turn to our addictions for comfort, and reliance on them characterizes our decline.
Valete.
My theory is that when old age starts to shut us down, our simple, common human facets are worn away first, and what's left of our selves clings to our obsessions and fetishes. Smiles fade, patience fades, but the desire to control remains, and in proportion to our loss of strength, perception, ability, we turn to our addictions for comfort, and reliance on them characterizes our decline.
Valete.
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