If you didn't care what happened to me,
and I didn't care for you,
we would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain,
occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggers to blame
and watching for pigs on the wing.
Companionship, friendship, art...
In the end the only way out is art: the art of friendship, the words we write, the things we draw, the songs we sing along with, these are things that stand outside of time.
(That is if you are willing to believe that thought is inextinguishable (is that a word?) and everything that has ever happened cannot be erased, ie. the past is set in stone... maybe immortality is all about the past, maybe I should have known this years ago...)
I was lieing in bed with a friend once and told her that our love was perfect because it had left the perimeters of time and that even if we should choose to part ways, which of course we did, we would still have that one little night of perfection, that one little piece of art that could never go away so long as we choose to remember it. Forever we can both look back on that night and find some piece of truth in our shared emotion (two becoming one). Far more satisfactory than a mere 'I think therefore I am' we had two people thinking and two people being... Descartes and his stupid cycle...
Now, I was roasted by my friends the next day when I told them this - I just remember Jared laughing his ass off and saying "jdon = bitch" - and maybe it was weak, but there is some truth to it: so long as we are watching, so long as we are keeping score, we are the masters of our own demise - if we choose never to let go, are we not immortal to everyone who matters? (our selves being our masters) And is hell even a fear for a man who controls his own mind?
anyway, whenever things are particularily bad I can look back at that night in Glencoe, and a million others, and tell my self "I am alive, I have lived".
life fueding with death.
A million little wars thought
my eternity.
1 Comments:
Death and immortality. If any theme comes up more often in your writings, I don't know what it is. They certainly run through the last two posts. But I have a hard time identifying with you plight. I don't every remember a time when my own mortality occurred to me, as if it were knowledge I was born with and never questioned. It was always a facet of the world as undeniable as heavy objects falling to earth when dropped. No one remembers learning that, they just know.
I don't want to live forever. I'm perfectly content with the possibility that three generations removed from our own, no one will have any explicit knowledge of my existence. No statues, no lines in a history book, maybe just a faded photograph in family album (that's a picture of you're great uncle Chris, um, I think...).
I saw a program once about a sand castle competition. Teams met annually to construct amazing creations, beautiful and detailed, out of nothing but sand and water. But what struck me was what happened after the winners were announced. At the end of the day, the teams took shovels and demolished their hard work. Certainly they only accelerated the actions of tide and elements, but it has a more symbolic purpose. While stunning in their own right, the real charm of the sand castles is in their brevity. If they could last an eternity, no one would care if they did so. But because they are here one moment and gone the next, they are special. This is my approach to life. It is not our stone monuments that last forever that matter. It is the fireworks that sparkle for but a moment.
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