Beautiful! Wolf, have you seen the movie about the last years of their lives? It's called "Iris" and stars Dame Judith Dench. I'm not sure, but I believe she was nominated for an Academy Award for that role.
I'm not quite sure what the rest of the quote means but I understand the part about "a solid core of love," if that refers to what's left after all else is gone.
Myrtle, that's the way I read it too. What's left after all else is gone. I wonder more who finally found the missing large pork pie.
As for Judy Dench, I think she's a fabulous actress. From Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare In Love through M in the latest James Bond films, she has always created a lasting imprint on anything she's in.
It's a very little bit funny how 'dame' was used in America and how it was used in Britain. I notice the Brits also say 'reckon' as in "they reckon that's what caused it" where once again that phrase is identified in north america more with ninteenth century western life.
I think you brought Helen as much joy as she brought you. I think at the least each of you brought each other much joy. Is that - or is that not - true?
In my world it is true. In my world also is the deep well of her loss. Do I want this life without her? No. I believe that neither do you.
Now, in my world, I have a choice. Just in my world and not in anyone else's, I can only hold my own pain by dis-respecting what I was given for the price. And I can only live in the good I had by dis-respecting my own pain.
I have chosen. Now I fight for what I believe. Which is I spit on whatever pain comes and just endure it because I do not speak out of both sides of my mouth. If I ever see Dianne again I will not say "this cost me". I will feel the joy which is the truth. What other knowledge do we need?
Living these moments believing only in the price is false. Embracing the reality of my loss is false. Enduring it is too vague. I must see it as something to fight. Not today for me. Dianne died eight days ago. But before the summer comes I will only see it as something I need to end and I mean now (then).
Your children did not know Helen. They knew their mother. Only you knew Helen. All the moments that were the two of you are still inside you. You are still here. Therefore that story does not only continue - it grows. Throw the cards away and get your butt in gear. Or call me wrong. You still have time to feel joy of some kind and that joy is part of the story of Helen and George. Dance in your soul and so does she. Mourn the past and so does she. Call me wrong or find a way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
Open your heart through the pain for the love of everything. Trust me.
Slide guitar song about the dust bowls of the thirties. I'm sorry for their troubles but I'm equally glad I wasn't there. One way of connecting to things in my view is to transport, empathize, and look around.
Then there's vicariously travelling. Two paintings ago I did a large canvas of a town on Cinq Terre in Italy. I couldn't make out some of how the hundred buildings worked with the streets and so I looked and sure enough someone had walked around that town with a camera and I had the fun of walking around in my own painting with plenty of AHA! moments because I suddenly understood behind these buildings there were steps up and there actually was a narrow street where I was questioning that I should join them. Never been there but I know my way around if I ever go.
This is Rick Steves from Oregon. He does a nice series of travel videos. Welcome to the French riviera.
Not many people know that Roberta Anderson born in Alberta busked for a living for a while on the streets of Toronto. And even fewer people know she went to Berlin in 1990 along with almost everybody relevant in music at the time to sing a song in the Pink Floyd concert given for the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.
Pink Floyd of course did Dark Side of The Moon and was considered a fringe if famous 1970's band. Roberta was mostly a folk singer once she moved to California. Dianne and I watched her a number of times in concert and she hasn't been feeling that well lately and I wish her well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbHgbxA3LQw
Goodbye Blue Sky, The Wall, Pink Floyd, Berlin, 1990, sung by Joni Mitchell
The thing about Great Britain (and much of europe) is that you can't dig a hole anywhere without tripping over ruins. Roman, Saxon, Tudor, Neolithic, Druids, and prehistoric.
That's why there has been a TV show in britain which has been running for almost twenty years which is a bunch of archeologists digging interesting stuff up in a chatty way. They always give themselves three days to investigate a site and what you learn is that the 'dark ages' doesn't refer to europe, it refers to the time after the Romans left britain until about 800AD or so and there isn't anything dark about it. It just wasn't as relatively enlightened by Romans.
I've watched about 30 of these so far. What I already knew but can now see in detail is that we have documentation on a ton of things and that history can come as alive and detailed as we are willing to spend time. This Time Team has historians who look up specific documentation which refers to the site they work on in each episode and there's rarely a shortage of detail.
The GeoPhys refers to underground radar and magnetic detectors they walk around on the site to help give them a picture of where to dig their trenches.
Basically, I'm touring britain learning about history and having a lark along with my new friends as one of the things I have available to me when I feel like it. Mark any episode into your favorites because there are several hundred of them if you find this interesting.
I could do this all day. I sometimes do. They make me cry, you see, and so...something has to because I have no tears for her. Only a bone dry well without a shred of moisture.
It doesn't matter where it is on this rock. It doesn't matter what we look like. We all feel the same emotions. We all feel the same pain and heartache.
All the moments in all of history humans have had these exact emotions where it doesn't matter whether we believe in evolution or not since there hasn't been remotely enough time to. In all the sweeping moments over the thousands of years everywhere people had the same set of emotions those people in those videos had. Their moments and their loves and their losses were equally poignant to our own.
That is necessarily true by science but it's by the accident of circumstance that none of those stories was your's, because if any of them anywhere had been - they would have seemed exactly like what reality now is. If you had been at Hastings with a longbow fighting the Norman invasion - you would have felt the leather jerkin, the sun on our face, felt the ground shaking as the horses charged. It would have been exactly as real as now is. It was back then you know. In that time.
What we do know for certain is that on that day in Hastings in 1066, your ancestor was bopping around somewhere on that exact same day - and so was mine. Our ancestors stretch back to the very beginning which must necessarily be so just as we are the ancestors to the future (well, you are, I'm just watching).
I may feel like Robert Frost out there sometimes with miles to go before I sleep but I'm never alone. For one thing there is Robert right there, in the snow, every time. Go back. See he's still here. It all is still here. Exactly where we put it.
Galiano Island between Vancouver and Victoria is one of the places I wanted to live. Of course I want to live in dozens of places. Like in Tina Turner's house on the Riviera. Here's a five minute video taken by some of the residents of Galiano Island. This is taken from the shore keep in mind. Some 50 Orca killer whales show up splashing around.
Another place I would like to live is in the Italian Lakes district. Here's a much longer video (no need to finish because all you do is arrive) of me driving into Lake Como one fine day. By the time I arrived I was Italian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4kkMxUTK-g
While some voices advocate doing as solution, I disagree. It's what I think, what I feel, and what I believe.
I'll tell you something George, when I tell friends I'm fairly happy already they actually argue with me. When I say that I'm less unhappy than I was, they're glad for me. I wonder if anybody ever really listens to themselves. I'm not that interested. I'm breaking out of that pool, learning not to disparage anything, and instead dive deep as me. I've never done that before. I've never done anything fully seriously frankly. It's time.
BTW - you have an open invitation to email me anytime. You don't need a reason. Ask me what I'm doing or tell me what you're thinking about. Just say hi. I have subjects coming out of my ears. Or don't. It's all good.
Wolf, Thanks for validating that although we are all in this together, how we deal with it is very individual. I see evolution in your posts and your stoke is getting stronger, but most of all you are doing "it" (finding life again) your own way. It fuels me to keep trying to find my way - not your way, not Joan's way, - but the way my mind is wired and the way it has been sensitized in life. Keep writing. It is always the reader's choice to read or not to read.
Thanks Marche. I needed that when you wrote that. It's your own way. But it's up to us when the time comes to have a way. We will be needing it. I doubt that's planning. I think it's desire.
George,
Today I watched the Japanese successfully land at the ISS. The International Space Station was short of supplies because the last ship blew up. There are six people living on the space station and they just got 4 1/2 tons of supplies. I watched.
I have a theory George which I've never shared. I think humankind must explore and we know we can't go into space in any serious way because of technology and physics. I think we're trying to either engineer a biological lifeform that can go out there or build an aritificial lifeform that can.
It's part of God's sense of humour that we can see each other and wave or talk to each other if you don't mind waiting 50 years for the reply - but nobody's going anywhere because of the stresses on lifeforms from acceleration and deceleration necessary to travel light years in less than many, many centuries.
But even in this short video, getting out into space means we get to see the rock we're on and that it's a big, blue marble that's amazing to take in.
Wolf.........Great video......And I like your theory. You come up with some great ideas. I still remember your suggestion of what to do with our nuclear waste. "Send it back into the sun"...... Its nice to know that the US and Russia are not the only High-Tech countries in this world.........Here's another one that someone sent me yesterday.
Subject: Remarkable Photos from the former USSR Manned Space program..... These are photographs of operational former USSR Space Shuttles that were built but never used!. ....There are two shuttles from the Buran Space Program left and they sit in idle, turning into historic relics, within a forgotten and abandoned building located in Kazakhstan.
Last night I had a strange and vivid dream. I was Fernando Lamas dancing to Carmen Miranda. Then I was Billy Crystal being Fernando Lamas dancing to Carmen Miranda. I seemed to be in a cabana in Rio long before my time. Then I was Woody Allen filming Billy Crystal being Fernando Lamas and I remembered Radio Days. It wasn't my cousin Ruthie doing Souse Amerikan Vay. It was a movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2AW-PFVNxI
edit - it may seem jumbled. it isn't. you are. it's best not to question these things and just jump to the next scene along with everybody else. this night you had a strange and vivid dream. in it you were fernando lamas dancing in souse amerikan way. so it goes. ahhhh. carmen miranda banana head. i knew her well in the MGM way.
Way back in the last century in the 70's there was a book called The Teachings Of Don Juan. It was by someone who I thought had done way too many mushrooms or whatever they do down there. It was by a man called Carlos Castaneda and in that book he said "The trick is what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."
Now human beings in general are such outrageous liars that they can actually pretend that all efforts made come from them while all things that go wrong come from elsewhere. Which is a crock. Or they can switch that which is an equal crock.
As part of that most humans that become parents see that world the same way. As part of that most humans see their jobs the same way. The short version is that's human nature. Somehow it's only our job of parenting that is never done while the same thing can not be said about our own parents. Their job parenting you was never done.
I keep looking for my car in my dreams. A freudian might say I feel inadequate to have a car and a jungian might say I've lost my way. I say when we don't know what's going on we make it up so the vacumn of need gets filled and if we can't easily imagine we listen to what someone around us has said.
I use my grandmother as an example - a devoutly religious and very giving person who kept warning me that if I touched myself all my dead relatives would be watching. Think about that. Who is sick there?? I knew more about her own upbringing than she imagined even though I can't remember ever meeting my great grandparents.
My own view is that a creator powerful enough to form reality itself, does not make creatures so they can kowtow because that is the working of a pedantic mind. More likely we quake and pretend it's not just a guest pass we have.
I watch the reincarnates becoming a butterfly next and not catch on that if you don't remember, what's the point of reincarnation? Do you remember a previous life? I don't. So their god recycles but they don't which is true because in physics which is universal throughout the universe, nothing is destroyed while everything is transformed in time.
Which brings me to the most common reason for killing others in history which is that we made them 'them' - so they can not be us. Perhaps they have a vagina so they get written out of the story, can't serve, can't vote, can't run for office, can't hold title to property, and yet feel no more empowered than to support those ideas. What in god's name do moslem women do with 72 virgins? Or perhaps they have a lot of melatonin in their skin because their ancestors spent a lot of time in hotter climes and so of course they are inferior or at least foreign. That alone excuses atrocious sadism throughout history.
The truth is that no one will ever know why Helen called out "George, I'm over here" when you were so balled up you started following the wrong skirt. I'll tell you what I know about that. She was watching you waiting for you to come up to her and when she saw you were confused, she helped you and herself get what she also felt. The rest is herstory.
Reminds me of a joke. Some wag goes up to God after the earth has been made unihabitable by humans and says they're sorry it didn't work out. God answers, "No, actually I wanted the plastic."
I plan to relax. We've earned it. Think of this as extra time like in soccer. No one knows how long that is. If humans ever relax in that and stop being terrified of their own existence, this planet will start to change for the better.
Medieval cathedrals took generations to build sometimes. Humans can dedicate all their effort into the betterment of future generations. Stonehenge is another example of that. Why did they drag all those stones there? Because that's what they believed. Not that different from my grandmother about ancestors watching. Better subject matter.
I was smart enough then not to correct my grandmother. I prefer the other lunatics in my life to be occupied and preferably over there. Now, maybe if you're not busy, you can help me find my car. I promised Freud I'd drive him home to mummy.
BTW - you should know The Turkey Letters will always remain one of my favourite things I learned here.
Back in 1783 when human wisdom knew nothing but birds could fly, there were these French Montgolfier brothers with other ideas. They got a large balloon to fly filled with hot air. This began 'balloonomania' where it took just a year to the first hydrogen filled balloon flight and on this day, on this particular day 233 years ago, two wags flew a hydrogen filled balloon across the english channel for the first time. They were Jean Pierre Blanchard and an american, Dr John Jeffries.
That successful crossing led the two of them to conducting the first balloon flight in the americas on January 9, 1784 - almost exactly one year after their channel crossing. That flight launched from the Walnut Street prison yard in Philadelphia to Deptford, New Jersey.
Among the spectators on that day 232 years ago were George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. They would have read what was going on in europe where everybody was flying balloons; but it would still have been impressive to see one with men in it fly away.
Just 119 years later, on December 17, 1903 another set of brothers from the one's who started it all pushed their equally revolutionary thinking onto the beach at Kitty Hawk and flew in the air for 59 seconds in a way no one had thought of before.
Just 54 years after that, the Russians launched the first rocket into outer space creating the way for that ISS that keeps circling over our heads (and under our feet once you get through 7900 miles of rock).
The answer to my question earlier is either 15 or 16. That's how many sunsets an ISS crewmember sees every 24 hours. It's doing 17,500 miles an hour and circles the earth every 92 minutes.
While I'm writing this the fastest object flown by man is steadily leaving the solar system and heading out into true outer space within the milky way galaxy. That's Voyager 1 and it's travelling almost 39,000 miles an hour. It got up to such a high speed by sling shotting it around Jupiter a few times before heading out on the grand tour.
Long before the solar system goes through it's own life cycle and transforms gradually into a red giant star, Voyager will be too distant to be affected by what happens with the sun and somewhere an unimaginably long time from now, it may begin to be attracted by some other sun and start being pulled into it's star system. It may not. It may drift out there.
Some four billion years from now give or take, the sun will begin to expand when it begins running out of elements to fuse. Stars can fuse from hydrogen to iron. Everything else has to come from something more powerful like a supernova.
Some four billion years from now Andromeda should begin arriving. That's our sister galaxy and their mutual gravity is attracting each other over all that distance. It's about 2.5 billion light years away right now and they should begin colliding right about the time the sun begins to get tired.
There is a gigantic black hole in the center of almost every spiral galaxy. They will go right through each other and their spiral arms of stars will all be disrupted in an extremely slow motion dance. They will likely almost entirely go through each other disturbing everything and then like a slow motion cartoon they will close on each other again as their combined gravity pulls everything back. It's when the black holes combine which they eventually will when the middle of the new galaxy now twice the size of the milky way, is not a place you want to be. That's true always. The stars are tightly packed there and the energies as the black hole absorbs entire systems is intense.
All astronomers know this. But the articulation that the new galaxy will need a name is something I've never heard discussed before.
Science is no threat to religion. This is how God works. It was church doctrine that the earth was the center of the universe and the heavens revolved around it. Just part of the evolution of the understanding. Exactly like in science. It's no secret that creation uses science to run the thing. The pope has already spoken about evolution and the big bang in those terms.
I simply admire the elegence and symmetry of it and I love how the stories all ultimately intertwine. Look at the ISS and remember the Montgolfiers and the Wrights and Sputnik and Voyager and Andromeda because we're all part of the story.
Wolf..... That was another wonderful story. I.ve been sharing some of your stories with some of my friends on email. Of course I keep your name on them. I hope it's OK with you.
That's ok George. That was fun picturing Thomas and the boys watching the balloon rise out of the Walnut Street prison yard and float away. Probably as unaware of the inevitable dance with Andromeda as most anyone. Besides they were busy. It was nearly the duelling period where men, the poor lads, can't simply put up their feet by the fire. They have to do some testosterone half mad thing that demonstrates their manliness. Hourly or weekly it doesn't say here in the brochure. Just look up Alexander Hamilton. Use what you like and no need to give me a byline. They're words. I have more.
One day in grade seven, in 1962, Mr Miller my teacher leaned against the wall of radiators along the wall of fifteen foot high windows and I remember the sun was on him. He was an old man somewhat hunched and a serious straightforward approach. He was making a point about something and suddenly said "vocabulary is power". And little Wolfie ran home in his lederhosen and began reading the dictionary front to back. Yessir.
But that was just piano keys on a piece of furniture. The beatles and the stones were coming out right at the end of grade eight. I went into high school with a german accent and came out with a slightly english -not canadian - use of the language which you can still detect today. In high school I discovered acting and studied that seriously. I detest duplicity but polish is fine. It wasn't until after university that I truly began to learn. Something inside wanted information and I took a tour through several hundred books that took me almost twenty years to source and read. It was in high school where another teacher told me what I was. He mentioned 'renaissance man' and the second I heard what that was I knew it was me. I changed the definition to being able to do five intelligent minutes on almost any subject but I never understood until much later that all of the subjects and all the words and all the ideas combine and connect with each other and it isn't just the notes or the words or the structure or the language - it's everything all at once without a single limit. Including no Wolf.
I studied the creative process deeply as part of those books. I read comments consistently by the great that the ideas jumped out whole and they were the scribes. That the image jumped out and the hand followed. That the scene showed itself and was written. Yes it's their work and yes it was worked on and polished and yes, they are deserving; but, to serve the work - not to serve the ego. The ego watches and is incapable of anything but interference during and the choice of learning or running around gushing afterwards. I have no interest in what I might call beiber belieber antics. I am the one. The distinguishing thought of the alpha male and frankly the alpha female whom nobody mentions because it makes penises shrivel.
We've come a long way from worshipping the volcano god and using antler needles to sew hides together with and nailing people to trees because we don't like them and drilling holes into people heads to let the bad vapours release. Not that far though. Every actor knows that because every actor meets fans who don't get they're not that character - they were acting. That when the Mayan long calendar ends you turn the page and start again just like any other calendar. Instead a calendar made by some indigenous people who weren't because they came over the bering land bridge around the ice ages - and that that calendar made by those same grunts who couldn't even run some cities for long, would end the universe. Or that western counting methods where we didn't even have a zero until the moslems taught us that which are based on the estimated birth of Christ because we don't have those accurate records - would mean that when we got to a ROUND number based on absolutely nothing but our own self important numbering system the world would change. And then celebrated a year early because the millenium doesn't end until you finish counting a thousand. The first day of the 3000 millenium is January 01, 2001 and not when it was popular because there was this big ROUND number ahead. Get your millenium celebration here! Only 1999!
Oh, it goes on. That an alignment of stellar objects would end the universe because there is no alignment - there is only where we happen to be looking from so that must be very important which would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. Not to worry. As P T Barnum said, we're just going to keep making them so we may as well relax.
I'm not changing a thing. I talking to you here and that's all. I'm going to chatter a bit on the way out. Besides, I'm going to keep an eye out for Frank. If I ever write anything and not just stick words in a little box, I'll let you know. And finally I'll tell you something I've never told anyone before. I grew up here. And that's the truth.
What is life? Should we assert ourselves into it? Should we be pious to the ideas we believe or were taught to believe? What is it I actually think is going on and what do I do about it?
In some ways we're sitting in the concrete of our conceptions where we might have been building those conceptions for over half a century. We might see change to that as threat or we might be hoping change finds us or we might even be in fear of it.
We are human and so we think and we know that change is among us. We read it and we see it on TV or the computer. We see it happening around us. One event or even an idea can turn all that concrete into nothing and we then change our lives.
The biggest drivers of behaviour I see are self determination and comfort zone. I assert myself because I'm determined in outcomes or I assert myself by accomodation into a chosen comfort zone. The comfort zone person might be more motivated to achieve a harmony, while the assert themselves person might be more motivated that the outcome is the one they determined.
My starting there demonstrates the flaw with self perception. The obvious evidence of the size of the universe and ourselves is never remotely in balance with our perception of the importance that we are here. I'll tell you bluntly that the extent of the vicious cruelty we uniquely demonstrate as a species is directly attributable to self awareness. Knowing we are here and knowing it is for just a while, is a serious strain. The first compulsion of a baby is that everything is directly a part of it. A baby will reach for the moon. The terrible twos are roughly when the baby learns otherwise and that others and their needs and rights exist and must be accomodated. We come from 'everything us' by design.
What is life? It is our relationship with time. Our thoughts are literally forged out of that furnace and our perception of life is our thoughts about it, whether they are articulated so you are aware of them or not. No part of ourselves is impersonal and no part of what we see as connected to our life is impersonal either.
By knowing it is the moment and it is us in the moment and there are outcomes to the moment, human beings are incapable of genuine objectivity. That is demonstrated by the serious difficulty people have with the fact of death. Not mourning for loved ones. The idea of ourselves ending. We have no problems with us beginning - it's only the ending.
What is history full of? Stories of men who rather desperately tried to become gods. They all did it in their own ways for exactly the same reason. Morbid denial of their relationship with time. Desperate need to be exempt - to be forever where even the universe isn't.
I'll give you a decent example. Humans are still evolving as all living things do. Time changes things and we are not exempt. Few talk about that in the scientific world. This is not a final product and we are changing in the same way everything does in it's relationship with time.
The Pacific Ocean is closing and the Atlantic Ocean is opening. A hundred million years from now there won't be an El Nino to disrupt our weather. There'll be something else. And life will here figuring out how to adapt whether it's dinosaurs who never did die out or mammals or new creatures that show up in this rock's relationship with time. I'm a part of that. I'm not just related to everything by stardust and molecules; but by knowledge about life. I'm one of the only species here that has demonstrated we know we're here.
And by that knowledge we have split the atom, introduced human rights, landed stuff on the moon that will be there for a billion years, and likely have influenced the climate of the entire planet. I read the first paper recently conjecturing that the tipping point that starts ice ages has already been passed. What we need to understand is that the planet has generally been warmer than recently and that it is it's general cooling that triggered the successive waves of ice ages we had been experiencing these last several million years which is a blink of an eye over the 4 billion years the earth has been around. I imagine if anyone ever does rule the entire planet they will need to see themselves as an immortal god. The first ruler that gets it will realize he has been promoted to caretaker.
Try and have a great day. It shows we know what's going on. Everything is going on. Take the example of Malala, who as a young girl defied the Taliban in Pakistan to fight for the right of girl's being allowed to go to school. She was shot in the head for it but survived and now is leading strong support for the rights of girls to have an education. She was given the nobel peace prize but the real story is that even though P T Barnum was right that a sucker is born every minute, he didn't mention the leaders that are born right beside them.
I know the struggles we battle and how genuinely difficult life is where all fears and all challenges are equally personal. I also know I share this field with absolutely everyone and frankly everything that has ever been alive - and in that, I am one of the little threads where the whole fabric is made up of little threads that all weave their way through their parts in exactly the same extremely personal way I do.
I believe real freedom to be a studied and developed sense of our own peronalized unimportance without losing the intensity of experience or the wonder of how much goes on in the place we find ourselves. Art, I believe, is where integrity meets style where some of the greatest artists I've met have never been near a brush, music, or a keyboard. They may be the stranger that says something that changes our lives. Like, "George, I'm over here." If that moment isn't art, I'll eat your turkey letters.
elizabeth, I'm going to risk it and go ahead and venture to comment, even without Wolf's say so. I'm usually not able to follow or relate to his essays, but this one struck a responsive chord with me, reminding me of a reading that I've asked my son to do at my funeral if and when I ever get around to dying. It's lifted from an autobiography entitled "Lanterns On The Levee" by William A. Percy, 1885-1942, a Mississippi delta lawyer and poet. In one chapter entitled "For the Younger Generation" the author wrestles with what guidance to give to the younger generation when they come to him with questions and concerns about the creation, man's role, etc.--- feeling that organized religion may not offer anything that can satisfy their intelligent inquiries. I have gone back through this chapter and selected a sentence here and a paragraph there to produce a brief philosophical statement that comes close to expressing my beliefs:
"We often forget how pitifully unendowed we are. All we can know is through the tidings brought us by our five inaccurate senses. Others, perhaps, here or elsewhere, may be more suitably equipped with six or a hundred, but we have only five and they rusty and defective.
But, circumscribed and blunted as we are, we men have always sought a God, a mind at work, a Master Schemer.
If we but knew, all we ask is that what we see and live in be not chance-built and accident- directed. Our fear is to be participants in unplanned chaos. The rest doesn't matter.
But through the equipment we now possess, these five poor senses of ours, we can see daily what no atom built and no dust bred: it is given to man to behold beauty and to worship nobility. He is shaken when he sees these two, but not because he feels them alien. Only when he is in their presence does the air taste native and the place seem home. These, only, are reality to his profoundest self; he needs no proof of them and no explanation. They are, he is, over him there passes the shudder of a recognition. These recognitions are brief moments, but moments we may live by for our brief years. Who gave us these perceptions gave too, no doubt, the heavens' laws and conjured up creation.
But we trouble our hearts with foolish doubts and unwise questionings --- the fear of death, the hope of survival, forgiveness, heaven, hell. Rewards and punishment hereafter? What bribes we ask for our perfunctory righteousness! The oak spreads its arms in the sun, puts out leaves and tassels, and, if the season wills, scatters down its acorns. But it does not querulously demand to know where fall its seeds or whether they will root and grow to saplings. There should be no question of reward: to function is the task assigned. To seek outlet for our emotions, our intellect, our spiritual cravings, to blossom and fruit with our whole nature, to keep its unity and proportion, of such is our occupation.
Death, Heaven or Hell, Rewards or Punishments, Extinction or Survival, these are epic troubles for the epic Mind. Our cares are fitted to our powers. Our concern is here, and with the day so overcast and short, there's quite enough to do."
Way to go Gourdchipper! Consider that we may be the designed means to bring that order to this chaos on the physical plane. There is quite enough to do indeed bringing order to the chaos such as writing about it!
I've been bugging George like this here for almost two years now and that's all I know. I don't imagine George would mind and I don't mind either.
Life is a ballet whatever we say whether it is the endless stoic watch or living grief ripping you apart or the long solos in the empty rooms - it's all part of the drama of being. And in this ballet I keep circling the motif I believe here.
I've read pretty much all of George's stuff and listened to his songs and I've learned a lot about this man. But he bared his soul to me the day he wrote about meeting Helen for their first date. I was there but I often view the scene from Helen's eyes. She spotted George right away just as I would have done. She watched George and knew what she was seeing just as I would have done. She decided in that instant just as I would have done. Right or wrong, I think that's a central bridge here.
Some people may wonder why little happens to them when they are actually holding things at bay. George doesn't do that. He opens himself and I relate to that. As a result, I know what Helen got from George - everything. I can relate to that too. Those kinds of things are foundational structure in my opinion and are some of the things bouncing around in everybody's mind pretty much all the time. In our own narrative of course because our population of concerns is likely unique.
That, and showing some stuff happening, is what's going on here. All motifs recur. She chose you and you gave everything; that is the structure you walk on. That is the motif. Look around because the place is wonderous. That's the stuff happening. I'm out of cards to lay down.
Like I always say, I never know what I'm doing but I can always tell you what I'm trying to do.
Grief: "I still feel really bad that she's gone. Wolf: "Yah, but would you want her to still feel really bad?" Grief: "No, I guess not. Want a sandwich?"
(see? grief gets the last word sometimes. hee-hee-hee)
I've been following your recent writings and thinking I should offer a comment but I'm at a loss as to what to say. As I've told you before, Your stories are almost over my little head and I have to read them several times before they sink in. I can never imagine where you get all those powerful thoughts.
I think you are neither religious or patriotic and have no preconceived attachments whatsoever, which leaves you perfectly free to accept this world exactly as you observe it with your very own senses.
You also have come across some great and powerful truths. Thank you for sharing them. I had never heard of William Percy. Now I'm going to find out more about him. There seem to be so many great humanitarians lost in the annals of time.
"I think you are neither religious or patriotic and have no preconceived attachments whatsoever, which leaves you perfectly free to accept this world exactly as you observe it with your very own senses. "
No, I'll fight and die for Canada. But I do think patriotism is a lot of air that serves no purpose. Beat your chest then or howl at the moon, I see no difference. When I fight I will kill. Up to that point there is nothing to say except signalling the enemy.
It's difficult to address the religion without getting into a religious discussion. I still feel bad for my catholic mom who was so disappointed and couldn't understand that I wouldn't insult God by believing in catholicism. Besides the mechanics of all religions is the behaviour of the flock in the physical world and in spiritual thought - and with those I agree completely. Good and bad aren't easy but they're real.
Charles Shultz understood. That sneaky bugger was teaching philosophy in peanut sized bites. Lucy is berating Linus for a thought he had because he shouldn't be having them. Linus takes a panel thinking. Then he says "Don't you have to have the thought first and then decide whether it's good or bad?" In the last panel Lucy took his blanket. Nobody wants to hear it. All of that is true.
Conan was a barbarian from Cimmeria. The God there was called Crom. Here is that religion. "I made you! Good luck!" You have now graduated Cimmerian religion.
On Easter Island they kept replacing the statues and freshly placing the spirit of their (more recent) ancestors into them through ceremony. The task of the statues was to protect the island from whatever was out there. When bad things happened the answer was they needed more protection from more recent ancestors who didn't have statues yet. It's working because the Island is still there protected from what's out there except the throngs of tourists who come to see the island lined with statues.
The focus for a thousand years in christianity was on pergatory. The indulgences and the monastaries and even the wars were about shortening your time in pergatory before you went to heaven. This central idea has clearly changed and today many christians would guess that pergatory is somewhere in Illinois.
Your last point is dead on. I'm on sure ground whatever the philosophy. Whether it's a supreme being or gaia or the life force or more likely something our paltry minds can't imagine - I play the hand the way I believe and once again, that's all the cards I have to lay down.
Look. I've been posting here for six years almost. I'm not suddenly somebody else. I've had my life ripped away and the plane I'm flying is more ripped out holes than plane. If I occassionally fart like Mozart, I still have feelings. And like my dear Joan Rivers, I have to ask, "am I smiling? I can't tell."
Note - Conan is a ficticious character written by John Howard or something like that.
2nd note - Mozart did have a problem. Well, he had a number of them. Music wasn't one.
This was so important to me that I copied it and put it in my prayerbook. It comes from a financial blogger, Mr. Money Mustache. I was always one who put a lot of "shoulds" on myself, and measured myself by my accomplishments. (Not so much anymore, after the Alzheimers years.) But I still like this quote.
"Life is not a contest to see who can accomplish the most. It is simply a series of days where your goal is to wake up, have a great time, and go to bed even happier than when you woke up."
This was a quote that helped me when life was grim and it was pretty much just the two of us facing his death together...and pretty much just me, because he had lost all awareness. I had to give up all pretensions to a career or to being successful in anything I was interested in, and just grab whatever small moments of happiness I could. (My coffee on the porch in the mornings, before the 36-hour day began, for instance.)
I guess for me the meaning of life is just to love ourselves and the people around us, try to get enjoyment out of everything possible, and somehow to keep advancing technologically so we can explore outer space.
Elizabeth, can you explain what you mean by the last phrase in your post? Are you using "outer space" as a metaphor for eternal life or something? And what do you mean by being "advanced technologically"?
Myrtle, I was being literal. I would like to see humans advance enough to be able to explore the solar system--I really hope we can achieve a manned Mars mission during my lifetime--and I wish we could develop a way to travel to other star systems. We need a way to get gravity on the ships, and a way to achieve faster speeds. Solar sails have a lot of potential, but I still don't think they are fast enough. Anyway, I think there is a definite spiritual component to mankind getting out there to the stars...to paraphrase the poem "High Flight": "To slip the surly bonds of Earth, and touch the face of God."
Yes, I'm an Air Force veteran. lol (That poem probably hangs on the wall of every Air Force household.)
Oh! I see. Yes, you could say there is spiritual component to outer space since heaven is "up" and hell is "down." Not to mention the space-time continuum and the infinite aspect of space. Hard to know where reality ends and metaphor begins. I'm familiar with the poem "High Flight" it because when I was younger, it was read as the sign-off on many local TV stations both here and in the South, when the station went off the air at night. (I don't know if broadcast TV stations even go off the air any more.)
This is a little disjointed today--I had DD, the 3 grands, and the puppy running around my house for a couple of hours. Anyway, I think that on a quest for the true meaning of life, we will have to explore outer space. I imagine it will take many years, but we need to find out more about: Are we alone here on Earth? Is there other life out there? What form does it take? Does all life have value? Can different life forms communicate and live together? And so on, and so on.
For such a long time, my life was spiraling inward, becoming ever more isolated and insular, cooped up with Alzheimers and pretty much being an inmate in the Alzheimers jail along with Larry. Then he died, and he went...somewhere. I don't mean anything so silly as that he was beamed up by space aliens in a passing ship, but I mean...so many of us have lost our spouses. Where are they? Where did their essences go? Are their spirits, their souls, "out there" somewhere? I don't really think they are, but there is something about the vast reaches of space--the beauty of the other planets, the stars, the other galaxies that we can see...that I would like to see and explore. I think it's a reaction to being stuck in the Alzheimers morass for so long. And also being right there with my arms around him when he died. I certainly didn't have any sort of mystical or "woo-woo" experience, but he went somewhere. If you all had been there, you would have seen it, too. I can't analyze it too closely, but He Was Going Somewhere. I am not a complete idiot, and of course I know it wasn't outer space. But for some reason, the whole 14-year experience of being increasingly dragged inward and down has made me now want to look upward and outward, toward the heavens.
I can't express this properly. One more try: I do feel that Larry has gone to Heaven, and is somewhere happy and well with all those relatives he loved so much who had died before him. But having said that, I don't think that I'm going to land on a planet orbiting Rigel or Betelgeuse and see him sitting on a rock smoking his pipe, sipping his cocktail, and watching the news.
I understand what you are saying about Larry's continuing presence. I was just distracted by the other reference. It is nice that you have an interest in space exploration. It does us all a world of good to have an interest like that. I used to have a lot of outside interests but I've forgotten what they were since I live entirely within the orbit of my husband.
Yes, being an Alzheimers spouse is all-encompassing, whether they're placed or not. It's a real life-suck, as everybody on this site knows. It still astonishes me how damaging it is to the caregivers, and at least in my case, how different I am now than when I started the journey. I know I keep saying that--sorry for being repetitive--but it keeps surprising me.
Hmmm. Not sure whether anything I've said has contributed much to the Wolf-George-and Gourdchipper discussion. I obviously didn't take philosophy in school. Ha-ha. For me, Margaret's quote was what spoke to me the most, and was the easiest to understand.
I really liked what you wrote about where Larry went. You've given me something to think about. I do believe they do go somewhere. They cannot just vanish. I know that someday I'll find My dear Helen again.
george, anytime I want to feel close to my precious departed Frances again, I click on my bookmarked url for the libera boys choir singing "Going Home", whose lyrics convey a comforting thought about where we go:
"Going home, going home I am going home Quiet like, some still day I am going home
It's not far, just close by Through an open door Work all done, care laid by Never fear no more
Mother's there expecting me Father's waiting too Lots of faces gathered there All the friends I knew
I'm just going home
No more fear, no more pain No more stumbling by the way No more longing for the day Going to run no more
Morning star lights the way Restless dreams all gone Shadows gone, break of day Real life has begun
There's no break, there's no end Just a living on Wide awake with a smile Going on and on
Going home, going home I am going home Shadows gone, break of day Real life has begun
I'm just going home"
Now while I don't really believe all that, what's the harm if someone is comforted by believing such as that as they fall into their final sleep?
Thanks for the suggestion. I spent a couple hours on youtube, listening to many renditions of this meaningful song. The lyrics are very soulful and captivating. Reading them .... I feel like I want to go home myself.