Before I left on this vacation, I had been thinking a lot about how random life is. I had just talked for a long time with my friend Reed, an existential atheist, who had pondered the meaning of life and death after attempting to kill an ant in the shower. I thought about how the good get the shaft and the wicked and incompetent are rewarded, about how incredibly lucky I am, why people I know who are more worthy than I seem to always be suffering, and about how our hardships don't even begin to compare with the injustice and cruelty others around the world have to face. I considered how people inexplicably find each other and love completely, and why others are lost just as fully. The haphazard nature of existence, the no rhyme or reason, the patterns that can't be predicted; it all just really amazes me. When I went on the Big Adventure, a friend gave me Don Delillo's latest book, Falling Man, which is set during the aftermath of 9/11, and so, of course, deals with the unexpected, unresolvable, and uncontrollable. Even while I was thinking and reading about all of this, during this vacation, though every day has an element of the new and unknown, there is an order and a plan to follow: every day, no matter where we are, we will move forward along a more or less predetermined course. This is the time for vacation and these are the things in this realm of possibility; this is how these factors are similar and differ from the day before. I was lulled into the comfort of the pattern. Every day we are lulled.
I was totally unprepared for the crashing of the bridge in Minneapolis. How horrible. How devastating. How chilling. How bizarre. How random. My heart goes out to everybody. I feel so sorry for all those people and their families, and for all the others, not just here in the US, but everywhere, around the world, who suffer for reasons I just can't seem to grasp.
Take care and live well, people. Even if there is no purpose, no reason, no mission, no meaning, no guiding light, no nothing, I hope that we are all happy to be alive for as long as we are living, and I wish us all well. I hope I don't forget to really pay attention, and not fall complacent. I hope I remember not to live my life lulled.
3 comments:
“Wisdom comes alone through suffering.” -aeschylus
"silent suffering comes to the end of every fun vacation." -rik
"a man who doesn't work can't go on a vacation" -ross perot's father
The stables are filling up ... with your blog in mind, this fan can shovel much wiser now. :)Rik
"I didn't want to be not G-d"
-Jeff Patterson, "High on Rust-Oleum" (1985)
Maybe all the meaning there is that matters today is what we mean to each other, and at least that 'works' and works well indeed for you, chip up....
Have you picked any of those 'Go Kiss a Moose' type t-shirts at any of these places you've been? I haven't seen one in years.
Damn, Deenst. When the vacation's over, its OH-VER.
Pick us back up, cheese whiz. The post is excellent, but I'm concerned for my mental health if I have to log in and read this one too many more times.
Sincerely,
Ed, of the Hill People
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