"My" instantiation as a sentient entity is winding down, as those who "know me" are aware of. And I find myself more and more looking forward to it, mostly so that, as the old songs have it, I can "lay my burden down." It's not at all that I've had such a terrible, painful life; though it had moments, it's not been particularly enjoyable or "successful" (whatever that means). But many, many more than I have had and continue to have it much, much worse. It's really about being human in the first place.
Humans are deeply flawed creatures - an evolutionary dead-end, in the current state of play. We are like a computer, one with intricate, powerful hardware, a huge collection of little bits of software to perform highly limited tasks very efficiently - but an operating system consisting of myriad kludges thrown together Rube Goldberg fashion, with huge chunks entirely missing. This state of affairs has led us to the unfortunate situation of striving mightily and furiously for complete, perfect understanding, without any conceivable possibility of ever reaching that state. Meanwhile, like the china-shop bulls, we step on, back into, and shit all over each other and every other entity within our ever-expanding reach. Worst of all, we seem to have no capacity to recognize any of this, nor either the ability or the willingness to restrain ourselves in the face of this lack.
I'm not bitching: It is what it is. And I could well be dead wrong. In fact, every one of us who ever lived could be dead wrong. Given enough time, that would undoubtedly be the case. The longer you look at it, the weirder and more mysterious it gets.
"If I knew the way, I would take you home."
mike, so metimes we hardly knew our friends . . . it is a loss of sorts I guess. However unappropriate, the lines of Millay's dirge without music is strong in my heart:
ReplyDeleteI am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.