a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early... (p. 642)
Well, that's enough of that.
Today's post will contain a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Okay, here goes.
this
that
I don't know why I continue to bother to try to blog when I have nothing whatever of
I guess it all boils down to Bloggo, ergo sum (thank you, Descartes).
For those of you who didn't take Latin, it means "I blog, therefore I am." It is as simple as that, and as complicated.
Nevertheless, I plod on valiantly to fill the ether with blather that can be traced directly to me, so that extra-terrestrials finding these words ages and ages hence (thank you, Robert Frost) will know that while it may not necessarily be true that I came, saw, or conquered (thank you, Julius Caesar), it will be irrefutable that I did at one time, someplace, somewhere, actually exist. Looking at it from their perspective, I blogged, therefore I was, which is so much better than their having to use the past imperfect conditional (I think I just made that up), as in if he had blogged, he would have been.
Immortality. To be remembered. To be not just remembered but celebrated. To have counted. To have mattered. I think that is all any of us really want, and it is something hardly any of us will get. After only a generation or two, perhaps, of being fondly remembered by our own descendants, no one will recall the sound of our voice, how we parted our hair (if we had any hair), what toothpaste or deodorant or cereal we bought, what we believed in our heart of hearts. Like all the others except for a very precious few, we will become non-entities, as anonymous as those rows and rows of skulls found under the streets of Paris.
Speaking of perspective, I need my morning coffee. This is getting too depressing.
There, that's better.
The Psalms are always a good way to start the day. I will read a couple. Psalm 30. Psalm 118. Psalm 23.
I almost forgot. Today is Good Friday. Things may look bleak, but Easter is just around the corner. There is hope.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (thank you, Psalm 30).
I have no wish for immortality. None.
ReplyDeleteTo have lived is enough. Somedays more than enough.
A very happy Easter to you and yours.
You scare me every time you write about questioning whether you should blog. Do you forget that you have readers who love you and whose only contact with you is through your blog and on their blogs, and that these readers would experience the loss of your blog as a loss in their hearts? You do good by blogging. You come across as sweet, knowledgable, joyous, loving, and curious about a wide assortment of things. You are one of my main reasons for blogging because I feel such a depth of friendship with you—and I’ll mention that I feel similarly about Sue, since she’s reading this too. You question whether your blog is worth reading, but there are two parts to this. One is the content of your blog, and the other is that people like myself care about you and want to know who you are and what your interests are. I cannot emphasize too strongly that to lose you as a blogger would be a very, very sad thing to me, and it would probably be to lose you altogether since you’ve never shown an inclination to be penpals, and since people who stop writing blogs also tend to stop visiting blogs. Therefore, once you let the blog go, I’m sure you’ll let me go as well, and I truly don’t want that. I’m loyal to you, and I have every intention of always being loyal to you, and I hope that what I feel for you is returned. I know that you find me off-putting and that you hold back from me in a way that I don’t hold back from you, yet I very want to believe that, in spite of the fact I’m more controversial than you’re comfortable with, you’re still committed to me. I need that from you.
ReplyDeleteUnlike you, Sue, I’m desperate to believe in immortality if only because I don’t want to give Peggy up, but it’s also true that I don’t want to give up a lot of other people and a lot of other critters and things too, critters and things that will be gone for all eternity if there is no afterlife. Of course, you might rationally point out that, if there’s no afterlife, I wouldn’t know that I had lost these things anyway, so it wouldn’t matter. This is true, but I know it now, and my knowing casts a pall over my life. It’s like being tied to rock while a tsunami is rolling in. I can see it coming, but I can neither stop it nor escape it, so the fact that it’ll kill me instantly when it hits is of no consolation because I so very much want to live. If I felt as you do, I would be but little troubled that there’s no God running things because I wouldn’t see myself as losing much to death, but since I see myself as losing a great, great deal to death, I very much care that there’s no Creator.