…it’s because we live too long, was, I think, what I said exactly. We live too long and thus have these artificial parts of which you speak and this scree (now there is a word I have not encountered since on the side of a mountain in Ecuador, the name of which escapes me, just remembering ropes and snow and a field of said scree), this scree, as I was saying, that inhabits our aging body–and mind, scree of the mind is, in particular, that of which I spoke to my beloved, commenting exactly, if memory serves, that the only reason the practice of therapy is enabled an existence is–that is of the physco-type–is because we live long enough so as to grow concerned about what is happening between our ears. Our ancestors running full-bore across the savanna plains, just a foot-step in front of some hunger-dripping monster, never would think such a thing necessary; all that was necessary being a tall tree or a field of hidden peers with chiseled spear tips awaiting a fine meal of monster served up raw, or at least medium and pink in the center. Ero vero me minus diu senem esse mallem, quam esse senem antequarm essem. Or, before you go find your latin grammar: For my part, in truth, I would rather be old less long that be old before I am old. Ancient wisdom compliments of my man Montaigne, quoting Brutus. As I was about to say, we are terminal, it’s just a matter of degrees, or so I was reminded this afternoon while taking a stress test because I was experiencing stress of the cardiac nature, only to now better understand, I am/was experiencing stress of the stress nature. So, the pipes are clean and the stress is environmental and thus I am even better positioned to consider the nature of the immortals.
The way I see it, the only way to accomplish such a feat–immortality, the fruit of your low hanging branch–should one be inclined, is to put time in it’s rightful place, to stop the right-ward nature of that continuum and take notice of such a thing when it happens. The cliché of the Heraclitian river–a cliché becoming a cliché through the test of history and earning the degree–still holds. And that seems to be the nature of reality. Chaos is evident at the quantum level, but who really want to go there? –particularly when young ladies full of blossom walk the streets of Portland, tan and lightly dressed, and of interest to the gods above who swoop down on them in slumber? What does it mean to say it is a good time to be mortal? When is it a bad time? Germany 1941? They didn’t think so, I suspect. When would it be a good time to be immortal? Oh, to be a god and swoop on young maidens!
There is only a finite amount of matter–carbon–in the universe. When you die you will continue in some fashion, albeit, one you won’t necessarily appreciate. Yet you will carry on, at least your atoms will, chaotic as they are, as you point out. And then, at some time when the river has flowed downstream and around the rock in the right bend, your parts will flow to some other place and you will continue. Little satisfaction in that, indeed.
Just because we have self-reflection and think we’re special because of it, we deem we should be bestowed with a soul, or some other medieval notion and that as a result, surely we are going to continue on somehow. Plant me below an acorn and I will carry on as an oak. And then perhaps I will be felled and made into pulp, from which I will be processed and pressed and used to absorb ink and bound with others of my ilk and will go into the world as a fashion of wisdom distribution. But then, I write like Dan Brown, so alas wisdom is not my venue, but entertainment. So, that’s settled. Let’s be entertained everyone. Cheers, and many happy returns,
Immortality, indeed.
Archive for the ‘Death’ Category
From a letter to a friend:
In Death, Mythology, Nature, Philosophy, The infinity of ideas, Wisdom on August 3, 2010 at 7:18 pmThe heros.
In Death, Family on May 30, 2010 at 7:54 amI was thirteen at the on-set of the Tet Offensive. But it was several years prior to Tet, that I realized people die early waging war. I say die early in the context of the individual life, that men and scores of women and children, all still carrying the imprint of youth, expire and with them the potential of their lives. I recall discovering this and being shocked by it. Life, I reasoned, was so dear that surely it could not end like that for means so questionable. But it did. And still does. War is a fact of history. It is, too, likely a certitude of the future. But I am not writing to moralize on war. It is Memorial Day, the day we commemorate the men and women who died in military service. That war is the practice of death and dieing is a sobering realization and we do well to remind ourselves of this by honoring those who have been subjected to it.
I am named after a Colonel Douglas, 99th Infantry Division. Colonel Douglas got my father out of the Ardennes Forest after the Germans broke through the lines in the winter of 1944. The Colonel delivered him, and many others trapped and waiting in their foxholes, to safety, snaking them through the forest and escaping. The Battle of the Bulge is the single largest battle of World War II. More than a million men–600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans, and 55,000 British–were engaged. There are estimates of up to 200,000 causalities for both sides.
Many years later I contacted the Department of the Army and replaced the Bronze Star my father had been awarded during the war. It had been stolen. He was not interested necessarily in replacing it, and had let the war recede in memory. The paperwork that accompanied the replacement called my father a hero. He was moved when I gave it to him. He was polite in accepting it and seemed touched by the gesture. A few days later I got a letter from him. In it he said he was not a hero, as the service record claimed. The heros, he said, where the one’s who did not return.
Thursday Grace Notes
In Books, Death, Philosophy, The Examined Life, The infinity of ideas, Thinkers, Wisdom on April 29, 2010 at 1:20 pmThere is a phrase that caught my eye in a book I’m reading: “…the search for lives lived as art.” It comes from the biography of the Renaissance writer, artist and builder, Leo Battista Alberti, by Anthony Grafton. Grafton is commenting on the intent of a previous Alberti biographer, Jacob Burckhardt. The full passage reads: “Burckhardt saw the full aesthetic development of personality as the Renaissance’s highest creative work; the search for lives lived as art, rather than a precise analysis of texts.” Lives lived as art–I love that.
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-short history of an idea-
Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you. ~ Confucius (551 – 479BC)
Do not do to others that which angers you, when done to you. ~ Isocrates (Greek philosopher, 436 – 338 BC)
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. ~ Jesus Christ (Luke 6:31)
Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. ~ Muhammad (570 – 632)
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At dinner with friends last night, we were talking about the passage of time and that it has been six months since our friends got their new dog. “Six months!” I blurted out. Then, perhaps because of an excess of wine, I remarked: “Six months closer to death.” I was met with blank stares and gaping mouths. Note to self: Just because I think it’s an important concept, does not mean I can stomp all over the conversation. And on that note: “Death is not an event in life.” ~ Wittgenstein
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And lastly, I’ve been going through some old journals and found this passage from December, 1980: “The solution to the problems of modernity are usually thought to be: God, democracy, socialism, sex, art, family, economic growth. But these in fact are the problems, not the solution.” I still wrestle with this problem, “the solution to the problems of modernity,” and am disappointed that in thirty years I’ve made no progress.
Dad
In Death, Family, Memoir on April 16, 2010 at 9:41 pmWe were having friends over for dinner this evening. I am the cook and was getting dinner prepped. The doorbell rang. Mary, a neighbor, upset, motioned behind her. “Your dad fell.” She pointed. My father was leaning, slumped, against the wall in the courtyard, covered in blood. It is six hours later now. He has a broken nose and lacerations, but is fine–other than looking like he just fought George Foreman (pre-grill days).
My father turned eighty-eight two weeks ago. He has not seen a doctor in fifteen years. And that time, fifteen years ago, was the first since induction into the service (WWII). He was a curiosity at the hospital tonight. “Mr. Bruns, you take no medicines, have no general practitioner and haven’t seen a doctor in a very long time.” He smiled, despite the blood stains, in confirmation. When they left the room, he asked me “How’d I do?” Great dad, you did great.
Two years ago I was in New York when my phone rang first thing in the morning. It was my father. “I’m so glad I got you,” he said. “I have terrible news. Your mother died last night.” It was out of the blue. She was gone, just, like that. I told him I’d be home in about three hours, that Carole and Jeff would come to him and then asked how he was. This is what he told me: “Last night your mother and I didn’t even turn on the t.v. We just sat and talked, maybe three hours. Then we kissed good night and went to bed. She didn’t wake up.” The story of my mother and my father’s last night together gave me comfort in a way that I cannot convey. “Dad, I said. We all will close the chapter of our life some day and what better way than to sit and talk with the one person you love most and then kiss them goodbye.” He said he understood this and that it gave him great comfort. It was a truth for him. He knew they had parted in the best way possible.
Tonight I thought of this even as I watched him resting in the hospital bed. He has me, but his life partner has gone before him and he does not have her. He must be lonely and even afraid, I think–this man who made it through the Battle of the Bulge. He is here, in the bed before me, bloodied and old and counting on something I cannot image to get him through. He is my father. I am his son.
The death of HDT
In Death, Thinkers on April 8, 2010 at 8:09 pm
HDT 1861
On his deathbed, Henry David Thoreau was asked by his aunt Louisa if he had made peace with God. “I did not know we had ever quarreled”, he replied.
His last words were, “Now comes good sailing.” And then two lose words “moose” and “Indian”. He died on May 6, 1862 at age 44.
Casco Bay, Maggie and a winter storm.
In Death, Dogs, Writers on January 2, 2010 at 8:30 pm“It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.” ~ Jim Harrison, The Road Home
I’ve written of the Harrison quote before. I haunts me. I am a dog person. That’s one thing. And I am also acutely aware of, dare I say?, dieing. That’s the other thing.
At the end of a year, beginning of a year, we are prone to reflection. I will spare you that. (Thank god, you sigh.) No reflection or such similar gibberish. But being a dog person gives one opportunity for contemplation. We die more slowly than our dogs, says Harrison. So imagine how fast they die. Are dogs given to reflection? I think not. I’ve heard it said that dogs have no conception of time. How anyone would know this, I can’t explain. But it makes sense. Maggie seems as excited when I return to her after and hour as she does after a week. Indeed, if a dog where to live being so present, then perhaps the accelerated pace of their existence is not all that bad. But that is just a guess, a mere hopeful consolation.
It was snowing this morning on our walk to the Eastern Prom. Snowing hard. Quiet and no one around type snowing. I heard the waves crashing, which is not normal. But the storm was coming from the northeast and whipping up the bay and slamming it into the rocks–that’s when the phrase “turning the tide” came to mind–and with it thoughts of all the things over which we have no control. Like dieing. Like our dogs dieing. Like the rise and fall of a tide, the turning of the calendar page, the beginning of a new decade. And all that that entails. Which is a lot.
It is natural to think more about the end than the beginning, I think, as you grow older. At fifty-four, I don’t think about it all that much, the end. But I do think about it more than I think about the beginning, that I know. And sometimes it startles me. That’s when I get comfort being around a dog. I know they don’t think of such things. If they did, their eyes would show it, that self-possessed knowledge of the end, and I’ve never seen that in a dog’s eyes. Yes, we die more slowly, and our leisurely pace affords us time to think of such things.
Such it is that the tide rises in the morning and goes out in the afternoon.
