Posterity
What would I do if this pain in my head turned out to be brain damage? A tumor? I know that the brain has no pain receptors, but what about unruly cells pressing against my skull? Would I end in shame? Would I just be a collection of unfinished threads? A cluster of knots that never quite got tightened up? A set of desires destined to be dashed up on some wall, commemorated in a brass plaque in the crematorium, a form letter from the Organ Bank? A score of short stories that always seem to peter off by mid-arc? A weblog that turned in circles and turned inwards, that was written for no-one and everyone, to the city, to my friends but mostly to total strangers? A sad computerized minima black reflecting inner depth at times and inner obfuscation at others? A journal of sorts which has sustained its volume of readership but has lost the interactive quality? What will I be? Will I be cremated? Will it be triumphant? I'd like it to be triumphant, but I've been raised for two decades to look over the next hill: "when you are out of school...", "when you finish your story...", "when you've acquired the necessary experience...", "when you've sorted your confusion out...", "when you're ready to rejoin the rest of us...". Will I be able to finish the last testament, written with the greatest sense of urgency? Or will that peter out as well, left at half-paragraph as my executive function unravels? If I could not achieve enlightenment in the time between diagnosis of tumor and death by surgery, odds are an entire lifetime will not be enough either. Does that mean that I have all the time regardless of the "imminence" of death? I have all the time in my world. Living is the longest thing any one of us will do. I would have preferred to be crushed by a cinderblock, or splattered by a falling construction crane, or vaporized, or melted, not to die bloated and cancerous. But such are wishes: they breed hubris, and they obscure the fact that we have all the time in the world. I walked the streets for hours, and were I more courageous I would perform neuropsychological tests on passers-by. That would be a gay old time. What would they think? Poor little A.D. has finally lost his mind. Now all that is left is to scatter his ashes in the ravine. But only symbolically. Preferrably only bone. The rest of my tissues can go to either the trees or as organs for people who actually need the damn things.
On a Wall, Worth Repeating: "Beauty is our only weapon."
On a Wall, Worth Repeating: "Beauty is our only weapon."
posted by A. D. at 9:48 PM
4 Comments:
ok, i yield to some staged (over-long and perhaps unwanted) contemplations:
-i would miss the pain in my head acutely..
-if you know you are able to finish the last chapter or tie up the loose sentences, then what is the worth in doing so..if enlightenment is elusive, one is perhaps able to write better prose (i think: would it be satisfying to write a spiritual tract..?)
-i think why not walk in circles? if the circles tighten up into a single point perhaps then you are just standing still; nothing is necessary-of-saying any longer, or all you write is perfected and unwandering (some perfectly ordered gnostic text maybe...or would you even 'feel' as if it was you writing it?)
-beware of these variations on a theme!:
"Once he called me into his room. The variations from the Opus 111 sonata were open on the piano. "Look," he said, ponting to the music (he had also lost the ability to play the piano), "look." Then, after a prolonged effort, he managed to add, "Now I know!" He kept trying to explain something important to me, but the words he used were completely unintelligible, and seeing that I didn't understand him, he looked at me in amazement and said, "That's strange."
I knew what he wanted to talk about, of course. He had been involved with the topic a long time. Beethoven had felt a sudden attachment to the variation form toward the end of his life. At first glance it might seem the most superficial of forms, a showcase for technique, the type of work better suited to a lacemaker than to Beethoven. But Beethoven made it one of the most distinguished forms (for the first time in the history of music) and imbued it with some of his finest meditations."
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Well, how do I respond to that? I guess I have to fall back to the sad facts of youth, or perhaps the exuberant facts of the ignorance that keeps me going. May it last a long time!
I'll definitely consider what was said about variations on a theme in preparation for death. I always though philosophy was preparation for death, but now I think extinguishing the self will be better. Whish is stil lkind of philosophy. But anyway. We'll go on.
I'm not dying, by the way. Although my lungs feel worse than ever.
Well, how do I respond to that? I guess I have to fall back to the sad facts of youth, or perhaps the exuberant facts of the ignorance that keeps me going. May it last a long time!
I'll definitely consider what was said about variations on a theme in preparation for death. I always though philosophy was preparation for death, but now I think extinguishing the self will be better. Whish is stil lkind of philosophy. But anyway. We'll go on.
I'm not dying, by the way. Although my lungs feel worse than ever.
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