Apology in Absence

A friend asked me once why I always preferred the backwards method of handwriting my essays and papers before retyping and submitting them for classes. At the time I found that I had no answer for her, it was simply the way I had always wrote and never gave a second thought to it. Yet this question stuck in my mind and, just for my own curiosity, the next time I wrote a paper I tried to jump right into the typing portion and skip the hand writing. You know what I discovered? I hated it.
It was not that the paper was any more difficult to write than any previous one or that I received a worse grade, the problem was it simply was not...enjoyable. To stare at a computer screen is to stare at the world in all its immensity. The internet, computer games, facebook: distractions, unknowns, fears, hopes, expectations, questions. One click and all is laid bare. My mind buzzes too loudly, its voice too soft.
A piece of paper, now there is my sanctuary. There is nothing on it, a blank space, no expectations, no future plans, no distractions, just my pen strolling along on its less traveled path. It is the journey of writing that I seek, not the concluding word. My mind wanders while my hand follows, page after page. My sanctuary, my wooded cove. For me, there is very little else as peaceful and freeing as the simple act of writing, I can only hope I never lose my way.

I titled this blog Apology in Absence because I felt that it has been entirely too long since my last blog. I could say that it was because of my entirely too hectic schedule but something pulls me away from that excuse. More so, I think, it is that my thoughts have been unwilling to be written. As a senior, it is becoming increasingly clear that this world I have constructed for myself here at MSU is quickly coming to an end. My own apocalypse draws near and eventually I must lift my veil and look upon the world beyond these mountains. What will I take with me?

Last week I had the tremendous opportunity of being able to interview Senator Jon Tester about his views on climate change policy for another seminar I am taking. It was an eye opening experience for me in so many ways that I am still contemplating my paradigm shift. Here I am, asking a United States Senator about what he believes are our chances of preventing wide spread destruction and misery while really wondering if he has ever heard of a Nicholas Urfe. Why that particular thought was in my mind I could not honestly tell you but there it was none-the-less. It is an interesting feeling being able to passively dissect the questions of man's mortality and the roles of gods in the same classroom as the one I had just beheld the secular gods of our possible destruction, mother nature and man's ignorance. I struggle to find the bridge that I know must link the two but how does one look past the ridiculous notion that I equate to reciting a Shakespearean sonnet on the congress floor during a debate on climate change? Again, what do I bring with me?

Answers are death, I am alive, therefore I have nothing with me but questions and nothing but the future ahead of me. Perhaps Mother Nature looms there and nothing I do now can ever take away the fears and apprehensions that come with that thought yet, for now,....there are still golden leaves on the trees.

"I asked the leaf whether it was frightened because it was autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me, 'No. During the whole spring and summer I was completely alive. I worked hard to help nourish the tree, and now much of me is in the tree. I am not limited by this form. I am also the whole tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree. So I don't worry at all. As I leave this branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her 'I will see you again very soon.'" - Thich Nhat Hanh

It has everything...

I'll admit when we first started this book I was a little skeptical when Dr. Sexson told us that this book is the closest to having "everything". I kept wondering, what did he mean by everything? Did it contain all the answers to questions one would ask themselves throughout their lives or maybe it just contained all the questions one ought to ask themselves. Also, how could it have everything in it that I was searching for? I have to imagine that everyone's everything is slightly different just as we are all leading slightly different lives down slightly different paths. Was this book a generic frame of what the path would probably look like? I had no idea but I figured the only way to find out was to simply jump right in and read. That is what I did.

It did not take long before I began to figure out what "everything" meant. Actually, it only took until page 63. Last week, the discussion of death we were having had been weighing constantly on my mind and my thoughts. Jonah's blog described how we are all enduring suicide in one way or another which I was very adverse to at first given the heavy connotations of the word. I had had a family member take his own life at around the same age I am now and to see the ripple effects that act has had on my entire family has been sobering to say the least, anyone would recoil from that thought after that experience. Yet it seemed I could not escape that word for there it was, in black ink on white paper: suicide, page 63. I read these pages with perverse fascination, it seemed so suddenly that Nicholas descended to the point of contemplating this end. I always had the assumption that the descent was more of a spiral than a straight plummet. The way he thought about his suicide, cold and calculating almost as if it were being planned by someone else and he simply accepted that this was the way it was supposed to be now. Then "the balance tipped".

What balance? What was Nicholas trying to weigh? I remember all these questions in my head as we discussed our own eventual demise in class trying to discern any other hint of a reference to the balancing act in life. Could life and sanity be so fragile as to be walking on a tight rope between what is real and is unthinkable? The way he borrowed the gun from the gatekeeper as casually as buying a piece of bread from a local store disturbed me. Did he have no thought for how the gatekeeper would feel when his gun was discovered next to this corpse? Would the gatekeeper blame himself for not seeing the signs in time and trying to stop him? Would he too plummet into a depression? All unanswerable questions but ones that warrant a reference none-the-less. Heedless, seemingly, of any other notion Nicholas set off into the woods. A place that had provided him with such relief and solitude only weeks before would now serve as his waterloo. I found it interesting that on his way to his end he chose to only mention those sights and sounds around him that would normally paint a very comforting picture in anyone else's mind. The luminous sun, the warm air, the bells from the herds of goats. Interesting. He selected his spot by comparing it to relieving one's self, a very interesting metaphor choice. It was as though this sort of thing happens everyday and, indeed, was simply a natural chore to be done. No questions, no surprises. Cold and calculating, he set about making sure his death would be achieved in the most efficient way by the optimal angle. A good death should not be done rashly after all.

I wonder what Nicholas felt when he actually rehearsed his death...

Then, it was all over. Where images of beauty and warmth could not save him, the voice of mystery and sorrow could? (wtf to that) He waited for his moment but it never came. The spontaneous singing seemed to ruin the moment. This was not a romantic death, there would be no songs or elegies created to remember this lone man in the woods with his gun....He had missed, it seems, everything.

Dr. Sexson said in one of our classes a while back that it is almost sadder for animals and babes that suffer death so soon. They, who have no knowledge nor faults yet take the ultimate burden, should be pitied above all else. I may have to disagree with this point for though their deaths are incredible tragic, it was not a death obliterate. There would be no whispered questions at their funerals..."Was it something the parents did wrong, did they not love them enough?"..."Should we have been able to see the signs to prevent this"..."How could they choose this"... The parents of a dying babe may try to blame themselves in some way but deep down they would have to know that those accusations had no ground, it was simply fate. The parents of suicide victim afford themselves no such luxury.

"Did you kill anything?"
"One shot, I missed."

.Death obliterate.

It Startled Me to Read...

“Does anyone believe the galaxies exist to add splendor to the night sky over Bethlehem?”

A simple question that Dillard poses yet one that is so very difficult to answer. The figures Dillard gives to precede this question state there may be as many as eighty billion galaxies in existence, each housing at least one hundred billion suns. They are also over thirteen billion years old…how’s that for perspective. We are such a proud species with our technology and scientific progress yet what do we really know? We, who occupy one planet orbiting one sun and only have for such a short period of time yet we have the audacity to proclaim we know the secrets of the galaxy and secrets of God, who made us in his own image? How? How can we stand so tall on that pedestal? Could we even handle the alternative? Dillard proves nothing else in her book if not that life is fleeting and fragile. 138,000 living, breathing people can disappear in a single moment and did on April 30, 1991 almost one year exactly before I was born. It did not matter how rich or powerful they were how much “stuff” they owned; they were all equal in death. But then what is the point? What do we work so hard for? Why do I spend hours of my short time on this planet in a state of high stress over a tiny black letter on a piece of paper? Do the stars truly shine only for us? But then…maybe that’s the answer: the stars. Something so vast, so awesome and so completely unknown yet we appreciate them above all else for their beauty. Each of those stars could have their own earths with their own intelligent masses and we may never know but we do know what a starry night looks like. Is that enough for you? I think it may be enough for me yet how can one truly conceptualize that eternity? Dillard seems to offer only clouds and numbers as sources of solidarity. Startling and stark. All I have at this point is questions but for now that will be enough, questions and stars. 

Lets Take a Walk

Begin by strolling down the road, any road will do, on a clear, crisp autumn day. You look up and are not very surprised to find clouds rolling through the sky. You may admire their shapes or colors or you may find them worrisome due to tomorrow's prediction of snow fall. Whichever the case may be, the clouds take no notice of your admiration or apprehension but drift along in their wanderings, seemingly indifferent and apart from the worrisome world you know so well. Yet, you might think, they cannot really be that apart if you remembered the Buddhist teachings of one Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, "The Heart of Understanding". Think of a piece of paper. Now that paper could convey anything in the world from a thought, a story, a poem, a priceless piece of art or just a crude drawing. Yet that piece of paper is a tangible part of the world, meaning you can touch it, smell it, taste it if you so desire. Any test you deem worthy enough of spending your time on in order to prove the existence of that paper in that location in time and place I promise you it will pass. Now take a deeper look into that piece of paper. You may see nothing more than a blank facade yet, according to Hanh, one can be trained to see not just the white fibers but the soils from which it came. The bark that gave it protection. The leaves that collected rain and nutrients. Finally, you will see the clouds in the sky. The paper is all of these things, it only matters from which point in space you choose to observe it. In fact, if you obscure your point of view in time, that piece of paper is all these things at the same time. Not unlike a certain cat you may have heard of...

Superposition. 

At this point in the walk, you may find yourself at the redbox in front of the Holiday gas station located on the corner of 19th and Durston. You may also find yourself wanting to see the new Great Gatsby movie and why not, it has Leonardo Dicaprio in it after all so it can't be all that bad? With disc in hand you return home from your ponderous venture, plop down on the sofa and seclude your mind from all these vexing notions, or so you hoped... For you come to this part in the film: Nick Carraway stands at a window while the chaotic nature of uninhibited life swirls behind him. He spots a lone person walking the streets below and suddenly he realizes that he is that person, looking up into the window while at the same time he gazes back at him. "...I am both within and without..." 

Superposition.

Slightly unsettled by the continual references to this being all in all places at once nonsense you might turn off the film at this point. Lay back on your sofa, eyes closed, listening to the whispering of the wind outside and think: what are the chances of that?