We all did it with joint tar staining the same lips that formed the words, "But why are we HERE?"
As teens.
I ask you, panel of grown wizards, Why?
Children, the act of having and shepherding them, would seem to beg the question more deeply, but I sense that they, may be an answer of sorts, that it quiets the question. A balm. That creation itself answers the question of why were we ourselves created.
But I may be wrong. Please advise.
I look in the mirror and ask the question, abetted by liquor.
I feel it when my dog looks into my eyes and I almost hear words.
I sense a stampede just behind the silver of the office bathroom mirror.
I muse like a starved ape when our race conspires to do something hateful or pretty.
In other words, what in the ever-loving fuck are we doing here?
Why am I asking Why at 37 years of age? Why do clouds, literal clouds, seem to speak at times, just a fraction of a percent past my ability to comprehend them, like the pulse of a flourescent light, just beyond my ability to know that it's a pulse, not a continual shine...and yet they give me headaches, those tubes, for the same reason?
Maybe I just need a new job. But that seems awfully convenient.
And if anyone quotes the Bud Dry ad campaign I will fly to you on a jet so swift and jam a used toner cartridge employed only to print the word WHY down your cute gullet.
Why do I feel like a "young soul,"--that abominable concept of knowing existence--while others, like TR, and Higgins from Magnum, seem so old and wise? And Cosby? Stevie Wonder?
In even OTHER words, and rounding out my query, what do you feel in your goodness-given bones (if they are real and hard at all! If they are in fact calcium and ossified What Not at all!) about why we are here, and why we Are, at all.........................as an adult who has had some time to consider this question, and who is not, unless you happen to be, high?
Mean it.
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Hello, you've reached the existential law firm of Higgins, Cosby, Wonder & Rowley. We all saw that coming. Oh, shit, unless you meant Teddy Roosevelt. Or Tom Robbins. Or Tara Reid?
ReplyDelete!
No, here I go. I'm going to mean it.
How the hell do you jump in to this one? Swipe at it from all angles. Hack at it. Just get some marble off.
Overarchingly, I buy the concept that we all meet in the middle of one being. You can call it God if you want to, but it's not necessary. That there are godzillions of separate beings all doing their own things I believe is the big illusion. We're all that one being, splintered into countless pieces and entertaining ourself. This rings a bell for me in some profound way. No separation. Something final, indivisible, unarguable, infinitely satisfying.
So, that's what's underneath, say my bones. Big bright ceaseless bliss. Well, my bones didn't say it. Other people did. Your Buddhas and whosits. But my bones nodded.
But that's not where we live. Or it is, but we don't know it, and then we're to the question of why are we here? Why are we somewhere? Why is it like this?
I see a large game to entertain this one being, and this game has a structure, and the structure is evolution: physical and spiritual, which to me means increasing compassion, vision, and - ultimately - access to the loophole through which you can sneak out of the game when you're done playing, which is the knowledge of this great, final, all-encompassing self. Not hearsay, but experience. You don't live here anymore, even if you have a physical address.
ReplyDeleteI demand reincarnation as a part of this. I give this whole scene the finger from the bottom of my heart if that doesn't happen. Too unfair.
We dream over and over that we're alive, and then we die/wake up over and over. We're to make these dreams lucid.
Having children hasn't, in fact, shifted this for me. This is how I felt it before, this is how I feel it now.
Boiled down even more: IMPROVE and KNOW. I think a person could just work with those, aim at them, and that would be plenty. A person would be on target.
Where I live.
Everyone please read Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino. Read the story "All At One Point", in particular. It's lighthearted but it pertains and it gets to something that I didn't even touch and how could I have left it out?
Love!
I'm kicking myself.
It's maybe what we're made of. And is the only instruction. Forget everything I said. Honestly. All useless. Make this all a mute pointing to love. That's my answer.
"Improve and know" - yes. I would add "connect." Which is, for me, the core of love.
ReplyDeleteFor believers, shouldn't this be simple? All existence is for the glory of God. Why God would need or want to be glorified by a tiny, tiny subset of the whole of creation doesn't make sense to me, but it seems to work for many. A brief layover on this plane, multifarious experience of suffering, and then graduation to the presence of God. Which, as I understand it, is the whole point of the exercise. Why not cut out the middleman, my Catholic grade-school self wondered -- smother our babies immediately post-baptism, set them free and let them merge? What could be more loving? What could possibly make more sense as a parent? I was an odd kid and the teachers of my religion classes did not like me.
Obviously, this thinking doesn't cut it as an adult.
Having a child did, in fact, give me a glimpse of ... something. I'm not prone to visions, but I have had one, lying in a hospital bed, recovering after her birth, with my pink and perfect child nestled on my chest. I saw, with a clarity I do not experience often in daily life, a perfect and perfectly unbroken chain of mothers and daughters, arms around each other, each being simultaneously parent and child -- my daughter and I the newest links. While the vision persisted - no more than a moment - I felt, I believed, in my purpose: to stitch together with the machine of my body this single, perfect child and to loose her upon the world.
It was good while it lasted, and it lasted for a long time, that procreative sense of purpose. But my daughter is no longer an extension of me. And would be just fine if I were not around. So now what?
Nothing comes from nothing. We are all immortal on an atomic level. We have all existed in our smallest component parts since the beginning of time - as we experience time - and will continue to exist in our smallest component parts till the end of it. We recombine and live and die and degrade and recombine. The great endless wheel of organic chemistry. We're a part of it whether we want to be or not. There's no jumping-off-point, no real exit.
So, right, what's the point? To "improve and know," still feels right. We're here, we should make the best of it. We think and we feel -- we should use that. We should add to the sum total of the world -- find new ways to play with the fundamentals, to re-group the basics in ways that please and instruct and smooth the path. We fashion brand new creatures with out bodies -- we should love them.
We aren't required to do any of it alone. We can, and should, connect.
And yes, Jumpy, you need a new job.
Addendum: while I stand by everything I said, I also disavow everything I said. I'm tied to all those ideas, but I don't think it does any good to be tied to ideas. Untying.
ReplyDeleteIn the game, refining. It's a race between refining and untying. The more you refine, the looser the knot becomes, maybe. But it doesn't matter how refined you are or aren't if you untie the knot. If you can untie the knot, who cares? You win.
Joint tar. Purple lines from cheap red wine. The dry, sober lips of worry, of dying. Why indeed.
ReplyDeleteTina, I want you to be right. And I think you are, addendum and all. Which cleverly lets me off the hook for all that follows.
And now for my hacksaw. Which I will use blindfolded.
Love and the single, giant cosmic entity may be one and the same. The "pulse" just beyond reach. The split second jolt you feel when you hear the click of the latch, that one hand on your forehead. The certain quiet outside when the trees take a collective breath. Or watching the unlikely candidate win. Or sensing one one-hundredth of the suffering of the sufferers. You feel it. Everyone feels something.
Love is such a satisfying answer both when you are here and for what you leave behind, or who. The more tenderness the better remembered. The more compassion the better remembered. The remembering is the measure of your impact on this world. The memory is the echo of the energy, the love, that is in timeless circulation. (Livingstone, keep it down. I'm sure we are forming no end of circles, jerks and otherwise.) And I am not willfully ignoring the impact of viciousness but I do believe the better angels have the edge.
So, are we here to make impact? Impact leads to improvement. Maybe each incremental improvement is the point. As the sages have been telling us for ions. Be better.
Enough of my dime store philosophy.
My children did not open some window of understanding or salve an unreachable itch. It can be difficult to be content with your insignificant kingdom when you want to do right for all the right reasons. Our actions and beliefs are just tiny versions, distortions, of what we consider greatness or truth, love. The introduction of a person, not just a human being, but a person can blur the purpose as well as magnify it. Now I must be confident that my own goodness and love are necessary even essential parts of the single entity because I've added to it and so must they add to it. And so on. I hope my aim is true.
I keep thinking of the stock film sequence of a man standing on a crowded street in a bustling city and the camera steadily zooms out past the buildings and the clouds, past the ozone and the satellites and it's just the earth, one thing. That never made me feel insignificant.
Or eons. Molecules or time you choose.
ReplyDeleteOh, elegance. Well put. A deep bow to you, Sara.
ReplyDeleteMy dear Anonymous, though I consider myself a believer, I'm not feeling the concept of the glorification. The being I'm toting around (well, AM, so, hey) (not that I'm in a position to speak for "myself" on that score) is not looking to be glorified. That may be a Christian thing, and as such it's very exotic to me.
My parents/grandparents were Theosophists. We didn't go to church. So my friends all brought me to their churches, either out of convenience after sleepovers or their parents' concern for my salvation. I've sampled communion with the Catholics, the Christian Scientists, the Mormons. (I don't think anyone anywhere is angry with me about that, especially since I was just a little girl.) I loved going to all these churches, in an anthropological way. I loved Sunday school. Couldn't believe all the sleepy, bored little faces. People! This is good! Let's break it down!
A few years ago, I went with a friend to an Easter service at her Catholic church. I was so excited to go, and so disappointed once I was there. Nobody gave a shit. Nobody in the pews, nobody up front. Blah blah blah. Whatever. Let's get this over with. Dead eyes wherever you turned. Saddening.
I don't care whether you believe or don't believe, as long as you engage the question, as long as you reach for it over and over, as long as you care.
TR - your experience in Catholic churches is compatible with mine. It wasn't till I was in my 20s that I found priests who approached the Mass with thoughtfulness and schlarly rigor. I loved those Masses.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was, indeed, conflating "believers" with "Christians," which I should not have done. But the rest of the paragraph -- that is, in fact, a central part of what I took from my years of childhood religious instruction.
or, you know, "scholarly." whichever. sheesh.
ReplyDeleteTina, I am blushing. High praise indeed, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI will digress but only briefly and with the hope that some of our silent partners will chime in on the question of Why.
Oh, Catholics...it isn't all their fault. The spiritual, the philosophical, I'd say the theological (Some of you are much more qualified than I to speak to this!) have been being snuffed out of many Christian churches for years, maybe since the very beginning. Those elements are too unpredictable and raise too many questions for institutions that want to be beacons of an absolute truth, pillars of the community. Transcendence is hard one in organizations that preoccupy themselves with the functions of society. We have much to thank them for but spiritual cultivation was left behind in favor of economy/poverty, social welfare, reproductive rights and health care. All with varying degrees of importance to individuals but that have been moved forward(in some cases hindered, but let's never have that discussion) by no greater force then Christian organizations. They should just maybe stop holding services. I don't really mean that, but they have dug themselves a deep hole. And a very sad one.
In the name of full disclosure, I was raised in the Episcopal church and since my childhood half of my family converted to Catholicism.
It's not my intention, never my intention, to put down someone's church. A useless occupation if there ever were one. I always imagined that the spiritual/philosophical/theological was the point. But, again, church is foreign territory to me. Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear. I was just surprised.
ReplyDeleteJumpy and Livingstone are modeling the mystery, possibly. Their silence is a...dramatization? Effective. I can feel the question starting to bubble.
sigh sigh sigh.
ReplyDeleteall lovely thoughts and phrases, truly. I am so often impressed by all of your words. that is in large part why we are gathered here.
my two issues, and where I hope we can take this conversation:
1. I've heard all of this before.
2. We're devolving into parsing essentialy identical religions.
Let's get away from what's been assigned to us--our classroom microscopes and slides--and get out of the classroom altogether.
What's the MOTIVE for our creation/evolution?
Would Reason really arise from the pond or the garden simply to learn to share and play nice?
Might something alien be involved?
Be aware of what your family/school/church/cool peer group has told you and try not to give me that. No, I don't think sci-fi is correct either, but what do you guess at outside of the usual??
And if you already told me that, and that's simply what you believe 100%, well, thank you. No need to write another single solitary slovo.
We are all slaves of God. Name your God and you've identified your Master and your Purpose. Master Builder meet Master Work meet Master Race. Pray hard.
ReplyDeleteJumpy, my dear, I have to point out that you keep asking the question but you're not answering it yourself. Let's go, then, wizard.
ReplyDeleteAlso. I get it. These responses sound canned to you. Fair enough.
ReplyDeleteOnce I was looking on Ammachi's website. (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi. Indian saint whom I love and go see yearly when she comes to town.) There was a testimonial from a prisoner, who was going on and on about how Amma's love saved him from this and that, and gushing his gratitude. My first response was scorn, I'm unhappy to report. His words sounded so canned, so fake, so cliche.
Then I was hit by a wave of shame. A stern feeling overcame me. I practically hit myself with a bat and made myself read it again properly. Forget the language, get the meaning, try and imagine his feeling.
An intensely visceral experience followed that went on for several hours.
Part 1: Intense confusion. What or where is God? Why am I so stupid? Why don't I know this? This involved actual pulling of hair and hitting myself on the head repeatedly.
Part 2: Intense anger. Where the fuck are you, God? FUCK YOU! Stop hiding! Show yourself! Rage. Jumping up and down. Yelling. Or, rather, being jumped. Being yelled.
Part 3: Exquisite love and longing. Experience of duality. God and myself in relationship. If we weren't separate, we couldn't love each other and miss each other like this. I never wanted it to end. This went on and on. Suddenly, Hafiz and Rumi didn't sound like they were talking out their asses. They were the only cats that ever made any sense. Ache.
Duality. Pleasurable pain. A vice for God. The universe is his vice.
Now I'm done. I have no need to make anything else up. This isn't a crossword puzzle, this isn't Sudoku. Mean it? I always mean it.
God comes in threes. Love comes in spurts. Come to Butthead.
ReplyDeleteTina, you are open. It's wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOh, Jumps.
To my mind the religion bit was a side note, an off ramp in Indiana.
Motive, reason, master, prayer.
You all better start offering better then the stock responses yourselves or any responses at all. Sorry L you got lumped in for tardiness. This classroom has a revolving door.
Why is there a motive? Does mold grow because it is trying to conquer? Or is it the result of biology that is organic to...blah, blah, blah. Reason. Same. Why did we get it and fish didn't? Biology. Or...
So, blowing the lid of existence. Say, Dianetics. I mean, if you are looking for original that's a good place to start. A whopper. Or the Book of Mormon, there are magic glasses in there. Come on, The B-i-b-l-e broke all kinds of barriers. The whale. The flood. The parting of the seas. My man walking on water. Stephan Hawking. Socrates. The Dalai Lama. Einstein. Shakespeare. The competition is stiff. You should probably lead the way. Especially if you are going to take all the vocabulary of existence and any known structure of belief or creation out of the offing.
I'm ready. And I'm praying hard. Don't back down.
I'm not done. Last question. What are you DOING about it? You're really curious? You're dying to know what we're doing here? I throw down every morning around 7. I may have swallowed and then spouted a lot of apple but I'm working like a dog to throw it back up.
ReplyDeleteOkay.
XO.
I prefer to hear your ideas first, is all.
ReplyDeleteHence Spaceage, britches.
Which is another way of saying "the act of being spacy." Juuust in case you missed that one.
Which is what we're doing!
It's all Valid, I guess.
But what I wanted from this post, from any post, is and was to push the boundaries of the topic. When the Brown Hornet turned into lots of adorable, cringeworthy stories--from me too--it lost its bite. What do white kids have to say about it anyway?
Now, here we are on the BIG question, all holding out our favorite marbles for everyone else to see. "Mine's a GREEN cateye." "Mine's a blue AGATE!" "Mine's an IMAGINARY marble."
And it takes me back to my Montessori school.
I took the older kids for lunch hour. Ages 5 and 6. There were 7 of them, and I watched as they set the table, got the water and milk, and unpacked their food. I tried to bring a sack lunch to be a team player, but some days it was Bruegger's Bagels. Then we said thanks before eating (a sans God offering), just a few things we were thankful for that day. No required participation. And yeah, I'll defend that decision all day.
At the end, and this is my point, we had "stories in the round." These are all my ideas, hold your applause. One child started and then passed on the story (I would gently ref this process). Participation was encouraged, but one was allowed to "pass."
I was trying to tap into the nascent sense of imagination these children possessed at age 5-ish. Just learning to lie with some conviction, just learning to consider catching red tigers in bad weather and nightgowns with green rings.
The result, initially, was stupendous. Oh glorious towers, princesses, dragons, puppies, sin, loss, redemption, grace...and one day, when it rained in a particular story...it rained ORANGES!!! And the children dissolved in laughter, as I sat there and marvelled at how I was the best surrogate dad ever, the most super-loco of in loco parentis in the world.
However...
(part 2 in a moment)
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteHowever...
We got stuck. A male-female divide of dragons and tanks vs. princesses and ponies crept in (eh, no big deal). A few poop/pee jokes (mild rebuke about "table conversation"), and the same voices dominating the discussion, and the wallflowers getting wallier/flowerier with each passing day. Eh, so what.
The worst was that we started tell the same story. Castle, dragon, princess, rescue, hail of oranges, dragon goes poop, gets head cut off, princess meets someone dashing.
So. many. iterations. of the same.
I tried to steer it, I tried to gently keep it growing. New topics. But the kids had reached their imagination pit-stop. They were comfortable in their story-telling. They developed rules (some dragons could fly, not others. Some princesses were nice, some not). Then they began to argue about the rules: "Remember yesterday you said that a cave dragon couldn't fly!" "Did not!"
So I put stories in the round on the shelf for a month. We drew instead, or talked about what we were going to be when we grew up (yes, I participated in that one).
When I dusted the concep off again, there was initial joy, giving way to a new idea, maybe, or two...and then the same old.
I have been moved by the Christian spirit (Northern Lights, summer of '91, most memorably). I been moved to see through closed doors by substance (fungus, in Nashville, most memorably). I have heard empirical and postulatory Truth in a great number of screeds. I have been moved by secular ideas also, by art and by nature, oh so often by nature. I have marvelled at myself, what kind and sinful eyes, what noble and mean bones, what sexy and vulnerable body.
But what the hell else am I going to get excited about? Any fucking port in a storm, I tell ya. I am skeptical of people claiming to know, or speaking about final answers---which none of you really did, because you're trained in the same systems of respect for others and generally a mannered lot. Good Americans, good whites, good stock. Jolly good.
So you've chosen the story that makes you happy, or speaks to your insecurities, or helps you get to sleep at night instead of sitting up and trying to get numb enough to go to bed. Hooray. Hooray for not being terrified.
My sense is that we were created to be something amazing, gods all of us! but we were corrupted by some alien force...subjegated by our own worst ideas--money, possessions, and finding dignity in slaving for others...
Oh wait, that story's been taken.
Kiss it.
Jumpy
Poesy.
ReplyDeleteThe more I study humans the more I appreciate the first peoples of New Guinea who spend 75% of their time hunting and preparing food, 10% of their time fermenting things, 10% of their time smoking tobacco and drinking the fermented things, and 5% fucking, dancing, and singing.
I am reconciling myself with my sinful nature and rectifying my human condition one day at a time so that I may atone in time to present the fullness of my cleansed spirit to the Lord of Ma'at, Osiris, and be judged worthy to pass through the veil. Brutish and short indeed. Fucking brutish. Fucking short. God help us.