Keep to Small
Accepting oblivion is the challenge I find myself facing these days. Time erases us all eventually; and even when the most famous of names linger--Jesus, say, or Shakespeare or Mohammed or Confucius--the details that were the experiences of their lives have evaporated: the smells and tastes they felt, the texture of their skin, the light or shadow in the eyes are lost to us forever.
How much more so for those of us only ordinarily known? The world will little note nor long remember, Lincoln said. Within a century and a half at most, everyone I've ever known will be, like me gone. I know, this isn't the sort of thing most people like to dwell on, but I can't seem to help myself.
This reality used to make me want to build skyscrapers, move a nation, create monumental works that everyone would know throughout the ages. Or, when I saw the unlikelihood of all that, I got depressed. But now, at 45, I've stumbled on a new response: less. Less ambition, less achievement, less notoriety. As it says in an old Japanese story about a boy wandering alone through a countryside ravaged by a demon, "Avoid large places; keep to small."
More and more I find myself absorbed (as much as the duties of life will allow) by the ephemeral, by what can never be recorded or preserved. Each time I run, I revel in the unrepeatability of the experience. I take each step, and it disappears forever in the wake of the next step, and the next. Each breath is an extinction.
The writing goes best when, at the end of each entry, I release what I've made. Of course, I still believe very much in polishing and revising what I write, but generally now I want to make my writing smaller, not larger, than it was. I want to burnish each one, piece by piece, then let them accumulate into whatever pattern they will--or not. Right now, a pile suits me as much as a mosaic; I'm more intrigued these days by what I find rather than what I make.
I'm convinced that each moment, when you look at it correctly, gleams. Then it's gone, but if you take that moment, the gleam is there. I want to be able to go that slowly and have that little that I can take the time to see.
But who'll pay me to sit on my rear end and do that? So I bustle about, trying to catch my naps from busy-ness when I can. I know that a lot of people would call my attitude "giving up" or "quitting on life," etc., etc. Until you've tried it, though, you have no idea how delicious stepping off the treadmill of expectation can be.
The hard part, or course, is that when you strip away the weight of the "oughts," you're left with yourself. I'm still getting used to that, and learning to beg the forgiveness of all those who have to live with this oddly preoccupied, remorselessly strange person I am. I'm still pretty bad at being me. It helps, though, to come to the realization that that small task really is an acheivement worthy of a lifetime. Somehow, it makes it easier for me accept--even celebrate--that someday that life will be gone.
How much more so for those of us only ordinarily known? The world will little note nor long remember, Lincoln said. Within a century and a half at most, everyone I've ever known will be, like me gone. I know, this isn't the sort of thing most people like to dwell on, but I can't seem to help myself.
This reality used to make me want to build skyscrapers, move a nation, create monumental works that everyone would know throughout the ages. Or, when I saw the unlikelihood of all that, I got depressed. But now, at 45, I've stumbled on a new response: less. Less ambition, less achievement, less notoriety. As it says in an old Japanese story about a boy wandering alone through a countryside ravaged by a demon, "Avoid large places; keep to small."
More and more I find myself absorbed (as much as the duties of life will allow) by the ephemeral, by what can never be recorded or preserved. Each time I run, I revel in the unrepeatability of the experience. I take each step, and it disappears forever in the wake of the next step, and the next. Each breath is an extinction.
The writing goes best when, at the end of each entry, I release what I've made. Of course, I still believe very much in polishing and revising what I write, but generally now I want to make my writing smaller, not larger, than it was. I want to burnish each one, piece by piece, then let them accumulate into whatever pattern they will--or not. Right now, a pile suits me as much as a mosaic; I'm more intrigued these days by what I find rather than what I make.
I'm convinced that each moment, when you look at it correctly, gleams. Then it's gone, but if you take that moment, the gleam is there. I want to be able to go that slowly and have that little that I can take the time to see.
But who'll pay me to sit on my rear end and do that? So I bustle about, trying to catch my naps from busy-ness when I can. I know that a lot of people would call my attitude "giving up" or "quitting on life," etc., etc. Until you've tried it, though, you have no idea how delicious stepping off the treadmill of expectation can be.
The hard part, or course, is that when you strip away the weight of the "oughts," you're left with yourself. I'm still getting used to that, and learning to beg the forgiveness of all those who have to live with this oddly preoccupied, remorselessly strange person I am. I'm still pretty bad at being me. It helps, though, to come to the realization that that small task really is an acheivement worthy of a lifetime. Somehow, it makes it easier for me accept--even celebrate--that someday that life will be gone.
posted by A Pilgrim at 9:21 PM
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