One hundred and Forty Two

Last night I dreamed one of my co-workers invited me to attend the wedding of his sister.

The wedding was held in his house, which was splendid. Every guest was young and beautiful, and beautifully dressed. I was still young myself in this dream, and wearing my best suit. Several of the bridesmaids flirted with me at the reception, as young women did when I was young. One of them was my friend’s other sister, and he joked that our wedding would be next.

I left the reception and wandered through the rest of the house. All the other rooms were just as splendid, as though they, too, had been prepared to receive guests.

I wandered from room to room, and eventually found myself in rooms that were obviously not part of a private house – auditoriums, conference rooms and lecture halls - all of them empty but just as splendid and waiting to receive people. But not me. This was a gated community whose residents all knew each other, married each other, and lived in houses connected to each other through passageways unknown to outsiders.

I realized I was trespassing, and should leave. The land outside was barren and desolate, but I opened the gate and stepped outside.

I saw a cat lying at my feet. It was whimpering in pain. Then I saw a bird of prey on its back, its gray feathers almost hidden in the cat’s thick gray fur. The bird’s claws were sunk into the cat’s body, and it was pecking at the cat like Prometheus' eagle.

I crouched down and carefully pried the raptor’s claws, one by one, from the cat's body. The bird flew away, and the cat crawled away to lick its wounds.

As I watched them leave, someone struck me from behind and knocked me out. When I woke, a man was standing over me.

He was a mulatto, lightskinned enough to be mistaken for a latino by someone not familiar with mulattoes, but his racial ancestry was obvious from his dreadlocks, which looked like Medusa's snakes. He, too, was wearing what was obviously his best suit. His fingernails were long and filed to points, like claws.

He demanded my wallet, and I gave it to him. He got angry when he found it was empty, and told me to take off my clothes. They at least were worth something.

I begged him not to leave me naked. He sank his long nails into me, as the bird had sunk its claws into the cat, and I passed out from the pain.

I woke up bloody and disheveled. I got up, staggered to the gate and banged on it. People came out of the house, but when they saw my condition they refused to let me in.

I watch my dreams as a spectator, even when I’m in them. The me in this dream was afraid the mulatto was going to kill me, but the me watching the dream found it funny.

One Hundred and Forty One

I'm as alone as Alexander Selkirk. 

Defoe is said to have invented Friday in order to show that the civilized Englishman invariably becomes master of any savage he meets, whatever the circumstances. That may have become the moral of Defoe’s story as he wrote it, but I think he began with Selkirk’s story, and invented Friday because he couldn’t imagine such loneliness.

“L'enfer, c'est les autres”, said Sartre. Not because he was a misanthrope, but because however well we come to know other people, they remain strangers. A stranger could become our friend, but we fear s/he’ll become our enemy because our society teaches us we're all competitors.

“There is no such thing as society”, said Baroness Thatcher. “There are only individuals”. Wise words from a fool. But we’re all fools.

Fools aren’t fools because they never say anything wise. They’re fools because they don’t know what they’re saying, but merely repeat what they hear.

“Never say more than you know”, said Wittgenstein. But if we didn’t say more than we know, most of us would never say anything. 

We all know more than we think we do, or admit we do. Education means forgetting what all children know, because it's too terrible to live with, and pretending to believe the comforting lies adults pretend to believe.

We all know life is terrible for most people most of the time, but we pretend the occasional moment of joy makes the years of pain worth living. Life may be worth living for some, but not for most of us. Perhaps not for any of us. Even the most fortunate must be troubled by the knowledge that their happiness is made possible by the misery of others. But even if they feel no pity for others, the fortunate must fear that their victims will take revenge on them.

What we used to call society, before the baroness corrected us, is therefore built on sadomasochism. The fortunate hurt the unfortunate to confirm that however terrible the things they do, their victims can’t or won’t take revenge on them. 

Slaves don’t rebel against their masters unless and until they delude themselves into believing they'd make better masters. But so few of us are able to master ourselves that only fools imagine they could master others.

We pretend to be masters or slaves because we've all done terrible things. We'd rather be masters, guiltless because above the law; but most of us are content to be slaves, guiltless because we merely carry out our masters’ orders.

We invented gods who could forgive us for committing crimes too terrible for us to forgive ourselves. Now we know too much to believe, or suspend our disbelief, in gods, but not enough to forgive ourselves; so we punish ourselves.       

One Hundred and Forty

After she died, I tried to kill myself, and failed; so I took all the books off the shelves and cleaned them, for something to do. But I can do nothing now. I never put them back on the shelves. They’re still sitting on the floor in piles.

Once in a while I look for a book; but usually I can’t find what I’m looking for, so I pick up the first book I find and read it. Last month it was Wallerstein’s. After I finished it, I picked up Stuart & Marie Hall’s A Brief History of Science. Brief it is, but well written, by literate writers for literate readers, in a style as obsolete as Chaucer’s Middle English.  

Nothing is more obsolete than a book about the progress of human knowledge. Every age of reason and enlightenment has been a renaissance, a rediscovery of ancient knowledge lost. We keep losing our way, so for us progress always means going back to the beginning. And we always lose more than we regain.

 

I finished the Hall’s book last night. This morning I woke, as I often do, with a phrase echoing in my head. It was We are dancing on the edge of a volcano. 

Popular historians invariably use this phrase when writing about the Weimar Republic, but it’s older than Weimar. Ravel wrote it on the score of La Valse before the Great War, and he was quoting Salvandy, who used it about the July monarchy. Historians started using it about the USA a few years ago, but no longer. The parallels between Trump’s USA and Hitler’s Germany are too close. They now insist Trump is a unique phenomenon without precedent.

Peter Campbell wrote with contempt about the people who danced on the edge of the volcano between the world wars, but we've always lived on the edge of the volcano. What else should we do but dance while we can?

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Dancing in the dark

‘Til the tune ends

We're dancing in the dark

And it soon ends

We’re waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here

Time hurries by, we’re here

Then we’re gone

One Hundred and Thirty Nine

Why am I still alive?

Leonard said he knows why he’s still alive.

When Cindy killed herself, Leonard said he was the only one who knew why.

Her daughter was grown and married, so Cindy’s work was done. She had no reason to stay alive.

Leonard said he wants to meet his Maker, but stays alive because his daughter needs him. Jennifer cannot or will not take care of herself.  

I used to tell myself I stay alive because I love the human race, and want to do what I can to help it. But I can do nothing. The human race is destroying itself because it doesn't love itself as I do. Now I stay alive because I’m already dead in the only way that matters.