One Hundred and Seventy Eight

I had a dream of sorts this morning.

Bunin's been waking me earlier and earlier each morning, by meowing until I get up and feed him.  He woke me before 4 AM this morning, so I after I fed him I went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep. Instead I lay there, wondering how I'd lived so long, known so many people, and was now alone except for a cat.

I never had to make an effort to attract other people.  They always made an effort to attract me.  That’s the problem, of course.

Everyone deserves to be loved, and I tried to love everyone.  I couldn’t, of course.  But I tried, and that's what attracted other people to me.  I made them promises I couldn't keep.

As I lay there, half awake and half asleep, I had something between a daydream and a vision, the way I used to do when I was a child.  I was surrounded by all the people I've attracted, who were attached to me like flies to a spider's web.  I struggled to free myself, and them, but they clung to me.

Whenever I met someone attractive, and sought to know them better, I was always disappointed.  So I struggled to detach myself, to end our relationship without hurting them. And I always failed.

I was always disappointed because I expected too much of them.  I see them more clearly than they see themselves—the faults they won’t admit, and the good of which they’re unaware—because they’re afraid  to know themselves.  How do they manage to stay ignorant?  It must be exhausting.

The struggle to pretend I don't know what I know has exhausted me.  I wish it were over.

One Hundred and Seventy Seven

Justin and his wife are in some kind of legal dispute.  I don’t know what kind, and apparently neither does he.   

He and Tatiana are both presenting their cases to a judge in Ukraine, but neither of them is in Ukraine.  Justin emails his answers to the judge’s questions from Canberra, and Tatiana emails her answers to her lawyer (Justin says he doesn’t need a lawyer) in Kiev from wherever she is.

I asked him if Tatiana is suing him for divorce, and he’s contesting it, but he wouldn’t say yes and he wouldn’t say no.  I asked him if he’s suing her for divorce, and she’s contesting it, and got the same (non)answer.  Perhaps this is due to some peculiarity of the Ukrainian legal system that I don't know about (Justin doesn’t seem to know much about it, either, which is why I keep urging him to get a lawyer).  Perhaps it’s due to the fact that he doesn’t seem to know what he wants.

He says he wants to stay married, and that’s why he makes lists of all the things he’s done for Tatiana - all the gifts he’s given her during their marriage - and emails them to the judge.  He also mocks her for making lists of all the things she's done for him - all the gifts she’s given him during their marriage - and emailing them to the judge.  Justin says the judge is too smart to be taken in by her ploy.  Can he really be this obtuse?  Of course he can.  Why should he be the exception?

I’m sure Justin wants to stay married.  Not because he loves Tatiana, but because he wants order in his life.  And Tatiana, after a bad first marriage, no longer believes in love and wants only order as well.

The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is how to love
And be loved in return.

Love is one of those things, like freedom or god, that people claim to believe exists, and want more than anything else; but few experience it, so most eventually settle for order.   

What does Justin want from me?  Why does he keep telephoning me from the other side of the world to tell me his problems?  Is it because he thinks I don’t judge him, the way Tatiana seems to?  But I have judged him, just as I have judged them all, and found them all not guilty by reason of insanity.

One Hundred and Seventy Six

I had a dream last night. 

I dream every night, of course.  Everyone does.  But this was the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I remembered after I woke.  My dreams are usually too terrible now to remember.

She’s alive, of course, as she always is in my dreams.  And she and I are both young.  But we’ve lost everything.  All we have left are the clothes on our backs.

We live in a storage locker inside a warehouse.  Many other people live there, too.  All the people who’ve lost their homes now live in such warehouses.

Just as the hotel in my previous dreams was on the shore of the eternal sea, so is this hotel-cum-warehouse on the edge of an airport.  Day and night we hear planes taking off into the sky.

We’re both jobless, as most people are now.  But I still have my business suit, and she has hers, and every day we put them on and go out looking for work.

As I walk across the airport tarmac, I am joined by other people, all walking in the same direction.  The other men are all dressed in suits, as I am, and the women are in long gowns.

I hear music.  I look around and see, through the windows of a nearby building, an orchestra on the top floor.  The other people are all walking towards this building, so I do, too.      

A sign at the entrance of the building announces that it is the new world headquarters of a multinational corporation.  Today is its grand opening, and the corporation is celebrating with a party and lavish buffet, with music provided by the orchestra.   

I and the other people enter the building.  Most gather around the buffet in the lobby, but some of us head for the elevator.

The elevator stops at the twelfth floor and the doors open, but no one gets off because the orchestra is on the thirteenth floor.  Of course the building doesn’t have a thirteenth floor.  No building does, officially.

Before the doors close again, I get off and head for the stairs.

As I am climbing up to the thirteenth floor, I find a black boy lying on the stairs.  He is small and thin, dirty and in rags.

I pick him up and carry him down to the buffet in the lobby.

One Hundred and Seventy Five

I’m reading about Sylvia Plath, which I usually avoid doing because she’s an icon, and most icons don’t stand up well to scrutiny.  Doubly an icon in Plath’s case, for feminists and for the suicidal.  And we’re all suicidal now. 

I read Alvarez’ book about her years ago, when I was considering suicide myself, before I decided it would be pointless because I'm already dead in every way that matters.

I read his book because the reviews said it was about more than Plath’s suicide.  And it was.  It was more about Alvarez’s suicide attempt than Plath’s suicide.   

He depicted himself as the brave hero who met the savage god and lived, unlike poor sad Plath.  He was telling yet another version of the legend of poor sad Plath, victim of men.

The article I'm reading now is about Plath’s and Hughes’ marriage, which it depicts as an idyllic partnership of two talented and charismatic people.  The shock of his betrayal is therefore doubly great.  But the shock of her suicide is even greater.  How could this extraordinary woman be incapable of living without a man?  Hughes turned out not to be the person he seemed, but neither was she.

They were both actors, as are we all.  Bad actors fall in love with their roles, forgetting who they really are (if they ever knew) and are crushed when the curtain falls.  Plath and Hughes seem to have been in love not with each other, nor with themselves, but with an image of themselves as the perfect couple. 

After Plath’s suicide, Hughes claimed they had been about to reconcile.  A few more days would have made all the difference.  I think he was trying, like Alvarez, to rewrite Plath's story with himself as its hero.

A few weeks ago Justin telephoned and announced triumphantly that he and his wife had reconciled.  Then, a few days later, he called again and said Tatiana had gone home to Ukraine, and he hadn’t heard from her since.  Her family say they don’t know where she is.

He’s been telephoning me every day since then, and we talk for hours.  I keep telling him to contact his stepdaughter.  If anyone knows where Tatiana is, it’s her daughter.

But don’t just telephone her, I tell him.  Fly to the USA and speak to Natalia in person.  That will show her he's sincere.

Tatiana is probably with her daughter.  I keep telling him what he should say to her if she is, and what he should say to Natalia if she isn’t.

Justin keeps saying he will remind Tatiana of all the things he’s bought for her, and how much she owes him.  I grit my teeth and tell him to just tell her how much he loves her.

I think Justin loves the idea of being married more than he loves his wife; and poor sad Tatiana, deserted by her first husband, has taken her revenge by deserting her second.

One Hundred and Seventy Four

Camus said the only important question is whether life is worth living.  When we answer it, all our other questions become easier to answer. 

When I read that, as a child, it became clear to me that Camus was an inferior thinker.  That he was nevertheless celebrated (in some circles) for saying it led me to suspect that (most) modern thinkers are inferior.

It was clear to me that Camus was asking the same question, in a different (and inferior) form, that those who we call religious ask.  For them, the only important question is whether gods exist.  When we answer it, all our other questions become easier to answer.

If we answer that gods do exist, we also answer the question of why we exist. It's to serve them.  If we answer that gods do not exist, our own existence has no purpose. 

When I read that, as a child, it was clear to me that the religious were asking the same question, in a different (and inferior) form, that those who we call scientists ask.  For them, the only important question is why does anything exist.  Are we the reason why there is something rather than nothing?

When I read that, as a child, it was clear to me that scientists were asking the same question, in a different (and inferior) form, that we all ask as soon as we become self-aware: why do I exist?

In order to get the right answer, we must ask the right question.  But we keep asking the same question over and over again, as children do, each time in a different (though not necessarily better) form, because we don’t question our a priori assumptions, those questions we think we’ve already answered.  Thus we ensure that we get the same answer each time, in a different (though not necessarily better) form.  

We keep asking the same question over and over again because as much as we want to know the answer, we also fear knowing it.  What we call philosophy becomes what we call religion when we lose our courage and stop searching for the answer, tell ourselves we know it, and start searching instead for confirmation.

In the childhood of our race, when our earliest ancestors asked why we exist, they reasoned that gods – beings like us, but as superior to us as we are to other animals - must have created us to serve them, just we domesticated other lesser animals (and enslaved other lesser humans) to serve us.  Nietzsche erred when he said Christianity was a religion for slaves, because he was thinking only of Christianity.  Every religion we’ve created has been for slaves – and for masters, too, because they need plausible excuses as much as slaves do to reconcile them to the obvious injustice of slavery; and every society we’ve created has consisted of slaves and their masters, real and imaginary.  

 We created our gods so they could create us, just as we created our human masters because we were animals who could not or would not master ourselves.  Eventually we persuaded ourselves that our masters, both human and divine, do not regard us as merely their property.  They love us, as parents love their children.  Our human masters also persuaded themselves that they love us.  Deception and self-deception enable masters and slaves to live together without killing each other.  But just as our real parents are never as loving as the ones we imagine, so are our real masters never as masterful as the ones we imagine.   

Because they’re as human as we are, our masters are no more able or willing than we are to rule themselves.  They’re equally unable or unwilling to rule us, so eventually we lose patience with them.  But as long as we cannot or will not rule ourselves, we do not lose patience with those gods in whose name our human masters rule us.  We merely exchange one god, and/or one master, for another.

Whatever the form in which we imagine them, serving the gods has always been our answer to the question of why we exist.  But every god eventually fails us – or rather those who rule us in their name fail us – which raises the question not only of which god is our true god, but which of our human masters is that god’s true servant.

Namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustos dominos volunt.

One Hundred and Seventy Three

The Buddha said life consists of suffering because we want to have things we can’t have, and want to avoid things we can’t avoid.   What do we want to have but can’t, and what do we want to avoid but can’t?

It’s conventional wisdom that what we used to call Nature is conservative.  Every thing at rest stays at rest, and every thing in motion stays in motion, unless and until it meets another thing. Every living thing wants to go on living.  What we want to have is immortality, and what we want to avoid is death.

If this is true—and everything that’s said must be true in some sense, or it couldn’t be said—in what sense is it true?

The world is always changing because it doesn’t consist of one thing, but many.  Our earliest teachers said it only seems to be many.  In reality all is one, and change is an illusion.  It used to be conventional wisdom that only the infinite and unchanging world we used to call Supernatural is real.  If this is true—and everything that’s said must be true in some sense—in what sense is it true?

If it’s true that all is one, and we are parts of a greater whole, it’s also true that we are separate and unique individuals.  There is not one truth, but many.  If there is one truth, infinite and unchanging, it’s not our truth, because we are many, finite and always changing.

Freud said whatever we think we want, sex is what we really want.  If this is true, it’s true in the sense that all living things want to go on living.  Our individual lives are brief, but the life of our species is long (at least in comparison), so we want to go on living through our children.

It seems everything we used to call civilization was created in pursuit of that kind of immortality - not, or not only, for our biological children, but for our species, our nation, or whatever greater whole we see ourselves as being part of.  But what we see is seldom great enough.  Therefore when we change that part of the whole which we call the world because it’s the only part we know, we change it in ways we cannot know.  We change ourselves as well.  Often we change both for the worse.

It seems the more we try to change the world and ourselves for the better, the worse both become.  We tried again and again to undo our mistakes and begin again, but always found we can’t go back, only forward.  Why, then, do we keep doing the same things again and again, knowing they’re the wrong things?  Is it because we don’t know what we’re doing?  Perhaps we do know, but don’t want to admit it.   

Freud said whatever we think we want, sex is what we really want.  He also said things we think we want to avoid are often things we really want, but think we can’t or shouldn’t have.  If this is true, in what sense is it true?

Near the end of his life Freud decided what we really want isn't sex, but death.  Most neoFreudians dismiss this as the delusion of an ailing failing mind, but it’s always made sense to me.  If we can’t live as we choose, we can at least choose to die.  

What we want is not just to die, but to die well; a death that concludes a life well lived.

We begin life full of hope, but most of us soon meet with things that distract and/or prevent us from doing what we want, and living the life we should.

 Throughout our history our teachers told us what we should do in order to live well.  But most of us can’t or won’t do what we know we should.  Not because we’re selfish, but because we’re unselfish. 

Most of us live for, and are ready to die for, things we think give meaning to our lives, but which in reality live on and through us as a parasite lives on and through its host.

All the gods we used to live for, and die for, are now either dead or dying.  We’re beginning to wake from the long dream we call history and see the world as it really is, not as we hope and/or fear it is.  How many of us can look at the world as it really is – or rather, what we’ve made of it – knowing what it could be and should be, without wanting to die of shame and disgust?

We’ve lost faith in our gods, who forgave us when we couldn’t forgive ourselves.  We’ve also lost faith in ourselves, and our ability to make the world a better place.  We know too much now, and too little.  All we want is to forget.

But it seems most of us want to suffer and do penance, to enter the purifying flames of the Apocalypse like sinful swimmers into cleanness leaping.  That's what they call a good death.  Whatever we think we want, death is what we really want.

One Hundred and Seventy Two

The last illusion is that love makes a difference.

I thought that in loving her, I could love all the others.  But I can’t, because there are no others.  We are all one, so I must love them all in order to love myself.  But I can’t, because they don’t love themselves.

I’d forgive them what they’ve done if I could, but I can’t.  They must forgive themselves.  But they can't, so they’re punishing themselves.  My punishment for not being able to help them is to watch them suffer without being able to help them.

I want to die, but I can’t.  I must endure my punishment while they endure theirs.