One Hundred and Eighty Two

γνῶθι σεαυτόν, said the oracle.  Know thyself.  I know that I am nothing. 

Cogito, ergo sum, said Descartes.  I think, therefore I am.  I think of nothing, therefore I am nothing.

Told that the oracle had called him the wisest man in Athens, Socrates said he knew nothing.

The wisest men have always said that what we think we know is false.  This world of things is an illusion that veils the real world.

The wisest Westerners have always said that we alone are real in this world of illusion: souls trapped in bodies, or minds trapped in matter.  We mistake it for the real world as dreamers mistake their dreams for reality.

Do dreamers ever mistake their dreams for reality, and ask themselves, as Chuang Tzu said he did, whether they are men dreaming they’re butterflies or butterflies dreaming they’re men?  I’ve always known when I was dreaming.

The wisest Easterners have always said that the self which dreams, whether it dreams it’s a man or a butterfly, is also an illusion, part of the dream.  I’ve always watched myself, the self in my dreams, as I'd watch an actor in a play.  My life never seemed real to me.

When I was a child, I’d sometimes wake to find myself lying on my bedroom floor, with my mother bending over me.  The first time it happened, she said I’d been crying “Help them!” in my sleep.

I stopped sleepwalking, but for years I woke in the middle of the night, the sudden silence of my bedroom making me aware that, a second ago, my head had been filled with cries.  Now I no longer dream.

The world sleeps, and from time to time it dreams.  Life is a dream, and too much living becomes a nightmare.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving 
Whatever gods there be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river 
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

One Hundred and Eighty One

Leonard died.

Why has this upset me so much?  He looked forward to his death as much as I do to mine.  And he had a good death—he lay down on the couch for a nap, and didn’t wake up—unlike most of the deaths I’ve witnessed, so why has this upset me so much?

Everything comes to an end.  It used to console me to know our end is not the end, and the world will go on without us.  But this is no longer true.

Leonard died a day after Notre Dame burned.  I’d been reading about it, and it left me depressed.

Victor Hugo made Notre Dame a symbol of France.  Individual Frenchmen and women died, but Notre Dame endured.  Even Hitler, who ordered the destruction of Coventry and Rheims, failed to burn Notre Dame.  But indifference to what Notre Dame represented succeeded where Hitler failed.

Leonard built something as great as Notre Dame: a family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  He talked about them constantly, and lived for them.  But he died alone because they're as indifferent to their history as the French are to theirs.

We’ve all forgotten our past, and live only for the present because we know we have no future.
 

One Hundred and Eighty

Lorsque au soleil couchant les rivières sont roses,

Et qu’un tiède frisson court sur les champs de blé,
Un conseil d’être heureux semble sortir des choses
Et monter vers le cœur troublé;
Un conseil de goûter le charme d’être au monde
Cependant qu’on est jeune et que le soir est beau,
Car nous nous en allons, comme s’en va cette onde:
Elle à la mer—nous au tombeau!

One Hundred and Seventy Nine

It’s not that I wanted too much.  It’s that I wanted something else.

I wanted to change the world.  Not because I thought I could, but because no one else wanted to.  Now I, too, want nothing.  

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.