Random Notebook #7: Heaven or Hell, You Decide

Not much to write today, other than I ran some errands and got a copy of “Camus at Combat.”  It wasn’t so much an impulse buying, since I considered for nearly an hour.  What is beginning to appeal to me at the present seems to be the sort of “Journals of…” or “The Collected Letters of…”  The reason behind this is, of course, the way I am ruminating on this journal, as if I had the interesting life of these accomplished people.  All I have done, really, is lose things—that’s what I am good at.  A cover of a magazine also got my attention this week, and I ended up (again, not on impulse) buying this magazine right off the rack.  The cover story is “First Love, First Loss: How Early Experience Shapes You.”  When I think of this, I think of that first couple of times, interestingly enough, how many of those experiences over so many years have been with people whose name began with the letter M.  Perhaps it is a coincidence, or the manifest of some undercurrent in my mind.  With this I mean something deploy embedded in my mind.  But I haven’t read the magazine article and I am already speculating on idiotic premises.  Crazy things happen for a reason—I remember how, while helping my sister clean a Catholic church back home, I sort of fell in love with the face of the Virgin Mary in one of the statues in the backroom where my sister took her lunch.  Why was this wonderful and beautiful statue in the backroom, I will never know.  Years later, while reading “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce, I would return to those moments when I stood mesmerized by the statue’s beautiful face.  Of course I am no Stephen Dedalus, and my fixation was not as terrible as his, but it is a wonder every time we discover that experiences we consider our very own (especially when they are this distorted), end up being as universal as birth and dead and taxes.  And then we don’t feel so special.  Then, the only thing we can do is to feel the sadness at our lack of originality, but soon we feel kinship with the so many others that are still with us, or came before us.  I know this is overly complex; I could simply say that every time this has happened it has simply been a coincidence.  Of course, one also begins to think of human existence in general—that is to say, when we read about the Romans and how they lived so many thousands of years ago, and how they all died, one begins to doubt.  Where do all of those souls go?  How many are in heaven and how many are in hell?  But those dichotomies do not answer even the most fundamental of all questions—could it actually be that the end is the end, and not one thing or the other?  For if we, by faith, stipulate the direction our souls take then who is to say that perhaps a person has decided not to stick to the dichotomy of the one or the other?  For example, a man who lives a life of extreme sexual lust might want to direct his soul in a way where he ends up living eternity in a personal harem with endless women of infinite variety, per secula seculorum.  Another example is the person who wants more than anything to encounter his family in the afterlife.  Couldn’t he or she determine in some way, out of sheer desire?  I suppose that that specific desire (of reuniting with family members for eternity) might not be of much interest today.  I say that humorously, of course, and I could keep an interminable line of examples, each as unique as that who desires it, but perhaps I have already proven my point at least partially.  And I mean partially because who really knows where we go?

Random Notebook #6: To Rant or Not to Rant... Not the Question.

I am not at a loss for what to write—it’s simply that most of all of this is taking a lot of energy from me.  Sure, it is easy to blame distraction.  It is easier to blame the stress, and mood, and overall disposition, but I can’t continue to do this and avoid doing this work—the work that somehow keeps me at my desk, at a bare minimum (at least) it keeps me engaged.  And writing kept many other things alive.  I can’t imagine right now where all of this is taking me, but I must (damn that word again) keep writing and putting it all down on paper.  How I wish I could leave my world of worries behind.  All I do here is rant, aside from the sporadic plot that surfaces every now and then.  I have been reading Mailer’s “The Deer Park” with little or no motivation at all.  I think I was influenced by C.I.’s opinion about the book.  Right now, I am a little under half of the book and the motivation to finish it slip out of me as quickly as I am determined to read on.  I am reading, but the pages lag on slowly and I tire of it quickly.  It’s not the book, I am certain.  Every book has its merits, independent of whether or not it is a good book.  I have been inclined to think this way since I began to collect my library.  I feel responsible for finishing a book despite of how “good” or “bad” it is.  Every book has both elements, I am sure.  For example, “Stations of Solitude” by Alice Kohler was a book I read shortly after moving back to Ohio from Washington DC.  I picked up the book used on the strength of its title.  But I kept at it, and if for nothing else, the feeling of accomplishment I get from finishing a book.  Writing should be the same, but I find so many obstacles, most of them, of course, self-imposed.  If and when I do get down to writing like this, it is very hard for me to pass beyond the rant, and most of what I write sounds repetitive as a result.  But I feel good writing nonetheless.  My brain is always turning in so many directions, it is hard to see and evaluate what I should or should not write about; that is why I put it all here.  If I ever become a father, then when I am gone my children will get to keep a piece of my mind here—somewhat more permanent than my own corporeal self.  And, if the end is in fact so near, then all the better to put all of this down.  I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I have to face the reality of these days and the events that are unfolding as the hours pass.  Perhaps it is a bit ridiculous to think this way, but one must (damn that word again) be open to all the scenarios this might bring.  It’s more than simply coping, but rather the fact that there’s little.  No fantasy world will ever over-compensate for what is going on today, right now, at this very second, while the music plays in the background and I put pen to paper.  But in the interest of leaving this reality and this obsessions behind, I have to construct the fictions that make up the other part of my life.  The world of the imagination is supposed to take over, it is, if for the lack of a better term, an obligation I owe myself for the stress and downright suffering these days have brought me.  I have, for some odd reason, neglected the Visconti and the pleasure of that instrument in my hand, however mundane happens to be what I write about.  A new fascination—the Nixon tapes online at the National Archives site.  Why?  I have no idea.  Right here, right now, Beethoven’s Ninth playing on the CD player.  Nothing matters other than keeping the hand moving and writing about whatever.  I understand all of the emotions; I know where they come from.