Luco, Till Death

Is there anything that is forever except death? Is compassion eternal? Misery? Do we sit at our dining room tables, reflecting on whatever (Dostoevsky? The price of meat? Siblings? The incredible momentum of aging? Dancing with the Stars? The march of consumerism [as an aside, in papers the prison guard was grading, one student listed consumerism as a force that binds us together, and while I believe this true in possibly positive and most certanily negative ways, it was such a depressing moment for me. I thought Really? Consumerism: the avenue to holding hands in a world of peace and understanding]?); so we reflect on "whatever" and, but, for why?

How?

The dog in his most recent entry wondered if I would comment on what he wrote. Please forgive this protestation - it will be my only - Mr. Pawsley loves Mingus, and he loves food, and this is something he deigns to broadcast across the Internet as though it were a beacon guiding ships to shore?

My thoughts are often such as these when I sit at the dining room table. Sometimes I regard him with a fury surprising to me. Sometimes with a love even more so.

I digress and I digress and I digress. Forgive me. I was reflecting on the possibility of any sort of eternity. I have come to the conclusion eternity exists merely as an idea. A concept. A dearest wish breathed into the ether. A dream not told upon waking for fear its dissolution.

Eternity: I will love you forever. I will live forever. My memory of you and your kindnesses and your trespasseses and my own.

And this is not to speak of a heaven or a hell, although these also have weighed on me. It is trite, but I believe that in our brevity, in our inability to accurately keep that which we treasure, there is a singular beauty. What could be more precious than that which we will lose?

Which, then, means everything is singular, everything precious, because what do we lose but everything? Contradictory, because my aching back feels less than precious. Pernicious isms even less so. And, but then how can everything be precious? If everything is precious, then nothing precious. Nothing dear. Preciousness fingerprints on a mirror - seemingly unique, but more like every other than not.

A house. A life. Children. Parents. Trees. Hope. Other animals. All die when we do. All lost once we are lost, but in losing, and in our fear of losing, and in our ability to risk that-which-we-hold-most-dear?

Absolution.

The prison guard related to me a dream she had recently of her grandmother. In the dream the grandmother hugged her, saying "You don't look a day over 23," which was meant in the dream, the prison guard continued, to indicate the grandmother's forgiveness. Her love. Her abiding joy in her granddaughter.

The prison guard woke up crying, she said, missing this woman she hasn't seen since she was actually 23.

 

And so again how lovely that. How moving. I begrudge the prison guard her myriad cruelties, but, and as I have mentioned previously, I do not actively wish her harm. In honesty I wish her more dreams such as these.

I wish them for you, too, reader. Oh, how fleeting our moments of joy and redemption. How wonderful and how outside of language. Affirming, even, if one lets oneself peer inward to spinning double helixes where, perhaps, a grandmother sits, sipping iced sweet tea on a lounge chair by a pool, smiling and gesturing for the ghost-of-you to come closer. For your childhood to crouch, expectant, by her knees, reaching for her cup to take a drink.

Yes, we are capable of nightmares. Yes, some believe in things I do not understand and cannot fathom for their hatefulness. Yes, I have realized I am a cliche - cat on the Internet: oh, woe, woe, woe.

 And joy without limit.