...keep finding myself in conversations like this:
Complete stranger: Whadja think o’ [somebody who apparently plays baseball] in the seventh last night?
Me: Uh...he was great...
Complete stranger: Whaddaya mean great?! That douchebag mighta cost us the series!!
Me: Oh...right...yeah...he sucks...
Chilly November
Philly’s in the world series
And I just don’t care
...was reading this newspaper article about somebody who, it said, had an unfinished life...which is the kind of thing you say about people who die before their time....as if life were a novel...and a conventional one, at that...a coherent narrative with proper beginning, middle, and end...exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement...and something seems very wrong when it doesn’t turn out that way...when the final chapters we were expecting turn out to be missing....maybe it ends halfway through a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence...leaving no neat, cozy message to tease out in English class...except maybe that life and death have no interest in the stories we create...the leaves are gonna turn and fall whether our summer plans have been completed satisfactorily or not...
Complete stranger: Whadja think o’ [somebody who apparently plays baseball] in the seventh last night?
Me: Uh...he was great...
Complete stranger: Whaddaya mean great?! That douchebag mighta cost us the series!!
Me: Oh...right...yeah...he sucks...
Chilly November
Philly’s in the world series
And I just don’t care
...was reading this newspaper article about somebody who, it said, had an unfinished life...which is the kind of thing you say about people who die before their time....as if life were a novel...and a conventional one, at that...a coherent narrative with proper beginning, middle, and end...exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement...and something seems very wrong when it doesn’t turn out that way...when the final chapters we were expecting turn out to be missing....maybe it ends halfway through a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence...leaving no neat, cozy message to tease out in English class...except maybe that life and death have no interest in the stories we create...the leaves are gonna turn and fall whether our summer plans have been completed satisfactorily or not...
13 comments:
"except maybe that life and death have no interest in the stories we create"
How true. how freaking true.
Yes, how true. And what's true for one person is also true for the whole human race. I like Yoga philosophy because it makes me feel whole in a way that doesn't depend in any way on my being alive or even the human race surviving.
I know that sounds pretty abstract. But it is exactly what the Upanishads and the Gita are all about. And once one feels it, it's not really so abstract at all.
I wrote a poem (in the form of an Upanishad no less) about the extreme case of the untimely demise you refer to in your blog:
"What is That and Why am I That"
http://yogademystified.com/sidebars/what-is-that-and-why-am-i-that/
Here's a teaser:
"Suppose a meteor hit the earth tomorrow
And destroyed all humanity
As once happened to the dinosaurs.
What would it say about Yoga?
What would it say about our most cherished beliefs?"
Not everyone's cup of spiritual tea. But it is mine.
Thanks for a thought-provoking blog.
Bob Weisenberg
Yeah, the final act
Might be pure banality
Not for me to know.
However I must
Dare to try to imbue this
Moment gratefully.
Otherwise I risk
Dying before death. Would you
Like to live today?
Or are we only
Those precious stories that we
Give our joy to have?
Brain in the jar stands
Lonely waiting for answer.
Body lives life now.
Yeah!
I'll be sure to share this with my husband tonight. Keeping track of players and teams takes a backseat to his other interests and concerns and he's had conversations just like the one you wrote here.
Moss may be destructive but I think it's beautiful and this is a great shot.
Yeah. What Kim said.
i second Kim.
as if life were a novel.
i also don't care about baseball. but i do think it's kinda neat that you are deemed approachable by complete strangers...
Do life or death have an interest in any thing,much less the sequence of events in our little moments under the sun? We impose meaning to everything. Life and death ~ not so much...
We mock the seasons with our life and death or is it the seasons mocking us with their repetition?
So how about that transit strike?
Thus the importance of making the best of those moments we DO get.
If life were a novel, it would be like a Faulkner novel. All jacked up and incoherent (sorry if you love him -- I always hated reading his books). Or maybe it would be like the final chapter in "Ulysses" where it's a rush of emotions and goes on and on and yes yes yes
:)
This made me think that any time a person dies, it's really their time, and to say "before their time" probably just means sooner than we would have wished for them, and likely what they would have wished for themselves, too.
our time is our time. Right now, this moment...the past was, the future might be...but NOW is really all we have. So simple. I say gratitude for THIS breath. Isn't it glorious?
In terms of baseball: regardless of feeling on the sport, that conversation is hilarious.
In terms of death: I've been a little obsessed lately after reading in the Sutras that if your Karma isn't working out in your body, it will just leave--as in--you die. It may not be obvious to anyone else, but it's definitely a story.
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