Monday
27 February 2017
— Red feeder doing fine.
Good Morning All,
My argument was and is, each and every wave changes me. A guy cuts me off in traffic, it changes me. I notice a woman more or less my age on the train giving me a look I can feel swinging up and down my spine like a kid on a jungle gym, and I am changed. (Okay, I tell myself she must be nuts, but I am still changed.) A gold finch lies dead under my feeder, and I am changed. In an otherwise dark room, I watch the constant flame of a candle until I gradually disappear into it and I am changed.
Heraclitus, if not Lao-tse, says you cannot put your foot into the same river twice because both the river and your foot have changed. According to the legend, this realization made him weep and bring forth the philosophy that the only constant is change.
Which gets me to all the stuff I have read over the years. Though I am an embarrassingly slow reader, that’s actually quite a lot. Sex rates higher than reading, but third place is way back there. “Close your book,” Britta would say.
“One more page until the end of the chapter,” I would reply, even as she was with one hand removing the volume from my grasp.
I think I’ve mentioned that Louisa May Alcott’s quote in Chapter 24 of Little Women, namely that “Love is a great beautifier”, was astronomically liberating for me. (Not that I have actually read that novel yet, since the title has always been so off-putting.) There must be a dozen major life-changing quotes from J. D. Salinger and another dozen from good old Edgar Lee Masters, and bloody Fitzgerald saying, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” And there must be thousands upon thousands of minor life-changing quotes, from my Uncle Norman telling me the dog came up the stairs in short pants to my dad saying with such enthusiasm, “Boy, will at that rain come down!"
Louise May and F. Scott died before I was born; Masters lived until 1950, such that we had four years together on the planet. Salinger, God love him, hung around until 2010, including one of those years only a couple of towns over from me. Each of them and countless authors more were/are waves upon my beach.
There are, just for instance, Charlotte Brontë and William Shakespeare whose birthdays I got to today and the day before. Two more decidedly defunct people who helped shape my life. Mind you, I hated Shakespeare in high school, warmed slightly to him at university, and was entirely overwhelmed by his genius when I had to teach Hamlet and King Lear at C.I.S.
I would not be the me I am today without the contributions from all these defunct people.
Which gets me to one of my more perverse fantasies about achieving immortality: what if by some horrific twist of fate all history as we know it is obliterated during World War III, all of it except for Bheka’s Day Book from the year 2017? Imagine how people of the future would pore over it. Who was this Lincoln fellow? This William Shakespeare? This Ella Fitzgerald. This Victor Borge.
Much as I enjoy indulging such an absurd fantasy, when I really let myself wade down into it, it can give me the blind shudders. "Jesus, Bheka,” I whisper to myself, “you've got room for only one Charlotte Brontë quote and two from Bill Shakes; you sure as hell better make them good ones!” I can feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead as I lean over the keys and mutter, “Fartzinzockus, who needs all this responsibility?"
Go Well and Stay Well,
Bhekaron
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