"A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession." How interesting. Kind of explains the lure of writing poetry and why I hone my work as way of living.
"To be happy we must not be too concerned with others." That explains a lot. On the other hand there is an boundless quiet joy that fills you as you act freely with kindness and love.
"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful." Now this is interesting. Explains why I find it so hard to live. I would believe in God if I could, I did as a child. I clung to my belief as a refuge and family found that disturbing when I started to be polite and say "pardon me." It worried them. Eventually, logic won out. That should have upset them more. Thing is, you can't know if there is God, you can only have faith (refer to my poem Is It Ever Just). Faith is blind, it is all about trust, and I lost that by the time I became an adult ... somewhere between 11 and 17 to 21. I think faith requires giving up control and I needed control more than faith to live. I envy and understand people who believe in God. I admire the people who crafted the constitution for having the wisdom of separating God from government. I admire them for understanding the power of simple words and how these words can evolve our understanding far beyond what would ever have been intended had most people then understood where they would lead. I understand the purpose of believing, I envy those who do. I remember fondly the time when I did.
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself." That's a compliment if true. I have looked at my self-focus as a flaw. I love arguing. I want to test my beliefs to see if I agree and will change my mind if convinced. I am opinionated and stubborn and open-minded. It is ok with me to argue with people who disagree with me. I don't argue to convince anyone of anything. I don't mind trying, but in the end, there are fundamental beliefs that are accepted by each of us, and I am more interested in proving my ideas to me. Nothing seems stupider than being blind to how you think and what core truths you accept.
"But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?" I don't know what happiness really is. But given how I hate how I live, this does not surprise me. Happiness takes a love for who you are and peace with how you are. I am at war with how I am. Peace would be nice.
"Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question." Ha! That makes laugh. I just passed on this to Kian and to all who friended me on facebook. I am in awe of my son's natural ability to charm. I love it. I love being taken in by it. It is an admirable ability. I hope he hears, "I love you and I love who you are" because that is what I am saying.
"For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium." I am against the death penalty and cannot understand how any Christian could be for it. It a barbaric practice. I understand killing. At times killing is justifiable. But to cold-bloodedly, execute anyone who is completely contained and separated from society is evil. Pure and simple. I don't have any ambiguity about this and no one has ever presented an argument that changed my mind. At best execution is about vengeance (getting even). It is also about attempting to prevent crime, even though it is applied unfairly to the poor, and even though it is biased to a mob mentality, and even though it is clearly not a deterrent. At worse it is about being unwilling to bear the cost of incarceration, simple greed. I wrote Vengeance Is Mine to express my frustration with this barbaric practice. I recently edited this significantly. I am pleased where it is today. Finally.... Until some tomorrow in the future ... as usual.
"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life." Hence the guilt. Hence the sincere apology for how I am. I do despair of life. I hope for life. I see the grandeur through a looking glass, where it resides on the outside and I reside within. Now there is a snippet for a poem. I and so I write Eluding Life...
Eluding Life
I see grandeur through a looking glass
where it resides on the outside
and I reside within, fused in avoid
in between. I am original sin. An Abomination
to be reviled, my despair is fated to forever
din. Wishing both to be me and not to be,
not only the outside, but throughout within.
That's how I write a poem. This is my first draft. It exudes out of me. I think it is complete. If it is, I won't have added a link to a honed version.
"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool." I suppose I am both. I hate what it means to be human in many ways. It is not the sociopath or evil person that disturbs me most. It is good people, with decent values, who abandon these values at a whim, and who act in direct and blatant contradiction, and who righteously have no remorse about it. I understand the behavior as being human. I don't get the lack of remorse. (I understand why my father hates that I live in Vermont, and why he never has visited. I do not understand that once the meaning of how he acts and what he said about not visiting was pointed out, that he proclaimed how proud he was of his behavior and that he never will visit.) This quotation fascinates me. It has the feel of a misleading question. Like asking someone whether they beat their wife with the question, "How many times a week do you beat your wife?" This quote has a no-win quality. The way I thrive on acting with kindness and loving people and I avoid everyone.
"I know of only one duty, and that is to love." Completely agree. Though I would not call it a duty. I think it is the real choice we have, which is about who you are. I think of who I am as the love I bring to who I am with other people. I wrote about love in Is Love Haiku? and I think who you are is about how you love, When In Is Out. I spent half my senior year in high school collecting everyone's idea of what love is (many thought I was odd — I was). Before now, I thought I was after feeling loved and being cared for, but today I realize that I was looking to know who I am. (I grew up among family that chided me for who I was. Some folks decide to please people and become what others want you to be to be accepted. That never occurred to me. I looked at the truth in what they said, and I was not perfect. I was flawed, selfish (after all I was a child) and I saw behavior which I agreed with them about. I do not regret my flawed reasoning which assumed that if I were who I valued and respected, that they would also value and respect me. I learned about true generosity in college when found I myself expecting something in return for what I gave, and I realized that was not generosity, that was a trade. And if it was not a mutual trade, then expecting to be owed back something was not at all being generous, and nothing was owed to me. I learned to aim to give only what I wanted to freely. Whenever I make the mistake of wishing I hadn't given what I had, I realize that it my mistake and my error, and I let it go. I am not owed for my generous acts. I disagree with people who think there children owe them, because it is a one-sided bargain and unfair to expect anything in return. My children owe me nothing. It isn't that I don't want from them, they just don't owe me. I am human. I will always want to be loved for who I am. What living is about is loving. What I do. I live alone because I cannot see how else to love.
"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." Here I think Camus was short-sided and naive. I thought through this a long time ago. I think of what so many humans do in the name of God, and I am appalled. I am horrified by what good God-fearing people do. I think that any God that would shun me for not blindly worshiping him/her is one I can live without. I think that if God exists, and God is love, then God would want me to live by loving and with kindness. I chose to be who I am, not for God or because of some promised afterlife, but because I believe sincerely that is a good way to live. A life where I can like who I am. I figure if I am not enough, I did my best. If more than that is expected or other people's ideas about God are real, and I am shunned for non-compliance because I don't believe or worship properly, that is ok with me. All I am certain of is now and even that can be questioned. Living out of fear or for a carrot is selling yourself short. I would be selling myself short if I did. On the other hand, given how humanity is, sometimes it seems better that people believe in God and live their life that way. Other times, it is horrific, as I wrote in Profoundly Flagrant. What many people do in the name of God is scary.
"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." Profoundly Flagrant. I would have liked to know Camus.
"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism." I think man is a futile being. I don't know for sure though. But that is just about faith and I lack it. We assume we have choice. Snowflakes expresses my ambiguity about what we are able to choose. We make up purpose. I don't think that is a bad thing. I repeatedly talk about my children understanding and forgiving me. That's about kindness and loving them. I think understanding myself is important to me as well. Without understanding love and kindness can fall short of their mark. I grew up Catholic and went catholic camp. Every year from the age of 5 I was given the courtesy and cooperation award for junior campers (through grade 6). You don't need God to understand good and love.
"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is." How ironic. Well, at least I have company.
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." There is an understatement. I find being with people exhausting.
"The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind." Nicely said... I really like Camus.
"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." and
"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." I am Sisyphus. I have been thinking about living as existing, not dying. I am happy loving and being kind. In the now of it, I am happy. I don't think I understood this before. When Christie came this summer and I went the pool and help her swim and massaged her back to free it up. I know it mattered to her and I made a difference because I understood and saw how to be kind to her. How could I not once I saw the opportunity for Kindness. I didn't consider any other option. I never do. Who I am would not. I want to be cremated and I want my ashes to be spread in the ocean in Hawaii where dolphins swim. Make something in memory of me and on it put this Sisyphus quote. I want my children to know that in knowing them I only know happiness. They are a blessing, a gift to me.
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