The Loom of Lachesis, Vol. 7, Book 7, Chapter 8

Reflections in a Temporal Life - What was I Thinking? Exactly; Word, Words, Words; Boomer Hubris;

I seek rather to care, write, and be ready. But…ready for what? Yes, got it, the readiness is all…but all this readiness can be a lot of time spent…for what? What difference does it make? When you’re dead, you are dead.

Right. I am not talking about waiting around for the rapture, or wearing sackcloth and ashes, or self-flagellation, or moving into a bunker, or preparing for end times. To be ready is to engage in homecoming and to get your house in order. This is both metaphor and an actual practice – within your house (oikos)– and further out – oikeiôsis – of being aware, attentive to cultivating the caring relationships, of engaging in your interests to spark both creativity and meaningful experiences in the here and now, to grasp tempus fugit, and amor fati, and to look squarely in the mirror and think that you (and ‘I’) have this uncanny ability of being alive, while knowing that we are alive with this thinking self, this consciousness, and contemplate the existence of myself (the sheer opportunity, the strange calculating probability of it all, there is no other – just me on this planet, in this galaxy, in this cosmos), seek to explain and understand, and face the existential position of how this can even be, how is it possible, and thus live with some things unfathomable, and some phenomena as ineffable, even as I relish and glorify the scientific, technological, and medical “wonders” that have been created to simply know – what we know – here and now.

To be ready and to answer the Lacanian challenge: “Est-ce que vous pourriez supporter la vie que vous avez?” - “Can you bear the life that you have?” Or do I wish for another life instead? If I choose to bear with it – in what way? Will it be anxiety or jouissance? Will it be apathy or generativity? Will it be pleasure or virtue? Will it be prudence or gratification? Will it be eudiamonia or power? Will it be in zest or in despair? These are all sample questions I pose to myself on a weekly basis (at minimum), with more specific questions very day for reflection both morning and evening. I stay at it – this writing in a journal – of the issues of the day and how did I react or what could be done better, how did my thinking go? What was I thinking?

This also serves as a foundation for writing these essays. So…to be ready for what else? I think of two passages from Marcus Aurelius and Meditations (Book 2, 2; and Book 2, 5) fits in well here, in terms of my readiness for acquiring and sustaining a perspective (a philosophy of aging) of my existence. The passage is an interesting mix: sort of big picture effect, and a granular effort in distilling what is important at this point in the life course.

Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh: it is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third then is the ruling part: consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future.

Note the three dimensions: the body, the spirit (breath), and the mind. So Marcus Aurelius has me thinking of the body (the flesh) as an aging container comprised of organic materials that will fade and die. It is inevitable. This is already in progress – my senescence. Why hang on the vanity of the youthful image? I am older, but the transformation has been offset by a mental capacity of more wisdom due to experience, learning, knowledge, more harmonization with things, a balancing, the equanimity, the humanization of this {human} being.

And then the spirit – the breath. That too is something we “borrow” for a while; again, if we breathe, we will die. The breath that I share, with all organisms on the planet - the exchange of gases to fuel the metabolism, and a reciprocation with plants and their photosynthesis. To me the breath – the spiritus mundi - could be the library, or the cultural sphere of artistry, or collective memories (via Yeats), or the atmosphere swirling above the oceans as we see it as ‘The Blue Marble” imaging (via NASA) series beginning with Apollo 17 (1972) through Blue Marble 2012. That is my breath too.

And then the “ruling part”, the mind, the intelligence. Marcus Aurelius is asking himself {and thus I ask myself}: Isn’t time to take command of the rationale side of living, and reduce being jerked around by social influences (e.g., social media)? Time to quit worrying about the future, and stay focused on what is before me – here and now – the present? In 2.5 Marcus Aurelius (remember, these are his own private reflections – for himself – but we benefit from the wisdom now), he is asking us to concentrate on the tasks at hand – what is right in front of me. Let go of other distractions.

I am to be acting (agency) and doing as if this were the last thing I will be doing in my life; stop the aimless drifting, and allowing the emotional hijacking to take place; be in command of your self, and quit wasting time with being a hypocrite. We have a job to do – and time is running out. What is the job? Ask this: What does it mean to be human? I answer: To strive to be wise…until I die. This I, Consciousness will not continue forever, and it will end. This illuminating experience, this knowing, this awareness – all of it will stop as the curtain falls, and the stage lights go out, and the theater is quiet. I will have my exit, and my hour upon the stage is finished. Less dramatically, my ability to write will be over and done as well, and yet I write now so that the words in these pages may reflect wisdom. Or - at least to try.

We do what we can to alleviate suffering in others and ourselves, up to a point. I think Seneca, Montaigne and Shakespeare have much to say and we have much to learn from, in their writings, but up to a point. I have learned from them (and others), but this is my life to be lived. They inspire, but it is “I” that must do the farming in this field, and this is row I am hoeing, and these are the seeds planted. What I am saying is that I must live with Reason and beyond it. I border on blasphemy to the purists in the Stoic domain when I say: Stoicism (yes) and then some. Beyond that and including: joie de vivre and to some degree an expansive definition of jouissance (beyond that of the constrictive Freudian or Lacanian world-view).

I have found that certain works of poetry, art, music and film help to experience (confront, face, address, deal with…) the cultural and social contextual issues of death and dying, but not perfectly so; nevertheless these additional lens capture the human experience, and balances the medical model perspective for what happens, what is supposed to happen, and what really happens as I approach death and dying, and as we, the collective group of “boomers” have this long journey begin to wind down and we are at the end of the road.

Is that too depressing? Is that a bit much? Because after all we are the boomers…not the greatest generation, not even the biggest (anymore), but perhaps still relevant with trying to get aging…right. You laugh. I can tell. We are talking about the same group that seemed to not let go of youth, and suddenly found themselves gray with envy.

This is the same group (we the Boomers) that is practically despised by Millennials and Gen-X. But why? Because we appear to be “sell outs”, hypocrites, selfish, greedy, self-serving, and indulgent. Appear to be? Well, we can claim to be different than as perceived, but that is the opinion held by many outside of our own cohort. There is even a sub-Reddit called “r/BoomersBeingFools.” Ouch.

But guess what? I, perhaps of a subset, perhaps of larger group within the boomers, think the other cohorts are right for the most part. We have met the enemy, and they are us. We the boomers – doom and gloomers. I do believe we have to now let it go with politics and vote for the new leaders of the nation. We can do our best to at other things at this point in the life course. Quit worrying about your @*&^! Medicare and Social Security. It’s a social contract among all the generations. You may say (and fair enough) that line – that call – to quit worrying is easy for me to say…Mr. White Middle Class College Educated Saved Some Money and Now Act All High and Mighty – who gave you the right, oh privileged one? That is true…I do not speak for you. Nor claim to. But here is my conscience within my consciousness speaking out in words and here it goes: I do think we have to drop the obsessive “looking back” to youth, adulthood, and mid-life experiences as woulda, coulda, shouda. Drop it. Leave it in the rear view window. Instead, we must embrace finitude with dignity, grace, and wisdom. I mean to say – we have this left (this time – only) in our lives – this finite amount of time. No time left for power, fear, or greed (inspired by The Guess Who, “No Time”, 1969), and on my way to better things.

Like what? Well, I look at this way: Aristotle versus Machiavelli. Am I understood? Seek the good life, not the money. Virtue as the mean. Seeking the end state: Flourishing. Areté. A time to live and a time to die. But more than that, and if I may build upon The Byrds, Pete Seeger, and Ecclesiastes: When there is time to live, there is also the time to be ready for the opportunity: kairos. If time flies, if time is finite – then I am to make the most of the time (the opportunity) to live fully and with a flourishing. And that eudaemonia (well-being, flourishing, arête) is an offering and outcome even through hardship and suffering. The difficult we can do, the impossible takes a bit longer. But seriously, kairos is also about living without fear or to try to be fearless (to which I include my constant companion – anxiety – as the ongoing subcortical and amygdala based condition of my self).

Brock Bastian (2018) in, The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living claims that pain, difficulty, and risk are necessary for happiness. But is

happiness really the end game here? Bastian proposes that the actual goal is our dedication to the enhancement of wisdom. But our current social-cultural design and fabric is saturated with “happiness” as defined by pursuit of pleasure, material wealth, or knowledge acquisition (which is so vastly differentiated from wisdom).

I suppose I am calling out myself – and other boomers – to consider that a philosophy of aging include the how and why of pain and suffering and loss and that these can be both a challenge and a promise to growth in the human condition – especially in the aging process. Therefore, I respond to the call –and I start with myself {Physician, heal yourself}.

I remember the lines from The Police where Sting is being very careful about how much “knowledge” one seeks to attain, which could lead to more than one could handle. Be careful. Be prudent. And be wise. All that glisters, is not gold. The brain is willing, but the flesh is weak. The Clouds and the Cave. And where does that journey lead to? Back home, a homecoming, grounded, on earth, about the earth. Here and now. Kairos. Eudaemonia. To care, to write, to be ready. Tempus fugit. Memento mori.

And my own examination of consciousness in later life that reveals that both emotion and rational thinking are intertwined, and that I seek the balancing act between them. Both are needed for consciousness, but time and place matters. There is a time and place (kairos) for where and when creative passion (or the emotional energy) is called for. Just as there is a time and place where and when reasoning is paramount. Am I able to discern the where and when? As I look back on this journey, the evidence is clear that the Clouds and the Cave is ample proof that the timing of behavior and decision-making was “out of joint.”

I owe that to many factors, all of my doing (agency), but also to the dynamic of where the fog of thinking was matched to the fog I was driving in. When I should have slowed down, and pulled over, I instead pushed the pedal down, and missed the curves, and went right over the cliff, and flew into the air, like Icarus behind the wheel of 1969 Pontiac GTO (green, of course), and then gravity gets real.

While it may be true that Van Gogh kept to it, even in despair (which sounds quite Stoic to me), he was still searching for that balance between the internal and the external: “This is my ambition, which is founded less on anger than on love, founded more on serenity than on passion. It is true that I am often in the greatest misery, but still there is within me a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner, I see drawings and pictures. And with irresistible force my mind is drawn towards these things. Believe me that sometimes I laugh heartily because people suspect me of all kinds of malignity and absurdity, of which not a hair of my head is guilty — I, who am really no one but a friend of nature, of study, of work, and especially of people.”

Serenity. Tranquility. One way or another. I can see the Picasso roaming through the Blue and Rose periods – wisdom in the balancing act. In later life, the creative fire, but the oscillations are closer to the central line – to the mark. I am less amplitude and more accepting of the dialectic in the whole of life. I need the North Star to find my way home. I am not Cincinnatus returning from the heroics of war, but I am Cincinnatus returning to the earth – the grounding to the soil – once more. I state it here and now: I seek to have my mortal remains to be buried directly (planted) into the forest and fields and estuaries.

I am aware of the “work of the dead” (Thomas Laqueur, 2015) and how monuments, memorials, mausoleums, cemeteries, tombs, funerals, churchyards all bestow the honor and remembrance of “the dead” for the rest of us – left behind – the survivors.

We, humans, cannot seem to forget, and do not wish to “let go” at all…whether they be intimately known to the still living or “unknown.” Its though the remains of the dead must have a “resting place” – once and for all, for fear of the dead to continue to wander as restless poltergeists. There is sacredness to this eternal placement on earth that is marked and sanctified as hallowed grounds. To which I respect that, and honor it. Whether that be Gettysburg, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Arlington, Pea Ridge, Ypres, Indian burial mounds (First Nation Peoples), Saint Louis Cemetery (New Orleans)…but I find no solace for me and my remains (the dead body) to be associated with or placed in such a place that even resembles the painting of The Abbey in the Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich. There is a punishing weight to the imagery in the painting. Bare trees, gnarled, and the ruins of what was…and I immediately drink despair and breathe the nihilistic mist. Why do we do that? Can our symbolism overcome the finitude?

It is like” You can have the body, but you cannot take the memories and the honor, and so we have this as reminder…” To what? Of what? I suppose I draw the line between the personal and the collective decision and effort. Collectively, I think of “the Memorial” for an entire cohort: The Vietnam War Memorial. I reconsider all of this once more as I recall the effect on my being – the self – I, Consciousness, when approaching, walking slowly, stopping, and then standing back to reflect upon the Wall. “But you and I, we’ve been through that…” And I can’t help it, this is what I think of…All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland, 1968), when I go back there. It is strange to think of a that war (time) as the fulcrum – a lens – a prism – to define and capture attitude, mood, existential meaning, politics, and eventually art itself – and what it all meant from 1955 to 1975 – a twenty year chunk of life.

James Reston, Jr. has written a powerful book on the topic of art, memory, and the fight for a Vietnam War Memorial, A Rift in the Earth (2017), and I was struck by the ferocity of political viewpoints and the entire question of art and symbolism and dedication – and the national debate on the Vietnam War continued on – even after 1975. Maya Lin and Fredrick Hart. The Memorial expanded and more works were added…layers and layers of time. Enough time has passed so that another memorial has begun for the Veterans of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Personally, I write it here as the final statement for my body: no cemetery, no tombstone, no shrine, and no casket/coffin. Rather, my ashes back to the earth in the forest, fields, and estuaries. My words are the epitaph. The writing here is the obituary. Essays are the eulogy. This is this – and no more. But again, is not this whole writing thing a bit of vanity? Is it not wishful thinking that any of these sentences and pages could match the sheer impact and longevity of some pithy quote chiseled in granite or marble?

After all, writing is certain to be suspect as but a cheap imitation of the real life that was lived…a thrown together memoir full of rosy tinted rear view mirrors and stuff made up to make an otherwise dull and mundane existence to seem…something different and extraordinary. Why write at all? Another book? Oh God, save us. Literature is already damned if you – and damned if you don’t. You said you were going to be a writer, but look at your life – full of unfilled promises and a bucket full of procrastination (like the astute observations in Andrew Santella’s (2018), Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, from Leonardo to Darwin to You and Me – which don’t say it! – okay I will – I never got around to finishing reading that book). Too bad…tick tock…now you are dead.

Or. You did write after all! Good for you. Oh, that is it? Um, where is the masterpiece? The magnum opus? This is it? Don’t quit your day job…But I did…retire. Oops…I mean permanent sabbatical.

And then there is whole “book thing” – you know – books, why write them when…who gives a shit? As William Marx (2018) has pointed out, books get blasted on two fronts: from the elite snobs and high-minded philosophers who think Plato was right (first kill all the poets! Just kidding…exile them!) because they are nothing but trouble to the status quo and the “way it has always been” crowd. Sing it with me (to the tune of War by Edwin Starr, 1970). Books, huh, yeah, What are they good for? Absolutely nothing.

Literature is subversive and immoral. Literature is redundant. We do not even “need” it. It is a distraction and worse, a dis-ease with existence. Or as a W. Marx would have it, it is indifference that is the worst outcome of all. If literature just faded away – disappeared – would anyone notice?

Of course, it is ridiculous to think such a thing…but has literature been left behind in importance to the “self” as a reader, when compared to “self” as embedded in the social media ecosystem which has great affinity, attraction, and attention-grabbing interactive capacity to draw the “I” away from books. Can authors write and books continue to be published in this context?

From my perspective, it is one thing to have these essays (or books in general) to be thrown into the flames (Montag…where are you?), but is another to have these essays to become digital dust, cyber lint, and relegated to the very edge of the cosmic winds. But then again, I think that over, and if these pages alighted both nowhere and somewhere, then the point would be, it mattered to me that I engaged in the process regardless of if no other human eyes set upon the lines that unfold here. But then again these words may be deemed of “not any use” because: what is the point to it all?

Words, Words, Words. These sentences will not build the barn, pave the street, and bake the bread. If you are reading these words, pages, and essays, how will any of this help me to live? To do? These are valid questions and go the heart of the age-old debate about a philosophy for the armchair (the chaise lounge) and a philosophy for the street and the field and the daily grind, and the month-to-month existence that does not know, nor care, nor find of much value to any top end part of the Maslow’s hierarchy – this is just getting by baby…surviving before flourishing.

Do I really care about paleography and Manuscripts from the Medieval World (see Christopher De Hamel, 2017)? I mean, how does that get money into my pocket? Food on the table? Pay the bills? Clothes for the kids?

Book of Kells? In Dublin, Ireland? Are you kidding me? I got enough dealing with a balancing the checkbook and paying off loans. And yet, as Christopher De Hamel (Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts) notes on p. 102, “If Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel could have existed in reality, it would be the Long Room in Trinity College.”

I think this soon after reading that: What is the point of Borges’s books? What is the point of this writing in the Book of Kells? More words. Words. Words. To what end?

And remembering seeing the ‘long room’ in Trinity College and the Book of Kells - in person. There. There. I see now.

Wisdom. Arete.