#399

Oh ho ho! Three hundred and ninety-nine! What a number! And soon, four hundred. Tremendous. Tremendous that I have not died or quit. Cheers to however many more beats are left in our hearts, dear reader. We woke up again, and the day lies before us in its terrible splendor and mundane fatality.

*

To flatter myself and the medium outrageously and without a modicum of shame, perhaps you're reading this after I've shuffled off the old mortal coil--you are almost certainly not reading it while it's fresh off the keyboard. But at any rate, I believe the dead people whose transmissions we receive are experiencing a parallel existence; are by dint of being seen, having a bonus look around. 

*

Reflecting lately on the scientifically supported idea that, in the Old Testament, is put forth as the notion that we see this world, this life, all truths in the universe as through a glass darkly. Incomplete, limited, refracted, transposed--above all, imperfectly illuminated, for the perfect radiance that is the source of all being cannot exist even in the infinite universe. Only when we are dead is there a chance that we will see the world, the infinite, and one another as we really truly are. Only when we have completed our term in this existence, this being-in-the-universe, and ceased to be.

We may enter an infinite dream. We may enter the void of eternal nonbeing with a cessation of knowledge and suffering that, in the final flickering fraction of a moment, may feel like entering the most perfect sleep of our lives or like waking up for the first time ever. We may begin our time in a new universe, repeat our lives exactly, reincarnate in this world once again, start our term in the infinite span of endless time walking through a billion kilometers of glass desert and swimming across a billion kilometers of apple juice. 

There is no way of knowing. Maybe it is all possible outcomes in a specific and meaninglful order, or randomly, probably set to infinite repeat. Maybe it is something literally unguessable and unimaginable by the apparatus and tools available to the human perspective and no one can tell anyone anything.

*

"What can I believe?

How should I live?

What do I hope?"

These are the three questions that subtitle my copy of Walter Kaufmann's Faith of a Heretic. It is an incredible book, and these avenues of inquiry figure largely into its thesis and scope. He has many valuable insights on the possibilites that a fresh look at these questions may offer. 

They are vital questions, ones we should ask ourselves without hewing too closely to long-accepted answers. And when we are ill, we can use them as handholds towards health. I mean that as broadly as I can.

*

Off to think about things. Always, every day that I am blessed to be able. Godspeed to you, dear reader, on your own wonderings.

--JL

#315

Finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which left me most determined to reread Ulysses once I'm done with all this Murakami. On that front, the instant I had completed the above text, I pulled out The Elephant Vanishes, swallowed it whole, finished it last night, and this morning I read South of the Border, West of the Sun to completion and began Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Once I've put that one to bed, it'll be 1Q84, then First Person Singular, and then the rereading will begin: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Strange Library, Wind/Pinball, Norwegian Wood, After Dark, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and then maybe Killing Commendatore--but I'm not sure about that last one. It's a definite possibility. Then, as I say, Ulysses, perhaps Dubliners, then as much Ursula K. Le Guin as I can cram in before the new year. Once that happens, I shall alternate nonfiction with poetry until I run out of fuel, though I seriously need to read at least fifty and perhaps more than one hundred nonfiction books next year, so help me. When I have exhausted myself, I will reread all my Kurt Vonnegut books, which happens to be all of them--except his Letters, and that one little book which is his first short story and his last short story. Don't think those have to count. I have everything else, from Sirens of Titan to Timequake, including Canary in a Cat House, one of my very rarest books.

ANYHOW THAT'S THE PLAN, and God may laugh but there it is. We have no choice but to lay it out sometimes, and risk being a cosmic punchline. Well, more of a cosmic punchline than we already are. 

*

Ever since I was quite young, I have conceived of a piece of spacetime after death in which it's just you, free of your body but still your own self, and a calculable, comfortable manifestation of the Almighty--an old man, a giant cat, a floating radiant crystal; whatever you want, I guess--who "sits" down with you--I always picture a brown leather couch--and goes over your lifetime stats, gives you a director's commentary, and lets you in on every joke you've ever been to small and too limited by perspective to see or appreciate. Then, after this blow-by-blow of your lifetime, seen from enough new angles that it would take a few lifetimes to see--the next thing, of who knows how many things. Or life again, exactly the same! Or the loop is instantaneous. Or it's the next life, as someone or something completely different. Or it's all something completely different. Having been encoded with a premium Catholic programming early in life, I've also always thought and felt there must be some kind of Last Battle, before some timeless time of perfect peace and bliss preceding the end of the universe and the beginning of another, infinite universes stretched out before and behind us, or the same universe again infinitely. 

All we know for sure is that death is coming! Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later today. Maybe sometime further off, but coming to meet you surer than anything else in this world.

*

Very much would like to put out a book this December and a couple more early in 2023, but we will see! I have most unwisely made such promises before, and that has only caused me personal anguish when unable to deliver. This book, for example, would contain the play I said I would publish over two years ago, finally done, but too short to stand alone. Also some essays, and difficult-to-categorize piece of poetry. If it can be called poetry.

*

On that note, I have actual work to do. Enough horsing around, dear reader. 

Enough.

--JL