|
Ask Icarus
by Jim
Culleny
Like the rest
of us, I had a birthday last year. I won’t say which, but
when I told a young co-worker that I can actually remember the
end of World War II --the carhorns and sirens and churchbells
and my mother kneeling in the yard sobbing-- when I mentioned
this, my co-worker’s jaw dropped as if the world had been
invented on her birthday. But, to be fair, this is a common misconception.
It takes shape in many philosophies.
Still, I
can relate to that --to being amazed by age --especially my own.
I can sympathize as someone who imagines that only yesterday
he dug Link Wray live, in a metallic gold blazer sending three-chord
riffs through an maxed-out amp, looking cool behind wrap-around
shades.
It’s beyond belief, but that was a half century ago. It’s
possible old Link is not even around anymore. So, being easily
spooked, when I walk past a mirror, my jawdrops too.
Look what you’ve become, I mutter.
My wife’s comment when I whine like this is, Think how your
mother feels. So, at birthday time, when, as usual, I’m
stuck with my own thoughts (who else’s could I have), it’s
easy to become annually depressed. But why go there? Better to
take a positive stance and forget the inevitable. There are more
important things to worry about then time and death. Today offers
the only happiness and hassles now available, so it’s not
a bad idea to keep your eyes peeled, your nose to the wind, and
do what you can while you’re here. After that it may be
too late.
The world’s an alluring place. But when I fall or get knocked
over I hope it’s not from distraction or inattention. Though
inattention’s a very popular addiction, it’s not a
practical one. Ask Icarus. Icarus fell from a great height after
disobeying strict instructions to be aware of where he was. Icarus
died of inattention. We could too.
As a result of
Icarus’ oversight, meditative techniques now exist just
to help us to pay attention. To help us avoid becoming etherized
by shiny objects. To keep us from falling asleep at the wheel,
so to speak. This in spite of the fact that we all eventually
wind up doing exactly that. Permanently. The point is, some of
these techniques teach us to focus, or point, our minds in the
hope that in the process of pointing we’ll come to appreciate
that the process has no point. There are times though, when this
truth is realized spontaneously without the help of drugs or
systems, as at funerals, during the priest’s soothing homily
while some in the pews inconsolably sob. A sister, a wife, or
mother has died, and there we are, regardless of liturgy, at
that wall again.
Considering walls, Robert Frost wrote, “Something there
is that doesn't love a wall.”
Robert knew what he was talking about. It’s very human not
to love a wall. Paradoxically, it’s just as human to love
‘em and build ‘em. In any case (you can lay money on
it), in terms of walls, the wall we face at death is one implacable
wall. It’s as prehistoric and impenetrable as the one between
the rich and the poor --except, that wall is strictly human.
It can be undermined by love and free will. But the wall we face
at death is another story completely. Death is one wall you don’t
surmount then live to talk about it. At death it’s too late,
even, for talk.
However, we can thank god that death is negated in myth. It’s
a miracle! How else could we have coped? Death’s wall has
been breached many times in myth. In stories of a phoenix rising
from ashes, for instance, or of Orpheus’ comings and goings
in the underworld, as told by the Greeks. All traditions tell
tales of death’s defeat. All wrestle the same truth and
come away with a limp.
This is why,
personally speaking, I don’t expect any story, no matter
how heartfelt or clever, to cure my bewilderment at the instant
I check out. My gut tells me that, at that moment, I’ll
be way beyond stories. Therefore, keep in mind that what I’m
expressing are gut feelings arising from some things I’ve
noticed at funerals and picked up here and there along the way.
I have no statistics to back them up, can give no first-person
account of having “passed on”, and by the time I’ve
had the experience to anecdotalize I’ll be too dead to lift
a pen.
This is exactly what’s so infuriating about death. Those
with no first hand knowledge of ever having thoroughly died,
speculate all over the place and blab about it, while those who’ve
actually had the experience never open their mouths.
But, with a new day dawning in a new century offering the promise
of still bigger swindles and dividends, who am I to rain on a
ponzi? And what’s another thousand years of futile metaphysical
theorization when we’ve got today to worry about and enjoy.
Eat, drink, and be merry they say, for, one day (as sure as the
sun melts wax), the self-inflicted, but somehow still unexpected,
will arrive. Ask Icarus. |
|
