Seize It Still

“If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don't know what you've got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality.”

From Saul Bellow's "Seize the Day”

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Dear Kate,

Same quote as last week, surprise :)

Last week did I sound like I was dismissive of the quote's claim about, if you will, the "divine call" to create?  (Bellow was speaking from the Garden of Eden, I am sure that's obvious to you.)

If yes, then I "bit off more than I could chew," which is a line from a most American song (written by a Canadian set to French music!) covered by more than a few brilliant self-created men, not least the chairman of them all Frank Sinatra, whose shamelessly egotistical rendition stayed in the UK Top 40 for 75 weeks, a record that stands still and still stands.

In his book "Civilization: The West and the Rest," Harvard professor Niall Ferguson asks what he calls "the most interesting question of our day": "Why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?"  And he proceeds to identify six "killer apps" unique to the West's development: competition, science, the rule of law, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic.

Here let me share with you an excerpt on his last point and you'll see what he is getting at.

Is Ferguson being reductionistic?  From "The Closing of the American Mind" to "The Coddling of the American Mind," is the West losing her killer (app) way, demythologized of her self-creating lavishness that "shapes leaves" and "rolls the waters"?  Is this not a big part of the violent sentiment to "make America great again?"  (If I bit off more than I could chew last week, now I am literally choking myself and maybe you too.)

One time I wrote: "On the ferry sometimes I would ask if one day mathematician can come up with a formula to account for the past and future journey of every ripple that has ever crossed path with another since the beginning of time and unto the end of (as we know) it."  God shapes leaves and rolls waters.  What is Man, who are we to think we are called to do the same and actually pulled it off too, for good or for bad?

Look around your room, at the simple things, things we think simple for their being taken for granted, exist and operational before we've successfully made ourselves to make use of them.  Look at the office chair we are sitting on, bend down and check its underside, touch the nuts and bolts and springs, squeeze the fabric and feel the shape of its many parts, parts coming together, many human ingenuities gathering in circle to soothe our bottom and still our soul.

What is Man, to create something so marvelous and deserve the blessing of it too, ceaselessly creating but destroying just as bullheadedly?

These are the "most interesting," most practical questions of colossal and enduring significance.  Biblical questions.

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex,

I have been rivaling in vapor for the past 4 nights to write. I am parched without language, except for the words sung by Johnny Cash: What is man, Lord, that you should care?

Life is a quest for questions - to seize meaning and sensibility from the ripples and echoes of voices, voyages and verdicts nonsensical. Do you want to see and seek with me?

Raising the right questions matters more than resting in the right answers. In seizing a glimpse or memory of an odd image or tune with the hope of understanding beyond ourselves, we cease from laying in the siege of our self-centeredness. Trust the ripples in water for they shall take you to new places.

Yesterday before dawn, I drove to work on a long, thin road worming its way through earth and orchards to meet the sun. In the dark, I could not see much though I knew all of my journeys by choice and consequence from birth were now converging on this single pathway, not a ripple in seconds earlier or delayed. I was skimming on one lane among infinitely braided routes and arteries, birthmarks and scars, on land that would soon be unveiled in the morning light.

A few hours later, my lifeline connected with a stranger at a health clinic. I was scheduled for 30 minutes to share his clinical journey in a new room furnished with the shiniest diagnostic tools. He was nearly twice my mid-aged years and more than twice I asked silently: Why is this happening to him? He used to do much. Now the inevitable is undoing his lifelong doings.

In my grasp was a 2-page document for me to complete - a long flow of specific questions about his visits to and from hospitals and laboratories. To justify my presence in the room with him, I had memorized the objective list. How should I begin our first ripple of interactions - with question or conversation?

Without sense, I reached out and touched his bare arm, a speechlessly nonsensical exchange. Over the brevity of our moments together, I could not have relied on my knowledge or experience to prepare for what would transmute him and me from strangers to friends. He was larger of a man than any of my questions on paper, yet fading in color and context, swaying in and out of mental clarity. He was seizing his day of questioning with few solutions and fewer words.

His questions in vague expression were mine. Questions biblical. Colossal and endearingly enduring in ripples big and small to move our every moment towards meaning.

Yours, Kate