'Tis the Day

“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,

"The possibilities for self-creation, material success, and absolute freedom are the basis of a powerful American myth, one that can just as easily destroy as empower those who embrace it."

I am ripping this line right out of a reader's guide of Bellow's "Seize the Day" to give some context to today's quote, so that you know, yes, the speaker might be tongue-in-cheek, but not insincere, cynicism, if any, fully intended, just as his creedal conviction.

I imagine asking my parents: What is the next "value added activity" you are going to do in/to your life? and they'd probably have at least a semblance of understanding of what I am talking about, being well tutored by the well versed narrative in the media, which, to them, is still the television.

But if I am to ask my grandparents the same question, they would probably blink at me in bewilderment.  Not that they are alive for me to actually ask.  They don't get to see the day to feel compelled to seize the day.

We are so entrenched in our own mythology that we could hardly imagine not that the entirety of our narrative is a new invention but the twist we give to our fable is fabulously peculiar to fit the shape of our heart's particular emptiness.

Think about it: When we talk what do we talk?

We talk about what we do, and then the rest would be justifications of why we are not doing something else, something more, something extra, further, newer, measurably greater, to put us in a better position to make our next bettering step.  When our hands are idle, it's not only our fault but really our sin.  Even leisure and enjoyment is done to fulfill a need: to get away so that we can get back into Life's Way.

Once we could grasp the right tenet it is not hard to catch the music in the air and march to the beat of the collective consciousness.  What's truly amazing is how a supposedly creative and ever-bettering life can be set to the melody of monotone and the scenery of monochrome.  This is the making of tragicomedy, our life.

If we find ourselves laughing and crying at the same time and often can't tell which is which we should know that's part of the act.

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex,

My fear is I am sick. A malady of the mind. Not rapid, lavish or creative. Metamorphosis reversed. March is morphing towards Spring. I am left in a haze.

From morning I have blinked at the brink of the unknown - this coming of 24 hours in a roll. I blink again to see rolling images from the grind of another day in virtual cloning of the one just passed, spooked by the twin days of tedium reflecting outcomes unbecoming in the fish-eye blind-spot mirror. We are emptied of our emptying.

At the heart of modern living, our ideals in innovating and competing are emptying us of the emptiness we have willed to evade. Rid us of waste and redundancy to create more vacancy for clutter and distractions. Thrust backwards to move forward in refilling barren vessels with smoke.

The grill is cranked up for party. We feast with feistier fists in furious feats and fabulous fits, falling further into the folly of being feasted ourselves. As we grow into chiefs and chefs of our own brewing in greater efficiency and productivity of time and labor, have we loved, breathed and died more daringly in dream and deed for ourselves and families, our neighbors and communities of shared earth and homes with past and future generations?

Why should I care unless I can use and apply, salivate and swallow what has been entitled or apportioned to me for my fanatic feasting? The fittest shall feast on.

The fact is I cannot catch up. It’s foam I am feasting on. I am purging. I am failing to think or write between teeth and tonsil. I am hollow in open jaw. I create cravings, not connections. Even in connecting, we are disconnected from conversations. I am irrelevant.

In the crisis of becoming obsolete, I retreated this weekend for home remedy in the kitchen and laundry. I rolled up my sleeves to roll back in time when homemaking, not Costco, kneaded and knitted daily living around the supper table. Tonight I baked, steamed, stir-fried and baked again, wondering whether I had gone mad over the 2 hours spent in mashing, shredding, scouring and ladling. I was playing house in rehearsal for home dining with a retired missionary couple next Sunday.

A call to order take-out meals would have reduced my 2 hours to 2 minutes.

I recalled for 2 seconds Saul Bellow’s words - create or destroy, no in-between.

I kept on cooking, rasping on my chopping board and in the throat, inhaling the night, gasping for meaning, desperate in seizing this day and the next to re-create.

Yours, Kate