Passing It on

無論是愛與被愛 也是寸步難行
風急雨勁 那可守得穩痴心
誰能盡棄世上一切 去做快樂情人
衹好接受 這叫沒緣份

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Dear Kate,

"Calls to Vancouver domestic-violence crisis line spike 300% amid COVID-19 pandemic," I was talking to my friend about this headline yesterday.

He said, "What kind of people would do that?  Especially now, when we need to help each other?!"

I didn't reply.  We were texting.

He filled in the blank for himself a moment later, "Maybe it's cos I live by myself."  And working from home now in a small apartment too.

I still didn't reply.

"But, why?"  He seemed to have not grasped what he has accepted already.

Those words above are the refrain of a song that I didn't even recall the name of when they came back to me out of nowhere yesterday, a song that I don't even like.  This is what it says:

Whether a lover or beloved
One can hardly move an inch.
The wind is strong, so is the rain;
How's one to keep a heart pure?
Who can give up everything to stay a Happy Lover?
I'll need to accept this: Fate.

My translation might have lent it a solemnity that's not there, but I trust there is seriousness in the lamentation.

"But, why?"

The songster claims it is "Fate" that breaks us apart, yet he acknowledges "Fate" works itself out via human agents, who could have moved but couldn't, kept but wouldn't, given up what hinders love but didn't.  So at the end, there is only one final action to explain it all away: to accept.

Fate, as Simone Weil understands it in classical Greek tragedy, is a passing on of destructive force:

"What is called Fate in Greek tragedy has been very badly misunderstood. There is no such agency apart from this conception of the curse, which, once produced by a crime, is handed down by men from one to another and cannot be destroyed..."

Who knows what caused the COVID-19.  Maybe one day we will.  Maybe it doesn't matter.  By the time we've learned enough about it some other novelty would have taken its place to occupy our consciousness.  We will learn much from this experience.  We will learn nothing from this experience.

What shall never have its novelty wear out is regardless what the source of Evil might be, we humankind shall perpetually be a major transmission agent of its virus, a main-stage actor, front and center in the theater of tragedy that is--dare I use a word that even modern Christians cringe at and mostly discarded--sin?

Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon to "do good" to each other now, at least that's what we claim we are doing.  But who would acknowledge we are all implicated in the transmission of Evil, despite our best intention to stop its spread, and no amount of social distancing or rule adhering could save us from passing on the SIN-20 virus?  And without this acknowledgement how much is our doing good going to do, and for how long, until "Fate" once again predictably blindsides us, before the sweet wine we offer the world turns sour?

I am not being pessimistic.  It is a lazy adjective sampled from an impoverished spectrum of linguistic possibility to explain away what I said here.

The song has it right, we are lovers and the beloved, simultaneously.  There's nothing more perceptive or truthful to speak about ourselves.

"But, why?"  Why can't we keep loving and staying in love?

This is the rest of Weil's quote:

"What is called Fate in Greek tragedy has been very badly misunderstood. There is no such agency apart from this conception of the curse, which, once produced by a crime, is handed down by men from one to another and cannot be destroyed except by the suffering of a pure victim obedient to God."

Yours, Alex