Why with You?

How does it feel, ah how does it feel?

To be on your own, with no direction home

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

Like A Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan

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Dear Kate,

Are we, human beings, fundamentally alienated from each other or are we meant to be (if not yet) together?  That was my question for you.

Before declaring it a paradox that "thought cannot think", we realize to think about it at all is to acknowledge we live with, live in, and live out contradictions.

To sing about never falling in love again is to attest to the power of love, to love and be loved, and, of course, that there is always the chance to fall in love again, maybe by this minute tomorrow, or else why would I sing to my head against my heart?  To say "the world will be as one" is to imagine a world without imagination, even the worst sort of naiveté that would consider the something being offered by such proposal of nothing.

"We are in this together."  To a degree, maybe?  But if there is no reason to believe we are meant to be together, at all and finally, then why struggle daily for an impossible ideal?  Why ask for disappointment?  Yet if we live with the cynicism that no togetherness will ever be worked out, now or ever, then we must resign in the fact that "the human race is just a chemical scum" that would "disappear" if we are to simply close our eyes.

Not too long ago I was watching a documentary about China, the tumultuous years under Mao.  (It was a Communist regime very different from the one that is now, which speaks about the enduring vitality, persistent quest, of Marxism on the part of its followers being adaptable to the point of conflicting with many of its first ideals, but that is another topic for another day.)  Some during the poorest of time were genuinely, exuberantly hopeful, more than anyone I've met in the land of plenty.  And they weren't naive.  I could imagine myself being uplifted among the people, together.  It was a wish, there was a promise, and together they had a destiny.  They were already there, but not yet.

How about us, now?  There is nothing for us here or there or anywhere.  Which way are you going today?  And why do I want to go with you?

Yours, Alex