|
Dear A.,
Your sister assured me you'll
stay in L. during the holiday, and that I could
write to poste restante. Hopefully, this will be in
your hand in time. Each Christmas is as if the
world paused. Could it be, as I have read
somewhere, that the earth briefly suspends its
orbital wandering, once a year? As if to rest, or
as when we hold our breath?
I would have visited you if
travelling still attracted me, if I could have
hoped to meet unusual customs, peculiar
institutions, notable rituals. But everywhere
abound the same tricky gestures, the same
facilities. Published worldwide, photographed,
analysed. That makes travel monotonous,
superfluous. I might have become alien to the human
order, but I wonder whether that order is alien to
some universal harmony.
Yesterday I was on the beach,
watching the December sea through the northern
darkness. An instant can change the mood. For a
moment, as a violent storm suddenly broke out, I
almost felt joy. The sand and the rain whipped my
face in the darkness. I saw the lights of a ship in
the midst of the dangers of the December sea. What
a storm! How different, I thought, are the assaults
of nature from the petty hindrances conceived by
man and his industrious oppression! If the
intellect could investigate happiness as it
investigates the world, if it could rescue us from
the mortal hardships of self-inflicted pain then, I
think, the oasis of man, always at the horizon,
would move towards him.
But the world of man is old, and
each age has its disposition. As a child, I had
hope, and the desires of hope. Now I consider the
utility of things, their comfort. Hope belongs to
the past, to childhood. Then it was possible for me
to love, and for my desires to contemplate the
future. I gathered my animals, let them pasture in
my meadows, play alongside my woods. I believed
then that a happy place could ensure happiness. I
pictured myself sharing with my beloved the
sweetness of unchangeable happiness, day after day.
Always the same little joys, which, being small,
could last forever. Then, life was real, later a
fleeting glint. Then, I discerned genuine beings,
later shadows. Then, the harmony of the world,
later its contradictions. Now, my desires are too
weak to seduce me. And my desire of desires has
waned.
My tastes and habits remain
simple, my friends peaceful, my life always the
same. If I am satisfied today, I tell myself, then
I shall be satisfied all the days of my life; if my
wishes are simple, they will always be fulfilled. I
call that frame of mind good, not virtuous. Virtues
are for the rivalry of the virtuous, as power and
riches are for the hate and envy of other men. I
live today. Life melts away in an instant that the
future claims. Merge with the instant, and you get
a tired body. Give it up, and you get, besides, an
indifferent soul. All desires gone, you are no
longer yourself but another, unknown to your own
feelings. If my life could remain the same, if I
could be the same, then I could hope. If there were
permanence in life, if the good of today could
still be good tomorrow, I could hope. But the
seasons of man are a parody of the yearly seasons.
They cannot be recycled, repaired. They don't
recur, except, perhaps, as nostalgia or
regrets.
The wise man, so they tell me,
accepts whatever fate grants him. He is not
anxious. He changes nothing. He makes no effort. He
does not run down the streets to catch a bus, or
catch health. He reproaches neither fate nor the
flaws of his nature. He knows there are obstacles
he cannot overcome, miseries he cannot escape. His
sole desire is to secure his serenity, his rest.
What is the worst that could happen to him? That
the whole of humanity made a common effort to
humiliate, scorn, torture, destroy him? But such an
alternative can only be submitted to someone who
thinks life is absolutely necessary. So they try to
maneuver him into contradiction: If he wishes to
die, they will tell him that it is a crime to
desert life, but will be ready to kill him if he
wants to live. He chooses neither, an indifference
that may well earn him the death penalty. But that
penalty, he thinks, has no power over death, just
over the now or later of death. So he abides,
undisturbed, by his desire. But if by popular vote,
plebiscite, referendum, we could abolish death
itself—making it either for all or for
none—, where will the advocates of the death
penalty stand? Will they stick to their desire?
Will they renounce eternal life for the sake of
putting a criminal to death? Or will they rather
say, "let the bastard live so that also we may
live"?
Daytime is populated by shadows,
discordances, haphazards, like the dreams at night.
Men could be asleep, or even dead. Death could be
dreaming life, as when you, in your sleep, dream
you are awake. If to live is to be dead—as
Plato imagines in his Gorgias—,
if the living are, in reality, dead, then our world
must be the Kingdom of
Death. And its
fundamental law must be, not death itself, but
dying. Dying continuously. Undergoing evanescence,
agony, loss. Being a shadow that fears to vanish. A
shadow that fears. Such is the grief of dying, the
bad dream that oblivion soothes. To go hungry and
thirsty. To get sick and old. To be crushed by
boredom, exhaustion, anguish, violence, desolation.
To destroy and be destroyed. To witness the end of
goodness, love, beauty, innocence. Of everything
that is eternal. And if you asked me how the
eternal could ever end, I would have to answer:
such is the dream of death. A dream of
transience.
But in the lull of Christmas,
another dream lightens up an unknown landscape.
Never visited, just remembered. A Kingdom of Life, where goodness reigns and nothing ever
dies, where our seasons return, recycled, and
remembrance whispers: "All... Is... Good...
Always... Good... Is... All... " Another dream,
like life, like death. Yet a dream that remembers.
No proof can refute, no force can subdue, a
self-remembering dream. It is an act of will. A
desire that tenaciously pervades darkness,
desperation, anxiety, Christmas gifts, goods and
chattels, real estate, and whatever the stubborn
fears call reality. It might even pervade, I think,
death—when we no longer will be dying, no
longer forgetting—, to let us dream of
permanence.
Merry Christmas!
Your friend, always,
C. |
|