various thoughts on vital subjects

a dispatch from my life. 

i have quiet nights recently.  on this one i am thinking of a high school friend i am told will likely pass away within the next day or two.  cancer.  i have a lot of high and wild ideas about cancer, about life really, about the unknown.  i have these notions about universal flow and karma, this sense there is balance in the world, it is always in the motion of balancing.  i think somehow i have some ideas about my own end, which diseases can't get near me and which ones i am likely to succumb to.  cancer. 

i haven't really been in touch with this person since high school but we were casual friends in a small, private high school setting.  she was easily the sweetest girl in my class.  her face was angelic.  i think she was the head cheerleader and her dad was a doctor but this girl was without even a hint of pretense.  i adored her on the down low because i was unclear in those days about who i was or who i would become and she seemed my polar opposite in that regard.  she was self assured like a girl who has a large and balanced perspective and as a result spends a great deal of time giggling at so much around her.

rilke said it was to love the questions and i can do that right now.  i wonder about death.  is it random who gets what disease?  how are actuaries so good at what they do?  are there tables and books full of science that algorithm our diets and our environments in order to one day pinpoint the time's of our demise?  does one's character and persona and outlook and yea, karma, play a role?

i have met a few people in life who were twisted to such a degree from what might be called normal or healthy human behavior or thought, or stasis, i think they were out of balance with the universe and so dark forces were at play.  it occurred to me those people might die prematurely as a result of what they allowed to become of their minds.  it also occurred to me they might transfer that karma somehow, the sins of the father might be visited on the son or the spouse might project the darkness onto their other half, unawares and unsuspecting but open by ignorance and their own choices. 

is this just me being like what i otherwise despise, creating my own fanciful religion with vague, under-explored ideas about justice?  or could there be something to it?

i love that passage from emerson about human character publishing itself evermore.  it does.  it is.  always and constantly.

there is an acquaintance of mine who supposes to be a nice person.  she adheres to some basic tenets of a formerly more active christian belief system and lifestyle she has fashioned into that which is most convenient.  ghandi rightly said religion without sacrifice was dangerous.  this acquaintance is not in any way unique.  i have a bevy of friends and acquaintances who hold certain beliefs but sacrifice so little for their religion in fact that they do not even attend church, (and i mean, like, ever.)  they claim to be christians but they seek to distance themselves from a certain mainstream christianity because they find it in any number of ways unsavory or wrong-headed.  convenience is the law they keep.  i diverge...

still, human character does publish itself evermore.  show me someone with a mean face, one where the lines are bunched up around the eyes in ways that tend towards scowl, and i'll show you someone who is or has been unhappy.  show me someone who is fat in any degree and i will show you someone who lacks self discipline in some proportionate degree.  show me someone who is socially inept and i will show you someone who does not value the realm of the social as much as the norm.  show me someone who doesn't read and i will show you someone who lacks insight.

my acquaintance is anxious to find the right man and get married and have children and get on with her life.  she is feeling a bit old by comparison to her friends.  she works out and eats right.  she purchased breast implants.  she attends the salon regularly and likes to get out for some occasional night life.  i think this acquaintance's character is publishing away.  she is working overtime to attract men physically.  intellectually she is something of a blank slate.  she has a few semi-formed ideas about morality and the superstitious or magical.  ultimately however i think she is a hot mess.  she is anxious which is anathema to achievement, or peace.  when i am anxious i try to figure out what is wrong with me.  (i am only sometimes successful-ahh cruel fate!)  she will find a man who likes her for who and what she is physically and we know that is temporal.  that relationship will not last, right?  my acquaintance needs balance.

the point is i think there is more at play than the idea that the cancer was random, or the heart disease was genetic, or the addiction was learned. 

what is important to me?  right action is important to me.  avoiding the pitfalls of karma is important to me.  whenever i rebuff bad behavior i think it is my nature to do so and there is a clear benefit to my being that is good karma, that is good health, good luck in some ways.  i know that the world will conspire on my behalf when i am open and honest.

when i was a 10-year-old kid and this man who was married to my mom hit me like he might have hit another grown man in a bar fight. in response there was an urge within me to become angry, truly angry.  angry in a deep seeded way, in a dark way.  even at that age i had this idea that i could get angrier and angrier and i could nurture that dark feeling in my stomach and hold it there so that i could explode later, transform myself into a terrible person, able perhaps to beat someone down with fists and feet or weapons.  i remember turning from that.  i remember knowing that i had to protect the kindness within myself, that it was important for me to not get so angry because acting on such a thing would result in a downward spiral, one in which the first act of mean violence would plant a seed of regret inside me that would grow and demand more terror to tamp it down.  if i reached that point i knew i would also have to create a world view for myself in which i somehow justified my actions.  i'd have this dark world view of absurdism or some such thing, one in which my evil actions were justified by some god or other man made notion, or the belief that all of humanity was somehow irredeemable and therefore it was to the strongest to take and pillory. 

my friend from high school is dying and nine days ago her husband posted in an online journal that life was still hard but that they were all expecting to turn a corner soon and the hope was that she would be cancer free by christmas.  that nine days ago and now i hear she has only a day or two?  (that's a question i don't love.)  the husband was thanking everyone for caring and praying.  he was actively and publicly believing in some combination of a miracle and results from an alternative treatment method that seemed to hold so much hope.  i don't know how i feel about that.

should he put on that positive, faith-based persona?  is that healthy?  or, should he be a bit more realistic and pragmatic about it?  should he admit where my old friend is in the scope of her illness and relative to her death for all to see and read?  should he encourage her to say all she has to say before she leaves because what else is there beyond human relationships.  fix them.  transform them.  nurture them.  build someone up.  profess your love in spite of this horrible condition that is death.  make peace with the idea that life and death are opposite sides of the same stone and death is meant to be bitter in proportion to how much we loved life. 

death always turns into a sermon.  i stopped by a friend's house today and he informed me on the funeral he had attended yesterday.  a friend of his from high school had a sudden heart attack and died at 43 or thereabouts.  the little flyer from the event sat on his coffee table adorned with an eagle soaring above a mountain and the words of a bible verse.

when i die, please, no bible or jesus or moral bullshit.  get together and say nice things about me.  (it would be in such bad form to discuss my many foibles.)  have drinks and feel free to shed a tear that you won't get to hang out with me again and in the process form greater friendships and tighter bonds with each other.  after all what else is there in a world with cancer?