"I've been thinking... I want to get that book," I said to my partner, a couple days after we watched that episode. I didn't have to say which book.
He smiled. "I already ordered it. It will be here tomorrow."
I promised I wouldn't steal it (I mean borrow it early). He bought it for himself, after all, and he doesn't gobble at books like I do. Or... he does, eventually, but he tends to let them sit on his bedside table for a few months before he gobbles them. Sizing 'em up, I guess.
But I flipped through it, snuggled in bed. One hand turning pages, the other massaging his neck.
I do have to be conscious of the need to treat it delicately, since it's his. I am trying right now not to bend it too far and risk creasing the spine. The last two books of mine that I read are now covered with pencilled notes in the margins. One might have a few drops of an extremely bitter beer on the inside cover--or are those tears? (Who's cutting onions in here, right?) Our bedside tables themselves are the opposite: his is covered in the sundry paraphernalia of the past eight weeks; mine is so sterile, so empty, you'd think no one lived over there at all.
Quote time, from If You Meet the Buddha:
The seeker comes in hope of finding something definite, something permanent, something unchanging upon which to depend. He is offered instead the reflection that life is just what it seems to be, a changing, ambiguous, ephemeral mixed bag. It may often be discouraging, but it is ultimately worth it, because that's all there is.
...
It is as if we are all tempted to view ourselves as men on horseback. The horse represents a lusty animal-way of living, untrammeled by reason, unguided by purpose. The rider represents independent, impartial thought, a sort of pure cold intelligence. Too often the pilgrim lives as though his goal is to become the horseman who would break the horse's spirit so that he can control him, so that he may ride safely and comfortably wherever he wishes to go. If he does not wish to struggle with discipline, it is because he believes that his only options will be either to live the lusty, undirected life of the riderless horse, or to tread the detached, unadventuresome way of the horseless rider. If neither of these, then he must be the rider struggling to gain control of his rebellious mount. He does not see that there will be no struggle, once he recognizes himself as a centaur.
The DFW bio has read like a warning to me. That, above, is how he died: complications of the struggle for control over the rebellious horse. Near the end of his life he was in communication with at least one Buddhist practitioner--ostensibly for the purposes of research for The Pale King but you get the feeling it was about more than that--asking questions on meditation and concentration, trying to break down the unbreakdownable into discrete, precise instructions, each part with a logical connection to the next and a specific, ascertainable purpose. "Just sit," his friend urged him. He could not. He wanted to know how to sit, how to breathe, how to think, whether or not it was permissible to scratch one's arse in the middle of it all, how to be the perfect practitioner and get an A+. It's not like he did this blindly, either--I got the distinct impression that he knew what he was doing "wrong", but he couldn't stop.
And then there was the abandonment of his medication, which was done partly in hopes of getting a clearer head, so he could concentrate better on the project at hand and life itself... but also partly in order to be pure. To be strong. To be beyond the reproach of even the most fundamentalist of substance-eschewers. (God... do I know that feel, bro.)
Yeah...
So.... I originally wrote this post on the 25th but I never posted it. I keep making the ending just a little too clever and tied-up-tight-with-a-bow. Then I get disgusted with myself, for my glibness or else for my lengthy exactitude, for my urge to present a kosher conclusion. I can't.
I will just let it remain unfinished. I am out of time. The essence of the beginning is important enough to post now. And what's left undone is important enough to take utmost care in the crafting--which means it will have to wait.
For now, I sit.
3 comments:
Still haven't mustered up or summoned or grabbed hold of quite enough courage to read DFWs bio. I identify all too easily with his weaknesses and blind spots, and not nearly enough with his strengths and insights, which I forget were there all along in spite of the irreversible outcome. That part can be one moment too long, leaning in the riskiest direction, literally, a matter of seconds in time--because sometimes a person pulls back right before the option disappears. It's all too much for me to ponder most days. It's like a sickness with me, that feeling, as if I actually knew him in some intimate way. Even that part stirs up my shame, my self loathing for being one of those *fans* he would have probably tried excessively hard to be polite with while counting the seconds before deciding the appropriateness of a blunt comment. "I need for you to not be here..." or some equally exceedingly honest statement. And now I've written out a whole scenario, a fantasy for god's sake, in which I play a role in the life of an apparently amazing individual who nevertheless chose (I hate the false implications of that word, however) a fate that I cannot seem to avoid approaching, far too often...yet, quoting from H&A's "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "...The probability is that even in the case of the most extreme crimes...you and I, but for the grace of insight granted to us through a chain of circumstances, would have acted like the person who committed..." p.188
Forgive my sentimental and self-centered ramble here, please, and know that I am grateful for this small chance to communicate (however strangely or awkwardly or inappropriately) with another who appears to feel something similar, perhaps, to my own emotional "knot": that strange uncomfortable love for a stranger, now gone.
Hi again. Don't know if you deleted my earlier comment or didn't see it yet, or whatever...just let me know, please, if you considered anything I write here offensive or inappropriate. I'm dunce-like in that department, apparently, on account of originating (please please please any gods or powers listening) from a different planet or dimension. Not sure which. Yeah. Kind of blah as excuses go. Oh. Well. I respect however you decide about such matters. The subject matter, the writer, touches my heart a bit too sharply. Still. All my best. Keep up your excellent blog work. It's one of a kind.
Sorry about that! I was taking a break for a while and just hadn't seen & published your comments yet. I love your ramble, please feel invited to comment anytime--you are appreciated. I would very much like to reply more in depth but I am a bit (necessarily) zoinked on pain meds at the moment, heh, so it will have to wait.
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