“The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.” ~ Death in Venice’
This will be a strange, feverish post. I begin it without knowing where it’s going – never a safe beginning, often a riskier middle, and always an ending of doom. So many doomed endings, so many little deaths – all the deaths of a day. This blog post will suffer its own series of deaths – when it is read, when it is unread, when it is forgotten, when it becomes buried beneath other posts, when the antiquated machinations of this WordPress madness cease functioning, when this blog itself goes offline. So many ways it falls apart, deteriorating and diminishing and dissolving, like some unfinished, half-hearted sentence…
The arrival of today’s mail escaped our notice, so I ended up going out to the mailbox after it was dark, listening to the frogs and insects in the very last days of summer sing their slightly sad songs. This day dies to make way for the night, and the night will be gone as well to make room for a new day. Every day a little death indeed.
“Only incorrigible bohemians find it boring or laughable when a man of talent outgrows the libertine chrysalis stage and begins to perceive and express the dignity of the intellect, adopting the courtly ways of a solitude replete with bitter suffering and inner battles though eventually gaining a position of power and honor among men.” ~ Death in Venice’
Summer’s demise is happening as I write this. It was there in the chill of tonight’s air, and the official switch of seasons will take place on September 23. Another summer will arrive, and it will be the same, as much as it won’t. Its heart and essence will scream ‘summer’ but it will still not be the same, even as it takes the same name, even as it goes through the same motions. Summer is summer is not summer is summer…
I knew this post would collapse into itself, and imperfectly yet impeccably designed it to do so, like those empty buildings so intricately laced with dynamite at all the right locations that upon explosion almost too neatly fall in on themselves. A million little deaths then – of doorways, of windows, of halls, of secrets whispered, of sighs unheard, of winter footprints stained into carpets, of bathroom tiles once peered into while random men found relief at urinals – all the deaths of an average day in an average building.
Then there is space, littered with dust and debris that will be carted away, ground that will be leveled again – space that will form home for something else, something new. Space and time, both extending and continuing, bound to what came before, bound to what will come after, connecting and separating in infuriating, impossible contradiction. An infinite conundrum that something like Buddhism would only dare hint at resolving, and then it would somehow shift the perspective into something that approached mindfulness, contorting basic laws of science and nature into mere perception, and offering little in how to practically navigate actual survival. Obviously I know little to nothing about Buddhism, or mindfulness… and the last four years of meditation might not mean all that much either. More little deaths – of dreams, of understanding, of plans – and more music by Mahler. I won’t drink to that.
Three more days until summer falls…
“It is probably better that the world knows only the result, not the conditions under which it was achieved; because knowledge of the artist’s sources of inspiration might bewilder them, drive them away and in that way nullify the effect of the excellent work.” ~ Death in Venice’
