Plague Journal, Destiny?
Sitting under the maple tree, in front of the old Kane County courthouse built in 1892, it has the architectural look and feel of another time. Many that constructed the edifice remembered the War Between the States, and likely served in the Grand Army of the Republic. That explains the 
impressive sculpture, imposing, on the granite pedestal of three Federal infantry troopers. They stand facing outward, their backs to one another, as if to repulse the onslaught of Johnny Rebs, or die…. And many died on both sides. One man is the colors bearer, the staff of an unfurled banner in his hand. The other is a drummer, his job to maintain the cadence of the forward advance of the line of battle, and the third man seems to be holding a Sharps repeating rifle. These were breach loading “modern” weapons for the time and were rare.
In my imagination the men depicted so finely in bronze, fought and died at Gettysburg. Gettysburg is where Mead’s army, faced Lee’s army of Northern Virginia. Perhaps they were cut down in the fighting around Culp’s Hill.
Did they die to defend the Union? Or give their lives to free their fellowman enslaved on Southern plantations? Or were the caught up in the maw of war because they happened to be Irish immigrants, and some federal officer to fill his draft quota, made them an offer they couldn’t refuse? In any case they and the rest of their generation are now gone. Spent, used up for a complex cause that unraveled into four years of bloody conflict.
Were those men born for the cause which they served, the purpose for which they lived? I don’t mean “purpose” in the sense of a transcendent Being that wills a life trajectory for human beings. I mean the confluence of intersecting cause and effect. As an example my own case: from my birth to Roy King and Ruby McLamb King, does everything between then and now, leads me to be seated under this maple tree, having these thoughts? Given, — that cause and effect is inexorable, law-like, the track of a billiard ball after impact, the outcome of F=MA, plus the coefficient of friction between the surfaces….. Myself included, and everything within my range of vision subject to the outplaying of intersecting trajectories, all the way back to the ice age, and still further back?
The inevitable outplay of intersecting trajectories……
It is mind bending, and I do not often have such thoughts. If the three of my American predecessors, who participated, and died in the great conflict, the War Between the States, had known that in 2020 civil unrest would roil American cities on account of persistent discrimination against Black citizens, and if they could have known in the year 2020, thousands in far away places toil for sub-poverty wages, in miserable conditions to make American affluence possible — what that have made any difference?
No longer cotton fields, but Foxconn airplane hanger-sized factories….
It all appears to be a circle, a curved arc that comes around to another beginning, just as Nietzsche wrote: a great “eternal” recurrence. And will the big guns roar once again, just as they did at Gettysburg?
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Destiny?”
You, sir, are skirting the area of predeterminism, which, if I remember correctly, was soundly poo-pooed by a variety of folks when we discussed this a number of years ago. The concept is a very uncomfortable one and I completely understand why anyone would feel squidgy delving into this area.
But if we can precisely determine the trajectory of a cue ball, based on weight, velocity, air temperature, humidity, gravitational relevance, wear of the felt and so on, then we can determine the direction, with a mass of data, a person’s life would take. In this context, the truth surrounding predeterminism doesn’t mean we throw in the towel and give up thinking because everything that will be is already in play. We just continue to live our lives under the illusion of free will and there’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t matter one way or the other.
Today’s blog is very introspective. It is really important that we examine the basis of our historical roots and whether those who came before us had a choice in their own destiny, but in the end, right at this moment in time, we are who we are. Our lives resonate with our environment and those around us, so we need to remember that someday, we’ll be the ancestors and future generations will still be wondering if we had a choice in the directions of our lives.
I’ll end this rejoinder by reposting one of my poems that you are familiar with, but since it is apropos of this dialogue, I’m offering it once again:
The Music of Time
There is a melody that has existed
since the beginning,
since the cosmos opened it gates
and the light of creation
rushed forward against the darkness.
A melody sung by swirls of ancient dust
as galaxies formed and new worlds
danced among the stars.
There is a melody that rides the winds of time,
echoing against the edges of the universe
and reverberating within vast chambered neutrons.
For a moment in its journey
the melody drifts from the strings of a piano
meandering through the air
to settle on the membrane of my ear
before melting from the present.
There is a melody that will last
until the final spark of nature is extinguished.
A melody that has been caught
in the eddies of existence where it cannot escape,
for its indelible notes were, are and will be
written upon the fabric of this seemingly eternal
but far too brief iteration
of all that we will ever know.
There is nothing that I can add. Your poem is a elegant exposition of our state of being. The poem also hints at the beauty, the balanced proportion of the whole deal. It is magnificent indeed that we humans have the intelligence to take this into account.