Ridiculous The Waste Sad Time
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
Excerpt Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot
I keep coming back to this. The enduring project was awakened by an email exchange by two friends. The playbill was clearly delineated: Where did we come from? Answer: The Past. What are we? Answer: The Present. Where are we going? Answer: The Future?
While we understand the conventional meaning of these words, we are hardly, if at all enlightened by our understanding.
Speaking personally, here am I, the culmination of histories. I, from a mother, a daughter along with six sisters, born to a yeoman farmer and his wife, nurtured during the great depression. Also, my great Uncle Thomas comes to mind. Thomas, a casualty of the War to sustain slavery, was wounded at Kelly’s Ford Virginia in 1865. Thomas never owned a slave, nor did any one else in my family as far as I know. That is enough history, the quanta of past suffering of ancestors. My fathers story is not dissimilar.
Now, in the early years of the 21st century, with a slowly failing, aging body, I strive to keep my company intact. Medicare is something of a shell game: guess which cup the pea is under, and win your prize. The economy is increasingly globally inter-twinned. Everything everywhere matters, too much. Little can be local anymore. Great opportunity so they say. The great liability is obvious. Markets, always the abstract totality of human desire, the fears and the avarice, are Janus-like. “Winners and loser, and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line,” a Springsteen lyric says it perfectly.
And I, along with my friends, seem to be musicians playing in a extended Fugue, a contrapuntal composition, one melody leading into the next, all of the parts interwoven. And sometimes I think that I am in a fugue state, a period of loss of identity, of abject confusion. a desire to flee. Which is the other definition of fugue.
Put a very big question mark after “the Future?”
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Not a chance.
2 thoughts on “Ridiculous The Waste Sad Time”
Perhaps the question to ask is: Where do we begin?
The multi-faceted answers to this query are both succinct and vague, lucid and confusing, all because there is no response that encompasses each and every one of us. I see this not as pertaining to the past but a question that leads from our past experience through the present moment, so we can try to reach into the future. It is about language and communication and acceptance and birth and death. It is about the start of each day, the first bite of a meal, the first words in a conversation, the first step we take away from each other. All of these lead us, sometimes by the nose, into the arena of uncertainty. Sorry for being obtuse, but what else is there really except beginnings and endings.
I agree. There is no single, universal, unequivocal response. The matter is very much a personal one it seems to me as well. As you state, beginnings are crucial. And every day, and every experience within a day is a new beginning. I understand your last statement to suggest that certainty and uncertainty is a continuum. Also that a sufficient degree of certainty is essential if we are to survive. Moreover we are tethered to one another. Movement toward social health, a sustainable community is a joint project. This is something that WE must do. Or not.