Remnants for the Future

"A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait." - Theodore Roethke

Last night while watching the second season of Northern Exposure, I began suddenly to cry. 'What is going on,' thought I. 'Aren't I perfectly happy? I have a house to go in from the cold. I have money with which to buy food. I am stong and of a sound mind. So why then am I experiencing sudden sad, intensely painful, yet sweet feelings?'

"The TV screen is blank. Vikorn is looking at me with an expression of almost academic - and drunken - curiosity. 'My brother talked about you and Pichai quite a lot. He said you were both very talented in different ways. He said your problem was your total lack of identity. You can be anyone your like, literally, but only for short periods of time. Who were you just then, the victim?"

'I was distracted,' said I, 'studying Chris.' I observe how his lips curve up at the corner, making him appear perpetually happy. It is as simple as the luck of the genetic draw. People have always told me to "smile". If I had been born with different lips, my life would be totally different. And if I had given (after all, why are we here?), truly given, I would be dead. And free. Wouldn't I have reached our common destination? The tie that binds. The reason for everything that happens in between. There are no strangers.

"The fact that we don't know this man isn't important, really, because his experience is our experience, and his fate, up here, is our fate. 'Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas,' says the preacher. All is vanity. I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we are stripped of all our earthly possessions, and all our fame, and family, and friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but it's just the way things are. 'Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.' Only when we understand all is vanity, only then it isn't."

And so we spoke the language of 'yes'.