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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Sic Finis Priami
Classic Gin
Wednesday, 2005-02-23 | Classic Gin
The greatest thing that I can think of to say about life is that, for whatever reason, it seems to have a will to persist.
In a certain episode of MASH, BJ hatches a certain plot. Eventually, after he's had some time to think on't, he arranges an odd reunion--he (re?)unites the family members of the staff of the 4077th at
a hotel in New York for a weekend of revelry and commiseration. The project, as indicated, does not begin as this sort of thing. It begins as he and Hawkeye go back-and-forth about what a proper reunion
of the 4077th would be like. While BJ is (as ever) optimistic, Hawkeye is (as ever) less so: 'Sure, I can see it; it's ten years later, we've all got gray hair--Charles has his in a box--the war has been over for a month...'
There are moments when duress, fatigue and hopelessness coincide. These moments are frequent; they do not merely punctuate life, but rather, they form the text that more pacific and idyllic moments adumbrate. If we can agree on nothing else so far as universal claims about the human experience go, I think we can all agree that it is more often the case than it is not that there is no end in sight.
You wake up early, still in yesterday's (last week's?) clothes, you drink weak coffee from a dirty mug, you put on dirty socks and take an abbreviated Mexican shower, you apply yourself diligently and assiduously to your work, you steal a few moments for yourself--perhaps a quick noontime repast or an hour or two with your hobby--where you can, you arrive home only to remember how far behind you are according to every schedule or timetable you can think of, you would like to nap but instead eat some moldy bread, drive to work, you return home and, if there's time, struggle vainly to squeeze a few more productive minutes into yet another 18 hour day.
And that's if you're lucky.
If you're not lucky, you're probably starving to death in the third, second or first world, imperiled or imprisoned (or both) by whichever warlord has most recently acquired the mandate of heaven or maybe you've got Consumption and you're rotting to death in a filthy, tomb-like hospice that smells of putrefaction, the sour mucous of the diseased and of aciculate commercial disinfectants.
And yet life persists. Why does life persist?
While I'm not at liberty to disclose that particular detail at this point, I will go so far as to say that it has nothing to do with any kind of categorical imperative, fear of the hilariously spurious claims of theologians and clergymen or rhetoric of any kind, for that matter.
A very good friend of mine is fond of responding to queries about his current activities and plans thus: 'I'm doing what I always do because it's what I've always done.'
Life persists because that is what life does. That's what it is to be alive; to persist and persist and persist in the indifferent face of Nullifying Death and despite the best efforts of the rest of the world to pick your pocket, break your leg and dominate your mind in that order and for no good reason.
Life persists.
