Humanity

Reaction to J. Saltz Facebook thread-

I like when people talk about real things, I also like when people talk about people.  I think it is interesting when we don't react to trauma.  One friend told me about his mothers death and he felt nothing, didn't even cry, and another told me about his grandmother passing and he felt oddly, uncomfortably neutral.  Both of these people felt guilt for not feeling, and while it is a common reaction, going blank probably feels unfinished.  Just by the fact that people have to bring it up, it is like when people say, 'I went to Harvard and got a masters in business, but I didn't graduate from high school', people bring-up not feeling as a clause.  There are so many ways in which big moments get scripted to expectation, but at the end of the day there is such a vast spectrum of human reaction and emotion.  My friends father died a few months ago and she said that when she heard the news she had a small orgasm.  There is no way to love or loose correctly, it is all a falling of the face- your persona, your view of life, the way the world looks, it all just falls off, and there you are, drooping, leaking, face turned down, out of control, like a child who suddenly can't make sense of things.  All those jagged stupid edges that normally we collect and fictionalize our coherence out of suddenly reveal themselves for the wild and simple truth that they have very little to do with us.  And it can be horrible to not be able to do anything when you want to, I guess that is why I say that it is like a child, there are moments when our limited expressions really reveal that they are only a mild and timid outreach at best, that we are so, so, so mortal.  And so is everyone else.  I think that is why I like that Jerry said this, somehow talking about the death of ones mother is like talking about our own mortality too, it is always a reminder of our own brief candle, our walking shadow.  

I think it is also really good to talk about death, for the living to make sounds together about the ultimate silence, to try to make sense about the unknowable.  There is such a privacy to loss.  Every loss is new and unique.  We all loose parts of ourselves when we loose others, we die with them.  Because we are held by people, both in their knowing our reflection, like some shimmer of our life in their minds, and by our relating to them.  The behavior of everyone we know is a part of the greater web of self identification.  Why is it that when a celebrity dies we all mourn?  I think it brings up the confusion of our relationship to them, that all along the stars have nothing to do with us, yet part of us dies with Robin because we brought him into our lives for the relief of escape or to access ourselves by the privacy of watching and relating.  But his actual humanity and autonomy from his fame is revealed by the most private act we can do of ending our own lives.  I think that we all have a right to do with ourselves as we please, and I say this as a person who has suffered the loss of friends asphyxiating themselves in cars, shooting themselves in the head, or tossing themselves in front of moving trains.  It is a shadow that I have held with me long after those people left because the shock of suicide never fades completely, it is a stance against our deepest biological programming and as such we turn it over in our minds for a long time.  

Suicide is like Oedipus, the ultimate tragedy.  Oedipus has stayed relevant to the human condition ever since the brilliance of Sophocles because incest stays weird through time, so does poking out your eyes, we all have moms and eyes and we have strong feelings about both that really help with the survival of the species.  And suicide feels more tragic than most deaths, because it seems like the ultimate thing we should be fighting.  After all, many physical fights are mental too, cancer can be enhanced by stress, recovery is a state-of-mind, etc, so that line of 'this is a brain problem, that is a body problem' is obviously very complex and to divide it at all is odd and disembodied.  Perhaps we are still searching as a species for a framework that synthesizes experiential reality with objective biology.  

At the end of the day we don't own anyone, we barely own ourselves as the world half leads us down the odd paths, the mysteries, and adventures, and challenges, and unknown forages of tomorrow.  Every day is a dragon of some kind, shape shifting, impossible to grab.  Make good, do good, try, pay attention, say, speak up, listen, we are so complicated, we all want so much, it is in our nature to want more for ourselves.  Robin is a man who had all of the capitalist dreams- fame, fortune, family, and had to end his life, it shows that we are so, so complicated and that is really great!  And death is a part of that complication, you could die tomorrow.  You really could.  We all have to remind ourselves of our mortality because it is not rational that we could suddenly stop.  We have very little control and we play what we are dealt.  Robin's depression helped to make him such a light for the world, like a martyr burning slowly inside his whole life as he stood-up for the faith that we all need to feel things to which he was our guide.  That the child and the adult live in each of us, that compassion is a really valuable asset that gets way overlooked because it has nothing to do with the economy.  Just like the rights of women, or LGBTQ, or minorities has to do with class, empathy doesn't always let you ride to the top of the fucking hierarchy, but it is an aspect of mind.  Our A waves.  Our ability to understand, to be one with people, to literally link our brainwaves, to feel with another.  Kindness and empathy need the body and need action, at the end of the day we all belong to society and to the organic natural way which is beyond our control.  

My friends and I watched Hook last night.  It was great.  The lawyer through his phone and a billion dollar deal out the window.  

From Jerry Saltz Facebook page...

I write this simply to record an early chapter of a story - a story not that terribly different from every other story or form *all* of your stories, from *all* stories. 
......
November 1961:

When I was ten years old my two younger brothers and I came home from Sunday School. There were many cars in front of our new suburban Chicago home (Wilmette). Before we left for Sunday School that morning I saw my father run down the rec-room stairs, out the door, to the garage saying something about the word "relapse." The word had no meaning; I had no idea what he was talking about. (But I can still *feel* an intensity about it.) I think I knew my mother was in the hospital at the time; "a lady operation," I was told.

My brothers and I went in the house. I saw a lot of my relatives there. Everyone looked at us. "This is strange. Oh God! There's Aunt Toby. I wish they'd go away. I want to play baseball."

My father took my brothers and I downstairs to the rec-room. 
We sat on the modern corner couch.
He said, "Your mother has gone away."
I asked "Where did she go?"
He said "She's gone to the angles."
I did not know what that meant. I thought she might have gone to visit the Los Angeles baseball team.
I asked "When is she coming back?"
He said "She is not coming back."
I asked "What are we going to do with her Buick?"
He looked at me.
That's all.

I went upstairs and tried to feel something. Nothing happened.

The next day my brothers and I walked to school.
There was no funeral service, no memorial, no commemoration, no nothing.
My mother was never spoken of again --- for the rest of my life.

I did not know that she had committed suicide. (Jumped out of a window.)

And yet, somehow I grew invisible antenna. I knew the psychic field around me had changed; I was treated differently. Looked at. Avoided. I gleaned meanings between glances, comments, silences, things not said, words not used.

That was that ....

(Again, I don't tell this story to solicit therapy, empathy, sympathy; if you do that here, I'll delete it, maybe block you. Really.

I think I tell this story simply keeping in mind that old bio-luminescent glow that illuminates all things and every story.