Mumu's Oracular Vision

Friday, October 24, 2008

Collusion of Chance and Probability - Ode to Everybody

Now that you mentioned god; sometimes it is hard not to feel tempted to believe in the existence of a higher being, some inscrutable intent in this grand mystery called life which guides us all. It is not because I fear non-existence, that I fear becoming nothing – that is an irrefragable eventuality I have learned to embrace with tired resignation; what is the use of fighting, might as well treasure the present to live and love. But I am oft tempted to believe in this greater intent, this invisible hand that guides us all, because I have seen so many instances of dispensed good will, not from camaraderie of human comradeship, but from some sheer ‘coincidence’ or intent.

If you do it mathematically, I am not good at this but you probably know the odds clearer than me, for us to go through our respective lives, to chance upon it entwining, and arriving at where we are today. If you calculate how many more infinite possibilities there could have, how a single sneeze could have changed it so inexplicably, or how even going through the same events, how we could have passed on like ships in the night – ever the twain – it brings into perspective how rare every instance in this life remains, and how doubly rare and vital every shared instance we might have is. And triply blessed it makes all things in life.

Words fail me. Failing to capture the sense of grandeur and humility I feel everyday - knowing from whence I came, and where I am, and that you are here with me.

Dinesen @ 10:58 PM

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Written in 1994 (LAUGH), after anguishing at night over some fundamental questions of existence.

How easy does the realization come - that you will never become anyone, never be remembered? No one in posterity will know you existed, let alone your name. No one will want to hear what you once uttered; the words wander off into forgetfulness. The scribbling you so painstakingly penned, no one will want to peruse; consign them to the dustbin, they belong there, rather, do not even bother writing, save a tree for our children. The feelings that so charged your breast, no one will want to know; the annals of history have no place for you or yours. The memories that you so cherished and carefully nursed and relived in secret, over and over again, no one will fathom.

Where do the memories go?

You are part of the vast ocean of humanity, destined to remain nameless, anonymous, to enter the world with a cry, to depart and be heard no more. Back to the ocean.

From there where do we go?

Afterlife? Heaven? Do you believe? Or would you rather come back as a cockroach, something you so despised and hated and wanted to squash when you were alive and bigger and stronger and higher on the evolutionary food chain?

Can you believe, when you see that lifeless figure before you, that once spoke, moved and laughed, shall find another day – a resurrection, in some place of eternal happiness or damnation? Tell that to the corpse. When you meet again, would you recognize? When they lower the coffin into the earth, or return what is said to be made of earth to fire, dare you envision a continuity? A resurrection? Do you believe that when they do the same to you, you will awake to something, something – anything? It doesn’t really what we awake to in the end, does it? Happiness, pain, salvation or damnation, the existence cannot believe in its own non-being and hence cries: Just let me be! And even if there is nothing beyond, if all these assurances are just fantasies, lies – funny how we will never ever realize.

Where do memories go?

And so the priest asserts: for those who believe, there will be salvation! From what? From the fear that clutches the heart which suspects the inexistence of its future? Fear of what? Be still, do not mention, try not to remember. But do not blame me for doubting – in all true faith there is doubt, without which the faith would not be tried, refined and pure. Adam ate the apple and hence we must die. Those who do not believe must burn. Animals have no souls, they kind of disappear, I think, but God knows when a sparrow falls from the sky. And God is Love. Merciful. Compassionate.

The Catholics say you can pray your loved ones out of purgatory. What if you leave behind no one who knows that it is possible? Does that mean I burn for their ignorance? What if they refuse to, if they do not believe? Does that mean I burn for their not believing, screaming in the delicious flames? Who then will pray for me out of the delicious flames of Hell into the cascading glory of an angelic choir singing songs over and over and over for all eternity? Some of my relatives cannot speak English; does God understand Mandarin?

We hate politicians when they consider us as nothing but numbers. Funny how in the end, we are still numbers. Each one of us is numbered, the chosen are numbered. The rest go to hell. I wonder if God bothered to count and number those.

The realization comes. You know. But you don’t want to remember. And so you die before you die. Because you refuse to remember.

And so when the realization comes, how easy is it to accept it? When someone gives you something as absurd, and painful, as a cactus, do you embrace it? How do you continue to live life as it is? You forget. You die first. Then you continue living as if nothing happened. Might as well tie your heart to your soles and walk the thorny path.

How can we not remember?

When the realization comes, when we accept it, holding the barbed cactus to our bosoms with a fervour of a demented lover – what next – what then? We get up in the middle of the night, when thoughts of eternity take an ominous turn. We get up and kneel on our knees and we pray, the way we did when we were children. Oh Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you for existing, that we may continue to exist. Better an eternity in hell, than, than, than that indescribable emptiness. Though Hell has twenty four levels of torture and pain, better! Better! Better by far than oblivion. Better by far than forgetfulness.

Where can the memories go?

The serpent tempted Eve into eating the fruit, hence all snakes must suffer to be legless; Adam ate the apple, hence we must all die; humanity was thus created and chased out of the Garden.

Is this where memories go – out of the Garden?

How many cursed Eve! How many less have cursed Adam. It is just a damned and damn fruit, what’s so hard in resisting? But remember how we use to look at sweets unguarded? Remember how the adults would say: ‘Thou shall not!’ and how that would usually galvanise one into doing what was exactly warned against? Indeed, if only metaphorically, we are the descendants of Adam and Eve; some of us, of the Serpent – legless, on our bellies we crawl.

What a tragedy! Precisely so, and hence it is not. Without Tragedy, what would humans be? To be without Tragedy is to be tragic. The Tragedy enabled us to write a story, to raise ourselves above the mendacity of existence. Hence, we live.

When Eve walked out of the Garden, did she not feel the crispness of the grass beneath? Did she not hear the deep murmur of the river beside, which flowed out of the Garden? Did she not, finally standing before the sea, feel comforted? That in a world and existence so determined, so ordered, foretold and unflinching from its destiny – from her Fall, to the salvation of humanity from her seed, to the final days – there is something so changeful, so changing.

Whenever I stand before the sea, I am Eve. I am Eve drowning in a surf of memories. Memories of the sin. Each time I return to the sea, it is like returning to the arms of the Beloved; I am Eve drowning. I am Eve drowning. Drowning, in full fathom five, of memories. And sea-change.

Some people write to live. Some live to write. Others write for a living. Me – I write because I die.

Caught between the irreversibility of the past, the unaccountability of the future; in the pregnancy of this moment, the hand is put to task – Write.

Dinesen @ 6:45 AM

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mumu the milk oracle