remember that wooden structure playground behind the cemetery where Leonard was, [wasn’t it Leonard?]
well, i should tell you, someday, of the night when i stayed up all night long scrytching the blood from my eyes, only to take a walk in the pre-dawn cold to the playground, and find that it was no longer there; and find that as the sun rose, i smelt charr and ash, and heat and dust, and to realize that the playground had become hallowed ground in a way i would never [i knew] be able to explain to anyone.
i was standing in a ruins. even the plastic monstrosity which replaced it in a month did nothing but exhalt in my memory the presence of that “playground.”
funny how old quotes point to things their authors never intended. different perspectives lend different outcomes, don’t they? it is the sad state of the human condition, infinite hypocrisies through the lens of changing perspectives and the attachments or aversions that accompany them.
it would seem that most times, the willingness of humans to endure one another depends more on how well one coddles the perspectives of others (as opposed to challenging them). the buddhists say it is all the same, but that rarely seems to matter or receive much in the way of consideration. someone clutching a thing and screaming, ‘mine!’ is hardly likely to be willing or able to clear their mind long enough to accept the futility of the claim. to be sure in those moments when i’ve been that ‘someone’, i couldn’t manage it. the statement is an indictment and a forgiveness, though i suppose it will not read that way.
no matter. it is what it is. all the perspective in the world cannot change intent. though it does often try.
my own experiences of shifting perspectives are boring tales of insight and contemplation. very rarely interesting to anyone but myself. i think that must be somehow unavoidable; the whole ‘each for their own’ of it all. in the end, you tell no one anything except that which they already know… because they cannot hear or understand anything that they do not.
heraclitus would get that. i only recently got it myself, just before giving up on philosophy as a hopeless waste of time. for the very same reason. it is funny, really. but sadly so. the notion of communion is noble enough, but it requires a more tender willingness than humans generally care to manage.
i am, of course, having yet another intermittent spasm. i wish i could understand what brings them on. i’d settle for understanding where their little hooks and tethers are… so i could quietly, calmly rip them out and toss them over the precipice into the abyss and be rid of them forever.
i’m actually at a point where i would and could do so, thus it is especially annoying that i have no understanding of the cause by which to navigate and manage it.
i’d like to say if i had truly understood what being this idealistic would mean, i would never have allowed it to take root in my head. but i’m not sure i had that choice at any point. certainly i do not have it now. this is no root to be pulled and cut out. or if it is, i am root entire and it is a binary equation – either i continue as i am and do as i do or i do not continue.
this is the place of the eternal sigh. i give it breath as i always do. it helps to let it have its way.
in south georgia, beneath the airport and behind the cloak of forest just off the highway, there is a playground that i recall and similarly exhalt. a great many pinestraw houses rose and fell within its dusty expanse and a few lunches were tossed from the mad, crooked spinning of the ancient merry-go-round there. dogwood tree lines the hillside just behind it, and to this day, the children clamor and climb all over it.
it has been many a year since i was one of those clamoring, climbing children. but i still remember how it felt on a summer day to lay upon the warm metal of the merry-go-round and let its motion make a kaleidoscope of sky and trees. it was the feeling of life, that exhilarating, dizzying, almost sickening intensity.
i never think of that playground that a host of other memories do not immediately throng to the forefront of my mind. i push them away, but gently. the reason i mention it is both in comparison to the one above quoted and for the contrast of perspectives in it. the person who wrote that quote has forever found more beauty in ruins and memories of things lost than in tending things to keep them from loss.
the differences are highlighted to me. i can shake my head and admit them. they no longer hurt. this is a good thing. but i have not yet managed to root out the perspective that holds it was possible to tend things so they may not be lost in the presence of one who thrives on ruins and memories.
it is curious to me, how the lesson of impermanence displays in this. on the one hand, it is wisdom not to cling to things, as all things pass. on the other, just because all things pass is no reason to be quiescent in relation to their tending.
still, nothing more than perspective, eh? fortunately, perspective is no less likely to change than anything. i count that a gift and blessing.
i started this with the intent of letting goofy little eeyore have its moment of depression by the river bank. interestingly, it would seem the act of being willing to do so results in there being no real need to indulge it. so, instead, i will say that i count it auspicious to be able to clearly state the differences and accept them as what they are — unequivocal.