Think About The Way III
Minneapolis — One more family member has bit the dust. Another Gordian knot has been tied, the Beer Barrel Polka has blasted out of stylized speakers so that the young and old can enjoy the fun. The fairly steady stream of weddings that has annoyed me for nearly two years continues, a couple per annum, with the next ready to ring in the new year in eight months. But the subject is tonight's celebration, and after the garter had been thrown (caught, incidentally, by a 21-year-old drop-dead gorgeous writer who is currently frustrated), I settled in for a questionable night.
The service, being non-denominational, was a short fifteen minutes. As always, and getting more and more unexplainable as time goes by, I found the ceremony absolutely hilarious. There's just something about a couple of Joe Six-packs using the lofty language of eternal vows that hits me right in the heart. My laughter is usually so strong it must be forcibly contained, lest it disturb those around me. I wasn't sure if tonight would be any different, but as soon as the music started I had that smile on my face and a gleam in my eye. Just hearing Pachelbel's Canon, under the right circumstances, is enough to put me in hysterics. Couple that with the funny dresses and tuxedos, the dressed-up audience that just might know who the hell is getting married, and you've got something that would be a perfect satire, if it were not so deadly serious.
Drink helped me through the beginning of the reception, but by the time the tables were rolled out of the room and the dance floor was getting ripped up by middle-aged wives doing the twist, I was far too sober to engage in any more than an obligatory romp around the floor. The bar was very far away, both physically and mentally, so I saw no choice but to take on the passive/observer role that is my default. I had proven the theory that alcohol does indeed make family events more tolerable, but it was now the time to take a good look at this crazy little thing called love, which was arguably the reason we were all gathered.
As I said before, the past two years or so have included many a wedding for me, far more than what I had experienced in the 15 years beforehand. With the exception of one extremely crazy friend (whose wedding I blame for floods, pestilence, and my shell-shocked state), all those getting married were cousins. The birthing patterns of my mother's extremely large (read: Catholic) family resulted in a miniature baby boom of sorts, a boom that I am at the tail end of. A few year's separation, and then another bulge as my younger aunts and uncles started families, et cetera. The first group is now of marrying age, and it will not be too long before people start asking me when I plan on getting married. There are a few ahead of me yet, but the count goes down one by one with startling regularity.
On the flip side of this was the previous generation, the parents of myself and my cousins. Most of the Sery kids were in attendance to celebrate the nuptials of a niece, but the state of their own unions was questionable. Of the five Sery sisters at the wedding, four were without an escort by failed marriage or circumstance, and the fifth danced the hokey-pokey alone while her husband sat outside and smoked. To me, something seemed significant about that, or at least strange enough to bear looking into.
Ah, yes. Love has bothered, cursed, pleased, and annoyed people for ages. It can be a sticky topic to get into, but given the alternatives, I didn't think I had much choice. Certainly, there were more pressing issues in the world that I could turn my scrutiny towards. But they grow tiresome: hearing a Southern President saying "Now, we will not send American boys eight or nine thousand miles around the world to do something that Kosovan boys should be doing themselves," is a bit too much to handle. We have gone down that road once before, and as it was happening again, I chose to stay away from it. School shootings, the Dow Jones, basketball playoffs, the Guv'nor signing his decadent book at the Mall of America . . . . why deal with this nonsense? Time to look at the predecessors to all of this contemporary garbage.
So why not start with weddings and love? They have certainly been around for a long time. Even though such modern-day add-ons as the Macarena and the Dollar Dance have started to crowd out the primary messages, there is no reason not to look at the underlying philosophies that molded the rituals in the first place. There once was a method to all of this madness; it is simply a matter of getting to the bottom of it.
Or is it? A full frontal assault on marriage and love is probably bound to fail. After all, poets, philosophers, and song writers have spent centuries trying to capture the significance of love in words or music. They have not succeeded, simply because they method they chose was wrong. Nobody is going to be able to subjugate such subjects with a clever turn of words or a chord progression. I have nothing to add when it comes to the obvious about love, sex, marriage, and what makes the world go 'round. Instead, such subjects, if there is to be any possibility of new insight, have to be attacked using a circuitous route. Blaze a trail.
Spring has come to Minnesota, and the evenings are quite pleasant. On nights when there is no rain, a rarity these days, the lack of any significant mosquito population invites one to pace around the great outdoors like a nervous chihuahua. A favourite locale of mine is the Mississippi waterfront, which has been made even more exciting due to the huge amount of rainfall we have had lately. The Falls of St. Anthony are raging at their strongest these days, and the water makes thinking pleasant.
Too pleasant, perhaps. It was during one of these excursions that my mind had turned to thoughts metaphysical. I had been crabby of late, and I knew why: I was suffering from a definite lack of potential. That much was clear, that surface explanation was enough to tide me over for a bit. But then the question came up, a question that I had not really thought about seriously, but a serious question nonetheless: what is potential? What the hell is that little bugger? The word is tossed around enough, but what does it mean? Where does it come from? How can I get some back?
My mind was heavy with the question as I walked along the river. Every step asked, "What is potential? What is potential?" As a starting point, I turned to the ideas found on the pages of the book I was reading once again, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It seemed that potential should have something to do with Quality, or what is good and not good. If something has potential, then obviously it has to be able to get better, i.e. have more Quality. This was simple enough. I fashioned it in my head as a rule of Calculus: potential was the second derivative of dynamic Quality. If something is getting better, it had to have had the potential to get there.
However, this mathematical definition was still definitely lacking. I had to relate it to real life. Furthermore, if potential was related to Quality, it had to share some of the same, well, qualities of Quality. For example, Quality itself is neither subjective nor objective. It doesn't exist in my mind, nor does it exist in the object I am viewing. Instead, it exists at the boundary between the two. Thus, potential had to be the same way. This made a lot of sense: a stone sitting in a vacuum doesn't have the potential to be a sculpture, and an artist without any materials does not have the potential to become a sculptor. But when the artist engages the stone as an artistic material, you have instantly created potential; the stone can now become whatever the artist wishes it to become. It can have more Quality.
Instantly? From where? This could be a problem. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that potential can be created at whim, anywhere, anyplace, by simply engaging subject and object in the quest for Quality. Potential does not create the quest to fulfill it; the quest to fulfill it creates potential. My thoughts ran farther ahead. It isn't merely engaging an object that matters; you have to care. You have to know what you want to change in order to make it better. You have to know what is Quality, and knowing that means you care. Forget the word "care". In a way, it can be said that you have to love.
This was the first step. The second came after I was shocked out of daily routine by more Zen thoughts. It was said in the book that Quality, because it comes before subject and object, creates them. Quality creates everything in the universe. At this point Phaedrus, our insane protagonist, stops; he is already too close to losing his mind. However, I took it a couple notches backward still. Potential leads to Quality, and caring leads to potential. Hence, everything in the universe is created by caring.
Bang! A door flies open. Of course! From a purely physical point of view, this is obvious. Every single material object that we know of exists today because at one point somebody cared enough to make it. Not only building, cars, and houses, but steel, timber, engines, everything. On and on, lower and lower in the hierarchy; everything from the lowliest ramp to the tallest building was created because somebody cared enough to increase the Quality of the world they lived in. Not only physical objects but non-physical as well. Ideas, thoughts, religions; all created by caring. In fact, without caring, nothing human would exist today. To believe that the universe would not exist if it weren't for caring takes a large leap of faith, but it is one that is possible.
It is at this point that I was able to swing my philosophy over to compare. I call myself a Romantic Idealist; an invented term, pretty much. A better term might be Fucking Moron, but I shall get to that shortly. Basically, I believe that to be happy is to love something or something, try to do it well, and give fully of yourself to whatever it is, person or idea. The Fucking Moron part is fairly obvious: when a person comes along and sees that I am going to give all of myself to him or her, it ain't hard to take advantage of me. Where I came to first believe this I have a hard time saying. I think it has something to do with the Catholic doctrines that were hammered into me from a very early age, as there seems to be a resemblance to Christian charity in there. More than likely, it is the combination of that and my own experiences.
Outside of my Quality context, this view doesn't seem to make much sense. It tends to look like the philosophy of, well, an idiot who is going to get screwed over repeatedly. However, when you add potential to the mix, it doesn't look so stupid. Creating quality in the world involves caring a hell of a lot; that is why I think to be happy is to care and love completely. That is how you create wonderful things. That is the only way, as a matter of fact.
All this came to me as I drifted down Larpenteur Avenue, trying to avoid a fit of rage. Ghosts I can handle, Philosophical realizations I can handle, but not at the same damn time. And I was surrounded. As well as frustrated, for something wasn't jelling. My recent moods had been as a result of finding flaws everywhere I looked: school, work, politics, people, you name it. For some strange reason, it wasn't working. I was giving my all, and still I wasn't happy. My all wasn't being accepted, it seemed. Does the world need to be a willing accomplice in the struggle?
That didn't make sense at all, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. That hadn't been discussed at all. We were always told that the righteous will succeed, and the morally flawed, the selfish, the shallow, the weak in character would fail. The system was supposed to be set up in favor of those who did sacrifice. But instead, we only sacrificed to those willing to snatch it away from us.
The problem is spreading. My friend Sam and I have talked about the problems in the world, and he said that what we should do is go out to D.C. and sit on the steps of the Capitol until they stop the bombing, for starters. Then the rest of our revolution will occur.
"What revolution?" I asked. "This isn't the 50's or 60's"
"Yes it is," he said. "Lifestyles today are as equally shallow as they were in the 50's. It has to get this bad before it can get better."
"But fer chrissakes, we aren't beatniks."
"Maybe we are," he said. "Maybe we are."
A short time after he disappeared, he himself caught in the very cauldron of caring that I talk about. Dragged away from the revolution by somebody that he can put himself into.
Meanwhile, I wondered if there was any way I could call this bullshit bluff. Quality could not be something that you fought against. But the other explanations were negative, to say the least. I have no choice but to give it my all, because I want to add Quality to the world, and that is how you do it. But I is getting siphoned off before my all can do any good, siphoned off by job bullshit, by school bullshit, by political bullshit. Siphoned off by those who are looking for a way to take the credit for creating Quality. This is not the way it is supposed to be, but what can I do? They are asking me to hate, and I refuse. Hate only subtracts Quality from the world, and that is something I will not do. My only recourse is to keep on giving, knowing that this is the only way to make the existence better, hoping that my essence will not totally get sucked into the vacuum. A fool; that is what I am.
A fool who laughs at weddings. My existence is testament to the vows that were exchanged today: "Loving somebody completely is the most difficult thing in the world." If caring were easy, then the world would be filled with Quality. A look around will show that it is not. There are so many pitfalls to avoid, so many traps that people seem to get stuck in. It is difficult, but everything that has high value is difficult to come by. That's where the value comes from. A struggle. Knowing that you are a fool for struggling is probably the first step. Laughing is the second, and from there you just love.