notes for a friend

[falcongrrl]

Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent
Pour partir; coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s'écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!

(from "Le Voyage," Charles Baudelaire)

This passage always calls to mind the EPCOT movie "Impressions de France," and an image of rainbow hot-air balloons beginning to rise across a glorious panorama.

It also makes me think of the Buddhist idea of impermanence.

Situations change; people change. Sometimes that's scary. But there's always, in the middle of that crazy step out into the unknown, the awareness that movement could be toward as well as away from something beautiful. Change creates as well as destroys.

Without knowing why, they still say...and 'Allons!' is so hard to translate there. It could be, "we go on." We keep going, keep moving, toward the next good thing. We have faith that it will be there.

***

The Baudelaire quote called to mind a passage from Camus that I fell in love with as a high school student (after breaking up with some boyfriend or other). That vision of the sky, of rising up unfettered even after deep despair. Anyway, I can't believe that, through the magic of google, I managed to find that passage again tonight. It's from Camus's Youthful Writings book. I believe it's from the essay "Losing a Loved One."

***

"Losing a loved one, uncertainty about what we are, these are the deprivations that give rise to our worst suffering. We may be idealists, but we need what is tangible. It is by the presence of persons and things that we believe we recognise certainty. And though we may not like it, at least we live with this necessity. But the astonishing or unfortunate thing is that these deprivations bring us the cure at the same time they give rise to pain. Once we have accepted the fact of loss, we understand that the loved one obstructed a whole corner of the possible, pure now as a sky washed by rain. Freedom emerges from weariness. To be happy is to stop. We are not here in order to stop. Free, we seek anew, enriched by pain. And the perpetual impulse forward always falls back again to gather new strength. The fall is brutal, but we set out again.

When some interest in our life crumbles beneath our feet, we transfer the interest we had accorded it to another possibility, and from this another, and again, without cease. An incessant need to believe, a perpetual projection ahead - such is the necessary comedy, and we shall enact it for a long time. Certain persons even play this pitiable game at the decisive moment. They review their whole life in order to persuade themselves of its nobility. A faint hope animates them.

Yes, there are deprivations, there are deprivations that give rise to our worst sorrows. But what does it truly matter what we lack when what we have is not used up. So many things are susceptible of being loved that surely no discouragement can be final. To know how to suffer, to know how to love, and, when everything collapses, to take everything up once more, simply, the richer from suffering, almost happy from the awareness of our misery."

***

Probably none of this 'helps.' But it's pretty and I'm glad I found it again.

Comments

not surprising we'd read this differently...

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...to me the problem with his model of life lies in his carefree attitude to disaster. it feels to me like a way of putting a bright face on a dismal sentiment: nothing lasts, everything is arbitrary, we might as well not get worked up. The pain is just the one stroke of the engine, the pleasure no more meaningful or lasting. Joy just enough to keep us going forward. I mean, in an existentially ambiguous world, I suppose pleasant faced despair is as valid as grim hope. (though obviously I prefer the latter (wry laughs)

Though given my preference, I really dislike the bit where he sounds (to me) to mock those who are too deeply led by the carrot on the stick that is hope. ("Certain persons"...)

However, I think the last para summarizes where this system will or will not work. Namely, can you find the hunger to poke and nuzzle at the dirty of the wreckage left by loss till you find something amusing to play with again? It _can_ work that way, and yes, it can be a great comfort to remember this (if this works for you). Yes there is a certain ruthless, useful pragmatism to doing this.

But it _still_ doesn't work if you have come to a place where the world is "ashes and debris" and unexpectedly a precious seductive passion clutches you in the midst of the wasteland. If one is left back in this wasteland, having tasted a hint of satiation...the desolation of the place is all the more wounding. And the tendency to impose that desolation on all new things even stronger than before.

Still, it is a valid way of coping with the nasty part of all this: we only know one thing (and this hazily): we exist, and one day we will die. In the face of such a puzzle, there has to be some level of anxiety and pain, anger and confusion. Accepting the whole cycle of it makes as much sense as anything...if your temperment allows you to incorporate this perceptual filter into yourself.

I should write soon the bones of my own accomodation with these things, for the days when my own umbrella against entropy pops in the gale and I'm just there to be ravaged by the elements. The memory of warmth is important at those times....so thanks for sharing this for that reason too. A good reminder to me....

(Btw I'm actually in a reasonably good mood. Thinking about this hasn't really broken that mood. Though I sigh to be reminded how flimsy my umbrella is. But my good moods are always going to be founded on broken glass and ash. At least I seem to have better foundations than before.)

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I interpret the "certain persons..." bit as saying that even sometimes when faced with death, rather than living the moment, people get caught up in, "Okay, what next?" Not that hope should be abandoned, but that sometimes it can be found in surprising pockets of the existing circumstances.

I don't know that I'm really interpreting it 'right' either. I wouldn't call myself an existentialist, and probably Camus means things bleaker than I'd want to take them.

But there is a certain hope, I think, in taking loss as both pain and surcease, that when you lose one thing you may find another that was escaping you until that moment. Or find yourself.

I don't think it's about diversion so much as observation, though ymmv.

I agree that going back to the wasteland after tasting satiation isn't viable. But after tasting one brand of satiation in the midst of the wasteland...maybe there's a way of getting out of the wasteland? Maybe a taste of happiness is enough to give one the courage to move on from the wasteland?

I don't advocate being ravaged by the elements. What I advocate is finding beauty - or God - wherever one can, of being open to possibilities without trying to ground oneself in them.

And this wasn't really directed at you, but at a mutual friend. I really meant it in the spirit of finding hopefulness rather than despair, as odd as that may sound... :-/

oh I know it wasn't about despair

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

(smiles) obviously despair isn't a part of it to you, because you talked about it in such positive terms. I can't even guess what most people would think of it. My main purpose in commenting was
(a) to point out there are some assumptions you have to accept for this to work, its not straightforward
(b) that there is one circumstance that it probably cannot work in (it doesn't matter how much courage one finds to hope. When the habits of ones perceptions don't produce a set of ideas on how to implement the hope it just another painful scourge. There needs to be a sense of how to do things differently. Just stoking up desire is no good if its going to be frustrated. Yes, the wasteland is all in your head, but so is everything else. Sometimes one can just throw off a set of mental habits by a great burst of energy. People do this reasonably often. But not always.)

I suppose I go on and on about pt B because it just reminds me of that time my cousin Don shared the Hawai'ian idea of blessing the world to both change your feelings and attract the good in the world. I recognized immediately that it was an excellent idea. But it really hurt to hear because I couldn't drop my anger at the world and other things. I knew in my heart I couldn't make it work. (ironically Judaism's tradition with berakhot did an alternate implementation that does work for me. I just need to get off my rump and memorize the things :) )

You're offering good advice but I thought it would be worth mentioning that while for some people, the very act of accepting the advice provides the means to follow it....but for others that this would't happen: for them, it might be like Don's words and me: stirring but distressing because it would show just how bad one is for being unable to respond to a good idea. If one has gotten to the very bad places where Camus' advice doesn't work, it is worth noting the failure of it to work does not reflect badly on the recipient.

and yah, I know the advice wasn't for me. Was just wrestling to be social since it was the first time I'd been by in a while (smiles) But I admit, I should have softened the grim tone of my comment more.

Re: oh I know it wasn't about despair

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Nah, there are no 'shoulds' here in my LJ space where you're concerned, or very few of them. :-) I'm just hoping that it didn't make anyone (else?) feel worse. :-/

Re: oh I know it wasn't about despair

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

(smiles warmly and prrrs and meeps cutely)