The last blog was a testament to the incredible energy generated by my upcoming Splendidly Wonderful Journey. Of course, the week preceding the trip has demonstrated the universe's propensity to take me down a peg. First, my travelling companion suffered a concerning back injury that has still not abated, though we leave in two days; and my carefully crafted plan to wrap work and transition gracefully with a free conscious to my universal journeyman pleasure cruise devolved as crises loomed like Peer Gynt's Boyg --a Boyg which I had to work through while ensuring work continuity, as well as defending my cub and doing my part to support the evolution of American education at a parent teacher conference. Worst of all, I learned of the diagnosis of advanced stage cancer of a dear friend and colleague.
Over a glass of wine towards evening, another friend profoundly honored me. Reaching out, she shared a little darkness, a little despair; a little humanity. This was not a cry for help, per se, as my friend is an extremely competent human being - and who is as humble and understated as that tongue in cheek description. It was, rather, a connection - what I refer to as "recognition and reciprocity". Ironically, as I found myself responding "I have done that very same thing" (to cope with loneliness), I was uplifted as opposed to broken. Recognition and reciprocity - life's lesson's abound with it. Connection happens and is sustained when you are fortunate enough to have someone to take those lessons with you, sharing perspectives and learning all the more together. It's what we all seek, though it's poignant at best when friends fall by the wayside or choose to pursue a course of study that you do not share an interest in, and the connection is broken.
This morning I awoke with a distinct memory of an excerpt from another friend's blog -- http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2005/11/index.html. Brett blogged about Blindness by Jose Saramago, an author widely recognized as an observer of the human condition:
"It's that powerful to me; his novels are written in a style which lulls me into the rhythms of his particular story, jocularly told by an avuncular omniscient narrator, and just when I'm least on my guard, he'll sneak in some bit of wisdom, such as this piercing line from Blindness, delivered just after the narrator has led you to a room where two people are making love":
Even if this instant of supreme pleasure should last you a lifetime, you will never become united as one."That sentence snuck up on me, as I played the voyeur, following a character who was herself a voyeur, and delivered a statement of a fundamental loneliness inherent in the human condition in a way that I had never experienced before. Even at our most vulnerable, if our whole lives are spent extending a moment of connection, we will never fully break out and connect the darknesses inside our separate skins."
I share Brett's appreciation of the impact of literature on the reader's pysche. I also subscribe to the notion that the interior journey, and it's all-too-fleeting external manifestations, is a lifelong attempt to integrate, to self-actualize, to sustain the state of grace which occurs when we do connect the darkness, when we are, paradoxicaly, not alone. I will have to call my colleague and read this to him while he is resting after chemo, as he is blind and thus has to work harder for the fleeting connection. Saramago, in his Blindness, is reaching to me through a friend, through the shared experiences of sickness, sorrow and despair, even though he died a few years ago.
Chaos and confusion all day, connected conversation continued well into the evening, the changeable weather, the perspicacious wine, the timelessness of loving friendship, the clever craftiness of subconscious memory working behind the scenes to connect related bits and bytes; all told over, evidences the elemental energy that enlivens human experience. I must pause here to acknowledge William Shakespeare, whose verses have inspired the world for so long:
THESEUS
More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
HIPPOLYTA
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
I love Hippolyta at least as much as I adore alliteration.
In addition to the amazing and iconic sites I noted in my last blog, I will now remember to move slowly, with respect for my companion's back. I will have time to listen to the perspective of others, to notice the state of the human condition in a foreign part of the world, to hear the emotion streaming out from the street guitarist's strings; to appreciate the passion of flamenco, the simplicity of sangria, to know joy. Maybe to learn a poem in Catalan. I'll connect.
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