Depression? Perhaps. But I have experienced that on and off in my life-- mine likely a drop in the bucket of suffering though of course to me such things are always massive and catastrophic--and still been engaged in a paradoxical way. Acedia? That sinful state would be not to care about anything, and if anything, I think I care too much about everything, even things that probably don't warrant the care.
In the throes of this existential state this very day in which I got up terribly late and schlumped around, I picked up my mother's fragmented writings of which I wrote before in these pages. Here is something I could be doing, to put the rest of her writings, much fewer in number than my late father's, on this blog. What for, then I thought? What dream of hers, or mine is achieved thereby? And must something be achieved?
My mother dreamed. And something in her became inert, unto death itself at too young an age, at least upon this earth. Or maybe it didn't.
I am not sure there is going to be a point to this entry except to put a prose piece of hers, here and somehow be a kick start of some kind for me, still treading on this earth.
Perhaps the inertia is about wanting to be remembered and realizing that, since most of us are never vaguely famous, we won't be. Perhaps the solution is about living without concern for others' memories of us--leading good, active lives because simply we were given life. Being an individual does not require another's acknowledgement of us. Perhaps the most accomplished individual, if accomplishment is even a part of it, is he or she who merely grows, the purpose being growth of itself. Somehow this seems to be something that will work for a person who believes in God, or does not. And that growth is not limited by time or even age. It's contours shift. So, for example, I talk to a man in a nursing home who once was smack in the middle of making of what now are old movies, like "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Notorious". His memory is short about many things, but not of those events long ago. He sends that experience to me by the telling of it. In it, we both grow, in terms of both becoming more substantial.
In a way, as I write what my mother put down on paper probably 60 or more years ago, and absorb it, and though she is dead for 44 of those years, her words, which only of late have I begun to pay any attention to, give me growth, and permission still to dream, and can be a spark to ignite me out of the inertia of not knowing what I ought to be doing along a non-linear path of what some psychologists called the "generative" period of life.
I don't know. Probably none of this is making any sense. That's all right. I offer now my mother's words, written in pencil, an interesting choice that raises questions about how she saw life and impermanence, words that she never chose to speak to me in life, with emotions that I never saw her exhibit in our short relationship. If she wrote these things, and did not merely copy them down, but even if she did only copy them down, I wish I had met this woman when I was a child. But at least I get to meet her now. Perhaps therein lies one cure for inertia.
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Among the great multitude of human beings in the world, there are a few who stand out clearly as individuals. They are like the distinguished white birches amid the thick growth of trees with brown bark, or like the blue-jays among the plain gray sparrows. What is it that raises some people onto a dais while the others remain below? What makes the world remember their names among hundreds of other millions? Perhaps it is an ability to vivify words, to give them strength and beauty, to take people out of their surroundings and create new, exciting, strange, vivid, lovely worlds for them--all by means of an animated pen. Perhaps they can ring enchanting sounds from a birdlike throat, or from black and white keys--sounds that sway; sounds that make spirits flit through clouds; sounds that make toes tingle; sounds that tell of the weird beauty of the Orient, and the primitive beat of tom-toms. Perhaps these men and women have the power to shape the destiny of nations, to lead people and fight for causes. Perhaps they are able to make trees grow on paper, to make people live on canvas, or to make and sow the rich throbbing blood of the earth flow. Somethings he stopped to run his fingers through it and feel its life. He planted his seeds and watched as they first timidly peeped upon the world and then boldly shot up into tall golden stalks of wheat. He visualized the loaves of bread made from his wheat; he saw the young, chubby hands reaching for glasses of creamy milk that came from his cows. In the evening he sat on the porch and smoked his corn-cob pipe while his plump red faced wife told him what a naughty boy Bobbie had been all day and how hot the weather was getting and what things she needed in town.
I thought of my shoemaker, whose teeth were always beaming when his mouth was not full of nails. Sometimes he used to throw his head back and let his lusty, uncultured voice rush forth with vibrant Italian melodies while his hammer swung to their rhythm on the sole of a shoe. I always liked to think that some of the zeal of his impulsive singing went into the soles he put on my shoes and warmed my feet. His shoes received all the attentions according to ailing patients. Each pair had its own personality for him and none was so far gone that he could not make it shine again with glowing juvenescence.
I thought of one of my teachers in school who did not always stick to the topic or even say that your question was not in the curriculum; who realized that sometimes you might not feel like doing homework, who knew about spring fever and day dreams, who had soft smiles and mischievous glint in her eyes and sometimes whistled. She had a way of making you feel poetry. She answered the silliest questions as if they were the most important. We never became her pupils; we were her friends from the beginning.
I thought of my mother, who still likes to have me lay my head in her lap, who quietly hums a tune as she sews the seam of a blouse, or scrapes the carrots. The sounds of her voice always makes me feel as though I were looking at a calm river, her eyes seem to glow softly with the warm peacefulness of candlelight. The security of her presence pervades the very walls, and the cushions of the chairs. She knows so well how to make the dragging heaviness of disappointments melt away; how to hide little surprises and laugh merrily when they turn up in our hands, and how to arrange flowers so that the room is filled with spring.
Emerson brought the blurred masses into focus as individuals when he wrote, "The pleasure of life is according to the man who lives it, and not according to the work or place."
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