This is not what I had intended to write about, heck no. But the dream came on with such a force of truth:
I was at my grandmother's house, who has died, which became my parent's place, both of whom have died. We were getting ready to move everything out, which is true, as the government now owns the place and we have to get everything out ASAP. My sister was there with my brother-in-law, who looked better than he has in a decade, and acted it, too, giving some of his wry humor as he asked me to look for a wrench to take apart a shelf. "Geez, he looks good for a guy about to die from cancer," I thought, which is also true - the last part, that is. There were many of us around, people who I hadn't seen in years as well as a few I had thought were dead.
It should have been a sad time, but there was a party atmosphere. This house, now in near shambles, was next door to the house I was born into, in a neighborhood of cheap, small government houses built for the GI's of WWII and their children who were part of the baby boom. There, I had Gramma and Grampa to go to when things got rough or boring at home. I was furious when we left it for the country when I was six, but have never looked back, or at least rarely.
Now it was a time of moving on, a time of get-togethers, of seeing old friends and family. But then it struck me, with such force that I awoke in a flash, wide-eyed: this was also the moment of passing on, of the end, of death. My brother-in-law is indeed near death, so many others involved with that house are dead already, and the place will probably be condemned and torn down. And that was the initial point in the dream, framed in this indelible thought that came on with a flash- it's true. Death is for real. It is all over so quickly, and nothing that we build or make or create can compensate.
Obviously, it was a call to spirit - to that which lasts. But it also made me think of the existentialists, who cannot believe in anything they cannot intellectually grasp, and so believe in only what is all too real - in this very thing, the end, in the death of all we are and do. I thought of them because their antidote is to live - to live bravely, in this face of death, like the men who sang while the Titanic sunk.
I understood them well, then, although I disagree - there is much more to existence than the sinking ship. There was a touch of that bravery in the party, in the people who did not cry as the past came to an end, but there was more to it; it was also about community, that the sharing of this end, of this unfathomable sadness at the heart of our world, is the key. We do die alone, but not really; there are always those close by, in this world and elsewhere. This is our consolation as we work our way past our ignorance and our blindness, work our way out of this world to something else.
I was going to write about something else, but in a crucial way, this is conjoined with it. As I finish the book, Command and Control, on near-nuclear disaster, I am stunned by the bravery of so many of the men, many of them only around 20 years old. Of their willingness - no, demand - to go back after colleagues lost in rupturing missile silos, or in burning B-52's loaded with hydrogen bombs. What is this bravery? How can it be?
It is a bravery different from that of the existentialists, who only try to cover their gloom. It is the bravery of caring, the surprising inner impulse that sometimes elevates us above the biological demand of self-preservation.
It appears to me now, although it did not at the end of the dream, that this is what was really being told to me - that it is all about the caring; that it is this, this true community of people, that makes the bridge from this life to something else. And it is in the nature of the bridge itself that intimates just what that something else will be. FK
I was at my grandmother's house, who has died, which became my parent's place, both of whom have died. We were getting ready to move everything out, which is true, as the government now owns the place and we have to get everything out ASAP. My sister was there with my brother-in-law, who looked better than he has in a decade, and acted it, too, giving some of his wry humor as he asked me to look for a wrench to take apart a shelf. "Geez, he looks good for a guy about to die from cancer," I thought, which is also true - the last part, that is. There were many of us around, people who I hadn't seen in years as well as a few I had thought were dead.
It should have been a sad time, but there was a party atmosphere. This house, now in near shambles, was next door to the house I was born into, in a neighborhood of cheap, small government houses built for the GI's of WWII and their children who were part of the baby boom. There, I had Gramma and Grampa to go to when things got rough or boring at home. I was furious when we left it for the country when I was six, but have never looked back, or at least rarely.
Now it was a time of moving on, a time of get-togethers, of seeing old friends and family. But then it struck me, with such force that I awoke in a flash, wide-eyed: this was also the moment of passing on, of the end, of death. My brother-in-law is indeed near death, so many others involved with that house are dead already, and the place will probably be condemned and torn down. And that was the initial point in the dream, framed in this indelible thought that came on with a flash- it's true. Death is for real. It is all over so quickly, and nothing that we build or make or create can compensate.
Obviously, it was a call to spirit - to that which lasts. But it also made me think of the existentialists, who cannot believe in anything they cannot intellectually grasp, and so believe in only what is all too real - in this very thing, the end, in the death of all we are and do. I thought of them because their antidote is to live - to live bravely, in this face of death, like the men who sang while the Titanic sunk.
I understood them well, then, although I disagree - there is much more to existence than the sinking ship. There was a touch of that bravery in the party, in the people who did not cry as the past came to an end, but there was more to it; it was also about community, that the sharing of this end, of this unfathomable sadness at the heart of our world, is the key. We do die alone, but not really; there are always those close by, in this world and elsewhere. This is our consolation as we work our way past our ignorance and our blindness, work our way out of this world to something else.
I was going to write about something else, but in a crucial way, this is conjoined with it. As I finish the book, Command and Control, on near-nuclear disaster, I am stunned by the bravery of so many of the men, many of them only around 20 years old. Of their willingness - no, demand - to go back after colleagues lost in rupturing missile silos, or in burning B-52's loaded with hydrogen bombs. What is this bravery? How can it be?
It is a bravery different from that of the existentialists, who only try to cover their gloom. It is the bravery of caring, the surprising inner impulse that sometimes elevates us above the biological demand of self-preservation.
It appears to me now, although it did not at the end of the dream, that this is what was really being told to me - that it is all about the caring; that it is this, this true community of people, that makes the bridge from this life to something else. And it is in the nature of the bridge itself that intimates just what that something else will be. FK
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