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pjthompsonRandom quote of the day:
"The dead are the invisible ones, but not the absent ones."
—Victor Hugo
Over the weekend I was going through a number of old files, old journal entries, rummaging around in there to see if I could get back in touch with something I've lost track of the last few years. Why do I write? Why do I want to write?
This quote reminds me of something I found from December 1996, something I started to write in the voice of a character in preparation for a story. But it turned into something else, about my friend, Stephan, who died in February of that year. So I stuck it in the private e-journal I kept at the time, and never did write that story. I have millions of little bits like this that should go into stories, but never get there. I have to get them out of myself. I'd probably implode if I didn't write them somewhere.
There has to be a place in the Universe which takes all this longing seriously, which takes it in and transforms it into something real. We should all be able to get there, but we can't. We sit here on this side of the glass and watch as all of the things we long for walk by us and past us. What was God thinking when he created longing? What did he mean us to learn from it? I admit I can't see it.
I have a friend who died, but before he did, he said, "All longing is essentially a desire to return to God, not to be separated from Him any more, to be in the presence of his love. Everything else we long for is just a shadow of that deeper longing."
Except he said it more profoundly. I've blotted out the words, or dramatized them, or something. I haven't gotten them quite right. Maybe what he said was, "All life is suffering, and we are suffering because we are separated from God and longing for Him. When we are reunited with God, we will never long for anything ever again."
Or maybe he didn't say that either. Maybe I'm just imagining it. Maybe I'm just longing to hear him again, wishing he had given me some profound statement before he died. Buddha said that, didn't he? He was rather Buddha-like when he died, my friend Stephan, stripped away of all pretense until the light of Heaven shone beneath his sallow skin. I suppose I'm longing to be reunited with Stephan, not God. Or maybe they're the same thing.
(And if Stephan wasn't already dead, he would have laughed himself to death over that one.)
He probably is, anyway.
"The dead are the invisible ones, but not the absent ones."
—Victor Hugo
Over the weekend I was going through a number of old files, old journal entries, rummaging around in there to see if I could get back in touch with something I've lost track of the last few years. Why do I write? Why do I want to write?
This quote reminds me of something I found from December 1996, something I started to write in the voice of a character in preparation for a story. But it turned into something else, about my friend, Stephan, who died in February of that year. So I stuck it in the private e-journal I kept at the time, and never did write that story. I have millions of little bits like this that should go into stories, but never get there. I have to get them out of myself. I'd probably implode if I didn't write them somewhere.
There has to be a place in the Universe which takes all this longing seriously, which takes it in and transforms it into something real. We should all be able to get there, but we can't. We sit here on this side of the glass and watch as all of the things we long for walk by us and past us. What was God thinking when he created longing? What did he mean us to learn from it? I admit I can't see it.
I have a friend who died, but before he did, he said, "All longing is essentially a desire to return to God, not to be separated from Him any more, to be in the presence of his love. Everything else we long for is just a shadow of that deeper longing."
Except he said it more profoundly. I've blotted out the words, or dramatized them, or something. I haven't gotten them quite right. Maybe what he said was, "All life is suffering, and we are suffering because we are separated from God and longing for Him. When we are reunited with God, we will never long for anything ever again."
Or maybe he didn't say that either. Maybe I'm just imagining it. Maybe I'm just longing to hear him again, wishing he had given me some profound statement before he died. Buddha said that, didn't he? He was rather Buddha-like when he died, my friend Stephan, stripped away of all pretense until the light of Heaven shone beneath his sallow skin. I suppose I'm longing to be reunited with Stephan, not God. Or maybe they're the same thing.
(And if Stephan wasn't already dead, he would have laughed himself to death over that one.)
He probably is, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-23 04:53 pm (UTC)