Bad tidings

Bad news, not urgent, not looming, not inconvenient, but I know myself this evening to be a lot poorer this evening than I thought this morning. My mind casts about for good things to see or dwell on for comfort but keeps snagging on this ugly news which tears the fabric of whatever equanimity I attain. There are plenty of good reasons for fury as well as self-recrimination. This news hurts and talk doesn't take the pain away. I think: what can I do to make up the loss, but my head feels inflamed and I can't think.

Walking down Washington Street, I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk with a cup outstretched: 'Do you think you're the only one with problems?' I thought to myself, incensed. But, of course, his issues are vastly more pressing and debilitating than mine. That objectivity provides no relief, however.

The world news doesn't help. The midsummer doldrums have been replaced by thinly disguised proto-panic regarding new crises erupting like bubbles in a volcanic fumerole not to mention the chronic naggers.

The narratives I've been constructing to link the future and the present have taken a hit, and my head is ringing, the hands of my heart wringing as well. And all around me structures of assumption about what's possible, what's priority, where I stand are under bombardment. Of course, this is what life does even to the best laid plans, and mine hardly fall in that category. I should expect to be knocked off balance, spun around, left in the lurch--at least sometimes. And the horrible heart-panting for what's lost should not be complete surprise. Granted, but none of these reflections assuage this anguish I'm experiencing now.

A night's sleep, a bright morning, I know enough of myself to expect relief from these, some blunting of the most acute symptoms. But my issues are small-bore. What about those who have to find courage day after day to confront really dire news, whether on the scale of the body physical or  politic, and the inevitable foreboding and dread. How, knowing that the worst may in fact be yet to come, do we cope with squirming, ready-to-hatch despair in our chests, and still carry on? (That helps a little. Hyberbolize)

Thumbing through a review in Harper's I picked up as I looked in a few minutes ago on the cat of a friend away on a trip, I came across a quote by Rebecca Solnit in her book The Faraway Nearby, who writes (with regard to memory), 'We never tell the story whole because life isn't a story. It's a Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.' .

'...isn't a story,' but has stories, or at least episodes which can be narrated, and within which and between which meaningful connections can be made or discovered. Any encounter consists of vastly more than can be done justice by the 'and then' event-sequences we love to structure our experiences in, even if there are clear denouements. My news? Maybe there'll be a happy ending but probably not, but why depend on the outcomes of stories to provide significance in the form of resolution. Indeed, what conceivable narrative arc can give import to the almost infinite number of encounters we have in our lives, considered start to finish.

No, no. I propose to trust the intrinsic livingness of deeds of hospitality, friendship and exploration to be what's meaningful in my encounters, minute by minute, day by day, year by year, the various narratives of my life resolving as they may. Success or failure just changes the context within which we dare to encounter each other.

Sounds good, Peter, but a little like a loser's sour grapes. Maybe so, but I need to stay in touch, as queasy or blown out as I may feel, with what still matters, what will always matter. At least at this moment, at this point, they can be the next things to do.