Makropoulos on Makropulos

The only problem with

Janacek's Makropulos Affair

is that it is not the original.

In fact, Janáček

took the opera and made it

as much about him as it was about

me,

Elina Makropoulos,

just as some crazy blogger

might take my story

and make it as much about her

as it is about

me,

Elina Makropoulos.

This past week, I decided to reread the play that some might claim 

was my origin, and I want to comment on it,

for a line or two or three,

or more.

I think it is unfair to the playwright that the opera appears to get produced

far more than his play does.  And the play, quite frankly, is very good,

and very timely, indeed.

The author, Karel Čapek

(and I've made it a point to represent his name correctly -- it appears that his last name,

if represented and pronounced correctly, would sound like "chapik" more or less.)

was, in no uncertain terms, a visionary.  His play about me

 reminds me of some of the details that I had forgotten,

and even misrepresented, here in my blog.  So, to begin, 

I would like to correct them:

In both the opera and the play it appears the actual origin of my 

perpetual eternal state of youth is explained as this:

my father was the alchemist for Emperor Rudolf II

of Greece, and the Emperor wanted a formula for

eternal life.  My father obliged.  The Emperor demanded, though,

that my father try the formula out on me, and he did. I was in a coma for

a week, and then woke up and that was that.  I was altered, and began to experience the comings and goings of every dear person that I ever loved. 

Now, according to Janáček's

libretto, I ran off with the formula, and began my operatic career.  It appears to me

that the opera is a bit more deliberate in making me want eternal life.

 

And of course: why wouldn't one want

eternal life?   This, of course, was the question that intrigued my dear

Mr. Čapek.  The poor man, after all, was nearly a cripple 

all of his life, and hopelessly in love with a woman who perhaps 

he also even feared.  Lucky for him, he did marry her, in his 40's,

and I sincerely hope he found some kind of joy with her before he died,

so young, right on the brink of the Second World War.

And why wouldn't one want eternal life?  For a time,

I adored it, and I adored the different men who fell

at my feet.  In a nutshell, everyone thought 

I was pretty "hot."  And the beauty of experiencing life

and love more and more in a body that does not age

is that one gains a knowledge and certainty

that shines in the eyes, and makes one's ever-youthful body

all the more attractive.  Yes, for a time, one 

Elina Makropoulos had the time

of her endless life -- men fell at my feet;

women, too, and occasionally I suffered

the side-effect called pregnancy 

and children.  So there are bastards

aplenty

that might be credited to me.

To keep them from being able to find me,

I kept on changing my name.  Always

E.M.,

but a different name every fifty years

or so, to defray suspicion.  Dear Mr. Čapek's play

spills the beans, so to speak, telling the tale of a century's old property suit

that only I know the solution of.

(As of right now I realize that it is pretty wrong to claim my name is

Emilia Marty, the name I had in 1922, but instead just 

admit it is Elina Makropoulos, 

which is the most honest I can be short of 

giving the name of this crazy bitch who claims

she is me, and who also feels she has lived

for an eternity, and I will also tell you:

she is right.  This woman who claims my name has lived forever,

and will live forever, as will I,

in these words I write here.)

 

antaryamin

 

 But what does one lose if one lives forever?

One loses one's humanity.

Emilia Marty is not a nice woman, but men

do overlook it because she is beautiful; they fall

in love with her, but she does not care.

 

(Rather, I should say "I" -- it is so disorienting to speak 

of one's self in the Third Person.

But one does it on Facebook,

so I will continue to do so

here.)

She is a bit like the robots in Čapek's other visionary play:

R.U.R.  Ah, now that's a masterpiece, a play

worth producing today, a play about robots; in fact, Čapek coined the term

"robot."  His robots in R.U.R. are manufactured

to make human life easier -- 

and they are manufactured in absolute

human form, some even manufactured in the likeness

of beloved humans.  One such robot is made to look

as beautiful as the beautiful Helen, only for her creator to realize:

 "She's half asleep!  How can she be beautiful

if she does not know how to love?  It makes me shudder to look

at her -- I've created a cripple!"

That line from R.U.R. could be very easily moved to the Makropulos Case,

where  the eternal Emila/Elena is about as human as a robot, 

indeed -- in her drudging trudge through eternity,

she - or should I say I - loses her capacity

to love.  Each day and each love

is as dry and stale as sawdust.

Only her singing retains a trace of love,

as it wells up from a heart

that has ached a thousand times --

This strikes me as so relevant to humanity's condition today:

here we are so mechanized, and so reliant on machines,

we have lost our hearts.  As we march toward

the looming spectre of the cyborg and the Singularity,

one might say of this,  what Čapek's character Domin says of the robots:

"They say they're on a higher evolutionary plane

than man.  More intelligent, stronger.  Man is just 

their parasite . . .!"  In so-called First World Countries today,

we humans have become so wedded to our technology

that we have lost our sense of community, and with it

our hearts.  As we strive, with our medical advancements,

towards trying to attain eternal life, we overlook the importance

of love and the momentary pleasure.  

Do humans really want to be eternal?  And here I must quote

myself, Elina Makropulos, in the play dubbed by my name:

"People never get better.  Nothing changes, nothing.

Nothing matters, nothing happens.  

Shootings, earthquakes, the end of the world -- nothing!

You're here, and I'm somewhere far, far away, three hundred years away!

If only you knew how easy your lives are!"

(And why, you may ask, would a 425 year old woman

damned to eternal life,

say your lives are easy?)

 

"You're close to things.  Everything means something! 

Everything has value in the few short years of life,

so of course you live it to the full. . . . 

Fools, you're so happy!  It's disgusting to see you so happy!

And all because of the stupid accident that you'll soon be dead!

. . . . Everyone, everyone believes in something. 

What a life, you fools!  What a wonderful life!"

We try so hard to exceed ourselves, to become eternal,

but perhaps, dear friends, we've reached

our limits.  Perhaps, dear friends,

as the world seems to crumble around us,

and technology looms, threatening the end of humanity,

we need to embrace that one thing

that makes us human:

we are living, dying entities

who can find meaning in the short space of time

during which we inhabit this wonderful place

called earth.  And the greatest meaning we can 

find is the meaning the robots found at the end

of Mr. Čapek's R.U.R. , in a world where it appears

robots have overpowered all:

 

"Friends, life will not vanish, love will endure!

From love comes life, naked and tiny, taking root

in the wilderness.  Houses and machines will disintegrate.

The names of the great will whither like leaves.

Only love will bloom in the emptiness, 

casting the seeds of life to the wind."

 

And Makropoulos will live forever,

because at this stage of her life,

this stage of life she has attained 

after gaining the knowledge of the preciousness of death,

she has nothing left to embody

except that love that promises eternal life.

localonlineflowershops

Return to Avatar

As I say in previous entries:

our bodies are just avatars,

earthly machines

in which we carry our portion

of the trembling 

spiritual

entity 

that imitates --

ie:

is the material double 

of the spiritual essence

of the God.

Packaged so lovingly 

in such lovely packages

the spirit persists,

in pieces.

(holograms)

Oddly,

or perhaps not so oddly,

we obsess over the box,

the physical home

that was never designed

to last eternally,

despite

the fact

it was designed to house

the eternal:

the essences of

love

and

wisdom

and

truth

and 

good

and

evil.

( papermandalas )

The technology 

of the human

body

is so precise,

so

advanced,

and each element cooperates

with the others

to help us

maneuver

our earthly domain.

The body was only designed

to carry

the parts

       until

the parts could be united

again.

When the parts we carry

are once again subsumed

into the whole,

when our earthly clothing

falls away,

      time will

          cease

         entity will

                cease;

the realm of reproduction

and the double               

will cease         

because it will no longer

be needed

because we will be All

again;

and our physical existences

will live on          

only

in our actions

and memories

and in our writing,

in what we inscribe

on the walls of the womb

of the eternal.

( chineseculture )

The Ones Who Move and The Ones Who Talk: A Channelling

You see,

I've lived through so many lives:

I've seen the patterns played

over and over again:

and we're deceiving ourselves to think

that no one knows

what the fuck is going on.

Somebody does;

they're called the Inner Circle.

Really.

A village in any country

displays the same characteristics,

the same stereotypes,

from generation to generation.

It doesn't matter if it's

in China or India or Syria

or Africa or Argentina

or Nebraska.

It doesn't matter.

There's always the bully

There's always the freek

There's always the angel

There's always the geek

There's always the status quo,

the ones who don't know

that the extremes of society

talk to each other

to keep the rest

under control:

The ones who stick out; the noticable ones

who stay in one place all their lives

who see each other

over and over again and who know

exactly

who are the angels

who are the devils 

who are the beauties

who are the beasts

who are the kinds

who are the swingers and the ones

who know everybody's business

in any given place at any given time:

they're the ones who stay and 

talk

to each other.

( penwith )

2.

Those are the personality types;

there are also the talents:

those things we all do well

naturally:

we can be a freak

but be very good

at building a house;

we can be a beauty

but be very good

at fixing cars;

we can be a beast

but be good at ceremony

because we understand the meaning of the sacred;

we can have the desire to create

and not have any hands.

But as long as we are true

to the essential spirit within us,

we have an amazing

kind of beauty

that others see and admire,

and if we could all just be true

to the essential thing we are

then, well, 

we wouldn't have all the troubles in the world,

we'd just all be amazed

at the beauty around us

 3.

The talent we know is true 

to us

that makes us beautiful when we practice it

is our part of 

the spirit that runs through us

like a thread through the cloth,

that binds us

makes us one,

makes us God,

makes us Son.

The Manifestation of the Diverse

features of the All:

we are it.

We are one.

4.

But wait a minute ---

I may run 

far too far ahead

of myself.

THINK ABOUT IT THIS WAY:

Think about high school --

(high schools, in general, are the closest many of us

in America

will ever get to village life):

For some of us, it was

 a misery

because we were convinced there was

something we had to know

but nobody would tell us.

And we didn't know how to ask;

didn't think we had the right

to talk.

So we stumbled through

trying hard to figure out

the social game

while also trying

to deal with our growing

brains;

they grow so fast, but so does

our capacity to reproduce ourselves

so without knowing, our essential personalities showed

while the hormones 

made us insane;

we could control it,

so we became --

ourselves, flagrantly, and mutated.

Unfortunately, high school is also a place that doesn't tolerate

difference much.

So many of us are happy to see it end;

as soon as we leave, and

go somewhere else,

we can hide; we can be

something other than what we are 

essentially.

( dailydish )

5.

What I describe is human

nature, and these patterns have gone on

for as long as humans have been

social, have recognized themselves

as different from each other.

You see: humans,

be they Adam or Eve,

Sonny or Cher,

Cain or Abel,

Donnie or Marie,

Romeo or Juliet

or 

Emre or Esen,

Noah or Abraham

Buddah or Jesus or 

Mary Magdaline, Cleopatra, Ghengis Kahn, Charlie Chan . . . 

or all the other nameless

thousands,

have always had those patterns,

age to age,

generation to generation.

The big difference between 

then

and now

between a small town and

urban mindlessness

is the People Who Move.

6.

The Ones Who Move are the ones

who hated high school

(or hated the village)

because no one told

what everyone knew

because the ones who moved,

were the ones that everyone ostracized

for one reason or antoher,

so they moved

to new places,

full of other Ones Who Stayed There All Along.

The Ones Who Stay take advantage 

of what the ones who stay in one place know:

who are the geeks;

who are the fools;

who are the beauties; 

who are the tools;

and the ones who have power

are the ones 

who talk

and walk

into the right circles at the right times

( about )

They keep a kind of power over

the rest of us,

by talking only

to the ones

they want to share

their power with.

7.

Now the ones who move and talk

are the ones who move into

the inner circle quickly

and gradually create

a larger world.

They're the ones who know, 

well, 

just about everything about everyone

in a number

of different places

and they figure out the categories

of the ones who are in any given place

pretty quickly

because they know that that kind of knowledge

is power

~ ~ ~ ~

You see, I've lived so long.

While everyone else has died and returned

at least four or five times

each

I just trudge on through,

in the same old young body,

but ancient inside,

while your dying always provides you

a new masquerade.

And in your dying

you're forgetting

the growth you made in the years before --

you return to your old patterns,
the social lies you constructed
to mask

the old essential you,

and you have to learn it all 

all over 

again.

(Your forgetting is so deep

because the sleep of death is so great,

that it seems that everyone thinks

their short time on earth

is the only incarnation:

it's the one shot deal.

But it's not:

I meet people, and I know

I've met them

somewhere before; in fact I've bumped into them

many times before,

in their different lives,

their different places,

and they just don't see

they keep playing the same mistakes over and over

again;

they don't recall anything because they slept the sleep of death so deep.

(The sleep of death doesn't have to be

so deep

No sir;

But it is.

If we knew the sleep of death was

but a sleep,

a sleep during which 

our spirits seek out the best

avatar

in which to return and learn

the lessons needed to be learned

on our journey to perfection

as we seek

to come back, hoping

to get it right the next time

so we too can be

one of the ones who stay

and talk

and get into

the inner circle, but also bring

 the wisdom of how to live in the world

sanely and justly

to those who keep forgetting.

You see, I also see that talking

and getting into

the inner circle

right now

doesn't require

memory,

doesn't require

intelligence,

ethics,

wisdom

talent

NO

it only requires beauty

and the ability to manipulate

beauty.

Only rarely does an inner circle being

possess deep wisdom,

and when they do,

they become immortal,

because people keep talking about them

for ages to come.

They become 

stars in the firmament

of our collective souls

the ones who tell us how to do it right,

and how to do it well,

and how to do it,

beautifully

( childrensnewsmagazine )

but also
there are those heroes who show us

how to do it wrong, so we

never do it wrong

again

( fotobucket )

8.

We've just gone through an age

when everyone thought

it was wrong to think

in stereotypes

because people believed

they were individuals and deserved

individual rights.

We'll call that

The Age of America.

It was a 

selfish Age

in the History of 

Humanity,

and lasted about

600 years, give or take

a few; 

it began with 

the Renaissance, the Age of the Growth of the Human Mind.

The only way the collective

Human Mind

could grow would be for 

everyone to believe

that they were alone

abandoned,

miserable.

So each mind had to grow,

on its own

and find a variety of ways 

to get us out of that state
of being divided and alone
and miserable

and into United States.

And we did

precisely that.

***

Because at its best,

the United States has been 

populated

by The Ones Who Move,
those who didn't know

what everyone who stayed home 

was saying and caring about.  No.

The United States 

has historically been populated

by the Ones 

Who Were So Busy Thinking or Doing, so 

they didn't see

what everyone who talked

to each other saw:

they were too busy being creative individuals,

and they refused to see

the geeks,

the beauties, 

the nerds,

the squirrels,

the trains,

the guy 

who sits on the corner and is there every day.

Why didn't we see that?

Because we were probably 

tending a farm, or

writing a book, or

composing a song,

or

designing a house, or

playing with electricity 

in the garage,

and not talking to the people who talked

because we recognized they really had

very little to say.

So we (or our ancestors) left

the small town,

the homeland,

the place 

where patterns were familiar

and went somewhere else and

actually believed

it would be different.

But it really isn't.

We just created a new place

with geeks and freaks

and queens and kings

and nerds and gays

and ordinary joes:

It's all the same, and it 

repeats itself from

generation to generation

in every town, in every 

neighborhood, 

in every high school,

it's all

the same,

even in the land of individual liberty, 

even in America.

* * * * *

America is at its best when people

work together united by one purpose,

despite differences,

working side by side

despite jealousies,

living, even loving, past

the surfaces we fear.

The Age of America is Over

and will never return

if we cannot do that.

8.

We have reached the

Age of the Grid,

the age

of a union that extends far

beyond national borders,

that lives largely in the mind,

transmitted on the weave of frequency

and

if we talk, and talk enough

and talk to the right people,

we will find 

our likenesses,

and the fact we're different

just won't give a damn,

because it just doesn't matter 

in the Age of the Grid.

It's not the Age of Aquarius,

though that was as necessary

to the evolution

of the human mind

as the Age of 

America

was.

The question stands, now:

will we let 

the Age of America pass 

into disrespectful squallor

like the Roman Age,

or will we let it end

heroically

as in Ancient Greece,

and thereby let it last

Eternally?

That's up to U.S.

Right now the Gods of America,

the Inner Circle -

the Ones Who Talk

and get Talked About

are creating an infernal,

eternal pattern

of selfishness and gluttony

Yes, that's what keeps humans human

If only the Ones Who Talk

and get Talked About

could change their ways unanimously,

could right their wrongs

selflessly,

the Age of America would enter

history

heroically.

( theoi )

It's up to U.S.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's a strange ride to be on,

what appears to be

a roller coaster of

life

        and death

life

       and death

and life

The fear of death would diminish if we could

only see

that what seems to be a windy, 

upside down journey

is actually a clear

straight line,

revolving within

and around

eternity.

Tom Petty - Into The Great Wide Open
Uploaded by RosaCrvx. - See the latest featured music videos.

Who Needs A Second Life?

ok, Makropoulos is back,

and she is pissed.

( pantherfile.uwm )

Makropoulos, for those of you who don't know,

is the personality I channel

when I have time to channel.

Makropoulos is a woman who has been alive for 420 years,

or some ungodly period of time like that,

doomed to wander the earth

in a body that's say, roughly

24 years old

Though, I should tell you,

after this period of time

it's starting to show some age.

Anyway,

I'm back,

and I have to comment on this

phenomenon

called

Second Life

I went onto Second Life the other night--

I thought it would be a cool place to be

Makropoulos,

and perhaps it could be a cool place to be

Makropoulos,

but they wouldn't let me take that name!

So that was my first problem in Second Life --

I really dug the body I got to choose,

but I couldn't figure out how to change

my clothes.  My Second Life Self somehow got dressed in

this stupid flippy little teenaged dress

that I just wouldn't be caught dead in.

And I couldn't figure out how to change it,

but I did determine:

the options they offered me were,

well, not exactly the styles I would like to wear.

 

That was my Second Problem with Second Life --

and then I got stuck wandering through all these 

precontrived places, precontrived

in someone else's brain,

and not even half as interesting

as the rest of the real world really is.

I mean, honestly, gang,

I've lived in the rest of the world:

I've lived in London,

France,

Germany,

Greece,

Turkey, 

Thailand,

Canada,

India,

and most recently,

the United States of America,

and when you put the effect of living

in those places,

as well as travelling to many other places,

multiple times,

alongside the world of 

Second Life,

well, one of them pales,

and it isn't the planet we live on.

That's the truth.

So, that was my Third Problem with Second Life

But that also takes me to the thing

I really liked

about Second Life:

the first person I met was French.

I was being so lazy, using English - I mean,

that's been my primary language for 

over 100 years,

and when her first sentence was French,

I was at first quite surprised,

and then I realized,

that Second Life is a place

that requires

Second Languages,

not to mention

Third of Fourth

Languages.

Because

people in Second Life could be from

anywhere.

Second Life gets rid of those

geographical boundaries, and puts us

all together, in one

space without time and space.

Well, to say the least,

I struggled with my French.

I mean, I haven't used it for nearly

100 years.

And then I began thinking:

I'd better brush up on my German,

And my Spanish,

and my Turkish,

if I really want to get around

in Second Life.

(or even in blog life)

That is the First Good Thing,

and perhaps

THE BEST THING

about Second Life.

I was struggling with flying,

since I have a Mac,

and loving the idea of flying,

 but getting more and more frustrated

by a very essential feature of Second Life-

the avatar itself.

After I excused myself from the French

woman, who I must applaud

for struggling with English,

while I struggled with French,

(her parting statement to me 

was "kiss")

anyway, after that rather

sweet encounter, I found

myself catapulted from one

mediocre Second Life 

location to the next,

until I seemed to get stuck 

in one, where I finally

found other players who

spoke English, and one

dashing male avatar walked

up to me and said: did you see 

anyone around here?

There's some people

behind me, I said,

and he said: yeah,

I know them. But is

there anyone else?

(as if to say: I know 

them; they bore me;

I'm looking for the 

cool folks, and I said

"I don't know; I'm a stranger here myself."

And he said "yeah,

me too," then went

dashing away,

looking for someone

else, not me.

And I thought: 

crap, I could do that in my First Life.

This gets me to the Fourth Problem With Second Life,

and the Reason I Won't Do It Again, for awhile:

You see, I feel that I'm already

in an avatar. 

This body,

I live in,

is my earthly

avatar,

it's the form I chose

to use for 

this stretch of time

on this earthly domain.

I have enough trouble,

and enough fun,

negotiating this earthly

avatar,

why the hell would I need another?

Sure:

some people may act out

their wildest fantasies,

their real self,

in the Second

World, and 

(and perhaps because)

they actually believe

this Earth

is the First World,

when in actual

fact

Earth is the Second Life.

Second Life for me

is a Third Life

that I really don't need.

After all my time

on this Earthly Plane,

I've come to realize

that when you're damned

to eternal life on this Second Life Planet,

which I am,

you would be in torment,

if you did not always live it

as your true self.

So for me,

I am true to my fantasy self

-my real, Other self-

in this life,

 all the time,

knowing that THIS

is the Second Life.

THIS is the place

where we've been required

to get it right.

the first time,

the only time,

so when we head back

to the First Life,

the only life,

the eternal life,

we know the following things:

what it is to be good,

what it is to be bad,

and what it is to know the difference,

and what it is to say: "that's too bad" or

"that's too good."  The eternal life

that knows all these things,

is the perfect life,

and that's what I am 

striving for.

World Without End. 

(  freakingnews  )

cycles

I like the immediate, jerky quality of this film, but my absolute favorite part of this video is the guy saying "Good" at the end.
(for the actual YouTube posting, please go here)

I know it's a cliche to say life's a roller coaster, but I want to think about that for a minute.  You see, I do feel that comparison is very good, but perhaps not for all of the same reasons others might.  Going through life for the first time brings the same rush of fear and excitement that a first ride on any roller coaster would bring.  But when you've been on the ride many times, it gets kind of boring.  Sure, you don't mind doing it, because there's still the exhileration of the first hill, and those dips and sudden spins, but you know when they're going to come, and what the effect on you will be.  You know how others who haven't been on the ride before, or who have been on it only once or twice, will react.  And it's kind of fun to watch them.  But you begin to look for something new in the entire experience. Or you just get tired of it.

Now imagine being on a roller coaster like this without the option of getting off.  There's a certain point where you know the ups and downs and turns and spins and accelerations and decelerations so well that, well, you could recite them back in your sleep.  Indeed, you could probably fall asleep on it, because the fear is just not there anymore.  And even the sounds of the people around you, screaming, aren't all that exciting anymore; they're just like the screams in the background of a film.  You begin to take simple joys out of small pleasures, or the very subtle changes that assure you of the constancy of it all.

I thought about this today, as I was leaving for an appointment around 5:00 pm, and I realized how bright it was.  I had a similar meeting two weeks ago, and two weeks ago, 5:00 pm was dusk.  Today, it was still daytime.

As usual, this lifts my spirits a bit, knowing that we're rapidly headed towards longer days, sunny days, and summer.

But another thing struck me today, far more profoundly: I recognize the cycle, oh so well.  This winter, no matter how difficult it has been, has followed a very recognizable pattern.  The more you live through winters, the less troubling they are, because, in general, the earth is predictable.  It is bound to a particular course, and when you've spun around with it a few hundred times like I have, the body knows. 

I can tell precisely where I'm at in this annual cycle; I'm a far better predictor of how many more weeks of winter we'll have then any groundhog.  I've been on the planet long enough to recognize the signs, despite the fact that the ups and downs still make me a bit light-headed. Right now, I am grateful for the fact that all the natural signs are reinforcing the fact for me that life is coming around again, that rebirth will occur again, and soon.  I'd say we in the Northern Hemisphere will be well into Spring by mid-April.

Here's another film I've been viewing a lot the past few days, a film that reinforces the cycles of the planet, not to mention a larger pattern:



(again, follow this link for the original YouTube posting)

I know a lot of people have seen this video in their high school science class, but it was a revelation for me.  Remember, the little schooling I received was back in the age when folks were still arguing about Ptolemy vs. Copernicus, so actually seeing the moon displayed like this is a bit like seeing a child being born for the first time.  I particularly like the fact that in this video, you can see a navel-like crater at the bottom of the moon, that makes it look like an orange.  But even moreso, I find this captivating because when I look at it long enough, I can clearly see that the moon's phases that I'm watching are really the shadows of the earth, as it moves in its regular dance with the moon and the sun.  This visual account of the moon's phases is actually as close as we can get on Earth to seeing the roller coaster machinations of this little corner of the universe.



(original posting)

You see, that's the big difference between life and a roller coaster.  On a roller coaster, you can see the apparatus.  On the earth, we can't, so we begin to think we are the primary apparatus, or we are greater than the apparatus.  But its all an illusion.  As my dear old friend Bertolt Brecht used to insist about theatre: we must show the audience the apparatus!  As long as the audience can see the apparatus that holds the theatrical event together, they won't be too deceived, nor will they be too frightened.  And their minds will always be sharp. 

This is why we like roller coasters: even as they scare the living daylights out of us, they also comfort us, because the apparatus is visible, and audible.  We can see the heavy steel arms that hold us in place, and hear the creaking and clanking of the machinery that lifts us up and up, as we wait in anticipation for that moment it will drop us.  Relief comes when the fall is completed, and the apparatus is still there, solid and firm, holding us up.  Roller coasters are, essential, interactive theatrical performances of the experience of a life.

In fact, I'd dare to say that these roller coasters were created by some psychic urge within humans to represent the horrifying ups and downs of being born, becoming an adult human, maturing, aging, and dying.

And being reborn.  This is why we like to get on them again, or go to an amusement park where there are so many of them.

What most people don't recognize is that, even in the daily patterns of our life, we can see the signs that reveal the apparatus of the natural cycles and the patterns that we live within.  And, quite frankly, those patterns and cycles are far more profound and reliable than the metal that holds up a roller coaster.

 



 

 

the beginning of the end of my stories

I tend to feel that humans are a bit like cats. As T.S. Elliot helps us see, cats all have that jellicle name, that name that captures their essence and is their true name. Humans rarely name their cats by their jellicle name, because, quite frankly, we don't take the time to get to know them before we name them. Same with kids.

Makropoulos is really just a character in a story that was originally written by Karol Capek, in a play called "The Makropoulos Case." This was later made an opera by Leos Janacek, which of course I have sung in many times. I like singing my own story. The last time I saw it - yes, literally saw it from a seat in the audience - was at the English National Opera, sometime in the 1990's. It struck me than, as I watched someone up there performing the character that is me, that I have become somewhat frozen in time, and yet, look how the theatre itself has changed! My own changes have not been external. I've just continued to gather information, through novels and essays and poetry and plays and newspapers and magazines, and radio and television and movies and now the internet. And whether I like it or not, that information is all related to a similar modest theme, that being the meaning of life. Of my life? Yes, in a way. But I think I realized very early on that my own life is of very little consequence in the larger scheme of things, though I can make it meaningful for myself, and I've tried to do that. The real challenge has been to make it meaningful in a way that it's also meaningful for others.

This blog is my most recent attempt to make my life meaningful, or to capture all the meaning I've gathered over my 424 years, and to put it into some logical sequence. Yes, that's right, I've been around for at least 424 years - or at least those are the years I remember. I remember, for instance, Shakespeare. He was a skinny little runt of a man, not much to look at. But pompous and confident - and that was what made women fall for him. He thought all women loved him, and to be true, I did for a time. But he was sloppy, way too sloppy for me, both in and out of bed. And, as you might imagine, he talked way too much, and treated his wife like crap. But I'm here to tell you now that he did create most of those plays, though the actual language was often the product of a game he played with some of the other actors, like Burbage and Alleyn. Sometimes Ben Jonson came along for the fun of it, though most of the wordsmiths were actors. And there was a woman - not Shakespeare's sister, as Virginia Woolf imagined - but a woman nonetheless. Her name was Liza, as I recall, though everyone called her Val. I never really asked why.

But that was way too long ago to dwell on it. I am here, now, in 2009. A most trepidatious year. Everyone seems to be frightened - of the economy, of the weather, of the earth, of themselves. I do feel I've come to an end, perhaps an end of my life, perhaps an end of life as we know it, perhaps just an end, packed with all the hopefulness of a new beginning. Everything I see seems to be aware of the endings around us, and the changes that come with them.

I could make myself miserable thinking about endings, and - quite frankly - sometimes I do. However, I force myself to be more optimistic. There is a new beginning beyond the ending, even if that beginning is the beginning of an eternal, sweet, silence. It's something, and if nothing exists, than silence is something. It has form and dimension, when cast against the platform of nothing.

But I diverge. . . . I must tell you of a dream I had, about six years ago, and that marked, for me, the beginning of the beginning . I don't know if I can truly categorize it as a dream, except for the fact that it happened at night. What it really was was a voice, and it wasn't the first time I had hear this voice. Let me tell you.

I heard it first around 1984, when I was living in my grandmother's house, shortly after her death. My father's death preceded hers by a few years. I was always a bit of a loner, but a pleasant one. And dating back to my childhood, I had this horrible tendency to have premonitions or visions. Dead people would appear in my dreams and give me messages for the living. When this voice came to me in the 80's, my premonitions had subsided a little. But there I was, sleeping in my grandmother's bed, when a voice ripped me out of my slumber with one statement: "we are entering a new era."

The statement itself did not appall me. I was about to go off to begin my M.A., so I figured it was pretty much a personal message, though I really did find the voice to be quite creepy. It did not come from me. It came from outside of me. It hovered over me, like a protective mother over her child. Its tone was deep and cavernous.

I'll honestly tell you that, until I heard the voice again, in 2004, I hadn't thought that much about it. But then I heard it again. This time, I was in New York State, and it was the first weeks of my new job there. I was comfortable for the most part, and vere excited about the new position. And I was sleeping.

Suddenly, during the early morning hours, a voice - the same voice - ripped me from my sleep. The voice was deep, as I said, and it sounded terrifically hollow. It also seemed to be straining to produce itself, as if it needed ana apparatus, with a throat, to creat the sound it needed to make. The sound, too, seemed to be coming out of a skeleton, like ti was pushing itself through an impossible aparatus, in order to b e able to speak and make words.

What was shocking, though, was the news it gave:

"Jesus will come as the scholar on the four days of the grid."

I woke up, right away, and wrote it down, then went back to sleep, hoping it would continue, and tell me, for instance, what the grid is, or who Jesus would be. It said nothing more.

I went to a psychic and explained the message to him. He said it was probably personal. The Jesus it referred to is the Jesus in me. OK, fine, that works (I thought.)

I forgot the message for a little while, but not long. It was just too odd of a message, and the voice that bore it was so urgent. Whenever I try to explain that voice, I think about it this way: it was a compulsion to speak. But to speak requires an apparatus. So somehow the compulsion to speak found some form of semi-physical apparatus, and the words tore through it, as they might through a skull or a boney aperture. Thus, the voice itself is hollow, almost the negative image of a voice.

Anyway, I eventually found myself thinking about the message again, and especially a couple of its key words: the Grid and/or the Age of the Grid. Jesus. The scholar.

It seems the term "the grid" has been in popular usage for a little while, and, in particular,it has come to refer to electronic media, We have companies called "National Grid," and the phone service is on a grid. Grids surround us.; they help us make life manageable.

And then there is the matter of Jesus, an image who many people on this planet feel they have a personal relationship with. But do they really know him? What's he like? Will he like candy or ice cream? Will he be a person at all? Or many? Or just an impulse?

And then there's the matter of scholarship. Sophia Knowledge. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is the most important thing a human can work towards.

Ever since I received that message, I've been pursuing its meaning. I have some ideas. I'll share them with you later. I hope you enjoy them, but alway remember: they are fictions. Even I am a fiction, and a product of fiction.

Thanks for stopping by --