Channelling: When Divided Time Meets No Time

(Preface: I don't know where this message came from.  If you can get through it,
and understand it, well,
I'll give you a piece of chocolate)

weber.edu

You see, in the New Age,

we will have to recognize and accept,

and forgive

the fact we are not one and never will be one --

we are parts, equal parts of a Whole, for sure,

but not One,

for God is the One.

It's impossible for us

to be one,

because we are all separate yet equal,

                                   different

parts of the whole that The One

produced

for the sole intent 

of being able to see                           

itself    . .  .  . . 

you see

this is what 2012 is:

it is                    

the year of the palindrome:

it is the year when

the Divided Self perceives the United Self, wholly, finally.

And Vise Versa.

 apod May 6 2011

As I said last week, how long can it take

for the Singular God (aka: the United Self)  to perceive 

its own Creation (aka: the Divided Self)

in all its parts?

Well, if you're on God's side 

of the mirror,

it takes an

unmeasurable instant

for the One to perceive 

its mirror image,

in all its disparate,

hopefully beautiful

parts.

But that instant

in Timeless Time

is an eternity on our side of the mirror --

paintingsilove

So anyway,

in the year of the palindrome,

God  (which is the linguistic placeholder

in our language used

to represent The Nothing Out of Which We All Came)

will have formed a conclusion

on what s/he thinks about the state

of her/his creation. 

                             (I hope you can follow what I'm saying)

I'm saying that by

12212012, D.T. (Divided, human time)

we, dear humans, will reach

the juncture at which 

the amount of time it takes the Creator to perceive It's Creation

intersects

with the numerical system we use to count the time.

That juncture, by the way,

can be best represented like this:

and that symbol,

dear friends,

is as much representational

as it is abstract.

Abstractly,

it is a number to indicate

no number:

the double zero,

so

to

speak.  And it is also representational 

(graphic):

it performs on the page

the intersection we

are about to experience.

The best way to describe it is an eclipse.

Now, we know about

Lunar Eclipses

boston.com

which occur when we, the earth that guides the moon

on its whirling, twirling path

stand directly in the way

of the moon's view of the sun.

It's an alignment that occurs because of a series of revolves

within revolves.

And then there are Solar Eclipses:

nationalgeographic


. and then there's something else,
that many people have speculated about:

infinitelymystical

 The eclipse we will encounter in a year or two
is much greater than the others,
it is the eclipse of one celestial habitation
as it comes in direct
alginment
with the larger force that it encircles,
and that keeps the celestial habitation
in motion,
just like the earth keeps the moon
in motion.

If you can foollow this,
then perhaps you'll be able to see
what I'm trying to say:

at this fabulous intersection,
all of creation (all of which exists
within the realm of Divided Time)
will be eclipsed by the force
that we call god,
and we
here on earth
will be in a position
where we will be gazing in
to God's eye,
as if gazing lengthwise along through the expanse
of the palindrome
of infinity.

And as with any eclipse
of the small
with the larger,
the smaller (we) will be able to see
the outline of the larger
around the the edges of the celestial bodies
between us.


~ ~ ~

The thing is:

the Unknown and Unknowable contains
the very force that produced
US,
and, well, we're about to have a good look at each other.

~ ~ ~ ~

And since we are, in essence,
a product of It, well,
the Unknown, the Unknowable, the Vast Emptyness
That is Everything Other Than Us
(let's just call that God, for the lack
of a better word),
so when God encounters us,
it will look upon us a bit
like a father looks at a son.  And if
S/He is not pleased
with what it sees,
well,
we may be screwed.

We are, after all,
just a product of division.

Yes.

For the One to Produce Many,
it must Divide.

Because one
cannot produce another one,
and remain the Only One.  No;
at that point when One becomes Two
it inevitably also become Three and Four and
on to Eternity

which is
12212012
or thereabouts.

Now,
the actual period of time
in our time
which summarizes
and translates the amount of time
that it takes NoTime to react to its perception of
All Time
is approxiamately four days,
give or take an hour or two,
and that four day juncture
that includes 12212012
will be kind of rough,
because for a brief
period of time,
when No Time meets All Time
we'll be in a state of,
well,
Frozen Time,
and there won't be much
we'll be able to do  about it,
except wait,
and it will seem like an eternity,
but it will really only be
four days,
give or take a minute or two,
and when
the big that after The Four Days occurs,
well,
we'll know the outcome
of the encounter of the All and Its Reproduction (aka US),
and those of us who survive
the intense interrogation
of Self against Self,

 will be in a time beyond eternity,
and in that time,
we'll finally realize
how insignificant
                   significance
really is.

Last Thing On My Mind

To all the lovers

who still have something in their past

that haunts them:

(p.s.: Judy Collins & Stephen Stills have done a fabulous

version of this, on Judy's album Paradise,

which I've been listening to a lot lately.

I wanted to post their version of this,

but it doesn't seem to be available.

I may need to do something

about that!)

Quote for the Day

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that."

Martin Luther King Jr.

nationalgeographic

(both photos)

Monumental Time

(photo by Makropoulos)

We're living in a time

when everything that happens

is becoming legendary:

Winters,

Earthquakes,

and Tsunamis,

and Floods

and Tornados

and Wars

and Riots

and Terrorism

and Political Corruption

is almost at a level at which we can say

"it's never been like this, during all of recorded history"

even as we hope it doesn't get any worse.

We're living in a time warp,

a warp in which

one time encounters another,

and explosions

happen.

This type of time warp doesn't happen

all too often, and when it does

the events that occur

are monumental,

memorable,

repeatable.

Furthermore,

this is an oral time,

a time when what we speak

and what we produce images of as much as what we say,

has more resonance

than what we write.

We can tell the tale of what we saw and did

much faster than we can

write it.

What we write, too, is important,

but nobody really has the time 

to read. 

People only read when they have a vested interest

in knowing

what they cannot see

(because what we can see is oh

so fascinating.

Reading and thinking is hard work.

Reading and thinking is scholarship,
and should be the domain of just a few.)

This is an Age of Hyper-Realism,
and Age of Non-Fiction
and intense Avant Garde.

Those who are satisfied with Hallmark landscapes
are incredibly
unsatisfied now.

because we're living in a time
when everything that happens
is legendary
and in such an age as this
people die legendary deaths,
and spark legendary fires. . .

~ ~ ~ ~
for what it's worth,
I "channelled" this entry this afternoon;
it was only as I was typing it up
that someone called me and told me
that Osama Bin Laden 
is dead.

I pray for us all tonight
Every single one of us, both living
and dead.
~ ~ ~ ~

However

Did you watch it?

Did you get up at whatever

ungodly hour

and watch that wedding?
 

I didn't; I slept

right through it.

I've seen far too many

"royal" weddings

to be impressed.  I know

too well

the pain that even,

and perhaps especially,

"royals" impose upon 

each other.

Marriage truly is

a sacrament;

it truly should be blessed

and reserved

for the sacred few

who feel the highest form of love,

that form of love that can endure

every possible hardship and disappointment.

Marriage should be outlawed

in cases wherein the couples

are together out of

lust,

crush,

greed,

need,

hunger,

anger,

or whatever other lurid

motivation hidden

behind most marriage vows.

Ultimately, then,

it would seem

marriage is only for

the elder,

the more experienced,

or the weak-in-the-head;

so rarely do

young people who

wed have that type of love.

azeventvideo

But then I watched

The Wedding

about ten hours

after the fact;

I knew I would see it

everywhere

again and again, and

every Blogger would have something to say about it.

My something to say about it

would be the entry that comes after this.

However,

I always hope for

However,

especially when it comes to love,

especially when it comes to honesty.

And when I saw Kate & William

tonight, I was touched,

and I thought,

and I wonder:

Could they be the 

"HOWEVER"

for our current age

?

lbtimes

The Age of Narrative Interruptus (a channelling)

Why do we take delight  and more delight

in songs   

stories

movies

that end abruptly?  that don't give closure?

. . . the song that melts away

on the lingering chord 

unresolved?

. . . . the story that does not tell us
that we live happily ever after?  But in-

stead leaves us
                   midsentence
                               midaction
                                       midthought
                              mid deed (?)

(or even before the deed; think:

Raymond Carver,

that dear, dear man who many fiction writers today

love to hate, but, well,

I not only still like his writing,

I also still have great respect

for him.

I actually knew him, he and his wife,

Tess Gallagher,

were my neighbors 

for a few years while

     I lived and studied

in Syracuse.

Notably, I studied Creative Writing there,

which of course is what Ray taught - 

I was in the graduate program

he was part of,

but, also notably,

the year I got there, Carver

got something like a MacArthur, 

and well,

what self-respecting writer really wants to teach

when they don't really have to?

He stopped teaching the year I arrived.

Anyway, it didn't matter, I was so clueless:

I went to Syracuse because I wanted to be a writer,

and not

because I knew anything about the teachers there.

In fact, I didn't know who he was the first time I met him

at a party, and I think that may be why 

he always sort of followed my work

for a few years (until they moved);

he would go to my readings, and talk to me

at parties, and give me all kinds of suggestion.

Looking back at it, I can see he 

kind of took care of me, 

in a very quiet way.

I paid him little heed; I was way

way

too in awe.

So anyway --

think Raymond Carver story. . .

OK,
back to my point about why
we take delight and more delight
in songs,
stories
movies

that end abruptly.

Well,

the Age we have been leaving has been
a Narrative Age,
and the age we have been entering,
rather haltingly and painfully,
but now we are absolutely in it,
is the Age
of Narrative Interruptus.


lastwordonnothing

The Age of Narrative was an age
that sought and sometimes found
happiness in its endings.

The "Happy Ever After" marks
Satisfaction and/or
the Desire for Satisfaction coupled with
the Belief
that Satisfaction is possible.

Since this is the Age we are currently exiting
we have inherited a truckload
of Happy Ever After Tales
that promote and perpetuate
a rather stilted view of the world.

IE:

• if you are good, Santa will bring you packages;
• if you clean inside your ears, beans won't grow in them;
• if you make a lot of money, you'll be happy;
• (a subnarrative of this one is: money can buy happiness -- if you believe this, just think about how much money it takes to be happy all the time); 
• if you're a blonde, you're stupid and easily pleased
• if you a marry a particular type of person just like you, you'll be happy
• marriage and reproduction are the ONLY routes to happiness

The list goes on:
essentially,
they're all mini narratives, all with
happy endings built right into them,
and we grew up using them
to define our paths in life.


But Hot Damn!
Most of us who are my age
                                  (that's 425, remember)
and over have learned
through this rather miserable experience
called life
that those lovely stories, produced by people
whose time, circumstances & personal beliefs
allowed them to think in terms of happy endings,
are lies.

Lies.


Life happens like this:







(and then it's over)

As we have come to understand this
is the true structure of
life in our time,
our stories --
and the literal structure of all of the stories
that we use to help us understand life
has gradually changed.

We prefer
Narrative Interruptus,
because
that is more true to reality.

~ ~ ~


~ ~ ~
It has taken art: aka:
reality's reproduction
a long time to catch up to reality itself.

Reality is this, this life
we lead, and
within this life we lead,
we Humans  were produced by the Creative Force
(aka: Allah, God, Yahweh)
to be the chroniclers & recorders
of the Force's creation,
to be the ones
to show that fabulous creation S/He produced
to the Master
who produced us.
It is our job to mimic all that we encouter
for the enjoyment
of our Progenitor.
(Yes, we are advanced apes,
we are the ones
in all the animal species
to be given the task of
going forth and finding
a way to show the beauty of nature
to the Creative Force
we call God.

That's our job.

Period.

(and, by the way, every now and then God wants to see this creation,
and that, my friends, is Makropoulos' explanation
of Two Thousand And Twelve:
that year marks the juncture
at which God is able to view
The Creation in its entirety,
and,
well,
we'll see what S/He thinks.

In other words, 2012 marks the end moment of the period of time it takes
(when measured in our realm of time)
for the timeless to be able to perceive
of everything it has produced
for the soul purpose of being able to view Itself.
 Eternity, then,
is best defined as a number, and it looks
like this:

fameisn'teverything

After 2012 (which fundamentally marks
the end of the period of time as it is measured in the realm of time
that it takes the timeless to perceive
of the timed)
we'll know how long infinity is,
and we'll be able to use that #
in actual counting, because
at that point
we'll have experienced an eternity
and come out the other side of it.
I'm not kidding!
That's what
12/21/12
will be:
the realization of the year
of the palindrome,
and the realization of the Perfect Mirror Image.



But I should get back to my point, which is
we live currently at the Dawn of the
Age of Interruptus,
during which our primary mode
of representing ourselves to ourselves
will be
by fragmentation.



Life
is
not
one
long
thin
con
tin
u
a
l
thread, no

it is interruption.


We believe no more
in the Aristotelean narrative,

because we know it is no longer
a complete narrative that fits our time.

No.

Our current life narratives acknowledge the short
ness and the changability
of real lived life.

One of the most compelling stories to us
right now,
unfortunately,
is the one that shows how
if you hurt the one you love the most
you can absolutely destroy them,
thereby
robbing them of the possibility of their own happy ending,
when we know darned well we're not going to have a happy ending.

And so we kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and lie
and lie,
then kill
and kill
and kill
again.

It is the acting out of our personal discovery
that not every one of life's stories
do not have happy endings, and
it brings happy endings to no one,
and death, painful death
to all.

But the fact is:
endings are often not happy;
endings
are often not even


endings.




We live in the Age of Narrative Interruptus.

Superman in the News

As usual, 

I woke up this morning

to the news on the radio,

and this is what I heard about:

boingboing

It appears that perhaps some fans

(or maybe Superman himself)

as if forced to desperate means

like Barack Obama

(

 huffingtonpost

 )

,

took it upon themselves to prove

Superman's rightful birthplace.

Someone went and stole

this plaque, from its home

in Cleveland, Ohio:

The state of this earth

is definitely a troubled one,

when even comic book heros

renounce their birthplace

and/or

it comes up for debate.

But perhaps we should take our cue

from the man from Krypton,

and recognized that national identity can sometimes limit

our perceptions of both ourselves and of others.

We are all,

after all,

citizens of the universe,

citizens of the galaxy,

citizens of the solar system,

citizens of this third planet 

from this sun,

we are all 

in this together.

Today's Diva: Phoebe Snow, (May She Rest In Peace)

Remembering

a gentle diva,

and an angel

who passed on, and went back home

today

The Audacity of Hopefulness

Hi.

Sorry I've been away for a little while.

The other day I was getting dressed,

and I looked down at the books that were

 holding my bedroom door open,

and this one was on top:

Audacity/Wikipedia

Audacity/Amazon

That's right,

it's been holding my door open,

for nearly a year.

And as I saw it there, I felt a pang

of grief and regret,

because I really do believe that Barack Obama is both 

hopeful and audacious,

underneath it all,

and then I wrote the following post:

I want to live in the country where

Barack Obama is president, and nobody

criticizes him for not fixing

in two years

the mess made by all the presidents we've had

for thirty years

(give or take a decade or two)

I want to live in a place where people

are only held accountable for what 

they themselves have done, 

no more, no less,

and where

they are not judged for what they haven't done,

when they haven't finished the job

yet.

I want to live in a land

of reason and clarity

and truth,

not to mention a good sense of humour,

a place where, if someone lies,

their nose turns red,

or their hair falls out,

and everyone immediately knows

they are a liar.

Sometimes I think:

the worst offense that somone can commit

in civil society 

is to lie.

wikipedia

Nietzsche "On Truth & Lying in a Nonmoral Sense

I saw a movie a couple years ago, with Ricky Gervaise in it;

it was called The Invention of Lying.

The friend who was with me really didn't like it;

as many of the critics seem

to have not liked it; but

I did like it.

It treated the whole issue of lying

like a parable, and the end conclusion

appeared to be a few things:

a) people are gullible

b) you can tell people anything, and they'll 

believe you.

Of course, it also begins in a world

where all people are truthful; 

indeed, at the beginning of the film,

no one can even conceive of someone who lies.

And in this world of comical honesty,

a character discovers the power of 

falsehood.  If you live in a world

where people are honest, and you lie, well,

they'll believe you.

The liar in the movie becomes

famous and walthy, espeically when he

lies to his dying mother

and tells here there's a heaven,

when he really has no clue

what comes after this life.

The film really celebrates

the concept of 

"what you don't know won't

hurt you,"  and that's just fine

and dandy, as long as it's something simple

like the tooth fairy.

The film is correct

on many points:

people are fundamentally

gullible and truthful,

so you can indeed lie to them

and gain power of them

to varying degrees.

And for awhile, in the world of lies,

all is fine, while the lie

maintains the impression of a perfect world,

that is,

until the lie is revealed to be a lie.

And then he or she or those

who have been lied to

is shattered,

and may even start lying, too,

and society itself becomes a maze

of mirrors and poses where

pretense is the only way to survive.

And the only way to see the truth,

is by distorting it.

I'm sorry, but I"m here to declare,

we've reached 

- and bypassed -

our critical limit of lying.

Only the truth can set us free now.

mmwindowart

The biggest lie

you can tell

is the lie you tell

to your inner self,

and the lies you tell

to the ones who love you,

and whom you love,

too.

Start by telling the truth to them.

Howwwl

apodJune132005

The night wind howls 

around my house,

and I - like one entombed

in the lungs of that howling man -

cannot sleep.

For eight hours, then,

I lie and shivver,

hearing every last shudder and splinter

of the wind and the wood.

The moan of the elements

becomes my own moaning;

the power and force of it

rattling my house,

my power,

and yet I know it can engulf

and destroy

me and all I own,

reclaim me to the yawing soul

of the abyss.

extremeinstability

Morning comes,

radio on,

I learn 

43 people have died in these storms.

April showers used to bring 

May flowers,

this year they bring

just the cold of the tomb.

Then the story on the radio changes,

and we're back

to the same old bickerings in the U.S. Senate,

the same old wars and revolutions,

humanity navelgazing --

How deaf we are to the voice of our mother,

begging us, pleading us

to pay heed to each other.

May this week pass peacefully.

Squeezing the Hours

technabob

I'm just squeezing the hours

of each day,

trying to find spare time

like a spare dime --

neither are worth much anymore,

and yet,

they're worth a lifetime.

That spare moment I can call my own

is what I seek

when I can even consider

this space

of Makropoulos:

the Makro pulos

makro polis

of the internet

where we all masquerade

as our true selves.

This is truly me.

The woman I wear every day

when I go off to work

is a facade I've developed over the decades -

she's a personality I've honed & developed,

and lordy lordy,

is she a hard worker.

But she's getting so tired,

as the years, decades, half centuries

centuries

wear on;

and all she wants to do

is expire

and let the true me

do the work I do best.

Well, well,

my dear internet friends --

give me another week or two, 

and I'll be back full force.

This has been a tough year;

a really tough year.

I hope it's been easier on you--

the face I wear

sticksandstoneslive

the face I wear,

I didn't choose,

so why do you judge me by it?

the color of my hair,

too,

came with this machine,

this avatar,

I found myself trapped within at birth,

so why make jokes about it?

my body too, was not my fault,

and I didn't buy my skin 

color in a bottle on a shelf

maps.grida

I gained them all

the same way you gained yours:

it was an accident of birth.

For some it's lucky;

for some it's not;

our challenge is to see beyond

and behind

the superficial artifices

we face everyday,

and find the fellow soul

beneath.

It's not my fault,

the way I look to you;

I only wish you

would give me a chance

to be not the person you think I am,

but rather the person

I long to be.

 

Oh, Japan

Every morning 

I wake up

to more news

about Japan.
This morning,
I heard that their nuclear disaster was ranked as equal
to Chernobyl.

After hearing that,
I went to work distressed,
and I remained upset until I came to work,
where, by chance,

I Stumbled upon this lovely video:

We are all one--

Please, give to any fund to help the people of Japan

(and Haiti, and Egypt, and Libya, and everywhere . . . )

www.globalgiving.org

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.

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