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Author Topic: Obituary Page Epiphanies
Deception
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Babbler # 4101

posted 27 April 2004 08:24 PM      Profile for Deception     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ever flipped through the obituary pages? It’s a remarkable page, you get acquainted with people you’ve never heard of or spoken with and they’re all dead so they can’t make a bad impression. Actually in my local paper it’s the “deaths, memorials and births” page, in other words a bombardment of announcements and pronouncements about life’s polarizing contrasts. This one man caught my attention with his touching tribute to his deceased wife, his words of undying love and paralyzing pain reverberated through me. Everything he wrote was so arcane; his words weren’t intended for me but they struck me like errant gunfire in the Congo. He wishes he could grasp her hand once more; everytime he reaches out there isn’t anyone there to receive his embrace. He’s in love with a memory that never fades just splintering the heart that refuses to beat no more.

Loves a bitch, he was hypnotized by it, estranging him from him. His love for his wife was the synthetic auxiliary support system that kept him upright. Death shattered his security; he had no contingency plan, merely a victim of his own creation. I guess on some level we all know this, we know nothing lasts yet we choose to get attached, we choose to love. Maybe that’s our weakness, the shit that encroaches boundaries, our desire to love and reciprocally be loved. We expose ourselves in the most indecent manner; our human nakedness is on display to be purchased by the highest bidder. Do I hear 20? Do I hear 30, going once, going twice, sold!!! to the lady in the black dress. We are all up for bid, dispensable carcass to be purchased for the right price.

I know what your thinking, he’s a jilted lover spewing his melodrama for all to hear, but I’m not. In fact, my primary consideration is why we love anyone or anything irrespective of the nature of the relationship? Why do we love our mothers? that ice cream flavour that you savor? that special author that made think like you’ve never thunk before? about that uncle, that really isn’t your uncle but he’s made all the difference? Love has one unifying principle; commitment, a unwavering, uncritical, unfettered, boundless, enduring commitment. Why do we commit to someone or something when tomorrow isn’t guaranteed?

LOVE, why?


From: front lines of the revolution | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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Babbler # 478

posted 28 April 2004 10:29 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Deception, don't get me wrong: that is a tough and true and fascinating meditation you've written there, even though I am about to speak back to you straight from the obit columns. This paragraph in particular is one of the harder things I've ever read on babble:

quote:
Loves a bitch, he was hypnotized by it, estranging him from him. His love for his wife was the synthetic auxiliary support system that kept him upright. Death shattered his security; he had no contingency plan, merely a victim of his own creation. I guess on some level we all know this, we know nothing lasts yet we choose to get attached, we choose to love. Maybe that’s our weakness, the shit that encroaches boundaries, our desire to love and reciprocally be loved. We expose ourselves in the most indecent manner; our human nakedness is on display to be purchased by the highest bidder. Do I hear 20? Do I hear 30, going once, going twice, sold!!! to the lady in the black dress. We are all up for bid, dispensable carcass to be purchased for the right price.

Except for the last three and a half sentences, which don't ring any bells for me, that is a hard way of putting a hard truth. That can be exactly how it feels -- his life, our life, my life, finally -- for one who loses a partner, that hits hard at some point(s): I have lost my own life, or I am watching my life being taken apart in front of me, and there is nothing I can do. Beyond sadness, beyond terror, there is sheer dizziness at the unreality of the self.

I said it can feel that way, and some of the time. In the language that you've used ("synthetic auxiliary support system," "security," etc.) and that I've used (the language of the self) there are hints about alternative truths, about what one can experience elsewhen. I can't write well about that in a single post. And besides, it seems to me that the shock of your first post deserves to reverberate for a while, unqualified, not prettied up. Will be back.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
mighty brutus
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posted 28 April 2004 10:51 AM      Profile for mighty brutus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Whoa--that's some heavy shit there...

I never fail to read the obits. And ALWAYS in reverse alphabetical order.


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Loony Bin
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posted 28 April 2004 11:02 AM      Profile for Loony Bin   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm one who never reads the obits. I tend not to dwell on death, or really think about it very much at all.

Even still, what Deception says about being left behind rings true in so many situations, that I've thought about it much in my time. Not just about death, but about the end of any relationship, for any reason, really. If you get attached enough to a person, their absence will definitely throw you.

It's a lesson I learned somewhere along the line, and so now, generally, I reserve a little of myself for me at all times. Waste not, want not, not even with the self. I'm ever so judicious about who I'll give my self to, and how much to give, and even though you can never know what will happen when you entangle yourself with another, it's always been beneficial to have held just that little bit back. Like the seed of a sourdough loaf, or a sugar crystal or something...if you keep a little of it for next time, there's always something there to generate new growth.


From: solitary confinement | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Scott Piatkowski
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posted 28 April 2004 11:21 AM      Profile for Scott Piatkowski   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I started reading the obits after my own father died. I had never understood the value of a simple sympathy note from someone that I hadn't seen in years, or someone that I knew only peripherally. Now, I make sure that I read them, and follow up when someone that I know dies or loses someone close to them.
From: Kitchener-Waterloo | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Deception
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posted 28 April 2004 03:12 PM      Profile for Deception     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
truthfully i haven’t ever had anyone really close to me pass away. in fact, i haven’t ever been to a funeral, never mustered up the courage to do so. i guess i fear death, I fear its absolute consequences. but they say "on the otherside of fear is freedom” so I’ve decided to write a series of short pieces on the obituary page to confront my fears. anyways, my piece pertains to love and more importantly why knowing its tumultuous implications as outlined in my “obituary page epiphanies” why we still choose to love?
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skdadl
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posted 28 April 2004 05:10 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Deception, correct me if I'm wrong, but I inferred, from the way your first post is written, that you are wondering whether it is loving another that can make us vulnerable to losing our selves. Lizard Breath (you correct me too if nec) seems to be implying the same.

In other words, we normally have very solid, safe selves. Loving another is a choice to be dependent on an illusion; and losing that other is somehow a punishing enlightenment, a lesson that we were mistaken to lose that solid self in the illusory double self of love. Or something like that?

For the time being, anyway, I would argue that it is our faith in the solidity or reality of our own selves that is the illusion. That deepest truth about the self, any self, is even harder to face than the one you've described, I think.

You say choose. The loves I've had don't always feel like choices to me, although I am prepared to admit that they must be constructions -- as long as you are prepared to admit that that refuge you are puzzled that we leave, our selves, is every bit as much a construction.

In my experience, love can teach that lesson faster than any philosopher. Its illusions, its constructions are more wonderful; and its loss forbids any comfortable refuge. You are thinking about your own death, Deception. So am I. Sooner or later, we might as well, eh?


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Loony Bin
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posted 28 April 2004 05:32 PM      Profile for Loony Bin   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hmm...I think you've got what I was saying, pretty much...It's not so much that our own selves are solid and safe, but that sometimes when we love someone else, we invest our whole selves in that person, and in the relationship with them. So then, when that person leaves or dies, we're lost, because we've been neglecting our selves in favour of this other person and the relationship...

It's not that you can choose who to love, or how much to love them, but to be wary of forgetting to love and nurture yourself, and your self, while you're loving someone else...and then if they go, you're not left with someone you hardly know...y'know?


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skdadl
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posted 28 April 2004 06:00 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
So then, when that person leaves or dies, we're lost, because we've been neglecting our selves in favour of this other person and the relationship...

But is it not an illusion to think, for so long, that we are not already "lost"?

Or, at least, as long as we keep thinking of our selves as something to protect, then we are always already lost, because it is our selves that are most imaginary?

[ 28 April 2004: Message edited by: skdadl ]


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Loony Bin
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posted 28 April 2004 06:09 PM      Profile for Loony Bin   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
But is it not an illusion to think, for so long, that we are not already "lost"?

I dunno if it's an illusion or not, but the reality is for a lot of people, that as long as they've got their relationship with person X, they're doing okay, and their life makes sense. Take person X out of the mix, and some folks don't know where to turn.

quote:
Or, at least, as long as we keep thinking of our selves as something to protect, then we are always already lost, because it is our selves that are most imaginary?

I'm not really sure what you're saying here, but I don't think I agree with you. I'm not talking about protecting one's self, but rather, maintaining a relationship with one's self, even while in the throes of the most romantic love ever, or the most devoted familial relationship or what have you. I'm talking about being as whole a person as possible, without depending on someone external to yourself to provide you with purpose and personality, or passion and vitality--while still recognizing that no person is an island unto themselves (and even if they were, an island is still surrounded by water...).

I don't think that who I am is imaginary at all. And I don't think that by reserving some part of my self, my consciousness and my thinking for the strength and development of just me is at all sign that I'm lost, but rather a sign that I know who I am and what I want, and that I can't depend on someone else loving me to get there or be everything for me.


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nonsuch
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posted 29 April 2004 11:22 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If you stay alone, isolated, that doesn't guarantee any safety. You're still going to die someday. And you can still suffer in lots of other ways in the meantime.

Thing about the man who lost his wife: he's hurting and lonely, sure. But that doesn't mean he's never going to be any good again. In a year or two, he may meet a nice widow who has felt the same way about someone. They've both already learned how to love, how to share, how to grieve and recover; they have a pretty good head-start on a second chance to be happy.

On the practical side: life is hard enough, unpredictable and dangerous enough, even with reliable backup.
Anyway, a relationship in which either individual is utterly subsumed is probably a bad relationship. The right partner will protect, encourage and nurture your self, so that, even if someday he's not there anymore, he leaves you more of a person than before he came.


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Deception
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posted 30 April 2004 12:12 AM      Profile for Deception     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So I had another epiphany, a paradoxically one at that. We attach, we commit, we expose, we love because we are human. Feel free to call me out on my contradictory bullshit but we are human with a vociferous need to express. The greatest expression of all is love, the love that’s lucid but arcane like obituary page memorials, a private act for all to see but esoteric in its understanding. We love not because we can but we must, there is no free will involved just our mortal compulsion.

Somebody close to the family lost his father this morning, without hesitation he borrowed some money and boarded a flight going 12,000 miles to a protracted war zone to say “I love you dad” one more time. Love’s irrational; you endanger your life, incur debt, all for what? Well his father gave him those wings to fly 12,000 miles away working a job many years with degrading pay to ensure that choice was afforded to his children. His children had gone Diaspora, pervading the world; some hadn’t seen their parents in twenty years. I told someone that this eighty year old man had committed the ultimate act of altruism, he died to reunite his family once more. Work, mortgages, war had been undermined by a dead man’s cosmopolitan love. I guess we express our will through our love; love brought his fragmented family together, imagine that? Why do I love? Cause to not would mean that I’m mute, and mute I’m certainly not. Express Yourself!!!


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Michelle
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posted 30 April 2004 05:10 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Deception, interesting thread. I would like to respond to this:

quote:
His love for his wife was the synthetic auxiliary support system that kept him upright. Death shattered his security; he had no contingency plan, merely a victim of his own creation. I guess on some level we all know this, we know nothing lasts yet we choose to get attached, we choose to love.

In my late teens and early 20's, I was in a relationship with someone 11 years older than me. At the time, I was obsessed with what happens after death. I was really terrified at the thought of dying, but I was also terrified at the thought of someday losing him to death (I just assumed that someone 11 years older than me would have to die first ).

Then I lost him a few years later - to dumping (as in, I dumped him). Then I got married to my husband, also almost a decade older than me, and again I was a little bit scared at the thought of losing him to death when we got older. Then during our marriage, which soon soured, I started thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could somehow, without him dying and without having to go through a divorce, be FREE of this person."

Once we separated, I thought a lot about aloneness, of course. For the first time in my life, I wasn't scared of being single and completely without a partner (not even a love interest). I guess I see love differently now than I did during my first co-habiting relationship and then my marriage. I may live with someone again; but I don't think I will ever be scared of being alone again.

It's really incredibly freeing to not be afraid of being alone. I don't think I'll ever have that scared feeling in the back of my mind with future partners about what will happen if they die first. Because I know that what will happen is that I'll be sad over them personally, but I will not have the fear of being alone compounding it - and the fear of being alone has always been the worst part of losing love for me.

I know everyone doesn't see it that way. But that's how I've come to look at it, and I find it very liberating. Some people after a separation or a death let it make them bitter and scared to love anyone again in case they again experience the same loss either through death or the end of a relationship; for me, now that I am not afraid of being alone, it makes me feel free to love hard, knowing that if and when the love erodes, I will be okay.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Loony Bin
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posted 30 April 2004 11:34 AM      Profile for Loony Bin   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Anyway, a relationship in which either individual is utterly subsumed is probably a bad relationship.

This is basically what I was getting at above, with my suggestion that a person should always reserve a little of themself just for their own. It's just not healthy to invest everything you have in this other person and your relationship with them. It leaves you really vulnerable to being completely thrown when they leave, for whatever reason.

quote:
The right partner will protect, encourage and nurture your self, so that, even if someday he's not there anymore, he leaves you more of a person than before he came.

It's true that the ideal partner will support you being an individual, as well as nurturing the bond between you and him/ber. A good relationship is one in which both people involved are better and stronger for it. But it's a mistake to go looking for a partner who will "protect, encourage and nurture your self", if you're not already doing that on your own. And that's all I'm really talking about: that you use some of your loving, nurturing energy on yourself all the time too--at least as much as you would devote to your partner. If you do, you send a message to your partner that you're something special, something to be respected and honoured, and you also send that message to yourself. And then, should you ever find yourself suddenly alone, it's not totally devastating, and you have enough confidence and strength all on your own to be able to carry on.

Maybe it's the golden rule of romantic relationships: love thyself as you would want others to love you. (and vice versa works too.)

[ 30 April 2004: Message edited by: Lizard Breath ]


From: solitary confinement | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
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posted 01 May 2004 11:32 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Maybe it's the golden rule of romantic relationships: love thyself as you would want others to love you. (and vice versa works too.)


I like that.
Of course, nobody should undertake a committment until they're mature and independent. But Romance won't wait another 10-15 years past puberty, so i suppose most people will just have to make a couple of mistakes before they find the right* relationship.
*Right for them. In some cases, this means no relationship, no partner, no committment.

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged

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