I think that maybe things happen just because the world is tilted at a certain way during a certain time at a given angle…
And sometimes I think that, perhaps things happen because of the mind’s little tricks. Mind over matter.
Other days I wonder if we are just characters of a play with implanted memory chips containing dialogue-data sufficient for an entire lifetime.
One afternoon I saw an old couple sitting on a bench. The husband was reading a book, with his sleeping wife leaning her head on his shoulder. They looked so sweet; they looked like One.
Which reminds me of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, where Catherine says, “We really are the same one, and we musn’t misunderstand on purpose.”
“We won’t,” says Mr. Henry (was his name Henry?)
“We musn’t. Because there’s only us two, and in the world there’s the rest of them. If anything comes between us we’re gone and then they have us.”
“They won’t get us because you’re too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave.”
“They die, of course.”
“But only once.”
So I ask myself : How is bravery measured? And is bravery dependent entirely on strength? Is is bravery, to spend your lifetime the way you want to? For a person can be plenty of people in a lifetime. One could play different roles, to the hilt.
Or maybe things happen when your clock starts ticking. When do we really start to live? When we see the first light of day? Just before we close our eyes? And when do we stop dying? In my opinion we die each day; that we kill ourselves unconsciously with every opportunity we get. Unconsiously. We die when sleeping, and we die still when we’re awake.
It doesn’t make sense. Things are in a strange light. Yet certain people make life worth living.
My friend’s thesis years ago, a performance art, required him to stand motionless in the middle of a room that had four tv sets and videocameras fixed in each corner. He wasn’t supposed to move from his position.
“I find your thesis a bit… religious,” one panelist commented. “You look like you’re nailed there.”
My friend paused, then replied, “I know it. I am nailed.”
When grades were released a few days later, we read the professor’s comment on his thesis. Written down : “Why be nailed to a cross when you can come down alive?”
