“Requiem for a Stranger.” On the 23rd day of the last month of a very trying year, a man fell on a slippery floor in the town in which i live - he died today · I knew him not at all, but am certain he will be sorely missed by his widow, son and those who clearly love them all; i can think of no greater testimony to anyone’s life than that. Days after his unfortunate injury i fell on a similarly slippery floor and faced a different end without the same dire consequence; i must live on, the same as his loved ones. They have the benefit of a strong loving memory based on what i can gather from a distance; these paltry paragraphs are as close as i dare go to such suffering, not because i am frightened to be in the midst of that manner of agony, but because i am at a loss as to how i might help; from what little i know about this community, i have to believe i am not alone in my confusion - this community, much less the world at large.
I just spent 15 minutes searching youtube for a renowned singer Trinh Cong Son who has fallen from favor though famous for the depth of his love for country, music and humanity. He is not unique in being marginalized for questionable reasons; i have faced quarantine for my own renegade position within a community attempting to reestablish a belief based on the fading economic model - Capitalism, the ideology of greed · I do not know where my friend the deceased stranger stood on this matter, but the city we shared is very nearly at what had been the dividing line of that promethean struggle of our shared youth, between capitalism and communism. But this essay is not about history or ideology, but a man who anticipated a happy Christmas with his loved ones when he fell. I sort of understand what he might have felt at that instant before impact from the same glimpse i’ve just had about my own tenuous future and have to believe from the outpouring of concern before and after his passing that my unknown friend was a loving human, someone whose example i would do well to emulate.
Nor, just i and my picayune concerns, but anyone who lives with loving concern for those around him/her. I remain at a loss as to how to relieve his widow and son from their grievous tragedy. There is nothing i know of that can substitute for the breathing presence of a loving other, unless it is the rich happy memory of one affected by that loving other. And so i trespass using the only channel left to me - words & ideas · I’m trying to move past apologies for what i think and feel, and willingly request forgiveness from the aggrieved family if my focus on their sadness does anything but alleviate sorrow. My hope is that dwelling on the love which this husband, father and inspired from his family and community can be amplified by consideration - something i find altogether too lacking in today’s media rich environment of ready-made solutions to every question - questions that no longer need be framed to find a desirable answer on the screen, now we just ask Alixa.
My next door neighbor, the brave-hearted farmer has been tilling his fields for the past 5 days, in weather so damp and chilling i cower within the comfort of clean dry sheets and pray for bicycle weather in which to again join with the human race. In my time as a member of this peculiar hamlet known throughout its history as a “friendly meeting place,” i assume my responsibility for not having mastered the native language well enough to have many local friends, however literate i might delude myself to be in body language. I do not meld well with expats either, truth be told i don’t meld well with most, preferring the company of my faithful two-wheeled steed “Asama.” I attribute its good company with muscle tone that has allowed me to suffer numerous falls on the snot-slick marble tiles of the few foreigner villas i have inhabited. If i was a wise man, i’d pay my kind hearted neighbor the farmer for the privilege of performing manual labor within his 4 century old and counting family rice business to reinvigorate my once vibrant anatomy; sadly i didn’t pass muster at my pre-employment skills evaluation during the last harvest: barely being able to hoist a single load of 12 or so bags of rice and so well understand his reluctance to underwrite my physical rehabilitation fromk my “dissipated youth.”
To my friend who has just passed through the veil as humans do leaving behind a loving wake of distressed hearts - i commend you for taking your existence to the brink · whether bidden by your wife or from an idea nurtured within the caverns of your own hungry heart, a powerful muscle i was never introduced to, i salute you. To have brought your bloodline out of the ruts of convention and to spend the last moments of your clearly courageous life, a world apart from what so many on the planet could ever conceive, much less join their passing spirits to - you were and remain a human hero, an explorer of the terrain of the unfamiliar: possessed of a heart stout enough to establish, cultivate and maintain a life different from your upbringing, your living example of how to face life demonstrates to my way of thinking the only reason our species might survive its darkest night · courage manifest, loving leadership and the ability to be at peace in violent environs full with duplicity & fear commingled with the age old human solvents, love & hope. G_d speed Bub, may you find what your heart has been seeking forever always.
jts 03/02/2021
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment