Existential Julebord.
DEBATING THE MERITS OF WRITING A BRIEF HOLIDAY GREETING, owing to my efforts to avoid the sheer insanity of Hanukkah and Christmas by keeping a silent vigil over my senses, I must confess to a certain procrastination about what–if anything–to say in the spirit of the season. Chalked up to my usual anaphylaxis to schmaltz, I wonder what words to offer for a hectic time of social obligation, pandemic shopping, and bittersweet reflections? As Nemesis is an aspect of Aphrodite, procrastination is an aspect of creative resistance. I don't mean creative in the sense of artistic product. In this context, creative refers to the will undergirding anything we endeavor to produce in life, from a piece of literature to Nan's holiday fruitcake.
An accumulation of years can be said to be a long time, but a solitary year is not. Certainly taken from the angle of the excessive, hectic lives we lead in this waning second decade of the 21st century. Besieged by media, superficial liaisons with, potentially, the entire globe in 1000 x 1000 pixel nosh, yet atomised. Intimacy has been made dangerous by those who would benefit from people not having strong bonds; malaise and Fukuyama fractures, splash damage–implosion implicated. The once venerated social bond undermined by our love affair with convenience, manifested by what is now the only thing venerated: Tech. Neither money, nor sex holds dominion over our cognitive metabolism. All of the human motivators harvested to drive the tech imperative while social technology lies fallow. The Matrix is real, not literally as sentient machines harvesting human bio-energy, but as language; as thought. The power-plant in which Neo wakes, naked and bald, immersed in pink bio-conductive gel– The Real– is the everyday lie to which we conform: That we are more connected than ever before. In this fractured landscape, what territory for self-reflection can we work from? I find myself returning to Grenzsituationen ("limit situations") which populate my daily existence; my constant talks with Vera, who is where I was exactly one year ago. I am walking in my own experience again as I walk with hers. Then, my state-of-being was radically different; detached, face-to-face with mortality–yet again. Now, there is only the imperative of primal contact; daily pieces we share are pregnant with meaning. The nation of my body fought adenocarcinoma to a standstill. The nation of Vera's body must do no less; we have an alliance wherein I can't provide the guns, the tanks, the bombs, but I can provide the morale, the propaganda, a unified coalition against "The Enemy." An enemy that destroyed everything I thought I cared about, and brought me into perigee with purpose.
They say no man is an island. Taking a man alone, what nature provides he makes use of. Fire, shelter and sustenance. Preservation of one's life in the face of nature's selective pressure ignites purpose. Perhaps harmony can be maintained in this equation, but nothing new is created. Mere mammalian survival amounts to a plateau from which all horizons are visible, and one day man begins to wonder, "what is just below that horizon?" Quantifying the unknown becomes an obsession–he must get to that horizon and peer off the edge. It is desire that undermines the man. If the man has built his hedge against nature (all civilization is, really) on poor ground then the best thing for him is to be undermined. In the fall of man, meaning can be puzzled together from the detritus. Individual Human beings are inherently fascistic civilizations unto themselves; everything must be unified, every system and every cell. In the biological world, cellular anarchy equals death. Cancer is a million Gavrilo Princips, sauntering down a fogged-over Sarajevo street, at dawn. Allostatic dissension undermines the totality of the civilizational body–the organism itself. Yet, when Individual Humans come together, we either clash or cooperate. The beauty lies in having the choice.
What words would I offer for this time of coming together, reaping the harvests we've sown? Make bonds; Make them in person. Make them count.