So I was browsing my favorites on youtube to find more music to help me write my poli sci study guide without going a bit insane and I start watching this vid (mostly b/c I was thinking about Ms. Schieffelin and I having a similar obsession with Community and other things meta and this person has a lot of things involving those two) . http://www.youtube.com/user/Catemonster#p/u/75/DK59NdBAB8M
Then I got to thinking (very dangerous thing you know) that maybe this was part of what Borges was trying to say: you may never find God or if you do find Him He won’t be what you expect or maybe He won’t be a He at all but an indescribable essence that the closest we can come to adequately describing will be as a bowl of tapioca pudding (Hinduism for the win!). Just because you know something will fail or turn out differently than you expect doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go after it with all the power you have and all the love you can give it; and yeah, we’re all going to die someday but joy and sadness and emotion and feeling and learning what those things truly mean (to know vs know) is part of the journey to that (possibly) ultimate ending and if we spent our whole lives doing nothing then what could we actually accomplish?
In the same way that Borges knows he’s going to be blind the rest of his life, that he knows God will most likely never answer anything concrete if He/She/It/They exist at all and yet he CHOOSES to continue to write and dream and explore (not because there’s nothing left because if there’s truly nothing left would he have been such an amazing writer?) we should all just keep going and learning and discovering what makes people happy and sad and laugh with so much joy it could light up the universe (the one we live in anyway). And while the idea of there being someone exactly like me but somehow completely different living the same but different life just because someone choose to take a left turn instead of a right is terrifying, it’s also wonderful. There’s a whole world of possibilities, Borges is saying, and the only thing holding us back is ourselves, trapping each other in this maze of pointless niceties and false mirrors and Enemies and the feeling that if we show our true selves we won’t be accepted or respected or loved.
A final note: sort of like Teddy/Hindu values, once the character realizes the extent of
themselves or their connection to the "Oneness" that is the "All", "That Before Which All Words Recoil" the almost invisible threads that connect every person and thing on this planet in some way in dizzying circles and mazes and labyrinths—they die. For Hindus, this is realease, this is "moksha" (release from the finite) a final death that is a blessing because when you Realize yourself and your connection and place and Being, all that’s left is to die. You can’t share it; we don’t have the vocabulary for it. Everyone has to find it for/by/with(in) themselves.
Happy Looking.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
-Oscar Wilde
"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they go right.
You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one that doesn't earn it, and sometimes good things fall apart, so that better things can fall together." ~ Marilyn Monroe
I disagree just in the fact that I look at Borges as more of a destiny type. In so many of his stories (Secret Ruins, Secret Mircale, among others), we talk about these themes that its a labrynth with the appearance of a maze, that it only looks like you have choices but you are predestined to make that choice. He seems less like an advocate for making choices than an advocate for "It doesn't matter what choice you made, you never really had a choice."
ReplyDeletebut then in circular ruins there's the whole creation thing where he chooses to dream up his son, though one could say it was the god controlling him, though "fire is a bad master" to have(Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey). I guess you could say it's more about personal interpretation...like Hindu/Buddhism *bangs head slowly against wall at developing migrane due to the very different thought process/understanding of those not me*
ReplyDeleteIt's more like Borges (and possibly Calvino) are giving you the opprotunity to see the choices, and just because you don't believe in them doesn't mean they aren't there (like magic; it believes in you).