SoCS - 20190120
Jan. 20th, 2019 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johncomicI have reread my NaNo novel about eight times now already. Most of those times were for the purpose of proofreading -- the SpellCheck in my OpenOffice doesn't work on that particular file, for some reason -- but, I confess, I have also been reading it for my own pleasure. I tend to like rereading my own work. I've always felt like my goal was to write something that I would like to read, so if I do, it makes me feel like I have succeeded, I guess. I'll come back to this.
samanthabryant introduced me to Mary Oliver a few days ago, on the occasion of her passing, and I have now started reading a collection of her poems. One just moved me to the brink of tears -- I hope to come back and share it. [I did, in the comments.] But also, there have been a couple of times where I have felt something in her work which reminded me of something in my novel that I am thinking of now.
At one point in my book, my protagonist talks about how, when he contemplates the vastness of the universe, it makes him feel like he is "part of something big and amazing". I get a similar sense from Oliver, at times. And it wasn't til I was rereading this passage of mine that it clicked with me that I sometimes feel the same way.
It's common to hear people describe how dwarfed they feel by the cosmos. I hear them contemplate the size of the universe, or the world, or the sea, or a mountain, and tell of how this makes them feel insignificant, how they don't matter, how nothing matters even. Not saying I can't fathom this response, but it isn't mine.
"It wouldn't matter to the universe if I were here or not," they say. It's true that the universe without me in it would go on much the same. In that same sense, the earth doesn't "matter" to the universe. Our galaxy doesn't matter, there are billions of others. But what is "mattering" to the universe? Does it matter whether any part of it matters? Every part of it is here, every part of it is a part. No part necessarily more important than any other. And not necessarily any less. I am here now. You are here now. That's what matters. It is an honour to be any part of something this big and amazing and beautiful. For me, there is no existential dread in the fact of my smallness in the face of the universe -- there is wonder and joy in it.
Some days, at least.
samanthabryant introduced me to Mary Oliver a few days ago, on the occasion of her passing, and I have now started reading a collection of her poems. One just moved me to the brink of tears -- I hope to come back and share it. [I did, in the comments.] But also, there have been a couple of times where I have felt something in her work which reminded me of something in my novel that I am thinking of now. At one point in my book, my protagonist talks about how, when he contemplates the vastness of the universe, it makes him feel like he is "part of something big and amazing". I get a similar sense from Oliver, at times. And it wasn't til I was rereading this passage of mine that it clicked with me that I sometimes feel the same way.
It's common to hear people describe how dwarfed they feel by the cosmos. I hear them contemplate the size of the universe, or the world, or the sea, or a mountain, and tell of how this makes them feel insignificant, how they don't matter, how nothing matters even. Not saying I can't fathom this response, but it isn't mine.
"It wouldn't matter to the universe if I were here or not," they say. It's true that the universe without me in it would go on much the same. In that same sense, the earth doesn't "matter" to the universe. Our galaxy doesn't matter, there are billions of others. But what is "mattering" to the universe? Does it matter whether any part of it matters? Every part of it is here, every part of it is a part. No part necessarily more important than any other. And not necessarily any less. I am here now. You are here now. That's what matters. It is an honour to be any part of something this big and amazing and beautiful. For me, there is no existential dread in the fact of my smallness in the face of the universe -- there is wonder and joy in it.
Some days, at least.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 12:14 am (UTC)On Meditating, Sort Of
(from Blue Horses)
Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?
Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place — half asleep — where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter —
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.
So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.
Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints —
all that glorious, temporary stuff.