Living the Myth

Originally Posted Monday, April 15, 2013

The point of it all just slips away I must say.  And with it goes the verve.  Was it fun to be young and dumbly running after "meaning" and "truth" as fast and hip as you could?  Yes, it was.  Each day, assured about something, you got up and wondered what might happen next.  There were the spontaneous trips, unplanned, perhaps to the beach or, perhaps, to a plane having stuffed a few things into a bag.  Cheap flights, hip destinations.  You could value yourself by the people around you.  You had found paradise.  You were there. 

Later and for awhile it seemed that paradise was harder to find as if it rejected you, as if it were playing hide and seek.  Then you thought that maybe you no longer belonged.  Then you became bitter.  And then. . . you just didn't care because it all looked silly if still incredibly fun.  And then you began to understand the myth.  We gain knowledge and maybe wisdom for which we must die.  That's the whole point of the Garden story, isn't it?  First uncluttered youth, then the party, then the wisdom and the suffering, then you die.  And, of course, we will have repented.  We sometimes long for the Garden, but it is gone.  And we know we would be bored with the pre-lapsarian version. 

The only flaw in the myth is that the party is so short.  Or perhaps mine was far too long. 

Yesterday after running, I walked for a while longer, and in a bit, I saw a large group of people on  the small beach of a large lake.  I was curious to have a look, but as I approached, I saw that the crowd was not particularly beautiful, that, in fact, they were quite the opposite.  They were standing around in the wrong clothing uncertainly eating hot dogs and hamburgers and drinking Hawaiian Punch.  I turned around before I got close.  As always, I am appalled by a bad crowd.  Perhaps I should have wandered over to listen and steal stories, but I can do that elsewhere without the mass of. . . of. . . just without the mass. 

But for dinner last night with my mother, I did spend the weekend entirely alone, exercising, reading, and watching movies.  And after watching "Mad Men" last night, I felt like Don Draper, sitting in the hallway in front of his apartment door, too exhausted with things to enter.  We've already fucked everything up over and over again.  We've squandered every opportunity.  And so we sit numb, without despair but without hope, just numb at the dumb stupidness of what we do and go through, of what we call "a life."