Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Observe and report. Observe and report. Observe and report.
The cliché is that nothing in life prepares you for death. I hate clichés. I hate them because they're often poignantly apt. And poignantly apt issues shouldn't be trivialized into clichés.
But.
Nothing in life prepares you for death. The past weeks have been, um, hmmm. I don't know what. They've been something I can't define. And that bothers me. Because if I have to deal with something at the very least I might as well learn something, gain some insight and share it with others so they can benefit from my experience.
I guess what I've learned is that there is no way to prepare for death. You're on your own. Fare thee well and good luck with that. Even though there are loads of books, DVDs, websites, songs and greeting cards attempting to help explain, help or ease the pain of losing a loved one none of them actually explains, helps or prepares anyone for The Actual Event.
All the Kahlil Gibran philosophy in the world can't soften the blow or explain the feelings.
Loss and grief are singularly personal. Sorry. No insight or wisdom to be found here. It hurts. It's weird. It's disorienting. It's scary. It's disturbing. It's empty. It's unfair. It's overwhelming. It's unpredictable. And that's just the first minute. Then it becomes a lot of things which have remained undefined since the dawn of human grief. If there are not words or ways to define what it is, it follows that there are not words or ways to ease the pain, soften the blow or get over it.
In management seminar speak: If you can define the challenge, you can create a solution. But if you can't define the challenge, no solution can be formulated and you've got a bona fide problem on your hands.
I've got this bank of fog traveling around me, like Pigpen in Charlie Brown comics but with fog cloud instead of a dirt cloud. But I'm grateful for the fog because the few times I've had clarity it's been unbearably painful. I prefer the weirdness of a traveling shroud of fog to the stark pain of clarity. (And yes, Traveling Shroud of Fog is The Best Goth Band Name Ever.)
Casseroles and flowers arrive by the cartload and the relatives start pouring in from all corners of the world. Which, when taken in any other context than death, is all very jovial and festive. But there are only two occasions when food, flowers and far flung relatives combine: Weddings and funerals.
Funny, that. Someone gets married or someone dies and the food, flowers and far flung relatives appear. Seems like an odd formula. Seems weirder that the formula is only used for weddings and funerals.
I have a cousin whom I have only ever seen at weddings and funerals. We get along fine under those circumstances so it begs the question why, in our entire lifetimes, we’ve only ever seen each other at weddings and funerals. I don’t have an answer. We have always lived far, far apart – thousands of miles apart – and we live very different lives. But still, we like each other and have enough in common that it seems like in all the years we’ve been alive (and cousins for all of those years) that we would have got together for a reason beyond a family wedding or funeral.
We always say we will. And we mean it. We've tried. While on a business trip several years ago I made plans to visit her and meet her newborn second child. Then her husband’s mother was in a car accident and they had to leave town and so I didn’t get to spend time with her. She was in my neck of the woods a few years ago, a professional conference, we made plans to get together, and then I had to go out of town for work at the last minute. Apparently our getting together for anything other than a wedding or a funeral simply is not meant to be.
It’s laughable, but sad. She’s the only relative I have whom I even remotely resemble. We have the same hands (girl versions of our dads' hands), ears (like our grandmother's, we're told), unruly curls at the first dew point of humidity (like our dads') and the same sardonic smirk (her dad had it, mine did not, but a photo of a great uncle shows evidence that it lurks in our common DNA). We're both animal lovers and music enthusiasts (like our dads and our mothers - both our dads married women who were animal and music lovers). We both like foo foo drinks and hate coffee (which causes raised eyebrows and hushed whispers about our parentage, hate coffee? Why...why...it's unNorwegian! It's blasphemy!) We long ago realized that even though we're undeniable progeny of that family we don't exactly fit in with them. We're not quite like them. Her blond hair, blue eyes and stocky build scream Viking girl. But the rest of her features lean toward her mother's French DNA. The blond, blue eyed DNA skipped me, but I got the height, the strength, the high altitude cheekbones, a love of water and the ability to sing an uncannily good rendition of the Immigrant Song. Together we make the perfect Viking woman. Apart we're odd half-breed combinations. Together we square our shoulders, hold our heads high and flaunt our mothers' DNA at our dads' family. Apart we silently endure jokes about our mothers fooling around with mailmen, milkmen and sailors due to our lack of full-on familial DNA.
The first time I met her was at an older cousin’s wedding. She, a full 18 months older than I, was a junior bridesmaid. I was the flower girl. I didn’t see her again until our grandmother died. And then another cousin got married and, since we’d done such a good job at the previous wedding and our dresses still fit, we were called into junior bridesmaid and flower girl service again. And then an uncle died. And then two more cousins got married. And so it went. Many years, many weddings and too many funerals later, we see each other, catch up on our lives, have some laughs, a few drinks (punch in our younger years, harder stuff now that we’re older), hug at the airport and go back to our lives.
It’s weird because I see other relatives, even her siblings, at times other than weddings and funerals. But she and I are apparently fated to meet only at weddings and funerals. It’s reached the point that we’re somewhat afraid to tempt fate. Do we even dare talk about seeing each other if we’re not going to a wedding or funeral? We’re not ones to mock the Universe by tilting the precarious balance. But it does seem odd and a shame that our lives are such that our paths only intercept at weddings and funerals.
Several years ago “we” said a final good-bye to her dad. A few weeks ago “we” buried my father. I was young when her dad died. I wasn’t very experienced at death, then. I didn’t know what to say or do. We’d been at funerals together, but her dad's funeral was going to be different. It was her dad instead of some distant or dotty relative. It was a slap in the face with reality. We went from the little girls, the youngest borns from whom no one expected much in the way of grief, to adults from whom everyone expected profound and wise insight and strength to carry on. The entire plane trip to her dad’s memorial I wondered what I could say or do. I felt unprepared and kind of angry that even though I’d known her my whole life I only knew her in the context of celebrating a wedding or trying to make sense (through children’s eyes) of our dads' family's funeral customs. When I arrived at the site of the memorial she split from the group and came to hug me. I put my arm around her. And that was that. A few hours later we had a drink and talked about her dad and how ill-prepared we were for death. We confided that we still didn't understand most of the funeral process our dads' family holds up as "proper" and questioned the legality of a few of the customs. We shared simultaneous respect and skepticism that we dared not confide to anyone else on that side of our families. Ironic that our shared DNA brought us together while experiencing feelings of confusion and exclusion from our shared DNA source. We don't quite fit in there.
We vowed to get together, hugged good-bye at the airport, life went on, we saw each other at a couple weddings, yadda yadda yadda my dad died.
And she appeared. And I split from the group to hug her and she put her arm around me and that was that. The next day we had a drink and talked about my dad and how ill-prepared we were for the death of a parent.
We vowed to get together. Got out our calendars, checked schedules, and discovered the next time we were both free for a few days at the same time is: A relative's wedding.
It’s the circle of our lives, apparently, that we are the wedding and funeral cousins.
7:41 PM
