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University de la Vie Part One

Ok, this one is likely to spread into a three-parter, if only because so much has happened. Understatement of the decade: in itself an example of over-statement. But where was I? Something about this crisp sunny September afternoon got me thinking about what I call simultaneity [which is not the same thing as the physics-related dictionary definition: I'm not sure where I got mine...] and how it might tie into compassion, as in learning to have more and more in a world where the other alternative is to give in and pursue those Zellers Club points with a zeal untamed. But let me come back to the start-point of this line of thought. I was sitting outside with the puppito, considering the recent suicide of the American writer David Foster Wallace, who hung himself on Friday night. And the sunshine and crisp breeze and the blissful canine snoring beside me reminded me of how often I avoid thinking about simultaneity, which for me might be like a philosophical kryptonite. Everyone has their own version of this, and mine is the realization that while I am enjoying a perfectly golden peaceful afternoon in my rural homeland, breaking from work, someone else's afternoon, in the same time zone and possibly mere miles away is not exactly or even remotely pleasant, peaceful or inspired. Which then leads to contemplation of how many billions of afternoons, evenings and mornings, depending on the time-zone, are unfolding in various and contrasting ways. But to remember this fact as one enjoys a moment of peace, or even several hours of bliss, is possibly one of the seeds of self-taught compassion, so it's not a bad thing, in measure, in safe doses. But it can definitely send you spinning if you give it to close a consideration for too long. Fears of aging and what it is and so on do not [yet] afflict me personally but I know that the very thought of getting older can send some people, even teenaged ones, into a full blown panic which defies their present healthy, happy-ish reality, makes them ungrateful and forgetful of all that is good. Thankfully that's not one of my plagues, but simultaneity is, so of course the news of the suicide of a writer of exceptional talent, or for that matter the news of a suicide of anyone, brings up the concept of asking oneself what bliss one was enjoying while another fellow human entered the darkest night of his soul, when stories and the urge to create could not win out over other thoughts and urges. A great number of people were stuffing their carts full at various shopping locations and across an ocean all forms of social barbarism were being acted out right as a head full of stories untold went quiet. Or for example the first day of one person quitting smoking is like the 20th anniversary of some other reformed smoker's freedom from imprisonment and this aspect of life/living is both enchanting and frightening, that so much could be unfolding all at once and each of us oblivious to all but the doggy dog of our own day. David Foster Wallace's Kenyon College commencement speech must have been absolutely breath-taking to hear as he delivered it. You can find it on the internet and consider the power of it for yourself, because as much as he denies it, it is in fact a grand clever sad true tutorial on compassion and how we all might get some more of it as soon as possible. So hi if you are reading this and you just quit smoking, congrat-u-fabulatiions. And if you have been free for 25 years or more good for you. Another time I'll tell you all about my escape from the Nicotine Detention Centre but not now.
I'm about to get interrupted by a pan full of roasting peppers, so I will fill you in as quickly as I can and resume another time this meditation...I passed my French exam, which is to say I managed to get the cordless phone operating properly by using the French instruction manual, the only locatable version after a season of delicious nomadism that has mercifully concluded in a filing system unparalleled. I managed to read, in French, a language I have recently begun to re-study with great excitement, because I am in full-blown autodidact mode [September\'s here again!] a banal manual and make something happen. Which was so impressive really, given the achievements available to a human being on a given day in the land of autodidactic delight. I got the phone working so we could hear the telemarketers better when they call to blither. Etc.
I think perhaps I\'m just unsettled because I\'ve been reading \"A People\'s History of the World\" and between the sheer weight of it straining my wrists and the percolating, dark realization that human beings have learned very little about how to behave in thousands and thousands of years.
But there is music, thank god, and crisp sunny afternoons with a gorgeously sweet-natured compadre to remind me what\'s what. And so much more. And to be writing again when one of the brighter of the soldiers of the word army has fallen, well, that\'s the only way to deal with the simultaneity ghosts.
More on my summer \"vacation\" and its connection to things self-taught another time.
Listening to: The Rose Tattoo, Daniela Nardi