A disturbing little episode, not disturbing in the sense of
calamity--more of those little bumps of
mortality that remind us that whether we matter or not, our conscious time here is limited (though more and more I suspect that the
Hindus have it right). My son saw the picture of the daughter of a
friend of mine, a
god here on
E2, and, in a good sense, a god in my life. I saw the same picture. In it, I saw the
mother of the child, a classmate of mine in high school, a brilliant, beautiful woman blessed with a sense of practicality. My son saw, well, in a word, a "babe."
To be fair, my son's response, appropriate, I suppose, for the 17 year old that he is, was justified. Still, I see the mother, and the idea that a child of mine could be attracted to someone I knew as a child myself turned my world a bit sideways. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." A wise commandment.
In 1945, the States dropped a second atomic bomb over Japan. Japan has a word, yugen, that expresses something I know, but cannot adequately define. Thousands of those who could define it for me perished.
I spent part of the afternoon reading in the backyard. Cabbage moths, small white
butterflies that flit about the East coast, lovely but so common we fail to see their beauty, tasted
oregano flowers,
brandywine flowers, nicotianas, and
honeysuckle. As the
skies started crying again, as they have for every day for almost two weeks now, I wondered how butterflies survived a rainfall. I watched one. Turns out this one hides under the leaves of the purple bean plants. Wait, now it flitted over to the grape plants. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. The rains increase. It tempted the rain, flew upwards straight towards the clouds, then thought better of it and sought shelter under the maple tree.
Anthropomorphizing. I live in a culture that mechanizes just about everything. Butterflies are just fluffy ill-designed bugs programmed by instinct. Maybe.
Ever watch two cabbage moths within 20 feet of each other? They will interrupt their nectar gathering to flit about each other in a figure eight pattern. Instinctual? Seems like a waste of energy better spent evading predators, securing food. I think they just like acknowledging they are not alone in this universe, a hypothesis that survives Occam's razor. Simplest explanation for irrational behavior, at least irrational in the sense of energy spent in in anything besides survival and propagating one's genetic material.
Vedanta. I think Jesus was a Hindu. I no longer think that that's sacriligeous. I should learn
Aramaic--understanding Jesus requires understanding verb tenses. "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."
Book of Thomas.
Any Japanese among us? Any
Japanese scholars? Teach me what
yugen means. I think I know it, but I want to be sure. I want to flit with another
everythingian like the cabbage moth flits with another.
We can only truly accept myths that we are capable of believing. Watch a cabbage
moth, a garter
snake, a painted
turtle. Watch the
sun set, knowing it will rise again at
dawn. Do not accept a myth that cannot explain why two mechanistic critters insist on wasting energy in midflight.
When I was born, my death was guaranteed. Now my son flits with the image of one who I have known almost a lifetime. Her father knows about yugen.