What if, at the end of the day, Romeo and Juliet were not meant for each other? And it was exactly this quality that made them what they were? What if “meant to be” is actually really boring, and what that really is is all the people who got together without the drama, married and had kids, who had kids, and they grew old, and died, and that was the whole story? When the entire world is against you, after dropping hint after hint, what you get is one stolen night, and then that entire world catches up to you — death is almost inevitable. Some sort of horrible tragedy, at least. But that’s Romeo & Juliet, right? There is no way it would have been anywhere near as romantic had they not both died at the end, being a hairsbreadth from getting away with the perfect crime. Whether this means that it was true love, after all, or that it was not, just because when one thinks of true love, one’s mind immediately jumps to the concept “meant to be” — maybe I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Is this an example of love’s true nature? I think not. It is an exception, and that is precisely why it is so prized as a story, as an experience. Maybe I am leaning in one direction, then. True love: if you love, truly, what else could it be? When you say, “I love you,” are you telling the truth? That’s it then. That’s true love. The nature of the world can be seen in this way, too: that the most ordinary of people can experience the most extraordinary of phenomena. For free. And I rather like that way of looking at the world.

It is interesting to note that those whom destiny seems to favor are exactly those who take charge of the choices in their lives. And in fact, destiny seems less inclined to make dreams come true of those who only dream. One may choose to float through this life, choosing (and yes, it is a choice) to believe that nothing you may do will change the outcome of what is to be in your world, and thus, make such a prophecy come to be. But this world is such that if one decides, quite the contrary, that what you decide means something — then you will find that the more you do this, the truer it becomes. Perhaps there will be things in your way, but perseverance always has rewards, if only in the resolution that whatever happened, you did your best. For this world: rather than nothing being in your control, if you really try, you may find the opposite sounds more and more likely: nothing is impossible.

flowers carved in stone
and the storm is frozen in the air
that which changes moves forward in time
never to be seen again
i am a dream of forgetting
i slip from the grasp of that which possesses me
the muse, and passion, all hardness
to grasp the void by letting go
but even the stone erodes
the storm must dissipate
gradually to come to my earthly senses
begin again to make differences
thus to exist: i am moved
tripping over all the toys i left for myself

Piet Mondrian: The Gray Tree

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Never do anything through strife, or emulation, or vainglory. Never do anything in order to excel other people, but in order to please God, and because it is His will that you should do everything in the best manner that you can.

I believe that I have burned with the fires of creation,
for I am as newly forged upon the anvil, a brand of light;
but if I make no difference in the world, what is it worth?

The Lord my maker is my salvation, let me call on His name with joy. Let me never undertake anything that I would be ashamed to put before him, though I know I will, at times, for I am weak, I am a sinner. Yet He forgives me all my wrongdoings, not because of anything I have done, but because He loved me, He loved all of us, even though we were all unworthy. Let me thank all the larger voices that dug me from my pit, stood me up and sent me on my way. Let me be able to pay back some infinitesimal of what I have been given, and I know this will take all of my effort, my entire life to do so. May I ask of my Lord, upon my judgement, when did I see you hungry, and I fed you? For this is my only aspiration: that I become able to say, “I am an unprofitable servant. I only did as I was told.” Selah.

I hear tell of a flower
that blooms in total darkness:
if light is ever shown on it,
it immediately turns to dust.
Though how it may be I have
heard but rumors, I am told of
some rare few who say they
have seen what that flower
may be. Palest white petals
that seem to be suspended
in air, so gossamer is its stalk.
These folk who claim to view
the invisible, this unique
flower: people whisper they
were born and lived in blackness
deeper than night: better to
view the mysteries of life, of
flowers only darkness may see.

We think of the enormous sacrifices of those early Christians; but what struck them was the immensity of their inheritance in Christ. Take that one phrase (surely the most daring that the mind of man ever conceived), “We are the heirs of God.” That is what they felt about it, that not God Himself could have a fuller life than theirs, and that even He would share all that He had with them! Tremendous words that stagger through their sheer audacity! And yet, here we are, whispering about the steepness of the way, the soreness of the self-denial, the heaviness of the cross, whining and puling, giving to those outside the utterly grotesque impression that religion is a gloomy kind of thing, a dim, monastic twilight where we sit and shiver miserably, out of the sunshine that God made for us, and meant us to enjoy; [that it is] all a doing that nobody would naturally choose, and refraining from what everyone would naturally take; a species of insurance money grudgingly doled out lest some worse thing come upon us.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But that’s not where the story is, is it? We are not Christ, our work does not extend in any way past our deaths — even if we have put something a little more immortal than us in motion, we do not tend to it in any physical way anymore. It’s one long tale to spin: our wanderings, our losings, our findings, and on, and on: you know what is involved in this thing called living. And yet, if we’re lucky, we will one day merely rate a paragraph’s worth of obituary in the local paper. When E. E. Cummings said that “life’s not a paragraph,” he wasn’t really thinking it through. All these years we cry and shout and talk and run and work and fail and jump and fall and eat and sleep: the living of it must be enough in itself, I think. We cannot count on a retrospective to sort all of it out somewhere in time, the huge majority of us; once through and there will be no more. The story of life is not in making sense of it all, but in living today in today: right now, right here, is the story. Maybe no one will ever hear it told, but it doesn’t matter, because we were there. The experience is reason enough for life to be.

Giorgio de Chirico
Melancholy and Mystery of a Street

Click on the pic for a larger version.