Alone vs. Not Alone, or is that even the question?

This is a stretch of land I have taken to taking in a fair amount lately. On this particular Saturday afternoon/evening, the wind blows leaves to the north (to the right); butterflies corkscrew emergency landings; squirrels leap invisible hurdles then turn and exit, seeming to forget what they were after. The sun inches to the west, shadows reacting with their own arc on the field.

All these things take place as I sit with two fingers of Jameson's, taking it all in, an observer trying to make sense of it all. And here's the thing: that swath of existences, this corner of the Universe and the wider Universe writ large--none of it gives a shit. I can sit there or not, it will continue about its business. I can be ecstatic, or I can be wrestling with the deep feeling of being alone, it will remain indifferent. Down to leaves and butterflies and ant hills, or up to dying stars or black holes or comets, whether I am having a good day, a bad day, or whether I am here at all makes no difference.

Let's call that a scientific fact. Now, what I do with that fact, how I react, how I create my life and my worldview given that that is true--that is what life is. That is what my life will be.

That's the first conscious thought of existential ____________ that must have been grappled with going back to ancient people who painted on the walls of cave. That blank is there so you can insert your own word: dread, freedom, trembling, ecstasy, it's all in what that sense of your place in the bigger picture evokes in you.

What I think, how I fit myself into that blank depends completely on when you ask me. I am not a Che Guevara fan by any means, but I think he was right when he wrote, "In nine months a man can think a lot of thoughts, from the height of philosophical conjecture to the most abject longing for a bowl of soup--in perfect harmony with the state of his stomach."

For the past seven months or so, I have wrestled with the question of whether we are ultimately alone or not alone in this life, on a soul deep level. If you have children or a spouse, it is easy to say not alone, you are surrounded by people you love and who love you. And that's true. Truth is what you know in your heart and soul. Or maybe that's faith. But stay with me. I watch our 12 year old wrestle with that alienated feeling, as 12 year olds will, because I watch and remember it fully, that no one else in the world understands them. And that is valid for their life experience. Nothing I can say can convince her that I went through what she is going through, and in earnest, I didn't, I am a guy, she is a girl, I was in 7th grade 30 years ago and life was different. This is her experience.

But who or what can bridge that gap that takes us from alone to not alone? It's wrapped into the same realization that the Universe doesn't need me; that life goes on regardless. Some people's perception of God crosses that void. For some it is love, probably with a "L." For some, it is our interconnectedness to creation, that we will return to the earth and our corporeal ingredients will be recycled back into the soil. For some it is art, and being able to live on in memories maybe.

I haven't figured it out. Sometimes I feel like Tony Hoagland, who wrote:

At this state in the journey

I would estimate the distance
between myself and my feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage

from Seattle to New York.

I don't have an answer. I'm not sure I will, but I am fairly sure that it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things whether I find out or not. Here is another Hoagland-ism from the same poem, "Self-Improvement:"

Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.

To grow graceful. To rail against. To acquiesce. To rebel against. To delve. To try to understand. To make peace with. What we come up with, our own answer, is our life.

"And her marvelous stars expand"

I was floating on a raft with a half-full beer can in my hand. When I leaned my head back the tree branches and leaves mimicked the expanse of the stars. It was like they shared a set of opening wings. Of course, it could have been the beer...

"And her marvelous stars expand."

That's a line from Pablo Neruda. It opens itself up from within, "Residence on Earth," a book/extended meditation/extended poem that he wrote over the course of 20 years (1925-1945). He stopped writing it the year my mom was born.

But the night stars expanded this morning, when I read it, 65-plus years later. And they expanded back to last week, floating in the pool, thinking that same thing, but without giving it words, just awe, and a mental note.

Maybe Neruda is a time traveler, knowing that it might take him 20 years to let go of his poem, but that with it, its utterance, he might travel across decades or centuries.

Maybe it's just a service of the stars, flinging themselves out across the sky each night, like so much sand from a child's plastic shovel,

And by realizing that the stars are so much shovel-flung sand, and giving ourselves that scale in the scheme of things, we see that, smaller than sand, we can stand shoulder to shoulder with Neruda, separated by only a half-century, which is what, really?

Yeah, Neruda is a time traveler. He uses the stars, which he steps on, as they expand. But maybe it's the beer...

Maybe Tycho Brahe is all we can hope for

I know I know who Tycho Brahe is....

Who is Tycho Brahe?

We were sitting at lunch and the small tug sitting at the dock had his name lettered on her bow. I knew the name, had come across it in college. Astronomer, explorer, something like that.

In our iPhone/Google age, Brahe is searched and found on the spot. Astronomer it is. He was the man. Observed a supernova, made precise calculations about the heavens before the invention of the telescope.

Brahe changed the game. He showed that the stars and heavens were changing, in flux, not perfect and immutable as folks were thinking prior. He laid the framework that changed the universe, or at least how we think about it.

But ultimately he didn't have it quite right. The Earth was still the center. Looking back, he had some fundamental flaws in the truths he was putting out there. But from where he stood and what he had to work with, he was right. And even now we know he was closer than anyone that came before him, and a gateway to help our cosmology get where it is.

The thing about it, is that we are likely in the same boat (not the tug at the DC waterfront, just talking figuratively here). History tells us time and again that what we know at any given time is generally shown to be HUGELY flawed with another century or so worth of technology, data and hindsight.

You could have gone to school and taken a science test where the right answers were the the Earth was flat and/or the center of the universe. Newton was king of physics until Einstein knocked him on his arse.

If you look with a broad historical perspective, you've got to conclude that we are equally fucking wrong about some of the basic building blocks of reality that we take for gospel. Which ones? Who knows? But we're using what we've got to plot the best map, paint the best picture we can. It's not our fault we can't see around the corner.

Maybe Tycho Brahe is all we can hope for. See and say it the best we can, without being able to get our heads around the whole picture. It's gotta be enough. And, hell, if we aren't ultimately right, it's at least good enough to get a small boat named after you 400 years later.

* Photo by Will White