Breathing

 

At the end of the play, the executioner walks onstage and pulls off his mask. It’s Everyman again. He holds his hands to his chest and says, “I’m breathing. It’s good to breathe. If you want to keep on breathing, don’t make trouble – or if you must, make the kind of trouble they expect.”

Such is the “moral”, so to speak, of A Man For All Seasons. We have watched how Sir Thomas More was humiliated, imprisoned and finally executed, becoming a martyr to his conscience and his faith. All through it, Everyman has watched each stage of the story, pointing out how Sir Thomas is making life difficult for himself, how much easier he would have things, if only he would co-operate with the people in authority over him. In the end, of course, he cannot and will not endorse what he believes is wrong, and dies for it. His reward is a place in history, of course, as well as sainthood (it has been observed more than once that Utopia is the only science fiction novel written by a canonized saint), but in life he still suffers and he still dies, and as in the play, Everyman just wants to go on breathing.

Well, that’s not quite true. There are many other things Everyman wants. But there are very few things he wants anything like as much as he wants to go on breathing. It takes something tremendous to get Everyman to put his life, or his freedom, or even, really, his convenience, at risk. Something tremendous, and then, often as not, something tremendous but stupid, tremendous but exactly the wrong thing, or at the very least something tremendous but trite.

So Henry keeps changing the rules, and Everyman wants to go on breathing, and the hard part isn’t even facing the axe: it’s facing the years of humiliation, loss of friends and hardship that come before. Those are usually enough to turn the average Thomas into an Everyman. Only a few of us manage to be something more.

 

 

https://janicefalls.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/ancient-language-by-hannah-stephenson/

 

[One of the members of the group observed, “Breathing is the first thing they ask, ‘Is she breathing?’ and it’s the last thing they ask.” Having watched breath leave the body more than once (but once, especially), I really felt that.]

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "It takes more than breath to make life."

I Hear You

 

“I hear you”, I replied. It seemed like an inadequate response, but on the other hand, it was the truth, and the easiest of all my complicated reactions to express, one that I could send quickly instead of allowing the silence to stretch. I could send a longer reply in a moment. I thought it would be better to at least say, “I hear you” first. Painfully, I was reminded of the advice to “Get your first shot off fast, to rattle him. Aim carefully with the second.” Not at all an appropriate thought for this moment, and evidence of how badly my youthful reading had prepared me for this moment, but I would try my best.

As it happened, though, she immediately replied, “Thank you. That, more than anything, is what I need right now, to be heard. Not even to be believed, but to be heard.”

“I do believe you, conditionally at least. I wasn’t there, obviously, but I don’t have any reason to doubt you. I’m not going to play the game of ‘Are you sure you didn’t misinterpret his meaning?’ or ‘Wasn’t he really just being friendly?’. I’m really sorry that this happened to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You’ve already done it. Seriously. Let’s talk about Frankenstein’s Arboretum.”

So, we did. After that real-life nightmare she had just described to me, we talked about an elaborate, stylized, imaginary nightmare that we had both enjoyed, and speculated on how it might be adapted into a computer game, incorporating the various scenes which had been cut for the sake of running time. She even invented a new horror that I thought was quite ingenious, and which would have fit perfectly into the film (though it probably also would have been cut for running time).

We went on from there to discuss an old idea of hers, of a DVD which would consist entirely of deleted scenes form a film which didn’t exist at all, so people could speculate on what the film itself might be like.

I knew she would need counseling for what had happened to her, but I didn’t press her on it. In a couple of weeks, I would ask her if she was in therapy, but I’d be cautious about raising the subject.

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tv1RJDhY3_zOE2Y48LmUhb6d1KxV2rGGMt_WAwSWFHE/edit?usp=sharing

The Magic Eight-Ball Says, "Sometimes, 'I hear you' is all you really need to say'."

Where Memories Are Kept

 I wish I had a place in my brain were memories were kept, secure and reliably stored, as in a digital recording.

Instead, I have a strange, unreliable holographic mechanism in which what is recorded degrades if it is not consulted...but is also degraded if it is consulted frequently, its details tending to become replaced by imaginary ones, its blanks filled in with fragments of unrelated memories.

Some people have trained their memories for greater rigor, and others are supposedly born with a natural ability to recall minute details with precision. All I know is that I don't have such a memory. I have a fairly typical memory, one which fades and fuzzes and only contains fragments and shards as I look backward.

If I had a convenient implant, though -- if I could replace one or two of my skull bones or vertebrae with substitutes made of cross-linked diamond so they were simultaneously data storage cores and also harder and more resilient than natural bone (I might as well go for top-of-the line unobtainium) -- I would be able to store my memories in a reliable form and not have to count on the tricky, dubious phenomenon or epiphenomenon of human memory. 

I would be something different from human in that case. Would I be better or worse? I do think I would be better. If I had possessed such a memory, I would have been able to avoid many of the confusions, doubts and torments that plagued my life, at work and in private. I could have avoided many traps and follies that resulted from distortions of memory, including some which I seem to have manufactured intentionally.

One day, people will have the option to improve their memories with this sort of technology. At first it will be used to help people with severe disabilities. Eventually, it will be available to everyone. Yes, I do wish it were available now. Oh, well.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42548/wasteful-gesture-only-not

What Songs Travel Toward Us

 

I sat on the roof with my guitar, plucking at it. I wondered what the people passing by thought of me: was I a lazy bum, idling away my evening? Was I a hard-working man unwinding after a long shift at the factory or the office? Was I a slightly overaged student, taking a break from studying some esoteric point of paramecium anatomy or Venetian law?

Probably none of them thought I looked like a hard-working man who didn’t especially like his job, sitting at the office engaged at his work. There it was, though. I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that as a singer I would never be more than a fairly decent amateur who would be tolerated at a coffee shop or a Saturday market. The only way I was going to make a living in music was as a songwriter, grinding out tunes for other people to perform, much better than I ever could.

I could write music at a pretty fast pace, fast enough to bring in enough to live on. I did better when I allowed myself time to let the music come to me, though, instead of chasing after it. If I just sat here like this, comfortable on an afternoon in late May, and plucked at my old acoustic Sitting Bull (because if I ever got into a fight, he was sturdy enough to use as “a coup stick”), there was no telling what songs might travel toward me.

Besides that, it felt better to just leave myself open for creation. It was the best feeling in the world when a song came and sat in my lap and said, “Play me”, or tapped me on the shoulder and said, “It’s time I was played.”

So here I sat, plucking and listening and waiting. I’d give it another ten minutes, and then I’d begin grinding out unrequited teen love for Chicken Clock 

 

https://onbeing.org/poetry/cross-that-line/

The Magic Eight Ball says, "Cross that line."