Field View II

Posted by Joe Deegan (Waterville, ME, United States) on 26 October 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

Here's the second half of the panorama. This half has fewer mountains, but I really enjoy those trees' long shadows on the far right.

I can’t believe how quickly the past few days have flown by. Time always escapes you when you want to savor the moment. I find it hard to keep in mind that this, really, is life. This, the way everything is. Right now. Nothing about it seems that way. It’s easier to think of the underwhelming present as just another obstacle. Certainly, the life I sit and dream about in this little apartment is only over the horizon, waiting just beyond these petty misfortunes, this feeling of incompleteness.

Pondering this question is one of my favorite pastimes. I have spent my days fascinated, horrified, or at least preoccupied with the unbelievably unlikely fact of being alive, here, in this particular way. I’m reminded of Dawkins’ metaphor: “For those of us lucky enough to be here, I pictured the relative brevity of life by imagining a laser-thin spotlight creeping along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything before or after the spotlight is shrouded in the darkness of the dead past, or the darkness of the unknown future. We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight.” The truth of this view seems so blindingly self-evident. Why, then, is it still hard to enjoy every second of living, despite the knowledge that to be alive is to be incredibly fortunate? I return to my first observation. Thursday-Saturday were some of the most incredible days since my arrival in the country, but they went by seemingly in an instant. There’s just something about the way we’re put together that makes the good times disappear, and the mediocre ones lengthen.

It’s like the conclusion of that famous Dowson poem, too:

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

When great things are happening, it’s all a dream that ends before we know it. In the morning, we remember for a while, but given enough time it all gets hazy. Given more time than that, we forget and our access to it is gone.

I don’t think these things point to a view that’s overwhelmingly pessimistic, but there’s something amiss with the emotional vector they create when read side-by-side. The idea of conserving happiness, of slowing down the good times just because I can’t be sure they’ll come again— or that I’ll even remember them— reeks of desperation. It feels overly romantic and self-pitying, adding another layer of absurdity to the situation.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that another attitude is necessary. I am entirely willing to accept the effervescent character of happiness. In fact, that doesn’t bother me as much anymore once I figured out the second part— that there’s something redeemable about almost every situation. At the very least, there is beauty in the drama of life, even if suffering isn’t noble, or even intelligible. Moments of nothingness— time in between what we like to think of as ‘life’— as well as moments of pain and loss are ultimately just as life-affirming as our most joyful times. Perhaps the best thing is to retain a sense of this in the face of both boredom and calamity. I’ll close with Donald Hall, who is smarter and more perceptive than anyone. From “Affirmation”:

Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

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