Musings After Dawn

2002-07-27 - 6:34 a.m.

I've been signing guestbook after guestbook lately. I promise all of you, I'm not stalking you.

Though, if I were, would I admit to it?

Anyway, enough of that. New subject.

I'm glad I don't work tonight, because I'm really feeling, well, sad.

Not for me, but sad for everyone. I was looking at a local gay magazine and just was suddenly overcome by how shallow and meaningless a lot of it is, and I had planned to write an entry about the vapidity of the gay community, but then I realised that it isn't endemic to just us...there's a lot of posturing out there, and pretending, and expectations that all of us fail to meet, and I just started to wonder at how we have an entire planet of people here, each one of them wonderful in their own way, but all these people running around trying to be something they're not. It was just sad.

And part of it is reading The Karamazov Brothers, which, really, could be considered a spiritual text in itself. Dostoevsky is trying to include as much as he can of the beliefs he lived with, and I'm seeing reflections in each of them, and I marvel a little at how it might have been to -know- the author of the character Zosima, who seems so utterly wise, and at one point Alyosha was remembering that it was important for him to pray for the forgotten ones, which is something I do when my agnostic shell cracks a bit, and it was explained that if one person can show forgiveness toward someone they don't even know then even those who think they have no one can reach heaven and realise that at least one person has prayed for them, at least one person has sent out their love...and how if a human being can do that, imagine how much love and forgiveness God can give to this forgotten person.

And I realised that I haven't really prayed (or sent out positive vibrations or whatever) in a while, and I remember, on occasion, being so moved by the beauty around us that I would cry. And that's something else that I haven't done in a while.

I'm still agnostic, simply because I can't -know- what's out there, and what faith I have isn't enough to sustain more than a "wait and see" or "wait and hope" attitude, but every now and then it wells up...

The houseguest is a Buddhist-in-training, I think, and we talked a bit about that. I admit to only the very barest of knowledge about Buddhism, and I like a lot about it, but I am not a Buddhist, because I really can't believe that all life is suffering. I think it's all a part of something larger, and that we aren't here just to learn how to suffer. I am in love with life, at least most of the time, and don't see why I should give up looking for the things I enjoy, why I should see them as failures. Buddhism teaches that we must renounce everything in this world in order to embrace everything, to achieve Nirvana. We'll keep living different existences until we are finally able to do this and achieve oneness and nothingness...

But I can't see this life, with it's warm bed, its books, its cuddling with Pookie, its feeding the Demon Cat, its watching the sunrise, its leaves and colours, and people I've met, and mistakes I've made, and pain I've felt and caused, and the love I have for people, the love they have for me...I can't see any of that as a failure, as a trial run.

Because this isn't a trial run. With no guarantee that there's anything afterward, I'm not really ready to assume it'll all be for the best...I need to experience and enjoy and embrace -this- existence, because it's the only one I know, and it's the only one I have guaranteed.

And it's so strange to write these words, because I'm still feeling sad, and maybe to read them you might think I'm feeling better than I am. It isn't like lying, because I believe all this...it's more like...I don't know. I guess it is possible to embrace life and still feel sad, at the same time.

There's something important in that concept.

Cheers,

The Magus

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