Petter, et al,
I've been reading the postings with great interest. It wasn't until
Petter's (and I'll confess, I was only able to give it a cursory reading)
that I felt the need to respond.
I, too, thought of Percy when I heard the news. But I didn't experience
the "excitement" of rotation. I did, in a small way, feel closer to the
"marrow" of existence, but not the exhilaration that I feel when there is
an incoming snow storm (no hurricanes here in the midwest) or something
that hit home to me in a personal way. I literally felt nauseated. We were
watching the reports in the faculty lounge until I finally had to leave.
I took a walk around campus to try to pray and clear my head. I saw
students talking to each other, some were sitting with cell phones to
their ears and blank looks on their faces. What stood out was the lack of
people (many, I guess, decided
not to go out) and an eerie silence. Or, better, a sense of not knowing
how to act. And then I saw a construction worker, beard and long hair,
getting out of his truck. The radio was on and he was listening to the
broadcast. Our eyes met, then darted away. And then they met again, and
all we could do was nod our heads as if saying, What can we possibly put
into words? And I walked one. And my sense was that all of us were asking,
How do we act? How are we supposed to feel?
The Percean element of this post is that the tragedy produced, yes, the
heightened awareness of my surroundings (the construction worker I may
have never acknowledged or remembered) and a reaction that was less
intense or extreme than a mere snow storm. I don't know. I guess I did
attain an intensity or awareness, but somehow my main sense was that of
numbness and the inability to articulate my feelings.
When I returned to the faculty lounge, the station was running a list of
services, cancellations, etc. And then came the announcement: Tonights
Jimmy Buffet concert has been postponed. Then a faculty member slammed his
fist on the table and said, "Dammit, now that means war!" We all laughed
in relief or something. But it brought to my mind my years in social
services and how we could "laugh" at the most severe cases of the people
we worked with: the young girl whose mother, a memeber of some group
called the Fellowship of the Ram, handed her 13 year-old daughter a shovel
and said, "Go dig your grave." Or whatever the case, someone would make
some irreverent joke and we would laugh in relief and somehow move to the
next person.
Sorry for these ramblings. Most have nothing do with anything being said.
But Petter's posting made me wonder why we nervously use humor to aid us
in dealing with the unspeakable. And why the unspeakable was better
communicated by a nod of the head between a construction worker and me
than all of my philosophical musings.
David Beck
"The only true joy on earth is to escape from the
prison of our false self, and enter by love into union
with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of
every creature and in the core of our own souls."
-Thomas Merton
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