I'm sorry to have to get obscure and partially serious, but thanks to the internet and the kind folks at blogspot, I have a place to unload these periodic feelings of darkness, and this one is upon me: no amount of regret, atonement, or apology can stop the end.
It is one of those truths that jerks us from childhood into adulthood, and delivers a shock from which many never recover. Simply, we are all capable, and guilty of, committing some act that has starts the final countdown to the bitter end of something. With climate change, it's the the end of the world as most of us know it, with that off-colour comment about Sai Baba being a pedo, a potentially beautiful friendship. It's probably the realization of this inevitability that strips the elderly of their hope for the future and turns them so bitter, longing for the pennywhistles and moonpie of the bright times that were. There are occasions in life when one is made to eat that truth full. Mostly, it's the news, the wars, storms, weirdness, extreme apathy and vapidity, but sometimes it's is also closer to home.
Several months ago my roommate and I were caring for a man who was dying of stage 4 melanoma. He was attempting the Gerson therapy, but was not following it properly, and hadn't bothered about his condition for over year after the appearance of the malignancy. He past away, trying to modify his therapy to the very end, always saying, "what about this?' or "Do you think I should...?". You can't really step back weeks before your impending death and go, "oh shit, this is kinda serious, I guess I better get with the program". It has it's claws in, and probably won't let go, unless you can pry them off with the jaws of life. Hey, it has been known to happen. However, the majority of us only realize what a pigs-ass mistake we've made well past the point of remedy.
I almost hate parents and school teachers for teaching us so judiciously that all you really have to do to make things right is admit your wrong and take responsibility for your shit. It seems like most of the time, even my own shit is completely beyond my power to flush, to say nothing of the steamy piles in the neighbouring stalls.
This whole thread of consciousness is reminding me of an episode of Homicide: life on the streets, in which a detective has to stay with a man who had fallen between the train and platform, his lower half practically torn off, but numb to his senses. It was understood that he was going to die the moment he was extracted from his predictament, and the whole epsiode was spent having him confess all his fears and hopes, blah blah blah, to the stone cold lieutenant, who was reduced to tears by the end. The event that had cause the mans death had already happened, by the consequences were a little late in catching up to him. I guess you could save that event is birth for all of us, but people are very interested in the petty details of the thing, cause we are at heart, well, kinda petty. I mean, a single person is exposed to a gazillion (metric) carcinogens in a day, but which burnt muffin crumble or whiff of cigarette smoke is the straw that finally broke the DNA's back? Which Mars bar finally makes our insulin receptors go, "no more Joe, it's diabetes mellitus time for you, bitch"? How do we catch ourselves before we vomit in our shoes and slip right off the pooky proddy of lifes stony path?
A spirtualist group in town presents various indy film screenings, amoung which is the film, "The power to forget", or something like that. The gist is that all our problems disappear if we can simply leave the past out of our present thinking, and focus on only what confronts us at the moment, in the moment. However, the past is forever following like an angry, bloodthirsty shadow, and it seems that if you cut the threads of fate you've tied to yourself, you'll lose your way and die all the same...maybe just a shade more confused. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and people cannot be blamed for not forseeing the consequences of swimming in that shiny black pool surrounded by the yellow tape when they were 7, but we are giving ourselves too much credit by believing in our supreme ignorance of the potential disasters that accompany many of our daily habits.
Is there are remedy for this? We are cursed with memory as close as dreams to sleep. So we give it up to the you-know-what that be. Fatelism, as cop-outish as it is, has survived as long as it has because eventually we must come to grips with our relative powerlessness in relation to the events that shape our lives. But we do have some power, and we must realize where it ends and the realm of No-control begins. So, when you can't do it, your higher power can. Remember, it goes in the recycle bin.
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