Tag Archives: God

An Elixir For Love

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“I was thinking about an elixir for love, the other day.  It would make beautiful people I see–almost anywhere–just become attractive.  We would fall in love, and have the most wonderful life to live!  Why did I think of such an absurd thing?  I noticed that beautiful people and I were not attractive!  We were not attracting each other!”

This is a quote, and could possibly come from all the new dating sites that have sprung up in the past five years, everywhere.  It actually is something my son said to me, on his observation of life.  (It’s sort of a summer homework project, I gather.)  From being in school, everyone is in cliques.  “And this completely shuts people off from each other,” observed again, my son.  If someone in clique A wanted to talk to someone in clique B, then there would ensue a whole ruler-full of acitivity that would evolve into a whole set of political manoeuvring, set either to establish new clique rules or to completely destroy the social lives of the clique-rule-breakers.  This is high school for thugs, politicians, and the dating game.

When I heard him say these things, I immediately wanted to counter him with something truly more worthy of reality than what he said he sees.  And, if you have guessed correctly, I was not exactly able to make my case for the shallow lives of teenagers.

I also thought back to my high school days, and yes, his description of just this one feeling, is very accurate.  Almost every high school interaction is heavy, laden, with much prejudice, and attempts to be someone part of something important.  If not for one’s own self-aggrandizement, then, for protection against those who who held much “political power” to make life miserable.  Teenagers need to feel rich, able to drive the car, and if not, then, to be able to have friends who have cars.  This is the center core of every teenager’s hope in life.  They need evidence, that does not yet exist, of worthiness, money, and value.

So, what is with my son’s need to buy an elixir for love?  Our talk actually did continue.  It was not stopped and stunted without investigation.  He is not necessarily older and more mature in his few years, but he has heard the lectures nd the talk of those who are more mature and have more experience.  So, I asked him, what exactly he was thinking of when he used such a strong metaphor for his thoughts and feelings?  He said something surprising enough, that it surprised me a little.  His answer?  “We are always trapped in roles we do not like.”  He is blessed with the gift of the gab, like his mother, and I immediately thought of a million things to say to him, but, I thought carefully so that I would only say what could possibly made sense to a teenager.

“Are you doing something you don’t want to do right now?”

My son hesitated, and, I gather, to try to figure out what it was we were both saying to each other.  “Everyone just hates each other all the time!  Everyone is boring.  The girls are boring, and the guys get boring.  I hate ending up stuck at someone’s house, or hanging out in the cafeteria, because there’s always nothing to do.  And people just get boring!”

I took a deep breath. It seemed that there was something on his mind.  I was wondering if there was something unrequited?  He did not answer, and was a still statue.

So, I did prod him a little, and yes, it seems, that there was a girl that was hanging out close to him and his friends, but she never really responded to the things he said or to his flat out questions about just going to hang out with him.  He was getting frustrated, but since she did always end up hanging out, close to him and his friends, he was also getting confused.  He imagined that there could be an “elixir of love” that could just make everything clear!  This girl, then, would not be so confusing, and cause him so much heartache!

“And,” as he says, “attractive people would be attractive to each other!”

I commiserated with him.  Yes, he is experiencing something that not only teenagers face every day, but something that a lot of people face in life.  I applaud him for his insight into the matter, and suggested that the answer may not be the elixir, but for him to either wait for another year, or, to find an official school club for him and this girl to join together.  “Believe it or not,” I said, “some girls are very shy, even more shy than some boys!  Don’t give up!”

He seemed to be relieved.  I am hoping, right now, that the problem does have this answer, and not some other, terrible, unexplanable answer, that perhaps only someone like God can answer.

My son and I smiled at each other, and we gave each other confidence in each other.  I am again, blessed with an easy life, and I cross my fingers every day, that we remain such a happy, lucky, family.  And, if I could, I would bottle all this into an elixir called “life” and give it away to people, spreading the joy, and the freedom that comes with joy.

Surprising Thoughts In the Summer

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Funny thing.  I recently saw a play where nothing ever changes.  The name of the play?  “Waiting For Godot.”  I actually not so much as saw it, as read it in book form from cover to cover.  The exciting thing is the one skeleton tree on the stage.  It is there when the stage lights come on and still there at the end when the lights go off.  It is the one very strong metaphor, outside of the life we live with the two clowns.

The play is only two acts long and the same  thing happens in both acts–nothing.  The clowns clown around, spending the night together by the tree, and eventually, the clowns leave, singly–effectively separating themselves.

The play is by Samuel Beckett, an ex-patriot Englishman living in Paris, France.  He originally wrote “Waiting for Godot” in French and then re-wrote it in English after receiving the reviews.  He is still a very famous playwright, now that he is dead.  He is in good company with other playwrights like Eugene Ionesco, all of them referred to as the Absurdists.

It was by accident that I came across the play, and even got to reading it.  I think I was attracted by the black and white 1929 or 1930 feel, of dust-bowl America where nothing exists, and everything is cheap.  The clowns are in bowler hats, overalls with suspenders, and checked, button-down shirts.  They have stubble and rough work boots on.  They also often speak non-sensically, in gibberish, and they will mix their languages, with one sentence carrying up to three or four different languages.  “Waiting for Godot” relies heavily on our imaginations to fill in the parts that the clowns do not speak.  They in fact do not debate very much or very long on their existence, which we can only say is a mystery.

They make fun of almost everything, which leads to some surprising conclusions, whether the answers have to do with reality or with just imagined places and things.  It takes an educated actor to be able to take on one of the roles, including a travelling hobo who sells things from his cart.

The three characters are equals.  There is no “ruler,” “police officer,” “rich person,” “poor person,” “parent,” or “child.”  They all meet as strangers, and even though they become acquainted, they leave each other’s  company separated.  It is a stark play of a tough reality.  They become closely acquainted in their struggle to find meaning in existence, even going to the point of questioning whether they actually are existing?  But, as reality is, the play comes to an end, the stage is cleared, and the skeletal tree is left standing on the stage.

So, have I heard the clowns?  Am I enlightened, according to that great European Revolution, which demanded its intelligentsia debate reality and come up with better solutions to life?  Beckett probably can be considered one of the elite during the tail en do the Enlightenment.  He challenged common thought that there must be a God, that life as it is, is not “good enough,” as, any person who imagines himself with the power of God, would definitely do a better job.

It has now become moot in my eyes.  The debate is an exercise.  Something to meditate on. I heard that things change as we grow old.  That my reading of “Waiting for Godot” now, will have a completely different understanding ten years from now… or, even twenty to thirty years from now.  The English language, according to the Oxford dictionary of Common English is always changing, and it always changes faster and more accurately the more people read–the dictionary included.

I consider this the one big project of the year, that I have promised myself to complete, annually.  It is a habit I picked up from school.  My private school teachers insisted that even though school is out for the summer, we must find a project to do and finish.  Now, that I am older and no longer living my life from school term to school term, I can usually satisfy myself by completing one big project a year.  It does not have to be reading some elitist book, but it does have to make me fee like I like myself.

So, now that “Waiting for Godot” is over, for another twenty or thirty years, I find myself thinking of making a beer cocktail, making sure it is sparkly, sugary, and bitter.  I see myself at our cottage, by the dock, and feeling the breeze that builds in late summer off the shore.

Gods, Actors, And Cannes

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The most beautiful thing about an actor is the way he looks into your soul, simply by turning his head and gazing into your eyes.  It is impossible to return the favor and we swoon as the movie continues.  We feel secure when the actor does this…. revealing the complete meaning of being alive.  Sometimes it is almost as if God is speaking, as if the messenger from heaven, wings unfurled and flight through the air to rush towards earth, is the breath of the one who creates.  Are we ever so lucky?  Do we ever get to see this extra-ordinary circumstance any more than once or twice in our life?  And, why do we pine so, just for these one or two circumstances?

I am willing to pay for a movie theatre experience, which can add up to one hundred dollars for our family when we do this outing….  I love that the size of the actor takes the whole wall.  I love that the music, the voices, the dialogue, fills the entire room.  I like the dimness, shared with all the audience.

Movie awards season has started again.  Cannes, France is the host of the Cannes Film Festival, and it is the premiere film fest in all the world.  It means something…  something good, to be there.  It is difficult for me to get any juiciness out of it…. I ravenously swallow all the information that I can find….  But, as always, as an outsider, I can only admire the red carpet poses and read the opinion of the local film critic.  I, too, have fallen in love with the great actors and the great leading men.  Who can forget Russell Crowe in Gladiator…  and of course, Brad Pitt in Fight Club or Seven….  Or more appropriately, in Troy or Mr. and Mrs. Smith?

These actors take over the screen, and screen by screen, they take over the world, making money fly.  I could watch several movies from Hollywood in one day…  And not be blind to everything by the end of it.  I could enjoy as if I gorget the horrible facts of reality.  But in the end, I always find the incredible efforts of these global names takes me away and I know I will live forever.

The wish for many gods to exist is not some barbaric pagan dream.  It is not about trying to ignore reality and hope for something that we can understand.  It is about seeing.  The look of a god.  The meaning of a god.  The wish come true of what God is.  It is about having and believing, because one God can only look like one thing….  Perhaps the greatest?  Perhaps the only?  Perhaps nothing like the way I am, the way I live, the way I think,  the way life is?  Why is there a God of everything when everything just cannot meet the standard that this One God is creator of?

What if the Greeks of ancient times, actually are right?  What is there are different dieties?  That let us say, each race, each  ethnicity, is led by a god?  That there is great importance to this each god?  That these gods are exactly perfect in who and what they are, in the role they have in creation, in nature, in life?

If we use the example of Hollywood, with all their screen gods and goddesses, it suddenly becomes possible and probably…  that a universe of many gods can exist.  I am not saying that one great God cannot create what it is that we have, I am saying that we do not have to rely and believe only in one God just because it makes sense that one God ca make reality make sense in every single case.  Many gods can come from the same point of view.  Many gods can still make one reality.  God and gods and existence is not about endeavoring beyond ability to create.  Things suddenly exploded, as in the Big Bang.  Things just interlace.  Things just rely and delegate and work together.  It does not necessarily gave to be a lonely universe…  a lonely planet.  Our desire for more, for relatedness, for company, for greater, for love, for familiar, for just plain old life, is the mirror of the being or beings that lead all of this creation.  They show the way time after time after time.  With each birth.  With each death.  And with each moment that we catch that glimpse of God.

So, I am looking at Cannes…. Looking to see what it is that that lonely planet of Hollywood and all the other planets of movies have created in their gathering for Cannes.  I am thinking that they try their best at Cannes.  That the movies are always greater there.  I wish I could join the crowd that has gatherer from around the world there.  They are gathered there to see each other and to see everyone.  They are there for a great party, once a year, because Cannes is the siren call for all greatness.

One day, in another life, I will get the chance to fly to Cannes.  I will remember here, where I am now, but I will be in the future.  I am looking forward to it.   A bientot, Cannes!