Life Its Ownself
Carlos Eire, a Cuban-American author, is a philosopher or, more precisely, a student of life whom I understand because he seems to see things much as I do, did, have seen, known and remember. Unlike me, he's actually lived in the scene of life at its worst. Cuban sunshine in its good, better, best and its bad, worse, worst. From my own Gulf Coast-ness with fiddler crabs and oyster cats, I relate to his puerile sending Cuban lizards to the moon. I can identify with words, thoughts, when he drifts off into the darkest reaches of the mind: "How I wish I could let go of the images I have" he says, "of all the passions that rule me. Letting go is a worthy goal, perhaps the worthiest of all." Then he goes to Johannes Eckhart and says that Meister Eckhart "had it all figured out. The only reason we suffer ... is that we are attached to stuff and to people. What you have to do is stop loving. No attachments, no pain. The state of letting go. Letting go-ness. You even have to let go of God, he warned. 'I pray God may rid me of God' ... Love hurts. It never stops hurting. God is love, God is pain. Pain and joy are one and the same. Life is longing. Pure longing. Nothing but unrequited love", he says.
But as for his own letting go, Eire says, "Blame it on the sun, and the sunlight. Cubans ... the sunlight is forever trapped in their blood. We love much too deeply." Writing from New England where he is a professor of history and religion at Yale, Eire, whose memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana is of his lifelong anguish in forced exile from Cuba, says letting go isn't that simple, that a Cuban can never let go of the sunshine. He speaks from the darkest corners of the mind where there are memories that won't go away. Somewhere in this chapter or another, he says that memories are of God. Memories and maybe dreams, some dreams. I know. I'm alive too and understand: on StAndrews Bay, I live in my own sunshine again at last after an eternity away.
A funny thing about life, my life, is, looking back as Eire does, the particular seasons and places I loved. My senior year at Bay High, and the only year I made straight A's. Forties after the Navy, my decade of forty-something. The years of life in Apalachicola. "Recently" inexplicably, age 75, being seventy-five, even with my January trip to Cleveland's frozen north, why? IDK but that the year I turned 75, despite the endless searing pain of unstable angina, I happily spent the spring and summer at Cove School working on the Bill Lloyd Building every day dawn to dusk, five days and six. Sometimes six days and seven, why? to make the building right in Bill's lifetime.
Why 74 and 75, it was the best. I can't figure it, I don't even agree with it. But it was so, both now and at the Time.
But 84, how in everloving hell did I, a nine year old fourth grader out during recess on what is now HNES William's Field, lying in the sunshine on the red clay and, like Carlos and the lizards, holding a magnifying glass twixt the sun and a giant red ant, get to be 84 and 85, it's not even funny. Oh but, yes, it is, it's life's joke on me and someone or something up there thinks it's quite funny. Wait'll you get here and you'll see, and know, and good on ya. Recalling film critic Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir, memories and dreams, life is its ownself, a memoir in the making.
But the non-letting go-ness - -
T
pic taken by Amy Moody on 2010-08-28, TW on the HNES/CoveSchool auditorium roof, overseeing building repairs.
Book, Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire, whose hatred and contempt for Fidel's revolution seems bottomless
But as for his own letting go, Eire says, "Blame it on the sun, and the sunlight. Cubans ... the sunlight is forever trapped in their blood. We love much too deeply." Writing from New England where he is a professor of history and religion at Yale, Eire, whose memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana is of his lifelong anguish in forced exile from Cuba, says letting go isn't that simple, that a Cuban can never let go of the sunshine. He speaks from the darkest corners of the mind where there are memories that won't go away. Somewhere in this chapter or another, he says that memories are of God. Memories and maybe dreams, some dreams. I know. I'm alive too and understand: on StAndrews Bay, I live in my own sunshine again at last after an eternity away.
A funny thing about life, my life, is, looking back as Eire does, the particular seasons and places I loved. My senior year at Bay High, and the only year I made straight A's. Forties after the Navy, my decade of forty-something. The years of life in Apalachicola. "Recently" inexplicably, age 75, being seventy-five, even with my January trip to Cleveland's frozen north, why? IDK but that the year I turned 75, despite the endless searing pain of unstable angina, I happily spent the spring and summer at Cove School working on the Bill Lloyd Building every day dawn to dusk, five days and six. Sometimes six days and seven, why? to make the building right in Bill's lifetime.
Why 74 and 75, it was the best. I can't figure it, I don't even agree with it. But it was so, both now and at the Time.
But 84, how in everloving hell did I, a nine year old fourth grader out during recess on what is now HNES William's Field, lying in the sunshine on the red clay and, like Carlos and the lizards, holding a magnifying glass twixt the sun and a giant red ant, get to be 84 and 85, it's not even funny. Oh but, yes, it is, it's life's joke on me and someone or something up there thinks it's quite funny. Wait'll you get here and you'll see, and know, and good on ya. Recalling film critic Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir, memories and dreams, life is its ownself, a memoir in the making.
But the non-letting go-ness - -
T
pic taken by Amy Moody on 2010-08-28, TW on the HNES/CoveSchool auditorium roof, overseeing building repairs.
Book, Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire, whose hatred and contempt for Fidel's revolution seems bottomless