Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis

Emissary: Five Eternities in September

137 Emissary Five Eternities in September 9/6/10 I was cutting dying fronds from the palm in the backyard. I felt a bolt of hot empathy for the trimmings. ❧ I am saying goodbye to everything. It will be a long, lingering goodbye, most likely. But I am going. It’s not correct to say that my going is “beginning” now; it began before I was born: like everyone’s; like everything’s. It is rather a question of time, or of timing. One month ago, I passed my sixtieth birthday; I must now think of myself as an old man. ❧ As old people go, I am only a beginner. But the learning curve promises to be steep, and graduation will come quickly. ❧ Everything, therefore, becomes a gesture of farewell. This is not a morbid notion; it is quite simply a statement of fact. I will take leave of the world; I will take leave of myself. ❧ Years ago—­ as long ago perhaps as fifteen years—­ I realized that the only question worth thinking about is the question of death, 138 knowing all along that death cannot be thought about—­ or at least the question has no answer for us. Always firmly agnostic on this as on many subjects, I was convinced, and am convinced, that nobody knows anything about death. The system is rigged that way, so to speak. Nevertheless, I spent an enormous amount of time pushing my nose against that sheet of glass, bashing my forehead against that obdurate wall. It was an exercise in futility that recognized itself for what it was full well. It has not ended, nor will it until I end. It is not, at this point, a question of bowing to the inevitable; that has long been a fait accompli. Long, long ago I thought of death as an enemy; now I understand the futility and foolishness of that anthropomorphization. ❧ Heidegger, that thoroughly compromised and yet in certain ways indispensable thinker, described the phenomenon of Being (from the perspective of archaic Greek) more or less this way: we come from concealment into the realm of the unconcealed and we linger awhile. There is concealment and I, like everything, will return there. My lingering approaches its conclusion. ❧ How do we say goodbye to everything? I am leaving. But everything is leaving. And in another sense it is not “I” who is leaving, as I will leave myself behind along with everything else. If I am saying goodbye to everything, everything is also saying goodbye to me. In relativistic terms, it’s interesting to think that means nothing is going anywhere, since we’re all vanishing together. If we all arrive at more or less the same time back in concealment, is concealment still concealment? The idea is attractive, and impossible to disprove, but it smells of an optimistic sophism. ❧ Heraclitus’s river cannot be stepped into twice. My river cannot be finally bid farewell. 139 ❧ What am I? An emissary I sent to myself with an ultimatum. Now, this much of my mission complete, the emissary readies himself to return with a reply. 9/7/10 I dragged the bundled palm fronds, dusty and insubstantial, to the front of the house, for bulk garbage pickup. There was also a large, heavy old storm door, taller than I am by two feet and made of metal, that I had no use for. I took that out and put it on top of the fronds, as a sort of paperweight. Ten minutes later when I went back outside, the storm door was already gone, snagged by a junk scavenger.Travel light, Pilgrim. The heavy ones go first. ❧ The emissary’s mission is complete, but he is not yet discharged. He awaits the pleasure of the Emperor, who has received the fatal ultimatum and made his reply, but has not yet dismissed the emissary. Without an assignment or any other purpose, the emissary sits in the courtyard; he watches the clouds blow past; he watches birds building a nest. He says farewell to them all, but he does not depart. ❧ The attitude of farewell is reverent. It honors that which is passing , and is at the same time attentive to it. It is humble as long as it does not seek to name the hour of departing; it is a servant to the Mystery and a respectful fellow traveler of the rest. I am...