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Friday, August 7, 2020

The Bells, Bells, Bells, Bells ...

The dimming or leaking away of who you are is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. 
--Paul Tremblay, Survivors Song


Well, I'm not becoming a zombie, per se. Then again, neither were the afflicted (or, rather, the infected) in Tremblay's novel. But I do have this sense of a 'leaking away' of self, of identity, of purpose. I feel pointless, more to me of mere organism than defined individual. Morning and night perform a mechanical leapfrogging one day to the next and the next without perceptible break in rhythm, little more conscious of moments than a dumbly ticking clock. I wake to the gamelan bells and gongs of the morning call to offerings with a cup of tea, a hungrily inhaled cigarette, a bowl of instant oatmeal. I watch the news, the same news. The world is reported to be outrageous. I am driven to the streets, but they are the same streets, and I stop for the same cup of coffee, sit at the same table, discovering once again that language once lost cannot be recaptured whole but merely reapproximated. It is like trying to reconstruct a lost manuscript. One can recount, one cannot recreate. Again the bells chime and gong at 6. This can only mean that it is dinnertime. This is the time that offerings are given. It is time for the gods to be fed. We are that we are. The day has taken care of itself, it has consumed itself and expended itself, and we, the gods and I, have done nothing. Nor is any of this what I meant to say. The gongs and bells, the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, lead to the usual guttural chant. Ohmmmm. Wahhhhhhhh. The same words in the morning, the same words in the evening, standing in for whatever we meant to or wanted to say.

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