Diffused


Dear Eugene,

"Nobody feels any pain..."

If you mumbled this line often enough it sounds like "Nobody diffused any pain..."

Does it mean I can't diffuse my own pain, someone else's pain, or no one can diffuse any pain, mine or anyone or everyone else's?

On one level none of the above can be true.  Just by speaking about pain we are already diffusing it somewhat.  Yet on a deeper level we know no amount of speaking can diffuse all pain, at least not to ever go deep enough to reach the root.  There are many painkillers on the market, but what we finally need is a root canal.  And not everybody has a safety net to afford it.

My son doesn't floss.  He said he does and I saw his movement like phantom last night: I thought I caught a glimpse of him doing it and--there--he was done.  No pain yet; so much to gain in life.  Can't wait to rejoin the Youtube queue for another indifferent giggle.

If you feel indifferent often enough you'd think peace is finally on earth and what suffocates us is goodwill after all.  The speech of the privileged speaks a safety net into a trampoline.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 7, 2018 at 7:52 PM

    Dear Eugene,

    Consanguinity. 1939 Poland. The stories of others came so far with us, downhill & up, till we find some nobody in pain diffused.

    “Nobody feels any pain… Yet on a deeper level we know no amount of speaking can diffuse all pain… If you feel indifferent often enough you'd think peace is finally on earth.. “

    The most intense pain may well be the sort I have not felt, one of missed opportunities: words unspoken & masked to evade that awkward feeling; pupils closed to block light from illuminating the obvious; faces untouched, unchanged by the morning sun; a song of the mutilated spirit, dismissed in the rain.

    In August 2018, at the fringes of the Louvre, I paused in my hurried steps along the cobblestone path to avoid such pain of missed moments. A sonata of stark agony permeated the dense heat. Who or what was the source of this pain? Among peddlers & crows, I found the cellist camouflaged in the shadows of the gateway arch. She was enamored with grief, a phantom of beauty & torment paired in motion, her every lift & dip of the bow agitating the strings to mock the mind & strain the heart.

    For an enduring brevity in time, I froze at the sight of her swaying head, entranced & embittered by her alternating tepid & furious notes. Consanguinity. Pain, unfiltered, naked & lonesome, diffused among bypassers distracted in frenzy & indifferent to her music, dissipating in the bowels of nothingness at rush hour. The real high octaves of art would percolate down the gilded corridors & chandeliers in the world’s grandest museum within steps & sounds of reach.

    My kid hollered at me momentarily, distressed over my delay in joining her at the entrance queue along with surging visitors whose tailored & shared pain I would have never known or imagined. Come on - let’s go! She beckoned me, unaware of having just missed the rarest among galleries of wonder palpable only through pain most liberating & transformative.

    Yours, Kate

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