Choosing


Dear Eugene,

There are many sad things in life, and I think one of the saddest has to be when no story can sustain our interest.

This must be a very odd thing to say because obviously we love our superhero stories and there is always one showing in the cinema.  When all things fail, we'll just re-watch the ones that we really like, on demand.  There're genres and playlists, things we listen to only when we are in the gym, church lingo and tribal handshakes, all sorts of plots and threads to play over again and again, in our head, in our heart, even in our dream.  It is hard to say we're not interested in at least some stories.

But isn't this, the re-watching, the re-making, the regurgitating of an agreeable meal served on our favorite plate, a sight into our plight?

We are building a template for our life, and once it takes shape the remain of our days is all about putting stuffs in their right place.  Does the template slowly emerge or is it imposed by others?  It hardly matters once we adopted the language in fashion as if we've discovered it on our own firsthand.  Even the manifestos of our all-too-rare little revolutions often sound like doctrines from the Dark Ages.  To think of my kids Googling the proper steps for my funeral procession, cutting and pasting the example they deem best to make a best example out of my life being processed...

What sustains our interest in a story is the usefulness of it being uninteresting.  Is it true freedom if we can only choose to eliminate options?

What is the last truly interesting novel you've read?  And if you were so lucky to have stumbled upon one, did you get a chance to get past the second page without resorting to online user reviews and let the number of stars dictate if it's worth your effort to keep going on?  We are too busy gathering justifications for our own stories, materials to build our template, to truly listen.  Get to the point, we say, assuming there is a point and it can't possibly be something beyond our radar.

Love sick or love lost, if you need to, which one would you choose?

It's a trick question.  You can only choose the former, not the latter.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. KateDecember 16, 2018 at 10:12 PM

    Dear Eugene,

    “… One of the saddest has to be when no story can sustain our interest… What sustains our interest in a story is the usefulness of it being uninteresting.”

    “Love sick or love lost, if you need to, which one would you choose?”

    Well, I have no grand story to tell of this Old Year soon to be mostly forgotten, creased & aged, destined to be frozen in the winters of time. I should finish some chores now, ordinary weekend things. But I am choosing to write, to tell a mini all-too-rare little revolution in uninteresting shapes, before it too vanishes like love lost without choice.

    Within the past week, I have received a few ordinary gifts in extraordinary paths of choosing at the whim of my givers: a white mug with big capitalized fonts - “tears of my students”; my elderly neighbor’s hands & knees for 40 minutes on ground of near 32 degrees F to help winterize my underground irrigation system; a full collection of poetry by Robert Frost; and tonight’s unexpected visitors bringing something special for my kid who has been sick for the past 7 days. They must have chosen love-sick to do these things for me & my family. No superheroes, church lingo or tribal handshakes. Just plain folks speaking about Christmas in flesh.

    Love sick or love lost, my choosing?

    Let me reimagine in this wintery choice of an Old Year that has upended much of the ordinary things in my life. I choose to love ’til I get sick to death, though I don’t know how most of the time, and live out from my most uninteresting life template through my funeral procession, telling a story simply mine - of love sick, lost & returned.

    Yours, Kate







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