#830: Stumbling Upon The Ecstatic
Monday, October 22, 2007
I found out that someone to whom I have only written letters through work but have never seen even once or spoken to on the telephone has liver cancer and will die shortly. He is ninety-six years old, so death really is not the craziest thing that could happen to him at this point, and I would not know who he was without his file, a confirmed street address, and the photograph that will accompany his obituary, and yet I feel like weeping.I have the same feeling now that I had when I heard John McDermott sing "Danny Boy" with The Chieftains at a concert I went to in Cosmopolis in 1994.
My fiancé at the time, Phil, took me to see them play, and just before intermission, John McDermott sang an a cappella version of "Danny Boy" that rent my heart into a thousand wilted pieces. To this day, I do not know why I had such a reaction to his clear tenor as it resonated up to my second balcony, front row seat, and I still do not know the words to that song or the history behind it, but once he hit the second or third line of that first verse, hot tears were already coursing down my cheeks. I was so taken with the experience of being so solely focused on and overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment, that I could not stop myself, even when a woman two seats down passed tissues to Phil in the dark.
That night, I was filled with grief, longing, joy, and hope so profound that I never found words for it. Now, after having had episodes like this since, although of a lesser degree, I am grateful for these experiences. I am often too far down into the niggly bits of this and that which intrude on higher life: I am hungry, I am tired, I have to do laundry, I have to go to work, I am cooking: these constitute the veil that obscures our view of the greater of which we are part.
So, for no good reason, as is usual with this sort of thing, I was moved in such a way by the present dying of an old man I have never met. It suddenly made life shine like dragon's gold in the storybooks where children stumble quite accidentally into a gorgeous lair alight with rare riches. If you are aware of the Palinode's and my year of my cervical cancer/hysterectomy surgery/mental instability and his back pain/upcoming back surgery, you would know that this is an amazing feat to affect.
Before you hurt yourself with all that eyerolling you are doing in the face of my cheeseball romanticism, I will have you know that, like anything else in this life, it was fleeting. I just started eating a yogurt that I was fully expecting to be strawberry, and instead I had a mouthful of yellow, fake-flavoured peach. The woman at the lunch counter gave me the wrong kind. I hate peach-flavoured food. It tastes like cheap, small-town-grandmas perfumes smell in church on Sundays. Ew.
See? I'm all back to normal now. The weeping has stopped. As you were.
Moral Of The Story: On the verge of spiritual awareness? Eat something you hate. It will kill your ecstatic enlightenment every time.
Labels: the here and now, the videos
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22 comments:
In these cynical, depressing, repressing times, I sometimes see hope in the most strange places. Is there the possibility that among the porn, the bashing and the racism on the Internet, there is glimmer of hope, that it will bring us all together in some form of global consciousness actually happen? Shedding a tear for a 97 year old men that you have never 'physically' met, gives me hope that it will.
I feel the same way about blueberry yogurt. Tastes like baby powder.
Schmutzie, I don't think it's sappy to feel the things you felt. And considering the way things have been for you lately, I think finding hope and joy in strange places is just as it should be.
I made a special trip from Bloglines to tell you how lovely I thought this was. Then I got here and played the video. It was still lovely, anyway.
Lovely post. I am glad you found words for your experience(s) because it is uplifting to read them.
(Except for the yogurt part but I'm just not a yogurt fan.) I know exactly what you mean. I was driving recently & "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen came on the radio. I almost had to pull over, so hearty was my emotional response.
Don't apologize for the sappy. Everyone should drill a hole in the side of their head and let the sap run out occasionally. A cruel and cynical world demands it. It also adds that extra ooomph to pancakes, which are already pretty ooomph-tastic even without the sap.
marian, I hope so!
lotus07, I think if we just let it out now and again... I have this theory. There's this idea that we all repress our anger and other negative emotions, but why not the flip side? I think we repress our joys as well. There's something safer about the middle ground. TB, I think you just ruined blueberry yogurt for me, but then it wasn't one of my favourites anyway. the queen, I couldn't help myself but stick that ridiculous video in there. Beeker's performance had me in tears with laughter. cheesefairy, your experience with Bruce Springsteen's song just goes to prove that monumental emotional moments can be brought on by the strangest things. You can call me, 'Sir', I'm planning drilling that sap hole in my head more often. It's a fine feeling.
i'm never ready for the slap in the face that music can hand me. I hate hate hate the song "amazing grace" but when i heard it sung at my friend's Fathers funeral...by her, i was done. but i think it had something to do with her lack of training, and her genuine smile as she sang - knowing that her father was no longer suffering from brain cancer.
also - thank you for that video. I laughed out loud every time Beaker hit the high notes. ps - i hate cherry flavouring.
Music is so powerful. I've had those moments you speak of. Music can hold memories like nothing else. At this stage, Christmas carols get me (not the Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer type, more like Away in a Manger and Oh Come All Ye Faithful).
And that food thing - yeah, kills about any type of self-awareness, other than the actual food thing...
amazing grace
danny boy my buddy shantytown classic because they are perfect reflections of who we really are. deficient, lonely, and always looking backward with regret while at the same time moving forward to become sufficient, be a good friend and live life like it was your last day. love you schmutzie. oh yeah! except peach pastel bubbly wine - tasty like pop and it makes you wonderfully silly wthout the redwine hangover.
i am the diva, I am with you on the cherry flavouring thing. It reminds me of these cough drops my mother used to push on me when I was a kid, and they were absolutely horrendous.
Amy, I keep thinking about how monks could use the bad food thing against other monks if they were feeling vengeful, although now that I think about it, I doubt monks would do that sort of thing. BOSSY, have I told you how I love that your name is in all-caps? wench, where do I get me some of that bubbly wine? The promise of the lack of a hangover will win me over despite the peach flavouring. Heidi, I hope they were happy tears!
Pastel Peach was my first drunk ever. I wonder if they still sell it at the LB?
Fake grape flavouring. Gross. But I think my aversion may be the fact that I was forced to take medicine when I was a kid that was this thick, fake-grape-flavoured syrup. Bleck. Certain songs do it to me. Danny Boy is one of them. My theory is that when a song comes from an authentic place, it still carries that authenticity with it beyond its original context. And that's what we respond to without even knowing it.
Well, really. The Chieftains doing pretty much anything can do that to a person. And I'd say you've given us all an important lesson (re: spiritual awareness, peach flavoring) to take away. Hee.
But...the Muppets? Singing 'Danny Boy'? My life is now complete.
See? That's real emotion. What drives me nuts is getting misty over a muthalovin' telephone ad. stupid hormones.
Are we only talking fruit flavors? Because I find hazelnut positively abhorrent. OH. And since I felt compelled to bust out a college word, check out http://www.freerice.com/ if you're a vocabulary geek (and I believe that you are) you'll be sucked in!
Maybe we should always cry. In fact, why don't we?
I honestly never did get that: The idea that if you got really, really old it was not such a big deal if you died.
Shelley, Beaker's solo = laughing until you cry.
Colin, I'm glad to have rounded your whole being alive experience. Pagalina, FreeRice.com is fabulous. I just found out about it yesterday. I am a word god. Ozma, I never got why death mattered more or less depending on the age of the person dying. It's DEATH. It's kind of a big deal whether you're seven or one hundred. Belinda, thank you.
I've been trying to stave off enlightenment for years! Thanks for the tip :)
I enjoyed the post thoroughly. I once looked at a billboard of older folks playing bingo and I started bawling. Thanks for the memories... post a comment ~ Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] ~ main page
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