EPIPHANY...
Epiphany...
Not the season, but a revelation. In a book shoved at me in my office by a graduate student very sure of its [and hence his own] claim to absolute truth, I found a metaphor for my own situation so compelling that it almost takes my breath away.
EXILE.
I am an exile, and live between worlds in either one of which I would gladly find a home, if only my experience did not set me at odds in both. I don't know how the rest of you out there feel, but this felt like stumbling upon a name for a hitherto nameless suffering.
EXILE.
Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that -- to borrow a phrase from music -- is contrapuntal...
There is a unique pleasure in this sort of apprehension, especially if the exile is conscious of other contrapuntal juxtapositions that diminish orthodox judgment and elevate appreciative sympathy. There is also a particular sense of achievement in acting as if one were at home wherever one happens to be.
Not the season, but a revelation. In a book shoved at me in my office by a graduate student very sure of its [and hence his own] claim to absolute truth, I found a metaphor for my own situation so compelling that it almost takes my breath away.
EXILE.
I am an exile, and live between worlds in either one of which I would gladly find a home, if only my experience did not set me at odds in both. I don't know how the rest of you out there feel, but this felt like stumbling upon a name for a hitherto nameless suffering.
EXILE.
Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that -- to borrow a phrase from music -- is contrapuntal...There is a unique pleasure in this sort of apprehension, especially if the exile is conscious of other contrapuntal juxtapositions that diminish orthodox judgment and elevate appreciative sympathy. There is also a particular sense of achievement in acting as if one were at home wherever one happens to be.
Edward Saïd
Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience... it is life outside habitual order. It is nomadic, decentered, contrapuntal... no sooner does one get accustomed to it than its unsettling force erupts anew.
Edward Saïd
Or, as Mary McCarthy said,
exile is an oscillation between melancholy and euphoria.
Mary McCarthy
"Nameless suffering" It's suffering because you keep flogging yourself! :)
ReplyDeleteI think my exile was temporary, I finally settled for one of those worlds...and from where I stood in all it's clarity, learned to abhor the other...
OJO:
ReplyDeleteTHAT is precisely my point. What I was saying back in "Sinai" was that I could finally see that I was making an idol of the love I had lost, which like all human endeavors, was in fact a mix of good and bad. (Only I used the word castigating" rather than "flogging." Same diff...) But the point of the post was that I could see that my REAL problem was lack of faith.
And I believe it is. Any time the past exerts that kind of overpowering pull, there is fear of the future mixed in. And that is the end of life.
In the meantime, the word "exile" provides the answer to the question your decision to "abhor the other" raises:
I may be divided against myself, but I insist that I am one and indivisible, so I refuse to declare war against myself.
It is precisely the "either-or" thinking of so many people that drives me wild -- as if I were suddenly categorized as a donkey, and all my years as an elephant disappeared overnight.
I spent thirty happy years as an elephant. And though "donkey," like murder, will out, I will always be marked by my elephant past, no matter what I do in years to come. It is enough for me (at least today) to take it off its pedestal; I see no need to trample it underfoot.
I think the key issue here is that my marriage was sincere, hopeful, and to a large degree happy. It was not a prison, or a lie, or a "beard." It was the result of a choice I made.
So will whatever comes next be.
Cheers.
T
Hi Troll,
ReplyDeleteMy day often goes better when I start it with this prayer...and of course try to remember it throughout the day. Some of us luckier drunks call it the Third Step Prayer:
"God I offer myself to Thee - to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!"
I mention this because your exile sounds a lot like "bondage of self" to me.
Hang in there.
F
I've felt a vague sense of exile, of nameless "homesickness" since I was a child, a resonance effectively damped, or at least deferred, by the distractions of this garden of earthly delights, and the compromises I've made in order to negotiate it successfully.
ReplyDeleteSWJoe:
ReplyDeleteAugustine says that we are born with a God-shaped hole in our heart, and are not happy until we find God to fill it...
T@C
Exile terrifies me as a word.
ReplyDeleteComing from this part of the world exiles either returned home (scary to contemplate) or died in exile. No new home was ever found.