221111 blue yellow red

November 11

Some days I feel like a child building towers with wooden blocks. I think that I have built some structure of ideas that holds up, and then it all comes crashing down. What tower of wisdom can justify any selfish notion of accomplishment that will allow respite from toil and suffering? How can I stop the suffering of millions, how can I laugh or rest while children are hurting, terrified, lost. How can I cure the ills of evil and destruction in all the politics of the world.

And then I have to ask, what is the point? This is where I was at twenty-two, in the black mud of the swamp, when I opened the university syllabus (reaching up) and found philosophy. Here were the questions that had been knocking at my brain, the purpose of life, its meaning, god. How could I do my life until I knew what it was for. (Swamp metaphor for depression.) (But now, also, I wonder if I might have, should have and now, is it too late?)

I lived, raised kids, worked, built structures and put together meanings.

Then

I remember, and get lost and hear the rocky crash of wooden blocks on the hardwood floor and see the bright primary colours red and blue and yellow tumbled and scattered.

It does not make a house that the world can live in and be safe; it is a child's castle built of wooden pieces that will go back into their box at the end of play, and there is still the night, pain and crying. There are the children, their mothers and fathers, struggling and crying.

*****

I stood on the hill this morning and the sky was orange.

Gradually the dawn came, and amid the rubble of fallen blocks, small "buts" rose up, people laughing, singing, for moments, in love, giving love. These are important.