The Absurdity of Grief

-a dispatch from the grief process

What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act… The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith … I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection.

— Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1849 (quoted here)

I am very fond of the absurd. The absurd encompasses things that are so extreme that there is no other response to have but to laugh. It’s not necessarily a humorous laugh. Sometimes it’s a little cynical or even bordering on bitterness.

In the definition of absurd there are words like:

• wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate
• ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous
• contrary to all reason or common sense

“It derives from the Latin absurdum meaning "out of tune"” according to Wikipedia. (an often absurd source of information)

So I’ve hit the absurd portion of the grief program it seems. That is apparently what’s on the other side of the existential wall encountered yesterday. So there’s absurdism to be dealt with. 

The absurd is not all that unfamiliar to me. It’s pretty close to my everyday viewpoint on a lot of matters. Having an appreciation of absurdist literature also helps.

So I’ll pretend Kafka is writing my life story for the next while and see how that goes. Some of the choices offered:

“I am in chains. Don’t touch my chains.”
― Franz Kafka

“You can choose to be free , but it’s last decision you’ll ever make”
― Franz Kafka

“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
― Franz Kafka

The Existential Wall

-a dispatch from the grief process

I don’t know what to do next. Not in the next part of my life, or next week or even in the next five minutes.

All the options have an equal valence. None seems any more desirable or preferable to any other. None even seem distinguishable from each other. It’s not like an equanimity or balanced state but a nearly complete disengagement.

It’s like hitting an existential wall.

Maybe similar to the wall marathoners hit when they get a certain distance into the race and they hit that point where everything just sort of shuts down. This happens when you’re trekking in the mountains too. Depending on the route it can come as early as 2 or 3 kilometers in or at 12 or more kilometers. You just want to stop, sit down, not move at all. Doesn’t matter if it’s getting dark, or you’re hungry, or you’re only 500 meters from the spot for the night’s layover, or all of those.

It’s some kind of limit, this existential wall. A margin. An edge.

Some point beyond which envisioning is not possible.

Then what else is there to do but sit down and write a little ditty about it?

Crashing on Shores of Significant Objects

-a dispatch from the grief process

I made a little note on Twitter:

“grief is kind of weird to deal with..one minute stuff feels "normal" then it crashes, again and again. tiring.”

That is just like this quote I put in a previous post.

“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”

― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Last night I went to a local fast food joint to get something to eat. On the way back I pulled my keys out of my purse so I could open the door. I looked at the keys. They are actually two sets of keys, I notice now. I had, up until that moment considered them as one set of keys. One group is for my place in Canada and the other was for our place in India, which is no longer our place because there is nobody there. And the apartment is now empty.

I had spent a fair bit of time last week on the phone and via email with Manoj’s older brother and some close friends dealing with the disposition of all his material goods. There were inventories to be taken, questions to be asked and answered. Technically under Indian law now when people live together for over two years the woman is entitled to property rights. So as the “widow” in all but name, my input was sought. There were some very difficult conversations. Not difficult in terms of conflict but difficult in terms of memory, for all of us. I have known the people I talked with for as long as I have known him.

I didn’t want anything sent to me. As things are examined though I expect some might be. Some personal things which those who know me will know have some significance. I trust that process. They will know these things when they see them.

I have here photos, gifts, household objects, all kinds of things that tie me to that life. Even if the other end of that tie has come undone. The gulf of the separation does not become wider but becomes deeper. I don’t know where the bottom of it is. Maybe there is none. Maybe I will just come out the other side, wherever that may be.

So I look at these keys. This one set that is now two in my mind.

These other keys.

These now uncanny keys.

They are the keys to nowhere.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

-a dispatch from the grief process

~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I don’t particularly like what life has dealt to me right now.

But this life is still a hell of a ride.

Come and Do Drawings With Me

-a dispatch from the grief process

One of the things I am doing on my own is drawing. It’s not something I’ve done often and I certainly don’t do it well. I was writing a little bit about it on Facebook, so I’ll write more here also.

Went to the bookstore the other evening after going to buy some more tea. I bought one book, The errors of young tjaz, by Florjan Lipus an Austrian writer. (Dalkey Archive Press–my current favorite publisher).

I also bought a sketchbook of sorts. I have kept saying I want to draw more because I can’t draw at all. Give me an empty screen or paper and I can fill it with words, in the tiniest of fonts, as well as squeeze some more in between the lines and in all the margins, but a blank paper with the intention to draw remains blank. I can’t think of what to do with it. So I bought this helpful sketchbook. It contains pages with labels on them telling you what to draw on the page. Some pages allow you to draw several things. I really need this kind of direction at present to get the drawing going.

This is the picture from Amazon.

So I’ve done some of the drawings inside. With some of them I have to put words just because words seem to fit there. On some of them I didn’t like the topics so I made up my own. For example I didn’t care to do “presidential pets” not only because I have no idea about such things but it bugs me that it’s a topic at all. So I replaced “presidential pets” with “giant babies”. So that one’s going to be fun whenever I get to it.

Yesterday I ran into an article about Franz Kafka’s drawings. They are quite interesting. He was very reluctant to let anyone see them. The article describes his viewpoint.

In his book Conversations with Kafka, Gustav Janouch describes what happened when he came upon Kafka in mid-doodle: the writer immediately ripped the drawing into little pieces rather than have it be seen by anyone. After this happened a couple times, Kafka relented and let him see his work. Janouch was astonished. “You really didn’t need to hide them from me,” he complained. “They’re perfectly harmless sketches.”

“Kafka slowly wagged his head to and fro – ‘Oh no! They are not as harmless as they look. These drawing are the remains of an old, deep-rooted passion. That’s why I tried to hide them from you…. It’s not on the paper. The passion is in me. I always wanted to be able to draw. I wanted to see, and to hold fast to what was seen. That was my passion.”

~excerpt from Open Culture, The Art of Franz Kafka: Drawings from 1907-1917

That statement resonates with me as I’ve also always had some wish to be able use more than words to express some things. But I draw about as well as I sing. Let’s just say you do not ever want me in a karaoke event.

There was a video also in that article which featured some of the Kafka drawings. It’s very short and quite interesting.

 

Certainly any drawings I’m making are not as sublime as those of Kafka.

They might be more along the lines of the work of Simon and his friends.