'Schau hinter dich'

Nella & Jule (11), #Kiel 2024

@FotoVorschlag

In 2009, I had to cancel a scheduled keynote talk at the European Lisp Symposium (ELS) in Italy because I was due to be in surgery at that exact time for my thyroid cancer. (Surgery went well, and I've seemed thankfully free of it since.) They were kind enough to ask me to speak in Lisbon in 2010 instead. But I didn't at the time, in 2009, speak publicly about the surgery or the cancer. Instead I made a vague excuse about an illness in the family (not technically untrue) being the reason I couldn't do the talk.

On the evening before the surgery, I wrote a somewhat metaphorically cryptic post to my blog that I figured would at least capture my apprehension in case the surgery did not go well, or even if it did, I suppose. It's still interesting to have a window back into my thoughts.

https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/05/over-edge.html?

Back to modern day, I do have a planned procedure (not tomorrow, not dire and far more routine, so not to worry, but please don't ask for additional details just now) that I've been reflecting about just a bit.

Though in all honesty, I and all of us are probably at more risk just walking around on the streets in our emerging fascism (here in the US, though other places are not exactly immune either), and that's on my mind all the time now as well. Any one of us could become an unperson, certainly anyone with decent ethics anyway, as that seems to almost be the criterion for who they're going after.

The tanka I wrote is not specific to one thing in particular, just the sum total of various such things that point to the ephemeral nature of each of our existences.

It's both frightening and infuriating to live in a society where we are at risk merely because of our very existence or nature being seen as a crime.

There may be some among us that don't feel at risk. I wish I could say that's good. But I worry it's obliviousness/denial, or privilege, or something darker, perhaps even being comforted by being on the winning side of bigotry. Maybe give it some thought, because I don't want people to be disempowered by what's afoot, but neither should they feel it's someone else's problem. We have real problems that need to really be addressed. It's a time to feel uncomfortable because no one should be comfortable with what's happening. It's a time for people to empathize and contribute to getting the world back onto an even keel.

Meanwhile we are all individually fragile, too. I had a philosophy class in which the professor told us we could not say with certainty that we would have lunch with someone tomorrow. The future is intrinsically less than certain, we're just talking degree here. But the things going on now are good cause to appreciate those we love, and make sure that we've got things in order in case things get wonky.

And even beyond the politics of the day, the state of climate is dire. I talk enough of that elsewhere, so won't belabor it, but its spectre is ever-present.

Still, it also makes it a time to live, not to put off living to some mythical future time when things will be better. (I wrote a different haiku about that earlier this evening as part of this same pondering.) Let's work toward creating a bright future, but let's also not fail to appreciate that today is all we know we have for sure. Make the best of it. And be the person you want others to remember fondly.

@samuelpepys

Pepys's entry beautifully captures the joy of looking back on a day spent with friends in unguarded company:

"In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content and my wife walked for half an hour in the garden."

As always with Pepys, the unorthodox syntax adds poetry to the passage.

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