Goose Eggs, Chips and Red Dice

I've recently gone through a terrible experience.

It's hard to look back on bad things from the past when they are not solved, and the tricky thing about life is that you don't get to choose what gets or does not get solved. A very cynical person can look at every single choice as a matter of probability. Do not what your heart, conscience and reason tell you to, but what is safest—take the road that has the fewest obstacles, the smoothest run possible.

That's no way of living. In Norm Macdonald's view, the gambling addict seems to understand this:

if you are at the table and you're rolling them bones, then there's no money in playing it safe. You have to take all your chips and put them on double six and watch as every eye goes to you and then to those red dice doing their wild dance and freezing time before finding the cruel green felt.

There are times in life when adventure calls you. The burning bush reveals your choices and you have to take a stance, neither of which being guaranteed to be painless. And sometimes you make a choice that basically destroys you for no reason. You are sure you're doing the right thing and picking the winning horse, but things don't go your way, and you find yourself hanging by the foot from a birch tree over a river of lava, to borrow an image from Bob Dylan. How does it feel?

My solution for dealing with terrible things that seem to have no explanation is that of grief.

You are not going to find an explanation, there are powers above that you cannot comprehend and you shouldn't even have the hubris to try to do so. Some things happen for reasons that are beyond you and tragedies happen for reasons that are beyond you. Trying to reason your way through tragedies might be the single worst thing someone can do if it holds them close forever to such pains. What good is understanding anything if you're destroyed in the process?

Listening to Joanna Newsom's "Goose Eggs", from what I consider to be her most positive album, Divers, I have always been attached to a very specific line:

What's redacted will repeat.

Dealing with people is hard, and breakups are even harder. Ideally, things should be sorted out and discussed, after all, that which you avoid discussing will not disappear but just manifest in different, newer, and more sinister ways. What is redacted will repeat. But any sort of breakup involves two people, and if one person doesn't want to discuss something, redaction is the only option. The fog will forever obscure the vision for both. In this sadder case, I can only see one option.

Grieve. Grieve the loss. Be it that of a friendship, of a love or both, grieve. They're not coming back except for a miracle. Miracles do happen, though.

In a very interesting song among his catalog, Bob Dylan sings

Now there's a wall between us, something there's been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed

The beauty of a personal relationship is often taken for granted when, in reality, it's a deep connection that involves a certain degree of intimacy and vulnerability. Once the wall is up, though, I tend to think it's impossible to recover what's been lost.

But what if you never make the choice out of fear of such a wall? Kierkegaard's aesthetic man famously said that there is no hope and you will regret both. But the aesthetic man merely fears discomfort, particularly that of boredom, which is certainly not the final evil. What if we are actually striving for something more, though?

Let's look back to the gambling addict's mind through Norm. "As you place your chips on the table, you feel anxiety and impatience", he says, and winning is not the point at all, for it only grants relief. The gambler's looking for something else:

It is after the red dice are thrown but before they lie still on the green felt where they fall. It is when the dice are in the air, and as long as they are there, time stops. As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.

Shouldn't all of us be hopeful? Shouldn't all of us want to live a peaceful, meaningful life? Wrong as the gambler might be, he has the courage that many of us lack, the courage to hope.

Joanna Newsom's Divers has a cliché leitmotif of cycles—a leitmotif of leitmotifs!—and as I said I consider it to be her most positive album. Take "Time, as a Symptom", which suggests how eternity can be taken from love:

Love is not a symptom of time,
Time is just a symptom of love
(and of the nullifying, defeating, negating repeating joy of life!)

Is there anyone who shouldn't be striving for this blissful monotonous joy?

It has to be said, however, that it is also true that we can get stuck in the repetition of that which is redacted and will forever torment us. That is the gamble.

The past might not be solved, but why deprive yourself of your own future? I'd advise anyone to grieve their losses, take the red dice, hope and shoot. We've all had too much sorrow.

God, I wish I'd take my own advice.