Entry tags:
Some roots
So, Dora died.
It was the second of January and I was 19. Steph called late in the evening and I collapsed so badly my mother was worried.
We held a Johnnie wake, after the funeral I didn't attend. We all got drunk and I clung to the stereo while Anna (my girlfriend at the time) stroked my hair. We drank her favorite drinks and listened to her favorite songs, but no one could explain what had happened. There were half a dozen emotional breakdowns, completely fueled by alcohol, and, then, it was late. Anna and I walked back home in the near dawn and I tried to explain (to her, to me, to anyone) how it could possibly make any sense.
I was heavily into Plotinus at the time. (I went on to write my Sophomore Essay as an attempt to understand Dante's trilogy in a Plotinian context), and, so "congenital heart defect", especially one only her family knew about, meant to me that her soul had figured out its mistake and decided to return to the Oversoul.
[Oh, Medora, my heterosoulmate, crazy kid from Freshman year (my RA's best friend, always around, always around). The weirdest thing was opening my dorm room's door and not seeing you watching some horrible Angel/Spike fanvid on my computer.
I left my door unlocked and she knew it. She transferred out of St. John's after my Freshman year and was going to school in NC, but every time she was in town, she was crashing in my room. She used to leave me CDs on my desk, weird mixes of pop music and indie shit I'd never heard. She always said (pre-Anna, TG) that I was the only person at St. John's she'd ever date, if only she weren't straight. And, damn, then there was her other-school boyfriend, less than a month in when she died, so distant and confused at that wake. (That I hope to never understand. At least Ellie died three years in.)]
But, Dora, I'm finally older than you were then, and I'm awkward and terrified at the thought.
Hey, kid...
To move it on: Plotinus was a great comfort to me then, providing a system in which every death had its reason. All life was was a great mistake, a collection of stupid souls just curious enough to leave the home they knew (the Oversoul, the happy place where we're all together), just to see what else was out there.
I thought of death as the great realization of one's mistake. We live until we realize we miss the Oversoul, and then, we die. At that time, Dora was gone because she was smarter than the rest of us. It wasn't just a bad heart, it was her soul finally getting it. She left because she was ready to go home. We were left behind because we weren't.
But, guess what, Plotinus is fucking complicated. I took the Plotinus precept my Junior year, two semesters away from Dora, but entranced.
The biggest problem was the terminology. Plotinus, a Roman Buddhist without Buddha, a man who was more Greek than Roman, a lover of Plato and a viewer of the growing Christian cult, felt the need to explain what he had experienced. And, so, he wrote.
He wrote a hell of a lot.
My seminars on his works from Sophomore year didn't even leave a dint on the surface of what he wrote. We had to special order books to find the texts we needed for the class. It bogged me down to hell.
In the end, however, you don't really need the full "Enneads" to get what he is saying. You just need souls and the Oversoul, and all the other terms fall into place. We fucked up, we are reaching, one day, we'll die and we'll be happy again. It's a simple system, really.
It didn't work, though. Life was too complicated for a bunch of souls just hanging around, waiting to understand their mistakes. (How many times did I declare my understanding of my mistakes, just holding out, waiting for my defect to take me home? Nothing happened, I went nowhere. I had to keep living.) I began to realize that, maybe, just maybe, there was something more to life than just living until you were lucky enough to die.
And that is next time.
It was the second of January and I was 19. Steph called late in the evening and I collapsed so badly my mother was worried.
We held a Johnnie wake, after the funeral I didn't attend. We all got drunk and I clung to the stereo while Anna (my girlfriend at the time) stroked my hair. We drank her favorite drinks and listened to her favorite songs, but no one could explain what had happened. There were half a dozen emotional breakdowns, completely fueled by alcohol, and, then, it was late. Anna and I walked back home in the near dawn and I tried to explain (to her, to me, to anyone) how it could possibly make any sense.
I was heavily into Plotinus at the time. (I went on to write my Sophomore Essay as an attempt to understand Dante's trilogy in a Plotinian context), and, so "congenital heart defect", especially one only her family knew about, meant to me that her soul had figured out its mistake and decided to return to the Oversoul.
[Oh, Medora, my heterosoulmate, crazy kid from Freshman year (my RA's best friend, always around, always around). The weirdest thing was opening my dorm room's door and not seeing you watching some horrible Angel/Spike fanvid on my computer.
I left my door unlocked and she knew it. She transferred out of St. John's after my Freshman year and was going to school in NC, but every time she was in town, she was crashing in my room. She used to leave me CDs on my desk, weird mixes of pop music and indie shit I'd never heard. She always said (pre-Anna, TG) that I was the only person at St. John's she'd ever date, if only she weren't straight. And, damn, then there was her other-school boyfriend, less than a month in when she died, so distant and confused at that wake. (That I hope to never understand. At least Ellie died three years in.)]
But, Dora, I'm finally older than you were then, and I'm awkward and terrified at the thought.
Hey, kid...
To move it on: Plotinus was a great comfort to me then, providing a system in which every death had its reason. All life was was a great mistake, a collection of stupid souls just curious enough to leave the home they knew (the Oversoul, the happy place where we're all together), just to see what else was out there.
I thought of death as the great realization of one's mistake. We live until we realize we miss the Oversoul, and then, we die. At that time, Dora was gone because she was smarter than the rest of us. It wasn't just a bad heart, it was her soul finally getting it. She left because she was ready to go home. We were left behind because we weren't.
But, guess what, Plotinus is fucking complicated. I took the Plotinus precept my Junior year, two semesters away from Dora, but entranced.
The biggest problem was the terminology. Plotinus, a Roman Buddhist without Buddha, a man who was more Greek than Roman, a lover of Plato and a viewer of the growing Christian cult, felt the need to explain what he had experienced. And, so, he wrote.
He wrote a hell of a lot.
My seminars on his works from Sophomore year didn't even leave a dint on the surface of what he wrote. We had to special order books to find the texts we needed for the class. It bogged me down to hell.
In the end, however, you don't really need the full "Enneads" to get what he is saying. You just need souls and the Oversoul, and all the other terms fall into place. We fucked up, we are reaching, one day, we'll die and we'll be happy again. It's a simple system, really.
It didn't work, though. Life was too complicated for a bunch of souls just hanging around, waiting to understand their mistakes. (How many times did I declare my understanding of my mistakes, just holding out, waiting for my defect to take me home? Nothing happened, I went nowhere. I had to keep living.) I began to realize that, maybe, just maybe, there was something more to life than just living until you were lucky enough to die.
And that is next time.