Still Awake and Pondering

I just watched Pulp Fiction with Dad. Noah was sitting there, writhing in pain and throwing up. At one point, he got up and didn't quite make it to the bathroom. He spewed all over the rug (and almost me) and I jumped flat up against the wall. Mom of course was hiding out in her room most likely brooding over how she does everything for the family while Dad was on the floor mopping up puke.

Sam came down sometime and curled up in the beanbag corner and zonked. Noah continued puking. We got him a very large bucket to serve his needs as opposed to the rug or too-distant bathroom. When the movie finished, I came upstairs and checked on the boys and kissed them goodnight even though they were both already sleeping. Now, I'm listening to Sam Cooke and thinking about a lot of nothing in particular.

One thing with Sam Cooke is the way he died. He had an affair with a married woman and her husband came bursting in and shot him. Now, my reaction would be "what an idiot". Other people's reactions would tend to be along the lines of "What a waste"...at least that's what I've heard a lot. And in cases like this, where insanely talented/influential people die young, I just can't tolerated the whole "what a waste of life, talent, etc etc" comment.

I don't believe that any life, in any form, is a waste. Talent is never wasted unless the person chooses not to pursue it and hone it. But if they were actively living it--and obviously he was, because I'm listening to him and writing about him right now--it's definitely not a waste. Stupid to cut it short in that way, though. For other people, they don't usually get themselves murdered by their mistress's husbands. Death comes accidently or of its on volition. Usually, the death makes the person's life even more influential. Maybe it's all just me being sentimental, though.

All I know is, I hope no one ever calls my life a waste, for any reason. Of course varying opinions abound. We've had all the musicians, artists, etc etc who have wasted themselves away from the inside out with drug abuse, and G-d knows what else. Still, although they threw away their time, the past was not a waste. I believe that. I'm not just saying it.

When I was in Israel, we visited the holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, which means Hands and Names when translated into English. It was so real I couldn't get the past I'd never lived out of my sight. I saw it all around me, felt it, breathed it. Everyone in my group cried all day. I'll post it here now because it shows how I feel about the fragility of life and the shame of so many taking it all for granted:

This is where I lose, where there can be no voices or words to fill them, where life is turned to ash and ash to nothingness. This is where the only miracle is a curse: where some survive to remember, to live it over again every night, where names are lost to absolute oblivion. And how can I ask for life to be fair? Why is it that I am here when so many aren't--because the baby crying in the dead woman's arms--the baby shot to silence--was that child's mother and that mother hardly knew a breath of life. Why does my soul get this chance when so many other worlds of others were annihilated? And all there is now is a memorial of stone: stone towers, stone walls, stone beneath our feet. Millions of stones eroding and what is their worth when measured against millions of lives? The six million who perished, the millions who never had a chance to be conceived, the millions who are forgotten as anyone but part of those other millions--the thousands who survived (but not really).

And the list goes on, and the questions prevail, and the answers don't exist. And how can we ask "why?" or "how?"; how can we ask anything when the taste of ash is in our mouths--when we have the mouths to taste it? When we fill up the space that so many other murdered and unmade souls deserve just as much as we? How can we ask? I can't. I can only be stunned to silence, because maybe that empty space where the air blows freely could have been me, could have been my mother, could have been my father, could have been my brother, could have been all of us. When that space could have been all of us. This is why I praise G-d and damn him in one breath. This is why we can all be sinners and saints: sinners because we damn him and saints because we praise. And we praise because we're here knowing creation.

And the list goes on, and the questions prevail. And the answers don't exist.