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| THE COMPASS ROSE |
*The following excerpt is from the novel: "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat, and I copy it here so as to poke around with the concept of fighting for life, or just giving up because of things that are too big for LIFE (perhaps not a legal term of art, but it is a prominent word in the US Constitution) such as Student Loan debt.
(BTW, I will leave off on "Liberty" and the "Pursuit Of Happiness" for now)
Should I flee my family and loved ones and my home, the USA? or, in the alternative, just give up on my ruined "Life" - animated, or depressingly animated (which mine is) in general, and again, given my utterly hopeless and deep, deep and ever growing nondischargeable Student Loan Debt.
So here is the excerpt:
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Some men just died: Sub-Lieutenant Baker, Stoker Evans, Lieutenant Morrel: and many others. These were the men who had nothing particular to live for, or who had made so fundamental a mess of their lives that it was a relief to forfeit them. . . . .
. . . . . When, toward three o'clock in the morning, the time came for (Stoker Evans) to fight for his life against the cold, he felt only lassitude and despair. It seemed to him, in a moment of insight, that he had had a good run--too good a run to continue indefinitely--and that the moment had come for him to pay for it. If he did not pay for it now--in the darkness, in the cold oily water, in private--then he would have to meet a much harsher reckoning when he got home.
He did not exactly surrender to the sea, but he stopped caring much whether he lived or died: and on this night, an ambiguous will was not enough. Evans did not struggle for the favor of life with anything like the requisite desperation..........Indeed, the swift chill........was like a derisive snub from headquarters; as if life itself were somehow, for the first and last time, shaking its head and crossing its legs.
Morrel died, as it happened, in French, which was his grandmother's tongue: and he died, as he had lately lived, alone. He had spent much of the bitter night outside the main cluster of survivors, floating motionless in his kapok life-jacket, watching the bobbing red lights, listening to the sounds of men in terror and despair. As so often during the past, he felt aloof from what was going on around him; it did not seem to be a party one was really required to join--death would find him here, thirty yards off, if death were coming for him, and in the meantime the remnant of his life was still a private matter.
He thought a great deal about Elaine: his thoughts of her lasted, as he himself did, till nearly daylight. But there came a time, toward five o'clock when his cold body and his tired brain seemed to compass a full circle and meet at the same point of futility and exhaustion. He now saw that he had been utterly foolish, where Elaine was concerned: foolish, and ineffective. He had run an antic course of protest and persuasion: latterly he had behaved like any harassed stage-husband, stalking the boards in some grotesque mask of cuckoldry, while the lovers peeped from the wings and winked at a huge audience. Nothing he had done, he realized now, had served any useful purpose: no words, no appeals, no protests could ever have an ounce of weight. Elaine either loved him or did not, wanted him or could do without, remained faithful or betrayed him. If her love were strong enough, she would stay his: if not, he could not recall her, could not talk her into love again.
It was, of course, now crystal clear that for a long time she had not given a finger-snap for him, one way or the other.
The bleak thought brought a bleaker chill to his body, a fatal hesitation in the tide of life. A long time passed, with no more thoughts at all, and when he woke to this he realized that it was the onset of sleep, and of death. It did not matter now. With calm despair, he stirred himself to sum up what was in his mind, what was in his life. It took him a long and labouring time; but presently he muttered, aloud:
"Il y en a toujours l'un qui base, et l'un qui tourne la joue."
He put his head to one side, as if considering whether this could be improved on. No improvement offered itself, and his slow thoughts petered to nothing again: but his head stayed where it was, and presently the angle of inquiry became the congealing angle of death.
Nicholas Monsarrat
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If life is motion,
towards knowledge,
and God is all knowledge,
and therefore non motion,
then God is dead.
And so therefore, as John Lennon said:
"All you need is love"
and if God is all love,
and, as I have proved above, God is dead,
then what John Lennon was really saying, is:
"All you need is death."
which, of course is motionless and perfect knowledge.
Mad logic right?
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Anyway, here is Colonel Nicholson doing some reflecting.
Have a nice weekend.
