Heaven isn't for introverts

The platitudes delivered to others in the throes of death, old age, or after loss is that one's friends, loved ones,  and pets will be there with them on the other side.

Rubbish.

First, this demand to never let go of those we love, to never accept their disappearance from one's life and from this earth is a selfish impulse. To address that with a platitude that heaven is a big happy house where they will all be and that while those who mourn their passing and can never let go can rest assured that their lost loves are in good hands.

Rubbish.

They're dead. Gone. Forever dust. The thing that was them, while unique and specific to their circumstances, is one of countless billions that came before who were also unique and specific to their circumstances.

Second, to those who really don't need people around all the time. Heaven sounds like hell. To mangle some Sartre: 'hell is other people.' Why would an introvert want to go to heaven if the balance of narratives one is told about it makes it sounds like one big party where everyone is laughing, smiling, and getting on. In short, it's the same social din that confuses and frustrates the introvert.

I don't want to go to hell, if it is as Sartre describes it. And I don't want to go to heaven if it is as the apologists describe it.

They're the same place.

Nope, I'll fend off too much chatter right here in my little quiet and shaded corner of this world until I return to the oblivion from which I came. My heaven, my church is in attaining excellence in dealing with other people fairly and without any pretense about motives or feelings. So if I'm not having a good time, I'll do my best to politely bow out of a situation. And if they're not having a good time, I'll do what I can within my power to address it by either attempting to be more social or, once again, bowing out.

To be caught in some ardor triangle or to have to wade through a crowd of friends to reach out to someone is not my idea of a good time. Mine is a one on one experience, and my god, those are few and far between in this world if only by virtue of the published lives so many of us live.

I don't want to be conveniently located at the swipe of a finger. I don't want to be constantly on and swiping through others' telepresent self-publications in cookie cutter device applications. I just want some peace and quiet. So please, don't invite me to your big party in heaven or your big party on earth. Don't guilt me into any number of silly situations that you constructed for your own ego. Please, just understand that not everyone wants to be with others, countless others all the goddamned time. Some of us cherish being alone, and we're not being arrogant or selfish or cranky when we refuse to join you or leave early, at least not intentionally so.

Geometry of Murder

Leonora grimaced, as if swallowing some poisonous phlegm. "Major Parker, tell him to--" She glanced at the dark cloud boiling over the mesa like the effluvium of some black-hearted volcano. ''Wait! Let's see what the little cripple can do!" She turned on Manuel with an overbright smile. "Go on, then. Let's see you sculpt a whillwind."

In her face the diagram of bones formed a geometry of murder.

from the short story "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D" in the book 'Vermilion Sands' by J. G. Ballard

Dream: August 6, 2019

I am in a house. A horse has two long hooks piercing its neck on each side. I am not alone with the horse. Another person, a man perhaps, had set the hooks in the horse in an attempt to kill it. The horse is very much alive and is chasing me from room to room. It isn't charging me or being aggressive, but it appears to not want to run from me or leave me alone. The two hooks don't seem to be stopping it from chasing me and facing me no matter which room I enter. I endeavor to finish the process of killing this horse. I finally grab hold of the two hooks and with the unhooked length hanging from its pierce points I pierce the horse's neck. The effect is gruesome as the skin is deformed by the submerged hooks trying to exit the back of its neck. The horse, at this point isn't resembling so much a horse in its stance, nor are the hooks behaving like two steel hooks that would be stiffly hanging from where they were attached to this horse. Nevertheless, the plunged ends of the hooks I have responsibility for are agonizingly exiting the horse's neck and all focus in my dream is on this. The hooks exit, the spine's outline under the skin is evident, the hooks exit. The dream is over.

Dream: August 4, 2019

I had a dream that my father bought me a guinea pig as a pet. It came in a little cage that came apart in a few pieces. I released him and he scurried around the house, which happened to be the house I grew up in as a kid. After literally less than a minute I decided that I didn't want the guinea pig and proceeded to chase after it to put it back in its package. Several times I grabbed the guinea pig and it would squeal an audibly articulate 'please, no' over and over as I picked it up and put it in the tray of its package and put it back together.

Western culture as bedazzlement with material

The conventional wisdom of our time is that European man has advanced by enormous strides since the age of cathedrals. He has landed on the moon. He has cured smallpox. He has harnessed the power in the atom. Another argument, however, might be made in the opposite direction, that all European man has accomplished in 900 years is a more complicated manipulation of materials, a more astounding display of his grasp of the physical principles of matter. That we are dazzled by mere styles of expression. That ours is not an age of mystics but of singular adepts, of performers. That the erection of the cathedrals was the last wild stride European man made before falling back into the confines of his intellect. (p. 250)

from Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

Abject survival on the ice

At 3:30 A.M. on the 26th of April 1832, the whaler Shannon of Hull, running before a southeast gale, slammed bow first into an iceberg. The captain ran forward in the darkness and laid his hands to the wall of ice even as it continued past them, ripping open the ship's starboard side. They were awash in minutes. Sixteen men and three boys were swept away. The survivors clung to each other beneath a sail, on a part of the ship kept afloat by trapped air. They were without food or water. They survived, with the death of but three more, by bleeding each other and drinking the blood from a shoe. A man who left their deck shelter to commit suicide spotted two Danish brigs on the 2nd of May. The survivors, save the captain, were all frostbitten. "The rescue," writes a historian of the arctic whale fisheries, "was one of those providential affairs of which many instances could be related."

I think of a final image of devastation: the remnant of several whaling crews found in a frozen stupor behind a sea wall of dead bodies, stacked up to protect them from the worst of the heavy seas in which their small floe rolled and pitched. (p. 218)

From Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

Aboriginal mindset

Hunting in my experience--and by hunting I simply mean being out on the land--is a state of mind. All of one's faculties are bought to bear in an effort to become fully incorporated into the landscape. It is more than listening for animals or watching for hoofprints or a shift in the weather. It is more than an analysis of what one senses. To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human companions. It means to release yourself from rational images of what something "means"and to be concerned only that it "is." And then to recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be related to other things. These relationships--fresh drops of moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing and a raven's distant voice--become patterns. The patterns are always in motion. Suddenly the pattern--which includes physical hunger, a memory of your family, and memories of the valley you are walking through, these particular plants and smells--takes in the caribou. There is a caribou standing in front of you. The release of the arrow or bullet is like a word spoken out loud. It occurs at the periphery of your concentration.

The mind we know in dreaming, a nonrational, nonlinear comprehension of events in which slips in time and space are normal, is, I believe the conscious working mind of an aboriginal hunter. It is a frame of mind that redefines patience, endurance, and expectation. (pp. 199-200)

from Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez