(no subject)
dearest friends,
have these relationships not all been, to varying degrees, works of mourning? we mourn well before our passings - or in other words, has mourning not been in process, readying itself before we recognize it? as derrida tells us, our lives - destinies, so to speak - have always been structured in a staggered formula of one before the other. our friendship follows a predictable scheme whose ordering is unpredictable - that my death come before yours, or yours before mine. it is a hypothetical possibility that we should die at the same time, at the same moment, simultaneously, but this is more exception than the usual case. and even were we to die together, simultaneously, it changes not the fact our relationship was premised more on the possibility that you should mourn me, and i, you. indeed, one aspect - or consequence - of our alignments to one another is that of survival, and in surviving, we outlive, and in this prospect of outliving - and it is always more certainty than mere prospect - there is only mourning. undoubtedly, there are those of you i mourn now - not in some morbid, twisted, black magic, voodoo kind of a way. but with the atlantic or the pacific to conquer, this distance, both spatial and temporal, behaves as some sort of rehearsal. i mourn in the sense that i've not seen, spoken, or heard from many friends in a long time, and may not for quite a while longer. i mourn those tim horton's nights, those idealistic undergrad days, those chinese grease huts following a long night of drinking, those days where basketball wasn't merely a spectator sport - there are more, but memory fails to recall at the moment (can we mourn what we can't remember?). nevertheless, this mourning accomplishes no caesura in the bitter of the bittersweetness of nostalgia. perhaps, this writing, this piece, is an attempt at some kind of eulogy - but to whom? for whom? what does this attempt to reconcile? i mourn you through the past associations i have of you, a past that belongs in a yearbook of halcyon gold. but this mourning fails in one tremendous regard - that you are, of course, alive (or, perhaps not, as my writing this precludes the possibility of your death and your inability to read this; likewise, it precludes the possibility of my death - i could be plowed down by a bus while crossing the street back home after hitting this "post" button in the coffee shop, in which case, this might read as some kind of haunting, words of a ghost). in mourning, we attempt to capture, seize, consume whole, as it were, the life of the deceased. a "successful" mourning would be to expound in full the life accomplishments, virtues, beliefs, desires and spirit of the individual; it involves taking a mental snapshot at the inventory presented, and then sealing it in our hearts. this procedure violates the deceased in two ways, however. firstly, we assume to have spoken fully on behalf of one who cannot speak for her/himself, and secondly, we have disempowered the deceased a second time (the first event of disempowerment being their death) by presuming there is "nothing left" to mourn following this process of interiorization. in fact, this "successful" mourning fails insofar as the deceased no longer exists as other - she/he is ravaged of everything that she/he was. the deceased become consumed in our imaginings, however well-intentioned, and lose the dignity of their differences, their secrets, their dark impulses. this is where my mourning of you fails, you are still alive and exceed my memory of you - i can't successfully, and credibly, "contain" you. yet, if it appears that the "successful" mourning fails, then perhaps all we can ask for is failed mournings. my failed attempts at mourning you at once embolden and heighten your alterity; i don't know you, and the fact is, i must have never known much. this is hardly a criticism, but a testament to us all our individuality - our singularity, and for some reason, that's oddly reassuring.
have these relationships not all been, to varying degrees, works of mourning? we mourn well before our passings - or in other words, has mourning not been in process, readying itself before we recognize it? as derrida tells us, our lives - destinies, so to speak - have always been structured in a staggered formula of one before the other. our friendship follows a predictable scheme whose ordering is unpredictable - that my death come before yours, or yours before mine. it is a hypothetical possibility that we should die at the same time, at the same moment, simultaneously, but this is more exception than the usual case. and even were we to die together, simultaneously, it changes not the fact our relationship was premised more on the possibility that you should mourn me, and i, you. indeed, one aspect - or consequence - of our alignments to one another is that of survival, and in surviving, we outlive, and in this prospect of outliving - and it is always more certainty than mere prospect - there is only mourning. undoubtedly, there are those of you i mourn now - not in some morbid, twisted, black magic, voodoo kind of a way. but with the atlantic or the pacific to conquer, this distance, both spatial and temporal, behaves as some sort of rehearsal. i mourn in the sense that i've not seen, spoken, or heard from many friends in a long time, and may not for quite a while longer. i mourn those tim horton's nights, those idealistic undergrad days, those chinese grease huts following a long night of drinking, those days where basketball wasn't merely a spectator sport - there are more, but memory fails to recall at the moment (can we mourn what we can't remember?). nevertheless, this mourning accomplishes no caesura in the bitter of the bittersweetness of nostalgia. perhaps, this writing, this piece, is an attempt at some kind of eulogy - but to whom? for whom? what does this attempt to reconcile? i mourn you through the past associations i have of you, a past that belongs in a yearbook of halcyon gold. but this mourning fails in one tremendous regard - that you are, of course, alive (or, perhaps not, as my writing this precludes the possibility of your death and your inability to read this; likewise, it precludes the possibility of my death - i could be plowed down by a bus while crossing the street back home after hitting this "post" button in the coffee shop, in which case, this might read as some kind of haunting, words of a ghost). in mourning, we attempt to capture, seize, consume whole, as it were, the life of the deceased. a "successful" mourning would be to expound in full the life accomplishments, virtues, beliefs, desires and spirit of the individual; it involves taking a mental snapshot at the inventory presented, and then sealing it in our hearts. this procedure violates the deceased in two ways, however. firstly, we assume to have spoken fully on behalf of one who cannot speak for her/himself, and secondly, we have disempowered the deceased a second time (the first event of disempowerment being their death) by presuming there is "nothing left" to mourn following this process of interiorization. in fact, this "successful" mourning fails insofar as the deceased no longer exists as other - she/he is ravaged of everything that she/he was. the deceased become consumed in our imaginings, however well-intentioned, and lose the dignity of their differences, their secrets, their dark impulses. this is where my mourning of you fails, you are still alive and exceed my memory of you - i can't successfully, and credibly, "contain" you. yet, if it appears that the "successful" mourning fails, then perhaps all we can ask for is failed mournings. my failed attempts at mourning you at once embolden and heighten your alterity; i don't know you, and the fact is, i must have never known much. this is hardly a criticism, but a testament to us all our individuality - our singularity, and for some reason, that's oddly reassuring.