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The book of laughter and forgetting

Lost letters:

main point revolves around how we try to change the past. When we look for change, for a better future, we may actually be trying to change the past. We try to attain power to change our past which we may be ashamed of or which may be a barrier to our "future".

He wanted to efface her from the photograph of his life not because he had not loved her but because he had. He had erased her, her and his love for her, he had scratched out her image until he had made it disappear as the party propaganda section had made Clementis disappear from the balcony where Gottwald had given his historic speech. Mirek rewrote history just like the Communist Party, like all political parties, like all peoples, like mankind. They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its counternance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past.

And I liked the touch of...meaninglessness that follows his above thoughts. Having stopped in his car for a moment as he was thinking on this, he woke from his thoughts and wondered how long he had been in thought. And what did this stop mean? It meant nothing.

But earlier, he (Mirek) had wanted to end his twenty-over year affair with this woman, seeking freedom. For he had made love to an ugly woman because he didn't dare approach pretty ones. He thought himself unworthy of anyone better...that weakness, that deprivation, was the secret he was hiding. And yet later he had been evenly ashamed because he did love her - someone he was ashamed of.


What is this? Pride? It seems much more complex than that. Shame of his past, but why? Was he expecting himself to have had a better past? Did he think we was better than to deserve an affair with an ugly woman in his youth, in the supposed prime of his life? He did later have proper marriages and affairs with other women that can be inferred to be not-ugly. Why was he still haunted by his past? By some insecurity and some apparent failing? And yet he loved her then. How does love come about? Do two people spend time together and form a bond? Is it impossible to love someone really when you never really fell for them? Was that love for her, somehow, tainted by this shame of her. Perhaps he was just using her. But can you not love someone you use? How does this all work?

But we forget.
The assassination of Allende quickly covered the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the massacres in Cambodia...until everyone has completely forgotten everything.
In recent times, some time ago people thought about Tibet. People suddenly dug out its past to discuss issues. Moral issues, historical claiming, human rights...etc. Then as the Olympics started, Tibet was forgotten. Some then "remembered" Georgia. And soon Georgia is forgotten. The American elections. No more.



And sometimes we forget what we started out to do. We can distracted, we fall out of track...ever so common. I have noticed it firstly with myself. I found that I was unable, years back, to get into a proper discussion especially in group work. Partly because of that and self-righteousness, I stopped serious participation in group work. I couldn't keep on track. I would deviate, and I wasn't the only one. Others would too, and eventually I wouldn't know what we were talking about. I only remembered I was a guilty of straying. And discussions with friends strayed too. Suddenly perhaps a statement that was not agreed upon would be scrutinized. It would open up into a bigger discussion. Ideas that altered relative to the new discussion. Sometimes they didn't seem complementary with my earlier idea of the subject. I was fickle.

But I wasn't just trying to defend myself at all costs, though it may have happened at times. It was be false humility to say that I always got distracted off-course because I took the agruments personally. No, I tried to be objective. I tried to separate myself from the discussion. The result was me changing sides frequently (if sides even existed in distinct forms which I felt was the more imposing belief of the people around me). No I don't profess to be a genius; everyone has had private thoughts. Nonetheless I feel embarrassed to talk about it without a disclaimer such as the previous sentence.

The result was I changed sides. And then I found that my credibilty fell as I changed sides, naturally. And the discussion started to matter less and less in those circles. Instead, victory was that of the one with most credibility. If you didn't change sides, you would be more substantial. It makes sense, except that I believed a lot of people were busy defending their stance and appearing substantial. I was not substantial, but I couldn't see others as substantial either. They were stubborn. And when they flaunted a victory, I thought how stupid my company was. I became arrogant. It was a start to my discovery that I too was stupid, except in moments of indulgence, even when suppressed to some extent for whatever my reasons might have been, that I felt smart relative to the other stupid people about me. Sometimes I kept quiet because I thought I was better than that. Sometimes I spoke because I thought keeping quiet was arrogance. Later I just didn't know what I was thinking anymore. Everything and nothing.

I stumbled across a word - "dialectical" - and I chose to define it as a form of...contradiction. A contradiction that more closely describes the world I saw than a world of no contradictions which I found only a fantasy. I loved that word. I loved it maybe for it's appearnace in English, for it's sound - no i think not - but mainly for the meaning it meant to me, not in some sentimental sense but rather its semantic value to me. Most things seemed contradictary to me. A bundle of facts could mean everything, and nothing. The table is measured 30cm across and yet has almost infinite surface length on a micro scale, but we create from the measurement of 30 whatever we need. Maybe we build structures based on that calculation. We can love and hate something at the same time.

I rationalized that someone who does not change his sides must either know everything, or does not know everything. If he doesn't know everything, then in the light of new information, one should have to re-think his position. He should have the privilege to change his mind. If he doesn't change his mind, then the new information had not compelled him into changing his mind whether because the info was just not convincing or he didn't understand it the way it would have convinced, or should have made him change his mind but was decided to be downplayed or ignored.

So it's good to change your mind. But how can that be good? How can you trust someone who changes his mind all the time, trying to be "true" to himself? It's too unpredictable. And a whole bunch of people like that is fickle and probably is what the civilian population is made up of. And they are easily swayed and manipulated. Maybe credibility is more important than a "right" stance. Maybe everything is inherently stupid anyway.


And when we don't forget, we get tormented by our past, if perhaps we haven't resolved it, as in Mirek's case? But why think so much about something? Why take it so seriously? Maybe it IS a serious matter and we should dedicate our lives to it. Just as maybe the destruction of our envirnoment and its ability to provide for us a living future is a serious issue! If it's so serious, we should all be very very serious about this. Do all we can. What you want? Change to this kind of bulb? Ok! Change all! don't use this too much? Ok! I won't even use it at all; I can live without it. It's a serious matter, we must be serious. Maybe too serious. Can we be too serious on a serious matter?


Forgetting is a great thing.
I think that there's too much burden in trying to do everything. We are not Gods. We aren't meant to be. Being a God would be such a tiresome job...knowing everything.