Force Of Lightning

There is lightning striking the edge of things, out beyond the homes, beyond the municipal buildings, even beyond a few hideouts. Some among us feel sheltered in our community, as if some power were diverting lightning from our homes and lives.... Neighboring villages do not share our good fortune. They cluster together in concentric circles around our center, and every summer collapse in flames. But habit or tradition compel them, and so countless defeated residents return after each attack and rebuild. We offer what help we can: wood planks, bricks, carpenters' tools, diagrams, even photographs in vivid colors of finished buildings, showing how to space them within a grid design of an ideal community. What role lightning will play in such idealism is an unanswered question. I have grown prosperous, my wealth accelerates each year. And I wonder in idle moments why happiness is my birth- right. Or mostly so. I lost my first-born son to an infant fever, twin daughters infected each other with contagion. My wife agreed to mercy killing one year into cancer treatment. Death is a solution nature presents typically with her blank expression: neither sympathy nor scorn. But it has not been my tragic destiny! Pay close attention to what I say: unless my flesh is scorched and scarred, unless my bones dissolve into dust, unless my innards gasp in chronic pain, it is not my tragic destiny. I witness such things like an alternative nature, and like nature, I am solemn, poised, confident of the long term, dismissive of the short term. What is tragedy but an avenue into the interior where we do not belong. There it is a welter of excess energy, cross- purposes, disappointments too painful to gaze upon. Block that avenue with your mind. Turn you back on it, and close your eyes tightly. Let nature with those depths in her own way. And those writers so in love with tragic destiny - Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Racine - trash their texts! Living surpasses them. My composure is all-important. You know, that's the trouble with saints. They fuss over sick people, and tell them in steady voices, 'I am here. I will suffer with you'. But the sick person hears, 'I am here. I will suffer for you'. What false hopes they engender! Why do they deny nature's will? They are all sentimentalists: Soon enough they will be leaning forward, whispering, 'I know that Goodness watches over you, and Love embraces you with her healing hands. Let us pray together.' What cheating false hopes! They expect impossible things: a miracle, a guardian capable of perfect love, a deus ex machina. I would rather fall silent for the rest of my life. Pah! What false hopes they pour over our heads like a ritual oil, as if they could change reality by good will. I know better: I pay witness to the dark angels. I want lightning to descend and burn me to oblivion before I surrender to hope. I know what we are - creatures of mud! Let lightning strike me as it will....