Warm Recollections #51
More from the Bitz Files
As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…
One of the functions of funerals is to provide a time limit for the most abject initial stage of grieving. By standing there, facing it head on, you earn the right to not feel guilty when it starts to fade from your mind, just a little, when the brain and soul do their essential jobs of dulling pain, so you can go on. You stood there. You paid witness with tears and a wrenching heart. Both you and other people know how you felt. You’ve served your tour of duty, in public. You don’t have to do it forever.
A lot of therapy is predicated on this: “Something bad happened, therefore I feel bad.” Whereas for at least some of what we go through it’s actually: “I feel bad, therefore I assume something has happened (or that I’m reacting badly to something that’s occurred) — and I must work out what it is, and continue to worry about it”.
Sometimes you feel bad because you feel bad, and that’s all there is to it. It may be a feeling you should live with, and not a wholly negative experience in the long run.
Writing something down sadly often seems to fix it in time. This can be splendidly useful if trying to get away from something — dealing with the past, objectifying it, enabling the ‘sufferer’ to move past — but a bad thing if it is an insight you want to carry forward with its full weight.
Photos can bring back happy memories. But either video (or far worse, Super 8) always seems to reek of melancholy and loss even if every person in shot is still alive. There’s something about the way it pins lost time that makes it horrifically obvious how much closer to the grave we all are, what parts of life are now behind us and gone.
The deviant mind evolves faster than the good. People learn how to break things far more quickly than we can work out how to make them. The Trickster spirit has deep roots in humankind. It may be what got us where we are.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
As always a pleasure to read.
Thanks Mike, a lovely piece and most timely