Hi Arlo, Thanks for your words and the quote from Pirsig! "Patterns" have to be unpacked. The MOQ is consoling.
Joe > Joe, > > My deepest condolences. My mother also has a serious medical > condition with which I've been occupied. > > Pirsig's words on Chris' death in the afterward to ZMM is one of the > more meaningful short considerations of "death" I have come across. > Worth repeating. The "pattterns" Pirisig talks about, I believe, are > the dialogic inter-social, and intellectual, patterns we build over > our biological lives. They are larger than "us", and are not limited > nor confined to the biological patterns from which they emerge. Your > wife lives not only in the voices and echoes and dreams of those who > knew her, but in the myriad of ways her participation with them > effected their being, their patterns, their activity. In this sense, > I believe, we are all at once both echoes and sound. > > "I tend to become taken with philosophic questions, going over them > and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round > and round until they either produce an answer or become so > repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now > the question became obsessive: "Where did he go?" > > Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He > had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of > books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this > planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack > at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed > back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of > these answers made any sense. > > It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just > something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental > hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just > imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like > that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in > trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that > disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off > like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always > appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go? > > The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could > be asked "Where did he go?" it must be asked "What is the 'he' that > is gone?" There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as > primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this > idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and > blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they > weren't Chris. > > What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an > object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the > flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The > pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that > neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete > control of. > > Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. > But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the > center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern > was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything. > That's probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery > headstones and any material property or representation of the > deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by > finding some new material thing to center itself upon." (Pirsig, ZMM > Afterward) > > Arlo > > moq_discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
