On the Species

Their lives. They cannot read them. Their eyes are too close to the page so close that they cannot even recognize it as writing. Others, who might make some sense of it are not so inclined.  For others still it is written in a language they never learned, in an alphabet they cannot recognize. Others still, might crumble up the page and thrown it away.

When I look at my own life, now,  I see it the way a novelist might see a character’s. Predispositions, weaknesses, talents too—I would like to imagine how all these combined can be expressed mathematically,  but I don’t know enough math.  These qualities are set up so that they  will trigger certain events (or, in a sense the same event again and again) when they are exposed to something in time, when they stumble upon something that will bond, or that will precipitate certain events (or, in a sense, the same one again and again). These precipitants themselves are visible enough to any outside observer with a modicum of intelligence, but to the subject, whoever it is who keeps stumbling upon them, they prefer to remain incognito, unless, of course, that subject has fallen afoul of them so many times that he at last wakes up to see them as what they are.

All this is very predicable, depending, of course, on who is doing the predicting. As you say, it is easy enough to read. But how can one predict what is already past?

My daughter can, in her very gentle way, recognize a person’s otherwise hidden characteristics in minutes. I think you can do this too.

I have a friend who is Italian and grew up in some rough places. He says that there is a type possessing the talent to see right into and through whomever he meets. This type does not use his powers for good. Iago would be a perfect example.

What I find more and more common is the egotist, the narcissist. The blindest of the blind. Oedipus. King Lear. Raskolnikov. I have known some such for years. King Lear: “he hath ever but slenderly
known himself.” My older brother is like that, brilliant out of bounds but a moron when it comes to understanding himself. Were I to tell him that he sees nothing but what is his own interest—not that he is selfish--  what his tumid ego battens upon, he would think I was delusional or simply pretend that he hadn’t heard what I was saying, or, more likely,  never even hear it in the first place were I to shout it at the top of my lungs.

You know, life has given me a thorough beating. Against my will, I have been forced to learn something from that. I would have preferred another mode of education. I know, however, that that beating is nothing compared to those endued by people who did not live long enough to receive their rewards or their punishments.

Our species likes to eliminate young males. We are a cosmic disaster of infinitesimal dimension. What we possess are love for each other but even more saliently, curiosity. That is the greatest quality of homo sapiens. Are you following the progress of this new Webb telescope? When my father was born in 1912, all the lights in the clear midnight sky were planets or stars. Until Hubble, the idea of billions of galaxies was something the cosmos had kept under wraps. I guess it came as a big shock way back when people realized that the earth a not the center of creation. But to realize now, as well, that it is a locus of immense insignificance? How many have realized that yet? The species itself is incurably narcissistic.

And yet curious.