so it goes, part 2
my very first blog post was almost 4 years ago, and said simply "and so it goes." There's a story behind that, like everything, but even i didn't really understand the story fully, and i lived it.
Next to where i worked at the time, in beautiful Oroville, California, there was a housing development on a bluff, overlooking a river, that was never meant to be. It was one of those where they tell you how grand it will be, that construction will be starting soon, and then the date for that start keeps moving steadily into the future as the weeds on the barren land grow taller. In the five years that i worked next to that plot of land, the date changed again and again. They weren't even sneaky about it, just haphazardly pasting new numbers over old. Eventually, after the impending construction date quit being updated and had fallen at least a year behind, someone spray-painted over the whole sign...
I can't really explain how much this spoke to me, and probably most everyone else that drove by that sign every day. Oroville is a shithole, and it's no surprise that this dream of fancy houses on the bluff was never realized. Nothing goes right in that town. Everything dies. so it goes.
At the time, i didn't know that this was a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I didn't realize all that was behind it, but i guess that's what makes the phrase so perfect: you know without really knowing. When Vonnegut died last year, i read many of the memorials and tributes to him, mostly because i knew he was a great writer that i should have known, but never did. That's where i really made the connection to this perfect phrase, where it came from, and why it fit so well. So i bought the book, finally, and told myself i needed to read it, to fully understand. Months later i took it with me on a train ride to Oregon, finishing more than half of the book in one sitting. But for whatever reason (but for the many distractions and angst that came after that) it sat on my bedside table unfinished.
Last week i finally picked it back up, started over, and finished it. It's a beautiful book, in a most peculiar way, and requires reflection while still being subtle about it. That phrase, so it goes, is used extensively throughout the book (106 times, according to Wikipedia). But it has a very specific purpose: briefly reflecting on death and mortality, and transitioning to the next thought.
Going back in my own time, to the beginning of my blog, and that week before Christmas in 2004, starting with and so it goes makes so much sense, says so much about where i was at, even if i didn't really get the connection at the time. My wife moved out, my marriage ended, that winter was death. so it goes.
Reading the book now, reflecting on that time in my life, all that is similar and different, it all fits all over again. a relationship that i wanted for so long, before i even realized how unhappy my marriage had become, has fallen away and died. that future ended. there's still more to come, but that string of events, and where we thought it was going, is no more. so it goes.
Like Billy in Slaughterhouse Five, i can revisit times and events, both happy and sad, though i know how it all ends. It's hard not to get human and emotional about it, and mourn the death. then again, sometimes it's hard to not just approach it as another event. there's a tendency to avoid the emotion, and mourning, and pain. at least in me. Maybe i don't really agree with Vonnegut. I think we need a balance of both.
Next to where i worked at the time, in beautiful Oroville, California, there was a housing development on a bluff, overlooking a river, that was never meant to be. It was one of those where they tell you how grand it will be, that construction will be starting soon, and then the date for that start keeps moving steadily into the future as the weeds on the barren land grow taller. In the five years that i worked next to that plot of land, the date changed again and again. They weren't even sneaky about it, just haphazardly pasting new numbers over old. Eventually, after the impending construction date quit being updated and had fallen at least a year behind, someone spray-painted over the whole sign...
and so it goes
I can't really explain how much this spoke to me, and probably most everyone else that drove by that sign every day. Oroville is a shithole, and it's no surprise that this dream of fancy houses on the bluff was never realized. Nothing goes right in that town. Everything dies. so it goes.
At the time, i didn't know that this was a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I didn't realize all that was behind it, but i guess that's what makes the phrase so perfect: you know without really knowing. When Vonnegut died last year, i read many of the memorials and tributes to him, mostly because i knew he was a great writer that i should have known, but never did. That's where i really made the connection to this perfect phrase, where it came from, and why it fit so well. So i bought the book, finally, and told myself i needed to read it, to fully understand. Months later i took it with me on a train ride to Oregon, finishing more than half of the book in one sitting. But for whatever reason (but for the many distractions and angst that came after that) it sat on my bedside table unfinished.
Last week i finally picked it back up, started over, and finished it. It's a beautiful book, in a most peculiar way, and requires reflection while still being subtle about it. That phrase, so it goes, is used extensively throughout the book (106 times, according to Wikipedia). But it has a very specific purpose: briefly reflecting on death and mortality, and transitioning to the next thought.
They saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them. They hit some. So it goes.It's the same refrain, whether he's writing about a man, a dog, nazism, or the entire city of Dresden. Death is a part of life, and though you should pause and reflect, you have to move on and keep living. This also plays into the main character's time and space travels, and introduction to the alien concept of life as a never-ending string of events that you can travel through at will (making death just another event, but not necessarily the last one to be experienced).
Going back in my own time, to the beginning of my blog, and that week before Christmas in 2004, starting with and so it goes makes so much sense, says so much about where i was at, even if i didn't really get the connection at the time. My wife moved out, my marriage ended, that winter was death. so it goes.
Reading the book now, reflecting on that time in my life, all that is similar and different, it all fits all over again. a relationship that i wanted for so long, before i even realized how unhappy my marriage had become, has fallen away and died. that future ended. there's still more to come, but that string of events, and where we thought it was going, is no more. so it goes.
Like Billy in Slaughterhouse Five, i can revisit times and events, both happy and sad, though i know how it all ends. It's hard not to get human and emotional about it, and mourn the death. then again, sometimes it's hard to not just approach it as another event. there's a tendency to avoid the emotion, and mourning, and pain. at least in me. Maybe i don't really agree with Vonnegut. I think we need a balance of both.
Labels: death, Kurt Vonnegut, mourning, slaughterhouse five, so it goes
posted by joe @ 11:00 PM
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