Bewitching

Landscape 101.i

Jonathan: I want to fly where no seagull has flown before. I want to know what there is to know about life!

Father, Mother: Son, this may not be the best life, but it's all we know.
Jonathan: There's got to be more to life than fighting for fish heads!

[the Elder banishes Jonathan from the flock]
The Elder: You are henceforth and forever outcast!

Jonathan: Listen, everybody! There's no limit to how high we can fly! We can dive for fish and never have to live on garbage again!

Chang: Heaven isn't a place; heaven is perfection.

Chang: Perfect speed isn't moving fast at all; perfect speed is being there.

Chang: I've gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of...

Chang: To fly as fast as thought to anywhere that is now - you begin by knowing that you have already arrived...

Chang: I am a perfect expression of freedom, here and now.

Jonathan: You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now - and nothing can stand in your way!

Jonathan: I only wish to share what I've learned - the very simple fact that it is right for a gull to fly!

Jonathan: The only true law is that which sets us free.

Wisdom 101.ii

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117)

The Meaning of Life..... and Everything.......

The quick and easy answer as everyone knows is 42 (and not to panic). Evolving from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy this posits us (the earth) as part of a gigantic computer program designed to discover that very answer. The point is that it assumes an investigative mode of behaviour and by placing the question in the guise of a comedy places existence firmly in the field of the surreal. Perhaps this is not so far from the same existence being explained in terms of the pantheon of Ancient Greek Gods interfering in the mortal lives of their subjects. Both of these are explanations that put the basic responsibilities for life and its meanings on the shoulders of giants (or at least higher beings with differing senses of responsibility). Us, as puny mortals, are at the beck and call of outside events - the whims of fate.

In the literary novelistic worlds of the human hero the meaning of life is deduced from the actions of the combatants of existence. To do one's best in the face of overwhelming odds. To boldly go where one is told to go and perform as and when required. It may even be the heroism of the ultra-ordinary that is celebrated. Reginald Perrin trudging faithfully into the anti-heroic world of Sunshine Desserts every morning down those streets named after the greatest poets in the English Language. Perhaps the meaning of life is measured in terms of the rise and fall of individuals, of civilisations, even of celebrity.

Another option lies in the meaning of the examined life. Making sense out of the inexplicable. The song of the philosopher struggling to describe mankind (and womankind) to itself. The navel-gazing or the star-gazing, both activities requiring knowledge, vision and mental strength to face what may turn out to be a big fat existential nothing.

My own personal choice lies in the making of beauty and truth (or Truth and Beauty). To describe what you can see or what you wish to see. To create a culture or an image that serves to define that decision to explore. The meaning of life would then be more about the process than the result. In terms of the written word or the making of marks the resulting works of Art would (could, should, might) reveal the nature of existence. It can illustrate the framework in which we find ourselves, the time and space and nature that surrounds us and in turn reflects our options, our opinions and our operations to understand that universe of being. The meaning of life is personal, private, public, profound, and punctuated by confusion. In the pauses and the clauses of existence life may be as obvious and as misused as punctuation. We eat, shoot and leave.