Everything makes me cry these days, but not in a bad way, and not in a way that is me feeling sorry for myself, like I used to when I was young. My personal angst bores me so much now it never really gets a rise out of me. No, now I cry because, well, the Universe and everything in it.
1) Pai makes me cry, from Whale Rider. This is honestly one of the saddest, truest, films I've ever seen. It's too real for me to even understand, since I know nothing of the "real" Maori except what I can read, and now see. But it is real on a human level. And what it says about the past and the future coming into conflict in the present breaks my heart, although I'm just a privileged Euro freed from the burden of "history", especially ethnic history, which for me is as blank as my white white skin. But this movie also told me something that I've felt and haven't been able to express. That the reign of men is ending, or should be. The traditional male has no place in society anymore, the righteous warriors are dead, and in so many ways, good riddance, but still for them its tragic, and I feel that. But what is left? Bitter old men bent on revenging their irrelevance, or worse, ignorant boys, permanent children, concerned only with their own self-indulgent needs. And still they lead our societies. By now, as far as I can tell, no one knows how to be a real man anymore, unless she is a woman.
2) William Sloane Coffin. Freedom-bus rider, anti-war protester, progressive Christian. Maybe this is the man we're missing, but he's dying. What a heart, what a mind, even after a stroke. Everything he says is measured by compassion and consideration. You can read the interview I saw with him on Now
. Here are a few gems though (and by gems I mean jewels, like the teachings of the Buddha):
"MOYERS: I once heard you speak in which you said, "We must always press the socialist questions. But be careful and dubious about the socialist answers."
COFFIN: Well, the socialist questions are questions about justice. And it's, you can say, with prophet Amos, let justice roll down like mighty waters, but figuring out the irrigation system is complicated. So that justice issue at the heart of socialism. But what's the best irrigation system..."
And this, much truer than I could ever say it: "And my understanding of Christianity is that it underlies all progressive moves to implement more justice. Get higher degree of peace in the world, you know? And although people don't see it, that's what I mean by politically-committed spirituality.
You know, the impulse to love God and neighbor, that impulse is at the heart of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. No question about it. We have much more in common than we have in conflict."
3) Spaulding Gray's body washed ashore. Some say he jumped off the Staten Island ferry. There's poetry in that. This one goes out to all my neurotic, self-involved, self-destructive, dead-pan delivery, dead homies.
4) The Universe. What you're really seeing here is time, remember, the moment when the universe was only 440 million years old. It's there right now just as we are here, but relative to it we don't exist yet. Every higher human endeavour asks the same question in one way or another, and no one can answer it: if the Universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? Is there a set of all things and if so how could it contain itself? If God is everything then what contains God? What is really "outside" the limits if everything is included?
