On Saturday my parents and I attended a lovely Thanksgiving dinner party. 4 Romanian-Canadian families of the higher rank speaking of food, the tragic levels of outsourcing, Canadian education, opera and Europe.
I must admit that the guest speaking about food the most was my father. In fact, Dad had a lot to say about everything as usual. As of late, I've come to chime in just when he becomes unclear (read:hostile) to his interlocutor. This self-volunteered position has left me frustrated on more than one occasion. I've forgotten how to express myself properly solely in Romanian. We don't speak English at dinner parties. Not really. We stay beside our soon to be dead language as if it's a fallen horse who has performed beautifully all its life. We stay with it, we cherish it and luxuriate in the melodious twists of the tongue it still bestows upon us. We don't abuse its strength or body. We only speak of beautiful things through it - old publications and bloodied revolution city squares and our romantic poets' lives.
My mother, like Hestia, has the most delightful anecdotes about our elite. She often knows which singer slept with whom, who escaped the political prison camps with the most faith, etcetera.
She surprises my father and he surprises her with his complete lack of detail about our capital's heritage. You see, my mother's family was heavily persecuted by the party. She has an aristocratic line she defends now through dates and times and places correctly remembered.
My father doesn't.
After wine and cigarettes and some turkey and cake, I loaded up the dishwasher, played with some of the kids present and sat down for some real talk.
The discussion turned on existential crises. My mother hasn't had an existential crisis. That's what the real problem was that evening.
There were only 5 of us left. My family and my parents' best friends who have pretty much read everything under the sun.
My dad, absolutely horrified, clarified with her again. Surely Ancush, you've had one.
"No no no no!" and she gets up to make some coffee.
We're all startled and a little worried. It's clear that it's now awkward.
My history with existential crises follows a neat timeline.
I had one existential crisis when I was 15. I was ahead of my class and really bored. I began reading Anna Karenina and Camus' L'etranger. In their twisted world of suicide and absurdity, I began to understand my place in the world. It was easy to do when you're young and a few scribbles away from a perfect tabula rasa. I became acquainted with Absurd.
The absurd sat beside me in my tiny bed. He had blond hair and cold slits for eyes and he didn't know his name. He just wanted to speak all night. I sat up with him and by morning he was keen on showing me which constellations disappear first. Slowly, the glowing nodes of heaven were bleached before us. By morning, the absurd was bleached out as well. No imprint on the bed was left. Not even a tiny blond hair on the pillow.
I tried to explain to my mother in terms less creepy than the ones written above that such a crisis is not painful or scary. It is just uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to wonder where we are going and why, in the face of so much meaninglessness, we cure ourselves by assigning meaning.
She understood that. She said she never had a crisis because life is too beautiful.
I agree. Life really is too beautiful.
I had my last existential crisis two years ago when I first moved into my student housing in Soton. I met someone with whom I had an indecipherable bond. The bond was quickly broken.
I picked up its pieces and looked at them and saw that they were quicksilver. Broken but never really formed. Forever escaping my grasp. The pieces were me, me, me. It was always just me quicksilver from myself. It was all new, I wanted to be so happy.
But the crisis happened one early winter morning. Before my flight to Paris. Absurd sat beside me - older and less blond. He was weary of this life and spoke of the stars as if he would soon join them.
An afterlife? Going where?
Camus conjures Dostoevsky where he puts forth the argument that indeed the absurd artist is rather an existential artist. I won't go through a timeline of my favourite part of Russian literature but I will say this: In "The Idiot" and in "The Brothers Karamazov", Camus argues that Dostoevsky believes God is the answer to the existential crisis.
Camus also goes through Kafka and Kierkegaard and so forth. But in our discussion, these became irrelevant. Mom's powerful belief in God informs her (lack of ) existential crises.
For her, belief is enough.
And you know, with all my books and Absurd character sketches, I envy her this.
My belief isn't strong enough. So there we sat. 5 of us. 4 of us with no belief but with so many books and quotations and pompous page flipping.
There sat my mom - shining and unchanged. She sat like a Dostoevskian character sketch whose name is not Absurd.
My mother's name is not Absurd.
This was my mother's answer.
I tried to explain mine.
My favourite passage in Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus":
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy"
My last crisis ended the way it began - clear eyed and hopeful with no proof of hope. Alas, I understood my plight. I took the experience as a prompt to keep creating, to keep writing, to keep digging inside myself while pushing out out out into the world. In retrospect, I was inspired to treat myself as if I was a celestial body. A star perhaps? And, in a crude way, it made sense to me.
I imagine myself happy.
I must admit that the guest speaking about food the most was my father. In fact, Dad had a lot to say about everything as usual. As of late, I've come to chime in just when he becomes unclear (read:hostile) to his interlocutor. This self-volunteered position has left me frustrated on more than one occasion. I've forgotten how to express myself properly solely in Romanian. We don't speak English at dinner parties. Not really. We stay beside our soon to be dead language as if it's a fallen horse who has performed beautifully all its life. We stay with it, we cherish it and luxuriate in the melodious twists of the tongue it still bestows upon us. We don't abuse its strength or body. We only speak of beautiful things through it - old publications and bloodied revolution city squares and our romantic poets' lives.
My mother, like Hestia, has the most delightful anecdotes about our elite. She often knows which singer slept with whom, who escaped the political prison camps with the most faith, etcetera.
She surprises my father and he surprises her with his complete lack of detail about our capital's heritage. You see, my mother's family was heavily persecuted by the party. She has an aristocratic line she defends now through dates and times and places correctly remembered.
My father doesn't.
After wine and cigarettes and some turkey and cake, I loaded up the dishwasher, played with some of the kids present and sat down for some real talk.
The discussion turned on existential crises. My mother hasn't had an existential crisis. That's what the real problem was that evening.
There were only 5 of us left. My family and my parents' best friends who have pretty much read everything under the sun.
My dad, absolutely horrified, clarified with her again. Surely Ancush, you've had one.
"No no no no!" and she gets up to make some coffee.
We're all startled and a little worried. It's clear that it's now awkward.
My history with existential crises follows a neat timeline.
I had one existential crisis when I was 15. I was ahead of my class and really bored. I began reading Anna Karenina and Camus' L'etranger. In their twisted world of suicide and absurdity, I began to understand my place in the world. It was easy to do when you're young and a few scribbles away from a perfect tabula rasa. I became acquainted with Absurd.
The absurd sat beside me in my tiny bed. He had blond hair and cold slits for eyes and he didn't know his name. He just wanted to speak all night. I sat up with him and by morning he was keen on showing me which constellations disappear first. Slowly, the glowing nodes of heaven were bleached before us. By morning, the absurd was bleached out as well. No imprint on the bed was left. Not even a tiny blond hair on the pillow.
I tried to explain to my mother in terms less creepy than the ones written above that such a crisis is not painful or scary. It is just uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to wonder where we are going and why, in the face of so much meaninglessness, we cure ourselves by assigning meaning.
She understood that. She said she never had a crisis because life is too beautiful.
I agree. Life really is too beautiful.
I had my last existential crisis two years ago when I first moved into my student housing in Soton. I met someone with whom I had an indecipherable bond. The bond was quickly broken.
I picked up its pieces and looked at them and saw that they were quicksilver. Broken but never really formed. Forever escaping my grasp. The pieces were me, me, me. It was always just me quicksilver from myself. It was all new, I wanted to be so happy.
But the crisis happened one early winter morning. Before my flight to Paris. Absurd sat beside me - older and less blond. He was weary of this life and spoke of the stars as if he would soon join them.
An afterlife? Going where?
Camus conjures Dostoevsky where he puts forth the argument that indeed the absurd artist is rather an existential artist. I won't go through a timeline of my favourite part of Russian literature but I will say this: In "The Idiot" and in "The Brothers Karamazov", Camus argues that Dostoevsky believes God is the answer to the existential crisis.
Camus also goes through Kafka and Kierkegaard and so forth. But in our discussion, these became irrelevant. Mom's powerful belief in God informs her (lack of ) existential crises.
For her, belief is enough.
And you know, with all my books and Absurd character sketches, I envy her this.
My belief isn't strong enough. So there we sat. 5 of us. 4 of us with no belief but with so many books and quotations and pompous page flipping.
There sat my mom - shining and unchanged. She sat like a Dostoevskian character sketch whose name is not Absurd.
My mother's name is not Absurd.
This was my mother's answer.
I tried to explain mine.
My favourite passage in Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus":
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy"
My last crisis ended the way it began - clear eyed and hopeful with no proof of hope. Alas, I understood my plight. I took the experience as a prompt to keep creating, to keep writing, to keep digging inside myself while pushing out out out into the world. In retrospect, I was inspired to treat myself as if I was a celestial body. A star perhaps? And, in a crude way, it made sense to me.
I imagine myself happy.
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