Is Ella Fitzgerald singing “You’re the Top” on the way in enough? The ride was smooth, the traffic light, and the whole prospect of the day regular. It was Wednesday in its best, most balanced sense—not hump day, a thing to get over, a thing to persevere, a thing to struggle with. No, it was Wednesday in being ordinary, not too stressful, not too packed—just there in the middle, with some buffer. Last week I was preparing for and dreading a Board of Trustees presentation on Wednesday. How different is this week, as I’m relatively caught up, and the only FAC action for today is a union meeting—but one with no presentations or arguments, just listening. So I get to go and just be, not push, not struggle, as everything just is what it is, and let’s all try to come to terms with it.
Ella’s silky-smooth singing typified the promise of the day. The car did too. The car has been running so peacefully, still like brand new, its quiet electric motor propelling me across town, as though in other-worldly, pollution-free, effortless gliding. And then there’s the Cole Porter factor. How does Indiana produce a Cole Porter? If ever there is evidence that the world is insane, and potentially delightfully so, it’s in that fact—that a breezy, urbane, sophisticate like Porter could spring out of Indiana.
Amidst all this pleasure and easiness and mild contradictions, I find myself contemplating, yet again … the abyss. What is the meaning of it? Existence. Why? What will save us? And if we get saved, what’s the point of it all? Why is there an Oba Chandler? And how can anyone be happy again, knowing that such a being is a possibility?
[Side note: Maybe my students will save me. Here it is 8:37, and so many of them just walked in … late … driving me crazy … distracting me, just as I was peering into that abyss of existence. They’re annoying … but they’re good too. They’re here. They will write. Some will write well, and some will be transformed. I have to let them find their way a bit. I have to be patient. Okay, back to the abyss.]
I should be happy these days. Besides silky Ella on the smooth ride in, and the joy of Cole Porter emerging out of Indiana, I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in years. The new lifestyle agrees with me, and it doesn’t feel all that unnatural or difficult. I should be eyeing a long steady prospect ahead: years of the new routine, years of living well, years of dodging a bullet, years of repeated pleasures, minor challenges, significant successes, accrued living progressing forward, with happy camaraderie, and a general aura of blessing.
But that abyss weighs heavy. It’s there to the side, or over on top, and it doesn’t seem to allow a moment’s peace. “The stakes are so high” it seems to say over and over. The roots of existence and hope are exposed and vulnerable and rotting because of this abyss, which I summarize thus in a bullet list:
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- Donald Trump
- Laurie Joyner
- Climate change
- Death
- The designated hitter
- The Faculty Affairs Committee (or its quixotic efforts)
- The stress of living, which, regardless of the basis for any individual, will always ratchet itself up to wherever it wants to ratchet itself
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I keep searching for a rhythm and routine, a purpose and procedure to rest in and exert myself in. But I think I’m looking for a mode of “eternity” in this quest, a “beyond-the-threat-of-danger-and-loss” life that won’t pull the rug from me (just as I was beginning to stand up). In these days of health and comfort and stability—and really, that’s what I’m experiencing—I find myself unable to relax and settle in because that abyss seems ever ready to pounce. What is the point of this or that endeavor, when it’s going to end, when you’re going to be hurt, when you’re going to lose something ever-so-needed for basic subsistence?
My prospects are as good as they have ever been (possibly better—but then, with Ang gone, can’t really say that), so maybe I’m just “growing up”—realizing the transience of all these incredible blessings of existence. Why does it have to be so good … and so temporary? I wish I could stop dwelling on the darkness, the moment after it ends and then continues on forever on its way.
The thing that helps me is Ella, my students, and so many very little connections with people—family, friends, colleagues. We touch each other in trivialities, and we take one another out of our spirals, be those spirals an abyss, an obsession, a mistake, a bad habit, a distraction. We need the distractions of one another to stay properly distracted. A distracted, purposeful life (please note the irony: one must be distracted to be purposeful, for if you aren’t distracted, the power of abyss thinking would take over your whole being)—a distracted purposeful life can be highly pleasurable, rewarding, and beneficial to the common good. Is that a rock of certainty enough to build a life on? Ella?