Friday, October 15, 2004

good mourning


jacques derrida, celebrated french philosopher and internationally misunderstood author (in the cool sense of the word misunderstood) died while we were having wine and cheese in his honor, halfway across the globe.

the humble community of mourners (the class' official fun name as stated in the course syllabus of CL 230-european literature, first semester, academic year 2004-2005, university of the philippines), has mourned alongside derrida by doing close readings on the funeral orations he had given to his friends compiled in the work of mourning as well his lucid thoughts on death, the gift of death. we did not know the man personally, and i am very sure that he did not know us at all.

i chuck this snippet of information to my box labeled "ironic" which i hide under my bed.

***

miracles happen.

thank god it does. in a span of less than twelve hours, i was able to compile sixteen pages worth of thought. (also: thank god for courier new pt. 11) with trembling hands, i slid the stapled bunch of papers into the plastic folder hanging on dr. schriever's office door. sixteen pages of deep-seated reflection on death and mourning, at first, was an unlikely feat for somebody who had just received his baccalaureate degree six months ago. starting my post-graduate life by understanding death was simply foreboding. and at the tender age of **, i could not believe that i was able to examine the topic with such dettached faux intelligence.

to quote myself:


In truth, we will never fully understand what death is for as long as we live. Certainly, understanding its unadulterated nature will require an experience of it, in which event, we would be stripped of the chance to communicate, let alone evaluate, what we have discovered unless we haunt the living. Since this haunting is least likely to voluntarily come from the one who has already crossed (unless the occult is dabbled into), the ones who survive bring it upon themselves. For us who have not died, the most we can do is to make meaning of death as we live through experiences of loss. We somehow rationalize death through this. Death is a concept hard to grasp for as long as one does not come face-to-face with it. This is, in a rough summation, mourning.

dying is different from death. wanting to die is different from understanding death and mourning. i still want to die young but i still don't understand death. i mourn for myself.

***

if i was able to tame the beast that is the course requirement for CL 230, my battle with my science fiction and fantasy writing workshop class is still ongoing. my first semester in grad school is marvelously decorated by my very first incomplete. i am giving myself the semestral break to claim the grade i deserve. or plainly, a grade, for that matter.

around three hours before the deadline (which i have set by begging for an extension), i sent my professor a text message asking for a grade of inc. by this time, reality had just slapped the daylights out of me as it whispered: you aint gonna make it bro.

it pained me (and it still does) that i was not able to finish what i had started. in ateneo, i never allowed myself to withdraw from a class or to get dropped from one. ever. sure, i dropped to my knees, worked up my charm and smiled my way to completions. once, i even promised a life of celibacy to my theology teacher. i got a final grade of c+, which to me was a lot better that an fa. (failure due to absences. and i still have not broken that promise, unintentionally.) i failed math12 and had to retake it but it did not impede me from finishing on time. and then i decided to obtain a minor. i was able to finish everything in four years. the inc is a new thing to me and i hope to god that i do not get too comfortable with it.

i shut the computer down and proceeded to get my much-needed sleep as the sun happily hovered above the gi-sheets. good morning, charlie. sweet dreams. and good mourning. the rhythm of my life...

posted by carl @ 1:46 AM