Remarks made by JWM
on August 10 to Panjayat
Future is cut off. Whole future. Puts you into state
of shock. Immovable. Intensification of sensitivity. Sensitive
of everything. Whole world becomes silent. Physical shock. Spiritual
understanding.
Stunned: Complex in itself. Boasted that nothing
could shock me. I'd seen it all, but I was wrong. First your future
is cut off, snapped. Puts you into a state of shock. Immobility.
Suddenly frozen. With it comes radical intensification of sensitivity
of everything. Then whole world becomes silent. Thick silence.
You hear but it's sheer silence.
2. EMPTIED
Drained all of a sudden. Sudden evacuation. Sense
of the hole at the center. Hole has been so expanded that there
is nothing more to bridge. You experience it wasn't John who died,
but I.
Emptied: Experience of being emptied, drained all
at once. A tub full. All at once. Total evacuation. Whole universe
drained of any kind of meaning. Not thrown into absurdity. That
comes later. Rather just aware of the hole at the center. Nothing
left to bridge over. Aware of own fragility. No recovery from
this kind of grief.
3. WEIGHT
Gravity intensifies Physically feel old. "feel
my age" Suddenly you are helpless. Let people take care of
you. Everything is trivia. Not intellectual, but nothing you've
ever done is important. Why you let people take care. Everything
is sheer intentionality. Effort, whether walking into other room
or saying, Good Morning.
Weight: Weight of own body. Gravity intensifies.
Also suddenly feel old. Whether 20 or 60. I feel my age…..
a twenty year old would feel 90. With that you feel helpless.
You just let them take care of you.
4. ABSTRACTED
Abstracted as never before. Sense you are beyond
your senses. Thomas Aquinas: "In direct communication with
angels." Abstracted from your mind. Experience yourself as
somebody else. Continual sense of being impartial observer. Empathize
with others to appropriate what is happening to you.
Abstracted: You're abstracted as never before. I'm
glad for fasts. You're out of your mind. Abstract from your mind.
Experience you're somebody else. Have to shake your head and need
to pull yourself out of being an impartial observer. Have to employ
empathy to others in order to experience it yourself.
[THESE NOTES WERE THEN TRANSLATED INTO JOE'S TALK ON ENDLESSNESS GIVEN AT HIS SON'S JOHN'S FUNERAL.]