I apologize for the last several posts, that many of them have been videos. I think I have been lazy and not wanting to let the blog die altogether, I post random videos so that at least something is up. Also, I don't know what is up with the page itself, looks a bit funky. Maybe one of these days I'll have my blog-savvy wifey help me spruce it up.
I just recently finished C.S. Lewis's first in his space trilogy, "Out of the Silent Planet." I remember being given the series when I was in middle school but never getting through it, so I was excited to grab it when I was at home and give it another shot. I just wanted to share something that I thought was told beautifully. It tells of how humans are addicted to seeking pleasure and how sad that really is. Also of the growing beauty of memory.
Anyway, here is some context: the main character is a man named Ransom. He is on a planet called Malacandra, having a conversation with a "hrossa" creature called Hyoi:
[Ransom]: "Is the begetting of young not a pleasure among the hrossa?
'A very great one, Hman[man]. This is what we call love.'
'If a thing is a pleasure, a hman wants it again. He might want the pleasure more often than the number of young that could be fed.
It took Hyoi a long time to get the point.
'You mean,' he said slowly, 'that he might do it only in one or two years of his life but again?'
'Yes.'
'But why? Would he want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept? I do not understand.'
'But a dinner comes every day. This love, you say, comes only once while the hross lives?'
'But it takes his whole life. When he is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and winsdom.'
'But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?'
'That is like saying, "my food I must be content to eat.:'
'I do not understand.'
'A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The seroni[another species/creature] could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah in the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then--that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?'
'Perhaps some of them do,' said Ransom. 'But even in a poem does a hross never long to hear one splendid line over again?'...
...'And indeed,' he continued[the hross], 'the poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by the means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought..." (p.72-73)
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Sorry if that was long, but again I just think the explanation of memory is so beautiful there. That there is something mysterious of it, and that it grows as we build upon it with new memories, making us think more fondly upon the first meeting or memory. What is all around it is what makes it beautiful. I suppose this resonates as we are in a season of remembering, especially with my grandmother passing away recently.
Our favorite memories of her...in and of themselves may seem extremely silly or random. But it is the feelings, the history attached to them that make them so special. It is those every day moments where you are not doing anything special, just being with those you love, that you long for when they are gone. Just sitting next to grandma as she rocked in her chair is now a fond memory since we can't do that any more. Even more so, considered in the context of the wonderful life she lived and the beautiful, fragrant spirit she was.
What are your thoughts on memories and remembering? Are they special? What makes them special and causes us to get attached to them? Do you have any items (keepsakes, artifacts, pictures) or memories things that might seem silly or random but mean a lot to you?
