To Making Sense

Because let’s be clear: you are made, manufactured, processed and constructed. You are created by whatever facts or views or experiential detritus we pick up along the way and use them as scaffolding, mortar, bricks, paint, wood to build you.

But we don’t think we do that. We say “make sense”, but only when it appears that we are not making it at all.

He’s 80-something. After a day mowing the yard, he decides this is too much. The yard is small, granted, and most people his age aren’t out there mowing and edging and weeding with the attention he has. But the time has come. And so he decides to buy a riding mower. The kind that will cut the yard in two turns. The kind they use out in the country. On acerage. “You know, we’ll do you yard for you,” I say. No, no. He wants to do it himself. He has to. It’s important. Today, I see him drive it out of the garage. Very shiny. He could do the whole block in the time it used to take him to do just his. 

Makes sense.

90 degrees and 74% humidity. I admit it’s hot but still, I refuse to turn on the air conditioning. I would sleep better. I would get more work done. I wouldn’t be so very slow. My family would be happier with me. They’d be smiling at me. Instead, we sweat.

All I can think of is winter. The one that just passed and the one that is coming. I don’t want to invite the cold any sooner and I won’t welcome it when it comes. I’m not into curling up under blankets and wool socks and mint tea. I do it, but it’s survival. I don’t miss the cold when it’s gone. I won’t turn the air on. I hope we melt.

Makes sense.

When Rainer died, people often told us “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”

They thought that made sense, a kind of pat-on-the-spiritual-back, you-got-this. They’d follow it up with “Everything happens for a reason.” I never understood how these cliches were supposed to help make sense, even if I believed in God. Especially if I believed.

The scaffolding of reason and narrative doesn’t fit here and the effort to construct is inherently flawed. I learn to live with the nonsense, the un-sense, the complete lack of sense. It is the white noise that remains when everything else goes silent.