Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel: Everyman (1556 - 1560)

Gallery Notes: The bearded figure with the lantern represents Everyman during his lifelong search. The legend explains, ‘Everyone searches for himself in various things, all over the world. How can anyone then get lost, when one is always looking for oneself? However, no one knows himself, … Whoever understands this has insight into a great miracle’.

"We live lives of ritual and habit …"

Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel: Everyman (1556 - 1560)

Gallery Notes: The bearded figure with the lantern represents Everyman during his lifelong search. The legend explains, ‘Everyone searches for himself in various things, all over the world. How can anyone then get lost, when one is always looking for oneself? However, no one knows himself… Whoever understands this has insight into a great miracle’.

"We live lives of ritual and habit  …"

Life continues in remarkably similar aspects even after being Exiled. Conservation and Preservation Laws applicable to physical systems also seem to apply when considering social ones. My rituals and familiar patterns continued trying to replicate themselves even once their originating contexts disappeared. Many attempts seemed absurd, though I rarely considered whether my intentions were reasonable. We were used to taking Sunday toodles when living in our small city, so we attempted to continue the ritual after moving into a big one. It might have taken us half the afternoon to get to what we might consider country, at which point we'd have to turn around to get back home by suppertime. We toodled anyway! In this and a thousand other ways, we preserved our rituals even into Exile.

Before, we'd home-can tomatoes every summer. After, we found we had to drive up into Pennsylvania to find tomatoes of requisite quality and economy, so drive we did. The Muse discovered The Tomato Barn online, and it looked like a genuine article: the pride of Washington County, Pennsylvania, and a nearly three-hour drive from Takoma Park. We drove and found better than we'd expected. Some of our ritual searches reset our expectations to better than we'd ever imagined. We sometimes felt genuinely blessed that we'd been Exiled because of these finds. Other attempts left us discouraged and feeling like aliens. The Muse's annual search for citron at Christmas took us on innumerable fruitless searches. That first year, we must have driven hundreds of miles vainly seeking satisfaction that was not forthcoming until finally it was. After a solid month of searching, we found what we'd been seeking. The instant that deeply ingrained need was satisfied, all the hassle was forgiven and forgotten, exchanged for the deepest imaginable satisfaction.

Like every Exile, in the early days, we searched for exact replicas of what we'd left behind. Time helps us refocus on more allegorical replacements. We wouldn't necessarily need to drive clear out into the country to satisfy our toodling urge once we found some more urban replacements. We could drive to the almost unknown National Lotus Garden, wander through the sweaty Eden there, and return home as if we'd been somewhere. Once we'd settled into our rented digs, the rhythm of our lives largely returned to something very similar to normal. Sure, we were separated from virtually all of our principles, but we continued swimming with roughly equivalent satisfaction even after relocating to what we'd imagined would be a social desert. We parsed the unfamiliar in allegorically similar ways to the familiar. It was still us parsing and our legs and feet dancing regardless of the different tunes and dance floor.

The Muse, most of our friends, and I experienced an Exile this week when the unimaginable was elected president. That feeling that overtook me was more than merely passingly familiar. It was the dread and revulsion of Exile, the sense that I wanted to do anything but this. But dealt this, which promises to deliver significant difference, I remembered Preservation. Change sometimes occurs instantly, but it more often requires much more time. Trajectories rarely turn on any dime. Logistics complicate transitions. Not even determination can instantly overcome Preservation. I was thinking about the democratic traditions and systems in place after two hundred and fifty years. I also thought about the newly elected's track record. He rarely delivers what he promises and more often manages to make a hash out of even his most modest initiatives. The angular momentum, the spin, will not easily or quickly relent. We all might be in for bigger surprises than we imagine.

Making too much of Preservation in any social context might be a mistake. Human relations can only be metaphorically connected to the laws of physics. Still, our experience reinforces the sense that we often blunt differences and persevere in ways nobody could have predicted. The Muse and I returned from Exile essentially unchanged. Different, for sure, due to our many adventures and experiences, but fundamentally the same as when we left. Older and perhaps no wiser, we continued replicating the patterns common to our relationship. The idea that we might one day colonize Mars seems delusional if only due to the apparent impossibility of preserving all the patterns and rituals that would maintain a settler's humanness. Few of these can be extinguished by mere discipline, for most reside deeper than cognition or volition. They seem inevitable components of every being and cannot be extinguished or replaced without superhuman effort, if even then.

We've all been Exiled and learned how to preserve ourselves after that insult. We are not so much what we believe as what we feel compelled to replicate. We live lives of ritual and habit, and this world might be much better for it.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz