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Pain has a transformative character, and the one you have will never go away. Your duty is to live with it, the same way your loved one did. My grandmother was an avid gardener. Now that summer is here, I tend to it every day after job. It's in a state of desolation, with wild grass growing everywhere and empty garden beds. I weed them out and take care of the seedlings: sweating, with my muscles arching from physical work, hands being numb because of nettle burns, knees bleeding after crawling on gravel around dooryard. I struggle and take pleasure in the labor that causes me pain, the way my grandmother did — so that she can live on in her hobby, in that pain, that very act of gardening. She *is* her garden, and *my* grandmother, after all. Mother to Christ, at a loss:
- Are you my God or son?
You’re nailed onto the cross.
Tell me how to go on?
How can I go, having not
understood, grasped, derived:
are you my son or God?
That is, dead or alive?
He, in turn, explained:
- Dead or alive, this time,
woman, it’s all the same.
Son or God, I’m thine.
— Joseph Brodsky, Nature Morte
The *time*-travel you are looking for isn't about being there and then. It's about persisting the pastime (the way of engaging with the materiality of *space*) of those who are long gone. About deciding what you steal from Kronos, what you leave to be devoured by him, and how far will you manage to travel with that stolen good now claimed as yours.So, my advice: look into your father-in-law's stories and military career; write and perform acts of bravery the way he did. https://youtu.be/O7fXfCZ4sB4?t=95 |