The Core of Creation

Perhaps it was the disappointment of tossing and turning the night of bringing home a new $1000 mattress that left me feeling the way I do today. Well, to be honest, the mattress isn’t really $1000. I got it for 400. It’s 1000 for the set but I didn’t need the box spring and I got it after somebody used it for some time less than 100 days. I suppose it wasn’t that great of a deal, but it was supposed to be a great mattress; though perhaps my preferences are not that of the ordinary when it comes to the position of one’s slumber. However, that probably has everything to do with nothing and was just something I felt like venting about.

Henry Miller said “The best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature.” Ironically enough as I write, my way to get over a woman is to turn her into music but just as well, I currently have no woman that I need to get over. Somewhere at the root of our humanity, (perhaps at the masculine heart, though I don’t want to exclude women from this) we find great satisfaction at creating. Just as well, we find a similar satisfaction when is comes to destroying.

One time I noticed this while I was camping. My friends and I sat out to spend the night in the woods to celebrate our graduating from college. The idea of camping has always been a tad baffling to me. Why is it that we trade the comforts of our home for the discomforts or the woods? I have since learned how nurturing it is for the soul but at first glance, the idea of camping is a bit odd.

So we arrived at our campsite not long before dinner time and sunset. We had to create our site, build our tent, lay out our sleeping bags, get our stove and food set up, and perhaps most importantly, collect fire wood so we could stay warm, see, and cook our food. Something about that next hour gave everybody meaning and it seemed that everyone of us had decided that building a fire was perhaps the manliest thing you could do. You get to chop down trees, break branches, and then turn those things into a fire that takes care of you. You see, somewhere at the core of creation we find the need for destruction.

This brings me back to the Miller quote. He tells us that to get over a woman you must turn her into literature, which I am loosely interpreting as art. When we think of art we mostly think of creation. Taking a blank canvas, painting colors on it until we have created some sort of image in our mind. I might attest that most art comes at the expense of what has already been created. In the sense of getting over the woman you are not creating a piece of art. I believe that the balance lies further in the hands of destruction; destroying the feelings that you had for her and perhaps her image along the way. Most break up songs are written describing how terrible the other person turned out to be. In both ways you create a new image for this person but also destroy what their old image was, at least to you.

Though destruction is deemed as a negative concept, I would like to turn it into a positive one. A theme in my life that I am beginning to understand is that in order for a new self to be birthed a death to the old self must occur. My priest said that in order for him to become a married man he had to die to being a single man. In order to become a father he had to die to being a young adult.

This can go on and on and perhaps seems trite. I don’t think it is though. I think it is the very thing that we fear. Perhaps this is why so many marriages fail, because we never kill the single self. Sure, the married man and the single man can have certain things in common. Somewhere there exists a ven diagram of what a married man can do, what a single man can do, and what both can do. Different relationships vary but I’m sure there is some sort of ideal that exists to help marriages succeed. To kill the single self is to move completely out of that single circle and live fully in the married circle. Again, certain things may be able to come with but only if they already existed in the married circle.

The trick here, I’m sure is discerning what needs to be destroyed and what should not be destroyed. Satan is out there to destroy what is beautiful and Jesus is out there to destroy whatever is destroying us. Jesus said that whoever tries to hold on to his life will surely lose it and that whoever wants to live must die to himself.

Last night while I was playing volleyball at the park there was a storm for about 30 minutes, about an hour before sundown. As Denver does, the storm quickly passed and the clouds parted. Shortly after, there was the most beautiful sunset and two beautiful simultaneous rainbows. If you were parachuted into the scene it would have looked like a beautiful day without any weather. And for some reason, this thought lingered in my mind: At the core of creation we find destruction.