Personal Reflection to the Disease of Matter

Hamlet, Vladimir and cancer have contributed greatly to how the neurons fired in my reaction to Robert's Ross' life. These are the parallels and comparisons these influences dredged up;

Hamlet was recruited by his father to avenge his death, and, though Robert enlisted himself, he did so to redeem a point for his life in the eyes of his dead sister. Vladmir squanders away his life, wondering how to go about living it - putting off suicide because there may be some reason undisclosed not to believe life isn't worth living for- while Robert decides to risk death after he determines what is worth dying for. He can't go on living in a world where innocence is sneered at and stomped on...or turned against by the mutinously malignant cells of some popular notion that infects the entire system.

Robert, in a 'madness' diagnosed by his contemporaries, made the only sane decision possible under his circumstances; he fought with a conviction galvanised by the tarnished, rusting apparatus of warfare to "not be taken" by this "disease of matter." He was defeated, but he was not taken. Life is unpredictable, but a person's actions are his responsibility alone (hmmm...it would appear the stoics have also made an appearance in my psyche recently). At least he died as who he decided he wanted to be.

The day after I finished reading The Wars, I asked my Mom if it was true that she was responding to a ad she had snipped out of the classifieds and left on the coffee table. The job regarded a position at an aerospace manufacturer (that, for the record is "doing very well" because of the various wars antagonised by North America), she responded; "can you taste the lemon juice in the soup?" I said maybe she should add a pinch of cilantro next time. War was an industry that had invaded my home, and I said nothing. I felt a fraction of the pressure Ross must have felt squirming under toxic societal norms. I stirred the vegetables around - blobs of tomato guts swirling around in their own blood - and wondered how her life would have been different if she hadn't given up on teachers' college.Alas, our impotence when it comes to following through on 'personal existential epiphanies' ...and the reason that heros of existentialism are fictional.

Or Diane Fossey...
Or Rosa Parks...Or my Mom when, a few days later she said “you know, I just wouldn’t feel right working there.”