"Tell Me How You Die": On Life and Sleep
From The Butterfly's Burden
A favorite professor of mine in graduate school opened up a seminar with the following quote from this writer. Writing about The Day of the Dead, Octavio Paz says:
“Death is a mirror which reflects the vain gesticulations of the living. The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end. Death defines life; a death depicts a life in immutable forms; we do not change except to disappear. Our deaths illuminate our lives. If our deaths lack meaning, our lives also lacked it. Therefore, we are apt to say when somebody has died a violent death, “He got what he was looking for.” Each of us dies the death he is looking for, the death he has made for himself… If we do not die as we lived, it is because the life we lived was not really ours.”
And then, as if all that wasn’t already a pummeling, he goes nuclear ending with :
“Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are.”
I first encountered this in late January 2017. I cannot stop thinking about that line.
Finding connections is one of the more exciting or beautiful elements of life. It is also something that helps produce meaning in the arts. Reading Darwish, I was taken aback especially during this moment in his poem, “Now, When You Awaken, Remember”:
“Tell me how you lived your dream | in some place, and I’ll tell you who you are | And now, when you awaken, remember: did you mistreat your sleep?”
Written in 1950, Paz brought this forward in his book, The Labyrinth of Solitude written (as I recall) in LA or Mexico City. Darwish, published his in 2003 as a part of his book, Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done, written in either his native Palestine or Texas. Knowing that (as (I recall) Darwish had an affection for Latin American poets, it is possible that Darwish read this of Paz and tried to expand upon it, each inspired by a search to measure a life. Truly, a beautiful connection. I will assume it is true.
Let me put these back to back for us to look at:
“Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are”
“Tell me how you lived your dream… and I’ll tell you who you are”
What is happening here?
In each case, Paz or Darwish is explaining the ability to identify and know someone based on how they either die or live their dream. The intrigue I find here is that, first, death has not yet happened to someone who is still able to also receive an understanding of who they are, and, secondly, the dream that is able to tell us about ourselves doesn’t happen in consciousness. Both senses of knowledge seem to occur outside of life. What is this?
“Our deaths illuminate our lives” could be a way to decode what Paz meant. The memory of someone, their reputation, is the reflection of the life they lived. It calls to mind today’s mantra of “what are you willing to die for?” So it is the thing that someone will die for that best defines their life. It is a sense of commitment that will clearly explain who someone is. But it is not just commitment; it must be authentic commitment. His line tells us this: “If we do not die as we lived, it is because the life we lived was not really ours.”
Meanwhile, what is Darwish doing?
Life and Sleep
It is interesting to pull together that fact that Darwish recommends asking yourself if you “...mistreat your sleep.” Sleep, obviously, being the thing that brings one to dream, and how one is in the dream best demonstrates who they are. For Darwish, it is dreaming that illuminates how we sleep in the same way that death illuminates how we live for Paz.
Though I find Paz’s equation potent and unforgettable, it is Darwish’s equation that I cherish. I do so because it gives concern to the practice that brings one to understand one’s total measurement of life. If observing how one dreams is the best way to tell who someone is, then it is incumbent upon the dreamer to take care of how they sleep, again, the thing that brings them to dream.
The pivotal point is that Darwish brings concern to treating sleep well. His formula for a good life is based on care: “did you mistreat your sleep?” or “did you mistreat your life?”
There is a sense of tenderness and responsibility within this setup. The definition of life, your dream, is best seen through the lens of care and one’s responsibility to be careful of one’s life.
I find this batch of a dozen or so words absolutely staggering. Hold it; it is astounding.
More soon,
Trevor
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