"In infinite still night the moon swam low
And saffron in a silver dusted sky;
Beauty and sorrow hand in hand with slow
Soft wings and soundless passage wandered by."
William Noel Hodgson

William Noel Hodgson was a Lieutenant in the British Army, who was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  He was also a poet.  Apparently, there were a lot of writers at the Battle of the Somme, including J.R.R. Tolkien.  The BBC documentary about them is worth watching.  Check it out when you get a chance:

The technology of death has always outpaced the technology of life.  Whether it's the industrial distribution of mechanical death from the minigun of social media, tearing your poets and artists to shreds with mass-produced, high-velocity depleted-intelligence content, or the magnetic pull of love toward the grave, beauty and sorrow have always gone hand-in-hand.  Hand-in-hand, as Hodgson writes, on slow, soft wings, with soundless passage wandering by.

Perhaps sorrow is the only viable companion for beauty, in a world plagued with death.  Perhaps ugliness and death are the world's last "hello," and to appreciate beauty is to master the art of saying farewell.

Perhaps having faith in a world built of graves is to extend a greeting to inevitable disappointment.  Perhaps, maintaining optimism and faith in a world populated by gravediggers is to invite death itself to dinner, and to experience true beauty, we must learn to say goodbye.  What if, in a world comprised of body-sized holes in the ground, the only honest way to appreciate beauty is to acknowledge the inevitability of its leaving?  To think we're going to look at (or experience) something beautiful forever is perhaps to be afraid to look at it at all, and to waste our lives pretending that there's any chance of extending our corpse pleasures indefinitely.  We will be tempted to mistake this sense of denial for "optimism," and will set ourselves up for a grand, unbearable disappointment.

This is a long way of explaining just one of the reasons I'm glad to be a Christian.  Goodbyes have been forced on me my whole life, and as a result of this blessing-in-disguise, I now am aware that I've gotten many of my goodbyes over with, and am looking forward very much to an eternity of hellos.  I shudder to think.... What if I'd wasted all my hellos in this life, and had an eternity of goodbyes to look forward to?  By believing goodbyes to be "negative," by being afraid of and denying them, and by living in a state of faux-hello while surrounded by graves, I would merely be storing my painful goodbyes up for later.  To be used as ammunition against me in an industrial war, perhaps.  Or an overabundance of aggravated likes in a social-engineering trend (death by admiring squad), or untested chemicals in an experimental medical procedure, or whatever horrors are next.

A horrible thought.  Though, don't let me discourage you away from being at least mildly optimistic about anything you may enjoy being optimistic about.  The black pill is as deadly as the white pill.  But when (not if) the world sends your muse to the front lines of The Somme, Ukraine, Gallipoli, or Palestine, to be cut down at the age of 23, and you're shivering in the trenches with a pen in your hand, struggling to jot down your last impressions of the beauty of the world...  Realize that it's your proximity to goodbye that sharpens your appreciation for life.  It was inevitable.  There's no other way to write a love song.  Or repent and get to Heaven.  The path to beauty, love, and hello is through the fear of goodbye, not away from it.

So embrace it.  And then repent and turn to Christ.  And meet me in the air.

"When we get to the other side of goodbye,
don't you know...
we'll say hello."
Farewell Song Sweet From My Trees

And yes.  Of course.  It's okay to be scared.  Show me someone in the trenches who isn't.

Happy belated Remembrance/Veterans' Day.

Thanks for listening.

$6 Tux

I kissed a girl
from San Antone
she gave me love
she gave me a home
she wore blue
and I wore black
I gave her my heart,
then I took it back

Like a cheap $6 tux
like Moses in a cheap pair of Chucks
the hookers lined up like sitting ducks
just tryna hustle up a couple-a bucks
the wind blows,
and the city sucks
like a cheap $6 tux

My baby's heart
is like a pearl
she is my love
she is my girl
there are no clouds
in her eyes
she tells me she loves me
she tells me lies

She ties my fingers around her throat
she pulled the knife out of her coat
her final bloody valentine she wrote
she didn't tell no one,
she didn't leave a note
she ate some rocks so her body wouldn't float
heaven or hell,
you know she's laughing at you, boy

I'll love ya baby
until we're old and grey
we'll lose our minds together someday
no matter how silent our heart beats
we'll play with cats
in the crazy streets
we'll plant flowers in the snow
there ain't a dance on earth
that the devil doesn't know
a box of bones is all it buys you in the end

Into a deep sleep
my darling fell
her resting place
I'll never tell
when she wakes up,
we will be married
under the stars
where she is buried

I carried her body down
to that mansion in the ground
wearing a blood-soaked wedding gown
my dearly departed,
dead and drowned
never once complained
never made a sound
I'll luvya baby,
'til death brings you back to me
again

©2006 Nathan Payne