l i f e
justify justification
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
Luna. "California All The Way"
Wanting a smoke...hold on...just a little smoke on the porch outside. It's a half-moon, the band will sound good. I won the poker game hands down tonight. Hands down.
Be right back to justify justification.
Hold on...
Okay, been thinking about this one a lot lately. Been taking questions on demand so to speak, writing them for folks. The magpie, that was one thing, but justification seemed different until I got a letter in the mail today. It said two things.
Look at problems from the side.
and...
See the west coast of Africa.
First off. Kafka. Gregor was a cockroach 'cause he worked too damned hard and traveled everywhere. Not unlike my father, who works too damned hard and travels everywhere. Probably knows every airport in the United States quite well by now, but he bears no resemblance to a cockroach.
To put it another way I look to the writing of Bruno Schulz. ..."in the pose of a Buddhist sage, its bitter dried up ascetic face petrified in an expression of extreme indifference and abnegation...my father no longer possessed that power of resistance which protects healthy people from the fascination of loathing. Instead of fighting against the terrible attraction of that fascination, my father, a prey to madness, became completely subjected to it."
He became...a cockroach.
To show an action which vindicates. To provide an action which vindicates. This is key. The vindication of something, in this case justification. Vindicating vindication. Oy.
Looking at it from the side it doesn't really seem that complex. A play on words. A definition by definition which at the core seems flawed in the very basis of language.
What we really want. What I want, is to show that an action can be ultimately justified. What kind of actions can be justified.
Truth?
Probably.
Love?
Rarely.
Regret?
Never.
Facts are justifiable. The rest is subjective opinion. So if I approach this from the proper angle then it all depends upon the justification that is to be justified, right?
You can be justified by faith, eh? How about Young Goodman Brown. Yeah. What about Kafka? The west coast of Africa? Justifiably justifiable?
Perhaps.
But really. It has to be fact. Doesn't have to be superlative to all facts, just a fact. So it becomes a simple question really. Can justification be taken as fact?
Well that all depends, but we are...sorry, I am, applying it to justification itself which demands fact by definition. So to justify it would be to demonstrate its truth. The truth of the justified, or the process of justification.
I sit at the table on Tate St. The black and white checks create the frame for the entire world. Purple and red border them, but in the middle a war is being raged. The coffee has quit steaming and cools down to a mellow golden flavor, brewed just slightly too long. I can feel the breath of others around me. It's hot. My neck itches from the sweat and when someone opens the door to the right and behind, I can feel the wind cool the nape where the hair grows light.
I raise my right hand, move the queen into position and punch the clock.
A slight smile curls the edges of my mouth into more of a smirk, "Checkmate."
The smirk justifies my winning. Relieves me from any guilt about winning, about being better. About feeling good for it, for feeling smarter than the opponent across from me. At the same time, he picks up the slightly warm cup of coffee and takes a sip while glancing away from the table. The sip says It meant nothing to him, and yet everything. He wants to play again, but I've got to go. I'm late already.
He plays it off to his friends and selects another opponent. I leave, stepping out into the shadows of Tate. I leave having justified my justification. I leave having won (fact) and in turn my smirk justified it to the room.
It happens all the time. The look you give someone when you only have one cigarette left and can't spare it. Damn. I understand. Even a scab would understand. Nothing need be said. It's justified.
Empathy.
goodnight 8.03.98
