The Writer Dons Black for Existentialist Tuesday

Scribbleland Chapter 3

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There is nothing I like more than when everyday life takes on traces of the symbolic. Sometimes, events arrange themselves spontaneously, such as when, following a breakup, my favorite mug with the inscription “Cup of Love” shattered unexpectedly. But more often, we must be “the single artificer of the world in which we sing.”

Especially in times of turmoil, to re-instill a sense of order, we find significance in ceremony. For some, that might mean attending Midnight Mass, or taking the Eucharist kneeling. But I am a Reformed Protestant, and our church has no such recourses. There are no robes, no bells, no smells. In our zeal for rationality, we repressed the primeval desire for mysterious rites. We eliminated ceremony.

So, on the first Existentialist Tuesday, I made my own.

Philosophy Sunday

The semester prior I had founded a much more respectable institution, Philosophy Sundays, for my atheist friends. I wished they would go to church with me and become Christians, but they wouldn’t. One was flirting with Marxism. Another was probably a nihilist. So, I settled for philosophical discussion, an exploration of belief, in the hopes that we could all grow closer to the truth in a non-religious setting.

We met in the late afternoon at Rough Draft for coffee to discuss various philosophical questions. One of the theories that resulted from this time was that all the world religions are like forensic sketch artists trying to use the clues of nature and history to reproduce a portrait of God. Some of them exaggerate the nose, others the eyes. One of them has got to be the best at revealing God as he truly is. I still love that metaphor.

Sadly, however, I had a falling out with one of the staunchest members of our coterie. I was extremely frustrated and blamed him for ruining our friendship, our band, and Philosophy Sunday. Out of this mess came Existentialist Tuesday.

I don’t remember why we threw the cake. I don’t know how it was that Tom and I came up with the scheme. All I know is I had recently read Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus.

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.

ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus

I was embracing life’s inherent absurdity.

Yes.

Mhm.

Definitely…

The real motive probably had something to do with the fact that after an abruptly aborted romance, I was secretly furious at the prospect of spending Valentine’s Day alone.

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Throwing the Cake

My, how silly everything looks in retrospect. At the time, I promise it all felt edgy and highbrow and perfectly sincere.

But I remember distinctly that I was mad at love that February, stomping around campus in combat boots. What better way to vent than by destroying a cake?

In the kitchen of MacIntyre Dorm, Tom and I adorned the cake in pink strawberry icing before decorating it with candy hearts. Once the virgin sacrifice had been prepared, we exited the dormitory and headed to the Arboretum with my friend, Erin. Erin had wandered in while we were making the cake, and with nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon, she joined in enthusiastically with the proceedings.

We were each participating in this ceremony for different reasons. I was there to exorcise romance from my life. Tom was there because he is unapologetically the sort of person who “does it for the story.” Erin, a bonafide contrarian, was there to talk back to Valentine’s Day. Hence, the ceremony took on a multidimensional significance as religion, exhibition, and performance art.

You can’t read the cover in this photo, but the book Erin is holding is a copy of Camus’ The Stranger.

It was also the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We loved to revel in our arcane knowledge of philosophy. I forgot this group chat existed, but as I hunted for photographic evidence in Messenger, this turned up:

Philosophy Sunday had been an earnest search for truth.

Existentialist Tuesday, in contrast, was a decadent romp.

Even the account I wrote at the time dripped glibness:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

If by God we mean a very particular cake that once gave off a delectable aroma and bestowed a splash of bright, beautiful, and terribly artificial color on a muted winter landscape, then yes, God is dead. And we three (oh, three, that significant number!) have killed him. As far as I know, he has not risen, unless it be in the stomachs of birds.

But if God is more than that tasty tidbit, or more widely construed, an activity to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless day - in other words, if he is not man-made but man’s maker, then how can we possibly think our puny efforts have killed him? A god like Marx’s specter of Communism, a diaphanous movement of the frail human intellect, is easily killed, but the all-powerful Creator of the Universe may very possibly exist, and if he does, he’s still out there. Nietzsche, stop setting up straw men. You’ll only get people setting others up in return.

…

We proceeded through a foot of snow, Tom cracking through the thin layer of ice on top and bruising his shins in the process of clearing us a path to a gate that turned out to be padlocked, whereupon we hopped the fence, delicately transferring the cake plate from person to person, sliding the eggs through a gap in the fence. We gallumphed through the snowy woods, up the hill to the Catholic shrine ruins, and with a shout, Tom hurled the cake down the hill. We grabbed the plate, dropped a phone, grabbed the phone, snapped a photo, and gallumphed to the lake. We each hurled an egg at the lake. The plate slid onto the lake. Tom slid onto the lake. We filmed his potential death. The scenery was gorgeous.

We named the plate Albert. I washed the pink icing from his edges tonight, with lemon-scented dish soap. But before that, he visited the dining hall and took the fourth seat at our square table by the dish-drop, where his comrades drifted back to the steel-lined kitchen. Let’s have a moment of silence for those ordinary dishes.

Erin and I steamed by the Heritage Room hearth before we reluctantly traipsed back into the cold world. Do you ever notice how the streetlights at night reflect in one’s glasses and shine through the air until it becomes orange and opaque? I heard a voice and saw a best friend. For a moment I did not recognize her face or her voice…

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Existentialist Tuesday continued for a time, and soon all our friends were dressing in deep purples and blacks every Tuesday. But once the movement grew, it lost its power. As it became more organized, it became less absurd. And once it served the purpose of deepening our friendships, it quietly exited our lives.

But I, for one, shall never forget it.

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Existing past Tuesday

The existentialists, whatever their faults, identified one profound truth. We have the power to write meaning into our lives. But I believe we can do so well or very badly, depending on our methods.

What I’ve found to be the key method is humility. Very often, we are so unaware of our own inner workings, we can only analyze a story in our life long after it has happened, years later, when we begin to notice sneaky little patterns in our actions and behaviors. As we outline our stories, infusing them with significance, it’s important to be aware that we are, in fact, unaware. It is only by cycling back to remember the past that we gain wisdom to create the present. In each moment, we are insufficient, unwise, incomplete. But each moment is an opportunity to learn and improve.

I am older and wiser than I was that fateful Tuesday in February 2018. We all are.

Now, six years later, Erin is studying law in Cleveland at Case Western. In ten years, she will probably be a fabulously rich patent lawyer with a complete set of first edition Brandon Sanderson novels on her shelf.

Tom is… well, I don’t know what happened to him, to be honest. Last I heard, he was sailing the seven seas as a marine engineer. I’m not sure how he managed to swing that one, considering he was a history major, but he’s always been good with his words.

And here I am, raising a baby in Upstate New York as I scrape away at freelance writing, bringing joy and entertainment to… whom? Why, to you, dear reader!

How have you created meaning in your life? Do you participate in any rituals? Let me know in the comments below!

xo,

Amelia

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