The Burial of Polyneikes

   I'm really not sure what to lead with, or even what this post's primary theme should be... earlier today I thought it would be about fate, and chance; right now I'm leaning a lot toward, responsibility, is the best word I can muster for it; both tie vaguely into this big long thing about the notion of causality and the paradox of omnipotence and omniscience, which I've developed a few good thoughts about lately. Conceivably I could tie them all together, but, though I'm surprisingly not tired for having been awake 17 hours straight, I'd still like to go to bed soon.

   I survived Saturday. Wasn't even that bad. There's something kind of amazing about having your worst fears being realized, the end of the world occurring, and then realizing that even that's not the end of the world. We did spend, until almost 5:30, at the CBW lab, discussing our comic, so the plasma donation this morning instead of this afternoon was worth it. Choosing the morning versus the afternoon, my left arm being stuck versus my right arm, it looking for a minute there like the arm about to be stuck was the one I didn't want but the mistake being realized, whether that mattered, having been entitled to a bonus gift for donation number six this February which I didn't cash in on till now with this being my seventh time, what that gift was, how that gift was, that's all part of the discussion of the random against the inevitable which I might tell you all about, maybe even some time soon. It was significant at the time, and plenty of material for one post, but the day lasted longer that 8:30 this morning...

   Like Antigone. I told you about this. Antigone. It's a play that deals with themes of the will of man vs the will of gods, and temperance, and who decides what is just. Polyneikes may have been a traitor, but is it for a man to decide to allow him to go unburied and thus damned, even if that man is Kreon, the new King of Thebes?

   Near the end of the play, Antigone is cast into a cave, which Kreon figures is a good moral medium between punishing her since she went against the king's wishes, and not punishing her because she went with the gods' wishes-- it's still some sort of civic punishment, which satisfies the king, but the gods could rescue her at any time if she really was in the right. The gods don't save her from her fate, and though Antigone still believes that she did the right thing in burying her brother, she apparently suspects that she screwed it up somehow, wavers in faith and hangs herself (spoilers! though if you're really hung up about spoilers from literally thousands of years ago, dang son you're a fastidious one.)

   Decrees of state versus decrees of gods are a whole lot easier to judge between, if you know that you worship the right kind of god.

    DLC. Disciple Leader Conference. The girl I sat next to during the closing session felt impressed, after we'd started to go our ways after the meeting, to return back to me,  to tell me-- not to be too hard on myself, for one thing. Just a random impression. She didn't know why she was prompted to tell me the things she did, and neither do I think that I'm too hard on myself, but we all have the right to receive revelation for those within our influence.

   Antigone this evening was the final performance, so it was packed. I'd gotten a ticket for myself, a roommate suggested some activity with him on Saturday, I said my Saturday was busy, but that I was going to go see Antigone if he wanted to fit something in, and he suggested to make it a group date with him and his gal pal.

   I don't think he showed up. I haven't seen him, not just all evening, but all day.

   I did invite a date along, for myself, though, like he'd suggested-- invited her, and picked her up, and brought her, but she'd apparently never bought a ticket for herself, and so wound up, not in the standby line to get in, but the standby line to the standby line. Last I saw of her, either. I wonder how she spent her evening.

   So, here's the powerful conundrum-- I did choose to go in without her, instead of like maybe giving her my ticket instead and miss out on it myself. Was that right? No matter who survives, one is stuck with survivor's guilt. Or do we both stay in the standby standby line, both miss the event, even though one of us could get in?

   I chose to abandon her. Harsh way to put it; there was still a chance that she'd have been able to get in, really. (Mathematically, not really, but I suppose that's another aspect of inevitability.) It was absolutely worth going to; the conflicts were sharper and yet more poetic than I remembered just from reading the Sophocles script in High School, and my eyes were opened. But was that worth the sacrifice? Whose will is the most just, gods' or kings'? Is this what I wasn't supposed to be too hard on myself on? Even if our pantheon is right this time, even if we do have the right for revelation for those in our sphere of influence, how do we know that our seer is as reliable as Tiresias was in the play, and that we should act as she says?

   18 hours, now, of no sleep. And the roommate just walked in.