Sub Terra Vita: Chronicle 2: A Sense of Living

Sub Terra Vita

by Tim Krenz

Chronicle 2: A Sense of Living

A sense of living provides the context for understanding the places people live and the places they visit. Literary movements often try to influence into the works of writers a concept called “a sense of place,” a look at surroundings, a demi-poetic rhapsody, that captures any essence of a setting in a theater of the life. The sense of place, if done well, keeps a writer and readers captivated in the drama happening in the seemingly mundane and dull role we call, “our lives.” Any story, even unwritten ones, of any genre or discipline should use the material accumulation of experiences to impart larger lessons to guide the living along a moral azimuth. Story can provide the course bearing, toward a destination in humanity's travel to better ourselves, help others, and leave good memories to others upon the individual arrival at the place of final repose.

In that sense, place becomes a heavy and permanent relief, one deep and grave, indeed. Until that time, we require life as the contemporary moments of accumulated experience. We must do what wisdom dictates, even if the Logic of Self defies that wisdom. To narrow the gulf separating everyone from each other, we must recognize that, first and absolutely, our relationships with others on this Earth form the most vital link between all first causes of existence and our own humanity. We live to enjoy the company of our family and friends, and to help them and others, in all times of feast or tragedy. No arguments allowed.

We may never truly achieve ambitions, dreams or goals, but we may never know the good impact we have had by sharing a smile with someone who needs one; telling someone of our gratitude for their friendship; or taught someone the value of poetry simply by reading them one. Such little things help all the world, in the end, as we never imagined our lives doing at the beginning. In recognizing the importance of meaningful people in our lives, our relationships—good, nurturing fellowship for pure intentions—we find our humanity as we face all the fears that would otherwise overwhelm all and everything.

For Memorial Day this year, I performed the honorable duty to place flowers in pots at the grave sides in East Farmington, (Wisconsin), south of Osceola. A few of the relatives I remembered, or even knew rather familiarly. On both grandparents' side, I found, or “met” new family relations I know only from story. Of one great-uncle, my grandma's brother, I never knew anything until placing flowers next to his flag and star. (He died in 1950, age 31, after serving in the Second World War).

In the cemetery, I saw headstones of other old, settler families of the St. Croix Valley. I know or know well many of their grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. The experience caused me a question about the current generations from the people now long deceased: Why does our humanity never seem to personally visit each other ever enough (not on the phone; not on the internet), when opportunity and meaning meet, for no other reason than to ask, “How goes it?”

In the end, it seems, we only congregate enough after death, when death has no memory of itself, and our ancestors can receive only spring flowers of red, purple, blue,and white to mark our sense of living, marking our humanity to their humanity, with a mere memorial? Our experience should say otherwise. Our future memories demand more.