Waiting for 'Waiting For Godot"
Paula and I went to see Waiting for you-know-who last night. It was done with little ceremony at the Crystal Theatre and starred 5 fellows I've never heard of. They did it well, I think.

I went to the dress rehearsal-premier for $5 and a can of food for the food bank. Paying for the show was the last reasonable thing I engaged in. The actors performed magnificently. I have no position to take on the way they demonstrated what was to be demonstrated. Leave that for other more experienced and educated folks. I have enough trouble thinking about what they were demonstrating than how well they did it.

The play is absurdist. There really isn't much else to say for it. It was written in 1948, when Europe, at least, was really looking at life without a goal. They still remembered the War all too well, and had lost any confidence in most things, especially thoughts.

The play reminded me of Camus, of course. How could it not? And "huis clos" by Sartre. Remember him? He and Simone waited out the war in Paris and then wrote stirring calls to action and praise for the Résistance, all published safely after the war.

The play does make me think, however. As the existentialists say, there is no guiding principle in the universe. We are not here for some purpose. We did not ask to be here at all. Religion makes up a purpose to try to make us feel better about our absurd life, but Religion depends on ignorance. If you really think about things, Religion won't work, and you are left with absurdity.

Any principles of ethics are yours, personally, to decide on. If you do not decide, you have decided. You can not escape choosing what to do while waiting for Godot or anything else. You must live in the here and now and you must decide for yourself what you should be doing while you are waiting for the tomorrow that becomes today when the sun moves around the earth yet again. You can not decide to do nothing without ending your own consciousness, by suicide.

That, too, is of course, a decision and you alone are responsible for it. It isn' t necessarily a wrong decision, right and wrong can only be decided by you. Sartre calls Hell "les autres". Becket does not concern himself with Heaven and Hell, he seems to say that the here and now is the whole thing. You decide if it is Heaven or Hell or just now. You decide if it is good or bad.

You decide if you want to see this play again. I don't think I want to. Once is enough.