Going Places

A year ago, maybe more, in the muddle of misery that was foreclosure law and the frustration of unanswered job applications, the need for an escape was more obvious. There were plenty of reasonably good things in the present moment, but I think we need goals and destinations to structure our actions from day-to-day, or we end up drifting. At least, that has been true for me. To get myself beyond that particular period and to give myself something to look forward and live forward to, I proposed a return to England.

It was a logical destination. I’ve always hated the idea that there might be a high point in one’s life that one could never really top, like people who peak in high school and spend the rest of their lives daydreaming about when they were captain of the football team, even as everything else about their adult life is deeply unfulfilling. It bothers me for two reasons: one, that I don’t like to think that there may be nothing better to be had out of the future, and two, that it’s simply impossible to recreate the conditions under which we may once have been incandescently happy. Perhaps three, and related to one, my life has generally trended upward, from a difficult, emotionally perplexing childhood to a differently difficult but somehow kinder adulthood, so I have historically felt that there were very few moments in my past that could feasibly be seen as an improvement on the present or possible future.

But all that aside, if you asked me when I’ve felt most perfectly at home, in alignment with my goals and hopes and temperament, I would have to say when I was studying at Cambridge. It wasn’t necessarily the easiest experience, but the positive far outweighed the negative, and the memories I formed quite deliberately have remained impressed in my mind with a strength rarely attained.

And yet, it has been four years. Memories, even strong ones, may fade a bit. I think I’m becoming less of a romantic, but I hope that’s a trade off for the better, if I may be a bit less naive as well. I’m not working at a job that is essentially awful - although somewhere Dan is wondering about the veracity of that statement, since I’ve been crying to him all week about how much work has been stressing me out. In short, my motivations for this particular trip that I’m taking are less clear to me and less immediate and urgent than they were when the whole plan was conceived.

I’m looking forward to spending two weeks with Katrina, and I’m happy to see Andy after seven years, and it will be pleasant, I think, to take after some of my favorite English (by birth or resettlement) authors in wandering long footpaths. I could certainly use the vacation after a rather long and occasionally exhausting  six months. But right now, on the eve of traveling, as I pause before plunging into  the last bits of packing, cleaning, cat petting, and so forth that must be done, I can’t help but feel as though some of my thoughts on travel, on the purpose of this particular trip, and on the general destination have changed.

I don’t need to escape. “Here” is rarely perfect, but after the first running of the gauntlet, I’ve had a fairly gentle time of it. I don’t particularly romanticize England anymore, I think, although as a lifelong Anglophile this may be a relative statement. I’m aware that it’s not a perfect place either, and whether I’d make the effort to move there, like I once hoped and strived to do, well, I don’t know. I suppose if the opportunity presented itself, although they rarely seem to be so promiscuous as to land in one’s lap. But it’s a comfort to know that after such a long time of feeling uprooted and misplaced, that perhaps there is a sort of home to be had here, for however long that might be.

Regardless, in less than 48 hours, I’ll be in hot pursuit of magpies and the best grilled cheese in the world. Fortunately, I think Katrina is already resigned to her fate, or this would be a very long trip indeed.

Axis Sphere and Saying Grace

My vision is limited - as a narrator, I write only myself with an even passably clear notion of the full, vibrant range of desires, motives, causes, and so forth that shape me, and I am most likely unreliable, for as much as I need to hide from the world, so too I may find it necessary to hide from myself. Most often, it seems, those things that would cause me shame were I to look on them with unflinching directness, but sometimes too the joys that would require an unbearable trust or a painful realization.

But that’s not the path I meant to wander down with my opening statement. I am less concerned about the limits on my ability to know and speak myself. More concerned about the limits on my ability to know and speak someone else, whether to myself or in translating them to a third party.

Even when the universe of shared experiences is richly populated, we are aliens to one another. I can at best project what you may be thinking and feeling based on my own experiences or on what I’ve been taught by various means to believe would be a rational response. But I can’t really know it, and even at the best of times, we may be on two entirely different planes. You are you, distinctive and unique; I am I, likewise but in my own way.

Sometimes, most times, that’s okay. We only need enough to get by, and no more. But there are occasions when the mismatch between two or more people’s worlds isn’t so easy to disregard. Friction attends the fault lines, as well as misunderstanding, hurt, blame, betrayal, and confusion. Then the story I narrate must be written with greater care, delicately navigating a fraught space. But this is not done in isolation and without tools.

To take but one example, this is the beauty of gratitude. In the infinite tangle of actions and words, we choose selectively to attend to this set, rather than that set, and we extend thanks for that which is excellent and praiseworthy. Whatever else may be true, this is also true: that I see what you have done, intentionally or unintentionally, that in some way touches me, and I thank you for it. Not ignoring any harm you may have done, but attending for the moment to the more important reality, and blessing it and you for the fact of its existence.

Part 46

Take me down the line of your face
With permission from the gods
I will explore this newfound territory
Wherein your flesh and animation meet
A land of possibility if the winds are fair
A gentle brush, a quiet word, leaning in
All preface to another thought.

The Enough of Here

This is the sacrifice made for comfort and security. That the midnight hours hold fewer uncertainties, fewer monsters that sit on your chest until the feelings leak out in sentence fragments and extended metaphors.

Once upon a time, she said, this was as necessary to me, as natural to me, as breathing. (She coughed on her own cigarette.) And now? It takes effort. Why do it, after all, when so many other things are easier? To indulge passivity and glut oneself on the empty calories of pointless pleasure. Listening, watching, protecting always protecting, holding one's arms close to one's sides, one's hands in one's lap, always aloof with every muscle tensed lest there be accidental contact (horrors!), but greedily gobbling up the product of other people's thoughts, actions, passion.

They told me they could see me being famous one day. I knew it would never happen: I would make sure of it. Because they thought they thought I wasn't lazy, that my love was an unquenchable fire, that this would be enough to make the whole world burn. We were all wrong. Them for speaking nonsense, me for not believing it.

Brick by brick by brick by brick. This is how we build the world. One tweak at a time. One unkind word, one loving touch, one act of faith, one gesture of goodwill, one rude hand gesture, one private moment of scorn. 

They tell me these don't really matter. That no one person can truly be responsible for making the enormous change. Perhaps that's true. But I am not responsible for the whole world. I am only responsible for my piece of it. And here there are July peaches sweeter than sunshine, a red-tail making love to the wind, two people with alien views shaking hands in mutual respect, a willingness to blossom into a yes when the warm winds of opportunity awaken the buds on the branches, and the gentleness of fingers like vines intertwining.

How do I how do I how do I? How do I not? Everything is dirty, but not everything is unclean. It waits only for the rain to give us our Sunday faces, scrubbed and shining, strange bride for a stranger groom. I'll marry you, humanity, but that doesn't mean a thing on the wedding day. It's all the other days that count: the days of plowing, fertilizing, planting, hoeing, weeding, picking, cooking and canning, even the days of rest, when we set aside our joyous labors (not joyous for the sweat, but joyous for the life they sustain) to abide with one another. 

They told me we were not for each other, and perhaps that's true. But all that's irrelevant now: I've been born into this love, I've tasted the candied lemon peel apple butter spice of it, and there can be no turning back. Therefore, onward, as long as our feet can hold us (and perhaps if they get us to the highest peak before they give out, we'll roll down the hill a ways further on).

I Have Heard the Silence

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the roots
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees...

The past sometimes seems like one mass grave, in which we have buried alike both our triumphs and our most shameful secrets. As Longfellow said in the poem I quoted not too many posts back, "Lives of great men all remind us..." There have been many great men and women throughout history, who made good decisions in the face of tremendous pressure and pain. There have been moments of joy, when daily trials were set aside for the serious task of celebration. In the everyday carnivals of human existence, we revel in life not in spite of, but because of our deep recognition of its brevity and the potential reach of darkness.

I have wondered recently, as I've listened to Billie Holliday's famous lamentation, "Strange Fruit," just what it is that we're seeking to accomplish when we dig in that grave of history and set before ourselves its most tragic victims. Say what you will about justice, but there is a point beyond which it becomes more complicated. Justice means something in the present to the living. I cannot deny that this is a space in which we can and should seek to break the cycles of oppression and to obtain justice for those who are suffering, whether directly or indirectly, at our hands. But what justice can there be for those who are dead or for those who are yet to come?

I think this is an essential part of being human: that we must, to borrow Wolterstorff's image, sit on humanity's mourning bench. It is not justice that brings us to this place. It is something humbler, but no less vital to our survival. It is our willingness to share not only in joy, but also in suffering.

I'm hesitant to draw on the image, but it seems that the power of Jesus's crucifixion was that if he were the son of God, it was not incumbent upon him to suffer, neither the sorrows nor the pain nor, in the end, the death of being human. But by humbling himself to share in that grief, he became both the promise and the fulfillment of the words he himself had spoken: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

I am not Jewish or African-American or Vietnamese or from one of any number of colonized nations. My family is Swiss and German and maybe a little French going back for practically as far as we have last names to trace these stories by. We have not been subject to genocide, slavery, lynching, persecution, exclusion, or exile. I am, for all intents and purposes, untouched by the legacy of victimization that sought to dehumanize or annihilate groups deemed inferior. Quite the contrary, my white skin is a mark of participation in, if not the actual abuse, then the benefits wrested from their suffering.

But I hope that by sitting here on the mourning bench, dwelling on and grieving over their pain, acknowledging the injustice of all that has been done, that should never have been done whether remediable or no, I may (not to draw grandiose parallels between myself and the son of God) honor them and, in recognizing and respecting their humanity, perhaps reveal in them some small part of the dignity that was concealed in what we have done to them.

It is not enough, but Wolterstorff concedes this too. There are things that our words and our best intentions and our fiery proclamations and soberest policies cannot touch. For those moments, all we have to offer is our being present and open to the pain, sharing in this terrible, wonderful Eucharist, whereby we drink the blood and eat the flesh and somehow, limping our way toward grace, may yet be made whole.