starlight. That old bald-pate I? Good God. Is that what Ruth sees? What Marian regarded with affection and amusement? What Curtis rejected and was rejected by? And if I am so strange from the outside, am I so sure I know myself any better from within?
How do I know what I think till I see what I say, somebody asks, kidding the Philistines. But I can’t think the question so stupid. How do I know what I think unless I have seen what I say? For two years I cultivated the condition that Marian called twilight sleep. Now my eyelids flutter open, and I am still on the table, the gown is pulled away to reveal the incision, the clamps, the sponges, and the blood, the masks are still bent over me with an attention at once impersonal and profound.
Escape was a dream I dreamed, and waking I am confused and a little sick. Sitting here sorting out the feelings and beliefs of Joseph Allston, while the rain sweeps in on gusts of soft Pacific air, I am sure of hardly anything, least of all of the code I thought I lived by. Some of it, yes; maybe more of it than I now think, for certainly I don’t believe in conversions and character changes any more than I believe you can transform a radio into a radar by rewiring one or two of its circuits. But I do believe you can replace a blown tube or solder a broken wire. I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of others is by sympathy, which in first-year Greek they taught me meant “suffering with,” and that the way to deal with one’s own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me I crawled into a hole.
Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A in irony—that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or others’. To hide from anything. That was Marian’s text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.
So I will have to see what I say about this sanctuary, these entanglements, these unsought amputations and wounds, this loss. In the saying, I suppose there will be danger of both self-pity and masochism. That Roman who drove a dagger into his thigh and broke it off at the hilt for a reminder, who would dare say he didn’t enjoy the stoical spectacle he made? But I will have Marian at my elbow to mend me with laughter.
The rain has come on harder. I should go up to the house and bring in wood and light a grate fire and prepare such comforts as the first night of winter prescribes. Ruth has been by herself long enough. But I know I must come back down here to my study shack, regularly and often, until I have either turned light into these corners or satisfied myself that there is no light to be switched on. If every particle in the universe has both consciousness and choice, as Marian believed, then it also has responsibility, including the responsibility to try to understand. I am not exempt, no matter how I may yearn for the old undemanding darkness under the stone.
I
O UR SIAMESE CAT, called Catarrh for the congested rumble of his purr, has a habit of bringing us little gifts, which he composes on the door mat with an imagination that transcends his homely materials. One morning there will be the long grooved yellow upper teeth of a gopher, a sort of disembodied Bugs Bunny smile, gleaming up at me when I open the door. Once there was the simple plume of a gray squirrel, quite effective; once the front half of a cottontail rabbit, a failure; once a pair of little paws with their naked palms upturned as if attached to an invisible cosmic shrug. Many times there have been compositions of feathers, especially in March when the cedar waxwings sweep in on their way north and have a blast on fermented pyracantha berries. They overwhelm the mockingbird who
How do I know what I think till I see what I say, somebody asks, kidding the Philistines. But I can’t think the question so stupid. How do I know what I think unless I have seen what I say? For two years I cultivated the condition that Marian called twilight sleep. Now my eyelids flutter open, and I am still on the table, the gown is pulled away to reveal the incision, the clamps, the sponges, and the blood, the masks are still bent over me with an attention at once impersonal and profound.
Escape was a dream I dreamed, and waking I am confused and a little sick. Sitting here sorting out the feelings and beliefs of Joseph Allston, while the rain sweeps in on gusts of soft Pacific air, I am sure of hardly anything, least of all of the code I thought I lived by. Some of it, yes; maybe more of it than I now think, for certainly I don’t believe in conversions and character changes any more than I believe you can transform a radio into a radar by rewiring one or two of its circuits. But I do believe you can replace a blown tube or solder a broken wire. I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of others is by sympathy, which in first-year Greek they taught me meant “suffering with,” and that the way to deal with one’s own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me I crawled into a hole.
Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A in irony—that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or others’. To hide from anything. That was Marian’s text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.
So I will have to see what I say about this sanctuary, these entanglements, these unsought amputations and wounds, this loss. In the saying, I suppose there will be danger of both self-pity and masochism. That Roman who drove a dagger into his thigh and broke it off at the hilt for a reminder, who would dare say he didn’t enjoy the stoical spectacle he made? But I will have Marian at my elbow to mend me with laughter.
The rain has come on harder. I should go up to the house and bring in wood and light a grate fire and prepare such comforts as the first night of winter prescribes. Ruth has been by herself long enough. But I know I must come back down here to my study shack, regularly and often, until I have either turned light into these corners or satisfied myself that there is no light to be switched on. If every particle in the universe has both consciousness and choice, as Marian believed, then it also has responsibility, including the responsibility to try to understand. I am not exempt, no matter how I may yearn for the old undemanding darkness under the stone.
I
O UR SIAMESE CAT, called Catarrh for the congested rumble of his purr, has a habit of bringing us little gifts, which he composes on the door mat with an imagination that transcends his homely materials. One morning there will be the long grooved yellow upper teeth of a gopher, a sort of disembodied Bugs Bunny smile, gleaming up at me when I open the door. Once there was the simple plume of a gray squirrel, quite effective; once the front half of a cottontail rabbit, a failure; once a pair of little paws with their naked palms upturned as if attached to an invisible cosmic shrug. Many times there have been compositions of feathers, especially in March when the cedar waxwings sweep in on their way north and have a blast on fermented pyracantha berries. They overwhelm the mockingbird who
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